USPS Files Patent for a Blockchain-Based Voting System - <AUTHOR> https://heraldsheets.com/us-postal-service-usps-files-patent-for-blockchain-based-voting-system/ <comment><USER2> Maybe this is a dumb idea, but what if for each election we issued a ballot containing a unique, random, sequential prime number to every registered voter?

Then, when counting the votes for each candidate we display the running product of all the primes counted for that candidate as a "checksum", or "check product". This retains privacy while allowing individual voters to easily verify that their vote was counted by simply dividing their party's checksum by their prime ballot number and confirming that it is a factor of the check product. By displaying a running product of votes, you can also verify that your vote was not counted before you voted. Additionally, this prevents double counting because the "checksum" for N primes must match exactly N votes and no two candidates can share a factor. By issuing sequences of primes to certain regions, you can get some metrics by state.

Then you institute a rule that if some % of primes dispute that theirs was counted correctly, a recount is automatically triggered.

<comment><USER3> It allows for verification not only by the voter but also by third parties, doesn't it? That would make it possibly to sell votes (with proof!) or threaten people with repercussions unless they vote a certain way.

<comment><USER2> This is only a risk if ballots are not issued privately.

<comment><USER4> That is a great system, but there could still be coarcion to show your "prime number" token to someone, say your employer. Probably not common in the US or the EU, but in Venezuela for example there is a lot of pressure for employees of state owned companies to vote for the government and they use many tactics to make sure you do. I'd be worried about making it simpler for them. Maybe there's a way of addding an extra layer of security?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could easily replace the word Blockchain in this patent application with the word database and it would all still make sense.

Blockchains (I prefer to call them Merkle trees) were invented 40 years ago. The interesting part about cryptocurrency based Blockchains that makes them unforgeable is that they contain proof of work. The work to create an entire Blockchain is equal to the sum of the work contained in each node. Without proof of work Blockchains are easily forgeable.

<comment><USER6> I strongly disagree. This is a comment from someone who (I presume) is unaware of the advances in Proof-of-Stake blockchains, and other consensus protocols like the Stellar Consensus Protocol. Databases do not have a distributed way to manage consensus - one of the main things that sets a blockchain apart from a distributed database.

This consensus mechanism is what's important when something important (like an election) hinges on the blockchain being an accurate representation of state. This requires a Byzantine-fault-tolerant agreement. See [https://medium.com/loom-network/understanding-blockchain- fun...](https://medium.com/loom-network/understanding-blockchain-fundamentals- part-1-byzantine-fault-tolerance-245f46fe8419).

<comment><USER7> ???

You absolutely do not want consensus anywhere near an election. Consensus is not about agreeing on the total balance of transactions, it's about agreeing on _individual_ transactions. It implies that multiple people know what your vote was which is absolutely not what you want.

<comment><USER6> This is not true if the voting apparatus is separate from the identity of the voter. There are two ways to accomplish this, and the USPS is proposing that they ship voters a sort of "private key", which is fully anonymous, which has no connection to their identity. This key is used once, with the right to cast one vote.

In such a system, the whole blockchain will know what each public key voted for. The difference is that there is no connection between this public key and the vote of an individual. This would allow for a massively snd openly auditable system, without sacrificing privacy or convenience.

I am not a proponent of this, as I think that in the near and mid-term futures, there are too many technical problems to be worked out. If, however, we end up giving every citizen digital ID cards as Estonia has done, and using those as secure hardware used for voting, we could distribute the voting process. Essentially, there would be no more vote-counting. There would only be vote casting and the election results would be apparent to everyone, immediately.

Consensus is absolutely necessary for such a system.

<comment><USER8> I look forward to the national outrage in year 2075 when it is discovered that 90% of "voting citizens" were tokens stored in the basement of the White House, and nobody noticed for 50 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My whole startup is built on blockchain, and I'm an Estonian e-Resident (Estonia allows their citizens to vote digitally), so I find blockchain voting fascinating. That said, there are some problems with it. This Tom Scott video explains why: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs).

But this is a very cool idea: combining the USPS vote-by-mail infrastructure with a blockchain layer that sits on top, used mainly to provide anonymous provenance. We'll see if this ever gets implemented, but I think it's a great example of the non-hype uses for blockchains being explored.

<comment><USER9> Very nice video, though in the personally delivered sponsored message at the end he seems to be contradicting himself. Why would you still trust a password manager after seeing the video? And wouldn't it be incredibly stupid if an entire nation put their passwords in a vault controlled by some company in possibly another nation?

<comment><USER10> > Why would you still trust a password manager after seeing the video? And > wouldn't it be incredibly stupid if an entire nation put their passwords in > a vault controlled by some company in possibly another nation?

I think you should use a password manager, I do, and the people I know that don't keep forgetting their passwords, keep reusing them, and generally just practice horrible security.

As to which one, I would recommend an open source one like BitWarden, but they won't fund YouTube videos on important issues because they don't have the money.

I doubt Tom Scott would recommend that everyone in the world use this one password manager, and it won't happen from him endorsing it. And I think that integrity of elections are more important than the security of passwords, even though I guess they are somewhat intertwined. For important things multi factor auth should be used which won't be defeated by passwords only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All blockchain (and electronic for that matter) voting systems are inherently bad because they are not easy to verify.

Nothing beats pen and paper in verifiability and ease of use. If done right with many eyes on the ballots, manipulation requires thousands of co- conspirators. The only downside is the slow speed.

<comment><USER12> You give one citizen one vote on the chain. They can personally verify that their vote was counted because the chain is visible. Counts can't be rigged because the entire chain is public. Voters can only vote by going to a physical location where they use a multi-key signature, one by the voter, and one by the local polling station, avoiding people selling off their keys. This is anonymous, traceable, and the vote can't be altered.

<comment><USER13> As I see, the problem is not that the vote can be altered, but that the vote can be bought and the fact that person voted in the right fashion could be verified by 3-rd party much more easily (screenshots/whatever).

The privacy of voting booth could give at least some chance to change mind/lie to the third party.

<comment><USER6> In theory, mail-in voting carries these same problems, and we're about to hold the largest mail-in voting election ever. Not sure this is really an argument against an electronic voting system.

In fact, with a blockchain-based system, the vote could be held in "limbo" until the voter decides to cast it, or you could give the option of creating fake screenshots to deter anyone "buying votes". You can't do this with a paper ballot.

The real problem is compiler and hardware level.

<comment><USER14> >In theory, mail-in voting carries these same problems, and we're about to hold the largest mail-in voting election ever.

And the president is - right now - conducting a denial of service attack on it.

If that doesn't show that remote voting is vulnerable I don't know what does...

<comment><USER15> The only reason for a big mail-in election is a historic exploit of an availability vulnerability of our in-person voting system, that it depends on lots and lots of (in practice, mostly older) people willing to spend a day in close contact with each other and other people for almost no pay.

> And the president is - right now - conducting a denial of service attack on > it.

Or at least miming one, perhaps to provide political cover for Republican- governed swing state legislatures, seeing the problems of in-person voting in the pandemic and armed with the telegraphed disruption of vote by mail as cover and polling data as motivation, to simply exercise their prerogative to cancel public voting and assign a set of Presidential electors without it, which the Republican control of the Senate can guarantee withstand any challenge in the electoral vote count.

If he really wanted electoral chaos by disrupting vote-by-mail, there'd by no reason to telegraph it; the reason to telegraph it is because he desires a response that it either provokes or justifies, as much, more than, or perhaps even instead of the disruption itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> \- Won't work. People will lose their private keys. Apparently the key is distributed to people on a piece of paper in the mail. That will get stolen-- or claimed to be stolen. It will be a mess.

\- What's the point of a blockchain here? Is USPS raising money with an ICO? The use of digital signatures is enough. By having a "distributed public ledger" now you open the possibility of getting Sybil attacked. But wait, you say, USPS has their own canoncial version of the chain that they can force everyone to rollback to in case of an attack--then what was the point of a blockchain? You could just have a website that shows a list of public keys and who they voted for. It would be totally auditable by anyone, just as a blockchain would be, without any of the security risks of a blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did they also invent a system which protects against voter coercion? If they did not, they might as well stop now since no matter how secure the voting system is its relevance falls down to zero if it is possible for the local gang leader to coerce voters to vote for 'his' candidate - "my man stands behind you to watch you vote for candidate X, if you so much as twitch your little girl gets whipped" (which works but doesn't scale that well) or "you show me proof of you voting for candidate X or we'll burn down your house" (which scales but depends on vote verifiability and as such is rather easily foiled).

<comment><USER6> This is a ridiculous argument, because it could just as well apply to mail-in voting as blockchain-based voting. I also think this fear is far overstated (do we have _any_ stories of this happening in the US?) and the more pernicious forms of voter suppression and misinformation are downplayed.

If blockchain systems allow 90% of the populace to vote unencumbered, with a 5% inaccuracy rate (which is far higher than to be expected), that's still more democratic than only 70% voting.

EDIT: There are also ways to guard against voter coercion, for example by allowing "fake votes" to be cast, which if not cast with a certain memo in the transaction, will not be counted. This memo can be a PIN that the user is given as their "legitimate vote PIN", without which the vote would be invalid. When the user wants to appease their "mob boss", they would simply vote with another pin, and the vote would show as having gone through.

This is a surface-level solution, but the technical architecture that can be built to avoid voter coercion in a digital system is far greater than that with mail-in voting. With mail-in voting, your "mob boss" just forces you to tick a box, and put the sealed ballot in the nearest USPS drop box.

<comment><USER18> It's certainly not a ridiculous argument. Anonymity is a cornerstone of fair voting systems, and any system that allows votes to be deanonymised increases the risk of coercion.

The same type of risk applies to postal voting, although with less severity, as with postal voting there is only one opportunity to check the coerced vote. Blockchain based votes can be checked after the fact.

Still, for this reason, postal voting is rare, and most countries that allow it do so only for citizens living abroad or who cannot travel to a polling station die to injury or illness.

Countries like the UK and Australia that allow any eligible voter to do so by mail are rare.

<comment><USER6> The results of blockchain-based elections can be checked after the fact, that's true. But if the votes of the individuals in the electorate can be checked after the fact, the system was badly architected. The USPS solution linked by OP does not link the identity of a voter to their blockchain identity, so coercion remains as much of a threat as in postal voting.

Blockchain-based voting systems can be either the least or the most anonymous voting systems. Electronic voting allows the abstraction of many voter- suppression tactics which are still in play in the US.

I may have misjudged the audience, because the postal voting argument is very US centric, at a time when the prevailing media narrative is that postal voting is an essentially _infallible_ system which should not be questioned. I would find it hypocritical if people strongly supported mail-in voting while not considering that blockchain-based voting carries similar advantages and risks (which is why the USPS proposed this, I'm sure).

If you read my other comments in this thread, you'll see I'm not in favor of implementing a blockchain-based voting system yet. I just think the above argument was made from a fundamental misunderstanding of blockchain technology.

<comment><USER18> > I just think the above argument was made from a fundamental misunderstanding > of blockchain technology.

Which misunderstanding of blockchains/merkle trees do you believe has caused the argument above to be incorrect?

The system as described in the patent provides no protection that I can see against voter coercion, and in some embodiments, allows a voter to verify that their vote has been counted as cast, which is significantly more ripe for abuse than in-person or even postal voting.

I did read your other comments in this thread, but it seems to me that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of blockchain technology and the problems that it can solve. Your proposed right-to-vote token solution is worse in every way than paper ballots cast in-person at polling stations with private areas, counted by hand in publicly observable count centres.

<comment><USER6> To be clear, most of my other comments in this thread are solutions to problems I took from the top of my head. I'm not suggesting we implement a voting system off of my comments.

I also am not in favor of blockchain-based voting. Of course a "right-to-vote" token is, at the moment, a far worse solution than paper ballots at polling stations. Mostly, this limitation is pragmatic — we don't have good ways to store private keys, low-level hardware and software is not easily auditable, UX/UI issues, etc.

In the US, we are considering having the largest vote-by-mail election ever. This is a politically charged issue, where Trump claims mail-in-voting will lead to massive voter fraud, and the Democratic party claims otherwise. If you suggest that mail-in-voting may be insecure, you're labelled as a Trump supporter.

With this political landscape in mind, electronic voting vs. postal voting is certainly a pertinent discussion. This comes especially as Trump has made efforts to "DDoS" the USPS by kneecapping its throughput. This would, depending on the system's design, be harder to do with electronic voting. Estonia is a good example of how digital voting can be implemented securely, with the approval and understanding of the populous.

But my main contention is that there _are_ ways that blockchain voting can be fully anonymous, even if we don't have the implementation capability right now. Zero-Knowledge proofs, combined with a system where the voter's real identity is never mapped to their on-chain public key, allow for this. The individual voter would receive a private key in the mail, or using a Monero- like blockchain they would generate their private key and redeem one "Right to Vote" token, which would be sent to their account. They would then vote with this token, and using a "view key" would be able to audit that their vote was cast for X party.

Nowhere in this system would real identity be mapped to blockchain identity. The risk of "deanonymization" is therefore about the same as with mail-in voting. A coercer could force you to show them the results of your vote afterwards, true, but there are ways around this as well. Most simply, all view keys could be revoked after casting a vote. The public "token balances" of each candidate would be viewable, but the results of an individual vote not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe they should maintain the postal boxes, have enough sorting machines, maintain the necessary manpower/processes, and remain independent enough to deliver the fucking mail.

<comment><USER20> Even if they did all that, all the states would need reliable mailing lists. Oregon and Washington have been rigorously checking their lists precisely because of this problem, while other states don't need to do that if the onus is on the voter to show up at the correct poll.

It turns out that 17% of Nevada primary ballots had the wrong address.

If over 10% of votes are mailed to the wrong address, it would be a major crisis in a hotly contested election.

[1]: [https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/NV-2020-Primary-1P-1.p...](https://publicinterestlegal.org/files/NV-2020-Primary-1P-1.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, we are making all the votes a matter of public record?

It's either do that, or the voter is forced to blind trust whatever system is used to record their voter intent.

To consider this problem properly, think about the problem a blind voter has with a ballot. They cannot see the record of their vote, when it's made by a mark. With a punch card, they cannot see the candidate associated with their record either.

They have to trust whoever helps them cast their vote actually does cast it correctly. There is no chain of trust between voter intent and the record of vote cast.

Now, in the context of electronic voting, a person touches a screen gives an audio input, whatever. They have to trust the system does what they intend. There is no meaningful verification due to the fact that the system could tell them anything.

When a vote is cast on media with a mark, and that mark and media are used for the final tally, the voter knows their intent was recorded, and that intent could be used directly to determine the outcome of the election.

(other corruption can happen, and is outside the scope of this comment)

Without a public vote record, voters have no idea whether they can trust the election. Blockchain does not help with this problem, unless it's a public affair, everyone sees how everyone else voted.

Banking gets around this by always having redundancies. Books are kept in many locations and all must and can be reconciled.

Voting has no such redundancy, and due to that, electronic input has a basic trust problem not being discussed enough in my opinion.

<comment><USER22> You can us zero knowledge proofs plus a blockchain to anonymize votes.

<comment><USER23> This seems to be the tech underneath Algorand. If the USPS created a "Vote Token" and it was truly anonymized, how would a central entity ensure that people were not double-voting etc?

<comment><USER21> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's the illusion of safety. There is no facility for identity verification baked into blockchain. You have integrity for the data allowed on the chain but if you let Russian hackers write to it, it undermines the whole thing. Personally I'd rather go with a PKI system that offers non-repudiation.

<comment><USER25> what Russian hackers?

<comment><USER26> Russians are to active measures what God is to sin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What troubles me with this is that at some point in the system there will need to be a mapping "real identity" -> "ID of voter in the blockchain".

What happens the day this mapping leaks?

<comment><USER6> In theory, this on-chain voter ID would never have to be "mapped" directly to a voter. Rather, IDs are simply private-public keypair accounts, and all that's provisioned by the holders of the election is the _right_ to vote with one account. Then, the vote is cast by redeeming this _right to vote token_ , without the voting account ever being linked to a "real identity". Of course, there are problems here too. Mainly with UX, and then at a low level the hardware used (the general public is very easy to hack if you have nation- state power).

<comment><USER28> How does this compare with Estonia and their use of public ID numbers? I just know they don't consider their ID numbers secret the way SSNs are in the US, yet they use them for everything. How do they prevent fraud and ID theft?

<comment><USER29> Many countries have id numbers which are not a secret. In those countries you simply can't do anything with the number. Creating a bank account by mail with a ssn? Impossible you have to be at the department and show your passport. You cant be at a department? The postal service in germany can verify your identity if you are there, or there are some online webcam solutions where you have to show your passport in the webcam, rotate it by instructions etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is wrong with in-person paper-ballots? They have worked for centuries. And continue to be the absolute best system from multiple criteria.

<comment><USER31> Covid? Waiting in long lines? Not having votes on a holiday like in civilized countries?

<comment><USER32> All of those are solvable (and solved in most western countries).

Re. Covid, it would be a simple solution to spread in person voting out a few days. It would be an inconvenience but no need to invent a new system.

<comment><USER33> You're assuming those in power want to increase enfranchisement.

<comment><USER34> So neither party wants to increase enfranchisement?

<comment><USER33> Parties want to increase enfranchisement when they are in a position to gain from it. Once they've gained power they usually no longer need the help that increased enfranchisement would provide (survivorship bias). This is the same problem that prevents fixing many problems in government, like underrepresentation due to the 2-party system. Those in power want to maintain the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> For peoples looking for the truth about blockchain voting:

[https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/PSNR20.pdf](https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/PSNR20.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER36> Electronic voting is a terrible idea.

Attacks on paper & pen ballot systems are much, much harder to scale.

Here's Tom Scott with a great explanation of the basics. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs)

<comment><USER37> The same argument applies to the internet at large. Shall we move back to filing cabinets because that makes data leaks more difficult?

I'm sure that at some point we'll crack the electronic voting nut. But yeah: it's scary and the stakes are high. Then again, we've fixed electronic banking and that runs pretty nicely without many problems -- right?

<comment><USER32> Electronic banking works prescicely because it isn't a secret semi-anonymous blockchain thing. If credit card payments end up in the wrong account, someone notices. If an electronic voting system assigns votes to the wrong candidate, who notices?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you were creating a society on Mars, would you use a system of people lining up in-person to vote? Probably not.

Rigged elections have been a thing for a very long time. The shenanigans in Belarus is only the latest example.

Covid-19 will accelerate the inevitable. We're having a mail-in election this year, people will get comfortable voting from home and it's only a matter of time before people start asking why they can't just do it on their phone. I'm excited for blockchain voting.

<comment><USER39> The vote in Belarus was rigged by the government: _" Lukashenko controls vote counting, [and abused] a vast security apparatus and a noisy state media machine unwavering in its support for him and contempt for his rivals"_. In other words: it required a vast conspiracy with many people cooperating in various ways to pull off. We've seen the same with rigged elections in Russia and some other places.

Compare this to an electronic system where a very small group of people (possibly even just one person) can potentially significantly skew the election results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's already a few cryptotokens that allow voting on maintenance of said cryptotokens (or affiliated ones) would these not invalidate such a patent?

Edit:

On another side, what if we did use Blockchain to supplement votes in a different approach. I have not yet looked at how other Cryptotokens handle voting on policies but say we distribute to each state enough tokens per their legal citizen population, and voting places use a single token per voter, maybe a code is attached to their ballot (maybe a district code, only identifying their region?), this in turn pushes the vote into the blockchain for a permanent record, then when all the manual / machine counting is done we compare the blockchain results to see who screwed up, but it would also allow for a slightly more live view of voting in real-time.

</comment><comment><USER41> I received two separate ballots on two different people who resided in this house in the past. What's stopping me from filling both these ballots and mailing them. The point is unless and until the voter roll integrity is guaranteed there is always a possibility of fraud.

</comment><comment><USER42> The caltech voting project has a nice collection if papers about electronic voting: [http://www.vote.caltech.edu/](http://www.vote.caltech.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Majority vote in a block chain isn't an election -- it's a 51% attack. Without a consistent economic incentive, too cheap for bad actors to act badly.

</comment><comment><USER44> If you already have working electronic voting (for the sake of argument) you don't need to elect representatives any more, you can just vote on issues directly and set quorums and thresholds. For that matter you don't really need ballots any more either, you can have the corpus of laws as a wiki and just edit it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Was this patent filed before or after the head of USPS was installed by the Dear Leader?

<comment><USER46> Patents take several years to be granted. This is an application, it was filed February 7, 2020.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I thought we made it past the era of every company having a blockchain patent.

</comment><comment><USER48> Regarding sale of verifiable votes. Why not regulate the sale and tax it ?

</comment><comment><USER49> Blockchain is important, but perhaps equally as important is the ability for every user of the system to be able to audit every other user, that is, vote/voter exact information transparency...

</comment><comment><USER50> Does that mean they can now further de-prioritize mail delivery? I'm waiting for weeks on my EDD debit card. If only someone would have invented a way to transfer funds electronically ...

</comment><comment><USER51> A distributed ledger approach is a very bad idea because a foreign country can launch a 51% attack on the ledger and has the resources to win and thus modify the ledger.

<comment><USER52> You can have a blockchain without a _distributed_ ledger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Why does a government service provider need to file a patent?

<comment><USER34> To prevent another entity from hoarding the solution?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Isn't the bigger issue here that someone can file a patent for something so blatantly obvious? Patents in software seem to do nothing good for innovation.

</comment><comment><USER55> It will all run on servers, where I am the administrator.

</comment><comment><USER56> How is this at all patentable? Can someone explain the line between new innovation and application of existing technology?

</comment><comment><USER57> Why does the USPS have a group that thinks about blockchain? If it exists what is this group ?

<comment><USER58> lots of enterprise-y companies and organizations get small groups to look at buzzword topics, and blockchain has been hyped for a bunch of postal-adjacent topics. Good chunk of the patent authors seem to be external consultants too... Couldn't find anything specific about in what context USPS specifically looked at that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> We should be experimenting with electronic voting for 30 years and innovate solutions to its problems. Nobody thinks it doesn't have problems, but to just stop at pen and paper voting just means to affirm the problems of pen and paper which are IMO much worse. (scarce voting, batched issues)

<comment><USER60> Most european countries simply don't have any problems with pen and paper voting. Turnout is typically much larger than in the US with its crazy mix of electronic/mail-in/in-person voting. Probably this is due to automatic voter registration for all citizens, having the elections on Sunday or on a holiday, and (in some cases) not having a first-past-the-post system where a large fraction of votes don't matter anyway.

<comment><USER59> Yes we do, everyone has them. There is an unimaginable difference between a system where you can have a referendum on =X once per year and it costs 10mil or a system where you can have a referendum every second and it costs ~0. We can then vote for issues directly instead of having people that may or may not (as is most often the case) vote in a way they signal they would before elected.

<comment><USER26> Referenda are a terrible way of governing.

Think about Brexit - bad faith arguing from one side, constant lying, no plan about how to actually leave, and then a protest vote pushed it last 50% so now we have to leave on a no deal because it's an impossible policy to do in a few years.

A referendum is OK for deep constitutional issues, but policy should not be decided by referenda especially vague ones.

Policy is also quite hard to undo, a direct voting system would like lead to us living in a rent-controlled, capital punishment-ing, overtaxed reactionary world.

<comment><USER6> And yet, the option to take part in a series of referendums works splendidly in Switzerland [1]. This is also what I've anecdotally observed from living in Switzerland.

Perhaps, if the option to vote on an issue were presented often, people would have time to change their minds and would become more involved in the voting process. The reason a second referendum on Brexit wasn't held was because it was deemed infeasible. Not so with electronic voting.

1: [http://direct-democracy.geschichte- schweiz.ch/switzerlands-s...](http://direct-democracy.geschichte- schweiz.ch/switzerlands-system-referendums.html)

<comment><USER60> I would argue that the Swiss system only "works" because the people reject the vast majority of referendums and let the elected parliament do the actual policy work. In total, only 22 have been successful since 1891. Most of them were on populist issues (often fueled by xenophobia) and had little to no influence on everyday life.

<comment><USER6> That is simply not true. There have been hundreds of successful referendums, many on non-xenophobic issues, and what's the problem with populism? The point of a democracy is to be populist!

Take 2006:

\- Financial aid to new EU members, 2006-11-26, overall result: YES

\- Standardized extra pay for families, 2006-11-26, overall result: YES

\----

> How many referendums are successfully passed?

> The Swiss have been called on to vote around 306 times since 1848 for a > total of 617 proposals. In total, 299 proposals have been passed while 334 > have been rejected.

From: [https://www.thelocal.ch/20190517/why-does-switzerland- have-s...](https://www.thelocal.ch/20190517/why-does-switzerland-have-so-many- referendums)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/2030/](https://xkcd.com/2030/)

</comment><comment><USER62> For those commenting, I suggest looking into ElectionGuard.

</comment><comment><USER63> Tom Scott: Why electronic voting is still a bad idea

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs)

</comment><comment><USER48> anonymous, verifiable: chose one.

I would chose verifiable.

<comment><USER64> I'm with you. If someone votes for someone, they should also be held accountable for their Politicians actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> There's an XKCD for this: [https://xkcd.com/2030/](https://xkcd.com/2030/)

</comment><comment><USER66> Am I the only one still against network-based, and to a lesser extent electronic-based, voting?

It's near impossible to rig or suppress a physical election without a lot of effort, but one person can DDoS an entire network and no one can vote and the whole election needs to be scrapped.

Not even the strongest cryptographic or software systems are free from exploits (especially over time) and there's no way to be sure the open source code for the system is the same code actually being served on the system.

A lot of software has died by its own hubris by assuming their systems are secure and then a single 17 year old on 4chan finds a bug and ruins it all. You can't afford for that to happen in an election. Forget hackers, some skilled social engineering gets you the votes of thousands, but you cannot do that in person so easily.

I'm sure the problems have been discussed extensively but other niche problems include lack of availability for rural areas (which has been a huge problem even with paper voting). I think the only reliable voting system at scale is in person.

<comment><USER67> You are not the only one. However I don't think security is even a relevant concern, because there is one much more fundamental flaw in all electronic voting systems:

The goal of voting is to produce _agreeable consent_ — so it doesn't really matter _how_ you organise voting, as long as everybody afterwards can agree who won, who lost and by how much.

So phrased differently, one of the most important properties of any voting systems is that people afterwards can't just call the result into question. This can only be true if _most people voting_ understand the mechanism, can verify it themselves and manipulation on big scales is hard.

This is why I think any electronic voting system is problematic. Even a total expert would have a hard time proving that _one_ machine worked as it should on election day. If you then have some Autocrat who raises doubt about the election result whom do you trust? That expert who tells you that manipulation was mathematically impossible or that autocrat whose party you vote?

<comment><USER68> Wouldn't a blockchain voting system help here, if everyone can examine the time, place, and votes in the history, and see that all the block hashes match what's expected?

That gives much stronger guarantees than paper, and while the average Joe can't verify it himself, there would be three million programmers in the US alone who easily could.

Whereas with paper I can't count the votes myself, I have to trust the authorities who did that.

<comment><USER69> One very important thing most people forget:

If you can verify that your vote was correctly counted, your vote can't be kept secret, and intimidation and vote buying becomes impossible to stop.

> _Whereas with paper I can 't count the votes myself, I have to trust the > authorities who did that._

The way it works in my home country is that the paper ballots are handled in an inspectable way and anyone can observe the counting process. You can't check _your_ vote, but you can control _all_ the votes.

<comment><USER70> I'd never want electronic voting either, but this myth needs to die. Intimidation can happen with absentee voting too, so it's not a valid concern.

<comment><USER71> In most elections the number of absentee ballots is so small as to be statistically irrelevant. I'm not even certain absentee ballots are always counted because of this, winners are surely announced and concession speeches are made long before absentee ballots are counted. So whatever security/intimidation issues might be higher in absentee ballots aren't that big of a deal due to the small number of them. That may be changing this election with wide spread/universal mail in balloting.

<comment><USER72> > I'm not even certain absentee ballots are always counted because of this

This is a misconception. All ballots received according to the laws of the state must be counted before the secretary of state certifies the results.

News networks will call an election as soon as they're certain it's gone one way or another. If Trump is up 30% in Wyoming on election night with 500 absentee ballots outstanding, CNN will call it. This doesn't mean Wyoming won't count those ballots. They have to in order to certify the results, which happens a few days after election night. States maintain detailed election results for historical and legal purposes. They don't throw away absentee ballots just because they won't change the outcome.

States will, however, toss out absentee ballots that aren't received according to their laws (i.e., some states require those to be received by election day, while others merely require them to be postmarked), as well as those without a verifiable signature on them.

This is a really common misconception. Absentee ballots absolutely count as long as they're received correctly. States need accurate vote counts. Absentee and provisional ballots aren't "lesser" ballots. They're just subject to some scrutiny before they're counted.

<comment><USER73> What you're saying about certification is true but the comment you're replying to was making the point that the volume is low enough that most elections can be safely called without having completed the count, e.g. you have 5 absentee ballots to count but one politician is up by 20 - doesn't matter what the absentee ballots say. So while intimidation with absentee ballots isn't a factor, that comment was saying the now material volume of mailed in ballots creates a greater risk exposure than we associated with the absentee system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I never understood why voting remains such an issue.

Why not have the credit card companies handle voting? The cost of a card with the chip is less than $2 isn't it?

The card is swiped into a reader, the ballot is displayed on screen, choices are made and confirmed, a laser printer prints out a paper ballot which is dropped into a secure box.

We would know within 1 hour of polls closing the accurate tally of every race.

<comment><USER75> Suppose I'm a bad guy with Trump, I command the credit card company to issue 1 million fake cards with names which are passed away in last century. Ask my agents to sweep these cards and vote for me. How could you civilians prevent these things from happening?

<comment><USER38> Vote by mail is also vulnerable to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> A lot of issues being brought up with electronic voting seem to me to be solvable via a blockchain technology like Ethereum.

> Even if the code is open source you cannot know that's the software running > on the polling machine.

If the entire election happened on an Ethereum smart contract and every voter was given an address to vote with they could verify that their transaction cast a vote to the correct smart contract address and they could know what function was called so they would know how it would behave. You wouldn't have to blindly trust the system because you could verify that your vote went where it was supposed to go.

> Social engineering/hacking an online voting pool This is definitely still > possible. Any smart contract to handle this would need to be rigorously > audited to make sure there are no vulnerabilities. As for social > engineering, I do not think this is that big of a deal as long as you > emphasize the importance of never sharing your private key.

I also do not think it's all or nothing. You could potentially have electronic voting built on blockchain technology but still have it all done in normal polling booths like we do now. The benefit to this is that you have the reliability of in-person polling but the citizen can then also track their vote to add a second layer of verification. Idk, what am I missing that makes this obviously a bad idea?

<comment><USER77> Because it's utterly utterly unnecessary and can be solved by the very simple tick box, count ballot in public, let anyone watch or volunteer to do so system. The existing problems with the American system of dodgy ballots, hanging chads, OCR errors etc. are causes by too much technology. Get rid of it all and use a wholly manual system. Treat postal votes the same way and count them at the same time as other ballots.</comment></comment>


How to Scale Your Company with Small Teams - <AUTHOR> https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/285917 <comment><AUTHOR> Small cross functional teams can work faster in our business. Two good examples are the team structures of Facebook and Wordpress.com.

Feel free to ask me anything about how we are doing cross functional teams at JotForm.</comment>


PostmarketOS: Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones - <AUTHOR> https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/ <comment><USER3> > Alright, so there is the LineageOS community, which provides weekly updates > for an impressive number of smartphones. They provide a practical solution > today, and I am very grateful for that. However, such Android based projects > will always run behind Google and the phone industry, fixing only symptoms > but never the root-cause.

I think it's very ambitious to not base this off of the work being done on Android but of course would love a proper GNU/Linux distro on my phone as well.

Lineage OS (formerly CyanogenMod) will run on a Samsung S II which is 5 years old. It might support some older devices that I am not aware of. I could see it still being supported 5 years down the line.

[https://download.lineageos.org/](https://download.lineageos.org/)

<comment><USER4> Wow, they have up-to-date images for the previous version of LineageOS for the Google Nexus, even.

Has anyone tried it on such an old phone? Is it dog-slow?

<comment><USER3> I don't know if you count it as an old phone but I use it on a Samsung SIII (Wikipedia says that launched 2012) and it's snappy as heck.

The current images are nightlies so I have encountered a few bugs. Previously was running CyanogenMod 13 on a stable image and that was fine (but the CyanogenMod company folded so it wasn't going to get security updates). Looking forward to a stable release of Lineage.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting, thanks. Which Android version is LOS 13?

<comment><USER3> ~I don't think Lineage OS 13 exists.~ (edit: it seems it does for some models). CyanogenMod 13 was Android 6 I believe and Lineage 14 nightlies are currently 7.1.2.

<comment><USER5> It exists. But I guess I get why you might be thinking this: with CM13 there were nightly builds for lots and lots of devices, but with LOS13 they heavily reduced the amount of devices for which they build nightlies.

I'm not sure if this means that they ceased to support LOS13 for these devices entirely. But it does seem that way, on account of how long it's been since the device tree ('DT') and kernel for my phone have seen any update. (HTC One M9, a.k.a. _himaul_ )

Nowadays I just build LOS13 myself every once in a while, because it still receives generic updates and fixes, and luckily the current kernel and DT still work fine. It's just that, while the DT also wasn't updated that often back on CM13, iirc the kernel did receive updates and fixes fairly regularly. With that no longer being the case is why I suspect they halted supporting it at all.

My reason for staying on LOS13 rather than to upgrade to LOS14 is that the Xposed Framework does not exist for LOS14 / Android N. So that's what I'm waiting for. I wish the LOS13 would recognize how many people want to use 13 on the M9 and provide updates even if it's just once a month. Or maybe they do recognise this, but they just don't have the manpower, resources, or heck maybe there were too many problems when users switched from CM to LOS... I don't know.

There is just one really annoying error which I don't know how to fix, which is that the default camera app crashes, I suspect because of face detection. I thought they fixed that on CM13 ages ago. I guess he bug snuck back in. The OpenCamera does _not_ crash, thank heavens, but it's still a nasty issue I wish would be addressed.

Anyway. My point was that it's still possible to build LOS13 for many devices.

<comment><USER6> Not all of the maintainers came over to LOS. They only support devices with volunteer maintainers.

[https://wiki.lineageos.org/faq.html#my-device-is-not- officia...](https://wiki.lineageos.org/faq.html#my-device-is-not-officially- supported-but-id-really-like-to-give-lineageos-a-try-can-you-support-my- device)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"?

I mean, if a project wanted to put a "10 year life-cycle" on an IoT blender by porting Gnu/Linux to it, you'd think the _first_ order of business would be writing a Gnu/Linux program to, you know, blend things. Getting 10+ years of running performant Weston demos would be a very distant 2nd to that.

<comment><USER8> That's is what I think is one of the huge problems with GNU/Linux and OSS projects, design being an afterthought rather than one of the core features.

I mean there is a ton of linux distributions that run better on my PC, but I still rather Hackintosh it due to the linux distros interface design and I bet others do the same.

I know this is a new project, but in order to ever hit the mainstream, it needs to have a interface at least as good stock android/TouchWiz. Otherwise people will be driven away, I ask people about Ubuntu and they won't ever say "the design is bad". But they said they switched back to Windows because "they couldn't get a hang of it", because the interface made them feel confused.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with the "interface at least as good as stock Android" part. I wouldn't even mind if someone re-created the Android UI with native GNU/Linux libraries instead of the ones from Android.

As long as the user choose the interface, this would surely make it easier for people to switch from Android to postmarketOS and users who'd like to use something different could freely do so.

<comment><USER9> Will never happen (well, with 99.9% confidence).

It would require replicating all of Google's Android APIs and keeping them constantly up-to-date with Google's, forever.

Extremely well-funded Amazon and Samsung tried, both gave up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wait, I did not say that it needs to be compatible with anything. Just recreating the top bar, that you can drag down to connect to your Wi-Fi etc. and the three buttons at the bottom working in a similar way would make it very easy to migrate without any compatibility requirements.

But as ocdtrekkie has noted: > At the point where the phone OS can't make calls yet, worrying about style is a bit premature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is one small fallacy in the decade old PC versus the decade old smarphone comparison: PCs are not status symbols but smartphones are and fashion is a _huge_ component in why smartphones are replaced.

Another driving force is that a smartphone made a decade ago would simply not be able to use many of todays apps because it is missing certain sensors.

so while I hope this will take off I see some obstacles. Happy owner of a 10 year old Nokia here that serves me well, I've tried quite a few smartphones over the years but I never found anything that I really needed that would make me give up 5 day battery life and being 100% drop proof.

<comment><USER11> The other factor is if the phone doesn't have a user-replaceable battery then it has a short self-life regardless of the software situation. Batteries don't last.

<comment><USER12> Anecdote: I'm getting ~9 days to a charge with my Nexus 5. Battery life improved after I moved from CM to LineageOS. Max was about 7 days on CM. I know batteries don't last forever, but the hardware is still perfectly good. Google doesn't care about Nexus 5 owners anymore. It's sad really. They should at least open source the drivers if they don't want to support it anymore. Even if I purchase a new phone, this one could still make someone happy for many more years. It doesn't belong on a rubbish heap.

<comment><USER13> Is that 9 days idling? That's fantastic for a nexus 5! Mine is running stock Android, it's over 2 years old, and the battery lasts maybe 16 hours with normal daily usage. It's still a very capable phone, but it's a shame it's becoming unsupported and slowing down as makes their apps more sluggish. I switched to an iPhone SE recently, Google's apps run much better on iOS in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope this takes off. I was happily using a note 4 for years, occasionally buying a new battery because it allowed you to change it by removing the back (remember all the phones that used to do that?). The only reason I had to retire it was because I needed security patches but each update made the phone progressively slower. My new phone has exactly the same features and if I factory restored the note 4 it would run as fast as my new one but phone manufacturers don't exactly like that, and it's something that should change.

<comment><USER15> Totally random but you probably would like the LG V20.

<comment><USER16> Yes, and its older brother the v10 is under $200 now. Very nice bang for your buck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is fabulous! There are millions of old phones out there with decaying versions of iOS and Android. Google and Apple are ignoring them, so these devices are just plummeting in value. This is the perfect market for an actually-open-source mobile OS!

If somebody can get React Native to run on PostmarketOS, then we could start building up an ecosystem of non-walled-garden apps that are compatible with iOS and Android!

<comment><USER18> > If somebody can get React Native to run on PostmarketOS, then we could start > building up an ecosystem of non-walled-garden apps that are compatible with > iOS and Android!

What leads you to believe this would actually happen? PhoneGap/Cordova have been around for ages, and they could have already enabled such an ecosystem to have formed, but we haven't seen that happen. Of course, there are other similar technologies out there, too. Even Firefox OS failed, and that was with the backing of Mozilla and its eager community. What's different about this case?

<comment><USER17> Good question. I think there are two big reasons this is more feasible now than it has been in the past.

1) Proliferation of compatible devices. Firefox OS attempted to launch with zero compatible phones. (The dev device I bought would crash on boot, every time). Postmarket OS is launching with hundreds of thousands of compatible devices already in the wild, many of which are sitting unused in people's drawers. If it gets much contributor momentum, there will be millions of devices ready to switch.

2) As a React Native contributor, I am totally biased, but I think it represents a big shift in mobile development. Personally I don't think ionic/cordova apps feel very good, especially on older devices. RN is the first open-source xplat mobile app environment that allows you to produce high-quality apps. Or at least, by the standards of FB, Airbnb, and Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > postmarketOS is a GNU/Linux distribution, so there's no problem in having > multiple phone interfaces (just like KDE/Gnome/XFCE/...) and let the user > choose.

IMO, there is a _big_ problem with that. The WHOLE reason the smartphone space finally took off was because Apple came in and rationalized the interaction model and implemented a robust, responsive UI. Android is successful largely to the extent it faithfully aped that model. Treating this as a secondary thing your project doesn't need to be opinionated on is a recipe for failure.

<comment><USER20> > _The WHOLE reason the smartphone space finally took off was because Apple > came in and rationalized the interaction model and implemented a robust, > responsive UI._

I see this "fact" thrown about all the time by under-30s who only ever knew of the iPhone since they were teens.

The iPhone OS interface, as it first existed, faithfully aped the Palm Garnet OS, which was the latest iteration of Palm's highly successful OS going all the way back to the late 90s. Before there were smartphones there were PDAs, and while it's debatable that Apple invented the PDA with the Newton, the platform didn't become a commercial success until US Robotics released the PalmPilot and PalmPilot Professional. When Handspring successfully melded the Palm OS with cellphone hardware creating the Treo, the touch controlled, icon based, modal fullscreen app "smartphone interface" as we know it was created. Palm bought Handspring and pivoted to improving the Treo line of smartphones, culminating in the Treo 600 and 700 series.

Speaking of responsiveness, while Palm's own devices were fairly standard and could be sluggish, Sony's Clie line made Palm OS feel almost as fast and fluid as the modern iOS interface. The hardware was expensive but it was the absolute best handheld computer you could buy in the early to mid 2000s. The first time I used the original iPhone I still owned a Clie NX70V, and the Clie was less jittery than the iPhone if I had a lot of apps open on both devices.

That's not even touching on Nokia's Symbian, arguably the best selling smartphone OS in history, but Symbian never resembled Palm OS, Android, or iPhone OS until after those systems became widespread.

So no, Apple never invented anything in this space; they took what already existed, polished the hardware, correctly implemented multitouch, and applied Jobs' marketing magic. I drank the Kool-aid and bought the original iPhone soon after its release. I ended up promptly selling it and going back to my Treo to get real work done when I realized the iPhone was nothing more than a (arguably excellent) mobile web browser. It wasn't until Apple finally started allowing apps (something Palm supported from the beginning) that the "modern" smartphone revolution really began. Even then, hardware improvements were driven by Android based devices, with Apple always playing catch-up.

<comment><USER21> Here is a picture of Palm Garnet OS which apparently Apple "faithfully aped": [http://www.palminfocenter.com/images/palm-garnet- vm-1.jpg](http://www.palminfocenter.com/images/palm-garnet-vm-1.jpg)

Do you think that both interfaces are the same simply because they are "touch controlled" and "icon based"?

Also, saying there were other worse phones before the iPhone came out does not refute the point that the reason the space "finally took off" was because of Apple.

<comment><USER21> I feel its my duty to report that after looking at that image of Palm Garnet OS it shows an app called "DiddleBug", which is apparently a note taking app.

Its website still exists ([http://diddlebug.sourceforge.net/](http://diddlebug.sourceforge.net/)) and indicates it contains "IntelliBooger™ extensions".

I am certainly glad Steve Jobs applied his sinister marketing magic to whatever this is so that no one has to be inserting IntelliBoogers into their DiddleBugs on their PalmPilots just to take a note.

<comment><USER22> Yes, things like these remind me to take our Product and Marketing guys more seriously, because, left alone in a cellar, I too probably would call things DiddleBugs and IntelliBoogers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome and I've been waiting for something like this to come along for a long time. It's crazy how easy it is to get Linux on an ARM based Chromebook, but nearly impossible to get it on a phone.

Android is a security nightmare and most of us are aware of that at this point. On top of that, Android has been moving functionality off the device and into their services for years making their AOSP offering weaker and weaker. Keep up the good work!

Edit: At some point it'd be nice to use a GuixSD or NixOS configuration file as your "one custom package" instead of an Alpine package. Any Linux on bare metal though would be welcome of course.

<comment><USER24> No, real security nightmares are reserved for things like WannaCry and all of the compromised Linux based IoT devices. You know, things that actually do real world damage at massive scale. As for the state of Android security, unfortunately the analysis and numbers don't really back up your baseless claims.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_ytg6MUP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9_ytg6MUP0)

<comment><USER23> OK, there are millions of Android users and most users put their personal information on their phone. I think any breach here would be considered gravely significant.

Non-Google branded phones get updates far later than their Nexus/Pixel counterparts if at all. Google and carriers drop devices from updates eventually (2ish years) so if you continue to use your device after that, you're playing with fire.

That's just covering the delivery mechanism, not the inability to set a encryption password separate from your pin, or the vauge permissions groups, or the fact that all apps can see your global clipboard, etc. If users can't get the newest version of their OS software, then you kind of fail at security 101. Any bug fix only fixes a small subset of your users. At least Windows XP device users knew how long they'd get security updates and had a clear upgrade path afterward.

Linux IoT suffers a lot of the the same problems. No one updates embedded devices.

You can draw the "nightmare" semantic line wherever you want, of course. IMHO it's not even remotely secure unless you only and always buy the newest Pixel phone directly from Google. Then we can talk about modern Android security issues.

<comment><USER24> There are over 2 Billion Android devices that access the Google Play Store each month alone - and I'm not even factoring in all of the Android based devices that don't even have Google Play Services like China. Where are all of these nightmares? When you have the #1 OS in the world, by a large margin, every nefarious organization is targeting you. And how much damage have they inflicted on all of those devices compared to the damage inflicted by Windows and Linux IoT devices?

Incidentally, Apple just released 40 security updates recently. 21% of iOS devices aren't even using iOS 10. Is there going to be a security nightmare for them too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't like Android. I prefer iOS because there is a single vendor for managing the sales and the development of both the hardware snd the software. This pro does come at a premium cost but I don't want my phone to stay on Android 2.X because AT&T does not want to release upgrade, then the only option is only going to be flashing and installing a new version on my own. That wipes my data and I probably will break my warranty worh ATT by flashing (I never checked).

iOS has bugs and performance issues too. But overall it is quite solid. The app store experience as a consumer is nice too.

If this project is aimed to bring freedom software to users on mobile with thr goal of running on phones for 10-years, great. But for mass adoption I am going to be bold: it won't happen. Firefox OS failed because (1) device spec is poor (Mozilla wanted to market it in countries where smartphone was not common), (2) not enough apps, (3) the influence and trending look of Android and iPhone.

<comment><USER26> > I prefer iOS because there is a single vendor for managing the sales and the > development of both the hardware snd the software

If that's really your only reason for preferring iOS, Google has been making phones for over 7 years. There are obviously valid reasons for that preference, but the single one you've mentioned isn't.

<comment><USER25> I am aware of Google phone. But is it Google who's also rolling out the upgrades to users directly? iphone does not care carrier's upgrade schedule.

<comment><USER26> The carriers do in fact have a say in the upgrade schedule. I know that (at least for a little while) they stopped being able to release updates _quite_ as quickly once they released the iPhone for Verizon in the US.

And yes, if you buy your phone directly from Google, you'll get your updates directly from Google with no delay (other than their staged rollout process).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This seems stupid. Android is hard to update because of closed source drivers - especially really proprietary stuff like Bluetooth, the RIL and graphics. That combined with the lack of a stable Linux driver interface means that only the manufacturers can really update the kernel.

I'm guessing this "fixes" that by just disabling everything.

<comment><USER28> The Linux community is already past the problems of proprietary drivers. We are talking about people that reverse engineered a full network stack, graphic cards, audio devices, you name it.

If you build it, they will work.

<comment><USER29> This statement is horribly wrong. The sad state of even wireless ac drivers in Linux today show that there is a severe lack of driver development. What makes you think that a more proprietary and more guarded cellular modem will have better driver support than the current state of driver support? Isn't this just wishful thinking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 12/10 would install on my aging Nexus 5.

One thing though: it doesn't state if it's possible to make/receive calls/sms using a phone. You know, I'd appreciate my phone to be able to do such things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, it is in a pretty early state:

> Most drivers don't work so you can't make phone calls or use the WiFi.

[https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/#prototype](https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/#prototype)

EDIT: SMS also do not work. In other words, what works is the touchscreen with Weston so far. But the underlying tooling (pmbootstrap) is pretty far, so that's why I have released it now.

<comment><USER30> Thanks.

I still think tgis project has a huge potential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good idea, I hope it gets developed much further. To cover the lack of apps you should concentrate on providing native internet browser with good PWA (progressive web apps) support. That way only a few native apps will be needed by user, e.g. dialer, SMS messenger.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In reaction to people who are confused, that this is not a finished product, I have added a note saying "(Not usable for most people yet!)" at the beginning. The summary at the beginning did not make that clear before.

[https://github.com/ollieparanoid/ollieparanoid.github.io/com...](https://github.com/ollieparanoid/ollieparanoid.github.io/commit/6a86986780e9001155ca3f07a6d43ca54c88a1cc)

</comment><comment><USER32> How does "Project Treble" affect this "issue"? The extra layer of APIs that Android will be built on should solve the "Fork for Every Device and Every Build" problem, yes?

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to- fix-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to-fix-android- updates-no-really-with-project-treble/)

<comment><AUTHOR> As I see it, project treble will improve the update process, but not completely resolve the endless forking. You will still have the "vendor implementation", which is different for every device. It will contain at least the kernel and drivers (kernel/userspace), for which you, as a user, depend on the manufacturer to keep it updated, and which will probably not be mainlined. This means, that after two years or so, when the support runs out, you will still have a device, that does not get updates anymore. Only for a smaller component of the operating system.

Also keep in mind, that this will work for newer Android O phones only. We already have more than a billion phones (the number could be much higher, I did not google it right now), which will never get that improvement. They can be saved from being electronic waste with projects like postmarketOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> All the new versions of Android are very much similar to an average user and my gf is always surprised when I'm so happy one of my devices is getting an update because getting "more fine grained permissions" or "customizable quick settings" are things about which an average user doesn't ever think about anyways.

It's mostly for us power users and people who just want to show off how they got something only cool/rich/smart people have. There were big differences between older versions of Android but apart from split screen which I used 3 times so far I don't see a reason to update.

I'm pretty sure the reason they don't port back the features to older androids is either because the old devices are lacking the specs or because they only want to have something to show as "new".

I know my friends avoided updating their iPhones for years because the new OSs only slowed the devices down.

</comment><comment><USER34> The original iPhone launched almost exactly 10 years ago. It had a 412MHz single-core processor, 128MB of RAM, a 320x480 screen, 2G data and no GPS.

Will anyone want to use an iPhone 7 or a Galaxy S8 in 2027?

<comment><USER35> Expect the rate of improvement in smartphone hardware to gradually decline over time, just like it already has for desktop and laptop computers. At some point even low-end smartphones will be "good enough" for the vast majority of users, and then device vendors will shift most of their innovation efforts to whatever is the next new hot form factor like AR glasses or whatever.

<comment><USER36> > At some point even low-end smartphones will be "good enough" for the vast > majority of users

I think we are more or less already there, maybe not the lowest of all ends but buying high end already feels like buying that more shiny expensive car with more horsepower which is hardly more useful because you are unable to leverage it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> super-io Like NetBSD but for mobile.

Easy to port.

Is it true the "Android" project rose from the ashes of an earlier company "Danger" who produced a NetBSD based mobile OS for the T-mobile Sidekick?

If true, why did founder of Android use NetBSD for the Sidekick, not Linux?

Microsoft acquired Danger.

"You know if you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me." \- Being John Malkovich (1999)

Maybe easier just to collect on Android sales via threatened patent assertion. IDK.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like the ambition. I've had a tinfoil-hat theory for a while that phone hardware is only built to last roughly 1.5 - 2 years gnerally before they physically begin to degrade. I've flashed new roms to a Galaxy S3 but it tended to reboot (i.e. hard crash) a lot still.

</comment><comment><USER38> It would be great if phone makers commit to something like this as part of their environmental plans

</comment><comment><USER39> I would very much like to find a way to use something like this on old devices that have locked bootloaders that prevent third-party kernels from booting. Is anyone looking at a way to bootstrap a system like this underneath the manufacturer's Android kernel?

</comment><comment><USER40> Thanks supporting phone devices longest is good for the environment instead of buy and throw.

</comment><comment><USER41> That'd be nice. I bought a MOTO X last year, don't do much on it besides using the camera and FB (hence my choosing a lower end model) and I can't use it for more than a couple of minutes without hiccups and app restarts.

</comment><comment><USER42> Could anyone explain what a "chroot zap" is (from the 'effective caching' feature)? Googling it just brings me to the same page.

<comment><AUTHOR> It means: remove the chroot folder (safely, with umounting everything first). You can do it with "pmbootstrap zap", it will ask interactively, which chroots you want to delete.

<comment><USER42> Ahh I see, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Great idea for a wicked problem.

Phone manufacturers will be against it, telcos, retailers, and many consumers. Maybe we could get Green movement groups on board?

</comment><comment><USER44> Will it be possible to revive the old Symbian button phones through this or some similar project?

</comment><comment><USER45> _Disclaimer:_ I'm fully behind this idea, but I think there are some issues to be ironed out.

I don't think the OS is really the bottleneck here. I think getting a _mobile_ device's hardware to run for this long is. There are a few things that make this difficult:

* Batteries - These currently only have so many cycles. A 10 year phone would need to provide a largish battery holding area allowing for two wires of varying voltages to be supplied. It would then in turn need to be able to charge at these various voltages through those two wires. I think voltages ranging from 1V to 24V would be a reasonable guess at where future battery tech would stay. Any person could then feasibly change their battery for some future tech.

* Connectivity - In just a few years, we've gone from only really having 2G to having just 3G/4G. In 10 years time, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that maybe 4G will be switched off. I think it's unlikely that WiFi will remain for the next 10 years too. You need some robust connectivity module that hackers could connect to an arbitrary home-brew hacker's module. Something like UART/Serial/I2C/SPI.

Other things could burn out over time, but replacing those things becomes way too difficult. The processor, GPU, RAM, case, buttons and screen are just things I think that need to be the core phone.

Another place that could be interesting to explore is converting old, arbitrary phones into useful everyday devices. For example, I'm looking at converting my old HTC wild fire phone (the screen is small) into a permanent low-power alarm clock. It'll sit on the WiFi and if it sees my laptop/phone on the WiFi it will schedule the alarm, otherwise not.

I have another slightly newer phone with a larger display, so I was thinking or either making some notification board for my office or some very cheap VR headset for watching YouTube videos in bed without holding my phone up.

That said, there's no reason why all of these new "smart" devices couldn't reuse old technology. I think a small technology company that recycled old mobile devices into new smart devices would be pretty awesome. People pay loads for a recycled pencil for example, why not a recycled electronics device? On the far end of the scale I've seen some awesome coasters made from old motherboards.

I would love to see offices and schools buying more second hand kit too. There's no reason why thin client software can't run on an old mini-intel board, or even a semi-old smart phone. Kids don't need this year's laptops to write a report in Word. I think there's a big space for reuse here.

<comment><USER46> >>In just a few years, we've gone from only really having 2G to having just 3G/4G. In 10 years time, I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that maybe 4G will be switched off. I think it's unlikely that WiFi will remain for the next 10 years too.

I'm using a Nexus 5, which was launched almost 4 years ago, that uses 4G. A reliable, widespread 5G network is at least 2 years distant, probably more. Barring breakage, and changing the battery, the Nexus 5 could almost certainly be used 6 years after launch, and still work well. The barrier for that sort of lifetime is software, not hardware.

I think you're right that 10 years is pushing it.

But, firstly, bear in mind the range of smartphone users there are. Really large percentages of people have never installed an app for instance. There are grades of users on their technology demands, and just as there will be a percentage that always want a brand new phone, there will be a percentage that just want something that is stable. There are a substantial percentage of people that are more worried about the UI changing underneath them than whether or not they're using 3G or 4G.

Secondly, even if 10 years is unlikely, the prospect of being able to run a functioning device indefinite ly allows the lifetimes to increase by more realistic but still significant amounts, 10 years is niche but 4 or 5 isn't.

<comment><USER45> >I'm using a Nexus 5, which was launched almost 4 years ago, that uses 4G. A reliable, widespread 5G network is at least 2 years distant, probably more. Barring breakage, and changing the battery, the Nexus 5 could almost certainly be used 6 years after launch, and still work well. The barrier for that sort of lifetime is software, not hardware.

My prediction for the communications modules not lasting is also trying to take into account that the rate of developments is likely to speed up - <USER2> stay the same or slow down.

>There are a substantial percentage of people that are more worried about the UI changing underneath them than whether or not they're using 3G or 4G.

I'm talking about simply being cut off from the rest of the world. Many Countries have now fully retired 2G networks. In less than 5 years, I can see the same likely to happen for 3G.

>Secondly, even if 10 years is unlikely, the prospect of being able to run a functioning device indefinite ly allows the lifetimes to increase by more realistic but still significant amounts, 10 years is niche but 4 or 5 isn't.

I think phones should at least match laptops - there's no reason why not. I think we should encourage a few things:

* Standardization of battery sizes - why is every LiPo pack completely different? If think this might even be arbitrarily pushing up the market value of the packs.

* Expansion ports - why is there no expansion port on a phone? Something just big enough to plug a small PCB with a standard connector. That way you could add something onto the internal bus to add functionality. For even common users, this could be slightly more battery, secondary processor, increased RAM, additional GPU, AI chip, VR chip, better camera, louder speaker, new communications, etc. Looking at the Intel Edison, if you can put an entire computer into an SD card [1], you surely could add value to your phone, either immediately or in the future.

* Unlocked - you should be able to easily load your own OS onto your phone with no consequences. This is the same with most laptops. Maybe somebody can't make a phone OS to last for 10 years, but I'm sure there will be some OS in the next ten years. Is it unreasonable to be able to swap your OS?

Completely unrelated, but another thing I would like to see is the use of colour e-ink displays for phones [2]. Video is something that needs to still be solved [3], but I think we pay too much energy for viewing static content on a phone display.

[1] [https://software.intel.com/en- us/iot/hardware/edison](https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/hardware/edison)

[2] [http://www.eink.com/display_products_triton.html](http://www.eink.com/display_products_triton.html)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc)

<comment><USER44> something like a nintendo gameboy styled phone with ports?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 10 years is pretty long time. Like think about still using first generation iPhone

</comment><comment><USER48> Smartphones only seem to last for two years before the hardware starts to fail.

</comment><comment><USER49> Great project! It will be cool to use our old smart phones as Raspberry pi.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've never had my phone hardware last for 5 years, much less 10.

<comment><USER51> I'm still using an iPhone 4S 64GB from 2011, which my dad bought for me as a graduation present.

Partly because I'm too poor to upgrade, and partly because it still meets most of my needs.

The biggest problem I face is software rot in iOS 6. That would be the same regardless of OS. I can't use WhatsApp any more, or Kakaotalk. Facebook used to forward my messages to email, but now they demand that I use a Messenger app. Instead, I just check Facebook's website using the browser.

There haven't been any really significant apps that I needed that have been released in the last 5 years. I've made a list in case I ever update my OS. I don't need BBM or Pokémon Go. The messenger apps are the worst for forcing software updates, but I hope that people will eventually move back to email and SMS, which just work.

<comment><USER50> I got my first smartphone in June 2009. Here's the list of what's happened (in no particular order):

* 2 phones had their 2.4GHz radio die (no bluetooth, no wifi)

* 2 phones were damaged by water

* 1 phone had screen cracked

* 1 phone was lost

I'm now on my 7th phone in 8 years.

Ironically it was my first phone that lasted the longest (about 2.5 years before the 2.4GHz radio died). Since then I've gone through about 1 phone per year. Phones have gotten much more fragile as they've gotten thinner, though water-resistance is now more common so that could solve at least some of my problems.

I do get what you're saying though because my wife's smart phone lineup is:

Palm Centro

iPhone 4S

iPhone SE

Each upgraded because software that had previously worked stopped working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bit-crazy-ivan Is the source a credible github project?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean with credible? The source is all here: [https://github.com/postmarketOS/](https://github.com/postmarketOS/)

But from reading through the comments, no one has analyzed it yet, if you mean that. It has less than 2000 lines of code, and it is Python, so it shouldn't be hard to read through.

Oh and there is room for improvement. Automatic Travis CI builds and what not. Alpine Linux already does this for every package, so with some effort postmarketOS could also do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is a pretty cool idea. I think we really need something like this.</comment>


Now That Everyone Wants to Be a Geek, Lawyers Have Been Called - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304453304576391602625560250.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_Top

<comment><USER2> Someone the other day was commenting on the whole 'everyone wants to be a geek now' thing and wondering what to call true geeks now.

I told him not to worry and that another word would soon be coined to make fun of the true geeks, as always happens. People just can't resist tormenting people who are different.

I am a little surprised that it hasn't happened yet... But then, maybe I'm too old and not hip with the new slang.

As for Best Buy suing everyone for using the words Geek or Squad (and every- so-graciously allowing high schoolers to continue calling their teams 'geek squads' (that's sarcasm)) it's obviously ridiculous. I understand protecting your brand, but when you name your brand so generically, you automatically lose a bit of it. Just deal with it.

<comment><USER3> Hacker.

It's still a term that's viewed negatively by mainstream, so you're unlikely to see "Hacker Squad" signs.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but it's a term that's used differently by the mainstream than by hackers, so you'd be constantly explaining yourself to avoid misperception. Constantly explaining what you mean is fatally geeky. It's better to use a word people don't know and only explain if they ask.

<comment><USER3> _it's a term that's used differently by the mainstream than by hackers_

Exactly like "geek". It used to be an insult.

<comment><USER4> With "geek" it's a matter of emphasis. The prototype is the same, but it's generalized differently. To a lame-o mainstream person, geek just means a frumpy, weird, socially unsuccessful, and possibly smelly person, but to a geek, it's all about pursuing interests in a particular way. Both definitions include a common group of core prototype geeks who look and act a little weird and have an obsessive interest science fiction and/or fantasy. In the lame-o jock douche (pardon me; showing my prejudices) definition, those prototype geeks get lumped in with all the frumpy, weird, socially unsuccessful, and possibly smelly people, which includes many people with intellectual disabilities, whereas by the cool geek definition, they get lumped in with anybody who is passionate about their interests to the point of being regarded as a little weird, which includes many geniuses in diverse fields. The difference can be summed up by asking, is Milhouse a geek ("I'm not a nerd, Bart. Nerds are smart,") or was Einstein a geek? They're different generalizations from the same prototype.

For the mainstream, the prototype hacker is someone who does something nefarious over the internet with no regard for any damage he or she might do. That's not the same prototype we have in mind when we say "hacker." We include those guys with a certain amount of reluctance and distaste. To us, the prototype hacker is somebody like Richard Stallman, the Richard Feynman of _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman_ or _What Do You Care What Other People Think_ , or the folks who perpetrated the classic MIT hacks (<http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/misc/best_of.html>). Most people wouldn't even understand why we include those guys unless we explained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm>

_7\. What constitutes tradenmark infringement?_

 _If a party owns the rights to a particular trademark, that party can sue subsequent parties for trademark infringement. 15 U.S.C. �� 1114, 1125. The standard is "likelihood of confusion." To be more specific, the use of a trademark in connection with the sale of a good constitutes infringement if it is likely to cause consumer confusion as to the source of those goods or as to the sponsorship or approval of such goods. In deciding whether consumers are likely to be confused, the courts will typically look to a number of factors, including: (1) the strength of the mark; (2) the proximity of the goods; (3) the similarity of the marks; (4) evidence of actual confusion; (5) the similarity of marketing channels used; (6) the degree of caution exercised by the typical purchaser; (7) the defendant's intent._

They sued a priest!

<comment><USER6> The priest thing seems more legit to me than the Newegg thing. The priests were deliberately trying to "cash in"[1] on similarity between their brand and the Geek Squad brand, whereas Newegg was just trying to use the positive associations between the work "geek" (which Best Buy doesn't own) and computer buying.

[1] - Personally I think there should be accommodations for the fact that it's non-commercial.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, because as we all know, that priests are all about raking in the Benjamins.

<comment><USER6> I'm not saying it makes for a good lawsuit or that Best Buy aren't dicks for pursuing it, but "God Squad" in a black-and-white car that's the same model as the Geek Squad car is sort of leaning on the brand at least.

<comment><USER5> Is it confusing to you, as a consumer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Checked out the offending work. New Egg's Geek On logo bares absolutely zero resemblance to Best Buy's Geek Squad logo. Best Buy doesn't own everything "geek" and orange. Are Syracuse geeks next?

<comment><USER9> I was ready to softly defend Best Buy on this one until I saw the logo in question. It's just a poorly made logo that happens to use orange and black (because they're elsewhere on the site). This is clearly a case where the sharks are smelling blood.

Good thing PG used the word "Hacker" instead of "Geek", otherwise HN would have been on the chopping block, too :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh noes!

I go by programming geek. Same name for my blog. I'm working on a side project called Answers Geek.

It's only a matter of time I get sued for being a geek I guess.</comment>


Is Serverless Computing Becoming a Threat to Google Cloud? - <AUTHOR> http://www.ishir.com/blog/5046/serverless-computing-becoming-threat-google-cloud.htm <comment><USER2> The whole concept of "serverless" strikes me as a fairly stupid way of handling things. As much as we'd like to, it's impossible to separate absolutely everything from the platform that runs it. Although "serverless" may be great for a backwater operation that's looking to save a few cents and lower dev workload, any software doing heavy lifting is going to be made with the strengths and weaknesses of its underlying platform in mind.

It's only a matter of time until we're making optimization considerations the same way we were when we were still concerned with the underlying software running our programs.</comment>


Building a Distributed Log from Scratch: Sketching a New System - <AUTHOR> https://bravenewgeek.com/building-a-distributed-log-from-scratch-part-5-sketching-a-new-system/ <comment><USER2> I am usually skeptical of links to blog posts people add to HN themselves because I'm skeptical of self-promotion more generally, but this series of posts is actually really insightful. I enjoyed reading it and have been passing it to some friends of mine.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting but the constant reference to NATS is more than a little irritating. It's one player among many in the space, and it's decisions aren't particularly notable. I would have loved to read something that was honestly "from first principles" rather than a pivot from the NATS architecture or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, part one of the series explains this:

> we will focus on what it takes to build something like this using Kafka and > NATS Streaming as case studies of sorts—Kafka because of its ubiquity, NATS > Streaming because it's something with which I have personal experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am in the process of building a system like this, and a question I've been asked is, why the need for a message broker at all. It's been a little difficult to justify once I really start to think about it.

Why not just set everything into essentially an S3 bucket, and then process off of it. What's the benefit of a broker in between them really?

<comment><USER5> It depends. What is your use case? If you mean this project specifically, part one says "you will probably never need to build something like this yourself (nor should you)".

Dumping everything into an S3 bucket may be perfectly fine and even efficient for some projects. I personally don't see myself wanting to use S3 buckets for transmitting messages between multiple different systems with different purposes.

If you have a lot of different services producing data that multiple services will consume, then a pub/sub system can simplify things. Some systems, like Kafka, also have added redundancy/scaling benefits.

<comment><USER4> Use case is a Cloud, taking all audit/log data, wrapping in metadata, and then placing it in a location which then needs analytics available on.

Currently this is done for the control plane by just loading them directly into Elasticsearch. Increasing the availability for all users, the consideration is, does a pub/sub add anything that just throwing the data directly into an s3 like bucket (swift in our case).

I just assumed it did. Everyone does it. Scale, decoupling the sender from the receiver...

But... I mean, why? What's the point of an additional hop, and another thing to manage. If your source is already wrapping metadata, and perhaps putting it into a structure, what is the value of a pub/sub there? If you can load it to the pub/sub, you can load it to the s3 bucket in the same manner.

<comment><USER6> Partitioning the S3 bucket scheme is terribly complicated. The senders have to know exactly how every receiver is partitioned, so they can adopt a compatible partitioning scheme when writing to S3. And the receivers have to know exactly how the senders are partitioned, so they can divvy up incoming data appropriately.</comment></comment></comment></comment>