LEGO Group banned user for buying bricks from official store and BrickLink - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/aurorastormG3/status/1205920418793545728 <comment><USER2> I didn't get a clear sense from her side on what happened. Or maybe I did?

She ordered something and it was lost during delivery? Some system flagged fraud and then as penalty for this she lost access to essentially everything LEGO. Later she found out about this ban via an email that closes all communication without any path to further followup. Now she can't shop or use her LEGO Account for anything.

Surely I missed something.

<comment><USER3> Yes I gather:

1) her order was lost by aus post

2) she told Lego it never arrived, they made a replacement order

3) aus post found her lego after being prodded

4) some anti-fraud system decided she was trying to scamaz

5) their fraud dept doesn't care about false positives

<comment><USER4> Aus post (australia post) is the worst, especially this time of year.

I have had that happen twice with Amazon (book) orders, they get lost, then only to arrive 2 months later (after Amazon has resent a replacement order)

<comment><USER5> I have to disagree. AusPost is pretty good. It's not perfect but given the stories you hear about USPS from the US, AusPost is undoubtedly doing a better job.

EDIT: I should've said "postage in the US", not USPS. My response was in relation to someone saying that it is "the worst". I've had much worse experiences with private shipping companies like StarTrack.

<comment><USER6> What stories? Most stories I hear about USPS are complaints about waiting in line. Otherwise USPS ranks pretty high, internationally, for quality of service.

In the Universal Postal Union's report for 2018, US ranked #8. Australia ranked #26.

<comment><USER7> And it's not like the USPS lines are meaningfully longer than Fedex or UPS, even in a city.

I think it's just anti-government hyperbole to pretend that taking an envelope from your hand to a farm house on the other side of the country for 55 cents and having a line for such an amazing service is too big an ask.

It would take just as long at Fedex or UPS. They're private. They don't mail anything for 55 cents. They're usually more expensive for packages even.

It's really pretty amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Make sure you read the rest here: [https://mobile.twitter.com/aurorastormG3/status/120611793955...](https://mobile.twitter.com/aurorastormG3/status/1206117939558006785)

He doesn't even know why they've banned him. And just like Google, there is no appeal or ability to get more info.

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure it's a "she"/"her" judging from her twitter profile.

<comment><USER10> Seems to be her/princess. If princess is concerned about what pronouns people use, then princess wouldn't like "she".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good thing he only got banned from LEGO and not, lets say, automated grocery stores all owned by the same company and associated with your Amazon account...

Well, no need to worry ahead of time!

<comment><USER12> 2020 prediction: Amazon buys LEGO.

June 2020: lead found in all LEGO bricks ... how does lead even get into non- metal toys? Life finds a way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe speculating, but possibly he ordered too many (free) replacement parts from the LEGO store?

I had to do this once and there seemingly are no checks in place to prevent abuse. (You don't have to prove you own the set where you are missing pieces from)

Also the OP bringing up Bricklink (which doesn't use Lego account for login) is a bit dramatic, which makes me thing the poster is skewing or omitting some facts.

</comment><comment><USER14> She goes by female pronouns, it says so in her Twitter bio.

<comment><USER3> I understand your perspective, but 'generic he' is grammatically correct for uncertain, unspecified or gender neutral contexts in English.

I've corrected my comment since you've informed me that gender is relevant in this context, but it is more pedantry than correction.

<comment><USER15> To be even more pedantic, "they" has been used as a gender-neutral pronoun for over 600 years.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the- ye...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year/they)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Damn, I knew them buying bricklink was going to be terrible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, same feelings.

Also _LDraw.org_ [0] (open-source digital lego community) still has no official word from _LEGO Group_ members to _LDraw Ambassador_ about acquiring of _BrickLink_ , as BrickLink's Stud.io app use LDraw Parts Library.[1]

FTR, Ten members of the _LDraw_ core met at the LEGO headquarter in Billund on May 22-26, 2019. (...) they also had a meeting with people from the _LDD team and other compartments of the company_. A request for a dedicated information channel when it comes down to part numbers, meshes or colours was forwarded.[2]

[0] [https://www.ldraw.org/](https://www.ldraw.org/)

[1] [https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-23768.html](https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-23768.html)

[2] [https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-23439.html](https://forums.ldraw.org/thread-23439.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How do you get banned from an online store? Can't you just use a different credit card and they'll have no way of knowing? Seems quite pointless to me, unless your goal is to make your best customers your unhappiest customers, which seems like a pretty bad idea.

<comment><USER12> They could ban your home address, so you'd have to go get a post box instead?

<comment><USER17> I thought about that, but people move, people can live in apartment buildings with thousands of neighbors, and people can have packages delivered to their work address or a convenience store. None of those are even corners cases.

I just find it baffling that someone would write a letter that boils down to "We are punishing you!! But there is no way to enforce this punishment, so, uh... umm..." Seems like a huge waste of time if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> He could just pay someone to order for him. Perhaps a friend. There might even be businesses in Australia that do that.

Edit: She ...

And hey, it's never too early to learn.

Edit: Seriously, what's so horrible about working around a clearly unjust ban?

</comment><comment><USER19> She has said she hasn't even tried to make a bricklink account yet. Hopefully she tries and is able to order that way.

</comment><comment><USER20> The increasingly common pattern of corporations issuing ultimatums without apparent explanation, justification, or any other kind of due process is really terrifying. How do we fix this?

<comment><USER21> "Due process"?? Buying Legos from the official store is not some kind of inherent human right. They can sell to whom they want. No doubt this person was breaking the terms of service. Explaining why he's banned would likely give away something about how they know he was cheating the system, which makes future fraud easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like it's new reality of online services, for example Instagram just rolled out "offensive captions checker"[0], that's look like beta-release of Orwell's «Thought Police».[1]

[0] [https://twitter.com/instagram/status/1206637381224259584](https://twitter.com/instagram/status/1206637381224259584)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Police)

<comment><USER15> Ah yes, the well known Orwellian police state tactic of politely asking users not to call each other stupid.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unicode Character Recognition - <AUTHOR> http://www.shapecatcher.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks fairly promising, but it's not there yet. For example, try drawing a capital sigma ( Σ ); if you don't get your top and bottom bars perfectly parallel there's a strong chance you'll get gibberish back. Or try pi ( π or Π ); a 1° change in the angle of your bars might make the difference between a handful of relevant results and a full page of nonsensical Devanagari and Gurmukhi characters. Or do a double dagger ( ‡ ); if your middle bar isn't perfectly straight up and down it might think you're doing cent ( ¢ ) or integral ( ∫ ). It seems like it's extremely difficult to get the same results for the same 'search' — every time you get wildly different answers because the slightest little difference in how you draw it changes how it reads it.

So i think the recognition algorithm needs a little work. I know you mentioned font limitations, so i suspect adding more of those would be a good start.

Also, i don't see Japanese support, which is unfortunate. If you could get that working i would be an instant fan. (I deal with transcription of Japanese a lot, and although i'm proficient in kana, my kanji skills are pretty poor and probably always will be. What i've always wanted is a tool that can return kanji characters based on a drawing WITHOUT requiring strict adherence to stroke order. That last requirement rules out every single tool i've found...)

Anyway good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I am getting an error.

This reminds me of a very useful project, Detexify: <http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html>

<comment><USER4> Ditto, on both counts. I think we crashed it.

<comment><USER5> Yup, I get Error: error.

<comment><USER6> shapecatcher.com works, www.shapecatcher.com does not.

The ajax urls are borked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love the idea, thought the same thing after having seen detexify and doing web development looking for suitable Unicode glyphs (glyph lists are a pain in the, well...). Keep it up and by all means fix the current error. ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> This only works if you go to the base URL: shapecatcher.com instead of www.shapecatcher.com

Someone done goofed with the ajax.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: Someone else made this; I just posted it to HN.

</comment><comment><USER8> fails horribly with any Chinese or Japanese (tested Kanji and hiragana) characters.</comment>


The Drug That Never Lets Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/ <comment><USER2> He was in a treatment program for marijuana. Most would agree that marijuana is portrayed by the US government and its law enforcement as being far more dangerous than it actually is. I wonder if someone who hears this portrayal of marijuana and realizes it's inaccurate also questions our government's accuracy when characterizing other more dangerous drugs like bath salts. If he had checked less biased sources like Erowid, he might have learned that he wouldn't be the first person to have a terrible experience with MDPV.

Also I liked the following quote:

"It's so hard to understand how something sold over the counter can result in death," Julie Sanders said. "I can't grasp it, I just still can't grasp that thought."

I guess she's not too familiar with Aspirin.

Drug education in the United States is dangerously flawed.

<comment><USER3> I believe part of the problem with "bath salts" and other quasi-legal drugs is that it's impossible to characterize how dangerous they actually are. The government keeps outlawing the existing formulations and the sellers keep coming up with new formulations using tweaked molecular structures, so no formulation stays on the market for long enough to get a good idea of its effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There will always be a demand for drugs. People want to get high. If drugs were sold in stores and manufactured under controlled conditions then people would know what they were buying. Dickie Sanders just wanted to get high not die. The rules are to blame here.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was listening to this on the audiocast version on NPR. It's very good.

The image that is the four drugs side by side is hosted on imgur, which is unusual. <http://i.imgur.com/P4csH.gif> (right below the line "Because it's amphetamine, it's not recovering completely," Kim says.)

Wonderfully laid out, however.</comment>


UK man arrested under Terrorism Act for airport Twitter joke  - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7016266/Man-arrested-under-Terrorism-Act-for-Doncaster-airport-Twitter-joke.html

<comment><USER2> I from Eastern Europe(Bulgaria), 20 years ago people used to go to jail for jokes, people used to get reported in by friends and family too, i see history repeating itself. Feel free to repeat our mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I really seriously wonder about is if these authorities have nothing better to do than to follow up on ridiculous leads like these. Apparently you are no longer allowed to write works of fiction either.

The next attack that will succeed will do so in part because apparently the people that are in charge of sifting the stream of intelligence for actionable clues are completely without ability to analyze this kind of information in a way that would lead to a safer society.

All that happens is they waste tons of money and man-hours chasing nonsense.

A remark was made on a social networking site, boohoo. Disaster. Meanwhile the bad guys are having a field day and are going to slip through the cracks left by the thoughtcrime police being occupied elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> I have no doubt that the intelligence people involved are fully aware that the comment was a joke. I imagine the theory is that by harassing all the people who purposely add noise to their intelligence stream they will get a higher signal stream in the long run. This is essentially the same reasoning they use to crack down hard on anyone who jokes around at various physical security checks at places like airports.

<comment><USER3> Well, I think it works in the exact opposite way because I'm sorely tempted to go and make a bunch of blog posts about all kinds of terrorist acts that I've just dreamed up to show how ridiculous this particular tactic is.

<comment><USER4> The big question is, will your temptation lead to action, or will the fear of prosecution stay your hand. If enough people go with the latter then this particular tactic would seem to work.

<comment><USER3> [http://jacquesmattheij.com/I+am+a++terrorist%2C+and+so+are+y...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/I+am+a++terrorist%2C+and+so+are+you%2e)

I think that should answer your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem here is that whilst it's long been accepted that you can't joke about having a bomb in your bags when checking in, we have novel real-time services such as Twitter, and the authorities and general population at large have to work out what the middle ground is.

Personally, I think the man's a fool, but can understand why the authorities investigated him. Otherwise, what's the alternative? Make a joke about bombing a place and so avoid being searched when you turn up there?

</comment><comment><USER6> Copenhagen airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!

Now would someone please come and arrest me?

</comment><comment><USER7> twitcrime doubleplus ungood

</comment><comment><USER8> What is Twitter's obligation to the UK to disclose the IP addresses of posters, anyway? It sounds like this is a very flimsy case; they have to prove the guy posted the tweet, and to do that, they need to get a company with no staff in the UK to turn over IP address information. I am surprised they even managed to get an arrest warrant.

<comment><AUTHOR> The impression I got was that the offending post was reported by someone who knew him; presumably that person also provided his name and other details to the authorities.

<comment><USER8> Is "some guy said so" enough to seize three computers and make an arrest? (Apparently it is. Deeply depressing.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm sorry but the, "A Robin Hood airport spokesman said..." just sums it up for me.</comment>


DOJ: We Want Martin Shkreli's Enigma Machine, Wu-Tang Album, and $7.3M - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/feds-seek-forfeiture-of-shkrelis-stuff-wu-tang-album-a-picasso-and-more/ <comment><USER2> This seems really insane to me. He was convicted of financial fraud. Then afterwards he made a post on twitter, and now prosecutors can have him jailed for it and even forfeit millions of dollars in assets?

Even if you think the tweet about Hillary Clinton's hair was illegal harassment or instigation or whatever, surely the state should be required to prove that! Apparently if you have been convicted of some (completely unrelated) crime, you lose all due process rights and in the future the state can punish you arbitrarily much with no trial at all.

<comment><USER3> I think the state did prove it.

For certain cases, you don't have a right to trial by jury, such as bail revocation. And often it is decided on a preponderance of the evidence standard.

I don't know the specifics of bail revocation case law, but there are worse known cases, like contempt of court. Martin Armstrong was held for years, the All Writs act is being use as an anti-encryption measure, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who has been following this case very closely since the beginning and is familiar with everyone involved:

The way this man has been treated is a disgrace to our judicial system and society.

<comment><USER5> Is it? Seems fair to me that if you antagonize everyone under the sun, it comes back to bite you.

I would hate to live in a system that worked by the letter and just said "Well, can't touch him, he didn't TECHNICALLY break any laws...."

Like what if you had a stalker who wasn't TECHNICALLY violating any of the terms of his restraining order but was doing everything in their power to make your miserable anyway? Is it a disgrace for the law to find a way to stick it to them?

<comment><USER6> > Is it a disgrace for the law to find a way to stick it to them?

If you don't uphold the civil rights of the loathsome, then those protections won't be there to protect the righteous.

It's worth remembering that while Shkrelli is super unlikeable, at various points in history, so were Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, etc.

<comment><USER7> All of those people were jailed for their actions. Their actions were considered noble by a large number of people so there were multiple lawful and unlawful protests that brought pressure on the government to change the law.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and it was BAD that those people were jailed.

They were jailed because the system was broken. And it would be better if the system was NOT broken.

<comment><USER9> > Yes, and it was BAD that those people were jailed.

In absolute terms, it was bad that those people were jailed, but with respect to the system, it was _good_ that those people were jailed because it served to highlight the clear disconnect between the laws and what was right and wrong to society. It's unrealistic to expect institutions to make changes without going through the process. If Rosa Parks never went to jail there would have never been the protests which brought about change.

If you think the actions by Shkreli should have strong punishment, it's a _bad_ thing if Shkreli gets the book thrown at him artificially. You're not setting precedent and you're not fixing the system. Someone in the future will do something similar and, depending on the court, they'll get off with a slap on the wrist. You should root for things to be done by the book so that everyone can realize, "hey, this book sucks!" and it gets changed through legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I won't comment on his demeanor, I think we all feel the same way about his mannerisms.

I do hope he gets some sort of mistrial eventually. What happened is not justice, it's mob vengeance with biased judges and prosecutors trying to make a name for themselves. This reminds me so much of the Aaron Swartz "trial".

</comment><comment><USER11> Missing from this article is this quote from his attorney:

> "We will vigorously oppose the government motion," Shkreli's lawyer, > Benjamin Brafman, said in an email. "Our position is clear. None of the > investors lost any money and Martin did not personally benefit from any of > the counts of conviction. Accordingly, forfeiture of any assets is not an > appropriate remedy."

Anyone here know if this position is legitimate?

<comment><USER12> It's true, his case is interesting in that there really was no victims. It was a victemless crime. Still a crime however.

<comment><USER13> How can something be a crime if there are no victims?

<comment><USER14> Its something like this. Say a person burnt his house, the house is razed to ashes. There is nobody killed, nobody injured or let's say nobody was even present at home.

The house was insured, but the owner doesn't claim insurance either.

Despite all this. No insurance scam and no harm to anybody. But still the guy setting fire to his own home will considered a arsonist.

<comment><USER15> Not true. Arson requires malicious intent / lack of consent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Recommend watching this video and others that are on his channel before believing what the media says about him:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l__qN9Qt3Hc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l__qN9Qt3Hc)

I only became familiar with Martin Shkreli's story a only few days ago, yet it has become my main example that I'll point out when talking about:

\- corrupt media and fake news

\- corrupt populist people in power

\- political witch hunts

\- public that is trivial to mislead

You can easily verify the claims made by the media and the claims made by him and see exactly who is right and who is wrong, there is no moral grey area.

<comment><USER17> Could you be a bit more specific? A few examples would be helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apparently, he also claims to have Wayne's album Tha Carter V.

Couldn't he do us a solid and just release it online before the government takes it?

<comment><USER19> I think currently he is in Jail, but I followed him a bit on YouTube where he said, that he is contractually obligated not to release it for 88 years (for Wu Tang Clan album).

One of the reason Wu Tang et al. released these limited edition albums was they hoped they would be bought by art museums or so, in this case ended up with private collector.

<comment><USER20> But if someone seizes it from him through legal means they wouldn't be bound by that agreement, would they?

<comment><USER21> Let's say the government gets it, auctions it, you (legally) purchase it (at that auction), and are now the owner.

While you wouldn't be bound by any agreements that Shkreli had w/ Wu-Tang Clan, you would still be in violation of copyright laws if you released it publicly (and the government _could_ , potentially, put stipulations on its sale if they wanted).

In addition, if you owned the only existing copy, I think it would be pretty easy to prove that it was you who released it.

<comment><USER22> None of that is true.

Contractually, the purchaser is not allowed to release it "commercially" which means they could release it for free. It has nothing to do with any copyright laws.

>"There are strict limitations on the distribution of the 31-track double album, with a statement from the band reading: "It can be exhibited publicly and it can be given away for free. But it cannot be commercialised as a conventional album release until 2103"[1]

[1] [http://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/music/news/m...](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/music/news/martin-shkreli-wu-tang-clan-album-sale-ebay-once- upon-a-time-in-shaolin-bids-a7933636.html)

<comment><USER23> > _Contractually, the purchaser is not allowed to release it "commercially" > which means they could release it for free. It has nothing to do with any > copyright laws._

Someone who buys it from a government auction is not bound by any contract signed by the original purchaser. They are still bound by copyright law, although the copyright holder (presumably Wu-Tang Clan) could (and likely would) allow them to exhibit it or give it away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Free Martin! It's horrible that people think it's ok to put someone in jail just for being offensive. Freedom of speech?

</comment><comment><USER25> I though he sold the album on ebay?

</comment><comment><USER26> Yesterday's Kate Steinle article got flagged, but this article on Martin Shkreli's Wu Tang record did not. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER27> Whatever he is going to be convicted of, they're going to throw the book at him. He's a terrible person and an opportunist.

The problem is he is not the only one like this. In an interview with Vice he goes over the fact that what he did is common practice[0]. Until there is some way to stop this price gauging there will be more people like him.

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g)

<comment><USER27> If you are going to downvote me, atleast tell me why. EDIT: Just realized I misspelled price gauging - it should be price 'gouging'</comment></comment>


Bezos' Girlfriend Gave Texts to Brother Who Leaked to National Enquirer - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/prosecutors-have-evidence-bezos-girlfriend-gave-texts-to-brother-who-leaked-to-national-enquirer-11579908912 <comment><USER2> Archive: [http://archive.is/nso14](http://archive.is/nso14)

<comment><USER3> Why must archive.is break reader mode? It seems so convenient except on mobile :/

(FF/android)

<comment><USER2> It works for me on iOS however it takes a while for the entire thing to load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember readinh about this a few months ago when the story came out. How is this newsworthy now?

<comment><USER5> Because of the recent reports that Bezos' phone may have been hacked by a WhatsApp message sent by the Saudi crown prince 5 months before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. I read the forensics report and it is far from conclusive, the mistress is a much more plausible explanation of how the tabloid got his dick pics. What kind of low-life shares her boyfriend's intimate photos with her brother?

An expensive ($25B) mistake for Bezos. As Benjamin Franklin said "experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other".

<comment><USER6> SA probably hacked his phone, but not to get his saucy text messages. Khashoggi was a WaPo reporter, which Bezos owns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Side piece, never worth it. Gotta lie and sneak. Why go out for steak when > you got tacos at home?

While I'm not averse to the Man finding happiness in other relationships than who he was married to for so long, its Natural people change and grow apart, what did irk me was when I realized this guy was trying to parade himself around LA with his has-been weather girl (I grew up in SoCal and recognized her face but didn't know where until I went back home and it was 'Newsworthy') instead of working on New Glenn.

Especially when I realized the death of ULA/SLS relies on Blue Origin on actually producing some results, which when you realize it was created 2 years before SpaceX is very disappointing.

I wonder if he will do what all powerful Men eventually do and just keep their private life, just that, Private: him openly being the (reported) richest Man on the planet has a lot of OPSEC issues, and this happening is not really that surprising. What is surprising is how rather than bring about unwanted attention, and additional vulnerabilities into the equation, he didn't just participate in the vetted high class escort route like most powerful, busy, affluent CEOs where discretion is paramount.

The thing is... his 'tacos' went to Princeton and is still worth Billions after (pledging?) donating half of it to charity. But such is the Human condition, I suppose.

<comment><USER8> I believe at least 50% of attraction is spending time together and learning about other person. That would explain why flings with secretaries are so common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the likelihood that both MBS and AMI were doing this independently?

It's plausible that one (or none) of the reports is wrong, but which is more likely?

<comment><USER10> Sounds like "this" are two separate things.

One is malware, the other an abuse of trust (but not a software error).

So yes I'd say it is plausible the two independently occurred.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >Sign in to read more

No thank you.

</comment><comment><USER12> ex* girlfriend</comment>


Anyone else sees a pattern? [jpg] - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/MIIFm.jpg

<comment><USER2> n articles about Apple, followed by 2n articles not about Apple, with n = 0, 1, 2, 3 (Well, we can't say for sure about n=3)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's almost as if Apple did something today.

<comment><USER4> and that somebody decided to underline articles related to that thing in red!</comment></comment>


Scala Category Theory – Composition - <AUTHOR> https://elbauldelprogramador.com/en/scala-category-theory-composition/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is my personal effort to learn Category theory and apply it in scala.

I know there are a lot of resources about Bartosz Milewski book, but you can see why I think this may be helpful for others: [https://github.com/elbaulp/Scala-Category- Theory](https://github.com/elbaulp/Scala-Category-Theory)</comment>


ORM Is an Offensive Anti-Pattern - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2014/12/01/orm-offensive-anti-pattern.html?2014-48 <comment><USER2> Reminds of a great anti-orm article written from 2006 by Ted Neward entitled "The Vietnam of Computer Science"

[http://blogs.tedneward.com/2006/06/26/The+Vietnam+Of+Compute...](http://blogs.tedneward.com/2006/06/26/The+Vietnam+Of+Computer+Science.aspx)

<comment><USER3> It is actually cited inside

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SQL sucks, too. I hope we start to see every web framework come with a better, more expressive wrapper for SQL rather than the compulsory ORM.

<comment><USER5> It sucks when you don't understand it, like any other language/technology :) When you understand SQL, it is a powerful implementation of a relational calculus

<comment><USER4> Been writing SQL for 10 years. I definitely understand it.

The problem is that it's rigid, and constructing queries based on filters or user input is painful. It disrupts the flow of your code.

That's why I now use query builders, which aren't ideal, but they at least allow me to build my queries in a logical order (adding additional ORDER BY conditions, adding/removing JOINs depending on my needs, etc.)

The problem is that no query builder that I've used flows as well as SQL or "gets out of the way".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't he just advocating for having a Model (ala MVC) on top of an ORM? That seems to be exactly what most frameworks using an ORM have done.

</comment><comment><USER7> I generally agree with the ideas presented but I think we miss an even larger point.

I should probably write this at a better time as a blog post, but briefly:

Why are we trying so hard to "abstract" out the database? If you have done any significant SQL work you'd agree that no ORM or abstraction can ever hope to beat the expressiveness and power of raw SQL.

We have spent decades trying to reduce all these awesome database technologies down to their lowest common denominator so that you can switch databases in and out and as if they are not important.

Most software revolves around data, software mostly is data. So if you can treat your database layer as a blob-store you are not making good use of it. Database in my view is such a core piece of technology that I pick one, and the right one, and stick to it and make use of its capabilities to the maximum.

And we have spent decades trying to adapt SQL into programming-language- specific concepts. We have to grab SQL and twist and turn it with some similarly named half-assed SQL pasta function chain to imitate SQL.

So my point is this, why don't we try to make the programming languages adapt to SQL, instead of the other way around?

Every non-trivial piece of software needs some form of data persistence with querying and sorting and ordering and all that good stuff that SQL does.

After this long, as far as our programming languages are concerned our SQL queries are still plain 'strings'.

I think there should be a tighter integration, and acknowledgement from those making the languages, that hey, every half-serious user is going to be using SQL with this thing.

One idea could be something along the lines of 'literal-sql' syntax. To 'upgrade' SQL from being a plain string into something that the language acknowledges.

Then the compiler could do a whole lot more. The language/compiler could be made aware by some mechanism about the database layer so it could figure how to turn your DATETIME column into the corresponding type in the programming language and vice versa.

And you could write something like "DateType myDate = <SQL>SELECT date from posts</SQL>;".

The model-based ORM does not make it easy for you to query custom fields because it tries to package everything into a box.

I think the programming languages need to embrace and accept SQL as a first- class citizen.

The compiler could potentially be able to connect to the database and generate some type-safe classes for use from the schema.

Ada with the GNATColl package is the closest thing to this idea I have seen.

It can inspect the schema and generate rock-solid type-safe classes for use with database.

It frees you to make full use of the power of your database instead of crippling it.

Edit: Put another way, after all these years the way programming languages treat data persistence is virtually unchanged. The attitude is stuck mostly at "ehh whatever just open your socket/file and write the bytes... I don't care if it goes down the drain or to a database".

I think there lies some potential for a next-generation change. The programming language and the database can work a bit more closely together, I don't mean in an interactive or real-time way but basically the compiler/tooling could say "hey we know everyone is going to need to save these things into some database at some point and get them back ... so let us help you with that ..."

It could in the form of an inspection step that you can trigger and it could say 'ok I see you've got these 20 tables that you are interested in and that column from that table is a boolean with a not null constraint so I'll watch out for that when you are writing your queries...' sort of thing.

Obviously statically and strongly typed and generally more 'safe' languages would have an advantage here because they can know more about your program statically.

Sorry it's a bit late and that's not in the most coherent way I could put it, just quickly typed it up for the sake of visibility and discussion.

<comment><USER5> Even though it sounds interesting, I believe that object-oriented programming has nothing to do with relational calculus. They are two different and very powerful things and they should stay separate, in order to stay powerful. There has to be a thin bridge between them (like JDBC). But again, I strongly believe that they should not affect each other.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Kickresume – an easy-to-use online resume builder - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickresume.com <comment><USER2> Looks really well done.

I played around a bit and it's working smoothly.

Kudos!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :)</comment></comment>


Spain raises age of consent from 13 to 16 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/04/spain-raises-age-of-consent

<comment><USER2> What kind of taliban society do we live in if it's normal for developed educated countries to keep rising age of consent like that? What's next, bringing to Europe American insanity where someone is allowed to own guns, drive cars, but not no make love? Or should we even allow sex before marriage?

Only a century ago human body was perfectly capable of having sex and reproducing around the age of 14, and it was a norm. What happened with human race since then? Did we somehow degenerated that we are not as capable as before, or it's that we now allow our governments too much in the name of "protection", "freedom" and "safety"? Do we want to live in a world when one power should be powerful enough to project its own moral norms to all the others? And who is the one to decide what is "right" and what is "wrong".

Pleas, just stop treating young boys and girls as immature idiots, and empower them with the trust. You might be surprised how capable and responsible they could grow up.

<comment><USER3> "Only a century ago human body was perfectly capable of having sex and reproducing around the age of 14, and it was a norm. What happened with human race since then?"

We've evolved as a society. It's the same reason women and minorities can vote.

"Pleas, just stop treating young boys and girls as immature idiots, and empower them with the trust. You might be surprised how capable and responsible they could grow up."

To be honest, this creeped me out (unless you are a ~14 years old). What would we possibly gain, as a society, by lowering the age of consent?

<comment><USER4> What would we gain by raising the age of consent?

<comment><USER5> It makes it far easier to prosecute people who prey on teenagers. I don't disagree that two under 16 year olds having sex is perfectly natural and ok, though not everyone agrees. But with the age of consent being 13 sexual predators could easily seduce under 16s and claim they consented when in fact being so young they had no idea what they were doing.

<comment><USER4> Sexual predators could easily seduce 16-20 (hell, even higher) too. Why not increase the age of consent even more if you're going by with that argument.

<comment><USER6> Because the circumstances in which a 13 year old may be sexually and emotionally mature enough to consent to sex with an adult and not be a victim of manipulation are extremely unusual. That is considerably less likely to be the case in 16-20 year olds, for reasons which have as much to do with biology as prevailing social opinions

I'm assuming you agree there should be some age cut off point, unless you think sex with infants is fine and dandy so long as infants aren't looking to testify against the paedophile.

<comment><USER7> > I'm assuming you agree there should be some age cut off point, unless you > think sex with infants is fine and dandy so long as infants aren't looking > to testify against the paedophile.

Just up front, the form of that argument will lose you a lot of respect.

Here are three approaches to sex with infants that don't involve a cutoff age at all:

\- Physical maturity threshold, e.g. menstruation / ejaculation. In a sense, this is the approach we use to drinking and driving.

\- Mental maturity threshold -- an infant is not capable of anything, and so is guaranteed to fall on the banned side of the line. The biggest use of this kind of thing that I'm aware of is trying juveniles as adults.

\- Just figure that nobody wants to have sex with infants. (This isn't, in the literal sense, true; I believe the youngest documented mother was two. However, it can easily be so-close-to-true-that-enforcement-is-a-loss-to- society.) This is the approach we use to prevent people from bombing trains, subways, museums, city buses, and pretty much everything else except airplanes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Under the new laws sex education will be removed from the curriculum ..

WTF?

<comment><USER9> You'd think that with the current state of the economy they would see how useful it is to teach kids how to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

<comment><USER10> LOL! You mean like dismantling I+D and social net. Don't take that for granted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The reason why it is relatively low is because gipsies often marry very young, so the purpose was to avoid discrimination against gipsies. IMO the old law hasn't really been a problem, and the new law should pose a problem to gipsy customs since it has clause where it allows sex if the partner is of similar age.</comment>


Competing On The Basis Of Speed - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5105910452864283694 <comment><USER2> I'm always slightly skeptical when people try and apply the lean process to software development. On the surface, there seems to be some nice analogies and you can kind of pretend that a unit test in software is the same as a unit test in manufacturing but the analogy quickly breaks down if you look at it more closely.

The correct analogy is not manufacturing == programming, it's design == programming && manufacturing == compiling. Lean manufacturing, as applied literally to software is to ensure that the output of your compiler contains no errant bits and 100% of software companies are in full compliance with lean. Software is probably the closest industry to achieving an actual six sigma defect rate.

However, applying lean principles to software development makes about as much sense as applying it to research & development. Nothing is ever consistent, nothing ever remains the same. Every compilation is the result of some change.

Are the general suggestions given in this video sensible advice? Sure, for the most part. But it seems more crammed to fit into a lean framework post-hoc than derived from genuinely lean principles.</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project, Political Screaming Match - <AUTHOR> http://politicalscreamingmatch.com/

<comment><USER2> My question: How are you going to get well rounded debate? I can see modern liberals and libertarians in good numbers in the hacker community, but are there conservatives?

Specifically, are there New Right conservatives in the Tea Party vein? These are the people who have swept the House and won office around the country and are the loudest voice on the Right. The Republican candidate for office strongly supports most of their platform, making their platform arguably the most legitimate conservative view currently.

And I don't understand how you're going to get any of those voices, at all.

<comment><USER3> I think they exist, but most of them know how unwelcome they are and they keep their mouths shut.

Edit: That came off not sounding how I meant it to. I really mean they keep quiet on various political issues because they know they're underrepresented and will get torn to pieces. I don't think it's actually a hostile, unwelcoming environment otherwise.

<comment><USER4> I'm a conservative and have spent a good amount of time here and have been vocal periodically. I know how unwelcome my views are but that doesn't stop me usually, although I don't speak up nearly as much as I did for a while. And it's not just conservative views. Basically if your views don't match with the majority of urban, liberal, Apple-evangelizing, Silicon Valley, entrepreneur/MBA/developer elites, then you will be put in your place. It's too bad really, because so many here that don't share those opinions stay quiet. It is quite a bubble.

But back to the site at hand, I think it is a neat idea, but I don't have time to text with people I don't know about politics, because I work, have a family, and am old enough not to waste much time on politics. I wasted many hours of my life trying to convince others about the perils of fiscal liberalism, and the best I was ever able to do is to point people to the Peter G. Peterson foundation: <http://www.pgpf.org/Issues.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I would love to see is a system that validates claims made by those involved in townhall meetings and TV debates.

Nothing would please me more than to see a politician make a claim of coal only outputting X carbon, and a sidebar slide over that pulls in Wolfram|Alpha or some other empirical data with a giant FALSE. This way, they can't use showmanship to sway opinion.

<comment><USER6> You mean like if <http://www.factcheck.org/about/> was instant?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From a user experience, it _really_ bugs me that I can't preview the topics. I don't want to give you my phone # until I see what "debates" are available to discuss.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Steps #1 and #2 should be reversed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Chat Roulette of political debates?

<comment><USER10> Hopefully with less male nudity.

<comment><USER11> Sooooo, no Anthony Weiner then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could you use this same technology to create an issue page e.g., SOPA and connect voters to their politicians?

Maybe people could get points from calling their politician through the site to vote on future issues?

What I've described is an idea I've been kicking around for a while.

</comment><comment><USER13> I know, Twilio, disclaimer and everything looks ok... but still i do not feel entirely safe to give my phone number... Not that i do not trust you... but...i don't know...it feels strange, even if i use more email and mine is everywhere i am not totally ok with giving my phone around.

<comment><USER2> Use a Google Voice number or something similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's always weird to see someone execute on an idea I've had myself. My idea was through chat and email though. Talking on the phone is way too personal. But good luck.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was expecting more some shouting match on who can scream his candidate's name the longest/loudest. Didn't expect that level of sophistication.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is crazy, but yet amazing. I'm totally gona subscribe to the RSS feed. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't wait until your next app "Striking my hand repeatedly with a hammer".

</comment><comment><USER18> +1 Twilio!</comment>


A litmus test for your idea - <AUTHOR> http://ninjasandrobots.com/litmus-test <comment><USER2> Also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6307094)

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this 4 hours before that one!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What did you undervalue when younger? - <AUTHOR> Alternately, what do you undervalue now? Or what do you feel other people overvalue now.
I can answer the first one easily. When I was younger, I undervalued humility.
And not for any reason like, "if you are humble, people will like you more."
Specifically, I came to realize humility is valuable for a very selfish reason instead.
When I overvalue my own achievements I noticed that two things happened that didn't work very well:
1) I would think myself "too good" to do such a such a job, opportunity, or thing. And I missed out on some things I didn't know the great value of, but could have, if I hadn't been so arrogant.
2) I was overcompensating. I mean...why else arrogant? And that doesn't work because it meant I was undervaluing the things I was actually good at...I mean...if I fully accepted those things and loved them and saw the good that I could do with them....my natural skills and so on...why would I need to "overvalue" things that weren't as good. Know what I mean? And if you undervalue stuff you are actually good at...then you sort of get skewed off a path that works for you in the world.
Sure I think some good things happen by going along many different paths...and this is my reflection. I would have toned down the arrogance, trusted my natural skills more and valued humility. What did you or do you undervalue? Or what do you think other people overvalue? <comment><USER2> When I was young I overvalued what other people thought. I did things because society says it's good if you do them. Now years later I regret it. On the flip side I undervalued the development of my own thinking.

These days I think other people overvalue what others think, what the news says, whether the news has "credibility". The thing is once a publication, news outlet, website gains credibility, it will begin to be manipulated by others to produce dubious information to take advantage of this new credibility. It takes some time for the credibility of the news outlet to catch up and go down. Meanwhile everyone is accepting the dubious news as fact, news that was created for the purpose of manipulating opinions. And I say this of all news, not just "fake news" or whatever.

The point of news for me now isn't what the news says, it's what opinion does the news wants to manipulate me into. That's a lot more newsworthy for me.</comment>


Astrology-loving MP seeks health answers in the stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28464009 <comment><USER2> The fact that Tredinnick is on the Health and Science committees is is proof that the illusion of government is just one big epic troll by our lizard overlords. Oh how they chortle.

</comment><comment><USER3> This just makes me embarrassed to be English. What were the Tories thinking of? They claim to be trying to save public money by cutting down on arguably essential services and then they have MPs trying to get the government to spend public money on complete rubbish.

We even publically fund homoeopathy which is a complete joke. It's just awful and then they have the audacity to reduce funding for things like mental health care.

Words can not describe how stupid this all is.

</comment><comment><USER4> In some ways this is minor (Astronomy isn't likely to have an MP come out against contraception and the like, so it's less pernicious than some religions). But this is an MP on the health committee and science committee, both of which would benefit from having someone who actually knows a little about science and how to tell complete rubbish from something that's been verified.

<comment><USER5> > In some ways this is minor (Astronomy isn't likely to have an MP come out > against contraception and the like, so it's less pernicious than some > religions).

Presumably you mean "astrology" rather than "astronomy"?</comment></comment>


Chrome patches "Issue with certificates validation in TLS handshake" - <AUTHOR> http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2014/02/stable-channel-update-for-chrome-os_24.html

<comment><USER2> Even though Firefox and Chrome both use the same TLS implementation (NSS's libssl), the ways in which Firefox and Chrome use it differ. Based on discussions with the credited researchers and with other members of the NSS team, Firefox doesn't need to implement such a restriction, so there's nothing to worry about as far as Firefox is concerned. And, that's about all I should say about it at this time, I think.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also see: [http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2013-665...](http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2013-6659)

The SSLClientSocketNSS::Core::OwnAuthCertHandler function in net/socket/ssl_client_socket_nss.cc in Google Chrome before 33.0.1750.117 does not prevent changes to server X.509 certificates during renegotiations, which allows remote SSL servers to trigger use of a new certificate chain, inconsistent with the user's expectations, by initiating a TLS renegotiation.

Access Vector: Network exploitable

Access Complexity: Low

Authentication: Not required to exploit

Impact Type:Allows unauthorized disclosure of information; Allows unauthorized modification</comment>


Amazon Game Studios lays off employees during E3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-game-studios-lays-off-employees-during-e3/ <comment><USER2> Keeping it classy, Amazon. I think the only story here is the weird timing that this coincides with E3.

At least employees have 60 days to find another department within the company.</comment>


Show HN: Tobab, a poor mans identity aware proxy. "BeyondCorp" for selfhosters - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gnur/tobab/ <comment><AUTHOR> Over the last year I got frustrated with the complexity projects like traefik and caddy have gained recently. While I do love Caddy still, it seems like it wants to do too much, which I understand because they have a commercial offering, but I wanted something simpler.

So I set out to build a truly simple proxy that can do the following:

* automatic certificates with letsencrypt (using the library created by the awesome caddy team)

* authenticate users (currently only sign in with google is supported, but the underlying library should make it trivial to extend this)

* authorize users based on simple glob matching

* allow creating (and modifying) routes by CLI and API

Building this I truly started to appreciate the meaning of standing on the shoulders of giants, the Go libraries I've used are extensive and made this application a lot easier to create.

While tobab is by no means finished, if you are looking for a easy to use reverse proxy that will handle certificates and auth for you, this could be the tool you are looking for.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing.

Very nice:

\- Secure by default (automatic https with letsencrypt, secure cookies)

\- Sane defaults (No public access unless explicitly added)

Curious (not nit picking). What's the high level possibility of allowing keycloak (or another self hosted auth provider)?

Looks like you are leveraging goth... fairly simple for someone to extend down the road via a contribution, correct? [https://github.com/gnur/tobab/blob/2d1fa1227d1f56ee332d3d83b...](https://github.com/gnur/tobab/blob/2d1fa1227d1f56ee332d3d83b2c135fba382d7cb/cmd/tobab/tobab.go#L87)

Ref - [https://github.com/markbates/goth/issues/319](https://github.com/markbates/goth/issues/319)

<comment><AUTHOR> If keycloak provides an openID connect endpoint it should be fairly trivial to extend tobab to use it.

Goth might actually have specific support for keycloak, but I'm not sure about that to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recently did an "identity aware proxy" deployment to protect a service with SAML, but I used good ol' Apache with mod_proxy. SAML authentication was handled by mod_auth_mellon, and certbot has great integration with Apache. I didn't have to edit any Apache config files for TLS - certbot did it all for me. It even automatically set up systemd to automatically renew. I was really impressed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks great! I have a homelab that already has HTTPS/letsencrypt via an Nginx reverse-proxy, and I use https simple auth for connections coming from the Internet. I'm interested in replacing simple-auth with Tobab. Does the configuration support disabling the letsencrypt parts (since I already have that)? Is there an API route on the tobab hostname (eg tonab.example.com/verify/private.example.com) to verify a cookie authorization that I can configure Nginx to call, instead of needing to proxy all traffic through Tobab?

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to Pomerium or other open source IAPs?

<comment><USER6> Another contender in this area would be:

[https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy](https://github.com/oauth2-proxy/oauth2-proxy)

I've used that to gate-access to internal things behind gsuite domains, and it supports authentication against github and other providers too.

<comment><USER7> Also [https://github.com/Widen/cloudfront- auth](https://github.com/Widen/cloudfront-auth) if you're OK fronting your service with CloudFront and Lambda@Edge for auth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. Just curious, if you're using this for your homelab, what method are you using to connect to upstream servers? Just forwarding ports?

</comment><comment><USER9> Shouldn't there be a hyphen in "identity-aware proxy"?

<comment><USER10> And the rest

"the poor mans identity aware proxy, easy to use setup for beyondcorp in your homelab"

->

"the poor man's identity-aware proxy with an easy-to-use setup for beyondcorp in your homelab"</comment></comment>


Show HN: spent a weekend "hacking" the UI of WhatsApp, then published two addons - <AUTHOR> I had a need for two missing features in WhatsApp and Messenger, and as I'm used to modifying the sites I use the most (JavaScript injection with TamperMonkey) I eventually went ahead and started the projects.
It took just a few minutes!... for me to realize I had greatly underestimated the difficulty of the tasks.
Those apps, it turns out, don't use regular inputs for the users to type messages; they use a weird combination of divs and spans, probably to avoid security issues. I took it as a challenge to at least, make sure that it wasn't possible. But the more I pushed, the more fun I had!
Screenshot
https://i.imgur.com/tMf531B.png
These were some of the projects I enjoyed the most, and I was left wondering if being a hacker feels as fun as that.
I made the code open-source, with MIT licenses:
https://github.com/ivocass/quick-emojis
https://github.com/ivocass/whatsapp-quick-reply-button
Demo videos:
https://youtu.be/Ixha7icPXkc
https://youtu.be/seTnOZlyEBs <comment><USER2> I know you did your best to convey the work and the idea behind this but this warrants its own "Show HN:" prefix properly done if I can say so. Try posting somewhere the images, embedded videos and the links etc as you did above, then submit it with the "Show HN:" prefix again. I'm sure it will get more attention!

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand, thanks! Updating the title now.</comment></comment>


Cohabitation with Python and C++ - <AUTHOR> http://tech.oyster.com/cohabitation-with-python-and-cpp/

<comment><USER2> It's quite easy to release the GIL while you are running non-python code.[1] Just be sure that if you touch the Python API that you reaquire the GIL.[2]

[1] [http://docs.python.org/c-api/init.html#releasing-the-gil- fro...](http://docs.python.org/c-api/init.html#releasing-the-gil-from- extension-code)

[2] <http://docs.python.org/c-api/init.html#PyGILState_Ensure>

</comment><comment><USER3> When you say HTTP API, does that mean you had C++ http server, C++ http client, Python http server and Python http client?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question: In this case C++ was the server, and Python (via urllib2) was the client.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, why didn't you fork and use a pipe?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're running on Windows, and fork isn't available there. Also, in this case AFAIK fork doesn't really apply, as we wanted to start the C++ and Python servers completely separately.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RapidShare will stop the active service on March 31st, 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://rapidshare.com/home <comment><USER2> That's a shame, why?

<comment><USER3> Probably ran out of money/customers, surprising they held on that long. A paid-only cloud storage service that's several times more expensive than Dropbox or Google is going to have a hard time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> That's a shame. Why?</comment>


Flash of a knuckle crack caught on video - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/flash-of-a-knuckle-crack-caught-on-video/ <comment><USER2> Why on earth is there no slow motion render of this video following the initial flash?

EDIT

I tried to slow it down myself, but there are simply not enough frames in the postprocessed video posted by Ars. There are one, maybe two, frames only in between, and none that show the flash traversing the void:

Slow-mo: [https://youtu.be/pVDz1pAtQbI](https://youtu.be/pVDz1pAtQbI)

Also note that the date on the video in the frame is 9/13/14, more than a year ago.

<comment><USER3> You can get the original video clips by following the source link in the Ars article. [https://www2.rsna.org/timssnet/media/pressreleases/14_pr_tar...](https://www2.rsna.org/timssnet/media/pressreleases/14_pr_target.cfm?ID=1851)

When you're no longer using Ars's Flash player, you can slow down playback in most desktop browsers. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaEl...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/HTMLMediaElement/playbackRate)</comment></comment>


Earning Bitcoin Through Arbitrage Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoinbulls.net/how-to-earn-bitcoins-through-arbitrage-software-aka-bot/ <comment><USER2> How does one automate the bank aspect of arbitrage? You'd need to withdraw the money to your bank account and make a deposit to the other exchange pretty often, you'd like to automate that as well. Most banks don't provide an API to do this though.

<comment><USER3> Selenium, Macros, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I made a couple of hundred pounds out of 20 by spotting intra exchange arbitrage opportunities on cryptsy. Just calculated all possible paths through the various coins and waited for a profitable loop to open. It was like riding waves through the markets, but the waves got smaller and smaller as the market became more efficient :( I started thinking about trying to understand if it might be possible to induce resonances within the interconnected markets to create more waves, but it I didn't have the time for such a hairbrained scheme.

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried to do n-point arbitrage on a single service (e.g. US$-BTC-RUB-US$). The reason to stick to a single service was that moving money between services could not be automated at the time, and, as the article states, a huge spread is required due to withdrawal and banking fees.

While trying this, I got the impression that some people must already be doing this at large scale, possibly the operators of the service themselves. All types of n-point arbitrage I tried had zero return.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting some more insights however this is what basically a person with no previous experience with the topic in the Bitcoin context would write.

Anyway I also did it in the past as well, but nowadays there are too many players already and the exchange fees don't leave much room.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does not work anymore.</comment>


Vinegar - refined Vigenère - can you break my cipher? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackensplat.com/2011/02/vinegar.html

<comment><USER2> A big problem with these types of ciphers is that you need to transmit the key somehow. If you have had no previous encrypted contact with the intended receiver, you have to get the key to that person in plaintext. This is why public key cryptography was invented.

As a side note, isn't this just a less secure Enigma cipher? Alan Turing would have your u-boats for dinner.

<comment><AUTHOR> "isn't this just a less secure Enigma cipher?"

Talk is cheap, my friend. I've described the algorithm and supplied some cipher-text. What's the plain text?

Seriously though, if you know what the Enigma cipher is without having to look it up, you're probably over qualified for this sort of puzzle.

<comment><USER3> Well, the first word is probably THE. I have doubts as to whether this is broken enough in practice if you follow standard cryptographic practice and remove spacing and punctuation; the key space size is still 26^17, assuming "random codeword" means a random string of letters and not a randomly selected string of one or more dictionary words.

<comment><AUTHOR> The key is 17 random letters generated using the password generator at GRC.COM.

I don't think I'm giving away anything by confirming that at least one of those three letter groups is "THE".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone.

In summary, the cipher is Vigenère with 2,3,5 and 7 key lengths. The four keys won't synchronise for 210 letters, so it's only "good" for that much.

It's very flawed. If you know cryptography its easy to spot, but the article isn't for you. It's for people who don't know cryptography, with the long description of Vigenère in the article.

Enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fun little problem. I think I'm on the right track towards the solution, though I'm not positive. So as not to spoil it for others wanting to work on it, I've put my thoughts and progress here:

<https://gist.github.com/828496>

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting read. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This cipher is just 4 rounds of Vigenere with progressively shorter keys...

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. It's a very flawed cipher which I invented when I was young and naive.

<comment><USER3> I realized that; I was just hoping that this observation would lead to an attack, but it's not clear to me that there's a particularly easy/reliable extension of the Vigenere attacks...

<comment><AUTHOR> Gotcha. The vulnerability I thought of could be applied to Vigenere but in a roundabout sort of way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Typed Racket as a research agenda [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://samth.github.io/epfl-4-14-2014.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm not that up-to-date with Racket, but this seems to be a sort-of-manifesto for transitioning from dynamically type-checked languages to statically checked languages...? (Which I whole-heartedly support as a types-ftw-weenie.)

Is there a video (or audio) to go along with the slides? It's pretty hard to follow the narrative without audio.

<comment><USER3> No, this was a seminar at EPFL and wasn't recorded.

<comment><USER2> Dammit! :(</comment></comment></comment>


The Unfinanced Entrepreneur [1998] - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col210/

<comment><AUTHOR> Part of why I thought this was a good match for HN was that it not only lines up with the monthly recap of "ideas versus execution," but it also reinforces Patrick McKenzie's spiel about "your creative work is valuable, demand appropriate value in return for doing that work."</comment>


Ask HN: I wish HN switch to a more sophisticated forum software - <AUTHOR>

Hackers news is an excellent place for startups/indes to share ideas and get help.  However the list format is kind of primitive and quite disorganized.  I wish HN consider moving to a formal forum software that would make us users easier to navigate, search and post.  It can also sell ad space to get some revenue to sustain the site too. <comment><USER2> I believe HN was written by PG as a project to learn Arc...so maybe it doesn't receive the amount of attention that we wish it would?

HN is partially an advertising space for YC companies, so it's already paid for I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hacker news is something different than typical forum. I come here to read interesting news, and list format is usefull for this.

I really hate your idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I noticed the thread disappeared from the page again...</comment>


US Border Patrol says they can create central repository of traveler emails - <AUTHOR> https://viewfromthewing.com/us-border-patrol-says-they-can-create-central-repository-of-traveler-emails-keep-them-for-75-years/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like a call to start crossing the border more frequently- with a suitcase full of "suspicious" drives.

How many petabytes of mirroring before the whole operation becomes too expensive to justify?

<comment><USER3> Or a hard drive shell with a Raspberry PI inside doing the equivalent of piping out /dev/random to the interface.

<comment><USER4> If it's encrypted it will probably end up in blob storage, which is low cost. If you want to hit them where it hurts, generate tons of fake text (stored as emails, documents, texts, etc.) with GPT-3 to clog up their elasticsearch server and/or NLP classifiers.

<comment><USER5> That works fine until GPT-3 generates inadvertently generates a bunch of incriminating evidence!

<comment><USER6> Looking forward to the first gpt-3 version of 'it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Too bad neither party shows any signs of reigning in this kind of overreach by CBP. Doesn't seem like this can be fixed by voting.

<comment><USER8> Neither party might go as far as you want, but it is also a mistake to think both parties are completely identical in their views of this sort of behavior.

<comment><USER9> How could two organizations of thousands of people ever be completely 100% identical, and why does that matter at all if neither party has rolled back these massively unpopular policies, even when controlling both houses of Congress and the executive?

<comment><USER10> Game theory. If people vote for the party promising policies closest to (using whatever metric) their ideals, and there are only two parties, optimal strategy for each party is to move as close to the center as possible.

They wouldn't lose voters with 'extreme' ideals because, if they decided to not vote, parties would counteract by moving towards the new center, which would be further removed from the ideals of those voters abstaining from voting.

<comment><USER11> How do you square that with the rise of the Tea Party and the Alt-Right? It seems like they've found that they can motivate people to vote by moving _further_ from the center, and the moderates continue to vote the party line of whichever party they prefer.

<comment><USER10> Alt-right or the tea party would lose an election against a center-line party, big time.

Motivating people with 'extreme' opinions from one side of the spectrum to vote moves the center, so it can make both parties move in that direction.

Let's (in a very simplistic model) say we have 100 voters on a 1 to 100 scale, so centered around 50.5.

If, normally, the extremes of 1 to 10 and 91 to 100 don't vote, the center stays at 50.5. Convince the 1 to 10 people to vote, and the center moves to 45.5, so the two major parties move in that direction, too.

There's an assumption here that most politicians are willing to, somewhat, go against their beliefs in order to get elected. I think that's true, and unavoidable in a two-party system (which, in turn, is hard to avoid in a system with "winner takes all" elections), but if it weren't, parties can easily replace candidates that object to a course change with others that either have different ideals or are willing to sacrifice some of that a bit in exchange for their career.

<comment><USER12> > so it can make both parties move in that direction.

This is the opposite of what we're seeing on the right. Centrist republicans have been pushed out of the party for not being conservative enough over the last 4 years, and primary candidates go out of their way to outdo each other in terms of conservative positioning.

Nobody seriously running on the right is trying to be a moderate Republican on the federal level because being a "RINO" is political suicide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's a reasonable way to protect yourself here? Other than wiping and restoring. Are there any encryption tools, or ways to keep your emails and other data on your device safe?

Can CBP make you unlock your own phone?

<comment><USER14> One word. Jurisdiction.

What is on the device in their hands, on US soil, is subject to their stupidities, whatever those stupidities may be on the day their grubby hands get hold of your phone.

What is located remotely, in a privacy conscious jurisdiction, say Switzerland, is outside of their remit. I know US courts like to think they have power over the world, but they don't. US courts and US law power stops at US borders.

The trick is to make sure nothing gets cached on your local device (including authentication credentials, obviously). A bit like the old Thin Client computing really.

If you want to go one step further, don't travel with working credentials. Rely on someone outside of US jurisdiction to provide you the last piece of the jigsaw in a secure manner once you are in a safe location.

<comment><USER15> Well, in theory, yes. In practice, there have been recorded instances where the US Government has asked people to disclose their social media [1] and in other ones (I failed to find the source) refused access to people who refused to log into their accounts.

Also, if you're a non-american traveler, all the constitutional rights you're afforded as an American don't apply. So they can pretty much ask whatever and refuse you access for any reason.

It's like the US is becoming more and more like China. But it's a worlwide trend, really, with old men screaming "We're gonna be in the dark !" ... It's thoroughly depressing.

Edit: As written down in the comments, the part about foreigners' rights is wrong. See comment for correction.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs- bord...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14066082/us-customs-border- patrol-social-media-account-facebook-twitter)

<comment><USER16> >if you're a non-american traveler, all the constitutional rights you're afforded as an American don't apply.

False

[https://www.maniatislawoffice.com/blog/2018/08/do-non- citize...](https://www.maniatislawoffice.com/blog/2018/08/do-non-citizens- have-constitutional-rights/)

<comment><USER15> Thank you, I was under the misconception that as a foreigner I wasn't afforded these right s.

<comment><USER17> Many Americans don't get those rights in practice - although I don't think there have been any cases of the third ammendment being broken recently.

<comment><USER18> In fact, the Third Amendment came up recently, when some hotels in Washington DC kicked the National Guard out.

Their right to do so wasn't challenged, so there's one plank of the Bill of Rights which hasn't rotted through...

<comment><USER17> I've always considered America's uniform worship to make the 3rd irellevent, I guess it goes to show that ensuring rights via law is good even if you think it unnecceraary

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really, the US system of manually extracting data from peoples physical devices seems so much more old-fashioned compared to the Great Firewall of China.

There really isn't much difference conceptually between the two systems.

<comment><USER20> That's an overstatement. The conceptual difference is that the U.S. system is limited to specific, known, legally prescribed situations, while the Chinese system is constant and ubiquitous. The U.S. system is far from perfect when you get down to specifics, but I'd definitely take it over the Chinese system.

<comment><USER19> > limited to specific, known, legally prescribed situations

Not sure crossing the US border in either direction or being within 100 miles of it (the 'extended border area') is particularly 'limited'?

<comment><USER21> 30,000 device searches annually is WAY too many, but it is far more limited than than the system in China. Are you really trying to argue that border searches, no matter how much overreach, is the same as the Chinese Firewall?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a list online somewhere of all the crazy shit that can legally happen to you in the US? How long you can be detained for, what data can be extracted from you, and so on? Like if you had a _really_ bad day and the authorities exercised all of the powers over you they legally have.

<comment><USER23> They can put a knee on your neck for seven minutes and 43 seconds until you are dead and be home watching TV The next day.

<comment><USER24> I thought that cop was charged with murder? I must have got confused, thanks for updating me.

<comment><USER4> Only after public outcry. What do you think would have happened if there weren't anyone watching?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are a handful of state courts in the US that find passwords testimonial, and therefore the Fifth Amendment prevents compelled production of passwords. [1]

Could that apply here?

1 [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191124/09372943445/penns...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191124/09372943445/pennsylvania- supreme-court-says-compelled-password-production-violates-fifth- amendment.shtml)

<comment><USER26> Borders are constitution-free zones, didn't you know?

<comment><USER21> Actually, the First Congress okayed border searches. Given that many of them were authors of the Constitution, it stands to reason that border searches were always intended to be allowed under the Constitution, even if not stated explicitly.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution- conan/amendment-4/b...](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution- conan/amendment-4/border-searches)

<comment><USER27> Did they expect the definition of "border" to get quite so mangled, though?

[https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border- zone](https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone)

I also suspect they did not anticipate it being both feasible and normal to have one's entire private writings on one's person at all times like modern phones permit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm going to start traveling with a 10 TB Encrypted NAS full of static. They can download that and save it if they want.

What sucks is that I know this is probably being stored on AWS. Tech companies enable this kind of shit, and even push sale of larger and larger systems to governments. And they are massively rewarded for doing so.

This isn't the government... this is a sales guy at AWS pushing them to store things for 75 years... he knows he gets a helluva commission check on that deal.

Gross oversimplification, but not really. We, as technologists, have to take responsibility here.

</comment><comment><USER29> The easiest thing to do is to simply not take electronic devices with you anywhere in the world, otherwise there is a slight risk of someone wanting to understand the information contained within it.

If you think there is a risk, and you take a device, obviously FDE is a requirement, although, that could be seen as "suspicious".

The easiest thing to do is to fill up TB's of HDD's with useless information. Random pictures, documents, perhaps thousands of people's contact information downloaded from a public source. Store any "important" documents as random file names, perhaps inside archives or volumes that need decrypting. Or not at all, instead "in the cloud" but still encrypted so that you can travel without worrying about somebody accessing your information. Make deliberate "suspicious" file names, make them believe a file is encrypted (a 50GB file named "totally not a hidden volume.hiddenvolume") and maybe they will waste time trying to open the volume only to realize it contains thousands of pictures of naked molerats.

Clearly you need to be smart about crossing borders with electronic information these days, and not having any with you seems to be the best course of action.

<comment><USER30> > The easiest thing to do is to simply not take electronic devices with you > anywhere in the world, otherwise there is a slight risk of someone wanting > to understand the information contained within it.

I think people seriously misunderstand the range that the Border Patrol has-- its far more than the US and Canadian borders. Portland Oregon, for example, is within their grasps due to the coast + 100 miles being considered part of the border.

So, you could be never leave the country and be caught up in their web quite easily. I wouldn't be surprised if 70% of the population of the US lived within their range.

<comment><USER31> I've always wondered - why is this border considered to be at the coast, rather than at the start of international waters?

<comment><USER18> That's easy to answer: the beginning of international waters is defined as a certain distance from the border.

Which is the coastline, for the most part; international law considers countries to control land, and lakes, bays (some) and harbors, but not the seas and oceans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Information is stored for 75 years although if it's not related to any crime > it may be deleted after 20 years.

I wonder if you have your house burned down and you want your digital pictures back, can you ask them to give you a copy of their backups? That's the only thing that storing this data for this period of time is useful for, but I guess they won't hand it over.

<comment><USER33> It may still be useful to the endless parade of hackers that get access to the confidential documents "procured" by CBP in this way and stored in what I sincerely doubt will be some impenetrable database.

Not to mention that given their track record regarding things like facial recognition software, individual unmonitored CBP agents will probably be able to just you know, steal all the private information taken on people they're stalking.

The police have already been caught abusing these databases when they were minimal, increasing the amount of available stored is idiotic until we solve the problem of oversight and security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not a US citizen, and I used to travel to the US from India occasionally before the pandemic. In reality there is no data that I have with me on my laptop or mobile device, that isn't already accessible to a nation state like the US. There is really no point trying to play games with US customs and immigration. You'll just irritate them and it won't end well.

The best strategy is to simply comply with all relevant US law and orders issued by officials at the border. And one should understand that at the border, a foreigner such as me will have very limited protections. In practice there are really no protections at all. People like me essentially rely on the goodwill of the US officials at the border.

For the most part they are polite and business-like. Its best to keep all interactions with them on a cordial basis and cooperate immediately and completely when ordered.

<comment><USER35> > The best strategy is to simply comply with all relevant US law and orders > issued by officials at the border.

The best strategy is not to travel to the US at all, if you can avoid it.

It's not even about not handing over data that they could have if they really wanted it. It's about sending a message that this behavior isn't OK and that foreigners are human beings too.

The US doesn't care about your privacy, but it does care about its economy and so voting with your wallet is still the most power you have. Continuing to degrade yourself at the border at their whims condones their abuses, however implicitly.

<comment><USER18> Every border on Earth already reserves the right to search your personal effects as thoroughly as they please, without any concept of probable cause being applicable.

If they don't extend that into data located on devices you're carrying across the border, it isn't because they don't reserve the right, but merely because they lack the means or interest.

<comment><USER35> > Every border on Earth already reserves the right to search your personal > effects as thoroughly as they please

You're correct, however this does not mean they all treat you like you should be the most thankful person of Earth for them letting you in and not harassing you endlessly.

The U.S. even requires you to hand over social media passwords in some cases and a lot of personal information before you even get on the plane.

The outright contempt for foreigners is not as common elsewhere.

P.S. And of course, you have borders like between EU countries where you barely even notice you crossed a country border, (as an EU citizen).

<comment><USER21> I have experienced a lot more contempt from border officials in Europe than anywhere else, specifically Ireland and Italy.

I haven't seen anything where the U.S. requires gratitude. Is that a new policy, or just your opinion?

<comment><USER35> I guess it all depends on personal experience, but [1] seems pretty extreme to me.

1 - [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us- canada-48486672](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48486672)

<comment><USER21> I don't like that program, but I am not sure I would call it contemptuous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The interesting thing about this is that it affects people who have never been to the US and never intend to go, or those who do but take 'precautions' to protect their privacy (secondary devices, double encryption etc) as most of the data in anyone's inbox is not generated by them.

That's pretty scary.

<comment><USER37> It also affects U.S. citizens who don't even have a valid passport and no intention to leave the country. According to the CBP being in the extended border zone is enough to be crossing a border and therefore be subject to a warrantless search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hmm could you not just encrypt your data and leave the key at your house and throw one away before you reach the border. They can have all of the "data" that they want.

<comment><USER39> And then they can deny you entry into the country.

If you're a citizen, I don't know if they can seize property, but if they can, you won't be able to cross the border with it.

<comment><USER26> The article says this is for people both entering and leaving the country. And applies anywhere within 100 miles of a "border" (including coasts).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What's super awesome is nearly every US voter (including the ones reading this) will vote for the jackwads that enable and fund bulk surveillance abuses like this.

In and outside the US, non US citizens serve as a proving ground, for tech that US Gov will eventually deploy against it's own citizens.

US Gov does this because it can, because news orgs are more interested in sportball, because both parties have successfully set citizens at each other throats for decades and because the public keeps gorging on whatever fear- filled plate of nonsense is put in front of us.

Ten years from now, an entirely new regime of surveillance abuses will be added to those already deployed against us. More than any other reason, this will happen because we endlessly reelect the people who are ultimately responsible.

We could do better.

<comment><USER41> I 100% agree with you. What can a voter do until the EFF fields a candidate? There are copyright and surveillance maximalists running both parties apparently. The DMCA, the Patriot Act, and the all the other BS seems to the type of stuff that everyone in power agrees on and no candidate that I'm aware of is trying to do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > a federal judge in Boston ruled that forensic searches of cell phones > require at least reasonable suspicion "that the devices contain contraband."

outside of illegal porn, what exactly constitutes digital contraband? is this defined anywhere? any well known example cases?

<comment><USER43> If you hack somebody and steal their data, that'd probably count. If you've exfiltrated confidential data from your employer, that could count. For a time, exporting strong crypto was illegal; we might see a return to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I hope someone challenges this in court.

<comment><USER45> EFF or ACLU, I hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Really wish I could enter a fake password on my Android device to launch a fake persona

<comment><USER47> this is a great idea actually. or simply manage fake social media accounts with a fake persona that you update semi frequently either by hand or through an automated script. Login to these accounts upon arrival, then switch back to your real ones when you're clear.

<comment><USER24> This would be a serious offence which would get you banned from the US for life, after serving a jail sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If this is the case, I'll leave the country with basically naked devices which I'll restore on the other side of the checkpoint.

<comment><USER49> They'll just consider that suspicious and confiscate the devices ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER50> Dunno about CBP, but I know the Canadian border agents are restricted to searching the phone only.

So anything in the cloud (e.g. webmail) is off limits unless you download to your phone.

<comment><USER51> Do they put it in airplane mode to enforce that?

<comment><USER50> I think officially that's supposed to be step 1. Makes sense so you can't remote wipe it.

Legally they are only allowed to inspect what you are bringing into the country, so stuff in the cloud is out-of-scope.

It's an open question about whether they can compel you to decrypt anything or get you to unlock. They could always seize to inspect later though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Surely you'd need to be a person of interest to have them process your data. The data is likely encrypted so how do they decrypt it? They can socially engineer a way in but does that work? Do people break down and give up their passcode?

Would they really process the data just because? It seems like a severe amount of data to process and evaluate. How much compute power is set aside for this and how much online storage is used? Do they use a cloud service for this?

It'd be interesting to hear from somebody in the know about what is they real can do and what is heresy.

<comment><USER53> In the past, a human was required for most policing operations. Economically, that meant you'd need to be a person of interest or at least incidentally connected to one to be subject to an investigation. It meant that judges and legislators could say stuff like "it's fine for the police to run arbitrarily license plates, that's public information" because running license plates meant there was a cop with a pad of paper walking through a parking lot, bringing the notes back to a clerk to manually tab through the registration files. Storing the data and processing it used to happen at human speed and cost on the order of $20/hr, assuming they weren't working overtime rates on nights, weekends, and holidays, now it runs at gigabits per second and costs $0.05/hr to run 24/7.

I'm not in the know, but I know that all the email content I've ever written is trivial to fit on a $50 hard drive, and with that I can search through 20 years in under 20 seconds.

It's not a question of "could they do it" but "would they do it", your answer to that question depends on social and political issues, not technology. It's why I prefer technical solutions like encryption to political problems like privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> So do I just need to fill my computer with porn? Or use stenography to put all my files inside porn.

<comment><USER55> That bit I don't get. Why are they happy to upload arbitrary data to their servers unless it's porn?

<comment><USER56> "US tax dollars paying to store petabytes of porn, news at eleven"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Remind me to travel with terabytes of encrypted garbage data. Just to be a costly pain in the ass. I'd love to watch an incompetent CBP agent try to figure out how to move 10TB of disk images with USB thumbdrives.

<comment><USER4> Your time is probably a bigger issue. Hard drives maybe average 200MB/s transfer speed, so a 10TB disk would take a little under 14 hours to image. I don't know about you, but I'm not too inclined to waste a day just to troll the CBP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> My takeaway; they have to search for porn first because they can't be amassing a huge porn collection, so store your sensitive info in your porn folder!

</comment><comment><USER58> At least now I can be like Jason Bourne, and have lockers in different parts of the world with laptops and phones... ;)

</comment><comment><USER59> > _Before uploading it to their network they check to make sure there's no > porn on it_

What happens if there's porn?

</comment><comment><USER60> I know they market this product for security researchers, and I've read all sorts of good reviews about the "anonymous" version. May everyone expand on this concept:

[https://usbkill.com](https://usbkill.com)

<comment><USER61> It would be interesting to have one of those built into a smartphone as an antitheft device. It could thwart someone who steals your phone or otherwise tries to get unauthorized access. Does anyone know the legal status of setting traps for intruders into private property?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Imagine the private letters of people in 1945 being of any use to a border agency in 2020.

<comment><USER63> I'd love to see your private correspondence, Mr. Kissinger. Preferably as part of the legal process of discovery.

(Sorry, it's off topic but I couldn't resist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> > Before uploading it to their network they check to make sure there's no porn > on it (so they search your devices to find porn first).

"Stenographically encode your important documents into your porn" is what I'm reading here.

</comment><comment><USER65> Uninstall everything before crossing the border? The 100 miles thing is the weirdest though, especially if enforceable on someone who has not recently/ever crossed the border.

</comment><comment><USER66> Can't they just ask the NSA for the Emails?

<comment><USER67> They probably don't even have to ask because they have a direct pipe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> It sounds like a person needs a filesystem that generates a few exabytes of GPT-2 output on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER69> I guess the studios wanted to get their copyrights extended one way or the other.

</comment><comment><USER40> I hate the world in which my own Gov is the nation state I need to fear.

</comment><comment><USER70> How long till burner devices are necessary for traveling to the US?

</comment><comment><USER71> defund the border patrol. seriously

</comment><comment><USER72> Cue the inevitable breach.

</comment><comment><USER73> When I was a kid in the 80s, I had a US flag on my wall. What happened to the US in the past fourty years? It became a country that I don't really want to visit anymore. Every civilized nation behaves differently, at least towards citizens of allied nations. We are no enemies. Ain't no reason to treat us non-US citizens like people without any rights. - I am deeply saddened to see the US come this way, and I have no hopes that this will change in the forseeable future.

Edit: Look at how non-US citizens exchange ideas for how to avoid handing over all their personal data at border-crossing. What a shame.

<comment><USER74> My simple answer: we became afraid. 9/11 showed us we were not invincible. Technology to enable mass surveillance had quick answers for our collective fears. Stoking our fears is a profitable industry. Here we are today.

<comment><USER73> I can totally understand the need to protect your citizens, but I rather think that this kind of behaviour damages the reputation of the US deeply. In the long run, you might have gotten your hands on someone's data that would like to harm the US (but are these guys so stupid to put their malicious plans on a handheld device they use at border crossing?)

Actually after the Snowden revelations: aren't the three letter agencies able to access our data without us knowing it anyways? If we are on their radar, they can get whatever info they want from us anyway. That's my understanding. So why harrass the normal person crossing the border?

<comment><USER12> Short answer is because they can.

Since the border has become such a focal point of our political conscious, the culture of some of these agencies is really being brought to light. Just look at the private Facebook groups of current and former CBP agents comparing migrants to animals and whatnot.

When the culture of an agency gets toxic, you start to see enablement of this kind of behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> What are the use-cases, and when would such a policy have led to a drastically different outcome (in the case of a crime being committed, industrial espionage, or what-have-you)?

If I have a laptop encrypted with luks or whatever, then what? What are the consequences of non-compliance?

<comment><USER76> Not sure why this got killed. I would like to have the answers to these questions myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I wonder what implications this would have for business travel. Devices may be required to be encrypted and giving a business password may violate employment law in the home country for non US travelers. It could be illegal to grant US border agents access to the phone and also illegal not to.

Even if you could grant access, businesses may very rightly feel the content shouldn't be accessed by US border agents and if it's stored by border agents, it means now some US government server could fall under the juris diction of GDPR or something (eg my work phone or laptop had a photo with sensitive customer data or something).

On top of that, it's increasingly mandatory to use your personal phone for business data, eg PagerDuty, Slack, company email, company social media tools. So while it may be your personal device, you may still run into crazy conflicting issues of whether you are allowed to unlock it.

How are you going to comply with "delete my account" requests when some business data is on US government servers for 75 years?

US agencies have deeply poor and incompetent information security, so how long before this is subject to a data breach, or a rogue employee exfiltrating and selling it? Will people be able to sue the US government for substantial per- person damages when that happens?

The conflicting and incompatible privacy issues of this are bananas. What an arrogant and deeply stupid thing to do by the border agency.

<comment><USER67> Businesses are first class citizens, unlike real people, so you should be ok.</comment></comment>


Google Updates Mod_Pagespeed With Smarter Caching, Progressive JPEGs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/20/google-updates-mod_pagespeed-with-smarter-caching-progressive-jpegs/

<comment><AUTHOR> What's really interesting for me is how some companies are trying to offer similar solutions, but charge A LOT of money for that, while Google is doing everything better and for free.</comment>