Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here's How to Stop Them - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/smarter-living/stop-robocalls.html?sl_rec=mostpopular_sample_dedup&contentCollection=smarter-living&mData=articles%255B%255D%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2017%252F08%252F14%252Fsmarter-living%252Fsolar-eclipse-watch-time-location.html%253Fsl_rec%253Dmostpopular_sample_dedup%2526sl_l%253D1%26articles%255B%255D%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2017%252F05%252F11%252Fsmarter-living%252Fstop-robocalls.html <comment><USER4> It amazes me that most of you don't question the fact that you (north americans?) are paying to _receive_ phone calls. Here (Spain, but I think it applies to all the euro zone) we just do not pay to receive calls, which seems much more sensible to me.

How would you feel if some random mailguy knocked at your door and when you opened it he threw a package at your hands and immediately charged you for (part of) the delivery? This is exactly how charging to receive phone calls feels to me!

How do telcos justify this to you? What's the reasoning behind it?

<comment><USER5> I'm not from the US, but I have worked with the US telecoms industry. The original reason for this was due to the numbering plan. In most countries a special 'area' code was chosen for mobiles, however in the US they decided to just allocate mobile numbers in the existing area codes (NPAs). At least in the early days of cellular it cost the providers more to connect a call to a cell phone and so someone has to pay it. In a numbering plan where it is possible to tell a number is mobile just by looking you can put that cost onto the caller, but if it looks like a landline then the caller would feel hardly done by getting charged extra. So that extra cost was put onto the cell phone user accepting the call. This is hearsay from colleagues so may not be 100% accurate, but it makes sense to me.

<comment><USER6> You can migrate your landline number to a cellphone plan in Europe. There is no way to know whats on the other side when you are making a call.

<comment><USER7> Not in every country in Europe. UK for instance you can't (is that considered Europe now?).

You can't even keep your landline when you move house.

<comment><USER8> Yes UK is in Europe and I think will be for the next few million years - <USER2> you meant the Political body - the European Union. Oh yes we're still in that and will be for a few years at least.

As to the landline number, you can keep your landline number if you don't move into an area where the phone numbers 'region' code is not applicable.

Just like I am sure that is the case for every other country in the world (or thereabouts).

I am curious to know with regard to USA phone numbers where I cannot tell a mobile from a landline by just looking at the number (e.g, UK Mobile numbers can be identified because they are 07xxx numbers) but US mobile numbers look like landlines and have the same area code.

Can you move to a different state and keep your number even if the area code for that state is completely different?

<comment><USER7> Well with BT which is the national provider in the UK you can't keep your landline number when you move if you are moving to another exchange (which is most likely).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work at RoboKiller.com

I've always thought the way to battle this problem is to waste the callers time. The longer you keep them on the phone, the more expensive and less profitable their robocall operation becomes. With enough people doing this, it could slow them down.

At RoboKiller we intercept the call so it doesn't ring your phone or go to voicemail. Instead what happens is we answer the call on our end and proceed to waste the callers time by tricking them into thinking they're talking to a human. Its really funny actually. We send you the recording when we're finished.

A couple weeks ago we reached a point where the top robocallers caught on to what we were doing. It was a proud moment for all of us. You can listen for yourself...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi- qtTuO9rY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi-qtTuO9rY)

<comment><USER10> never have I had a stronger "shut up and take my money" moment. I noticed that you only have a ios app at the moment. Any plans on supporting android?

<comment><USER9> Here's an honest answer... we definitely want to support Android, but we don't have the resources to do it right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am at the point where I no longer answer my phone if it isn't one of my contacts. If it is important, they will leave a message. I just press the hang up button on my watch immediately, if it shows an unrecognized number, local or not.

<comment><USER12> If you have an iOS phone, you can set it up to do this for you.

Do Not Disturb + allow calls only from contacts = whitelist of callers.

<comment><USER13> I tried this, but Do Not Disturb silences all texts, including those from contacts. Deal breaker for me.

<comment><USER12> There's an (awkward) way around that with Emergency Bypass:

[https://www.imore.com/how-receive-messages-specific- contacts...](https://www.imore.com/how-receive-messages-specific-contacts-do- not-disturb-mode)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The only way I found to fight them requires me to get annoyed enough that I can devote a half-hour for the following:

\- follow through the automated prompts

\- get to the tier 1 pre-screening agent (usually some outsourced call-center) and feign interest

\- get transferred to the next level and go fishing for a contact on their end

\- if they require a credit card to continue, provide a test number from stripe/paypal etc.

\- remain nice and pose as gullible the whole time until you get that real contact info

\- once you got a direct number of a real account rep (and/or company name), set up a script and call them ~ 100 times with an auto-generated message asking them to remove your number. A variant if it's a legit company with a toll-free number: have your script call them and stay on as long as possible, to make them pay for the call.

This is fighting fire with fire and it only works one group at a time. But it does provides momentary satisfaction.

<comment><USER15> Be careful with any sort of auto-dialer, even if you script it up yourself. If the contact number you're given happens to be a cell phone, you'll run afoul of the TCPA. Those fines can add up quickly.

<comment><USER16> I'm going to go ahead and guess that the FCC would choose not to move forward with fines in this case. :-P

<comment><USER15> I was wrong to use the term 'fine'. The TCPA expressly allows individuals to sue for _damages_. The FCC need not get involved.

If someone auto-dials your cell phone, and you can figure out who it is, you can take them to court with a good chance of recovering money from them. If you can prove a willful violation, which isn't necessarily a high bar, you can get treble damages ($500 becomes $1,500). Multiply that by the number of calls.

The hardest part is determining who actually called you. If you can get past that hurdle, the court costs aren't terribly expensive, and you can exact a tidy sum from repeat offenders. There are actually lawyers who specialize in these kinds of cases, and because they aren't terribly expensive to pursue, they'll even take them on contingency. I learned about this through a Reddit AMA with such an attorney. Of course, a determined individual can prevail without hiring a lawyer, provided they're willing to put in the time (and can unmask the caller).

<comment><USER17> Run the number through Twilio's lookup API first: [https://twilio.com/lookup](https://twilio.com/lookup)

It'll provide carrier and connection type info for the DID.

<comment><USER15> Not sure how that helps when the caller spoofs the caller ID. According to Twilio, the spam call I received earlier today came a number registered a T-Mobile customer named Sharon. Pretty sure the actual origin was a call center overseas. They just picked a random number that had the same first six digits as my own number.

<comment><USER17> In that case, it does not help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Full disclosure: I work for First Orion (the company powering the analytics behind T-Mobile's "Scam-Likely" technology)

We have a couple of apps out in the wild that aren't mentioned in the article here (seems like our media relations staff isn't working too hard)!

They're on Google Play and iTunes under the banner "PrivacyStar," and I think they are worth checking out if the permissions / data accessed by other apps (e.g. Hiya) has turned you off in the past. For starters, our apps don't lift your contacts and don't strictly require your personal phone number (the majority of our apps still use your number, but we are moving away from including this data in our analytics). We collect analytic data from devices, but in general it's the minimum amount required to power our nuisance-call prevention systems. (I'm not aware of it being sold or farmed out in any way.)

Anyway, there's my elevator pitch. Just doing my part to get our name out there, we're a small tech company in AR and it's hard to get any attention down here! :)

<comment><USER19> Can you address any of the negative reviews? Seems like there's quite a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The tips in the article don't work in my case. I do all of them and get about 3-5 robocalls per day.

One of the most prolific robo scammers that calls me just about every weekday spoofs their number to match the first 6 digits of my own phone number (area code included).

<comment><USER21> While traveling in Europe, my mom got a SIM card so she could have Internet access. It came with a phone number, which she didn't tell anybody. A couple days later she got a call from a number that matched the first 6 digits of her home number.

Therefore: The SIM card vendor in Europe shared not only her number, but additional personal data allowing the robo-caller to determine her home number in the US.

<comment><USER22> Was it a European phone number?

I think you might be too paranoid, and the explanation is simpler: if you dial enough numbers, eventually you'll find some idiot willing to hand over control of their computer, or their credit card number, or social security number.

<comment><USER21> Yes, she received a European number a few days prior, and then received a call from a number matching the first six digits of her US home number. It was the only call that she received on this number. I was there.

Granted you could be correct, but it was a weird coincidence, with one in a million odds. She's quite tech savvy -- taught CS in the early 80s.

<comment><USER22> Ah, if someone faking a number like hers called her on an otherwise unconnected european number, that's definitely... shady.

I'd contact her service provider for that sim card. They'd probably like to know that an employee is selling numbers, or that a retailer is, etc. (Unless they're doing it themselves.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As I did mention a month or so ago in a post related to robocall I decided myself to tackle a solution to help fight those calls. I am still working on it as a side project, and 90% of the backend system is done, and probably 50% of the iPhone app done (considering to add Android support later). It will add a twist on the way to fight such calls do it has at least a feature that differentiate it from similar apps.

If anyone will want to help beta test when it is ready (require an iPhone with iOS 10 or 11), ping me! (Email info in profile)

<comment><USER24> Can you give a hint of what it does differently than the current "report spam"/"suspected spam caller" feature of Android?

<comment><USER23> Not right now, since it is one of the aspect where my app will be different than other app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Largely unhelpful article.

Summary:

\- yes there are more robocalls

\- Don't pick up

\- Put your number on do not call list

\- Get an app to block them

<comment><USER26> > \- Get an app to block them

I'd soon change my number before resorting to most apps. Unless it's like uBlockOrigin where I just feed blacklists into it, I'm not really okay with giving an organization besides my service provider my call history. Read Nomorobo's TOS sometime, it's a doozy.

<comment><USER27> This is how the call blocking API on iOS works. The blocker app can only provide a static, pre-set list of numbers to block to the OS, and that's it. It has no access to call history, awareness of calls being received/made, etc. The OS handles all the blocking, referring to the blacklist the app provided earlier, and provides no feedback to the app itself about this.

Of course, this means that call blocking apps have less features than on Android. For example, apps can't dynamically look up a number when a call is revived and make an on-the-fly decision. This is in keeping with iOS' philosophy of "privacy/security over features", vs. Android's "everything is completely open to developers, for better or worse".

<comment><USER28> It also means that the ultimate call blocking mechanism I've always wanted isn't available on iOS: Only allow calls from known numbers in my address book. Frustrating, because to achieve such a concept I've had to resort to DND mode in iOS which then also blocks all push notifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A great observation by tacostakohashi a year ago was that "peak telephone" was the mid-1990s and its success is what kills it, following the same pattern as postal mail, fax, email, usenet, and facebook:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551566)

<comment><USER30> Now you can often get so much more done talking to online chat for whatever utility or organization. I guess it's only a matter of time before you're talking to a robot there too (or is it happening already?) So have we perhaps reached "peak communication"?

At least until the direct neural implant, when we can express or receive the information we need by joining minds. But then will there be frustrating computer minds that we have to interface with?

<comment><USER31> You think emailing or chatting your common utility will get your change order processed in a reasonable timeframe? I've got bad news for you, knowing a few people who work at local utilities, those emails you send in get to sit for months in some cases before being processed, meanwhile an order put in when you call in gets processed within days.

Many utilities just opened up the floodgates to email and other forms of customer service, without adding any staff to handle said workload, hence the severe backlog at many of these utilities. Same deal with meter readers, most utilities have stopped hiring them because within 2 to 3 years, the utility will have a new smart meter system implemented across the board, and they'd rather not fire a whole team outright. Letting the employees churn without replacing them is much less dramatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> One of the sad things that broke when number porting became a thing was there was no definitive answer of which phones were cell phones and which were land lines. This was unfortunate because if you were called on your cell phone for a long time it would cost you money, and if someone called in an unsolicited way, you had 'damages' that you could sue for on the theory that they knew it was a cell phone and they called it anyway. Now however they have reasonable doubt and so they call whenever.

I wrote the FCC once and suggested that a good use of some of those fees I pay would be to create a service that would instantly back trace and log a complaint on a number using telemetry from inside the phone system. That combined with a federal criminal statute which allowed for jail time for masking the origin of a phone call and I think you could make to fairly costly for the owners and enablers of this stuff.

<comment><USER33> In the UK, all mobile numbers start with "07". Simple solution to this problem.

<comment><USER34> Until you run out of numbers starting with 07?

France started with 06 and is now using 07… but 08 is already taken for some other purposes.

<comment><USER35> Then existing 07x numbers would be made 071x numbers, and repeat.

But the existing 07x range is effectively 9 digits long, (with a few chunks out of it) so we're probably good for a while.

We've not started 072 and barely touched 076 (and 071 is currently unused but that's sensible if the existing might ever be bumped to start 071).

Our population count is a good way way away from being 9 digits.

Already (because of number porting) you have numbers from networks now home in the middle of number ranges of their competitors.

But I think we're more likely to see a separation of number/device before that 071x happens. Devices or SIMs will have an IPv6 address and your number is separate but accessible. Time will tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why do mobile phones not provide the option, "if caller is not in contacts, send immediately to voice mail". Seems like a simple check box.

<comment><USER37> Both Android and iOS have "Do Not Disturb" features which almost accomplish this. On my Android phone, the "Priority only" setting will silence any calls from outside your contacts list. It would be ideal to be able to send directly to VM, but this option definitely minimizes the distraction. I have it enabled 24/7, except when I know I'm expecting a call from an unknown number.

<comment><USER38> I use the "Mr. Number" app on Android to accomplish this. I have found that straight to VM instead of silencing the phone actually reduces the number of calls I get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nomorobo ([http://nomorobo.com](http://nomorobo.com)) is great for this too on iOS.

Fun fact about Aaron Foss, who started Nomorobo: In 2014 he was invited to testify to the FCC on his efforts to fight robocalling. To drive home the magnitude of the issue, he printed the anonymized call logs for the 15M calls blocked by NomoRobo, and bought the 25 boxes of printouts with him to the floor.

[https://www.wired.com/2015/01/guy-found-way-block- robocalls-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/01/guy-found-way-block-robocalls- phone-companies-wouldnt/)

<comment><USER40> Nomorobo is $1.99 per-month per-device! Why should I have to pay for the phone company not being able to screen out caller ID spoofers. This is a failure of the phone company and the technology.

<comment><USER41> I agree, it is a little pricy. Cost comes down over time. I don't know of any other service that is doing this at the moment. I hope within a year or so, we find an open source solution to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have had the same phone number for 15 years, and I have been getting A LOT of robocalls lately.

I tried stopping them with NoMoRobo on iOS. It worked OK, but it can't match "Unknown caller" or blocked numbers, which made it kind of worthless for me. Sigh.

<comment><USER43> Really wish stock android had an easy way of blocking all calls/notifications from callers without caller ID information.

<comment><USER44> I was just poking around in the settings for my new Android phone and found Settings > Applications > Phone > Call blocking > Block list > Block anonymous calls. Would that be helpful at all? I haven't tested it myself.

<comment><USER43> No such luck. Menu structure is different and dialer does not have that option (stock 7.1.2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I have slightly different way of dealing with them. I pick up, and either ask them to hold on because I'm outside/on the other line/doing something etc.. or if it's a robot I select option they want me to press to connect to the operator. Next I put them on hold and wait to see how long it takes them to disconnect. Record holder was 7 min 51 sec. When I have time I will also talk to them, feed them incorrect information, put them multiple times on hold etc. This wastes their time and money. Maybe if more people started doing that they it would no longer be profitable. :)

<comment><USER46> Exactly.

I did the same in Europe and calls lowered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Aren't unsolicited, electronic commercial messages illegal, or is calling somehow different from email?

As a Dutchman I've never received a call like that. Only once a text message (about 7 months ago), and I highly suspect that one was just sent by my ISP on the advertiser's behalf.

<comment><USER48> The USPS straight up sells your phone number when you move just by filling out the change of address form online. There is no opt out.

<comment><USER49> Can you provide some more information on this?

<comment><USER50> The article is from 2013 but I believe this is what he is referring to:

\- [https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how- the-p...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/08/how-the-post- office-sells-your-new-address-with-anyone-who-pays-and-the-little-known- loophole-to-opt-out/#7cae632039f3)

<comment><USER51> That says nothing about phone numbers, just addresses.

Selling an address updating service to parties that already have your address is not the same as "straight up sell[ing] your phone number when you move."

From the horses mouth:

"The information you supply will be used to provide you with the requested mail forwarding and related services. Please be aware that this service is voluntary, and that requested information is required to provide the service. Collection of information for this service is authorized by 39 U.S.C. §403 and 404. We do not disclose your personal information to anyone, except in accordance with the Privacy Act. Authorized disclosures include limited circumstances such as the following ... to mailers, if already in possession of your name and old mailing address, as an address correction service. Information will also be provided to licensed service providers of the USPS to perform mailing list correction service of lists containing your name and old address. A list of these licensed service providers can be obtained at the following URL: [http://ribbs.usps.gov/ncoalink](http://ribbs.usps.gov/ncoalink) /documents/tech_guides/CERTIFIED_LICENSEES"

They imply they only provide the new address but saying "the information you supply" leaves it open to for them to provide your phone number along with your new address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Google Fi provides this service out of the box. It shows you a red call screen if they think the call is a spam call and it'll ask you if you want to block that number. It's lowered my annoyance level a lot.

Somewhat related: if you want to stop receiving a ton of trash on your mailbox, you can ask all credit agencies to stop sending you "pre-approved" credit card offers. It's easily cut my trash mail in half: [https://www.optoutprescreen.com](https://www.optoutprescreen.com)

<comment><USER53> Pretty sure that's a native feature of the default Android dialer app, not just Fi: [http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app- no...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-now-shows-a- warning-about-spam-callers-and-makes-it-easy-to-block-and-report-them-apk- download/)

<comment><USER52> Ah, maybe. I have been using Android all the way back to 2011, but this is my first non-Samsung phone. I have used "stockish" Android before (CyanogenMod) but I guess those don't come with the actual default app as shipped by Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These are great bits of advice - for people with smartphones. What's my mom supposed to do? She visited here for a week, owns a flip phone, and gets - <USER3> minimum_ \- a dozen calls a day. We spent a whole day together, I counted.

The majority of them come from a single number, and apparently Verizon refuses to block it permanently without being paid a fee.

<comment><USER54> The only advice mentioned that is smartphone specific is the app suggestion. The rest are things like don't answer and register on the donotcall list which can be done with a rotary phone.

As for Verizon not blocking the number without charging you. Why not just switch?

<comment><USER55> Yeah if only the do not call list worked...

<comment><USER56> It doesn't work, but you should register anyway and report all instances. The people who maintain that list and abuses of it need to know how badly it is ignored. They need data on how big the problem really is. If they get only a few reports of it not working, well that is statistical noise and can be ignored. If everyone on the list constantly reports unwanted calls that is data that it isn't working and a sign they need to do something about it.

One obvious thing they can do about it is pressure the phone companies to stop allowing caller id spoofing. It isn't hard, if the number is from North America, then the phone companies verify it (if it is from a cell phone overseas they have verified the phone and should have verified the owner of the phone), otherwise it is fraud.

Caller id spoofing exists so companies with a private switch can have a bunch of different phones have the same number- but the phone company knows what numbers the company is allowed to use so the rest can be filtered.

Mind you the above will take a few years to implement. However nobody is working on it because if even one party that needs to do work doesn't the whole thing falls apart.

<comment><USER55> So is there an easy way to do it? I've reported repeat callers a number of times, and they just keep calling so I get weary of filling out forms online and stop. I want a big ol' button on my phone that I can slap whenever I'm dumb enough to answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I have had pretty good luck answering the phone and not saying anything. The call just ends without any recording. My volume has dropped from 2+ a day to 1 a week.

</comment><comment><USER58> >One recent scheme involves getting consumers to say "yes" and later using a recording of the response to allow unauthorized charges on the person's credit card account, the F.C.C. warned in March.

I doubt banks are using voice recognition on the single word "yes" to verify charges. Does this make any sense?

<comment><USER59> That's a case where it has happened a small number of times, complaints were filed, the FCC & Co. picked up on the scam, and they view it as their responsibility to keep the public safe so they generalize. Although I suppose given the speed at which AI is improving, the roboscammers will be utilizing more and more advanced methods soon when it comes to voice sample manipulation.

Most of this criminal activity is coming from outside the US, courtesy of Twilio & Co. having turned the phone number system into an API such that it's now easy to rapidly buy and ditch numbers for cheap. The only practical solution for the end-user point is to insert greater intelligence into the system at the carrier level or at the phone level.

We're facing a problem where very large numbers of phone numbers will be black listed given enough time, unless we insert a greater cost into the system to make the spamming unprofitable (or make it much harder to get a phone number via services like Twilio). The US could try targeting the criminal organizations and individuals operating these scams on the other end; of course that's expensive and slow, and those people will just keep popping up so long as it's easy to do and profitable. The improving and cheapening AI will make it more and more profitable, as the scammers learn to snake into new, more lucrative financial outlets using authentications / identities they steal.

<comment><USER60> Why would they need Twillio et all to give them new numbers, if as everyone (including in this thread) says they can spoof the number, even showing as the receiver's number itself?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Google android phones appear to be crowdsourcing countermeasures against spam calls. For instance, I have a Google nexus phone. Often, spam calls are indicated as such in android as I'm receiving a call. For calls that aren't indicated as spam and manage to receive my answer, I hang up and hold my finger down on the number until a menu appears where I can mark a number as spam.

<comment><USER62> I've been very pleased with this feature. I used to use TrueCall, but giving my call data to yet another third party felt wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Telcos should answer all calls to unregistered numbers with robots of their own. Simple way to prevent spammers from finding real people.

</comment><comment><USER64> The only way this stops is for the FCC to direct backbone providers to block non-US IP addresses that flood people with these calls.

</comment><comment><USER65> I started using the robokiller app and it's made a huge difference for me. I get at least a few telemarketer calls every day and I had stopped answering any phone calls. I've been using the app for a few months and now only get calls that I want. Definitely worth the money for me.

</comment><comment><USER66> The article recommends "Hiya" as an app among others. I have it on my phone, but I've had horrible luck with it. The app will correctly identify fraudulent or scam calls, but the program has prevented the call from reaching my phone exactly _0%_ of the time. In practice, what ends up happening is that my phone rings on the normal Android Dialer app, I decline the call, and then Hiya shows up about 20 seconds later to tell me that the call was from a suspected scam caller, which I already figured out when I decided to decline it.

Even after installing the thing, I'm forced to still do what I was doing before, which is looking at the number and trying to quickly google it on my PC before the ringing stops to figure out whether to answer or not.

<comment><USER67> My Google Nexus 6P phone has something like this built-in, I get a warning when the number is ringing that it's a suspected spam call. If I answer, it will ask me to confirm afterwards that it was indeed a Spam call (it always is) allow me to block it in the future.

I'm assuming this is built into the stock Android dialer.

<comment><USER66> No, it's only available to Google and Nexus phones. In fact, Google explicitly blocks non-Nexus phones from installing it:

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/05/14/google-has- updated-t...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/05/14/google-has-updated-the- google-dialer-to-block-sideloading-on-non-nexus-devices/)

I would love to have it, but I'm not going to buy a Pixel strictly for that purpose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I have never once had an unsolicited call on my cell phone number. I suspected it was because I simply never use it as a phone (data and text only) and therefore somehow stayed off the radar. This seems to validate that thought.

It's been an interesting decade, that's for sure. The whole world kind of expects you to have a phone number if you want to do business. Some people are confused, but more often than not it's their software or processes that insist I give a phone number. I leased a car recently and not giving out a number was perplexing to the sales Dept. I explained that I simply don't have one. They ultimately still wanted my business. I wasn't so lucky with getting a credit card.

<comment><USER30> Your suspicion is correct. Your number gets out there because you give it out, and then 10 years later the company goes under and liquidates their assets which includes a load of customer phone numbers; or because you give it out when you open a credit card or buy a mortgage or car, and you legally can't limit the sharing of your personal info to third parties, who can share your personal info as widely as they want... point is, not having a phone number will be tantamount to not having a social security number in many situations.

<comment><USER69> > point is, not having a phone number will be tantamount to not having a > social security number in many situations.

I think a phone number is shifting to be a replacement for social security numbers in customer databases.

My grocery store/gas station relationship, Guitar Center, jewelry store, and oil/lube service station. And that's just the last week-or-so interactions. They don't know my social, but they're using my phone as a primary key for their rewards/lookup.

<comment><USER70> Maybe I'm too young, but why would any retail merchant ask for a social security number? The only people I give that out to are banks.

<comment><USER69> For a while, a membership card number would have sufficed, but since no one carries that around, the retailers are assigning your phone number to your identity. Much like social security numbers did for the government back in its inception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Lenny - Recordings of an hilarious spam-buster. Great way to pass the time:

[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOG...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl- i_3g)

</comment><comment><USER72> Easiest way to deal with this is never say anything when you pick up.. the line just goes dead after a few seconds if it's a robo call

</comment><comment><USER73> I noticed the uptick in spam calls as well, even though my phone has been on the do not call list for years.

I changed my voicemail recording to: "You've reached the law offices of X and Y, please leave a message..." It seems to have worked so far.

<comment><USER74> The only time spammers leave me voicemail, it's an automated recording, I doubt any human spammer is evening listening to your "law offices of..." voicemail recording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Just a note of caution about Jolly Roger ([http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/](http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/)), I used to love forwarding spam calls to them. However, since you have to pick up the call to loop Jolly Roger in - the automated system might mark you for repeat calls. For instance I answered a call about student debt repayment or whatever to forward the call and since then I've been getting at least a few calls a week from different numbers about it as well as text messages.

<comment><USER76> I use Jolly Rodger as well and love it. I think you're correct about picking up the call getting you added to a list. When that happens I just go on the offensive. I call them back and forward the call over to Jolly Rodger multiple times. I have been blacklisted by every call center that I've done this with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> It should not be possible to spoof caller ID. This hole is what allows all of this. Nobody would do this if you could reliably report them or call them back.

</comment><comment><USER78> There's only a few people that I want to have the ability to have real-time interrupt-driven access to me. My phone is pretty much always set on do-not- disturb, and those folks are whitelisted through. The only time it's off do- not-disturb is if I'm expecting a call. Otherwise, leave a message or use some other asynchronous way to contact me.

</comment><comment><USER79> 484 273 0091 calls multiple times such as 5 within one minute. When answered, there's no one there. I've blocked, and sent a text message threatening to report as harassing calls. So, how do I go about making such a report?

</comment><comment><USER80> Has anyone been getting calls from numbers that are oddly similar to your own? As in (xxx)xxx-abcd, where x is the same numbers as my own. Both my coworker and I seem to get these calls. We have different area codes too. Both are on the FCC DNC list. I frequently report these numbers too.

<comment><USER81> I get these all the time, like 3-4 a day. I'm pretty sure they are spoofed. I suspect, they are meant to look like your number so you might for a second think 'hey i recognize that number' and pick up

<comment><USER80> I had a feeling that was the intention, but I was surprised at the tactic. Because that does mean they are likely spoofing real numbers. But it does seem that that is something the FCC should crack down on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I have been out of the loop for awhile, however in the nineties we had a dial in system at work we used for guards to report when on site and when leaving a site from work. We relied on ANI data from the phone company which contained the actual number the call was placed from.

Surely the phone company has this data and could compare it in flight to what is being passed along as the caller id information which I was under the impression is wholly separate data. If anything do so smart phones could see both entries and flag suspicious calls

</comment><comment><USER83> I just answer the call and don't say anything. After a few seconds the robot makes a few beeps and hangs up. Presumably the software waits to hear the recipient say something before starting the recording.

I hope it marks the number as bad when this happens. I will say that I have received fewer calls since I started doing this.

If it is a real person calling you, they'll sense the silence and say "hello? Anyone there?" or something.

<comment><USER84> Reportedly, if you play a reorder tone or special information tri-tone, the dialer will mark your number invalid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> What could someone evil do with a recording of me saying "Yes"? I have a YouTube channel and I've probably said that word in a few of them.

<comment><USER51> [https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-warns-can-you-hear-me- phone...](https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-warns-can-you-hear-me-phone-scams)

>The scam begins when a consumer answers a call and the person at the end of the line asks, "Can you hear me?" The caller then records the consumer's "Yes" response and thus obtains a voice signature. This signature can later be used by the scammers to pretend to be the consumer and authorize fraudulent charges via telephone.

In other words they splice together "do you want to authorize these charges?" And your "Yes" and present this as "proof" to the credit card company you authorized the charges you are disputing.

<comment><USER86> Status unproven: [http://www.snopes.com/can-you-hear-me- scam/](http://www.snopes.com/can-you-hear-me-scam/)

<comment><USER51> I should have added a caveat, I actually agree with you and I, too, was skeptical of the fact this has been happening. However, since the FCC released an official document about it I figured it was worth mentioning as a theoretical possibility. I am unaware of many cases where the FCC spread urban legends without getting actual complaints, so people presumably have actually been complaining about this happening to them to the FCC, or at least them believing it's happened to them.

The "can you hear me" call would have to take place AFTER a scammer had already charged your card for a dubious service. They would (probably?) have to have a merchant account with a payment processor for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> A piece of advice they don't mention: use an alternate number for registering websites and/or hide your WHOIS data.

I have a Google Voice # I used only for domain registration. I let the WHOIS guard expire, and I now get regular spam calls to that number daily.

I'm sure they source the numbers from a lot of places, but from what I've experienced and read this is a big source of them.

<comment><USER88> I use Google Domains, privacy guarding is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> The responses here are only addressing the symptom. You want to stop robocalling, make it stop earning the callers money.

<comment><USER89> I wonder, incidentally, if stopping it at the banking/money transfer level would be effective.

<comment><USER59> It's a whack-a-mole problem. You could never move quickly enough in the banking world to squash how this thing works. The methods are going to get more and more advanced, as AI tech gets better very rapidly in the next few years. The carriers, FCC, and banking system are entirely unprepared for what's coming next.

If you really wanted to smash it, make it harder for the roboscammers to abuse the relatively new API systems of inexpensively buying phone numbers in the US market. That either has to occur at Twilio & Co's level or it will have to be government action.

If Twilio & Co are smart, they'll get on this soon rather than allowing their business to be destroyed by heavy handed or inept government moves. There are few things more ripe for bad and unintended outcomes than the US government moving rapidly into something they don't understand in the name of safe guarding the people.

<comment><USER90> You'd be surprised at how quickly adaptive fraud detection systems can work.

<comment><USER89> I wonder how quickly phone companies would shut down people if they faced a meaningful financial penalty.

<comment><USER90> Hrm .... interesting suggestion.

I wonder if there are similar cases or ways to create a test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Oh the joys of government systems. I received this when verifying my number is on the do not call list.

"Due to system difficulties, your request was not processed. Please try your request again later or call 1-888-382-1222 to submit your request by phone. We are sorry that we are unable to process your request at this time."

</comment><comment><USER92> What we need is a simple addition which allows whitelisting - if the contact isn't in your phonebook it's either blocked or you're prompted to accept.

Yes it would create an issue in the case of emergencies but that's what voicemail is for.

</comment><comment><USER93> I get at least one call a week now. Always from the same area code, often one a few digits off from my number.

I wonder how long it will take for the goverment to start enforcing the do not call registry laws. What's the threshold of annoyance before it's worth spending taxpayer money to enforce?

<comment><USER94> The laws are basically unenforcable.

The carriers could do something about it. I'd consider switching service to a carrier that demonstrated they block these kinds of calls. Just like a big part of gmail's popularity is how effectively they block spam.

<comment><USER95> > The carriers could do something about it. I'd consider switching service to > a carrier that demonstrated they block these kinds of calls.

T-Mobile blocks a lot of spam callers, but they do not seem to block these spoofed caller ID calls.

Thankfully these spoofed calls are so easy to spot that they aren't even a real annoyance to me.

<comment><USER96> On my T-Mobile GS7, most such callers are recognized and given a "Scam Likely" caller-id label.

<comment><USER31> How does the phone model even play into this? Odd of you to mention it.

<comment><USER96> It doesn't occur on my GS5s.

<comment><USER97> The difference may be the t-mobile account instead of the phone. IIRC, they are rolling the "Scam Likely" feature out starting with t-mobile one plans.

<comment><USER98> In my case, all 5 phones are on the same plan and account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> it baffles me that people answer to unknown phone number. If you want to contact me, and I do not know you yet, you'll have to contact me through an asynchronous way. Voicemail, SMS, e-mail, whatever. Synchronous communication takes way to much time.

<comment><USER15> This. The only time I answer a call from an unknown number is if I'm expecting a food delivery, and it might be the restaurant or delivery person calling. Otherwise, I mash the 'decline' button, and it goes to voicemail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> Why is robocall and telemarketing spam legal? It is surprising that in a modern world where everything is regulated and monitored such a simple problem cannot be solved with fines and jail.

</comment><comment><USER101> Why are spam calls not against the law in the same way that spam emails are?

<comment><USER15> Calls and text messages to cell phones that use any sort of auto-dialer _are_ illegal without express written consent (and the term 'auto-dialer' is applied rather broadly). The same goes for calls that deliver a pre-recorded message. Fines for violations can range from $500 to $1,500 _per violation_ , but you'll have to figure out who's actually calling you in order to file for damages. Almost all of these calls spoof their caller ID, so good luck with that.

If you're in the Do Not Call registry, there are another set of fines on top of those imposed by the TCPA. They start out around the same range, but for excessive violators the fines can now reach up to $40,000 per call (as of August 2016).

<comment><USER100> Do Not Call registry means that by default spammers are allowed to call anyone not on the list. I guess they paid a lot to politicians to have it this way.

<comment><USER15> I suppose it had the effect of legitimizing telemarketing at the time, but the effect diminishes as more and more people abandon landlines. Spammers can't legally call a cell phone without express written consent unless they dial the number manually, which of course they never do. That's a protection of the TCPA. Same goes for text messages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> If you have AT&T, try the AT&T Call Protect app:

[https://www.att.com/features/security- apps.html](https://www.att.com/features/security-apps.html)

<comment><USER103> The insane thing about this app is it still allows some numbers through that they have identified as "severe threats". So AT&T are allowing known severe threats to go through.

The app works pretty well most of the time. I just can't wrap my head around this decision unless maybe there is lag between their identification of a number as a threat and their ability to block it.

<comment><USER102> They might be playing it safe letting the calls still ring your phone, instead of auto blocking. I've had a call show up labeled Telemarketer, but I actually was expecting that call (from Dish TV billing), so I just let them go to voicemail and if they do leave me a message then I know it was a legit call.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Revenge on IRS phone scammers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzedMdx6QG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzedMdx6QG4)

</comment><comment><USER105> I had been receiving many spam calls and downloaded the Truecaller app. It crowdsources spam caller information and does a good job of notifying you if a call is spam.

</comment><comment><USER106> Is there a phone equivalent of "ping"? If there is/was, one might be able to tell if the caller was local just be the round trip time.

</comment><comment><USER107> TL;DR Don't pick up calls from unfamiliar numbers.

It did help confirm a sneaking suspicion I've had, which is that robocalls spoof a caller ID number with your area code and prefix, to make it seem more familiar.

Stories about people who manipulate telemarketers are amusing, and mobile minutes are mostly no longer scarce, but who has the time? Time and attention are the scarcest resources.

<comment><USER43> Surely telcos can do something to block calls coming from sources that don't own the number they are providing as caller id. Internet provides started doing this years ago with alien packets.

<comment><USER108> There are a lot of legitimate reasons why a call from a number isn't coming from where you would be directing the call, so it's hard to fix it with a simple policy. What would be useful though is requiring something analogous to email received headers, combined with a real time method to report calls as spam/unwanted.

If spam volume from an interconnecting carrier is too high, cut them off.

Telco routing is a lot of twisty passages, but there are many fewer players than internet routing, so it should be easier to get bad apples off the network, as long as there is desire and some users are willing to provide feedback on calls.

<comment><USER31> Carriers already do this FYI, but it only gets you so far. Robocallers pay higher rates due to this, but they seem glad to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> I think a simple way to fix it would be to charge someone an extra fee the first time they dial a number, and transfer most of that money as a debit on the callees bill. It wouldn't take much to make robocalls unprofitable.

</comment><comment><USER110> "Jolly Rodger" LOL!

I still have that text file sompelace!

</comment><comment><USER111> Check out quitcalling.us

<comment><USER23> Just a landing page and no info on who is working on this service... doesn't make me confident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> "Attorney general's office, criminal complaints investigations, how may I help you?"

<comment><USER112> Impersonation of government officials is a crime, at least in the US. Funny in this case, but not adviseable.

<comment><USER113> If the call center is in India you probably wouldn't get in trouble for it. For that matter, what call center would report you?

<comment><USER90> "Hello, I'm calling to report an impersonation of a government official."

"So, what official was impersonated, exactly?"

"Well, not directly ..."

"And how did this impersonation happen to come about?"

"Well, I was robocalling about a million households all on the Do Not Call Registry ..."

I'm not too worried about that risk.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


All Hacker Monthly issues free for next ~24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://hn.my/xmas

<comment><USER2> Hope this takes some load off his servers:

 _Edit - changed links to the s3 servers_

Issue 1 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue001.zip)

Issue 2 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue002.zip)

Issue 3 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue003.zip)

Issue 4 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue004.zip)

Issue 5 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue005.zip)

Issue 6 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue006.zip)

Issue 7 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue007.zip)

Issue 8 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue008.zip)

Issue 9 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue009.zip)

Issue 10 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue010.zip)

Issue 11 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue011.zip)

Issue 12 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue012.zip)

Issue 13 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue013.zip)

Issue 14 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue014.zip)

Issue 15 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue015.zip)

Issue 16 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue016.zip)

Issue 17 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue017.zip)

Issue 18 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue018.zip)

Issue 19 - [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue019.zip)

Thedebate - <http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?644hhgmk7ao8qgj>

Startupstories - <http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vfhm4a6iqs2fj5j>

<comment><USER3> Everything in one zip:

<http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?klj42fqmnwx0xtr>

<comment><USER4> Zipfile, and the list above, are missing the "Startup Marketing" special issue: <http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-startupmarketing.zip>

<http://hackermonthly.com/startup-marketing.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He put some of them up on aws, probably more on the way. I was able to download 1,4,5,7,10,13, and 18. Just replace the "004" at the end with "001", or "010", etc.

[http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue004.zip)

Or in terminal just enter:

wget [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue00{1..9}.zip)

wget [http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermo...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/bearwithclaws.baconfile.com/hackermonthly- issue0{10..19}.zip)

<comment><USER6> Here's a Python script I threw together to automate this: <https://gist.github.com/1515666>

At this point, it looks like 1, 4, 5, 7, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 have been put up on S3.

<comment><USER7> You can use %03d instead of %s and the number will be zero padded to 3 digits.

<comment><USER8> also, range(1,20) rather than needing i+1 throughout your code

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the tips. I get better at Python every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe there's a way to put the archive in a file locker (like Megaupload) and delete it after 24 hours.. It's pointless to make the files free if /everybody/ tries to download them but /nobody/ actually gets to read the zine because the files time out..

<comment><USER10> Megaupload is terrible. Please encourage people to use Mediafire.

<http://www.mediafire.com>

<comment><USER11> Why do you say that? Mediafire is usually my first choice too, but megaupload is a close second (mostly since you can use tessaract on the captcha, either manually or via jdownloader/plowshare) with all the ReCaptcha sites (filesonic/fileshare/wupload...) trailing behind.

<comment><USER10> They're just distasteful and annoying. Check out Kim Kardashian hanging out on their home page. They make you wait for a download. And I've had problems with downloads always stopping at the same point no matter how many times I tried.

<comment><USER12> At the risk of appearing to be a fool, I can suggest that if you are doing enough DLing that the wait is a problem for you, you might want to go the Premium route. I'm an anime buff (as well as other stuff), and have a yearly subscription with them and with Fileserve. Blistering fast DLs, no waits or ads, YMMV...

<comment><USER13> The whole point of the wait on various download sites is to throw advertising for Premium on you. They also make you scroll past "buy premium" buttons and such to reach the download button on some sites. I think you can assume that if someone is complaining about the wait time for a download site, they have already considered and rejected buying Premium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      for i in `seq -w 19`; do
      echo "http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue0"$i".zip";
      done | xargs wget

<comment><USER15> In parallel:

        for i in `seq -w 19`; do
          wget "http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue0"$i".zip" &
        done
        wait

<comment><USER16> Let's not forget GNU parallel, that would be naughty ;-)

        seq -w 19 |
        parallel wget http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue0{}.zip

;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The servers are getting slashdotted. Anyone who has gotten all of them downloaded feel like making a torrent? Not for the purposes of piracy, of course, but just to spare this poor guy's bandwidth.

<comment><USER18> Use Coral Cache to spare his bandwidth, add .nyud.net to the end of the domain name and it will be routed through the CoralCDN (<http://www.coralcdn.org/>).

e.g. <http://www.hackermonthly.com.nyud.net/blah/blah.zip>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He posted a snap of his server logs:

<http://lockerz.com/s/167554725>

Ouch.

<comment><USER20> I think the takeaway here is that if you're going to promote something on HN, put your downloadable content on AWS or some similar CDN first. When there are nerds involved, expect heavy turnout.

Yowza.

<comment><USER21> Also, we're cheap. Really hope this works out in his favor and nets a few more signups. I'm interested to see the quality myself, as I've managed to hold off viewing or sampling any of these to date.

<comment><USER22> Seems like perfect work fodder for me - If I manage to remember in the morning I'll be looking to sign up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> On a mac (without wget) paste this into the terminal and it'll open up every download in a tab in your default web browser.

      open http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-startupstories.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/hackermonthly-thedebate.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue019.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue018.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue017.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue016.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue015.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue014.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue013.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue012.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue011.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue010.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue009.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue008.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue007.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue006.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue005.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue004.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue003.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue002.zip;
      open http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue001.zip;

<comment><USER4> Macs have curl, which can easily fill in for wget.

<comment><USER24>
        curl -O "http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue0[01-19].zip"

<comment><USER25> and for auto resume when it disconnects in the middle.

      curl -C - -O "http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue0[01-19].zip"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Downloads seem to have slowed to the point where one 27.9 Mb issue is taking 1hr and 7 min to download. Looks like all of HN is taking advantage of this promo!

BTW, the magazines are beautifully done, kudos!

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised to discover Hacker Monthly still exists, after the iPad app simply stopped serving up new issues 7 months ago. What's that about?

<comment><USER28> Was having some problem on AppStore in-app purchase submission (before Newsstand). Update to the app (along with new issues) coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just bought the print subscription, after forgetting to the last few times I thought about it. Great marketing!

<comment><USER30> I'm also getting a print subscription while thinking "excellent marketing campaign!".

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Thank you, Lim Cheng Soon! As a student I really appreciate the free year-long subscription you offer.

</comment><comment><USER32> Put a torrent up before your server melts down.

</comment><comment><USER2> ...and his server has officially crashed. I recommend not running anymore automated scripts directed towards his server.

I'll try to chuck it onto mediafire once I get all the issues. Just missing 9 at this point.

<comment><USER33> He's uploading them here: <http://baconfile.com/bearwithclaws/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Another download link with everything: <http://www.filesonic.com/file/e9tf5hs>

Will be removed when free period ends on the website.

</comment><comment><USER35> Thanks Lim~! You just made my iBooks library look 10x more awesome <http://imgur.com/0HM5p>

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm happy to mirror if anyone actually has the files.... I have tons of bw on a ton of big servers. email@example.com

<comment><USER37> I thought of doing it, and I can't get to the webpage to see if there's a special license... barring one, redistributing would be copyright infringement which I'm not cool with. The HM folks would have to offer.

<comment><USER36> Indeed. Sorry, my offer was intended to the folks who are actually making the offer, who have the steaming server:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> #!/bin/bash X=1 while [ $X -le 19 ] do if [ $X -lt 10 ]; then n="00$X" else n="0$X" fi wget "<http://hackermonthly.com/xmas/hackermonthly-issue$n.zip> X=$(( $X + 1 )) done

</comment><comment><USER39> I think they have a sweet problem of being waaay to popular. And everybody likes free stuff.

I meant to say they should use nginx, but apparently they are already using it, I guess that is why our connections are not getting dropped.

Anyway, nice gesture, thank you HN!

<comment><USER39> I am getting all zips corrupted :(

<comment><USER28> Try downloading 'em again. Should be fine now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a monthly subscriber, this is great to see! Hopefully this will lead some other subscribing as I think the price is well worth it. Wow, I sound like a salesman, but genuinely just a fan of well done work for our community. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER41> Not to plug, but welcome to upload mirrors (depending on the redist. rights of course) to <http://Castle.so/> :)

</comment><comment><USER42> Hm yeah..cool offer. But we need one of two things..

1\. server/bandwidth upgrade 2\. time extension of the offer beyond 24h

Or actually.. ideally both :)

<comment><USER28> The offer is actually 48hr to cover all timezones for Christmas :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Thanks for the early Christmas present! I've been wanting to check out a subscription, being able to see the current content will push me over the edge.

</comment><comment><USER39> I could make a torrent but it is not mine to make it, I think HM owners should do this if they feel like it. I don't want to abuse their good will.

</comment><comment><USER44> It is Christmas early... thanks Lim! Hacker Monthly is a great resource for the HN community, keep up the great work with it.

</comment><comment><USER45> awesome! any chance there's an easy way to bulk download all of them?

<comment><USER46> It would be nice if a torrent was available, but they couldn't exactly have it expire after 24 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I had never read Hacker Monthly. I will now probably subscribe.

</comment><comment><USER48> hacker monthly is a very nicely put together magazine, I've read a few issues on the kindle, it's well worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER49> It's down. Anyone have a mirror?

</comment><comment><USER50> interesting that nobody posted Dropbox public URLs to the downloaded magazines.

</comment><comment><USER51> If you want to download them all with one click (works in Chrome): <http://jsfiddle.net/nGatG/>

</comment><comment><USER52> If you manage to connect to the site, that is.</comment>


Brazil's Amazon rainforest is burning at a record rate - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/21/americas/amazon-rainforest-fire-intl-hnk-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20755008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20755008)

<comment><AUTHOR> ahahaha I was offline all the day and I didn't notice :) tnx</comment></comment>


The Meritocracy Is Under Siege - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/opinion/meritocracy-tests-education.html <comment><USER2> Was there ever a meritocracy to begin with?

<comment><USER3> The article is basically talking about the economic advantages enjoyed by better educated people. It does go into the factors that influence who gets to have easier or harder access to better education.</comment></comment>


BritePic (add ads to photos)  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2007/04/02/britepic-photography-may-never-be-the-same/ <comment><AUTHOR> Their video player, to me, is slightly more interesting. How difficult would it be to create a system by which you could "annotate" video?: you could add tags to objects in the video that could allow viewers to link to the product page:

\- for instance, when an actor lifts a can of coke, you could click on it, go to the coke page. \- an actor's face could go to the wiki or imdb entry. \- might be an interesting way to take brand awareness advertising (product placement) and make some conversions to actual purchases.

Add some options to hide/show these annotations, and maybe you could (unobtrusively) actually make some money off of video. Anyway, enough rambling about an unrefined idea.. just looking for feedback or thoughts or links to existing stuff like this.</comment>


A bit of background on compilers exploiting signed overflow - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/rygorous/e0f055bfb74e3d5f0af20690759de5a7 <comment><USER3> One other advantage of signed overflow not listed here -- loop termination. Consider the following loop:

        for(int i = A; i <= B; i+=4) ...

This loop can be infinite if overflow is defined, and B is less than 4 from the largest value. Checking for this is a pain (and extra code), and in practice (almost) no-one would ever mean to write this and get an infinite loop when B is close to the top of the integer range.

Special case checking for this case is a pain for various kinds of loop unrolling / peeling, and also removing empty loops if they don't contain any code (which often comes up in practice with C++ templates).

<comment><USER4> It's just one line. Put this before the loop if the code logically shouldn't trigger this.

      assert( B < B_TYPE_MAX - 4 );

Or use an if statement if it could trigger at runtime.

Also the code is clearer on intent.

<comment><USER5> Can assert() actually function this way? Can you use assert to tell the optimizer it can assume something is true?

I've noticed that memcpy(x, y, 4) on x86 can generate very efficient code (register move), but on ARM it expands to something much more verbose because the addresses might not be aligned.

Could this effectively function as a way of promising to the compiler that the addresses are aligned?

        void move4_aligned(void *dst, const void *src) {
          assert(((uintptr_t)dst & 0x3) == 0);
          assert(((uintptr_t)src & 0x3) == 0);
          memcpy(dst, src, 4);
        }

<comment><USER6> > Can assert() actually function this way? Can you use assert to tell the > optimizer it can assume something is true?

Trivially.

      #ifdef NDEBUG
      # define assert_and_assume(cond) if(!(cond))
        __builtin_unreachable((cond))
      #else
      # define assert_and_assume assert
      #endif

<comment><USER5> Interesting! This assert_and_assume() seems strictly better than vanilla assert() for any predicates that don't have side effects. But I guess you have to be sure that the compiler is able to deduce that there aren't side effects and feels comfortable optimizing away the predicate in release mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The biggest takeaway is the last paragraph:

> On most of the machines you're likely to use, "size_t" for loop counters is > a good idea where signed values aren't required. It's unsigned and generally > as wide as addresses, so there's normally no extra code for zero/sign > extends, and the type is standard.

Just work with size_t and be happy!

If you need to iterate through a sequence a[0], a[1], ..., a[n-1] in backwards order, the while-condition "i >= 0" of course won't work with size_t (which is unsigned); instead, use the following idiom:

for (size_t i = n; i--;) f(a[i]);

The above code will call f(a[n-1]), f(a[n-2]), ..., f(a[0]) with no issue, thanks to the post-decrement operator.

<comment><USER8> Quick: how would you implement for (i = n; i >= 0; i -= k) with unsigned integers?

I just use a signed pointer-size type for all sizes and counters, and stay happy...

<comment><USER9> Your loop:

        void TestSigned(int min, int max, int step) {
          for (int i = max; i >= min; i -= step) F(i);
        }

Becomes this with unsigned:

        void TestUnsigned(unsigned min, unsigned max, unsigned step) {
          while (true) {
            F(max);
            if (max < min + step) break;
            max -= step;
          }
        }

Now if I want to transform my loop to operate on pointers or iterators, the transformation is trivial:

        void TestUnsigned(unsigned *min, unsigned *max, unsigned step) {
          while (true) {
            F(*max);
            if (max < min + step) break;
            max -= step;
          }
        }

Quick: Do the same for yours.

<comment><USER4> It looks easy but it isn't.

The second example causes unexpected behavior (and probably ub later) if: min + step > MIN_TYPE_MAX

The last example causes undefined behavior if: max - min < step - 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like making the width of ints implementation specific in C was a failure. It was supposed to allow better performance (allowing it to be set to the register width) but instead we get the worst of both worlds - <USER2> code can't depend on its size but compilers can't practically change the size.

<comment><USER11> There's an added complication: in C, there are just five[1] names available for signed values: signed char, short, int, long, and long long. Additional, the number of bits assigned to each of those must be >= to the previous name.

Suppose your C implementation wants to have signed types for 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit values. If int is 64-bits, then you literally don't have names left to label those lesser-sized signed types. So in practice, int can be no more than 32 bits.

The solution is to always use size_t as a count or size of anything. Uses offset_t for a difference between size_t values, or a difference between pointer values.

An alternate practice (one I subscribe to) is to use unsigned as your default type instead of int. In this practice, 'int' means a variable which can be negative. In real programs, the vast majority of variables never contains negative values.

[1] char can be either signed or unsigned, so let's ignore it for this. Also, let's ignore the new char type names introduced in recent C++.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The other thing to consider is that "x86-64" or "amd64" is not really 64-bit. Operand sizes are 32 bits by default (except the addressing modes, which leads to this mess), and you can only use 64-bit widths with an extra prefix byte --- on each instruction. There are no 64-bit equivalents of some instructions. Compared to the 16-to-32-bit transition that happened with the 386, the 32-to-64 just does not seem anywhere near as well thought-out.

Then again, it makes sense to leave operand sizes at 32 bits, as otherwise code would be twice as big, with the accompanying consequences for caching etc.; in fact I'd be willing to bet that 4 billion representable values is more than a lot of applications would ever need to put in an int. Extending that to 64 bits is really for addressing and the other cases where that exponentially larger range is truly needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> How much of an issue is this really though?

Isn't the worst case a 1 cycle penalty for using a 32-bit int on x86-64 in the manner described in the article?

<comment><USER14> But that's repeated in the loop. So, looks like around a 10-20% performance change. Quite a bit for something not obvious.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps in a really tight loop but the counter is still going to be several iterations ahead thanks to the out of order capabilities of the CPU. You may also have other things in play as well such as the micro-op cache depending on the code size of the loop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I find the wording somewhat peculiar: 'the resulting address will change dramatically, by (4 - 2^(32+2)). In 32-bit mode (all addresses modulo 2^32), this is just an increase by 4 as usual; the "wraparound" part is a multiple of 2^32 and hence invisible'

Why would it matter that the address will change "dramatically"? Even if it didn't (and only change by say 16 bytes or whatever) you'd have to deal with it. The problem is that int overflows at 2^31 while long/a larger type doesn't. In order to cope with the overflow you'll have to "simulate" an overflow in the larger type as well (or at least do what the smaller type does) which is achieved via a sign-extend.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've recently been diving into low-level loop optimization on current Intel x64 processors. It's a rabbit hole, but makes me think there are considerably better optimizations that compilers could be making. Here are some thoughts on this "naive" loop example as they would execute on Skylake, with reference to sections in the (excellent) Intel Architectures Reference Manual: [http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/64-ia-32-architectures- optimization-manual.pdf)

First, since the µops have already been decoded, instruction length doesn't really matter. Also, the limiting factor in this loop is not the execution ports, but the "renamer". While we can supply 6 µops per cycle [2.1.1] and dispatch and execute up to 8 µops per cycle [2.2.2] (limited by instruction mix) only 4 (possibly fused) µops can be moved from the Decoded Instruction Queue to the Scheduler per cycle. [188.8.131.52]

Using "xor %reg -> %reg" for zeroing a register is considered a special "zero idiom" (along with several other forms), and does not need an execution port [184.108.40.206]. It is handled in the renamer with zero latency. It does however take up one of the 4 available renamer slots, but since it's outside the loop here this doesn't matter.

The "test %ecx -> %ecx; jng done" sequence is "macro-fused" to a single µop. It's a single both for the renamer and for execution. These instructions need to be consecutive for this to happen. Again, outside the loop so no real difference.

At the top of the loop, "movsxd %ebx -> %rdx" is a single µop, 1 cycle latency, and can execute on any of the 4 arithmetic ports. While it can't be substituted here, it's interesting to note that if sign extension is not needed, "mov %ebx -> %edx" and "movzx %bl -> %edx" are specially treated as a "zero latency move": 0 latency, no execution port, but do use a renamer slot.

The add from memory "add [%rsi+%rdx*4] -> %eax" is internally treated as a single "micro-fused load op" when stored in the Decoded Instruction Queue. But because it uses an addressing mode with an index register, it is "un- laminated" as it is transferred to the scheduler [18.104.22.168], and thus uses two renamer slots. Since we only have 4 available slots per cycle, this can be a major reason to prefer a non-indexed address like "add [reg+offset] -> eax" as in his unrolled example.

"inc %ebx" can perform poorly as an instruction, since it updates only part of the flag register (leaves "carry" unmodified). While it doesn't stall post- Sandy Bridge, in some cases it may require an extra µop to merge the flag register. Intel suggests avoiding it, and using "sub $1 -> %ebx" instead [184.108.40.206].

The "cmp %ecx, %ebx; jl lp" pair are fused and treated as a single µop. This is good, and loop termination should almost always keep these instructions consecutive for this reason. Even better would be to arrange the loop so that one can update the loop counter and then check the flags resulting from the arithmetic. The usual way to do this is to count down to zero instead of up to a maximum: "sub $1 -> %ebx; jnz lp". Possibly worth noting is that fusion with add/sub does not occur with jno (jump not overflow) or jns (jump not sign), so terminating at zero is usually the best choice.

(Note that I intend this as supplementary information to the article, and not a criticism. While I agree with CJefferson and cokernel_hacker that loop termination is a more important reason for undefined overflow, I think the technical details in the article are correct.)

</comment><comment><USER17> There's been a lot of discussion about undefined behavior on HN recently, and I'm gradually starting to question if the conventional approach to compilers might be a giant dead-end. In this case, our conventional languages provide no way for a programmer to say "I care about overflow". Because face it, the vast majority of programs a compiler sees are written extremely sloppily. Most of the time there's this huge disconnect between the amount of effort the programmer and the ghost of the compiler writer are putting into considering such situations.

Now, most of the time this disconnect is a good thing. Division of labor ensures that the work of the compiler writer is amortized across many many programmers. But the discussion around undefined behavior is a sign that the load on the compiler writer has gotten too onerous, to the point that everybody is paying a cost (in reduced performance, in increased compiler complexity leading to reduced compiler stability, in compilers antagonistically interpreting standards like lawyers) for a level of correctness along one narrow dimension that only a tiny fraction of users actually care about.

What if we instead said, "compilers will never ever consider overflow" and let those who care about overflow fend for themselves in the source language? Among other things that would allow integers to always be the word size of the computer they're running on.

(My interest in these questions stems from trying to program in an idealized assembly language for the past year: [http://github.com/akkartik/mu](http://github.com/akkartik/mu). After writing 10kLoC of assembly to build a simple text editor ([http://akkartik.name/post/mu](http://akkartik.name/post/mu)) I'm surprised to find it quite ergonomic. High level languages today seem to provide three kinds of benefits over traditional/ugly assembly: expressiveness (e.g. nested expressions, classes), safety (e.g. type checking) and automation (e.g. garbage collection). An idealized assembly language gives up some expressiveness, but doesn't seem to affect the other benefits. As such, it's at an extreme end of the trade-off I describe. I'm hoping my experience will largely translate even when Mu eventually implements a high-level language.)

 _Edit 21 minutes later_ : For reference, here's how I've been thinking about undefined behavior while building Mu: [https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/5dd82a8a70/001help.cc#L4...](https://github.com/akkartik/mu/blob/5dd82a8a70/001help.cc#L40). Comments most welcome.

<comment><USER18> With every additional compiler check, you reduce the set of possible programs. It would be interesting if the checks could be easily programatically defined and inserted by those who care. I think Perl6 is probably the best modern compiler that allows this.

I agree, it should not be the compilers job to decide the set of possible programs. The hardware guys figured this out long ago. Afterall, CPU registers are untyped.

<comment><USER17> Can you elaborate on what checks Perl6 permits programmers to ask for?

<comment><USER19> Aiui you can have any checks you want.

Aiui, simplifying, every operation is a function call so you just write a function body that corresponds to what you want the operation to be with the checks you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are there any example of how big projects deal with this? Like, using int64_t and friends.

I'm also surprised that there does not seem to be an option to tell GCC to use 64 bit ints if this really produces better code.

[https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.5.3/gcc/i386-and-x86_00...](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.5.3/gcc/i386-and-x86_002d64-Options.html)

<comment><USER21> If you could change meaning of int to be 64-bit type, then your code ABI ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface)) would be essentially incompatible, and you wouldn't be able to use code (such as standard library, or other headers provided by operating system libraries) that was compiled on a compiler where int was 32-bit, as for instance wrong structure fields would be read.

If you would try to "solve" that by assuming headers use 32-bit int definition, then you would break calling your own code, as you would use 32-bit int definition provided in headers, while your code was called with 64-bit int convention.

It's probably just easier to define your own int meaning type, say, a shorter alias of int_fast32_t.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tafels.app – simple math training for kids - <AUTHOR> https://tafels.app <comment><USER2> Mix all the multipliers and everything together, shuffle up and that's going to be a way better of an exercise + also beneficial for adults (perhaps you know Dr. Ryuta Kawashima - he says doing easy math exercises fast every morning is a great thing).

<comment><USER3> Fully molly agree! I really love this tool, love it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found it really addicted to play the mini calculation game lol

</comment><comment><USER4> The sounds from the UI are really satisfying :)

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem I seen with apps like this is my kid likes get it wrong on purpose to hear the sounds.</comment>


Quality, not quantity: ending science's "academic prostitution" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/06/quantity-over-quality-doesnt-cut-it-for-scientists.ars <comment><USER2> Aren't scientific journals more of a hindrance to scientific progress these days anyway? They're not essential to the peer review process, and the services that they do provide could be decoupled from publication.

It would be very nice to see a distributed publication system taken up by the scientific community, based on circles of trust where anyone could partake in the peer review process.

<comment><USER3> In my experience, journals are still essential to the peer review process and are the primary way in which work is disseminated into the larger community.

<comment><USER4> In computer science, I'd say the first part is true but not really the second, at least in the areas I work in. People definitely use "did it get into a journal?" (actually in CS, more often a good conference, since top conferences have more prestige than journals) as a quality filter, but they don't really _get_ their information by browsing the latest issue of journals. For that, it's much more common to just get PDFs off the internet--- from authors' homepages, Google Scholar, CiteSeer, citeulike, mailing lists, personal suggestions, etc., and then figure out where those PDFs came from later.

In some cases, if it's an author I already know of, I don't even bother looking to see where it was published until I actually need to write out a bibtex entry to cite it. Doing things that way, I've cited papers from publication venues I've never even _heard_ of, so they aren't really doing any sort of information-filtering work for me. In those cases, the article may as well have been a tech report for all it mattered to me, since the publication venue was really serving as nothing (from my perspective) except a fancy place to deposit PDFs. Admittedly, that works mainly when I already know something about the author (or someone I know can tell me something about the author). If they're a total unknown, I'd probably be more wary of citing stuff that didn't already get into a venue I respect.

<comment><USER5> Actually, the only real reason I maintain an ACM membership is that I think their online library is a great resource for browsing technical computer science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _science output is not directly proportional to effort. Instead of ranking scientists purely on their publication records, credit should be given for all sorts of activities that don't necessarily come across in traditional metrics._

While I agree there is more to science output than publications, candidates for post-doc/faculty positions shouldn't be judged on "effort", but on making real contributions that bring progress to their field of research. Judging that on anything else than quality publications becomes difficult, but I look forward to what people may do about it.

So far I've heard mostly talk and little action.

<comment><USER4> When you quantify _output_ , though, it tends to reward conservatism: work on smallish, high-probability incremental improvements, not big things, because big things have too high variance. It also rewards being good at overselling work, although that's a bigger problem in some areas than others.

I think people actually are already pretty good at judging research quality on something like "effort", or more to the point: how good a scientist is so-and- so? But it requires familiarity with the person over some time, and tends not to scale well. If you ask a scientist about the quality of research of one of their colleagues they've been in the same department with for 10 years, they'll rarely refer to publications, and they often won't even refer to discoveries. Instead, it's inputs rather than outputs to the research process that they evaluate: how well is the person managing his/her lab, how insightful is he/she in picking problems and approaches, how good at mentoring students, how well does he/she really understand where this field is and where it's going / should be going, etc.

There is correlation, of course, in that the good scientists most often also produce good results. But at least among the researchers I know, if you have to pick one as the "real" one, inputs rather than outputs are it. If you observe someone for a while, you can tell whether they're a good scientist or not, and you can also tell the places where it doesn't correlate with outputs--- someone's been doing everything exactly right on an important problem but just hasn't gotten a break (or maybe _did_ get it, but it came a month after they were scooped by another group), or someone else is kind of mediocre but got lucky with a big result. Neither's the common case, but it's not that rare either; it's not like research is just a crank you turn and results come out. =]

I guess the main issue is how to scale it. I think the above is pretty much how people already _do_ make decisions when they're familiar with someone's work. If someone is up for tenure, my impression is that profs in that person's area will rarely even bother looking at publication lists when deciding whether to vote yes/no: after working with the person for 6 years they already have a good idea of whether the person is a good researcher they want to keep. It's mainly the people in other areas (in a large department), or in administrative roles, who seem to have no choice but to use the CV as the main basis of their tenure decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me that making research more open and searchable would mitigate some of these problems. The system-gaming and badly calibrated incentives smell like the kind of distortions closed social systems tend to introduce.</comment>


Spacecraft Saw ULF Radio Emissions over Haiti before January Quake - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26114/ <comment><USER2> If this approach has promise it seems a shame that the mission ended yesterday, just two days after this paper was released. <http://demeter.cnrs- orleans.fr/dmt/index.html>

The next step must be to investigate whether any similar correlations have been observed. There have been plenty of major earthquakes over the past year alone. The satellite isn't going to have robust data on all of them but I would imagine that over the past 6 years they've been 'lucky' enough to collect decent data on at least a few more major earthquakes.

<comment><USER3> I think the really important question, sidestepped in the article, is how many false positives there are. It's not much good noting that RF buildups precede earthquakes if 99% of RF buildups aren't followed by earthquakes.

<comment><USER4> From the article:

"It may well be that the crust generates more low frequency waves in the build up to an earthquake but there may be other mechanisms that produce a similar signal but are not linked to quakes."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually attended the Dayton Hamvantion this year. They had a HAARP forum, and I think that this might be interesting for everyone to listen too: <http://johnrdavisjr.com/feed/NA/HAARP.mp3>

It is very interesting to note that HAARP makes the sky GLOW RED when it is turned on and it operates at a low frequency to modify the ionosphere. We discussed this and the hamvention here: [http://socitpodcast.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/socit- podcast-0...](http://socitpodcast.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/socit- podcast-007-dayton-hamvention-follow-up/)

</comment><comment><USER6>
      > Now Michael Athanasiou at the Technical University of Serres in
      > Greece and a few buddies say that DEMETER spotted good of
      > evidence of a change in ultralow frequency radio waves in the
      > ionosphere above Haiti in the run up to the quake.

"... and a few buddies..." ? Is this thing being operated out of a garage?

</comment><comment><USER7> I was a little thrown off by "spacecraft". Wasn't it just a satellite? Isn't there a difference?

<comment><USER8> "Spacecraft" is the catch-all term. Pretty much anything designed by humans to be in space can be called a spacecraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When will wikileak give us californians this sattelite data in real time?

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't wait for conspiracy nuts to start saying that this is proof that govt satellites use radio waves to cause earthquakes.

<comment><USER10> I find it sad how quickly people are downvoting comments these days. That was a perfectly legitimate snarky remark. Don't think it's funny? Don't upvote it.

<comment><USER11> If you're looking for a place to make snarky comments and congratulate yourself on what a hilarious Internet comedian you are, go to Slashdot or Digg. That kind of pointless babble isn't supposed to be encouraged here.

PS. Don't act so offended. You just aren't funny.

<comment><USER10> Actually, people here try to be funny all the time -- and not everyone agrees on what's funny. But we try to keep things civil. I encourage you to be more civil as well.

<comment><USER11> Saying "that kind of post isn't appropriate here" and "you aren't funny" isn't civil? Really?

<comment><USER10> Not really civil, no -- considering that those kinds of posts are considered appropriate, and that I've been around a couple of years longer than your account shows you've been, and so would more more likely know what's generally OK here and what's not. "You aren't funny" is just rude -- see PG's extortions about not saying something here that you wouldn't say in person.

<comment><USER11> I'm going to let your "I've been here longer than you, nyah" comment stand on its own (lack of) merit.

I am perfectly happy to meet you, the next time I am in your town, and tell you that your comment was not funny to your face.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Perseid Meteor Shower is Peaking Now - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/22332-perseid-meteor-shower-peaking-now.html

<comment><USER2> One of the few reasons I'm glad I live out in the sticks. Absolutely beautiful show tonight and I'm looking forward to tomorrow.</comment>


Solo-run Bitcoin exchange shuts down - <AUTHOR> http://mcxnow.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This comes after selling shares in the fee structure system for thousands of Bitcoins as well, users are furious.</comment>


Help wanted for a new pretty printer and code editor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/djalbat/yapp <comment><AUTHOR> There's some fun to be had in working with the grammars, even if you've never done this kind of thing before. If you take a moment to clone the repository and have a look at the examples, you'll see that you are able to work with them directly.

I am especially interested in (and would be especially grateful for) contributions to the JavaScript grammar.Any contributions would be hugely appreciated, however.</comment>


The Noun Project - <AUTHOR> http://thenounproject.com/

<comment><USER2> Implemented by <http://simplehonestwork.com/> who, if I read their project list correctly, also did whitehouse.gov among other things.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so good! But, some of the js is buggy (scrolling, search in Chrome).</comment>


Stability of Trumpet Winsock 2.0B impaired when receiving bad IP packets (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.winsock.trumpet/t0Ze3vfpmTI/zd_PtQUJSewJ <comment><AUTHOR> For those that don't know, this was the last version before the timelock was added in 2.1.</comment>