Actually she is, and she has already won by a landslide against AirBnB. She's the victim and I wouldn't want to be in her shoes, but I also find the reaction disproportionate toward AirBnB. It's only fair that those "techicalities" are made public as well before everyone trash them to death.
AirBnB gives tools to pick your guest, the first one being the track record and ratings. Was the rating of Dj Pattrson Good/Bad/Virgin?
They also have a pretty straightforward safety tips page ( http://www.airbnb.com/safety ), but not a single precaution was taken. It appears she didn't even try to call her future guest. No neighborhoods or friends warned, nothing.
AirBnB is taking all the shit for an objectively irresponsible behavior. Nobody deserve what has happened to her, it's just horrible. On the other hand, AirBnB taking all the shit for this doesn't seem fair as well. They handled the crisis in a poor manner, but the perpetrators should be the ones paying for the damages.
AirBnB aside, she doesn't seem to take some responsibility for it (the rape victim analogy), and it's just not fair or reflective of the whole picture, if you're being objective for a minute this is the simple truth. I truly hope she will recover and learn from this awful experience.
One question remains to be cleared: how did the guest got inside the apartment? What was the system used for the key transaction?
I don't know how it usually goes, but I'd like this blind spot to be cleared. She published a number, an email address and a nickname on her blog, but no postal address. So the keys weren't shipped.
She never called the number, and can't tell the gender of her perpetrator. Only the neighborhoods acted as mere witnesses of a "group of people" coming in. This suggest that nobody else was involved in the transaction, no friend or neighborhood to give the key and see the guy.
So the guys "came to her house" and got inside, but it doesn't tell us how. Nobody has been in physical contact with them, and the keys weren't shipped.
I don't want to sound insensitive, but this blind spot buggers me a little. Wonder if she can tell more about it, even if it doesn't sound relevant to her horrible experience. I believe her, maybe the key transaction process was bit naive as well and it wouldn't be relevant (hiding the key somewhere), but it could also mean that the burglary might have happened after the host left (while still being an improbable hypothesis, it would just open a new possibility). It's just a small bug that I'd like to be squashed.
Opera was the most suited browser for my eeePC (1gb ram, Atom in ecomode most of the time). I originally planed to use Chrome as I thought it was lighter and faster, but quickly found out that Opera fared much better globally.
Beyond the numbers, Chrome seemed to perform worse as my number of tabs growed. I had freezes and the pages didn't scroll smoothly. I don't have such problems with Opera.
I have over a thousand of synchronized bookmarks, 4 email accounts set-up, in the end it just saves me a ton of ressources as I don't have to open anything else for my needs.
Chrome is perfect as the secondary browser who doesn't save sessions, the launch is blazing fast.
Correct me if I'm wrong: you mean that in the real world, salted passwords have only one advantage over plain text passwords, which is to buy you some time ? (albeit it's a strong advantage)
Just a clarification : I'm not the original poster and this isn't a "Ask HN". I sent a message to the OP on reddit so he can find this thread.
With all the talks about the benefits of the Apple Store, I just found this story interesting. Before, I thought that jailbraking was a niche practice and that the iPhone/iPad were relatively spared from piracy.
I tried to learn programming but I was discouraged by the utter lack of pedagogy in the books I've picked so far. The author pretty much nailed it.
I even tried Land of Lisp only because it was supposed to be fun, but unfortunately it used this horrible and widespread format where the author writes all the code for you and proceeds to an explanation.
There is no creation (or creative problem solving) ! And creation is the fun component, it should be the point of programming.
Later, I read the Little Schemer and I found it very fun and engaging. Because I had to think by myself, I realized I learned more in 30 minutes with the Little Schemer than 200 pages of Land of Lisp.
My first attempt at programming was with an horribly dull PHP book. 5 stars on Amazon, but it was again the same format where the author writes all the code for you and then explains it, and did not provide any exercise.
I think the perfect programming book would be a mix of the Little Schemer and K&R : the quiz format for the theory coupled with challenging exercises. There is no greater reward and way to learn than solving problems by yourself.
When it comes to justice Saudi Arabia is not an inspiring example, I'm not interested in this perspective. Their system is stuck in the medieval era, why should we take any pride from such a comparaison ?
I'm uneasy with this kind of plastering as well, it has this "mob lynching" vibe that is often for the worst rather than the best. It appeals to our worst instincts, and you can sense that the author is angry and we are helping him to punish this guy when we look at this.
I felt dirty to be honest. If you don't believe it, ask yourself: why didn't he blur his face ? Would his message be less efficient ?
Thanks for the feedback. Security and user experience is always a matter of balance. I was seduced by the idea of having a strong password, but I think the current implementations discourage it for a regular use. From what I understand the only alternative under Ubuntu is to disable the prompts altogether, which is really not recommandable. Windows 7 has a nice way to handle it, I wonder if it is secure enough.
In the age of the web, we have the power to make democracy more direct. I also believe we don't need so much statemen whose daily job is to make new laws. A strong and centralized state is mandatory during war, and that's it.
In aviation, a lot of crashes could have been avoided if the captain released the commands instead of desperatly hook on them, because the plane is programmed to get back on its feets alone.
It think it would be the same for our governments, people would be really surprised to see that the world wouldn't collapse if you removed the bulk of our elected and non-elected statemen. We give them too much credits. The industrial revolution happened in spite of them rather than thanks to them, that's why every western european country encountered about the same progress overall with different political systems. Unless a certain amount of freedom was missing, progress grew naturally. Thats what happening right now with the Internet.
As a French I don't vote anymore. The truth is that Freedom is incompatible with having full time elected people at all scales of the society, since they need to justify their work by taking all kinds of unsollicited stances and intempestive measures.
Left or Right ? Both of them will spend the most of their time fulfulling their purpose : to make new laws. Generally on a wide range of topics they don't understand (not only the Internet).
Unfortunately, the blank vote isn't recognized in France: abstention is the best option. So far, no political party suggests that we drastically reduce the number and power of representatives.
AirBnB gives tools to pick your guest, the first one being the track record and ratings. Was the rating of Dj Pattrson Good/Bad/Virgin?
They also have a pretty straightforward safety tips page ( http://www.airbnb.com/safety ), but not a single precaution was taken. It appears she didn't even try to call her future guest. No neighborhoods or friends warned, nothing.
AirBnB is taking all the shit for an objectively irresponsible behavior. Nobody deserve what has happened to her, it's just horrible. On the other hand, AirBnB taking all the shit for this doesn't seem fair as well. They handled the crisis in a poor manner, but the perpetrators should be the ones paying for the damages.
AirBnB aside, she doesn't seem to take some responsibility for it (the rape victim analogy), and it's just not fair or reflective of the whole picture, if you're being objective for a minute this is the simple truth. I truly hope she will recover and learn from this awful experience.