aptsurdist

http://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/customer-proprietary-network-information

As a Verizon customer, I didn't realize that my cell phone plan information was being sold to their affiliate marketers. Apparently, this is 'opt in' by default and I have to opt out. I'm sure that I was told about this change in some contract small print. But of course that is a poor justification for such a nasty practice. I wonder if this is why I've been getting so many spam phone calls.

This is so frustrating. But, of course I'm not surprised in the least. Maybe I should finally switch to Project Fi or some other alternative...

How to opt out: While logged in, navigate to (My profile -> Privacy Settings) Or, go to this page: https://nbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/secure/setPrivacy.action

Full information: http://www.verizon.com/about/privacy/customer-proprietary-network-information

Edit: There are plenty of articles out there discussing the recent legislation that has led to an increase in policy changes like this. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a25859/how-to-protect-your-online-privacy-from-isp/

What's up with the HN post currently on the front page that you can't interact with? It looks like an AD for the ycombinator company Listia.com. Did HN start doing promotion posts? Did they always do this? It just says "Listia is hiring developers to build a marketplace using virtual currency (listia.com)". I can't vote for it or comment on it as those links are missing. Is this a new kind of HN ad? Or a promotion for ycombinator companies? Or maybe just a bug?

Maybe I just missed an announcement about this? Thanks -

Now that PDF is such an ubiquitous file format, I think it would be appropriate for Adobe to offer a free way to add and remove pages from our own PDF files. Your acrobat tool is simply not affordable for most of the world, yet, people have to work with PDFs. People spend hours trying to work around the inability to add and remove pages to a PDF document. By handicapping acrobat reader to not have this ability, it just makes you feel like a cheap and restricting company that wants to force users into paying for a tool on which they are dependent. I want to pay for your software, but you don't offer any price-points that make sense to my budget. Please, please give acrobat reader the basic ability to add and remove pages within a PDF. Charge me for the annotation tools, fine, but please, at least don't restrict basic manipulation of my own files which are now such a standard format.

Thank you for considering this proposal.

I'm not a security expert, but I just can't see how adding security questions to an online account on top of a password is anything but a nuisance that just weakens security. Especially when most answers to these questions are just names or single words that are easily researchable online. Why is there so much expert advice on strong passwords, yet the industry doesn't condemn security questions? What am I missing? Am I just wrong here, or should there be a clear message to just get rid of them? I hate it when sites make me add security questions to my account; isn't it so much better to just let me reset a forgotten password through my email?</rant>

Recent events have been weighing on my mind. In the past I've tended to write off Anonymous as childish and petty, but I also knew that they were on to something really important. Let's say that amongst the trolling, I saw a noble goal - "Anonymous: The Good Parts" - that aimed to push the boundary of what online collectives could accomplish.

I think this month Anonymous has proven something important - I tentatively believe that "Anonymous: The Good Parts", has come of age. They have proven they have the muscle to make the world take notice, and at least superficially, that they can decide to do something useful with that attention. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/pro-wikileaks-digital-activists-change-course/67847/ (No small task if it was truly a collective decision.)

Regardless of how you feel about Anonymous, you've got to respect that they've pushed the world to realize a lesson - that an online leaderless collective with low latency can have instant access to the media's ear.

In a way, this lesson is the same as it ever was - another picket line. But it also seems things are on a new scale. I've been feeling that it is important for the hacker community to help the world understand this type of instant collaborative political voice that is both exciting and unnerving - how it can troll and manipulate but how it can also be earnest. And most importantly, how it is startlingly powerful.

After that overblown introduction - I propose a dubious experiment. If you think this experiment sucks, then start a new one, but my question is this: how hard is it for a leaderless collective to form an agreed upon collaborative statement that is eloquent, powerful, and useful. Is this just reiterating Wikipedia, or does it demonstrate something new?

Can we demonstrate that an online collective can literally author a collaborative statement fit for media attention?

http://piratepad.net/LW793ZNN6Z (any motion to take this to git?)