A bigger problem than ISIS: The Mosul Dam is failing - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/02/a-bigger-problem-than-isis <comment><USER3> Stunning picture showing a portion of the huge amount of water behind, at 300 ft higher: [http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/client_media/images/...](http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/client_media/images/x846.aerial_view_of_mosul_dam.jpg.pagespeed.ic.od7I9iy- mQ.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Wow, amazing to see that much water and no greenery surrounding it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dexter Filkins, the writer of this piece, is also the author of one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read - The Forever War (not the space war book).

The Forever War [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307279448/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_OWDy...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307279448/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_OWDyybR2B68S1)

<comment><USER6> You've got to be kidding me. I started reading "The Forever War" (the space war book) based on some comments I read on here and I assure you that there wasn't any warning about the space war book.

<comment><USER7> If you want a good space war book, Cixin Liu, Three Body Problem and sequels.

The Forever War (not the space war book) is excellent however.

<comment><USER8> The Forever War (the space war book) is also excellent

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a close friend that is is the Army Corps of Engineers at the dam. Despite being deployed to the dam months ago, she's seen sporadic time at the dam due to ISIS in the area. Every time they even get close the higher ups decide to evacuate the American engineers, can't say what's been decided for the others. During the recent Mosul Offensive, they were away from the dam the entire time.

She was also telling me that during the time that ISIS held the dam, they managed to booby trap the entire place. They had multiple Iraqi workers killed in bathrooms from traps set. However, ISIS didn't manage any real structural damage to the dam.

<comment><USER10> > ISIS didn't manage any real structural damage to the dam.

This makes it sound like they were intentionally trying to destroy the damn, were they?

I'm not an expert but it seems like it should be easy for a military group controlling a damn to blow it up if they wanted to. Though the article mentions that it was built to be resistant against air strikes, so maybe not?

<comment><USER9> She said all the booby trapping happened in the last days as the US was about to recapture the dam, so it was hastily done. That being said, it did slow operations as they then had to sweep the entire dam after they realized what happened.

She said it would have been pretty difficult for them to cause significant structural damage, because as mentioned it was 'bomb proof' and as stated they were making money up until the very end in selling electricity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazing read, much longer than I generally get hooked into.

I am astonished that "Grouting" (A term i find like many in the engineering word makes a possibly questionable practice sound like a good idea) is a functional, let alone acceptable solution, I can only begin to imagine what the ground under that dam must look like after the last 20+ years of concrete being poured into it.

<comment><USER12> "Amazing read, much longer than I generally get hooked into."

Please, please subscribe to the New Yorker in some fashion ... I personally subscribe to the kindle version which is a very useful and workable format.

The New Yorker[1] regularly has very, very good long form articles that have deepened my understanding of what I consider to be very important issues. Off the top of my head, I can think of three such articles that stick out - <USER2> long treatment of the deepwater horizon accident and the chemical dispersants that were used in the cleanup, their decade-after-the-fact retrospective article on Gore vs. Bush, and a more recent article on the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.

[1] Also the London Review of Books which is _excellent_ for long form current events articles. Also book reviews.

<comment><USER13> Agreed.

If you believe that you should not read main stream news (like I do) this is one of the sources to get 'good' news from.

<comment><USER14> I don't mean to knock on The New Yorker or cast aspersions on your choices, but I have two rebuttals:

First, longform articles such as this one usually come months or years after the fact and don't help with the primary mission of journalism, which is to keep you abreast of the goings on around you. (Of everything from "what your local government is doing and how that affects you" to "what the financial markets in another continent are up to and how that affects you.") This is my opinion, but I think that the pejorative "mainstream media" is often used as a substitute for "media that doesn't write a story how I want it written."

Second, The New Yorker is owned by Advance Publications, which is about as "mainstream" of media as you're going to find. One of their larger publishing subsidiaries is Conde Nast, which publishes The New Yorker alongside Architectural Digest, Vogue, Golf World, GQ, and several other publications. You may also know them as the publisher of ArsTechnica. They also own more than 40 newspapers.

Just my two cents, for what that's worth these days.

<comment><USER15> _longform articles such as this one usually come months or years after the fact and don 't help with the primary mission of journalism, which is to keep you abreast of the goings on around you_

I think there are many facets to the mission of journalism. In-depth and investigative journalism are very important as well as being kept up-to-date on what's happening in the day-to-day. In some cases I prefer these more in- depth pieces as they have some perspective on how the events they're describing are affected by historical context and how they are affecting what's going on in current events. Consider the Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate coverage or the Boston Globe's coverage of the child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Boston.

Different events and issues can be served by different forms. For a piece like this, I have a hard time imagining it being served better as a short piece of a couple column inches in a paper or a 90 second segment on the evening news. Not all events need coverage like this, of course, but it doesn't make the long-form pieces any less an important and vital aspect of journalism.

<comment><USER14> > For a piece like this, I have a hard time imagining it being served better > as a short piece of a couple column inches in a paper or a 90 second segment > on the evening news. ... it doesn't make the long-form pieces any less an > important and vital aspect of journalism.

I agree and I should have written more words that are like what you wrote. The New Yorker is great for what it is, in-depth coverage of a complicated or unfamiliar topic. I suppose my point was that other, more general sources ought, in my opinion, to be part of a "balanced diet" of news coverage.

<comment><USER16> There's some interesting criticism of whether "current events" news really provides any actual societal value, or if it might actually do the opposite [1].

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad- ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf- dobelli#top)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Way down the bottom, we see the problem is solved for at least the next year:

"Early in 2016, under American prodding, the Iraqis reopened negotiations with Trevi S.p.A., the Italian firm. In September, a team of engineers, hired at a cost of three hundred million dollars, arrived at the dam to perform a crash repair job. Their main task is to install updated equipment, designed to fill the voids beneath the dam more precisely, and to repair the broken control gate. Under the contract, the Italians will do the grouting for a year, and then leave the equipment with their Iraqi counterparts. The engineers say that they are confident they can prevent the dam's foundation from washing away."

<comment><USER18> The sentence folllowing that starts with _But_. 'Crash repair job' also doesn't instill confidence that it is a given this will work.

Also, this dam still is close to a war zone, if not in a war zone. That updated equipment may not make it there, can get destroyed in an attack, or the personnel doing the work can be 'persuaded' not to work or may outright be killed.

What surprises me most about this story is that they kept delivering power to the enemy, while they also could have let all or most of the water out. It wouldn't surprise me if money or backstabbing ("we'll keep delivering electricity if you focus on attacking your other enemies instead of on getting back the dam from us") was involved there.

<comment><USER19> This has been a pattern that has been seen over and over in Iraq. Contractors come in an build "state of the art" infrastructure to repair or replace existing infrastructure. This in itself is not a problem per se. There are two issues.

One is the local population lacks the training and expertise to run and maintain this "state of the art" infrastructure. Not that they couldn't become capable because they certainly could but their frame of reference is maintaining 40 or 50 year old infrastructure.

The second issue is that they don't have the financial means of maintaing this newly installed infrastructure. Their operating budget often can't accommodate the maintenance of such state of that art infrastructure. What's good for a first world contractors bottom line is not necessarily the best fit for a third world country's utility company.

This book details a lot of this and is worth a look:

[https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Money-Wasted-Billions- Corporate...](https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Money-Wasted-Billions-Corporate- ebook/dp/B000SEQN3Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482853876&sr=1-1&keywords=9780316030816)

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure if your point is applicable here. This is a dam from 1986, not some new fangled contraption no one understands. It has a known maintenance schedule and is old school technology. The problem is, ISIS decided to murder or chase off the staff who maintains the dam and didn't keep up with the work it needs.

Worse, the construction was done "on the cheap" as dictated by the Hussein regime. Instead of digging deeply into the delicate and soluble gypsum and grouting properly, the engineers were forced to use a shallow blanket-grout technique which simply requires more maintenance going forward as it failed to stop dissolution. Grouting on this dam is done six days a week. That's right, every day but Sunday since 1986. ISIS's pause of this created this crisis.

Contrary to your point, if it was done "first world style" it would be a much more stable dam, but instead the Hussein regime was too busy buying palaces and gold toilets to care too much about getting large scale projects right. Iraqis now much pay forward the technical debt of the shallow blanket grout until the dam is decommissioned. There is no alternative here and this dam should be a study of autocratic regime's attempts at cost savings which ultimately cost more in the long run and may eventually cause a human rights disaster. I believe 1m people are at risk of drowning if this dam collapses. These are non-trivial numbers.

<comment><USER21> Iraq had a lot of money back then and like in much of the developing world, mega-projects were sought after (and not just by despots).

The Mosul Dam was not built cheaply, it was rushed to completion to meet some idiotic deadline. The other options would likely not have cost much more (especially considering maintenance), but it would have taken more time.

And it was "first-world style", the consultants and construction firms were European just like the ones that built Kariba Dam. They had no problem building it nor any problem cashing the cheques.

<comment><USER22> The article says the dam was rushed because of the war with Iran that Saddam Hussein started in 1979.

Saddam had the crazy idea that he could conquer the Middle East and make Iraq into a world superpower. So he started a war with much larger Iran, the war stalemated and went on for 8 years, with enormous loss in human lives, and enormous debts piled up on the Iraqi side. That ended and Saddam invaded Kuwait to get its oil riches, leading to the Gulf War which Iraq quickly lost.

Saddam still wanted to build an empire, so he prevented full nuclear arms inspections to keep the rest of the Middle East afraid he still had a nuclear arms program, and in fact planned to re-start it after the inspection and sanctions program ended.

That lead to the Iraqi war, which Iraq quickly lost, and left Iraq so divided and disorganized that ISIS could arise and take much of the country, including temporarily taking the Mosul Dam. And the disorganized, corrupt government has bungled dealing with the threat of the dam collapsing, and so we are in the present, very dangerous situation.

So it all goes back to Saddam Hussein, and the generally poor political situation in Iraq, and beyond that, I would say, the Middle East as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Kurdish officials intended to shut down the turbines, but American officials > told them that this would add more water to the reservoir, making the dam > more likely to burst. So isis continued to profit from the dam. "We wanted > to strangle them, but we weren't allowed," a Kurdish official told me.

Not that destroying infrastructure and killing the power to a city of civilians, despite ISIS control, is necessarily a good idea, but could they not just cut the lines?

<comment> Tuna-Fish > Not that destroying infrastructure and killing the power to a city of > civilians, despite ISIS control, is necessarily a good idea, but could they > not just cut the lines?

Do you know what happens when you run a turbine with nowhere to put the load? 750MW is enough to boil something like a kiloton of water every hour, that energy needs to go _somewhere_.

<comment><USER24> Honestly - no, I don't know what happens. Can you tell me? I mean without any modifications that would specifically covert that power into heat, what would happen with the lines cut? Something like the turbines melting, or welding themselves to the structure?

<comment><USER25> The turbines are Francis type which means they keep spinning until the water flow is stopped.

When a generator is disconnected from the power system without first removing the power from the shaft then power in is greater than power out and the result is an acceleration of the generator. Generators are built to be able to withstand a certain maximum rotational speed without flying apart for a certain duration of time before the bearings get too hot. Of course it can operate at the normal speed forever, but the rated over speed might be twice as fast for 10 minutes.

So when the power lines are cut the turbines and generators speed up until the flow of water is stopped. Pictures of the Mosul dam show four surge tanks, one for each turbine, so they can probably turn off the water in 5-10s.

Pelton turbines are used for higher head and the flow can be maintained without turning the turbine by deflecting the water away from the runner.

I've commissioned about a dozen hydro electric power plants and opening the breaker to simulate cutting the transmission line while making 10, 25, 50,75,100% of the power is standard procedure.

<comment><USER26> Thank you very much for the expert information. but that still doesn't make sense to me. The article states they have two control gates and a spillway. (one gate previously defunct but now repaired) So, shouldn't it be possible to block off the turbines and open the control gates instead, so that the total flow stays (roughly) the same?

Moreover, if the dam is indeed that easy to destabilize, letting ISIS control the load seems equivalent to handing them a big red "trigger flood" button for use at their discretion. Sure, _right now_ it's in their interest to keep the dam intact - because they still control many parts of Mossul and need the electricity. But "scorched earth" is not exactly a new concept and if the operation in Mossul continues as planned and ISIS is driven out, they could decide to cut the lines on their end to deliberately cause mechanical failures.

<comment><USER25> I haven't re-read the article, but I recall the control gates were at the bottom of the dam. Traditionally the spillway is at the top of the dam and on one portiona there are gates which are operated hydraulically or by winches that open to allow water to pass underneath and run down a specially shaped (ogee shape) face of the dam. If for some reason the water level behind the dam gets too high there can be a section of spillway with no gates that will allow water to flow around the dam without the dam being overtopped in an uncontrolled fashion.

The mosul dam is 113 m high and the article said they were operating the dam with the water level 30m below the normal full level. Probably the sill of the spillway is only 10 or less below the normal operating level, because if the dam isn't full why would you want to spill.

The control gates at the bottom of the dam could have been primarily for allowing sediment to be sluice out from behind the dam or to allow the reservoir to be drained.

There is no guarantee the two control gates could pass as much flow as the turbines. Who knows how they were sized.

As I tried to explain before, cutting the power lines shouldn't damage any equipment. It effectively happens all the time due to natural causes, be they tree branches falling on power lines, birds, squirrels, etc.

Flow through an orifice (sluice gate, control gate, turbine, etc) varies with the square root of the pressure of water (the head), so a side effect of operating the dam with 30 m less head (30% less!) is that the turbines would be operating outside of their normal range and the control gates would pass less flow than they would at the nominal head.

There was a terrible accident at a dam in russia that was caused by operating the turbine outside of the normal range of pressure, and poor maintenance (loose bolts holding the turbine down...):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenska...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano%E2%80%93Shushenskaya_power_station_accident)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The Masonry dam in Washington state near Seattle also has/had this problem. The geotechnical reports and conditions were ignored and the water flowed under and around the dam, popping up in all kinds of places.

The dam was never able to be filled and is just called the masonry dam since nobody wanted it named after them.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_River_(Washington)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_River_\(Washington\))

<comment><USER27> Masonry dam had quite a different problem which is just that there was too much water and it couldn't keep up, so water spilled over the side about 6000ft away from the dam. The problem with the Mosul dam is that it's built on soluble rock that could be swept away with enough pressure. Yes, too much water is the cause of both failures, but they're quite different.

<comment><USER25> do you have a better link to information on Masonry dam? My information is second hand from a hydro electric turbine expert. He clearly stated to me that the dam was built in a location that was geotechnically unsuitable so water flooded underground channels due to the pressure of the water behind the dam and popped up all over the place. A nearby lake level raised a bunch. I might have got the wrong link. "masonry dam" is hard to google, as intended.

<comment><USER27> Heh, I was originally going to ask you for more information before my comment because the link wasn't the most descriptive on that incident, but briefly mentions that it happened 6000 feet away from the dam, which got me curious. I think had some more luck searching for "Boxley Creek 1918" or "Boxley Burst" which was the name of the actual incident. [http://www.historylink.org/File/2426](http://www.historylink.org/File/2426) was the first result on Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The caption of a picture says the reservoir holds 11 billion cubic FEET, but the article earlier says METERS.

That's a magnitude of difference.

<comment><USER29> I'm curious, were you calculating or using (or thinking about, had some train of thought about) this information or did you just happen to notice the mixed units? I mean because I can't picture either one or ten billion cubic feet of water so it's just a very large number to me and I wouldn't notice that difference.

<comment><USER30> One billion cubic meters is a cubic kilometer - a cube with each side measuring 1km. 11 of these would be a cube with ~2.25 km sides. Or slightly less than a mile and a half per side.

<comment><USER29> I never thought about the fact that a billion is "just" a thousand times a thousand times a thousand.

So I thought of something I could picture a thousand of - for example millimeters. A thousand mm is just 1 meter, so I can easily see/picture a billion of something (cubic millimeters of air) right in front of me (as 1m x 1m x 1m). Neat!

<comment><USER15> The _Powers of Ten_ film comes to mind, helps put things in perspective as well. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_\(film\))

It's a classic, by Charles and Ray Eames.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off-topic:

> _Up close, the work is wet, improvisatory, and deeply inexact. [...] Like > his boss, Jabouri has worked at the dam since he was a young engineering > graduate. Now, he told me, he is as sensitive to the dam's changes as the > electronic gear buzzing around him. [...]

"We feel our way through," Jabouri said, standing by the pump. Generally, smaller cavities require thinner grout, so Jabouri started with a milky solution and increased its thickness as the void took more. Finally, after several hours, he stopped; his intuition, aided by the pressure gauges, told him that the cavity was full._

The irony saddens me that, if you replaced that worker and his human lifetime of knowledge with a "data-driven control system" and his intuition with a "machine learning algorithm", we would all hail the result as the pinnacle of technology in mainantence systems - even though the data and actual descision making would be almost the same...

<comment><USER31> What happens if Jabouri gets hit by a bus? I love a good craftsman as much as anyone, but when the lives of that many people rely on one person, you're just asking for a disaster.

<comment><USER32> I'm assuming you'd deal with bus factor as everyone else who has ever relied on human labor has done -- training, more than 1 person who knows how to do a given job, etc. The world's still buzzing even though we've lived through thousands of years of people dying, I think we've had enough time to figure this one out.

<comment><USER33> It's not like the problem of training disappears with machine learning. What if the person maintaining the ML algorithm is hit by a bus? What if the algorithm needs adapting? etc.

<comment><USER31> Then someone else picks up the code and continues maintaining it. You can read through documentation and existing code. You can't extract information from a dead guys brain...

<comment><USER33> What stops a human from documenting a process in writing?

<comment><USER34> Intuition is pretty hard to document.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Previous discussion [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11209228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11209228)

<comment><USER36> I came here to note this. People bring this up every year or so - when I was in Iraq in 2006, this was an issue of the "any moment they could all die" sort but nobody seems to care enough to fix it since there isn't a firm timeline for the dam failure. Also, there's that whole war thing going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > In private, some Iraqis pose conspiracy theories. "I know a lot of Iraqis > who think this is just a big psyops operation by the U.S. government—senior > officials, not just Iraqis on the street,"

Of course. When a foreign army invade your country, then proceed to criticize your infrastructure, they make themselves difficult to listen to. Even if they are right. If Iraqis had concerns wouldn't they involved third party inspections from non-American firms?

<comment><USER22> What the Iraqis should do is not just believe every conspiracy theory that comes along, but carefully investigate each one to see if it makes sense. From what I understand, they don't generally do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's hard to figure out if this event is unlikely or likely to happen.

But I won't be surprised to wake up tomorrow to learn that there's a humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

<comment><USER39> Without action, it's certain it will happen. The question is not if, but when.

<comment><USER25> It sounds like they can keep grouting forever

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm curious to what ratio an abusive regime is affected by general sanctions vs the populace under its authoritarian control. Sad to see so many people living in poverty from a dictator, then sanctions, then an invasion, now ISIS (And a dam apparently).

I don't know what the solution is, but that area of the world just cannot find peace.

<comment><USER33> > I'm curious to what ratio an abusive regime is affected by general sanctions > vs the populace under its authoritarian control.

Inevitably the sanctions will hurt the general populace more than the people in power. However, that might reduce the popularity of the leader and ultimately help their downfall, perhaps.

<comment><USER41> Or it might not. It might make the populace more isolated, bitter and paranoid, more likely to stand by the leader against the perceived evil of the rest of the world. Decades of sanctions against Cuba and North Korea just entrenched the respective regimes more tightly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I don't understand, can't they slowly empty the lake behind the dam?

<comment><USER43> The built up water is a form of potential energy and draining it would mean it is wasted.

<comment><USER44> I don't think wasting energy is the major concern in this situation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A quick calculation of what it would take to replace the dam with solar panels:

According to wikipedia the dam produces 1052MW. Let's call it 1GW. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam)

According to quora you need about 10000m2 or one 1ha to produce 1MW. So 1000 * 10000m2 = 10km2 to produce 1GW.

I wonder how big the lake is? Could solar panels installed in the drained lake - theoretically - provide the same or more energy than the dam?

Of course energy storage is a major part of water power and it is not taken into account above. On the other hand a decentralized power grid is one of the major advantages of solar (especially in an unstable country) and that is not taken into account either.

<comment><USER5> But the damn isn't there just to provide power. Remember back when it was built Iraq exported power, in the form of oil.

It's also there to regulate the flow of the river, which commonly floods the surrounding, crop-growing region.

<comment><USER45> Yes, but according to what I can read the lake is filled to 8km3 capacity, with 3km3 capacity for flood regulation.

So wouldn't a much smaller dam be sufficient for flood regulation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I rarely like The New Yorker writings, but this is actually a good one. Importantly, because it starts with short description of a whole, and then goes into the detail. Most The New Yorker writers consider it ok to start (and continue) the article with something like: "On a warm sunny autumn day he was sitting in the park, wearing his grey merino-wool polo shirt and khaki pants".

The only thing I'd like to be explained more thoroughly: what actually is this dam? I.e., how does it work? Going to wikipedia I see a whole list of different types of dams, and it is not clear to me, what does this specific construction in the article actually do, and how its failure would cause a tsunami-like wave.

</comment><comment><USER47> if isis can ruin more dams; why arent they a bigger problem?

<comment><USER48> Because that would not make as good headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The Lewisville Dam near Dallas, Texas is also one to watch, although the scale of a potential disaster is much smaller and something is being done about it. [http://interactives.dallasnews.com/2015/lewisville- dam/](http://interactives.dallasnews.com/2015/lewisville-dam/)

</comment><comment><USER50> Sadly there is also a dam in Africa, in similar dire position, due to being built on a geologically unsuitable site.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas- bigges...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/one-of-africas-biggest-dams- is-falling-apart)

</comment><comment><USER51> This is eerily similar to Bitter Lake.. [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35szal](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35szal)

</comment><comment><USER52> A bigger problem than both: the 100-1000x atmospheric mass in methane calthrates bubbling up from the ESAS that have the potential to push climate change beyond +6 ℃. Get ready for high food prices, more failed states (and more mob armed cults), regional WMD wars and mass exoduses.

It sounds rhetorical and impossible at first glance if the evidence including satellite measurements and field observations weren't so definitive. Preppers don't sound so insane at first but they're probably not thinking about sustainable semi/off-grid living in a radically-altered climate.

</comment><comment><USER53> Article from the future? Jan 2nd, 2017

<comment><USER15> It's the issue date of the magazine it appears in, which is why it says "January 2, 2017 Issue".

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> The saddest part of the article is the US tried to blow the dam up during the gulf war. Why? That is as brutal as dropping the nukes on Japan.

<comment><USER55> Uh, what article are you reading? Or do you think bombing a generator is to "blow up the dam"?

The quote is: "the dam had been built to survive an aerial bombardment. (In fact, during the Gulf War, American jets bombed its generator, but the dam remained intact.)"

(A dam with bad air defense ought to be an easy target, considering all the emphasis the Americans puts into getting through lots of cement -- and that dams were bombed already during WWII.)

Edit: The shocking part was how the US found out about how much the sanctions had damaged the country -- and then poured billions into fixing it. The US politicians might waste even more than my native ones.

<comment><USER56> bombed generator not dam....bombing dams was banned under the Geneva conventions.

"According to Article 56 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, "works or installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dikes and nuclear electrical generating stations, shall not be made the object of attack, even when these objects are military objectives, if such attack may cause the release of dangerous forces and consequent severe losses among the civilian population."

<comment><USER57> That was never ratified by the USA or ISIS, both reserving their right to blow up dams like this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Is there a summary of the main risks? Sounds interesting but I don't have time for New Yorker-style reporting.

<comment><USER59> " _... Completed in 1984, the dam sits on a foundation of soluble rock. To keep it stable, hundreds of employees have to work around the clock, pumping a cement mixture into the earth below. Without continuous maintenance, the rock beneath would wash away, causing the dam to sink and then break apart. But Iraq's recent history has not been conducive to that kind of vigilance.

...

In February, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a warning of the consequences of a breach in the dam. For a statement written by diplomats, it is extraordinarily blunt. 'Mosul Dam faces a serious and unprecedented risk of catastrophic failure with little warning,' it said. Soon afterward, the United Nations released its own warning, predicting that 'hundreds of thousands of people could be killed' if the dam failed. Iraq's leaders, apparently fearful of public reaction, have refused to acknowledge the extent of the danger. But Alwash told me that nearly everyone outside the Iraqi government who has examined the dam believes that time is running out: in the spring, snowmelt flows into the Tigris, putting immense pressure on the retaining wall.

If the dam ruptured, it would likely cause a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, loosing a wave as high as a hundred feet that would roll down the Tigris, swallowing everything in its path for more than a hundred miles. Large parts of Mosul would be submerged in less than three hours. Along the riverbanks, towns and cities containing the heart of Iraq's population would be flooded; in four days, a wave as high as sixteen feet would crash into Baghdad, a city of six million people. 'If there is a breach in the dam, there will be no warning,' Alwash said. ..._"

<comment><USER60> It's really weird to see 'loosing' used in the correct manner online...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Sorry if this is a dumb question. TBH I didn't rtfa. But if the dam needs a constant infusion of concrete in order to not fail, why wasn't anything done to evacuate the area and gracefully (sic) fail the dam in the first place?

<comment><USER62> You would have to evacuate Mosul (1.7 million people) and probably also Baghdad (7 millions), all in a country thorn by war where refugee camps are already bursting with people. Plus of course the entity that control Mosul (ISIS) is not keen on letting civilians go given their value as human shields.

<comment><USER61> But this issue with the dam was apparent before ISIS, no?

<comment><USER63> The constant infusion of concrete isn't an emergency measure. It's how the dam was intended to operate. The problem (from the planners' point of view, anyway) isn't that it requires constant grouting, it's that it _stopped getting_ constant grouting.

<comment><USER61> My broader point is that a dam which requires constant grouting seems like a pretty bad idea.

<comment><USER64> All dams require maintenance or they fail. You are correct in that its merely a question of magnitude. Completely abandoned, Hoover Dam for example would last a lot longer, but hardly forever. Where the line is drawn is pretty arbitrary, and if the alternative is the people have no electricity or irrigation water so they riot and kill you ... Saddam was famous for the stick but sometimes he used the carrot to keep his country together. No one is keeping it together now, of course.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What jobs will exist in 10 years that don't exist now? - <AUTHOR> Figure the HN crowd will have a better sense of this than most. <comment><USER2> "Premium User Interface" \- you know how when you ring up a bank and essentially they're just reading you stuff on screen and typing your answers in? They're basically just an extra layer of UI. AI and text-to-speech will increasingly make that redundant, but it'll mean the UX will get demonstrably worse. So some companies will pride themselves on retaining those real humans as the front end of the UI, even though all they're doing is relaying information to and from the computer.</comment>


CloudHarmony Blog: Introducing Web Services for Cloud Performance Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/10/introducing-web-services-for-cloud.html <comment><USER2> We've spent about a year collecting data and developing these web services. I'd be very interested in feedback and suggestions from the HN community.</comment>


Ask HN: How can Artificial Intelligence help artists paint? - <AUTHOR> I'm doing research and developing an open-source tool which helps artists create paintings (with data analysis/mining, visual analytics and deep learning methods).
A question for every artist or art lover: what features do you want for such a tool?
Topics include but not limited to:

  - Analyze others' artworks to get ...

  - Analyze my artworks

  - Coloring, sketch, stylization
 THANKS : )
<comment>-----
The purpose of this post: User requirement analysis
The purpose of creating this tool: As an art lover, my dream is mapping human thoughts to digital images, though it's impossible with current technologies. I'm enthusiastic about using computer science techniques to help art communities.
Tools/Algorithms you might be interested in: style2paints, paintchainer, Autodraw, Sketch-rnn, pix2pix </comment><comment><USER2> Well, thanks for the list of tools/algorithms - I hadn't heard of any of them, and they all look amazing. Fascinating stuff. Thank you!</comment>


Relaunched TrueCrypt site with original content and documentation - <AUTHOR> https://www.truecrypt71a.com <comment><USER2> It is available the version 7.1a, but the TrueCrypt development has stopped (for now). An alternative solution is VeraCrypt (build over Truecrypt 7.1a): [https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/](https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/)

VeraCrypt says to add extra security features (ex. TrueCrypt uses PBKDF2-RIPEMD160 with 1000 iterations whereas in VeraCrypt we use 327661): [https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/discussions/569777#PostConten...](https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/discussions/569777#PostContent_1313325)

Do you think VeraCrypt is an valid alternative? or have they only fix something in TrueCrypt ( like change the CONSTANT value of iterations )

<comment><USER3> They're your most realistic option right now. They are actively developing it and added things like newer algorithms (e.g. SHA2).

There's CipherSched but that is basically a completely new program/rewrite which is very far from done.

However, I don't agree with VeraCrypts choices. They've changed several things that make mounting slow (0,5s -> 10s), which is annoying, especially if you mistype the password. Providing the option for increased security isn't bad, but they refuse to give users overrides to disable those slow security options because they are of the opinion that users can't assess the tradeoff for themselves. Which leads people to just go back to truecrypt because it works way better in their minds.

<comment><USER4> This is an odd conclusion to come to. Are there a lot of users of True/Veracrypt that don't understand this? I guess I just don't see my grandparents using either of these packages, and I can't imagine a lot of "normal" users "trying out" a new encryption program.

<comment><USER5> 10 seconds is ridiculous, especially if you know what you're doing and use strong passphrases.

The passphrase to one of my TrueCrypt volumes is around 30 characters long. It's not completely random, so let's say it only has 2 bits of entropy per character. That's 60 bits total. A brute-force attack would take an average of 2^59 guesses before it succeeds.

At 10 seconds per guess, we're looking at approximately 180 billion years to crack my passphrase. Even if you devoted a million computers to the job (as an extremely well-funded adversary might do), it would still take 180,000 years.

If you weakened the PBKDF to take 1 second instead, it would take 18,000 years to crack my relatively weak passphrase using a million computers. That's still long enough that I don't care at all. Moreover, if I were really paranoid, I can easily bring it back to the 180,000-year mark (or more) by adding a few more characters to my passphrase, which would only take another second to type. So why wait 10 seconds?

<comment><USER6> You can bruteforce much faster on GPU.

E.g. 20*10^9 ripe160 hashes per second on 8x AMD R9 290X (price is around $3000): [https://hashcat.net/oclhashcat/](https://hashcat.net/oclhashcat/)

60 bits are not secure against attacker with medium budget.

<comment><USER2> Some years before oclHashCat support, I buil a gpu cracker for truecrypt volume TrueCrack ([https://code.google.com/p/truecrack/](https://code.google.com/p/truecrack/)) . To be honest oclHashCat has better performance. Now the board of the oclHashCat tests ( AMD R9 290X ) costs about 300 euro (not $3000).

<comment><USER6> They used 8 cards for that test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I was concerned about my data, I wouldn't touch TrueCrypt with a 10 foot pole. More specifically I wouldn't touch Windows.

Developers don't abruptly shut down projects. If there are problems with the code, they release statements and patches. If they lose interest in the project, they call it orphaned and ask for maintainers. If it's a mix of the two, they at least say so.

But what happened with TrueCrypt was truly bizarre. No warning. No phase-out. Telling people to move to BitLocker?

I think there's only one way to interpret that. They did something bizarre because it was all the noise they could make without telling us what really happened. AKA some of their developers got served gag orders.

But what on earth could a TrueCrypt dev be gagged for? A gag order implies that some three-letter-agency had enough foresight to know they were planning to disclose something. If it was that there was a government backdoor in TrueCrypt itself, how would NSA/FBI know that they discovered it? How would they know that it could be tied back to them? Why didn't the audit [1] catch it? Gag orders are pretty loose in terms of legality in the first place, but even still, would a gag order prevent them from releasing a statement about a security hole (without mentioning its origin) and releasing patches?

It's a total guess, but my theory is that TrueCrypt discovered something outside their codebase (EG: Windows itself) that was undermining encryption. They reached out to Microsoft, who contacted FBI/NSA, and they were served their gag orders. This is the only theory I can think of that makes a gag order possible, in other situations the FBI/NSA wouldn't have been able to know about a disclosure before it happened.

[1]: istruecryptauditedyet.com

<comment><USER8> If they discovered an issue in Windows, and it led to gag orders, why would they tell people to move to BitLocker (a Microsoft product)?

<comment><USER9> I suspect that by recommending encryption software that is highly unreliable like Bitlocker (by virtue of being closed source and developed by Microsoft who we know cannot be trusted) they sent up a huge red flag to their user base.

Nobody would expect the TrueCrypt devs to recommend something like this, so it is immediately suspect and all anyone really needs to asusme something isn't right (like a gag order).

<comment><USER10> Occam's Razor tells us that the TrueCrypt devs were done with the project and don't share your opinions of Bitlocker and Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> Except they do share those opinions and very suspiciously changed them in their final message. So what you believe is the simplest explanation doesn't work here.

<comment><USER11> Who are you to say what opinions they share? Especially considering davts emails...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who are we? Why do you need cookies to deliver your service? I rather trust steve gibsons website [https://www.grc.com/misc/truecrypt/truecrypt.htm](https://www.grc.com/misc/truecrypt/truecrypt.htm)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I agree that this is the truth. This sort of mystery about the end of truecrypt was unfounded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Free open source"? Did they actually get an open source license this time?

If not, this website could be in violation of the license, but as discussed before, it's very unlikely the TrueCrypt authors would pursue this copyright violation.

<comment><AUTHOR> thats the original caption from their old website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why can't the original devs just leak the reason behind all this? I don't expect it on their official website but honestly, how difficult is it to just let people know?

<comment><USER15> And what? Eat bad food with a bad view for the rest of your life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No link or mention of the audit? I guess it would be very useful!

</comment><comment><USER17> What do you think about [https://diskcryptor.net/wiki/Main_Page](https://diskcryptor.net/wiki/Main_Page)

</comment><comment><USER18> Why not [https://truecrypt.ch/](https://truecrypt.ch/)?

</comment><comment><USER19> good work :)</comment>


Rust for C++ programmers – Part 8: destructuring - <AUTHOR> http://featherweightmusings.blogspot.com/2014/07/rust-for-c-programmers-part-8.html

<comment><USER2> Nick this is awesome, thanks! As someone who is just learning C++ for my day job this is a great resource and gateway into rust (and potentially fun side projects).

Just a gentle suggestion, have you considered putting some syntax highlighting on the code portions of your site so that it is more readable? I find it a little hard with the grey on grey scheme even though the Rust itself is super elegant.

<comment><USER3> I had that feeling too, so I started publishing his posts in GitBook, which has nice formatting and syntax highlighting: [https://www.gitbook.io/book/aminb/rust- for-c](https://www.gitbook.io/book/aminb/rust-for-c)

The repo, from which the book is built, is available on GitHub: [https://github.com/aminb/rust-for-c](https://github.com/aminb/rust-for-c)

I tried contacting and asking him before, but didn't hear back, so I just went ahead and did it myself.

<comment><USER2> Very cool, thank you!

<comment><USER3> you're welcome ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've found Rust By Example to be a really great help with learning Rust.

[http://rustbyexample.com/](http://rustbyexample.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Be useful to document the distinction between:

       match x { (y) => { ... }

and:

       match x { (ref mut y) => { ... }

In there too. I think ref x matches (particularly from Result) are pretty common.

</comment><comment><USER6> A restriction not mentioned -- you can't destructure a struct with destructor (impl Drop).

<comment><USER7> Interesting. What's the rationale for that?

<comment><USER8> Note that this reply may have some factual errors since I'm still learning this aspect of Rust myself.

It's not that structs with Drop can't be destructured, but that they can't be destructured and moved. For why that's a bad idea, consider this example (from the original bug implementing this behavior, [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/3147](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/3147)):

        let {f, g, h, _} = move foo

(The `move` keyword is no longer in Rust, but local variables with a type implementing Drop are implicitly moved, not shallow-copied, when used as an rvalue, since it is only safe to run a destructor once on the same structure).

The problem is that there's no obvious place to run the destructor. Destruction for items with the Drop trait in Rust proceeds as follows: first the value's destructor is run, then the value is completely destroyed, and then the values of any of its children are run. Clearly, then, the destructor must be run after the let, or the item's fields would be uninitialized at destruction time--but there's no longer any available reference to the item upon which Drop can be run.

There's at least one proposal to fix this floating out there ([https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/11855](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/11855)). The basic idea is to alter destruction semantics so that the three steps of destruction can be split up. This would allow Rust to run the destructor for the original item, then move any referenced fields out of the item, then destroy the item, and then run the field-level destructors for any items going out of scope.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Appropriate title to brand myself as a consultant? - <AUTHOR> I've been a designer and developer for my career, but I've recently started consulting and it's certainly where I'd like to move my career.  I love designing, and I love writing code, but I'd much rather just consult for a living and do that stuff in my spare time.  I have a pretty wide range of expertise within the web software business, from marketing to application architecture to design to SEO to CRO, etc, and these are what I've been consulting on lately.
What should I brand myself as in order to convey that I'm a consultant, not a contractor?  I don't know if I should still call myself a designer or a developer, or if "software consultant" should cover it.
What do you call yourselves? <comment><USER2> This is easy: call yourself a Principal, which in technical consulting has the meaning "Consultant/Owner", but conveniently leaves all the specifics out of what you do.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Principal works great if you want to brand yourself as someone who is looking for longer term projects and you can do multiple things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a somewhat similar profile to you, background in computer science and design and visual arts. I have been working independently for around 15 years now and I ended up adopting a 'title' of Creative Technologist. I picked it up because... I like it or to be precise I like how it reflects what my interests are.

This being said, I don't think it does much to improve my business which is based on word of mouth referrals and demos of my previous work. That's my brand as the consultant. It's not really the title, but people mentioning my name to new potential clients who ask for somebody who does creative technology... I don't think they actually use the Creative Technologist label in these conversations/referrals.

And in my last full-time job before before going solo I had a title of Messenger. I was the connector between developers, designers and business teams. I thought it was appropriate, but I don't think anybody ever used it in conversation. It was a good conversation starter when handing in my business card, though!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a problem that I've been struggling with as well.

I started calling myself a consultant, but I've found that seems to be a title that a LOT of hacks around here use.

I think the best approach is to make a name for yourself. Do people say "Seth Godin, the marketer" or just "Seth Godin"? When you can say "I'm notduncansmith", you can charge a premium, because no one else can say "I am notduncansmith" (Uggh, did you chose your username for the sole purpose of ruining my example??).

Long story short, when you get a reputation, title doesn't matter as much, and you can just be you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good thought, and certainly my end goal. Until I get there though, I feel like I should have some sort of concise way of telling people what I do. "Consultant" does carry a certain connotation (and not always good), but it's much better than "web strategist", which I feel is an apt description of what I do but is within spitting distance of "Social Media Guru". Maybe I should just fake it 'til I make it? That's how I got my start in this field.

By the way, I chose the username for a bit of pretend plausible deniability. "Look NSA guys, that post was _clearly_ not written by Duncan Smith. It says so right here!" My sense of humor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Senior consultant or even principal consultant.

<comment><USER2> If you're a sole proprietor, it would be pretty silly to call yourself a "Sr Consultant" \--- Sr compared to what?

Principal is in fact a title used for Consultant/Owners.

Principal Consultant, on the other hand, is usually the next step after "Sr Consultant". Unlike "Sr Consultant", you will not sound goofy calling yourself that. However, if your consultancy grows and you need to create a ladder of titles, you may want to reserve Principal Consultant for employees.

(I hate that Principal Consultant has that meaning; it makes no sense to me that the owners of the firm are "Principals" and the most senior delivering consultants "Principal Consultants" \--- what are they, the Presidential Guard? But that is how it works.)</comment></comment>


MicroConf State of Independent SaaS Survey - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MicroConf/status/1177237105820323842 <comment><AUTHOR> Tweet gives some context about the survey.

Link to take the survey: [https://surveysoftware.net/hostss/microconf.htm](https://surveysoftware.net/hostss/microconf.htm)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been working on this for at least 3 months (I need to check the calendar). Crazy how much time something like this takes to put together.

Hoping to share our findings in the next month or two.</comment>


Thoughtcrime - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/05/thoughtcrime.html <comment><USER3> I've been moving more and more to the notion that freedom of speech is an all or nothing proposition. On a technical level when dealing with systems that protect the transfer of information such as encryption, this is an absolute, because the technology that provides the security (and thus freedom) cares not the content and any backdoor would destroy all integrity regardless of how it is used. But there has been a notion that laws, rights, and duties do not have the same requirement. We can build compromises in the laws, so we should be able to create a system where only the stuff that should be banned is banned and all other speech is free, no? But now I doubt that, as any ban sacrifices the integrity of the entire system. Maybe in theory it is still possible, but as many of us have seen time and time again, theory and practice differ far more in practice than in theory.

From this, I've moved to adopting an ever stricter view of all speech as being free. I will not say it is perfect as it does have flaws. But the flaws are a small price to pay to ensure one of the axiomatic rights is defended. For without free speech, we lose the power to criticize, to discuss, to be democratic.

While I know the author isn't regarded quite as highly in the UK and the US, I think the following passage captures the importance of the exchange of information being free.

>The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

<comment><USER4> Rather than freedom being defined as "doing what one wants", Kant defined freedom as man "rising above his animal instincts" (sp).

In other words, it's perfectly natural and convenient to behave like the "free" and "extreme" tattooed apes pandered to in modern television commercials, whereas it takes relative effort be polite and follow the golden rule.

Ask yourself who is more "free", the chair-throwers on Jerry Springer, or, Scott's Rob Roy who was shackled for refusing to lie about a stranger.

America, given its near constant prating about freedom, is itself in dire need of a dialectic on its essence.

<comment><USER5> _Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other._

\-- John Adams

<comment><USER6> You realize this isn't authoritative, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I COMPLETELY missed what Cameron said the first time. Like, completely:

"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'."

Obeying the law is no longer enough. Great.

<comment><USER8> I've actually gotten depressed at the results of the election. I was scheduled to go back to the UK in a few months, but decided to move to another country instead.

Cameron is on a rampage. I've never feared rapid descent into dictatorship until now. I'm well and truly afraid of what the UK will look like in 4 years.

<comment><USER9> Can anyone share why exactly the Liberal Democrats, who seem to have been against this sort of stuff, got crushed at the recent elections? Was it because of some unpopular positions or were there many "scandals" that appeared regarding their candidates (perhaps about personal issues?).

<comment><USER10> One theory I've heard is the way votes are counted.

I've heard that UKIP had around 3.881.129 votes and got only one seat, Green party with 1.157.613 won a single seat and Scottish national party had 1.454.436 votes and got 56 seats.

I'm not sure it's plausible, but it could be a valid explanation.

<comment><USER11> There was no change to the way votes were counted that I'm aware of. This is a FPTP political system in action.

There was a referendum to move to a more grown-up voting system, but the majority voted against it. Depressingly, many of those who voted against were too stupid and too uninformed to actually know what they were voting against. I could only weep as someone left the polling station proud to have taken a stand against proportional representation.

I suppose they could have been balanced by people who voted in favour who were too stupid and too uninformed to actually know what they were voting _for_ , but I suspect that is less likely.

<comment><USER12> The AV system we voted on wasn't actually PR, any kind of PR got veto'd by the conservatives, and the Lib-Dems were perhaps foolish to try to continue with such a meagre reform, as it now gets used as an excuse to not implement PR in future as "the country voted against it" (except of course they didn't, as it wasn't one of the two options they were allowed to vote for).

<comment><USER13> > The AV system we voted on wasn't actually PR

Yes it is. It's what Ireland uses (that and multi-seat constituancies) and it is called PR. (Technically PR-STV).

"PR" covers a lot of voting schemes.

<comment><USER14> Alternative Vote is a single member constituency version of STV, that is therefore not proportional in any way.

It is perhaps the only form of democracy that's typically less proportional than FPTP.

I support electoral reform wholeheartedly and I voted for AV only reluctantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ah the irony of this happening in George Orwell's own country.

I think Orwell intended it as an extreme dystopian vision meant to serve as a cautionary tale for future generations.

Instead it seems that our leaders are using it as a blue print for a technological panopticon that could way beyond what even Orwell imagined.

<comment><USER16> Yes. Fun fact: Orwell lived in a cheap hostel in Whitechapel known as _Tower House_ , Stalin was another occupant. At the time it was next to a Jewish synagogue, these days that's closed down and it's behind London's largest mosque, next to a very well regarded (by Londoners) Indian restaurant. Later the building was abandoned and gained a reputation for drugs and violence... people used to throw themselves off the upper storeys to effect a quick suicide. Later on it was fixed but by a Cypriate real estate investor and carved up in to cheap units. I had a go at living there, and successfully sublet a room to a guy on the interest rate committee of the Bank of England. Hosting this social mobility in a hundred years ... not bad for a building on a backstreet!

<comment><USER17> More details on the Stalin, Orwell, Whitechapel connection. Jack London visited it as well.

Stalin "fetched up in London in 1907, living in a Jubilee Street tenement flat – the future home of Golda Berk."[0].

"Tower House was immortalised in 1933, when George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, praised it as the 'best of all common lodging houses with excellent bathrooms'."[1]

"Jack London, the author of Call of the Wild and White Fang was first in the line of anarchists, authors and lost souls to shelter here. He christened it The Great Monster Doss House in his seminal work of living among the East End poor, People of the Abyss, in 1902."[1]

[0]: [http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons- ea...](http://eastlondonhistory.com/2011/06/16/stalin-in-londons-east-end/)

[1]: [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/oct/24/housingpolicy.books)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is all about unintended consequences.

During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and security services. But that power _always_ gets used to subvert democracy and silence dissenters.

This is not a new problem. There's a bunch of literature about this, starting with Robert K. Merton's 1936 paper _The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposeful Social Action_ [1].

Maybe the best way to counteract the perverse outcomes of feel-good social policy is to acknowledge these mistakes and teach future policy makers how to anticipate the second- and third-order effects of their actions [2].

Stross shows this in his hypothetical Labour Party communication:

      The party recognizes that that our own legislative program
      of the late 1990s and early 2000s established the framework
      for repression which is now being used to ruthlessly suppress
      dissent.

[1] [PDF] [http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/T...](http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/4111/2111-home/CD/TheoryClass/Readings/MertonSocialAction.pdf)

[2] [PDF] [http://www.au.af.mil/info- ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_mil...](http://www.au.af.mil/info- ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_miller.pdf)

<comment><USER18> > This is all about unintended consequences.

> During a crisis, it seem like a good idea to grant more power to police and > security services. But that power always gets used to subvert democracy and > silence dissenters.

In France, the currently in power socialist party seemed well aware of the "unintended consequences" when the conservatives were voting their own think- of-the-terrorists laws. One has to think that they either think this doesn't apply to them, or that they in fact don't really care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I'm afraid you can't buy a copy of the Glorifying Terrorism SF anthology > (it's out of print, and not going to be reprinted or published as an ebook > any time soon, because of the ongoing VATMESS headache)

I wonder if in this day and age a 500-year old book like "Vindiciae contra tyrannos" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindiciae_contra_tyrannos)) would land his/her author in jail. I suppose it would. And I cannot remember the exact title, but there were books similar with this one, written at about the same time, which were advocating for even more drastic measures: i.e. the assassination of the tyrant/king.

Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say "I want to kill the President of the United States of America" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQOvyGbBtY)), the UK had remained one of the few countries where a liberty of speech "loophole" was still in place. Sad to see it gone.

<comment><USER20> > Anyway, in the US it has been illegal for some time to say

Note the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this threat against the life of a sitting president was protected by the First Amendment:

"If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J."

Here's the text of the opinion; it's a famous 1A case: [http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html](http://laws.findlaw.com/us/394/705.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> ...and here in the US, a major party candidate for president just said "If I'm president of the United States and you're thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State], I'm not gonna call a judge, I'm gonna call a drone and we will kill you."

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/w...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/18/wonkbook- lindsey-grahams-comments-on-drones-were-very-blunt/)

Hearing that made me sick to my stomach.

<comment><USER22> Even by Republic standards, Lindsey Graham is on the crazy end of the spectrum. Luckily, there's almost zero chance anyone would put him anywhere near any power.

<comment> lhc- Other than, you know, a position in the US Senate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It will be impossible to really discuss free speech issues on a venue that is predominantly American.

America has a very idiosyncratic view of free speech, embodied in their constitution. Good for them.

Unfortunately they usually categorically deny that any other variant of free speech, other than their own specific formulation, can ever be free speech at all.

That ties in with the general feeling in America that the US constitution is the best constitution there is and could ever be, to the point where the Founding Fathers are venerated beyond belief, and changes to the constitution are next to impossible.

To make a tangential point: America often criticizes Germany for not having the right flavor of free speech. While having more than just influenced our constitution.

So basically they approved our constitution (after demanding a few changes), especially the parts that were designed to counter Nazism. Understandable, after World War II. Unsurprisingly that ran counter to the American view of free speech, but that was _intended_ at the time.

Decades later everyone is surprised...

<comment><USER24> Your attempt to pin the blame on the Americans is quite tortured. Absolving the governments who actually pass the laws leads to much worse laws.

<comment><USER25> No, Tomte just knows more about the German Constitution (Grundgesetz) than you do.

Insulting your betters is bad form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A second foreign policy adviser to Mr Romney said: "Cameron's contacts with Republicans are really quite limited, and have been going back to when [George W.] Bush was president." The adviser added: "In many respects Cameron is like Obama."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david- cameron/94274...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david- cameron/9427438/David-Cameron-angered-US-conservatives-with-unprecedented- election-year-embrace-of-Barack-Obama.html)

I think we need to be honest with ourselves and realize:

A) The US and the UK are basically operating under the same "security at any cost except raising taxes" mindset.

B) The logical conclusion of that mindset is to take away freedoms, minimize restrictions on law enforcement, minimize restrictions on espionage, and maximize government's ability to control the message to avoid "leaks".

The only real difference is the US was attempting to do it domestically under the radar with tactics like parallel construction that allowed them to bypass the firewall between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence.

It seems Cameron has decided to take the opposite approach and say "Fuck it, we are doing this openly and publicly." We'll hack machines, we'll suppress speech of anyone we consider a danger, and anything else we have to. The really sad part is there is a large segment of both country's populations who will go along with it just because it promises to make them "safer" and ignores the fact terrorists are as dangerous as lightning strikes with pre-9/11 procedures and funding.

Is it really worth giving up freedom to reduce the risk of a threat that is fundamentally less dangerous to the population at-large than lighting strikes or bee stings? Especially given that to do so we are removing safeguards that protect the general population from law enforcement whom kill more people (particularly in the US, in the UK the numbers are much closer) than terrorists?

[http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be- ki...](http://www.cato.org/blog/youre-eight-times-more-likely-be-killed- police-officer-terrorist)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the- uk/9...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the- uk/9359763/Bee-stings-killed-as-many-in-UK-as-terrorists-says-watchdog.html)

<comment><USER27> The flip side of the coin is a voting public who refuse to accept terrorism as part of life. Demanding that politicians do something when a terrorist act happens, and blaming them for not stopping it.

Here in Australia we've been ridiculously safe from terrorism. If we get a serious terrorist event, people here are going to lose their marbles, rather than accept that 'one got through' the net. You see a similar thing in the US, where the public quite happily throw hundreds of thousands of US soldiers at muslim countries, but then complain that they die, and that they aren't supplied with enough armour and equipment. There's a very weird disconnect going on there. In general, the voting public _want_ this surveillance, to protect them from the 'bad guys'.

<comment><USER28> The flip side of _that_ flip side is that people in "our" camp (against ubiquitous surveillance, believing terrorism isn't the biggest threat, accepting "one got through," etc.) seem to have great difficulty accepting that the public largely disagrees with them.

Look at the discussion over NSA dragnet surveillance. It's almost always discussed in terms of an abuse of power against an unsuspecting public. Politicians set it up to further their own ends, or the NSA itself is grabbing power by blackmailing politicians, or at least implicitly threatening blackmail if anybody gets out of line.

The reality as far as I can see it is much more mundane. Things like NSA dragnet surveillance are happening because it's what the people want. Terrorism is seen as a threat that justifies almost anything required to counter it. The politicians are just giving their electorate what it wants.

If we want to fight this stuff, we need to win the war of public opinion. Unless the plan is to subvert the government ourselves and institute some sort of enlightened dictatorship, the only way to get this stuff to change is to convince people that our position is actually better, because most of them don't think that right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> HBO has a documentary on the so called called Cannibal Cop, who was convicted for conspiracy, a so called "thought crime". He never really acted out on the underlying criminal act in question, and it's difficult to say if he conclusively took a substantial step in furtherance of the crime with someone else. Though, much of the evidence that did stack instead him included chats and search queries from Google.

I always thought that the crime of conspiracy was ahead of its time, but I really don't know how it fits in today's context where everything can be tracked. Not that conspiracy shouldn't exist, but that the world has finally caught up to the law.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would encourage UK based people to join the various pressure groups and political organisations (e.g. the Liberal Democrat party, the Open Rights Group etc) that campaign (and in the case of the LibDems actually vote in the commons against) against the sort of Stasist legislation that Cameron's government is trying to push through.

Do remember that the UK's informal version of a constitution does not allow the Lords a lot of scope to change or reject e.g. the Snoopers charter. (It is convention that the Lords doesn't oppose things that were in the ruling party's manifesto..) Therefore there is not a lot of time to act on these issues.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, is V for Vendetta still legal in UK?

<comment><USER32> Never mind V for Vendetta, what about Robin Hood? Hard-left propaganda glorifying armed robbery and violence against public officials under the guise of wealth redistribution.

In the eighties series Robin of Sherwood, the Sheriff does at one point describe Robin and his gang as terrorists.

<comment><USER33> That's strange, as Robin Hood is a right-wing hero, fighting against excessive taxation and oppressive government.

<comment><USER13> Depends on your branch of right wing. Some right wing governments (e.g. Nazis) have ben very in favour of the government being able and duty-bound to oppress people.

<comment><USER33> That would be the National _Socialist_ party, right?

<comment><USER32> Socialist in the same way that the German Democratic Republic was democratic.

<comment><USER33> Economically socialist, at least. [1]

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP)

<comment><USER13> That was written in 1920, before they even adopted the name "Nationalsozialistische". It's better to look at what they did while in power. About a year after getting power in 1934, was the Night of the Long Knives when the party assinated the more left wing higher ups in the party who wanted wealth redistribution.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives_(1934)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives_\(1934\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Absolutes are a powerful thing, in rules, in law, in communication and in all sorts of other ways. Absolutes make all sorts of things easier. Laws deal with them easier. Technology too. Compromises and caveats are trickier.

That's kind of what rights and freedoms are supposed to be, some abstract fundamentals we can all agree on that don't need much detail or qualifications.

The pursuit of absolutes (or ideals) is a problem though. Trying to stick them where they don't fit is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> A friend of mine, a very smart local restaurant owner, had a long talk broadly on this subject yesterday. We both believe the same thing: 1) the US government and other major governments have been negotiating and executing for a long time on a smooth as possible transition from the US dollar being the world's reserve currency to using special drawing rights (SDRs) as the reserve currency. 2) This will badly effect the economy of the USA for several years and the economies of other countries for a much shorter readjustment period of time. 3) A lot of moves to reduce privacy and rights is an attempt to make sure that society remains civil during this transition. 4) It is crazy to not be at least a little prepared by having 3 or 4 weeks of water and food in your home just in case there are supply disruptions.

We also talked about the normalization bias of most people we know - <USER2> are so uncomfortable talking about this that they simply deny the possibility of this happening. Best thing: do a little prep work, try not to take on new debt, and after preparing live life and don't worry about the future.

<comment><USER36> Do you have _any_ evidence for your belief that "Special Drawing Rights" will replace the the US dollar as reserve currency?

This kind of sounds like ZeroHedge style paranoia.

<comment><USER35> Sorry, in my other reply I didn't state any hard evidence. Assuming my theory/prediction/opinion is true, it is unlikely that there would be a public release of information concerning secret inter-government negotiations.

However, this did happen: 1) three countries (Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea) in the early 2000s publicly stated their intention of going off of the US dollar for trading (the first two, Iran and Venezuela are oil producers). 2) shortly afterwards, all three countries were labeled "axis of evil" states. I am no fan of any of the governments of any of these countries but it seems like more of a coincidence that strong actions were taken right after the declarations to go off of the dollar. In addition to sanctions against Iran, shortly after Venezuela made its announcement, the US Navy had it largest ever peace time prolonged naval exercise right off of the coast of Venezuela.

So, I admit that I personally don't have any hard evidence, just my own analysis. That said, I thought that I made it clear in my top level comment that what I was saying was the shared opinions of my friend and I.

<comment><USER28> Venezuela was never labeled as part of the "axis of evil," which was the label for Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

<comment><USER35> Correct, thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I thought I'm fucked in my country, guess what, this has blown my mind.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think the main upshot of all this is that drawing the line on freedom of speech is _hard_.

</comment><comment><USER38> More and more, I'm starting to think that free speech and privacy are opposed to each other.

<comment><USER39> Quite the opposite, free speech and privacy demand each other and cannot exist without each other.

Consider these two scenarios, taken to the extreme to elaborate a point.

Unfettered free speech, with zero privacy.

Total privacy, no free speech.

Both examples are impossible in a human society (maybe in a robot society).

In scenario one, there can be no free speech if you have no right to privacy. The concept of chilling comes into action. If humans were robots, one might say that zero privacy would encourage and illuminate perfect speech because there would be greater total information and understanding. However that is not how people function. When faced with zero privacy, people will always self-censor, often dramatically. We can see this in practice time and time again, in numerous countries throughout just the last century.

In scenario two, if you have a government enforcing zero free speech, there's no chance they're going to simultaneously grant their people complete privacy (they can't, they have to constantly monitor speech).

The point of these examples, is to show that one can't exist without the other, not in actuality. As one erodes, the other will go with it.

A government willing to use extreme violence (which is what it would take) to stop all privacy, is not going to give you free speech. No such contradiction can exist for long. Any government willing to use violence to stop your freedom of speech, is not going to respect your privacy because they'll need to monitor you constantly to check against your speech (not to mention a violent government in reality simply isn't going to respect individual rights anyway).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Getting started in learning software UX design? - <AUTHOR>

I'm young and working in IT, but what really interests me is UX and UI design. I've done some reading, both online and on paper, but I'm looking for more guidance.<p>What concrete skills would I need to get a job in the field? What formal education would help, both for learning and gaining employment? What blogs and books would you recommend? <comment><USER2> I have hired UX people in the past. Skills I'd look for in a programmer/usability person:

\- You know jQuery and can mockup things easily. Mocking things up with an eye towards usability is a great skill.

\- You can make wireframes fairly fast, in OmniGraffle or Dreamweaver. You have something to show.

\- You have designed and run usability tests yourself. At least a few times. (You can easily learn this and just practice it yourself.) This is a biggie.

\- You've created an open source UI element in jQUery. (For example, a dropdown that lets you also add items to it, or a multi-part button, or something like that). You've written up the tech process and the user experience aspects of it.

\- You're familiar with UX design patterns (Yahoo's are a good start, search for them), and you've written a critique of them.

If you have a few of the above, you're doing great. And things to show. For example, when I was a programmer and starting out in UX, I wrote a script to test 2 versions of a footer for a webpage, wrote up some theory around how they might differ and why in actual usage, and then measured the actual usage. (That was in 2001).

Show an interest, and show that you've done stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I wanted from this post. Thanks.

<comment><USER2> If you've not only created a UI element in JQuery, but then also open sourced it, and ALSO ran usability tests on it with some friends, and written up your conclusions, I'd hire you immediately.

Unfortunately almost nobody has the combination of these skills (dev + usability + the willingness to get stuff like this done).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was in your shoes not too long ago. Blogs and books are great, but in the end you should learn by doing.

You were probably looking for a more concrete source of some sort, but in my experience no books/blogs will teach you how to come up with original UX/UI design.

Its not the easiest task in the world by any means, but come up with a project (a website of some sort), and learn how to build it from the ground up.

Once you're done you'll have the skills you need to get a job in the field, and you'll be able to show employers your work to prove your qualified.

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out "Don't Make Me Think": [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321344758/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321344758/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=stevtruo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0321344758)

</comment><comment><USER5> Read this book: "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald- Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald- Norman/dp/0385267746)</comment>