I Had My Electronics Seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection - <AUTHOR> https://vc.gg/blog/so-its-been-a-while.html <comment><USER2> As an American citizen who travelled extensively up until TSA made me too miserable to continue, I am absolutely embarrassed about the travel situation in the United States.

I grew up in the land of freedom, and grew up hating overzealous and pointless "security" associated with the iron curtain.

We have freedom of speech, which inherently means freedom of thought. At one point we were the bastion of freedom and hope, and a leader in this regard. Nobody should fear harassment because they happened to speak at DEFCON anymore than one should fear harassment because they spoke at Jesus camp, or the science fair for that matter.

We SHOULD be encouraging people to come here and talk about things that might get them in trouble in their home countries. We SHOULD take a position of leadership and protect the basic inalienable rights of all people regardless of their citizenship, alliances, or thoughts.

I am absolutely appalled at the state that our government has arrived at. I am stunned that after such a strong revocation of the previous leadership that Obama's generation sought to increase security theater, decrease freedom, and decrease the rights afforded to our own citizens and our visitors.

The enemy of our freedom isn't thousands of miles away in some terrorist training camp. It's the people we freely elect who have seemingly no forethought and no historical understanding of our fundamental values.

A leader isn't someone who looks to cover his ass at every opportunity. A leader is someone who stands up, tells people there is something wrong, and pushes us back to the values that we were raised to be proud of. You don't have to be president to be a leader. Every police officer, every border agent, every engineer, janitor, and unemployed citizen can stand up at some point and see enough is enough. People need to stop arguing about politics and stop worrying about the boogey man. People need to start caring about freedom and they need to stop the culture of fear.

Sorry... This whole discussion hit a sore spot for me. I have always been a proud american and this kind of behavior just flies in the face of the values I was raised to embrace.

<comment><USER3> The constant affirmation of being "free", the need to "protect our freedom" and "the greatest country in the world", simply stops people questioning anything about the relative state of society and freedom.

Instead of being 1st in the world, the USA ranks 23rd in the world for freedom [1], and 11th for economic freedom [2].

It's only likely to get worse.

Even sadder is that there are countries where people have a average life expectancy up to 5% longer than the USA.

[1] [https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index](https://www.cato.org/human- freedom-index) [2] [http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking](http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking)

<comment><USER4> And in that 'ranking' they put 'Hong Kong' as the #1 'most free' place in the world.

Yes, the same Hong Kong that is not a democracy, wherein the CCP can and will come and get you anytime they please, wherein if you speak out against the government, you can go to jail, wherein every action of every citizen is monitored by the CPP.

I find this to be somewhat problematic.

Apparently they forgot to include 'political freedom' \- which is a rather odd thing to overlook :)

They also place nations such as UAE far ahead of the US in terms of 'economic freedom' \- this, a 'nation' wherein the various 'mini monarchs' have absolute authority, can pluck your finances, do as they please with you - for whatever reason they want, at any time, and are completely above the law. Of course total censorship of information, and absolute power by the police to intervene in your personal affairs have something to do with 'economic freedom'.

The Cato institute does some good (but opinionated work), but find this is irresponsible.

<comment><USER5> Agree. Also: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_United_Arab_Emi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be fun to start a meme of carrying antiquated electronic waste devices, and getting them confiscated as a means of disposal.

Encrypt them with spacefiller data and start crossing borders, and then refuse to provide passwords and abandon them for sheer amusement.

Way more fun than recycling old laptops and batteries. And better than planning to travel empty handed, in anticipation of getting ripped off by pesky customs guards.

<comment><USER7> > Encrypt them with spacefiller data and start crossing borders, and then > refuse to provide passwords and abandon them for sheer amusement.

You don't get that option. The first thing that happens to everybody who is attempting to enter the US and flagged is that they give you a form to write down all keys and passwords you might have, they will then unlock your phone and attempt to find anything that might be used to bar you from entering.

A common method of confirming a profiled person seems to be using the "I have not done illegal drugs" checkbox on the entry documentation, they will find any drug reference on your devices using the passwords they just discovered. If you answer "yes", you're a criminal and you are barred from entry. If you answer "no" and they find any reference to any recreational drug, no matter the context, you just lied to a federal officer and you are barred from entry.

One rejection is enough to ban you for life from ESTA, so for most people entering the US who don't have a temporary working visa, being profiled is the last time you'll ever be able to enter the united states. A woman I was speaking to was bumped back onto their flight for a 3 year old SMS on her phone where a friend asked if she wanted to come over and smoke a joint.

<comment><USER8> I will refuse giving keys to hdd/usb, pretending they are randomly empty. I will give it to the phone (and have nothing there).

This prohibits them from barring me from entering, and allow them only to seize the hdd/usb.

<comment><USER9> The advice I've heard is that if you're concerned about being compelled to release passwords or encyption keys you should cross borders with no personal/work data on your devices. This avoids any 'half-truths' that could still get you into trouble. Once you have safely crosed, download what you need from during your trip from your server (and consider using it as a VPN for all your internet browsing).

If the authorities take your device out of your sight, and you're sufficiently paranoid, then discard it and buy fresh hardware.

<comment><USER10> What if I overwrite the partition table with an empty one, say "I'm just carrying empty HDDs", then restore it later? If all the data is encrypted, it will just look random, even if they dump all of it, which is what I imagine a new HDD looks like.

<comment><USER11> I'm not quite sure what you're trying to accomplish - TSA agents are no more trained in computers than your average mall-cop and if they do decide to inspect your electronics, it's likely because you were flagged already when the ticket was purchased or you rubbed the agent the wrong way. What your drive looks like is probably irrelevant as the decision to copy isn't based on evidence or practicality it's based on an order from higher up or a whim, and then procedure is followed, which for electronics is to plug the drive in and do a copy of some sort.

I mean you can do whatever you want but only the encryption is going to do you any good for actual security. Even if you make it really convincing that the drives are empty, procedure is still going to make them plug it into the copier anyways. I mean, from the article, they're confiscating headphones and power cords - there's no rhyme or reason here except intimidation; the agents don't investigate - someone else does.

Do what you like, but it sounds like hassle you're adding to what is going to happen anyways.

<comment><USER12> _I 'm not quite sure what you're trying to accomplish - TSA agents are no more trained in computers than your average mall-cop and if they do decide to inspect your electronics_

This depends entirely on the context. If you're a high-value target to an intelligence agency, there's a very high probability they would have someone pose as an agent of the TSA or CBP, or that they would have one of those agencies grant them access to your electronics. Someone involved in the publication of leaks or creation of security-related software would count as a high-value target.

 _they 're confiscating headphones and power cords - there's no rhyme or reason here except intimidation_

This, too depends on context. For the average person, the purpose is obviously nothing more than harassment. It's not difficult for a flash drive to be concealed inside a USB cable though, and if you're being targeted for a search, it makes sense for them to take everything.

On the other hand, a MicroSD card can be hidden just about anywhere, so if they're not going through _all_ your stuff with a fine-toothed comb, the whole thing is theater.

<comment><USER13> > If you're a high-value target to an intelligence agency...

They have threatened to shoot a presidential plane flying over Europe and searched it on the possibility that Snowden might be on board. So yes be aware when you are a person of interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is ridiculous!

Some colleagues and I get back from Barcelona in December and while I didn't have any problems [1], my colleague who is Indian born, but with a green card, was questioned for 30 or so minutes. Gladly he didn't have his electronics seized but as a permanent resident of this country, one would have expected some better treatment.

American border security has been among the most draconian one since I set foot into this country in 2007 [2]. I don't have high hopes from the next 4 to 8 years either. Conferences should start moving outside of the US. I don't see a point in non-Americans wanting to vacation in the US either -- there are a lot of other great places in the world.

[1] I am born in the Middle East, with a name that raises all the alarm bells for the DHS and was on the NSEERS list. I was detained in 2010 for a few hours in DC on my way back from the Middle East (everything short of a full cavity search was done). As soon as I got my green card, I applied for Global Entry and now don't have to interact with any border security agents on my way back into the country.

[2] In my early days, my boarding pass would have SSSS either hand written or printed on it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_Selection)

<comment><USER15> I once knew a Mexican green card holder whose name was a soundex match to someone on the most wanted list. Suffice to say re-entering the US was a challenge for him.

<comment><USER16> A friend of mine happens to have a somewhat similar surname and come from the same country as a known terrorist. He just gave up and refuses to travel to USA any more, despite being a senior engineer in Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always been guarding against such things whenever I passed through a non- free or otherwise questionable country's air ports: Laptop contents were pruned of everything, leaving just the base OS, and data was stored redundantly on dedicated servers connected to the internet. I then would connect via SSH or VPN, unlock the encrypted partitions and download whatever I needed.

The only countries where I got treated in an appropriate, respectful manner at airports were Japan (both entry and exit as a foreign citizen) and Germany. UK (Heathrow) and VAE just had idiots and bullies for security and were my worst experiences. Which I'm assuming is entirely intentional. Going for the headphones even is really a bit stark I'd say.

Needlessly to say, I don't fly to or via these countries whenever I can avoid it at a good price.

<comment><USER18> The most awkward experience I've had with an airport as a US Citizen is LHR. It seemed disorganized, lots policies being enforced by people who had no context on how to enforce them.

The most invasive experience I've had with an airport was TLV. Though it was helped by the fact that I knew they were going to be thorough, they had plenty of staff, and the staff all seemed very well trained. However, I've heard that it can be a lot worse if you provide the wrong answers or aren't a white American traveling on business.

Other airports like FRA or AMS have been relatively pleasant.

<comment><USER19> LHR is just awful, strongly enforcing the stereotype of Britain being succumbed into Orwellian dystopy. Lucky me, JFK has always been very friendly with me. I do have a very trustable face, people tell me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Might be slightly off-topic, but I'm still curious about one experience:

On return flight from US I refused to use full body scanner. I got 'thorough pat' (called that way probably to scare us, although it wasn't so bad), also my carry-on was checked in detailed way.Interesting things happened further, I have two stage flight.

1\. On first landing in Germany, while moving by foot to next connection, I was picked by Germany border officers from all passengers going through corridor, and examined for about 5 minutes, also my carry on was scanned. Nothing serious, but happened first time ever (try of 20 I would say)

2\. on final destination, while I picked my checked bag, it was marked with stickers, and I was picked by border people of my country, also asked, both bags checked.

3\. At home I saw TSA notice inside of my checked bag.

Last thing wasn't unusual, I would say I had it on 30% flights from US, but all three items in a row connected somehow (?) to the full body scan refusal, were a little bit too much for a pure coincidence.

<comment><USER20> As someone who refuses body scans every time and have never had anything happen (Other than a brief secondary that involved waiting for 5 minutes and a "Sorry, you're good to go"), I don't think refusing the full body scanners has anything to do with it

<comment><USER21> Likewise, I have refused scanning in the US, England, and the Netherlands, for the last 8 years and don't have much to report. As much as I hate security theatre, I try to be polite and when asked for the reason I opt out I state that it is political, the devices don't make us safer, and I'd like them to hire more personnel instead ("just like you fine Sir"). In the US, apart from an occasional sigh, my worst experiences have been being insulted by an agent at SFO and an agent putting my shoes with the soles down on my laptop at ORD despite me asking him not to. I do however find that agents in the UK are much less cooperative with "nutcases" such as me, with one officer stating that I made her feel "uncomfortable" by standing as opposed to sitting while waiting since I insisted on seeing my belongings as they take no responsibility for them.

<comment><USER22> > with one officer stating that I made her feel "uncomfortable"

This is becoming a common reaction in the UK, not just at borders and not just with customs and immigration officers. I encountered a similar attitude once when I was accosted by a security guard in Tesco who demanded that I put shoes on. When I politely asked him why he immediately called his supervisor on the radio and told her that I was threatening him.

<comment><USER23> Uhh, why were you wandering around Tesco with no shoes on?

<comment><USER24> Seems like it's a statement being made about excessive hygiene norms. Personally I feel the soles of my feet afford some protection, but not enough for certain public places. I have no direct experience of Tesco, maybe they are especially clean.

<comment><USER23> I think it may be more a question of how clean the patron is. If they tend to walk around public places with no shoes on, one might imagine that their overall hygiene may not be particularly good.

Most likely though it's a health and safety policy - sharp things on the floor, etc.

<comment><USER24> I'm a fairly square, non-trouble-making, shower-positive individual who loves going around barefoot. I might think Tesco is the wrong place, but I wouldn't assume anything about a barefooted person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The bizarre thing is that once upon a time these "contraband" checks were a thing at the East German (communist) border.

You would be checked for unwanted newspapers, literature etc.

At the time the U.S. was vehemently against the practice ...

<comment><USER26> When you compare things, you will end up, that today those people have for more elaborate techniques for spying on us. When the people which have done it in East Germany, look at what is done in the West today, they have tears in their eyes, because what they did was Kindergarden in comparison.

</comment></comment><comment> un-devmox For those that don't know who don't know who Vincent Canfield is (I didn't), it is worth reading up on the man as he is a fascinating if not controversial person with a flair for raw/abrasive humor and a confrontational manner. He faced extradition and criminal charges in Germany [0] and his email service, cock.li, was at the center of the terrorist hoax against US schools [1].

[0] [https://twitter.com/gexcolo/status/715640881651564544?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/gexcolo/status/715640881651564544?lang=en) [1] [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-story-of-cockli-the- sit...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-story-of-cockli-the-site-used-to- shut-down-the-la-school-district)

I would like to respond to a few comments:

> Why do we only hear stories about this from the US and not from China or > Russia? > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13454966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13454966)

As a proud US citizen, I understand the slight you are feeling. It's as if we are continually being picked on and singled out for every misstep. In these types of thread I always see comments like:

> USA: make East Germany great again. > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13454689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13454689)

> Yip. Traveling to the US is ironically the one place where I'd be concerned > about my rights & freedom. Their tourist harassment force really needs to > relax. > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13455194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13455194)

Which infuriate me! But, we (as US citizens) __should __be held to the highest of standards because at times what we preach as a country is contradicted by our actions. It 's not good enough to say, "Well, this is an isolated incident," or "Look at what x_country does." To justify abusive over reaching actions by our government based on what another country does is not logical or constructive. What we need to do is improve ourselves as a country and by doing so maybe set an example for others.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sadly this is feeling more and more like the new 'normal'. Carry a copy of your essential data, heavily encrypted, in an 'attachable' hard drive. Leave the expensive display and keyboard (aka laptop) at home.

Now I'm wondering if I can patch Asterix so that if I text it a particular challenge and response will it take the number that is texting it and route my phone number to it.

<comment><USER28> Or don't carry anything, and take an old thinkpad with basically a throwaway thin client OS on it set up to allow you access to a vnc-over-ssh session elsewhere.

<comment> bjelkeman-again What would be a good tutorial for those that aren't familiar with this?

<comment><USER29> These links might be a good step in the direction of familiarization

[http://askubuntu.com/questions/304017/how-to-set-up- remote-d...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/304017/how-to-set-up-remote- desktop-sharing-through-ssh)

[http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/86666/how-to- han...](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/86666/how-to-handle-disk- encryption-for-remote-connection)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The safest option is traveling light. Just a cheap notebook and phone, containing no sensitive data, which you will abandon if compromised/confiscated. That way, you attract little attention at borders. Keep your data online, securely encrypted, and buy equipment "anonymously" for cash.

<comment><USER31> The safest option, and what I recommend to all my friends, is to simply take vacation somewhere else. Lots of countries around in europe and asia that actually welcome visitors. Especially if you'd need a visa to visit the USA; seriously, not worth the effort.

<comment><USER32> Exactly, I refuse to go to USA even for conferences I'm invited to speak at.

Many countries invite you without compromising your phone or telling you that drugs you've done are a national security threat. Plus if you have ever watched porn on your phone or laptop, you can be blackmailed with jail time. USA just doesn't desire people like us.

<comment><USER33> >Plus if you have ever watched porn on your phone or laptop, you can be blackmailed with jail time

You lost me here. Porn isn't illegal in the US. Are you thinking of the new UK porn laws?

<comment><USER32> Sorry I've skipped a step. I'm quite confident that the day they want to corner you, they'll claim the porn pics in your browser cache are child porn. Even a drawing counts as "depiction of child pornography" and if you don't have the ID of the actor on file, good luck claiming your innocence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Good job they've seized those dangerous headphones and USB cables ...

It makes no rational sense because if you think the headphones are more than they appear to be (eg. they have a secret memory card), then why not seize every other solid item -- pens, toothbrush, even the suitcase itself could be suspicious. So the conclusion is this is just designed to intimidate and inconvenience.

<comment><USER35> >Good job they've seized those dangerous headphones and USB cables ...

You need to seize them if you want to hide spying devices in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> For those not in the loop, this is the guy who runs [http://cock.li](http://cock.li)

<comment> angry-hacker Why are all the names profanities? Serious questions.. Some are pretty.. Racist. Why people use this service, because of transparency and anonymity?

<comment><USER36> He's an active member of 4chan, and that's how this email service was started. Similar to Imgur being made for Reddit users.

It's basically a culture of trolling people and making lots of overly sexual and racist jokes. The porn on his phone was "nude anime girls with MAGA hats". A lot of 4chan users seem to be Trump supporters. I'm not sure what percentage are actual Trump supporters, versus people who just want to troll the US with memes and watch the world burn.

One of the email domains is "tfwno.gf", which means: "That feel(ing) when (you have) no girlfriend". Depression and loneliness is a common theme, so there's a lot of lonely people taking out their frustration. There's also a lot of pretty normal people who just enjoy being rude and gross for no reason.

4chan can be a pretty dark and weird place. But I've heard there can also be some fairly positive sub-communities and good discussions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Worth listening to Jake Appelbaum's 'digital anti repression workshop' [1]. In this he explains why he takes the hard-drive out of his laptop and just uses a TailsOS thumb-drive for his computing. It would be actually hilarious when staff ask to peruse the contents of your computer for contraband, only to discover the laptop doesn't have a hard-drive.

[1]: part 1 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8)

[#]: part 2 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9fByRmAHgU)

</comment><comment><USER38> These officers refused to identify themselves to me at all, which is interesting "

Is that even legal?

<comment><USER39> Since when has something being legal or illegal ever stopped US law enforcement.

There is no actual accountability, so why should they care if what they do is illegal. They are the law, and they make shit up as they go

<comment><USER40> Border entry points aren't legally in United States and you have absolutely no rights whatsoever, even if a US citizen, when at those locations.

There is nothing new about this, but it's been getting worse ever since the evul hackers started subverting the US Government by encrypting and leaking the Government's illegal activities.

<comment><USER41> I missed that part in the constitution where it said these rights not available in all areas.

<comment><USER42> Not in the Constitution per se, but: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception)

<comment><USER41> That was kind of my point. It's not in the constitution and conflicts with the constitution.

<comment><USER43> It doesn't conflict with the Constitution and this is a common misunderstanding by laymen about how the law works in the USA.

"Case Law" vs "Statutory Law" is the name of the game here.

To not beat a dead horse: every single decision made by the Supreme Court is _effectively_ in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Any part of the Constitution can be interpreted, modified, or nullified by a decision of the Supreme Court.

So, when the SCOTUS decides that an exemption against prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure applies at the border, you can be assured that they view it as "constitutional".

<comment><USER39> Which is contrary to how many of the framers wanted the nation to be run... I cite Jefferson

>>"The Constitution... meant that its coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." \--Thomas Jefferson [1804]

>>"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." \--Thomas Jefferson [1820]

>>"This member of the Government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt." \--Thomas Jefferson [1825]

Over the last 200 years to much reverence and power has been placed in the hands of the Supreme Court, and the federal government in general.

<comment><USER43> I'm not arguing for one side or the other. I'm telling you how it works _in practice_.

Complain all you like. Our Constitution spells out in very clear terms that blacks are to be considered 3/5th of a white man for the purposes of representation in Congress. If that term itself isn't an example of how wrong it is to be a strict textualist I don't know a better example.

I wouldn't make the mistake of pretending that the Constitution is a perfect document. You shouldn't either.

<comment><USER44> > Our Constitution spells out in very clear terms that blacks are to be > considered 3/5th of a white man for the purposes of representation in > Congress. If that term itself isn't an example of how wrong it is to be a > strict textualist I don't know a better example.

No, it doesn't; it states, 'Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.'

It doesn't say a word about blacks or whites (although it does mention untaxed Indians).

And that clause no longer applies, because it was removed by a later amendment. So: a) the Constitution does _not_ and never _did_ say that blacks count as 3/5 of a person; and b) the clause not counting slaves and those serving life prison sentences for purposes of representation has been deleted.

> I wouldn't make the mistake of pretending that the Constitution is a perfect > document.

Of course it's not perfect. It's a damn sight better than what we've got now though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The porn on the burner phone trip back seemed to defuse the agents. So maybe a strategy could be to have all your important work be encrypted, but have the a decoy boot which you reluctantly unlock after acting all nervous which contains legal porn in an open browser.

</comment><comment><USER46> Yip. Traveling to the US is ironically the one place where I'd be concerned about my rights & freedom. Their tourist harassment force really needs to relax.

<comment><USER47> Ironically we have a company memo a couple of weeks back advising all employees if traveling to the US to wipe all data on their laptops (Even paid for new SSD's), and download everything via the cloud when we arrive over VPN.

I think the guys and I just cleared out as much stuff as possible and then had to images on the server (clean) and (business).

<comment><USER46> That's pretty intense. What line of business is that in?

<comment><USER47> Defense Contracts (back then). Ironically the Employer at the time didn't really pay that well and I moved over to doing web-dev work that was resulted in my wages doubling over night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Hmm... coming from the Chaos conference. Refuses to answer questions. Has a ton of equipment. Resides in Romania. And, get this: already involved in a terror hoax that shut every school in LA!! [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3367044/Maine- colleg...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3367044/Maine-college- drop-21-center-hoax-terrorist-threat-emails-New-York-Las-Vegas-issue- subpoenas-former-student-claims-knows-origin-posts.html)

What a sense of entitlement.

Seems like the TSA was doing their job.

<comment><USER49> Certainly their job isn't to illegally deny him his right to representation or confiscate without returning his headphones?

The CC conference is hardly some blackhat meetup. Likewise, Romania is by no means our enemy.

So a guy, who has followed the law entirely, coming from a friendly country from a well known meeting, should be denied his basic legal rights and have his equipment confiscated... why exactly? What law did he break? How did TSA (or what you actually mean in this case, the CBP) "save us" from this gentleman?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Wow a page full of horrifying border control experiences. Perhaps all those people who like to say Schengen free movement is a bad idea might want to reconsider?

<comment><USER51> Perhaps we in the US simply need to rein in our border guards, and have done for quite a long time. The experience of other nations proves it is possible to arrive at a satisfactory medium between the extremes of Schengen and Stasi. I'd hoped under Obama we'd do so, but lots of people hoped for lots of things under Obama that didn't happen. Under Trump it doesn't seem likely we'll improve on the current situation; if anything, I'd expect it will get worse. But perhaps the man will surprise us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why would you cross _any_ border with electronics with data on them? Especially if you went to 33C3? Especially in this climate?

Why didn't you just SSH everything? You can easily resync your contacts/data on your phone after you cross the border. You can keep the few you must have on the recently reset phone. If you travel often, why don't you have a second phone for just this to save you time?

I'd think most of us have tech junk piling up. It's less effort to reset or have a 'travel drive' than top go through all the paperwork to (maybe) get stuff back.

Maximum laziness. If customs asks you to unlock your phone, nothing gets you through quicker then quick unquestioning compliance. (Of course the current climate is stupid and needs to change.)

<comment><USER53> I travel with my wife and 2 kids. I have NOTHING! And yet, I am hyper aware of how I might be perceived.

It's one thing to fight the good fight! And its another to poke the bear.

I don't agree with your "maximum laziness", perhaps the author was arrogant? Or ignorance?

I love the idea of porn on a burner phone, but even then... (Legal) porn has a very different meaning in different countries. The author is really playing with fire.

Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) suggested a few months ago a "Better Surrender Technique"[1]. Surely this could be applied to the U.S. Customs...

[1] [http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147192672916/better- surrender-t...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147192672916/better-surrender- technique)

<comment><USER52> When I said maximum laziness, I tend to think of things in maximizing the expected value of my time.

Crossing the border with $3-4k in electronics? Say there's a 5% chance they demand passwords & access. I don't want some nosepicker TSA agent going through my stuff. Refusal to give access means I lose it.

So E(X) is $150-200 worth of my time. That means an old i5 laptop. If I need anything I can grab an SSH key off the web somewhere that lets me get another SSH key somewhere else...

Plus, you're more at risk of your stuff being stolen when traveling anyway. You shouldn't be risking all of your data getting taken away for good. Even if you comply, that doesn't mean they won't take everything away from you. That raises the potential loss significantly.

And fuck Dilbert. I bet that guy has late stage syphilis by now. He's becoming increasingly deranged and disconnected from reality. Oh, the irony.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> USA: make East Germany great again.

</comment><comment><USER55> Genuinely curious if anyone here experienced something similar (being asked to unlock all your devices) and if so how often?

<comment><USER7> It's standard. All people who are taken aside by customs in the US are given a standard form which asks for all passwords and keys for all devices they own. This is so they can immediately use the content on them to reject you from the country. It's presented to you in such a way that you are to believe you have no option but to fill out the form. You're offered the ability to talk to your embassy, but are told that is a useless opportunity that won't get you anything of value.

<comment><USER56> Since no one is explicitly saltating it, this only applies to non-citizens, right? What's the process when a U.S. citizen is "taken aside"? I would categorically tell them to fuck off. Do I face jail time instrad of refused entry?

<comment><USER57> In general, a US citizen can be detained for some time, interrogated and searched in an unpleasant fashion, have property they carry with them seized, and be subjected to (illegal, but it happens regardless) retaliatory prosecution under nuisance-type charges for being uncooperative or for being perceived to challenge the authority of the CBP employee, but cannot be denied entry to the United States.

<comment><USER58> But you can get added to the no fly list, which is effectively the same thing, as no carrier will take you. (You have to fly to e.g. Canada and cross at a land crossing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> So if a friend or family member from Europe wants to visit, they shouldn't travel with their personal laptops, phones etc?

All this talk of 'keep your data on a private vpn server and ssh' is so far outside of what a normal person can do its ridiculous. I understand the concerns but 99.999999% of people aren't even aware of these things.

And yet they can be arrested, detained indefinitely, and much much worse, for no reason whatsoever, and have their devices confiscated at the very least - and this isn't just a possibility now (as in its possible a black hole will spontaneously emerge and swallow us all) but a very likely probability.

So what do we do? Not have any visitors, never travel?

</comment><comment><USER60> Why do we only hear stories about this from the US and not from China or Russia?

<comment><USER10> Russia aren't interested in pointless security theatre, if they're interested in you, you just wake up at an enhanced interrogation facility, or you have all your stuff searched without anyone notifying you. Both also have tighter controls on what gets posted. I'd say Russia also have a big interest in appearing better than the USA, so they can just tell their citizens: "Look at the kind of shit they do in the USA; while when you enter our great country of Russia, you just come in peacefully". Back in the day part of anti-USA propaganda was "USA treats blacks in horrific ways, we treat everyone equally".

<comment><USER61> I think it ultimately comes down to the type of person working in airport security -- in Russia, you interact with police or military affiliated staff when you "enjoy" special attention. In the US, you're dealing with a very numerous staff of people without special training being paraded as a type of "elite security" for the country.

Anecdotally, at the US border, I've had TSA deny a small wooden children's toy because they got drunk on a fiction that I could break it or combine it with other items to make some sort of weapon (a ridiculous idea), and, on another instance, deny a carabiner because they believed I could use it as a sort of "brass knuckles" (also ridiculous and demonstrative that none of the involved parties were even passingly familiar with punching (as a carabiner would simply cut into the puncher's hand)). At the Russian border, I misheard an important question and answered incorrectly, and the treatment was professional and grounded in reality (confirmation of the type of work I do, my documents, and my purpose for being in the country). On the American side, the workers have big imaginations and are incentivized to invent things to catch. On the Russian side, they're looking for suspicious outliers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I was wondering why I could not resolve cock.li from where I am right now; and thought this may be related, but it turns out the DNSSEC signatures have expired[1] so my resolver is rejecting the answers.

[1] [http://dnsviz.net/d/cock.li/dnssec/](http://dnsviz.net/d/cock.li/dnssec/)

<comment><USER63> This is probably because I had set up DNSSEC on my nameservers, but my registrar doesn't yet support DNSSEC for .li. I plan on moving to another registrar once the domain is closer to expiry. I guess I'll try to do something sooner than that to remove the DNSSEC entries that my nameserver is returning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> TSA, HS and Border protection are a bunch of unqualified, uneducated, underpaid thugs put in a position of absolute power with zero consequences, and rewarded for every 'criminal' they catch. What exactly do you think will happen?

These are people whose dream job is becoming a cop and being allowed to wield lethal force on anyone with zero questions.

The best part is most everyone in this country is so brainwashed they'll actually support this because it keeps us 'great'.

</comment><comment><USER64> Oh, awesome.

I'm planning to go visit my business partner in Texas in October, now I'm having serious doubts about the whole trip. (I am dual nationality, Hungarian and Romanian and I have a Hungarian passport which, theoretically, allows me to enter under the Visa Waiver program). By the way, I always travel with my Hungarian passport, because people at the border DO treat you differently. If you're on Romanian papers, you face way more harassment, more waiting and in general it's a lot more of a struggle.

I find it incredibly obnoxious that the only who are affected by this entire BS are the people who, I'm quite sure, are not planning to do acts of terrorism, in fact, has anyone noticed that the ones who do are the only ones this sh _t never managed to stop?

Btw, travelling within the EU has gotten a bit more annoying, too. When I left the UK at the beginning of April, last year, I pretty much got through without any issues, they haven't even bothered to look at my passport. I've not been searched, harassed, stolen from by border officials, etc., however in November, I've harassed, scanned, made to take my shoes off (your poison, brother), scanned to sh_t, and to top it off, the agent who was scanning my backpack stole out of it (2 PS4 video games, worth 20 quid, really?).

I'm planning trips to US, Germany, Austria, Ukraine and France this year, however based on experience from last year and now this, I'm pretty much questioning if I should by now.

I would've wanted to bring some of my photography equipment with me on these trips, so how risky would you think it would be to travel (for example to the US), if I had a mirrorless camera on me (Sony A6000), two batteries, 5 lenses, a tripod, a 13" laptop and two phones (always prefer to have a backup while traveling abroad)?

Background info: I have no convictions, I don't do drugs, I haven't been arrested, I don't attend security conferences and in fact, I'm generally a nobody.

<comment><USER65> You should have nothing to worry about. Just follow directions and be cooperative. The people at the border get off on authority. Don't give them a reason to harass you.

<comment><USER64> I try to be the nice to anyone in similar situations and not to obstruct stuff because we all have better things to do than to argue over stupid stuff at the border. Thanks for the information, you kinda put me at ease!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Question, say that I travel with an reset telephone, can you be forced to "install" it, complete setup and enter account information so it syncs it with your icloud/google/microsoft acocunt?

<comment><USER54> the issue is: "do you want to cross this border or not?". If you want to cross, unless it's your country, you have to comply with everything, without any oversight or appeal. You're outside of every single Constitutional protection, in an international zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is this person a US citizen?

<comment><USER35> Yes, he is. Tho he moved to Romania last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> _All of my devices are encrypted. Though I 'll be doing some key rotation as a result of this, I'm confident none of the devices will be able to be decrypted._

That's what I always advice folks to do.

<comment><USER68> Kali Linux has a nuke option for Luks-encrypted devices [1]. Just not sure if that patch has been updated.

[1]: [http://linuxbsdos.com/2014/01/09/a-kali-linux-cryptsetup- pat...](http://linuxbsdos.com/2014/01/09/a-kali-linux-cryptsetup-patch-that- can-nuke-an-encrypted-disk/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I was flying from Indiana back to New York last week. I got flagged for a search because they said my bag had some residue.

Utter BS I have travelled with the bag for over 20 years.

On the plane I was talking with the person next to me. I told her it was all security theater and she could not believe I could say that.

<comment><USER70> Any cash from your wallet would set off those ion scan detectors as well, since it has probably at some point come in contact with other cash that has at some point in time come in contact with drugs.

They are ridiculously oversensitive to the point of being useless.

The lady on the plane probably has no original thoughts beyond what Fox News has told her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Related discussions on border control:

U.S. government begins asking foreign travelers about social media

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13242620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13242620)

<comment><USER63> I'm the author of the OP's post. When I left the U.S. one of the questions that I was asked (that I refused to answer) was whether I used any social media and what the accounts were. The sites that they listed as examples were Facebook and WhatsApp, which I found particularly interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Reports of people being denied entry for political reasons even though they should be guaranteed entry: [https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/21/1623180/-Canadian...](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/21/1623180/-Canadians- French-British-Denied-Entry-to-the-United-States-to-attend-Protest-March)

(yes, it's dailykos, I'm sure there will be a claim of fake news)

<comment><USER73> Legally there is no such thing as 'guaranteed entry' to the US except for citizens. Even possessing a visa doesn't guarantee entry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I don't foresee any event which would cause the right to be free from unreasonable searches at the border to be acquired. I guess the only hope is the supreme court?

<comment><USER61> He runs services for 4chan that were used to send threats. Unreasonable is hard to quantify, but to be careful, this shouldn't be confused with a routine traveller.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Wonder if I can get TSA to do data recovery for some HDDs that I have that crashed.

<comment><USER76> Hah. A couple years ago I flew across the border with a suitcase full of 9-track tapes. I did get a TSA inspection notice, but I strongly doubt they read them — I'm sure it was just a "WTF is _that_?" on the baggage x-ray.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I wonder, would it be possible to ship sensible devices through another medium (fedex?) instead of taking them through border security? Sure it would be expensive, but at least you don't get confiscated $2k worth of electronics because your name sounds funny.

</comment><comment><USER78> We're heading to Italy in the Spring (from the US). I'll buy a cheap chromebook the week we leave, never use anything but incognito mode, and we'll rent phones in Italy once we're there.

</comment><comment><USER79> US CBP and others often seem to see themselves as a kind of Special Forces detachment.

</comment><comment><USER80> What does one do if they dont have a lawyer's number on hand?

</comment><comment><USER81> Terrifying

</comment><comment><USER82> Facism?

</comment><comment><USER83> CBP is cancer.

</comment><comment><USER35> That title is editorialized. Cock.li is not an anonymous email server, it's a regularemail service.

<comment><USER8> This makes it even more interesting.

Also this creates us cool insight how to do them DOS: let's bring old hdd/sdd drives with random on it, and let them spend their CPU to break it. Sensible recycle for the environment and freedom.

<comment><USER84> Probably they are not really after the data here. This is way to intimidate people and to discourage others from participant in projects which are not appreciated by the US officials.

This kind of publicity is actually beneficial for the officials. More people see what kind of trouble you maybe get into should you start contributing to Tor or other similar projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> IIRC, wasn't Tor originally either funded by, or some sort of results of a project by, the US Navy?

<comment><USER85> Yes, and DARPA also contributed: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Histor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_\(anonymity_network\)#History)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Is there something more to the story? I travel with laptops and iPads all the time. Never been stopped.

<comment><USER40> You're not on a Government watch list.

Start working on Tor, LavaBit, Wikileaks or any other technology initiative the Government sees as a risk, and see what happens. Alternatively you could also start acting as a publisher of leaked Government documents.

<comment><USER58> And in MAGA land, probably many other thought crimes. Like, going to a women's rights march.

<comment><USER87> You've got it wrong; it's the regressive left who convicts people of thought time. In "MAGA land", you're free to piss the left off in defiance of their byzantine schemes of political correctness.

<comment><USER58> CBP are known to be resoundingly pro-Trump. It was a great example of perverting their authority to discriminate against views they don't like.

The next step will be to mark NGOs as having 'foreign influence'. Pretty soon RT'ing Amnesty International or the EFF will exclude you from government or sub-contractor employment. Just look at what happens in Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> This story inspired me to get my own @cocaine.ninja email address. I'll be putting it on my resume and all official bank or government correspondence from now on.

</comment><comment><USER89> I was going to visit Defcon this year for the first in my life, never been to USA before. I think I'll take a rain check.</comment>


Deep Render: A startup optimising image and video compression in a unique way - <AUTHOR> https://codesips.io/new-ways-of-looking-at-tech/ <comment><AUTHOR> Deep Render: A startup optimising image & video compression in a unique way</comment>


Facebook presses for more pay for janitors, cooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-presses-for-more-pay-for-janitors-cooks-2015-05-13-01032042

<comment><AUTHOR> More details at [http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-presses-for-more-pay- fo...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-presses-for-more-pay-for-janitors- cooks-1431489602) but WSJ is login gated.</comment>


Huawei trying to sell its 5G patents to a Western buyer - <AUTHOR> https://www.insider.com/huawei-wants-sell-5g-patents-get-round-trump-2019-9 <comment><USER2> Hmm. I wonder what would happen if Apple bought them and then really put the screws to Qualcomm?</comment>


Show HN: Free Hugo Theme – Hugo Hero - <AUTHOR> https://hugo-hero.netlify.com <comment><USER2> Here's my blog[0] using Hugo theme[1] that I made from Greg Davis's blog[2] theme.

[0] [https://anarchyrucks.github.io](https://anarchyrucks.github.io)

[1] [https://github.com/anarchyrucks/axis](https://github.com/anarchyrucks/axis)

[2] [https://www.gregnavis.com](https://www.gregnavis.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see another Hugo theme.

I think Hugo has great potential. Unfortunately, the themes are not as polished ([https://themes.gohugo.io/](https://themes.gohugo.io/)) I'm sure people (well, me) are willing to pay for quality themes. I occasionally buy static themes in ThemeForest and repurpose them for Hugo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that's what I'm trying to do, build some quality free and premium themes for Hugo.

There is a real lack of Hugo themes that are more than a blog. This theme at least shows the potential for building a marketing or smb client side in Hugo.

You can see more of my themes at www.zerostatic.io

I've got a few for Jekyll and Gatsby as well but Hugo is my favourite at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice thanks, but the top text gets partially covered by the fixed top navbar on mobile view (Firefox/Android here)

<comment><AUTHOR> do you mean the hamburger icon is not clickable when you open the mobile menu. I'm seeing that occur. I'll fix it. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Did this post get banned or something. It went from number 2 to not even in the list. Is that normal?</comment>


World health chief says it may be too late to contain swine flu - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci_12227047?source=rss

<comment><AUTHOR> More information about the Spanish Flu, for those who somehow haven't heard of it, is available on Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu>

Extra nice quotes:

 _The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but is estimated at 2.5 to 5% of the human population, with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent._

 _This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death._

 _Another unusual feature of this pandemic was that it mostly killed young adults, with 99% of pandemic influenza deaths occurring in people under 65, and more than half in young adults 20 to 40 years old._

<comment><USER2> Sixty-eight deaths from around one thousand infections is a lethality of 7%. That alone should make us take this very seriously until we have more data.

<comment><USER3> In the State of Mexico (metro area of Mexico City) there has been 3 deaths out of 44 cases of Influenza (not all confirmed to be H1N1) which is 6.8% lethality

Update: On San Luis Potosi (some 400Km north Mexico City, second biggest outbreak) has been reported 62 cases and 5 deaths, 8% <http://bit.ly/15VOOt>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is a bit alarmist. Although "humans have no natural immunity", it looks like it responds well to drugs.

I am not losing much sleep over thoughts of dying from this.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill The real question is, will there be a large amount of variance among populations in different countries? You cannot necessarily extrapolate from Mexico City to other places since climate, diet, and no doubt other factors, all play a role.

</comment><comment><USER5> WTF is a "world health chief" ?

<comment><USER6> _WTF is a "world health chief" ?_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_chan>

<comment><USER7> A famous quote comes to mind...

<http://bash.org/?4780>

<comment><USER8> quote:

"<Thumb> do you know of any major organizations that are similar the CDC?

<Lucent> who?

<Thumb> center for disease control

<Lucent> i said WHO

<Thumb> what? i'm asking you

<Lucent> World Health Organization"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask: What interfaces inspire you? - <AUTHOR>

Particular applications, websites, the controls of a jet aircraft, the interface of your tricked out car, musical instruments, complex weapons, simple weapons, control through spoken language -- there are a ton of interfaces out there, which inspire you?<p>I want to gain a broader knowledge of interfaces that are awesome, innovative, or exceptionally usable. Mostly awesome. <comment><USER2> Ipod

<comment><AUTHOR> Overrated...pod

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Zippo lighter

</comment><comment><USER4> 37 signals' apps and last.fm</comment>


Compilation of revenue figures for different kinds of startups - <AUTHOR> http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/compilation-revenue-figures-different-startups.htm?from=hn

<comment><USER2> This is a great round-up and awesome information to have. But I'd be way more interested in the profits other bootstrapped startups are seeing.</comment>


Artifact SETI - <AUTHOR> http://www.personal.psu.edu/jtw13/blogs/astrowright/2013/03/artifact-seti.html

<comment><USER2> I've been watching too much Warehouse 13. I thought it was a SETI-like project to find Artifacts at first.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project, Costume Database - <AUTHOR> http://costumedb.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, it's not 100% finished but plenty functional. Log in upload and vote on costumes, create your own public profile, and just in general let me know what you think! I wanted to create an easier way to find cool costumes. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, let me know of any feature requests! :)

<comment><USER2> I had an idea the other day when trying to think of a costume idea for my friend. You could do it.

For each costume, break it down into its components.

Clark Kent: black glasses, superman t-shirt, fake press pass, black suit. (Basically just tags)

Then allow someone to input all the random crap they have laying around their house and you can tell them which costumes they can create from that random crap.

It's like an ingredient based recipe search engine, but for costumes. <http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients.aspx>

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting... haha I actually stripped out the tagging features lol I'll re- add them

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some suggestions: \- Include ability to vote on pictures from the thumbnails, and without having to click on the picture and go to its own page first.

\- Include ability to vote without logging in. It's a huge barrier for people wanting to participate. At the very least have an easy facebook log-in.

\- Have more costumes, at least 100x this much. There's a lot of sources where you can find users showing off their costumes (like reddit).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I like your advice and will implement it today or tomorrow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea and execution. Now you just need to link up with some costume/craft sellers for monetization. You of course have the seasonal problem of extreme interest for a few weeks, but maybe it can be an active site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'll definitely look into more things to do with the site :)

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of other times during the year in which people wear costumes. Theme parties, for one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the NES cartridge costume... would've loved it to see that in person ;D. Great work, I wish you posted before I wore my lame costume this weekend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :) yeah it was fun to make, but wayyyy too bulky to wear at the club haha</comment></comment>


Stack Overflow Research: MongoDB Is the Database Most Wanted by Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/stack-overflow-research-most-wanted-database <comment><USER2> MongoDB is a nice shortcut for when you don't want to deal with a schema at the beginning but that's all it is - a shortcut.

Turns out schemas exist for a reason and will save your ass later down the line, and I'm not even talking about Mongo's dubious transactionality, atomicity or lack of good tooling.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >> The document data model and MongoDB Query Language, giving developers the fastest way to innovate in building transactional, operational, and analytical applications.

I'm pretty skeptical about this. It seems they kinda advertise it as traditional OLTP database.

<comment><USER3> I agree. That sounds like a marketing speak translation of developers saying they're familiar with it and/or they have an existing code base of examples they base off of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I say go for it, junior devs. Stable, mature, scalable relational databases will still be here when you're tired of recovering corrupt databases and implementing second-rate locking and transactions in application code.

</comment><comment><USER5> Was All-In MDB stock at $28. Glad I insisted my own opinions

</comment><comment><USER6> except on HN, where PG is the only thing for everything always :D the world is a nail. where's my hammer?

<comment><USER6> the other day someone talked about using PG to make a key-value store, and I hit my forehead hard enough that it hurt.

I didn't have the heart to tell them to examine the PG source code, or any other database, and see what sort of primitives are underneath the hood....

<comment><USER6> but didn't Mongo change their license and basically try to shake everyone down? and then revert this... or am I imagining things here or transposing a villain from a differen DB drama?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is LinkedIn's Suggested Connections default now add all 50? - <AUTHOR> I accepted a request today and noticed their suggestions filled out a list of 50 people, all of them checked and they have a button to add all 50 at once.
Are they that desperate to get their numbers up? Why on earth would you be adding 50 people at a time as connections? It's pretending it's people I know, but I recognized 7/50 names.
screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/wWIgKMe.png <comment><USER2> Best guess is that they are just trying to get you to connect to more people.

You could be right: [https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/linkedin-10-million- monthly-a...](https://medium.com/@wtfmitchel/linkedin-10-million-monthly- active-users-a482e2ecc086)

>Unfortunately and according to my sources within Microsoft, this may be due LinkedIn's monthly active usership plummeting since their acquisition as speculated above. Just how bad is it? LinkedIn's monthly active users have supposedly been reduced to a paltry 10,000,000 users per month by winter/spring of 2017 or roughly 10% of what it was during summer of 2016</comment>


Which hosting provider do you use? - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
from the past 5 years i am running couple of websites but i am frusteted with my host. there are CPU cycle limitations. i have a site which is getting lots of traffic,comes around alexa 60,000 rank. so i am facing lots of downtime. which host will u recommend,what is price and what is your feedback,please share.
Thanks, <comment><USER2> I've been politely asked to leave 3 different shared hosting companies. Most advertise unlimited disk space and bandwidth, but they never offer unlimited CPU cycles or disk I/O. For the past two years, I've been hosting with Rackspace Cloud (Cloud Sites, Cloud Files, and Cloud Servers).

Cloud Sites is nice because it scales with demand, and there is no upper limit to CPU cycles. The one caveat is that the databases don't scale (basic master/slave setup), so you'll have to go heavy on the caching for DB based sites. This tradeoff is worth it to me because I don't have to worry about server administration or scalability.

<http://www.rackspacecloud.com/?id=605>

</comment><comment><USER3> Slicehost share out CPU cycles based on the size of the VPS. e.g. a 521MB VPS has 2x the CPU of a 256MB VPS.

They also do 64bit distros, which may help your CPU load.

I assume you have investigated where that CPU goes and consider refactoring, caching etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> For generic sites(wordpress, forums, clients websites, etc), which run php/mysql, I use liquidweb.

For custom applications, I use and recommend Linode.

<comment><USER5> I second Liquidweb. We've used them for over a year now and our servers runs like a champ. I'm actually going to test their new cloud product, Storm On Demand, soon. Hope it's also awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use thishosting.com . I'm not sure that the standrat planes are situated for you, but this Guys are doing their job very well! So, check it up!

</comment><comment><USER7> I use ASmallOrange (shared), Prgmr (VPS) and App engine for hosting my sites.

At 60K alexa, you should really be looking at a VPS.

<comment><USER8> +1 app engine. It's pretty great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use Cloud Servers on Rackspace Cloud. You have to know how to setup a server but the per hour costs are pretty good.</comment>


Introducing Preemptible VMs - <AUTHOR> http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/05/Introducing-Preemptible-VMs-a-new-class-of-compute-available-at-70-off-standard-pricing.html <comment><USER2> This is a great announcement. Preemptible VMs are a great strategy if:

        * you don't care too much about when a workload finishes
        * it can be chunked into small units of interruptible work
        * the cost of resuming interrupted work is zero or small

Examples of workloads that might look like this:

        * geocoding large batches of addresses
        * map-reducing large event streams
        * content scraping/crawling

Notice that you don't need to run _all_ of your cluster as preemptible if you're using bdutil [0], too -- some of the workload can be preemptible, and some not. So you can guarantee a minimum processing throughput, but get extra throughput for very cheap.

I think that's a great way to do it, though I wish it was generalized for all kinds of clusters, not just for Hadoop ones.

[0] [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/bdutil](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/bdutil)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I added it to bdutil since it was clearly useful and yet well understood that it would do the right thing. I'd love to see more cluster and machine management tools deal with "machines can come and go".

The guys on the go team are using it for their buildbots ([http://build.golang.org](http://build.golang.org)) which was already prepared for the box to die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Any developer who was burned by App Engine pricing in the past is likely to take the lure of a "70% off" discount with a grain of salt because of the much higher cost of incorrectly relying on Google's pricing pledges.

In case anyone forgets, the pricing changes on Google App Engine caused many developers to abandon apps they had developed on the platform because of hundreds of percent increases in pricing:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google- appengine/rSh...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google- appengine/rSh8mgw2f3c)

<comment><USER4> I can immediately off the top off my head think of no less than four examples of useful services Google has discontinued or EOL'ed: Google Reader, Google Code, Google Wave, and XMPP support for Google Voice.

So as well as potential future price hikes, you should be prepared for the possibility that this service might not be around for the long haul. Therefore you should skip using any Google-specific functionality, and instead implement a design that allows you to easily migrate to another VM vendor.

<comment><USER5> I never got the "google shuts everything down" mentality that has become so prevalent.

I could easily beat those 4 with a multitude of examples from both Apple and Microsoft, that doesn't mean that any of them are untrustworthy, just that they evolve and continue to grow.

At least when google shuts down a service, they give a good amount of "heads up" to those using it, provide examples of trustworthy equivalent services from competitors, and ALWAYS provide an export function if it makes sense to have one.

<comment><USER6> Apple and Microsoft may discontinue support/sales but the hardware/software they sold you continues to function. That is inherently not true of "cloud" services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As we put in the docs, to try this out:

      gcloud compute instances create my-vm --preemptible --zone=us-central1-c

or just set the preemptible bool to true via the API (it's under scheduling). When you want to test how your system behaves on preemption, you can just do:

      gcloud compute instances stop my-vm --zone=us-central1-c

which will give you the same 30 second timeout as when you're preempted. Most OSes have a fairly standard set of things they do on shutdown that will at least send all your running processes a signal (via kill), but if you need to add your own you can inject it via the new shutdown script support ([https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/shutdownscript](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/shutdownscript)).

We tried to cover this in the docs ([https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/preemptible](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/preemptible)) any feedback on that would be welcome!

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice! This ties in with the discussion yesterday on HN about data center utilization. Good for saving money and the end result must be lower global energy use if this also catches on with other providers (AWS already offers something similar).

When I worked at Google in 2013 part of my job was running very large calculations that were often pre-empted. I usually ran at the lowest priority and was in effect using spare capacity. No hassles, assuming that getting runs completed was not too time sensitive.

<comment><USER8> Could you point me at the datacenter utilization article? I can't seem to find it, and it sounds interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might be missing something important here. But according to their pricing page[1], a preemtible VM with 30GB memory costs $86.4 a month.

Why would someone go for this when cheap dedicated host providers like hetzner etc offer powerful dedicated servers with 64GB memory and multicore server grade CPUs? The comparison only gets worse taking into account that Google's offering is preemptible and can shutdown and come up as they wish.

[1]: [https://cloud.google.com/compute/#pricing](https://cloud.google.com/compute/#pricing) (0.12x24x30)

<comment><USER10> It's like asking why do people use Serviced Offices which are usually 10x the price of a monthly rented office. Answers: because they only need the office / VM for a few hours. Because they can immediately get an office / VM of any size they need. Because they can walk away from the office / VM when they don't need it any longer. It's certainly not for everyone, but Regus seem to be doing ok.

<comment><USER11> And for those who truly only need it now and again, it's great.

But time and time again I see infrastructure where people pay for these services for large amount of instances that are running continuously, blindly assuming that it's cheap because it's cloud. There's a bizarre level of price- blindness amongst certain subset of customers of Google Cloud and AWS that I've never seen anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> @boulos, since it looks like you're involved with this: The link to the product pricing [1] goes to a generic landing page for Google services, which is a little confusing. I think you should link directly to the instance pricing [2].

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/pricing/#compute- engine](https://cloud.google.com/pricing/#compute-engine)

[2] [https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing](https://cloud.google.com/compute/pricing)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, as part of our larger pricing announcement we're making sure people go to /pricing so they get a bigger picture before diving straight to the table ;)

[Edit: Point taken though]

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how big the chance is that the machine is turned off in the first hour.

I use Google Compute for some personal project and the typical run time for a VM is about 10 - 20 minutes. If the vm has 90% chance to survive the first hour, it could be worth the trouble to make my process more fault tolerable.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not ready to put hard numbers on it. As our docs ([https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/preemptible](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/preemptible)) say:

The probability that Compute Engine will terminate a preemptible instance for a system event is generally low, but may vary from day to day and from zone to zone depending on current conditions.

Give it a shot in us-central1-a and let us know how it goes!

[Edit to undo my quote text (it wrapped poorly)]

<comment><USER14> I couldn't figure out from the docs, can one restart a preempted preemptible instance, or needs to start a different one? Would it be possible to restart in non-preemptible mode, so the job completes but at a higher price? We still want to complete our workloads, one way or another :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you can start a VM back up via gcloud:

       gcloud compute instances start instance-name

Note of course that if you got preempted because we needed the capacity back for regular VMs (as opposed to say a maintenance event) you may not be able to start a new Preemptible VM in that zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome. Thank you Google for another great addition to hassle-free cloud computing.

</comment><comment><USER16> How does their pricing compare to ec2 spot instances?

<comment><USER12> The fundamental difference seems to be that Google's prices are fixed, whereas AWS uses a "market" model, which frequently sees crazy prices (well over the on-demand price) especially in us-east-1.

I say "market" because no-one really knows how the spot market place actually works. We've had machines run for weeks, and other times the prices fluctuate in bizarre ways and we can't get out preferred instance types for hours or (in the worst case) days. There's an interesting analysis here: [http://santtu.iki.fi/2014/03/20/ec2-spot- market/](http://santtu.iki.fi/2014/03/20/ec2-spot-market/)

<comment><USER17> We had the same problem with getting priced out of c3.8xlarge in Virginia. We fixed it by changing our allocation algorithm to find alternate instance types and zones. For example, instead of 1 c3.8xlarge, it might pick 2 c3.4xlarge instances or a cc2.8xlarge. Seems to work so far.

I looked through the pricing table and played with the calculator, it seems something equivalent to our needs would cost around a third more on google but each cpu would have twice as much ram. Not worth it for us.

<comment><AUTHOR> For people coming from AWS, we currently don't have an instance shape that lines up with the c3/c4 ratio (pushing you either to our n1-standards or n1-highcpu-. Can you get by with _less_ memory?

Note: we're very aware of this pain point, and maybe you'll see something soon ;).

<comment><USER17> We need maybe 1GB for each job, but we need some leeway to avoid the OOM killer when a group of work units is larger. Swapping takes so long that it's not cost effective.

But to be honest about the situation, the cost would have to be much lower to make it worthwhile for me to rewrite our scheduler on Google's API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And this is where a tool like mesos + aurora/marathon really really shines. The same can be said for the likes of kubernetes.

<comment><USER19> Could certainly be interesting for cheaply expanding Mesos slaves to cope with a workload spike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Now I am waiting to see a similar thing in Azure.

Preemptible VMs will prove to be very useful in fault tolerant Distributed Networks.

One more usecase that I can think off is Load Testing on a large scale ( in a distributed way ).

</comment><comment><USER21> The 1970s just called. They want their batch processing back. :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> Any reason you couldn't use these for conventional web stuff? 30 seconds could easily be long enough to bring up another instance and sync data if needed.

<comment><USER23> By "conventional web stuff", do you mean serving a website or similar? Yeah, I don't think it makes sense to host a website on a service that is preemptible. You need your webserver available to respond to requests 24/7\. It can't just randomly go down. Pre-emptible instances are more suited for batch processing and big data computation runs.

<comment><USER24> If you have a website that can be distributed among arbitrarily many frontend servers, it could make sense to put them on preemptible instances, with the database on a regular instance. (In the unlikely case no preemptible instances are available, you could always automatically switch the frontend servers to regular ones.) However, I think this could only possibly be efficient pricing- wise if your traffic was extremely bursty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So... this is essentially first come, first served based on their description. And they say the preemptibles come from a smaller pool of resources. Seems odd to me they wouldn't have a number somewhere of how many are available and how many are in use given that it's a finite resource.

Tough to build a business model around a resource you can't even determine the availability of.

<comment><USER26> > Though to build a business model around a resource you can't even determine > the availability of.

That's exactly why it's cheap: you're trading price for reliability.

<comment><USER25> reliability != availability. I can build a business model around an unreliable, but available resource. I can't build a business model around an unavailable resource. They're two very different things, and the distinction is important.

<comment><USER27> This basically for batch-processing. That means that the lack of availability isn't such an issue because this lets you trade speed-of-processing for cost.

Say you have a few hundred terabytes of images to process. You can prioritize images by pushing them to the head of the queue, but you don't really care how long the complete batch takes.

If you are happy to wait for your job to complete you pay less. Otherwise, pay more and guarantee completion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At a penny per core per instance hour the cost is about 7 dollars a month. I can get a normal dedicated VM for cheaper... What's the benefit in this?

<comment><USER29> > What's the benefit in this?

You're not buying a dedicated instance for a month, you're renting it as long as you need it. If you only need a core for an hour, your bill will be $0.01.</comment></comment>


NZ Mashup competition entries and winners - <AUTHOR> http://www.mixandmash.org.nz/2011-winners

<comment><AUTHOR> (note: one of the entries is mine. But the other entries are much better!)

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't know, the winners are kind of disappointing. The winning entry "100 companies" is just some dot charts of some public data, and most of the time the axes on the charts are not even marked.</comment>


Tilda is the web design tool for the rest of us - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/tilda-is-the-web-design-tool-for-the-rest-of-us/ <comment><USER2> Funny how this same blogspam ended up on a bunch of different sites[0] in the same instant, each attributed to a different author. ("Agatha Christie"? seriously?)

[0] techgig dailytechgadgets globoble ...</comment>


Strict ID Laws Don't Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S.Nationwide Panel,2008–2016 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/19-076_d6d50f60-0972-4680-b633-5667cb4de1ad.pdf <comment><USER2> Maybe not a great citation: (A) working paper, (B) business school, (C) buried the lede.

The real conclusion is at the end of the abstract:

"ID requirements have no effect on fraud either – actual or perceived. Efforts to improve elections may be better directed at other reforms"

<comment><USER3> People who support Voter ID are being called racist. This working paper goes against that story line. Therefore, we will never here about this working paper in the mainstream media (e.g. New York Times). If the working paper had found otherwise, I am certain the results would have been broadcast far and wide.

<comment><USER2> Not entirely, that's why I noted the buried lede. Voter ID doesn't have any effect on fraud, either, if we believe the paper. So, it's entirely possible that it is racist to impose voter ID laws. At the very least we should acknowledge that voter ID laws from the 1890s to the 1950s were very definitely imposed on a racist basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55734](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55734)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm getting a 404.

<comment><USER3> If you search the Harvard Busness School for the article, it is there.</comment></comment>


Show HN: From Excel-hell to cloud database heaven in 5 steps - <AUTHOR> https://restdb.io/blog/from-excel-hell-to-cloud-database-heaven <comment><USER2> In no part of heaven is there a monthly subscription fee.

In no part of heaven does your data go _poof_ and disappear if some 3rd party company goes under.

In no part of heaven is privacy of your data at the mercy of a 3rd party, that doesn't share your interests.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meh. When it comes to spreadsheet hell, the issues are usually human, not technical. It's getting people away from defaulting to spreadsheets as a data source/destination that is the problem. It's a cultural problem that is unlikely to be solved by a technical solution any time soon.

And no, there's no way this happens in 5 steps. Spreadsheet hell usually exists because of poor data management practices and/or lack of understanding. In other words there's some underlying reason people think they need to use spreadsheets instead of other data management tools.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks quite cool! Excel spreadsheets do worryingly much work in industry, and lack even mediocre software industry practices.

It's confusing to me why the article spends so much time describing Excel->CSV translation pitfalls, when the screenshots indicate "Excel" is a supported format. As a developer, I can understand _why_ , but handling those differences internally would make for a much more seamless user experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> I presume that the implication is that a local database, being midway, is purgatory.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't migrating away from so-called Excel hell exactly the sort of thing a traditional RDBMS is for? It's already tabular data, I feel like MongoDB (the tech behind the platform allegedly) is just adding another layer of confusion for this use case. Don't get me wrong, there are places where NoSQL works great, but spreadsheets aren't one of them.

</comment><comment><USER7> You misspelled "genius" as "genious".</comment>


Succinct Data Structures: Cramming 80,000 words into a Javascript file - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=120 <comment><USER2> What a wonderful hack! I thought that succinct data structures were not really feasible in JS because of the lack of unsigned integer arithmetic, but here they are implemented doing arithmetic directly on base64 6 bit "bytes", without passing through JS numbers. Very clever, I wonder how fast this implementation performs compared to jeresig's implementations (I'd say that the bottleneck is the binary search in `select`)

BTW, if anyone is interested in succinct data structures, there are very good libraries for Java (<http://sux4j.dsi.unimi.it/>) and C++ (<http://www.uni- ulm.de/in/theo/research/sdsl>).

PS. the job listing at the bottom of the page is awesome, compared to the usual BS:

> Some benefits: You'll probably get a next-generation Blackberry that you > have to hide under the table when in restaurants. You get to know what's > going on when a call drops or a web page isn't loading. Plus, it's a small > team so you get to own a large chunk of the project.

Makes me almost want to apply :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Succinct data structures are very interesting.

I recently implemented an FM-Index[1] which supports the following operations:

\- count() the number of occurrences of a pattern P of length m in O(m) time.

\- locate() determine the locations of all occurrences of a pattern P.

\- extract() extract any substring from the Text

\- recover the original text

The most interesting part is that the size constructed index depends on the compressibility of the text itself. For English text roughly half the size of the original text.

Construction time and memory requirements, however are not that great.

[1] <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1082039>

<comment><USER2> Did you compare your implementation with others? There has been a lot of algorithm engineering effort on FM-indexes and CSAs (in general, full text self-indexes), and there is a common testbed to compare the implementations:

<http://pizzachili.dcc.uchile.cl/>

<comment><USER3> My implementation is very similar to SSA_RRR on the pizza&chilli website. The index implementations on the website are not easy to understand (research code + 8 years old) so I'm trying to re-implement a few of them (especially CSA).

I used some of the test data on the website to test my implementation [1] but didn't really compare to their other indexes.

Also make sure to always use the chilean mirror as the italian one is outdated (2005).

[1] <https://github.com/mpetri/FM-Index>

<comment><USER2> > My implementation is very similar to SSA_RRR on the pizza&chilli website.

Thanks for the code, I've seen you are using libcds's wavelet tree. I was wondering if you had implemented your own, since apart from libcds and sdsl (and some unreadable research code) I couldn't find any other implementation of the WT so I'm always curious to see if there are any developments in the engineering of wavelet trees, the current implementations are still too slow to be really useful, I think.

<comment><USER3> I'm trying to get myself to implement a wavelet tree. There is however a lot of low level stuff that I'm still not sure how to implement. Especially RRR.

This paper [1] is the most recent practical wavelet tree paper I know of.

[1] <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1483966>

<comment><USER2> There is also this one: <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1198521>

Instead of RRR it uses RLE and gamma codes. Oddly, I have found no comparisons between this approach and RRR. I would expect RLE to compress better, and it is also conceptually simpler, but I don't know how fast it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would be interesting to see how this method compares to the benchmarks John did in his post.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, in particular it would be great to see how the load time compares. John found that even loading literal JSON in a JavaScript interpreter is _much_ slower than loading a comparable length string. Presumably the latter is just a buffer copy operation.

<comment><USER6> There are a couple of things to balance. I'm building a word game myself right now, and ran into these same issues. I found that loading a string for each letter of the alphabet worked adequately. It is not clever in the least, and far from optimal, but it ended up with a reasonable size / load time / processing trade off in the browser.</comment></comment></comment>