There is this thing called the NSA (which monitors all kinds of things but is getting better at monitoring less of them, or so they claim) and there was this guy who worked for the NSA called Keith Alexander. Keith came under a lot of fire for taking his knowledge and experience and going into business for himself as the leader of a security consulting business, and in the world of business there is lot of money to be made—it is business, after all—and so there are general principles of business like what to do, what not to do, what to say, and what not to say, just like you are hearing me talk now as you are reading this. Those truths are self-evident, as you can plainly see on your screen right now.
A well-informed audience such as the one which inhabits this site is no stranger to scepticism. That's why I turned on my personal computer and pondered how many ways things, all things, can happen. E-mail, for example. E-mail is analogous to postal mail, where you have an inbox and you can send messages. Using e-mail, I sent a message to Japan, and instead of weeks the message took days to get there before the recipient opened it, him being in Japan and seeing what those Japanese are doing, with all those things in the vending machines and things. You are hearing me talk in my own voice about things, things we deal with all day (and night). Things happen in this world, as I expect them to, and I am doing things even now like you probably are. I have your attention because you are reading this, and I am writing about stuff. Not only do I write about stuff, but you read about stuff, and therefore you are reading this article about writing stuff.
With convenience comes complacence. This is like driving on an unfamiliar road, you see a fork in it—and there are a lot of forks in it. With one wrong and uninformed turn you too can lose your security. You can put much more information about yourself on Google Plus, and then somebody can find that information and you along with it. And with that comes more information, the amount of information available rises exponentially, or in plain English, every fork in the road leads to two more. And then each one of those leads to two more. Some forks lead to three or four more. At this point the information available doesn't increase exponentially, it increases factorially. Or Ackermannly, and that's a lot. I've known people in the security industry who blew up their entire call-stacks messing with the Ackermann function. That's how bad it is, and that's why you should not provide so much personal information—because the user is often not informed enough to give proper consent. In effect, the average user is being exploited by the internet, even just using e-mail:
Inbox: Bennett Hasselton
[ ] From: Melony Jiggles | Subject: "Hey baby want to party?
[ ] From: Wanda LaFrotta | Subject: "5-million dollars
As you can see, what appear to be two harmless e-mails are actually an entrapment for you, no, me to give up your, no, mine, why, no, yes, so prized, personal, information. So prized. It is an inbox, and yet it is an inbox hijacked by the very internet itself, which is full of all kinds of bits and bytes and things that you can't even really grab with your hand—they are but concepts. And just that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by nukkel on Thursday September 11 2014, @07:47PM
Bennett Haselton on SN? You have got to be kidding me!!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:07PM
If it is the real Bennet Hasselton, he has gone off his meds.
I doubt it is the real Bennet Hasseleton. TFA is far too short, too incoherent, and not nearly narcissistic enough to have been written by the real Bennet Hassleton.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:14PM
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:30PM
He probably just followed Hugh Pickens and the other asshats that use the green site as their own personal blog.
He often responds to comments with amusing flamebaity stuff.
I will give him credit for using the world "Ackermannly", though. It is now my favorite kind of mainlyness.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kbahey on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:11PM
Hey, it is September, not April Fool.
The last thing this site needs is rants by Bennett Haselton, despite the protests of the community ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning [2bits.com].
(Score: 1) by strength_of_10_men on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:15PM
I tried reading this and then reading it again and I just don't get what he's trying to say. It's very stream-of-consciousness and none of it makes any sense or comes to any point other than: the internet is a big,scary place.
Is Soylent being pranked, or is Bennett just more inane than usual?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday September 11 2014, @10:11PM
I read it multiple times and the *ONLY* insight I could get is the following:
From the point of view of Big Data, every single piece of information possessed by apathetic citizens decreases the level of security for each individual citizen factorially...
The first paragraph sets you up for some situation involving corruption, the second one makes you think he took some weird drugs, and the third really doesn't make all that much sense.
While I can understand that your level of security decreases for every bit of information, to believe it decreases [sic] factorially seems just weird. The reference to the Ackermann function is really just trying to confuse you with a function that is not increasing exponentially. It just sounds awesome, because it is:
That's a pretty damned big number, and why it's supposed to seem impressive. For an "insight" it's unnecessarily hyped up and hard to believe, as well as pointless anyways.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Thursday September 11 2014, @10:38PM
There was no chance of me reading it again.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday September 12 2014, @04:37AM
You're a better man than I. I got through half of it before I was looking around for the TL;DR version.
If we're going to have something like this, perhaps a longer journal entry with a summary linking to the journal entry and the summary being clearly marked as such?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:24PM
If you look closely, the user ID is spelled with one "s" and in the body of the message, the name "Hasselton" is spelled with two "s"es.
Seems unlikely the real Bennet would misspell his own name.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:15PM
No wonder people think security is too hard, when just reading about security is that hard. All I want to know is whether that was the inane sermon of a human, or if it was that whole diatribe was the Bayesian fantasy of a machine, and if the latter, then what the encoded call to action was; NSA recruiting season again?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rhilgers on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:19PM
I for one will not be visiting the site again if this keeps up.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:38PM
Yeah, what the fuck is this?
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:19PM
I think we have a well-crafted Troll article here folks. Supposedly submitted by Bennett Haselton even... I do not like that guy's post but at least they make long-winded sense. This is just some nonsensical rambling.
The intention here is clearly to start an Editor flame fest.
Though, seriously, how did this get past the Editor?
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:23PM
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday September 11 2014, @11:15PM
You need a refresher course in timecube [timecube.com]. Now, repeat after me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @09:02PM
> Though, seriously, how did this get past the Editor?
Yeah, I have to agree. Perhaps the actual submitter was inspired by this story of 120 computer-generated papers being published. [nature.com]
I thought at soylent editors were supposed to vote on articles so acceptance wasn't a one-man decision. Did I misread that?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday September 12 2014, @12:27AM
Think of this fake Bennett Haselton rant as an inoculation against the real thing, which we will hopefully never see again.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by tkd-physics on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:39PM
Well, there were many other reasons, but one was the apparently ability of some guy to turn the site into his personal blog.
If someone has a blog, and someone else wants to tell SN about a particularly good post... OK. There are a lot of interesting blogs out there, sometimes with relevant articles.
I'd think that if someone out there has a blog, writes a post, and then submits that to SN, there would be some extra editorial attention given, since maybe that person is just promoting themselves.
If someone actually sumits *a blog post* in its entirety to the site, I'd think the editorial control would go to 11. Apparently it doesn't.
Please, SN Editors: don't do this again.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @08:42PM
Also: In Soylent Russia article trolls you!
(Score: 1) by groovemonkey on Thursday September 11 2014, @09:06PM
I think you're just about ready to run for office now.
(Score: 1) by archfeld on Thursday September 11 2014, @09:14PM
What is/was the purpose of the above rambling fsck'n mess ? There doesn't appear to be a point or any real value to it regardless of who the author may or mayn't be...
The front page is not a substitute for a blog or a personal journal and articles that make the grade should contain some news or humor or something beyond wasting space and time.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 5, Informative) by LaminatorX on Thursday September 11 2014, @09:34PM
I thought it interesting to let something different come through. It reminded me of gonzo journalists like Thompson, and I found it refreshing. Clearly that opinion is not widely shared. (I actually had no idea BH was a thing prior to this afternoon.)
We do listen to feedback around here and take guidance from it. Rest assured, the criticism here is not falling on deaf ears.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Blackmoore on Thursday September 11 2014, @09:58PM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 11 2014, @10:05PM
This article was a parody of Hasselton instead to embarrass either soylent or Hasselton or both.
Others have pointed out that is name is misspelled and anyone who has read much of what Hasselton has written in the last decade will recognize it as a parody - normally the guy is a great example of why writers need editors, but this submission was just over the top even for him.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday September 11 2014, @10:29PM
And all this time I was being so careful not to submit stories while drinking.
Screw that, its Beer O'clock!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Friday September 12 2014, @04:45AM
I didn't like this article, but I like the idea of getting some original things onto Soylent News... which I knew y'all wanted to do too. (It is an original, right?)
Suggestion: Place the full article in a journal or well marked area, summarize it into a little blurb and then post the summary with a link to the original article. Mark the summary as special so we know it's an original Soylent News article.
For me, this article was a bit too incoherent and I think a summary would have the double benefit of helping with that.
Just my two cents. I encourage you to keep trying new things too.
(Score: 1) by archfeld on Friday September 12 2014, @10:33PM
thanks for the response and your point is noted as well, just because some of us find it annoying doesn't mean everyone does. Keep up the good work and G'day.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12 2014, @05:34AM
blub blub.
problem is stagnation in underlying tech.
email is ancient.
it relies on hierarchical unique name identifier system.
it is push technology.
it all means that your connection to the internet is not equal.
your connection to the internet is not fully fumctional without access to the hierarchical unique
name identifier system.
once you have acces to that then you can only push email.
-
now imagine something new.
it always to pick a name for your internet connection and it is unique.
other people can find you.
it works maybe something like this: if you remember me i will remember you too.
in this hypothetical system, if you want to send a message, you just send a notification to the recipiwnt that says that he can come to your house to pick up the message.
this would be pull emai and spam would be gonne.
-
there is soo much more we could do with the internet but "the ancients" built the stargate and we just build ontop and use it.
the last to big crystal swap outs on the stargate were bittorrent and tor and even today half of the travellers dont get it ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 12 2014, @06:38AM
we-don't-even-have-a-dept-for-this department.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Friday September 12 2014, @12:08PM
Things happen in this world, as I expect them to, and I am doing things even now like you probably are. I have your attention because you are reading this, and I am writing about stuff. Not only do I write about stuff, but you read about stuff, and therefore you are reading this article about writing stuff.
I mean that's some of the most terrible trash I've had this month. And I've see several Steven Segal films.
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