Square Canada has a Cuban coffee issue - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/square-canada-1.5303143 <comment><USER2> And this is exactly why the US domination of the payment industry is so dangerous, why companies like mastercard/VISA need to end, and why maybe sometimes it's understandable countries like Germany or Denmark have their own card systems or prefer cash.

Running all transactions through companies subject to foreign laws makes you subject to those foreign laws. And there is no reason US laws should affect e.g. a Canadian in Canada doing business in Canada with other Canadians.

The current situation is extremely unjust, because as German in Germany interacting with other Germans, I'm suddenly subject to US laws on which I can't even vote. Being subject to laws which I can't influence in any way democratically is unacceptable, and needs to end.

Either we as society should go back to cash, build our own payment systems to replace the US-based solutions, or end the US hegemony that even allows the US to spread its laws this way.

<comment><USER3> Curious how you feel about GDPR (the EU asserts its authority to bind an American entity with servers in America running a service targeted at American consumers so long as a single EU citizen chooses to visit the site).

<comment><USER4> You could have one GDPR compliant site in the EU and a different international one.. or just block EU. Nobody is infringing on someone else's sovereignty in that case.

<comment><USER5> Some sites actually do block visitors from the EU. E.g. the Chicago Tribune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They need to just give her the $14k immediately and then eat it if it's a problem. Stop processing the transactions going forward or until it's sorted out, but do not steal her money. Also, I found this distasteful:

"I want to clarify that Square is not experiencing a technical glitch. While I cannot speak with you about Monica's individual case, I can tell you that Square's Customer Success team spoke with Monica yesterday, and she now knows the reason"

How incredibly tone deaf to use such a condescending, bullshit phrase as "customer success team" when speaking with the media in a situation where they are clearly failing the customer. A simple "we spoke with her" would do.

<comment><USER7> If the question is legal liability for violating sanctions, releasing the $14K could put them on the hook for _much_ more than $14K in liability.

<comment><USER8> Not releasing can put them in violation of Canada's Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act so they are between a rock and a hard place (particularly Foreign Extraterritorial Measures (United States) Order, 1992 [https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/p...](https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/page-1.html))

<comment><USER7> Oh ouch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a bigger story here and I'm glad it's made visible to more of the general public, and I _really_ hope more people listen intently; the underlying technology running your favorites apps are sitting on servers on US soil and prone to US laws.

that needs to be a title of the next headline, especially for anyone installing apps under the disguise of "privacy".

<comment><USER10> Yes, that was made visible by the blocking of github accounts for developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea [1]. The US can disrupt whole businesses just by blocking access to fundamental services, tools or equipment. That's some nice political power right there. Free stuff is always a double-edged sword. You can't have free Google, free Youtube, free FB, free Github, free everything unless you also give back something. In this case, it limits the options of Nation States where most of its citizens use these free services on a daily basis. One wrong move, and the Government of said Nation State will have a nice (color?!) revolution on their back.

In the end, good for US for having the brains and the determination to build all these systems, conspicuously. I'm sure Russia does the same or is striving to do the same. Different methods, same desired outcomes. It will be interesting to see what China will have in store in the coming years.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552797)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> US government and US payment companies like Visa and Mastercard complaining about India building its own payment processing systems (RuPay).

Countries who depends on US and its companies for technology are very much vulnerable to these type of bullying.

Countries need to look on bigger picture and develop self sustainable technology ventures and US should stop bullying countries with technology to retain the trust.

</comment><comment><USER12> I used to (nearly 20 years ago) roast coffee in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory Canada, and folks from Alaska would often stop in the shop. People that bought Cuban coffee often requested it be rebagged and just labelled "coffee" for about the same reason.

<comment><USER13> Hey I just stopped in at midnight sun coffee roasters for the first time last week. Good place.

<comment><USER12> Haha! That's the one, but I worked in the old building that was burned down when the neighbouring business sparked a fire :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Might be just a coincidence, but it seems Square is turning it's back on the coffee/cafge industry that it did a lot of it's brand building on the back of:

[https://sprudge.com/square-just-increased-their- transaction-...](https://sprudge.com/square-just-increased-their-transaction- rates-and-cafes-are-screwed-151533.html)

They've used the industry for good PR like this: [https://squareup.com/au/en/townsquare/2018-australian- coffee...](https://squareup.com/au/en/townsquare/2018-australian-coffee- report)

I guess they'd prefer to not have sub $5 transactions any more...

</comment><comment><USER15> I once bought cigars at the Duty Free on my way into the US. Spent the next 2 hours dealing with an agent who'd clearly just been transferred from the southern boarder since the receipt said "Havana Style". I really hope the US is able to normalize relations with Cuba some day.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's beyond time to end the embargo against Cuba.

<comment><USER17> And it's beyond time Cuba end it's 2 ounce coffee rations every 15 days for Cuban citizens. That wouldn't last me 15 minutes.

per Wiki: "Domestic distribution is currently limited to two ounces of coffee rations every 15 days for Cuban citizens.[13]

<comment><USER18> They have rations to make it accessible to all, they are a poor country crippled by a long lasting embargo. Cubans are very sweet people. Their politics attempted to keep they away from american greedy companies. Just look around the caraibean region. Countries that played ball with the US are in a very bad shape, a la economic hit man and such. Cuba managed to keep the people poor but with dignity, education, health care, for all its citizens. They manage with what they have and they'd do much better if it wasnt for the embargo.

I don't get why this is being downvoted. I'd rather get a comment on why you disagree

<comment><USER19> They are a poor country ravaged by a tyrannical regime that has lasted as long as it has because Cuba is but a slight annoyance to the US after the Cuban Missile Crisis- nothing more, nothing less. Even if there was no embargo, the Castros would still be there doing as they wish. God knows they're trying to do the same with Venezuela.

EDIT: None of this means I'm pro-embargo, or into US meddling into things they have no business in. Just that ultimately these embargoes do little in the grand scheme of things to stop dictatorial regimes. A tyrant has no reason to play by the rules, especially when money is involved.

<comment><USER20> The suggestion that this has anything to do with tyranny or dictators is ridiculous as well. The US has a long and consistent record of supporting hideously repressive Islamist monarchies like Saudi Arabia, and it is clear that they do not actually care about democracy or freedom in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Square says it's "working on" getting Mustelier her money back. I feel like, at this point, they ought to simply pay her out of their own pocket. They were the ones who put her money in a bank that was not fit for purpose. Even if they didn't realize this would happen, they've violated their obligation to her, and they need to fix it now, not after a few more months of wrangling.

<comment><USER22> The fact that they're "working on it" should be a strong hint that it is not as simple as writing the merchant a check and wiping their hands of the situation. As a US financial entity, Square is subject to the same laws and regulations as JP Morgan, the bank holding on to the frozen funds.

<comment><USER23> By operating in Canada, Square Canada is subject to Canadian federal law: [https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/p...](https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/page-1.html) .

<comment><USER22> By being a US-based company, they are also subject to US law.

If you believe you have a general solution to the problem of incompatible edge cases in international financial regulation, there are many, _many_ companies who would be willing to make you a very rich person in exchange for that information.

<comment><USER24> The Square Canada corporation may still be directly prosecuted for violating the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act. It is designed to prevent the United States from interfering with Canadian business.

That Square Canada has a parent corporation is immaterial. Seize assets from the Canadian company to pay the $1.5 million fine for violating the act.

If this is unacceptable, then Square Canada is no longer a legitimate business and Square can't have a legally operating subsidiary in Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Square should definitely set this right ASAP she's not doing anything against. I wonder if she had named her stand Canada Beans, would this have happened? The nerve

<comment><USER26> A couple of my friends went to a restaurant together in the US. One of them paid with card, the other friend paid the first friend back by sending him a transfer by PayPal or Venmo, I cannot remember which. The amount was around $10-$20. The description said _Persian restaurant_ or _Iranian restaurant_ , because that's the kind of restaurant they had gone to. The transfer was blocked and the transfer amount remained in frozen state for over a year.

Ask anyone from one of the countries sanctioned by the US, like Cuba or Iran. This kind of experience is not new and it is not an exception. I no longer get surprised, just more and more disappointed.

<comment><USER27> OFAC lists are no joke, you will go to jail for disregarding it.

<comment><USER28> The name of an ethnic restaurant has _nothing_ to do with the corresponding country, legally speaking. That's just a stupid software glitch.

<comment><USER27> Nah, you think the guy doing this is working that hard?

<comment><USER28> Then he ought to be fired.

<comment><USER27> American workers are scared of being perceived as anything else other than a YES MAN. The guy being told he has two-three days to implement OFAC can't say NO or they'll find someone to replace him that will say YES so he'll implement the shortest answer that causes that 'feature' to be marked as 'complete'

<comment><USER28> Even a random Excel geek would know that a "name" field is not the place to go for OFAC implementation. Or at least, not for a restaurant. I'm sure that they can link to corporate and banking data.

<comment><USER29> It doesn't really matter what someone knows, what matters is the payoff matrix:

Apply OFAC blacklisting extremely overly aggressively ... suffer an insignificant number of pissed off customers (who probably don't even leave you because everyone else is also awful).

Apply it as non-agressively as you think the law permits, or somewhat more than that... and find out that you're facing criminal charges because a prosecutor thinks the line was slightly different where you thought it was.

The situation is made more complicated in part because if prosecution isn't aggressive there are enormous sums of money ready to flow through whatever loophole exists and plenty of _bankers_ happy to help guide clients in blacklisted places through them. [ [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/business/standard- charter...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/09/business/standard-chartered- sanctions-violations.html) ]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I believe Stripe and/or has the same issue. One of the roasters I like to buy from in Toronto has beans from Cuba, but can't sell them online.

</comment><comment><USER31> > "I was kind of shocked and mad, because we're a Canadian company using Cuban > goods bought and sold in Canada,"

Using an American payment company and an American bank, both of which are subject to American laws and aren't going to risk breaking a trade embargo, regardless of whether this particular case is 100% legal or not.

Also not sure why the headline says Square Canada when the article makes it clear that it is JPMorgan Chase which is holding up the payment.

<comment><USER32> It is illegal for a Canadian company, in Canada, to be subject to or comply with American extraterritoriality laws surrounding Cuba.

[https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/p...](https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/page-1.html)

<comment><USER33> I think the distinction of JPMorgan being the processor that denied the transactions is relevant here. IANAL but it's unclear to me that Square Canada is at fault for depending on a company that happens to comply with US laws.

<comment><USER34> If my bank took my money, and ran off with it, and then blamed it on bad behavior of some third party that I have nothing to do with, I have two things to say:

1\. Not my problem.

2\. Fuck you, pay me.

If they can't find counter-parties that let them do their jobs, they should not be in the business of payment processing. I don't get to pick which third parties my bank interfaces with.

<comment><USER33> They're working on refunding her the money. I'm not sure running off with it is an appropriate comparison here. They just don't want to work with clients that have a business relationship with Cuba in the future.

<comment><USER4> How much work does cutting a 14,000$ check requires? It been going on since August. For a foot truck operations 14,000$ must be a significant toll on cash flow. It's inexcusable.

<comment><USER33> I agree, and I definitely don't want to excuse it. I would maintain that the analogy used is inappropriate given that they're still in contact about the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> _Mustelier is Canadian and says she has no idea why a U.S. embargo is affecting her Canadian business._

The article claims her money is going through a US bank.

Not surprised this happened at all.

<comment><USER23> It was Square Canada's choice to route her money through a US bank. If her merchant account agreement has no mention of this possibility, then she is totally in the clear.

Some other commenters have already linked the relevant Canadian law that is broken by the stopped payment: [https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/p...](https://laws- lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-92-584/page-1.html) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Amusingly, they literally show someone serving coffee with an endorsement from a coffee shop on their Canadian sign-up page for food & beverage services. [https://squareup.com/ca/en/solutions/quick- service](https://squareup.com/ca/en/solutions/quick-service)

</comment><comment><USER37> The vendor claims to buy beans from a Canadian distributor. It's not immediately obvious how to get from "bought beans in Montreal, sold Coffee in Toronto" to "funds frozen for doing business with Cuba." The devil must be in the details of the embargo.

<comment><USER38> Once something gets flagged as a potential violation, it turns into a guilty until proven innocent situation. Square has much more to lose than just some bad PR or the spread on $14K so they're fine with freezing the money until they get a clear ruling from the _US_ regulators that could put them in a proverbially vice. The name "Havana" probably tipped off something and now it'll be stuck like that until a high enough exec decides to take the heat for cutting it loose.

If you want to try this out yourself ( _don't do this..._ ), send money to a friend via Venmo or equivalent, put something blatantly criminal in the description like "Heroin" or "ISIS tuition", and see what happens.

<comment><USER39> I've put everything from "erotic services" to "5kg of cocaine" in the memo fields of cheques, bank transfers, and interac e-transfers and never had an issue of any sort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is where it is too bad bitcoin did not become more mainstream allowing people to just exchange money without permission. But perhaps these are the incidences that will lead to the mainstream use of things like bitcoins.

</comment><comment><USER19> People are all fine and dandy with the status quo until they fall on the wrong side of a dispute involving their money.

Perhaps those cryptocurrency wackos aren't so crazy after all. Perhaps.

</comment><comment><USER41> Somebody needs to buy Cuban coffee in Canada, repackage it with a nice "produced in Central America/Aerated in Canada" sticker and sell it to the end coffee stands.</comment>


NSA refused Clinton a secure BlackBerry like Obama, so she used her own - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-refused-clinton-a-secure-blackberry-like-obama-so-she-used-her-own/ <comment><USER3> This is a classic story that gets repeated again and again, and security professionals should take note; if you forbid your users from doing something, they will route around you to do it, and it will be end up being less secure than if you were involved.

Haroon Meer says that saying "no" is a finite resource that security professionals are too willing to tap. If an organization comes to see your department as an obstacle that shoots down ideas and never contributes, you end up ignored. Chip in with ways to make bad ideas less bad, because we already know that deploying any vendor's software is a loss to security.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that security professionals should lower their standards because too many people don't want to follow the protocols that security professionals have determined to be the best course of action?

Must be nice to have a high enough position in life to ignore security protocols at whim. If I did that I would be fired.

<comment><USER5> I think he means, if you tell somebody that you can't do something that's technically possible, they will find someone who can and will do it.

They did it for the previous administration but refused to do it for her and offered no good alternative. She couldn't fire them and replace them and with someone more capable, so her team found an alternative.

This is exactly how a person who is used to getting shit done would operation. You either break down obstacles or you go around.

<comment><USER6> Just to be clear, in this case "getting shit done" meant recklessly creating a massive security breach at the highest levels of the government.

<comment><USER5> During a period of time when government insiders were leaking damaging classified information on the internet.

I can see how she would consider her actions to be the lesser to two evils, at least she could trust her people.

<comment><USER6> That's the equivalent of someone who sees a bunch of broken windows in the neighborhood and therefore figures it's okay to toss a beer bottle out the window of their car.

Mind you, I could see that being her thought process, it's very human. But it is hardly a ringing endorsement of her behavior and principles, to say the least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand that is is very inconvenient to use the channels provided to transmit confidential information, but that goes with the job. It is also probably inconvenient to have a massive physical security detail follow you everywhere as well but that is also necessary as a high profile government official.

Securing mobile communications on a massive scale according to SCI government specifications does not happen overnight, and is not very easy. So unfortunately she has to use the channels provided, however clunky they are. I am sure Mrs. Clinton wouldn't hop into her car to visit a friend without gathering a full security detail. Yes this curtails her life, and yes it is inconvenient, but it is necessary just like securing her communications is!

It is like if I were working for a large bank, and I put in a back door VPN to the network since their VPN client only works on Windows, and I want to use Linux. Sure more convenient for me, but it is not my place to subvert security for my own personal convenience.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I don't know why this comment was downvoted without explanation, because your point is correct: as a public servant, one is expected to live up to and follow the rules and laws dictated for that position.

Security is something you never need until you need it the most.

<comment><USER8> _Security is something you never need until you need it the most._

Yeah, we get that part. But it isn't about secure, or not secure.

It's that she (or more specifically Donald Reid, her secure information technology coordinator) was never provided a legitimate explanation as to why this technology was available for the POTUS -- and for her predecessor -- but not for her. So it's understandable that they felt dissed.

<comment><USER7> Feeling dissed, is one thing, but subverting the process is another. The explanation given was that scaling the Blackberry that the POTUS was given was unmanageable. Whether that is a fair explanation or not we do not know. Even if it were not a fair explanation, does that give Mrs. Clinton the right to basically backdoor the whole process?

<comment><USER8> _Feeling dissed, is one thing, but subverting the process is another._

Agreed - I definitely do not condone her going rogue in response.

My message is simply: if the NSA can't (or won't) reasonably coordinate with the 2nd most important office holder in the Executive Branch, on what should be a perfectly tractable issue... then we have to wonder whose interests they're serving, exactly.

 _The explanation given was that scaling the Blackberry that the POTUS was given was unmanageable._

Actually what they said was quite different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This makes Clinton seem petty.

She had a wired-computer she could check email on in the SCIF, but she refused and was only willing to read her email on a Blackberry, so her staff tried to get authorisation for one, failed, and then tried to get her a highly sensitive top level device just so she could check her unclassified email in the SCIF (she could use a standard Blackberry elsewhere).

I'm siding with the NSA here. She should just buck up and learn to check her email on a wired PC like everyone else.

<comment><USER10> This is easy when you work in an office every day at the same location for your job. As Secretary of State travelling all of the time around the world this isn't realistic.

<comment><USER4> Imagine all the previous people in that position that were incapable of properly doing their jobs because they had no Blackberry in which to receive secured information.

<comment><USER11> It says in the article that Condaleeza Rice + staff were authorized for BB use whilst SecState, but the grant of that was withdrawn for Clinton.

<comment><USER9> It wasn't withdrawn for Clinton, it was withdrawn for the devices themselves. The NSA decided the potential consequences for a baseband compromise within a SCIF was too high risk.

Honestly I suspect their policy is "no wireless devices within the SCIF period." From wireless keyboards, to cellphones, to WiFi, and beyond. The black phone might be authorised but I suspect that is due to operational importance (e.g. calls vital to national security).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is literally the highest level example of Bruce Schneier's theory that people understand risks, but security people don't understand people. [1]

Let's look at this classic case: they won't give Hillary Clinton access to a modified BlackBerry that Obama was using because it made security "unmanageable". Even though Clinton's position is literally one of the most important in the country, if not the _world_ the NSA decided it was a security threat and so just didn't allow it to happen.

So Clinton setup her own email server infrastructure and conducted all State business through that.

So now those same security people caused a considerably greater threat to national security.

Someone should find who denied Clinton access to a secure BB, then they should be removed from any security related work. I almost feel sorry for them if Clinton becomes President, because their days will hopefully be numbered. But I don't feel sorry, because their short-sightedness caused a greater risk to U.S. National Security.

1\. [https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/08/people_unde...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/08/people_understand_ri.html)

<comment><USER13> It feel the same about these modern chip based credit cards. While giving a totally intangible security benefit these cards have brought great discomfort to everyone. A swipe takes around 1 second to register. Chip based cards take anywhere from 5 to 9 seconds with the message "do not remove card" flashing in between. Machines are designed such that you have to insert card in a slit you cant see, I have seen elderly people struggle to do that and cards falling out on floor creating more delays.

I really wonder if the wasted human time is worth saving handful of frauds.

<comment><USER14> I still find it bizarre the USA is only just dealing with this - the UK and most of Europe moved to chip and PIN years ago, and are now increasingly rapidly moving to using contactless payments.

<comment><USER15> I'm American and I find it bizarre too.

What really baffles me is how inconsistent the rollout has been. Chip-capable terminals are everywhere, but maybe 3/4ths of them don't have the chip part enabled. So many times, I've inserted my card only to find that it simply doesn't work. Yesterday I made a purchase where they had taped over the slot so you wouldn't even try.

It seems like once you have the hardware, the rest should just work. I don't know what the hell is going on.

<comment><USER16> I was at a place the other day with a taped over chip slot, with a little note saying "please swipe". I asked what the deal was, and the guy said all chip purchases were being double billed (apparently due to some software issue). I commented, "at least they were being _securely_ double billed". Chuckles all around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A number of comments here blame the security people or government IT in general for not being accommodating. That may be appropriate in some cases, but anyone who has worked in IT for any length of time understands how this happens. Systems that you don't like are created by bad policies, not bad IT people. Bad policies are driven by overly centralized security responsibility. The security department that says no to <X> because they are responsible for whatever you manage to do with <X>.

Think of a car accident. There is a diffusion of responsibility. The decisions both drivers made, road conditions, weather, speeds etc... You would only be concerned with the manufacturer of the car if one of the safety systems malfunctioned. Yet in the case of computer security we want to hang all the contributing factors/decions around one party: the security team. Imagine if General Motors was liable for every car accident; regardless of fault. Every time someone didn't put on their seatbelt, or drove through a flooded road etc... What kind of cars would be produced? Certainly not the kind you would enjoy driving.

The day that we can have the security departments we want is the day we understand that we can't absolve ourselves of all security responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER18> Having dealt with classified work in a previous life, there's no doubt that if any normal joe without her political connections did anything remotely close to this type of thing, they'd wind up in prison.

Clinton will probably skate. And yet she'll be the first person demanding that we try Snowden and keep Chelsea Manning locked up.

<comment><USER19> It's not crystal clear that she violated any laws. Agency heads determine policy for their department's classified information, and she was the most senior of the agency heads. She had explicit authority to classify and declassify information, and to say how it can be disseminated.

There isn't that much statutory groundwork to support charges and what there is says an agency head "is assumed to be acting under executive authority", i.e. as the arm of the President.

The Congressional Research Service wrote a rather helpful summary[1] of the myriad aspects of classification and law.

[1] [https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf)

But yeah, if you or I were to do what she did, big difference - just not all because of politics.

<comment><USER18> I hear you, although I would argue that someone with her position should have been the first person to know whether what they were sending needed a security designation or not.

The fact that 10-15% or so of those emails needed a retroactive security classification demonstrates that she held either had a cavalier attitude toward guarding that information, or was simply incompetent in knowing what should and should not have been classified.

Whether that rises to the level of a criminal act, I suspect, depends on whether any of the 30k+ emails she deleted, claiming they were personal, also contained classified material, because then the crime is lying to the FBI more so than the reckless handing of classified information.

<comment><USER20> Information does not get de-classified just because it is publicly known.

For example if one of Clinton's friends forwarded her a NYTimes story about CIA activity in Syria, and she forwarded that to a deputy, well, now she has both received and sent classified information from her email.

And even though it might have been on the front page of a newspaper, a retrospective review would designate it as classified information.

Would a staff-level person get fired in that situation? I don't know. _So much stuff_ is classified these days, and yet the press is pretty good about ferreting out stories. Any regular reader of the major news operations is probably going to see classified info on a regular basis.

How easy is it to keep track of which public, well-known news stories should be excluded from nonsecure email? I would guess, not that easy.

<comment><USER21> I've seen the same thing at companies, where employees get in trouble for talking about confidential information that is known outside of the company.

I think the rationale is because sometimes the file gets updated internally such that the leaked info is no longer accurate and the person with access might screw up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The title seems incorrect.

>And while Clinton's predecessor Condaleeza Rice had obtained waivers for herself and her staff to use BlackBerry devices, Clinton's staff was told that "use [of the BlackBerry] expanded to an unmanageable number of users from a security perspective, so those waivers were phased out and BlackBerry use was not allowed in her Suite," an e-mail from the NSA's senior liaison to the State Department noted.

NSA says that they could not ensure the security of BlackBerry devices. That's not a refusal, just the facts. Is someone expecting the NSA to magically conjure unlimited, secure BlackBerries?

<comment><USER23> Securing the blackberry is a red herring. What they wanted was a functionally equivalent mobile device. If providing such capabilities isn't exactly what the NSA should be doing, then they shouldn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> From my inside perspective, government IT is dumb.

Not that that excuses her going off and using her own. The NSA should probably evaluate if the end result of their refusal was more security or less.

<comment><USER25> But why would the NSA believe that she would set up her own server? Other Secretaries of State hadn't done anything like that.

<comment><USER26> > Other Secretaries of State hadn't done anything like that.

They actually have, the FBI is auditing the last 4 Secretaries of State and has found similar use of private email servers [1]. Outside of the state department the Bush administration was rife with the use of private, RNC managed email servers [2].

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept- cla...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept-classified- data-found-ex-secretaries-personal-email-john-kerry-condeleezza-rice-colin- powell.html?_r=0)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy)

<comment><USER25> None of these guys used their private email exclusively for government business. That is the key. They all had State Department email. Clinton did not. ALL of her email was on her private server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps I'm overly cynical but I'm guessing she got caught with her phone in the SCIF more than a few times before she got the message to leave it outside.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was rather impressed by Clinton's IT skills, managing her own mail server, using electronic communications extensively, and according to this even asking the NSA to provide a bberry.

Then I read:

> As I had been speculating, the issue here is one of personal comfort… > [Secretary Clinton] does not use a computer.

What?

<comment><USER29> She obviously didn't setup the email server herself.

<comment><USER30> I might be more excited about voting for her if I thought she could commiserate with the pain of sendmail.cf files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So basically she's even more guilty than previously realized, but perhaps a little more sympathetically so.

</comment><comment><USER32> Important bit from the article:

> the solution supported by the NSA—its SME PED (Secure Mobile Environment > Portable Electronic Device)—was hardly BlackBerry-like. SME PED devices are > based on a secure version of Windows CE, and they're only rated up to > "Secret" classification. And as Clinton was taking over at State, the SME > PED was only just becoming available.

It sounds like at the time that Clinton was moving into State, there was, literally, no good solution supported by the NSA for mobile email use.

Which considering it was 2009, and mobile email was already prevalent with Blackberry, iPhones/Androids, etc, is well, maybe par for the course for government entities.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm reading between the lines here, but is it suggesting that Clinton didn't trust the PC she had been assigned, and that she suspected she was being spied on?

Was this the reason why she chose to run her own email server (not that it was secure but still)?

<comment><USER18> Maybe she did not want anyone in to be able to FOIA her correspondences. She has said she deleted about 30k emails off the server because she claimed they were "personal in nature". The problem is, that wasn't her call to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm so glad people are finally, hopefully going to shut up about this soon. I'm surprised Clinton didn't just say this herself and end the scandal months ago. It's an extremely lame scandal because we're talking about unencrypted email anyways, email that could have been read by anyone and everyone and almost undoubtedly was. The irony that it was the NSA (as usual) that made things less secure instead of more secure is certainly not lost on me.

<comment><USER25> People are not going to shut up about this. This will be an issue through the election. It's a really big issue that the Secretary of State was so cavalier about how she handled classified information.

<comment><USER35> I'm going to point out that no one has found a single email sent to Secretary Clinton that was born secret - all of the emails were retroactively reclassified.

<comment><USER36> No, they are not "retroactively" classified. They were intentionally kept out of the classification process by Clinton via her undisclosed server. When the emails were finally inspected for classification many of them were designated as containing what _should_ have been classified from their creation. This act was fully intentional by Clinton. And inexcusable.

<comment><USER35> That would cover emails sent by her - but not emails sent /to/ her - <USER2> arguably if they were classified never should have left the email servers hosted by Department of State/General Service Administration.

<comment><USER37> I don't believe I understand the reason for pointing out the distinction. IIRC the overarching issue here is the subterfuge involved in the email server even existing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When was the last time you used print edition of yellow pages? - <AUTHOR>

I noticed that Verizon has been distributing phone directories in my neighborhood. It seems a huge waste of trees. Are people using them any more? <comment><USER2> I'm in NZ and just got more delivered as well. I find them really useful, currently I use them for:

\- Lighting fires when it's cold.

\- Holding down the clothes airer when it's windy.

\- Holding up monitors.

\- Keeping muddy shoes off the floor...

</comment><comment><USER3> I keep one on hand for starting my barbeque. As an actual resource? Almost never.

The last time, and quite possibly the first, I used it to find a plumber. $300+ later my problem still wasn't solved.

</comment><comment><USER4> At least 2 years. Google Maps/Yelp has pretty much obsoleted yellow pages.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use my yellow pages as a monitor stand, so I use it every day :P

</comment><comment><USER6> It's been about 4 or 5 years for me. I get a stack of new phone books every season, despite the fact that we don't have a land-line.</comment>


Machine Learning Can't Handle Long-Term Time-Series Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N594EF44CZD2aGkSh/machine-learning-can-t-understand-long-term-time-series-data <comment><USER2> Time is only a symptom of what's missing: causation.

ML operates with associative models of billions of parameters: trying to learn thermodynamics by parameterizing for every molecule in a billion images of them.

Animals operate with causal models of a very small number of parameters: these models richly describe how an _intervention_ on one variable _causes_ another to change. These models cannot be inferred from association (hence the last 500 years of science).

They require direct causal intervention in the environment to see how it changes (ie., _real_ learning). _And_ a rich background of historical learning to interpret new observation. You need to have lived a human life to guess what a pedestrian is going to do.

If you overcome the relevant computational infinities to learn "strategy" you will still only do so in the narrow horizon of a highly regulated game where causation has been eliminated by construction (ie., the space of all possible moves over the total horizon of the game can be known in an instant).

The state of all possible (past, current, future) configurations of a physical system cannot be computed -- it's an infinity computational statistics will never bridge.

The solution to self-driving cars will be to try and gamify the roads: robotize people so that machines can understand them. This is already happening on the internet: our behaviour made more machine-like so it can be predicted. I'm sceptical real-world behaviour can be so-constrained.

<comment><USER3> The causal argument suffers from a problem of nomenclature.

On one side we have the colloquial understanding of cause and effect where a cause is a true impetus of effect. On the other side we have "causal" learning in biology where you're not actually learning causes, just strong correlations. We can learn just about any temporal association even if there is no direct cause-effect relationship. Random reward structures are a way to illustrate this: present a reinforcing stimulus to an animal at random times and a random subset of behavior will increase in frequency. The animal develops a false "causal" belief that a series of its actions is influencing the presentation of a reward.

That's why I like focusing on "sequence prediction", even colloquially we know predictions can be wrong. Those predictions can be influenced by low-d world models, but you don't accidentally elevate that model to claim a pure/symbolic/accurate model as can happen with incautious use of the words like "causal."

<comment><USER2> The key element here is _intervention_. Animals learn by changing their environment.

Superstition in pigeons arises because they believe their actions cause the reward, it isnt "mere sequence". Any distribution over two variables observed overtime, _for all time_ can change unpredictably given an environmental change.

Animals have rich models of objects and their behaviour over time, these models aren't "sequential", and they are brought to bare on deciding whether mere sequences should be regarded causally.

<comment><USER3> 'Animals have rich models of objects and their behaviour over time, these models aren't "sequential"'

This strikes me as patently false, which means I'm probably not understanding what you mean. What does forward simulation mean if it isn't sequential?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is clever crackpottery type brainstorming from a smart person.

The author has extremely grand set of connections he developed. It ties down Buddha, enlightenment, vipassana meditation, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, fractals and neuroscience. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

Creative thinker should have these kind of crazy ideas and connections every day or at least once a week. I carry with me a notebook that is full of them.

Most ideas die as 'premature babies'. They may be interesting to think and write down, but they are not fully developed and never fit together as well as you initially thought. Filtering and piking some of them to work with is important. Giving them up is the difference between crackpot and non-crackpot.

Forcing grand connections prematurely makes this crackpottery type. Sharing the creative brainstorm in an essay that does not try make up connections would be easier to read.

<comment><USER5> The line between crackpottery and genius is a fine one. If blogs had existed in 1900 and a certain patent clerk had written a post on his ideas about clock synchronization somehow being related to electromagnetism, many would have dismissed him as a crackpot as well.

The questions this article relates to are among the most profound and difficult that human reason has ever attempted to confront. I think one should be careful in labeling such ambitious speculation as crackpottery just because it doesn't yet amount to a fully coherent and formally testable theory.

<comment><USER6> Okay...but Einstein didn't write a blog. He published a paper for peer review. Some of his ideas remained controversial for decades, but he had a sufficiently mature, cogent and well-specified theory that he could at least work through hypotheses and publish results.

<comment><USER5> He published that paper in 1905. Is it absurd to think that if the Internet existed in his time he might have blogged about his preliminary ideas before publishing a formal paper ?

<comment><USER6> Absurd is a really strong word. I will say that I really doubt he'd blog about his ideas instead of just publishing them, even on arXiv, because all the examples of groundbreaking new work in the modern era have been blogged about contemporaneous with, or after peer review of formal papers.

I'll also go further and say that, while there's a kernel of validity to your analogy, it's not the right analogy with which to deliver your overarching point. I don't think the publishing method for one of the most significant scientific advancements of the previous century is a particularly good lens for analyzing this blog post.

The critical content of this post is far below the threshold usually associated with an idea sufficiently well formed to be publishable. Einstein had a minimum viable theory before he solicited feedback; and when he did solicit that feedback, it was through what we'd consider orthodox channels.

<comment><USER5> What you say is true.

The main point I was trying to make was that given a speculative post of such breadth, which touches on such difficult issues as AGI, how the brain works and perhaps even the nature of conscious experience, and which makes some claims that are at least interesting, I think it's quite presumptuous to assert that these ideas are all nonsense without a deeper exploration of them. I certainly would not want to make such an assertion, despite being troubled by what I think are some inaccuracies in the author's description of certain physical concepts.

Now a secondary issue is that it is true that as far as I'm aware major scientific discoveries have typically been initially published in much more developed form and have thus been the work of a single individual or of a relatively small group of closely affiliated individuals. I'm not convinced however that this historical model of very small scale scientific collaboration is necessarily the only one nor the best one in light of modern means of communication.

It seems at least conceivable to me that there is a possible future in which the following hold:

* There is some kernel of validity in this author's ideas.

* A small number of other people find them intriguing and choose to collaborate with the author to further elaborate them.

* This collaboration leads to major progress in our understanding of one or more of the areas mentioned above.

For me the, admittedly very small, likelihood of such an outcome, justifies the author's post and its appearance on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems out-of-date by 5 years or more even though it was published today, and I am unsure as to why.

It calls out long short term memory but doesn't mention recent (last 5 years) improvements like Gated Recurrent Networks (GRUs) or Transformers (GPT-2, huggingface/transformers) which have shown significant improvements over the traditional LSTM model. These can handle time series data much better than older models could.

<comment><USER8> Any links to heavy time series based machine learning algorithms? I'm in finance, and while I know how to establish and run a random forest or gradient boost regressor using standard libraries, I've never had a good handle on them.

<comment><USER9> Most everything Eamonn Keogh publishes: [https://www.cs.ucr.edu/%7Eeamonn/selected_publications.htm](https://www.cs.ucr.edu/%7Eeamonn/selected_publications.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This claim seems plausible.

The reason seems even simpler than the article. Deep learning requires lots of training data - that data naturally needs to more or less be "the same"; follow "the same" logic.

A long enough time series is going to involve a change in the logic of the real world, a change that the network won't be trained for.

<comment><USER11> Deep Learning doesn't necessarily require a huge amount of data. What DL does is allow you to fit more complex relationships between input and output than would be the case with, say, a bog standard linear model. If a relationship is complex and also clearly defined in your data, then you don't necessarily need much. In general it's true that may not be the case, but that doesn't make "deep learning requires lots of training data" true, only that "the data used for deep learning models is typically noisy on top of representing a complex relationship".

It's a semantic difference, but a very important one if we're to avoid going down the road of just mindlessly throwing compute at every problem. And if we do that, we'll just wind up with millions of Rube Goldberg machines instead of actually solving problems.

The change in logic of the real world thing is absolutely spot on, though. Over enough time it becomes basically impossible to disentangle effects.

<comment><USER10> _Deep Learning doesn 't necessarily require a huge amount of data._

References? I mean, I know "one shot" and similar approaches but as far as I know, these involve extending a neural network that has been already trained, on massive data, to a little bit more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Machine learning does just fine to _extremely well_ at long term time series data; there are entire branches of machine learning dedicated to this. The fact that this imbecile never heard of these tools is why nobody should be reading his essay.

Uber's engineers didn't do this for their human finder because;

1) Image recognition stuff isn't explicitly built to do this (though it easily could be jury rigged to do so)

2) Uber's engineers apparently never heard of the concept of "moving averages" and "threshholds" which would have worked just fine.

"More precisely, today's machine learning (ML) systems cannot infer a fractal structure from time series data."

-look at this idiot using words he doesn't understand. Muh fractals.

<comment><USER13> "Imbecile", "idiot"? Please refrain from personal insults as they add nothing to the discussion.

<comment><USER12> "Imbecile" and "idiot" were measured and reasonable adjectives for the gibbering nonsense published above. The drooling lackwit who wrote this should be tarred and feathered for such frippery and nonsense.

As I said above; machine learning does just fine to extremely well at long term time series data; there are entire branches of machine learning dedicated to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm feeling like this is entire missing the whole world of Matrix Profiles and Time Series Chains...

</comment><comment><USER14> The article I would like to read is what the challenges are to including a few prior states in navigation. I'm amazed that, when I drive over or under a bridge, my online mapping software changes instructions as if my car were able to levitate 20 feet onto the roadway above or below, even when that roadway is a highway without exit or entrance within a mile.

</comment><comment><USER15> I remembered that neural differential equations are better suited to represent time series data, I saw them being used a lot in pharmacological processes, any additional idea or insight related to this?</comment>


Will Killing Net Neutrality Crash the Economy? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/will-killing-net-neutrality-crash-the-economy-4d4e9b2a259b <comment><USER2> What i dont understand is how can people become so greedy. They would have made a ton of money if they just let the internet be free for all, a world that is truly connected,but no,not for these guys. Its ok though, because these actions will not go unnoticed nor will it last very long. Looks like the show will soon begin.</comment>


The way to write a program depends how it's most likely to change - <AUTHOR> https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1087402.html <comment><USER2> This also applies to complicated parametric CAD models, assemblies in particular.

Three schools of thought on CAD:

Unconstrained, design in place at assembly, and or part level.

Partially Constrained. Given that which is known, define, test, and process according to numerical input.

Fully constrained. At part level, this can make a lot of sense, but not always. At the large assembly level, resolving all those degrees of freedom get human and very compute intensive. Today, pretty much all very large models, rockets, planes, most of cars, is either partial, or design in place.</comment>


Kickstarter has no clue how drone startup raised $3.4M then imploded - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/11/kickstarter-learned-of-zano-collapse-through-a-bare-bones-project-update/ <comment><USER2> Kickstarter is the stock market for amateurs to buy into other people's dreams. You are always going to have a few bad apples who spoil the bunch. I have funded tonnes of successful Kickstarter campaigns and I have learned to steer clear from the obviously risky startups, which at times can be difficult.

Although I have never backed a failed campaign, every campaign I have backed that requires some kind of manufacturing and hardware has never delivered on time, except my Remix Mini Android PC. The problem is manufacturing starts out inherently expensive and the price drops the more you produce. If you're only doing a production run of 6000, you can guarantee you're not going to get a good price for something that requires plastics molding and assembly.

I think Kickstarter needs to make it harder to start a hardware based campaign. There are a lot of empty promises, I think some accountability would go a long way. A milestone based system would be great where the owner of the campaign specifies milestones (design, plastic mold, hardware components, etc) and when they need a milestone released, Kickstarter evaluates on a request- by-request basis and then updates the campaign automatically.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How about KickStarter holding the money in an escrow account after a project is funded and then releasing it in bits after the creators have reached a milestone? That way, the creators are not getting all the money upfront? Will that be hard to implement? Surely, there has to be a way to protect the backers from losing all their money..

<comment><USER3> I think the people cost will be what would kill that; they'd have to have people actually verify milestones, investigate the kickstarter campaigns, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kickstarter's requirement that projects have a working prototype is a good start. They should at least verify working prototypes in person for projects with over some amount (like $500K) of funding. Or even just require a prototype video shot by an independent third party.

</comment><comment><USER5> As to why they failed, just watch their original pitch video. Their claims are essentially impossible.

<comment><USER6> Would you care to elaborate? I just watched the video and didn't see anything impossible. They claimed a small drone that would take pictures and fly itself in some limited ways. Everything described I've either seen in other (larger) drones or sounds easy to implement and gimmicky.

I will admit the video dosent show very much of the team that would make the drone and I consider that a bit of armed flag.

<comment><USER5> The worst part was the mode where it follows you around. There is only one device on the market (airdog) that does that, and it requires you wear a special RF beacon and doesn't work that well. The zano was meant to follow your phone's GPS (which isn't very accurate) and they didn't specify how it managed to keep you in frame. I suspect it didn't.

Also, no way in hell are they getting more than five minutes flight time out of the tiny battery they showed.</comment></comment></comment>


Allison Randal -- Parrot VM (talk from JVM Lang Summit 2008) - <AUTHOR> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2900106024749292774

<comment><AUTHOR> Slides can be found here....

<http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/pdf/38_Randal_parrot.pdf></comment>


The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestranger.com/features/feature/2015/08/26/22755273/the-more-i-learn-about-breast-milk-the-more-amazed-i-am

<comment><USER2> "Breast is best" absolutely dominates the conversation in the popular press, no matter what the actual studies say. This surge of support for breastfeeding started with the Catholic La Leche group, and now the studies tell us they chose the right cause for their goals: breast feeding women ARE much more likely to stay in the home, much less likely to "disrupt christian families" by holding a job, and much more likely to become the primary care giver for their child. Breastfeeding is a great way to support a regressive Catholic family structure: woman at home as the primary childcare giver, man at work.

The press talks about it like an established scientific fact that breastfeeding does everything: fights diabetes, childhood obesity, raises intelligence, fortifies the immune system, and the list continues. The only problem is that if you actually read the research, there's no good evidence for any of that. There are tenuous correlations in uncontrolled, unreproduced studies, often reusing the same poor data sets, where even the authors note that no real conclusions can be drawn. Those are the only studies quoted in favor of breastfeeding's miracle effects. In responsible surveys of the research, the only claim that holds up is that iq may get up to a 5 point boost (well within the error bars for childhood IQ testing). There is some evidence that it can help reduce incidence of upset stomach or diarrhea in an infant, to the tune of one fewer incident per child (on average). That's it. There are no controlled, reproduced studies to show anything else.

But the science is very clear that if both parents can trade off to share the loss of sleep and emotional bonding, the resulting boost in emotional stability and support have much bigger effects! New parents, imagine your mental state if you could each put in earplugs and get 3 full nights sleep per week!

Breastfeeding is the religious right's sneak attack on female independence, wrapped up as pop feminism. Real feminists (of both sexes) share the load and bonding time with their partner, and ensure their baby gets consistent feeding with complete nutrients every time. Real feminists have a gender agnostic parenting environment for their child. All it takes is reading a little research.</comment>


Getting More out of Top - <AUTHOR> http://fitnr.com/getting-more-out-of-top.html

<comment><USER2> Previously submitted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2259911>

No comments, one upvote (from me).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I was pretty sure more folks on HN would enjoy this, but it's hard to get noticed. I figured my timing was off so I thought I'd try again. I guess it just may be the content :)

<comment><USER2> Ah, it was you that submitted it last time as well.

Hmm.

I know what you mean - I would've thought more people would get something out of it. However, I found the presentation pedestrian and repetitive.

I may be wrong, but my impression is that the number of poeple on HN who use the command line intensively is small. Most seem to be involved in web stuff, and seem less interested in the command line, and getting the most out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Next time I'll work harder to edit out the repetitive bits and try to add some zing. I'm thinking of tackling screen(1) next.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hobbits' Size Not Likely Linked to Growth Disorders - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/hobbits-size-not-likely-linked-to-growth-disorders.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fscience%2Findex.jsonp

<comment><USER2> The image comparing both skulls is just the same image stretched. [http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/07/16/science/16HOBB1...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/07/16/science/16HOBB1.html)

<comment><USER3> The image in the NYT piece doesn't appear in the original article, you can read the whole thing here: [http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0069119#s5)</comment></comment>


Fiat Chrysler to Modify 100K Vehicles After Accusations of Emissions Cheating - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/business/energy-environment/fiat-chrysler-diesel-emissions.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20170519&nl=dealbook&nl_art=7&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0 <comment><USER2> This is not a problem with capitalism.

This is not a problem with regulation.

This is a problem with humans. Some will always try to break the rules, and take risks, no matter what the system. The best systems are the ones that recognize this and have ways of self correcting.

In this case if there was a magical device that measured actual pollutants in every car sold, through out it's life, and could be easily and inexpensively checked annually so that the owner had to pay a tax on excess pollution (or even better, a market price for total pollution), the regulation would be easy.

Automakers could claim whatever they wanted, rig whatever tests they chose, but it would become very clear in real world usage that they had done so. And their brands would be murdered if they got a reputation for lying.

<comment><USER3> If you have to pass some standardized tests, the engineers will do what they're supposed to: Meet the goals.

I wouldn't call it 'rigged tests', it's more like they optimize the system under test to meet the spec. It probably happens everywhere, not only in cars. The behavior of your fridge, AC or any other hardware is probably optimized in weird ways just to meet Energy Star etc.

<comment><USER4> >I wouldn't call it 'rigged tests', it's more like they optimize the system under test to meet the spec.

You would do so wrongly. In these cases, like VW, the car is programmed _specifically to detect when it is being tested_ , and lower emissions. They aren't optimizing to test spec, they are cheating. There's no other word for it.

<comment><USER5> In the auto industry, it's called a "defeat device", and has a long history of causing woe to car companies who use such devices.

<comment><USER3> Since when? And which long history? Seriously, I don't know, where can I read up on this?

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia has a list of a bunch of incidents going back to the 70s, in which the phrase "the largest fine to date" appears often: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An issue with dieselcars is that they emit small particles PM2.5 particles which is very damaging to human health.

"A typical diesel car emits around 10 times more nitrogen oxides than an equivalent gasoline car."

"Fivefacts about diesel the car industry would rathernot tell you" [https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publicat...](https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2015_09_Five_facts_about_diesel_FINAL.pdf)

PM 2.5 particles which is small particles emitted by diesel vehicles are a cause for preterm births in babies. " We estimate 2.7–3.4 million preterm births may be associated with PM2.5 exposure in 2010 globally." [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412016...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412016305992)

"Health experts lambast 'deceitful' carmakers as data suggests 97% of vehicles fail to meet NOx emissions standards in real-world conditions". [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/23/diesel- cars...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/23/diesel-cars- pollution-limits-nox-emissions)

<comment><USER7> Does this also happen in Bluetec engines?

<comment><USER8> Yes, BlueTEC is just Mercedes' name for the DEF system that treats the exhaust. There's nothing special about the engine itself, the exhaust is just treated.

BlueTEC is just a marketing term like SSRS ( airbag ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing. If you get caught with so much as a non-stock air filter on your car, you can get hauled into criminal court (at least in California). If the car maker actively conspires with ill intent, to cheat the test, all they need to do is "fix" it and promise not to do it again.

<comment><USER10> What does California do about rolling coal? I see it a lot in the Midwest.

<comment><USER11> Regarding California:

[https://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/complaints/smoke.htm](https://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/complaints/smoke.htm)

[https://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/complaints/svc2.htm](https://www.arb.ca.gov/enf/complaints/svc2.htm)

Regarding rolling coal:

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nothing-wrong-with- rollin...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nothing-wrong-with-rolling- coal-711)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So after VW's issue and now this, it makes me wonder--is diesel actually as attractive as some of these manufacturers had made it out to be? Or was that all inherent in this big con?

<comment><USER13> I think we're seeing the end days of diesel for passenger cars, at least in developed nations with strict emissions controls. Hopefully electric will take over. Unfortunately, no one's quite solved the trucking problem yet.

<comment><USER14> I hate to say it but I think you're right. I was a big believer in diesel passenger cars because their mileage is as good as a hybrid, they're cheaper to produce, and you can operate them more or less carbon-neutral (with biodiesel).

But that was before we found out everybody was cheating on the emissions.

<comment><USER13> Diesel cars aren't as fuel-efficient as a gasoline hybrid. You're making that comparison via volume, which is misleading because diesel is significantly denser (and, thus, burning a similar volume of diesel releases more greenhouse gases). Do the comparison by mass instead of volume, or simply by CO2 mass emitted per mile, and you'll see that the hybrid still wins out.

Although, of course, even hybrids aren't good enough in the long run; we need to stop digging up and burning buried carbon, full stop. Electric cars do that. Hybrids and efficient diesels do not. Electric cars are a workable final solution that results in a planet that remains livable; hybrids and diesels are not. They don't destroy the planet quite as quickly, but the destination is still the same.

<comment><USER14> Specific gravity of gasoline is roughly .74 and diesel is roughly .85, so point taken. Agreed that electric will be the best solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That will go as well as their 'voluntary' air bag recall.

Even Mercedes haven't got close to schedule they promised (they are a decade late), let alone Chrysler's less premium brands.

</comment><comment><USER16> It would be interesting to see real world impact of health and economy of diesel passenger vehicles in a country like Ireland where most passenger vehicles are diesel vs the US where very few are.

Commercial vehicles are going to push far more emissions out, with far more miles/running hours/idle hours and older standards (i.e. you will have a 40 year spread of commercial vehicles on the road).

</comment><comment><USER14> Slightly OT: I didn't know there were such things as 1500 (1/2 ton) diesel pickups before I read this article. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER17> Question: Do any emissions regulations (US/EU/etc,etc) set a ratio of lab to real world emissions?

<comment><USER5> No. And the US, until prodded by the academics from WV, apparently never measured any real-world anything, even for research purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> now everyone who thinks their vehicles are made to be crash safe think twice! they make them only to pass those tests

</comment><comment><USER19> It it a crime if everyone does it? Capitalism has its problems.

<comment><USER20> It's a crime if it's a crime, and it has nothing to do with Capitalism.

<comment><USER21> But if everyone does it and it's a crime, then you might want to reconsider what a crime is (not saying that you should in this case...)

<comment><USER20> It's the legislature's place to make that decision. The companies don't get a pass on breaking the law because everyone's doing it, the same way you and I don't get a pass.

And I don't think every company is breaking the rules. Letting the scofflaws off sends exactly the wrong signal to the companies that made sacrifices (in price or performance) to stay within the law.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Wave API - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

<comment><USER2> Same thing over & over again.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean?

<comment><USER2> This is the second time _I_ saw this on HN (previous one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=632146>). People tend to dump techcrunch, nytimes like bots & also I noticed people submitting links found on sites on HN. Most the time they are just crap. The danger here is people getting blind to Good content or good content easily going down the drain.

Time to go & listen "same thing over & over again - Flobots" <http://tinysong.com/YTh>

<comment><USER4> "This is the second time I saw this on HN (previous one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=632146>) "

That link is to this thread.

<comment><USER2> Oops. Here's the right one. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630828>

<comment><USER4> Ah, OK.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Work as .NET independant contractor in SF/Bay Area? Or re-specialize? - <AUTHOR> I wanted to ask you if you think if there's interest for a SF/Bay Area company to hire a senior .NET developer as a semi-remote independent contractor / consultant, or if it's better to shore up other skills.
I'm a longtime developer, working mostly on .NET for an U.S. company as an employee for a South American branch, getting a (good by local standards) South American salary, but I've hit the "glass ceiling" and the only way to get a better salary is to go the management path.
I have an U.S. business visa so I thought I might try my hand going to SF and interviewing for .NET positions next year, working mostly remotely, but I do have where to stay in SF for short periods of in-house work (crunch times, project prep or whatever is needed).
I know .NET is not the most used stack, I don't know if I'd have more success if I brush up React/Vue (I'm not a fan of frontend work), I'm mostly a backend person. I work with Java occasionally but I'd rather not. Rails demand has gone way down from what I see, but seems much more in demand than .NET - should I learn it?. I have a chatbot in production use but it's very basic - I did try out all the current frameworks. I'm also very comfortable with Azure but not at all with AWS.
Pretty sure I'd at least learn the basics of AWS, but I'm not sure where to spend the next few months preparing. I probably should shore up on the algorithms interview questions but those are unrelated to the actual job :)
Very grateful for any feedback. <comment><USER2> Doesn't hurt to learn other skills that are in demand like Node. However being an independent contractor you're at an advantage (when building new solutions) because the client may not care what you use as long as you build a deliverable that meets their requirements and solves their problem. In my opinion which may be biased since I prefer the .NET and Microsoft ecosystem there's never been a better time to be on .NET. The new direction for the company is .NET Core which means great performance and cross-platform capabilities. The ease of deployment allows for leveraging the cloud with containers and serverless solutions that can run on Windows or Linux environments. Add on to that SQL Server starting with 2016 being available on Linux and you have a winner. That's on the back end of things. On the front end you have ASP.NET Core with support for SPA applications if you choose not to use Razor Pages. You also have Blazor which look interesting as well. For mobile development you have Xamarin. If you want to do Machine Learning you have tools like ML.NET and CNTK. Long story short, with Microsoft becoming more open and offering tools for developers to be productive on Azure as well as ways for people to build the next wave of solutions like Chatbots, Augmented Reality, Microservices, etc. having invested so much time on the .NET platform can be rewarding because the transition to these new set of tools can be seamless and your opportunities endless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ! You're right, maybe getting better on what I do know and try to sell solutions not technology.</comment></comment>


Study finds police body cameras had no significant impact on use of force - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/20/the-benefits-of-police-body-cams-are-a-myth/ <comment><USER2> IMHO it seems that the body cameras are quite frequently "malfunctioning" when they would be needed.

edit: some links from quick google search.

[http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us/minneapolis-police- shoo...](http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us/minneapolis-police-shooting- body-camera/index.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/a-cop- fir...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/a-cop-fires-a-teen- dies-yet-six-police-body-cameras-somehow-miss-what- happens/2017/03/20/c7d801a8-0824-11e7-b77c-0047d15a24e0_story.html?utm_term=.1ad46681f944)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-baton-rouge- shoot...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-baton-rouge-shooting- questions-swirl-around-body-cam-failures-n605386)

<comment><USER3> It's quite possible they are functioning just as often when not needed, and that this only seems malicious because of selection bias.

<comment><USER4> And guess who does the selection bias on the on/off button.

<comment><USER3> This only matters if you assume malicious intent. I'm not saying it isn't ever there, but let's not pretend it's proven to be statistically significant.

<comment><USER5> Malicious intent __must __be assumed. The body cameras exist in order to be a deterrent to malicious police behaviors and as such any system which puts the officers in charge of the functioning of the cameras, and which does not heavily discourage or prevent police from operating with a broken or malfunctioning camera is failing in its primary mission. It should be illegal for an officer to operate or be on duty with a broken or otherwise non- functioning body camera, and the footage from body cameras should be held by an independent third party that is not subject to oversight or control by the police (FBI might not be a bad idea).

<comment><USER6> Ironic, given that a core tenant of our justice system is "innocent until proven guilty".

All of the things you mention are "wishlist" items right now.

Lets assume this is true (and honestly, I'd love for it to be true).

>It should be illegal for an officer to operate or be on duty with a broken or otherwise non-functioning body camera

So now that you have that law, how do you enforce it?

How does a department verify that they're complying?

How does any individual officer know whether his camera is working or malfunctioning?

How do they correct the problem if it's a technically complex issue related to camera infrastructure or hardware?

How much additional burden does this place on each department?

How do those departments pay for that added burden?

\----

So can we put a system in place that satisfies your very high standard? Almost certainly yes.

Should we? I don't know.

Will we? Almost certainly not. At least not in the immediate future. It's expensive and hard.

<comment><USER5> Obviously there's the question of how foolproof you want the system to be, but at a minimum there should be some system that monitors and confirms it's receiving at least a heartbeat signal from the camera and that the camera is reporting normal functioning. If the camera drops out police dispatch should be notified who in turn should notify the officer that he needs to return to the station to have his camera replaced. One possibly more passive solution that others have mentioned is to simply discount any testimony an officer provides that doesn't have an operating camera to corroborate his statements and instead defer to non-law enforcement testimony in those cases instead of the current situation where an officer is always considered more trustworthy than anyone else. That provides very strong incentive for police to insure their cameras are working because in the event they aren't any testimony they provide would be more or less nullified and likely lose them cases.

<comment><USER3> This is like a nightmare scenario. Criminal testimony should be given more weight than the police? Madness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surprise!

You can't expect to extract any value from cameras under police control.

The cameras must exist beyond the reach of police departments, and publish footage in a way that cannot be censored.

The body cameras get censored because the police have created a system that benefits them, above all else.

The reality of this outcome should weigh heavily on everyone's mind, about how this correlates with every other aspect of police activity.

<comment><USER8> > and publish footage in a way that cannot be censored

Easier said than done. Police officers are often seeing people on the worst day of their life. It would be an incredible decrease in privacy and general dignity if all footage was just published uncensored.

If someone assaulted you and stole your cloths would you want a video online of you being interviewed about the experience with just a towel on (and probably a few scenes where you are completely naked before they get you the towel)? That is potentially an extreme example, but ever day police officers interact with innocent people and victims that don't deserve to have that experience made public domain.

In short, the police need some way to make sure some video is kept private.

Police abuse of power is a terrible thing. I have no doubt they are literally getting away with murder and framing people in many cases. But we have to remember that a vast majority of what officers do is to protect us and help us in our time of need.

<comment><USER9> The related argument against this that I've seen from a few cops is that this also removes their ability to use discretion and not charge people. If somebody reports a crime and happens to have some drugs in their pocket and the police find them, they could have just ignored them or confiscated them and not charge the guy in pursuit of the greater good, but with the whole thing on tape, they essentially have to charge everything they see/find.

<comment><USER10> Is that an issue though? It's my understanding that police are allowed a lot of discretion as to whether or not they should charge someone with a crime. ianal, so genuinely asking

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The cameras are a positive step anyway. The political debate cannot help but be effected every time a cop is caught on video doing something shady, but nothing happens. Over time this repeated evidence will cause social change, even if it doesn't create justice for the particular victim of that particular moment.

But for cameras to be really effective a couple things need to happen:

1) They have to be on by default, and not turned on and off by the cop.

2) The video needs to be archived with a neutral party that can provide the raw source data to attorneys for both prosecution and defense on equal terms.

3) The law needs to change and juries need to change so that cops are actually held to the same standards of violence and self-defense as any other citizen. This is necessary for US police to claim to actually be civilian police, and not a military occupation. But nonetheless this last one will be the hardest and slowest change of the three.

</comment><comment><USER12> Another data point:

"The presence of body-worn cameras caused police to refrain from the use of force even when its was necessary for self-protection."

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-017-9311-5](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-017-9311-5)

Tl;dr here: [https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/942692766177480704](https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/942692766177480704)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a poster child for jumping to conclusions. It's just as possible that there's no impact because there aren't a significant number of violent actions performed by police with the mindset that it is not justified.

We seem to have a great understanding of the detachment with which a doctor needs to operate to handle a stressful and high stakes daily environment, but somehow totally lack this empathy when it comes to police.

</comment><comment><USER13> There are many rationales for body cameras. Most are along the lines of providing better records of events such as interactions between the police and the public. Reducing use of force is usually not among the official rationales. However, one unofficial rationale is that body cameras may reduce _unreported_ uses of force and again this goes back to the main rationale of providing a better record of police activities.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yet a study in Las Vegas reports significant reduction in the use of force when body cameras are used: [https://www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/IRM-2017-U-016112-Final.pd...](https://www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/IRM-2017-U-016112-Final.pdf)

In fact, I think the DC report is the exception - cameras are having significant impact most everywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER15> This signifies that the police in question don't believe their conduct is wrong. This definitely comes down to a problem that needs to be sorted with proper training and establishing proper protocols on how to deal with these situations.

</comment><comment><USER16> Better than nothing, however?

<comment><USER17> Not really. The article states two huge downsides:

1) Privileged footage access by the police results in selective publication of parts of the video, creating false or distorted narratives;

2) Police cameras are cameras, so this results in increased surveillance.

<comment><USER18> I dont get number 2. There's already a police officer where the camera is, they themselves are surveillance. Id much prefer the camera. Especially if I did something wrong so it can be seen exactly what I did instead of the report being blown out of proportion to ensure the charges stick.

<comment><USER19> Right, but what about all the times that crimes aren't being committed? In Illinois, the law is that the cameras must be able to record 10 hours and must be on when not in the car or the officer is talking with a victim, witness or confidential informant and those individuals request the camera be turned off [0]. That means that whenever the office enters a private area, where one expects a reasonable amount of privacy, that privacy is gone as long as the officer if following the rules. There are, of course, private places that one would not expect privacy such as any business that states they are recording video.

[0] [http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?ActID=3662&Ch...](http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?ActID=3662&ChapterID=11&SeqStart=100000&SeqEnd=1000000)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> tl;dr: The problem isn't the "body cam". The problem is that the victims can't get at the body cam footage due to various rules put in place by departments and police unions.

<comment><USER21> "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt tells CNBC

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew)

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

<comment><USER20> The "nothing to hide" argument is not relevant for a public servant whose job, by definition, is occurring _in public_.

Since we give police more power than the average citizen, the more appropriate argument would be: "Who will guard the guards themselves?" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F)

At then end of the day, the appropriate answer in a Democratic system must eventually be "the people, themselves".

Body cams don't magically make police better. But, without them, you can't even begin the process.</comment></comment></comment>