pavanred

I am surprised that on opting out of ad tracking in Android, they found that the opt-out flag was set to true, but the size of the tracking payload shot up i.e. more attributes being tracked. Not sure what to make of it? Is it possible its a legal thing that once you opt-out of ads, it enables less risk for the company and therefore more tracking, perhaps?

Fun fact: Air India is a state owned airline that has been bailed out with tax payer money multiple times. Attempts to sell/privatize the airline has failed too so far.

The problem with this argument - I care about issue X, company C is known to disregard/exploit users with X and so I assume all employees of company C are complicit while I give a free pass to the users who remain ignorant and simply don't care no matter how many times these issues surface.

And where do you stop? Are all doctors working for big pharma related to opioid crisis complicit? what about people working for firms related to the financial crisis? engineers working for any company that suffered data breaches due to lax data security? what about engineers working for companies that haven't suffered data breaches yet but might have lax security? scientists working to certain biotech firms related to GM? engineers working for car manufacturers that cheated emission norms? engineers working for telecom/internet service providers that cheat users by throttling/net neutrality etc. etc. etc.

Edit: ...2GW in 2015 and is about 20GW in 2018...

Typo, and HN doesn't allow me to update it now. Anyway, my point was that in the past 4 years we achieved 20GW and we expect to achieve 80GW in the next 4 years.

> I don't buy the fact that in the Internet age, you have to be some reporter to write against the government policies.

We don't need reporters anymore because we have the internet? :)

I won't engage further. You're free to believe what you want, but here's what I would like to say - You can interpret the current situation however you want, but others might disagree. And, anyone that disagrees with you or criticizes the govt, isn't necessarily the opposition or the enemy. - The govt is not a victim of opposition's hate, opposition and press are free to and supposed to criticize the govt, and they always have.

How about freedom of press as an example (World Press Freedom Index)

2018: 138

2017: 136

2016: 133

A good rule to follow, formulate an opinion after you gain enough facts to argue the other side, else you'll keep seeing only what you want to see.

Care to also publish rankings of the country over the years in freedom of press, law and order, mob violence, transparency, economic growth, journalists/writers murdered, appointments/shortages of RTI commissioners, RTI rejection rate, lack of lokayuktas, appointments/shortages of judiciary by govt etc. (or just look it up for yourself)

> There have also been tremendous investments from the government in green tech, like solar.

The goal setup was a 100GW of solar capacity by 2022. It was about 2KW in 2015 and is about 20KW in 2018. We are most definitely not going to achieve the goal, perhaps not even get close. Lofty goal, sound familiar? I am sorry, I take lofty goals and promises of the Govt. with a pinch of salt until I see some actual implementation.

Ghost in the wires by Kevin Mitnick.

OK, let's consider your view point. Perhaps England had lions a few thousand years ago, they went extinct and perhaps some other predator took its place or may be it didn't, maybe the predator that was above it (if there was one) in the food chain went extinct too. But, yeah human life went on.

Now, here's where I disagree. The effects of extinction perhaps seem more pronounced with some species, rather than others. For instance, take coral reefs and how these could trigger a cascade of events affecting a bunch of species like small fish all the way up to human industry and life. Same with say bees, where they potentially can affect agriculture and humans in a huge way considering they are instrumental for pollination.

I suppose people don't like the idea of incurring the cost of efforts to prevent a species from extinction when they think its simply a moral thing to do, but in reality I suppose everything from climate change to saving endangered species is all just an effort towards self preservation for humans, perhaps simply branded differently.