California Police Chiefs Misrepresent License Plate Privacy Bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/california-police-chiefs-misrepresent-license-plate-privacy-bill <comment><USER3> It worries me greatly when communities, businesses, another private entities start recording the license plates.

<comment><USER4> Why? License plates are meant to be public, that's why they're on the outside of cars, where anyone can see them. It's no more sinister than knowing your name and address.

<comment><USER5> _Why?_

Your phone number is public, but you wouldn't be happy if the lat/long of your phone during various times of the day is public, right?

<comment><USER4> Maybe not, but if I knew when I bought the phone that I would be legally required to carry a placard around with my current lat/long on it, I wouldn't be shocked if people knew where I was, even if I put the sign down once in a while.

I've got no real issue with being able to cover your plates while parked, but doing so doesn't do much to prevent surveillance or identification - that much is even mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am genuinely curious : why do people want to cover their plates while the car is parked ?

<comment><USER7> Well, police cars are driving around all the time. Tireless electronic eyes look out of the vehicle for plates, and records of every single one are made: timestamp, location, etc. The vast majority of the data collected is on people who are not suspected of any crime. But the data can be misused in innumerable ways. It would be easy to pick out patterns and then flag deviations, like the patterns show that this guy works from 8-5, but for some reason, his car was at a hotel from 1-3. On and on.

There are lots of reasons to not want this kind of omniscient eye on us. My favorite is that a lot of laws are wrong, and people are violating the laws righteously, and they will be vindicated by public opinion someday, but it's going to take time for everyone to catch up. We don't want perfect police. There needs to be some slop so that we can see where the laws are wrong.

<comment><USER8> >Well, police cars are driving around all the time. Tireless electronic eyes look out of the vehicle for plates, and records of every single one are made: timestamp, location, etc. The vast majority of the data collected is on people who are not suspected of any crime. But the data can be misused in innumerable ways.

And - as a side note - whenever there is information stored (and poorly protected, i.e. "always") there is a good chance it will go in the hands of someone that is not the police or government.

There is the known case of the Oakland Police ALPR, which data was initially available through public record request:

[http://records.oaklandnet.com/request/8562](http://records.oaklandnet.com/request/8562)

Now the data is not "public record" anymore, but I wouldn't be surprised if - one way or the other - data harvesting companies would be able to get a copy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Data collected by EFF from across the state show that only .08% of vehicle plates captured by police ALPRs are connected to a crime.

Lol. What percentage of cars are connected to crime?

<comment><USER10> Why are you running data if you don't suspect a crime?

A friend of mine moved to a new neighborhood. Apparently, her neighbor was in the police. She said she was out walking her dog and the neighbor greeted her with her first name and middle name when she had barely moved in. We didn't know her legal middle name was different from what we called her. So we pretty much know he looked her up (driving licence info?) and he wants her to know he looked her up.

Why? Who knows but he did.

<comment><USER11> Illicit querying of NCIC should be a crime in and of itself that officers and anyone else with access (admin personnel & some security guards) are commonly prosecuted for.

We should have a right to security in our information, and privacy of it from meddlers and nefarious actors like the aformentioned neighbor. Sadly, many of my fellow Americans are all to happy to claim they have nothing to hide, despite how much that attitude continues to hurt them.

<comment><USER7> > Illicit querying of NCIC should be a crime

I'm not disagreeing with this, but I don't think we can trust people to make a system that, e.g., automatically collects and stores the locations of all cars with plates visible to all the roving police cars -- and then not use that information improperly.

I'm hoping that we'll gradually choose deliberate ignorance of certain things we _could_ know because although the knowledge could be helpful in certain cases, it's also too dangerous.

<comment><USER12> There shouldn't need to be such a choice. Make both more difficult - <USER2> plate tracking and inappropriate lookups.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: weekend project, Find Similar Restaurants with the Hunch API - <AUTHOR> http://www.metarade.com/restaurantology/ <comment><USER2> Some excellent recommendations, I love it.

One small bug, a confirmation window shows up to select a restaurant, even when there is only 1 match to the text entered.

<comment><USER3> really? mine was off. I entered in a very very authentic Thai restaurant in LA which I love and expected to see some authentic Thai restaurant recommendations in Chicago - not at all. #fail

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. Bug: when i have the dropdown for "what I'm homesick for" but hit discover, the dropdown stays over the new overlay.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for pointing that out. will investigate and forward to jQuery UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice! I am not familiar with hunch's api. Could you share some internals on how you leveraged that?

<comment><AUTHOR> hunch gives recommendations about pretty much everything, you can check out their api here: <http://hunch.com/developers/v1/>

i am specifically using "get-similar-results" and "get-recommendations" limited by the location you enter

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome work. Did you show this to Yelp as well to get their API limit increased?

<comment><AUTHOR> no, thats a good idea lemme look into it

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you could build this for movies (and it works) I would pay 5 usd/year for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> noted, i'll wordmerge the word "movies" and see if i can come up with any cool names for this ;?j

<comment><USER7> Be sure to notify me/us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like it a lot. I had a similar idea to do this with Wine.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice.

</comment><comment><USER10> dig it</comment>


NY Mayor Warns of Possible 21,000+ Teacher Layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703956604576110114146999314.html

<comment><USER2> this doesn't bode well...</comment>


The Fundamental Problem With Libertarianism - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/01/fundamental-problem-with-libertarianism.html <comment><USER2> _"Libertarian ideas are revolutionary. I've been told that Trotsky once said "Every revolutionary should study chess."

The best book on chess that Libertarians should read is The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank, which left me certain after many years that I was absolutely no Libertarian, and more than that, embarrassed to have ever been one."_

What a clown. Libertarians are not revolutionary. Second, that book has nothing to do with chess, and Trotsky's quote was literal.

This doesn't even warrant a rebuttal, but I'll continue.

 _"Republican Presidents and legislators use Libertarian arguments to advance policy decisions which benefit business, then conveniently forget those same arguments when it comes to issues of government debt or unnecessary military spending."_

Republicans and Libertarians share certain conservative values. For what it's worth, one point of libertarianism is that the government's first job is national defense.

Ugh, this stuff is awful.

 _"If politics were chess, Libertarians would be trying to win by holding up the pawn, saying "my pawn has a machine gun!", and making little pew-pew noises. It just doesn't work that way."_

Politics is not chess. The writer's introductory quote associates _revolution_ with chess. The writer may want to use an outline next time.

Here's a summary: The government uses Libertarian arguments for purported corrupt scheming between itself and big business. Thus, Libertarianism as a political ideology is, according to the writer's ham-handed "arguments," flawed.

I want my three minutes back; I could've made toast.

<comment><USER3> I agree 100%.

Also, the concept that businessmen contributing to libertarian causes are in it so that they can capture regulatory agencies/contracts/etc misses that a lot of companies just want the government out of their way.

<comment><USER2> After that, I made toast, and found that toast is much better when made in an actual oven (400°) as opposed to a toaster or toaster oven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > American conservatives have followed a deliberate strategy of destroying, > undermining, and sabotaging the Federal government.

That's not libertarianism.

> They even conveniently forget the arguments when advancing business > interests in ways which contradict every last iota of Libertarian political > theory.

Sounds like they're doing it wrong.

> Frank quotes one of their policy wonks freely confessing that he constructs > his reasoning with no concern for intellectual integrity or even internal > consistency. The arguments are only a means to an end.

This is true of both sides, Republican and Democrat. Again, not Libertarianism.

> If you think it through, this should be enough to destroy Libertarianism for > you.

Not at all. You've indicted current and past administrations. That in no way reflects on libertarianism or its principles.

> This means that if you want to achieve a Libertarian transformation of the > United States, your only possible winning strategy is to get as much money > from business as possible. But that means that the only way to get > government out of business is to get business into government.

Whoa! Slow down there, chief. Nice straw man, there (not really). Business will be naturally attracted to libertarianism.

> In order to affect this revolutionary change, you would need to leverage a > great deal of political momentum from campaign contributions originating > with business interests. Then, once you had achieved a Libertarian > transformation, you would need all the people with strong ties to business > interests, who would owe their political careers to these strong ties, to > turn their backs on their business allies.

The idea is not to lure constituents in by political favors. That is antithetical to libertarianism.

> It just doesn't work that way.

Yes, finally! Libertarianism is about principles, none of which have been addressed. All of the bad behavior -- real and hypothetical -- pointed out here in no way indicts libertarianism or its principles.

We are all as disgusted with the bad behavior as you are.

</comment><comment><USER5> This guy confuses Mercantilism with Libertarianism. Libertarianism is about maximizing freedom, not empowering big corporations.</comment>


Why the World's Armies Don't Want U.S. Tech Anymore - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/14/why-the-world-s-armies-don-t-want-u-s-tech-anymore.html

<comment><USER2> I can't help but wonder if what we're seeing with these really big-ticket military systems (F-35, V-22 Osprey, the Littoral Combat Ship, etc.) is pretty much the same thing that happened to NASA and U.S. space exploration with the Space Shuttle. Basically you end up with programs that grow into beasts that either deprive their competitors of oxygen or subsume them (into an even bigger program with even more requirements) and become both too big to succeed and too big to fail at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else really concerned about this?</comment>


6 Reasons Developers Sell their Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apptopia.com/why-sell/#.UOrwCqX3B3k

<comment><USER2> "A lot of blood (and well, Red Bull) goes into developing apps."</comment>


Jobrupt - a new job interview experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.jobrupt.com/node/about

<comment><AUTHOR> ..one last attempt to get some critical thinking help for our new job interview tool. 'Show HN's don't get much help.

thanks for any critics, anyway.</comment>


U.S. Slaps New Sanctions on North Korea in Response to Sony Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-02/u-s-slaps-new-sanctions-on-n-korea-in-response-to-sony-hack.html <comment><USER2> This makes no sense. The original demand was for money and wasn't political.

> Then on Nov. 21, a strange message popped into several Sony executives' > inboxes. It was three days before the hacks debilitated the company. And > this was their first contact. But the message didn't talk politics. It > didn't mention anything about "The Interview." What did the hackers want? > Money.

> "We've got great damage by Sony Pictures," the message said, according to a > copy published by Mashable. "The compensation for it, monetary compensation > we want. Pay the damage, or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as a whole." The > message was signed: "From God'sApstls."

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/12/18...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2014/12/18/why-its-still-not-certain-north-korea-is-behind-the-sony- hack/)

<comment><USER3> We must not forget that they threatened the US. So it would not make sense if they did not react (to the allegations and the movie) in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With all the security experts coming out saying that it's really likely it wasn't an attack by North Korea, maybe this is one of those things they call a "false flag" operation.

<comment><USER5> Well with war wrapping up in Afghanistan, we need somewhere else to focus our attention. I wish I was being sarcastic.

<comment><USER6> This seems unlikely. Even if North Korea would not be backed by China, could the US win a war? Probably not and they know it. North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world and they are probably crazy enough to take huge losses. This is not like Iraq at all, to say nothing of Afghanistan.

There is also little to be gained. Syria would be a more obvious candidate. It's just as good for "focusing our attention", probably can get public support easily, would please both, Saudi Arabia and Israel and could even make strategic sense. (To be clear, I would oppose such a war, of course.)

<comment><USER7> When you have the superiority the US sports, it's not hard to win a war. It becomes a question of what you're willing to do to win it.

The US is one of the only countries in history to have to deal with that question. Defeat Iran? Easy: nukes, or a never-ending bombing campaign that leaves nothing left standing. Throughout most of history, the problem with defeating an enemy wasn't a question of: well, but can we do it without killing too many people.

North Korea's army is worthless. They're extraordinarily backwards, poorly trained, and with mediocre equipment. The problem would be the guerrilla warfare part, much like Vietnam.

Iraq had one of the largest armies as well, and the world watched in shock as the US trivially dismantled it. The US would dismantle the standing North Korean military very quickly, it would be the next stage of the fight that would be terrible.

If the US had a reason to really want to topple North Korea, the easy thing to do would be to make a deal with China: they get Taiwan tomorrow morning, and they allow North Korea to collapse, don't get involved if the US fights a war with North Korea, etc. China would make that deal in a heartbeat.

The biggest problem in fighting a war with North Korea, as everyone knows, is the damage that would be done to South Korea.

<comment><USER8> > When you have the superiority the US sports, it's not hard to win a war.

What was the last war the US actually won?

<comment><USER9> I think you stopped reading Adventured's post too early.

The U.S. defeats conventional armies all the time, and Adventured was responding to the idea that North Korea's conventional army might be a problem for the U.S. It's the guerrilla war afterward that the U.S. might lose, which Adventured goes on to address.

<comment><USER8> I didn't stop reading. What does "win a war" mean if you only consider initial combat? To that end, let's ignore the last 14 years and declare that the US won the "War on Terror" during the first 6 days carpet bombing of Tora Bora.

<comment><USER7> Winning a war vs North Korea would be easy for the US: kill very large numbers of people indiscriminately with nukes, or stand-off and just bomb them very heavily and perpetually for a decade until nothing is left. After a very short amount of time, North Korea would be entirely incapable of shooting down high altitude bombers, the US would never have to put boots on the ground, just spend all the money on never-ending bombing raids.

It goes back to what I said: the issue is what the US would be willing to do to win. It's not acceptable to defeat enemies today in a manner in which truly large sums of civilians are killed (I'm talking about killing 1/4, 1/2 of the country, vaporizing them, mowing them down with unrelenting bombardment, and then with starvation).

The US could have easily won the Vietnam war, it won every major engagement. The US could have marched north with a million soldiers and run over the Vietcong, killing however many people were necessary in the process. However it would have required another level of extreme brutality, and potentially (likely?) would have ended in a direct war with Russia or China. The question for the US post WW2 has been what's acceptable to achieve victory in war, because against its adversaries that question has been the only limiting factor, not the ability to achieve victory itself.

As a side note, I consider that the US won the Korean war. Given how South Korea has turned out, I consider it a staggering victory. Especially considering how difficult it was to go into Asia and hold ground with China, Russia and North Korea trying to push you out in one form or another.

<comment><USER5> The US is never going to nuke another country over hacking, especially of a movie studio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow,I mean,where is the evidence? I don't want to doubt the FBI but come on... So US slaps sanctions just like that? and who do you think it will hurt? the people again.It didn't work for Cuba,doesn't work for Iran,didn't work for north Korea all these years,and while Russia is in trouble,it's not due to US sanctions.

<comment><USER11> You should voice your opinions to your local congressman. Meanwhile, shall we go back to building our mobile apps?

<comment><USER12> Lol, are you guys working together? HN is definetly the best place to address management issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Has there been any analysis from network/security communities posted to HN on the Sony hacks? All I've seen is reporting and opinion pieces, none that attempted to do research.

This is the closest I've been able to find, some random guy on reddit from a couple weeks ago:

[http://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2puo8h/bittorrent_...](http://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2puo8h/bittorrent_offers_distribute_sonys_the_interview/cn0ksh7)

<comment><USER14> who quotes the BBC's selective quote of a NK representative saying: "The hostile forces are relating everything to the DPRK (North Korea). I kindly advise you to just wait and see."

down to "Wait and see." with a headline: "North Korea refuses to deny Sony Pictures cyber-attack"

The more I read about this whole controversy the stupider I feel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Now, from the people who brought you "Iraq was behind 9/11", we have "North Korea was behind the Sony hack". This is embarrassing for the FBI. They used to keep quiet until they were ready to arrest someone.

Gawker says one security firm thinks it was an inside job by a laid-off Sony employee.([http://gawker.com/researcher-sony-hack-was-likely-an- inside-...](http://gawker.com/researcher-sony-hack-was-likely-an-inside-job- by-a-wom-1676556756))

 _" Don't embarrass the Bureau"_ \- internal FBI motto, Hoover era.

<comment><USER16> There were several different leaks or attacks from multiple actors, one of which has signs of being an inside job, but not all do. I recommend reading this analysis of the events for one perspective on the complexity of the situation: [https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2puo8h/bittorrent...](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2puo8h/bittorrent_offers_distribute_sonys_the_interview/cn0ksh7)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is Sony an American company now?

I thought they were still solidly Japanese with a US presence.

<comment><USER18> Sony Pictures Entertainment (the movie studio) is a US company. It's a subsidiary of the Japanese company Sony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This entire fiasco reminds me of 'The Yes Men' and their reality hacks. Claim something loud enough and it becomes the story. The story is then repeated by the media, eventually forcing a change in government policy. The claim is then, for all intents and purposes, a new reality.

An unavoidable downside of democracy is that politicians react to public belief, no matter how easily that belief is manipulated.

<comment><USER20> Let's not forget the very public threats NK sent to anyone who would listen about the movie. Not that this is the first time NK did such a thing.

NK is just getting what it really wanted, attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The sock puppets in the mainstream media bought it when they told us a youtube video caused the Benghazi attacks. Why not try it again?

<comment><USER22> Wasn't the Benghazi attack more to do with the Iranians and Russians trying to stop the CIA secretly smuggling missiles and other weapons to Syrian rebels?

I seem to remember reading that somewhere.

<comment><USER22> Lots of downvoting on my comment above but no related feedback as to why?

Maybe I'll just leave this here and people can judge for themselves:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-secret-cia-mission-in- ben...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-secret-cia-mission-in- benghazi-2013-8?IR=T)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So. I guess the US is going to invade... _rolls dice_ The South Shetland Islands... for their role in, uh, um, malware in the white house.

I swear we're run by a broken magic eight ball.

</comment><comment><USER24> Has someone actually suggested that the Sony attack was done by N.K?

Edit: I mean is there some source that would back up the claim?

<comment><USER25> Several large and respected security companies agree with the FBI's assessment, like Crowdstrike. Crowdstrike claims to have been tracking the NK group that did it for years. They've published information about that group (whom they've codenamed SILENT CHOLLIMA) in the past, so they're telling the truth about that at least.

Obviously that is not proof that they're correct, but it adds a bit of weight.

And of course, the company that Sony hired to investigate and clean up the breach, FireEye/Mandiant, believe it was North Korea. FireEye and Mandiant also track APT groups; Mandiant notably released their report on one of China's state-sponsored cyberwarfare divisions, APT1, some time ago.

There are some dissenting opinions from other companies, like Norse and ErrataSec's Rob Graham. They are skeptical. However, these companies do not share Crowdstrike's or FireEye's niche industry, which is tracking and defending against targeted and government-sponsored groups.

As far as I can tell, the organizations that would best know whether it was North Korea and who have information directly related to the case (FBI, NSA, FireEye, Crowdstrike) believe it was North Korea. The dissenting opinions are from security experts who are undoubtedly intelligent and great in their respective fields, but are really just being armchair analysts.

So unless you think _all_ of these organizations are either incompetent or are colluding to intentionally lie to the public, then NK remains the most likely hypothesis.

It is certainly possible NK retained help from non-NK individuals, and it is possible an insider was involved, but the prevailing hypothesis among a large part of the security community is that NK's government ordered the attack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wag the Dog, a reality show version.

</comment><comment><USER27> Greenwald: [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/01/north- koreason...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/01/north-koreasony- story-shows-eager-u-s-media-still-regurgitate-government-claims/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I for one support sanctions on NK for voicing threats against Sony.

It's immaterial whether they did it or not. I'm just sick and tired of NK's tantrums and hopefully this will keep the propaganda arm of NK govt keep its mouth shut for a little while.

<comment><USER10> Where is the proof NK did it ? did the FBI at least made a case against NK? or just because the president says NK did it,it's true? well maybe it's good enough for most people but that's the problem,it shouldn't be.

<comment><USER20> Not hard to find proof NK was threatening American company and citizens.

[http://variety.com/2014/film/news/sony-hackers- threaten-911-...](http://variety.com/2014/film/news/sony-hackers- threaten-911-attack-on-movie-theaters-that-screen-the-interview-1201380712/)

<comment><USER10> Are you kidding me? that's what you call concrete evidence? aside from the FBI and the media repeating what the government says there is no evidence.

So please don't pretend this Echo chamber does prove something.It doesn't.There is absolutely no evidence NK did it.

At least during the WMDs madness,the Bush government tried to make a case.Now they don't even bother.Why would they? with people like you,they just have to point fingers at a country and say "let's go get them".

<comment><USER20> My God, my point was whether NK hacked or not. My point is NK is famous for threatening other nations.

If any nation that doesn't deserve any benefit of doubt is NK. Kim doesn't deserve the title of 'head of a nation state'. I'm sure you are a good liberty minded person and if so, you shouldn't waste any energy defending little Kim.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the essential books of knowledge for civilization? - <AUTHOR> I saw a reference in another HN post to "507 Movements", a classic textbook on mechanisms, and it set me wondering what books would be most useful to rebuild the world in the event of a collapse of society. I'm thinking of definitive books on agriculture, engineering, metallurgy, etc. What would be your choice of books that could be used to learn the fundamentals of civilization? <comment><USER2> There used to be a website called Canonical Tomes, which provided a way for people to propose and vote on the most essential books on various topics. It's been gone for a long time now, but you can browse through it on archive.org here: [http://web.archive.org/web/20010616232238/http://www.canonic...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010616232238/http://www.canonicaltomes.org/index.cgi) . You might find some useful stuff there.

</comment><comment><USER3> As well as definitive books, you need a carefully graded way of proceeding through them - plus a very good index. As David Palmer pointed out in his novel _Emergence_ , one would have to devise a 'system to locate specifics in such huge collection. Useless otherwise; researcher could spend most of life looking for data instead of using.'

Other critical books should include philosophy and science: it took a _long_ time to build a technological civilization, and the Scientific Method is the cornerstone of this. (And yet even now, much of the world is still mired superstition/religion.)

More crucial lessons from John Wyndham's _The Day of the Triffids_ : 'The most valuable part of our flying start is knowledge. That's the short cut to save us starting where our ancestors did. We've got it all there in books if we take the trouble to find out about it...

'From my reading of history, the thing you have to have to use knowledge is leisure. Where _everybody_ has to work hard just to get a living and there is no leisure to think, knowledge stagnates, and people with it. The thinking has to be done largely by people who are not directly productive - by people who appear to be living almost entirely on the work of others, but are, in fact, a long-term investment. Learning grew up in the cities and in great institutions - it was the labour of the countryside that supported them...

'A community of our present size cannot hope to do more than exist and decline. If we stay here as we are, just ten of us now, the end is, quite inevitably, a gradual and useless fade-out. If there are children we shall be able to spare only enough time from our labour to give them just a rudimentary education; on generation further, and we shall have savages or clods. To hold our own, to make any use of all the knowledge in the libraries we must have the teacher, the doctor, and the leader, and we must be able to support them while they help us.'

</comment><comment><USER4> I know that conflict is the less civilized side of civilization, and that HN generally is opposed to it (as sane people are), but a discussion of societal development would be lacking without an honest consideration of where the civilized components break down.

I would suggest Musashi ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings)), Clausewitz, Influence of Seapower Upon History (Mahan), and of course Sun Tzu. While some are more specific than others (Musashi is actually about swordsmanship specifically, but conflict generally) they all have insightful things to teach.

For a broader discussion look at Bobbitt's Shield of Achilles. He still has a significant portion on conflict, however it is also a discussion on the interplay of technology, legal development, and conflict.

</comment><comment><USER5> On the cause and mitigation of collapses, my humble opinion is that a culture of technical ambition and inquiry is likely to be as important as specific knowledge.

You might want to look at what kinds of people (culturally and ethnically) are behind most innovation and engineering, and look at the differences and influences there. (It may be interesting to look at the historical trend of their power, as well, for futurological purposes.) If the culture that produces civilization stays around through a collapse, there probably is less to worry about than if that culture doesn't survive.

Thus among your important books may be some of the books of industrial _culture_ , like Atlas Shrugged, most good science fiction, some enlightenment philosophy and poetry, Paul Graham's writing, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great question. I suspect that any references would not be immediately useful. The collapse would be slow and chaotic, we'd probably go through something like the dark ages, and then rebuild partly on salvaged historical references and mostly on immediate need and ingenuity.

<comment><USER7> > Collapse would slow and chaotic

Unless a comet or asteroid hit the earth. Here's some good sci-fi reading for you: [http://www.amazon.com/Lucifers-Hammer-Jerry- Pournelle/dp/044...](http://www.amazon.com/Lucifers-Hammer-Jerry- Pournelle/dp/0449208133)

<comment><USER6> Could happen, obviously.

But whether it's cosmically sudden or self-inflicted, we'll likely be more concerned with the fast or slow moving catastrophe than with future generation, and the Time Traveler's three books aren't going to matter when it's eat or be eaten. Once a collapse happens I think we have to play through the whole cycle.

Speaking of fiction, I've always liked this as an exploration of how society would respond to a collapse: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not a book, but a good addition:

[http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs.php](http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great resource thanks!</comment></comment>


Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period. (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2011/01/two-spaces-after-a-period-why-you-should-never-ever-do-it.html <comment><USER2> Sorry, the run-on way your own sentences appear because you insist on using only one space show how wrong you are. The very problem of the crowding of text shows that you have made it harder to read by following your rule.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s."

 _blinks at the terminal_</comment>


Where Have All the Entrepreneurs Gone in Japan? - <AUTHOR> http://miter.mit.edu/node/142

<comment><USER2> This is a very interesting topic, but the linked article does not add much. It can be shortened to one sentence: Japanese are conformists, and therefor unlikely to be entrepreneurs. While certainly part of the problem, Japan used to be far more conformist, and companies like Sony and Nintendo still got started. Many of the companies, such as Hitachi, Toshiba and Panasonic were actually founded in the early 1900s, and later turned into hi-tech electronics companies when the opportunity appeared.

One issue is that most successful startups in the past two decades have been related to computer software, while Japan's strength has rather been electronic appliances.

Perhaps Japan needs to find a path of entrepreneurship that actually appeals to Japanese in their 20s and 30s, rather than desperately try to copy the valley? My interpretation of Japanese history is that the country is very resistant to change, but when it does change, it can happen very quickly and in surprising ways.

<comment><USER3> On the subject of appealing models for entrepreneurship: see my other post on this thread for why the typical well-prepared middle class person doesn't do it. You have to be a wee bit broken.

Personally I wouldn't touch iPhone development with a ten-foot pole, but there is an entire _floor_ at my local technology incubator related to it, and my town has several iPhone millionaires.

This is one of the "overnight success in ten years" stories: my town has had a technology incubator (previous employer of mine) and an artsy-fartsy "MIT Media Lab"-type academic institution which, for the last decade, has soaked up government subsidies and produced a lot of quirky tortured, brooding artists' takes on the intersection of music and technology. Fast forward to a wee bit ago: it turns out that tortured brooding artists who sweat music and visual design are Kinda Popular Among iPhone Owners. Success breeds success, too -- the technology incubator jumped on the gravy train and there are coffees held every week where folks come to talk iPhone shop.

Now if only we can get them to start doing B2C/B2SB SaaS...

<comment><USER4> Why exactly wouldn't you touch iPhone development with a ten-foot pole? Do you dislike Apple Inc., or don't trust your ability to design mobile apps that are worth paying for, or what?

<comment><USER3> I feel about Apple quite similarly to how I feel about Google: they're a ginormous megacorp with a much better PR team than my insurance company and precisely as much soul. That doesn't mean we can't do business, it just means I go into business dealings with both eyes open.

Mobile development doesn't play to my skill set as a programmer, but that is easy enough to fix. (One copy of Objective C for Dummies, please.) The graphical design I'd have to contract out. The (limited, to my understanding) ability to extract usage metrics from iPhone apps and multi-week wait time between re-releases effectively neutralizes my main strength (testing and iteration) and the app store's discovery mechanism neutralizes the marketing channel I understand best (search and search ads).

And the big killer is that the hit- and fad-focused sales lists mean that if I don't hit a homerun immediately at launch I'm probably going to end up taking a bath on the development costs. I sold $25 of my software my first month and sell ~$4,000 a month now. That is a rare trajectory for iPhone apps: typically, they get released at whatever and then start immediately declining.

<comment><USER5> It's not so hard to extract usage metrics from iPhone applications. Companies offering help with that include Flurry (disclosure: that one's partially mine), Motally, Mobclix, Medialets, and Localytics. Pricing is generally free with the companies making money off of additional, primarily ad-related services. Or you can just roll your own.

However, measuring conversions from marketing campaigns is still brutal, when it's possible at all - it's very difficult to buy installs profitably at volume. And the 'big killer' statement is largely accurate, although I've seen higher-priced niche applications grow more like your business did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article reminded me of a bit in an article that was on HN a couple weeks ago:

 _Starbucks evolved from a small chain of cafes to a huge one by consistently introducing new products, constantly pushing the envelope. Right? So what the hell? [Chokokuro Cafe] just immediately changed their name to reflect the name of the first product that brought them moderate success.

A Japanese friend who works in marketing told me this is the "Japanese resolve." A company sees its fate and resigns itself to it. I think it sounds more like someone just giving up and settling for what they have._

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1173679>

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone who talks about Entrepeneurship in Japan and doesn't talk about the housing situation & concentration of industry in Tokyo is following fancy rather than reality.

When you are unable to rent anything other than the oldest (most undesirable) places without corporate approval, you are not likely to start your own business.

When all business deals are done in the most expensive part of the country, you and your sales staff are not likely to have experience dealing with problems that average people are going to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER8> First line:

"For a nation that once boasted the likes of Sony, Toyota and Mitsubishi as its entrepreneurial heralds"

Well that's problem number 1, founding years: 1946, 1926/1937, and 1870.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's all about the education. Internet start-up are now cheap to start. So I think most students/developers in Japan can do it. There are two factors that can affect it: 1) education and 2) the network.

When you have a network like the Bay Area, this will encourage, enthusiast new young students to become entrepreneurs and start their venture. If they are successful the money and funding will come.

</comment><comment><USER10> patio11 seems to be doing ok.

<comment><USER3> Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.

1) I'm fortunate to be in an industry where I can get by with zero employees, which is exactly how many educated people in my town would be willing to work for a one-person company that didn't have major corporate backing.

2) I _may_ be forced out of my current apartment after leaving the day job, on the theory that I present unnecessary risk to the landlord of nonpayment of my ($450 a month) rent, since we all know how dangerous small businesses are. (I haven't discussed this with the landlord yet. I think I should be able to finesse this, but I'm a very, very quirky guy by definition because I come from the perspective that this is something that I can negotiate with the landlord rather than a condition he'll impose that I'll just have to accept.

Social acceptance doesn't stop at landlords and bank officers, either. For example, take prospective in-laws. You want to marry your daughter off to a nice young salaryman or a post office worker: he'll give her and your grandchildren _stability_. You don't want to marry your daughter off to an entrepreneur: one bad quarter and your grandkids won't be able to afford cram school!

Without casting any aspersions on the motivations of parents of young ladies I may have dated, suffice it to say that for at least some people "salaryman" is such a good quality it trumps obvious negatives like "he's, ahem, well... he spent a lot of time overseas."

3) Have you noticed how I use the world's most efficient distribution channel, the Internet? Japan lags the US -- by quite a bit -- in the "ads -> web page -> purchase consummated online" space. It looks like America in 1996 in a lot of ways -- I have software engineers at my company ask, in seriousness, "But how do people _pay_ you when they get your software?" "I take credit cards." "PEOPLE TELL YOU THEIR CREDIT CARD NUMBER!?"

Oh, the entire Japanese payments infrastructure is optimized around Big Freaking Enterprises rather than small businesses. You know how painful it is to get a merchant account with no corporate history? Think that "about that painful, cubed" for taking non-cash payments in Japan.

4) I am sharply limited in what I can say of the Japanese government's entrepreneurial promotion activities having once been employed by a sub-branch of them (prefectural technology incubator). Here's a general statement, make of it what you will: the government giveth and the government taketh away.

5) Hypothetically assuming I were Japanese, my resume would read DAMAGED GOODS right now, because I had the brass ring (salaryman employment at a good company) and I let it go. (Foreigners interact a little... quirkily... with a lot of Japanese social norms. This is one of them.)

Let me try putting it in American terms: how attractive would YC be if it were widely known that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and almost every other company worth working for considered anyone who either a) did not secure employment at graduation or b) has ever left a company as the moral equivalent of a felon?

<comment><USER11> Good points. There's another relevant one - in Japan, parents are liable if their child defaults on a debt. How much risk would you be will to take if you knew your parents might lose their house if you failed?

<comment><USER12> Is the parent liable for as long as the child is alive (e.g., what happens when the child is well into adulthood)?

<comment><USER3> You know how you're supposed to return your rental modem by a certain date to avoid paying an extra fee? The person who previously rented my last apartment did not get her's returned by the date, so she owed the ISP $100. She also left the country prior to paying it. Lo and behold, when I tried to get coverage, they discovered the bill and asked me to pay it.

"I'm sorry, I think you have a misunderstanding. I am not this young Swedish lady."

"Are you related to her? Is she your wife, girlfriend, etc?"

"No."

"Quite the coincidence that two foreigners would end up renting the same apartment back to back."

"We're translators. Her contract is up, I'm replacing her, it is my employer's apartment."

"Oh. So that makes you coworkers?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking."

"You should pay to avoid causing embarrassment for your employer."

This is one of those times when my American brain goes "Oh hellllllllllllllll no" and my Japanese brain goes "Oh effity, you're right, that _is_ what I am expected to do in this situation."

I paid.

If your adult child defaults on a loan, and someone knocks on your door (and there may be an actual physical knock and likely as not the person who is knocking is a yakuza enforcer, even if your adult child was in debt to an arm of a major publicly traded corporation), you pay. If your drunken useless excuse of a son has an automobile accident, you show up to the hospital several times with flowers and once with a discrete envelope with a generous amount of money to convey the depth of your sorrow for the lapse.

<comment><USER13> Does the envelope full of money go to your useless excuse of a son? And what is the parent's lapse in such a situation?

Interesting, baffling stuff. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, was unclear. The money is for whomever he hit. The lapse is raising the kind of son who gets into auto accidents.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Bitcoin Flaw: Monero Rising - <AUTHOR> http://cryptoizzy.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-bitcoin-flaw-monero-rising.html <comment><USER2> I agree with the premise that fungibility is important to Bitcoin's success, but I disagree that Bitcoin is 'flawed' or has in some way lost to Monero.

There was an update yesterday on the progress being made on privacy features in Bitcoin: [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2017...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2017-December/015346.html)

On a related note, I am happy about the conservative and careful pace of development of Bitcoin. I don't want my store of value to undergo risky development.

<comment><USER3> Bitcoin may not be dead but it is certainly being destroyed on its original purpose (being money).

The only reason to hold Bitcoin is the naive hope that more suckers (not even a better word for them) pay you to hold something they think will go higher (again: suckers)

There are networks that are faster / more secure than Bitcoin and therefore more valuable as usable money (which is what Bitcoin was supposed to be)

Bitcoin may be worth _something_ , but it certainly isn't worth $11k in my opinion since it is just a community-decided value-store currently.

The same could be said for USD but at least USD is backed by the United States.

<comment><USER4> NOT being backed by any one country or central bank is Bitcoin's primary value proposition.

<comment><USER3> >NOT being backed by any one country or central bank is Bitcoin's primary value proposition.

Absolutely.

But if no one is backing it and it has no purpose that supports its value, it shouldn't be worth a lot.

Monero is underpriced because it is actually useful and can support that price.

Bitcoin is worth _something_ , just not 11k in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > How would you feel if you were required to print, in legible block letters, > your full name on every dollar bill before you spent it?

I already do this with 99% of my purchases. I almost solely purchase through credit card, which is a contractual obligation that my clearly identified person will allow a financial institution to pay for this coffee on my behalf, on promise I will pay that institution back at a later time.

I fully expect that institution to carry a full record of my purchases, and these days I expect them to share some subset of that data with whoever they see fit. It's just the world we live in.

I never carry cash with me, except for the rare occasions I know I'll be going to a cashless enterprise, which is becoming exceedingly rare where I live.

<comment><USER6> Not entirely equivalent, since the coffee shop does not receive your purchase history.

<comment><USER7> They probably will soon. Or the equivalent in the form of services backed by that history, like rewards programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the argument is ever "the government could force X to do Y" then you need to finish your thinking.

If the government taxes mixed coins they will extend that tax to coins where it is impossible to detect. "Prove me they weren't mixed" is just as easy for the IRS to say as "prove to me that you bought at $500/BTC".

If anything, Bitcoin's track-ability is likely going to give it some thin veneer of government acceptance, even if I think that people underestimate how careful the truly evil can be.

</comment><comment><USER9> The author fails to understand that fungibility is tangential at best to anonymity.

fungibility is based on the equality of a unit of stuff. short selling works with fungibility, you hire some shares of IBM. Once you have them you sell them, when the price drops you buy them back. The hire period ends and you return the same _number_ of shares, but not the _same_ shares. This works because it is agreed that shares of the same time in a company are all agreed to have the same value.

but, this principle works with anything that has uniformity of price. This is determined by the trading environment, and not the thing being traded. Stocks nominally have unique IDs, at least for accounting purposes (otherwise how do you stop unauthorised re-issuing, and distribute dividends)

Gold is fungible, as pointed out, but anonymous gold is worth less than gold with provenance. To prove that gold hasn't been messed with is expensive, so keeping accurate and verifiable chains of custody is required for fast trade of gold.

Sure one can melt down gold and make it anonymous, but thats expensive. You can barter with your local drug lord using physical gold bullion, but you'll need to be damn sure its verifiably pure, so you'd better hope the serial number and foundry stamped on the front checks out.

Its far quicker to just transfer the ownership of bullion in a known vault, and that has certain guarantees about custody, purity and security of product.

In short, the author fundamentally fails to understand basic commerce, let alone post enlightenment stock markets.

<comment><USER10> one stock is the same as others, but you can have tainted coins that you obtained through legal means (it is just that the source was invalid). With BTC exchanges can block cashing out, for example.

<comment><USER9> Thats the same for stocks, trades can be reversed, this happens quite often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the current crop of cryptocurrencies that are truly anonymous? The list I have so far is: Aeon, DASH, Komodo, Monero , NAV Coin, PIVX, Verge, Zcash, Zcoin, and ZenCash.

Any others?

Edit: Added Aeon

<comment><USER12> These coin all employ some anonymity features. Some real shallow (such a Verge only routing traffic over TOR) and some more elaborate (such as ZCash with zero knowledge proofs).

If you define truly anonymous as having no way to see transaction addresses and amounts, no way to check balances and history and these features all active by default... it would leave you with Monero and Aeon.

Of course other differences exist, such as vulnerable crytography (Zcoin), a potentially flawed "trusted setup" (ZCash, ZenCash), etc

<comment><USER13> Truly anonymous would mean if you bought $100 worth of anoncoin under your own name from an exchange and then played two hands of poker at an online casino, there would be no way for the casino and the exchange to collude and identifier you. Is that the case for any of the systems you listed?

<comment><USER10> Exchange gives you coin, and then have no way of telling what you did with it. Exchange just knows you are given 300 coins at the time of transaction, nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been looking into Monero for a few months. As a Bitcoin enthousiast I find the Monero community very friendly, hard working and seemingly disinterested.

</comment><comment><USER15> For another perspective (from a Bitcoin Core developer): [https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/77atgv/what_do_you_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/77atgv/what_do_you_guys_see_as_the_biggest_competitor_to/doks8zr/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there any particular reason why, assuming that the author is correct and that people will eventually want to migrate to a more anonymous currency, that Monero will be the winner and not some other anonymous currency?

(I don't pay close attention to cryptocurrencies, so this is the first time I've read of Monero.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's the thing, with finite supplies in place most coins still have a risk of some kind of blockchain analysis: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15849236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15849236)

</comment><comment><USER18> If you are wondering why there is another shortage of RX Vegas...

</comment><comment><USER6> Would Monero not eventually run into the same energy inefficiency problems as Bitcoin?

<comment><USER19> People argue that this property is desirable: [https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1944/will- monero-...](https://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1944/will-monero-ever- move-to-proof-of-stake-pos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Bitcoin is still in beta, new features can always be added. They are building something to last the rest of the century at least, so its going slow.

Plus even without adding anything, bitcoin -> monero -> bitcoin solves the privacy problem.

<comment><USER21>
      Bitcoin is still in beta

W h a t.

<comment><USER11> What's so surprising about that? All cryptocurrencies are still very experimental. Nothing shocking about that.</comment></comment></comment>


TOP 10 Startup Failures of 2017 – Album on Imgur - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/xGbTv <comment><USER2> There seems to be way too much easy money available these days. The ability for a boring, not very innovative startup to attract 9 figures of investment without the need to ever deliver a viable product or service is worrying for the industry. It's burning resources and disenfranchising those with actually good ideas.</comment>


Let PGP die - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fct%2Fausgabe%2F2015-6-Editorial-Lasst-PGP-sterben-2551008.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with the message but we need something in place before letting it die.

</comment><comment><USER3> "How good end-to-end encryption must look like today, Apple demonstrated with iMessage: millions of iPhone owners do not even know that they encrypt their short messages."

No. This is not good. Because who in his sane mind would trust a company like Apple not to sucumb to pressions from powerful governments, or his own people, to have backdoors and look at your data. Who in his sane mid would trust a company like Apple (or Gemalto or any other), to never hire spies, and to always ensure 100% secrecy of cryptographic or communication systems?

Basically, the problem is that you need to trust a lot of elements to ensure secure and private communication channels, starting from your hardware.

It would be possible that hardware is compromised (and it's a certainty in the case of smartphone, since no smartphone contains 100% open hardware, but always have a core of privative chips around the communication module (which is why Gemalto hack is not such a big deal anyway: GSM is wicked from the start)), but even with clean hardware, there would be no point in using cryptographic system if you use privative operating system (even if those privative operating systems are derived from free and open operating systems). iOS may contain some parts BSD software, that doesn't prevent Apple to include secret backdoors. And even while Android OS is free and open source, until its 18 _gigabytes_ of sources are audited, we cannot really trust them, much less in their Google or Samsung and other binary forms.

Basically, even [http://www.blackphone.ch/](http://www.blackphone.ch/) cannot really be trusted for this reason: it's not open and free software.

PGP is good, because it's a distributed public key system, into which some trust can be put, for the precise reason that people have to understand it to use it. Also because you would normally use it on open and free operating systems that you can trust, and hopefully, on open hardware that you can trust too (no privative firmware, chips preferably fab'ed in your own country, components assembled by yourself or somebody you trust not to be a CIA or MSI agent, etc).

Brazilian and German politicians may be unhappy about the USA spying their phones, and may initiate the building of their own phones and phone operating systems, but while those are not open software running on open hardware, only THEY can trust their phones. I would trust a brazilian phone just as much as a korean one or an USian one: ie. I would be 100% sure in both case that my communications are spied, by brazilians, koreans or USians spies.

So, how good end-to-end encryption must look? It must look like being implemented on open and free software running on open hardware, of which the USER can audit the sources (and therefore that must have a very controlled complexity), and of which the USER may modify and compile the programs at will.

Ie. all the contrary, from the user point of view, of what a smartphone or tablet is nowadays.</comment>


Enjoyable Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://dtsironis.net/posts/awesomejs/

<comment><USER2> > X ? doSomething() : doSomethingElse()

That's called a ternary operator, and it exists in almost every language. It's not a great example of the power of JS.

The things that tend to concern people most about JavaScript have little to do with poor browser implementations, but are a result of JS being a really messy language. Consider the following code:

      [] + 1;
      // => "1"

In any sane language this would result in an exception, not a string. And using strict mode doesn't help:

      (function() {"use strict"; return [] + 1;})();
      // => "1"

There are other things that are even more concerning.

      {} + 1;
      // => 1

      ({} + 1);
      // => "[object Object]1"

This behavior makes no sense. Wrapping an expression in parens should _not_ modify the value of the expression, only its evaluation precedence. It gets worse:

      {} + 1 === ({} + 1);
      // => false

      ({} + 1) === {} + 1;
      // => true

Note that I'm using threequals here, so JS shouldn't be doing any weird automatic type coercions. This violates the basic laws of logic. If A is equal to B, then B _must_ be equal to A.

JavaScript was built to be a forgiving language. One of its core principles is that code shouldn't raise exceptions unless there's absolutely no way around it. As a result it does terrifyingly weird things to avoid exceptions, such as letting you subtract a number from an array.

That may have seemed welcoming to non-developers 15 years ago, but we've got millions of professional web developers these days who understand that raising an exception is preferable to having your program do something unintended. I think it's the mismatch of expectations that causes a lot of gnashing of teeth about the state of JS.

The good news is that JavaScript has proven to be a suitable language compilation target, so we've got things like GorillaScript that fix a lot of these weird behaviors.</comment>


F-35's radar invisibility cloak in question - <AUTHOR> https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/sensors/2019/09/30/stealthy-no-more-a-german-radar-vendor-says-it-tracked-the-f-35-jet-in-2018-from-a-pony-farm/ <comment><USER2> This isn't strictly just about a weakness in the F-35's radar resistance, but that the whole concept of "stealth" aircraft may be limited in the future thanks to ever increasing computation power and clever usage of existing radio waves (making effective, passive, "radar" that cannot be easily overcome). But as the article points out, this cannot yet be used for guided missiles, and is very early tech regardless.

I suspect the future won't be "super weapons" like the F-35, but instead just "mass" weapons like tens of weaponized drones. Where the mission isn't to be invisible but to simply overwhelming enemy defenses (essentially the World War I strategy, but without the massive numbers of dead soldiers).

PS - The people pointing out that the F-35 had radar reflective disks added didn't seem to have understand the article (or technology). This is using entirely different methods to detect the aircraft, not radar waves, so that's irrelevant. The F-35 could be broadcasting a transponder, and it wouldn't undercut the technology discussed.

<comment><USER3> > I suspect the future won't be "super weapons" like the F-35, but instead > just "mass" weapons like tens of weaponized drones. Where the mission isn't > to be invisible but to simply overwhelming enemy defenses (essentially the > World War I strategy, but without the massive numbers of dead soldiers).

I think this point of view will come to be seen as anachronistic, much as the WWI strategy was not long after WWI.

Why? There is a fundamental disparity between the complexity needed for a forward-operating offensive weapon, and the complexity needed for domestic defensive weapons. Offensive drones need to avoid defenses and navigate to a particular target. Defensive drones just need to interfere with the offensive drones.

Any offensive strategy you can think of that depends on simple numbers, can be countered with numbers at lower cost. If it's drones, I can build more defensive drones than you can build offensive drones for the same total cost.

<comment><USER4> > Any offensive strategy you can think of that depends on simple numbers, can > be countered with numbers at lower cost. If it's drones, I can build more > defensive drones than you can build offensive drones for the same total > cost.

Mobility can complicate that picture. If I have a million attack drones, and you have a million defense drones, there's still the question of _where_ you put your defenses. If you have a hundred cities to defend, you might realistically need a hundred million drones.

<comment><USER5> I imagine they will spot whatever you are using to transport your million drones...

<comment> D-Coder Transport? You can't just fly them there?

<comment><USER6> I mean, it seems like any drone cheap enough to be expendable by the millions would probably be lacking enough in range as to need a carrier/mothership of some sort.

<comment><USER7> And of course the carrier/mothership could be a cloaked bomber that drops them over the target zone, which brings back the need for cloaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure I've ever seen stealth sold as an "invisibility cloak," except by press lacking subject matter familiarity.

The pitch I've seen in settings that _do_ have subject matter familiarity is that stealth decreases the detection range for a given power / bandwidth / noise tolerance. Could your opponent use more power? Sure, but then they're easier to missile lock and destroy. Could they use more installations? Sure, but then they have to maintain them and their communications. Could they crank up the sensitivity? Sure, but then they have to deal with false positives and increased vulnerability to jamming. That goes especially for passive radar. Don't get me wrong, it's still an arms race, but it's not as cut-and-dry as this piece would have you believe.

Also, it's a VHF technique, which is low enough frequency that I'd bet active cancellation is practical, possibly even through a software update :)

<comment><USER9> > Also, it's a VHF technique, which is low enough frequency that I'd bet > active cancellation is practical, possibly even through a software update :)

A lot of this stuff is literally an arms race, along multiple dimensions. Want to active-cancel the VHF signal? You'll need a transmitter for that. How many can you miniaturize into your fighter, and how many can they fit into the installation on the ground?

Another way that it's a race. You have to detect the signal quickly enough and recognize that it's a signal, and then jam it before they can get enough return to discern you from the noise.

So there was _always_ a matter of economics/engineering here, and one valid criticism of the F-35 is that it costs a _lot_ for what it's doing, and any way that chips into its advantage (in a way that is actually production-ready, and not just an irreproducible hack) shifts that cost/benefit balance.

<comment><USER8> Very true, I just want to make sure we aren't taking the "stealth used to be perfect but passive radar makes it mostly useless" claims at face value. Passive radar certainly isn't useless and it does tip the table towards detection.

It only tips the table, though. By using ambient RF it is very difficult to track, but very easy to spoof and mess with.

How well would it deal with a dozen drones omnidirectionally blasting the star-spangled-banner at high amplitude over FM with a bunch of wacky reverb (and maybe a few leads/lags chosen to look like scattering)? Traditional active radar wouldn't have the slightest problem rejecting interference at that sophistication tier, but most passive radar systems would have a tougher time.

As for stealth,

> Want to active-cancel the VHF signal? You'll need a transmitter for that.

Like antennas in the skin hooked to software radios with resilient analog front ends? To my ears, that sounds like a bet that payed off.

> How many can you miniaturize into your fighter

A few, probably. That's not enough to do active cancellation at microwave wavelengths, but it might be enough to do active cancellation at VHF.

> You have to detect the signal quickly enough and recognize that it's a > signal

With active radar, that's the game. With VHF passive radar, you characterize the "ambient" radiation, which in this case probably boils down to mapping the FM stations. It's public information, and that is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of passive radar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The weakness in F-35's have been well known for a long time now.

They've been well known since that a F-117 was shot down in 1999 during the Serbia conflict. The actual event was mostly due to bad operational tactics on the American's side and a very lucky shot, but it did highlight that it was possible to detect stealth fighters using coldwar-era Soviet technology.

The problem is that the stealth is specifically geared towards XHF frequencies, which are the frequencies used in radar guided missiles.. which are the favored missiles for the USA.

However the planes lack the physical size and features necessary to completely absorb VHF radar. VHF lacks the resolution necessary for guided missiles and VHF radar stations must be very large, but it can be used to monitor air traffic over vast areas.

So if you detect a aircraft on VHF and then point your XHF radar at it and nothing shows up... Then you know you are dealing with a USA stealth fighter.

Stealth has been heavily oversold to the American public, but foreign governments are not so vulnerable to USA industrial-military propaganda.

This doesn't mean that stealth is worthless. It does dramatically reduce chances of detection, just doesn't make them invisible. They are still largely invulnerable to radar-guided missiles. The size of VHF radar arrays needed precludes their use on other aircaft.

So to make this sort of thing still requires a sophisticated network connecting large and easily found radar stations, which themselves can be targeted and disrupted in a combat environment. There is still major hurdles needed to solved before it would be possible to actually shoot down these aircraft with radar-guided missiles.

Also this technique doesn't work as well against aircraft the size of B-2 bomber.

<comment><USER11> I think you may be missing a key point of the system described in the article- it is passive, and does not transmit any signal. Instead it relies on RF already in the environment - radio, tv stations and the like. This makes the system far harder to detect and target. I recall hearing about a similar Chinese(?) system a little while ago which used the scatter from mobile phone signals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> These articles are spectacularly uninformed, jumbling together claims which have never been made, uninfomed guesses and lack of domain expertise. It is more interesting as a propaganda exercise, conceivably so Boeing/Dassault/Saab can sell their planes more competitively, or so the RADAR operator can get more government funding.

Problems with the article: \- The F35 isn't flown to air shows in 'war mode'. It has a bunch of reflectors added to increase its RADAR signature. It is only naked when it might be used in anger or over test ranges, and the USAF is very careful to make sure non-JSF program RADARs are off, or have the recordings deleted.

\- Passive RADAR is a real thing that works, but it only gives a general location. It would be meaningless to try to send a link track to an interceptor or SAM site from a passive RADAR system -- all you could do is call and say "look sharp chaps".

\- When you want to shoot at it, your S band (ground) or X band (interceptor) RADAR will have a very hard time picking it up or maintaining lock (because its signature changes depending on aspect, and obviously the pilot will manoeuvre to minimise). Meanwhile your ground receiver is getting jammed and transmitters are getting blown up by JDAMs.

\- Passive RADAR can also be jammed and deceived. How many times will you scramble interceptors for a false passive detection?

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a big stretch.

A radar manufacturer claims they can detect an F-35 which was equipped to be detectable but the radar maker claims that the devices uses to make the plane visible to radar didn't matter because they were tuned to a different frequency.

They're just selling radars.

The thing about stealth is that a tiny aberration can turn an invisible plane into a flying barn. It doesn't matter if the devices used to make the plane visible were for different bands, it's radio, nothing is exact. They obviously made the plane visible to more than just the target design.

On another level, there are various maintenance things that are done to make the plane stealthy when in operation that wouldn't be done going to an airshow.

And finally, no one says the F35 is totally invisible to radar in all circumstances. It is especially detectable after it has passed your current position. The value of the stealth is that you don't detect it until it's on top of you or has already fired on you.

In a real air-superiority fight, F-22 and whatever other classified drones and planes would be the first wave and clear out a path for the less stealthy but more versatile F-35.

<comment><USER14> Stealth isn't a binary. It is a completely analog range. The stealthier you are the closer you can get to a radar before detection. Even the very stealthy planes are highly visible at relatively close ranges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So they managed to pick up a stealth jet.. that was equipped with special markers to make it extra visible (for air safety outside of combat), with additional help from a strong polish broadcaster... with information knowing exactly when and where the aircraft would be?

<comment><USER16> This was addressed in the OP. Their explanation is that the markers are optimized for the specific band of civilian radar, and that they do not assist with passive radar detection.

As for knowing when and where the planes were flying, true, true. But then again, they deployed one van to try to detect the planes, in the one farm, and if the objective was to suggest that the passive technology could end up being useful in a military situation, that might be enough.

The argument is that the F-35 is invisible. If passive detection seems to have any effectiveness, even slight, in detecting F-35s, that ought to guide investment into passive detection and into upgrading the F-35's stealth to avoid passive detection.

INAE, but it feels like there is enough here to cast the claims of complete invulnerability to detection in doubt.

<comment><USER17> The main argument for the F-35's stealth is to avoid target locking missiles. It's not to be "invisible".

<comment><USER18> How does low radar observatbility help against IR missiles?

<comment><USER19> IR seekers have very (in air-air combat terms) short effective range, ~25km at best. Thus, a missile with an IR terminal-stage seeker needs to either be launched from close range (which would indicate the F-35 was probably detected via Mark 1 Eyeball) or the missile needs to be guided into range by radar. Guiding the missile that way involves painting the target with a fire control radar and having a passive radar seeker on the missile follow the return. Reduced radar signature obviously helps in the second case.

Edit: fixed seeker range

<comment><USER20> But in this case passive radar would help enormously? It could detect the aircraft and help to launch an IR missile, effectively rendering the stealth capabilities useless. Deployed at borders, it could provide good air defense against F35.

You obviously need strong signals for passive radar to work but those could be positioned inland and they don't need to be where the passive radar is, making it harder to disable it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would be real curious how this passive radar design helps in an actual war environment.

Even if you discount all the possible issues like the F-35s not being in "stealth operational mode", having reflectors, etc.. this is not a real world test at all.

In the real world test there will be a massive amount of ECM energy hitting this passive radar... it might totally blind a sensor like this. In addition a lot of the civilian radio frequencies/transmitters will be getting knocked offline and it won't have it's energy sources.

<comment><USER22> Would active ECM not be a source of illumination of the target that passive radar could take advantage of?

<comment><USER23> Sure it would if you also assume that the ECM transmitter is also the target. Decoys might break your assumption though. It seems logical to mount ECM on a decoy target.

<comment><USER22> Passive radar depends on the reflection of ambient RF by the target. A drone radiating for ECM purposes (or any other) might illuminate the airplane it is supposed to be protecting.

On the other hand, the algorithms behind passive radar might depend on knowing where the transmitters are. Maybe one could triangulate the drone directly, but not so easily if you have multiple drones transmitting short bursts asynchronously. And if there are enough decoys, it would be like chaff.

<comment><USER23> > _Passive radar depends on the reflection of ambient RF by the target. A > drone radiating for ECM purposes (or any other) might illuminate the > airplane it is supposed to be protecting._

That's a very good point which I neglected to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting, apparently it's because of "passive radar" which I'd never heard about before...

"Passive radar equipment computes an aerial picture by reading how civilian communications signals bounce off airborne objects."

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

<comment><USER25> I've seen a presentation (over 10 yrs ago) where passive radar was set up as a secondary sensor system that is hard to locate because it's not transmitting. One attack scenario is with a stealth plane first attacking the radar systems, then regular planes come in after. So the passive systems would stay up, as most attacks won't target civilian infrastructure. Still, there's a hint of hiding behind civilians here I don't particularly like. But I'm just being impractical about the matter.

You can't optimize your civilian transmitters to send out signals best for radio detection and ranging, so you lose accuracy. Better than nothing.

<comment><USER18> I don't see how its hiding behind civilians? Typically a well marked road march isn't seen as comparable to using human shields, there mere sharing of infrastructure isn't enough.

<comment><USER25> Essentially it's using civilian transmitters as part of a military radar system. A stretch, given.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Midway through the article it finally mentions that this was with the "radar invisibility cloak" turned off by installing Luneburg lenses to make it radar visible. I don't doubt that there are current advances in radar technology that weaken the stealth claims of the F-35, but I don't think that this specific case demonstrates this.

<comment><USER27> The lenses are irrelevant to VHF scattering. Civilian air traffic control is S-band, quite a bit up from radio transmissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Goes a long with a story I heard last year concerning the presence of a German radar and electronics company at the ILA. The story goes that Lockheed didn't want to fly the F-35 as long as the most advanced radar was on premises. After the radar was moved the F-35 cleared. Also, the radar was set up further away. And the F-35 successfully located. (I wasn't there, so that is a second hand story).

EDIT: The Spiegel reports more or less the same story, occurred in Aptil 2018. The radar comes from Hensoldt, a former Airbus subsidiary.

And, as already stated in another comment, it was passive radar in the sense it took existing signals and analyzed them and their absence.

EDIT 2: Yeah, submitted article reports the same story... Lazy me...

</comment><comment><USER29> It's worthwhile to note that while passive radar might be able to detect stealth aircraft, there's not much that can be done other than that. Passive cannot guide missiles, and active radar is the only method used to guide missiles. So even if you detect a squadron of stealth aircraft, what can you do about it?

<comment><USER22> No doubt there are already missiles in the works that will fly to a given location on internal guidance, and then attempt to home in on a nearby target. As others have pointed out, stealth is not invisibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wait, the passive detector was set up only "a couple kilometers" away from the jet? At that range, I'm not surprised you can detect it up with passive radar. You could also detect it with an infrared sensor, a pair of binoculars, or even just listening for the jet engine.

<comment><USER18> Sure, passive radars need a lot of antennas to cover a lot of ground, but the point is they can be made very hard to find since they are passive and that the hardware doesn't cost so much.

<comment><USER30> Definitely, but unless this offers better range than other passive methods (like infrared) this doesn't really change anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In the future, due to advances in radar tech, satellite and others. Skirmishes between highly advanced nations will likely emphasize the use of swarm drones to serve as a battalion and a distraction against the more technically advanced and less defended solutions (e.g. F-35).

Whenever someone looks at the F-35 and others, you should aim to build a holistic picture of what 'X' feature serving sub-optimally could entail, not just "Invisibility cloak has weaknesses under these specific conditions, therefore it is a failure" and whether the group behind optimizing the aircraft is aware of it and accounts for that when upgrading and /or sending it on missions.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is trivial to see. There will be a F-35 demo at Fleet Week in SF this weekend.

Turn on your TV to a UHF digital channel during the demo. Watch the interference. Now, it could all be reflectors, but you get a sense how a bistatic RF detector could work.

<comment><USER20> The hard part is probably calculating where the object is and where it's going. With that information, you could then feed the data to IR missiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> All comes down to whether the Luneburg lens reflects background noise too. If yes then this is of little use and the result is tainted.

If not well that could be a game changer

A bit of Google suggests that they are indeed frequency specific see link. So that sounds like it has real potential

[http://targetsystems.qinetiq.com/static/media/files/Luneberg...](http://targetsystems.qinetiq.com/static/media/files/Luneberg_Lens_2015.pdf)

<comment><USER22> According to that article, the most common use of a Luneberg lens is as a reflector, returning the RF back to its source, and I would guess that is what you would want it to do when your goal is to enhance its visibility to conventional radar. I do not think this would help passive radar, however, even if the lens functions as a retro-reflector at the frequencies used by the passive radar, as the sources and detector are typically a long way apart.

These lenses presumably have some isotropic scattering at the frequencies used by this passive radar, and the question is, how much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Misleading. The article says things like the F-35 is "designed to be undetectable by radar."

Nothing is designed to be undetectable by "radar." "Stealth" aircraft are designed to be "invisible" (low-observable, really) in one or more radar _bands_. Once you get outside those EM bands, the aircraft is obviously detectable (e.g., you can see it because your eye doesn't operate in the X band).

<comment><USER35> You are not wrong. But air defense radars operate in specific bands, too. So when articles targeted at laymen use phrases like "designed to be undetectable by radar" \- I think they mean that the aircraft is designed to have a small RCS for the bands/radars generally in operation. But of course you are technically right, the jet isn't literally invisible...

<comment><USER34> True. The reason I said what I did is because if you have an aircraft that's designed to defeat airborne X band, and somebody on the ground pulls out a truck-mounted radar in a different band, I still wouldn't say the stealth has been defeated, if the reason X band was chosen was to defend against other aircraft.

Don't know your background, so I apologize if this is old info for you: the band of radar you use is driven by the size of the antenna, which is why pretty much all fighter radars are X band (maybe +/\- a little bit). You only have so much space in the nose of an aircraft, and that becomes a constraint for what radar frequencies you can use. If you know that, and your goal is to not get shot down by enemy fighters, you can optimize your radar signature _for that threat_.

To me, this article is like saying something like "bullet-proof vest defeated by falling boulder." My reaction is _well...no...not really..._.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For some reason there is the expectation that a new weapon generation is somehow completely infallible and will be able to defeat any future generation. Except new generations of tech make the old generation obsolete. Nothing more nothing less. A non stealth aircraft will have an extremely hard time against a stealth aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER37> I recall that in at least one case an F-35 used for an airshow demonstration had visible deterioration of the stealth material forward of its canopy. It seems that the low-observable systems used by the F-35 are very maintenance- intensive and that the jets used for shows may not be in combat-ready condition.

(or, if you prefer, maybe the jets used for demonstrations are intentionally damaged in visible ways so that there is a convenient excuse for the ease of detecting them on radar)

edit: I was thinking of the F-22, see comments below for a source. But similar considerations probably apply to the F-35.

<comment><USER38> I think you are thinking of these recent photos of an F-22: [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29218/these-images- of-...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29218/these-images-of- an-f-22-raptors-crumbling-radar-absorbent-skin-are-fascinating)

However you're no doubt correct that radar absorbant materials is high maintenance on any aircraft.

<comment><USER37> You're right! Thanks for finding the source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Where there are no existing civilian emitters, such as FM stations, it would seem possible to deploy transmitters deliberately to create a hostile RF environment to assist the passive radars.

<comment><USER40> Supposedly, passive radar can use sources as weak and diverse as individual cell phone towers, the GPS system and analogue TV signals. I doubt there is anywhere left on land you couldn't get at least 2 of those signals. Though I'm no expert on the tech and I guess the manufacturer has a big incentive to overstate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've been looking for a source, but I remember a previous air show incident where a stealth aircraft was detected and the excuse was that the active stealth system was not turned on, i.e. the aircraft would have used electronic active radar cancellation in addition to stealthy body design if it had been in actual combat.

Whether any electronic system would help against passive radar, or would in fact make things worse, is another question.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if these F35s had external fuel tanks attached, for the long flight back home?

<comment><USER22> Excellent question. Embedded within the article is a video of the airplanes arriving in Berlin, and there is no sign of external stores. They might have stopped elsewhere in Europe and removed them there, but a caption on the video describes it as "a record-setting long-duration flight for the F-35 from Arizona" and "an 11-hour flight."

<comment><USER12> It would have been air to air refuelled, the F-35 isn't certified for any type of external tank, though it gets mooted occasionally when someone wants more endurance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Anything made by man can be defeated with enough effort, time, and people.

</comment><comment><USER44> Tracking any aircraft, stealth or not, isn't the issue. The issue is whether you can get a weapons grade track.

</comment><comment><USER45> If this is true then this is bad.

I always warned that the F35 is a one trick pony. Can't fly fast, can't fly far, can't carry much load, can't dog fight, needs ton of maintenance and may or may not be invisible.

By definition, no plane can be invisible. It is a questions of frequencies and angles you look at it. This plane was not build to bomb Syria or Iran. If the German radar can see it, they Russians and Chinese can detect it for sure.

<comment><USER46> > Can't fly fast, can't fly far, can't carry much load, can't dog fight, needs > ton of maintenance and may or may not be invisible.

that is exactly all the "can't"s the F35 ancestor - Yak-141 [1] - was designed with. All the stealth and quasi-fighter related capabilities of F35 are just bolt-ons onto that design in an attempt to mitigate the "can't"s and to stretch if even just a bit the very limited otherwise capabilities of that design. The only "can" in that design, its raison d'être, was the VTOL with swiveling nozzle (which can't even vector in flight). While that swiveling nozzle is a great thing for a country with no capabilities to build real aircraft carriers, it is a thing born in the pre-stealth age, and thus naturally compromised the stealth (especially in IR) of F35 as there is no way of making it "flat rectangular", like for example on F-22 and B-2, at sane (even by DOD standard) costs.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Lockheed-Martin-fund- Yak-141/a...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Lockheed-Martin-fund- Yak-141/answer/Jones-Averino)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Lies. I've been reassured by the highest authority in the land that this jet is _literally_ invisible.

</comment><comment><USER48> I rant about the F-35 a lot, but seriously: this thing is a trillion-and-a- half dollar shitheap, and this is just the latest proof.

What's really damning about this news is that it calls the entire value proposition of the plane into question. By which I mean, every time someone like me points out that the F-35 loses dogfights to planes from two generations ago, the apologists always come in and say that doesn't matter because the stealth and ECM technology means it will never be in dogfights, only BVR engagements.

But if you think about, that statement is essentially a gamble. It's a wager that our stealth and ECM technology will _always_ , for the entire 40+ year projected lifespan of the plane, be ahead of competitors. Is that a safe bet? I don't think it is. This news shows it, and that's only what's publicly admissible. Imagine what Russia and China have that they're not talking about.

This thing is a piece of junk based on multiple failed ideas (V/STOL, stealth and ECM obsoleting actual combat performance, on-the-fly development, etc.) and it needs to be scrapped yesterday and started from scratch.

<comment><USER28> I have my doubts about all these 5+ Gen fighters myself. As you said, the planes will fly for 40 years, so it is certain that stealth will be lost sooner or later. And still everybody is developing them. Just looking at the economic side of it, in a war against an enemy with a strong air defense (against ever other enemy stealth doesn't make a difference anyway) exact how many of these planes can you afford to loose without ruining your air force and your economy with it?

The F-35 angled at not just its combat capabilities but at a NATO wide domination of combat aircraft, including operations for the full operational life for _all_ operations of these planes. Almost worked out, and my still do.

<comment><USER49> It strikes me that having an entire fleet of high stealth aircraft is only going to be important for... maybe the first 48 hours of any conflict. I would suspect that the very first targets in any air war would be radar installations and command and control centers. Once those are down, and air superiority is achieved, stealth doesn't even matter; you could fly B-52 bomb trucks around.

Even for that opening stage of the battle, I would suspect that cruise missiles and drones would make more sense.

<comment><USER30> One issue with using drones in a high threat environment is that it needs to be able to communicate with a controller. Not only can that communication be potentially jammed, it can also be used to triangulate the coordinates of the drone (and controller) which limits your ability to surprise the enemy. Then you need to consider both bandwidth and latency. Latency matters because that lag between the drone operator getting data and sending orders greatly degrades your reaction time, which can be critical in situations like air-to- air engagements. Bandwidth matters because if you have a swarm of these over enemy territory all using satellite communications you won't be able to stream high quality video feeds back to your operators. That matters a lot if you are searching for targets. I think you'd need the drones to have very high autonomy, which is tricky both technically and ethically.

<comment><USER28> You are basically describing some if the potential concepts. And in addition to all the technical points you raised in scenario like that you would need a lot of drones, not all of which would come back. Which again drives costs up.

Would kind of make sense, IMHO, to have a superior, super stealthy dog fighter that can serve as a drone "mothership". Supplemented by droves of cheaper, non-stealthy specialized planes for ground attack, recon, bombing and whatever nasty fun things a future air force might dream of. Otherwise I think the next world war starts with zhe equivalent of a X-Wing and ends with the use wooden bi-planes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Product Managers Hate Vacations - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-study-group/why-product-managers-hate-vacations-760f8267eb97#.9tza2jgrz <comment><USER2> This is the dumbest thing I've ever read.

If you're doing all those things on your _vacation_ it's not a vacation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad it's not just me who had this reaction. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If your product falls apart when you leave the office for a week, I'm not sure I'd call you a "successful" product manager.

<comment><USER4> This. The bus factor[1] is much too high.

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

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the writer, but I think there may be some people on HN who'd like to voice their opinion on this.</comment>


BlackBerry PlayBook First Tablet To Gain NIST Approval - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/mobile/231002423/

<comment><USER2> Hardly surprising. Blackberry phones have been FIPS certified for ages now. In fact RIM bought certicomm a while ago and Certicom pretty much has a lock on patents for Elliptic Curve Cryptography.</comment>


New Major Relase for Pyglet - <AUTHOR> http://www.pyglet.org/

<comment><USER2> I may be in the minority but I am actually pretty excited for this. I've been using Pyglet for simple graphics assignments in my intro Python class, and it has literally been the only remaining Python 2.x library holding us back.</comment>


How Bernie can hack the Media to win in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IDD4aBPi_7NGt4DfR1BTJmg17mSRRzlTIsIpstrW30Y/edit <comment><USER2> The media not-so-secretly hates him. There is no hack here. They got away with it last time. They're getting away with it now.

Unless they discover Elizabeth Warren's freezer full of half-eaten human bodies, she'll be the nominee.

<comment><AUTHOR> The media hated Trump

They still covered him and he won because of $2B of free coverage

<comment><USER2> Right wingers haven't trusted media for a long time.

Every anti-Trump segment on CNN, NYT, MSNBC is just free advertising for him.

That doesn't work so well for a left-wing candidate. Too many on that side still have faith in accredited officialdom.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am talking about when FOX News originally still hated Trump and his stance on immigrants and history with women. They told Megyn Kelly what to ask him. Roger Ailes was unhappy with his feud w her. And the founder of FOX criticized him on his stance.

It's just a fact that the Media is compelled to cover controversy and attention is half the battle. Ron Paul and Bernie are too consistent to be interesting to cover. Thus they need others to come out for them.

<comment><USER2> I will hope that you are right, but I'm not putting any bets down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tangential. Should anyone - regardless of political preference - use Google Docs for their political activity, so they can be profiled and micro-targeted very accurately?

<comment><USER4> My opinion is people should use non google services whenever possible at this point.</comment></comment>