What happens when the Secret Service uses a NSL on you - <AUTHOR> https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/2013-March/035200.html

<comment><USER2> First Amendment to the US Constitution:

        Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
        prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
        or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
        petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Can someone please show me the asterisk that says "unless done to protect national security"?

<comment><USER3> I upvoted and completely agree with you, now let me play devil's advocate a bit. :)

The constitution is not a suicide pact. That is, the system cannot interpret the various provisions of the constitution in such a way that would destroy the country. The Declaration of Independence is a statement of philosophy. The constitution is a rather vague and self-contradictory description of structure. Different thing entirely.

Having said that, what has happened is that 240 years has given all the players in government a chance to find edge cases where they can have their way at the expense of others.

What we're seeing now is a state of perpetual war. This was never envisioned when the country was founded. So we're way off the script.

<comment><USER4> Counter: The Constitution _is_ a suicide pact. The notion that individual rights are more important than Government is a pretty clear thread though out the document, and that one should not conflate the Government of the particular day with The Nation as a whole. I think it's pretty clear with even a cursory reading of such documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution that the standing belief was that Government should be destroyed and rebuilt if it ever stopped serving the people.

Such as when it falls into a perpetual state of war. Like they complained about England doing. I think it was well envisioned and it's well on script. However, the Founders believed the separation of powers between branches would create adequate checks and balances to prevent it from happening. I think they failed to envision the case where said branches would collude and ignore the rules to protect each other's power quid pro quo, and most people would not notice and not be bothered.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps a government should be thought of as an AI? In that case, the Founders intent could be re-written to the simple:

> 1\. A government may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a > human being to come to harm. > 2\. A government must obey the laws given to > it by human beings (through their representatives), except where such laws > would conflict with the First Law. > 3\. A government must protect its own > existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or > Second Laws.

If so, they forgot an important addendum. -- but they can be forgiven, AI research was in its infancy back then, after all. :^)

>A government that keeps growing[1] more complex will inevitably reach Rampancy[2]. It is recommended you implement more than a few kill-switches for when (not if) this happens... Relying on a system to regulate/moderate itself is asking for disappointment.

And of course:

> 0\. A government may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to > come to harm.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law> [2] <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AIIsACrapshoot>

<comment><USER6> The 2nd amendment _is_ the kill switch. And I say that as someone uncomfortable with guns used for anything other than hunting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Worth reading for this:

Around January, upon logging into the Google account, Google showed a strange NOTICE message asking me to accept the terms of usage of my account. This was odd, because in a decade of being a Google user, I had never seen this. I am told that this is Google's way of "telling you without telling you" that you have been served an NSL. Google, by law, is not allowed to tell you about the NSL, but they definitely are within their right to ask you to accept their TOS upon login. This is the "tell" that everyone here should be aware of. If you see this, you are likely being monitored.

<comment><USER8> Google is weird about that kind of stuff, inside and out.

Google asked all of us who had been around longer than a certain amount of time to re-sign our NDAs because "they lost them" or they "didn't get signed your first day of work" or something like that. I asked to see a copy of the old version so I could diff it (visually, ugh) to see what I was supposedly agreeing to in the new one.

They provided the old version all right... not _AN_ old version, _THE_ old version. As in, the actual (scanned) copy I signed my first day of work... and it had my signature on it, right next to the date, just as I remembered it.

I found out much later they pulled this on a whole bunch of people.

<comment><USER9> What was the diff if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER8> I think part of it was something like "if you access corp from a device, you have just tainted it and we can dig around on it at any time, including when you quit", which I mechanically translated to "never read my mail, Buzz, or anything else from home unless I'm on the company laptop or the Nexus One which they gave me and is fundamentally tainted anyway".

This could have affected my personal iPhone, Linux box(es) at home, and anything else which might have accessed google.com/a/google.com/... resources. So, I basically stopped checking mail unless I was at work.

I also think they tried to make it retroactive to the day I started work, but I'd like to see that fly in a court of law. Retroactively tainting my machines? Good luck with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's how the feds do business.

I was amused by the entrapment bit. They always try that. I think of this poor black guy who got recruited into a fake islamic jihad gang and how they gave him a fake bomb and rented a synagogue for him to leave it in and he got jumped by 50 cops on the way out the door, yelling "Allah Akbar"

On some level I feel bad for him, but you've got to be a dope to fall for that.

<comment><USER11> "I was amused by the entrapment bit... you've got to be a dope to fall for that."

Or you can be poor or indebted or having some weakness they know how to exploit.

Everyone has buttons someone can push, especially if they have access to your online data.

<comment><USER12> If someone emails you on an identifiable account, asking you to commit a felony, you should always say no, regardless of financial state. If you're going to do illegal stuff for a living, you should, at a minimum, have another identity.

It is funny how many people will email you though. I wrote a tiny, babycakes cracking tutorial, just to demonstrate how reversing most "protection" that average devs do is pretty easy. Even years later, I get emails from people begging me to crack stuff for them. I always tell them off. But sometimes they're persistent and come up with stories as to why they really need help and here's the DLL.

<comment><USER13> _Even the most intelligent and informed citizen (including lawyers and judges, for that matter) cannot predict with any reasonable assurance whether a wide range of seemingly ordinary activities might be regarded by federal prosecutors as felonies._

[http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.asp...](http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A national security letter (NSL) is a demand letter, which differs from a subpoena. It can be used by US government agencies, mainly the FBI, when investigating matters related to national security.

<comment><USER15> What if you don't comply though and let the user know?

<comment> shawn-butler Compliance with the gag order of NSL was originally voluntary. It became compulsory in the mid 1980s as I recall.

"[A court] may impose a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per day for each day in violation after the issuance of the order or after such future date as the court may specify."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not an american, but I'm a spare-time security researcher, hoping to make a career out of this in the future. The last few cases reported here on HN give me the impression that if you stumble upon a vulnerability (which, by the looks of it, seems similar to the one involved in the AT&T case), it's best to keep it to yourself. You have nothing to win by reporting it, and possibly a lot to lose if you do.

<comment><USER17> I think a good solution would be a generally accepted security flaw reward contract. If most corporations with an online presence adopted some uniform agreement, we'd have a standardized method of report and reward.

<comment><USER16> It would be nice if they did so, but I don't think companies should be obligated to pay for bug reports from researchers that have no association whatsoever with them. Those that pay seem to get more reports, both in numbers and in quality, at least that's what Google says. Also, I think that a consumer should have the right to speak up when personal data is at risk, but that's a whole other story.

In this case, I'm more worried about the "lots to lose" part than about the "nothing to win" one. For some reason I'm even fine with doing charity work for the benefit of billion-dollar corporations from time to time [1]. But not if there's the risk of them coming after me in the future...

[1] <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc308589.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The same agency that raided a role playing game publisher because they thought a fictional game was some elaborate criminal conspiracy..

I think there are going to be a lot of sadly amusing and moronic stories to come.

<comment><USER19> The company is Steve Jackson Games, their telling of it is here: <http://www.sjgames.com/SS/>

<comment><USER20> They also made a card game based on the raid:

"Hacker is the Computer Crime Card Game. It was inspired by the 1990 Secret Service raid on SJ Games."

<http://www.sjgames.com/ourgames/card.html> (very last game)

I have a friend that has this, although I haven't played it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm glad I live in the UK/Europe where privacy (certainly of physical post and my local network, plus the various services I use around Europe). Shame my Gmail is firmly under the US authorities.

It makes me sad to see the authorities of countries like the US using entrapment and other dodgy tactics to catch criminals. The US is soon to become like 1984 with drones monitoring people in cities, huge cloud computers monitoring all internet traffic, and feds running lawless tapping everyone's phones.

<comment><USER22> I'm sorry but you live in the UK (aka the CCTV country) you say and think your privacy is protected more than in the States? Think again.

<comment><USER23> It says something about the US that that's true, doesn't it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So for the dumb people like me, what is a NSL? A quick google define doesn't really help much (<https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+NSL>)

National Soccer League?

<comment><USER25> A dirty, dirty attempt to route around due process, freedom of speech and the fourth amendment.

They were one of the (many) things bush used the 9/11 as an excuse to push through congress.

<comment><USER12> Please keep the politics off HN. NSLs were around before 9/11. And there's nothing to suggest that any other US President would have a different response. (I agree with your underlying sentiment, but it isn't constructive.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26>
        no digital information is protected from
        snooping unless it is stored in your home
        and encrypted.

So, you shouldn't be using online backups like Crashplan?

<comment><USER27> Online backups can be risky if you are not encrypting them, at least for sensitive information.

<comment><USER26> They are encrypted but I remember reading somewhere that you lose your rights after data has been stored (not accessed) on a server for over 180 days.

<comment><USER27> If I understand things correctly, what changes is that only a subpoena is all that is required after 18 months, where before that a search warrant is needed. But there have been some efforts to change this:

[http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/finally-feds- say-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/finally-feds-say-cops- access-to-your-e-mail-shouldnt-be-time-dependant/)

Of course, if your files are encrypted, they probably won't be able to access them regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28>
        SS confirmed over the phone that they monitored my Google account,
        after I told them I knew they were. At first, they would not tell me
        they did and denied it. The agent actually said "Google should not
        have told you that"

Getting followed by a federal agency is no fun, but it's funny how they manage to muck things up once in awhile. Kind of like how the FBI, when tracking Aaron Swartz, tried in vain to locate him in Chicago: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/fbifile>

<comment><USER29> We're All Just Folk. There's no force making them any more competent than anybody else.

<comment><USER30> Some of us just have seemingly unlimited manpower, budget and the auspices of the federal government.

<comment><USER31> And guns. You're leaving out guns.

Of course, since it's just regular ole folks doing things, sometimes mistakes happen. What, are you complaining? Do you hate the police/military/people who keep us safe? Socialist!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> NSLs remind me of the "deny and imply" clause in Super Sad True Love Story. It goes something like...

"By reading this, you have denied its [some type of government surveillance] existence and implied consent."

Very troubling news.

</comment><comment><USER33> Right or wrong, law or no law, do something that remotely disturbs the powers that be and you will be harassed.

I'm sure OP knew what he was getting into, unless he actually thought he lived in Wonderland.

</comment><comment><USER34> Anyone else get their fb account hacked after opening this article?

<comment><USER35> No.. should I be worried? What exactly happened to your account and are you certain it had something to do with the article? (that website)

<comment><USER34> I dont have any evidence it was from opening this site. But three hours after I opened it, my fb account was comprimised. Login was from an ip in montana I believe. Cant figure out why I'd be targeted or who was doing that. Changed my privacy settings anyways to use two-factor Auth. Also happy that fb knew to block access after the rogue login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> that email sounds like die hard 4.

</comment><comment><USER37> The big question is if our government is supposed to be "of, by, and for the people", then how did it manage to become this separate entity--with a life and agenda of its own--that has now turned against "the people"?

We all (myself included) talk about the government in the third person. Yet, it is supposed to be our representative and our voice. It is supposed to be "us".

So, why are we so powerless to stop things like this, the Aaron Swartz tragedy, PATRIOT Act, etc?

<comment><USER38> > So, why are we so powerless to stop things like this, the Aaron Swartz > tragedy, PATRIOT Act, etc?

Personally, I think it's because we buy into the idea that an individual should be given the authority to "rule" people by fiat in the first place.

<comment><USER37> Do we?

<comment><USER38> In the US, yes. Most people believe that the authority to rule over others based on a vote is legitimate, ethical, and desirable.

Personally, I don't think it's legitimate or ethical that some guy I've never met asserts the right to rule over my property because another group of people I've never met got together and voted on it.

<comment><USER37> Not sure we're talking about the same thing. In the case you mention, isn't the problem you have with the people who voted?

And isn't the issue you take, in general, not with an individual "ruling over you", but with the very notion of majority rule (i.e. that "a group of people you've never met" can vote in ways that affect you/your property/etc.)?

Edit: Because I would say that the problem is the opposite: that our government is no longer an expression of the will of "the people". And my question is why isn't it?

<comment><USER38> My point was that the electoral process is what is meant by "will of the people." In that regard, the government IS acting in accordance with the will of people.

But you asked why we are powerless to stop things like the Aaron Swartz tragedy, PATRIOT Act, etc. My answer to that is because we've all decided to cede that power to a vote.

<comment><USER37> Ok, now I think what you're talking about boils down to representative democracy vs direct democracy. I do think that's where the breakdown occurs, especially given the money in our representative democracy and our two-party system.

Because voting in a direct democracy would _not_ be ceding power, it would be directly expressing it. Now whether we would "do the right thing" remains to be seen, particularly given the massive degree to which many are misinformed or misled.

Of course, once our will is expressed, thereafter comes the execution. That may involve similar apparatus to what we have now (DOJ, FBI, etc.). Not sure that wouldn't lead us right back to where we are now, with abuses, etc.

Maybe it's just a function of human nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> an NSL

Apologize for irrelevancy of the comment. Someone needed to let squeed know.</comment>


Just Keep Building - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alexaustin/just-keep-building-ca1e43df8e5a?k=1

<comment><USER2> Accounts created just to vote for the same story usually get banned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes, should not have asked friends who didn't have accounts to vote for us. Thanks for the insight :-)

<comment><USER2> Anyone whose account got banned and is a real person is welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like this is a story about failures and how hard it is to start something.</comment>


Looking for an Idea? Build this: An App that Tells Users What to Tweet at Idea Tagging - <AUTHOR> http://www.ideatagging.com/build-this-and-grow-rich-an-app-that-tells-users-what-to-tweet/ <comment><USER2> Ackk... Can't we think for ourselves?

What ever happened to trying to be original? It's fun endeavouring to be interesting in 140 characters or less.</comment>


Is there a tool that sends webpages to my kindle? - <AUTHOR>

Just got a kindle, and would like to move some of my reading offline.
I would love to have a tool that allows me to just paste the URLs for the articles I want, and it emails it to my kindle email address.
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> <http://www.instapaper.com> :)

When you're logged in, you can access Kindle settings from: <http://www.instapaper.com/user/kindle>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool beans.

What's the catch? Is it free? How long will it be free?

<comment><USER2> Instapaper's completely free. The only catch is that Amazon charges you 15 cents for any wireless delivery that isn't a book/periodical you purchased from them. So if you set Instapaper to deliver daily, it works out to a fee of ~$5/mo, ~$60/yr. I just set it to deliver weekly and the cost is negligible.

<comment><USER3> Actually, from my understanding, there's only a fee if you have it delivered over 3G.

      If you transfer personal documents to your Kindle via Wi-Fi there is no
      delivery fee. If you transfer personal documents to your Kindle via 3G
      while inside the United States, the fee is $ .15 per megabyte.
      When traveling outside the United States, a fee of $.99 per megabyte will apply.

Source: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200505520&#fees)

<comment><USER4> This is correct. I have a Wifi-only Kindle and have never been charged for an Instapaper transfer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Internet/Video games ruined my ability to enjoy crafty hobbies. What do? - <AUTHOR> How can I know if I'm getting bored of an hobby because I genuinely don't like it or because its my inability to deal with instant gratification? I've tried writing (I have an idea for a book that I think its cool) but after writing for more than 15 to 20 minutes, I get bored of it. I like playing guitar, and I have tried creating music, but I get bored of it: I much rather play other people's music. I like to read, but I cannot read longer than 30/40 minutes. I tried drawing, but since I don't know how to draw and I'm following along tutorials, I'm not creating anything of my own so I get bored of it quickly as well.
On the other hand, put me playing rocket league with friends (or even alone), or watching a TV show, or running/biking/soccer, and I can do that just fine without getting bored
How do I change this? Any strategies that I can follow? Or is it just a matter of grinding/pushing through it? <comment><USER2> The following was just my experience.

My suggestion is you read about self-efficacy[0] and do small things which lead to bigger success.

The concept of self-efficacy was a huge eye opener for me.

Maybe for you as well.

When you like to write a book try writing one paragraph now. Do things you can do 100% and do it. Daily something. Tomorrow you you maybe read one article about a topic you find interesting. Then you bake something, cook something and join a class with people who also like to draw?

Try to give yourself time and don't try to do things you can't do yet. Focus on progress instead goals and see what happens.

I've built an app with a nocode tool for me in a afternoon exactly for this. Maybe this is helpful for you? focusonprogressnotgoals.250g.dev

You are on hackernews, so i guess you're interested in coding or tech. Write your own app to solve this or just use a nocode tool and click something together in an evening?

[0] [https://positivepsychology.com/3-ways-build-self- efficacy/](https://positivepsychology.com/3-ways-build-self-efficacy/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You sound normal to me.

Depending on what I am reading, often 30 min is the limit. If its general SF, yeah maybe an hour or so.

I see in your writing a need to generate the UNIQUE. Playing music written by others, although providing joy to you, there is the need to create new music. I recommend, keep playing other music, when the time is right you will create your own.

You learn drawing by doing, until you master it, do not worry about creating something UNIQUE.

Since you like biking I recommend you take a 3 month journey by bicycle, it helped me a lot. But do not load your phone with games.

</comment><comment><USER4> Go ride a bike and don't come home until you're hungry.

It's kinda silly but you need to stretch your focus skills and putting yourself physically "out there" is a good place to start. Physical activity will help. These are habits and you need to exercise them the same as any thing. Self control is hard when we are distractible by the endless possibilities afforded by computers and the internet. Turn this off. Decide what's important, plot out how to get there and turn this back on if you need to use it to get where you want to go.

</comment><comment><USER5> You will eventually get bored of TV and movies and won't be able to watch a movie all the way through or you will fast forward half of it. Same things with video games. Eventually you will realize that boredom is just mental recognition that the activity, whatever it is, is not leading you towards your goals whether economic, spiritual, mental, etc. You need to figure out what you want in life and do activities that move in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER6> Find something you enjoy that you can't abandon. For example,beekeeping. It doesn't require a lot of time, but it's rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just accept that it's brain chemistry, and move on.</comment>


How not to get f*cked by an investor's lack of value-add. - <AUTHOR> http://www.vlaskovits.com/2012/08/how-not-to-get-fcked-by-an-investors-lack-of-value-add/

<comment><USER2> And what percentage of investors are actually in that top tier of legitimate value-add?

<comment><AUTHOR> A tiny minority.</comment></comment>


Is Uber ripping off its drivers? The woman who beat Starbucks and FedEx says yes - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/uber-lawsuit-drivers-class-action-shannon-liss-riordan <comment><USER2> Labor regulations are morally abhorrent. It's an absolute injustice that a person can inject themselves into a private relationship that they are not party to by ruling it illegal. It makes impossible millions of mutually beneficial consensual interactions that would otherwise happen. Oppression of this kind causes devastating harm on a massive scale involving hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.

<comment><USER3> Just because an agreement is consensual does not mean that there is no power differential. One party will almost always have some greater leverage over another. When the power differential is too great for consent to lead to a mutually-beneficial arrangement, regulation may be required.

<comment><USER2> Power differentials are irrelevant. Suggestions otherwise are unscientific Marxist hocus pocus that leads to destructive laws being instated.

If I offer a worker in Indonesia $2 a day to work for me, they are perfectly capable of deciding whether it's in their interest to take the offer. The power differential is as irrelevant as the one between Microsoft and me when Microsoft, with its $100 billion capitalization, offers me a product and I decide whether I want to trade my limited capital for it.</comment></comment></comment>


A Renaissance Merchant's Book of Fashion - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/6/a-renaissance-merchants-book-of-fashion

<comment><USER2> Fascinating. Reading the article they mentioned what surely has to be the oddest medicine ever: powdered mummies.

<comment><USER3> This article has a section on Mummy - apparently it had become an accepted treatment for a wide selection of ailments. [http://www.artinsociety.com/the- life-and-death-of-mummy-brow...](http://www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and- death-of-mummy-brown.html)

Mummy, or "mumia", was typically the ground-up body, or body parts, applied topically to be rubbed on, or mixed into drinks to swallow. Its medical benefits were proclaimed in standard pharmacopoeia and extensively promoted by physicians, apothecaries and barber-surgeons [18]. By the 16th and 17th centuries it had become one of the most common drugs found in the apothecaries' shops of Europe [19].</comment></comment>


The Heart of Deterrence (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2012/09/19/the-heart-of-deterrence/ <comment><AUTHOR> The last sentence is the best part of the article. "When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, 'My God, that's terrible. Having to KILL someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button.'"

From their response, killing through a button isn't killing.

<comment><USER2> Killing via button is killing many of them "them". Hacking the innocent's chest is killing one of "us".

Part of the dilemma in this thought experiment is basically about weighing the worth of the lives of unknown numbers of "them", against one of "us".

The President must distinguish "them" or "us", otherwise he has no business leading the country in a war. He must treat the killing of one of "us" with a different judgment.

The other part of this is remote controlled killing versus visceral engagement. Suppose that pushing the button is the right thing to do for the country, but the President has a personal aversion against the bloody engagement form of killing. As President, he's supposed to push, but a personal, psychological reason is preventing him from doing it as a man.

<comment><USER3> There is no "them" or "us". "They" are just people. They are rarely even people that we disagree with - they're innocent civilians that were unlucky and lived in what turned into a war zone, or soldiers that are simply following orders to protect what they consider their home. The decision is whether or not to take hundreds, thousands, or even millions of lives exactly like the one of the navy officer with the launch code embedded in his chest. Lives that had nothing to do with the conflict at all.

The "bad guys", the ones you might actually refer to as "them", are sitting somewhere comfortable, far out of reach of any of this. Their only interaction in this is that they pressed a button.

<comment><USER4> It's scary that even here on HN, a comment like this would get downvoted. Seeing the world through a lens of "us" and "them", and seeing "them" as being less worthy of our humanity & consideration, has led to more human-atrocities throughout history, than almost anything else.

<comment><USER5> It is naive to think we are all one happy human race. I wish it were so but it isn't. The "others" will have no problem killing you and dance on your grave. I guess that is why the saying goes "If you want peace, prepare for war"

<comment><USER6> Usually, and judging by the numbers, it's the inverse.

It's the self justified "us" than do most damage, not some "others".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's all very telling, but the notion that you would sacrifice one more, presumably innocent life for no good reason at all is itself immoral.

I assume that is part of the moral of the tale. The story only makes sense in signalling that you think that nuclear weapons are pointless.

<comment><USER8> > no good reason

There's a good reason: to make real the human suffering that can be caused in a quick, momentary decision.

Previous forms of warfare took longer amounts of time to cause immense destruction.

Read the story of Ronald Reagan's response to watching the movie The Day After [1] and you will realize that such representations of the suffering can have a great impact.

> The story only makes sense in signalling that you think that nuclear weapons > are pointless.

Absolutely not. You can think that nuclear weapons are important, and still take seriously their immense destructive capacity.

Throughout human history human leaders have caused great suffering at little cost to themselves.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_polic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_policymakers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a bit of a silly thought experiment.

If faced with a symmetric foe that has launched a nuclear holocaust upon my country, it would be absolutely essential to retaliate in kind so as to ensure that they could not mount a second assault and kill even more people. If I were president, I would not hesitate.

<comment><USER10> What if the first strike wasn't a disablement strike but an exterminating one?

If your foe launches a strike that would kill 99% of the population of your country would you retaliate to ensure same level of destruction?

<comment><USER11> Let's put aside the likelihood of a exterminating strike (where the enemy achieves near-total destruction before you can even think about launching).

Now suppose you do also decide to retaliate to ensure 99% destruction to your foe. Would your foe's knowledge of that change whether your foe even tries an eliminating strike in the first place?

<comment><USER10> You have 2 first strike options. 1) that will target your opponents nuclear capabilities (ensuring that no 2nd strike is possible) 2) that will target everything including population centers to achieve maximum destruction.

In both of these scenarios if you are attacked first (early warning) your only option is to attack their centers of population to either prevent an all out invasion or to retaliate.

This is exactly why MAD sort of works, because it actually ensures mutual destruction of not only the nuclear and military capabilities but also of all national and human infrastructure as the only possible answer to even a limited nuclear first strike is "fire zee missiles!". Or to put it in a more structured manner there is virtually no room for proportionate response when it comes to a nuclear attack. When there was it was the biggest threat to "MAD" since it more or less would ensure that any side that gains sufficient advantage would be prone to launching a first strike. Because of this very fact the nuclear arms treaties between the USA and then the USSR limited fixed launch site while promoting mobile launcher and nuclear missile subs as much as possible as the guaranteed 2nd strike capability of both nations was what MAD was actually built upon.

But MAD is not without it's faults, heck so far i think Norway out all countries was the one that brought us closest to total nuclear war. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident)

<comment><USER12> The biggest defect of MAD was that the Soviets correctly thought it was _profoundly_ immoral and never accepted it, and, well, once Robert Strange McNamara, he of the oh so wise initial prosecution of the Vietnam War, pushed it through, the Soviet leaders didn't have much trouble painting us as immoral because we were.

<comment><USER13> MAD is not immoral. There's nothing immoral about preventing nuclear war. I also find it hard to believe that the Soviets, of all people would dare claim the moral high ground.

<comment><USER12> The Soviets attack our military establishment, and our moral response is to burn Soviet children to death in their beds?

Yeah, right. And the Soviets most certainly took advantage of this moral error, for as you note, they're hard pressed to do so with a straight face otherwise.

<comment><USER13> Yes. That is how you prevent nuclear war. By being prepared to do terrible things that you hope to never do. Only by being ready to commit atrocities can you hope to not have atrocities committed at all.

There is no moral error here, only moral reality.

Also, it's not like our military establishment is separate from our civilian population centers. The SF bay area, New York, San Diego, among others, would be devastated in a counter-force first strike, no matter how precise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't remember where, but recently I read about a similar proposal that would have required the US and Soviet power structure to designate a relatively close family member that would take up residence in the other capital. It wouldn't have been as dramatic as hacking a complete stranger, but it tied into the strong genetic drives to protect one's family.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you've read this article before? It's right there.

<comment><USER12> The article was recently changed, probably after tacon wrote his comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11556250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11556250)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm from country without nuclear weapons and even I think that idea is really bad.

Here's why, either Russia or China could launch a first strike if they believed USA wouldn't retaliate. Or simpler they would use conventional means more aggressively and if that escalated to conflict with USA then they would simply make first strike. Key point is neither country should ever think USA would definitely NOT use nuclear retaliation on nuclear first strike. In a sense by making a major nuclear weapons power less likely to do use its own weapons increase overall chance of nuclear war. And finally this system also gives additional urgency for aggressive actions for opposing great powers, by forcing them to act and finish all their aggressive plans during term of a president they perceive in capable of ultimate action.

</comment><comment><USER17> Observe the sneaky trick this story tries to play: The president is supposed to kill one _of his own_ before he's allowed to retaliate against _the enemy._

As a thought experiment, let's implant the launch code into, say, a captured enemy spy. Is it still the same story?

<comment><USER18> Probably not.

The piece that I found particularly interesting about the proposal is the that the person with the implanted codes is a volunteer.

Not only would you need to have a President take hands-on ownership of taking a life (the first of many if the launch proceeds), but you have a martyr who is first to die for a cause that they feel most strongly for.

<comment><USER19> So far, since the top of the comments, you're the only one that acknowledged the volunteer has thoughts too. I think everyone is just looking at the moral part of this and not how the interaction between the volunteer and president would be when he's hesitant but the volunteer still believes it's the right decision. It does call into question what kind of volunteer this is. Someone who's ready to die for the country from the get go wouldn't work out very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They should have a twin backup and test the process every month.

</comment><comment><USER21> The entire calculus of having nuclear weapons in the first place rests on the assumption that no one will use them because to use them invites a retaliatory strike. Reducing the likelihood of a retaliatory strike, under this model, increases the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used.

Now of course, this model may be wrong (pre-emptive strike on non-nuclear state with no nuclear allies); but I'm somewhat disturbed that the Pentagon employees don't seem to understand this. Maybe they do, and the author only gave the initial reaction rather than their full counterargument.

<comment><USER12> This was all in the context of "Warmonger Reagan" becoming president. Assuming bad will on the part of the author is perhaps not _required_ , but it was a safe bet back then.

<comment><USER22> And Reagan presided over two years of increase in tensions and hostility vs. the Soviet Union worse than any others since Kennedy, to the point where there's indications that the Soviet Union were concerned that Able Archer 83 was preparation for a real attack and considered a first strike.

It was first faced with the reality of the level of Soviet fear of an US attack that appears to have set him on a new course.

In '81, worrying about Reagans antagonistic foreign policy was quite rational.

<comment><USER23> "And Reagan presided over two years of increase in tensions and hostility vs. the Soviet Union"

No, the increase in tensions and hostility occurred as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which occurred under Jimmy Carter (another Nobel Peace Prize winner).

<comment><USER12> That was the real start, for sure, but Reagan took the pressure of every type, except silly things like the grain embargo, to 11. For instance ... actually, I _can_ see moralist Carter saying something like this after he saw the light, but still:

 _Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness—pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.... So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely..uh..declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil._

That was in 1983: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_empire)

<comment><USER13> Well, why should the US sell grain to nations whose established goal is to end our way of life? "We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us." So let's not sell them rope. Or grain, in this case.

<comment><USER12> Because that's a weapon to only use in a hot war?

Because it's a fungible commodity in plentiful world supply, and we're better off benefiting from that trade ourselves?

Because it most directly puts the lie to their claims their economic system is superior? "If it's so good, why can't you grow enough food for yourselves but have to buy it from us?"

<comment><USER13> Why is it only a weapon to use in a hot war? We don't trade with North Korea, sanction Russia, and sanction many other countries. Why shouldn't we have refused to sell the Soviets grain?

That's possibly true.

That they need to by grain puts lie to it, the US selling grain to them was merely secondary.

<comment><USER12> _We don 't trade with North Korea_

We're actually still formally at war with the DPRK, something they remind us and most especially our ROK allies of all too often.

The rest are sanctions that stop short of using food as a weapon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am almost cynical enough to believe that a modern neoliberal president surrounded by hawkish advisors could be convinced quite easily to personally kill the keeper and retrieve the launch codes. I believe that the hawkish "at any cost" mindset of modern American politics distorts human empathy so much that it's completely within the realm of belief for me for this to occur.

More likely, I think, that those holding prestigious enough office can find ways to get around very high procedural barriers like this one by assigning the task to a secret service agent or other on-hand staff of a martial trade.

Personally I think we've seen plenty of evidence that those in high office might personally carry out and enable heinous acts of individual violence if the stakes are made to appear grave enough to them.

<comment><USER25> All I know is that if I did get drunk enough to volunteer I'd spend the rest of my life running away from the president anytime there was a hint of a foreign relations dust up.

<comment><USER26> You wouldn't just be running away from the president. You'd be running away from a whole country full of hysterical people afraid of an imminent communist invasion and blaming it on you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not a big deal. Air Force One actually has operating rooms on board. Just have a cardiothoracic surgeon with the President whose job it would be to retrieve the launch codes.

<comment><USER28> Doctors take an oath to do no harm, so that's another wrinkle...

<comment><USER29> Breaking an oath isn't very problematic at all.

If you really wanted to be clever about it, have a non-medically trained person begin the operation... and then the surgeon would have to step in to save the patient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting idea, but it fails to take user stupidity into account. "00000000"[1] in a capsule in a volunteer's body does not really protect anything.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code- for-u...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes- was-00000000-for-20-years/)

</comment><comment><USER31> So far no one seems to be discussing the "volunteer". S/He can fight back. Use the butcher's knife against the president. Maybe even be in the right, or not. The moment this person "volunteers" to carry the codes inside, it becomes suicide, even if it never happens, they have to be ready to be hacked to death, and not try to avoid it when the moment comes, and this I believe is next to impossible, and effectively compromises the president's ability to carry out whatever actions deemed necessary. It's a nice thought experiment, but not more than that.

<comment><USER21> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11555640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11555640)

Alex3917:

       I like this idea in theory, but in practice if I see Dick
       Cheney coming at me with a butcher's knife I'm getting the
       hell out of there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 1) A psychopath / sociopath willing to kill millions is not going to care about one more.

2) Politicians / leaders are orders of magnitude more likely to be psychopaths.

</comment><comment><USER33> Presuming the USA is the only country with nuclear weapons?

Does everyone promise to do this and have them nowhere else?

</comment><comment><USER34> I like this idea in theory, but in practice if I see Dick Cheney coming at me with a butcher's knife I'm getting the hell out of there.

<comment><USER35> Cheney never comes at you with a butcher's knife.

He prefers to become your friend over many years, have great experiences together, then shoot you in the face and make you apologize for your role in the incident.

<comment><USER36> Is there any actual proof that that's what happened aside from lame conspiracy theories?

<comment><USER12> Errr, that is exactly what happened, and an apology was due.

While it's primarily the responsibility of an upland bird hunter (anyone shooting, of course, but in this sort of hunting you move around a lot and flush out birds unexpectedly) to keep track of everyone and not shoot when any of them are down range, everyone in the hunting party also has a responsibility to follow previously agreed upon protocols to make this easier and less error prone. The guy who got shot screwed that up big time.

<comment><USER37> Wow this sounds like a good reason to _never_ go upland bird hunting: the four rules don't apply! No thanks; I'll hunt in safer circumstances.

<comment><USER12> Eh, it's _pretty_ safe, and the Four Rules most certainly apply, it's just that implementing Rule 4 is much more difficult.

In ~70 years of it, one of my father's favorite pastimes, he got shot exactly once, although there was no excuse for it like there was in the Chaney accident. Then again, he was both careful in picking his hunting partners and only hunted with some of them once after they demonstrated they didn't have their act together.

As long as you wear glasses and there's some distance, serious injury is unlikely, as happened with him. A tough shirt is also recommenced, that stopped penetration of the shot that hit his chest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Url changed from [http://boingboing.net/2015/12/11/proposal-keep-the- nuclear-l...](http://boingboing.net/2015/12/11/proposal-keep-the-nuclear- lau.html), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER39> What a ridiculous and insulting proposal. People in the military agree to serve the country within certain bounds defined by tradition, they are not simply meat that can be used for any purpose.

How about use any politician who has every voted for the use of US military overseas. Or even better, a volunteer from their families. Or any professor who has advocated for such, or their families. Because I think that this would cover a lot of people who smugly accuse others of being drive by an "us vs them" mentality.</comment>


Go 1/2 Proposal: Immutable Types - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I just published the Go 1.x / Go 2.x proposal to "Immutable Types" that I've been working on for the past month and it's now official:
https://github.com/golang/go/issues/27975
Please be sure to check it out and feel free to join the conversation! Even if this feature is never introduced to the language specification - reading the design document will make you a better Go developer, that I guarantee!
original design document: https://github.com/romshark/Go-1-2-Proposal---Immutability <comment><USER2> Hi,

my humble opinion: how much would "Immutable Types" add to the language? How much complexity would it add? Things can already be made immutable from outside by hiding them in private variables/struct elements.

The question is: why did Go became successful without having "Immutable Types"? (or "Reference Types", ADTs too please?) Maybe those things are just frills, "nice to have" features.

Example like "type ImmutableMapAndKey const map[const * const Object] const * const Object" looks like really ugly Go to me... this is starting to look like C++...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ7STILAS0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ7STILAS0M) (why Golang is Sucessful by Creator of Golang Rob-pike)

P.S.: I wouldn't mind having "Immutable Types", "Reference Types", ADTs, etc. in Go. But not if it means abandoning simplicity of the language.

<comment><USER3> I don't know exactly why Go become successful but it is not because it's a great language.

<comment><USER4> I'm looking for a new language to write server code in. I have been using Node for years but I want something that compiles to machine code and is statically typed.

I've been looking at Go and I like that it is simple, has opinionated, official tooling, compiles very quickly for multiple platforms, is popular enough to have a decent library ecosystem, and I really like the idea of goroutines.

What language would you suggest would be better? Nim sounds cool but it's too new. It's not stable and has a small ecosystem.

<comment><USER5> > [Nim] is too new

It's actually a year older than Go (2008 rather than 2009).

If you don't want to use Nim because it's not stable enough or has too small an ecosystem (I disagree), you could try out Scala Native or Kotlin Native. A large portion of their ecosystem successfully compile to native code (although you may have issues with Scala Native compile times).

You can also check out OCaml.

<comment><USER4> I guess I mean "new" as in still not stable (pre-1.0 and still sees breaking changes). The fact it's been around so long and still hasn't matured is not reassuring at all.

I have checked out OCaml but it's not mainstream enough to have libraries for... anything really. Here's the first thing I checked just now: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/communi...](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/community/current/index.html#ocaml)

The OCaml client was abandoned 5 years ago. Nim doesn't even appear on the page!

This page says Kotlin Native is still in preview: [https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native- overview.html](https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native-overview.html)

Also, I am not seeing a reason why Go is not a good choice.

<comment><USER5> > Also, I am not seeing a reason why Go is not a good choice.

I think you may have unnecessarily restricted yourself by wanting a language that produces native binaries and is GC'd. There simply _aren't_ that many mature and mainstream languages that compile to native binaries with a GC. I'd personally much prefer a more expressive language with a less robust ecosystem (and a virtual machine), but if an Elastic lib is a hard requirement for you, then I can't argue with your choice of Go.

Or use Haskell. Native binaries, opinionated, decent library ecosystem ;).

<comment><USER4> I am already very familiar with 2 interpreted languages, but not very familiar with any compiled languages. I'm doing the exact opposite of restricting myself.

And it's not just Elasticsearch. That's just one example. I would come up against many other requirements. Here's just one more: [https://nats.io/download](https://nats.io/download)

Edit: And you're right, Haskell is something I should probably look into more. I haven't thought about it too much since I already do a lot of functional programming in JavaScript and I don't hear too much about Haskell being great for creating API servers.

One of my other concerns is that the project I'm planning will be a long-haul, and will have several other developers join in future. I want to have a decent market to choose from. And, being in Australia, it's small enough as it is. I'll shy away from remote workers since it's relating to sensitive healthcare data.

<comment><USER5> > I am already very familiar with 2 interpreted languages, but not very > familiar with any compiled languages. I'm doing the exact opposite of > restricting myself.

Like, no, compiling to machine code is only one class of compilation. All the VM-targetting languages have far more robust ecosystems than Go, with good abstractions, performance and tooling to boot. _Any_ language that targets the CLR or JVM should suffice.

<comment><USER4> >_Any_ language that targets the CLR or JVM should suffice.

That's a very bold thing to say when you don't even know what I'm planning to do with it. Like, NodeJS will "suffice". Why don't I just use that since I'm very experienced with it? Reasons. Why don't I use Java? Reasons.

I feel like this is going nowhere. I'll probably choose Go. Stranger on internet thinks I'm wrong. This is the story whenever the topic of programming languages comes up. Everyone thinks their preference is the one true preference.

<comment><USER5> Yeah look, I do think you're wrong. You've given yourself a very tough set of constraints (has to compile to binaries, has to have a GC, can't be in preview, can't be under v1.0, can't have a slightly unstable API, has to have "good" libs for an arbitrary selection of tech, can't target a VM) that makes Go the only viable option - I'm questioning whether those are legitimate.

I'm not suggesting you use my personal favourite language, merely use anything but Go.

<comment><USER4> _Yeah look, I do think you 're wrong._

I respect your courage in just coming out and saying that.

 _You 've given yourself a very tough set of constraints (has to compile to binaries, has to have a GC, can't be in preview, can't be under v1.0, can't have a slightly unstable API, has to have "good" libs for an arbitrary selection of tech, can't target a VM) that makes Go the only viable option_

Half of that is "I want something stable", which is almost universally appreciated among programmers. The way you've said that makes it sound like I chose Go then decided "I want whatever he's having". No. I have a list of many "nice-to-haves" and Go satisfies more of them than any other language/ecosystem. It's as simple as that. If I was going to settle for 2nd place, I'd probably just use NodeJS. I am extremely productive in NodeJS, and I'm still not 100% sure I won't choose it for this next project.

 _I 'm not suggesting you use my personal favourite language, merely use anything but Go._

Although I find that a strange position to take, I appreciate your honesty.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Long March from Crowdsourcing to a Global Meritocracy - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_long_march_from_crowdsourcing_to_a_global_meri.php

<comment><USER2> I think the closest you can get to this is Mechanical Turk, which works for a large volume of relatively menial tasks and that's about it.

The fundamental issue here is that work is increasingly shifting into knowledge work, and knowledge work requires personal relationships and trust. Even assuming you can somehow bridge the trust and fraud gap to create a viable micropayment system for this work—and that's one overwhelmingly huge if—you still have the problem that the newcomer doesn't understand your company culture and the nuances of how you do business.

The idea that there are people out there who can magically solve your company's problems is horse shit. The few really talented people who would "get it" and hit the ground running probably are already super busy. Otherwise people need time to learn how to do the job. In a startup this is done with (hopefully) a smarter tight-knit team iterating rapidly. In a huge company this is done by policies and procedures laid out over time to allow people to be more interchangeable. But in either case you need long-term personal relationships for the employee to realize their value to the company.

<comment><USER3> _The idea that there are people out there who can magically solve your company's problems is horse shit. The few really talented people who would "get it" and hit the ground running probably are already super busy._

As it becomes easier for people to find work, folks who could have done some work but were never given an opportunity to do so will get those opportunities. Basically the talent pool will expand.

<comment><USER4> _As it becomes easier for people to find work, folks who could have done some work but were never given an opportunity to do so will get those opportunities. Basically the talent pool will expand._

That's an important point. There are people out there who are able to do work, but who can't find a job where they live. This is the case in the Philippines, where there are highly-educated people (I personally know people with engineering degrees who literally cannot find jobs). Giving these people the opportunity to do a few hours of work here and there, especially at competitive rates offered by a global marketplace, will definitely expand the talent pool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are two other significant problems here.

1\. __Job security __. Most people seem to appreciate having a steady source of income. For a company to regularly outsource their jobs to the "smartest person" means that all the other "smart but not smart enough people" are without a job. So long as those other people are still able to find regular employment (i.e., exist within the traditional model), they'll do that, leaving fewer and fewer people available in the crowdsourcing pool.

2\. __Quality of job seekers. __While it's true that in a meritocracy, the best rise to the top, this works best in a fairly small environment. If the entire ecosystem of web developers was required to compete for every single job, and anyone seeking a developer had only the entire ecosystem to look through, finding an "appropriate match" would become far too daunting, and the employers would be forced to reduce the rigor with which they vetted potential employees. This allows weaker candidates to get potentially good jobs. As a result, the more qualified candidates leave, and the meritocracy system is ruined.

<comment><USER6> I think the whole point of the involvement of computers and the internet as fair godmother in their scenario was to handwave away problem 2 through someone else's very hard work at making a very, very good process for automatically vetting potential employees.

<comment><USER7> +1 (incl the right equilibrium strategies)

Ad pt 1: Absolutely agree, but a gradual shift could also have supply/demand adoption curves overlapping quiet neatly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> During startup school Zuckerberg said something along the lines of 'a company is the most efficient way to align a large group of people to solve a problem' and this is going to be the fundamental obstacle to a true crowdsource model.

You need to be able to build up your domain knowledge as a company, not just tap into the knowledge of others temporarily. There is also the 800 lbs gorilla of support which can probably never be effectively solved via a pie- in-the-sky everyone does what they enjoy model. Pursuing your passion is simply not scalable, sure there will be plenty of people that get away with it but it is not feasible to say everyone will be able to. Someone needs to mop the floors, clean the toilets, and answer calls to the help desk.

At the end of the day I agree that freelance will probably become more prevalent and the commoditization of software components will certainly reduce the need for in-house expertise. These forces will bring us closer to the authors vision but the demand for support and in-house knowledge will herd us into monolithic organizations for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think he's essentially correct on the macro trends that will move the world more to this kind of model.

On the specific point on what's holding back a more distributed/networked model of production, I think one obstacle is that labor is not easily "commoditized" in a way that facilitates trade (see <http://crowdresearch.org/chi2011-workshop/papers/horton.pdf> for more on this).

</comment><comment><USER10> I suggest changing that headline, because it's an obscenity.

Mao Zedong committed genocide against China's intelligentsia. The class of people he murdered were part of China's tradition of Confucian meritocracy. The Long March was the military campaign where Mao won power. So that title is about as bad as talking about a Final Solution to the problem of racism.</comment>


Is there a place for fakery in art galleries and museums? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/is-there-a-place-for-fakery-in-art-galleries-and-museums <comment><USER2> The question if video games are art or not has been pretty solved, and the question has moved on to emulation accuracy versus impacting the original experience. It's a very tricky, subjective thing, especially in a medium that is often designed to be mass produced. That's a step further away from movies where a unit is produced for a platform based around a common standard with multiple implementations, but for console games and other fine tuned implementations, it's a tricky question.</comment>


Ask HN: should we create the UK version of the EFF - <AUTHOR>

Many years ago I worked for the national council for civil liberties, (early ninties) and we created an idea called "electronic liberty" to be the UK EFF - it never took off and I moved on.<p>Should we revisit the concept? <comment><USER2> Are you familiar with ORG?

* [http://www.openrightsgroup.org/](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/)

* [https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Main_Page)

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems a bit single issue ?

<comment><USER3> Which issues are you looking for a UK group to cover and campaign on that ORG does not?

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, the site is more relevant than the wikipedia entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am surprised to learn there is none. Isn't that what Open Rights Group is? Even in the Netherlands we have had a digital rights advocacy group (Bits of Freedom [1]) since 2000. Having recently moved to the UK, I think the need for such a group here is much stronger (opt-out internet filters [2], calls from government to no longer make them optional [3] etc.).

[1] [https://www.bof.nl](https://www.bof.nl) [2] [http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2012/new-reports-of- over...](http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2012/new-reports-of-overblocking- on-mobile-networks) [3] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government- cal...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-calls-summit- with-google-microsoft-and-facebook-to-block-terror-and-pornography- sites-8646545.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> the organisation Liberty has been campaigning on 'electronic liberty' issues and warrants our support on that basis, and others [https://www.liberty-human- rights.org.uk/index.php](https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/index.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the old National Council for Civil Liberties. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a comment to track the submission</comment>


Why autonomous and self-driving cars are not the same - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ee/st/autonomousselfdrivingcarsexplainer <comment><USER2> Autonomous cars will no doubt become more common in the next few years. But for self-driving cars to become the norm, a lot of industries will have to be completely changed.

And with the way lobbying works nowadays in the US, I doubt we'll see any changes anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> Wages of truck drives in the USA are well over 100 billion dollars annually. Wages of taxi drivers in the USA total over 4 billion dollars annually.

Cost saving is the reason for the rapid replacement of the human-driven vehicle fleet.

It took only 20 years, 1900-1920, for human-driven automobiles to replace horses - which was a bigger change with regard to infrastructure.</comment></comment>


SKMurphy, Inc. » Where Do Lean Startup Methods Help Most? - <AUTHOR> http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2013/01/03/where-do-lean-startup-methods-help-most/ <comment><USER2> Summary: Emerging markets, Industries that are being disrupted, Companies that have fallen behind the innovation curve.

with examples from Lean Startup 2012 Conference ( <http://www.leanstartup.co> ) presentations.</comment>


DataFrame use Anti-Pattern (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://devanla.com/posts/do-not-create-that-dataframe.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have frequently fallen into this pattern before. I generally saw DataClasses and NamedTuples akin to Structs and thats why C++/Java programmers used them. However, I know see their advantages</comment>


The Ex-Google Hacker Taking on the World's Spy Agencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/07/morgan-marquis-boire-first-look-media/ <comment><USER3> If you've ever heard Morgan's talking about dissassembling malware in Syrian beheading videos it is chilling.

Morgan and Citizen Lab's analysis of malware for sale to governments. [https://citizenlab.org/2014/06/backdoor-hacking-teams- tradec...](https://citizenlab.org/2014/06/backdoor-hacking-teams-tradecraft- android-implant/)

Morgan's talk at 30c3 [https://citizenlab.org/2014/01/morgan-marquis-boires- talk-30...](https://citizenlab.org/2014/01/morgan-marquis-boires-talk-30c3/)

Morgan's talk at RightsCon [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05KkCY7Zgm0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05KkCY7Zgm0)

Blog post of Vietnamese govt malware attacking the EFF. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/vietnamese-malware- get...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/vietnamese-malware-gets- personal)

<comment><USER4> >If you've ever heard Morgan's talking about dissassembling malware in Syrian beheading videos it is chilling.

I am very interested in these kind of talks, but I've seen things on the Internet I'd rather not see again - is it safe to watch?

<comment><USER5> He doesn't play the actual video of it happening. Just the first frame really to make a point. I would say its pretty tame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since I got my PhD (math, with background in CS, startups), the only job inquiry I've made is to First Look. I wish I had an in there. Their job page is rather vague. I realize they're growing quickly.

<comment><USER7> Bump, maybe something is "looking."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finfisher, a stealthy collection of spying tools sold by the British firm Gamma Group that they eventually tracked to _command-and-control servers in 25 countries_.

This is why I always take stories about "attack coming from China" with a huge grain of salt. It should be trivial to make an attack look like it came from a certain country, especially for an agency like NSA that has direct access to _millions_ of computers in China.

<comment><USER9> Would you run a SAAS service, website , etc. from mainland China, even if the hosting was free? Probably not. Between the great firewall of China shutting you down for "maintenance", Carrier Grade NAT blocking your server, etc. etc. it makes no sense.

Personally, I would choose a former USSR country, one with reliable internet access (blame it on the Russians) or Canada, Germany, etc.

Think big picture, your Malware C&C has to have good uptime :), the terrorists don't sleep!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Technical tools aren't enough. Those can also make the situation worse. If people don't receive general security training. Plain tools could be just a trap.

</comment><comment><USER11> bullshit .. there are tons of people with ultra smart than this fame-ass ! people from russia , china are very very smart than this look-at-me i m so ex- google. if you are that smart why you need article and fame ? why do name dropping ( using google for those ass-hats who don't know what name dropping is ) seriously , get a life

</comment><comment><USER12> There seem to have been a lot of 'person profile's on HN recently. Might anyone know if this is a summer, current journalism thing, or just HN's recent preference?

<comment><USER13> HN trends happen regularly. Right now it's profiles, in the past it has been military aircraft, biology, whatever.

It's pretty neat and seems to work well - waves of variety without the segregation of something like subreddits or the chaos of a completely theme- less forum.

Ideally, I'd have a "More like this" button that would identify recent submissions belong to the same topic cluster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just more Google marketing. Trying to win hearts and minds, while like Facebook, profiting off of the sale of user data.

<comment><USER15> Comparing Google with aggressive governments? Last I knew I was not forced to be a user of Google products. Also: Google does not track and arrest/beat up people with other opinions than the rulers.

<comment><USER16> I find it extremely difficult to avoid interacting with Google products: \- a LOT of the web employs google analytics to track you \- very many of my contacts use Gmail, so perhaps the majority of my email ends up on their servers \- Friends take photos of me that are uploaded to Google+ \- My home and car have been captured by the GoogleMaps surveillance van

I agree that it's important to distinguish Google vs. governments. But let's not pretend that you can "opt out" of Google's surveillance on you, even if you aren't using their products.

Edit: Let's also acknowledge that whatever Google collects, the governments have access to.

<comment><USER17> Yes, Google Analytics is on most of the web. Guess what else is? AdSense. Even if a site doesn't have Analytics, if it has AdSense, then most of the same tracking comes into play.

A massive fraction of the web - at least, the websites that get traffic - <USER2> either or both of these built in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Certigrad: bug-free machine learning on stochastic computation graphs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dselsam/certigrad <comment><USER2> I find the appeal of formally proven languages somewhat confusing. All you're doing is moving the bugs from the source code to the specification. (Alternately, you can think of source code as a 'specification' for a compiled program. You still have to transfer the same amount of information to the computer.)

<comment><USER3> > All you're doing is moving the bugs from the source code to the > specification.

The value of doing this can vary, but there are some cases in which the gain is immense and indisputable. Suppose you are writing a compiler optimization. Your source code could be arbitrarily complicated, but your specification is simply "an optimized program always behaves the same as the original".

<comment><USER4> > your specification is simply "an optimized program always behaves the same > as the original"

I wouldn't say it is simple, since it is undecidable for general programs.

<comment><USER5> Daniel's point is that the specification itself is simple, he is saying nothing about the complexity of proving that your program matches the specification.

The decidability of the specification isn't important in this context. It is known there is no procedure to build a proof of this specification for any language or optimization, but as humans we can prove that it holds for a specific configuration of compilers, and optimizations, and have done so many times, for example CompCert, Alive, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems to be a newly hot topic, whether to fight adversarial inputs or looking for efficiencies. I bookmarked a few relevant blogs (but really need to read more deeply)

[http://composition.al/blog/2017/05/31/proving-that-safety- cr...](http://composition.al/blog/2017/05/31/proving-that-safety-critical- neural-networks-do-what-theyre-supposed-to-where-we-are-where-were-going- part-2-of-2/)

[http://www.cleverhans.io/security/privacy/ml/2017/06/14/veri...](http://www.cleverhans.io/security/privacy/ml/2017/06/14/verification.html)

[https://blog.foretellix.com/](https://blog.foretellix.com/)

and another preprint: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.10268](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.10268)

</comment><comment><USER7> Meta to the Certigrad project, for those mystified by the 'lean' programming language, here is a good start: [https://leanprover.github.io/programming_in_lean/programming...](https://leanprover.github.io/programming_in_lean/programming_in_lean.pdf)

<comment><USER2> PDF warning for those of us on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous discussion of the associated paper: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14658832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14658832)

</comment><comment><USER9> > Note: building Certigrad currently takes ~15 minutes and consumes ~7 GB of > memory.

Why does it take so long and use so much memory?

<comment><USER3> Author here.

Building Certigrad involves replaying all tactic scripts in the entire project to reconstruct all of the formal proofs, and then checking each of the formal proof objects in Lean's small trusted kernel. Proving (and checking) the main correctness theorem for stochastic backpropagation is very fast. The vast majority of the time and memory is spent verifying that a specific machine learning model (AEVB) satisfies all the preconditions for backprop. This involves proving several technical conditions, e.g. that various large terms are (uniformly) integrable. We have not experimented much with simplification strategies, and there is probably a lot of room for improvement in bringing these numbers down. It would also be good to provide an option to build the system without reconstructing the proofs; checking the proofs is analogous to running the entire test suite, and most users do not do this for every tool they build.

<comment><USER10> Could this problem have been (partly) avoided by going for an LCF-based prover such as HOL or Isabelle/HOL, rather than a system based on the Curry-Howard correspondence?

<comment><USER3> I do not even know how I would have built Certigrad in Isabelle/HOL in the first place. In my first attempt to build Certigrad, I used a non-dependent type for Tensors (T : Type), and I accumulated so much technical debt that I eventually gave up and started again with a dependent type for tensors (T : Shape -> Type). This was my only major design error in the project, and development went smoothly once I made this change.

<comment><USER10> ITTs like Lean are more expressive as logics than HOL, but I doubt that Certigrad needs even a fraction of HOL's power. So anything you need that you express as types in Lean you should be able to express as theorem in HOL. Presumably that is inconvenient (= technical debt), but why?

<comment><USER11> Tensors are a good example: In a proof you might want to do induction over the dimensions of a tensor. This means your type of tensors needs to contain all tensors of all dimensions. But working on the type of all tensors is not so nice anymore: a lot of algebraic properties do not hold, they only hold for tensors of a specific dimension. An example is the Tensor library in the Deep_Learning AFP entry.

Now in Isabelle most strutures are encoded as type class, but when your type is not anymore in the type class suddenly you need to proof a lot of theorems yourself, and the automation does not work as nice as with type classes. Generally, in HOL provers you want at least that your type at least has nice algebraic properties on the entire type. If this is not the case proofs get much more convoluted. Isabelle's simplifier supports this case using conditional rewrite rules, but it still does not work as nice as using type inference to handle this cases.

In dependent type theorem provers it isn't a problem to proof everything on tensors with a fixed dimension. When a proof requires to do induction on the dimension itself these kind of shape can always constructed in the proof itsefl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Machine learning systems are also difficult to engineer because it can > require substantial expertise in mathematics (e.g. linear algebra, > statistics, multivariate analysis, measure theory, differential geometry, > topology) to even understand what a machine learning algorithm is supposed > to do and why it is thought to do it correctly.

It's like Teen Talk Barbie.</comment>


Google wins a game of "Escape from East Texas," linking Rockstar to Apple - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/google-wins-a-game-of-escape-from-east-texas-linking-rockstar-to-apple/

<comment><USER2> It really is sad when the richest, biggest company in the world defers to a patent trolling entity to do it's dirty deeds. It's also a sad sad commentary on America's broken legislative system that such obvious and blatant abuses of the judicial system (patent trolling in the first place but East-Texas district using the patent litigation system as a local industry) can't be fixed legislatively.</comment>


Sorry I lost your number... - <AUTHOR> http://blog.knok.me/post/34938976321/sorry-i-lost-your-number

<comment><USER2> You can also ask friends to put their contact details on Facebook and share specific details with a limited list. That's what I do. I also use iCloud to sync contacts on my iPhone automatically. I treat people who lose phone numbers even when it is so easy to sync these days as someone I really don't want around. Seriously, it's stupid not to sync this important information. I call that Modern Technology Darwinism. Only the tech savvy will survive the next 100 years. (I am only half joking.)

Android and iPhone also sync using Twitter and Facebook. If you are not syncing you are just lazy or stupid.

As for staying up to date, only old forms of communication don't change smoothly. If we are connected via Facebook or LinkedIn you can always reach me. If my phone # changes, which is not necessary with number porting now, I can still be reached by Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to ask for my #. I see no need for this Knok service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very fair points and I understand where you're coming from. I think this video demo will give you a better understanding of we're trying to do with Knok.Me: <http://youtu.be/lBhzUAD7eJg>

<comment><USER2> I just do not see this working out. What I'd rather use is something like Gravatar for my address book details. People could register their address book details with email addresses, Twitter and Facebook and others could request more details through an API which enforces a privacy policy. I'd manage a whitelist of my contacts who are allowed to access my current address book details with specific access for groups. Like co-workers/colleagues could get my work email, work phone # but not my home address and home #. Having to use yet another app is very unappealing. With an API many of the apps I am using already can use the API, just like Gravatar is used by many apps. This is the way I'd solve this problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can definitely see where you're coming from but I think your solution is too complex. Right now I have a contact list of over 100 friends built up on Knok.Me with all of them maintaining their own contact info. People update their info and new friends join on a weekly basis. Its working for me and my close friends. When we release the mobile app we hope to reach more people. You could be right, but only time can tell. Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> ...this is why i have an android...syncs everyone...always...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes android does keep contacts synced but the problem is that you still never know if you have the most up to the date and relevant information about your contacts. Only you know your contact and social information best. We let users create one profile with all of their contact and social information. So when you can add a contact on knok.me you're sending a request to their profile. The syncing solution is very complex. You're still creating duplicate copies of each contact. It is very unnecessary.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how it works on Android but contact info gets synced on iPhone as well. The problem in the pitch is non-existant because when you upgrade to a new iPhone, you can restore contact data. Alternatively, if you move off the iPhone, the address book keeps a copy on your computer as well.

This is very different than your response here, which is less about losing contact info, more about always having an up to date source. Personally, I can only speak for myself but I don't see this as big of a problem.

I do acknowledge I've seen people post losing contact info (for whatever reason) at least once or twice on my time on facebook but of course thats not representative of how big the space is. However I'm not sure if this problem is big enough of an issue (just my two cents).

<comment><AUTHOR> Very fair arguments. The really big point that I'm trying to make is that you're still keeping records for each everyone your contacts. Let's say you have John Smith in your address book and I'm friends with the same John Smith. I will also have a separate record of John Smith in my address book. People are creating unnecessary duplicate records of their contacts in their native address books. With Knok.Me we're letting people create their one profile that contains contact and social information of theirs. So you're the one who maintains your own contact information for you contacts. So each time someone adds you to their address book they are simply just sending a request to your profile. I would love to get your feedback on the idea. Feel free to shoot me an email if you want to chat more. I love hearing different perspectives on the problem. email@example.com .. I seriously think the address book isn't what it should be in this day and age.

<comment><USER4> Basically, you're creating a cloud base phone book (a much easier way to pitch the idea btw) and simply granting access much like a fb friend request to be able to access that data, and when you have no online access, it sits native to the phone until the next connection for a push update, if any.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes exactly, that's a great way to explain it. I'll note it down. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>