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Comment Re:There's a middle path (Score 1) 394

The way I see it, is time is the most precious asset I have. I really don't care to spend too much of it going to low-key events from someone I barely know. That's not to say I don't want to socialize with a wide-range of people, but an event every once in a while that I do get wind of is more than enough to keep a good flow of new faces to meet.

Facebook breeds a strong fear of missing out, when in reality if I get invited to 1 out of 1000 events going on in my city, its far more than enough to keep my social calendar reasonably full. I don't care that I missed event X, even if I think it's far better than event Y that I did stumble upon because I don't *know* it was better and there's no sense in lamenting over such trifles.

It's interesting to me that you see email as too formal for some invitations. Email is where we go for spam, mass mailings, and heads-up about events. Everyone I know has email. I cannot think of a single person that does not. About half the people I know don't have or never use Facebook. Email is where I send out invitations because it works best.

Perhaps millenials all use Facebook and none of them use email for such things, and generations shift in how they do things. In my generation, we all use email for organizing things (with attached calendar items when it makes sense). For context, I'm in the generation where I used to write letters to girls across the pond because phone calls were expensive and not everyone had email.

I guess what I am saying, if someone cares about me, they know how to contact me. If I get passed over, it's really not a big deal at all. Either a) they didn't want me there enough to put in that kind of (pretty low-bar) thought or b) the Fates screwed me, oh well, or c) my "friend" dislikes the fact I don't use Facebook and didn't invite me to spite me; fuck 'em.

Comment Re:What guarantees of longevity? (Score 1) 48

First, not all companies are doing fine using services from Oracle, IBM, SAP and Microsoft.

Second, Facebook is different in the same way that Oracle is different and IBM is different and SAP is different. It is not a very convincing argument to say other companies provide services so *this* company's services must be "fine".

Comment Re:Are the CAs that do this revoked? (Score 1) 139

Yes, of course you also have to trust the sender. We're talking about securing communications here, not trusting a sender. If you don't trust the sender, why even talk about trusting their communication? We need to first trust the sender, then we can think about "how do I know this message is from that specific trusted sender and not compromised."

Authentication using a certificate gives you no inherent trust of the other party. I thought that was obvious.

Comment Re:eliminate extra sugar (Score 1) 496

There is no quick and easy solution, that is true. If you overeat then there are only one way to validate you are eating less: measure.

We too use a variety of ingredients and we too cook from scratch without using recipes. We weigh our ingredients before putting them in the dish. I takes maybe 5 seconds longer, per ingredient. We write down the weight for each no a piece of paper that's always by the scale. Then, while we wait for the dish to finish (or some other time later), we calculate how many calories went into the dish total. Most of the time, we don't eat left overs but cook fresh every day, but sometimes we do make two-days worth. Either way, we know how much is in the entire batch and can portion: whether its two portions, four or six, it's more or less the same math.

It does take effort and time, but it's well worth it in our case. Over time, we got good enough at guessing, even with new ingredients we've not used before but could compare to others, at how many calories we're putting into our food, to within 10% error. That's not great, but we can now often guess how much food we didn't cook has just by looking at it.

Last night I worked late and the company bought us pizza. I felt the weight of the slices and guessed 250-300 per slice. I then looked it up online when I got home and the restaurant that made the pizza lists it at 280. Now, of course it's an estimate but it's a starting point.

The more you do it, the easier it gets.

Comment Re:Are the CAs that do this revoked? (Score 2) 139

The company can generate a certificate (public and private key pair) and send you the public key pair through an unsecure channel. They can then tell you the fingerprint over a secure channel. You do the same. You each verify that the public key of the other party is actually the other party's public key and then you two can communicate securely.

No, what constitutes a secure channel for key verification? That's where you can get levels of trust from one posted on their website (weak) to one read to you over a phone by a human (weak) to travelling and exchanging (stronger). Of course, if you are travelling you might as well just exchange public keys that way.

Comment Re:But they help also (Score 1) 366

I had a chance to actually use uber, so excuse me and please correct me if I get this wrong, but I was under the impression that the uber fare is based on the distance between start and destination as determined by a routing software and not on the detours the driver decides to take?

So how could the driver fleece the passenger here?

I can only go off the information Uber makes publicly available without signing their terms of service, but this disclaimer is prominent on their marketing materials: "Applicable tolls and surcharges may be added to your fare." Sounds like you are agreeing to unspecified surcharges, which if they abuse, your only recourse would be expensive litigation rather than protection laws of taxi services.

Comment Re:But they help also (Score 1) 366

In both scenarios, the passenger may be fleeced. The difference is, in one, the passenger has a recourse (having the local government find the driver in violation of the law and losing his taxi license if he does it often enough) and in the other not (having only a private relationship with a non-employee of a private company, having agreed to term of service for using the App, and only being able to sue the driver on his own).

If we're going to say the regulations are bad, and hence we should throw them all out, we're going to have an anarchy.

Comment Re:But they help also (Score 1) 366

Guaranteeing taxi-users to need a GI using recent (online) maps is a pretty bizarre requirement for good taxi service. Taxis exist to serve everyone, which includes the blind, the elderly, the religious, and the poor.

Also, an uber driver who decided to flaunt all regulation, can certainly charge a customer for taking the scenic route. They aren't licensed taxis, so are exempt from the rule that they must take the shortest route unless permitted by the customer.

Comment Re:But they help also (Score 1) 366

Oh, please. I am no friend of the rent-seeking, regulatory-capture taxi cartel, but Uber is unethical as hell.

So go after them for that... instead of an excuse that literally supports evil.

Its as if you are saying "Uber is unethical, therefore I want the very things that makes the existing system evil to triumph over Uber! Go evil!"

There is a middle ground, grasshopper. The choice between draconian regulation serving only the interests of the wealthy establishment and anarchy were laws are meaningless words on a piece of paper is an illusion. Labeling them with ethical monikers like good and evil only furthers the false dichotomy and prevents a civil discussion about what it is we, as a society, actually want to fall on this debate.

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