That's the best part, we are not funded at all and are building this office after eight years of profits from our products: Beanstalk, Postmark and dploy.io. We count every dollar that goes into the space and it is purely an investment in our team and culture. I'm personally researching everything from glass panels, to steel sourcing to carpet with our architects to keep costs down.
I wonder how many people are genuinely afraid of raising their own profile in such a way. I'm not American, but I would certainly be partaking in any political action against the actions being discussed here.
Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of these entities.
Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of these entities.
I understand where you're coming from, and clearly it's an individual choice, based on one's judgment of risk vs. reward. But let me add that when people choose that position, it just makes it that much easier for these guys to keep doing what they're doing, and getting away with it.
FWIW, I routinely criticize the CIA, NSA, etc. here, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc., using hashtags like #fuckthecia, #fuckthensa, etc. and nothing bad has happened to me as a result.
How can you be certain? How many really successful job interviews have you had since you started your one-person campaign, where the hiring company inexplicably dropped you like a hot potato? Do you regularly check your credit rating to see if weird stuff is showing up? Have your bicycle tires quit holding pressure?
I ask the last question because East Germany's Stasi did that sort of thing (https://books.google.com/books?id=GlbAmn_cajYC&pg=PA160&lpg=...). The USA "national security" establishment/"intelligence community" gets unbelievable amounts of money, that they must spend. Why not make and use "smell chairs" or randomly screw with people that openly oppose the deep state?
How can you be certain? How many really successful job interviews have you had since you started your one-person campaign, where the hiring company inexplicably dropped you like a hot potato? Do you regularly check your credit rating to see if weird stuff is showing up? Have your bicycle tires quit holding pressure?
Well, that's a fair point, so maybe I should say "nothing overt and noticeable has happened as a result." Beyond that, I could speculate about really subtle stuff, but that strikes me as a sure road to a level of paranoia that I don't want to engage in.
Three years ago, almost everyone laughed at folks who claimed the NSA was watching everyone. Now, it's an article of faith, and there's some evidence that people have changed behavior because of that faith.
Any sufficiently advanced level of precaution is indistinguishable from paranoia. That East German activist was probably a little puzzled by flat bicycle tires, but probably shrugged it off. What are we all shrugging off today? Stock market weirdness? Oh, that's just HFT, right?
It's known that folks profited off of "top secret" CIA-led coups in the 1950s (http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~snaidu/papers/coups.pdf), so it's not out of the realm of reason to look at the stock market today to see if the current "intelligence community" is profiting.
That's a good question. Why are you asking? Who do you work for? What are you going to do with this information?!??
Just kidding... it is a good question, and I don't have a perfect answer. I guess I'd say the level of paranoia is too much when you reach the point of diminishing returns... that is, when it turns out that, even if you're right, knowing that doesn't help you because there's nothing you can do about it.
So, maybe an NSA agent sneaks into my parking lot every night and lets a few pounds of air out of my right rear tire. I can't prove that doesn't happen. But what am I going to do, camp out in my truck all night with my pistol at hand, hoping to catch the guy in the act? Not practical. Hire a private security guard? Not practical either. Etc., etc.
Well, look at it this way; the politicians raise money so they can campaign to us, the citizens. So obviously our voice still matters. We're just not using it.
Thankfully, for the most part, its not dangerous (yet) to exercise our right to contact our representatives.
I already acknowledged that I'm a virtual nobody to them. I just don't want to be a virtual somebody to them, even if it's just a raised XKeyScore rating.
>The war on terror, like all the metaphorical wars, is really a civil war. It needs to stop now.
There's too much money at stake for those at the top for this to be stopped. Lucrative contracts for all their buddies whether it's in consultancy or providing military hardware and software.
I mean the fact that congress keep ordering tanks the military themselves have proclaimed loudly that they neither want nor need should be setting off alarm bells everywhere, and yet it seems to just get brushed over.
I think you're missing the real motive for Congress ordering hardware that the military doesn't want.
It's what their constituents want.
They are (by and large) not doing that sort of thing out of some scheming to enrich themselves. They want to be reelected to their next term, and delivering some federal cash and contracts to your district is the perfect way to do that.
>This is not about you. This is not about your data. This is about our society's collective ability to think and act for itself. Blanket acceptance of surveillance is a dangerous attitude and shockingly common.
It's also about the future of our society, that which our children have to grow up in and deal with.
I don't know how we'll be able to turn to our children in the coming decades and tell them "the government is monitoring everything you say through voice and text on your phone, every keystroke you make on your tablet or computer, every purchase you make on your phone or through your card in this inevitably cashless society, every connection you make on a connected device, everywhere your devices check in, connect to GPS or triangulate... oh and every camera you see out and about is recording you and facial recognition software is tagging it as you" with the justification for their complete lack of privacy being "there were some guys in the middle east riding around in pickup trucks with AK47s so we needed this to protect us".
We're at a pivotal point now and it's very much up to us which way it goes. Our governments are supposed to serve us but instead we live in a society where we are very much ruled, where our rulers are the elite and their ruling mechanism is the complete charade of representative democracy.
We'll all be dead before it gets too bad, thankfully, but our apathy will condemn our children and their descendants to a life under tyranny which we ushered in through theatrical politics, fear mongering and a bizarrely held belief of There Is No Alternative.
Recode automatically has rep here because it's run by the main principals of the old WSJ site AllThingsD. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg earned their rep—ReCode is just keeping it alive.
For the company. Depending on how it is implemented, taking a cut of the first 2 years' salary could be very high risk. Intuitively there seems to be little to stop someone taking the education and then absconding abroad.
it's be interesting to know how a situation where student takes school, then starts their own company and pays themselves ramen salary is handled
seems like a good portion of their target market might have something like that in mind
also (opportunity cost of two years and having to live in one of the more expensive real estate markets in the US isn't exactly risk free for the student either)
>Or are attention spans so short and/or the agency so completely removed from the rule of law that we're going to let them get away with their crimes? If we're not even going to bother with the trial - acknowledging that we won't even bother trying to maintain the rule of law - then I guess that's sufficient proof that we have lost our republic, as we let it be replaced with feudalism.
No, there will never be accountability for any of the gross abuses of the constitution, people's rights (including all those in the USA) and foreign "captives" physical and mental wellbeing highlighted in the NSA and CIA revelations.
Let's not kid ourselves. Representative democracy has shown itself to be a charade, particularly in the USA where you've two very similar entities who have billions pumped into them at election time to ensure no other entities have a shot at power, and then once elected those two very similar entities spend their time serving and protecting those that pumped in those billions.
The worst thing about it that I can't see any way out of it for the American people. The system is now so thoroughly stacked against them that any attempt at radical change - whether it's passive through the political system or more active through protests or at worst a revolution - will be very rapidly quashed. As a European I absolutely loathe that this very same, corrupted, abusive entity - the US Government - is reaching its tentacles into our governing and is now vying for power here via the TTIP and similar.
>to drum up more support for killing people an ocean away
To drum up more support for pumping billions or trillions of dollars borrowed from America's descendants into the pockets of the US elite via the military industrial complex.
Don't like it? You're welcome to protest but make sure you do it in the designated "free speech zone" over there, well away from those you're holding the protest against.
Oh and while you're doing it we'll increase the attention we give your NSA profile, everything you look at online, your emails, everyone you've ever interacted with in a trackable way and more. Can't have you radicals trying to upset the system the elite rely on, after all.
I find it amazing that people seemingly don't know that Facebook tracks you across the web through those embedded Like buttons, and more amazing that many who do know don't seem to care.
>It seems that for most people total calories are more important than the carbohydrate/fat-ratio.
It's also relatively easier to track. It's easy to say "Well, I can consume about 2000 calories per day, this donut has about 300 so I'll have roughly 1700 calories left", but it's quite difficult to know the breakdown of how much carbs/protein/fat should be consumed within those 2000 calories and more difficult again to plan and monitor for those values.
> [Total calorie intake] is also relatively easier to track [than carb/fat ratio].
I'm not sure about that...knowing total calories is not quite that simple (without fairly-sized error bars), due to differences in basal metabolic rate, efficiency of absorption of calories, determining calorie counts in general (particularly for restaurant food), etc etc.
On the flipside, it's much easier to understand the level of fats and carbs in a given item of food; hell once you start paying attention, you can even get a good rough guess just by the taste. On top of that, your body gives you some pretty nuanced signals related to hunger: without having put in any extra research or effort, I can definitely tell when I'm hungry for protein/fats vs carbs. I doubt it's just me, but IME at least, the feelings are completely different (this is also supported to some degree by nutritional science, in that protein and fats are known to provide satiety in a way that carbs don't).
Not relevant to calorie intake (relevant to calorie expenditure, which is a different issue.)
> efficiency of absorption of calories
differences here are the aggregate of differences in the efficiency of absorption of particular nutrients, so while this is a real source of challenges in measuring total calorie intake, its also a challenge in measuring carb/fat ratio of intake.
> determining calorie counts in general (particularly for restaurant food)
Again, the same problem with calorie counts here applies to carb/fat ratios.
>Not relevant to calorie intake (relevant to calorie expenditure, which is a different issue.)
What? How in gods name would you determine the appropriate amount of calories without having a sense of expenditure?
> differences here are the aggregate of differences in the efficiency of absorption of particular nutrients, so while this is a real source of challenges in measuring total calorie intake, its also a challenge in measuring carb/fat ratio of intake.
The variance (across time) of the ratio of absorption of fats vs calories is presumably much lower than that of calories in general (the latter is MUCH more sensitive to both lifestyle and things like "I happened to walk s lot this week"). That's partly conjecture though and your point in general is sound.
> Again, the same problem with calorie counts here applies to carb/fat ratios.
Come on man,the only part of my comment you didn't address is the one that talks in detail about the differences in difficulty between calorie estimation and macronutrient makeup estimation. Why pretend to respond if you're going to ignore the half of my comment that directly addresses your disagreement?
Edit: Is it the smoke from all those dollar bills going up in those flames?