This reminds me of War of the Worlds, where the martians had no diseases and thus no immune system. When they came to earth they died from diseases.
A society like that, with no defenses, would be very vulnerable. That's why it's better to actually have some bad actors to keep "selective pressure" on societies so we evolve our defenses.
1.) ISPs can not change the content of websites their users are watching to modify or add additional advertisements. Companies have to buy advertisements at Google.
2.) It is harder for ISP to analyze the web traffic of their customers to build profiles which they can sell. Only Google has these information.
3.) When people feel safer in the Internet they buy more stuff on the Internet. Business will buy more advertisements on the Internet, probably at Google.
>2.) It is harder for ISP to analyze the web traffic of their customers to build profiles which they can sell. Only Google has these information.
Using DPI to view the SNI (which is still in plaintext... for now, anyway) of all connections is very easy.
Even once that's patched, most users still use the DNS servers provided by their ISP, which can easily log queries. Even if you created junk queries to add noise, it's child's play to correlate DNS query with the TCP SYN (or UDP datagram for QUIC etc) to the IP returned by the query.
I’m not sure that’s true. Many people know and simply don’t care.
Using hypothetical me as an example, why does it matter to me that Google can read my emails? Why does it matter to me that Google is improving their searches by tracking my activity? I’ve got nothing to hide.
And before you say “I’ve got nothing to hide” isn’t a good reason to give up privacy and freedom... well that fight isn’t here on HN. It’s a fight with the hundreds of millions of privacy apathetic people who are winning the fight by a landslide.
We can hate on FANG as much as we want, but if 2/3 of the population can validate their business model, does it even matter?
I think that most people implicitly assume that their communications are private.
Mass surveillance is an open secret that is easier on the senses to ignore.
Ignorance can be combatted with information. But now there's a "war on information" with companies like facebook (in true comedic fashion) being the arbiter of "truth". Facebook, one of the biggest players in the mass surveillance game.
The business model is validated because of ignorance. Most people have no idea what pixel tags are, for instance, yet the web is oozing with them. When given the option, people prefer not to be surveilled. It is more or less inhuman to want to be watched surrepticiously. We call that stalking.
I'm not sure this is even useful as a rule of thumb, let alone generally true.
Let's Encrypt certificates and Debian are both "free" in the sense you mean, are you somehow "the product" for those?
Everywhere I'm aware of in the world, COVID-19 vaccines are free, are you "the product" when immunised against a deadly disease? How so?
Air is free, am I the product for like... trees? How does this work?
And in contrast it's pretty clear that many expensive things Americans buy treat them as the product anyway, because it's free revenue. So the rule of thumb doesn't even help you to avoid being scammed, it just means you're more willing to pay for the chance.
>I'm not sure this is even useful as a rule of thumb, let alone generally true.
Because free is a limited word. Which is why we have free as in beer / free as in freedom / libre vs free, the list goes on and on.
"If its free, you're the product" is a perfectly fine statement to help average folks navigate the modern tech consumer world outside of opensource efforts.
>Everywhere I'm aware of in the world, COVID-19 vaccines are free, are you "the product" when immunised against a deadly disease? How so?
For this you do actually provide data back to the providers of the vaccine (depending on country and agreements signed of course). Most of the free vaccine sites near me (USA) have a lot of obvious data collection along with the provided vaccine which I'm fine with.
> Everywhere I'm aware of in the world, COVID-19 vaccines are free, are you "the product" when immunised against a deadly disease? How so?
The people making the vaccines are getting paid, although the vaccine is the product. The people sticking the vaccine in my arm are getting paid, my arm is the product. (Sort of)
The US government is compelling insurance companies to pay for it, and paying for it in absence of insurance, because excess death is a drag on the economy.
LE and Debian, two projects I use and appreciate, are free as in beer, but you're allowed to donate [1] [2]. Mirrors run for example on a university. In the end, it is all paid somehow. Perhaps by altruistic people, perhaps by public funding, perhaps by government funding, perhaps by donations (with a nice mention, aka advertising), perhaps by private money... but its paid for somehow.
You mention air and trees. If we don't pump money into the quality of our air and in trees (to offset Co2 production) we are doomed. You mention COVID-19 vaccines. Who do you think pays for it if its free? All of us who pay our taxes do ie. society.
If you pay for something, you have in some circumstances a stronger legal ground than when its free. I have all too often witnessed free products where, when I give feedback/criticism, I get the reply "..its free /care don't moan". If I pay for it, this argument doesn't hold, and you can hold them legally accountable in some situations. Its also not as if e-mail is expensive. I pay my ISP for it, and I get to pick a domain (all included with my sub, but guess what it isn't free...). I can move from that domain if I desire. There's also something like Posteo which costs 1 EUR a month or so, and then there's Protonmail (which I personally don't like cause of JavaScript webmail but YMMV).
The reference "if its free, you're the product" is a great rule of thumb on the WWW, as it raises awareness on an important issue. I wish more people realize it because all too many people have no idea what exactly is being harvested about them. Which is a shame. It also makes it more difficult for commercial products to compete. And, if I take for example two local research news sources which I like (De Correspondent and Follow The Money) then these are paid for; not free as in beer. Yet, they compete with free as in beer. Which isn't free as in beer. Every time you use YouTube or Facebook you pay, with your privacy. What I foresaw long before it got the standard quo was that we get a divide in world-wide society: those who pay with money, and those who pay with privacy. You can already see it very clearly in the mobile world of iOS and Android.
Am I the only one left in the world who actually likes Google and has a positive opinion of them?
I remember switching from AltaVista to Google and thinking they're much better. I remember a friend forwarding me an invitation to join GMail on its first beta day and how impressed I was with the 2.2 GB storage. I remember switching to Google Chrome when I read about its beta release on Slashdot. It was much faster than Firefox.
Personally, the company I loved to hate was Microsoft, and for me Google was the good guy.
Question to those who hate Google - are you old or young? Have you used the Internet in the 90s, before Google came? Have you used email where you lose your emails once you exceed the 20MB capacity, and you need to pay money to increase it? Have you used Internet Explorer because it was everywhere?
I'm not young and I remember the times when Google replaced Alta Vista and then Hotmail (and released Wave).
I don't think people forgot about those days, but mostly think that the Google they liked has kicked the bucket. (Google's motto was "Don't be evil" those days, remember? It was removed from the code of conduct in 2018).
I think today, Google (together with Facebook and friends) is actively harming the open internet we loved. So, yes, we see what Google has replaced, but I don't think that is enough to worship a corporation forever.
I stand corrected. Wikipedia says "In April 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence." Thank you.
But I think my point remains valid. Google's "attitude" changed dramatically in the recent years and we are just responding to that.
Corporations tend to lose the original good feelings of their founders.
On the other end, people is coming to recognize, more and more, the value of privacy. To understand that "I have nothing to hide" is a meaningless phrase in this context.
What can we do?
The primary thing is to always pay attention and be vigilant towards those to whom we give our data. Even if it's very difficult, being the tracking so pervasive nowadays, even for us HN' readers.
Another palliative is to split our data among different cloud vendors, in order not to let anyone have all your information.
In my opinion, at the end, we should use more paid services.
Most of your positives are more than 10 years old. In the meantime they've remove the "Don't be evil" motto, their Android/Chromebook support is very short lived, they've killed countless services people relied on, ...
I don't think Google is evil like Microsoft was in the 90s but I don't blindly trust them as I might have done in the past.
Yes, but it is no longer their "motto" (the guiding principle for the company). So, it appearing in the CoC does not mean that it's the guiding principle.
But I think you are raising a good point. Why is this piece of "misinformation" being spread so much? What do you think? I think it is because it corresponds to people's experience with Google: "an entity once liked by the users and did good deeds has quit doing those." So, it may be "misinformation" as you put it, but I don't think it bears no value.
23:37, 21 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 12,196 bytes +1 Reverted edits by Tykell to last version by Alex 101 - FOR THE LAST TIME, STOP AND DON'T COME BACK! undo
23:35, 21 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 12,196 bytes +1 Reverted edits by Tykell to last version by Alex 101 - TYKELL, CAN YOU DO ME A FAVOR? DIE! undo
23:34, 21 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 12,196 bytes +1 Reverted edits by Tykell to last version by Alex 101 - crying PLEASE STOP, PLEASE, I'M BEGGING YOU crying undo
23:33, 21 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 12,196 bytes +1 Reverted edits by Tykell to last version by Alex 101 - I HAVE A GUN, I'M GOING TO SHOOT YOU NOW! shootshootshootshootshootshoot undo
23:31, 21 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 12,196 bytes +1 Reverted edits by Tykell to last version by Alex 101 - YOU REALLY HAVE TO STOP, FOR THE VERY LAST TIME, STOP OR I'LL KILL YOU! undo
23:30, 21 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 12,196 bytes +1 Reverted edits by Tykell to last version by Alex 101 - I KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO STOP, BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP undo
Am I too charitable or is it possible that this guy is actually just joking and entertaining themselves? I can't imagine someone being serious with these threats and at the same time typing out shoot shoot shoot. Maybe it is just a weird hobby. Like when people play the long chess games where they share a board in common space and just make a move every time they happen to pass by and be in the mood. Maybe this person pours themselves a cup of coffee every morning and goes to Wikipedia to do his morning revert.
There is some effect where people contribute often and wonderfully in their area of expertise but turn completely weird outside of it. Stuff like a doctor running into a historically notable alternative medicine topic.
If HN, Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, Youtube comments, etc have taught us anything it's that people who should be mature enough to know better will readily engage in "no u" type arguments like 14yo kids.
It looks like it dies down shortly afterwards but the next day someone gets unblocked ...
00:09, 23 February 2006 Tykell talk contribs 11,705 bytes -1 No, we can't. Don't you know when to quit, kid? undo
23:42, 22 February 2006 Alex 101 talk contribs 11,706 bytes +1 now that I'm unblocked and this page is unprotected we can change it undo
I think if you're all-caps screaming you've lost the argument, and seeing this I'm actually quite embarrassed for the guy. Personally I think "$band is good" or "$team is winning" does sound a bit silly, but I've seen it so many times that I'm kinda used to it. Besides I suspect the same is true for an American hearing "$band are good" or "$team are winning". Either way it definitely doesn't warrant losing your cool like this.
The same is true of US English as well, and people will choose one or the other when they're trying to emphasize one perspective or the other.
In my neck of the woods at least, whether the proper noun itself is a plural word is also a major factor. I would be more likely to say, "The Beatles are a band," but, "Led Zepplein is a band."
Angels & Airwaves is a fun one, because it's two different proper nouns, but "Angels & Airwaves is a band" still sounds more correct to my (Chicago) ears. I cannot provide any plausible-sounding rationalization for this opinion, but I will fight to the death to defend it.
Yeah, agreed. It's about context. I tend to use plural form even though I'm from the States too. That said, "Angels & Airwaves is a band" sounds more correct simply because it delineates the two proper (plural) nouns as a single (collective) entity very clearly.
Just like you'd say "Wells Fargo is a bank" even though it's obviously a huge corporation that is made up of thousands of people.
In some contexts it still makes way more sense to use the plural conjugations, like if you were to say "Angels & Airwaves are playing a great show", because at that point you're talking about what they (the band members) are doing. Likewise you would say "Angels & Airwaves are putting out an album" or "are retiring" because you're talking about the actions of the band members, as opposed to the business entity (the band itself).
Sorry, I'm a musician as well as a coder, so I've thought about the syntax of this before.
I suppose I like "Angels & Airwaves is a band" because the alternative feels ambiguous in a way that creates tension. With "Angels & Airwaves are a band", I'm left wondering if that was the intended sense, or if they made some editing error and what was really meant is, "Angels & Airwaves is a band," or, "Angels & Airwaves are bands."
This is in danger of running into the back/forth that we saw in the Angels and Airwaves Wikipedia page :-)
Joking aside, it might sound odd to an American (or Canadian?) but British English would not distinguish between whether or not the name or “nickname” are singular or plural. So we would say:
The Seahawks are winning
Seattle are winning
Arsenal are winning
Rangers were relegated
I think this is the kind of thing where you can learn to tolerate the “wrong” one but it’ll always sound weird to you, whether “wrong” for you is British or US English :-)
Edit: I did think of a situation where we’d use “is” - when you’re referring to the legal entity or FULL name of the club. “Aberdeen Football Club is a Scottish professional football club based in Aberdeen”. This is pretty rare to see, and you’ll likely just see it in, ironically enough, the first line of a Wikipedia page.
"The" and the postscripted "s" imply plurality, and therefore the use of "are". Nearly all sports teams in the US are pluralized, so it would be "the Seahawks", "the Bears" etc. There are a small handful of counter exactly examples, such as the Utah Jazz and the Miami Heat. But I think most sports fans use their standard sports lexicon that they use for every other team and treat team names as plurals.
Band names tend to be mixed. It's clearly "the Red Hot Chili Peppers are playing at..." but also "Primus is playing at...". (See also the edit war between "The Eagles" and just "Eagles")
I think the use of "The" as part of the name also matters.
"The Patriots are winning" sounds OK to me as an American. "The Patriots is winning" sounds totally wrong. "Arsenal are winning" sounds fine, "Arsenal is winning" also sounds fine.
When I think of American sports teams there's usually an understood "The" in front. "Patriots are winning" works fine conversationally but, if you were being a bit more formal or writing it down, you'd say "The Patriots are winning." On the other hand, the city name is singular. "Boston is winning."
Something that comprises many people is treated as singular unless it's in a plural form.
-Arsenal is a team.
-We are Arsenal players.
-There are many arsenals in Britain, but there is only one Arsenal.
If it's unclear you have to add words. You have to make sure the subject is singular. With Arsenal the singular nature of the word doesn't require it.
-There are many patriots in the USA, but there is only one Patriots football team.
In your example, Arsenal is the singular team. "Arsenal players are winning" is grammatically correct but not really used because players are understood to be part of a team.
The difference is that most U.S. sports teams names are proper nouns in the plural form (49ers, Raiders, etc.), but most motor sports teams are usually referred to as Team <Singlular Noun>. "Team Quaker State is in the lead." If they were the Quaker States, then it would be "Quaker States are in the lead."
I don't follow MLS, but looking at the team names, they mostly look singular to me, apart from "New York Red Bulls". I suspect the Red Bulls are nearly always referred to in the plural by Americans.
> Didn't America attack british colonies in Canada in 1812?
Yes.
> I thought America was the aggressor in that war and Britain just retaliated.
It's more complicated than that. Britain tried to prohibit America from trading with France, as part of their war against Napoleon. America thought that was against international law. Britain also had a habit of seizing sailors off of American ships and forcing them into service in the Royal Navy, which the US regarded as extremely over the line. The British were also (pre-war, IIUC) arming Native Americans on the US western frontier.
Eventually, the US declared war. But I'm not sure that makes them the aggressor, at least not 100%...
I wonder if neclei were "invented" by viruses as those safe rooms. There are already theories that DNA was first invented by viruses to protect against cleaving by RNAases, and the presence of UDNA viruses suggests it. It would also explain how DNA had immediate selective advantage over RNA.
In the book The Vital Question the author argues that nuclei were invented to protect against the original mithocondrial DNA:
> Introns are the result of "a barrage of genetic parasites" that early eukaryotes faced from their own endosymbionts; nuclei evolved as a defence against this, allowing spliceosomes to remove introns from transcribed messenger RNA before ribosomes can translate them into proteins.
A society like that, with no defenses, would be very vulnerable. That's why it's better to actually have some bad actors to keep "selective pressure" on societies so we evolve our defenses.