One in 10 ballots rejected in last month's vote-by-mail elections in New Jersey - <AUTHOR> https://www.njspotlight.com/2020/06/one-in-10-ballots-rejected-in-last-months-vote-by-mail-elections/ <comment><USER2> I used to run campaigns in Ohio. I was also an elected HRC DNC delegate from 2008.

There are some real concerns with vote by mail.

One particular issue I noticed when canvassing was that the voter roll was incorrect. It was not uncommon to go to a rental unit, and have 3 or 4 families registered at the address - all having moved out years ago. Another issue was dead voters. Another issue was no one was registered at the address.

The voter rolls not dependable. It's not by design, but its a hard problem to solve. Its worth listening to the concerns "of the other side" so that we have fair elections.

<comment><USER3> It is amazing how many problems in the US exist simply because the government lacks knowledge about its people. From the census, to maintaining voter rolls, to mail in voting, to general voter fraud, to stimulus checks going to dead people, to identity theft caused by overuse of SSNs, it could all be solved by having a central database that is updated whenever one of us is born or dies.

<comment><USER4> Especially amazing as I know of no EU country that has the same problems (of course some of those cases happen, but there we talk about single digits in absolute cases).

Take Germany for example, or France as much as I can tell: You move, you register a new primary residency, where you vote. Your residency is also you voter registration (not sure why separating the two makes any sense). You leave the country permanently, you declare it, when your French, you can register at the consulate in the new country of residency. Guess what, you get your ballot by mail to that address.

Carrying passports or ID cards, check. No unidentified residents.

Dead voters, no problem. Registered residencies are constantly updated with birth and death certificates.

Voting by is, as is voting in general, a solved problem. Including paper trails and enough voting places for everyone. Voting happens on Sundays.

<comment><USER5> There's a lot of reasons but the number one one is because there's only a two party system here in the US and the Republican one by it's policies and histories is almost entirely reliant on non-white voters not showing up in the electorate. It's not quiet, in NC they've explicitly targeted voting days and locations that are predominantly Democratic and non-white [0]. Second is just our whole system, the states are independent and run their own voting so tracking movement between states is harder in places that having intentionally done something like motorvotor (where ID and voter registration happen together). [1]

[0] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter- id/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north-carolina-voter-id/)

[1] Again generally opposed by Republicans because it would mean more voters which demographically isn't good for them.

<comment><USER6> > _Republican one by it 's policies and histories is almost entirely reliant > on non-white voters not showing up in the electorate_

You could make the literal exact argument in reverse with at least as much credibility.

<comment><USER7> You had the chance to do just that and ended up not making an effort. It seems far fetched to think anyone could become president without a sizable chunk of white voters in the US just based on the census demographic data.

[https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219)

<comment><USER8> Well given that whites are a majority of the population, it makes sense that the president would need a sizable chunk of that populace. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER7> It would be factually incorrect to say the Democrats have a history or desire to disenfranchise white voters. You can not become president without a chunk of the majority demographic's support. Hopefully that helps shine light on whatever you are missing.

<comment><USER8> Right, I understand that. I just don't understand the point _you_ are trying to make in the context of the discussion.

<comment><USER7> You understand my point if you understand the two sentences I had the desire to type out on the topic. I wasn't responding to the full context of the grandparent's post. I was responding to the weak attempt at saying the Democrats and Republicans are the reverse sides of the same coin. Democrats have no desire to disenfranchise the same way Republicans do as it doesn't benefit them. They may try other ways to skew the results towards them but this tactic isn't used by them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand why voter ID is such a big deal in the United States. In my country (Sweden) you _cannot_ vote without identifying yourself with a state- issued ID card or passport, no exceptions. If you for some reason lack both you need to have someone that can affirm your identity (and they need to show their own identification papers). Nobody complains about it because it is a necessary precondition for a fair and rigorous democratic system and everyone implicitly agrees upon this. If you don't like it then don't participate.

I don't buy the argument that it disenfranchises voters. Even the poorest in my country are able to vote despite having these voter ID restrictions. India also has some form of voter ID too, and their population is almost triple the American population and substantially poorer.

I can't help but think that there is some kind of malicious intent behind the opposition to voter ID, but it is unfortunately very difficult to prove.

<comment><USER10> I think that this is a fair question, especially if you don't live in the US.

The context is that certain populations in the US are known to be disenfranchised from getting ID. Here's an example from the Washington Post in 2016: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting- a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or- elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html)

I actually really like the process that Elections Canada uses. They verified that most Canadians have ID (86% have Driver's Licenses). They identified the most common issue (proof of address) and added a mitigating process (mailing Voter Information Cards). And finally, they have a fallback: as a third option, a person's identity can be vouched for by a person who does have ID. [https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=c76/id...](https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&dir=c76/id&document=index&lang=e) [https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=poli/r...](https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=poli/rep1&document=index&lang=e)

<comment><USER9> I can see why a tiny minority of people would be disenfranchised, but unfortunately compromises have to be made to have a fair and rigorous election system. Edgecases exist where people slip through the bureaucratic cracks but those exist here too and I see _no one_ complaining about it. If you for some reason lack identification papers you'd try to fix it by going through the processes that we have to verify your identity. Nobody ever complains and says that the system is actively disenfranchising them as that is patently ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> It's not a tiny minority. 11% of Americans and ~25% of black Americans don't have acceptable voter ID.

I'd suggest reading through the ACLU's article on voter ID laws to learn how the disenfranchisement is targeted in practice.

[https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation- fact-...](https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet)

Edit: I'll put two of them into Swedish context.

First, some rural areas in Texas are 170 miles from the nearest location they could apply for an ID. That's about the distance from Stockholm to Karlstad, which is much more difficult to travel without a train infrastructure like Sweden's.

Secondly, the cost of applying for an ID can range from $75-$175, or ~650-1500 krona. I noticed in another thread you mentioned Swedish voter IDs cost 350 crowns. Our voter IDs cost 2-4x as much in absolute terms. Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage, but for reference ours is $7.25/hr ($14,500 pre-tax annually, assuming a full-time 40hr/week job) and our 10th percentile household income is about $14,000 annually (~$122k SEK). So a voter ID can cost a low-income worker about 3 days of pre-tax income, likely 3.5 or 4 post-tax.

<comment><USER12> Do you really think you can get your documents done in Europe in every rural area? No, you travel to a bigger city, often using a bus and whatnot. Part of life, being a citizen. Every single opposition to having an ID to vote sounds insane to Europeans (UK excluded but they call us mainland anyway), and I can promise you they would take Republicans side on the issue.

<comment><USER5> The distances in the US are so much larger and the public transportation infrastructure is so much worse the comparison boggles the mind. Consider 170 miles the distance quoted is roughly half way across the entire country of Germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like

1) about 1/2 of them are due to plain ol' User Error (not that there isn't room to improve the "UI" so that happens less) like not signing, not including required parts, simply leaving the ballot out of the envelope entirely(!), and so on,

2) 1/4 are "signature didn't match" (most of those are probably false negatives and should have counted, I'd bet, but given other issues I wouldn't be surprised if people in the same household accidentally signing one another's ballots or something else silly like that _is_ some measurable part of the problem) and,

3) 1/4 are other :-/

[EDIT] looks like most of the "other" category is probably a couple towns in one county having a vote so screwed-up that 3,200 ballots were rejected _en masse_. That's about 20% of the rejected ballots, or about 2% of the total vote, right there.

<comment><USER14> >2) 1/4 are "signature didn't match"

I've always felt that matching signatures was a terrible way of authenticating voters. The person doing the matching is not a trained handwriting expert. Also, like many people, I have subpar handwriting and I highly doubt my signature today looks anything like what it did when I first registered to vote 25+ years ago.

<comment><USER15> When I lived in King County Washington half the time my vote was sent back due to mismatching signature. Heard similar stories from others. Maybe it stops fraud, but the high false negative rate is egregious.

<comment><USER16> maybe it is fraud. who audits the people who compare it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Still, the League of Women Voters and NAACP say the state's signature- > verification requirement is unconstitutional because it disenfranchises so > many. Election officials are not trained in handwriting analysis to be able > to properly determine whether the signature on a ballot matches the one on a > voter's registration, not to mention that a person's signature can change > over time and with age.

Every time I have to sign something that might be verified against a signature record I get nervous and I bet my signature reflects it.

<comment><USER18> Plus, you have to _sign_ your ballot? It's supposed to be secret.

<comment><USER19> You need to have some way to prevent fraud if you're going to allow mail-in ballots.

<comment><USER18> It's not as if signatures are going to do that. Especially not any of the types of fraud that involve coercion or payment for votes. If you're paying someone for their vote they can still sign their name. One of the reasons it needs to be secret is to make it impossible for anyone to verify that you voted the way they want you to.

I still don't understand how voting in person is supposed to be any more problematic than e.g. buying groceries in person. Wear a mask, stand six feet apart etc., what's the problem?

<comment><USER20> It's not any more problematic for the voters, yes, but what about the poll workers? They stay there all day and skew older. The big concern is that reliable poll workers are going to skip this year because of COVID (not unreasonable) and we simply won't have people to facilitate the voting we normally do. [https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young- people...](https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/894331965/wanted-young-people-to- work-the-polls-this-november)

<comment><USER18> Would it be that hard to put a sheet of clear plastic between the poll workers and the voters?

<comment><USER20> You can put all the protections in place you want but if volunteers don't feel safe, they won't show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I keep seeing people say "user error" to these problems as if that's an acceptable answer to a quarter of submitted votes being rejected.

These are mistakes that are caught and resolved with in person voting.

I'm not in the camp that thinks mail in voting is impossible but these are real problems that need to be solved before November. For our country this is an unprecedented election, it deserves more respect than being explained away by partisan politics.

</comment><comment><USER22> Vote by mail works very well here in Oregon. Indeed, we _only_ vote by mail. Here's our Republican secretary of state saying so:

[https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works- espec...](https://www.myoregon.gov/2020/06/19/vote-by-mail-works-especially- in-a-pandemic/)

<comment><USER23> >There are many security measures to guard against fraud, including a signature line on the outside of the envelope that is checked against a digital signature on file. Every single ballot envelope signature is compared to the signature in the voter file to make sure it is a match. Our election workers are trained in forensic handwriting analysis to determine whether a signature matches. Each ballot return envelope contains a unique barcode that cannot be duplicated to make sure that voters can only return one ballot. Voters can even go online to track their ballot to confirm that it was received and counted. It is a system that costs less, is more secure, and has a paper trail.

There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things of note.

1) They check signatures and the election workers have training in forensic handwriting analysis.

2) They use unique barcodes to prevent duplicates

3) They have a way to make sure your ballot was received and counted.

I bet that for a lot of states ramping up mail in voting, they are missing one or more of the above.

<comment><USER24> > There is a difference between a system that has been running for years and > evolved to work, and one that is put together in an emergency. Some things > of note.

I don't really understand this argument. You list some things that we should do to have a secure vote-by-mail election, but you seem to be phrasing your argument as if it's an argument _against_ vote-by-mail elections.

<comment><USER25> It is not an argument against vote-by-mail elections, it is an argument against mail elections on a short notice, where we don't have the time to implement those things effectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A larger figure (21%) was reported by NYPost[1] in a recent NYC election.

The worst part about paper ballots (mail-in, ink, or hanging chads) is that the intent must be re-interpreted by someone other than the voter at a time after it's too late for the voter to fix any issues.

[1] [https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots- disquali...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/84000-mail-in-ballots-disqualified- in-nyc-primary-election/amp/)

</comment><comment><USER27> It always amazes me how one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world has such a shitty voting system.

Big American tech companies know when you're pregnant before you do, but the government doesn't know who lives in a specific house. So weird.

<comment><USER28> It's a very hard problem. I live next to a multi-family house in a college town and the tenants move in and out so frequently that I'm not even 100% sure who lives there... and I'm 10 feet away. Hell, I could probably only roughly estimate the total number of people that live there.

I wonder if there's a solution in there though... maybe landlords should have to report tenants on their federal taxes or something?

<comment><USER29> Why are we tracking it via residency? If you're homeless, that doesn't invalidate your citizenship.

We need to move to a unique ID per person with password, that you can link to email(s), phone(s) or both. And then we can have on-line voting.

<comment><USER30> I really don't understand why there is so much opposition to online voting in the US. I think people fetishize voting as this super hard problem whee it must be anonymous, must be verifiable that the vote was counted and was correct but in such a way that a person can't prove to someone else their vote or even that they voted.

It's just exhausting. Just have an account with the government, fill out your ballot, hit submit, post the votes publicly that are counted and let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a day.

I'm willing to bet that more people than not are more than willing to use this system.

<comment> dane-pgp > let people find their ballot by some ID number if they want and call it a > day.

And if your boss or landlord or spouse or cult leader hints that you should show them you voted the correct way, what do you do?

<comment><USER30> And if your boss or landlord or cult leader makes you request an absentee ballot and fill it out in front of them?

<comment> dane-pgp Then you have to hope that the system allows you to override your absentee ballot with an in-person ballot, and that your boss or landlord or cult leader doesn't have people watching the polling locations (or watching your movements whenever the polling locations are open).

I admit that's not a perfect system, but it might skew the outcome of the vote less than a system where governors can selectively reduce the number of polling locations, and staff working at them, to produce hour-long lines of people risking catching a potentially deadly disease from each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Everyone is concentrating on the wrong thing.

There are two possible kinds of voter fraud (both extremely rare), "retail fraud" (i.e. individual voters) and "wholesale fraud" (i.e. bulk fraud). Voter ID laws mostly "fix" a non-existent problem of individual false votes with the express intent of discouraging votes. The real problem you want to fix is "wholesale fraud" which means securing the whole system from voting machines (which should be open-source and paper-audited) to how votes are tallied. Think about it. If you were going to steal votes would you go to all the trouble to forge or hijack individual votes or would you bribe someone to flip a couple of digits at a county office?

Of course, a trustworthy system includes how mail-in votes are tracked and verified but that is a well-understood problem working well for thousands and thousands of absentees, military personnel and whole states full of people who have voted that way regularly for decades.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't see why we can't just have in person voting, but require masks. Given that we didn't see any significant spike in COVID after the protests, when people were packed together and shouting, it is pretty clear that the virus doesn't spread significantly when you are outside with a mask. I think the risks of 10% of the votes being thrown out are far greater than the risk of a slight increase in COVID spread.

<comment><USER32> At the very least you need a universal option to vote by mail. There's a few good reasons: 1. People are going to make individual judgements about how high the risk is and you don't want people making the choice between safety and voting. 2. It is disproportionately more difficult for people to vote in some areas[1]- making the risk different. 3. What we're seeing more and more are localized outbreaks, where certain areas have a flare up of cases, in those cases you probably don't want to vote in person. 4. People who are self- isolating would be disenfranchised.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas- pollin...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling- sites-closures-voting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was curious and checked the numbers from the last Polish presidential election where the postal votes are not super common, but also a normal occurence. The results are also split by the type of specific mistakes (card not signed, envelopes not handled properly, etc), but I'll ignore it here. The counts are:

\- 704,016 voting cards sent out (2% of registered voters)

\- 614,662 cards received back (87%)

\- 593,205 cards valid (84% of sent / 96% of returned)

I thought that 10% is a pretty high number (and obviously should be worked on), but for context, 4% seems to be a "normal under covid" number if the rules are pretty simple (2 envelope layers + signed slip).

</comment><comment><USER34> That headline isn't anything to be proud of, I'm not sure if 10% is supposed to sound significant or insignificant, but at any sort of scale 10% is enough to potentially change a close election.

What we don't have for comparison a similar breakdown for elections in physical polling places. Politicians engage in all sorts of squabbling and shenanigans every election in attempts to knock votes off of opponent's tallies. I'm sure the difference between votes cast and votes counted is pretty substantial in any election.

If the rates are similar then this is not much of a headline at all.

</comment><comment><USER35> That's one of the reasons why the US makes it only to spot #25 on the democracy index and earned the "flawed democracy" label.

</comment><comment><USER36> Now all an agitator needs to do now is to send a few obviously dq'ed ballots to influence how people view the election.

</comment><comment><USER37> My signature has small variations each time I sign. Enough so that it currently does not match what's on my driver's license. I foresee many ballots thrown out depending if they require exact matches to how you signed your voter registration. I hope there is an easy way for me to check if my mail-in ballot is thrown out.

</comment><comment><USER38> One of the key problems is in verifying citizenship. None of the existing identities work well for this. I remember when India introduced Aadhar card, it was explicitly mentioned that it is not a proof of citizenship and there was a "challenge" to come up with a good identity proof for citizenship.

</comment><comment><USER39> I recently had to sign many, many papers at a bank. They specifically told me to make sure my signature matched the one on my state drivers license.

Looks like someone sold some hand writing similarity software in the name of fraud detection. Also, for the children!

/Comments my own, not my employers.

<comment><USER40> It's so odd... Like what constitutes a similarity? Do people not change their signature between 12 and 50?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if the signatures actually didn't match, or if someone bulk- challenged votes based on demographics (either perceived from the name or from an actual list of registered voters by campaign contributions or zip codes).

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a good headline. Without reading anything else, there's at least two assumptions to draw from reading it: * they caught 10% of votes for being fraudulent * they stopped 10% of voters from exercising their right

</comment><comment><USER43> States need to open all in person polling places right away and keep them open to election day to prevent a civil war. This isn't going to be a normal election.

Social distancing over time instead of space.

</comment><comment><USER44> Just for context since nobody's mentioned it and it looks like a lot of folks here aren't reading the article or EAC surveys, the rejection rate in 2018 general elections was 3%.

</comment><comment><USER45> This election is going to be an absolute circus

</comment><comment><USER46> 200+ comments and 100 upvotes. Hmm, seems like some people don't want this information spread.

</comment><comment><USER47> given how effective IRS is, can we vote with our tax return?

<comment><USER47> that is if you reject my vote, I don't need to pay tax for a year

<comment><USER46> imagine how much deliberate voter fraud would happen if that was true :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If you liked Bush v. Gore and the hanging chads, you'll love vote by mail.

</comment><comment><USER49> I know everyone in certain social circles is pressured into saying that vote- by-mail is the best thing ever, because the Orange Man said that vote-by-mail is bad and you must be on the other side.

However, it's time to admit that vote-by-mail has huge problems and it's more prone to fraud.

<comment><USER50> The article explicitly says that this wasn't 10% fraud. Please leave your political views at the door.

<comment><USER49> I never said that the article says that it's fraud.

I said, taking full responsibility for it, that vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud.

Why should I leave my political views at the door? Is because they don't align with yours?

<comment><USER32> The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're trying to pass them off as facts.

>vote-by-mail is more prone to fraud.

That is simply not supported by any evidence.

<comment><USER49> > The reason you should leave your political views at the door because you're > trying to pass them off as facts.

Never tried to do so, you must be mistaken.

> That is simply not supported by evidence.

It is.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google preps identity spotter app - <AUTHOR> http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/31/google_facial_recognition_app/

<comment><USER2> This was just a matter of time, although I expected Facebook to do it first. Combine it with the heads-up displays in glasses and contacts that we should be getting in the next 10 years, and we're most of the way to Halting State.</comment>


A Look Inside Apple's Custom GPU for the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.realworldtech.com/apple-custom-gpu/? <comment><AUTHOR> _we believe the company has shifted […] to designing a custom GPU. This new GPU first shipped in the A8 processor that is in the iPhone 6, and its descendants are also in the A9 and A10 Fusion processors in the iPhone 6S and 7.[…]_

The most interesting part, is that this is only a part of GPU, the shader core. The fixed-function hardware still comes from Imagination's PowerVR, so the transition isn't complete yet.</comment>


From Collisions to Chosen-Prefix Collisions Application to Full SHA-1 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/459.pdf <comment><USER2> There are, broadly, two kinds of collisions. In the first kind, you can pick an arbitrary prefix P shared between the collision pair; the algorithm spits out a pair of (essentially random) blocks of data C1, C2 in the middle that are different but yield the same hash value (H(P+C1) = H(P+C2)). In the second kind, you can pick two arbitrary (equal-length) prefixes P1, P2, and the algorithm outputs collision blocks C1, C2 such that H(P1+C1) = H(P2+C2). Because of the Merkle–Damgård construction common to MD5 and SHA-1, you can add arbitrary (equal) suffixes without affecting the collision.

With the first kind, you don't have much control over the collision blocks, and the prefixes and suffixes have to be the same. This can still be useful - file formats can be carefully rigged so that the differences in the collision blocks are noticed somehow (e.g. misaligning length fields, changing testable field values, introducing different code). With MD5, these collisions take just seconds to compute; with SHA-1, the one known example (Shattered) took 2^63 hash evaluations to compute.

With the second kind, you can do a lot more evil, since you can pick two completely arbitrary prefixes. This was abused (for example) to create a rogue CA certificate from an ordinary signed website cert. With MD5, this takes several hours with a good GPU and CPU; with SHA-1, it was previously thought to take around 2^77 evaluations - more than 16,000 times harder than the first type of attack.

This paper describes a method that would take only 2^69 evaluations for the second kind of attack on SHA-1, only 64x harder than the first type (in the worst case). This would be feasible for a big institution like Google or a government.

All of which reminds us that, yet again, SHA-1 deserves to be laid to rest.

</comment><comment><USER3> Around 2010 I had to play Benevolent Dictator and refuse to support SHA-1 signatures on software that could potentially kill people.

Every time another article like this comes out I experience two emotions. First, a bit of smugness mixed with a lot of relief that I won that argument. Second, a bit of shock when people say "it's time to stop using SHA-1" as if that hasn't been the recommendation for 10 years.

It's dead, dead, dead. Now is not the time to have discussions about upgrading. Now is the time to start throwing people under the buss for dragging their feet on upgrades.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some nice practical detail: They estimate using the methods of previous research that the new technique brings the price on EC2 of your very own SHA-1 chosen-prefix collision to somewhere between $1.2MM and $7MM.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does this have any implications for the urgency of replacing SHA-1 in git?

I recently asked a question on the pip issue tracker[1] about whether it would make sense for pip to _start_ accepting sha-1 git refspecs when running in --require-hashes mode, on the grounds that there's more upside to encouraging use of --require-hashes than there is downside risk of sha-1 collision attacks. This surely doesn't help that argument, but I'm not sure if it hurts it either.

[1] [https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6469](https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/6469)

<comment><USER6> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13719368)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Git SHA1 to SHA256 transition plan is here, though it may not be finalized yet: [https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/technic...](https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/technical/hash- function-transition.txt)

</comment><comment><USER8> First SHA1 was shattered. [https://shattered.io](https://shattered.io)

Now it's reduced to shambles.

It's time to stop using SHA1. (HMAC-SHA1 is still okay.)

<comment><USER9> It's OK in the sense that it's not a security emergency, but, don't use HMAC- SHA1 (or HMAC-MD5, which is also in the same sense "ok").

<comment><USER10> When do you expect it would be feasible to forge HMAC-SHA1 or HMAC-MD5?

<comment><USER2> All current collision attacks assume you know the intermediate hash values (IHVs). With a typical HMAC forgery scenario, you don't know the secret key so you don't know the IHV corresponding to the inner hash application, which means existing collision attacks are not applicable.

If you do know the secret key, collisions are easy, but probably pointless since you can already forge HMAC signatures for anything you want.

Still, even if there's no way to break HMAC-SHA1 (or even HMAC-MD5) faster than the birthday attack, you should still prefer to pick a better hash algorithm for safety.

<comment><USER11> Also, you shouldn't use a different hash algorithm for HMAC than for other hashing, because that increases the amount of security-critical code you have, which directly increases the chance that there's a bug in your security- critical code.

<comment><USER9> It's pretty unlikely that you're going to have a bug in your SHA1 and SHA2 cores, for whatever that's worth to you. Virtually nobody implements them by hand.

<comment><USER12> Anecdotally I know of one very popular application that has a bug in their SHA-1 implementation causing it to effectively only perform a single round.

<comment><USER10> Would that make it only interoperable with itself, and not have the security a correct implementation of SHA1 provides? Is it a security bug (i.e. is there anything worth stealing by breaking their not-quite-SHA1-hash)?

<comment><USER12> The application is using a proprietary client/server protocol, so it already lacks lacks any kind of interoperability.

In this specific case, it's unclear whether the bug has direct security implications. The broken SHA-1 is used on some user-controlled data that gets XORed onto the server's decryption of a user-specified payload before being passed into an RC4 key schedule. It's certainly plausible that this might produce a server-assisted privacy compromise of other users' sessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I didn't see any date in that paper. Is it new? (The URL suggests 2019, but that could just be when it was put on that server, not when the paper was written).

<comment><AUTHOR> It is, [https://eurocrypt.iacr.org/2019/program.html](https://eurocrypt.iacr.org/2019/program.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Using data to figure out where to live - <AUTHOR> http://maptitan.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm Ben! A couple years ago when I moved to a new city for a job I made a little program that used a bunch of data to help me figure out if I'd like the place. It was a fun programming project because I nerd out over city data haha.

Last year I turned it into a website (MapTitan.com) and I'm curious what you think of it? Now that it's not just for me anymore, how can I improve it to help you too? I'd love to hear about your favorite places to live as well!

And if you need any advice/help with moving or choosing a place to go, definitely let me know. I'd be glad to help you out!

<comment><USER2> Looks cool Ben! Very clean layout. How are you looking to monetize it? Through newsletters?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm thinking through partnerships. Whether that's real estate agents, visitors bureaus, corporations, or local businesses, I'm not certain yet.</comment></comment></comment>


AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1 – Pre-Release for the AmigaOne X5000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/news/36-amigaos-4x/176-amigaos-41-final-edition-update-1-pre-release-for-the-amigaone-x5000 <comment><USER2> Presumably one of the excellent points about using a PowerPC structure is that there is no Intel ME system within it: since the system (X5000) is already marketed as running Ubuntu and Debian ([http://www.amiga-shop.net/Amiga- Hardware/New-Amiga-Computers...](http://www.amiga-shop.net/Amiga-Hardware/New- Amiga-Computers/AmigaONE-X5000-complete-system::790.html)) there's presumably no reason why it couldn't be certified for Qubes OS and find wider audience!?

</comment><comment><USER3> The X5000 presumably succeeds the X1000 from 2010: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne_X1000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne_X1000)

Are there any sales figures available for that machine? I'd love to know how many people are still buying "Amigas".

(Also worth noting, the X1000 had a dual-core CPU, but AmigaOS can only use one core. RISC OS (the ex-Acorn OS) has a similar problem when running on later Raspberry Pi devices.)

<comment><USER4> They're being coy about it, but [1]:

"As I replied in another interview recently, we have sold in excess of 200 AmigaOne X1000 systems and boards but less than 2000. As for satisfaction, yes we were very pleased with AmigaONE X1000 sales but, due to the high cost and shortage of P.A. Semi CPUs, we took the decision to discontinue manufacturing the Nemo motherboard." (June 2015)

Note that this is not the only AmigaOne's on sale. There are also the ACube SAM boards/computers [2], which are substantially cheaper. They don't really directly compete due to the price gap - in fact, A-Eon apparently contracts ACube for some work (firmware etc.).

Estimating the yearly sales of AmigaOS 4.x machines is thus quite hard, but I'm assuming it's in the low hundreds per year at most.

[1] [http://distrita.com/a-eon-interview-about-amigas- future/](http://distrita.com/a-eon-interview-about-amigas-future/)

[2] [http://www.acube- systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7](http://www.acube- systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7)

<comment><USER5> So how can these companies survive? And produce custom motherboards, no less?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Price for that board is preposterous especially considering it doesn't have the old Amiga custom chipsets to optionally run old software and games, but depends on emulation.

How many years left till these vultures stop picking the bones of the Amiga community...

<comment><USER4> Nobody are forcing anyone to buy these. And I very much doubt Trevor Dickinson is making much money from A-Eon. It's pretty clear he's doing this as an expensive hobby.

Those that can't afford these have plenty of cheaper alternatives to choose from, ranging from AROS on a wide range of platforms, to classic AmigaOS or AROS in emulators, MorphOS on old Macs, classic AmigaOS on upgraded classics or FPGA reimplementations, to SAM AmigaOne boards from ACube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the Amiga, but this seems a little too much; for a computer that will cost € 2.299,00, consisting of 'old' hardware.

<comment><USER8> > this seems a little too much

It is. Especially considering that other m68k systems are sold for much less, such as this one which is an Atari-compatible computer and is sold for 643 Euros (560 for the motherboard and 83 for the case): [http://firebee.org/fb- bin/index](http://firebee.org/fb-bin/index)

<comment><USER9> My FireBee is being couriered to me as we speak, I'm super excited about it.

But it is kind of a different sort of thing. I think the AmigaOne is a foolish concept, but it is a far more powerful machine than the FireBee, as it is based around a high speed PowerPC board.

PowerPC IMHO is a dead-end, but it seems like many in the Amiga community have tried to hitch their wagon to it. They'd be better off porting to ARM (running in big-endian mode I guess) if the OS is really worth it.

<comment><USER4> AROS does run on ARM. As for AmigaOS 4.x I don't think Hyperion have the resources, and they're very dependent on their hardware partners bearing part of the cost.

The only problem with PPC from an Amiga point of view is that most of the SOCs are targetting networking and automotive markets and similar embedded use rather than desktops (total PPC sales in terms of number of chips is still in a similar region to x86 sales; revenue per unit is way lower, though). It's not like people will buy these machines looking for top end performance, and the OS is still incredibly light weight, but if you pay for it you can still get PPC chips that perform very well.

But AmigaOne's are an very expensive hobby for most people who buy them, not bought to be cost effective.

More comparable to the FireBee you have a multitude of M68k accelerators and FPGA Amiga reimplementations that are much cheaper.

There's been various discussions about trying to run AmigaOS or AROS on ColdFire like the FireBee too. Problem is people would expect to run their old binary-only software, and AFAIK the ColdFire can't trap all the unimplemented instruction combinations fully, so it'd require "fun" hacks (e.g. dynamic translation; I think it probably _could_ be done reasonably easily for AmigaOS, but finding someone with both the time and the skills is another matter) so the Amiga community focus has been on FPGAs.

<comment><USER9> Yeah ColdFire is also a dead end because Freescale isn't going to be releasing any more models and certainly not at any higher clock speeds. And it's really being made for specialized markets (automotive, ethernet switches, etc.)

The FireBee is a neat hack I don't mind supporting, but if people really want hardware and emulators don't cut it, then FPGA is probably the way to go.

Or switch architectures and port the OS (EmuTOS and/or AROS) + some sort of CPU translation/emulation layer for 68k stuff. It would probably have to be something big endian, so that rules out RISC-V but OpenRISC, J2 (SuperH) and OpenSPARC are some open source candidates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IMO the X5000 is kind of a joke. It doesn't even have USB 3.0, for instance. I really don't understand how A-Eon or Hyperion stay in business. Why the entire Amiga community, including the commercial interests, don't get behind AROS is just insane.

</comment><comment><USER11> What can you use this for?

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a PPC VM that could run this on Linux or Windows?</comment>


Show HN: Relationship Graph - <AUTHOR> https://relgraph.notmet.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a graph entry tool I built, which sought to make it easy to enter, link, and display many pieces of data.

One design goal was to make the tool easy to use and share even on fairly restricted corporate networks. A save file contains the data and a copy of the tool, and is simply an HTML file with JS and CSS bundled. No external resources, so it's easy to trust with sensitive data, and easy to move onto even an "air-gapped" development network.</comment>


How Black People Are Being Shut Out of America's Weed Boom - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/amandachicagolewis/americas-white-only-weed-boom?utm_term=.wdG9yoVWO <comment><USER3> "Henderson was more than qualified, so why didn't he get the gig? ... he has two drug possession felonies on his record"

You know, people with illegal bookmaking convictions are kept out of the gambling industry for good reasons. It started off as a dirty industry, and to the extent you keep anyone with a hint of grime out of it, you avoid it regressing to that state. That keeps regulators off your back and eventually helps you turn it into a family-friendly mass market industry.

It's also really difficult for people with fraud convictions to get job as accountants, no matter how good they are at forensic accounting. Trust is the commodity being sold.

Do you really _want_ someone with a shitload of existing drug connections, being the poster face for the industry you're trying to vanillify? The whole premise of legalization wasn't that your local corner boys get to go industrial after they gain mass market access, it was that the "drug trade" becomes roughly parallel with the "tobacco trade", where the worst thing that happens is penny-ante tax evasion.

<comment><USER4> Everything you say is entirely logical, but omits the reality that as a black person in america you are vastly more likely to be arrested for drug crimes. Not more likely to DO drug crimes, just more likely to get caught.

This means profiling and racist policing directly leads to economic exclusion. If the american dream is upward mobility, that means black people get a smaller shot at the american dream.

But all that aside. This is like saying that people who've had DUIs can't work at bars. The guy in the article had possession charges. That means he had nothing to do with selling the stuff, he was just a fan. That's a big difference from being an accountant convicted of fraud or a bookie trying to work at a casino.

<comment><USER5> This is just bad statistics. [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and- justice-much-m...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much- more-than-you-wanted-to-know/)

>For example, all of these "equally likely to have used drugs" claims turn out to be that blacks and whites are equally likely to have "used drugs in the past year", but blacks are far more likely to have used drugs in the past week – that is, more whites are only occasional users. That gives blacks many more opportunities to be caught by the cops. Likewise, whites are more likely to use low-penalty drugs like hallucinogens, and blacks are more likely to use high-penalty drugs like crack cocaine. Further, blacks are more likely to live in the cities, where there is a heavy police shadow, and whites in the suburbs or country, where there is a lower one.

...

>Finally, all of this is based on self-reported data about drug use. Remember from a couple paragraphs ago how studies showed that black people were twice as likely to fail to self-report their drug use? And you notice here that black people are twice as likely to be arrested for drug use as their self- reports suggest? That's certainly an interesting coincidence.

<comment><USER6> > Likewise, whites are more likely to use low-penalty drugs like > hallucinogens, and blacks are more likely to use high-penalty drugs like > crack cocaine.

Why is it, then, that crack cocaine is a high-penalty drug, and hallucinogens are low-penalty drugs?

(I leave this as an exercise to the reader.)

<comment><USER7> Because of the damage addiction does to communities. When these laws were passed it was people in those affected communities demanding them. People forget there were huge community marches in the 80s/90s crack epidemics with locals demanding police rid their towns of crack dealers.

<comment><USER8> > People forget there were huge community marches in the 80s/90s crack > epidemics with locals demanding police rid their towns of crack dealers.

People also forget why those dealers were in the business in the first place.

(Hint: the US government played a large role in explicitly financing the drug trade that resulted in a stead inflow of crack, predominantly to black communities[0]. Crack cocaine would not have been anywhere nearly as lucrative a business otherwise[1].)

[0] [https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/](https://oig.justice.gov/special/9712/)

[1] Which isn't to say that it's particularly lucrative either way, as has been demonstrated numerous times by economists - it just happens to be one of the few options available for many people who are trying to scrape together a living under those circumstances.

<comment><USER7> A steady influx of cocaine, which became too expensive when said shady agencies stopped what they were doing and local dealers decided to boil the expensive coke into crack so it became more affordable to addicts. Now there was a $5 per point addictive drug flooding poor areas with zero law enforcement to control it.

I remember big protests with black community leaders accusing the police of racism for not arresting crack dealers as their neighborhoods had become so dangerous police totally avoided them. They demanded new laws. Their newly elected reps ran on a platform of new tougher laws. The heavy hand of government then solved this by creating mandatory minimum sentencing and other laws that were blanket applied regardless of individual situation and created mass incarceration.

<comment><USER8> Yes.

Now, let's think why white neighborhoods were not struggling with the same problems of violent crime due to the drug trade. We know that the answer is not

(a) white people weren't doing drugs

(b) white people were doing drugs that were less addictive

because in reality, white people had (and still have) roughly the same total rates of drug use as everyone else. And in this case, white people were largely using the _same_ drug (cocaine, in powered form) as black people (cocaine, in freebase form).

I'm not saying that black people at the time weren't concerned with violent crime and calling for solutions to it. In fact, I'm usually the person who points this out whenever discussions about 80s and 90s drug law sentencing come up on HN. What I am saying instead is that it's silly to ignore the reason that black communities were concerned with problems that white communities never had to face in the first place.

<comment><USER5> Whites were doing less drugs per drug user, as my comment above said.

<comment><USER8> No, drug usage rates among whites are not and were not substantially lower than drug usage rates for other races. (In some years, they were actually _higher_ , though not substantially so). In fact, in the 1980s, white people were also 45% more likely to _sell_ drugs as well[0].

The difference in the effects of drug trade on black communities and on white communities in the 1980s are emphatically not due to fundamental differences of the drugs themselves, or due to differences in the prevalence of drug trade and drug usage.

[0] [http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/339610?seq=1#page_scan_t...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/339610?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

<comment><USER5> >Hindelang, Hirshi, and Weiss (1981) compare police records on arrests to self-reports for a sample of individuals and find these to be similar, with the exception of self-reports for young black men, which appear to understate the amount of crime committed.

If the fraction of drug users are equal, but blacks lie about whether they're drug users more often, then your statistics will show that whites use more.

The reported difference between blacks and whites is less than the known difference in honesty between them with regard to drug questions.

You also don't seem to have responded to my point at all, which is that blacks have a higher rate of reported usage within the last week. This is before taking the self-reported nature into account. See the source originally cited, [http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rdusda.pdf](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rdusda.pdf)

>Among black drug users, 54% reported using drugs at least monthly and 32% reported using them weekly. Such frequent drug use was less common among white drug users. Among white users, 39% reported using drugs monthly and 20% reported using them weekly.

I'll let you do the math to determine how this affects usage rates.

<comment><USER8> > You don't seem to have responded to my point at all, which is that blacks > have a higher rate of reported usage within the last week.

That's completely counter to the results of both the MTF and NSDUH. Since 1975, with the exception of Native Americans, whites consistently have slightly higher usage rates of drugs than any other racial demographic, although the overall drug usage rates are roughly comparable. For example:

> For a number of years, 12th-grade African-American students reported > lifetime, annual, 30-day, and daily prevalence rates for nearly all drugs > that were lower—sometimes dramatically so—than those for White or Hispanic > 12th graders. That is less true [in 2014], with rates of drug use among > African Americans more similar to the other groups[0]

The reason for the discrepancy is that you're citing statistics from the BJS about drug _users_. That's quite different from usage rates of drugs within the general population.

Finally, you are quite literally begging the question[1] by citing the 1981 analysis (which is itself a rather contested one). Even if we take that data at face value, it concludes that black men understate the crimes they commit, and does so by comparing this to arrest records. The whole point is that arrest records provide a skewed perspective of drug usage for black men (and women), because they are far more likely to be arrested for the behaviors they do.

[0] [http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf- vol1_2014...](http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf- vol1_2014.pdf)

[1] Yes, begging the question, not raising the question.

<comment><USER5> You're using 12th grade numbers. That's more than enough to account for any difference.

>The reason for the discrepancy is that you're citing statistics from the BJS about drug users. That's quite different from usage rates of drugs within the general population.

If the same percent of whites use drugs as blacks, then looking at how many drugs are used by each user (or how often each user uses them) matters. If each black user uses more than each white user, the total usage can be more.

>Finally, you are quite literally begging the question[1] by citing the 1981 analysis (which is itself a rather contested one). Even if we take that data at face value, it concludes that black men understate the crimes they commit, and does so by comparing this to arrest records. The whole point is that arrest records provide a skewed perspective of drug usage for black men (and women), because they are far more likely to be arrested for the behaviors they do.

I took that quote out of your jstor source. If you don't like it, use the one from SSC that I linked to:

>Comparisons of several different surveys of drug use find that "nonreporting of drug use is twice as common among blacks and Hispanics as among whites" (Mensch and Kandel). ([https://www.jstor.org/stable/2749113](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2749113))

This can't be explained by bias in arrest records. Note that they're looking at how many people who admitted using drugs in 1980 denied ever using drugs in 1984.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > But it can't be someone who got caught. Which for the most part means it > can't be someone who is black.

It's thinking like this that pisses me off. Henderson wasn't hired because of a record. Yes, racism still unfortunately exists, but in order to move towards an equal future we need to stop bringing it up and searching for problems where there are none. Fucking Buzzfeed and Huffington post are constantly using they're over-sensitive audience to start drama.

<comment><USER10> Ignoring up problems won't fix them.

<comment><USER11> But how does demonizing the legal weed industry by accusing it of being racists accomplish anything useful?

They are clearly NOT being racist and just following the legal requirements for their industry. The fact that the ones being excluded are mainly black is not some conscious decision to exclude blacks but the result of the current laws and enforcement saddling them with felony drug convictions. The author's time would be better spent addressing the real problem of the disproportionate number of black males with drug felonies for simple possession.

<comment><USER12> Accomplish anything useful? Buzzfeed is about _generating ad revenue through clicks_, not about being useful or educational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The book mentioned in the article "The New Jim Crow" is an extraordinary good read for people more interested in gaining context on the situation between race and crime mentioned in the article. It is also good to gain more insight into how politics can be racially coded without ever mentioning race - <USER2> given the current political climate.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't believe for one second that the people running the dispensaries never 'partook'. It takes a fan of the merchandise to run these things and communicate with the clientele. They just weren't caught. Why not? I suspect it still works like this:

Some 10-odd years ago, I had a (white) colleague who really enjoyed smoking mary-j. He lived on the 48th floor of a deluxe high-rise in Manhattan. He, like his wealthy neighbors, didn't have to get their fix off the street. Instead, they called 1-800-greenhouse and ordered two "theatre tickets". Within 30 mins, a bike messenger (African-American) came over to deliver 2 ounces of stuff to his front door. He never left the house. Last I heard, he got a job with the government…

He still has the right to vote too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here activists called legalization the new prohibition because of all the regulations like no dispensaries within a X distance from each other, a school, church ect so drove them out or cemented monopolies for the existing dispensaries which can raise prices. Then they created high barriers to entry with massive licensing fees and other regulations. This of course spawned online purchasing and delivery business models that's worked well for now, until more regulations on delivery.

One problem with the distributor in this story is he is constantly getting high off his own supply while in care and control of a vehicle which makes nobody want to work with him. That's heatbag behavior asking for problems. His comment on firearms about pulling out a gun during an argument is also something only heatbags do, the guys with side arms on the farm he went to are only armed to deter getting jacked for their product not win arguments.

You can't have a record and operate a dispensary here either, which was designed to keep bikers and other org crime out but they get around this by partnering with somebody that has a clean record.

Also wondering why the guy in Colorado can't apply for a pardon if it was only for teenage possession. Friend in Seattle did that to erase his record and open a weed business.

<comment><USER12> | Also wondering why the guy in Colorado can't apply for a pardon if it was only for teenage possession

Because that would dilute the click-baity narrative that Buzzfeed is trying to drive home. We wouldn't want their efforts in conflating cause and effect to go to waste now, would we?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A secondary issue here is that a joints worth of pot was cause for a felony conviction. How is that punishment in any way fitting the crime.

<comment><USER11> And this is the real issue the author should be addressing instead of trying to accuse the legal weed industry of being racist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's shocking to me how the comment section is replete with "a felony is a felony!" and "it's not a race issue- it's a criminal record issue!" messages. A few of them even go further and proudly proclaim they only read the first "paragragh". Too bad, they missed a critical point:

> Even though research shows people of all races are about equally likely to > have broken the law by growing, smoking, or selling marijuana, black people > are much more likely to have been arrested for it.

The lesson goes much further than the weed-boom, of course. So many people look at the current legal landscape and say "opportunities are equal for equal candidates", with seemingly no ability to observe for the compounded effects of all the preceding inequality.

@

edit: My comments seem to have been flagged so hard that I can't post replies. I guess this place isn't much more sophisticated than BuzzFeed when it comes to race issues.

As for that piece you keep posting, ikeboy, I don't think it's nearly as relevant or convincing as you think it is.

From the choice headline quote from the research SSX cites:

> is small to nonexistent once legally relevant variables (e.g. prior record) > are controlled

The entire controversy here arises due to the racially-biased source of the prior record.

I have a very low opinion of SSX's weasel-word-weaving to pander to his narrow audience, to be honest.

> Summary: Blacks appear to be arrested for drug use at a rate four times that > of whites. Adjusting for known confounds reduces their rate to twice that of > whites. However, other theorized confounders could mean that the real > relative risk is anywhere between two and parity. Never trust the media to > give you any number more complicated than today's date.

Blacks "appear to be", huh? With a couple of sketchy assumptions, suddenly we're "between two and parity", which then gets reproduced by you in this debate as "misleading and basically parity".

Anyway,

> There seems to be a strong racial bias in capital punishment and a moderate > racial bias in sentence length and decision to jail.

<comment><USER17> The comments section here isnt much better than that

Edit:

To follow up your edit, I find the attitudes toward race and gender on HN particularly troubling. Whenever there is an article that discusses legitimate race/gender issues it tends to be downvoted/flagged and drop like a rock off the front page. The comments are often calling into question the credibility of the person making the complaint about racism, and even blaming them / their race.

The reason that I find the attitudes here so troubling is because there are a number of influential people here. Many are entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs. If these attitudes are a reflection of the racial attitudes in the tech industry then woe unto us. We are doomed. We fancy ourselves sophisticated, rational, and benevolent leaders of the future world economy but we are too arrogant to look inward at our own flaws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Once I met a guy who worked for some Edward Jones-type company, investing the money of moms and pops, making money from watching various markets for opportunities to make profits.

He was so in love with how effectively the whole world made sense in terms of dollars, contracts, and trades. He liked the meta-economics of the prevailing world economic order. He would think in terms of "is it worth it to me to buy your debt?" if ever you said anything within a mile's distance of implying that you might want money for some economic purpose.

Well, at that time, there was no weed boom. It was illegal for the most part, in the U.S.

And his worldview, which always tried to relate everything -- from national or world news, right on down to the conversations of everyone around him after the workday was done -- everything he related to in terms of how our existing systems of money, contract obligations, and legal decisions was so logical and coherent and wonderful.

What did he think about weed then? That it was an unproductive (one of his favorite words) and likely immoral industry of drugs, not fit to be placed in his glorious world of markets and trade deals.

What does he think about it now? You know already. What do all these full-time market-men think about it: markets are awesome and efficient and now it's just another market service for them to try to arbitrage and to buy ownership of so that they themselves can maximize profit on the margins.

What was the difference before and after? Well, in this one respect, there is no difference: he still goes on effusing self-serving pro-US-capitalist rhetoric everywhere he goes. The one difference is that now he doesn't think weed is bad, it's just another thing for him to try to leverage financial/economic advantage out of, behind his Edward Jones-style desk, while there is a whole 'nother entire class of people mentioned in this article who probably don't dig his own worldview as much as he does.

<comment><USER19> > What did he think about weed then? That it was an unproductive (one of his > favorite words) and likely immoral industry of drugs, not fit to be placed > in his glorious world of markets and trade deals.

> What does he think about it now? You know already. What do all these full- > time market-men think about it: markets are awesome and efficient and now > it's just another market service for them to try to arbitrage and to buy > ownership of so that they themselves can maximize profit on the margins.

Isn't that exactly how we want our businesses to behave? If a businessman who didn't want to get involved in something when it was illegal now wants to get involved now that it's legal, isn't that good business ethics?

<comment><USER18> If my rhetoric is too grandiose, or my illogic too hazy, then I have to concede that you can parse details out of it which seem to be incorrect.

So, sure, that's exactly how we want our businesses to be, you are right, I concede for the sake of a limited argument under all the rest of the assumptions you have when you make that statement. I have unstated assumptions as well, everywhere.

Overall I was trying to make a hard point. I think that people are a just a little too content with the status quo. I believe only radical changes can fix the brokenness of our systems, and only on a long time line. (Our systems are broken at so many, many different levels, we could start by talking about problematic broken hardware/software systems if we wanted, and probably arrive at the conclusion that the present paradigm needs a radical change in the long run, saying nothing of money, law, or politics.)

I wanted to complain about how we expect our businesses to behave, because I think it's dysfunctional. But in the pragmatic sense, I'm not making any useful complaint. You are being more pragmatic.

The first thing I've come to realize the importance of by now, is that talk is just talk, and radical changes aren't going to happen on any time line, not without a lot of consensus.

I sincerely hope that some aspect of the human nature itself does not prevent us from coming to healthier consensuses than what we currently have. All I see is a system that maximizes paper profits while not counting environment damage or exhaustible resource availablity. Accounting is everything, and I fear for all humanity if we don't come to some better system of accounting value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Black underemployment is not an issue specific to the weed industry, it's a problem in all industry. Duh.

Also, legal weed is supposed to deal with racial inequalities. Legal weed means less people being caught and jailed. This is good.

Though, to be perfectly honest, I am not into the idea of states using Marijuana as a profit vehicle. It's about as cynical and without class as state run gambling. Hopefully more people will grow their own and once the rest of the US legalizes, weed will be about as profitable, no more or less, than a tomato.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why would anyone _want_ to be part of something called "Weed Boom" is beyond me. Also why literal Buzzfeed clickbait is being posted on HN.

</comment><comment><USER22> If most DUI convictions were white males and a delivery company didn't hire you if you had a DUI then that too would be racist? Seems like a reach.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd expect states to be strict in this area for now, especially states that legalized recreational use, because the weed business is _not_ legal under Federal law. The Federal government is currently taking a hands off approach to see how this works out. The cleaner the states can keep their weed business, the more likely the Feds are to leave them alone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Previous discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305929)

<comment><USER25> To call that link previous "discussion" is generous. There are only a handful of comments, nothing interesting.

<comment><USER24> At the time that I posted, there were only a handful in this thread, too. Besides, there's no objective indicator of 'interestingness' or a rule that states that all discussion must be interesting, or have a minimum length in order to qualify as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I read the entire article. The man was duly convicted of a crime in Oklahoma. He broke the law, regardless of what anyone thinks. Fast forward to when selling dope in certain places is now legal and this guys want a piece of the action, but... he cannot legally do so because he's a convicted felon. Should we undo his conviction? No. He was tried fairly and found guilty based on the laws of the time and place. His fault. His color has nothing to do with it, and quite frankly, I'm sick to death of everything in this country now revolving around race, homosexuals, feminists.

The man made a choice, he now lives with the repercussions of that choice, whether anyone agrees or disagrees. I realize my outlook is likely unpopular, but like I tell my children -- there are consequences for your actions, and it may take years to see them. This story will be read by my kids tonight to reinforce my good advice.

Besides, the morality of the people involved in a business like legal dope would put me off. Just because they don't have convictions means nothing. The type of people attracted to the dope business are off putting.

<comment><USER27> The point here is that there are more consequences when you're Black in the US. Statistically speaking people of color, and in particular Black Americans, are arrested and convicted of marijuana related crimes at a much higher rate than any other group [1]. That translates into Black Americans being kept out of the newly legal business because of racist policing policies.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the- blackwhite-marijuana-arrest-gap-in-nine-charts/)

<comment><USER26> I appreciate your remarks. But -- what I'm saying is that no one should feel sorry for this guy. It pains me to see the vast numbers of Americans who but a few years ago were for tough legislation and tough policies and who now desire to see criminals released from prison because the sentence may be too harsh. Really? If you do the crime, you do the time. We should not undo sentencing. It was all done legally at the time and it should stand.

I don't like the dope industry. It attracts children who think that smoking marijuana is harmless. It's not. The dopeheads can trot out all the industry- inspired crap they like, but it's not healthy. I'm all for ACTUAL medical patients who are in severe pain using it, but so many go to these quack doctors who will give a medical reason for a few dollars. Actual doctors with hospital admitting privileges should be the law.

Marijuana is not harmless and just a few years ago the majority of Americans agreed. The morality in America has slipped precipitously since our heyday as a nation in the 1950s.

<comment><USER28> >The morality in America has slipped precipitously since our heyday as a nation in the 1950s.

Yea, the 1950's were really America's heyday (/s), while the rest of the world was blown up. I wonder if people in the 1920's were sipping on illegal booze at Gadsby's party thinking "man, the morality in america sure has taken a dive since the gilded age". Is your view so skewed by the media portrayal of the Jones' and white picket fences that you think America was some bastion of morality then? The morals established then were that woman couldn't own credit cards unless their husbands deemed it so, gays should be sent to sanitoriums to prevent the spread of their disease by showing nude pictures to other boys (Lavender Scare anyone?); it took 10+ years for some states to comply with Brown v The Board of Education. So how about you get your kids a history book and let them read that so they don't have to see the world through rose colored bigoted glasses.

edit. The more I think about this the more upset I am. HUAC, being able to LEGALLY beat your wife, this isn't even touching on African-American trials of the time. America was a fucking mess in the 1950's.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Angularjs Surpasses node.js in Google Trends interest. - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=angularjs%2C%20%20ember.js%2C%20%20knockoutjs%2C%20%20backbonejs%2C%20%20node.js&date=8%2F2011%2025m&cmpt=q

<comment><USER2> Whats interesting is comparing Angular to other frameworks. This page compares frameworks from a Github perspective: [http://js- toolbox.org/category/frameworks](http://js-toolbox.org/category/frameworks)

AngularJS clearly has the most open tickets which also might mean high level of activity and interest (or being the most buggy framework, but I seriously doubt that =) )

</comment><comment><USER3> Something I found interesting is that when searching for "angular", "angular.js" and "angularjs", spain comes out as the country where the search happens the most and Barcelona, the city where I live, is the second most popular city for Angular people.

Where are you all?

</comment><comment><USER4> But football surpasses microsoft: [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=football%2C%20%20micr...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=football%2C%20%20microsoft&date=8%2F2011%2025m&cmpt=q)

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this comparing apples to oranges? It's like saying Apache surpasses PHP in Google Trends interest - they're very different, incomparable technologies.

</comment><comment><USER6> node.js + angular.js = world domination :P

<comment><USER7> Why not Golang + AngularJS? JS is not the best programming language and on server side we have a choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Orthogonality.

</comment><comment><USER9> The sum of 'node.js' and 'nodejs' is greater then 'angularjs' and 'angular.js'</comment>


The Year Climate Change Began to Spin Out of Control - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609642/the-year-climate-change-began-to-spin-out-of-control/ <comment><USER2> There is zero evidence that climate change has increased either the number or the severity of hurricanes.

The _costs_ have increased because the southern coastal areas are vastly more populated than they were in earlier times.

Disagree?

Here's the data:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurrican...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_hurricanes)

Plot it yourself.

<comment><USER3> Plot what?

You've made an assertion, but you haven't supported it.

It's not like the models say the US went from "3 bad hurricanes a year" to "4 bad hurricanes a year."

They say what was a pretty terrible hurricane in 2017 would have been a lesser storm in <2017 (due to sea levels and water temperature).

<comment><USER2> > Plot what?

The frequency of hurricanes v. time and the intensity of hurricanes v. time.

I would have thought that was obvious.

>You've made an assertion, but you haven't supported it.

First off, I'm not the one "making the assertion". The burden of proof lies on those who are claiming that the frequency and/or intensity of hurricanes is increasing over time.

Secondly, sure I have. I've provided a link to _actual hurricane data_ that demonstrates it conclusively. Given that data, can you produce a plot using any generally accepted method that shows an increase in the frequency or intensity?

Hint: No, you can't. Because no such relationship exists.

> They say what was a pretty terrible hurricane in 2017 would have been a > lesser storm in <2017 (due to sea levels and water temperature).

That's your counter-argument? "They say"?

Okay.

P.S. what do you think is the approximate value for "sea level rise", say, in the last 100 years?

<comment><USER3> You linked to a Wikipedia article listing historical hurricanes. What metric you're drawing from that isn't obvious.

> The frequency of hurricanes v. time and the intensity of hurricanes v. time.

Ah. Okay. Thanks for clarifying your metrics.

I'll refer you to the NOAA page for hurricane / climate studies, which answers all your points.

[https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and- hurricanes/](https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/)

<comment><USER2> > You linked to a Wikipedia article listing historical hurricanes."

Which gives the source: "Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2012". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

[http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html](http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html)

> I'll refer you to the NOAA page for hurricane / climate studies, which > answers all your points.

No, actually, it doesn't.

"It is _premature to conclude_ that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity."

"Premature to conclude" is a euphemistic way of saying "we have no evidence".

"Anthropogenic warming by the end of the 21st century will likely cause tropical cyclones globally to be more intense on average (by 2 to 11% according to model projections for an IPCC mid-range scenario)."

Your page says that it "likely" (how likely? They don't say.) will cause them to be 2-11% more intense _by the end of the 21st century_ (not now).

It also says "That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable"

Those are vague claims that are not falsifiable (in other words, they are not science). Could there be "undetectable" changes? Sure. Could the whole thing be controlled by angry mythological dwarves? Or excited unicorns? Sure. But those hypotheses are _not science_.

What I said was that there is no evidence that the frequency or intensity of hurricanes has increased. And there is no such evidence. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Too right! _sips from plastic mineral water bottle in air conditioned apartment situated in what should be a desert_

</comment><comment><USER5> Meanwhile...the band keeps playing on the deck of the Titanic.

</comment><comment><USER6> As if we've ever had control of "Climate Change".

</comment><comment><USER7> People still believe in this shit?</comment>


Audi's unions demand electric model for main German plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-audi-board-idUSKBN1701YQ <comment><USER3> This is absolutely why German unions are awesome, read this: "Labor leaders at Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) luxury Audi brand have asked top management to assign production of an all-electric model to the carmaker's main plant in Germany, concerned they might lose out as electric cars gain in importance."

The reason for the Union speaking out is twofold: The workers want to have the necessary skill set in building EV and they also want the company to stay in front of the market. This kind of communication allows management to actually see those things that they couldn't perceive in their normal view from atop.

<comment><USER4> > This is absolutely why German unions are awesome

curious: What about this is specific to German unions?

<comment><USER5> In all my travels I've never seen quite a union as German unions. They have a seat at the board and are involved with decisions the board makes. This creates a drastically less antagonistic relationship between capital and labor.

<comment><USER6> Yes, and even in smaller org's (above 20) the employees are able to setup an employee council that helps management steer the company.

It's not something that can be rejected by management.

For someone from North America it can be a challenge to accept but does work quite well once you get over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Unions in Germany are considered to be very strong.

This works well in companies where managers don't have a lot of imagination and who's first reaction is to fire staff when the going gets tough.

For example VW wanted to cut 3000 workers. [http://www.reuters.com/article/us- volkswagen-redundancies-id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen- redundancies-idUSKCN0WC21Y)

After talks with the Union they rescinded somewhat and now the losses will be through attrition. i.e. wait for people to retire or leave.

It doesn't surprise me that Audi want to keep what may be seen as a growing product in Germany.

<comment><USER8> > This works well in companies where managers don't have a lot of imagination > and who's first reaction is to fire staff when the going gets tough.

Not really that's US-style or French-style management and the result is hard clashes between labour and management.

<comment><USER9> But aren't US and French unions considered weak compared to Germany ? That would make the stance correct.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't call french unions weak. They are quite famous for their strikes. Here's an Economist blog post about them: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist- explains/2014/03/ec...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist- explains/2014/03/economist-explains-15)

<comment><USER9> Hmm. I live in Belgium and I believe being famous for their strikes isn't a good indicator of their real weight. Media and journalists makes much more noise covering the strikes than strikers actually do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a former Audi owner, I wonder if the "audi service position" will be applicable to their electric cars. Tangental I know, but I would be curious to know if they will make their cars easier/cheaper to service. I never really had much trouble with my A4, but maintenance costs upwards of 1k per 6 months(I was driving a lot of miles at the time) turned me off to the ownership experience.

<comment><USER12> Depends on a lot of factors. There is no engine oil, so the first scheduled maintenance will probably be the cabin airfilter (20000 miles in every car I've had that has one), and I would guess that anything in the suspension that needs grease will get the same interval (many cars have nothing to grease today but it is a possibility). Then there are tires.

Brake pads should last a little longer, but I'm not sure how much.

Ultimately though I believe electric cars will be much more expensive in the long run. Nissan wants $5499 for a new battery back. I don't know of any study on how long they last, but reading forums and extrapolating I would say you should plan on replacing the battery pack every 100000 miles. This of course depends greatly on how your charge it which in turn depends on how far you drive. If you drive the full range of the battery every charge you probably need to replace the battery every 50000 miles. If you make dozens of short trips per day, charging after each, you could potentially get several hundred thousand miles.

I'm curious about your A4 experience - how many miles were you driving. Unless you are driving 80,000 miles a year I don't see how you can get that high - <USER2> 80,000 miles/ year you have timing belt service. If you are driving this many miles the VW diesels (same base platform as the A4, though less luxury) can probably pay for the entire car including maintenance just in fuel savings.

<comment><USER13> A4s (and to a slightly lesser extent all other Audis) have been, up until very recently, among the most unreliable new vehicles for sale since the model's inception.

Combine that with expensive Audi parts, expensive and zealous dealership labour, and they are unbelievably expensive to maintain.

I own a 2006 that I bought for a song--I do my own service, so I was willing to take a bit of risk. The cars are very difficult to work on, even an oil change involves special tools and working around a poorly laid out engine bay. It takes me twice as long to do as any other car I've done.

The previous owner of my car put 120,000km on it. I only have the last 50,000km or so of records, but in that time it was towed to the dealer at least twice according to the service records, and she spent upwards of $10,000 on regular service ($250 oil changes? yep) and fixing broken stuff that shouldn't break at that mileage (turbo blowoff valve, ignition coils on more than one occasion, brake lines, the list goes on). She spent over $1000 on every trip to the dealer in that time.

I do not understand anyone who buys a new Audi, or for that matter any German car. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER14> A post about BMW Engines: [http://thegarage.jalopnik.com/bmw-engines-are- gigantic-piece...](http://thegarage.jalopnik.com/bmw-engines-are-gigantic- pieces-of-shit-1784684330)

<comment><USER15> A smear piece. While condemning the whole of BMW engineering the author is putting more effort to use the words "sh _t " and "f_ck" than he is to disclaim even once transparently that all of his "experiences" are based on cars that were 20 years or older at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The competition in EVs is heating up. In Norway, the share of Tesla in net new EV registrations has fallen to 11.5% in 2016 compared to 18.7% two years ago.

[https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use- cases/blob/master/Norway...](https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use- cases/blob/master/NorwayCars/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not clear whether the workers are afraid they will find themselves in the age of EVs without the necessary skill set, or whether they are afraid that as Audi makes the switch to EVs they will open plants outside of Germany. There was already a lot of hype about German auto makers opening plants in China.

<comment><USER18> Audi has plants in Hungary, Belgium, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Slovakia and Spain. They also own Lamborghini of Italia. The German plants are in Neckarsulm and Ingolstadt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Audi/VW has been dragging their feet bigtime on the EV movement and wasting a whole bunch of energy shoving money down the turbodiesel pipe.

In North America VW actually pulled their only hybrid from their lineup for 2017, in the middle of dieselgate when hundreds of thousands of TDI owners who bought their diesel for its fuel economy are looking for a replacement.

They have their e-tron line, and they _look_ nice but they are far inferior to other PHEVs, especially the Chevy Volt and pack only an 8kwh battery.

When I give up my TDI because of dieselgate next month or the month after VW has nothing to offer me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Images of the car: [https://www.google.com/search?q=Audi+e-tron+quattro](https://www.google.com/search?q=Audi+e-tron+quattro)

<comment><USER21> eww

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have a 2017 Audi Etron PHEV. For our single car household it's nearly the perfect car. Given how refined it seems I'm surprised that Audi/VW took so long to bring a PHEV to market.

The dealer told me that they are pushing EVs now to help remake the company's image after the diesel cheating debacle.

The unions probably see this repositioning and reasonably want to secure their members foothold in it.

<comment><USER19> w/ dieselgate in Canada, I get a sales tax break if I buy VW or Audi when I do the buy back or trade in for my TDI.

I briefly considered the e-tron but the battery is too small. And doesn't drive as nice as a Chevy Volt.

The interior and exterior styling are amazing though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is impressive, and I'm usually not a fan of unions, but they actually thinking ahead and switching to a electric vehicle must mean that at least some of their members will have to either drastically change what they do become unemployed, possibly both, which can't be an easy sell.

I am also entirely certain the union is entirely correct in how they see the future.

<comment><USER24> > This is impressive, and I'm usually not a fan of unions

Germany has an unusual knack for making normally inefficient things efficient. You are probably used to unions in America which are often extremely inefficient, to the detriment of the company/government department.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _but the success of Tesla and arch rival BMW 's "i" series of electric cars > has convinced Audi there is a market for electric luxury vehicles after > all._

Sigh. This better not be what Audi actually thinks. Let me say it as clearly as possible - ALL CARS will be electric vehicles in the future. So if Audi still comes at this from the perspective of "let's build an EV for environmentalist vegan weirdos...and I guess for some eccentric millionaires", then it will always be 5-steps behind Tesla, and it will fail badly in the EV market (as well as in the gas-powered car market, once the decline begins).

<comment><USER26> Research before you write. Audi is part of the Volkswagen Group, which consists of VW, Audi, Porsche, Skoda, Seat, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Scania, MAN and Ducati. So they all produce for different niches of the Market. The cheap small electrical Vehicle is currently produced by VW, with the e-up!. You must not forget, that the institutional knowledge from the Hybrid Systems used in the LMP1 Class in Le Mans won by Porsche and Audi is huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it me or unions on Germany are a species of their own kind? I mean I'm expected the union to do strikes to raise salaries, protect laziness and unproductive workers, counter automation and firing of current workers...

Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting down-voted over this.

<comment><USER28> Many people and organizations with a lot of power have spent a lot of time and money giving you that impression. Unions have done a great deal of good worldwide, but no 'it's Henry Ford that's responsible for the 40 hour week' etc.

PS: Remember, the best way to keep power long term is to convince everyone else to hand it to you.

<comment><USER29> 40 hour work week? Unions

Weekend off? Unions

9-5? Unions

Retirement Savings? Unions

Pension Program? Unions

Health Benefits? Unions

Vacation Time? Unions

Sick Time? Unions

Lunch break? Unions

Work place safety regulations? Unions

Boss threaten to fire you if you don't let him screw your wife? Unions

<comment><USER30> Just a friendly reminder that people had been beaten, shot at, bombed and attacked by the US military for the things you listed.

Employers were not willing to give those concessions without a fight.

<comment><USER31> _> Employers were not willing to give those concessions without a fight._

Today, they don't have to fight. They can offshore, outsource, or automate your job. There are a lot more options these days then there were back then...

<comment><USER29> Not really.

These all boil down to the same thing. Firing the offending laborer. So really we haven't advanced far since the 1850's.

\---

This is why Anti-Unionists get so pissy about Unions blocking people from being fired. It removes the main power owners have over their workers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atari 800 ad "It will never become obsolete" - <AUTHOR> http://www.retronaut.com/2014/07/atari-800-ad-it-will-never-become-obsolete/

<comment><USER2> Class action lawsuit for deceptive advertising?</comment>