When Your Used Car Is a Little Too 'Mobile' - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/when-your-used-car-is-a-little-too-mobile/ <comment><USER2> The issue here isn't that this guy can see and control the the vehicle without the next owner knowing. It's that the entire corporate world and government can see and control the vehicle without the next owner knowing. This is increasingly true across the board, regardless of trim level.

I was excited about Rivian as a family friendly electric vehicle. Then they decided to add Alexa (due to an investment by Amazon) and reminded me why I will likely die driving my 1980s SUV.

<comment><USER3> Certainly your 1980s SUV is certainly the thing most likely to be the location of your death, unless you're older than ~70.

<comment><USER2> Only if your 1980s SUV is capable of reaching speeds that might kill you.

I will simply be maimed horribly and die later in the hospital, screaming "AT LEAST MY DEATH WASN'T TRACKED BY ALEXA".

I am, on balance, comfortable with this fate.

 _Alexa: His death was, in fact, tracked by Alexa_

<comment><USER4> I'm hearing that last sentence in the voice of the narrator from arrested development.

<comment><USER5> Ron Howard! Director of A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Willow, etc., star of Happy Days, father of Bryce Dallas Howard.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70nqLIj6l_M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70nqLIj6l_M)

<comment><USER6> And not to forget Opie from the Andy Griffith show

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> somewhat off-topic, but if you'd like a hardware hack to disable the perpetual vehicle tracking in most modern cars, its actually a component of OnStar in GM vehicles. BMW Assist and others are patterned off the same technology as it all comes off the boat as a single embedded package from China. Its a cellular modem with a header for your OBD and ECM and data line for your info-tainment. its NOT built into the info-tainment.

on GM Vehicles You're looking for a metal box under the passenger side footwell, about the size of a cable modem. newer models have it in the trunk on the right or left side. You can remove the box, open it up, and inside will be a riser card with 2 or 3 connectors for a cell antenna. theres no SIM card.

Pull the riser and you wont get any error codes. Confirm the hack by pressing the OnStar button (or whatever your car calls it.) it will ring, but no one will pick up.

this will NOT affect your bluetooth ability OR your backup camera. thats actually part of the infotainment.

this WILL however disable the SOS button and the automated SOS on airbag deployment signal as the riser doesnt exist to make the call.

<comment><USER8> In your opinion, is this worth doing even if you never signed up, activated, or signed any agreements with respect to on-star?

<comment><USER9> Not OP, but yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> BMW is also massively insecure. My "secret token" I had to enter on my phone to link it with the car was the VIN number. That number is physically stamped into the engine block and chassis so obviously cannot be changed, even after I sell the car. I also suspect these numbers are sequential. Till this car is scrapped I will be able to locate it, turn on the AC, unlock the doors etc.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious, would it be possible for a malicious person to create a bunch of VMs running the app and brute force VINs to get access to thousands of vehicles and do things all at the same time?

As it is, it already sounds like a theif's dream: no special, suspicious tools required: just a burner phone with an app, walk up to a car, enter the VIN, unlock doors, steal stuff.

<comment><USER12> VINs roughly follow patterns, so if you know one, you can figure out many other cars with very little brute force effort.

vinwiki probably has a guide explaining them somewhere if you search

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm thankful our 2004 & 2002 cars are as free of "smart" as they are. They're aging out on us and we've been looking at replacements; the used market is contaminated with screens and systems that we DO NOT WANT.

I wonder how difficult it will be to strip all that shit out when the time comes. What's going to have to be stubbed out or emulated to make the car run and how difficult will that be? Are we looking at things like people rolling their own EverQuest shards yet?

<comment><USER14> Cars manufactured starting May 2018 must have backup cameras, so chances are whatever car you get will also have infotainment and other features. Maybe there are a few cars that have a pop-up screen or something similar that is only used for backup.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_camera#Mandates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_camera#Mandates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The master reset and much, much more is actually detailed in their privacy policy:

[https://www.ford.com/help/privacy/](https://www.ford.com/help/privacy/)

"Performing a Master Reset returns the vehicle's modem to the factory settings and removes any imported personal data like cellular phone contact lists, names of paired devices and/or connected networks. Master Reset also disconnects modem-equipped vehicles from any FordPass / Lincoln Way accounts. See 4 above. Deleting the FordPass/Lincoln Way app from your device will not disable data sharing.

PEFORM A MASTER RESET:

BEFORE SELLING OR TRANSFERRING OWNERSHIP

AFTER PURCHASING OR LEASING A PRE-OWNED VEHICLE

BEFORE AND AFTER RENTING A VEHICLE FROM A RENTAL COMPANY "

</comment><comment><USER16> People are now beginning to realize that cellphones send out too much data. Well, modern cars are far worse. Do you know that some of them have weight sensors in seats? Do you know that they send this info out? On your phone, you at least have some control. You have zero control over your car's cell connection. I'm not even sure you can disable over-the-wire updates.

<comment><USER17> Pull the SIM card, or if it's an eUICC cut the trace. Yank the antenna wire, cap it with a terminator. Cut the module off the bus if you feel like pulling the fuse isn't enough.

<comment><USER18> Would the car detect the tampering and refuse to operate? Seems like there is a fair argument to be made for that by car manufacturers in the name of safety.

<comment><USER19> While totally possible I've never heard of such a thing actually happening. Tearing out the OnStar module on Chevrolets has been done by people with a specific mindset for a long time. Whats kinda neat is that if it does still work after tearing out the module it should continue to work forever because you just ripped out the update mechanism. Assuming you don't go to the dealer for service of course...but who does that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fun fact: Nissan Connect, which allows you to track, start, stop, lock, unlock, trigger horn, and toggle headlights is also massively insecure. In order to gain control of a Nissan Connect-enabled car, you need to know the VIN of the car and the name of the person to whom it is registered.

Most of the time those details can be found on the internet, but if you're reasonably motivated you can find the VIN visible on a car's dashboard and probably find the owner's name in their mailbox.

If you own a Nissan, register your car in Connect, or someone else will!

<comment><USER6> Helpfully, my state will allow you to search tax records by VIN or name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I learned long ago never to trust dealerships to do what they say they will, unless I see them do it.

When I traded in a car, among other things I signed was a release of liability for the DMV. They claimed they would submit it.

They never did. 3 months later the DMV called asking about the lack of insurance for the car. I told them what happened, and they said its common for dealerships to never send in this paperwork. So, yeah, lesson learned. I can't imagine what a pain in the ass this would have been if the car were involved in an accident.

<comment><USER22> _I learned long ago never to trust dealerships_

I traded in a car in Houston and the employees of the dealership (an actual big-name dealership, not some guy selling cars on his lawn) took it on joyrides for a week blowing through tolls.

I found out when I got a letter in the mail from the Harris County Toll Road Authority with a bill and photos of my old car zipping through the barriers.

I called HCTRA, and they were super nice about it, cancelled the fees, and said it happens all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ford (and other manufacturers) need to own the reset process. There's no way you can rely on car dealerships to do this.

[https://www.fi-magazine.com/311144/but-the-dude-can-sell](https://www.fi- magazine.com/311144/but-the-dude-can-sell)

<comment><USER24> How would manufacturers know when cars change hands?

Sure, in the example in the article, it was a lease that was turned in to a Ford dealer. But I've sold cars by handing my keys and a title to an individual who handed me money. The manufacturer of the car was not involved in the transaction.

<comment><USER22> _How would manufacturers know when cars change hands?_

The same way that every single marketing company, bank, finance and insurance company does. It's public information.

<comment><USER24> That might be a good 90% solution - car registrations are public records, which tons of companies harvest, which is why you get those annoying extended warranty junk mailers, etc.

Not all cars get registered though - some are chopped for parts (in which case that infotainment system might live on in another car), some are shipped internationally to be re-sold elsewhere, etc.

And there could be a lot of lag - some cars languish on dealer lots, get auctioned, languish on another lot, get auctioned again, etc. Or a dealer might like your car and slap dealer tags on it and keep it essentially as his personal vehicle for a while without registering it.

Lots of little opportunities for data to leak or remote functionality to be abused. There ought to be a complete, no-joke, absolutely reset everything in the car (and expire any remote access tokens) option in the car itself, that either a buyer or seller can easily invoke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kube-system Yikes. This is a serious safety issue. Imagine if this wasn't an EV, and someone started a car while in the new owner's garage.

<comment><USER25> Can you start a ICE vehicle remotely? I thought it was mostly a EV thing, some people have aftermarket kits.

<comment><USER26> A huge percentage of people that live in the cold parts of Canada have "remote start" on their key fob. Press a button and that ICE fires right up to warm up your cabin, defrost the windows and get the engine warm enough.

They usually have some kind of hardware interlock to make sure the transmission is in park and the hand brake is on.

<comment> semi-extrinsic FWIW remote start is not allowed in Europe, so in the northern areas cars come with separate units that generate hot air from a heat exchanger connected to a small chamber with a flame burning the fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always do an infotainment system reset when I rent a car -- both when I start using the car, and just before I return it. I don't know what apps or other data other people synced, and I don't want anything I synced to be available to the next person.

I'd be doubly sure to reset the car at the end of a lease.

<comment><USER28> I find it more amusing to enter in the address of a local liquor store, then a bar, then a weed shop, a casino, a strip club, a bail bondsman, the local municipal courthouse and finally a divorce lawyer's offices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> First thing I do in any rental car is turn off any remote tracking, mobile apps, clear out bluetooth and turn off wifi if equipped.

<comment><USER30> While always good to turn non-essential features off, this doesn't mean that you can't be tracked. Many vehicles, even if non-rental, now come standard with cellular voice/data connections. GM pioneered this with OnStar in the mid-90s[1], and other manufacturers soon followed. Combined with the "black box" recording of _every_ sensor in your car, there can be some pretty damning evidence against the driver in the event of a wreck, etc.

There are no switches for the driver to disable regarding the data inside your ECU[2], or Event Data Recorder[3].

It's not that you can't get away with anything anymore, it comes down to minor infractions are now enforceable (with the lucrative fines that follow) and that your car can present evidence against you.

[1] [https://smart.gi-de.com/automotive/a-brief-history-of-car- co...](https://smart.gi-de.com/automotive/a-brief-history-of-car-connections/)

[2] [https://www.plaintiffmagazine.com/recent- issues/item/beware-...](https://www.plaintiffmagazine.com/recent- issues/item/beware-the-black-box)

[3] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/26167752?seq=1](https://www.jstor.org/stable/26167752?seq=1)

<comment><USER31> Can't you just cut the antenna? Or just improvise a Faraday cage around it.

<comment><USER22> Good luck finding it. And then, good luck getting to it.

<comment><USER32> While a pain, it isn't impossible. There will be an FCC ID that it has (due to transmitting receiving). Based on that device, you at least know what to look for (a PCI card? An entire board? an Antenna?).

Since FCC testing is expensive, I would not doubt that many manufacturers just make one card to install into multiple cars (to lower the FCC testing cost). That would be the best case, as all you need to do is find and remove that card.

<comment><USER30> Instead of doing that, I'd simulate "network loss" by substituting a 50 ohm dummy load for the output antenna. This assumes that it is a connector, not soldered right to the board.

This way, there is no "fault" other than not being in a cellular-coverage area.

<comment><USER32> That's a good way too. Didn't think of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There are enough street labels visible on the map of the car location in the screenshot from the myford site to figure out where that is.

I was kind of surprised the article did not obfuscate that.

It looks like it is at one of these businesses in Milford, CT: Stevens Ford Lincoln, Stevens Ford of Milford, Steven's Collision Center, or Colony Ford.

I wonder if one of those Ford dealers is the dealer that failed to do the reset when processing the lease return?

<comment><USER27> If it's at a car dealer, I'm not sure there's any need to obfuscate it -- revealing that an off-lease car is on a car dealer's lot is not much of a breach.

If it was in a residential neighborhood it'd be a different story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A low tech example, but I bought a used car a couple years ago with navigation and still saved in the system were addresses the previous owner had entered. From this simple list, I was able to determine where they lived, and if was curious enough the businesses and homes they visited, or at least used navigation to find.</comment>


JavaScript: This is a trap, avoid it - <AUTHOR> http://bfred.it/notes/this-is-a-trap/

<comment><USER2> Depends on your team's conventions. I started doing this on a team where "var self = this" was the convention (lots of Backbone code), so to the rest of my team, "var view = this;" et. al were actually _less_ readable (because they broke the reader's expectations).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this short article about "this" in the hope to make code more readable and save you from debugging time.

Feel free to comment on it here or call BS. I'm here to learn. :)</comment>


This basic income crowdfunding campaign reached its goal in less than 48 hours - <AUTHOR> http://funding.basicincome2013.eu/ <comment><USER2> "Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It's an unconditional monthly sum, paid out to by the government to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed."

Well, they should have written

"Unconditional basic income is a new form of total social security for all citizens. It's an unconditional monthly sum, taken from taxpayers and paid out to every citizen - rich or poor, old or young, employed or unemployed. "

<comment><USER3> Combined with some progressive taxation this works out to be massively more efficient and helpful than most other forms of welfare. Replace foodstamps/subsidized housing/unemployment-insurance/myriad-of-other-safety- net-programs with a basic guaranteed income and everyone is better off. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income) .

<comment><USER4> The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income.

Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are higher because they are more likely to get a job there.

The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where the unemployed would congregate , separate from the productive economy.

<comment><USER5> >The problem is that not everybody's costs are the same. A disabled person may have much higher living costs due to needing additional care and special equipment to help them, they also have less chance of gaining employment in order to increase that income.

This would seem to be the case regardless of the type of government assistance provided. Suppose we provide enough that a disabled person can live a dignified, if spartan, life. Should we deny that same level of support to someone else, who may be more able to contribute to society, just because that person is _not_ disabled?

> Also consider costs of living/housing etc. For example an unemployed > programmer might be better off staying somewhere like SF where costs are > higher because they are more likely to get a job there.

That's the reason why the cost of living/housing is higher there. Increasing government subsidies in areas with higher costs cause the costs to increase even more, because recipients of government assistance then have that money with which to pay, increasing demand without increasing supply and therefore raising prices. Meanwhile only the poorest of the poor remain in the lower subsidized areas because they can't afford to live in more desirable areas even with some government assistance, causing those areas to degrade even more. This is the same logic that leads to the mortgage interest tax credit which benefits mortgage lenders much more than homeowners (and screws over renters even more) -- you're subsidizing the sellers of housing and loans more than the buyers because you're increasing the demand rather than the supply. If you want to help the poor live in San Francisco, subsidize the construction of affordable new high density housing and mass transit there, so that the cost goes down rather than up.

> The risk would be that you ended up with low cost of living slum areas where > the unemployed would congregate, separate from the productive economy.

That's what happens already. If anything a basic income can disrupt such behavior, because it allows people living in poorer areas to take better risks, and provides them an increased incentive to seek employment because taking a job doesn't result in the discontinuation of government benefits.

<comment><USER4> The point is more than a disabled person will require a higher subsidy to attain the same standard of living. The differences can be enormous.

A non-disabled person can walk or cycle around the city to pick-up groceries whereas a disabled person might need a specially modified vehicle or may require the services of another person. Subsidizing everyone to the same amount as required by the most disabled of people would be unsustainable.

I guess by the second point I mean the short term unemployed more than the "poor" per se. Consider a person who has just graduated from a university in SF and wants to remain there while they look for a job in SV. If they can't afford this , they might have to move to a poor area with less opportunity.

Optimistically it might produce more opportunities elsewhere if there is an influx of educated people, but pessimistically it might mean that those who are independently wealthy are the only ones who can take the risk of living in SF.

<comment><USER5> The "most disabled person" who is not independently wealthy is not going to achieve the same standard of living as the average person. If you need a special vehicle and you can't afford it, you can live across the street from a grocery store and get a job working there.

You're basically talking about the "heart transplant problem." Suppose you have zero dollars and no job and you need a heart transplant which will cost $200,000, which will cause you to live for another two years, or else you will die today. The government can't afford to pay for that -- people can say "death panels" all day long but the fact is that with the current state of medicine and technology we cannot save everyone, and it is not productive to bankrupt the government paying for measures that are more expensive than they are effective. Moreover, the fairest way to distribute government services is to give the same amount to everyone. If you need more than that amount, seek charity. There is a point past which government cannot fix every problem, and we can't calibrate society to the level of the "most disabled person."

> I guess by the second point I mean the short term unemployed more than the > "poor" per se. Consider a person who has just graduated from a university in > SF and wants to remain there while they look for a job in SV. If they can't > afford this , they might have to move to a poor area with less opportunity.

So how is that different with a basic income than it is today?

<comment><USER4> If you are severely disabled it's really not a case of "just live opposite the grocery store and work there". Many disabilities will mean that a person simply can't perform economically productive work at all. If you have a degree of means testing you can afford to provide for these people because they are a relatively small % of the population.

In the UK for example we have disabled people who receive more in total government assistance than many able people would when working a full time job. For example they might need full time carers. Relying on charity will favor those who can best play that game, which will by definition make things harder for people with certain disabilities, particularly mental disabilities of less "popular" ones.

> So how is that different with a basic income than it is today?

If you give people different amounts of housing based on the relative costs of housing in different areas then they will not have to move to a different area and can stay where they are more likely to find work.

<comment><USER5> >If you have a degree of means testing you can afford to provide for these people because they are a relatively small % of the population.

The problem is that they're not, because you're just picking some subset of the population and saying they're more needy than everyone else without actually providing any proof of that. Why aren't the victims of automobile collisions just as needy of that money so that they can buy more expensive safer vehicles? Why don't indigent cancer patients "need" the same level of care that Steve Jobs got?

You can pick some _arbitrary_ subset of the population and say that we can afford to provide for them because they're a small percentage, but you can't pick that population in any just or rational way because everybody needs something -- everybody dies and would benefit if the government had given them more resources to fight the thing that killed them.

> Relying on charity will favor those who can best play that game, which will > by definition make things harder for people with certain disabilities, > particularly mental disabilities of less "popular" ones.

Charity is exactly as much a "game" as applying for government benefits is. If you feel for the plight of the mentally ill, by all means donate money to the charities that help those people, and join together with everyone who thinks the government should be helping them out of proportion to the rest of the population to do likewise.

<comment><USER4> I mean people who can't do the basics such as feed or clothe themselves without assistance, not people who want a better car.

<comment><USER5> You're making an emotional argument. Let me try. Why are you condemning the single mother whose job has no access to mass transit and who can't afford to live within walking distance, who therefore has to drive a death trap and endanger her life and the lives of her children?

The problem is that we have limited resources. We can't save everyone. And making emotional arguments gets in the way of doing the most good. Why is it better to spend money on nurses to change the bed pans of the mentally ill than to spend it giving opportunities to those who want to go to medical school, who may one day ultimately cure them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see but what is with the mountain climber image which reminds me of someone who would have plenty of free time and cash for such a hobby.

Is the idea to be "upwardly mobile" ? I mean I have to grasp for that idea.

<comment><USER7> No one likes looking at poor people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd not heard of the basic income concept until now so my reaction might be naive, but what benefit could possibly justify the collection and redistribution of a fixed amount of cash to _everyone_ , regardless of their situation?

For example, if 1 person in 10 is thirsty, what benefit derives from giving water to all 10 versus the 1 - isn't that simply a wasteful distribution of resources?

Even in the extreme case where a blind distribution of resource would save a life I cannot see it being superior to a distribution based on actual need.

<comment><USER9> To construct a trivial example, say we give every citizen $2000 a month in post-tax basic income. Of course, most citizens have jobs and other sources of income. To make math easier, assume this government has a flat income tax of 20% If you earn $0, you are pay $0 in tax and get $2000 in basic income. If you earn $9000, you pay $1800 in taxes and get $2000 in basic income, netting you $200. Basic income washes at $10,000, and after that serves only to defray your tax costs until it is hardly noticeable.

I can't speak to what levels of taxation and basic income might be useful -- these ones have been selected for convenient math -- but that's the general idea of it.

Or, in terms of your water metaphor, if one person in ten is thirsty, we give water to all ten, but we also take from the nine, so they actually see a small loss. The water didn't come from nowhere.

<comment><USER10> FYI, for the States at least, $2000/mo is too high. It always strikes me... I don't think people who make good money often understand just how poor most people really are. The lower 50% of U.S. tax payers only average around $15,000/yr. If I were to guess, approx. 50% of the poverty level would make a good peg. I also think parent should get additional allowances for no more than two children.

That said, the system has a tendency to balance itself (the marvels of free- market capitalism when allowed to work properly) so no mater how much was granted per month, the system could self-adjust. Unfortunately there are so many entrenched interest gumming up the works these days, I'm not sure anything about the markets are really working "freely" as they should.

<comment><USER11> Parents should get no allowance for any children, and children should get the same benefit as everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I will never support this idea. This is kind of thinking is extremely nationalistic: I am entitled to free money because I was born in XYZ.

On top of this, this idea has very weak economics fundamentals, there is no prove that growth comes from redistributing wealth. There is plenty of prove growth comes from innovation and innovation comes from people actually working.

We are in denial. The whole Europe is in denial. We don't realize the only way out of this mess is working more and cutting public spending. Instead we propose the exact opposite.

<comment><USER13> Good to see someone thinking for himself here.

<comment><USER12> If I were thinking for myself I would support this idea and then go on basic income for life, I can live with very little, so why not?

<comment><USER13> You seem to be talking about "pursuing personal gain", whereas I meant thinking for yourself in contrast to group-think / herd-mentality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The goal has been set at 15,000 EUR and the duration of the campaign at only 14 days. There are still 12 days left in this campaign and the donations keep coming in.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe I'm missing something, but if they want to gather signatures - why not add a link to the petition so people can actually sign?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because you need to be focused on one goal only. This campaign's goal is to reach 15,000 EUR. The target audience for this particular campaign are people who already signed the initiative and who are mostly informed about the Initiative.

<comment><USER14> Hence you post it to HN, who have all obviously signed the initiative? Sorry, but that seems like a missed opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem I envision with a basic income model is that it could have an inflationary effect - shifting the baseline. The only way this doesn't happen is if our basic income economies exploit non basic income economies - and even this wouldn't prevent housing, energy, and (non artificially) scarce items from inflation.

<comment><USER5> Why do you expect inflation? Inflation only occurs if the source of the money comes from creating currency. If it comes from taxation then you're not increasing aggregate demand at all, you're just eliminating the large disincentive to seeking employment created by the discontinuation of government benefits if you succeed.

<comment><USER15> sorry, _price_ inflation. Supply and demand.

<comment><USER5> There is no difference between "inflation" and "price inflation."

Suppose that yesterday you received $50 from government assistance programs (e.g. food assistance) but today you receive $50 as a basic income and no food assistance. You have the same amount of money to spend.

Suppose that yesterday you received no government assistance and paid no net taxes but today you receive $50 as a basic income and pay $50 in new taxes. You have the same amount of money to spend.

There will be some people who, on net, receive more or less from a basic income (less the taxes required to pay for it) than they do now -- mostly the very rich would pay more and the working class would receive more -- but the net amount of money in the average person's pocket remains the same. The difference is that you don't have the disincentive to seeking employment that the current unemployed do when they lose government assistance by taking a job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One important advantage of BI would be that it would allow the labor market to be more liberal (especially in Europe, I don't know about the situation in the US). Employees wouldn't need to be protected that much, because they would be less scared of being fired.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you are EU citizen, don't forget to sign the petition: [http://sign.basicincome2013.eu](http://sign.basicincome2013.eu)

</comment><comment><USER18> With little administrative overhead, this should be a more effective way of stimulating demand than QE.

<comment><USER11> Even if I assume your premise, why would you assume that this is a more effective way of stimulating demand? (I'm not necessarily disagreeing its just not obvious to me that one mechanism is better than the other.)

<comment><USER18> As I understand it, the QE strategy is for the central bank to buy bonds. Bonds become overbought, so investors shift to stocks and shares, lifting the stock market. Investors benefit, as do companies seeking to raise funds through share issues, but uninvested consumers do not. As a result, the stock market goes up, and borrowing costs for companies go down, but the "Real" economy stagnates. Companies can borrow easily to fund expansion, but have no real market to sell into, because the stock market is disconnected from the underlying "main street" economy. Basic income provides another mechanism for Keynesian reflation, but targets the "real" economy rather than the stock market, so stimulates actual demand, rather than pumping up the bubble. Of course, inflation is a massive risk with both of these strategies ... and may happen more directly and more quickly with the basic income strategy rather than with QE ... so on second thoughts ... it might not be too great an idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> People voting themselves bread. I'm sure this will turn out well.

<comment><USER20> Technology and automatization of production is changing everything, the more we raise productivity the less people can satisfy our needs for products.

Do you propose we just start shooting people who are below the skill level required for sustaining the economy?

I for one would like to avoid living in a Logan's run type of universe. Thank you very much...</comment></comment>


5 must have security tools - <AUTHOR> http://try.lemon.email/must-have-security-tools/ <comment><USER2> "We interviewed several companies specialized in data and security and these are the tools and products they recommend as a first wall of defense against cyber attacks in 2017."

First rule when you create a startup : Don't lie and don't assume your clients are stupid.</comment>


"100 spies" will monitor all SMS and email that goes in and out of Norway - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nettavisen.no%2Fnyheter%2F100-spioner-skal-overvake-alle-sms-er-og-e-poster-som-gar-inn-og-ut-av-norge%2F3423589246.html <comment><USER2> This article references another news article as their source.

Link to original: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fnorge%2Fi%2Fqn9JrO%2FDet- koster-dyrt-a-vare-Storebror-Her-er-regnestykket-for-a-overvake-din-nettbruk)

</comment><comment><USER3> At least the Norwegians (and other Scandinavian countries) are publicly open about what they are doing. You'd probably never see this 'news story' in the UK or US except as the solution to some event that supposedly justified it

<comment><USER4> Meh, we have had the same thing as you guys for a long time. FRA (the signal intelligence in sweden) has been recording our border-passing communications for many years. This is maybe not new knowledge, but definitely not that widespread.

The information gathered (oh, they have access to XKeyscore) is then shared within X eyes (nine? fourteen?) program. The extent of FRA's intelligence operations was not known before snowden.

Some of it became more public knowledge in 2008 when there was a new law that gave them permission to do cable interception. It was later confirmed that they had been doing cable interception before the law was enacted, in conflict with the law, but "with acceptance" of the administration.

Sweden is really not much better than other countries. Norway is following suit, but with a slightly "better" law that at least requires secret court orders to store other things than metadata of things passing the border.

Edit: oh, and they are allowed (or at least not strictly disallowed) to do targeted hacking, which they have done in cooperation with other (NSA) intelligence agencies.

But, at least we do not have a secret bugdet like other democracies :) . They got about 1 billion SEK last year, or about 0.1% of the national budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a proposed bill and is far from being implemented yet. It is currently being evaluated by all involved departments, institutions and companies and has predictably received sharp critique from many angles. It will be interesting to see if it survives the process at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> How does that work with encrypted transport? Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and of course many others, all provide IMAP over TLS so sending email to them and receiving from them doesn't go in the clear.

<comment><USER7> Like most gov, they probably have access to a root CA and they MITM.

<comment><USER8> There are currently no publicly trusted CAs participating in such a scheme. If there were, it'd be trivially detectable due to the millions of fraudulent certificates showing up in Certificate Transparency logs.

<comment><USER9> Of course they won't tell you that they are doing it...

<comment><USER8> They _have_ to tell you, there's no alternative option. If they don't publish the certs in multiple logs, then they aren't considered valid by browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clickbait title. It's a proposed bill.

<comment><USER11> I'd watch that movie though.

<comment><AUTHOR> 100 people in suits and tie intercepting _" Norsemen"_ memes and analyzing fake-book reviews such as " _The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo_ "

edit: apologies just realized the latter was Swedish not Norwegian

<comment><USER12> _pours drink into chess computer_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I doubt most tech literate criminals won't use something like Telegram or Matrix over a tor relay.

Whenever I and my girlfriend talk about anything too personal, I always joke about the government's ability to hear our conversation.

WhatsApp and Viber provide cryptographic communication but, if I'm not mistaken, it needs to be explicitly enabled and I've also read there's a bunch of metadata exposed.

<comment><USER14> You are mistaken about WhatsApp. It does end to end encryption by default. What needs to be explicitly enabled is that theoretically WhatsApp/some bad guy could steal an WhatsApp account, and it would create a new public key, and if you didn't turn on security notifications, you might not be aware that the person you think you are talking to changed. You also should verify that the end to end encryption keys match, but most users are not paranoid to that level.

<comment><USER15> I heard a couple of times, after people get a new phone number, after installing WhatsApp, they see the conversation from the old owner of this phone number. How can this happen then?

<comment><USER16> If you really mean conversations of the original owner, I can't believe that's true after e2e has been enabled.

But it could be that messages sent to the original owner are received, since WhatsApp automatically re-encrypts and sends messages if the message has not been received yet and the key has been changed. So basically that would mean the message would be sent when the previous owner already changed their number. So the people shouldn't have sent the messages at all.

WhatsApp e2e encryption just makes sure that the only person that can read the message is the owner of the number, not necessarily the person you want to send it to.

<comment><USER17> WhatsApp also does backup.

<comment><USER16> In drive&icloud(?) AFAIK, so that would be linked to the owner of the phone at that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I assume "100 spies" is the name of the server running all the traffic is funneled through.

<comment><AUTHOR> the tag name of the docker container that runs on the same Linode VPS as the rest of Norway's Internet infra. /s

edit: just some friendly (immature) banter from another European

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How exactly does this work with encryption, which is becoming more and more prevalent? E.G., Tor...

<comment><USER20> You decrypt the traffic. Or you monitor on a point in the chain where the traffic has already been decrypted. I think what you meant to ask was how do they obtain the decryption keys or establish a point of presence post- decryption?

<comment><USER21> You can't decrypt the traffic. You can however monitor it at a point that traffic has already been decrypted. SMS messages are not encrypted and email is only encrypted between you and your email provider whether that email goes on to its final email recipient server encrypted or not is entirely up to the email provider.

<comment><USER20> > You can't decrypt the traffic

Sure you can. There are many how-to's on decrypting SSL/TLS using wireshark, you just have to have the keys. Here's one - [https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116557](https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX116557)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 100 New/More/Added Spies. Not "100 spies".

</comment><comment><USER23> Sounds like it's only meta-data of emails, not actual content when TLS is used.

<comment><USER24> When TLS is used there is no metadata either... server x talked to server y for a while, but what, if anything, happened we know not.

<comment><USER25> >When TLS is used there is no metadata either... server x talked to server y for a while, but what, if anything, happened we know not.

Quite a bit of metadata really...

Client X: IP address

Server Y: IP address

Client X request: TLS parameters that can be analyzed through TLS fingerprinting

Server Y response: Hostnames supported by SNI

Server Y response: TLS parameters that can be analyzed thorough TLS fingerprinting</comment></comment></comment>


Streaming RNNs in TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/09/speech-recognition-deepspeech/ <comment><USER2> Author here, the release files are now available if you want to try it out (we had some snags with the infra to build and publish the packages): [https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech/releases/v0.2.0](https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech/releases/v0.2.0)</comment>


Ask HN: What if family issues could be turned into Jira tickets? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I like the keeping historical records part. But an important part of being in a family is face to face problem solving. Then again it might allow family members with little voices to be heard instead of being stepped over.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was also thinking about onboarding, lol. New family members would be encouraged to look over old tickets to help with the legacy problems that will likely never be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Jira might fit well with all its "issues" and such, (sorry being cheeky :)

Another, more light weight platform would probably make the family like it better.

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually thought about Trello for family issues. With two kids it feels like managing a startup. Did you mean something in that nature?

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you imagine the backlog?</comment>


Coinado – Cloud torrenting for command line fans - <AUTHOR> https://coinado.io/ <comment><USER2> I've spent the last few months talking to artists, and I've managed to convince a B of people to release stuff into the creative commons.

see: [http://mercbay.com/#search/gendale](http://mercbay.com/#search/gendale)

The films are now on BitTorrent, and all include both license information and BitCoin addresses where you can pay the artist.

I'd like to use a service like this to provide streaming of these files. But I don't want to use a service that has a business model that relies on transferring copyrighted files.

I wouldn't mind self hosting this, because the data transfer should be relatively low, and all the content would be legal. Does anybody have any input in this regard?

<comment><USER3> Self host + CloudFlare in front of it? They don't limit your bandwidth and will cache what you have. Plus that way you don't have to explain to your potential users how to torrent. They likely already know how to use a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Strict no log policy" That's a great thing for many of us.

But the price is quite high with 90$ (currently) per Terabyte.

If the legal situation in your country allows you to download things like Movies, Computer Games and Software without legal consequences and your downloads are also available on a hosting site, you would be cheaper of this way.

If you either depend on privacy or using torrents, this might be a great service for you.

<comment><USER5> > "Strict no log policy"

That's meaningless. You can say it but you can't prove it.

> That's a great thing for many of us.

If you need to rely on that to keep you out of trouble then don't.

<comment><USER4> Usually I like to argue alot, but I have to agree with you.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.alotisnotaword.com/images/ALOT6.png](http://www.alotisnotaword.com/images/ALOT6.png)

<comment><USER7> [http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.se/2010/04/alot-is- better-...](http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.se/2010/04/alot-is-better-than- you-at-everything.html)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing the source, I will be taking a lot more care from now on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hosted in Latvia. This won't last long.

<comment><USER9> Already down for me in the UK.

edit: 20 mins later and it's back

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems a bit like put.io. Companies that make money purely by supporting copyright fraud historically have faced a lot of problems, though.

<comment><USER11> Put.io has a big advantage in that it streams the files to you via the browser. You don't need to download the whole file locally in order to watch it. If needed it even converts to mp4 and adds subtitles.

<comment><USER12> [http://popcorninyourbrowser.net/](http://popcorninyourbrowser.net/) uses coinado.io to stream videos in your browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice, they even make the torrents healthier by seeding:

"We ensure that every torrent downloaded through Coinado is seeded to a ratio of 2 or up to 36 hours, whichever happens first."

<comment><USER14> 36 hours doesn't seem long enough to me, according to my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> interesting idea, but its currently slow... the demo url they give, you would expect to be fast... i got the first 1024k and its been waiting since... ETA started at 39 min, its now at over 12h... would definatly be interesting if it worked as expected, and maybe a little cheaper as @radle mentions, but interesting none the less...

</comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately, hosting this on a single domain will give ISPs and sys admins a very easy target to block.

</comment><comment><USER17> Browser version of Popcorn Time use it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Anyone have any issues with this on OS X? I get a `--content-disposition` not valid error

</comment><comment><USER19> Is the code on github?

</comment><comment><USER20> Why must everything be a cloud service?

Also, I doubt this could be used with private trackers (if one values their account, anyway)</comment>


Apply HN: The Decentralized Internet Endowment - <AUTHOR> The Internet Endowment is a decentralized pool of capital that will be used to crowd-fund projects in support of the Internet ecosystem.
Historically, the Internet community has demonstrated an incredible ability to come together to support causes and projects that benefit and protect the rights of Internet users. Recall the coordinated protests by many websites to stop SOPA and PIPA in 2012 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA).
Internet users should be able to quickly deploy financial resources when future threats appear or when there are opportunities to invest in ambitious pro-Internet initiatives.
Existing charities and interest groups have little oversight and offer little recourse to those who contribute. With a decentralized endowment, we can collectively determine how our donations and accumulated capital should be allocated. A decentralized model will encourage more donations and broad voting participation from Internet users with diverse perspectives and ideas. Until very, very recently, only highly centralized institutions such as universities and charities could operate endowments. Recent innovations around trust-less organizational structure now enable any loosely-affiliated group of people to create an endowment and invest in common causes with complete transparency.
We will use the concept of a DAO ("Decentralized Autonomous Organization") that was pioneered recently on the Ethereum blockchain to provide anyone who donates to our Internet endowment the right to vote on proposals for investing the endowment's funds and/or proposals for spending fund proceeds.
A decentralized Internet Endowment will enable:

  - funding for open-source projects

  - funding for political efforts

  - perhaps, funding for novel technologies and research
 For more information on how the endowment would function as a DAO, I recommend:

  https://blog.slock.it/on-contractors-and-curators-2fb9238b2553

  http://daohub.org/principles.html
 <comment><USER2> Does a person's status as funding or not-funding affect their ability to participate in determining the endowment's actions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - there are different ways I could see it work, but right now, effectively, the amount of money you contribute determines the number of votes you have on ANY action of the endowment. Anyone within the DAO or not can submit investment proposals to the DAO to vote on.

Of course, 51% attacks become possible with anything decentralized, so there are provisions to split the endowment itself or pull out your share of the funds whenever you desire (another benefit vs existing charities and endowments).

Check out Stephan Tual on Medium for more info on how his DAO supporting the Ethereum ecosystem awards votes to token-holders and incorporates 51% attack protections ([https://medium.com/@stephantual](https://medium.com/@stephantual)).

I'd be interested in ways to non-linearly scale votes with donations (such as quadratic voting: [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531)) but that would require some sort of decentralized identity to prevent dupe accounts.</comment></comment>


Check out my business Grade ME Advice? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.crunchfit.com/lsw-rewards/
Test my landing page! What do you guys think? Any advice or words of encouragement?
Set Goals. Measure Progress. Earn Rewards. Earn discounts and get coupons for achieving your workout goals! Sign up and start tracking your progress so that you can benefit from our exclusive deals. Don't want rewards? Run for a charity and give back!
We're launching this mobile application in two weeks.  Get a 75% discount by signing up for the service now!
(Created this business @Lean Startup Machine Los Angeles) <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.crunchfit.com/lsw-rewards/></comment>


Introducing the 1Password App Extension for iOS 8 apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.agilebits.com/2014/07/30/introducing-the-1password-app-extension-for-ios-8-apps/

<comment><USER2> How many times am I going to have to re-buy this app? I would love to just buy install it once for each device and then pay a subscription and have the versions all just update everywhere. As it is right now I only use it on my laptop because I still have not upgraded on my iOS devices and the sync between v3 (the version I own for iPhone and Mac) is not that great.

Are there alternatives to this situation? I can't go back to not using a password manager.</comment>


Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/03/future-sailors-what-will-ships-look-like-in-30-years <comment><USER2> As someone that has designed (military) ships, here are my thoughts.

\- LNG is definitely happening, and that alone will make a massive difference in emissions.

\- No shit smoother bottoms and bulbous bows are better for efficiency, that's been standard practice for decades and large cargo ships are generally not that old.

\- Counter rotating props are interesting, I could see that being a big win but the mechanical complexity might not be worth it. Cargo ships are generally kept pretty simple for reliability.

\- I doubt we'll see widespread wind or solar power any time soon. The dynamics of wind turbines on top of a pitching platform get pretty wild quick. The energy density of solar doesn't seem high enough.

\- Lol, get the fuck out of here with the idea of nuclear power for cargo ships. The US Navy doesn't even bother with that complexity for anything other than subs & carriers where it's the only viable option.

<comment><USER3> > LNG is definitely happening, and that alone will make a massive difference > in emissions

An important, if often repeated point: Natural gas reduces emissions at the point of consumption; that may be balanced out by higher climate change impact when it's mined.

If someone has good, conclusive information on that issue, it would be appreciated.

<comment><USER4> People mean different things whey they talk about emissions. Shipping is particularly dirty because of the low-grade fuel that they've been using. Its very high in sulphur content, and typically contains a higher fraction of heavier compounds that don't burn as well.

So the ships produce more unburned hydrocarbons (smog precursors) and sulphur oxides (acid rain precursors).

So even if the total CO2 emissions are similar, the other toxics are still greatly reduced.

<comment><USER5> So... can we produce LNG without producing Diesel? I thought crude oil mandated the proportion, and it was a "good thing" that we found some opportunities to consume the Diesel part? We can't convert the whole world to LNG because we'll have way too much Diesel left.

<comment><USER6> We can produce natural gas, thence LNG, from natural gas reservoirs, which contain very little liquids. Eg. coal seam gas can be 95%+ methane, and essentially zero diesel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm excited but skeptical.

Energy-saving concepts have been around for a long, long time. For example, I first heard about the use of kites[1] over a decade ago, yet the company that makes them is struggling to stay afloat.

The issue is that commercial ships are _very_ expensive to build, even using parametric design — where you basically plug in your desired cargo capacity and get a complete blueprint in return. Also, margins for shipyards are razor- thin, so they need to keep production _very_ consistent and predictable in order to stay profitable. So there is not much incentive for either shipyards or shipping companies to build ships that deviate from the standard, cookie- cutter designs.

Maybe the upcoming regulation will provide the necessary incentives, but even then it will take several decades for the majority of ships—which have a lifespan of 40+ years—to be replaced with the next generation.

(Former naval architect and merchant mariner.)

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

Edit: Maybe what's needed is an Elon Musk for shipping. Someone with the resources and guts to take a big gamble on a new technology in an industry that otherwise moves at a crawl.

<comment><USER8> And, I have to say, as a navy surface officer, I don't see how much of any of this is going to change the sailor's life. Living on a working ship is a bit like being a mouse on the deck of a lawnmower. For all intents and purposes, you're in the machine, and it will kill you.

<comment><USER3> > I don't see how much of any of this is going to change the sailor's life

While sailors' lives are important in themselves, what do you see as the connection to the issue at hand, reducing climate change impact?

> it will kill you

Every sailor dies? I don't understand what you're getting at.

<comment><USER4> >> it will kill you

> Every sailor dies? I don't understand what you're getting at.

He means that life at sea is one of managed risk. For starters the ocean itself is hostile to human life. The machine is is also filled with hazards that will kill you if they aren't properly managed: steam, ionizing radiation, CO and CO2 build-up, combustion exhaust gasses, high pressure hydraulics, seawater flooding, electric shock and electrolysis hazards, rotating machinery hazards, the list goes on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of ship cargo consists of things that (1) we need a steady supply of, and (2) have a very long shelf life. For such cargo it doesn't matter how long the transit time for any particular shipment is, as long as shipments are arriving at the destination often enough.

I wonder if we could make unmanned cargo boats that spend most of their time drifting?

Drifting can be quite effective at long distance ocean transport. For an example look at the Friendly Floatees accident [1]. A ship accidentally lost 29 000 floating bath toys in the middle of the Pacific. Over the next 15 years they reached land in on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America, the Pacific coast of South America, Australia, and Europe, and came close to Japan.

I'm imagining a ship that drifts, occasionally using an engine to get into known currents that will help it toward its goal or avoid currents known to hurt.

Places where two or more significant currents pass through the same region could be used to route traffic. They could have tow ships stationed there that can move drifters between the currents

We could have a large fleet of such drift ships carrying suitable commodities with very little environmental impact, with a smaller fleet of normal cargo ships providing fast transport to fill in the gaps caused by the randomness of the drifting fleet arrivals.

The above idea is based on the proposals I've seen to do something similar in space. Briefly, there are orbits that can move an object from Lagrange points of one pair of bodies to Lagrange points of another pair using very little energy, but they can take a very long time.

The proposals are to start using those to regularly send supply ships to various moons and planets that we think we may want to send humans to later. Suppose the path to some particular moon takes 30 years. If we start sending supply ships down that path now, sending one every 6 months, say, then 30 years from now they start arriving. Then we can send the humans. The ship with the humans only needs to take enough supplies for the trip out, making the trip much more feasible.

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

</comment><comment><USER10> What I'm waiting for is for foils to become useful. It doesn't make sense to (only) replace energy source, drag should be minimized too. Admittedly it will take a long time for technology to be ready for these huge ships though.

<comment><USER2> Hydrofoils are generally higher drag at low speed, they only make sense when you want to go faster than displacement speed. That doesn't make sense for most cargo, anything time sensitive is going by air.

<comment><USER11> There is a large gap in price and performance between 15-knot container ships and 500-knot aircraft. The former costs $0.1 per ton and takes months (7+37+7 day cargo transit), the later costs $5 per ton and does it in less than a day.

There are already lots of hydrofoil passenger ferries where passengers pay a lot less than a plane ticket but more than a slow monohull ferry ticket to get to a destination a bit more quickly.

On land, you might send something across the country at 60 mph on a truck for $0.4 per ton if you don't want to wait for rail or pay for air, but as far as I know, no such middle ground exists for ocean freight.

There are certainly customers who can't afford and don't need next-day air, but would pay more to get components in perhaps 5 days (60 mph hydrofoil, 6000 mile Pacific crossing, plus a day to load/unload) instead of 5-8 weeks, if there was a business that catered to that.

<comment><USER2> I see what you're saying, and I think that's why more cargo is moving by rail in Asia. If it was sold as a premium service it might work, but I have no idea how big that market really is when you are talking about crossing whole oceans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The following contains simplifications.

The shipping sector is squeezed by regulations and fuel prices. If you burn a tonne per hour and it costs a thousand bucks, thats about 8 million bucks per year. If oil price goes up, shipping gets more expensive. Those with newer more efficient or alternative fuel using ships get hit less.

If oil price goes down, it is the opposite.

Regulations need to be predictable. Ship building projects take a long time. If you can be sure that your fuel costs will be high in the future, an investment in better efficiency will pay itself back in a shorter time.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe nuclear power for commercial ships?

Global navies have proved and refined nuclear power technology for their ships.

Why not apply this technology to the commercial sector, instead of carrying gallons of diesel?

<comment><USER14> So pirates will be able to steal nuclear material? What happens if a container sinks near a popular beach? I doubt people want these kinds of risks.

I'd expect gas and diesel to be used for airplanes and ships for a long long time.

<comment><USER13> >So pirates will be able to steal nuclear material?

Why couldn't private security be part of international freight? The costs for this security could be added to freight costs.

For example, Russian private security contractors successfully protected ships near Somalia - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XJ0nblZjZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XJ0nblZjZE)

>What happens if a container sinks near a popular beach? I doubt people want these kinds of risks.

Governmental navies don't experience these risks? Also, read this section about liabilities for private nuclear reactors: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Civil_liability)

<comment><USER14> Private security is not a guarantee and someone could always send a suicide bomber. It happened a few times to US navy ships it would probably be easier to do to commercial ships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Much like they look now. You might call ship designs a local maxima but the physics aren't going to change any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER16> no one, even from the military posters, mentioned the new salt water engines that are in development? [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/seawater- to-fuel-n...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/seawater-to-fuel-navy- vessels-_n_5113822.html)

<comment><USER17> Cool. But only for jet fuel. ie for air craft carriers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anticipated by Paolo Bacigalupi in Ship Breaker. Great book if you're looking for some semi-dystopian SF.

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems sensible to have some solar panels. Even to make power for living quarters.

</comment><comment><USER19> The Mighty Boosh - Future Sailors

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAbkh4TMRqg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAbkh4TMRqg)

<comment><USER20> "Digital stowaway!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surely the most effective way of improving shipping efficiency is to stop shipping as much? The principal of locality can be applied to far more than memory architectures.

<comment><USER13> This could be done but it would probably kill or slow technological progress and economies.

For example, China is extremely good at manufacturing, Japan and South Korea are great at electronics manufacturing, Germany engineering disciplines, etc, etc. North America could do this but everything would be very expensive or impossible to source locally.

Also, what about food? Do you enjoy coffee? Well it got to North America on a ship. How about bananas? Same thing, that tropical fruit's year round availability is due to shipping logistics. The same thing applies to most "everyday" goods like chocolate, transistors, cotton, etc, etc.

Also, going back to China, they don't only manufacture cheap goods to be shipped to Wal-Mart. They are also a major farming and agriculture producer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well, we could also shop at the thrift shop a little more often. Disposable cheap crap is central to Western culture.

</comment><comment><USER23> I love how the concept sailing ships look nothing at all like traditional sailing craft. Turns out that we have over a thousand years of experience designing and operating sailing cargo craft - maybe it wouldn't hurt to look at some of the older designs guys?

<comment><USER24> Have you taken a look at what designers do when they have access to modern materials and control systems? They don't design Triremes, for good reason.

Have a gander at the America's Cup boats, for instance.

<comment><USER23> Sure but compare America's Cup boats with that atrocity pictured at the top of the article!</comment></comment></comment>


RealDoll's first sex robot took me to the uncanny valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/11/realdolls-first-sex-robot-took-me-to-the-uncanny-valley/ <comment><USER2> He never took middle school hygiene. He never saw the propaganda film. [https://vimeo.com/12915013](https://vimeo.com/12915013)

<comment><USER3> I regret that I have but one upvote for you.</comment></comment>


North Korea seen moving ICBM-grade rocket towards west coast - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-missiles-icbm/north-korea-seen-moving-icbm-grade-rocket-towards-west-coast-media-idUSKCN1BG081?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=59ae17e304d301613b76e16f&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> What makes this newsworthy? Is the only launch site in the west? The width of Korea can't be that important for an ICBM and I'd assume the US could strike just about everywhere in North Korea before they had a chance to respond.

<comment><USER3> Did you read the article?

"North Korea has launch facilities for its missile program on its west coast..."

<comment><USER2> Does it not have them on it's east coast or anywhere else? There was no context for what makes this significant.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm...I must have missed the question in your original comment about the significance of west coast (or it was edited afterwards).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle-e-books-and-others/ <comment><USER2> I have started going back to real books for any book I might want to keep, loan, or give to a friend when I'm finished. It would be nice not to be screwed over by DRM yet again. I like my Kindle, but it doesn't help me read. It helps Amazon make money. The only thing it does is for me is to help me carry lots of books around easily.

<comment><USER3> If your books have no DRM, how will DRM screw you over? Isn't that the point of this posting?

<comment><USER4> Some people are refusing to pay Amazon (or other providers) for DRMd content - a boycott of anything with DRM.

Some people are not going to break any laws, even if those laws are mostly technical and not going to be enforced. And providing means to remove DRM is more problematic because the law is enforced a bit more rigorously there.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that removing DRM for personal use only is legal in the US.

<comment><USER5> It is not. Section 1201 of the DMCA specifiys: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

There is an exception to users whose ability to make legal use of the protected material is impeded, but only after the Librarian of Congress rules that the given type of user of the given type of work qualifies for the above exception.

The exception mentioned above also, explicitly, does not apply to the following provision: "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that-- `(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; `(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or `(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/F?c105:1:./temp/~c105hq5...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/F?c105:1:./temp/~c105hq5F7A:e11962):

<comment><USER3> Interesting, then some of the news articles I've read on this are incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since I disapprove of Amazon's DRM policy, the only books on my kindle are tech books from O'Reilly (DRM-free) and fiction from Project Gutenburg (DRM- free)

I know I _could_ download ebooks from Amazon and just remove their DRM, but I think it's better to vote with my wallet.

After all, they sell the Kindle at cost and rely on you buying books from them to make any profit. So don't buy their books and maybe they'll learn..

<comment><USER7> Some books on Amazon are DRM free. The publisher is the one who decides if they want to use it.

<comment><USER8> How do you see which books are DRM-free before purchase?

<comment><USER9> At least some books mention that "At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied." in the book description field. For example: [http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Cinema- ebook/dp/B0089LOEBS/ref=...](http://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Cinema- ebook/dp/B0089LOEBS/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1351023851&sr=1-2)

<comment><USER10> Is there a way to tell if this book has DRM?

[http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-the-Brain- ebook...](http://www.amazon.com/Neuroscience-Exploring-the-Brain- ebook/dp/B008QWSV2S/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital- text&ie=UTF8&qid=1351042693&sr=1-1&keywords=neuroscience+exploring+the+brain)

<comment><USER11> Yes. This part in the details section:

"Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits"

means that it has DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Wired link adds nothing. They link to ([http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ebooks- formats...](http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/ebooks-formats-drm- and-you-%E2%80%94-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/))

<comment><USER12> I disagree.

Wired's nice little introduction will make more people aware that they don't have to put up with DRM.

Wired's attention will also make it easier to find definitive info on DRM removal. When I'm not looking for anything in particular, I look at sites like Wired. But when I want to know how to do something specific, I go straight to Google. And Wired's story will boost Apprentice Alf's search ranking, making the solution that much easier to find for folks tired of DRM.

<comment><USER4> "The Wired link adds no value for the readers of HN, apart from a tl;dr".

<comment><USER13> I disagree--I learned something.

<comment><USER4> What extra information did the Wired link add over the page that Wired link to?

([http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm- from...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle- e-books-and-others/))

([http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal- to...](http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal-tools-for- ebooks/))

<comment><USER13> Perhaps not information, but the fact it's reposted on Wired means the article has a larger audience (at least by one--me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real problem is there is nothing that requires companies to provide continued access to DRM-encumbered media; they can turn it off whenever they want.

In my opinion, if a company can't or won't provide a way for a customer to access their purchased files, then they should be required by law to provide a way for the customer to un-DRM those files.

<comment><USER14> I would think that the problem is that one of the reasons people like Amazon want to use DRM is to ensure that no DRM free copies of the media exist. One DRM-free copy can multiply into 1 million DRM free copies very quickly.

Of course in reality this is laughably unworkable unless they release a future version of the kindle which _requires_ DRMd media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found this link to be more helpful, in regards to what plugins to use. (Note for Windows + Kindle)

[http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add- kindle-...](http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/06/15/how-add-kindle-drm- removal-plugin-calibre/)

<comment><USER16> At least that is 18 months more recent, that should help a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Frankly, I don't care about DRM for fiction. I generally only read fiction once, anyway (and donate the paper book afterwards).

For technical books it's a different story, but then the Kindle is not a medium that works well for diagrams and special formatting that you would expect in technical writing.

So in the end, Kindle DRM does not hurt me much. Then again, it is so easy to strip that I think Amazon does not care, either. It's just a pacifier for publishers.

<comment><USER18> There's a 3rd category: non-fiction that doesn't necessarily require diagrams. For this category, ebooks are great in the sense that I can add highlighting and notes very easily. For me this is the largest category of books and so DRM scares me. It also scares me that the highlights and notes are not owned by me. I wonder if I can somehow retrieve all of them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does removing the DRM also remove the highlight tracking/syncing provided by Amazon? If so, that'd be a deal breaker for me to use this other than as last resort backups

<comment><USER20> No it doesn't. You reload DRM-stripped books on the device, as if it had never been bought from Amazon.

Don't forget that DRMs aren't here to save Amazon from piracy. Today and for the next couple of years, what they really care about is securing a dominant position. So the DRM security only needs to be good enough to reassure clueless edition managers, who believe that DRM will help their business rather than hurt it. So they have no incentive to get out of their way to bug DRM-stripping customers (in light of which, I'd guess some of the morons who handled Linn Nygaard's case will be fired, and deservedly so).

Same as iTunes DRM actually, which Apple ended up discarding once they were in a position to tell the music editor to just shut up.

<comment><USER19> > _No it doesn't. You reload DRM-stripped books on the device, as if it had > never been bought from Amazon._

Yeah that's the issue...From what I can tell, Amazon differentiates between both and I imagine that would affect how its central database of highlights/bookmarkings keeps track of each individual book. I suppose this would affect you only if you were highlighting a DRM book and then stripped the DRM...which I guess is mostly an edge case.

<comment><USER21> From what I saw on my own Kindle, there's no "central database of highlights/bookmarkings"; it's stored per book in new files Kindle create next to each book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> He publicly admitted that he cracks his ebooks. IANAL, but his missteps would be much easier to proof in court, compared to the case of the Norwegian kindle user.

But for some reason, I strongly doubt Amazon will ban him...

<comment><USER23> _But for some reason, I strongly doubt Amazon will ban him..._

And the point is that even if they ban him and try to delete his library, they will fail because he has backups without DRM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> With respect to the conversations about the legality of stripping the DRM from e-books (in the USA). I just looked up the Librian of Congress's 2010 DMCA statement, where it is stated that one of the classes works which qualify for exception from the no disabling DRM clause of the DMCA is:

"Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book's read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format."

I suspect that it is in error, but this excemption does not specify that the reason for disabling DRM is to use it for one of the mentioned purposes, only that stripping DRM would be nessasary for the mentioned purposes. The lack of enforcement probably makes this a moot point, but if all of a e-book's versions have DRM, and you get in trouble for stripping the DRM off, this would probably hold up as a solid technicality.

Granted, it is still illegal to distribute software designed to aid people in lawfully stripping DRM from e-books.

Source: [http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of- Congress-120...](http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2010/Librarian-of- Congress-1201-Statement.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> Any good command line tool for doing this?

<comment><USER25> They are included in the tools zip

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've always just sort of tolerated the Kindle.

Lately I've been doing most of my reading via Safari. I pay for the "library" level plan and feel it's worth every penny, in spite of the horrendous mobile app. Every few months, I spend Safari token on an ePub copy of something particularly good.

I'd like to see all publishers offer the option to purchase a print + DRM-free digital copy for not much more than print alone just as O'Reilly and Pearson do today.

</comment><comment><USER27> Sadly, I would be glad to pay a reasonable price for books without DRM, but my options are still quite limited. I've been waiting patiently for Tor's ebook store to open (promised "by the end of summer 2012"). Baen is fine for a couple genres, but I don't trust Smashwords because of sockpuppet reviews. I don't want to pirate, I am glad to give authors their fair share.

<comment><USER28> Baen also has a problem with OCR'd text. I downloaded a Greg Bear book from them a few weeks ago and it was clearly OCR'd without a second look towards quality. It had so many typos and spelling errors that it was practically unreadable. I returned it for a refund.

To be fair Amazon also has this problem. It's hard being an ebook consumer when 90% of books either have DRM or are unreadably OCR'd.

<comment><USER29> I've never experienced this with Amazon. Presumably it is a publisher problem, not a retailer problem. What publishers have you experienced this with?

<comment><USER28> It's endemic in the industry. With a few exceptions, try downloading any book printed before, say, the year 2000. A good example is the Kindle copy of Dune that Amazon sells. Spend $15 ( _$3 more than having the print version delivered to your doorstep!_ ) on one of the most famous science fiction books of all time only to find that it's riddled with spelling errors, grammar errors, and word omissions. (Or just read the Amazon reviews that tell you as much.)

Another good example is the older Dark Tower books. I bought book 3 a year ago and it was in the same unreadable state. I also returned it for a refund.

New books aren't a problem, they're designed with ebooks in mind. It's just older books that the publisher quickly OCR'd and spammed Amazon with to make a quick buck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All you lawyers: Is removing / tampering with Kindle DRM legal in this case? Considering we bought the material?

<comment><USER31> It all comes down to the end user agreement you agree to when purchasing the ebook. Content providers are within their right to define how they want their copyrighted works to be used - though a judge could potentially throw out the end user agreement in court.

So, if Amazon stipulates that you should not tamper with or remove the DRM from the ebook, it's a violation of your purchase agreement if you do.

Basically, you agree to not remove the DRM when you pay them for their content. The only legal alternative is to not buy from them.

<comment><USER32> EULAs can't override laws. Even if you break the EULA for legitimate purpose - you aren't necessarily breaking any laws.

<comment><USER31> Nobody said anything about _breaking laws_.

EULAs are technically _legally binding_ contracts, and breaking them leaves you liable in civil court.

<comment><USER32> Point is, EULA can't even restrict you for civil cases if it contradicts your rights. But that can vary from country to country.

<comment><USER31> And also state to state, which is why I said pending a Judge doesn't throw it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is from 2011 and hugely outdated. As far as I'm aware, the newer Topaz Kindle format hasn't been cracked and thus the DRM cannot be stripped. It's been a long time since I've bought a book that wasn't Topaz-imprisoned.

<comment><USER34> This is not true. Topaz is a scanned, PDF like format that Amazon uses for older books where for whatever reason they can't get a digital copy. While it's true that Topaz books can't have the DRM easily removed, only around 5% of Amazon's books are in this format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> <http://thepiratebay.se/browse/601> \+ a spiral binder + a laser printer.

Knowledge should be free.</comment>


Indie (Game) Fund is open for applications - <AUTHOR> http://indie-fund.com/apply/

<comment><USER2> These guys have balls of steel to be doing this (or other people's money...). I started writing a long reply, but realised it was turning out almost exactly the same as an earlier post I made so with appologies for the copy/paste:

I'm a game developer, have built a profitable but small studio and I wouldn't invest a cent of my money into a game company I didn't have control over. The risks of developing a game are:

* Technical. Modern games of the retail console variety are incredibly complex pieces of technology. I would not be surprised if building an MMO was comparable to designing a car in terms of engineering effort expended. If your schedule slips, you need to rework major pieces of code just so your engine is no longer dated.

* Artistic/Creative. The game world needs to be interesting, believable and engaging. Asset production is very expensive. Let your schedule slip, and it will all feel dated.

* Gameplay. The game needs to be fun! This is much, much harder than it looks.

* Market. Distribution is incredibly hard, and even very good games often fly under the radar. Is your game the genre of the month? Is it fun enough that everyone talks about it? etc

Very rarely is someone great at all 4. I'm reasonably good at #1 & #3 and hopeless at #2, and average at #4.If you manage to somehow succeed at all four points, then you have a game that makes essentially a one time income of $x (it's spread out over a few years, but it spikes high and rapidly diminishes). Hopefully you made a profit!

And that's per game. All you need to do is mess up your next game (for instance by being too ambitious and letting your success get to your head), and you're bankrupt. The trouble is that you're essentially engineering new products each year or two. There's none of that nice, slow maturation of product and increased customer base you may get if you make, eg, bug tracking or database software, operating systems etc. Each release is potentially a very big, maybe-the-company-won't-survive flop.

There are a lot of companies that are established enough that they can survive on their fan base and income, but they're the exception, not the rule. I admire every one of them.

<comment><USER3> Your points are all valid, but many of these apply to other industries too, and other industries also have their own subset of problems.

You could basically sum it up by saying 'Startups are risky. Angel Investors are brave'.

All the risks are why Angels/VCs (including PG in his essays) are always saying they look for promising founders rather than good ideas. There are so many risks that can derail a great idea, what's important is that you can trust the people at the wheel to make the right moves.

There are a lot of technical problems in making a game, but if John Carmack is doing the coding, I'd trust him to solve them. There are a lot of gameplay problems in making a game, but if Soren Johnson is doing the design, I'd trust him to solve them.

<comment><USER4> That's still not a risk-free approach, you could trust John Romero and get Daikatana. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana>

<comment> daniel-cussen "John Romero's about to make you his bitch...Suck it down."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It is one of the main reasons we are able to offer funding terms that are better than anything else out there. Well, except maybe Canadian government funding, but we're not all fortunate enough to be Canadian."

Hells fucking yeah.

<comment><USER6> Specially in Quebec, where productions costs are highly subsidized by the provincial government - [http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/04/canadian- government-is-buy...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/04/canadian-government- is-buying-the-video-game-industry)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first thought was "oh wow, some rich people who want to participate in the gaming industry, how cute".

But when I saw the team, wow. The creators of Braid, Fl0w and world of goo are all among the partners it seems.

</comment><comment><USER8> > It's founded by a bunch of people who have done pretty well with their indie > games.

Reminds me of the fund that one of the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles setup to help independent comic book artists publish their own comic books.

"The Xeric Foundation has awarded in excess of $2,000,000 to comic book creators and non-profit organizations since its first grant cycle in September 1992."

<http://www.xericfoundation.org/>

</comment><comment><USER9> What are the terms of the funding? If an indie game has low cost development already, why need the extra fund to dilute the profit? It would be great if it's a grant.

<comment><USER5> Because the kind of people that tend to make indie games don't have the money to keep themselves under a roof and fed without taking gainful full-time employment, which gets in the way of getting a game out in a timely manner since it's done purely in free time. The investors don't want to make it into a grant a) out of respect for the developer and transaction and b) because they don't have oodles of money themselves, at least compared to more traditional investors.

Think of it less as a business venture to jumpstart a company and sell it for millions later and more as a way to allow people to have a job doing what they really want to do full-time... so long as the game is successful enough. :)

<comment><USER9> Understood. Then it's more important to spell out the terms of the funding ahead of time. Are they paying you money to develop the game then take over the end result completely? That would be 100% equity funding and it sounds like a "job" to the dev. 6%, 10%, 20%, 50%?

<comment><USER10> The aim is ramen profitability, I guess.

Vague outlines to the funding terms are at <http://indie-fund.com/about/> . Basically you pay back a proportion of revenue til you pay then back plus a bit. Or, if you make no money in the first 3 years, you don't owe them anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool, my game almost qualified except for the last bit of making money. I'm developing an android market distributed game (which doesn't make that much money, from what I've heard) and a free add supported version. So the income possibility isn't that high. Though it is a social mobile game it might have an edge.</comment>


Email marketing: do you understand what this service is about? - <AUTHOR> http://www.obvi.email <comment><USER2> No, I genuinely have no idea what I'm signing up for if I was to put in my email. Autoresponder list? Pricing? Per email? Users?

<comment><USER3> @iamben This is an email marketing tool. OBVI makes it easy to create & send fully measurable campaigns. CODE FREE. You can send 10,000 emails per month to unlimited people.</comment></comment>


Productized marketing services, are doomed to fail - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sjmoody/if-you-launch-a-productized-marketing-service-it-is-doomed-to-fail-f633b617fc4e <comment><AUTHOR> "The typical millennial entrepreneur now exits the 9–5 corporate world before ever tackling complex tasks, and this only enhances the fixation on the simple domain."</comment>


Citizen: Now Operating in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@CrimeNoMore/citizen-now-operating-in-san-francisco-154c7ebc9bc6 <comment><USER2> > _To be clear, Citizen does not allow users to interfere with active crime > scenes or disrupt law enforcement. Both are clearly forbidden in our Terms > of Service, and we've been encouraged by the responsible engagement of our > New York user base._

Yeah, okay.

</comment><comment><USER3> the parallels between this and the social credit system in china are interesting. their system is accompanied by new and powerful surveillance technology that uses facial recognition to pick out criminals from crowded settings. it is interesting to see two totally different societies come to similar ends through implementations that they find acceptable.

a tool like this will probably end up with a much higher rate of criminals and victims having their faces and other information posted and viewed online, like on reddit.</comment>


I will dream of this $5,900 reclining work station for the rest of my days - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/ces/2017/1/9/14174532/altwork-station-reclining-standing-desk-ergonomic-work-ces-2017 <comment><USER2> The added strain to the arms will probably mess you up...</comment>