RaptorCS's redemption: the POWER9 machine works - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2019/10/10/RaptorCS-redemption.html <comment> yjftsjthsd-h > However, I refuse to give any company credit for waking up their support > team only when a scathing article about them frontpages on Hacker News. I > told them I wouldn't publish a positive follow-up unless they also convinced > me that the support experience had been fixed for the typical user as well.

You are a gem and I wish more people were like you.

<comment><USER2> A very old, but still key lesson here for product makers: when you know that you're doing new, early-gen work with a kinda reasonably high probability of something faulting - you need to provide stellar, high touch support, whatever it costs. And you need to plan to be ready for that from the point when you ship your first thing.

(I think this applies both to hardware and software products.)

Of course, this is easier said than done, but ultimately this is the core function - are your customers happy or not?

As a CTO you need to prepare the company and your investors for this failure mode. You need to be able to explain to them that sometimes making sure that the product actually works and the existing customers are happy is more important than that sexy new feature of the month. It's not always a very easy balance.

In my experience, even semi-technical people with a more sales/marketing kind of focus in the company often get blindsided by this. It's on us to prep them for this.

It seems like this company learned it the hard way. The key thing is that they did learn.

<comment> tpearson-raptor For what it's worth, we do have a focus on making sure the hardware works properly etc.; I've always been pushing for that and haven't had any real problems there.

This particular board was a test escape. A very unique, thankfully singular (so far as I know) test escape, but there's always a chance for that -- the larger failure in my mind was the breakdown in the support process. With our new controls in place (including rapid escalation / RMA of "odd" faults observed by customer) I am confident this won't happen again.

And yes, we're updating tests to catch the newly discovered failure mode. It's an interesting one, the board is a sort of a "zombie" in that if you boot it up by looking at it just right, it'll run stably and pass our stress tests, but it should never have left our factory in that condition due to the other faults. Full stop. :)

<comment><USER3> That particular horror story led me to _not_ equip our development team with a dozen POWER9 machines, which is a pity, because the combination of almost- total trustworthiness and enormous firepower was extremely attractive for our particular niche (plus, I used to hand-code PPC64 AltiVec "velocity engine" code for HFT funds back when Apple sold G5 Xserves).

I'm glad to hear that it was a one-off and that you have revised your support strategy, but... really, it made for a pretty frustrating read. It's not chump change, and going out on that kind of a limb on... trust... which was clearly unwarranted at least at the time of that initial incident.

There's nothing more frustrating than paying top dollar for something exotic and then being stonewalled by oblivious "tech support" when things don't work as advertised, particularly when something is sufficiently novel or unusual that relatively few other users are out there to proffer help and the potential points of failure are plentiful and "unknown unknowns".

As far as I'm concerned, that incident was extremely bad publicity. That board could've been shipped to me. I'd have been left to dangle from my solitary rope and squirm when management asked me what was going on.

That's just not acceptable, sadly.

<comment><USER2> If I were you I'd be a lot more comfortable pulling the trigger after reading all of this.

Being worried over what _might have been_ spoilt milk if you had gotten a broken board _in the past_ seems counterproductive.

<comment><USER3> The new machines I eventually decided to go with were ordered more than a week ago.

<comment> tpearson-raptor Sorry to hear that. If you ever get tired of worrying about untrustworthy firmware phoning home, DRM, etc., please consider us for the replacement purchase? ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original issue thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21049093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21049093)

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope this means some future work on Wayland performance on ppc64le or at least on 2D only is coming. My GPU-less 4-core Blackbird was unusable in Wayland with the basic BMC graphics (whereas it is quite sprightly in X.org on the same version of Fedora and with the exact same hardware loadout). I'll be honest and say I'm a Wayland skeptic generally for reasons I won't derail this post with, but I'm resigned to it probably being the future, and I would like to see it do better.

<comment><USER6> Which compositor are you using? If you don't have a GPU you'll want one with software rendering support. Using a software OpenGL implementation like llvmpipe will work but will be very slow.

We don't support this yet in wlroots, but it's definitely something we want to add, and not a limitation of the Wayland protocol at all.

<comment><USER5> It was whatever was out of the box with Fedora 30 and GNOME (I guess gnome- shell itself?), and indeed was very slow with llvmpipe. I look forward to the future work on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like these machines. Unfortunately, I'm in Europe, where they seem to be harder (or riskier) to get hold of. I suppose I should also try to think of something reasonable to do with them, given their cost...

<comment><USER8> Fellow EU here: I was curious too, but the high cost + the insane import duty + risk of return. I'm 99% sure if I RMA'd it like OP did, the local customs would somehow not understand that it's a replacement/repair and sting me for the import duty once more :(

<comment><USER9> This is the main reason I didn't buy one.

<comment><USER8> Worth noting that I actually feel quite bad about this, I _really_ wanted to try one out, and vote with my wallet in favour of more open hardware, an alternative architecture and to support a smaller company like Raptor. I eagerly followed all the news around Raptor (both here on HN, lobste.rs and elsewhere) and read all the guy "ClassicHasClass"'s blogs @ talospace.com - but in the end I unfortunately can't justify to myself the expense (when I spec out a modest Blackbird system it consumes the better part of a month's salary, I've recently bought my first flat and I sense a recession around the corner...). That actually makes me feel a bit hypocritical and part of the "problem", but maybe I'm not actually the target market.

<comment> tpearson-raptor Anyone wanting control of a powerful modern computer is part of the target market. We just haven't been able to drive the price down further at this time -- doing hardware design around fully open source firmware is _hard_ and a lot of the typical shortcuts to lower costs (including the always-concerning "post-sale monetization" concepts) simply aren't something we find acceptable on any level.

Basically, it doesn't do anyone any good for us to lower cost by giving up the full owner control experience that is centric to our product lines. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > I have christened it "flandre"3, which I think is fitting.

Youmu Konpaku is best character. Just gotta love the sword-characters in a bullet-game. Although Flandre was an "extra" endgame boss character, never actually playable IIRC. Really good music for her stage though.

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

Glad to hear everything is working out for your machine. One thing I'm curious about:

> Installation was a breeze, it compiles the kernel on 32 cores from spinning > rust in 4m15s

Is that 8-core / 32-thread CPU? I don't think there's actually a 32-real core CPU available from them. If so, I think that's an impressive speed for 8-real cores.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I meant threads. Thanks for catching that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Source hut build slave for ppc64? Groundbreaking!

<comment><USER13> To ask the dumb question, what is source hut? It looks essentially like Gitlab to me.

<comment><USER14> It can do the same tasks like Gitlab (Git hosting, issue tracking, CI and more) but it does it in a different way that is more similar to the workflow of the Linux kernel and other big open source projects.

For example instead of pull requests, you have mailing lists in which you send patches. You can see more in the website of Sourcehut: [https://sourcehut.org](https://sourcehut.org)

<comment><USER13> Ahh, makes sense. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > I am quite impressed with it so far. Installation was a breeze, it compiles > the kernel on 32 cores from spinning rust in 4m15s

Does anyone know how this compares to a recent x86 machine? This seems quite fast for the entire kernel, but I have no idea what typical build times are like.

<comment><USER16> The trick is far fewer modules and compile time options.

A fun benchmark would be a Power9 Vs a X86_64 cross compiling the same ARM64 kernel. I wouldn't bet heavily on the Power9...

<comment> tpearson-raptor I might take that bet core for core, matched node size (i.e. 14nm), run out of tmpfs or NVMe storage, and with both systems protected against Spectre, Meltdown etc. (i.e. no cheating by ignoring the ISA specifications)...

Slightly OT, but if you limit the playing field to open ISA / fully owner controlled systems, POWER9 is so far out front in terms of performance that it looks like an outlier. ;)

<comment><USER17> > both systems protected against Spectre, Meltdown etc. (i.e. no cheating by > ignoring the ISA specifications)

Does the x86 specification say "speculation will have no observable side effects on the memory subsytem"? I wasn't aware of that. In other words, Spectre/Meltdown are bad security flaws, but I don't think they're the result of cheating.

<comment><USER18> Meltdown is absolutely cheating as it speculates through permission boundaries. I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise in good faith, especially considering that it was only Intel and IBM effected. AMD and SPARC were immune, and the extent of ARM's vulnerability was a single register, which seems like a bug, not reflective of an architectural design decision.

You can't design your software to protect against Meltdown, which makes the ISA guarantees useless. Whereas Spectre-type side channels can be mitigated through software, which is what cryptographic algorithm implementations have been doing for years.

There's far more room for debate regarding culpability for Spectre class attacks, though it's pretty clear that Intel deliberately pushed the envelope in ways that AMD and ARM weren't prepared to do.

<comment><USER17> Again, I don't see that as cheating or violating a spec (or at least any guarantee made by Intel about x86(-64) behavior that I know of). I would assume that speculation can do just about anything (access protected memory, run illegal/protected instructions, etc), as long as any effects aren't committed to architectural state until the speculated path retires. The existence of side channels (timing information of subsequent memory accesses) for retrieving information from speculative execution paths is a different issue. Perhaps it was naive of the architects to assume this wouldn't have any consequences beyond improving performance, but I don't know what spec it is supposed to violate.

<comment><USER18> What's the point of protected memory, _especially_ when using VM extensions, and _particularly_ with regards to SGX, if the architecture is implemented in such a way that unprivileged software can read the entire contents of memory and there's no way for software, either the kernel or the processing software, to prevent it? You can make a tortured, pedantic argument defending Intel if we disregard VM-x and SGX, that memory protection was originally intended only to prevent data corruption, not confidentiality, but at the end of the day all such an argument does is emphasize the deliberate choices Intel made to sacrifice confidentiality for performance. And those choices are all the more unforgivable considering Intel's primary motivation for taking these performance short cuts were to expand into and secure their dominance of the VM and cloud hosting market; a market _predicated_ on the ability of their architecture having the nominal capability to ensure data confidentiality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Check out the Jawbone UP, inside and out - <AUTHOR> https://sketchfab.com/show/ha7bDuCFcT085bHvl5mOb5GfYiP

<comment><USER2> Looks stunning.</comment>


Kotlin meets Gradle - <AUTHOR> https://gradle.org/blog/kotlin-meets-gradle/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just finished porting a very non-standard and highly customized Ant setup to Gradle, and the thought of now potentially rewriting the Groovy implementation in Kotlin isn't making me jump for joy.

(No, rewriting wouldn't be strictly necessary as Groovy will still be supported per the article. But for how long?)

However, when working with Gradle I do acutely feel the pain that is the lack of IDE support for Groovy, so perhaps this will be a worthwhile move in the long run.

<comment><USER2> The article does say:

> You'll find that, suddenly, the things you usually expect from your IDE just > work

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a video on the talk from Kotlin Night: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gmanjWNZ8E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gmanjWNZ8E)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note also, from the JetBrains side: [http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2016/05/gradle-meets- kotlin...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2016/05/gradle-meets-kotlin/)</comment>


Crazy at the wheel: psychopathic CEOs are rife in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/15/silicon-valley-psychopath-ceo-sxsw-panel <comment><USER2> Clickbait article that attempts to use psychological terminology and generalized this / performs mass diagnosis to make you feel better about your job by demonizing your CEO.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Came here to say this. Furthermore if psychology had any predictive power at all, a charge such as this might under certain circumstances bear some meaning. Instead, it is rife with 'stories' and tautologies. Numerous mass murderers have been under psychiatric evaluation and were not flagged as a danger. This is a catastrophic, first order failure.

The entire field makes economics look rigorous.

<comment><USER2> I don't have an issue with psychology. I have an issue with people without qualifications diagnosing people and demonization. It really hurts people with psychological disorders by generating stigma and negative connotations .

<comment><USER4> I think its fair to demonize sociopaths. The stigma is deserved.

<comment><USER5> Why? I never understood the need to demonize sociopathy. They're not hurting anyone by the sole fact that they are a sociopath.

<comment><USER6> But they will and do, if put in a position of power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's tough to read this article because it's trying to support a particular point, and not really exploring an idea. Like all psychological diagnoses, psychopathy is a set of traits/behaviors that are on a scale between "all people some of the time" and "some people all of the time".

So if you skip the article's agenda, and explore the idea, it's kind of interesting. Psycopathic traits are "persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, egotistical traits." (thanks wikipedia)

It isn't surprising at all that successful CEOs exhibit some of those traits more than most people. I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse", even if those feelings are temporary. Firing people is terrible, and if _I_ felt the full weight of that horribleness while it was happening I'd never be able to do it.

And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all.

What's more interesting than recognizing these, though, is the difference in how they're applied. Execs who are decent people and execs who aren't apply them differently (and decent people who aren't capable of being CEOs might not apply them at all).

I've spent a lot of time worried about my own traits. Am I decent person if I can fire people? Am I a decent person if I can't work for someone else? Am I a decent person if I'm so worried about my own work-happiness that I risk my family's well being by quitting objectively good jobs? Hopefully!

<comment><USER8> > I'm not sure you could fire people without "impaired empathy and remorse"

I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with. I make tough decisions everyday. Heck, disciplining my kid is a lot tougher emotionally and no one expects you to be some super tough person to do it, every parent has to be able to pull it off.

>And yeah, "bold, disinhibited, egotistical" traits are almost required to run a company at all.

Those are meaningless psych buzzwords. I want to run my own company and I'm driven by certain ideas, goals, and ideals. I'm fairly low ego and not horribly bold, like most introverted techies. The idea of holding up guys like Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison as perfect CEOs because they act like sociopaths is fairly ridiculous. You don't need to be a huge asshole to get ahead or to be successful. I think the idea that we should praise sociopathy as leadership skills is a fairly toxic attitude that reflects an internalized anti-worker bias.

<comment><USER7> > I have and I'm no sociopath. I think its easy to justify firings if you have > a mature and adult attitude towards work. People perform a fireable offense > and they're out the door. If you're experienced and honest with what it > takes to run a business, this stuff isn't that horrible to deal with.

That's best case firing. Firing for performance is much harder, in my experience. Justification for that is never 100% for me, because performance failures are almost always my failure somewhere along the way (because I hired badly, or set bad expectations, or didn't help someone enough).

<comment><USER9> Think of it from the perspective of the other employees on your team. In most cases the person being let go for performance reasons is a drag for them to work with.

Plus, even for the employee being let go, it's usually better for that to happen sooner rather than later so they can more quickly move on.

Not firing someone who isn't a good fit is just avoiding your own discomfort (letting the person go) while forcing other people to suffer. It's actually the less empathetic, more psychopathic thing to do.

<comment><USER7> Oh I agree. I just don't think understanding that something is logically best for a group of people is why I can do a hard thing. I'm fairly sure there's a part of my brain that lets me act against my empathy for an individual at times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You don't have to be a psychopath to be a CEO, but it does provide a competitive advantage.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Hancock has developed software to analyse the social media posts of public figures to see how they rate on the psychopathy scale thanks to identifiers in written language. 'There tends to be an emotion deficit, they tend to use few words related to anxiety but a lot of hostile language,' he said, adding that they write in a way that's disfluent and difficult to understand."

I find it impossible to believe that this has any degree of accuracy.

<comment><USER12> Agreed but if they started posting results people would then believe in its accuracy in proportion to the hatred they have of the public figures identified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure why the story is picking on Silicon Valley in particular. Putting aside the anecdotes from an SXSW discussion panel, the only study cited in the article was more broadly covering "high-level executives in a corporate environment". There was no explanation for why SV would have "weak HR departments and investors" compared to other industries. Is this what passes for journalism these days?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is what a pseudoscientist looks like (self-described forensic and clinical psychologist quoted in article): [http://www.kelownapsychologists.com/our-professionals/dr- mic...](http://www.kelownapsychologists.com/our-professionals/dr-michael- woodworth/)

</comment><comment><USER15> This sounds like an "article" meant to shoe-horn into uber.

The ceos I knew were highly smart and extremely driven

</comment><comment><USER16> I was returning videotapes.

<comment><USER17> Sure you were, Marcus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Read a theory or something once.. that Sociopath's are likely to do one of two things -- go on a murdering spree, or become a CEO.

<comment><USER19> Maybe becoming a CEO is the most productive/net positive role for someone with such a disorder.

<comment><USER4> ...or the place they can hide and do the most lifetime damage to society. E.g. instead of going on a killing spree and being detected/arrested at a young age, they can produce pollution for profit and injure millions over decades.

<comment><USER20> > ...or the place they can hide and do the most lifetime damage to society.

Most sociopaths aren't that calculating. They don't sit there and think "How will I inflict structural damage to society tonight?". Sociopaths just want to get their rocks off (not necessarily in a sexual way), and they don't care who they have to hurt to do so. Your average sociopath is more impulsive than anything else.

<comment><USER4> 'Profit/bonus at any cost' is a reasonable sociopath goal. It can result in decades of environmental trashing, coverups of carcinogenic product, abuse of employees and customers for wholly profit-motivated reasons. We've seen all this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is interesting that companies and their leaders are analyzed in this manner while the government and civil servants aren't.

<comment><USER22> I believe if you read the article again you'll see it mentions presidents as well as CEOs.

As for civil servants - what evidence can offer to support the suggestion that civil servants (and I presume you mean public employees of all kinds, including those in agencies like NASA and NOAA) are more likely to be sociopaths than ordinary people?</comment></comment>


Qim: Select from Your Immutable JavaScript Cake and Update It Symmetrically Too - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/engineering/qim-immutable-javascript/ <comment><USER2> I couldn't get through this article, even though the title sounds interesting. I don't like the kind of blog post that tries to explain technical concepts as a conversation. It seems that it is often used as a way to make the concept more approachable, and also to insert some cute humor. But I find that it just obscures the information and I have trouble following the narrative because I usually try to speed read (skim) these things. Another example is the "Lawsplainer" articles on Popehat.

I'm willing to admit that this just might be a matter of taste or habit. But, in my humble opinion, technical writing is an art that was just about perfected in K&R. Technical data is organized in a way that matches the subject matter, and the narrative follows the information without superfluous discussion. Off the top of my head, Armin Ronacher's (creator of Flask) has put out some articles that I find to be very informative and also easy to read quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> The README is a lot more matter-of-fact if that's your taste: [https://github.com/jdeal/qim](https://github.com/jdeal/qim). I tried to have a bit more fun with the blog post and avoid simply rewriting the docs.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Responding to NSA spying with a simple consumer VPN service - <AUTHOR>

The NSA metadata gathering and passive monitoring is quite upsetting, and we don't have much confidence in legal changes happening quickly, so we put together a really simple consumer VPN service. We're still cleaning up the UI and making the install process easier, but it should work for people now.
Yes, it's based in the US, but there's a big difference between "will turn over data proactively" and "will push back on requests to the fullest extent of the law". Since we don't fall under CALEA, there's no requirement for us to have any monitoring infrastructure.
We're focusing on the mobile experience for iOS and Android -- the best combination of platform security but also difficult to "roll your own" service.
Would greatly appreciate HN's feedback on concept and implementation; still under active development.  Posting some free signup codes in the comments to try it out.
https://privacy.cryptoseal.com/ <comment><USER2> The Biggest problem I have found with VPN providers is bandwidth. I just installed DD-WRT on my router to use OpenVPN client on the router, the bandwidth speed drops to a level that makes the setup totally useless.

It might be because of consumer grade router[1] have low computing power, but the speed is so low that I highly doubt it. Yes I have tried multiple VPN providers.

I have yet to find a VPN provider that can provide all of the following:

\- Guarantee Bandwidth

\- Take Privacy Seriously[2]

\- Support consumer grade router (with DD-WRT or alternative)

\- Do not cost more than my actual internet connection

[1] ASUS RT-N16

[2] [http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your- anonymit...](http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymity- seriously-2013-edition-130302/)

<comment><USER3> I'm sure there are many legit VPN provider out of there, which really care about the user and provide some hardware/bandwidth, but most are oversold services (barely scam) with very high price for what they offer. I think the solution is a self-made VPN out of a VPS. VPS nowadays are really cheap, and you can get awesome deals with some very serious providers. Also, you can easily get one outside the USA, for (in my opinion at least) increased security.

For anyone interessed, [https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn- install](https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install) makes installing OpenVPN a breeze. For VPS deals, [http://www.lowendbox.com/](http://www.lowendbox.com/) and [http://vpsboard.com/](http://vpsboard.com/).

<comment><USER4> Absolutely agree. For those who have trouble setting up OpenVPN (it's a pain in the ass) and want a simple solution, sshuttle works really, really well:

[https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle](https://github.com/apenwarr/sshuttle)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For the tech details: it's OpenVPN, PPTP, or L2TP, your choice. Yes, PPTP and L2TP have "issues", but they're currently the easiest way to get a VPN on iOS without a custom client.

<comment><USER5> These "issues" are critical in thwarting PRISM. More security snake oil.

<comment><USER6> If enough people make it difficult enough to beat those implementation "issues" then you still have security in the aggregate.

The Soviet soldier was almost always outclassed on a 1:1 basis by the German soldier in WWII, but the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe combined still were unable to defeat the U.S.S.R.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure how this is at all relevant to the NSA spying - the NSA are gathering details from content providers (like Facebook, Google, Skype), so if you use the VPN to access any of them you are still at risk, or if you communicate using with anyone using one of those services.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the whole solution, but the vast majority of NSA spying is passive "over the wire" stuff. We _know_ they do that, pervasively, and even more, we know foreign countries do that (and filtering, and in some cases lots of fun tampering) on connections (e.g. Great Firewall of China). NSA has been doing passive intercept since inception in the 1940s.

PRISM is somewhat ambiguous -- maybe it's a huge secret program where they get blanket access to big sites directly, maybe it's just a UI layer for managing subpoena or warrant results.

Protecting your metadata is one thing where a VPN works pretty well. There are still some more advanced attacks (looking at the encrypted traffic flows on lightly loaded links, you can infer what site/activity one is doing, even without decrypting, unless you pad all communications).

<comment><USER8> If the NSA is actually doing widespread monitoring/collection of backbone traffic will a VPN actually help at all? End-to-end encryption seems like right solution.

EDIT: nevermind, VPNs do offer obfuscation of "metadata", i.e. your IP address, which I guess is what you were saying.

I wonder if you could create a VPN/Tor-like network that automatically picks "exit nodes" closest to the destination to avoid taps... (or even better, avoiding known tapped routes)

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually do some pretty interesting internal routing for that, but only have 4 geo locations so far. Adding more, and adding some "unique" security features in the future, but wanted to get something out there now. Doing "cross border" that way is probably the most meaningful, assuming many countries set up their monitoring on international links. Being aggregated inside a VPN service helps a lot there.

End to end is mostly the right solution, but I'd like to see message/object based encryption (conf and signing) rather than just transport encryption, too.

(other metadata includes DNS resolution, and of course all the other protocols and things which aren't encrypted -- it's not JUST an issue of hiding your IP)

<comment><USER8> So it's possible different hosts will see different IPs for me depending on where they are in the network relative to your locations?

<comment><USER9> Yep! Ideally you don't want to use different IPs while visiting the same site because they'll likely block your account, but for sites on different sides of the globe, this is going to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing the NSA fiasco has done is made people aware of the security and privacy issues on the internet and it's a great time to launch a service like this. Hopefully we will have most of the internet users using VPN (and hopefully Tor).

I also love the fact that they have servers outside of the US, makes it a little bit harder for the US government to spy on you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we love Tor, and are looking at ways to help Tor and make Tor more robust and easier to use as well.

It would be ironic if the NSA fiasco ended up accomplishing half of the NSA's mission (protecting domestic networks) by getting everyone to improve security and encrypt-by-default, at the cost of making the NSA's SIGINT mission vastly more difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Coupon codes: hn50hnaeS6SaeR is 50% off for HN.

<comment><USER11> What's the difference between you and eg. [http://unblockvpn.com/](http://unblockvpn.com/) who offer easy VPN access for less than $5 a month?

Or how is your product easier to use?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are ~hundreds (thousands?) of VPN providers worldwide. I've seen as low as $1-3/mo -- and some which are ad sponsored and free. I haven't used them all, so I'm not sure of the specific advantages and disadvantages of each.

We have some differentiating security features vs. all existing VPN systems coming; this is just a show hn to get feedback.

We've mainly worked on the corp VPN as a service (which does internal monitoring/filtering/IDS/etc.), but at $100/mo, it's not really an option for consumers. Due to all the NSA stuff, people were asking for a consumer option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I intend absolutely no offense here. I love seeing HN projects posted here. _But..._

One of the major issues that has been raised recently is, essentially, trust. Especially in the market that you'd be targeting -- individuals that no longer trust various online services.

You can say that you will fight requests as much as possible under law, but how is that different from what Google, Facebook, and others claim to do?

The NYTimes just published an article claiming that Skype was backdoored by the NSA in cooperation with a small team of Skype developers, in secret, back in 2011. For the sort of people that are concerned by that sort of news, how are you going to convince them that you're different?

<comment><USER13> This exchange may provide some insight... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5914546)

<comment><USER12> Thanks. I was also alluding to the service being compromised in the future though. i.e., whether or not they've come up with something new, above and beyond the usual assurances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the items I'm going to be most interested in from your service (when the time comes for you guys to start working on it) will be the TOS and/or practices you put in place.

I've been a ViprVPN customer before. I had a question or perhaps it was an issue I called them about and the person I was communicating with told me what VPN server I last connected to and when I connected. Sure, to do any kind of troubleshooting, this would have been necessary and important information. But I was concerned enough about the unsolicited disclosure that I cancelled the service immediately.

DuckDuckGo can claim a reasonably high interest in protecting my privacy because they simply do not collect data that the big search engine does. Collecting and storing this data would make them a target for undisclosed, unchallengeable, and unwarranted surveillance. This has enormous appeal to me.

Having said that, have you guys discussed (loosely) what data you will be collecting?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our goal for the privacy service is to collect as little as possible. (the corp service is totally separate tech and infrastructure and has user- configurable logging). We're trying to figure out what the absolute minimum is. We're also looking at Bitcoin and other forms of payment.

For a $5-10/mo VPN, we're probably going to handle most problems by "open a new account, here's a service credit", so we don't actually need to debug much. We have a vested interest in collecting the minimum information possible so there's no point in subpoenaing it from us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for making this viable for noobs like me.

<comment><USER15> There are already plenty of equally viable options for cheaper. I hear good things about [https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client- support/](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/) , and it is about 1/3rd the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Howdy, CryptoSeal guys. It was great grabbing a beer with you in SFO earlier this year and talking about the VPN space. GetCloak.com continues to go well. I didn't realize you were heading in the consumer direction. We should probably catch up again someday soon! ;-)

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the idea of more VPN providers coming online. One thing that may be helpful is to differentiate yourselves from the other VPN providers. For example, I have a VPN provider. Should I switch to cryptoseal.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly if you're happy with your VPN provider right now, it's probably not worth switching yet. We try to do the baseline VPN service as well as possible (performance, support, etc.), but it's not _that_ different from other providers, so please consider us if you're not happy with the current provider, but otherwise you're probably just as well served with whatever you're using now, for now.

We're working on some things which will make it compelling to switch. We put it up now because a lot of people don't have VPNs today -- so hopefully adding another provider convinces some additional people they could use a VPN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Without having visited your URL, or read your TOS, or evaluated your service for ease of use / viability, I will tell you right now that I would gladly pay a cost equivalent to what I pay monthly for broadband for a VPN service that's reliable and can protect 100% of my Internet traffic in transit. (Exit point, destination points are a whole 'nother animal.)

<comment><AUTHOR> So, since you sound like a somewhat higher end user:

1) What platforms do you care about? Do you mainly need service from one fixed location, or from home/office network plus mobile?

2) How close does it need to get to the endpoints? We have 4 exit nodes right now; we'd probably need ~50+ to be very close to most services. There's still a portion which is "in the clear" (although, use https...), but it becomes very impractical for NSA or especially others to passively tap all those locations (since they wouldn't be IXes necessarily, and intra-colo links don't get routed through buildings like ATT 611 Folsom St.

<comment><USER13> There are 3 platforms I care about, Windows, Android, and Linux.

For the last 2 weeks I've been taking actions that attempt to pull-back my public footprint and re-exert control over my privacy (admittedly illusory) to a point where I feel more comfortable. One of the biggest "oh crap" moments was when I realized my phone is powered by software derived from a Google product.

Windows desktop should be straight forward enough to connect.

Personal Linux server farm with services that are open to the general Internet, but for outbound traffic not related to something I serve, my servers are at the mercy of the security of the feed I have.

As far as how close it has to be to an exit, I'm completely indifferent. There are trade-offs that I'm willing to accept (in some cases, extreme) as I record over 20 years of habitual internet behavior.

<comment><USER18> If you have a Galaxy Nexus S or similar you could try the FirefoxOS image, the base Linux system on there is quite simple and everything seems to be available in Github. Of course you still have the baseband to worry about, but apart from a few OMAP850s you're going to have a hard time getting away from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do you do ANY kind of logging?

<comment><AUTHOR> We do logging on our web server, obviously the support ticket system, our mail server, coupon code redemption, etc. Billing with Stripe -- presumably they keep records for a long time. We don't see your CC, but are notified of payment, etc. (which is why Bitcoin is very attractive to add, and maybe other systems.)

The privacy VPN itself currently does zero logging. The best practices seem to be either zero logging or very short retention logging. We'll commit to one of those (but most likely zero logging) soon (working on a very clear and plain language ToS). All the stuff we'd handle with logging is instead done by going out to top-500 sites (or anything reported to us as not working), rather than monitoring use.

We don't currently do "anonymization" so web browsing can be an issue. We're looking at that with some kind of opt-in proxy.

<comment><USER19> > We don't currently do "anonymization" so web browsing can be an issue.

What does that mean exactly?

<comment><USER9> Browsers leak information. Profusely.

We have looked at various ways to solve this, but generally the easiest thing breaks a bunch of other "stuff". We'd like to not break stuff, but still be private. We have a couple strategies but haven't deployed them yet.

<comment><USER19> We are talking about a VPN here aren't we? Won't anything the browser "leaks" go down the same pipe and get spat out your end? Assuming your using In Cognito and connecting to TLS websites...I can't imagine how there could still be a significant privacy risk.

<comment><USER20> He means that the browser leaks information to the website that it is connecting to. More info:

[https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser- uniqueness.pdf](https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Payment is by Stripe, how long are records of the transaction kept by yourselves? Are you associating a card transaction to an IP address in any way that could result in you ever having to release that data?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're adding other, more anonymous payment options, which is probably the best solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Where are the VPN servers located geographically? It might be wise to include where your servers are located - and perhaps even a test IP address that users can use for latency / packet loss testing.

<comment><AUTHOR> US-West, US-Central, US-East, UK right now. Adding some more in Europe and Asia ASAP.

A (current and historical) performance monitor, uptime monitor is a great idea.

<comment><USER23> When will the Sealand node come online?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since it's ethernet-distance to the UK node, ... (after I left, HavenCo ran servers out of London Telehouse for a long time claiming they were "on Sealand". It was lulz when the place caught on fire and everything was unaffected. Previously, we had 4xE1 running from border routers at Telehouse back to shore near Sealand and then a microwave link, but I guess they figured this was cheaper and more reliable and no one would check... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> you broke #1 rule of the internet: "Logo in header must point to the homepage."

<comment><AUTHOR> At least the text next to it does, but will fix -- the traditional error is "blog header links back to blog vs. corp site" which we've solved for now (by not having a blog).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> For the noobs, what's the difference in OpenVPN between UDP and TCP?

<comment><AUTHOR> UDP will give you better performance. TCP will work better in pathologically bad network conditions (either some kind of firewall, or some specific kinds of network loss).

The issue is that "TCP in TCP" can lead to weird interactions where you delay one packet, wait for retransmit, etc., and essentially a single packet lost can eat up a second or two.

In general I'd always try UDP, and if it doesn't work, fall back to TCP.

They're equivalent security -- it's just network performance.

<comment><USER25> Thanks! Good to know. Service worked flawlessly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How about one of those tryout codes?</comment>


Ask HN: Customer facing API, how would you do it? - <AUTHOR>

We are a website monitoring company http://www.verelo.com and we're just starting to look at getting together our public API. We want people to LOVE it, not just "put up with it". Nothing makes me sad like an API that isn't practical...
We already have an internal API used by our app and all the monitoring nodes. Having created this internal API has been great, it adds a nice layer of abstraction and taught us a lot about the creation of API's which are used at scale (many thousands of requests per minute, maybe even per second by now, go through our internal API). Its written in PHP (shock, horror!!) but has done quiet well by us and I think it will live on for a while to come.
We plan to make a REST based API that responds in json....but nothing is in stone until we get more feedback.
Here are some questions to try frame the responses, but feel free to deviate...we're just looking for honest feedback.
1. Whats the one big thing you would suggest we consider when making this API?
2. What is the one big thing you would suggest we don't do?
3. Do you have any examples of API's you like or don't like to work with today? Why do you like or not like them?
4. Are there any frameworks etc you suggest we look at (We're only using PHP & Java today so i would like to avoid introducing a new language)?
Functions we plan to expose initially will do the following:
- Create a monitor
- Delete a monitor
- Edit a monitor
- Get recent results within a time period, and optionally of a certain type (possible types are pass,fail)
- Pause a monitor
- Un-pause a monitor
- Get a list of all monitors (and return some associated details of each) <comment><AUTHOR> To answer these questions ourselves:

1\. We plan to include the documentation for the API at the root of the API i.e. <https://api.verelo.com> will serve up the API spec.

2\. One thing that I want to ensure we avoid is simply having return values that are not explained anywhere in the documentation, Facebook drives me nuts for this reason.

3\. The main API i've worked with recently has been Facebook. I love how much info it exposes, but i hate how much it changes and the lack of documentation. There are also a bunch of surprise functions in there, very frustrating.

4\. We use a lot of Zend functions today, the Zend framework is my initial thought...</comment>


Dealing With (Not Dealing With) the Open Source Assholes (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://harthur.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/dealing-with-not-dealing-with-the-open-source-assholes/

<comment><USER2> The JS community in particular seems to be pretty bad to deal, my guess is because of its relative youth (as in the age of your average JS dev). Also if you've worked for any amount of time in JS, and inherited another person's code, more likely than not you've torn your hair out trying to untangle someone else's spaghetti. This leads to disproportionately negative responses to _any_ code that looks "less than good".

Not excuses, just hopefully helpful insight

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't one post on this enough?

<comment><USER4> I presume you noticed but this one was from 2011.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps what's meant is one submission is enough. For some reason, it's not enough for the first post, the assorted apologies, and then inevitable commentary to be on the front page. Somebody needs to submit all the greatest hits from each party's back catalog.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for articulating that - it's pretty much what I meant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


We are hiring smart data engineers - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I work for a cool startup in San Francisco, and we're hiring for a variety of engineers. Most immediately, we're looking for someone we've been calling a "data engineer". The job is involved, the company is awesome, the people are smart, motivated, and fun, and the location rocks.
I'd give you a URL for the company, but the project we're hiring for has no public info on the Web yet. Basically, we're in the private company intelligence space. This involves collecting, storing, and processing some interesting data. Below is the public job posting, but if anyone has any questions, I'd love to answer questions about the company, the job, the perks, etc.
To apply, send a short note about yourself, and your resume, to the work email listed in my profile.
----
Your Attitude:
Data geek. Be excited about opportunities to discover, collect, and structure some of the world's most important information
Detail oriented. You are pedantic about details and rigorous in your pursuit of perfection with a clear eye for process.
Technical whiz. You understand the different ways data can be stored, accessed, and analyzed.  And you have the scripting skills to use it for creative and innovative products.
Experience. You have experience working with large datasets and text mining.
Naturally curious. You want to know everything there is to know about new and innovative companies.
You will be:
Confident in designing, building, managing, and owning a growing and complex database. Your past experience should reflect success with something similar.
Taking large heterogeneous datasets to deliver clean, synthesized streams of data into the world's largest database of early stage private companies.
Extracting insights from datasets using statistical / machine learning tools such as R, Weka, or using parallel transformation and processing techniques such as Map-Reduce.
Combining multiple sources of data from APIs, RSS feeds, and human input into a single, structured data store while dealing with issues of duplication, cross-referencing, relational structure, and non-relational/denormalized storage.
Developing processes to monitor and ensure data integrity.
Capturing data from human analysts and implementing QA processes.
Working with cross-functional teams, analysts, mathematicians, and engineers on projects including text mining, structuring data, and extracting entities.
Excited to find creative new ways to gain insights and information from a range of sources.
Technologies you know and love:
APIs: ReST, XML-RPC, SOAP.
Dynamic languages such as PHP, Ruby, Python; and R.
MySQL/PostgreSQL, document-based stores such as MongoDB or CouchDB, and key-value stores (Memcached, Redis); their distinct advantages, disadvantages, and trade-offs
Column-oriented stores (HBase, Cassandra), graph-oriented stores.
----
Thanks! <comment><USER2> GD. Quit stealing my potential recruits! :) We're looking for pretty much the exact same set of qualifications. The only major difference is that we aren't exactly a secretive company. That said, I won't shill on your post since you took the time and effort to write it. Depending on how tight lipped you are about your work, I'd love to talk shop with you some time. Maybe at SF HUG9?</comment>


Show HN: Get Adblock - <AUTHOR> http://benbristow.github.io/getadblock/

<comment><USER2> It looks like the link for "Download Adblock Edge for Mozilla Firefox" points to IE.

<comment> c-rack See [https://github.com/benbristow/getadblock/pull/1](https://github.com/benbristow/getadblock/pull/1)</comment></comment>


Microsoft's 'Cloud OS' takes shape - <AUTHOR> http://news.com.com/Microsofts+Cloud+OS+takes+shape/2100-1007_3-6196152.html?tag=nefd.lede <comment><USER2> This was pretty interesting, though I specifically enjoyed this quote: "A lot of what Windows was doing early on was memory management, storage, all of the things today we take for granted," Hall said. "The vast majority of developers (today), they are not thinking, 'how am I going to store this particular piece of data in memory?' It just happens."

It might just happen, but it would probably be useful to know at least in principle how and why it happens. From my experience, a lot of developers have no clue whatsoever.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill Considering Microsoft has been dealing in vapor for years, clouds seem to be a natural line extension for them. Seriously though, does anyone really believe MS is going to be able to deliver something well-engineered?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not a chance. Unless they buy a completely separate company not run by their engineers to do the work. Their standard production model seems to be: slap a bunch of features together so that the user gets at least an hour or so of non-crash functionality, then spend years slowly resolving the bugs, yet pile on more features with more bugs, repeat.</comment></comment>


How much sleep do you really need to work productively? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5933568/how-much-sleep-do-you-really-need-to-work-productively

<comment><USER2> Sleep doesn't just affect the brain and alertness: "The immune system is affected by sleep and rest, and sleep deprivation is detrimental to immune function." [<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_system>]</comment>


with – Program prefixing for continuous workflow using a single tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mchav/with <comment><AUTHOR> An example to illustrate the tools usefulness:

        $ with git
        git> add .
        git> commit -a -m "Commited"
        git> push</comment>


Ask HN: What is the market price of an experienced iPhone dev in SV? - <AUTHOR>

Recently since the start of this year I've been getting offers left and right from startups and companies for my iPhone development experience. They all offer around the same amount +/- $10'000 but I don't know if that is just estimates based on my current wage or position or what they are offering typically.  What is the real market price? <comment><USER2> If you have a lot of offers all in the same range, wouldn't that be the market price?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to say, since almost all the people I've talked to I have given my current salary range and relative experience first, and I hear there is a big shortage for iPhone development skills in SF and Seattle. The wages I'm being offered is around the average Facebook software engineer wage on glassdoor. So I'm curious as to what the real iPhone software developer price is, and if I'm just falling prey to bad salary negotiation tactics.</comment></comment>


FCC votes for Internet "fast lanes" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/fcc-votes-for-internet-fast-lanes-but-could-change-its-mind-later/

<comment><USER2> As I keep saying: There should be a fast lane, it should also be the only lane.

<comment><USER3> I totally agree, there should be no bias when it comes to internet speed. Everyone should be able to get the same fast speed, regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, the FCC didn't vote for any 'Fast Lane'. They voted to discuss and eventually vote on possibly regulation of the Internet. Included in the proposal is complete Net Neutrality as well as Fast-Lane/Slow-Lane. Everything is on the table right now.</comment>


Do you use encryption? Beware of Windows System Restore - <AUTHOR> http://blog.szynalski.com/2009/11/22/the-hidden-shadow/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the oldest practical problems in encryption, and the reason that groups handling PII use full-disk encryption and encrypted VM; even if the OS wasn't archiving your plaintext for you (and really, what else do you expect it to do?), there's probably 10 other ways your plaintext is persisted after encryption.

<comment><USER3> I would expect it to archive the ciphertext? Honestly, it sounds like TrueCrypt should warn Win7 users about the feature and maybe even hook into it if possible.

<comment><USER2> Encryption isn't magic. To the OS, a file is a file is a file.

<comment><USER3> Of course it is, but by storing the backup versions on a hidden partition as implied by the article, Win7 is clearly violating what the user intended to be the storage policy for the file. Had they instead stored backups on the same partition, then a full-disk encryption program would also encrypt the backup. Here, the user is expecting a behaviour (the file is expected to be encrypted), and Win7 is violating that expectation. That's why I said I expected Win7 to archive the ciphertext.

This is precisely what SimpleBackup does with my encrypted directory under Linux. Since the encrypted store is mounted as a loopback via encfs and fuse, SimpleBackup only sees the files the ciphertext that encfs uses to generate the plaintext view. So, to the best of my knowledge, Linux/encfs/SimpleBackup act as I expect them to, backing up only the ciphertext.

<comment><USER2> I think you might have an unreasonable expectation of how well (mostly) userland encryption should work.

Win7 is doing its job; TrueCrypt is only doing part of its job; and I'm guessing that unless _you_ shoulder a lot of the job you think EncFS is doing for you, your plaintext is sprayed all over your hard disk (seriously: image the drive and scan through it in a fast hex editor).

Most files bounce all over the place before they ever see the AES block function. Did you mail it? Did you PGP or S/MIME encrypt the file when you mailed it? Oops: you probably gave up your plaintext to a forensics tech.

<comment><USER3> And we could get into swap, etc. No, it's not airtight, and I know that. I'll just say that the archival feature goes beyond this level of leakage. Whereas most, if not all, of what you mention is at least contained in a single partition and in swap, and thus can be protected by full-disk encryption, creating a new hidden partition to store secret backups is violating expectations quite badly.

I choose to use a secure directory rather than full-disk as part of a security/performance tradeoff, and so I know that there are temp files and caches and swaps all over the place (though GnuPG is setuid so that it can lock pages in memory, thus preventing them from going to swap-- an attacker would have to freeze my RAM to get to my keyring). Most of these, though, should at least be manageable. I can see them and interact with them.

I do agree that in some sense TrueCrypt isn't doing its job, but I argue that's because their expectations have also been violated. Do the API specs make it clear that data written using those APIs may be copied off-partition without user interaction? If not, then the TC team would have to find out the hard way, then scramble to workaround this poor design decision.

<comment><USER2> GPG and PGP both make tempfiles, as do many of the email integration systems that use PGP, but I'm not here to help harden your idiosyncratic Linux setup, only to explain that your expectation that the OS designers are going to make 3rd-party crypto packages a priority is unrealistic.

If you need crypto-level assurance for your machine, you use full-disk encryption --- or at the bare minimum you turn _off_ system restore points and use secure deletion software. People who harden Win64 professionally know to do this stuff, just like people who harden Linux setups professionally know the rest of the problems with your EncFS system.

I'm a security person, and not a Windows user, and I prefer the Win7 approach over the "whatever makes TrueCrypt easier to write" approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Granted this is a parable to prove a technical point, but encryption and steganography issues aside, NO professional investigative journalist would risk keeping such sensitive material at home. It's kept at the office, or rotated across multiple safe deposit boxes, multiple safehouses, or, at the bare minimum, an offsite dead/dry dump--NEVER at home.

Additionally, why did he even open the door in the first place?

If they have a warrant, and if the information is valuable enough, let them expend time, effort, and resources to physically break in while the critical files are scrubbed (i.e. securely deleted with multiple over-writes).

If he's paranoid enough, these days, it will never be permanently stored on hard disk media in the first place. Instead the project files will be on easy- to-destroy and physically tiny flash media.

If the information is valuable enough (especially with corporate backing and 'sources' laws protections in the U.S.) it's worth the risk fighting an obstruction of justice charge.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are ever going to commit a crime, don't use a computer. If you do, you will get it caught. It's that simple.

If someone has a warrant to seize your computer, and you encrypt it's contents, you can be compelled to remove the encryption. If you don't, then you have committed obstruction of justice, and you are going to go to jail anyways.

Strong encryption will protect against the case where someone has your computer, but not you. However, if they have both you and your computer, its not going to protect you.

Also, are you sure that the Windows 7 hidden partition is used for the Volume Shadow Copy Service? My understanding is that it's only used for storing system files, not user documents.

Your user documents (and their backups) should be stored on the system volume (not the hidden partition), and hence should be covered by your encryption software.

</comment><comment><USER6> The key here is to power down your computer before opening the door for people with a search warrant.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't help in this case, though, if there's a separate backup maintained by Win7.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 I had no idea that Windows 7 - which I use - had this functionality. Looking at this from the other perspective, I think this article does a better job at marketing this feature (restore previous versions of documents easily thanks to Windows Restore) better than Microsoft ever has.</comment>


The Other Startup Exit: SitePoint Marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_other_startup_exit_sitepoint_marketplace.php <comment><USER2> If you are open to trying SitePoint, DigitalForums tends to attract similar audiences / traffic. Listing is free too - though you need to 'qualify' with 25 forum posts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sites that seem to perform well on SitePoint are those that are old and undeveloped. A lot of search engine marketing specialists are scouring those boards looking for older sites and domains that have some sort of standing on Google. They know they can load them up with new content and quickly reposition them!

So.. if you have a site that's been around for several years, isn't making much revenue, and that you don't want to develop, give it a go. Talk about your PageRank, talk about the link backs you have, and talk about the domain's age.. and you could make a pretty serious amount of money compared to your existing revenue.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sitepoint, is a burial ground most things sold on there consist of snake oil or clones. It doesn't even deserve the name of 'exit'. More of a liquidity place to re-coop bad investments..

<comment><USER5> _"... Sitepoint, is a burial ground most things sold on there consist of snake oil or clones. It doesn't even deserve the name of 'exit'. More of a liquidity place to re-coop bad investments.. ..."_

I don't think so.

Sure the content, technology and articles might be lower end commodities: tutorials, design, php with a focus on sites. I know Mark ~ <http://www.sitepoint.com/about/> we worked in another startup in Melbourne pre-2000. What Mark co-built is a business selling _"information"_ that people want and are willing to pay for. While this business is growing, selling boring old web focused tech resources, technical book sales are falling. Make things people want, right?

What do you make that people want?

<comment><USER4> sorry for any offense;

I'm sure he is a great guy.

Right now I make service that my employer wants to pay me for ;) (doesn't count?) I'm also working for a new way to sell cars online with a included way to advertise that your selling your car..

<comment><USER5> _".. sorry for any offense ..."_

There was no offense taken. What I tried (poorly) to point out was that "where there's muck, there is money".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sold my first site on this for $2k about 1.5 years ago. It was just the kick I needed to tell me that I could actually build stuff people wanted.</comment>


Spaniards launch a campaign against blackstone [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPGGJpOiseI

<comment><AUTHOR> _" Blackstone is the biggest vulture fund in the world, spending up to 100 million dollars per week on foreclosed properties in the U.S. Completely lacking in social responsibility, Blackstone specialises in buyin up devalued properties, upon which it then raises rents. In this way, Blackstone systematically places the families that live in these properties in danger of eviction and in a situation of extreme vulnerability_.

Source [english pdf]: [http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/03...](http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/03/comunicado-PAH-opBlackstoneEvicts_ingl%C3%A9s.pdf)</comment>


Scientists remove HIV-1 from genome of human immune cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/03/21/Scientists-remove-HIV-1-from-genome-of-human-immune-cells/1511458583664/ <comment><USER2> Some interesting discussion on /r/science, I liked this one;

"If you had a CRISPR that worked in vivo and that fast it wouldn't just be the cure for HIV, it would be the holy grail of genetics. You could edit anything, genetic diseases, you could insert anything, and remove it later, adding traits like sickle cell factor to cure malaria then removing it later. Theoretically you could even use it to overwrite damaged genetic code with the original copy, meaning you're a little telomere-altering from immortality... Somehow, though, I think it won't be quite so easy."

<comment> norea-armozel I swear there's a good scifi TV show in that short paragraph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this a big deal? I can't tell whether it's a big deal. I hope it's a big deal!</comment>


Personal Programming Environment (PPE)? - <AUTHOR> http://jasymca.holoklip.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Dev here.

With the increasing move to get more people programming, maybe a simple coding environment can be helpful..

I have ported Jasymca to the mobile web...

Feedback, especially from students is welcomed.</comment>


Git-recent: Quickly check out your favorite branches - cool-RR https://github.com/cool-RR/git-recent/ <comment> cool-RR OP here. This is my new open-source project. I made it to scratch an itch I've had for years. I'll be happy to get any feedback.

Shameless plug: I've quit my job recently and I'm looking for my next home! If you're hiring and you're looking for a gray-bearded Pythonista, shoot me an email and I'll send you my CV: email@example.com

I'm thinking mostly of Berlin or Munich, but anywhere in the EU could work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I see myself using this...</comment>


Assange Hearing Day 7 - <AUTHOR> https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/09/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-7/ <comment><USER3> > Clive Stafford Smith said he had been "profoundly shocked" by the crimes > committed by the US government against his clients. These included torture, > kidnapping, illegal detention and murder. The murder of one detainee at > Baghram Airport in Afghanistan had been justified as a permissible > interrogation technique to put fear into other detainees. In 2001, he would > never have believed the US Government could have done such things.

This is odious, and it's just one of the things in just this article. The amount of human rights violations going on seems staggering.

<comment><USER4> we're judging things through the prism of the present.

back in 2001 the US just experienced 9/11\. the sense of anger and retribution was shared internationally. people were arguing for dropping A-bombs all over the middle east.

<comment><USER5> > _the sense of anger and retribution was shared internationally_

Speaking from South America, I can asure you that the general opinion of 9/11 was that the US had asked for it and that there are only so many countries you could bomb for oil before one of them decides to fight back.

Sure, our government sent a statement of solidarity and no one was _happy_ that it happened. But I am having a hard time thinking of someone other than the US who was truly, angrily calling for retribution.

<comment> saiya-jin I can attest to that, the general emotion in my part of Europe was - <USER2> that's horrible, just like all the atrocities US is doing all around the world and that it was just a matter of time that such a thing would happen.

It was clear, I mean crystal clear even to US commentators on places like CNN on that very day that this will be used as carte blanche for government to instill control, surveillance and fear among US general population, and basically get away with anything because 'terrorists'. Well, they for sure were right.

Life of Manhattan-based bureaucrat is not worth to me more than some poor civilian blown to pieces on some wedding or tending his field half around the world. You know, equality of human beings and stuff. 3000 means nothing compared to millions, in fact tens of millions if we keep counting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's difficult for me to read this objectively, because I "know in my heart" that the persecution of Assange is unjust. Nevertheless, it is important to put that aside and absorb the information without bias. Let the prosecution make its best case without attachment to outcome.

Still, there are some rather shocking revelations about the conduct of the government of my homeland. Torture, of course; but also murder of a detainee to terrify other detainees; "puerile attitude to killing, with juvenile nicknames given to assassination targets"; the attempted murder without trial of a US citizen, also a journalist; the attempts to block and cover these actions, which suggests that the perpetrators and enablers themselves knew they were crimes.

<comment><USER7> I'm generally an "ends justifies the means" kinda guy, but I think anyone with that position needs to be aware of what the "means" actually are.

Maybe that's why I'm a bit shocked that you're shocked. These things have been going on for a long time and they're well documented. I'll just give three examples: the My Lai massacre, the imprisonment/trial of Omar Khadr (a child soldier) and the extrajudicial execution of Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (an American citizen).

(To be clear, I don't think any of the above are justifiable. As a Canadian, I was particularly ashamed of Canada's position towards Khadr. But I don't go around a) thinking these things don't happen and b) that they're alway black and white)

<comment><USER8> Nothing is black and white, sure. Foreign intervention was probably good for the Kurds and some other minorities being suppressed by Saddam. He really wasn't the nicest guy.

But there is also an unfortunate history of selling weapons to him in the hope he would point them towards Iran. But the useful idiot didn't do what he was told and lied to his handlers. They probably didn't mind because the ends justified the means from his perspective. The war killed hundreds of thousands of people and we are in process of torturing the person responsible for transparency on the consequences of war.

Difficult to really say what that achieved. What was it for the US? Saving face after 9/11? If the US casually kills thousands of people not involved in the attack as impotent retaliation, you might find other terrorists that think crashing a plane into a skyscraper of innocent people is justified. The US would sabotage its reputation itself in that case. The ends justify the means, right?

<comment><USER9> It was a _very_ local optimum for the Kurds, probably many more have been displaced and killed because of interventions. The ISIS was very harsh on kurds, and ISIS could not have existed without the US invasion.

Saddam was a horror, but in terms of people killed (after the Iran / Iraq war) much worse came after 9/11.

If you go back, it's an infinite fractal of short sightedness and incompetent tampering.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, they just have no voice on an international level and always seem to be handed the short end of the stick in every conflict. Even if things in Syria turned out differently...

Just wanting to point out that the regime of Saddam wasn't too nice for a lot of people, but yes, I think the intervention was worse for basically everybody.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One interesting snippet, which gets to the one of the key areas around this case for me (I know there are more issues here than just this one):

> Mark Summers then re-examined Professor Feldstein. He said that Lewis had > suggested that Assange was complicit in Manning obtaining classified > information but the New York Times was not. Is it your understanding that to > seek to help an official leaker is a crime

> Professor Feldstein replied "No, absolutely not".

> "Do journalists ask for classified information?"

> "Yes."

> "Do journalists solicit such information?"

> "Yes."

> "Are you aware of any kind of previous prosecution for this kind of > activity."

> "No. Absolutely not."

> "Could you predict it would be criminalised?"

> "No, and it is very dangerous."

There are clearly two sides to this argument, but the chilling effect around the prosecution of journalists gaining access to classified information is a worry for me.

I realise that the US Government might claim that Assange isn't a journalist. They're certainly claiming that he crossed the line from journalism into hacking, but that line seems to be blurrier and more arbitrary than it used to be (at least from where I sit in the cheap seats).

<comment><USER11> I don't think regular citizens should have less rights than journalists in the first place, but maybe I'm just nutty.

<comment><USER10> So I will respectfully disagree with you there. In general I agree with you about most (almost all?) rights - they should be available to all citizens equally.

However _if_ you agree that:

\- The state should be allowed to keep secrets

\- The state can't always be trusted to choose what should be secret or not

\- There is a need to hold the state to account, but somehow not make all secrets public by doing so

Then there needs to be some subset of citizenry who can gain access to those secrets without the blessing of the state.

In history this has been likely to occur when a person with access to the secrets feels strongly enough about something that they feel the secret should be made public. For good reasons or bad reasons (which not everyone will agree with either way).

A good journalist can fulfil that role IMHO. I realise that "good" there is another assumption...

<comment><USER12> This is a point of view I hadn't considered, but is an interesting way of consoling my two points of view that secrecy is important but accountability is essential. This almost framed journalists as being a kind of law enforcement for the people, which is certainly an interesting way of viewing them.

<comment><USER10> I wholeheartedly agree - I absolutely view quality journalism as an essential part of an accountable and transparent state.

Good journalism, which IMHO should strive for a degree of impartiality[0], is needed to hold administrations at all levels to account.

[0] humans are clearly imperfect mind

<comment><USER13> It doesn't get less impartial than publishing original source classified documents with little to no commentary. That's what WikiLeaks is/does.

The Intercept and The Guardian add a layer of partiality/bias with narratives that paint state secrecy as inherently problematic. Somewhat paradoxically this anti-state bias in reporting makes them MORE palatable/acceptable; because their narrative justifies their role as the fourth estate of government.

WikiLeaks' position is that this narrative is implicit and doesn't need reiterated with each leak. Unfortunately powerful institutions and people experience the world in narratives and the importance of the fourth estate isn't one that is strongly engrained in their thinking. So, they go after WikiLeaks because of its impartiality.

WikiLeaks shouldn't have to add bias to every new publication to be legitimate. That's plainly backwards. They absolutely have the high ground here. All they need to do is paint the narrative to the courts that organizations like The Intercept paint continuously.

If the courts don't accept the narrative as sufficient justification then they drive the nails in the coffin of the free press at large.

<comment><USER14> Wikileaks 100% had a narrative, it was one of the things that disappointed me most about them.

In general, I was on the side of this information needing to come out, I just really wish Wikileaks hadn't politicized it the way they did.

<comment><USER13> WikiLeaks has a 100:1 ratio of words in leaked documents to narrative words, at LEAST. Meanwhile The Intercept has a 1:100 ratio. You can't dismiss this difference as insignificant.

<comment><USER14> That's a terrible metric to use.

Wikileaks would time their release of information for political effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> US can really do whatever they want and get away with it, for now. What a shame if the UK allows the extradition of a journalist.

<comment><USER16> But is Assange a journalist?

Does he have any accreditations, or follow journalistic standards for example?

<comment><USER17> The Guardian (& many many others) certainly think so.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/23/julian- assange...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/23/julian-assange- indicted-what-charges-mean-for-free-speech)

From [https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/903612/julian- assange...](https://www.mondaq.com/australia/crime/903612/julian-assange-did- redact-an-interview-with-lawyer-journalist-mark-davis):

> _The line up of renowned Australian journalists on the stage at the Martin > Place Amphitheatre on 24 February was impressive. Gathered for a rally, they > included John Pilger, Mary Kostakidis, Quentin Dempster, Wendy Bacon, Andrew > Fowler and Mark Davis. They were there to speak in support of fellow > journalist Julian Assange._

> _" He did redact"_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The cross-examinations showed the weakness of the thirty minute guillotine adopted by Baraitser, with really interesting defence testimony cut short, and then unlimited time allowed to Lewis for his cross examination. This was particularly pernicious in the evidence of Mark Feldstein. In James Lewis' extraordinary cross-examination of Feldstein, Lewis spoke between five and ten times as many words as the actual witness. Some of Lewis's "questions" went on for many minutes, contained huge passages of quote and often were phrased in convoluted double negative. Thrice Feldstein refused to reply on grounds he could not make out where the question lay. With the defence initial statement of the evidence limited to half an hour, Lewis's cross examination approached two hours, a good 80% of which was Lewis speaking. "

Sad...

</comment><comment><USER19> I really hope people don't take from this that the U.K. legal system is being applied in a biased way. The laws themselves may be wrong — and that's a matter for government. But these write-ups do tend do suggest that the laws are being misapplied through manipulating the process.

I'm not a lawyer, but I am in the UK and I do know people who are lawyers so I've talked about their court work with them. From what little I know, the processes (the backs and forth, the judgements, and arguments over procedure) are all typical.

<comment><USER20> I would love it if a laywer could explain to me how the following is not applying the legal system in a biased way.

From the article:

>The cross-examinations showed the weakness of the thirty minute guillotine adopted by Baraitser, with really interesting defence testimony cut short, and then unlimited time allowed to Lewis for his cross examination. This was particularly pernicious in the evidence of Mark Feldstein. In James Lewis' extraordinary cross-examination of Feldstein, Lewis spoke between five and ten times as many words as the actual witness. Some of Lewis's "questions" went on for many minutes, contained huge passages of quote and often were phrased in convoluted double negative. Thrice Feldstein refused to reply on grounds he could not make out where the question lay. With the defence initial statement of the evidence limited to half an hour, Lewis's cross examination approached two hours, a good 80% of which was Lewis speaking.

>Feldstein was browbeaten by Lewis and plainly believed that when Lewis told him to answer in very brief and concise answers, Lewis had the authority to instruct that. In fact Lewis is not the judge and it was supposed to be Feldstein's evidence, not Lewis's. Baraitser failed to protect Feldstein or to explain his right to frame his own answers, when that was very obviously a necessary course for her to take.

>Today we had two expert witnesses, who had both submitted lengthy written testimony relating to one indictment, which was now being examined in relation to a new superseding indictment, exchanged at the last minute, and which neither of them had ever seen. Both specifically stated they had not seen the new indictment. Furthermore this new superseding indictment had been specifically prepared by the prosecution with the benefit of having heard the defence arguments and seen much of the defence evidence, in order to get round the fact that the indictment on which the hearing started was obviously failing.

>On top of which the defence had been refused an adjournment to prepare their defence against the new indictment, which would have enabled these and other witnesses to see the superseding indictment, adjust their evidence accordingly and be prepared to be cross-examined in relation to it.

As a layman (who admittedly knows nothing about the UK legal system) this looks like they are stacking the deck against Assange.

<comment><USER19> I guess what I'm saying is this all feels quite ordinary.

The judge will have the written outline arguments, and will be focusing on the parts that need greater interrogation. And they will also be juggling various factors -- there's limited court time; letting the case drag on is a potential source as injustice too; etc. On top of that, each side will be looking for advantages within the constraints of allowed legal procedure. All of these will contribute to what's being seen on the day.

If the judge missteps according to procedure, they're open to having the judgement appealed, so they're highly motivated to apply the rules correctly.

I'm not saying that the outcome is just, or that the laws themselves are ok. But the procedure seems ordinary to me, a lay person, and if there _are_ problems with it, they will be technical and unlikely to be spotted in an article like this.

<comment><USER21> If this is ordinary in UK courts (and I have never seen anything like this), then UK courts are not fair, and are not safe, or just, and we should all be shocked and outraged at living in a society with a legal system that will not provide justice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Taken from the Crown Prosecution Service guidance[0], which isn't gospel, but is usually a pretty accurate reflection of the law, the grounds the court must consider are:

\- the conduct described in the warrant amounts to an extradition offence;

\- any of the statutory bars to extradition apply;

\- there is prima facie evidence of guilt (if applicable, see below);

\- extradition would be disproportionate or would be incompatible with the requested person's human rights.

The statutory bars to extradition, taken from the same document include whether the subject would face the death penalty.

It's not clear to me from this article which of the points of law above is being argued. Some of the testimony appears (or at least the reporting of it) appears to include an element of trying to demonstrate that the extradition is politically motivated. It probably is, but they'll have to establish one of the above specific points.

Note that I'm not claiming that the above points can't be established here - I'm just not seeing the direct link from the reporting on the case, in this article and others, to how they're attacking the legal aspect.

[0] [https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal- guidance/extradition](https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/extradition)

<comment><USER8> > It's not clear to me from this article which of the points of law above is > being argued

You cannot evade injustice by referring to the law. This serves as an example that the law is broken because it allows for political prosecution.

Won't be the strategy of the defense of course and not of relevance in the hearings, they do the best they can in this situation.

<comment><USER10> I'm not claiming whether or not this is right, or serves the interests of Justice. I'm just pointing out that it appears to me that the defense team is arguing more in the court of public opinion, and less on points of law in the court itself. And to be clear: I don't really think they have much of an option - the law around extradition makes this hearing mostly a formality. There are pretty limited grounds _in law_ to prevent it going ahead.

Independent of this particular case, I don't like the fact that in UK law the process _is_ mostly a formality for UK to USA extraditions. When the legislation was drafted after 9/11 the claim was that this was a necessary evil and would be used solely against terrorists. Like previous non-terrorist cases against bankers, 'hackers' and others, this isn't a use of the law in the way it was originally intended (well, at least what was said about intentions at the time).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There doesn't seem to be a trace of Vanessa Baraitser anywhere on the internet outside a couple of mentions of other extradition proceedings and the Assange case. There are only three known photographs of her[1], and only one including her face.

She isn't even registered as a practising solicitor with the SRA [2].

It's difficult to see how in today's world a person with a career in "public service" (and with such an unusual name) can leave such little trace online.

[1] [https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Vanessa_Baraitser](https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Vanessa_Baraitser)

[2] [https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/register/](https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/register/)

</comment><comment><USER18> "You are free to republish this article, including in translation, without further permission. A brief note left in comments below detailing where it is republished is appreciated."

Really nice!

</comment><comment><USER23> How long has Assange been held without a public trial again?

<comment><USER24> While I don't think it ought to have been as long as it has been, it's worth noting that a) He has previously fled to take asylum in a foreign embassy to avoid arrest, so it's understandable why bail wouldn't be granted again and b) He actually requested this extradition hearing be delayed due to not having had enough time to prepare (which the judge denied).

<comment><USER25> a) doesn't really seem a fair representation:

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, speaks in detail about the explosive findings of his investigation into the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.:

[https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about- wikilea...](https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks- founder-julian-assange)

(someone linked to this in yesterdays comments its an amazing read though depressing)

b) He is being detained in a way that is regarded inhumane, but its still better than being epsteined.

Assange may be a bit of a greaser, he may be an egotist, he may be lacking in social skills - he may even be wanting to be famous for his work in a way that makes him an arse personally... but i still want our legal systems to be fair and my government not commit war crimes and openly investigate any accusation of them.

Also note that i firmly believe that if any commenter on this site was to be the target of such a campaign that we would all look like scumbags when scrutinised with such bias.

<comment><USER26> Nils Melzer is full of shit: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22209868)

<comment><USER25> My understanding of the above link:

The accusation that police changed the statement from the witness may be false or even deliberately exaggerated.

Not extactly that he is blanket full of shit or did i miss something?

But Nils onky asked Sweden to respond to the question, which they didnt do.. not even a short: sorry you got the wrong end of the stick there. Which given the attention of the case seems weird.

It also doesnt really say anything about his treatment in the uk the lack of gurantee not to be extrodited, the leaking of accusations to the press, lack of aninimity for the accused etc.

And to be clear sweden didnt respond to any of Nils' questions, why? Is the UN really just a joke? If so isnt that still really bad?

Please feel free to expand on why you dont trust a single thing he says, but at the moment your comment doesnt seem justified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This comment in the article made my day:

>the US Government changes its indictment in this case about as often as Kim Kardashian changes her handbag.

</comment><comment><USER28> What would happen if Trump pardoned Julian Assange just before the election? Would this improve his chance of winning again?

<comment><USER29> He probably will since Assange has been a reliable ally to Trump in the 2016 election. But I don't think it helps or hurts matters electorally since most voters have never heard of Assange.

<comment><USER23> Trump has had ample opportunity to do it until now, though. So what's the holdup?

<comment><USER30> You can only pardon someone who has been convicted, so I don't see what opportunity he has had

<comment><USER23> True enough, but I should think he's got the power to stop this train too, then. How long can a man be held prisoner without a trial in the UK, anyway? What kind of democratic system can hold a person jailed indefinately like that? What are we becoming?

<comment><USER31> He wasn't really held prisoner though. He was being tortured.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/31/julian- assange...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/31/julian-assange- shows-psychological-torture-symptoms-says-un-expert)

Democratic IMO means: the majority of people in a country take all political decisions that matter to them. They decide about the creation and alteration of all laws that matter to them. The majority of people in a country is well informed by free press.

With that in mind I would argue there isn't really any country in the world that comes close to being democratic (with the exception of maybe Switzerland).

<comment><USER23> The first thing I studied at uni was Political Science. I liked statistics more, but it did prompt me to read up on the many interpretations of what democracy is. To sum it up; it's deeply flawed, but it's also the the best we can do.

Democracy is what caused Socrates to drink poison, but at the same time it's also what has made freedom-loving countries the best places to live on earth. Within this system, there are various ways that you can amass undemocratic power, and make undue influence on others, and IMHO _that_ is why Assange is still in jail. I'm not talking solely on "evil elites" here but also of the undue power of bureacracies and institutions that are built up by the very democracies they are meant to serve. And in this special case, diplomacy in particular.

This is why we should work to unravel these powers, to see them for what they are, not least to shed light on who benefits from them, so we can make a democratic decision upon if it benefits us as a people to have such institutions at all, or in what way they can be changed to better serve us. One of our tools for soft change is of course reform and reorganization. But in the face of unchanging and monolitic institutions, there is another way; to build up entirely new and competing institutions in order to challenge the decisions of the "powers of old," as it were.

I can name one such institution in Norway, for instance; _Datatilsynet,_ the Data Inspectorate, that primarily works for the human right of privacy in terms of what kind of personal information the state and other actors can and cannot legally store in their computer systems. They are experts on these matters, and the law, and often advice courts and big institutions on matters regarding privacy, but also cryptography and other measures that make the storage of data safer for the individual. They were among the first to challenge the Data Storage Act, for instance, where all Norwegian internet protocol traffic (sender and receiver IP's and such) is to be stored by ISP's for at least six months to aid possible police investigations, for instance.

In Norway some of these actors are part of the state, like the Data Directorate, because we trust them to do their job for the people. But in other countries, it is perhaps better to have them as wholly private actors, as is often the case in the USA, for instance. But because The Data Inspectorate is part of the state, they are also respected that much more by other state actors than special interest groups, because they have real power granted to them by the people, and so they are authorized to intervene in matters of privacy and data security. So, perhaps one such institutions should also be made to intervene in matters of freedom of speech and persecution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Source here is Craig Murray who is possibly the most extreme-biased source one could imagine. Nevertheless it's good to get primary source information from the hearing.

<comment><USER33> He pops up on HN all the time. I'm surprised he's still posting, wasn't he recently prosecuted for the politically motivated release of the names of women in an active sexual harassment trial?

<comment><USER34> Can you just say something like that and don't even bother to point to a link? It hardly seems fair.

<comment><USER35> In the UK complainants in sexual offences trials have strong legal protections around anonymity. Murray is alleged to have breached the anonymity of some of the complainants in the Alex Salmond trial. He denies this.

Here's his post asking for some evidential support: [https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/05/a-very- polit...](https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/05/a-very-political- prosecution/)

Here's a reasonably neutral article about his prosecution date: [https://www.thenational.scot/news/18566311.court-sets- date-c...](https://www.thenational.scot/news/18566311.court-sets-date-craig- murray-trial-alex-salmond-case/)

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the links. So he didn't release any names like the grandparent comment said. I thought that sounded strange.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's iPhone Evil an Android Killer – A Maemo Chance?  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.herlein.com/2009/11/apples-iphone-evil-may-give-them-android-killing-edge-maemo-chance/

<comment><USER2> I would absolutely love it if Nokia could get a foot hold in iPhone territory, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen as long as Nokia doesn't bring in carrier subsidies. As it is unsubsidized Nokia smartphones are simply unaffordable especially when considering unlimited data plan charges.</comment>


Programming and Stenography - <AUTHOR> http://www.danieljosephpetersen.com/programming-and-stenography/

<comment><USER2> I watched the same video a few days ago and I also felt like people were trying to solve the wrong problem, why do we stick to pre-historic tools ? We all should just do what you just did: 1\. Send a message in a bottle to the people who needs to solve their own problem by drawning themselves in an endless pain of solving old tools problems.. 2\. Embrace new technologies which offer new possibilities to solve real life problems that will eventually lead us to new problems that children of the people from 1. will try to solve by insane and overcomplicated hacks...

ps: whilst my fr-english is quite bad to read, I noticed you have a typo in your last sentence: "but I also don't love the idea of people having to learn such an inSane and archaic system."

<comment><AUTHOR> Inane is actually a word. Its not used too much, but it means silly / stupid.

<comment><USER2> sorry about that, I was extrapoling first (because I found it insane :) )

instead of looking for the meaning of this new word (for me[which I discover is spelled the same in english {and few other european languages}])</comment></comment></comment>