I recommend avoiding all browser extensions unless they come from well-known developers (eg 1Password) and they’re downloaded and installed through official channels.
Browser extensions have a lot of access to your browsing activity and can phone home as well. One of the reasons this extension was sent a C&D was that it was sending some data home to the author’s server. That might be what the install instructions above are hinting at with the warning to examine the JS and remove any phone-home code. The original author defended the data collection as just enough to make sure the plug-in was working, except for study participants who apparently submitted much more information through the plug-in. Either way, I wouldn’t rush to install a plug-in that was caught sending any of my social media data to a 3rd-party server.
I certainly would not install a browser extension from an unknown 3rd-party website just to spite Facebook, regardless the claimed origin of the code.
“Accessing and/or collecting users content or information” is the first bullet point in the C&D. The Reddit install instructions even include a note to remove the phone-home code before running the plug-in.
The plug-in author also explained his data collection in his interviews. He said they collected a lot of data for study participants and less data for normal users to confirm the plug-in was “working”.
The first paragraph is the only one that includes a list of what their extension had been doing wrong. I haven't seen it typed up anywhere else, so here are the salient bits:
> Facebook has gathered evidence that your Chrome extension “Unfollow Everything for Facebook” facilitates unauthorized functionality on Facebook. Specifically, your extension automates actions on Facebook, including mass following and unfollowing of Friends, Pages, and Groups. Your extension also impermissibly makes use of Facebook’s trademarks. These activities violate Facebook’s terms.
> Facebook demands that you stop these activities immediately.
The bullet point you've pointed out lives beneath that list of issues, under a title of, "Facebook's terms prohibit, among other things." Things that Facebook's terms prohibit ≠ stuff the extension was doing.
Otherwise it would be curious indeed that Facebook isn't demanding they cease the collection of data :)
> The plug-in author also explained his data collection in his interviews
That could well be – I'm just saying that the C&D does not include it as a basis.
For this kind of simple use case, a userscript makes more sense than a full extension, which has the benefits of making the code easily auditable and forkable.
Jekyll requires you to generate your site. Dropplets generates pages on each request.
Jekyll runs on your machine, and is written in Ruby. Dropplets runs on your server, and is written in PHP.
Jekyll's posts require very minimal metadata, and use a key/value pairing system with YAML. Dropplets' posts require a ton of metadata, and the same metadata for every post, and in a specific order, and you can't add arbitrary metadata.
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I don't think Dropplets has categories, but I may be mistaken.
Wow, even after you invest heavily initially to buy a house with your own hard-earned money, you are still supposed to pay the government a cut for renting it? What has this world turned into! Shouldn't YOU be the one who should decide how you spend YOUR money, for renting out YOUR property?
Perhaps. Did you use any of the resources and infrastructure of the economy and society to earn that money? Did you in any way use or depend on the legal system? The financial system? The roads? Internet? Phones? The financial system? Law and order? Was your education in any way supported by public funds?
If you can answer no to every question, is the same also true for all of your paying customers?
I pay taxes. That doesn't mean that I owe the government for every accomplishment that I've achieved. You seem to subscribe to Obama's "You didn't build it" statement.
You also fail to acknowledge that a large majority of the spending you've described could be privately run. I'm not suggesting that it should be, however, it's possible some of it could be. If I went to a private school supported by no government money, does that mean I ought to pay taxes to that private school if I happen to become a billionaire? After all, if it weren't for that school, I wouldn't have the education to have built something that made me a billionaire.
Well that's bullshit. I pay a gas tax to drive on the road. I pay a telephone excise tax as well as state and local taxes. I also pay sales tax. I pay property tax, I pay school taxes. I pay taxes on buying and registering a car, I pay taxes when I sell and transfer the title to a car. I pay parking taxes, airport taxes, airline taxes.
I don't owe government a "debt" because of my success any more than government owes me anything because of my failure.
That doesn't mean that I owe the government for every accomplishment that I've achieved. You seem to subscribe to Obama's "You didn't build it" statement.
I didn't say you owe the government for every accomplishment. But perhaps I have a different perspective, which is hard to convey over a message board, from having traveled and lived in several countries where the government does not enable the infrastructure (legal, financial, etc.) for businesses to thrive that we enjoy in the US.
Unless you believe that Americans are genetically superior Übermensch, you have to give some credit to "the system" for making the success of this economy, relative to most of the world, possible. And your taxes, to the extent that they are wisely spent, support that system and ensure its survival.
So when are we going to pay taxes for writing OSS? I mean, it was either taught to us by government-subsidized education, or we learnt it from the internet which is also government subsidized. The licenses which you license your software under are a product of the legal climate, generated by the legal system, etc etc etc.
Look, all of this is ridiculous. I'm all for taxing business, but honestly, taxes on the house (the structure itself, the materials) have been long paid, and property taxes are being paid. If anything, I'd think that this would be a zoning issue, which would be handled by municipalities. But even then, I tend to agree that unless if your neighbors are taking issue with it, then taxes/fees should be kept at an absolute minimum, if not zero.
e: on top of that, the money which he used to buy his house (with tax) as well as pay the annual property tax is ITSELF taxed by income tax. How many levels of taxing are appropriate? Honestly.
> So when are we going to pay taxes for writing OSS?
Yes, sure, absolutely, we already do. It's a percentage of what you earned writing said OSS. I sometimes get paid by clients to write code that later gets open sourced and yes, sure, I pay regular income tax on that. If you didn't earn any money, well then the government cut is zero USD, just as it is when you give your room away for free to strangers.
I can't say I disagree with any of this, though it still feels wrong to otherwise pay taxes on something like renting a room in this instance. It's your property, what business is it of the government's?
> It's your property, what business is it of the government's?
You could argue that renting an apartment puts a burden on the community - the people that rent it need to drive there, they use public roads and public resources. However, that argument is false. The argument behind taxes is that there is a government that allocates certain resources towards community goals - security, infrastructure, welfare. These resources need to be paid for and so the government raises taxes - on income, on property, on cars etc. All the money collected gets redistributed and none of it is tied to the sector it came from: My income tax pays for roads, railways, kindergardens alike even though I don't own a car and rarely drive and don't have any kids. And the legislative decided that renting a room is a taxable action and that's it - like it or not. It's really as simple as that.
I am not a lawyer, but I believe that lawyers spend lots of time discussing who has "an interest" in whatever issue. In any given case there can be multiple competing "rights" and "interests." Your property rights are only one among those. Property rights do not trump all other rights and interests. (I'm sure I'm not using the precise terminology, but you get the idea.)
Dude, cut the crap, will you? I already pay OTHER taxes for that. The roads? I pay road tax. The water? I pay water tax. The financials? I pay income tax.
This is my property which I bought with no help from the government. No subsidies, no discounts, nothing. But why do they want my money again? This is double taxation, dude.
I don't see why HN people are so dismissive about this just because it costs less. I'm from a middle class family (considering my pa's income) but I make well more than $2000 a month (which is considered very good here). And I live in a posh area as well. Think about an equivalent of something like the heart of New York. That's where I live in.
Now that we have my financial background clear, to avoid ad hominem attacks, I would easily vouch for this razor. Not only it's really smooth to shave (very good ergonomics), it also lasts longer. Believe me, I have used a single blade for about 6 months (max), with no deterioration and any sort of skin irritations/side effects, on the condition that I take care of preserving my blades by placing them into the air tight bottles to avoid rusting.
However, my average with a single blade of this razor is usually 3 months. It's also really cheap. You can get 5 blades for an equivalent of $1.5 bucks USD (80 Indian rupees). The razor itself is cheap too. So, it's a good product that get's the job done for most of us. It's much better than what my father has - A three blade motorized, vibration enabled Gillete razor whose blades alone would set you back for $10 minimum for a set of 3 or 5.
I hate it when people automatically go into this "if it's cheap in price, it's cheap in quality" mode without giving the product a fair chance.
Just to be clear, my other HN account has 2000+ karma and I'm not a troll/marketer for this product. I'm a genuine customer who just would like to share my experience with it.
I recommend avoiding all browser extensions unless they come from well-known developers (eg 1Password) and they’re downloaded and installed through official channels. Browser extensions have a lot of access to your browsing activity and can phone home as well. One of the reasons this extension was sent a C&D was that it was sending some data home to the author’s server. That might be what the install instructions above are hinting at with the warning to examine the JS and remove any phone-home code. The original author defended the data collection as just enough to make sure the plug-in was working, except for study participants who apparently submitted much more information through the plug-in. Either way, I wouldn’t rush to install a plug-in that was caught sending any of my social media data to a 3rd-party server. I certainly would not install a browser extension from an unknown 3rd-party website just to spite Facebook, regardless the claimed origin of the code.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28804308