Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | maxheadroom's comments login

>Not sure what the angle is?

Maybe a new version of the directory harvest attack[0]?

For example, if someone has an email address (or list of email addresses) from somewhere else, one can easily tell if you (or they) have a Facebook account by simply requesting a password reset against it (them). If there's no throttling on password reset requests, one could process a large list rather quickly.

[0] - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/recipient-filterin...


Oh - that sounds entirely likely. I'd be surprised if Facebook allowed unthrottled password resets but the bad people are so clever these day, who knows. Thanks for insight.


>...but strictly just means "not a manager right now".

There's also the verisimilitude that it can also mean an inferred ceiling. For example, Principal <whatever area> Engineer role[s] at Microsoft is [are] typically the highest that you can go - if you stick to the IC (read: non-managerial) track[s].


>While I still consider DuckDuckGo to be in the "not bad" category...

If you're into privacy-conscious search engines and want one that's not susceptible to blanket FISA warrants[0], check out either Qwant[1] or SwissCows[2].

[0] - DuckDuckGo's address is in Pennsylvania - 20 Paoli Pike, Paoli, PA 19301.

[1] - https://www.qwant.com

[2] - https://swisscows.ch/


Re:qwant

France has a more permissive surveillance regime than the US[0], and as a foreign (US) user I have no recourse if they spy on me.

Furthermore, here are some quotes from qwant:

>We do not use any cookies or other advertising tracers to create your profile for commercial purposes. This means that you can use Qwant with confidence, we will never try to establish your psychological or commercial profile to sell it to third parties, here or elsewhere. [1]

Note the "for commercial purposes" in the first sentence, and the "to sell it to third parties" in the second. These are weasel clauses.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/24/france-big-bro...

[1] https://betterweb.qwant.com/5-reasons-to-be-brave-and-choose...


[flagged]


> With Google you can be sure that they sell your data to _anybody_

This is not true. There is no documented case of Google selling any user's personal data to anyone.


Okay, fair point. Googles' business is literally selling access to all the data they have collected from you. So they are not selling your data, only the access to that data, that's right.


> more permissive

That should probably read 'more pervasive'.


Qwant doesn't work for me at all on Firefox. It displays an empty page. Does anyone else have that problem?

In the console I get a warning and an error:

> Content Security Policy: Couldn’t process unknown directive ‘script-src-elem’

> TypeError: browserLanguage is undefined


For some reason, your Firefox profile doesn't have a preferred language, but Qwant expects one. If you add one in the Preferences (option "Choose your preferred language for displaying pages"), it should work.


Seems like Firefox should fall back to the OS language of a preferred language had not been set in the browser. I wonder how that happened.



All of these are using Bing results, right?


Startpage was good but I think they were recently bought out by a less than a good party


Yes, see HN's 'Startpage is now owned by an advertising company':

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577


wow, those seem quite fantastic at first glance. If I search for my real name I get every single profile I've ever created since the beginning of time - as opposed to google listing a bunch of random garbage. Names there are like John Doe returns famous people named John OR Doe above the person(s) with the actual name.

EDIT: I right click the search box and make qw and sw keywords for them.

EDIT2: I'm just looking for a functional google alternative.


I tried Swiss Cows just now, it appears effective at first glance but a little longer and realized I’ve never seen a more sanitized and curated search.

I don’t necessarily mean that good or bad. Just interesting how... different it is. Seems good if you know your thug exists already and someone approved it for their results.


"swiss cows"... .ch right


Qwant was proprietary last time I checked and didn't seem that privacy centered as they say

Also >France


Downvoters care to explain? I was born and lived in France for 20+ years, I think I've a pretty good idea about the government, freedom and privacy in that country. I've seen Qwant being shilled countless times, starting from the french government pushing a "privacy focused search engine" a lot of school use this search engine by default. Despite all of that I have yet to see code or any actual proof they respect user privacy.


In an ever-connected world, it's entirely plausible for you to die alone and for no one to have seemingly cared.[0]

[0] - https://www.oddee.com/item_98735.aspx


Does this sound like Downing Street is gearing-up for mass surveillance, post-Brexit, or is it just me?


I think this is about improving decision-making and effectiveness of government. I'm not an expert but I imagine a surveillance play would be handled via MI5 (domestic security) and not Downing Street. Moreover, Johnson is vaguely libertarian.


It does seem to me too.


Giving the benefit of doubt, I'm assuming that they meant the UK being a protector of the US interest[s]; however, I could be wrong.


Considering they specifically mentioned "alongside Guam," I have to assume they meant becoming a territory of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_Stat...


This comment doesn't even make sense, as with a little digging you could've found this[0] information yourself:

"Windows port work is underway, but is not yet working. The difficulties are in figuring out the set of system library APIs to intercept, in getting the memory management and dirty memory parts of the rewind infrastructure to work, and in handling the different graphics and IPC pathways on different platforms."

In fact, their documentation makes a specific call-out to TTT (Time-Travel Debugging) on Windows; so, I suspect that this is the API that they would like to use but are unable to do so at present (presumably because many of the features are still lacking in the API, which Microsoft could - and most probably would - enable).

[0] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Projects/We...


>On top of that they monitor for profanity. WHY? It doesn't harm anyone and lets people express themselves how they want.

The war against profanity is strictly a Puritan, I mean American, thing.

In most sensible countries in Europe (read: those still not devoutly religious), profanity on the "state-run" TV stations is a normative part of life (e.g.: "helvete" or "fan" in Swedish - https://youtu.be/4ofbqaLiPe4).


Surprised that this is the first comment about this on here but we really need a better turn-of-phrase than "toxins" because kind of language validates the fads going around that are harming people - like the "get skinny in two days!" diets or the anti-vax community.

Also, why do they use the term emphatically in the title of the article and then state, "...presumably removing toxins associated with Alzheimer's, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science." That comes across as, "We don't actually know what this is doing but we're going to take a guess and just run with it."

In fact, from the abstract of the paper itself, "Sleep is also associated with increased interstitial fluid volume and clearance of metabolic waste products. It is unknown why these processes co-occur and how they are related."

I don't understand how metabolic waste products automatically equates to "Alzheimer's toxins" nor how they're reaching these conclusions if they don't understand their coincidence - whether accidental or intentional.

Can anyone help a stranger on the internets and connect these dots? =]


Part of the issue is the vagueness is likely appropriate to both as we don't know the depth. It is linked to Alzheimer's and its presence causes a negative effect so it is contextually a toxin at least until narrowed down to a more precise mechanism like say prions, inappropriate cell reactions, and/or inappropriate oxidation levels.

Anyway that amateur explanation aside - the woo community is inherently appropriative of things they don't understand - witness "quantum" anything buzzwords outside of the physics or numerical context.


[flagged]


Presumably "We the people who don't believe in the toxins-fad but do believe in science"


Who exactly is this?


>...one thing that gets overlooked is declining religiosity...

I think, maybe, you're mistaking the community that forms around religion (e.g.: churches, friendships, church groups, etc.) for religion, itself.

If the argument were that lack of religion is a precursor to increasing suicide rates, then we in Europe should be killing ourselves off in droves because we're the least religious lot (compared to our North American counterparts).


I’m speaking within an American context. The decline in organized religion in the US has been very rapid (since 1998, really, after decades of stability), and other community constructs have not arisen in their place. For example, living with parents or extended family is much less common in the US than in Italy or Spain (which have particularly low suicide rates).

Likewise, the drop in fertility rate has been steeper in the US. Rates dropped from almost 4 in 1960 to 1.8 today. Sweden dropped from about 2.5 to 1.85.


> and other community constructs have not arisen in their place.

This is really the issue. If the Church had been replaced by some other form of community, that would be one thing, but it has been replaced by nothing.


>I think, maybe, you're mistaking the community that forms around religion (e.g.: churches, friendships, church groups, etc.) for religion, itself.

If countries are having difficulty replacing it is there really a meaningful distinction? Even Europe doesn't have as much atheism or deaths of despair as the US.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: