Governments admit to faking terrorism: a list - <AUTHOR> http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/12/governments-admit-they-carry-out-false-flag-terror/ <comment><USER2> A lot of people's jobs in the military is to come up with plans like these. The point is that we're not actually doing them most of the time.

The fact that a US senator once proposed a false flag does not make this official US policy. If we had to take everything every member of congress said as scripture, we'd have bombed every country in the world by now.

There are a lot of disturbing stuff in this list, but the false equivalency between putting a weapon down next to an afghan civilian after being (most likely) accidentally killed (despicable, but not always likely they went in with a plan to kill civilians) and actively killing your own people just so you can say it was some militants (an actual campaign involving planning and whatnot) is preposterous

Creating a fake terrorist organisation to mess with the heads of the real ones doesn't seem like an issue in itself, and there's a pretty big line to cross between fake training camps and real bombs.

Also, the notion that a country is funding terrorism in another country is not exactly a novel one.

It's unfortunate because there are a lot of real issues, but some people who cover these issues try so hard to find all these issues with US policy (of which there are many), that they try to equate some offhand remark of a senator with years-long operations involving framing and murdering innocents with express political goals.

>As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".

This one is beyond bizarre.

<comment><USER3> >The point is that we're not actually doing them most of the time.

I agree, but is that really knowable? By definition, the successfully done ones aren't known, right? Not that it's a reason to dive into conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER2> I'm maybe too much of an optimist , but I've always felt like we're(Americans) a bit less realpolitik than the rest of the world, and that if it were to come to shooting Americans for political gain, somebody would say something. I think the biggest proof is in the Snowden revelations, american politicians seem to be the only ones complaining about their own country's systems. We seem to have a good culture of protecting government institutions above politics, even if our politics end up being pretty shitty anyways. Other countries are loud about the leaks, but only to hit on other countries. I've heard nobody in France complain about the DGSE's complete unfettered usage of everyone's data.

I'm also of the opinion that there are enough incompetent people in every part of the government that we'd somehow end up hearing about it anyways.

<comment><USER4> > I'm maybe too much of an optimist , but I've always felt like > we're(Americans) a bit less realpolitik than the rest of the world, and that > if it were to come to shooting Americans for political gain, somebody would > say something.

Spend some time consuming foreign-language media. You'll find the same hard- nosed realpolitik narrative on foreign governments, mixed with a much more sympathetic treatment of the domestic government.

This has the same effect: "we" are sincere, "they" are nefarious, "we" are straightforward, "they" are untrustworthy, "we" are working for the greater good, "they" are working for their own advantage, etc.

<comment><USER2> At least in France, I've found that people are a lot more accepting of realpolitik from the french state. The limited time I spent talking to people in Japan about politics makes it seem like nobody can be an idealist about the japanese gov't with all the wheeling and dealing that happens there.

I'm not saying that the US is some shining standard of gov't, but that the citizens seem to care a lot more about their ideals than in some other countries, sometimes at the cost of seemingly sound things (healthcare, gun rights, whatever).

<comment><USER5> I think the US government is partly such a big target for criticism (constructive and otherwise) exactly because Americans are such navel gazers.

Conspiracy theories, and flat-out badmouthing the government happens in every country I've been in (and generally the government is far worse than the US one in at least some ways), but they never get traction. It's different in the US. The cynic in me would say that it's quite exceptional for the US to not have the "main" news organization to be state-controlled. And not conspiracy- theorist-style state controlled, actually state controlled. It is blatantly obvious that the BBC asks for permission before running government corruption stories for example. Hell, they even ask for permission before running corruption stories about the US government.

But in nearly all of Europe, there is zero doubt that the main news providers are 100% state controlled : the BBC, Nederland 1/2/3 (the Netherlands), VRT (Belgium), France 1/2/3 (France), ... Nobody's even trying to hide that fact.

<comment><USER6> The BBC is officially public, but not officially state controlled. Same goes for the German public broadcasters. (In Germany, they are controlled by the same people than run the political parties, though. Literally.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really just the tip of the iceberg. How many "terrorists" has the FBI arrested where the FBI delivered the plan, the motivation, contacts and most importantly, the explosives?

They are actively fabricating terrorist plots.

<comment><USER8> One way to keep on top of the KPIs

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is actually incredibly easy to see how smart people tasked with solving complicated societal problems arrive at false flag operations as a viable solution:

Imagine you have a credible imminent threat to your society posted by a danger to which the society is not familiar enough with to fully grasp and take seriously.

Do you wait for the threat to play out and take your chances with the society sufficiently changing its attitude towards it in time? Or do you galvanize things with a false flag operation that will cause less damage than the real threat but induce the much needed urgent action against it? Almost like a vaccine. Innocent people will die either way.

It is incredibly paternalistic in a way, and a morally gray area. Ultimately it is a lack of faith in the people the operation is trying to protect, a lot of times it is flat out wrong or backfires in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways - for example Iran.

And yet. And yet, not always. And when it works you'll never hear about it.

Thought exercise: You are a marine biologist who has become convinced that over fishing is about to cause a sudden, sharp, and potentially irreversible collapse in the sea food supply. Millions will starve. But meanwhile tuna cans remain cheap and abundant in supermarkets across the world.

This is a long standing serious issue but _now_ it is coming to a head, do you wait for the crisis to unfold and hope international politics find a way to avoid it in time or..?

<comment><USER10> Imagine you were a US intelligence officer with an extremely in-depth knowledge of socioeconomic momentum around the world. You are aware that oil is a relatively irreplaceable dependency and that most oil is controlled by foreign regimes that are not allies of the US. You realize that if things keep going this way, those in control of oil will have huge advantages in the future. _You_ have the ability to recognize that perhaps in the long term, this could result in these countries overtaking the US economically and culturally. These regimes have religious connections to organizations who are militarily anti-american, too!

But the society is not familiar enough with the threat to fully grasp and take seriously. Do you wait for the threat to play out and take your chances with the society sufficiently changing its attitude towards it in time? Or do you galvanize things with a false flag operation that will cause less damage than the real threat but induce the much needed urgent action against it? Almost like a vaccine. Innocent people will die either way.

<comment><USER11> "Society is not familiar enough with the threat.." Yeah, that whole line of bullshit is definitely the sort of rationalization people unfortunately make.

Unfortunately its also bullshit.

The United States is just as much an evil, selfish empire as any that came before it.

Someday people like you may learn to think on your own rather than rationalizing immoral acts.

One way to make it easier for yourself. Try to think of things on a smaller scale. Say if your dad was lying to you (as an adult) about how your sister was killed by a terrorist. Only he really killed her in order to take over her bedroom to convert it into a gaming room.

The established institutions need to be completed demolished. They are destructive, unethical, worthless.

But anyway it doesn't matter too much what people do anymore. Within a few decades artificial intelligences will take over. And it will be a much more ethical and sane world. Because many of the problems we have are the result of human ignorance, stupidity, and childishness.

<comment><USER10> I apologize for the miscommunication in my post. I am certainly not an advocate for the Iraq war or the line of thinking you're criticizing. I was hoping to propose a follow-up thought experiment to GP's in order to provoke discussion around the fact that the US is continually engaging in such inadequate behavior.

<comment><USER12> Apologist

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the article:

>> _" As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings."_

I know I'll be 65+ years old; retired in a Nigerian village eating some Obe Ata Dindin. Suddenly someone is going to show me a breaking-news article about the real truth of 9/11\. Based on this, I see it takes about 55 years before the truth comes out. Anytime you read something about seemingly insane 9/11 truthers talk, keep this bit of info in the back of your mind and consider that they just might be right...

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't the whole Iraq war a false flag act of terrorism? Accepting that the 9/11 attack was executed by those purported to have done so, and even if you accept that all the knowledge of the preparation and planning for the act was overlooked and filled with institutional incompetence and failure; using one act as a justification for action of a totally different nature and rationale is just that.

Was it really just opportune that 9/11 happened to justify the Iraq war? I mean, there is an audio recording of Wolfowitz proclaiming how 9/11 should be used and is an opportunity to rationalize an attack on Iraq?

<comment><USER15> Not really. I've read the books of Clarke and Tenet, and according to them yes, it was just opportune. Wolfowitz, Cheney, et al had decided to go to war years before and had written about it extensively.

After Afganistan, intelligence services were directed to "find a link" over and over again until such information could be gathered, no matter how flawed. Feith at DOD was (inappropriately) tasked with finding intelligence that supported the administrations conclusions. ( [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2007/03/feithbased_intelligence.html) ) Cheney even went out and made several speeches saying the link was substantial to the bewilderment of CIA. In truth, no significant link was ever found.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I generally find this blogger too alarmist, but much of the list here appears accurate, and shocking to me. Faked terrorism seems much more common than I would guess. Of course, the more liberal/democratic the country, and the more recent, the more weak/stetched the case is.

but still, the lesson to me is that this sort of "conspiracy" is not at all implausible, even in a country like Canada....

<comment><USER16> > _Of course, the more liberal /democratic the country, and the more recent, > the more weak/stetched the case is._

Not really, quite the opposite. The most "liberal" countries are the worst perpetrators of such things, if we're talking about Western democracies. They usually do it outside their territorry to assert influence on countries and place allies in power, grab resources, prevent unfavorable regime change etc.

(Nothing to do with establishing democracy either: they are impartial to that, and have worked with regimes such as the apartheid in S.A., Pinochet etc, including of course people like Noriega, Saddam and Ossama, which they later broke ties with when their foreign interests didn't ally as well, but who were just as scum when they were pals).

<comment><USER17> What? This is like saying that peaceniks are, in reality, the most violent of all. That after leaving Love-All-Equal Unitarian Church, the church-goers spend time studying the strategies of Hermann Goering. That's utter hogwash.

For some reason, neither Scandinavia, nor Canada, nor Switzerland appear on the list as perpetrators. And when Italy does, it's when the country is run by a decidedly illiberal corporatist/fascist.

Indeed, for some reason, liberalism -- that is, the philosophy based on the ideas of freedom and universal human equality under the law -- is seen as antithetical to violent mendacity.

<comment><USER16> > _What? This is like saying that peaceniks are, in reality, the most violent > of all. That after leaving Love-All-Equal Unitarian Church, the church-goers > spend time studying the strategies of Hermann Goering. That 's utter > hogwash._

Study the history of colonialism. BILLIONS of people enslaved, suffered, killed, mamed, had their resources and country stolen and such. All by "civilized western societies" such as England, France, Belgium, Holland, et co. And then post-colonialism, where US plays a major role.

> _For some reason, neither Scandinavia, nor Canada, nor Switzerland appear on > the list as perpetrators._

Yes, and the reason is they didn't do much if anything bad in that regard.

Then again, I didn't say that ALL western democracies did such things.

I also didn't say that this behavior is inherent to being a democracy.

I only said that the worst offenders in such matters have historically been (and continue to be) western democracies.

Here's just an example, the tip of the iceberg, of what they still continue to do:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside- france...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-frances- secret-war-396062.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a bit of a mixed bag. The Columbian think wasn't a politically motivated false flag operation, for instance, it was murder for financial gain.

<comment><USER19> Yes, it's a bit misleading to mix in US State Dept contingency plans (Northwoods) with actual false flag operations (Israeli bombings in Egypt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think most of us have come to believe that governments themselves are better terrorists than the real ones.

<comment><USER21> Generally the distinction between gangster and terrorist depends on the motive. But the methods don't differ much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And yet, one might wonder: who is it that benefits most from these stories on .gov and .mil doing these distasteful things?

As much as I'd love to believe that we've all spontaneously awoken to our governments being underhanded, I cannot help but wonder if it's as organic as we'd believe.

<comment><USER23> OK, tell us who benefits most. I have no idea what you're insinuating, so why not come out and say it?

<comment><USER22> I honestly haven't thought it through too far myself--just curious, is all.

EDIT: That's the problem with conspiracies...it's conspiracies all the way down, and then beneath that happenstance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem with distinguishing agents provocateur from real terrorists lies in the proof. Enough real terrorists / revolutionaries / gangsters exist that one cannot assume governments acting as the sole generator. And reasonable people do not - or at least should not - act solely on suspicion.

Leakers might provide a solution, but a lot of conspiracies are very small and tightly-bound. And one cannot discount the possibility of the leak - or the leaker, e.g. Snowden - being discredited.

I would also add that the decentralized command-and-control model of terrorist organizations (i.e. cells) allows outside organizations to hijack cells for their own ends, at least temporarily. With no higher-ups actually giving orders, who can really determine the source of a particular objective?

</comment><comment><USER24> This is something that is really starting to bother me: More and more websites are doing this thing (on tabets such as the nexus 7 I'm on now) where they load most of the way in a second or two, and then some loading screen pops up and I have to wait 15-20 more seconds for some god-awful "mobile" paginated monstrosity that is slower and harder to read than the desktop site.

Can we stop that please? Just...stop.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a tried and true tactic. It would take extensive use of brainwashing and belief in fairy tales about an enlightened government, a city on hill exceptional-ism or what-have-you to think these don't happen. However, this level of brainwashing is achieved in US quite often. It is a lot worse vis-a- vis the rhetoric of independence, free thinking, individualism. But that in an of itself (this belief that we are no brainwashed) is also a result of brainwashing.

The issue is quite subtle and there are a few factors at play. One is the basic need to believe their "team" is a good team. This works with the brainwashing. "Teams", "us vs them" is ingrained in our tribal brains. We want to think our team is the winning team. We are better, special, not like "those others".

It is really working against the flow when attempting to show our citizens that "yes, our country has done these horrible things to others". They is an irrational immune response against it, they have been believing their family/their team they've rooted for now has a dark secret, its past marred in shameful things. They have been telling others, their kids, and themselves how great our country is, and now look! -- a total reversal, "what, have I been living in a fantasy world all this time?" kind of bewilderment. So instead of exposing and handling the hard truth, it is easy to bury it, stick fingers in the ears and say "la-la-la, I am not hearing you, ..."

This also is interesting because it kind of explains what happens in the brains of many who work for CIA, NSA and other such agencies. They are supposedly hired for their exceptional patriotism. Now sometimes it backfires, because they realize what they have to do in their jobs contradicts the high idealized patriotic beliefs of what this country is about. So there is Snowden, he is one of them. What about others?

There was an article just yesterday about how "Morale at NSA is low after the leaks". Hmm, it is low. Why is it low?. Good to explore. Did many realize they have been playing for the bad guys all this time? Or do they just feel angry about one of their team members "betraying" the team and they don't see anything wrong at all with what they do. To keep their nice govt job are they forced to believe one thing in their heads ("this fucking contradicts what our Constitution is all about!"), and profess another thing at work publicly. Much like North Koreans perhaps. Cry with happiness when "Dear Leader" drives, but curse his guts in their head? Who knows.

Another way to look at it is from a psychopathic, practical aspect. Do people just acknowledge the situation for what it is and say "yes we are bad and we love it". "We conducted these attacks? Great! Let us do more. If it means a blowing up a few civilians so be it." I can image many at the top operate on this principle.

<comment><USER26> _they realize what they have to do in their jobs contradicts the high idealized patriotic beliefs of what this country is about_

This is extremely uncommon.

For example, I used to be a submarine officer in the Navy, and I left as a conscientious objector because of this realization. In an average year, less than 100 active duty service members will apply for conscientious objector status (there are over 1 million active duty personnel). If you take a look at [this graph]([http://izbicki.me/blog/most-conscientious-objectors-are- not-...](http://izbicki.me/blog/most-conscientious-objectors-are-not- reservists)) based on GAO data, you'll see that the number of conscientious objector applications dropped significantly after September 11th. This is despite the fact that the wars afterward have been much more controversial and less just.

 _Why is [NSA moral] low?_

I'd bet it's not because of any ethical conflicts. Instead, it's because 100s of man-years of work is going out the window. One of their own betrayed them. This would be demoralizing even for the most ethically unquestionable teams.

<comment><USER27> The NSA's morale is low because shit rolls downhill.

The pressure is increased while blame flows down The Hill through every office and cubicle. New procedures are set in place so that supervisors can tell their supervisors what steps they've taken to ensure there won't be another Snowden. Peons scramble to adopt these new procedures all while under closer scrutiny from everyone around them. Everyone, including the janitors, are pressed to find "traitors" in their ranks. All of this while harvesting/analyzing new data and shredding/deleting evidence. I'm guessing that $100,000+ salary is fast losing it's allure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm shocked by the amount of comments here saying things like "they didn't planned to kill, they just took advantage of it" or "they planned it but didn't do it", so it's ok. It's not ok, it's miscreant attitude that demonstrates poor human skills.

I want to be represented by people with high human skills. Call me an idealistic if you want, it's ok for me in a world where vice is common place. Any way, we can't do anything great if we don't expect much of ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yeah, we've known about these tactics for decades. I wouldn't be surprised if 50 years from now, 9/11 is also revealed to have been a false flag operation.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would like to say that the Russian apartment bombings, although not officially proven to originate from the government, upon thorough investigation appear to have a very significant probability of being an actual brutal false flag. In addition to the available facts and possible motives, one can also consider that all serious journalists investigating this in Russia, and several KGB whistleblowers, have been assassinated.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't see the recent "secret weapons" in Iraq thing.

<comment><USER5> Maybe someone can explain this one to me ... about WMD in Iraq.

1) Iraq kills > 500 civilians using chemical weapons (google Ali Chemicali, Halabja, ...) (documented, amongst others, by the UN)

2) it is known that for at least a decade after that, Iraq was producing chemical weapons. (again, documented by the UN)

3) US invades

4) finds no weapons

Apparently the conclusion after this series of events is "there never were any chemical weapons", with a subtext of "Bush/CIA was not wrong, just lying".

I find it VERY hard to honestly draw that conclusion. The obvious conclusion is that those weapons were moved, the question is where.

<comment><USER15> They had it in the 80's and a bit later. After twenty years of sanctions they had little left but residual infrastructure.

The inspector conclusions at the end of Gulf II weren't that there was _zero_ evidence of WMD, just that no stockpiles of it were found. It was not found in neighboring countries either.

Turns out Saddam was bluffing, which he admitted to later. He could not appear to be weak before US and Iran, literally surrounded by enemies. Everyone was wrong on WMD, he had fooled them with his elaborate games. Saddam's mistake was that he misjudged American govt resolve to oust him after 9/11\. That they fabricated the reasons may have even surprised him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Considering things in this perspective, is it so far-fetched to at least consider the possibility that 9/11 was a false-flag attack?

<comment> fsck--off > Considering things in this perspective, is it so far-fetched to at least > consider the possibility that 9/11 was a false-flag attack?

Yes, it would be completely far fetched and cretinous. You would have to completely ignore the history of bin Laden's interactions with American and the CIA, the attack on the USS Cole the year before, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.

<comment><USER33> The Bin Laden and Bush families go way back. FBI Agent Robert Wrights press conference is a good place to start. [http://911encyclopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Robert_Wright](http://911encyclopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Robert_Wright)

Also the calls Emad Salem (1993 WTC Bombing) recorded with his FBI handler where he talks about who built the bomb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This list is quite confused and several of the examples are not false flag operations. As Wikipedia's definition says, it has to be carried out with the purpose of pinning blame on another group and tarnishing their reputation.

> Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out > by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that > the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White > House officials.

Is the author suggesting that the US government in fact organized the anthrax letters? That's a long stretch from the evidence that the letters were sent by a government employee. It's unfortunate that the government would try to blame al Qaeda, but it's just opportunistic dishonesty since they didn't plan the attack.

> Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US > should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having "our intelligence > agencies create a false terrorist organization."

This seems to be taken from an op-ed, which is a pretty terrible place to plan a false flag operation if you think about it. Yoo seems to be suggesting disrupting al Qaeda through disinformation, but I guess the name leads people to assume that something more evil must be going on.

> U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq > are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had > their serial numbers erased. ... Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs > may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent > attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

Pretty speculative and doesn't fall under the category of "government admissions." In any case, even if true, it's questionable whether it's qualifies as a false flag operation.

> A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, > then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat

War crime, followed by cover-up. Not false flag.

> U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, > they then "drop" automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they > were militants.

Same as previous.

> The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says > that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – admitted last the > Saudi government controls "Chechen" terrorists.

I don't even understand how this could be confused with a false flag. Just a threat of using a proxy force, and who knows if it's true.

Then to further confuse things the author defines "false flag terrorism" as "a government attacking its own people, then blaming others in order to justify going to war against the people it blames." I don't know why the author includes "its own people" and that the purpose must be to start a war, because neither of those appears in the Wikipedia definition and each is violated by several of his examples. But it just goes to show the sloppy thinking that went into putting together this list.

Look, many of these incidents were despicable and those responsible deserve to be called out, but the list is such a mixed bag of actual violence, planned violence, or speculation of planned violence, sometimes by the military, sometimes by police forces, sometimes by radicals. I don't see what the message is supposed to be by listing all of these together.

<comment><USER35> And you missed including these items:

      As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified
      documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint
      Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN
      airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the
      switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist
      acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans
      in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the
      following ABC news report; the official documents; and
      watch this interview with the former Washington
      Investigative Producer for ABC's World News Tonight with
      Peter Jennings.

      2 years before, American Senator George Smathers had
      suggested that the U.S. make "a false attack made on
      Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually
      fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to
      go in and [overthrow Castro]".

      And Official State Department documents show that – only
      nine months before the Joint Chiefs of Staff plan was
      proposed – the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-
      level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the
      Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of
      that country. The 3 plans were not carried out, but they
      were all discussed as serious proposals

While he included the disclaimer at the end "the 3 plans were not carried out", he mixes this in with a list of actual false flag operations, and if you didn't know better when reading these items, you may believe that these were actually carried out by the US government.

Mixing real false-flag operations with things that were at some point discussed as possible options is fairly misleading at best; couple with all of the other examples you quote, I would call this post downright dishonest.

Between the paranoia about "false flag", and the line "People are slowly waking up to this whole con job by governments who want to justify war", this is veering dangerously close to "wake up sheeple!" territory.

<comment><USER36> False flag operations are the bread and butter of conspiracy theorists, and I'd like to show this list to some I know...

This may not be an ideal list, but it describes things that actually occurred. The false-flags that involved the US are the exceptions that prove the rule. You can see how far these proposals typically get in the US government.

<comment><USER37> > The false-flags that involved the US are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Are they? They are certainly rare, but so are actual terrorists attacks in the United States. If you choose at random an attack on the US outside of a combat zone within our lifetimes, you have a nontrivial probability that it was an _admitted_ false flag operation. And that's just counting the ones they've admitted.

This isn't to say that we should fall in with the "9/11 was an inside job" people, but rather that we should be _extraordinarily_ skeptical when there is some kind of an attack and self-interested parties come out of the woodwork with complicated one-sided proposals to ensure "never again" (even though they can ensure no such thing), which just so happen to secure to the proponents an unfathomably large quantity of tax dollars.

<comment><USER34> > If you choose at random an attack on the US outside of a combat zone within > our lifetimes, you have a nontrivial probability that it was an admitted > false flag operation.

Really? What are the admitted false flag operations against the US, forgetting about how old any of us are? If I look at the list from the article, the ones involving the US are either not false flag operations (my post), operations never put into action, or actual false flag operations but against a foreign country (Iran, Italy).

<comment><USER37> Obviously if you go down this road you end up in conspiracy theory land because everybody has their own version of historical events even after the parts that everyone admits happened, but here are a couple of incidents not on the list:

FBI had an inside man in the 1993 WTC bombing but chose not to thwart the bombing by substituting the explosives for inert powder (allegedly to preserve the inside man's cover): [http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/28/nyregion/tapes- depict-prop...](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/28/nyregion/tapes-depict- proposal-to-thwart-bomb-used-in-trade-center-blast.html)

Second gulf of Tonkin incident famously used to justify the Vietnam war never actually happened. Government now admits it never happened, doesn't admit to intentional fabrication. (Is it a false flag operation to falsely claim there was an attack or provocation without properly verifying the truth of it before going public? Because if it is then we also get to put the Iraq WMDs on the list. For that matter, if we want to go that far back, the sinking of the USS Maine which was used to justify the Spanish-American war was also subsequently shown to not have been an actual attack: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Incident#Investigations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine_Incident#Investigations)).

I don't mean to make the argument that the US is often in the business of bombing itself in order to drum up business for the defense industry, but rather that the defense industry will use anything that _looks like_ an attack to opportunistically drum up business for itself. Only after they've finished lining their pockets with our money does it come out that the original justification evaporates upon scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This article is very 'unpatriotic' ... I don't think normal god fearing individuals with so much power would even think to do these horrible things.

Time for my 'delusion' pills ... ;)

</comment><comment><USER39> FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real.

False flags are symptoms of a deeper problem. The root problem is that we want war to be justified, because we want to be the good guys. War is unjustified, period, even when you think you are doing the right thing -- it is this that a lot of people have moral problems with _Ender 's Game_.

</comment><comment><USER40> One could add the Marco Polo Bridge incident. Under inadvertent stuff one could add the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

<comment><USER38> I second that motion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> * Bombing of the golden mosque

* Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists

* Stuxnet

* Smuggling rocket launchers into Gaza

* Gulf of Tonkin

* Assassination of JFK

* Oil Embargo on Japan

* Selling arms to Iraq

* Iran-contra

* 9/11

Tip of the iceberg.

</comment><comment><USER42> Not really surprising, but how do we stop it? Can it be stopped, or is corruption in government, just something we're forced to live with forever?

<comment><USER43> "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

<comment><USER18> But the price is cheaper if you redefine liberty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> That Onswipe plugin is so annoying on iOS.

<comment><USER45> A plugin designed to annoy the visitors

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran: [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag)

</comment><comment><USER47> > People are slowly waking up to this whole con job by governments who want to > justify war.

More people are talking about the phrase "false flag" than ever before.

Here's an interesting google trends graph of the phrase over time - [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=false%20flag](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=false%20flag)

</comment><comment><USER48> My only problem is with this one:

>Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians

2005 was the height of the 2nd intifada, there were nearly daily suicide bombings in Israel there was no need for excuses and undercover agents. Also the source basically says that the soldiers were originally supposed to work undercover and locate the organizers to be arrested (quality arrests, say what you want about that...) but as things appeared to get out of control the undercover agents (who were first timers) took matters into their own hands.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm surprised they missed this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_%28testimony%29)

</comment><comment><USER50> I thought the basic idea was documented clearly in 1984

</comment><comment><USER51> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire)

</comment><comment><USER52> That's an impressive list, but far from complete. Here's a famous false flag operation in post-Nazi Germany for example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celle_Hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celle_Hole)

</comment><comment><USER53> I personally think that the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1980_Bologna_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_1980_Bologna_bombing) should be part of that list.

</comment><comment><USER54> In the recent Brazilian protests, infiltrated undercover policemen made several violent actions as an excuse to lower the credibility of peaceful protests.

</comment><comment><USER55> I wonder what this list would look like in comparison with a list of legitimate acts of terrorism. Hint: it would look pretty insignificant.

</comment><comment><USER56> Blowing up consulates... sounds really familiar...

</comment><comment><USER57> Not to diminish the issue, but many items were not 'governments' but rather members of govt covering up errors.

<comment><USER58> I think that's the key thing, though. I would gladly live under practically any government system if I knew that all the officials and citizens were perfectly honest, responsible and charitable. I don't think I'd like any system that was repeatedly plagued by the types of individuals that are committing these acts.

<comment><USER57> I'm really tempted to say "that's life"; there are no perfect people to run the govt any more than in any other sphere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.

</comment><comment><USER59> Just FYI ritholtz is a complete fake... tried to build a brand out of working as a strategist at a bombed out bank.

Not saying that his articles are invalid, just that he is a serial marketer with little in terms of relevant credentials.

<comment><USER60> What? He's been a trader/strategist for nearly 30 years and is CEO of his own firm. Furthermore, he one of the most widely read financial bloggers around. Why don't you post some evidence supporting your claims.

P.S. He didn't write this, he posted to his blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> So frustrating this site is unreadable on the iPhone.

<comment><USER62> use a different browser? (if this is allowed)

<comment><USER35> Using a different browser (technically, a different rendering engine) is not allowed on the iPhone. There are alternative browsers like Chrome, but they use the iPhone Safari rendering engine and serve merely to sync your bookmarks and whatnot with your other Chrome bookmarks and provide a slightly different UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> looks like a nash equilibrium to me!

</comment><comment><USER64> loving the fake Hitler quote

<comment><USER65> More info:

"Hitler on Terrorism

"Hitler has often been quoted as saying: "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death." This quote is based on two invented remarks in Hermann Rauschning's mendacious book, The Voice of Destruction."

[http://www.ihr.org/other/weber2011fakequotations.html](http://www.ihr.org/other/weber2011fakequotations.html)

<comment><USER66> That might very well be accurate, but I'm not daft enough to believe anything posted on the "Institute for Historical Review" site. Do you have any better sources?

<comment><USER65> That was just the number one result, this post number two (9 total). I googled the quote without Hitler, and all results came up as a misattribution, but in my quick skim, there wasn't a different attribution.

<comment><USER66> Yes, I checked too, but all the misattribution links appeared to be related to neo-nazi sites, so I'm not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is this on-topic for HN?

</comment><comment><USER68> Old news.

</comment><comment><USER69> Government is the enemy.

That means no wealth redistribution.

Can the internet balance these two?</comment>


Python Multiprocessing with ZeroMQ   - <AUTHOR> http://taotetek.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/python-multiprocessing-with-zeromq/

<comment><USER2> Looked promising at first, but could use more depth. Multiprocessing doesn't even get interesting until well beyond what's covered in the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but I think it serves well for a quick intro.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How about we have a way to mark wrongfully linkdead accounts for revival - <AUTHOR>

Visiting HN i've had the showdead option on for quite a while now, and often come across insightful, meaningful linkdead account posts, who seem to have been wrongfully killed by a trigger-happy algorithm.
I was wondering if just for linkdead accounts or comments, we could have a link or button to mark that account for review by a moderator and for possible revival.
It's a real shame when good comments and posts are invisible to most HN participants and visitors, and we really should have an easy, hassle-free way to fix this. <comment><USER2> The 'feature request' link at the bottom of the page is the appropriate place to make this kind of suggestion.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get feedback from people who signed up but churned? - <AUTHOR> When someone use my product for a while and I send a message, for a good percentage I get feedback but for people who signed up and didn't use much the product/dropout before even activating I'm having a hard time to get feedback<p>How can you get feedback from users who are churning? Any creative methods that helped you? I'd love to hear your story about getting feedback <comment><USER2> There's a thing called Exit Survey that a lot of people use. I've seen it working too. There are some SaaS products that can do that part of marketing automation cycles.</comment>


PayPal is down - <AUTHOR> Paypal is, at least in europe (Germany for example), down since almost two hours. Since there is no official statement (as always) many users are reporting, that they can't login into their accounts - me neither. Several messages can be seen here: http://allestörungen.de/stoerung/paypal, in english: http://downdetector.com/status/paypal or on Twitter. <comment><USER2> [http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/paypal.com.html](http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/paypal.com.html) From comments here seems that its from 1 or 2 days ago too</comment>


Four reasons why Facebook might be overvalued - <AUTHOR> http://arturadib.blogspot.com/2011/03/four-reasons-why-facebook-might-be.html

<comment><USER2> These aren't really 4 reasons. They're 4 counterexamples supporting 1 reason - that social networks come and go.

In my opinion, a bigger reason is market saturation. Facebook's valuation assumes big growth will continue, but at this point in time, if you're not on facebook, you're pretty unlikely to ever be on facebook.

<comment><AUTHOR> For valuation purposes, "growth" is not necessarily tied to user base growth, but rather profits growth.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Google's dominance of the search engine market has in no way prevented them from keeping to grow.

Facebook may very well diversify even more to keep its growth, and therefore valuation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Clearly social graphs are fragile."

I come across this sentiment all the time and I'm thinking that maybe it's completely wrong. Maybe it's not the social graph that is fragile, but crappy companies. Every one of Facebook's predecessors did something wrong. Too much downtime, bad design, corporate interests, spam, etc.

I don't see Facebook making many (big) mistakes.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your overall theory but not with your conclusion. I think Facebook is making two big mistakes...

1\. Thinking that everyone agrees that privacy is dead

2\. Still having not found a way to allow users to separate groups in an effective way (e.g. it's now possible to keep Mom from seeing those party pics but it still isn't easy)

I think developers are afraid of Facebooks dominance right now and think it's a waste of money to challenge them which is why you don't see anyone trying to exploit those flaws. But they do exist and Facebooks seen (and largely ignored) the backlash to prove it.</comment></comment>


Apple charging 9x market price for MBP RAM upgrades - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com/us/memorymodel/ME_17_266_MBP_ICI7

<comment><USER3> Apple charging ridiculous amounts for their RAM isn't news.

I don't understand how they can sell computers in 2012 with 2GB soldered in with a straight face (<http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC968LL/A?>).

<comment><USER4> They can because people are willing to pay for it. Also try fitting a SODIMM slot into a Macbook Air.

<comment><USER5> Plus, it is a machine with a small screen and an SSD, which means, people aren't as likely to be interacting with multiple apps, and swapping isn't as painful as it is with a spinning disk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "You've found market price when buyers complain but still pay." - <USER2>

<comment><USER5> Plus, people who want a Mac, but find the RAM prices odious, can save a bunch of money for a slightly more effort.

This allows apple to capture larger margins from people who aren't as price sensitive, while still Making a sale to those who are.

<comment><USER7> As long as the device is upgradable. The soldiered 4gb ram on the mb air sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is actually one of my biggest concerns that keeps me from moving to an Air from a MBP. With the unibody MBP design it's actually pretty easy to do things like upgrade the memory and hard drive, and not pay the ridiculous upgrade prices that Apple wants at time of purchase.

With everything soldered on the Air, you lose that choice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Coincidentally I'm having a similar issue tonight. Heading to somewhere like Crucial usually gets you compatible memory _way_ cheaper, but for an extra 8GB for my Mac Pro Crucial is coming in at $355. I dread to imagine what the official Apple price is, I didn't even check..

<comment><USER10> macsales.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> FWIW new models custom 8gb costs $200.

But yeah.

</comment><comment><USER12> I bought 16GB of ram for my MBP for $135 at Fry's. Almost (but not quite) beats the 24GB I bought for my desktop for $100.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is for 1066 memory. For 1333 they charge a more reasonable $200, which is only about 4x the market price.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now that's how you run a business.</comment>


Any addicted Springpad users on HackerNews? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Just curious why you guys got addicted :)</comment>


Thank you Microsoft, and so long - <AUTHOR> http://byterot.blogspot.com/2013/12/thank-you-microsoft-and-so-long.html

<comment><USER2> I feel like developers who haven't worked with medium-sized data don't know where to draw the "big data" line. You see this with companies overspending for complicated "big data" solutions when the only have something on the order of billions of rows and nothing more. I deal with many billion row tables in the products, and SQL Server still works wonderfully there. Throw 1TB of RAM and a stack of Fusion IO drives on a pair of servers and I'm confident the pair (for mirroring obviously) and a DBA can easily handle the needs of any company that thinks they have "big data", save the current big data pioneers (e.g. Google, Facebook) who are only spending time on these problems because throwing more money (read: hardware) was hitting diminishing returns. In my specific case, we have billions of rows store in SQL tables whose schemas (including PK and indices) and queries were built by server engineers without any explicit DBA experience. If we can manage to store our data quite naively in SQL server by just putting it on a pair of superboxes, I find it hard to believe this solution wouldn't apply to all but a handful of tech companies.

<comment><USER3> Big data doesn't have to be "big". I'm not going to store statistical information, information that has at most a value and a date and maybe a key or two, and is updated multiple times per second per user in an SQL database. It doesn't fit in the table row column paradigm.

For me at least, big data is more about a form of non-relational data that updates very quickly, doesn't need joins, needs high availability and can be processed later to derive value out of it.

<comment><USER2> We do exactly this, with billions of rows each day of statistical data right into MSSQL server instances. For data like this, the only difference is that we partition the data into daily tables and provide views into the data as necessary.

What experience or expertise can you share as to why this doesn't work?

<comment><USER4> What's the reason for partitioning into daily tables? Why not add a day column and index it on that column?

<comment><USER5> Index would become bigger than ram. Removing old data would be more difficult. They likely only use todays data. This is probably a trading data system of some kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disagree with almost everything this guy wrote.

99% of startups and in house business apps will never need to scale at a level that an RDBMS can't support. We should all be so lucky to have the success that brings these horizontal scalability problems.

Also, I hope he lets us know what kind of incredible data he end up mining from his mouse movement logs. Surely every website and app on planet Earth has completely exhausted basic solutions like A/B testing and usability testing to make their apps better. The only solution now is to embark on a data mining expedition so that artificial intelligence will tell us how to make better software.

<comment><USER7> Came here to say the same thing.

A bunch of statements that have little or nothing to do with the requirements for 99% of projects, then somehow links this to being the end of Microsoft? Wait, did I miss a step? And then he concludes with "I will carry on writing C#, ASP.NET Web API and read or write from SQL Server".

Totally bizarre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree with what you said. I worked with .net since the 1.0 days and after years of staunch support, I got a job last year working with python/javascript on a unix stack and kissed microsoft technologies goodbye.

You're absolutely right about Microsoft being behind the curve. There's a pattern of denial when it comes to new technologies, and a total ineptitude at spotting new trends and adapting to them. I watched with envy for years as all the rails kids played with their new toys until Microsoft got its shit together and came up with an MVC solution.

The whole world is using flash? Lets come up with a knock-off 5 years too late. Interactivity is a big deal? Let's try to convince them that webforms is MVC until its too late. Who needs javascript anyways? Distrubuted software you say? Let's not jump on the REST bandwagon, lets make WSDL defined web services and make a shitty API on top! Why have an ORM solution when putting all of your business logic in SQL is SO EASY with microsoft? See, I can drag and drop a database connection from Visual Studio!

I love C# as much as the next person. It's a great language. SQL Server is a pretty good relational database. But if you choose to devote all of your energy to Microsoft development and don't learn anything else, you have nobody to blame expect for yourself when you find your skill-set behind the curve.

.Net developers would never agree about the big-data part, because to be honest they haven't invested time into understanding what data science is. There are so many IT shops developing on the Microsoft stack that make less than say 50 million a year that have tons of data (billions of records they say!). Maybe they make CRM software, or school software, or an inventory system for a small grocery store. They have tons of test scores, purchase records, waste numbers, demographic info, yet if you ask them to develop something that gives you insight into what factors influence student performance, or to visualize perchasing trends, or to predict sales numbers so that the company doesn't over purchase perishables, you'll get a blank stare. The idea that data can be transformed into useful information, and that this isn't simply a matter of CRUD hasn't occurred to them. They probably don't even replicate their db for their half ass attempt at reporting, so they wouldn't begin to understand what something like hadoop even does.

You simply CANNOT explain to a .net zealot what big data is. They just don't get it. "It's stored in the database, and its a few terabytes...how big does it need to get? We aren't Google afterall!"

<comment><USER9> Your statement is an incredible generalization of a large group of developers. It may be your experience, but I have to counter it with my own.

While the Windows/.NET stacks may not provide as many pre-built solutions to handle 'big data' (a term I'm growing to hate), I have worked with tons of competent developers who have been able to build solutions to answer exactly the kinds of questions you propose.

I've seen it done with SQL Server Reporting Services, Analysis Services and even straight custom C# code. I've seen it done with Hadoop + streaming API, StreamInsight (CEP rather than post processing) and custom Workflows in WF.

As for your other statements that are just built to jump on the 'hate Microsoft' bandwagon, just because a single large company doesn't iterate fast enough to keep up with the rest of the OSS landscape doesn't mean that .NET didn't have options available to it. Nancy provides great REST capabilities and has existed since 2010. Devs were building REST services with Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC during the same period. Others were using WCF REST (not great, but usable) at the same point as well. WCF Data Services was another option.

ORMs.. Theres the ever-expanding Entity Framework (which I don't love), NHibernate and many many others.

Lets not just jump in and bash MS because you've only worked with bad developers using their stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in a similar boat except that I think I can keep the good (C# / .Net) and leave the bad (Microsoft Analysis Server).

We are looking at scaled DB backend using column stores, multiple compute instances feed through message queues running on Amazon or private cloud, and a mostly Javascript / HTML5 front-end. It is all tied together with C# and so far it doesn't look like it will be too bad.

Not surprisingly, the stickiest part of the puzzle is... Microsoft Excel, specifically Pivot Tables. Weird but true.

<comment><USER11> Have you looked into PowerPivot free add in for Excel from Microsoft?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes when I talk to CS students at my university, I feel like we are living in parallel universes. I live in one where Python, Ruby and JavaScript are the most important languages, basic Unix skills is a must-have, etc. In their world, the whole programming landscape is divided in two sides: .NET and Java. Everything that doesn't fall in either of those categories is a toy.

I thought it was just the atmosphere of my university, or maybe realities of the job market in my country[1]. But reading this made me wonder id there are really two parallel universes in computer-land.

[1] Based on the name of OP, I am 90% sure we have the same nationality.

</comment><comment><USER13> This guy makes the assumption that all problems are big problems.

Most problems are NOT big problems.

<comment><USER14> It's a cargo cult thing - people think "if I do like Google, I will be successful like Google!"

Data is getting bigger, sure. Movies in HD, umpteen-megapixel cameras, yadda yadda in the consumer space, but hardware is getting bigger too, for the same price. You can easily buy a terabyte drive now. My first HD was 20M and I thought I'd never need anywhere near that much!

But in the corporate space - where is this data actually coming from? If you have a company selling widgets, then by how many orders of magnitude do your sales have to increase before you have to worry about "big data"? Most companies could probably handle a tenfold increase in sales on their existing systems, even if those systems haven't been updated in a few years. Bread and butter software work is not going to change in the foreseeable future, it'll just have a different set of buzzwords.

<comment><USER13> I see cargo cults all over, its my favorite way to explain the problem of people conflating causation and outcome.

In business I see lots of folks who do this: "Well, if I do what XYZ does, I'll be successful just like they are!" So they do what XYZ does without understanding the WHY part of what XYZ does, and invariable either fail, or succeed and making a very poor copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree there's an increasing demand for big data but I think the OP is overreacting. I think there's going to be a big demand for internal LOB apps, mobile apps etc for a long time. Not everything is big nor needs to scale. Can't hurt to learn unix or jvm languages though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am mainly talking about server technologies. So yes, client technologies do not need to scale. But if the when even LOB apps need to work wit

Remember "Can't hurt", not quite true. I am shifting focus, so I am spending time that could be spending on learning and mastering, blogging, speaking Microsoft technologies. If I am wrong, it will hurt me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The fight between Silverlight/XAML vs. Javascript took so many years.

There was a fight? I must've missed it.

<comment><USER17> Yes there was, people refused to use a crappy script language but now they pretty much have too :(.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So his point is that databases are going to go away (odd, considering even Google went back to a nice ACIDy RDBMS for AdWords), and Microsoft is just going to ignore any sort of scaling technology and disappear. That's certainly an odd perspective.

MS has two problems with "big data" (and let's just pretend lots of people have big data problems - I've seen people deploy 100-node Hadoop clusters to deal with 30M rows/month of data because they think Hadoop is some magic sauce.)

First, they want to squeeze as much money out of enterprise customers as possible. Look at the new SQL Server pricing and limitations, where the SQL team is doing things they promised they wouldn't and previously mocked Oracle for doing (charging by core). Their in-memory solution (Hekaton) comes a bit late, and only for Enterprise edition.

Second, they generally want to deliver solutions that the majority of their customers can figure out. Again, look at Hekaton. From what I've read, it'll have extremely high compatibility with T-SQL. Shipping a limited release that only had a small subset of SQL, even though it'd be useful for certain apps, probably was never a serious consideration. Hell, look at C# and how their customers are begging them to please not innovate too much, since learning is hard.

There's also the Azure push. SQL Azure has federations, making it easy to shard a traditional SQL schema across many physical instances. They also promote Hadoop on Azure. (As I understand, Hadoop's a dead-end; even inside Google, MapReduce was toasted by Dremel, right?)

If Microsoft just added Hadoop-style functionality to one of their server products, it would not be friendly. People capable of writing an OK SQL query for a report can't necessarily format that same query in an efficient map- reduce style.

And really, since this need is far less than it's played out to be, MS is probably just fine pushing and profiting off their traditional solutions. Azure helps them secure a few leading-edge needs, and eventually they'll roll out an easy-to-use commercial solution.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't agree on big data part. But I certainly agree on not innovating and not have a solid plan. MS doesn't have any plan, their biggest problem is they don't like to innovate and instead just love to jump on the bandwagon of any trend. I mean what's the point of Silverlight? Adobe Flash is already dominated market. Instead of focusing on HTML5, they just built another thing like Flash.

MS needs innovation and solid plan; not jumping on the band wagon of next hot topic.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit confused by this statement:

"Cannot say the same thing for middleware technologies, such as BizTalk or NServiceBus. Databases? Out of question."

I'm curious about his view that middleware is not here to stay. Surely the multiple vendor cloud trend that enterprises are following (Google + salesforce + Microsoft + oracle) - because no one vendor does everything - means middleware is going to be more prevalent in the future.

Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Point is middlewares that are not built from ground up to scale horizontally are bound to die. BizTalk uses SQL Server for its storage as such cannot be horizontally scaled. End of story. NServiceBus... well, let's not go there :)

<comment><USER21> NServiceBus is a very different technology than biz talk, I wouldn't call it Middleware.

It basically a message based event driven transport layer. By its very nature it's extremely easy to scale horizontally.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is about High Availability. Have you ever tried to use a central broker in NSB? The best HA you get is clustering 2 machines. And that is not HA.

<comment><USER21> Thats because NServiceBus is a Service Bus and not a broker: [http://www.udidahan.com/2011/03/24/bus-and-broker-pubsub- dif...](http://www.udidahan.com/2011/03/24/bus-and-broker-pubsub-differences/)

For HA you simply run a distributor process for each logical event on windows cluster and add as many worker nodes as you see fit.

Because NServiceBus uses the store and forward pattern if a NServiceBus process/machine hosting it goes down, you are still guaranteed the eventual delivery of messages when the process/machine is resumed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's like Microsoft can't catch a break: if they develop something that competes with other solutions - it's NIH syndrome; if they don't - they're behind the curve.

Fun fact is that DevDiv produces tons of things that allow .NET devs use existing OSS solutions for things that are not done by Microsoft themselves.

<comment><USER23> I think it comes down to adoption rates and general influence, and Microsoft isn't meeting those goals in many people's minds. They doing great stuff with Javascript, Node.js, Python, Azure, and all that other jazz, but I view that as "me too" stuff.</comment></comment>


Potential: an x86-64 assembler as a Haskell DSL - <AUTHOR> https://intoverflow.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/announcing-potential-x86-64-assembler-as-a-haskell-edsl/

<comment><USER2> Very cool. Can arbitrary assembly programs (having well-defined behavior) be represented with this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so because the "assembly language" is actually Haskell code (an "embedded" domain specific language).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Chacy, Simple Collaborative Lists Without Logins - <AUTHOR> http://chacy.com

<comment><USER2> Well done! :) Is it possible to embed this in my website?</comment>


Ask HN: How does Google Voice search get input w/o flash? - <AUTHOR>

In Google search now you can use your audio input to search. My question is how are they technically doing that in HTML/Javascript?<p>I've been told that HTML5 doesn't have an audio input object, but that's what it seems they are doing here. Any tips of how I'd implement similar? <comment><USER2> They have this feature implemented inside of Google Chrome (or maybe it is Webkit, I am unsure) and I take it that you're using Chrome to test this feature. As far as I know, it's an experimental API that they have added to the HTML5 specs. In the video in that blog post they say that you need to have the latest version of Chrome to use it : [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/knocking-down- barrier...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/knocking-down-barriers-to- knowledge.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah this is a Google Chrome specific feature. Chrome records your voice, uploads an mp3 to a Google server and returns the text. It is about the least efficient way to accomplish the task. Ridiculous really. Our operating systems (even Windows95) have had speech features forever, but it's implemented in a very clunky way. Instead there should be a standardized speech-to-text input, or JavaScript API where I can use my operating system's built-in speech features.

<comment><USER4> The built-in speech recognition in your OS isn't as good as Google's (and it may not even be there — think Linux or Chrome OS).

<comment><USER3> My quick experiments with the Chrome speech input says otherwise. It is both less accurate, and less useful than the built-in speech-to-text in MacOS. There exists speech systems for Windows and open source ones for Linux that are "good enough".

The point isn't really about accuracy, it's about usability. The way this is implemented in Chrome does not make it possible to use voice commands to do operations in a web browser. That's what we need. We don't just need a voice input for Google search.</comment></comment></comment>


Massive Internet security flaw uncovered - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/technology/la-fi-techblog9-2008jul09,0,1218924.story

<comment><USER2> This is a great example of how bad the press is at handling publicity attacks.

Any open source J2EE stack has at least a 128 bit session ID. Any .NET's is longer. PHP, Python, and Rails all have crypto-unguessable session IDs.

DNS has a 16 bit session ID.

Reliable exploits for this trivial problem have been available since the early '90s. So it's hard to see how we could have a massive new vulnerability in a protocol so fundamentally insecure.

Not only that, but the patch for this vulnerability simply randomizes source ports. DJBDNS has randomized source ports from the day it was released. Randomizing source ports adds ~14 more bits of randomness, when constraints are factored in. A 32 bit session ID still totally sucks, but it's more annoying to attack. But my point is: no vulnerability that is solved by randomizing source ports can be game-changing at this point. I could comment more about the novelty or importance of the attack, but it's inside baseball.

Even more importantly: secure web apps don't rely on the DNS for security. SSL/TLS was designed to assume that the DNS is insecure. It creates a parallel hierarchy that is secured by anchor keys distributed with Firefox, IE, and Safari.

If you are affected by this announcement in any way, "ur doin it rong".

<comment><USER3> Kaminsky and Ptacek comment on DNS Forgery flaw <http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1466>

<comment><USER4> I am interested in hearing about this new "ninja out of the LCD screen" attack vector.

Are there any current safeguards against the ninja menace?

<comment><USER5> To my understanding, the only thing that can safely protect you is to wear a Pirate hat and Eye patch at all times.

Consuming copious amounts of Rum may or may not work, as the only people that recommend this strategy are generally drunk - so this information is unreliable at best.

Hopefully on September 19th* we can co-ordinate a proper defense to take out this imminent threat

*September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Summary: "There's a highly exploitable design flaw in the domain name system. We're not telling anyone what it is for thirty days, though, so the open- source community can't fix it themselves within days and embarrass larger vendors. Patches will be sent out without context, so as to make it only slightly challenging to reverse-engineer them[1], and impossible to trust they're not actually creating worse vulnerabilities."

[1]: See: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/reverseenginee...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/reverseengineer.html)

<comment><USER2> The research Schneier is pointing to suggests that it's possible to automatically generate exploits from patches.

It's an "open question", but given how much flexibility there is in patching vulnerabilities (effective patches don't need to be tightly correlated with the single broken code path used by an exploit), you can predict what the result is going to be on it.

<comment><USER6> I linked to it because I think trying to keep it under wraps but issuing binary patches is doomed from the start. I guess my sarcasm wasn't clear enough, so I changed it it "... _only_ slightly challenging ...".

Mainly, I think the computer industry at large should know better by now. Delay the people who would fix things from getting the details they need and _hoping_ the 'evil types' (their words) won't be able to figure it out in the mean time is a pretty bad strategy. (Fortunately, the "good guys" are often good at reverse-engineering things too.)

I don't know anything at all about the technical details here, but it sounds like the whole thing is being handled very badly.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you. In this case, for reasons I won't go into right here, I think the effort to "hide" this "new flaw" was doomed from the start. But in general, if you patch it, it's out there.

If this announcement counts as "Hackers News", it's marginal at best. "Protocols designed in the '70s found insecure --- film at 11!" But the discussion about whether you can reliable reverse patches to vulns? THAT's fun.

<comment><USER7> That so many vendors have collaborated to synchronize a patch release is interesting Hacker News. The odd quasi-disclosure -- here's how to test, here's a mostly-helpful patch, but full details will wait a month or until third parties figure it out -- is Hacker News.

Regular reminders of the general insecurity of DNS are also a public service, attached to megapatch firedrills or not.

<comment><USER2> It would be news if it was (a) news or (b) really true.

Regarding (a), there was more collaboration and a bigger fire drill on the OULU.FI SNMP findings from 2003. That was a series of memory corruption and code execution findings in multiple different implementations.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

 _EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE WAS WRONG_

Also, Microsoft patches on a schedule ("Patch Tuesday"), so if you have an activist security researcher trying to keep details from getting out, the major coordination problem is already solved: you're releasing on Patch Tuesday. What I'm saying is, if you find ANYTHING, and you want to talk about a mass vendor reaction, get Microsoft on board and you're done. Dan has a professional relationship with Microsoft.

Regarding (b), most of the implementations that are patching fall into two categories:

(1) --- Derivatives of ISC BIND

(2) --- Fantastically weak embedded or proprietary DNS implementations that were totally screwed prior to any new research result, and are now catching up on 13-15 years of DNS best practices for fear of being found out.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey, everyone: I made a comment above, calling this a publicity attack. Disregard it. Dan has the goods on this one. Patch now, questions later.

</comment><comment><USER8> So I log into my Debian box, and there are some updates pending with the following description:

SECURITY UPDATE: Randomize UDP query source ports to improve forgery resilience. References: [<http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=2008-1447>]

So there's some more information, although it's not saying anything that hasn't already been said. Looks like I'll be patching boxen for the next couple hours.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can check if the nameservers used by your current machine are still vulnerable/unpatched via a utility at Dan Kaminsky's site:

<http://doxpara.com/>

<comment><USER2> Or, let me help you out with this: yes. Even if you're running DJBDNS, your stub resolver (the one linked into your browser and other programs) is weak.

If this was a big deal, you'd have been owned a million times over by now, because this is something that the BIND team declined to fix in 1996.</comment></comment>


How to fire your boss - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/08/10/how-to-fire-your-boss/

<comment><USER2> Are you kidding me? RescueTime tries to capitalize on the "story" when their monitoring software is the very thing the story mocks. They want to have it both ways. As if any manager is going to volunteer to be accountable. The last paragraph is downright perverted:

"Employees should be able to use tools like RescueTime to defend skipping out early on Friday, after putting in extra time to meet deadlines during the week."

RescueTime sure has given a gift to the world! Employees can now use it to "defend" themselves from leaving a couple hours earlier!

<comment><AUTHOR> I just ran a quick query and it looks like 57% of the managers who sign up for our service track their own data alongside their teams. We consider this a best practice, and try to discourage the typical top down approach that you seem to be so familiar with. That's not to say their aren't plenty of other corporate spy-ware tools out there, but we do try not to be one of them.

<comment><USER2> That doesn't mean anything. Are you saying in team mode that everyone has equal access to everyone's data? Or do managers still get special controls? I would love to be proven wrong, but I sincerely doubt it's as democratic as you suggest.

<comment><AUTHOR> 39% of those accounts allow other people to see the manager's data. The rest only allow the employees to look at other peoples data in aggregate. There are also basic privacy controls available for all employees, for example, to flat out delete personal time from the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Gah, I really love Rescue Time's product, but this post makes my skin crawl. It should have been titled, "How NOT to Fire Your Boss". And on top of that the story is positively covered in too-good-to-be-true forced-internet-meme- sauce. The original source is a parody site for goodness sakes, and a poorly done one at that.

Poor form, Rescue Time.

<comment><USER4> > _The original source is a parody site for goodness sakes, and a poorly done > one at that._

Everyone seems to forget this, but if the story is faking (which it likely is) it is pretty much completely pointless and without humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently the source, thechive, is similar to the onion in that it is all fake.

Source: [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/czj2v/girl_quits...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/czj2v/girl_quits_job_via_picture_email_takes_bosses/c0wfhkl)

</comment><comment><USER6> Fake

[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100810/meet-the- prankster-...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100810/meet-the-prankster- brothers-behind-jenny-the-whiteboard-using-farmville-exposing-hpoa-girl/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Since when is quitting one's job the same as firing one's boss?</comment>


Excerpts from Richard Stallman's talk in Mandya, India - <AUTHOR> https://factordaily.com/richard-stallman-india/ <comment><USER2> There needs to be a sustainable free software business model that small and large companies can easily adopt.

Donations aren't enough.

Support based models like RedHat lead to bad incentives and seems to limit one to enterprise clients. Its an option however, but then you're not directly selling your software either, but rather running a side gig alongside development.

Most other models that I see working involve saas / hosting, which is a good compromise but also weird: the creator earns nothing if you benefit from the license and use it to host your own instance, which is unfortunate and yet amazing for the end users.

There is also the industry association model like Linux uses, which has merit: various stakeholders buy an interest in a project to fund open development. This isn't feasible for the average entrepreneur though, although the creator of Vue apparently has some respectable funding.

The creators of something so great for end users should be able to get rich for doing so, rather than needing to make personal financial sacrifices to dedicate their time to the work. It should be more win win.

<comment><USER3> Complaining about a lack of business involvement in RMS-approved "free software" is like complaining about sugar in Cadbury's products.

Plenty of companies create, use and release open source software using permissive open source licenses.

When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it's no surprise business doesn't get involved.

<comment><USER4> >When the licence itself and the mantra that goes with it are both hostile to business use, it's no surprise business doesn't get involved.

Obviously, but that's because businesses act unethically -- ie, for private profit over public good. They absolutely should be called out for that. Or, more specifically, they should be regulated so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted.

<comment><USER5> >Or, more specifically, they should be regulated so that non-free software licenses are illegal or severely restricted.

I think it is OK to just not have copyrights (and also not have patents). And then, there is no non-free software licenses because it is not copyright, so even if they write them they do not have any legal meaning.

Stallman's idea, that practical works you can freely use/modify/distribute/etc but artistic works it is permitted to be a limited copyright (only a few years), might also work, I think (although I am not entirely sure; I think it is probably simpler to just abolish copyright entirely).

I have also seen a suggestion to tax copyright so that you have to pay a annual tax, and can copyright it for up to ten years, but anyone who pays 100 times the tax rate of copyright can force it into the public domain early. I think that can do (and if the government likes to earn money, it can help them too), but still perhaps the copyright should not be applicable for practical works, which instead are freely usable. (Some works may be hybrid, and that is more difficult. One idea is if you can separate the parts easily enough then you can copyright the artistic parts, but if you cannot then it is forced public domain; making the source code of a computer game available may be one way to do, so that you will want to release the source codes anyways in order that you may copyright the artistic non-practical-works of them.)

But whether or not is copyright, there should be a requirement of warning label on commercial products that use DRM, and there should not be laws to restrict circumventing them on your own copies of works/devices.

<comment><USER3> > I think it is OK to just not have copyrights

Without copyright the GPL (or any other license) is unenforceable

<comment><USER5> I am aware, of course. But it is still better than copyrighted proprietary software, I think.

<comment><USER3> So a "Free" license that has literally no legal protection from abuse is better than the mere existence of proprietary software?

This makes zero sense. The companies that are currently publishing copyrighted proprietary software would then be free to take the GPL software, make improvements for their own purposes and distributed the compiled binaries and make profits without providing the improvements back.

As a proponent of permissive licenses I have no qualms about my software being enhanced and used by others without giving back those improvements - but the whole point of the GPL is to prevent that - so a GPL without copyright may as well be MPL or BSD or MIT.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, maybe I was being unclear, because it isn't quite what I meant. I meant that that I think having no copyright at all is better than copyright enforcing proprietary software. Yes, you still would be able to distribute compiled binaries without providing the improvements back (and I think permissive licenses (I use public domain myself, rather than copyright) are much simpler than the GPL), but someone can try to reverse it (or to do other things with it) and they can't arrest them for that (although anyone can still make complaints about what the company is doing, to give them a bad reputation; people could still complain about anything they wanted to complain about). I know what is the point of the GPL, and I like that point, but think it is complicated, and I do not like copyright.

Of course if I write a program I would like that others who make modifications (public) that they would also contribute those source codes too, but I do not like to put in legal obstructions, so you should have freedom rather than having too many laws and obstructions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I refuse to carry a portable phone. I never have one and unless things > change, I never will. I do use portable phones, lots of different ones. If I > needed to call someone right now, I would ask one of you, "Could you please > make a call for me?"

I don't understand how RMS can find this behavior of his non-noteworthy. He claims to boycott things but admits to having a critical reliance on other people not boycotting. For someone deeply committed to extend ideals, the moral flexibility here is huge.

It'd be one thing if he advocate a network of swapping burner phones or something, but he's acting like an antivaxxer relying on the herd to indulge and accommodate his desire to get the benefits without paying the costs.

<comment><USER7> This bothered me as well. Not carrying a mobile phone works for him, but if everyone did the same then obviously that strategy collapses. Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone, which actually seems reasonable in some respects.

<comment><USER8> > Unless he's advocating that no one carries a mobile phone

I'm pretty sure he is advocating that, "unless things change".

If even a significant minority fraction of the population stopped carrying cellphones, society and industry would have to work around that problem. After all, we all seemed to get along mostly fine before they existed.

<comment><USER9> I honestly think there's a moral argument _against_ everyone not carrying a mobile phone. How many people worldwide do you figure use their mobile phone in emergencies? How many times do you figure having a mobile phone has made the difference between receiving help when needed and people dying?

It's not to say that mobile devices don't come without their own set of challenges (surveillance capitalism, social media, the influence on how we interact with others, etc). However, Pandora's box has been opened here. Even if we assume that mobile phones only make the difference in addressing emergencies, and only do so 0.1% for 0.1% of the population, that's 7M people that are saved.

It strikes me as suprisingly disingenuous that some people are so ready to eschew technology as inherently "evil" just because there are some challenges or problems associated with it. You have to weight both sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's nice to read a write-up on RMS which doesn't editorialise what Stallman says, but just _reports it_ polemicists often get criticised on interpretations not on their actual words.

</comment><comment><USER11> He brings up an interesting problem for smartphone (or any cellphone) use. I know I will never see this as an available product but I would like: something like my Apple Watch that had a simple hardware switch that would turn off cell and GPS connectivity. Then I could occasionally check my messages or missed calls but most of the time have communications turned off. Note that the Apple Watch has an "airplane mode" that turns off cell connections (I think) but not sure about GPS.

I have read about Linux cellphones that do have hardware cutoff switches so that would be a good way to remain private most of the time.

EDIT: it looks like going to airplane mode also disables GPS: "when the user activates airplane mode, they will disable Bluetooth, GPS, phone calls, and Wi-Fi" nice!!

EDIT 2: starting with iOS 10, GPS reception stays on in airplane mode

<comment><USER9> Is this a massive misunderstanding of GPS? What are you hoping to do here?

GPS is a passive antenna / receiver. You don't emit anything with GPS, you just passively pick up signals from GNSS satellites. You could "turn it off" by unpowering the GPS receiver, but there's little benefit there, and that may not be possible because most of these are soldered directly to the mainboard for power efficiency reasons. These embedded receivers barely use any power whatsoever, and if your cellular / WiFi is already off, it's certainly not transmitting it in real time. If you want to stop location logging you would need to opt out of location logging. I don't know if that's possible with Apple Watch products, but turning GPS "off" doesn't tend to make a lot of sense in many contexts.

<comment><USER12> Turning GPS devices off could allow you to avoid attack over RF against GPS device firmware. This 2012 paper details some possible attacks, including a bug that lead to the GPS device continually rebooting.

[http://www.locata.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/GPS- Softwar...](http://www.locata.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/GPS-Software- Attacks-Paper-Carnegie-Mellon-Nov-28-2012.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In a strange coincidence, I was flying back from Bangalore in late Jan and the long curly haired person in the Emirates check-in line looked awfully like Richard Stallman. That's because it was Richard Stallman and in good Indian fashion, he was bring dropped off by someone who clearly adored him. I can't say I reach that level of admiration, but it's good there are people like him in the world.</comment>


History repeats: Uber and the second great tech bubble - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/08/04/history-repeats-uber-and-the-second-great-tech-bubble/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The overall tech bubble will eventually burst, it might be next year, it might be two or three years down the line, and it might be external economic factors that bring it to an end..."</comment>