You are going to get a lot of people telling you that you're a libertarian nutjob. Even here, which touts itself as a bastion of internet privacy champions and "experts".

But you, you're walking the walk. Asking the hard questions and accepting the consequences. There is only one way to make things change.

Don't let any little pedants tell you "how your daughter is going to grow up", either. Or that they somehow know how she'll feel about you.

FWIW: my kids have SSN's and that is just as dangerous as what you've chose.

Yes, the big brain types sometimes get really pissed off when they find out they were tricked into voluntarily consenting into a bunch of stuff.

When you get/renew passports, leave the SSN box blank. It will become second nature to ignore these data requests.

It starts with "I can assume what this person is about to say". Because you can project how the conversation will go (You're in "good company" - family, friends, hackernews colleagues - you are all used to linguistic shortcuts as well)

The reality of what they say differs from how you imagined it. Maybe it was close, but they participated new information, so now you feel the urge to contribute as well. Add your own perspective.

You are now suddenly in an arms race with the other person to find the "correct perspective".

That's really insightful. I definitely do this! Even when I correctly anticipate their point it's not a good conversational approach - and when I get it wrong, it's a major miscommunication. I think for me it happens when I prioritize information over people. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to extrapolate that point across the HN demographic.

"What I'm hearing is, there's a vacuum in the market for giraffe re-cabling services."

But those are a man's most intimate treasures, you can't have other people basking in your curated radiance.

No, he's too busy making genuinely useful comments. Why don't you try it?

Those are quarks, judging by their observed behavior of self-assembling into Unicode for the bacteria emoji.

And within epistemology and your process of "verifying" there are hundreds of contemporary schools of thought from Wittgenstein to Chbosky.

I don't care about Wittgenstein or Chbosky. I can only care what meanings mean to me.

The use of 'we' is fine in many cases - when talking about a holiday, I can say 'we went to the beach' and that is understandable because of the context.

Its not fine to talk about 'we' in the context of something that is subjective, eg understanding or knowing. It is an assumption to say 'we know' unless you have checked all the people you are referring to really do know.

If you think this usage is acceptable - and apparently most people do - I'd love to hear an explanation. To me, it is sloppy and confused thinking, and actually it's use is ultimately a type of casual lie, because it overstates whatever-it-is.

I have astoundingly profound whiplash from reading your comment before reading the article, then coming back to your comment again.

If you're anywhere near El Cajon I know a guy that'd teach you for free/some odd work around the shop

I'm up in LA, but I'm strongly considering going up to SF (or down to SD) for a day or two to learn as I can't seem to find anything where I am.

Lurkers make the best commenters, because they only come out of the woodwork for something they're passionate about.

It's all one big ecosystem, and I quite like this corner of the reef