Scientists can't agree whether salt is killing us - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/17/scientists-cant-agree-whether-salt-is-killing-us-heres-why/ <comment><USER2> I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process.

Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what causes problems. Use salt to taste, most likely it won't kill you - else we would have found out already.

<comment><USER3> "Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest."

Allow me to suggest a further path forward that is superior to "trusting your gut":

Establish a regular, very high output exercise regime - incorporating both long duration aerobic/cardio and relatively intense resistance training.

Under such a regimen, you will _notice_ what food does to you because you're pushing your physical state out to the edges. You will _need_ to eat densely nutritious food and you will _notice_ when you don't. It's quite striking.

An analogy: nobody notices a bad tank of gas, or slightly wrong octane in their toyota minivan. You _do_ notice a bad tank of gas, or slightly wrong octane in a race car.

Become a racecar and you won't need to guess about food anymore.

<comment> nommm-nommm Meh. When I was an athlete I had a horrible diet which consisted of mostly boxed pasta and I ate junk food every day. Didn't hurt my athletic ability noticeably.

I try hard to watch what I eat now.

<comment><USER4> This was actually tested in a study last year, which found that cheeseburgers are just as good for recovery as expensive sports drinks: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/04/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/04/02/need-to-recover-after-a-workout-eat-a-cheeseburger/)

<comment><USER5> This bogus study keeps getting cited and misrepresented:

> Gatorade, chewable energy cubes, organic peanut butter and power bars.

All of those _are_ junk food. Drinking a large bottle of Gatorade is exactly equivalent in sugar content to drinking a can of pop, energy and power bars are also basically crap and sugar with some "vitamins" or "soy protein" added.

So yeah... this study found that eating one form of junk food is no different than eating another form of (cleverly marketed) junk food.

> Eleven males completed two experimental trials in a randomized, > counterbalanced order. Each trial included a 90-min glycogen depletion ride > followed by a 4-hr recovery period.

Wow, such thorough and newsworthy research: _eleven_ males worked out _twice_ for 90 minutes and ate two different types of crap.

This is just another example of the sorry state of modern clickbait research.

An alarming number of studies out there are nothing but noise, especially in the medical fields, where it does actual damage. Here's a good talk on this issue: [https://youtu.be/GPYzY9I78CI](https://youtu.be/GPYzY9I78CI) "Reproducible Research: True or False?"

<comment><USER6> _Wow, such thorough and newsworthy research: eleven males worked out twice for 90 minutes and ate two different types of crap. This is just another example of the sorry state of modern clickbait research._

This is peer-reviewed research that appeared in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Perhaps, as an esteemed expert in sport nutrition yourself, you could approach the journal and offer your services as a reviewer, given how strongly you feel about this.

<comment><USER5> I linked to an hour long lecture from a domain expert who offers a thorough, evidence based critique of modern research practices in the health sciences. I hope you watch it, because it raises important problems in current research practices that many are not aware of (or not taking seriously enough).

Either way, I resent such an empty appeal to authority on your end. As intelligent, educated adults I'd like to think we're capable of arriving at our own conclusions. One can be critical of someone's methods without sharing their domain-specific expertise. Science is not meant to be an old boy's club, it's a communal activity; it belongs to everyone and it's up to everyone to scrutinize.

That's not how science works no matter who reviewed what. It doesn't matter if Francis Crick himself was brought back from the dead to review this paper: until this line of research is investigated further, experiments are reproduced, modified, and analyzed from every reasonable angle, the data is meaningless.

Perfect example, straight from the article:

> "We found that the published literature bears little imprint of an ongoing > controversy, but rather contains two almost distinct and disparate lines of > scholarship."

> This finding arose from their review of ten "systematic reviews" of the > evidence that have been conducted. In systematic reviews, scientists collect > all of the primary research on a topic and, in effect, weight it on the > whole. But there appears to have been widespread disagreement about what > research papers ought to be included in a systematic review. If a research > paper was selected for one systematic review, it was more than likely not > selected for another, the researchers found.

Thd researchers choose a narrative and stick to it. i.e: Domain expertise _is_ the problem. If it's not up to outsiders to point this out, then who?

The current trend of careerism and domain myopia, this pressure to churn out original research sausage factory style (again, presented in great detail in the talk I linked to) is not science, it's actively hurtful to science, and actively hurtful to people whose health, even lives, depends on this research.

I personally have gone through the medical system for reasons I won't go into, and have seen first hand the very real consequences of good and bad science, which is why I feel so passionate about these matters.

I also know a number of bright individuals who have left the world of academic research due to their disillusionment with the system. There is a very real brain drain going on, and God bless those who stick it out. But if more outsiders (and disgruntled insiders and ex-insiders) don't speak out more, people will continue to get hurt (many already have been -- it's not difficult to find articles and books on this subject). This isn't pure maths or theoretical physics, this is medicine; and we must hold it to the highest levels of scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "the image is dominated by red and blue, a sign that scientists are more likely to cite the research that conforms to their outlook."

Or a sign that the green lines were drawn first, and test red and blue overlaid.

<comment><USER8> Was about to post the same. It's hard to continue reading the article when the basic premise is so obviously flawed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think a huge problem, is that some of the guidelines are insanely low and difficult to hit without serious diet modifications. A couple of years ago, I tried to stick to the Canadian RDA for salt and found it near impossible even on a whole food diet. If you engage in strenuous exercise or in manual labour, they are dangerously low.

A couple of recent studies are pointing to this problem with the Health Canada Guidelines [http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/13/salt_guidelines_a...](http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/08/13/salt_guidelines_are_too_low_studies_show.html)

So studies that compare people at or near the RDA with people who are over the RDA are essentially comparing vegans, vegetarians and other people are very closely monitoring their diet to the general population.

<comment><USER10> Honestly given that due to health reasons I have to stick to ~500mg of sodium a day, and have been for years with no adverse effects, I don't consider the 1,500mg Canadian guidelines that low. I do find it funny though that, for example, the Canadian guidelines are 1,500mg while the Italian ones are at 2,400 (and if you look at packaged foods sometimes the percentages seem to be based on 4,000mg)

The only way for me to do it is to be completely whole foods (the only "packaged" food I eat is canned crushed tomatoes, and only a very specific brand with absolutely no sodium added). It is obviously annoying not to be able to eat bread anymore, or to eat out, or to be able to do air travel without starving (unfortunately airlines nowadays seem to not serve full fruit meals, so I have to make do with just the little square box of salad and the one of fruit, which on an 8 hour flight is not fun) but what can you do.

This said having to severely limit your sodium makes you realize just how much of our industry relationships seem to be predicated on eating out, from interviews, to work get togethers and so on, this makes me think that likely any future job I will have will have to be fully remote because flying somewhere for an all day interview would be quite difficult to figure out food-wise.

<comment><USER11> bread with no or very low sodium exists but usually in the freezer section.

[http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/ezekiel-49-low- sod...](http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/ezekiel-49-low-sodium- sprouted-whole-grain-bread)

<comment><USER10> thanks! I've never seen this particular one at my local stores but I'll keep an eye out. Theoretically "Tuscan Bread" should also be made with no added salt, but it's also not easy to find, and I wouldn't trust it anyways unless I knew the baker personally

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article kindly submitted here is interesting. Like more and more recent articles about science in the popular press, this article, which reports on a large analysis of previously published papers on salt in the human diet, digs into the process of science to look at how (or even whether) scientists learn from one another by citing the previously published papers on the same topic. The article's key point, just below a graphic that is criticized in several previous comments here, is "Overall the papers they reviewed were 50 percent more likely to cite reports that drew a similar conclusion than to cite papers drawing a different conclusion." In other words, scientists working on the issue of how much salt in the human diet is too much are largely talking past one another, and not collaboratively seeking truth. The article further reports, "Trinquart and his colleagues also turned up another factor that might pose even more profound problems in the salt research. It appears scientists could not even agree on what ought to be counted as evidence."

Human nutrition studies are notoriously difficult because it is very hard to measure exactly what a study subject eats, especially a nutrient like salt that occurs as a hidden ingredient in wildly varying doses in many foods. So correct measurement of the initial study data is hard to get right in studies about salt. But if scientists are still not in consensus about what to look at as endpoints to tell if salt is helpful or harmful in different doses, it will be a long time before we can individualize the research or do anything else suggested in the comments already posted in this thread.

<comment><USER13> I was recently prescribed beta blockers by my doctor, due to ongoing heart and blood pressure issues brought on by severe stress anxiety.

I also have asthma. It's a mild case, and I don't need an inhaler or any medication for it, just get pretty short on breath under heavy exercise.

Now, accumulated medical wisdom is that beta blockers are bad for asthmatics. They supposedly shorten air intake, and can even be fatal, especially in severe cases. NHS guidelines in the UK recommend against prescribing them to asthmatics and other similar lung conditions.

But ... see it turns out this wisdom basically goes back to some case reviews from back in the 70s, of patients having reactions to proplanolol, the first beta blocker released to market.

But recent reviews of the research shows that's pretty much all there's ever been: case studies. The only actual experimental trials done on this had significant methodological issues (one of them didn't even have a control group!), leaving little more than just a pile of what amounts to anecdotal evidence, involving two conditions (heart and lung) that have significant chance of comorbidity anyway.

On top of that, even most of that research is all based on the original "nonselective" kind of beta blockers, while initial research with the modern "selective" variety indicates they may even _help_. Even more fun is that the beta-agonists sometimes prescribed as an alternative to blockers, may themselves have a reaction with asthma ...

The end result is that in nearly 50 years of beta blockers being on market, no one medical professional actually seems to have any idea whether they're good or bad for asthma, but the "wisdom" gets passed down all the same ...

And meanwhile I've got a bottle of them on my desk. I'm not a doctor, or a pharmaceutical scientist, and if they don't know if it's safe for me to take them or not, how in fuck am I supposed to make that choice?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> At least the we can all agree that salt is good for our passwords.

<comment><USER15> Just in case they are random.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem is that salt (and other minerals) is required to live. But we eat too much of everything (including salt).

It's not the salt that's killing us, it's the shitty diet, too-large portions, and lack of exercise. If we ate reasonable portions of well-prepared meals the salt wouldn't be a big deal. But no, instead we eat extra large portions of everything, way too much meat, starch, fat and salt, so all these food items get a bad rap because we can't simply moderate ourselves...

<comment><USER17> Why do you think you know that?

Since the answer is basically either A: "no good reason" or B: "I believe I have science on my side", this really isn't a good response to an article about how controversial the science is. Which science do you think you have? Why is it better than the other half of the science?

This is a generic reply to everybody jumping up to explain what the truth really is.

<comment><USER18> Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C?

Of course this point has the same problem of lacking details. But recognizing "modern food" as a culprit is actually less overeaching than putting the blame on a single substance that has been used for centuries.

<comment><USER17> "Would "people ate less and suffered less heart diseases time ago?" qualify as C?"

No; that would fall under "no good reason". Are you _sure_ people "ate less"? Given that we (think we) know that people of the past were _also_ more active (although history is definitely on your side for that one), and how much more active people need to eat to sustain their activity, I would be completely unsurprised to learn that people in the past consumed more calories than the average American. You'd need to do quite a bit of science to nail this down.

Unless, of course, you've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B.

It's hard to escape from needing to have done science to really _know_ what the problem is, and it's also hard to escape from the fact that all the science is really a great deal less clear than we've been led to believe by our government and public health organizations. It's clear we have problems; it's _way_ less clear what the cause truly is. It also is reasonable to observe that you can "eat better" with less processed food, etc., and exercise is reasonably well established as helping, but why, _exactly_? We may speak in English of that as being one or two changes, but it's not; it's hundreds, thousands, perhaps even more changes, all at once. Which of them are relevant, and exactly how? Those questions are much less well answered. It also doesn't necessarily matter to you personally in the end. But it does mean that confident declarations about what is "really" the cause are poorly supported right now on all fronts.

I've been looking at this for many years too, and just about the only conclusions I've come to are A: less processed does seem better B: exercise does seem to be important but it's surprising how much debate about which types of exercise are good for what is still happening, again, despite what we've been led to believe and C: the consensus I was taught growing up in the 1980s is dead wrong in almost (but not quite) every detail, but that doesn't mean I know what is _right_.

There are still entire massive dimensions poorly explored by science; for instance, go look up the science on "intermittent fasting". One of the first things you ram into is that while there have been several studies on it, they all use the exact same schedule, which happens to be fairly unrealistic. No exploration of the space as a whole, just this one point, sampled over and over again. Does the schedule of your food intake matter? What's the best one? Science very nearly just shrugs at this question. Who knows what else we're missing?

<comment><USER18> _Unless, of course, you 've seen the relevant science, in which case it falls under B._

My point was that, even if not exactly science, basic facts are known. Yes, I'm sure people ate less in the past. I've seen the numbers and, to a certain extent, I've _seen_ people changing their habits in my lifetime.

This is like a tide, while many studies are focusing in a few waves. That's what my point anyway.

<comment><USER19> People in China on average have been eating eat more calories than in US yet stay definitely thinner.

<comment><USER18> I do see the connection between that and the ongoing discussion, but it's subtle and mostly caused by my careless use of terms. Let me fix it a little: the diet of our ancestors was mostly "slow" carbs and a modest amount of proteins, except if you have rich ancestors, that's it. Now there are cheap proteins and a lot of refined carbs that are the equivalent to a nuke for metabolism. So I should have said that heart diseases have raised while much has changed in diet but salt intake has probably _decreased_ because of medical recomendations.

Better now? :)

<comment><USER19> Yes - modern Western diet is much closer to what pharaohs with all their deceases have eaten, rather than what a typical person experienced, say, 100 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems to me that in otherwise healthy people, they are able to deal with excess salt by getting rid of it, but when people have issues they are unable to do so as efficiently and that's when salt is bad.

<comment><USER21> There was one recent study that seemed to indicate exactly this, but I can't find it right now. As I recall they found that salt exacerbated inflammation related to hypertension, but found no difference in healthy individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you consciously reduce your salt, it is probably good for your health. This is not necessarily because of the salt, but because reducing your salt intake pretty much requires preparing your own food from unprocessed ingredients, rather than eating out or consuming processed food (whose sodium levels tend to be high, and not controllable by you).

A high sodium intake is widely _believed_ to be unhealthy. Whether that is actually true or not, those who prepare high sodium food basically show that they don't give a shit about health.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think Dr Michael Greger's short video summary of salt research argues pretty convincingly that if you reduce your salt intake to very low levels (what he calls "normal-for-our-species salt intake"), you will not suffer from hypertension.

[http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may- be-a...](http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a-choice)

Another salt video looking at conflicts of interest:

[http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to- shake...](http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake-up-the- salt-debate/)

<comment><USER24> In case someone doesnt want to watch the videos: the amount of sodium discussed in the first video as "normal" is <1g/day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the core issue is that biology doesn't know as much as the media likes to claim it does. I mean read this: [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh- mlf05291...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh- mlf052915.php#.VWzrrUM7T6Y.mailto). If true, this effectively invalidates nearly all previous research regarding the safety of anything we inject into our blood stream because they may in fact impact the brain.

Many people have a choice to make. Although the scientific community may make a consistently supported claim about something does not mean that something will turn out to be true. Creating a near-perfect predictive model of the human body for doctors to use is about as complex a task as reverse engineering a UFO (actually reverse engineering an alien space craft is still probably more simple). They are going to make mistakes along the way.

So you are faced with a choice. Either take a risk with incomplete knowledge that something man made will not be harmful in the long term or keep doing most of the same stuff that we've been doing for centuries that has a known, if imperfect, outcome. Yes there are a lot of things can will probably kill you first, but does that mean you should continue to assume more risk on the claim that a predictive model that the scientific community generally endorses is correct enough to avoid harm?

Then again "organic" can mean a lot of things and the lack of regulation and quality control can and has made things worse on the other end. Just because it has the label "USDA Organic" doesn't mean that the USDA or FDA has done the job you think it does. There is risk and uncertainty either way.

</comment><comment><USER26> Why does a respectable news outlet/paper like the Washington Post lower itself to clickbait titles.. I don't get it.

<comment><USER27> Titles like "Scientists can't decide" always grate on me. Almost as bad as "Science has found out x!".

<comment><USER2> They should hold a global meeting and call in a vote to determine the definitive reality of the matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In lieu of any conclusive evidence that has percolated down to the mainstream news media, I'm just going to operate under the entirely baseless hypothesis that the human body can tolerate any amount of sodium above its absolute minimum required for basic functioning, provided that it is consumed within a certain range of proportions with potassium, calcium, magnesium, and water.

I suspect that the mineral content of seawater diluted to 1.5% salinity (from 3.5%) would have a bit too much sodium, and not enough potassium, but would otherwise be safe to consume in any quantity.

Needless to say, testing this hypothesis on humans might raise a few ethical concerns. Finding enough people who already drink nothing but diluted seawater to claim significance might also prove difficult.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this speaks more about a broken research system than it does about the challenges in determining how bad excess salt is on our health.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder to what extent this can be explained by varying individual responses to salt. Maybe none- definitely possible. The recent study showing blood sugar response varied widely amongst individuals to the same foods, I wonder if scientists will arrive at that conclusion for salt.

[http://www.weizmann-usa.org/media/2015/11/19/blood-sugar- lev...](http://www.weizmann-usa.org/media/2015/11/19/blood-sugar-levels-in- response-to-foods-are-highly-individual)

</comment><comment><USER31> Being an avid cook I have a hard time with believing that salt is the evil some claim it is. It has always been with us, it is in so many recipes and many don't work without it. It is the basis for brine solutions which produce make even some of the worst cuts of meat palatable and take good pieces and makes them better.

I am more of the idea that the sedentary lifestyle of many and lack of water as the go to drink for a lot of people combined with the excess of salt in snacks as a triple whammy that exaggerates salt's place on some people's lists of it being bad.

<comment><USER32> One thing to consider is pre-made processed food has tons of sodium in them to bring out taste due to the absorption of salt.

When I cook for myself, I use a fraction of the salt that a pre-made equivalent normally ships with.

I recall reading a blurb about how when processed foods don't do well in taste-testing research panels, they are instructed to dump in the sodium, with the result of positive results to follow up panels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> WaPo titles are sounding more like Buzzfeed or Quartz.

</comment><comment><USER34> Remove the sugar and starches from your diet, and be physically active. You'll need ample salt, maybe even more than you'd expect.

<comment><USER22> I eat low sodium, cycle 70 miles a week, run 30, and sweat buckets. I'm fine.

When I go traveling, I end up eating out a lot due to circumstances. The sodium intake bloats up the skin, yowzers! My wedding band gets stuck on my finger, when normally it slides off easily, and I lose a bit of definition. I hate how that looks and feels.

<comment><USER35> Body builders will maintain high sodium levels until just before a competition, whereupon they stop consuming sodium and their water retention decreases granting them extra temporary muscle definition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In the image showing how polarized research has become, does the yellow or green category include "Inconclusive citing supportive and/or contradictory"? I would suspect as much, otherwise the image ends up being quite misleading, but I didn't see any confirmation in the article.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think it's better to enjoy life than worry about nutritional guidelines, which might extend our time in some retirement home. Especially something that's been in our diet for a long time. Just don't overdo it.

<comment><USER9> My in-laws, who have always regularly exercised and eat healthy are 10 years older but have a much higher quality of life than my parents who have done neither.

It's about staying out of the retirement home for as long as possible not how long you're there before you die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Salt and other nutrients are bad if you're sedentary...

</comment><comment><USER39> UL is 3600 mg [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_Reference_Intake)

</comment><comment><USER40> Does it taste nice? That means it probably causes cancer.

I jest but it does seem like everything _nice_ either causes heart disease and/or cancer.

<comment><USER41> Even vitamins cause cancer[1]. My personal guess is that it is far more harmful to you to worry too much about what you eat, than eating a little bit too much of something "bad", see Nocebo-effect[2] and other psychosomatic factors.

[1] [https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vitamins-and-cancer- ris...](https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vitamins-and-cancer-risk/) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The fact that you can eat a lot of salt, with out instant harm , always makes people think twice on reports like this . Same is true with sugar reports and fat as well . So what is this a vegan conspiracy to make us all go veg ! Unlikely , but consumers should Recognize that consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results . Try This rule as an example , many people like olive oil , many people say eating lots of olive oil is good for you . No one equates this as drinking a pint of olive oil as a good idea , nor eating 1/7 of that a day for a week . The bigger issue with this study is how pervasive doctored food has become . Yesterday Bloomberg news had a story how Parmesan and other grated hard Italian cheeses have become regularly doctored with wood pulp as a filler . Once wools pulp tastes like well , wood , one would expect salt to be added t this product to cover the wood content . A similar analogy can be made with regards to olive oils . Many providers filter and treat lower quality oil to make it appear as a higher quality product . It's not as bad as Chinese "Gutter Oil" but the fact that we have food health studies with out super strict food quality enforcement, in my humble opinion leads the biased reports or studies with flawed data .

<comment><USER43> > consumption not in moderation will lead to unwelcomed results

The whole point of these studies is to define the line between "too much", "in moderation", and "not enough". Saying "everything in moderation" is the equivalent of answering "when should I start worrying about my radiation dose" with "when it's too much". Technically correct, practically useless.

<comment><USER42> So say the question is alcohol consumption. Science knows the ld50 for alcohol . Science could say 1 drink a week is too much for you . However much of that logic deals with the "average man" not "you" . Your level of moderation could be calculated by direct observation of you, but I doubt anyone would stand for that sort of nonsense in today's science . So how much salt , sugar , or fat is to much ? It depends on many factors , much like how much alcohol you can consume before you "feel intoxicated" . There is a legal standard, in many countries,for how much alcohol you can have in your system before you are a burden on the state . Ie are you so dunk you will crash your car and cause harm to your self and to others or property... Back to my point you may not fit the legal parameters for being "too drunk to drive" because you can drink 10 beers before "you" feel drunk or the inverse one beer and you need a nap . Again this is based on averages as well as a social standard of acceptability on what we as a community governing the law feels is acceptable . So how does this relate to salt,fat, or sugar . It's quite simple it's too much salt in your diet does not make you potential harm your self or others in the short term like alcohol would . The same could be said about sugar , and fat . To be honest I should say something like I eat 2 lbs of sugar coated bacon each day with a fifth of bourbon and I am well over 85 . But in any case you will vote be down either way .</comment></comment></comment>


Dealing with Noise in an Open Office Setting - <AUTHOR> https://viget.com/flourish/dealing-with-noise-in-an-open-office-setting <comment><USER2> I once worked as a developer at a newspaper that had an open floor plan. The biggest issue was the darn emergency scanner radio squawking in the background all day! I often fantasized about taking a baseball bat to it, like they did to a printer on Office Space ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjsSr3z5nVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjsSr3z5nVk)). It's one of the reasons I no longer work for a newspaper.</comment>


Google Street View Vehicle Revealed! - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/the-google-street-view-vehicle-revealed/ <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently Google has been spying on us from a Chevy Astro.</comment>


First NetHack bot ascension - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/nethack/comments/2tluxv/yaap_fullauto_bot_ascension_bothack <comment><USER2> You can watch players (and bots) play NetHack in real time:

        telnet nethack.alt.org

...then hit "w" to watch games that are in progress. You might need to resize your window, and some players might be using a different character set than your terminal.

If you want to start playing, telnet there, create an account, hit "p" to play a game and then "?" to read basic help. [http://nethack.alt.org/](http://nethack.alt.org/) will keep logs of your game as well as other stats.

This post also mentions previous bot attempts such as the Tactical Amulet Extraction Bot (TAEB), which is also worth looking at: [http://taeb.github.io/](http://taeb.github.io/)

Warning, SPOILERS: If you're okay with spoiling the game to some extent (e.g., solutions to common puzzles, which corpses are safe to eat, strategies), check out the NetHackWiki: [http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page](http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page)

<comment><USER3> It's worth pointing out that no one ever finishes (ascends) a game of Nethack without looking at the spoilers, so they're really not spoilers, they're more like the instruction manual.

It is definitely more fun to try playing the game for several hours without reading the spoilers, but you're not going to figure out stuff like the Invocation Ritual without reading the spoilers.

<comment><USER4> There is at least one self-described unspoiled ascension, in 2010:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike....](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/wci4E96iKc4)

This did involve use of wizard mode (not for the unspoiled ascension itself, but beforehand for learning stuff).

People often ask how someone would learn how to perform the Invocation without spoilers. One intended answer by the DevTeam is to pay the Oracle for a series of major consultations, one of which (somewhat elliptically) explains the Invocation. The Oracle consultations aren't considered spoilers if you pay for them in-game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Folks, do yourself a favor, and check out the bot's source: [https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/bo...](https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack/blob/master/src/bothack/bots/mainbot.clj)

It's really, really neat. Even to those of us who know little or nothing about the game, from the nested Englishy descriptors piled up into short conditions for things-the-bot-might-want-to-do, the basic strategies can be discerned...

<comment><USER6> I have no idea how to even parse this:

        (or (if (and (weak? player)

If it is a player or a weak player?

Or this probably simple function(?):

        (defn- want-protection? [game]
          (and (< (:protection (:player game)) 3) (> 15 (:xplvl (:player game)))))

It makes zero intuitive sense to me.

<comment><USER4> That first line is just the beginning of a statement that goes on until line 71. It decides whether to eat or pray if the player is very hungry. (In NetHack you can die of starvation if you don't have enough nutrition; nutrition can be obtained either by eating food[1], or in some circumstances by praying when hungry.)

The second function is easier for me to understand: it says that the player wants protection if the player has less than 3 intrinsic protection and has an experience level higher than 15. (In NetHack, gods grant intrinsic protection under some circumstances, which causes one to become better armored even without wearing additional physical armor. It's basically like a kind of magical armor on one's body that's independent of any physical object.) The idea seems to be that a player with at least experience level 15 ought to have 3 or more points of protection, and if the player doesn't, the player should try to go and get them.

If you're not used to reading parenthesized prefix notation, you might have a look at

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29)

[1] In another example of NetHack's complexity, it's also possible in some circumstances to eat objects other than food, by turning into a monster that's able to eat the objects in question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At the risk of losing my nerd card, I've never played Nethack.

I read the reddit thread, and while it was in English, it made not a lick of sense to me. Now I know how non-engineers feel sometimes. :)

BTW, can someone tell me why this is such an amazing accomplishment? I know Nethack is very old, so is this a case of a complex problem space or just no one has tried before?

<comment><USER8> It's incredibly complicated. That's probably less of a big thing now than it was in the 80s or 90s. In the 80s or 90s it was just amazing that a game could be that intricate.

The sigil-based graphics are part of what make the complexity possible. And - the dev team have coded in all manner of combinations of things, many of which get you killed in plausible/amusing/annoying/complicated ways.

There's a culture of players looking at the source code while they play. The source is really antiquated C.

If you decide to have a go, I'd recommend printing out a copy of the manual, avoiding the spoilers for the first couple of dozen games at least. Just try to learn your way around the dungeon just from that manual, and experience the complexity and sense of mystery.

It's not a particularly 'good' game - grindy. A vogue at the moment in roguelikes is for games with as little complexity as possible. For example, I've spent far more time studying the C code to this game than I have playing it: [http://trogrd.tumblr.com/post/61949503427/zoo](http://trogrd.tumblr.com/post/61949503427/zoo)

<comment><USER9> > The sigil-based graphics are part of what make the complexity possible

I don't think that is relevant, I have played the GUI version for many years, and it's perfectly usable.

<comment><USER10> This is the reason those games can be so complex. Want to make a character fly 10m? Just move his character ('@') 10 grid steps. Want to make a camera? A char 'c' will do it. It's awesome that this allows you to easily program whatever you wish but you still get a visual representation of what's happening.

<comment><USER11> An Expansive Camera in Nethack is the character '(', not a letter 'c'.

A letter 'c' is a cockatrice or a pyrolisk; those are both quite dangerous so I suggest you learn to recognize them for your own good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you find this interesting, take note that people were writing bots to beat _Rogue_ over 30 years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)#Automated_pl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_\(video_game\)#Automated_play)

<comment><USER13> The roguelike Angband has had a bot built into it for at least 20 years... I don't know that it has ever actually beat the game, though. I used to run it as a screensaver on, I think, Windows 95. Was interesting to watch, but it wasn't a terribly clever bot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good stuff.

There's a bot with several wins in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, another roguelike. The combinations it has won are pretty rote, but it's still very impressive, particularly since I don't think it's even capable of knowing that much about the game (it uses Lua handles to pick up information about the state and I believe there's a fair chunk of the game that isn't exposed that way.)

</comment><comment><USER9> > the bot has already managed to reach Rodney without farming and can get to > the Castle and beyond fairly reliably, maybe 1 in 10 runs or so

so, the bot is also a better player than me.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of the difficulties for a human playing Nethack is remembering all the potions and amulets and wands and scrolls and rings and monsters and their effects and many, many, many combinations. In a way a bot should have an easier time since it has basically unlimited memory.

<comment><USER16> True, also most player deaths are due to obvious mistakes - YASD (Yet Another Stupid Death), mistakes that the bot will only ever make once and then be programmed to avoid.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I guess a major advantage for a bot is being totally disciplined and never impatient. "No, I won't read that yet; yes, I will #untrap three times; no, I won't go down these stairs with the cockatrice corpse; no, I won't eat this giant while satiated" and so on. It can be hard for human players to have absolute discipline about not doing actions that they know could theoretically cause instant death.

Also, the bot can safely walk along the edge of lava without falling in due to a typo. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reading through the comments, I realized that people even do speedruns in Nethack... impressive.

<comment><USER18> Why is it surprising? (And I do not at all mean that in a snarky tone. I've been lurking in the nethack community for so long that it seems perfectly natural to me)

<comment><USER19> Probably because to the the person familiar enough with NetHack to have played it but never immersed themselves in the community, ascension seems _hard_. A speedrun is one thing, doing it on a game many can't even win is another thing entirely.

<comment><USER20> I add to the point: doing it on a game many can't even make half way through.

<comment><USER21> My first nethack game? I was locked in a room without door and was killed by a falling rock. I don't even know why I ever played another game :-) And yes, there was a big gap until the next game. As a beginner that's all you ever do, die, die, die.

<comment><USER22> Similar experience with ADOM, it even has a special location which becomes reachable only after the game killed your 100th hero. Got to this point in a few days back then, I wish there was something good for 1000th death, that was when I started to know what I'm doing :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Really amazing achievement, kudos to duke-nh!

For those of you who are looking to get into nethack, or play it all the time... (shameless plug) I've been working on a project for some years that helps ease some of the monotony of playing.

[https://github.com/samfoo/noobhack](https://github.com/samfoo/noobhack)

For example, it keeps track of where you see shops, so you can come back, maps out levels and what you've seen on them, and auto-price identifies things you pick up.

There's a rudimentary plugin system so you can write your own extensions (more coming soon).

</comment><comment><USER24> Video of the winning game: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unCQHAbGsAA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unCQHAbGsAA)

The author's list of milestones illustrates the key components of this achievement, as well as some limitations:

[https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack#milestones- reached](https://github.com/krajj7/BotHack#milestones-reached)

Awesome work, Jan Krajicek!

</comment><comment><USER21> That is truly impressive. I remember what a colossal achievement my first ascension felt like. Nethack is such a complex game, but the most important skill is probably patience and planning single moves, something a bot can be perfect or very good at. Now I feel like playing again.

<comment><USER25> The bot can also do things that would bore a human player to tears, such as automatically switching between items as the need arises.

<comment><USER21> Not to mention the farming. I could never do that.

<comment><USER4> I look forward to hearing about a non-farming bot ascension (as the developer of this bot has suggested is possible!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm the creator of a Rogue-like game (Dead By Zombie) and love NetHack, consider it one of the masterpieces of game design I've tried to study and learn from. Lessons baked into it both in terms of game design and software. Has a lot of bang per buck, in terms of fun/value per LOC, and per square inch of screen real estate.

If anybody gets introduced to Rogue-like UI for the first time because of this article, and likes it, I also recommend checking out Dwarf Fortress. Similar but very very different in ways that people tend to either love or hate.

<comment><USER27> I'm one of those people who are just now taking a look at this genre. Can't believe how cool this is.</comment></comment>


Critical PRNG Bug in NetBSD Kernel - <AUTHOR> http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2013-003.txt.asc <comment><USER2>
        Due to a misplaced parenthesis, if insufficient GOOD
        bits were available to satisfy a request, the
        keying/rekeying code requested either 32 or 64 ANY bits,
        rather than the balance of bits required to key the
        stream generator.

I think this paragraph is a nice reminder, how hard crypto can be.

<comment><USER3> In particular CSPRNGs, because the output of a fatally flawed CSPRNG and a secure CSPRNG can look very similar.

This is also why CSPRNGs are a great place to hide backdoors.

<comment><USER2> Backdoor in the sense of leaking state?

And is there a case in the wild ( except the PS3 hack?)?

<comment><USER4> > except the PS3 hack?

To be clear, the PS3 problem was not a problem of randomness quality or a PRNG backdoor. It was illegal nonce reuse in the zero-knowledge proof-of-key- possession protocol embedded in DSA signatures.

<comment><USER5> Did you mean to use the word "illegal"?

<comment><USER4> Sorry 'illegal' in the sense of being contrary to the requirements of the crypto protocol, in the same way that you can have the concept of an 'illegal operation' in a CPU ISA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I enjoyed the Thanks To section:

        Thor Lancelot Simon for causing, finding and fixing the bug

</comment><comment><USER7> The advisory says that reading from /dev/random is fine, but reading from /dev/urandom is affected. Shouldn't cryptographic applications be using /dev/random to begin with? I was under the impression that /dev/urandom is only for when low-quality randomness is acceptable.

<comment><USER8> The only time that ought to make a difference in a modern properly-implemented CSPRNG is right after system startup when very little unpredictability has made it into the pool.

Consequently, system boot scripts are just about the worst possible place to generate new keys if they didn't already exist.

<comment><USER9> From the manpage of /dev/random "If a seed file is saved across reboots as recommended below (all major Linux distributions have done this since 2000 at least), the output is cryptographically secure against attackers without local root access as soon as it is reloaded in the boot sequence, and perfectly adequate for network encryption session keys. Since reads from /dev/random may block, users will usually want to open it in nonblocking mode (or perform a read with timeout), and provide some sort of user notification if the desired entropy is not immediately available."

<comment><USER8> Only if the seed file was was generated by a secure kernel during a clean shutdown and kept secret during that whole time. There's a lot to go wrong there, especially if you're an embedded system running on flash.

I also seem to recall host keys being generated on _first_ boot. Perhaps some installers are smart enough to prime that seed file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Due to a misplaced parenthesis...

I know this isn't the (main) take away message, but it does make me feel a little better about some errors I've made in the past to know that even heavily vetted code can have these types of errors.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if this code would qualify as "heavily vetted." Thor Lancelot Simon wrote it himself and imported it himself into the tree for NetBSD v6 and onwards. Probably hasn't seen that many eyes for review.

<comment><USER10> I just assumed kernel code would have at least someone else looking over it before it's merged in.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it does, but they won't be looking for misplaced parens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone have a link to the actual patch?

<comment><USER14> [http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/kern/subr_cprng....](http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/kern/subr_cprng.c.diff?r1=1.14&r2=1.15&only_with_tag=MAIN&f=h)

        Fix a security issue: when we are reseeding a PRNG seeded early in boot
        before we had ever had any entropy, if something else has consumed the
        entropy that triggered the immediate reseed, we can reseed with as little
        as sizeof(int) bytes of entropy.

<comment><USER13> The misplaced right-paren is in this line:

        rnd_extract_data(key + r, sizeof(key - r), RND_EXTRACT_ANY);

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does vim have a plugin to detect unbalanced parens/brackets/braces etc?

<comment><USER16> The parens were not unbalanced, that would very likely not even compile. They were misplaced, a much more subtle mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just in case anyone is curious, the error was having `sizeof(key - r)` instead of `sizeof(key) - r`

Rookie mistake!

<comment><USER18> I wonder, what sort of technology would have avoided this? The "key -r" bit seems a bit suspicious type wise

<comment><USER8> Yeah, why would you care about the size of a temporary arithmetic expression?

<comment><USER19> Well... sizeof of an expression is mostly useful for not repeating yourself in cases when you need the size of a type you already have some way of referencing, as in

      a = malloc(sizeof(*a));

It's also useful for various hacks (stuff like compile-time assert macros), since it doesn't evaluate the expression, only its type.

<comment><USER8> Sure, I can think of plenty of ways it could arise via metaprogramming. I don't know if I would want such a warning enabled in my own template-heavy C++ code.

But it perhaps it could be useful for those following the NetBSD style. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _"Due to a misplaced parenthesis..."_

Is this RNG written in Lisp!?

Sorry, couldn't resist ; ) (big fan of Clojure and elisp here btw)

<comment><USER8>
         ERROR: LINE 3, COLUMN 26
         ERROR: UNMATCHED RIGHT PARENTHESIS ENCOUNTERED.
         ERROR: WHILE PROCESSING INPUT:
                  1         2         3         4         5         6         7
         123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012
         Sorry, couldn't resist ; ) (big fan of Clojure and elisp here btw)
                                  ^
                                  |
         ERROR: PROCESSING WILL CONTINUE WITH THE NEXT AVAILABLE INPUT TOKEN.
         ERROR: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Danger World - <AUTHOR> https://danger.world <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this a while back looking for testers, and I've posted again because now there is a playable demo on the website. Also we're live in both app stores now!</comment>


Bogus stories of wild animals flourishing in quarantined cities gives false hope - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-fake-animal-viral-social-media-posts/ <comment><USER2> I live in a Pasadena and we have a fair amount of coyotes. It seems like they're out in force based on everyone on Ring posting videos of coyotes running through yards.

Normally it's one or twice a week, but scrolling through my neighborhood alerts now, it's been everyday for the last week.

Can't wait for the bears and mountain lions to get bored.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much of it is due to more people being home/bored and seeing the coyotes?

<comment><USER4> Probably mostly this, but I also notice a major uptick in my own daylight Coyote sightings in the early spring. My assumption has always been that this is breeding season and animals with new pups are forced to spend more of their time foraging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't be surprised about behavioral responses in wildlife to reduced human activity outdoors. But anything substantial will take time. For example, if some village were abandoned, I'd expect that native plants and animals would move back in, over some years.

I also wouldn't be surprised if 2020 greenhouse emissions were less than in 2019. And indeed, it might take some years to recover the rate of increase.

And perhaps, if PV replaced old dead coal plants, there might be long term emissions reductions. Similarly, if working from home becomes the new norm, that will also cut emissions dramatically.

Even so, the population decrease will be too small, in and of itself, to have much impact.

<comment><USER6> Every year 130~million are born 55~60million die. Corona virus is not going to effect the population growth rate at all. Infact because of the lock downs chances are 9-10 months from now the number of babies being born will be a lot higher than normal.

<comment><USER5> Hey, another baby boom :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes it doesn't matter if a story is true or not, if it brings attention to the problem of global warming and how we're killing the world.

<comment><USER8> The step from using fake stories for bringing attention to real issues to using fake stories for bringing attention to fake issues is worryingly small.

If everyone had your mindset it might happen without anyone realizing. Imagine everyone thinking "Sure my anecdote is false, but what does that matter when his and hers are true?"</comment></comment>


Supreme Court Takes Important GPS Tracking Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/paul/supreme-court-takes-important-gps-tracking-case <comment><USER2> This case brings up the issue of attaching a GPS to a car surreptitiously without a warrent and using it for continuous tracking. Near the end it brings up the theory of "practical obscurity", which distinguishes between public records where one might have to dig into court records all over the place vs. getting the same data from a central clearing house. Apparently the FBI has refused to release aggregated public records on this doctrine in the interest of privacy.

Practical Obscurity is an interesting theory. My non-lawyerly guess is that if it is upheld by the Supremes, it would be used in all kinds of attacks against search engines.</comment>


The era of cheap suburban growth and development is over - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/05/the-new-suburban-crisis/521709/?utm_source=SFTwitter <comment><USER2> Maybe on the west coast and western USA.

But the suburban dream of middle class life at low prices is alive and well in the midwest, south, and much of the NE too, where nice housing is still no more than 2x-3.5x median income levels.

<comment><USER2> A related thought...

Startups and tech companies should pick a few midwestern or NE cities and open offices there.

Imagine if Cleveland Ohio was a tech hub and "cool" by any vague stretch that a western city is, housing there is practically free by west coast standards.

[https://www.zillow.com/homes/cleveland- ohio_rb/](https://www.zillow.com/homes/cleveland-ohio_rb/)

Even cities like Albany or Rochester NY are dirt cheap compared to any city in a western state.

[https://www.zillow.com/albany-ny/](https://www.zillow.com/albany-ny/)

But instead everyone piles into San Francisco, bay area, Seattle, Portland, LA, and overpays by small fortunes.

<comment><USER3> I left my home country to work in the bay area largely because I was going to a well established company in an area dense with other work. The chance of me moving to the middle of nowhere for a startup is exactly zero.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. If there were plenty of good tech job opportunities in Nowheresville, USA, tech people would move there. If there were more tech people in Nowheresville, USA, companies would move there. Who has to act first to bootstrap the next tech hub?

<comment> sid-kap Google, Facebook, and Amazon? Many of my friends believe that Google's new Austin office might lead to other tech companies to move here, but that's just speculation.

<comment><USER5> Yawn, It will be a cold day in hell, when Austin has more tech jobs than Dallas or Houston.

<comment><USER6> But then you have to live in Dallas or Houston.

<comment><USER2> Have you been to either? Texas is quite nice, and has great weather.

Cost of living is a small fraction compared to the bay area or west coast cities too.

<comment><USER7> >Texas is quite nice, and has great weather.

No, it doesn't. It's hot. And the people are conservative; nothing nice about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Across the nation, hundreds of suburban shopping malls are dead or dying; > countless suburban factories, like their urban counterparts a couple of > generations ago, have fallen silent.

OK, but those are not specific to suburbs, are they? Shopping malls are kind of a trend that fell out of fashion, and it was partially replaced by internet sales and other forms of brick and mortar shopping. Factories have gone overseas, but I don't see how that's related to suburbia. Certainly the suburban area I grew up in in the 70s and 80s never really had factories in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER9> self driving cars is going to resume the suburban boom. When commute time becomes productive time, or TV time, then people will continue to expand outwards to cheaper housing with more space. I would be betting against density right now.

<comment><USER10> Self driving cars will be quiet, electric, clean, shared and won't need the parking space. They'll make living in high density areas that much more viable and pleasant. I wouldn't be betting on sprawl right now. A long commute is still a long commute.

<comment><USER11> The car form factor can't be shared because everyone needs one at the same time (to commute to work). This is a major problem with making good cities in America, would be solvable by reintroducing minibuses.

<comment><USER10> Peak traffic on a typical weekday in Seattle is around 5:30, when 1/5th of all daily use vehicles are on the road at the same time.

<comment><USER11> That's interesting, but how many daily use vehicles are rides that could be replaced by bus trips? It sounds like a more general category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also on the topic (2016): [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-end-of- sprawl/20...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-end-of- sprawl/2016/07/29/2039a2b8-4d20-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> > During the mid-1980s, before anyone thought of the suburbs as being on a > downward trajectory ...

Those of us paying attention knew in the late 70s that suburbs were a dumb idea.

Edit: OK, so "dumb idea" unpacks to ecologically destructive, racist, socially disruptive, and fundamentally incompatible with energy and resource efficiency.

<comment><USER14> Efficiency is not the goal of human life. Why not put everybody in a dormitory and feed them gruel? You could even run the bunks on three shifts. That would be efficient, right?

<comment><USER13> Sure, that would be efficient, in a limited sense. But not if you included quality of life in the calculation. Or even productivity. And mainly, it's a dubious _reductio ad absurdum_.

<comment><USER15> Quality of life is subjective. There are people that think cities are absolutely oppressive due to the crowds. Similar to how you would feel about sharing a bunk.

<comment><USER13> People think many things. But reality may end up trumping all that.

Edit: What I mean is that, if negative externalities of energy and resource use were priced in, most people couldn't afford to live in the suburbs. Or at least, not in the manner that they've been accustomed to.

<comment><USER16> > if negative externalities of energy and resource use were priced in, most > people couldn't afford to live in the suburbs

Depending upon the definition of "negative externalities", this may be true for most of the developed world.

Maybe the Amish were right after all ..

<comment><USER13> Well, they're on a path to stability, to sustainability.

Technological development is on a path to AI, I think. People have been dreaming of it for at least a couple thousand years.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Economic Collapse Has Been Confirmed, We Are Being Warned That More Dmg Is Ahead - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W02rC0h_cQ4 <comment><USER2> Sir, this is an Arby's</comment>


Chinese employers using brain-reading technology to detect changes in emotion - <AUTHOR> http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2143899/forget-facebook-leak-china-mining-data-directly-workers-brains <comment><USER2> Discussed 6 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16957332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16957332)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of Snowcrash & Bob Rife:

""I deal in information," he says to the smarmy, toadying pseudojournalist who "interviews" him. He's sitting in his office in Houston, looking slicker than normal. "All television going out to Consumers throughout the world goes through me. Most of the information transmitted to and from the CIC database passes through my networks. The Metaverse -- -the entire Street -- exists by virtue of a network that I own and control.

"But that means, if you'll just follow my reasoning for a bit, that when I have a programmer working under me who is working with that information, he is wielding enormous power. Information is going into his brain. And it's staying there. It travels with him when he goes home at night. It gets all tangled up into his dreams, for Christ's sake. He talks to his wife about it. And, goddamn it, he doesn't have any right to that information. If I was running a car factory, I wouldn't let workers drive the cars home or borrow tools. But that's what I do at five o'clock each day, all over the world, when my hackers go home from work.

......

So we're working on refining our management techniques so that we can control that information no matter where it is -- on our hard disks or even inside the programmers' heads. Now, I can't say more because I got competition to worry about. But it is my fervent hope that in five or ten years, this kind of thing won't even be an issue." "

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/830.Snow_Crash](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/830.Snow_Crash)

</comment><comment><USER4> I would be worried- but knowing the Chinese, there is already a sensor data generator, woren by every worker to give these super-conductors the ability to be super even on a rainy brain day.

Imagine if a citizen could smell governments fear- what would that smell like? Like thousands of brand new cameras and sensors? Like the surveillance harassment with a thousand needle stings by a jealous spouse?

If everybody wears those caps- then you as a government produced evidence, that you do not trust anybody- which is a consensus that you have nobody really loyal to you.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can they actually read anything meaningful? Last time I've looked up research on emotion reading, you needed a device much more elaborated than what you see in the picture (and it was still shit). It could just be another case of a company lobbying to put these devices everywhere to get money, it would not be the first feel-good/bogus security device deployed at a large scale. It might just be similar to the fake bomb detector: [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896).

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if a person can get penalized for false positives, after all the system will not work a 100% without glitches. That would make for a Kafkaesk situation where a completely loyal person has to self justify his inner thoughts that got misrepresented...

Also this reminds me of a novel by Kurt Vonnegut - I think it was 'slapstick'. Here 'the Chinese' did all sorts of wondrous things like minituarizing themselves in order to solve the population problem.

Still, this may well turn out to be our future as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> In the US, using a polygraph on an employee is illegal. China is not using polygraphs, what the article describes sounds like EEG, which is not very detailed in terms of what it can read, but is invasive.

The Chinese were already slaves to their scoring system, and now you've got this.

</comment><comment><USER8> What if the depression subspace can't be escaped from by just twiddling with the break schedule?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the most dystopian article I have read in a very long time:

>"They thought we could read their mind. This caused some discomfort and resistance in the beginning," she said.

>"After a while they got used to the device. It looked and felt just like a safety helmet. They wore it all day at work."</comment>


The Rise Of The Hybrid Startup - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/24/hybrid-startup/

<comment><USER2> _...even as we speak, web entrepreneurs are teaming up with doctors to build better hospitals, with scientists to build better drugs, with lawyers to build better firms, with manufacturers to build better factories, with teachers to build better schools._

I'd love to help/partner with e.g. a mechanical engineer who wants to build Factory2.0.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't you also want to have a factory? Having recently run one, I would suggest you just contact one near you. We had an XP machine running the plasma cutter, a Windows CE powered welding robot and a Intel powered (MS-DOS I think) CNC milling machine and a bunch of other homebrewed things. I would dream of the ability to link them all together easily and do better production planning. If you are in a higher wage country, technology is your main defense against lower wage competition. I am very confident that almost any factory around would welcome being a test subject for Factory 2.0 (and they often have mechanical engineers on staff)

<comment><USER4> Is there a niche for a mechanical engineer who can also program decently in this space? I recently graduated as a mechanical engineer, and have a passion for programming, so I've been looking for ways to combine the two,. But honestly, I haven't found much outside of robotics.

<comment><USER5> Oh, hell, yes! I'm in the same boat. I can't say the work is always interesting, but people who can cross that line are invaluable.

Looks like you're in New Jersey. Try some of the solar startups-- they're open to new tech, and they need to scale up rapidly. Petra Solar? Komax in York, PA?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great post. Any startup working with the head on the web and arms in the real world will be part of an entirely new batch of startup, much more focused on profitability rather than traffic. This is good.

I'm just a bit perplexed on one point though: if you're a founder of an 'hybrid startup' you're supposed to have deep knowledge of the (physical) industry domain you'll be working on and some kind of expertise of web dynamics. I think very few entrepreneurs can be very good at both.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article. A couple of examples that I think have phenom ideas came to mind while reading it. TaskRabbit & Uber Cab both straddle the online/offline experience and seem like they will do pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER8> those who ignores technology will be disrupted, those who focuses on technology mainly will fail, only those who combines the two perfectly will win.</comment>


Terror laws clear Australian Senate, enabling entire web to be monitored - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/terror-laws-clear-senate-enabling-entire-australian-web-to-be-monitored-and-whistleblowers-to-be-jailed-20140925-10m8ih.html <comment><USER3> We are working on a grass roots campaign to raise awareness about these bills, mainly the data retention legislation which will be up for debate in the upcoming weeks.

The campaign will focus on allowing constituents to easily contact their representatives via calls, emails, facebook and twitter.

Here is the campaign mockup -> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByT3WMbCYAEsFcA.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ByT3WMbCYAEsFcA.jpg:large)

We also have an animation in development to more easily explain in laymen terms the repercussions of the proposed legislation.

For anyone inspired enough to want to help out there are a few roles to fill.

1) Website development

[https://github.com/stopthespies/website](https://github.com/stopthespies/website)

There are a bunch of open issues but your best bet is to join us at #ausprivacy on freenode to get a better idea of what needs to be done and where we are at.

2) Legislator Dataset

We have a large majority of the contact details for legislators thanks to OpenAustralia.org but there are quite a few missing still. So for those who can't help out with development, we would love help finding missing contact information. I have already wrote a call for help on Reddit -> [http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/2hhh2m/call_for_v...](http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/2hhh2m/call_for_volunteers_to_help_make_contacting/)

3) Press/Media

If you are a journalist or influential person/company who is interested in promoting the campaign, please shoot me an email(can be found in my HN profile)

<comment><USER4> You might want to coordinate with GetUp in this as well as you can expect they will be mobilising on this issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense." ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

</comment><comment><USER6> Incredible, even after seeing up close what America has gone through because of laws like these passed in the wake of 9/11, Australia is going to pass the same sweeping type of surveillance laws? And Australia doesn't even have the excuse of a recent terror attack.

What is going on there, Aussies? How is there enough support to pass these kinds of laws? (or is there?)

I would have thought post-Snowden this would have been out of the question.

<comment><USER7> The average person doesn't care about government snooping. They have a million other worries in their life. Sure, they might watch the news and see a new report on a Snowden leak, but they probably don't feel very strongly about it one way or the other, and so they'll just ignore and go on with their daily life.

<comment><USER8> I think the average person hears "new terrorism laws", doesn't hear any other words, and is happy because they think it means the government is rounding up brown people and imprisoning them for being brown.

As far as I can tell from mainstream journalism here in Australia, that's the top priority for most people. It doesn't matter if the brown people are immigrants, refugees, terrorists or locals.

<comment><USER9> That's definitely my experience in attempting to deal with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (trying to get tourist visas for my brown de-facto partner); and also my experience when talking to Australians outside my immediate clique.

I'm an Australian who lives/works overseas but spends quite a bit of time in Australia, and it's quite sickening to return every 6 months to a more polarised, racist, and terrified public -- and it's sure as hell not Al Qaeda, Daesh or any other external group that's causing the problems, it's the mainstream media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's a good one: A few hours before the legislation came before parliament, but early enough to get extensive media coverage, a member of the Australian Defense Force reported being attacked outside his house, whilst in uniform, by men of "Middle Eastern" appearance [1]. The "beheading" bogey was even worked into the story [2]. The next day, he withdraws the complaint [3]. To what extent was this an influence on the vote in parliament?

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/national/adf-member-reports-assault- in...](http://www.smh.com.au/national/adf-member-reports-assault-in-bella- vista-20140925-10m372.html)

[2] [http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/uniformed- australi...](http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/uniformed-australian- defence-force-member-allegedly-attacked-by-men-of-middle-eastern-appearance- in-western-sydney/story- fni0cx12-1227070513974?nk=7b2ada99cf4b7ce505f6329766400eef)

[3] [http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-defence-force- memb...](http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-defence-force-member- withdraws-attack-complaint-20140926-10mfgg.html)

<comment><USER11> I hate to tell you but its probably true. During 2008, Defence Force Personnel were told to not were passes or uniforms in public when not necessary as there were threats and some staff were attacked in Brisbane

Your conspiratorial tone is sickening, given you lack of proof. The circumstances are suspicious, but they also coincide with browning tensions, with ISIS, beheadings and forces being sent to the middle east

<comment><USER10> The evidence is strongly against it being true, given that the ADF is apologising for the allegation and the officer's conduct is being investigated.

The ADF might well be an innocent party, given that it was ASIO that stood to benefit from the legislation.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-26/adf-sailor- withdraws-s...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-26/adf-sailor-withdraws- sydney-attack-allegation/5771586)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that is all a bit strange.

But Defence forces being attacked for being in uniform is not unprecedented, even excluding Lee Rigby there have been several incidents [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/europe/03frankfurt.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/europe/03frankfurt.html) and [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.htm...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=505864)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was ashamed to be an American when the PATRIOT Act passed and when it was reauthorized.

And today, I get to be ashamed to be an Australian, too.

There's no need for these laws, and they'll be abused to do anything but "fight terrorism".

<comment><USER13> It's not about terrorism. Never was. That's just how the deep state sells it to voters.

If you look at the Snowden documents (and leaks by others) you'll see essentially nothing other than the international nature of the programs. For example, you'll remember from the Snowden leaks that the NSA hacked the Brazilian oil company PETROBRAS to help American oil companies win offshore oil drilling locations. The hacking of Merkle's cell phone was a big deal because it revealed that the US had information from Germany _during the Eurozone crisis_! Stuxnet was used to destroy Iran's nuclear program.

The US also faces the same sort of pressure from other countries. This year alone the DoD was hacked, Wall Street, NASDAQ and JP Morgan were hacked and hundreds of defense contractors were hacked - all with foreign attribution. Israel's Iron Dome designs were hacked by China.

Take a look at the NSA program HACIENTA, which "is used to port scan entire countries" and which uses other compromised (civilian) computers to disguise attribution.

Look at The Intercept reporting (where Glenn Greenwald is right now). He speaks at length about how the US uses NSA operations to benefit the global bargaining posture and competitiveness of US companies. [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us- governments...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments- plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/)

And take the Inspector General's report from the Boston Bombings - a great example of how and when the NSA domestic programs would be used if they were about terrorism. The NSA is hardly mentioned. The Inspector General investigates the failings of the FBI. ([http://info.publicintelligence.net/IC- IG-BostonBombingReport...](http://info.publicintelligence.net/IC-IG- BostonBombingReport.pdf))

"We focused our review on the entities that were the most likely to have had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev prior to the bombings – the FBI, the CIA, DHS, and NCTC, which maintains the U.S. government's database of classified identifying and substantive derogatory information on known or suspected terrorists. We also requested other federal agencies to identify relevant information they may have had prior to the bombings. These agencies included the Department of Defense (including the National Security Agency (NSA)), Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Department of Energy, and the Drug Enforcement Administration."

The report on the failures to anticipate/stop the Boston Bombers barely mention the NSA. This is because the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Counterterrorism Center are in charge of counterterrorism, not the National Security Agency.

Or go to the NSA's own mission statement. ([https://www.nsa.gov/about/mission/index.shtml](https://www.nsa.gov/about/mission/index.shtml))

"The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) leads the U.S. Government in cryptology that encompasses both Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Information Assurance (IA) products and services, and enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies under all circumstances."

(Nothing to do with terrorism.)

Lots of news recently has called out Executive Order 12333's role in defining the goal and the means of intelligence capabilities. EO 12333 was passed in 1981. The Five Eyes, the key partnership of the NSA, has its origins in the 40's and ECHELON and other leaked programs (eg CARNIVORE/PREDATOR) predate 9/11 by decades.

The Snowden leaks disclose a list with over thirty countries with competing digital intelligence programs.

The NSA is not about terrorism. Never was. Never will be. The NSA and CSS are the intelligence arm of the United States. Austrilia's programs are similarly not about terrorism. Digital communications play a huge role in global communications and corporate and international power.

That's not to say there no domestic component to the programs. Domestic programs are also useful to track and disrupt radical ideas and organization within the country (MINERVA), and can also be used to incite discontent in other nations (look up the USAID Cuban Twitter program). Countries are able to manipulate the appearance of consensus within citizens of nations and in this way actually affect this consensus. (Look at the GCHQ programs leaks with BIRDSONG/BADGER/GATEWAY/SLIPSTREAM/ETC.) They also are used to monitor, detect and perform forensics on breaches from other countries.

There's so much to say, but I'll leave the comment with this. Digital communications are so insecure that the attackers always win. Always. And digital communications play a huge role (next to satellite and radio communications) in modern espionage and sabotage. If you just play a defensive game, you lose. The US feels it needs these capabilities. There's a sort of cyber cold war. Every country will lose if it decides not to play. So it doesn't really matter whether we want these programs or not as citizens - <USER2> vote is going to disarm nations at cyberwar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The internet poses one of the greatest threats to our existence," Palmer United Party Senator Glen Lazarus said, speaking out against Senator Ludlam's amendment.

I do not understand it. How can people say such things about one of the greatest inventions of the human species, that allowed us as a species to understand one another better?!? What goes in their mind when they say things like this?

<comment><USER15> Glenn Lazarus is a former rugby footballer, who was nicknamed 'the brick with eyes'. He's basically a warm body whose election was paid for by a political party founded by a billionaire miner who - the miner - has hardly been present in the House of Representatives when it comes to votes other than to vote for climate change legislation repealing one of the lowest carbon taxes in the OECD and - go figure - a mining tax. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-16/clive-palmer-is-mp- lea...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-16/clive-palmer-is-mp-least-likely- to-use-lower-house-vote/5746612)

He's also building the Titanic II. Nevertheless, this wasn't the stupidest thing heard in the Senate this week, which would be Chris Back's "Some people may be distressed to know maleness is actually suppressed femaleness".

Edit: Yes, I already know there's a TV show just waiting to be written out of the daily tales of Australian politics. No need to tell me. But the media here, controlled like politics by Rupert Murdoch, isn't going to be the one to do it.

You want to see the cover of the best selling newspaper on that day? Here it is: [https://i.imgur.com/2TglCpg.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/2TglCpg.jpg) "Hellfire justice" indeed.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm aware. PUP and Clive Palmer went from being the punchline of the Chaser boys' jokes to something seriously wrong in a very short period of time.

<comment><USER16> Amazing what you can do with almost limitless campaign funding.

Hopefully on some issues they aid in voting the government down but it is really rolling the dice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a person in the IT industry within Australia, I speak to normal average people every day about these things. In the last 2 days I have spoken to many people about these new laws, and the general consensus is THEY DON'T CARE, just plain and simple. Your average person has many more problems to deal with other than the government spying on them. We do not have "free speech" here in Australia, so most people don't really see this as a big problem. Bear in mind this is a country where healthcare is pretty much free, our wages are extremely high compared to most countries, and our welfare and pension system is reasonable. No matter what bitching and moaning people do, the government has "generally" looked after us (though our current PM is beginning to change that). On top of this the government and mass media are collectively running a scare campaign on terror, so people just look at the news and go "Yep, that makes sense". Having said that I do not agree with any of these laws, but there is very little I can do about it myself. I didn't vote for the current government, and my local member of parliament is part of the opposition anyhow, so as a single person its pretty much game over.

<comment><USER18> I'm right here with you bigB. I voted Greens, since they seem to have more common sense than either side. The current government is an embarrassment to Australia, both historically and politically. We used to be proud that we were free - it's part of the first sentence of our national anthem. This isn't the only poor decision the current government has made; they also scrapped our carbon tax and destroyed our fibre optic internet just as it was being rolled out. Truly a terrible government, with no sight of the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So is time to switch from Fastmail now?

<comment><USER20> I would like to understand why you are voted down.

Fastmail is in Australia, your comment seems relevant to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The internet poses one of the greatest threats to our existence

This is true, where "our" refers to domestic spy agencies and the governments that consume their output.

Hence these laws.

<comment><USER22> What if most people support these laws? What happens when a democracy decides to vote away its own freedom? Should it be somehow prevented from doing so?

<comment><USER23> This is a classic example of the tyranny of the majority, and why government of any kind, democratic or not, is illegitimate. Any institution that wields power over you will eventually deprive you of your freedom against your will.

<comment><USER22> And without a government, i.e. without some entity with a monopoly on force, what happens then? Do I have to do battle on the streets every time I buy groceries or go to work?

I guess in the end, democracy or not, you get the government you deserve. Australians voted these guys in, they tolerate their actions, and many Australians will applaud them. If it all goes well, great. If not, I won't have much sympathy for them.

This is not an attitude I like to have, mind you, because I find that wherever I see tyranny in the world, I believe that to some degree - sometimes a lot, sometimes only a little - the victims of that oppression had it coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are there any good pointers to where the amendments have actually expanded surveillance capabilities? I've been going through the amendments and comparing them to the original bill, but so far I'm finding a lot of rewording.

For instance, the definition of computer[1] that is being suggested to allow monitoring of the entire internet is:

      computer means all or part of:
        (a)  one or more computers; or
        (b)  one or more computer systems; or
        (c)  one or more computer networks;
        (d)  any combination of the above.

Whereas the old definition[2] was:

      computer means a computer, a computer system or part of a computer system.

Both of these seem equivalent in my eyes. If so, the horse seems to have already bolted years ago.

Frankly I have no idea where to go from here. How does one talk to your local MP when the details of the proposed legislation are so muddy?

[1]: [http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w...](http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbills%2Fs969_first- senate%2F0002%22)

[2]: [http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014C00613/Html/Text#_Toc3...](http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2014C00613/Html/Text#_Toc396138654)

<comment><USER25> Those seem in no way equivalent. The old definition pretty clearly refers to 1 computer. You could certainly argue that several hosts represented 1 computer, but a judge would throw it out.

The new definition plainly allows "one or more computer networks" which means literally the entire internet since it's just "one or more computer networks".

<comment><USER24> It seems to me that the explicit separation (and vagueness) of 'compter' and 'computer system' seems intended to have the latter cover networks. But perhaps you're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This wouldn't be so depressing if it was just Abbott and the Liberals ramming changes through, but no, Labour voted in favor as well. Sigh.

<comment><USER27> Just shows you that for Australia to regain a functioning government, it will take us to elect someone other than LNP or Labour who will undo the damage.

<comment><USER28> Agreed, but who?

The Greens? Not likely. The "Green" bit scares too many people. The Dems? Ha! PUP? Oh god no. Other crazy minor parties? See: crazy minor party.

The reason we elect Liberals and Labor (apart from institutional momentum) is that they're the _least despicable and dysfunctional_. Besides, look at precedent. The last major move in politics was PUP getting seats in parliament for the 3(?) dumbest stooges I've ever seen. Essentially proving that you can _buy_ seats in our parliament.

No, if we want to effect change we need to find another way. Possibly that means joining the major parties and attempting to effect change from within, or perhaps that means more protesting to increase awareness. I don't really know.

<comment><USER29> Why find another way? I like to point to Geert Wilders [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders)

The Dutch parliament is the same size and the Australian parliament. In about 5 years they went from a new party to the 3rd largest in the Netherlands. They are still the 4th largest. And these guys seem a little bit wacky. Why can't we get a third party (or the Greens) elected?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Possibly relevant (from 2012):

[http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/asio-boss-says-we-need- more...](http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/asio-boss-says-we-need-more-muslim- recruits-to-combat-terror-threats-in- australia/story-e6freuy9-1226252730137?nk=7cae6a1e81c09f1996f6c615ead5f065)

> On the other side of the ledger, Mr Irvine admitted that the debate about > civil liberties and intelligence gathering was a valid one to have.

> "I believe however that the vast majority of Australians expect their > governments to take all necessary actions to protect their community and > further the national interest," he said.

> He said ASIO has no plans for a "grand expansion" of its spy network but > said it would need to lift recruitment to meet the demands or cyber > terrorism as well as traditional forms of terror.

</comment><comment><USER31> Apparently you seemed to have missed it, but France passed a similar law one week ago, adding to it the ability to forbid residents from leaving the territory. This is the general trend toward final abandonment of democracy. Dark times to come.

<comment><USER32> Could you provide a link? The only recent thing I could find was [http://www.france24.com/en/20140925-france-heightened- securi...](http://www.france24.com/en/20140925-france-heightened-security- terrorism-threat/)

<comment><USER33> It's not final yet, it still needs to go through the Senate. More details here [1]. It's different from the Australian law, as it's more focused on administrative (as opposed to judicial) censorship rather than spying. It's obviously bad too.

Sadly, the judicial arsenal for no-oversight spying on telecommunication is in place since 2013 [2], as part of the Military Programming Law. Not that the DGSE would wait for a law to do something like this anyway [3].

1: [http://www.laquadrature.net/en/france-adopts-anti-terror- law...](http://www.laquadrature.net/en/france-adopts-anti-terror-law-eroding- civil-liberties)

2: [http://en.rsf.org/alarm-over-massive- spying-12-12-2013,45606...](http://en.rsf.org/alarm-over-massive- spying-12-12-2013,45606.html)

3: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/orange-gives-all-of-its- dat...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/orange-gives-all-of-its-data-to- frances-nsa/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If we are to believe the foremost principle of democracy, that the government is the people. And the people are to give up their privacy for the sake of security, then so too the government has no right to privacy for the sake of its security. Indeed, a secret government with a people lacking security in their effects, is a government that will soon discover is has no security of its own from its own. For it has separated itself and made its own people the enemy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think that the bill has been poorly drafted. I don't think that ASIO are interested in monitoring the entire internet. To me, I think the intent was to allow ASIO to monitor a home network with one warrant, given the prevalence of people having multiple computer devices.

I do hope that the government tighten some of the definitions within the bill, rather then relying upon courts to narrow the interpretation.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is this bill allowed to be retroactive? If so, this is what they will get Assange, or the next Assange with. Consider the Australian arm of WikiLeaks (including the party) closed for business.

Which now concerns me. Will WikiLeaks Party members be put on a list just like the ASIA targetted communists during the cold war?

</comment><comment><USER36> It's amazing what people will agree too based on the idea of fear. People learn nothing from history.

</comment><comment><USER37> Of particular note with this issue is that _both_ major parties (The Liberals in Government, and Labor in Opposition) voted _for_ this legislation.

It appears to me that regardless of who of the major parties was actually in power something like this would have come in.

</comment><comment><USER35> "The internet poses one of the greatest threats to our existence," Palmer United Party Senator Glen Lazarus said.

For a second there, I thought I was reading about North Korea.

</comment><comment><USER38> As an Australian the first thing i thought was " youre fucking kidding me".

I didnt leave Australia because of things like this, but it certainly makes me rethink returning.

<comment><USER39> Sure, but where do you go?

</comment></comment><comment> eden-san Personally I just don't understand why everyone worries so much about all these surveillance announcements.

People contribute with personal data to help increase the security of a nation. I don't consider that as an act of spying from government, I call that "Crowd Funding" from the people, for global security.

But well, I'm an optimist and I assume there are doing this for the right reasons.

<comment><USER40> > But well, I'm an optimist and I assume there are doing this for the right > reasons.

Even if the laws were made with good intentions, they are not implemented by perfect human beings. If you get on the US No-Fly list just because of a clerical error, you will have to fight in court for years to get off [1] because the administration does not want to admit mistakes. Laura Poitras, an investigative journalist, was repeatedly "randomly" searched and detained on airports, without any formal charge, because her documentations are inconvenient to those in charge [2]. IIRC, GHCQ employees stored nude images of those they were surveying in the "Optic Nerve" program for their private collections (I couldn't find source for that, though, so take it with a grain of salt).

The general pattern to observe: The combination of power and secrecy fosters abuse.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2014/02/no-fly-list- bungle/](http://www.wired.com/2014/02/no-fly-list-bungle/)

[2] [http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...](http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/) \- Note that this was years before her involvement with the Snowden leaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Countdown to these laws being used for copyright prevention. Lazarus should stick to oval shaped balls.

<comment><USER42> I don't think anybody in power cares about copyrights at all.

Copyright protection is just a great excuse for enabling widespread eavesdropping and history rewriting. But there is no reason to run it the other way around.

<comment><USER41> They will when the US Govt lobbies for them on behalf of the RIAA. Expect a 3 strike law like New Zealand got.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Have these programs been responsible for actually stopping any large scale terrorist attacks?

<comment><USER21> An answer that usually works:

Absolutely, because there have been no large scale terrorist attacks.

<comment><USER44> "Why are you waving that handkerchief?"

"Keeping the elephants away..."

You know the rest.

<comment><USER45> The thing is that they have been doing just fine with their current powers - there is no need to expand them. I have no doubt that actual terrorist plotting has been countered by ASIO, but I also have no doubt that ASIO clearly already have enough powers to do their job appropriately.

<comment><USER46> Implying that there is such a thing as just enough power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Labor opposition - a contradiction in terms.

</comment><comment><USER48> do not want</comment>


Nokia: Symbian and MeeGo not dead, still shipping this year - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/nokia-meego-not-dead-still-shipping-this-year/

<comment><USER2> does any think meego is really worth anything?

btw. i think i might've sold a meego developer some powder a couple months ago. i'm joking. i really am.</comment>


Tony Fadell's struggle to build Nest - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/inside-tony-fadells-struggle-to-build-nest <comment><USER2> Follow the link from here to get free access to this article: [http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-fadell-on- alphabet-2016-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-fadell-on- alphabet-2016-3)</comment>


Show HN: Search products and services - <AUTHOR> https://doma.io <comment><AUTHOR> Made in two weeks with Rails, React, and Heroku. There are only ~1500 items but I'm planning on adding more, at least 10 000 by the end of the week and probably 100 000 by next week.

What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I do not understand what it is and how I would use it. Because as a user, I have spent thirty seconds with it. Not two weeks. So for me, it is not self- explanatory and as a user, rails, react and heroku don't matter. If it is built for you, then my perspective doesn't matter. If it is built for other people, then looking at it through their eyes is important. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I made it to work well when users are in France but I need to make it work well for international users. I will think about what's the best way to handle international users (like having a default zoomed out map of the world).

How to use it is by dragging and zooming the map to look for markers that represent items, they are all in French territory for now.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I still don't really understand what it is. Though now I know I probably can't use it because I am not in France.</comment></comment></comment></comment>