Elsevier investigates hundreds of peer reviewers for manipulating citations - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02639-9 <comment><USER2> This seems kind of bogus to me. Yeah, I can see how someone could construe it as such, but I think there's a perfectly legitimate reason to mention possible citations in the review. If I get a paper that covers something I've written about in the past, I feel perfectly justified saying, "Gosh, this has been published before. Perhaps you should cite this and explain how your work is new."

I do it for other papers and I don't see why it would be wrong to do it for my own. Oh, I can understand how someone can twist it sound nefarious, but that doesn't seem the best solution to me.

More citations to prior work is a good thing. More discussion about what is truly novel is a good thing.

And let's be honest, my salary won't change one iota if I get another few citations. The idea that this is somehow selfish is really bogus. Citations aren't worth that much at all.

<comment><USER3> > And let's be honest, my salary won't change one iota if I get another few > citations. The idea that this is somehow selfish is really bogus. Citations > aren't worth that much at all.

IF you already have a permanent position and many papers. While you are still a young researcher with fewer publications, hiring committees definitely are also interested in whether your papers are highly cited (see also the whole notion of "impact factor" of a journal).

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is correct.

Additionally, massive cash incentives are being handed out in (at least) China [1]. This reward is given based on the impact factor of the journal, which means that excessive citation of your papers can artificially inflate the IF of the journal and lead to higher payout for your next article(s). It's a bit of a stretch, but it could have an impact if it is done on a massive scale.

[1] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about- ch...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608266/the-truth-about-chinas-cash- for-publication-policy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like Elsevier, but I always wondered:

Why aren't there a few meta-reviewers, to review the reviews?

That is, why doesn't the PC chair, or some key reviewers, have a look at the reviews given on papers to make sure that:

\- They were respectful \- They were to the point \- They did not indicate obvious lack of knowledge of the relevant subject matter (this one might be a bit tricky) \- They were not self-promoting

That would really have helped a lot of conferences...

(but I actually know the answer: There's a dearth of reviewers as-is, so there's de-motivation to introduce this meta-review mechanism even if it would help review quality.)

<comment><USER6> > Why aren't there a few meta-reviewers, to review the reviews?

In principle, the associate editor managing the submission (and making the ultimate accept/reject decision) should be doing this for every paper. In practice, the workload is such that editors have an incentive to make the review process as automatic as possible on their end.

<comment><USER5> So in theory, a highly-trusted reviewer should avoid regular reviews and be engaged in meta-reviews, because of that load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unrelated to anything else:

Please try avoiding work with Elsevier journals, and instead prefer open- access not-for-profit ones.

Did you know Elsevier had a 37% operating profit margin last year?

<comment> denton-scratch Elsevier has an open-access no-cost publishing option [1].

I understand it's considered inferior to the paywalled version by reviewers, and that Elsevier itself regards it rather like a loss-leader. So indirectly, I suppose Elsevier profits from it. And I don't disagree with the exhortation to avoid Elsevier - it's better for all of us if research (and especially publicly-funded research) can be read by anyone, without having to pay a gatekeeper.

[1] [https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb/about/open-science/open- acces...](https://www.elsevier.com/en-gb/about/open-science/open-access)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a possible solution to this problem. I'm still workshopping the idea, so feedback is welcome.

The review process must become more transparent. The reviewers and their assessment of the work must become public when the paper is accepted and published. This in itself will prevent some nefarious citation-begging.

In addition, some guidelines could be mandated concerning citations to be added or removed. For example, for each reference you want the author to include, you must explain why it should be included. Not just "this has been done before" but "the work you describe is similar to the work done on p.4 of [new ref.] but differs in X,Y and Z and is still novel because of invention/method A,B,C. Therefore, you build on their work and should cite them."

To the others in this thread: remember that peer review is often an iterative process and the authors and reviewers have multiple rounds of review in which the authors can choose not to implement some suggested changes, such as adding citations. This is often a small debate. The editor of the journal has the final say and can overrule the decisions of the reviewers (publish / reject) if there are good grounds to so.

Also a small note: the reviewers are selected by the journal editors based on expertise. That means, especially for smaller fields, that many prominent papers are written by the reviewers simply because they are the experts. It is easy to conclude that this leads to bad behavior but it is often the case that there simply are no other papers available with such specific details. Of course, this is not an excuse for malicious actors which are also rampant.

<comment><USER3> The reviewer is known to the editor, so you already have some accountability there. The reviewer should definitely NOT be known publicly for the same reason that reference letters are usually confidential. You are going to get sugarcoated, bland, self-censored reviews otherwise.

> "the work you describe is similar to the work done on p.4 of [new ref.] but > differs in X,Y and Z and is still novel because of invention/method A,B,C. > Therefore, you build on their work and should cite them."

That is your job! As a referee I will point out that:

\- This is similar to paper X, which you did not cite. You should give credit here.

\- You, not me, should argue why your work is new/better etc. and hence worth publishing. If you just write "we do the exact same stuff as in X", then I will assume this is not novel and not that you are lying and it is actually novel and very different from X.

<comment><USER4> Points taken. Maybe the reviewers should be anonymous, but I still believe that making the reviews public after publication is a good thing (anonymized).

> The reviewer is known to the editor, so you already have some accountability > there.

Yes. I think it is not enough though.

> That is your job!

Well, yes it is. But, assuming the author is acting in good faith, it is still possible to miss some references. You can kindly point out the references and ask for clarification as to why the material isn't cited. I may have gone too far by handing the arguments to the authors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems a positive move for science process, as well as for Elsevier's reputation and the value it can add as a publication venue.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I think undoubtedly the reason for "investigating" this now is the optics for Elsevier. They are bad guys in the eyes of most people right now.

The main evidence I have for this claim, is that coercive citations are so common as to be a trope in PhD comics and the like. Moreover it is bleeping obvious to the editor, when they receive a review by M. Ister that suggests 10+ new references to M. Ister et al., that this is going on.

<comment><USER8> It also de facto deanonymizes the reviewer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That may be the least of their problems right now

</comment><comment><USER10> It's good that they're investigating the "insider dealing" varient of citation boosting but I haven't seen anything around excess self or chain-citing, which I always viewed as a more common offense. Obviously follow-up papers are a good thing, but I've known several authors that aim for long chains of follow- up papers (or summarizing several chains) purely for boosting citation numbers. The idea being that if it's a hot topic their paper will be caught in the crossfire regardless of whether it truly merits a citation.

</comment><comment><USER11> Elsevier has always smelled bad to me.

They published the Andrew Wakefield autism paper for crying out loud.

<comment> denton-scratch Well, The Lancet published it - The Lancet is probably the #1 medical scholarly journal bar none. True - The Lancet is owned by Elsevier.

Ten years later, the General Medical Council found that Wakefield's research had been dishonest, and on that basis The Lancet retracted the article. But I don't think it's right to criticise Elsevier over the publication of a paper that wasn't conclusively falsified for another decade.

Reviewers are not supposed to be detectives; it's not their job to expose deliberate fraud. They rely on the material submitted by the author. This is the much same as for auditors; they rely on the documents supplied by the auditee's accounting team, they're not in the business of investigating criminality and blatant lying.

Elsevier smells no worse to me than any other commercial publisher of scholarly journals. To be clear, I think they all have a pretty dodgy whiff about them; but I'm not aware that Elsevier is any worse than the others.

<comment><USER11> Most papers I've heard of that exhibit malfeasance come from Elsevier and it's my understanding that the journal editors manage the whole peer review process and are compensated by the publisher through some form of an agreement.

And yes, it is the job of reviewers to at least recommend not publishing a paper that can be detected as fraudulent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm actually surprised the number is so low.

With high profile scientists, in specific fields there are often 2 camps pushing 2 different competing solutions to the same problem, and each solution tree has a set of "canonical" references which are cited for most papers in that tree. A set of these is generally requested to be discussed by the opposing team (i.e. why does your paper support your tree and what have you found that seemingly invalidates the other tree?) The more prolific authors in a subfield are generally chosen as reviewers, and also hold the most recent papers in that tree, so requesting citations to recent relevant literature often goes hand in hand with work they've had input on.

Add this to the fact that, even in blind reviews, the reviewer can guess the author's name correctly more than half the time, and the reverse is anecdotally true (this is not as astounding as it seems, in my specific subfield there are maybe 20 people putting out a paper a year -- there was a paper I reviewed where I did not suggest my own work for citation, but the author retroactively added a citation for me, leading me to believe they guessed my identity), and I'm surprised less than 1% "consistently" are cited in papers they review.

If anything, this meta-analysis is heartening, as I would expect this problem to be much more prolific in the "publish-or-perish" (get cited or lose your job) paradigm. Elsevier, in my field, has high impact journals though, and I know the problem to be much more rampant in the lower level journals.

As a slight aside, some countries simultaneously promote local researchers to publish in their own local journals and turn around to note that publications by their scientists have tremendous citation numbers, I personally question the validity of those citation numbers since they seem to be politically incentivized. Within the fields, real researchers will have a feel for what journals are pushing good science and which are "citation padding" with incomplete and hasty work just "published" for numerics.

In response to the meta-review comments. All review is volunteer work, _it should be this way,_ but I personally find it obnoxious when I'm on public wifi and can't even load a paper I've reviewed because some ostentatiously profitable publisher has paywalled it. The research is publicly funded, the researcher pays 100$ per page of publishing cost, the review is volunteer work. Why exactly do you need 30$ for me to read the methods section?

<comment><USER13> I agree with most of your comment, but why do you believe review should be volunteer work? In lots of non-academic fields you have professionals evaluating the quality of products, and being paid to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "grifters complain about free labor"

</comment><comment><USER15> Everyone is being told to put faith into "science" as somehow incorruptible, only to have articles like this written. We are supposed to be able to rely on the people writing papers being ethical, when it seems the reality is a race to the bottom like everywhere else in society.

<comment><USER8> I agree that the general public has basically no idea how the academic world operates and surely their trust in it would decrease if they knew. There are many sketchy practices and a lot is based on an "honor" system, which often devolves to back scratching. Lots of inflated claims for sexy publicity, mass produced PhDs etc.

People imagine science as this serious rigorous thing where everything is objective and unbiased careful "monks" investigate all the details with scrutiny. When actually it's often like a bazaar. You have to sway the reviewer with overinflated claims and "sell yourself" in a way that fully contradicts the scientific virtue of self-skepticism (finding reasons why you're _wrong_ , not right). There's also a lot of who knows/likes who and subjective human factors. These are all obvious for people after a few months or 1-2 years as a researcher, but science has a very different image for laypeople who mostly know about it from school, mostly results that were produced in a different era. The number of scientists has exploded recently, there are tons and tons of papers written and they are all supposed to be some novel discovery and this great leap forward, which is clearly unrealistic at this scale. At the same time thorough analysis and skeptical papers are "boo"-ed down, seen as confrontational and are undervalued compared to sexy new claims.

Many institutions have become paper mills. Raw metrics like paper counts and citation counts have replaced careful consideration in many evaluations, it's basically an industrial scale mechanized process. Feels like a house of cards that can not be kept up indefinitely. The reputation of science will be hurt for sure as the public starts to find out more.

<comment><USER16> On the other hand, to list some random newish things:

* Genome sequencing.

* New malaria drugs.

* Graphene.

* Better batteries.

* Deep learning.

* fMRI.

* CRISPR.

From the outside, the public doesn't care about the trials and tribulations of PhDs. Or irrelevant puffed up papers. Or the organisational politics of research.

<comment><USER8> That's true, there is a lot of good work out there of course.

And I'd say the system is still of concern for the public. Few readers of pop science articles recognize when they are essentially reading a pr marketing piece, and not something like a consensus textbook-like description of consolidated knowledge. The authors have special interests and biases beyond uncovering the truth, such as pressure for publication counts, tenure possibilities, filling your CV, all sorts of political considerations, flag planting, etc.

Another thing is how these discoveries are made. I think people imagine it as if researchers research and ponder about things, then when they find something, they write it up to share it with the world and contribute their new found interesting knowledge. I know someone who did that in his PhD, he quit after several years without any paper submissions. When asked, he said he hasn't found anything yet worth publishing. In most places, people decide in advance that they're going to have a paper this year for this journal/conference and then they plan a solid way there. You decide what result would be sexy (keeping some secondary plans in place) and then do the whole thing. Several times things will not go as you expect, but the paper must be written. Then you rewrite history and come up with ridiculous "storylines" to make it seem like all your hypotheses naturally flow from prior work and everything fits in this nice story. Then you torture the data until it sings because there must be a paper. You look for the smallest indication of something interesting, inflate it to sound like a breakthrough, speculate about far reaching conclusions etc. And then if your university has a good pr department, journalists will eat it all up and you'll be out in the media, impacting normal people's understanding as well.

(I realize I may be a bit too cynical here, and I exaggerate somewhat to get the message through.)

<comment><USER16> I get that, and you may not be wrong. It's that you may be right about the wrong thing. All this stuff matters a lot if you're pursuing a career in academia. But from the outside it just means the machine of science is a bit less efficient than it could be.

Also I put it to you that serious researchers are rarely misled by low quality, vacuous papers. That kind of work will be ignored by history.

So I agree that what you're pointing out is something of a problem, but may not constitute a cataclysm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ... and then they 'll be after networks of ~~bots~~ reviewers , and then networks of networks of bots, and then state actors etc etc. Scientific publishing quickly catching up to twitter and blackhat SEO</comment>


Standing at work doubles the risk of heart disease - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwx298/4081581 <comment><AUTHOR> The Relationship Between Occupational Standing and Sitting and Incident Heart Disease Over a 12-Year Period in Ontario, Canada Peter Smith Huiting Ma Richard H Glazier Mahée Gilbert-Ouimet Cameron Mustard American Journal of Epidemiology, [https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwx298](https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwx298)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Occupations involving predominantly standing were associated with an approximately 2-fold risk of heart disease compared with occupations involving predominantly sitting.

This association was robust to adjustment for other health, sociodemographic, and work variables."</comment>


"They Would Be Gods" (taken down from ycombinator -- now hosted by scribd) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/179382/They-Would-be-Gods

<comment><USER2> Ah, Upside. The magazine that posted their entire archive on their website, before the magazine got bought out, and then it was a page saying "Pay for a subscription".

This is one of the most vicious removals of a WWW bubble archive I can think of.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this when I was looking through my del.icio.us 'to read' list and discovered this: <http://ycombinator.com/gods.html> . Which is too bad; it's a great essay.

</comment><comment><USER3> any way to fix the html bits I'm seeing?

<comment><USER4> copy the text into a .html</comment></comment>


Skully has crashed and burned - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/once-promising-ar-motorcycle-helmet-startup-skully-has-crashed-and-burned/?sr_share=facebook <comment><USER2> For those of you going through this for the first time, this is what the loss of "loose money" feels like. For some it will feel "sudden" but it started last year. "Big name" startups were getting re-valued downward by their investors and founders trying to raise a series A or B kept getting "we would prefer to follow in this round, rather than lead it."

I feel for the employees. One of my friends in the dot com bust showed up for work to find the doors locked and a line of other employees outside. A security guard was there who would escort the employee inside, they were given a box and supervised while the put their stuff in the box (and it was inventoried by the guard) and then they were allowed to leave and the next person was let in. No linkedin or big social media at the time so they didn't know that the 3 founders were all now at Apple, that Monday had been the founder's first day in their new jobs. The dissonance was huge, it was if the startup had never even existed. It took 3 months but his final paycheck arrived, written out by a legal firm representing an insurance company.

Default dead, or default alive. That is a really important question right now.

<comment><USER3> I also feel for the junior developers being minted in droves from the various bootcamps across the country, but particularly in the SF Bay Area. Since we have it the hottest here, the pain will be the most acute as well when the downturn finally arrives in full force. Those who believed in the narrative that a 10 week developer bootcamp was the ticket to a good job in the "new era" will be in for a rude awakening. It'll be akin to the Law School false promises (though not nearly as severe with respect to time and financial commitment and loss).

I hope they have made contingency plans, or have pursued robustness in their skills.

<comment><USER4> What about all the tens of thousands of students that graduate with CS or related degrees every year?

<comment><USER5> They seem to fare much better, at least that I've seen. I've been in places that've hired freshly minted BS/CSes, but I'm only aware of hiring one bootcamp grad. She was exceptionally brilliant and motivated, and did the bootcamp to round out her otherwise excellent skillset.

I contrast that with some I've seen turned away for being able to make a Rails site, for instance, but with little or no knowledge of CS fundamentals. They too might have been brilliant and motivated, but they didn't come with the underlying knowledge they'd need to succeed in the roles we had available.

Bootcamps seem to teach tech, not theory. That's fine if you're hiring for that specific tech! My employers have been more interested in broad theory, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a Skully helmet owner. I've had it about six weeks (although only three weeks of usage as I was on a long vacation). I picked up my helmet directly from employees at a Skully HQ BBQ release event for the first batch of non beta testers, so I met a lot of them. They are a good bunch, and obviously put in a lot of effort, and found success, on a difficult and audacious endeavor. I feel sad for them.

I'm still quite happy with my helmet. The battery life seems to not be as good as I hoped (maybe 2-3 hours) but not a big deal as my commute is under 15 minutes.

The software is definitely beta level, but not too surprising, and software is relatively easy to improve. I had very early on figured out a vector to load my own firmware onto the helmet (it's basically request with a response that points to a tarball of an android system that the helmet will download and install). I hadn't actually tried it yet, but I suppose now that's the only way to get improvements.

If any other hackers would like to collaborate on improving the software, or other owners would like to commiserate, I created a face book group Skully Owners:

[https://www.facebook.com/groups/269680180066362/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/269680180066362/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Its crowdfunding page, on Indiegogo, is a bit bizarre to me:

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world- s-s...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-smartest- motorcycle-helmet)

1,940 backers for $2.44 million, and only 24 comments? For a project with this many backers with this much skin in the game, comments usually number in the hundreds (if not thousands), especially as it becomes apparent that the campaign will miss its estimated delivery dates. Even though Skully seems to have its own website and support forum, the campaign landing page is still where you have "noisy" backers (i.e. people who frequently back products enough that the site becomes a social network for them).

<comment><USER8>
        $2,446,824 USD raised by 1940 backers
        979% of $250,000 flexible goal

Did they ship to all the Kickstarter backers?

<comment><USER9> No, I was one of the first 25 indiegogo backers, haven't received anything.

<comment><USER6> Oh man, sorry to hear that. I was part of that group too, but I got one. I feel like I lucked out getting something at all, even though the long term value is in some question now. What a mess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews:

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY- Reviews-E1046917.ht...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY- Reviews-E1046917.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false)

<comment><USER11> Why does management always plant incredibly glowing fake reviews? At least do 3 stars, that would look more plausible than a 5 star review praising the CEO in a sea of 1 star reviews talking about how the CEO is burning investor money.

<comment><USER12> Pro tip on Glassfoor reviews: if under "advice to management" it says, "keep doing what you're doing" it's an HR-planted review. And given how often I see those exact words, I assume they all went to the same HR conference session.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" Weller ... and his brother were forced out of the company after investors disagreed with the LeSports deal he brought to the table, opting instead for an inside round. Another source familiar with the matter confirms his story that he brought in the LeSports deal but said Skully was rapidly running out of cash and it was down to the eleventh hour determining if the numbers added up.

Adding to that, we've been told the board thought Weller has been so difficult to deal with since leaving, they now don't see the point in salvaging the company he started.

We're told by a source inside the company that as of Monday, investors ... determined it was better to just shut the whole company down instead."_

In what world is shutting down, a superior alternative to selling the company to LeSports for some cold hard cash?

<comment><USER14> The VCs are mad at Weller -- it sounds like a pissing match to teach Weller a lesson to do what the investors wanted or else.

<comment><USER15> A pissing match costing 50+ people their livelihoods is disgusting to me. The fact that every player in the startup game so readily screws each other over is a big part of why I'm not in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I actually turned down an offer from Skully a little over a year ago. They flew me in and had me spend a week with the team. Their offer was on the low side but I was super excited about the technology, an augmented reality helmet is something I had been dreaming of since I started riding a motorcycle.

However, after spending a week there it was pretty clear to me that they were in a bad place managerially, so I ran away as fast as I could. I highly doubt that the issue is the bubble bursting in this case, it's the investors having no confidence in the leadership.

It's a shame for the employees, I met some really awesome and talented people, although I'm sure they'll have no trouble finding something else; one of them I saw is at Tesla now.

Anyway, my experience was pretty terrible, they dropped the ball in every way possible in terms of my experience being recruited, and left me with the strong impression that they did not have their act togethe at all, from failing to buy my ticket until the absolute last minute to not giving the manager I would be working under any heads up about my arrival, to Mitch repeatedly making inappropriate remarks about women, Maxim magazines in the office bathroom, etc. On top of that the product has some major design flaws that they were punting on, not even trying to address them and instead scrambling to get things ready for the CEO to go on a world tour showing off the helmet and apologizing for it being late.

I understand that consumer electronics is always kind of a shit show and there's usually lots of last minute scrambling and crises, but their situation seemed insane even given that. They were already thinking about version 2, deciding to use a crappier display than was originally planned and then the better display could be a huge reason for people to upgrade to the next version. Meanwhile, the non-replacable helmet battery could only last a few minutes per charge, and didn't even have deep discharge protection in place yet. The night before the world tour kickoff, all the employees pulled an all nighter to get things ready and then someone forgot to plug a few of the helmets in, or plugged them into the wrong charger so the helmets were worthless after that, cutting the number of helmets they had for the tour in half...

After that experience with them I was pretty sure they would not be successful, but then I saw a few months ago that BMW was working on basically the same thing and I knew they were doomed for sure.

<comment><USER17> Do you think BMW will ever truly productize their AR helmet though? I always thought of that as a fun research project, and that's it. I know that I, as a fellow rider, would never use an AR helmet - too much distraction.

<comment><USER18> While I'm a rider and I agree distractions on a motorcycle are not what you want, just being able to do the following without having to loose sight of what's in front of me would be great:

\- get my speed (for a traffic cam for instance)

\- have an almost 180 degrees view of what's behind me: no blind spot

\- get directions (I usually do it from memory, I don't use a GPS on my bike just because of the distraction reason)

Keep in mind we ride between traffic lanes here so the more I can look ahead, the better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really sad to hear this. I was rooting for them and thought the helmet could save lives, in addition to making it way easier to navigate turn-by-turn on a motorcycle. True, not many would pay $1500 for a motorcycle, but like any other hardware technology, that cost would have come down with scale. I already invested half that in a normal Shoei helmet. I had planned to purchase one to support the product and future scale once they started delivering pre- orders. I hope someone picks up on this idea and starts it again with better investors and culture.

</comment><comment><USER20> So having used the recon line of products (which this is a spiritual cousin of) I can only say that these kinds of displays are kinda dodgy.

When skiing anything resembling challenging terrain, the stuff is bouncing around and my ability to focus universally across on the then 2nd gen recon displays was simply not possible. I'm a decent skier, but not that crazy and I ended up returning the smith io/x using the recon screen.

On a motorbike it'd be pretty intolerable, way more bumps and stuff, I'd think. Then you layer on the safety concerns... the very real question of what happens when someone crashes wearing one of these helmets (Will the display impact your eye? Will it stay far enough away to not do so? Will the battery cause any problems when wet or exposed to impact/air etc..) probably made insuring the company difficult, too.

I bet the other helmet makers are cutting/have cut deals with recon to repackage their stuff anyhow, so those that want this kind of crap in their FOV can get it.

<comment><USER21> Crash safety is a concern I have as well, I attend track days (for bikes) and some of the organisers near here banned Go Pro's on helmets after one punched through the shell in a collision.

That said there are flip down visors in plenty of helmets that do just fine, and built in bluetooth headphones in others. So I guess it's a question of how miniaturised and well designed it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I saw this helmet for the first time about 3 years ago at a hardware meetup in SF. I thought it was a sure thing at the time, pretty surprised that it's gone belly up. It's unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER23> I recently installed a Sena BT system for my helmet. And I'm fairly pleased with it.

It would be nice to have a HUD for driving directions, but relying on just the voice prompts is usually sufficient.

The Skully design is neat, but I don't see a big enough market for it.

<comment><USER12> _The Skully design is neat, but I don 't see a big enough market for it._

How much of a market could there possibly be for a $1500 helmet? I shudder at the thought of a $700 Shuberth hitting the ground. I consider a helmet to be disposable as well. How disposable is a $1500 helmet? And are you a Shoei head or an Arai? IOW, will this helmet even fit my style of head, or is it going to leave hotspots after a few hours?

Cool tech, no argument. But it needs to come down to something like a $200 add-on like the Bluetooth unit for my Nolan.

As to the ultimate reason for their demise, I have no idea. From what little I've paid attention, I'm guessing a combination of way overpriced and, yeah, hardware is hard.

<comment><USER20> The article says that there were 3000 units pre-ordered. That's a fair amount of cash, but spinning up a hardware line where there are real safety and fit questions at hand is not trivial. Maybe they would have been better off making something that would replace the visor on a popular model of helmet like a shoei.

<comment><USER12> So, 3.5 million to develop safety equipment with electronics that have to endure wind, rain (at 90mph), shock, and general misuse (I don't treat my helmets with nearly the care I do my iPhone)...and still make a profit. My napkin scribbles say that would be a tall order.

EDIT: oh, yeah, and DOT/Snell testing. Don't know how much that is.

<comment><USER23> _I don 't treat my helmets with nearly the care I do my iPhone_

Just as a note to everyone: If you drop your helmet, you should throw it away. You can't tell if the foam has been cracked, which reduces its protection.

<comment><USER24> This is a pretty common misconception. Info from Snell Foundation: [http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq#aDroppedHelmet](http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq#aDroppedHelmet) Most manufacturers also offer a free inspection service where you can ship them your helmet and they'll check on the internals/foam.

<comment><USER23> That's good to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why was actually wrong with the company? I did not understand what caused them to stop operations. Also, the HUD seems to be a very useful thing for GPS navigation (IDK if the rear view is all that useful, but GPS certainly is).

<comment><USER26> Hardware startups are incredibly challenging and capital intensive. It seems they ran into the classic cash flow problem and didn't have a coherent enough leadership situation to follow through with the next round/acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The idea of buying a helmet with the tech built in, from a no-name startup is ridiculous when there are so many other factors in play.

I think the folks over at NUVIZ came up with a better stand alone solution, as its just an external attachment that projects the HUD for any normal full face helmet. That said, its been awhile since I've heard any updates so I'm not exactly hopeful.

<comment><USER28> Yeah I think that's the thing that doesn't make sense to many motorcyclists including myself. A helmet is a personal item and you want the fit, noise level, airflow, and features that suit you exactly, especially if you ride daily. Skully could have had interesting standalone technology (could have had, but actually didn't) but it's nuts to marry that to a helmet since that dramatically narrows the market only to people who want that exact kind of helmet. An add-on makes so much more sense.

People who are willing to spend a lot of money on helmets would never have gone for Skully's "meh" helmet with expensive tech inside.

That and it's a stupid idea. Honestly who wants to sysadmin their helmet?

<comment><USER6> > Honestly who wants to sysadmin their helmet?

You sound like someone at the advent of the smart phone who says "who would want to sysadmin their phone?"

<comment><USER28> I was inventing the smartphone when most of the people on this site were still in second grade, so that's definitely not me. However, good taste is a key to success. It has always been true and remains true that people do not want everyday objects turning into software hassles. Nobody ever wanted to upgrade Flash Player on their "smart" TV. Ever. Nobody wants to have to charge their car keys. Nobody wants to charge their motorcycle helmet every 2 hours of riding.

Here I am using a definition of "nobody" which means "a number of people so close to zero that it will be virtually impossible to create a successful company serving this tiny or non-existent market."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I know the founder, Marcus Weller. I've had business dealings with him at the time Skully was just an idea, in the very formative stages.

I wanted to tell him "look dude, anything hardware-related will be copied in China like tomorrow, and your price point per helmet is what?"

Being an entrepreneur myself, I thought "most founders have to fail a bunch, so let him fail" and I said nothing. He also reneged on a commitment he made and in my opinion thinks too highly of himself. Good luck Marcus, try again, but stay away from high-end hardware.

<comment><USER30> It's one thing to fail, it's another to screw your vendors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Well that's a lot of sad. I was following the helmet project and thought it was a great idea ... should I ever (be foolish enough to) buy another motorbike.

Some rear view mirrors are just ludicrously small. Having the rear view projected inside the helmet's AR display would be a massive boost to safety and confidence, as any rider who has ever waited at lights should be able to tell you.

I feel sorry for the engineers working on this, who will not be able to bring it to the light of day, and for all those who already paid for theirs should chargeback not be available.

<comment><USER32> > as any rider who has ever waited at lights should be able to tell you.

You should always filter straight to the front of the line at a stop light to avoid being hit from behind.

<comment><USER33> That's a recipe for getting your ass kicked, or at least targeted for an attempt.

<comment><USER32> Where do you live so I can avoid going there?

<comment><USER33> It's like that everywhere in the US. Not always legal, and also incredibly rude (frowned upon).

<comment><USER34> Contrast with the UK where 'filtering' is legal [0] and I have never heard anything negative about it. Riders filtering won't cause me as a driver any delay.

[0] Rule 88: [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for- motor...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for- motorcyclists-83-to-88)

<comment><USER35> Not just legal, but recommended.

You can fail your motorcycle test for not filtering when appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very sad. I pre-ordered this a while back. I don't mind startups dying but the way they handled the whole thing is disappointing. Absolute no communication whatsoever about the impending disaster. In fact, I am yet to receive any notification thus far that my order won't be fulfilled.

</comment><comment><USER37> How did payments work for this? In the UK - I don't know about the US where this was presumably 'on sale' \- you can issue a chargeback against the credit card company if a sale falls through in this manner.

<comment><USER38> Most of the time, credit cards are not charged until goods are shipped. In any case you can do a chargeback and are protected by the Fair Credit Billing Act:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act)

<comment><USER39> > Most of the time, credit cards are not charged until goods are shipped.

Not true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Their shopping cart [1] is still taking orders as of 4:21 PM PDT.

[1] [https://www.skully.com/store](https://www.skully.com/store)

<comment><USER40> If you click checkout you will get a message that the product is not currently available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Anyone who actually and seriously (more than 30min per day in diffetrnt conditions) knows this is a gimmick. Visual focus on your enviornment is priority one, the HUD is distracting unless done very carefully. I was thnking of getting one to test but after meeting some of their exec team and senior management decided against it. Honestlly not surprised but sad to hear it for the rank and file enginner who genuinely believed in creating this product.

<comment><USER6> The helmet is actually very nice. The HUD (actually technically a HMD not a HUD) is not distracting at all. it's the size and position of a typical right hand rear view mirror, and hardly anything visual happens on it except the rear camera display, which is has been a fantastic enhancement to my riding safety, although it does take some getting used to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Really unfortunate for everyone involved. In these cases, does the company legally owe anything to the crowdfunding backers? The campaign was on indiegogo, which I believe has much looser requirements than kickstarter for ensuring project creators fulfill their rewards.

</comment><comment><USER43> While people do buy helmets over the internet, they almost always test one beforehand to see if it fits them properly. More so on a 1500 USD purchase. Did Skully even had a single international order?

</comment><comment><USER44> I remember reading [https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our- promise/](https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/) just last week !

</comment><comment><USER45> Perhaps not so bad my employment application with them in May didn't work out.. nonetheless, my sympathies are with those now abruptly finding themselves needing to secure new gigs.

</comment><comment><USER46> As a rider myself I'm not surprised.

The product seemed very gimmicky to me. I also would be very concerned how safe the helmet is compared to a snell approved Arai Signet-Q</comment>


Show HN: strongtrends - automated recognition of price trends (side project) - <AUTHOR>

I am a software engineer but also interested in practical data mining of financial time series (did MSc and dropped out of PhD in this subject).
I have became tired of analyzing individual charts and reports looking for mid-term investment opportunities and last evening finally decided to create a simple service. I have had this idea in my mind for a while so after a few hours of coding I have built www.strongtrends.com. The service automatically analyzes price trends of multiple financial instruments on daily basis, allowing you to discover strong and stable price movements that might become interesting investment opportunities. Trend stability metric is calculated for each financial instrument which is then classified as stable, crazy or chaos - a greater value means a stronger, more stable trend. Currently major currency pairs and commodity futures are supported.
Hope you will find it useful too, for me the selection process is now much easier. <comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://www.strongtrends.com/></comment>


Ask HN: What if a SuperPAC sponsored a voting machine bug bounty program? - <AUTHOR> Instead of wasting all that money on campaign ads, why not pay to hack the voting machines until they're fixed?<p>If they spent as much money as they do now, they could offer obscene amounts. <comment><USER2> Many private funded PACS probably would offer money for expliots.... patching them... well.. depends on how publicly favorable their position is...

</comment><comment><USER3> Because if voting mattered, they would not let us vote.</comment>


Russia to Disconnect Entirely from the Internet as Part of Cyber-Defense Measure - <AUTHOR> https://www.circleid.com/posts/20190211_russia_to_disconnect_entirely_from_the_internet_for_cyber_defence/ <comment><USER2> Having them permanently disconnect from the internet would be a god send.</comment>


Is it just me or does wi-fi seem to break down above 20-30 computers in a room? Why? - <AUTHOR>

This may seem like it's coming from left field, but stick with me. The US Medical Licensing Exams are computerized. Many schools, including ours, are exploring administering computerized exams also. Building computer lab facilities to support conducting a computerized test with 180 people seems a bit over-the-top. The often suggested alternative is to administer the test over wireless. Virtual machines and other security concerns aside, when students pile into any of the auditoriums, just for class, it seems like we never get more than 20 or 30 of us connected. I have also noticed this in other venues, thousands of miles away. Is this a sideband or bit-rate issue? Can't have too many red flashlights blinking at the same time? Is this a solvable configuration issue with 802.11G? Sunspots? <comment><USER3> Basically it'll be a limitation of the Access Point, and the actual spectrum.

All of those clients will be connecting using the same frequency band - <USER2> Wifi uses a spread spectrum approach (basically), which means that whilst you can connect more clients, the quality degrades each time you add another.

The most I've ever seen connected was 30. I've heard of commercial grade AP's that claim to handle 60-120 clients (for airports and such).

This interference also depends on how the clients are actually using the network - if they're all downloading at once, I'd guess it would get saturated very quickly. Maybe as low as 10 (just a guess). If they are all relatively idle you could probably get a lot of clients on.

It's also not helped by the fact that certain clients and AP's do not interact well with one another (due to slightly different interpretations of the spec)... It's also not helped by other devices operating in the 2.4Ghz range. e.g. Cordless phones and such. I think microwaves also put out a of 2.4Ghz noise too.

However, you can run multiple access points - you just run each access point on a different channel. The trick here is that wifi channels actually overlap with one another, so pick ones next to each other and they'll interfere with each other (i.e. slow each other down). However, you can pick channels that don't overlap. IIRC in the US these are 1,6,11.

(p.s. This is also a good tip if you're in an appt building. If there are lots of other AP's take a look at the channel they're on and try and get on a clear band).

Theoretically you could also run (one or more) 5ghz wireless N network in parallel with this. Modern macs will be able to connect to this.</comment>


Wikijerks - <AUTHOR> http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/12/wikijerks.php

<comment><USER2> Daniel,

I respect your opinions, and I certainly respect the strength of your conviction about WikiLeaks. Most people seem to be taking a white-or-black stance on this, but I'm stuck somewhere in the gray.

Regarding the leaked cables (at least the ones leaked so far), I'm finding it hard to believe that the leak has caused permanent or significant damage of any kind. Diplomats will have to work overtime to smooth some ruffled feathers, but I haven't seen evidence of a shift for the worse in international relations.

If the worst outcome of these leaks is "even greater clamping down of information and ... a new age of the security state", then there is something fundamentally wrong, that goes beyond WikiLeaks. It seems irrational to argue that such changes would never happen IF ONLY WikiLeaks wasn't around.

The closest analogy in terms of effect on American policy and society would be 9/11. 9/11 was a barbaric, indefensible act, but the US has vastly over- reacted in the following decade, with no signs of slowing down. How much of the blame for the over-reaction belongs to Al Qaeda, and how much points to a systemic problem with how the US government deals with crises and the tradeoff between security and personal rights?

Now, WikiLeaks hasn't flown any planes into buildings. They haven't killed anyone. They've made state secrets public, which is a serious matter - but, pragmatically, they've embarrassed and caused more work for a number of diplomats, and not much else. That doesn't necessarily make them praise- worthy, but does it really warrant violent or even lethal opposition?

Look, the reality is none of us have any real clue about what WikiLeaks means. All we know is that technology means the rules are changing. I only really see two possible trends for the future - more openness, or more control. I'm not convinced that what WikiLeaks is doing is right, but given the choice of how I would prefer the world to look like in 20 years, I'd pick more openness over more control. Your preference seems to be for more control, since you seem to feel that an assassination of Julian Assange by the US government would be justified.

Edit: saw your comment about assassination. You can disregard that part of my comment, although since Julian Assange is not a US citizen (and neither am I, for that matter), our ideas for what "lethal force" implies in this context are probably different.

Edit2: Have you read "The World is Flat"? It may seem tangential, but I think it has everything to do with people's perception and expectations of WikiLeaks, and the changes implied by this episode.

<comment><AUTHOR> alex,

I respect your right to disagree. Heck, I don't claim to have all of the answers.

Here's the thing: WL is taking it on itself to make those decisions for all of us. Put differently: the government is broken and is making too many things secret. WL has decided that because it is broken, they get to decide what sort of massive response is warranted.

All I'm saying is wait a minute, the entire purpose of my voting is so I can make decisions. If you'd like to point out specific things that are secret that need fixing, I'm with you. Please continue. But if you're saying that you have become the arbiter of what causes harm or not, you are taking on yourself something that you have no right to do, whether you're alex or some WL guy. You're making the same mistake only in reverse.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER2> >But if you're saying that you have become the arbiter of what causes harm or not, you are taking on yourself something that you have no right to do, whether you're alex or some WL guy.

>Does that make sense?

More than you may think. I'm Canadian. The US routinely makes decisions that affect me but that I have no say in.

Now, I want to be very careful here, because I don't want to frame this as "the big bad US got some egg on their face, serves them right" - it's very easy to think this is about the US (and, well, in a literal sense it obviously is), but it's really not.

What nationality is WikiLeaks?

Think about that for a second.

To what extent would you support retaliations against an American member of WikiLeaks by, say, the UK or German government?

Here's the fundamental difference between how we're looking at it. As a citizen of country X, Y, or Z, you have every right to be pissed if an external party leaks some of your country's secrets to another country.

If, however, you think that technology from the last 20 years has set us on an inevitable path to an interconnected world, then that changes things. Your vote as a US citizen affects me, although I have no say in it. My vote as a Canadian citizen affects people in other countries. And we're no longer talking about geopolitical stuff like wars or foreign aid, we're talking about everyday stuff like how my computer works. To what extent should I support your specific government's secrets?

Here, a perfect example:

<http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5504/125/>

Maybe "less secrets" IS the answer, and maybe governments will never arrive at that answer on their own. I don't know. I do know the picture gets a lot more complicated when you look at it on the global level, and not just one country.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought experiment: pick a foreign country that most people think is really screwed up. Let's pick Saudi Arabia, but you can pick any country.

I hate the way SA does things. I hate the fact that they support terrorist. I hate the fact they oppress their women. I hate the fact that they oppress their people. I hate the fact they bleed us with oil money (continue on ad infinitum, or until you get a good head of steam worked up over how bad country X is)

Now. I come across a big pile of documents from Saudi Arabia. All of their secret documents. All of the details of all the bad things they've done. All of the little evils. But also some good things. Some things that might hurt people (or not). And some things that I have no idea the importance of (probably the biggest hunk, really).

We're back to the 3 choices again. I can give it all to my own government. I can choose a particular injustice and release documents in support of that (and be willing to accept the consequences) or I can dump them all on the web and effectively declare my own little personal war on Saudi Arabia.

Option 3 is incredible because it didn't exist before. Sure, it used to be done -- there was a big dump of secret documents before WWI that partially led to the instability that caused the war -- but not by a single person.

In this case I'd pick option 1 and be very happy about it. But I could also support somebody picking option 2. This is a personal decision.

Option 3 is a non-starter with me. It is wrong under any circumstances.

That help clear it up?

You guys are so starry-eyed by the new existence of option 3 that you think it's going to solve all these huge problems. I'm telling you all it's going to do is cause somebody with a really big stick to come over and hit you on the head. And then we all suffer because a few guys thought bittorrent and aes could save the universe.

<comment><USER2> I'm satisfied that we at least understand each other's points - it's gratifying to have an Internet discussion where the two parties aren't simply talking past each other.

I am not arguing that option 3 will magically solve everything - it's very possible it may do more harm than good. However, I'm also not convinced that it should be unequivocally condemned, and the truth MAY be that we simply don't know how it will change things. Like I said at the beginning, I'm somewhere in the gray. I rarely like absolutes.

There is one part of your argument that bothers me, though. On the one hand, you are fundamentally opposed to what WikiLeaks is doing because you feel they don't have a mandate for it, and a change in government policy should come from its own people, not be imposed from an external source (I could go on an obvious tangent here, but I'll stay on topic). On the other hand, you argue that WikiLeaks' actions will have a net negative effect because of heavy- handed government response, resulting in less openness and personal freedom.

For me, the second point severely undermines the first. If you strongly feel that government should and can be controlled by its own people (and not external sources), then the people should be able to prevent an inappropriate government response that is against their interests. If, on the other hand, getting hit on the head with a big stick is an inevitable outcome to a crisis, then maybe you have to leave the door open to the possibility that certain changes can only be forced from the outside. It almost makes _something_ like WikiLeaks seem necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. Instead of my rebutting we'll just let it go for now.

Thank you very much for the great conversation! I lean on my HN friends to help me think through these things, and you guys have been awesome today. Hopefully our conversation has helped other folks sort through this issue also.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _So if you speak to an American consular official, you deserve that > conversation to be made public? But if you comment online about file- > sharing, you deserve to remain anonymous?_

The difference between my secrets and the secrets of the government is that the government works for me.

The government governs in the name of the people. I am the people. Government employees are my employees.

If my employees keep their actions secret from me, conspire with diplomats from other countries against me and try to push me into waging wars based on false information, then I should be able to find this out and make it public.

> _[Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against > them, up to and including lethal force._

You have the right to "support" anything you want, but the US constitution (in theory!) prevents the government from killing individuals without due process (which includes charging them with crimes based on pre-existing laws, and trying them in an open court).

If you don't approve of the US constitution, then what are you fighting for...?

<comment><USER4> By your argument, any dealing a citizen has with the government should be fully in the public record, for all other citizens to see. Does that mean you think you should be able to see my income tax return?

As far as your employee analogy goes, employees sometimes do need to keep secrets from their employer. For instance, if I tell my lawyer something I expect it to only be shared with other lawyers who are actually working on my case and need to know it. Just because my lawyer is an employee of a firm does not mean that the owners of the firm have any right to secrets I've shared with my lawyer.

The notion that government employees are your employees is simply wrong. You are more like a stockholder, not an employer. Companies are not required to tell their stockholders every detail of the operations of the business, for good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How can you have a discussion with people who not only believe that it is unacceptable to expose government deception and corruption, but who go on to advocate the use of lethal force against citizens of western democracies.

Rarely has an event exposed so clearly the hypocrisies and conflict at the heart of our western democracies.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that really disturbed me. Mr. Markham seems like a pretty reasonable guy, a mainline Republican, possibly even a moderate. And he's basically advocating fascism, here.

If it happened in Germany, it can happen here. Germany had Liebniz, Kant, Mozart, Einstein, the Reformation.. no reason to think that we're so much better.

( I really tried to avoid Godwin's law here, but I couldn't. The news debate has rapidly turned from "what is our government doing" to "just how unamerican is this guy, anyways". It's a bad trend. )

<comment><USER7> That's the interesting thing about facism: nearly everybody is in favor of it as long as it furthers their causes. Democracy really doesn't work any better than other forms of government, it just tends to keep the lunatics at bay, and even that doesn't always work (see Bush Jr., Hitler, ...).

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't put both of those guys between the same parentheses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clearly, Julian Assange doesn't much care for US policy and is using information to fight against it.

Now, if he were using violence to kill Americans, like say a Somali pirate, and no less violent alternative was available and effective, then lethal force would be justified.

However, if we don't want him to discuss our secrets, the solution is pretty simple: keep them secret.

Where the writer's argument falls apart is that

1) Assange doesn't owe the US Government any duty to keep its secrets, unlike a US citizen

2) it's not a commensurate response; embarrassing us is not the same as killing us; there are simple solutions to prevent what he's doing and

3) it would be ineffective because it would make the US look far worse than it already does.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention, most of the stuff got leaked reflects a lot more poorly on other governments than the US.

But that's besides the point. He's a hippie! Look at his hippie manifestos! Don't read the leaks or anything, we'll just have a debate on cross-fire about whether he's anti-american.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "They are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. "

....

really? I'm going to try to think of something to say about this that doesn't fall afoul of Godwin's law. It might be a while.

<comment><USER10> Y'know, I think danielbmarkham is wrong to call for the use of lethal force against wikileaks, but I think that his point deserves a counterargument, not just some outraged huffing and puffing.

So Daniel, here's why I think you're wrong.

Firstly, you're justifying this on the basis that what Wikileaks is doing is analogous to war against the US. But it's really only analogous to it, it's not an _actual_ war. Nobody has been killed in this "war" yet, and I really don't see a reason to start.

Secondly, it would set a bad precedent. By all means we can assassinate Osama bin Laden, but if you scale that back to Julian Assange then who _else_ can we justify assassinating? There's all sorts of individuals making weakly- analogous and ineffectual "war" upon the US Government from various extremal points on the political spectrum.

Thirdly, it's unnecessary. Even in an actual war, we prefer to capture rather than to kill unarmed men where possible. If Assange has broken US law then there's a perfectly reasonable set of procedures we can go through in order to put him on trial.

Fourthly, it would just be a public relations disaster for the US, in ways that I don't feel the need to explain.

In conclusion, Daniel, I know you were being hyperbolic with the kill-Assange thing, but I think you'll agree that under careful consideration of the options that it's probably not the best option.

<comment><USER6> It's in no way analogous to war against the US. It's a publicity campaign against some people who are pulling some levers in the US.

As has been said a million other places, there's way more embarrassing stuff about other gov'ts than there is stuff about the US in these cables.

But all you see the news media talking about is "whether Assange is unamerican".

Cui bono?

<comment><USER10> I really haven't seen anyone talking about whether Assange is un-American.

Since he's an Australian, it's not much of a question to ask.

<comment><USER6> Excuse me, anti-American.

But then, you knew what I meant, right? Glad to see that my typo was the most important part of the post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The difference between government getting to choose whatever they want to be secretive and an individual getting to do so online is that government controls others whereas an individual does not.

Being able to keep it a secret that innocent people were killed because of a poor war campaign is reason enough to not trust the government ALL of the time. Are there secrets that are important? Yes. But nowadays, EVERYTHING is confidential and the only information we get is the stuff that's too big for them to hide (or they want us to see).

<comment><USER10> _Being able to keep it a secret that innocent people were killed because of a poor war campaign_

I don't think it was ever a secret that innocent people get killed in wars.

<comment><USER11> It was a secret because if anyone asked for proof previous to Wikileaks releasing pertinent information (in regard to Iraq), the answer was "No, I don't have anything to prove it..." Speculation doesn't make something any less secret and is often inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Daniel,

Thanks for the thoughtful post.

The logical stretch I think you commit is that you view consent or dissent as largely black and white. I'd argue that it is our civic duty to dissent about all things we disapprove of, both at the ballot box and in our day to day lives.

That entails that we break any laws we disagree with, etc. Of course, the limit to this is the willingness we each have to risk the consequences (if any) of breaking laws.

I don't think we are somehow bound to support or obey all laws just because we haven't yet gotten to the point of renouncing our citizenship or packing up and leaving.

In a majoritarian system like ours, the minority is constantly unhappy. Since we are nearly constantly in the run-up to an election, we must publicize our dissent in order to participate in the democratic process.

Again, civil disobedience puts the individual at risk, so I agree with your point that a person must accept the consequences of his/her actions, but I strongly disagree with the idea that we should accept the majoritarian conclusion of the moment and feel bad about speaking out against bad laws and bad policies.

On the issue of secrecy, I don't hold the belief you describe. Sure, some secrecy is inevitable (and probably helpful). But the US today has way too much. We learned that the military was keeping things secret that bore no relevance to the battle but only to the perception of the battle by the American public. That's not secrecy, that's propaganda by omission.

I think in order to claim that the Wikileaks people are jerks, you have to explain why you think it was appropriate for the US Government to reply that "we don't negotiate" when offered the ability to redact whatever it thought might prevent any harmful consequences of the leaked info. In my view, this response is just as grating as when George W Bush crossed his arms and proclaimed "We don't negotiate with Terrorists" as he attempted to escalate things with Iran.

<comment><AUTHOR> Grandalf,

I see lots of shades of gray. I think they're all covered under option 2.

As far as how the U.S. should have responded, I don't think they had much of a choice: the State Department couldn't tell whether one doc should be secret or not even on a good day. Even with an order from the president it would have been physically impossible for them to go through those docs. Not to mention the precedent it would set -- very bad thing there.

Yes, the U.S. has too much secrecy. Let's vote to fix it. Or let's leak selected stories to fix it. But let's not come up with plans to massively overwhelm the government with tons of formerly secret documents. Not only is it not productive, it is taking up a position of control over other people's lives that we are not entitled to, and it is deciding that the entire thing is so broken as to be worthy of attack. That's not a very good way to get your point across, no matter how right or wrong you are.

<comment><USER12> Well, I think there is a built-in bias around issues like this. Because rationally, everyone realizes that some secrets are quite reasonable and do save lives, so the notion of leaking that information sounds quite wrong.

This is why I think the impact of the leaks was profound. Suddenly this abstract concept that so many of us had treated with reverence and respect turned out to have been severely misused.

I can personally state that I would never have dreamed that some of the things that were revealed would ever actually take place. Is it really possible that in 2010 the US Government can lie to its citizenry about such important things? Note that propaganda against US Citizens is forbidden by law, and the leaks revealed a massive propaganda campaign.

Only through leaks of this kind can the public accurately understand that there is a need to rein in the use of secrecy (and propaganda) by the government. When kept in the abstract, secrecy is a great tool of statecraft, warcraft, etc. So the only way we could be rational about this was to see firsthand just what is going on.

It's true there might have been a more delicate way to introduce the leaked information, but the biggest threat to Wikileaks' credibility is the notion that it selectively filters/omits information to serve its own political goals. With such a large leak, it becomes almost inevitable that a fledgling Wikileaks resort to leaking such large amounts b/c it currently lacks the credibility to do anything but.

<comment><AUTHOR> Grandalf you are making a "greater good" argument. (and a very good one at that)

I'm simply saying that part of my arrangement with my government is to conduct our business like it always has, with leaks, scandals, and voting. I do not like the way things have been going: we're turning into a secrecy state that actively deceives it's citizens. But I feel that the way we make changes is the most optimum for the people involved at the current time. Perhaps you are unhappy with my arrangement, but it is my arrangement and not yours. I do not come to your country and interfere with your arrangement.

Now feel free to carry on with your outrage about the lying and propaganda and such. Run videos of soldiers killing innocents. Run ads and make leaks to convince me that my relationship with my government is bad. Do all the things in a free society that help us find our mistakes and fix them. I might disagree with you, but I completely support your right (and obligation even) to make a moral case to others that some wrong needs fixing.

But short-circuiting the system does not do that.

<comment><USER12> Interesting points. I suppose it's a question of how far gone one perceives the system to be and whether one has any optimism that the system can heal itself without some sort of added stimulus.

What would the NY Times have done if Manning had sent the cables to it instead of to Wikileaks? Most likely nothing.

The adversarial relationship between the press and government is a core principle of our democracy, and I think it's because I view Wikileaks as being largely journalistic in nature that I feel that the leaks have strengthened our democracy, though at the cost of weakening our rule of law.

But in my opinion the government has already weakened our rule of law by propagandizing us and lying to us.

Democracy is a tenuous arrangement between the rulers and the governed. In my view it is a tradeoff between individual sovereignty and rights. When the government squashes those rights by breaking its contract with the people and propagandizing a war, the tenuous arrangement has been disturbed and a self- respecting public will claw back those rights through an exercise of sovereignty... and while this may be at the temporary expense of the rule of law, it is guided by a principle that we ought to consider at least as sacred.

So I hope our leaders are appropriately chastened and I hope that your wish of reforms and improvements via the democratic process occurs.

<comment><AUTHOR> "What would the NY Times have done if Manning had sent the cables to it instead of to Wikileaks? Most likely nothing."

Agreed. But twist it a bit. What if the NYT had received 100 docs on the subject of prisoner torture: detailed accounts, videos, reports of the problems it was causing. What would be their response then?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Surely if the Times received a completed story with detailed research and corroborating video evidence, it would write some sort of story, but I don't see how this differs from the leaked cable content.

The true power of journalism comes from what doesn't get reported. The NYT wrote a story on Assange that referred to his "dwindling supporters" and made no mention of the odd technicalities in the rape case, and presented him as being an egomaniac. All of these may be true (or false) but the article cited no references for any of the negative claims. Also, the leaks are the story. Assange is not the story, as much as tabloids would like him to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem is that he's not making the distinction between good secrets and bad secrets.

If you do something bad and covert it up, it's a bad secret because it results in bad things and the politicians involved do not want to be associated with the result. Such a thing musn't be a secret. It's wrong to cover up a bad thing because it's hiding something that could hurt you and others in the future. If the government's job should be to keep the society's justice then it's absolutely necessary not to hide bad things otherwise they're lying. So it's not the government's place to hide bad secrets.

Good things don't need to be lauded (humility) and they don't need to be covered up either. Since it's not going to result in a bad thing and hurt the society then it doesn't have to revealed unless you would like to use the good thing. For example, if private stuff in his life is actually private and not hurting anyone else, then he should be allowed to keep the secret if he decides to because it's his own life.

If there is this principle to tell good and bad in people's activities then it solves his question.

<comment><USER14> and who is the judge to differentiate good and bad secrets?

<comment><USER13> It's the principle.

A good thing makes a good result, bad thing makes a bad result. A good thing is something that has enough truth inside it to transmit 'what is' accurately. Bad things have too much falsehood to see the things correctly.

imo you should judge things in the world for yourself after you've seen & confirmed what it is like.

Edit: @hugh3 hope that makes more sense

<comment><USER10> _A good thing makes a good result, bad thing makes a bad result._

That half of what you said is circular,

 _A good thing is something that has truth inside it. Bad things have falsehoods in them._

and that half doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER13> Could you teach me how you format italic text like that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Even more surprising is that everyone of these [Wikileaks supporters] I know are ardent freaks about keeping their own lives private._

Privacy of the individual is not the same as privacy of a government[1], we must take into consideration the balance of power. If you look at things with respect to power it makes sense that the most private individuals want powerful organizations to be more transparent as they have disproportionate power over individuals.

The author didn't clearly explain why he hates Wikileaks but presumably it is because of _what_ was leaked: diplomatic cables as opposed to something that uncovered massive criminal conspiracy.

We haven't seen anything to suggest that these leaks are dangerous to the US. Defense secretary Robert Gates basically said they were embarrassing and awkward but won't have much of an effect on foreign policy[2]. For earlier leaks on the US military shootings he said there was no apparent fallout[3].

 _[Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force._

This is an overreaction. The information was not that valuable or that hostile to the US. Most of it was a confirmation of stuff we already knew. And even if it was serious, I don't want my government going around assassinating people for leaking documents to the media. I don't know how that can justify lethal force. Maybe if it was strategic military routes or something that is obviously not newsworthy.

1: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_po...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_pow.html)

2: [http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable- secretary-...](http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary- gates-on-wi/)

3: [http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month...](http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/adam_serwer_archive?month=10&year=2010&base_name=gates_no_wikileaks_deaths)

</comment><comment><USER7> You just called for the murder of an innocent. What exactly is wrong with you?

Obligatory snark: Oh, look! An abused kissing the ass of his abuser!

</comment><comment><USER16> > WL is fine with dumping United States State Department secrets, but if they > had dumped all your financial and personal records, that would be bad?

I have yet to make up my mind on the whole situation, so I'm open to that thought experiment, but I still have one major unresolved issue for which I have not heard a satisfactory argument:

Why is it okay for the New York Times to publish this information, but it's not okay for WikiLeaks to do it? Are we not distinguishing between the _leaking_ and the _publishing_ anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Why is it okay for the New York Times to publish this information, but it's not okay for WikiLeaks to do it? Are we not distinguishing between the leaking and the publishing anymore?"

Because the NYT is an agency dedicated to telling stories -- some of which happen to be political and/or secret in nature. Wikileaks is dedicated to attacking the structure of the government by mass releases of documents covering all sorts of things.

When you have a leaker which wants some injustice fixed and a publisher who publishes to tell that story, you are then able to make some informed judgment on what was best for society, ie, there is a rational conversation. See the Pentagon Papers.

But when you leak 200K documents -- who has the ability to review or digest all of that? I doubt anybody could make a statement on what the impact is or whether the leak was worth it or not. They'll be debating the impact of these leaks 50 years from now. It takes away the conversation between the voters and the government. Which is the entire point, of course. If the purpose is to destroy the relationship between voters and the government, then you are no longer a publisher, ie, you are no longer relating a thematic story with some sort of political or secret overtones. Your right of free speech -- the ability to relate stories, demonstrate, protest, and persuade me of a certain cause is not applicable any more. You can't have any sort of reasonable conversation about how to fix things using 200K documents to do so. This would be like calling myself a musician if I played every note on the keyboard on a thousand instruments at once. I would be something -- noisemaker or something, but not a musician. There is no theme or point except chaos and anarchy.

Beats the hell out of me what wikileaks is, but its not a publisher. Information sprinkler? I'd go with "cyber terrorist", but nobody was purposely killed to effect political change, just massive amounts of information leaked, so the word "terrorism" doesn't work.

It's a very strange semantic place we've ended up.

<comment><USER16> Wikileaks gave these "dedicated storytellers" first shot at analyzing the information. They've release .3% of the documents to the public.

"The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice."

It seems they've given consideration to the sensitivity of the material.

<comment><AUTHOR> _It seems they've given consideration to the sensitivity of the material._

But consideration to the sensitivity of the material was never at issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh, yeah, Hacker News.

Where we get to read posts from users calling for murder.

<comment><USER18> I support your cynical comment, because I think we need to point this is in fact a major values-of-the-community issue.

"Major" you ask? Yes, the value proposition of murder is always a major issue. It should always be reaffirmed as one of the brightest lines a society can draw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Larry Sanger -- one of the founders of _wikileaks_...

Just FYI, for those who don't know, Sanger confounded Wiki _pedia_ and not Wiki _leaks_. Two separate organizations; not related.

I have alerted the author about this.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think all that can be said about Wikileaks has already been said.

This thread has degenerated into name-calling (several commenters accusing other commenters of being fascists). Why is that?

</comment><comment><USER20> Dear clueless author,

how do you know if the government is working in your interest, if nearly everything it does is secret?

Do you know how much it takes for the government to access your personal email address?

Do you think that the government is always right? Do you think that the people there don't have personal interests?

As time passes the government demands to know more and more about you and let's you know less about it, don't you think at some point this becomes a problem?

</comment><comment><USER21> > _"How could wikileaks have done so much harm to civility?"_

I wonder what Mr. Markham considers the proper etiquette for blasting people apart with DU.

I would suggest that when one's 14 year old son would assent to a government butchering and eating babies in the name of National Security, it might be time to reconsider one's career as a moralist.

</comment><comment><USER22> _Deep Breath_

<warandpeace>

This doesn't really wash.

It's not inconsistent to believe that the entire episode as it stands is a good example of a less bad system than if all this information was kept forever under wraps. Let's examine a few of the cases point by point as to why the leaks are a terrible thing;

Point) Secrets are essential to the functioning of a government, without any secrets nothing could get done.

Counterpoint) Wikileaks are not trying to reveal _all_ secrets, if you look at their released documents there are many redacted segments where sensitive names are handed out, for example this one [http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09TELAVIV1098&h...](http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=09TELAVIV1098&hl=xxxx) . This does not entirely excuse the process in one fell swoop, as there are other instances where they have exposed information with a questionable upside and an apparently heavy downside, but it does indicate that they are at least trying for a harm minimisation process. It is clearly not their purpose to cause as much "battle damage" as possible.

Further, although some secrets may be necessary to the functioning of governments, this is not a license that they ought to be able to employ secrets to cover up their messy failures that the public needs to know about if they want to be able to punish a surfeit of these or reward an absence of these. Hiding them leads at worst to an assumption that much more is wrong than actually is, and at best to an assumption that everything is rosy when the world is falling apart behind the scenes.

Point) They should stand up and take what's coming to them like real men, without this they're just being cowardly.

Counterpoint) How does this logic work for North Korea or other edge cases? And if this logic does not work for North Korea or other edge cases, where people would like to have exposure of injustice without opening themselves up for spiteful retribution or the execution of their entire family for not swallowing wholesale evil nonsense, where do you draw the line? If a torrent of information showing government malfeasance is leaked along with a trickle of examples of the actual valid employment of secrecy as a defensive measure, isn't this proof in itself that the ability to maintain secrecy is being abused?

It's actually a sliding scale in the leaking model dependent upon the content of the secrets being leaked, the leak process itself is one that somewhat accounts for this. You have a potential authoritarian conspiracy, members to this potential authoritarian conspiracy, and then the personal ethical and moral considerations of these members. When the degree to which a person feels compelled to disclose the nature of these secrets outweighs the degree to which they feel that it is more beneficial to keep these secrets, leaks happen. This is a hedge against deploying secrets to cover the failings and underhandedness of a given authoritarian conspiracy. Without this hedge, administrators of said authoritarian conspiracy have all the motivation in the world to mark their failings secret and none not to.

If you were to have had access to this trove of secrets beforehand and you had found that the only instances where secrets were actually employed is when it was clearly being used as a shield to protect lives and property, would you feel compelled to leak it? It looks like in instances where secrecy was validly employed in this method, even wikileaks has attempted to maintain that secrecy. That they haven't been perfectly capable of doing so is certainly partially their fault, but the blame cannot be shifted from the original situation in which secrets were primarily used as a cloak for failure.

Point) Ok so if things are really that bad then we should just declare armageddon, armed uprising, down with the tyrants! let the blood run free and fire flood the cities! Rargh, pass me my axe and the skull of the nearest infant that I may swill mead from it!

Counterpoint) Why in the event that you deem the current situation to be bad would you want to replace it with rank chaos and barbarism? This just sets an artificial lower limit for the pain of change. If no tactical movement could be made in opposition to the established powers until the alternative was outright armageddon, all this does is guarantee that eventually you will have outright armageddon. The sensible thing to do is obviously to act with foresight and care and attempt to minimise harm as much as possible, weigh your movements against the potential negative consequences of them and proceed on this basis.

If the only way to improve is to destroy everything in the established order, not only do we guarantee that eventually everything will be destroyed, but we also limit the current less bad circumstance to a natural plateau. This is not a good thing.

</warandpeace>

</comment><comment><USER23> _How could you negotiate a treaty without secrets? Handle personnel issues like addiction treatment? Have battlefield commanders report on enemy positions and their current tactical weaknesses?_

Well, I guess we're going to find out, aren't we?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify one thing: I am not supporting an assassination attempt on wikileaks. What I said was that I support use of state force up to and including lethal force. What the appropriate level of force is, I leave that up to people smarter than me. I just have decided that I support whatever decision is made legally.

You guys can continue the bickering now.

<comment><USER24> _> What the appropriate level of force is, I leave that up to people smarter than me._

Why leave it up to people who are smarter than you? Aren't decisions concerning the level of force that is used against human beings a matter of ethics rather than intelligence?

 _> I just have decided that I support whatever decision is made legally._

So if X is legal, then X is good?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I went back and tried to recap this discussion -- which I thought was excellent, by the way, into a new blog entry. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1979866></comment>