11% of Americans don't use the internet - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/meet-the-11-of-americans-who-dont-use-the-internet/ <comment> ezequiel-garzon It's reasonable to assume that 11% of the adult US population is still illiterate [1]. I know this is not unique to the US, and that these people may very well be as happy as anyone else. Still, if we sometimes point out that HN is a bit of a bubble, well there's a big bubble I can't wrap my mind around well into the 21st century! I would certainly be surprised if an illiterate person made heavy use of the Internet (though I'm sure there are edge cases, as always).

[1] [https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp)

<comment><USER2> A lot of jobs now have internet only application processes.

<comment><USER3> This is just one of many reasons why public libraries are so important. It's a major part of the mandate for modern libraries and librarians to offer a place where people with low incomes, low educational attainment, low tech literacy, and even plain old low literacy can get some help navigating occasional requirements like an online job application or trying to enroll in some kind of assistance program.

<comment><USER4> More than libraries, I wish there would be _really_ affordable computers.

We've already proven it's technically possible, with Raspberry Pis and cheap Android phones. Now I wish we would stop cramming bloat and shit (like useless JavaScript and ads) into our websites and operating systems so those low-end machines actually remain usable and productive.

Internet access should also be a right - not high speed 100+Mbps, but basic 1Mbps or so. The unused cell network capacity should be given away for free so that less fortunate people can still get online.

<comment><USER5> You can get a Samsung Chromebook for $75. The FCC operates the Lifeline program, which provides subsidized Internet access to low-income Americans, but the program was gutted about three months ago, dropping about 70% of enrollees.

<comment><USER6> There's also a second hand surplus of old technology. They may have wear & tear and other disadvantages though compared to today's standards: slower CPU, slower IO, less RAM, HDD instead of SSD, dead pixels, (half) dead batteries just to mention a few but hey its an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy.

He is starting to run into some practical problems. For example, the local library apparently stopped stocking all the paper IRS forms.

<comment><USER8> What is interesting is that it seems to have more to do with age than intellectual capacity. I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it. They might learn just how to use it but have no curiosity on how it works.

<comment><USER9> _I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it._

I know a woman who until recently worked as a secretary to one of the presidents of a large regional bank. The first thing she did each morning was to print out the president's e-mails, and bring them to him on paper. He would then dictate his responses and she would send the e-mail responses for him.

The job paid big bucks for several reasons:

\- She knows how to take fast, accurate dictation with steno. They don't teach that anywhere anymore.

\- She knows how to file. Real paper files.

\- She would place his phone calls for him, old-fashioned style. He would say, "I need to talk to Mr. X," and a in a couple of minutes she'd be on the phone: "Is this Mr. X? Please hold for bank president Y."

\- She dressed the part; coming to work in a proper business suit and briefcase each day, not carrying a backpack like a sixth-grader.

\- She didn't mind making coffee for the boss. It's a hate crime to even ask these days, but she did it happily.

That bank president must have a very low stress level, since he only had to see his paper e-mail once a day.

<comment><USER10> > \- She dressed the part; coming to work in a proper business suit and > briefcase each day, not carrying a backpack like a sixth-grader.

This is something I've been thinking more and more about lately. I used to be happy with the lax attitude most tech places have to attire but honestly I look around my office now and I wish we had a bit more of a dress standard. I was a tshirt and hoodie fiend but changed to slacks/smart jeans and a shirt recently. I've been on the end of so many barbs and jokes from coworkers over this (which I take in good humour). Interestingly I've found that I'm being taken more seriously by our management side/CTO etc. I have no interest in moving over there by the way, I'll be coding til I retire.

I'm going to be asked why we should change and what's wrong with the casual approach. I think if as a profession we want to be taken seriously, we need to start looking the part. Sure a lawyer could rock up into court wearing shorts and a faded 1980s Man Utd jersey and still do a good job, but honestly what would you actually think of him? What is actually wrong with looking smart?

<comment><USER11> Right! Workplaces seem to advertise to, for example, computer people how they are relaxed and that you can come to work in jeans. I just want to get to wear a suit for once, for the enjoyment of myself and others!

<comment><USER12> We had Classy (Client* Team) Mondays at a previous job of mine. The whole larger group would come in dressed up in suits and business appropriate dresses, then have some nibbles and drinks afterwards.

Pretty much a reverse of a casual Friday.

* Client in the client-server computing sense.

<comment><USER13> Monday is a good day for that as well - gives you time to panic-prepare/iron on sunday evening :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a shockingly _small_ number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017.

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who- doesnt-r...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-read- books-in-america/)

<comment><USER15> What's the connection between reading books and the internet, aside from literacy? They're such different things, I'm not clear on the connection between reading and the internet.

<comment><USER14> > I'm not clear on the connection between reading and the internet.

Prior to the internet, books were the only way humans consumed large amounts of textual information. Now, we have web pages, which 89% of people use, whereas books, which have never been more accessible, still linger at 76% usage.

One assumes of the 89% of people who use the Internet, 100% of them use web browsers, web sites, and thus read lots of textual information. That's as close to 100% penetration for a technology as you're gonna get, in my view. I wonder what percentage of Americans use toothbrushes!

I suppose there might be some subset of Internet users who exclusively use YouTube/Netflix (children, maybe?) That would be the only wrinkle in the comparison, IMO.

<comment><USER16> _and thus read lots of textual information._

I don't think that follows. If you use Instagram, YouTube, Imgur, 9GAG, and such, you barely need to read any text. Same for Facebook, depending on the people you follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My Grandfather is one of those 11%. However I suspect he's a bit different from the others. Up until the late 90s he was programming Fortran and COBOL. He started during the Korean War or just after I believe. Towards the end he was mostly doing contract work as one of the few people who could still work on them. But after he retired technology stopped for him. The latest innovation he'll use is a DVD player. The only reason he doesn't have a tube TV is it died five years ago and we got him a flat screen.

To be fair he may never have gotten used to using a GUI on a PC or the internet at large. But still, it's my grandmother who runs their email account and shared cellphone.

<comment><USER9> I think your grandfather and I are kindred spirits.

When I retire, I don't plan to ever use a computer again if I don't have to. There's nothing on the internet that can compete with the fulfillment available from my wife, my dog, and my actual real life friends.

<comment><USER18> I'll keep the computer but I'm planning to disconnect from the internet once I retire.

<comment><USER11> For what tasks do you intend to use the computer?

<comment><USER9> Everything that computers were used for before the internet?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, what was that, really? Typing QBASIC programs from paper into the computer? Using it as a fancy typewriter? Calculating ballistic trajectories? That's all I can remember.

<comment><USER9> I'd write an enormous list here, but it's probably easier and more educational for you to go to archive.org and look at the software ads in pretty much any issue of Byte magazine before 1990.

<comment><USER11> We can also ask what we use the computer for now, for which we don't need the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Old people can use the internet just fine if they want to; my 80-year-old mother happily uses it to buy all kinds of stuff, to pay her bills, to keep up with family on Facebook, etc.

<comment><USER20> Probably depends on the person. My 79-year-old father has early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia and can't remember the names of his grandkids. I would say that he can't use the internet just fine - even if he wants to.

<comment><USER21> at that point, he probably should be considered internet-disabled (among other things)... as an analogy, would you expect a paraplegic to swim with it's own body? sorry, but that's reality...

<comment><USER22> African paraplegic or Mexican? Pink Floyd wants to know (they bankrolled monty python and the holy grail.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's more impressive when you turn this number around: 89% of Americans "use the Internet", up from just over 50% less than 20 years ago.

That is an insane adoption curve for a network that basically didn't exist -- at least not in an approachable, mainstream way -- within the current memory of many of its users.

That's faster than the update rate of either the telephone or electricity or indoor plumbing. (Arguably fair I suppose, since those things all require more infrastructure than the Internet does, which if needed can run over existing telephone infrastructure, and did for a long time.)

And of the people who aren't using the Internet, the plurality (according to the article) are declining to use it by their own decision -- "just not interested" \-- not because they can't afford to get online, or don't know how to, or some other externally-imposed hurdle. Which is their prerogative; if people aren't online, I'd hope it's by their own choice and not through inability (the same as not reading books -- if someone isn't reading books regularly, one hopes it's because they're not interested, not because they're illiterate).

</comment><comment><USER24> Makes me wonder if when we are 80 years old, we'll be organizing retro LAN parties to play Unreal Tournament (1999 release) in our retirement homes.

<comment><USER25> I stopped LAN'ing way before that; and I'm from the early 80s. (80's of christ not of age.) Let's play something older. I stopped playing way before Unreal.

<comment><USER26> Indeed, I remember when PhoneNet made ad-hoc AppleTalk networks a bit easier (although, by then, the LocalTalk hardware, genuine and clone, was common enough, too, except sometimes long enough cables could still be a rarity).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm not a hacker. I got my first PC in '88 (a 286 with a 20mb HD) because for sure it was going to be the thing in a few short years. I was 28 and wanted to use it for my business... the NIGHTMARE of trying to; load software, hookup a printer, get the modem to work and so and so was just unbelievable. I persisted though, in fact when Windows was seriously starting to dominate-I even refused to use for a damn long time. Anyway, my point is I bet more than a few of those 11 percenters are peeps my age who just never got comfortable at the command screen.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was a little disappointed not to read anything about conscientious objectors, having just read Wendell Berry's 1987 article "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" [0]. Idealistic as he is, Berry's work appeals very strongly to me. But maybe there isn't anyone like that anymore.

[0] [http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html](http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> When I read an article like this I'm reminded that Pamela Jones (PJ) [1] of Groklaw [2] -specifically, her last Groklaw article [3]- might be one of them.

Quoting from the last article:

"The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.

[...]

Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose. I can't really hope for that. But for me, the Internet is over.

[...]"

My point isn't that a significant percentage of the 11% consciously don't use the Internet for similar reasons. I don't know how significant such as percentage would be. My point is that there are people around who consciously do not use the Internet (at all) for privacy/security reasons. The Internet isn't a panacea.

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

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

[3] [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175](http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175)

</comment><comment><USER29> It blew my mind when I visited my grandmother recently.

There's a computer in the household. My grandfather used it avidly since the days of dialup. He didn't give up the dialup connection until well into the 2010s. I'm not sure if he still uses it. My grandmother was never interested in it.

My grandmother still certainly has her wits about her. She does NOT fit the mold of someone un-skeptical or easily swayed due to senility. Yet like many older people she voted for Trump despite voting Democrat in the past and living in a very blue area. This of course is very curious to me.

Eventually my conversation with my grandmother went to the topic of news media. I had mentioned that I do not like the way news reports anecdotes and not data and paints a misleading picture. I mentioned a few of my favorite sources which eschew this trend (fivethirtyeight, the economist etc).

My grandmother replies that she knows full well the news is garbage. The thing is to my grandmother the news is whatever she can buy at the corner news stand. Her options are the New York Post or the Daily News. She has considered maybe spending the extra money to buy the New York Times.

Coming from a world where news comes in an infinite stream from infinite sources straight into my pocket 24/7, it completely blew my mind that news for her comes from 2 sources and only once a day and both are owned by Murdoch. I am used to a world where debates can abruptly end with "lets look it up". In the world of my grandmother, remembering a few stories from the papers and friends is the only reasonable basis to form an opinion on anything.

Maybe we've overvalued the importance of fake news on the internet.

<comment><USER30> Presumably your grandmother has had the same news options for the past... many years, and was subject to the same pressures. Are you just thinking about this now because she voted against your wishes?

<comment><USER29> My grandmothers news options didn't manifest in any unexpected way in the past. Nothing to do with my wishes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just got back from a camping trip in the White mountains region of New Hampshire. Neighboring cities strike me as those where high tech lifestyles aren't needed nor preferred. Locals congregate in the early morning where breakfasts are served. No one looks at a phone once. People seem to enjoy the company of those in reality over those of their online social network.

I see why this lifestyle is alluring.

</comment><comment><USER32> I left a comment about this on HN the other day ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562306)) - 8 months ago, I launched a product to serve the older population, blending old and new, called NanaGram ([https://nanagram.co](https://nanagram.co)). We let you send printed photos to a loved one in the mail with just a text message.

Older people like my late grandfather are some of the happiest I've ever met. I think one of their secrets is growing up in a more disconnected world. I've honed my ability to stay off the internet for long periods of time but this skill is just the default state for many older people and isn't a challenge they face. I didn't always struggle with internet addiction and remember life before and after the internet. Some of my most joyful moments in the past year have been visiting loved ones just after spending 2 or 3 days completely disconnected.

There's a great book called Happiness is a Choice You Make about the "oldest old", people over the age of 85. I touched on in the book in this blog entry and expanded on some of the lessons I learned hanging out with my 94-year-old grandfather as often as possible over the last couple years: [https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell- cook](https://nanagram.co/blog/on-happiness-from-tirrell-cook).

My grandfather never learned how to internet but we did have a hilarious unboxing moment with the Amazon Echo this past December. He made it to a viral TV show and tried to negotiate for bitcoin as compensation. While it was very promising, we never truly got his Echo habit to stick as he and my grandmother kept pressing the wrong buttons. [https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show- unboxing](https://nanagram.co/blog/echo-show-unboxing)

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder will the internet have matured (jumped the shark with excess commercialism, JS, ads etc) to the extent TV has that people start cord cutting the net.

Anecdotally the novelty is starting to wear thin with more than a few people I know who barely use anything beyond a chat service and a little shopping (probably at Amazon).

<comment><USER34> People didn't start cutting the TV cord because of commercialism or ads or really anything about TV in particular; they cut because there was a substitute. Until there's another option as good for that chat and shopping, they'll keep their internet connection (even if only a cellular one).

<comment><USER33> I don't think that's completely true.

There was a choice between streaming services with no ads and TV with ever longer ad breaks and cheaper programming. Dissatisfaction with TV made the choice easy. No ads was a big selling point for Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish all three perspectives had been more like the last one; the first two were pretty much just the stereotype of old people who don't like the internet because it's too newfangled. It's more interesting to learn about factors that limit people who otherwise might use it.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wish I _could be_ one of them.

<comment><USER32> You can, at least for a few hours a day, or even for multi-day streaks. Your friends might think you're weird at first but they'll get over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "don't use the internet" is a vague qualifier.

My father has a Gmail and a Facebook account, both of which he signed up for himself. He last signed into the latter no less than 5 years ago. He interacts with his email account by calling myself or my siblings and asking them to check it for him. A few times a year.

Sometime a year or two ago he borrowed my brother's computer and went online to do some research into something he wanted to buy online; no assistance required so he's not computer illiterate. He just has absolutely zero day-to- day need for them.

11% seems very very low.

</comment><comment><USER38> I kinda wish we could pump those numbers up, esp for children on the internet. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s growing up, it sure seems like people were happier. But what do I know!?

<comment><USER39> I feel like this is the same thing they said about tv, before that radio, before that..

<comment><USER33> I don't remember it ever being said about radio. TV certainly, but mainly it became a common theme after the arrival of Sky in UK. Now the kids had 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from, and even dedicated channels for effortless excess consumption.

For the early part of our kid's lives there was only an hour or two of kids TV a day - between end of school and around 5:30pm in time for the evening news. Limiting consumption was far easier.

Course there'd still be opportunity to watch soaps etc with parents

<comment><USER40> Are you 70 years old? Radio was at the same stage as the internet in the 50s and 60s.

<comment><USER33> Grew up with kids TV in the 70s and 80s thanks :p

I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember. Walkmans in the 80s, yes; games, yes; TV, definitely as mentioned. All of those have cropped up in the news more than a few times while they were topical.

Maybe UK radio got a different reaction to the US?

<comment><USER41> _> I have never once heard anyone criticise radio consumption that I can remember._

You're far too young to remember. There were two distinct moral panics about radio; the first in the 1930s when radio first became popular in the home, and the second in the early 1960s when transistorisation allowed teenagers to have radios of their own.

Until 1967, the BBC did not have a pop music station. Until 1973, commercial radio was illegal. The pirates who filled the demand for pop radio in the interim were hugely controversial. A great many column inches were spent fretting over the corrupting influence of foreign broadcasters, beaming salacious rock and roll music into the bedrooms of British children.

<comment><USER33> Fair enough.

Of course I also remember the huge moral panic over us all going to hell for playing rock records backwards for satanistic messages. We all tried, and failed, to find one of course after hearing of this. :)

I'm rather surprised about the 1930s - early British radio was so worthy and busy and educating the populace. I'm surprised there was much scope left for panic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> And nearly 55% of Chinese don't use Internet.

Yes, that is nearly 800M still without Smartphone or Internet. There is going to be a very long tail, likely 10 years plus to bring the last 500 to 600M online. The rest are likely not going to be online in their life time or has no interest in doing so.

Out of the 7.4 Billion people on earth, there is 5B Mobile Phone users, 3.5 Smartphone users. So it will likely take another twenty years before we reach 6 Billion Smartphone users.

</comment><comment><USER43> Diffusion of Innovation always has "Laggard" All of us have been in different part of spectrum for various innovations... when the innovation/trend is irreversible, everyone eventually converts.... remember rotary phones, VCRs etc

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

</comment><comment><USER44> Do we need another type of operating system interface to solve this? Something simpler, like TV or Minitel?

It would seem that Apps have helped to bring the last 20% of Americans online, would we need something even simpler to bring the rest onboard?

</comment><comment><USER45> My 96 yo neighbors use internet, without too much hassle. Just like most people they don't understand it, but they use games, search, chat .. funny.

</comment><comment><USER46> My 90 year old father-in-law has never used a computer or the Internet directly, but my wife buys from Amazon and searches Google for him.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have social anxiety. I only use the interact when interacting with people outside of work or in a business professional setting.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's pretty cool. I think we need a reminder that the Internet isn't a prerequisite for life. :-)

</comment><comment><USER48> My mom, aunt, and grandma are among them.

</comment><comment><USER49> Bernie Sanders needs to add this sad statistic to his spiel about how America isn't doing well. It fits in perfectly between "We have more people in jail than any other country on Earth" and "Only major country that doesn't guarantee right to health care".

</comment><comment><USER50> I wonder how many members of Congress fall into this category...

</comment><comment><USER51> I would like to know what portion use the Internet for whorthwhile activities and what portion uses it only for browsing Facebook and Twitter.

<comment><USER52> I find it interesting that you consider those activities not worthwhile. I'm sure you use the internet for things that are "less worthwhile" than those things, at least to me. But that's what it's really all about anyway right? Different things have different value to different people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> What's worse is that 99% of Americans, or rather the global population, (including businesses) use it for BS.

</comment><comment><USER54> 89% of Americans use the internet.

</comment><comment><USER55> At home I'm very proud of my triple monitor setup and second iteration of my hand assembled computer. The setup is built with ease of use in mind. To lazily chat with friends, unwind, and keep up with bleeding edge news.

When I leave my little tech temple, my mobile computer of choice is a flip phone. A substitute calculator and unit converter.

With no GPS it's great reading the land and people in it. Very occasionally I'll cheat and bum around in front of a cafe and use the tablet to find a spot but most plans are made at home on a printed map.

As stated in other articles here, it's great not having a slab fight for your attention with bleeps and red notifications while out on adventure.

TL;DR / Long story short: Be the friend at the restaurant conversing, not on the glass slab.

</comment><comment><USER56> i saw a Dad the other day on a playground with his kid. The Dad stood there staring at his phone the entire time while "playing" with his kid.

Kinda sad to see this...

<comment><USER57> I see this complaint about parents a lot. I interact with my kids all day. We cook dinner together, we play playdoh, I read to them endlessly. And I'll bike them to the park, and then I sit there and play with my phone while they run around.

I do not find it fun to climb on kids playgrounds. I don't enjoy helping my son across the monkey bars, and he makes more progress at it when I don't.

Parenting can be mentally and physically exhausting, and it's really not fair or at all useful to judge a parent based on a glimpse of 5 minutes of their day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Certain parts of my family do not operate on the same timescale as me wrt tech. It's not just a generational divide in my families case.

To me, tech is all-emcompassing, I follow new developments as if it's second nature. To the more tech literate of my family they see the stuff that comes out as usually unnecessary in most cases but upgrade to have the new hotness every second major cycle (iphone 4->6 for example).

For the final part of my family, they operate on a different time scale altogether. For them a computer is a computer, they don't really "get old" unless they break. It's difficult to tell them (when they have been told to use the internet for some system of government) and you need to explain to them that their computer from 1995 can't use the internet in the modern day.

To them, they have a computer, a working computer, it cost a lot of money. The vacuum cleaner they had for 25 years works, the TV too, why can't they use the thing that cost significantly more than that. (my grandparents ironically have that compaq PC that says it's future-proof on the front).

For them to get back into technology it needs to be a form-factor change (IE; Desktop->Tablet) which was how they started to use the internet.

Anyway, that's my anecdotal story.

<comment><USER59> It's really not an age/generation thing at all. There are plenty of millennials who know shit about computers, while there are "old farts" like Bill Joy, Brian Kernighan, James Gosling, Rob Pike, Patrick Winston, Gerald Sussman, Bjarne Stroupstrup, etc. who know more about computing than most of us will ever know, and are more comfortable with technology than most kids out there today.

I think it's always been the case, and probably always will be the case, that some people intuitively embrace / grok technology, and some don't. Stereotypes aside, I haven't found that age has much to do with it.

<comment><USER58> > It's really not an age/generation thing at all.

You're right, that's why I clarified that originally.</comment></comment></comment>


Microservices. The good, the bad and the ugly - <AUTHOR> http://devweek.com/blog/microservices-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

<comment><USER2> Link broken for me. None of the articles in that blog seem to work, actually.

<comment><USER3> It works for me (Chrome for Android) - though if you click on the X at top right, near the regular "we use cookies" notification, it closes the post for some reason</comment></comment>


Show HN: TinAid – Tinnitus Masker and Temporary Cure (iOS App) - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tinaid-tinnitus-cure/id1483624796?l=sv&ls=1 <comment><USER2> Cool post, and pretty spot on. I've been doing this with Ruby apps, many of which interact with a browser, and I have some additional thoughts:

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey cool. What additional thoughts? Would love to hear them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks really interesting. Any plans for Android or Web?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it! Depends on the growth of the IOS App. If people find it useful i will definitely look into it yes.</comment></comment>


Analyse Asia 41: The 500 Mobile Collective with Edith Yeung of 500 Startups - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/06/27/episode-41-the-500-mobile-collective-with-edith-yeung-of-500-startups/ <comment><AUTHOR> Episode Synopsis: Edith Yeung from 500 Startups joined us for a chat on all things mobile and an overview of the mobile landscape all over the world. Drawing from her career experience with Dolphin and BiztechDay, she explained her investment thesis: how it continued to evolve with a ever-changing landscape of mobile and how she looked at investing into startups not just in the US but also how to map ideas from Asia back to US. On mobile, we discussed from payments, healthcare, enterprise, gaming, content to on-demand apps and understand the latest trends in mobile. We also discussed some of her investments and she offered her advice on how mobile startups need to figure out driving up app installs and usage.</comment>


For one million dollars, Amazon Japan will sell you the giant Kuratas - <AUTHOR> http://www.intorobotics.com/one-million-dollar-amazon-japan-will-sell-giant-kuratas/

<comment><AUTHOR> The HOWTO video is... fascinating. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iZ0WuNvHr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iZ0WuNvHr8)

</comment><comment><USER2> Does anyone else get the impression that though the japanese may be obsessed with robots they are way behind the rest of the world in terms of technology? For example compare Hondas asimo to Boston Dynamics' atlas.

<comment><USER3> It's just that you are not following closely what companies in Japan are doing. As a reminder Shaft company bought by Google was way better than the robot from Boston Dynamics during the Darpa Challenge: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/schaft...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/schaft- robot-company-bought-by-google-darpa-robotics-challenge-winner)</comment></comment>


Jambool, makers of Social Gold, officially announces Google acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jambool.com/

<comment><USER2> I've never heard of Jambool, but, I'd say that Google is getting very serious about social gaming. First Labpixies to make games, Zynga partnership, now monetization.

The question in my mind is whether or not they'll use all this to build social games that do something meaningful like Image Labeler (<http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/>), or whether or not they'll attempt to flood us with worthless crap like FarmVille and Mob Wars.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm wondering why Social Gold and Facebook Credits are only focusing on gaming. Does virtual currency have no other legal use? Take on PayPal already.

<http://www.dotsauce.com/2010/08/09/age-of-virtual-currency/></comment>


Risky Business Requires Active Operators - <AUTHOR> https://blog.skyliner.io/risky-business-requires-active-operators-9debbb082995 <comment><USER2> Risky business requires systems which have measures of risks and hazards.

This is what bothers me about some of the self-driving efforts. You need a metric for "how long until we hit something on current course", and that has to be connected to braking. This has to work even if you don't know what the "something" is or the planning and evasive action subsystem hasn't decided what to do yet. Tesla's "plows into unrecognized stationary objects projecting into left side of road" feature indicates that they relied too much on recognizing known objects. This is also a criticism of automatic driving using deep neural networks. That's likely to perform well until it performs very, very badly.

</comment><comment><USER3> How would you say, prevent me from accidentally removing more servers than I should using the change boundaries Skyliner provides.

Asking for a friend...</comment>


Russia is strong-arming Apple into getting access to its user data - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/how-russia-is-strong-arming-apple-vladimir-putin-time-cook-2019-2 <comment><USER2> Disappointing. I can understand having to cave in China, but Russia is a much smaller market and Apple could've afforded to take a stand.

<comment> java-man NSA needs access to the top government officials via their iphones.</comment></comment>


How China's New Missile Concept Could Cripple American Air Power - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a24117442/china-missile-pl-xx/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if HTML5 could be extended to have length, weight, currency and other kinds of tags. Texts would encode distances, weights, etc in the appropriate tags, with default values equal to the current text.

I would then set my browser to "show SI units" and all the "100 miles", "8 feet", etc. would be converted to kilometers, meters, and so on.

That would make this article infinitely more pleasurable to read for me.</comment>


The economy of weirdness - <AUTHOR> https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/the-economy-of-weirdness <comment><USER2> I had a particularly bad school switch between the 3rd and 4th grade. Going from a strict private catholic school to the nearby public cool, I was teased a lot. It sucked. At some point "weirdness" just became part of my identity, I embraced it as a shield.

Having grown up, I've moved past some of it. I still recognize that I've got an essential core of weirdness. In college I learned about the myers-briggs and, while you can criticize the test all you want, the iNtuitive / Sensing divide is real thing. I'm just an iNtuitive living in a sensor world.

I definitely budget my weirdness. I don't care about my clothes, but I recognize that it's good social engineering to look good. I try to be open and friendly to all types of people, especially people who remind me of being an outcast in grade school.

But at times I see people who just seem to be... pointlessly wasting their weirdness. They're talented, bright, energetic, and you're spending time praying to crystals? There's so much more you could be doing!

I'm really worried about becoming the society that ostracized my past self.

<comment><USER3> > I'm really worried about becoming the society that ostracized my past self.

To some extent it would be weird if that didn't happen. So, maybe that means you have a chance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Byung-Chul Han calls this weirdness _negativity_ , contrasting the _positivity_ that is largely replacing it in our societies. Everything that slows down the flow of communication, capital, consumption, information etc. is negative. Positivity smoothes out all negative aspects.

In "Transparenzgesellschaft", he argues that too much positivity makes people transparent and controllable, their actions operational.

"Agonie des Eros" is about the contradiction of positivity and love. It's the weird, unexplainable things (atopos) that make people interesting. Desire itself is negative.

"Müdigkeitsgesellschaft" explains how the positivity of meritocratic societies, vs. the negativity of disciplinary societies in the past, leads to depression and fatigue.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung- Chul_Han](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-Chul_Han)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would say that the 'economy of weirdness' is closer to simple supply and demand. Too much weirdness lowers the demand of more weirdness, and thus the 'value' in a given scenario.

Weirdness is 'different', and as such requires a certain level of cognitive load to process. Too much weirdness can be overwhelming bordering on abrasive.

Looking at it from another point of view, if you have an action movie where it is 2 hours of explosions, you will eventually get bored of all of the explosions. 'weirdness' works similarly. There needs to be some pacing to your weirdness.

<comment><USER6> The cognitive load point is extremely important. It isn't that "weirdness is bad" but "your weirdness puts my brain in the position of having to do more work, using up precious fractions of my most limited resource: attention." People radically under-estimate the amount of attention we have available (and are then shocked and surprised when they miss the guy in the gorilla suit.)

So on this basis, weirdness is always potentially rude and anti-social, unless it becomes so common that it's no longer weirdness, but just natural variation. It's impossible to be "weird" anymore by simply having tattoos for example (at least where I live) because so many people have them that the presence or absence of ink is recognized as a completely ordinary variation, well within accepted social norms.

To be weird, something has to be outside of local social norms, and by definition such things call attention to themselves, each one using up 10 - 20% of other people's extremely limited attentional resources (because we can only pay attention to 5 - 10 things at once.)

As such, budgeting your weirdness wisely is simply polite and pro-social. We should be weird in ways that matter to us enough that they warrant the attention they will use up. People will differ on both the kind and amount of weirdness that exceeds this threshold, but the general principle that we should be weird wisely still holds.

<comment><USER7> This is a great comment. The attention microeconomy explains _so_ much of our social / coordination issues. On a completely separate track, this is sort of the fatal flaw of modern outrage culture -- it refuses to count the cognitive- time-value of being non-offensive to the world's 7 billion population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The weirdest things, like the funniest things, are neither intentional nor the product of conscious effort. They surface despite attempts to suppress them.

I'd also argue that weird is not necessarily synonymous with unusual. You can achieve unusual by traveling a little farther along any metric you want, including conventional cool values like athletic prowess or symmetric beauty.

Weird is more than unusual. It is the irruption of some aspect of life that gives us an eery feeling. It's Blue Velvet.

</comment><comment><USER9> Did anyone take away a different interpretation of this than thay would have if "weird" wasn't used as a substitute word for violating social norms or "unusual" depending on context?

It seemed a bit awkward to read in terms of "weirdness economics" rather than social groups, but I failed to see where the difference was going.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great find, for the rest of the blog as well as the article. I am reminded of Lacan's theory of libidinal economy, with weirdness as an analog or isomorphism to his notion of _jouissance_.

</comment><comment><USER7> Also related: Kevin Simler's take on the concept of Personhood as a sort of contract to encapsulate your own weirdness to function well with the weirdnesses of others.

[http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two- or-m...](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/personhood-a-game-for-two-or-more- players/)

<comment><USER11> So true Wow, great writing, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Normality is weird. Normally, normal people only have a few normal characteristics, so being completely normal isn't.

<comment><USER13> To extend that concept with her models, there isn't a weirdness economic market, its more like the numerous world financial markets.

Weird at gencon, weird at hope conference, weird at work, and weird in the bedroom either have nothing in common or possibly you're living a totally awesome life.

<comment><USER12> I guess you could attempt to combine them. Which would probably be awesome, but might cause shenanigans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is fascinating, but difficult to respond to because it is itself a "weird" way of seeing - it is both curiously analytical and vague in it's purpose. Which, ironically (inevitably) is exactly the kind of weirdness I (and many others here) really need to address.

Another point entirely missed in this essay is the fact that in general, rare is _valuable_ , not bad. Even if you think the world is made of faceless corporations with insatiable appetite for people who snap together like Lego, there are always a few odd, special-purpose pieces in a Lego set. No, they don't fit in _everywhere_ and you can't make a kit with just them, but they are badly needed.</comment>


A Homebrew 8-Bit Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.msarnoff.org/6809/ <comment><USER2> Wow, never thought I'd see this posted here! (I'm the creator of this project.) I thought about building my own CPU from relays and/or discrete logic (I met the creators of the Magic-1 and BMOW a couple years ago at a Maker Faire), but it would have taken _way_ too much time and money, so I stuck with an off-the-shelf chip.

My development process isn't that well documented online, but soon I hope to start a blog where I explain how the whole thing works; address decoding, bank switching, assembly programming, etc. And then I'll write some games, add a Forth environment, hook it up to the internet, who knows. All my source code, schematics, and tools will be online sometime in 2011 if anyone's interested.

<comment><USER3> Forth was my first thought when I read the article -- it seems like a perfect fit for a project like this.

<comment><USER4> Can I get a pointer to why?

<comment><USER2> The 6809 actually has _two_ stack pointers, S and U. S is the hardware stack (used for calls/returns) and U is basically another index register with dedicated push/pull instructions. A Forth implementation typically uses two stacks (the return stack and the parameter stack), this maps very well to the 6809's register set.

Here's the first of a great series of articles from 1993 about implementing Forth on 8/16-bit computers: <http://www.bradrodriguez.com/papers/moving1.htm>

<comment><USER5> I read on your webpage that you go to HSC. I LOVE that place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of this wonderful 3D rendering I saw yesterday, titled "16-bit memories"[0].

The artist is Toni Bratincevic, and you can find more of his work on his website[1]. It's the kind of art that makes me wish I had an ounce of artistic talent so I could illustrate my thoughts in such splendor ;/

0: <http://i.imgur.com/0gZzv.jpg>

1: <http://www.interstation3d.com/new_gallery.html>

<comment><USER7> Ahh, the memories. Thanks for the link, really nice picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oooh. I used to have a Radio Shack Color Computer, and I _loved_ the 6809. So much cleaner than the 6502. Two 8-bit accumulators, A and B, which can be combined as a 16-bit accumulator, D. MUL, which sets D to A * B. Four 16-bit index registers, all of which can be used interchangeably in any indexed-mode operation. (Two of them can be used as stack pointers.) A rich indexed mode, including constant offset, accumulator offset (A, B, or D), and offset from PC (allowing position-independent code).

The 6502, by contrast, had one 8-bit accumulator, A, and two 8-bit index registers, X and Y. X and Y were used differently: IIRC, you could do (in C syntax) * (addr+X) or (* addr)+Y, but not the other way around. No easy way to do position-independent code. (I suppose you could hack it with OS support, though, by providing a routine at a fixed location that reads the caller's address from the stack.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice project. I've got a box full of 8086's and support chips just waiting for that rainy weekend to come around.

If you like this stuff, you have to check out the daddy of homebrew computing: <http://www.homebrewcpu.com>

<comment><USER4> This was referred to as an extreme sport in IEEE Spectrum Magazine and I cannot agree more. How then hell did this guy manage to debug any problems he may have.

<comment><USER9> His HP1630A ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You really want to see a CPU made out of relays: <http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/>

Note, this is just the CPU - he uses an 8K CMOS RAM unit.

<comment><USER9> A quick tip just in case this inspires anyone to far. I highly recommend that you think long and hard before you run out and buy a thousand relays with the intentions of following in this guys foot steps ..

If still want a thousand relays, give me a bell.</comment></comment>


Oodle commissions study that accuses CraigsList of being a cesspool of crime - <AUTHOR> http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/25/6130437-rival-links-craigslist-to-12-deaths-330-crimes-in-past-year

<comment><USER2> Upvoted because although the AIM study regrettably stoops to fearmongering and lurid prose, it does illustrate an important point about the value of Facebook's social graph.</comment>


Technical report on DNC hack [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296.pdf <comment><USER2> I have looked through the report. The only useful information was brief description of attack methods, everything else looks like a list of general recommendations one can find on the OWASP website.

As I understand from report the main methods used were:

\- sendind emails with executable files that victims for some reason executed

\- phishing

So, they used script kiddie level tools anyone could use (and they are cheap; you don't have to buy expensive zero-day exploits on a black market). But of course this could be done intentionally so it looks amateur-ish.

This attacks could be easily mitigated. First, OS and applications should not run unknown files from Internet (because some people got used to double click on everything they get in email), second, we should start using physical cryptographic keys instead of passwords. Common people cannot handle passwords, they either make easily guessed passwords or enter them everywhere without thinking. I hate passwords too because they are hard to remember (and please don't suggest that I should download some software and upload my passwords to a "cloud" in NSA-controlled country).

By the way iOS is the only popular operating system I know that doesn't allow to execute files downloaded from web or emails. Apple did it the right way.

The report also contains a pretty useless firewall rule named "PAS TOOL PHP WEB KIT FOUND" that can be used to search malware in PHP files. It is interesting that they have replaced digits in 'base64_decode' function name with regexp as if there were any other similar functions.

<comment><USER3> The "evidence" boils down to:

The Hackers drove a truck.

Russians drive trucks.

The Russians did the hacking.

While its insulting that our government would try to pass off this drivel as "evidence", I'm much more dismayed that so many of my fellow Americans will uncritically accept it as such.

<comment><USER4> The actual evidence is probably closer to 'we have moles in the kremlin and taps on their phones' but they're not exactly going to publish that are they.

<comment><USER5> Wasn't the NSA spying on the whole Internet or something? Are you telling me the NSA saw _no evidence_ of Russia hacking the DNC servers? They wouldn't necessarily have to reveal their "methods" that it was the Russians if it was the NSA catching them and not some Kremlin CIA spy.

But who knows, maybe they are too busy spying on hundreds of millions of Regular Joes to watch out for all of the Russian attacks.

<comment><USER6> Haven't the NSA already said they believe it was the Russians? As you suggest, they would be the ones to know.

<comment><USER7> The NSA doesn't, in general, publicly announce anything. They exist to supply analysis to other branches of government, and only very rarely to the public directly. So the absence of commentary from them in public doesn't indicate that they haven't drawn conclusions and passed them along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Folks, the point of this report is not to justify the punitive actions taken today. It is to provide information that companies can use to protect themselves against similar attacks in the future.

So if you judge it by whether it "makes the case" against Russia, it will be lacking. We don't need 100 comments pointing that out.

<comment><USER9> It seems notable that many of these comments are jumping on this for not providing proof that it was Russia, when that was not the intention of the report.

The first page states-

>This JAR provides technical indicators related to many of these operations, recommended mitigations, suggested actions to take in response to the indicators provided, and information on how to report such incidents to the U.S. Government.

<comment><USER10> The bloomberg article I read ([http://archive.is/j5wRd](http://archive.is/j5wRd)) presented it as evidence. Maybe other publications are doing the same.

>As part of the administration's response, the FBI and Homeland Security Department also released a report with technical evidence intended to prove Russia's military and civilian intelligence services were behind the hacking and to expose some of their most sensitive hacking infrastructure.

<comment><USER11> The "evidence" cited is not the handful of unclassified details included, it's the fact that the FBI and DHS are willing to go on record publicly accusing Russia. There are no asterisks or weasel-words or "allegedly"s. Just a clear "Russia did it."

There are only two possible explanations for that:

1) A massive conspiracy in which the leaders of practically the entirety of the US military/intelligence community are willing to go on record with a hoax that will easily be unraveled by the incoming administration in a few months

2) There is clear and damning evidence that Russia did it, but it's classified

<comment><USER12> I'd guess a third option, actually: It's just a best guess, but they don't like being questioned.

If they had damning evidence it'd be in their interest to release it.

<comment><USER13> Not if it would give any humint sources away and they may have kicked out people to allow a source to step into their shoes - as the UK did to put there man in as the Resident in London

<comment><USER14> It's somewhat obvious from the context but for anyone not familiar with military jargon I think the parent post meant to say "humint" instead of "humit" which is short hand for "human intelligence" or in layman's terms "spies".

<comment><USER13> oops my bad

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems unlikely that email hacking will stop in the future. If the leaked emails actually influenced the elections, it was because of their content. I've heard exactly zero credible claims that the leaked emails were falsified in any way. Perhaps if political candidates/party executives are going to do unethical/illegal things, they shouldn't discuss them over email.

Edit: changed "zero claims" to "zero credible claims"

<comment><USER16> > I've heard exactly zero claims that the leaked emails were falsified in any > way.

Podesta and high-ranking Dems have leveled this very charge.

The extent of the DKIM signatures all being true makes this very unlikely.

RSA1024 and SHA-1 can be beaten, but not easily and not in this volume.

It is not E2E from the people authoring the e-mails, so the server maintainer (often Google) could be forging and signing e-mails.

However, again, doing it the volume it would have had to be done is not likely.

The DNC has backed off from the forgery accusations. Besides the asinine nature of the accusations making them look bad, such accusations weaken their grand thesis: Russia hacked them. If they open up the possibility that most or all of the e-mails could have been fabricated whole cloth, then it undermines the argument that Putin pulled off an ingenuous heist of tens of thousands of e-mails.

<comment><USER15> I suppose I should have said that I have heard no _credible_ claims that they were falsified. Most of the denials I've heard were of the "I don't recognize that" variety, which literally means nothing.

<comment><USER17> There was that twitter post from John podesta "i've switched sides hi /pol/" post from his verified twitter page.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3835460/Now- Podesta-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3835460/Now-Podesta-s- Twitter-account-gets-hacked-day-Clinton-campaign-chair-accuses-Russia-hacking- emails.html)

if the emails are fake, how could a password from the emails dump be used to login into his twitter page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As an aside, for those looking to understand YARA rules, [1] provides a brief introduction and [2] introduces how to write them. I needed to look it up myself, but seems relatively straightforward if you have a programming background.

tl;dr: YARA rules are a method of categorizing malware based on their characteristics. So the PDF here released a YARA rule to determine a specific piece of malware used in the hack (it's not clear to me what it identifies, other than a PHP script).

For convenience, here's the YARA rule presented in the PDF formatted to be more readable:

rule PAS_TOOL_PHP_WEB_KIT {

      meta:
        description = "PAS TOOL PHP WEB KIT FOUND"

      strings:
        $php = "<?php"
        $base64decode = /\='base'\.\(\d+\*\d+\)\.'_de'\.'code'/
        $strreplace = "(str_replace("
        $md5 = ".substr(md5(strrev("
        $gzinflate = "gzinflate"
        $cookie = "_COOKIE"
        $isset = "isset"

      condition:
        (filesize > 20KB and filesize < 22KB) and
        #cookie == 2 and
        #isset == 3 and
        all of them

}

[1] [https://securityintelligence.com/signature-based- detection-w...](https://securityintelligence.com/signature-based-detection- with-yara/)

[2] [http://yara.readthedocs.io/en/v3.5.0/writingrules.html](http://yara.readthedocs.io/en/v3.5.0/writingrules.html)

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER19> > (it's not clear to me what it identifies, other than a PHP script)

It seems obfuscated code. The $base64decode string seems a regular expression to generate the PHP `base64_decode()` function.

At some point the script would read a base64 string, which would be an encoded PHP script retrieved from remote or included in the script. The output is then executed through the `eval()` function. Like in this example: [http://ideone.com/awhqOg](http://ideone.com/awhqOg)

<comment><USER20> This is a pretty common PHP payload idiom, yup yup. (It also is common with proprietary PHP applications, CMS extensions, etc. that are happy to burn your system performance to "protect their IP". I've been unwinding them since I was twelve.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jeez people, read the report, it isn't any kind of justification of anything, its just a fairly generic don't do this, like I see 100 times a week at work. The real details were likely shown to congress and the senate (or at least a portion of it). Those are the only people who can say if the actual attack was real or imagined. Do you think the British and Americans were going to publish stories about Enigma back in WW2 in the Times during the war? There were like a handful of people in the world who knew the details.

While we technical folks would love to see all the details that's not how intelligence works. Some things have to be secret even though these days everything becomes a conspiracy and a political controversy and a tweet storm.

That said I doubt anyone in either party committee had any idea how security works; even worse is that much of the US government is (and will be) lead by political benefactors with an axe to grind and not people with a real clue about modern security either so expect nothing much different in the future until someone hacks the nuclear "football".

<comment><USER22> > Do you think the British and Americans were going to publish stories about > Enigma back in WW2 in the Times during the war? There were like a handful of > people in the world who knew the details.

Well they plan on releasing the malware samples and evidence of the hack, so I'm not sure what you mean here...

This isn't the enigma in war time. It's not even a denied operation like Stuxnet (which was also had malware samples found in the wild and plenty of details on how it was spread and worked). It's standard nation state malware from a foreign adversary and the phishing email was already released from the Podesta hack via Wikileaks.

The only question is how they connected the public leaks to Russia. Which most people doubt they even have. But that detail won't stop the press from believing it was one and the same. Even though any number of people could have accessed it.

But otherwise simply connecting the hack to Russia and the hack itself is hardly a mystery or interesting in itself. You're very much overselling that which I'll just attribute to not knowing much about infosec.

From NYTimes:

>> The samples of malware were in what the Obama administration called a "joint analytic report" from the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security that was based in part on intelligence gathered by the National Security Agency. A more detailed report on the intelligence, ordered by President Obama, will be published in the next three weeks, though much of the detail — especially evidence collected from "implants" in Russian computer systems, tapped conversations and spies — is expected to remain classified.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia- elec...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-election- hacking-sanctions.html)

Obviously they won't release every detail, especially regarding implants in Russia, but they'll release more than just 'trust us'. They always do.

<comment><USER23> I'll wait to actually see it first.

We know what nation state hacking looks like thanks to the leaks about the NSA. There would normally be things like custom hardware or TEMPEST like tools, not kiddie level phishing scams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The Sony hack had more evidence than this...

Someone explain to me why this is such an issue?

There have been many proven hacks from many states that are far worse (the Chinese Fighter plane that looks almost identical to the F35 come to mind) than exposing the DNC's dirty laundry. No one is denying that the emails are real. This seems like some sort of distraction.

<comment><USER25> > No one is denying that the emails are real.

Actually, Donna Brazile, who is inexplicably still the current chair of the DNC, claimed the emails were falsified: [https://youtu.be/P_WHsr07cbY?t=458](https://youtu.be/P_WHsr07cbY?t=458)

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't trust a person like Donna Brazile with running a thing as simple as a banana stand, the fact that she claims the emails were falsified convinces people like myself that they were indeed the real deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great. Password expiration.

Cue everyone recycling a set of 10 unique passwords among devices and/or writing passwords on Post-It notes on work computers at the office.

Only bit of truth in here was the phishing campaign. That could be anyone, however. This is barely more advanced than the Nigerian bank scam e-mails.

Yet the POTUS says it's a sign of the highest levels of Russian government.

We've already been fed lies about e-mails being altered (DKIM signatures disprove this) and now this PDF ignores the insider element in the DNC/Wasserman-Schultz leaks.

What a joke. NIST, NSA, FBI, CIA et alia should be discredited almost entirely at this point.

<comment><USER27> If I recally correctly, NIST recently issued guidelines specifically against password expiration/recycling and against forced limits on what characters you can have in your password.

<comment><USER16> Yep. All the more infuriating. They know better.

NGOs, private industry and the US government at most levels there has been a movement away from password length limits and password expiration and SMS as a second factor. (Even OTP and hashes may be replaced by U2F keys someday.)

Then we get this recommendation for password expirations.

Two steps forward, one back -- as always.

<comment><USER28> What? The old suggestion which government/enterprise followed was quarterly password changes/rotation. This is no longer recommended by NIST though. How is that bad?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a magic report.

Over the next 24 hours, it will transform a huge number of people into experts on intelligence reporting requirements, hacking, sources and methods, and diplomacy.

<comment><USER30> Respectfully, do you feel this is constructive discourse?

Because to me the purpose of your comment is to drag down other comments, even yet unmade ones, into the mud. Invalidating everyone's opinion on this subject except 0.1% of the population (namely very specific experts). Even politicians or professional political commentators wouldn't meet your high bar.

And to the people who do feel like the bar should be set at "only experts are allowed an opinion" then why stop on this issue? Why not branch it out to every major political issue? Plus seemingly being well read on a topic is no longer enough to have an informed opinion, qualifications are the only metric by which we can measure an argument rather than the qualities of the argument itself.

My point is that this is a dangerous argument that only seeks to result in the silence of commentators. It only detracts rather than adds to the discussion's value.

<comment><USER29> I was commenting on the phenomenon in which random "facts" from narrow professional niches are cherry-picked to make politically motivated arguments.

The show is playing now on the usual blogs, so rest easy. If I had been making an oblique argument attempting to shut people up, I failed rather miserably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Page 5 lists a YARA signature names "PAS_TOOL_PHP_WEB_KIT" that is supposed to match some kind of payload from the attack. It looks generic but is surprisingly specific.

A quick search reveals that it happens to exactly match [1] (if you fix a few obvious bugs where the github code uses $COOKIE instead of $_COOKIE, or produces base64decode instead of base64_decode. The attackers probably fixed that in production). Apart from the exact combination of three `isset` and two `_COOKIE`, that code starts with the unusual sequence `<?php $l___l_='base'.(32*2).'de'.'code';` which happens to be matched by the (also very unusual) regex from the report. It also ticks all other boxes from the provided signature.

I just found that within five minutes by searching github. It seems like an encrypted payload that can be executed by visiting the php page while having the password in a POST parameter or in a Cookie.

I'm not an expert, but the encryption looks very simple. Maybe somebody feels up to the challenge to try some statistical analysis or similar on it?

[1] [https://github.com/Nu11ers3t/Null/wiki](https://github.com/Nu11ers3t/Null/wiki)

<comment><USER2> I would like to add some details about a username in case someone didn't understand its meaning. The github username spells like 'nullers'. 'Nulling' is a slang word meaning removing license protection from commercial web applications like CMS (and usually publishing them for everyone to use like some type of modern Robin Hood) and 'nullers' are the people who do it.

The code has a payload (probably a web shell) encrypted with a password that should be sent via a cookie or a variable in the POST request body. The encryption has some serious weaknesses.

The @masrermike's comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281312) has a link to the tool that could be used to encrypt the payload.

In case if anyone is interested I can post a formatted code (the payload is still encrypted): [http://pastebin.com/sVLsGTub](http://pastebin.com/sVLsGTub)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32>
        ~ grep IPV4 JAR-16-20296.csv|awk -F ',' '{print $1}'|sed 's/[][]//g'|sort -u|grep -f exits -c
      191
        ~ grep IPV4 JAR-16-20296.csv|awk -F ',' '{print $1}'|sed 's/[][]//g'|sort -u|wc -l
      876

At least 191 of the IOC IPs are (probably random) Tor exit nodes :) The actual number may very well be higher, I just grabbed current exit node list from [https://check.torproject.org/exit- addresses](https://check.torproject.org/exit-addresses)

Here's the PHP backdoor the YARA rule is for [http://sprunge.us/ReFg](http://sprunge.us/ReFg) I'll probably put up the rest of the samples in a sec.

Edit: Here, I uploaded most of the samples listed in the csv [http://www.filedropper.com/samples_5](http://www.filedropper.com/samples_5)

Edit 2: The obfuscation used in the russian PHP shells looked _awfully_ familiar, I think the shell they're using could very well be this one [http://profexer.name/pas/download.php](http://profexer.name/pas/download.php) originally shared on a .ru hacker forum.

<comment><USER33> Wow, this should be the top comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There doesn't seem to be much new information there. A bunch of IP addresses, file hashes to look for, and general network security advice, in addition to a history of the attacks which was already public, and an explicit attribution to the Russians.

They mention a phishing attack which took place after the election, but don't give any further details.

</comment><comment><USER35> This report is a joke. I didn't find any reasoning about attribution.

Here is the only valuable part:

" rule PAS_TOOL_PHP_WEB_KIT { meta: description = "PAS TOOL PHP WEB KIT FOUND" strings: $php = "<?php" $base64decode = /\='base'\\.\\(\d+\\*\d+\\)\\.'_de'\\.'code'/ $strreplace = "(str_replace(" $md5 = ".substr(md5(strrev(" $gzinflate = "gzinflate" $cookie = "_COOKIE" $isset = "isset" condition: (filesize > 20KB and filesize < 22KB) and #cookie == 2 and #isset == 3 and all of them } "

<comment><USER9> Did you read the first page? This report has nothing to do with detailing or justifying attribution

<comment><USER36> Then why did the report attribute any of this to Russia without substantiating those claims? It's one thing to detail mitigations, it's another to call out Russia as the perpetrator without adding contextual value - the majority of the addresses involved aren't Russian.

<comment><USER11> Did they really need to say, "We also have other data about the attack that we're not publishing because it's classified"? Isn't that kind of safe to assume?

<comment><USER36> When things like this are used as a pretext to sanction other countries, I will assume nothing and expect data. The bogus weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was enough to convince me that "just trust us" isn't sufficient data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is this more or less reputable than the clear and unambiguous claims of Craig Murray regarding the DNC leak, which he has stated clearly were the result of him personally traveling to DC, acquiring the data dump face to face from a non-Russian DNC insider, and then returning to the UK to give them to Assange himself. If the us-cert.gov report is to be believed, then both Assange and Murray are liars. Both can not be true. Who is more credible? Perhaps we can compare the history of truth reliability in claims from each party? Would that be a reasonable approach to ascertain who is lying here and who is telling the truth?

<comment><USER38> Craig Murray said he got the document drop in September, right? Didn't Wikileaks start publishing emails earlier than that? (Sincere question, I don't understand the timeline here.)

<comment><USER37> Thank you BryantD, that is a relevant and useful contribution.

Per wikileaks:

> "Starting on Friday 22 July 2016 at 10:30am EDT, WikiLeaks released over 2 > publications 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments from the top of the US > Democratic National Committee -- part one of our new Hillary Leaks series. > The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: > Communications Director Luis Miranda (10520 emails), National Finance > Director Jordon Kaplan (3799 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer > (3095 emails), Finanace Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel > Parrish (1742 emails), Finance Director Allen Zachary (1611 emails), Senior > Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director > Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails)."

Per Craig Murray:

"Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September."

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex- British-a...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British- ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails- handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html)

Perhaps Craig Murray meant September 2015, or perhaps the Daily Mail wrote the wrong thing down. If neither of these is true, there's a serious discrepancy in these claims. Lacking such an explanation, the reasonable conclusion here given the date discrepancy would be that either Ambassador Murray or the Daily Mail is lying about the dates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> At least the report is short. As others have stated, it doesn't really lay out any new evidence to believe the Russian government was behind the hack. It lays out information that almost looks like evidence, such as a list of usernames, but doesn't discuss how the information is relevant to anything. There is an assertion that three teams were involved, and that two teams communicated with each other, but no discussion of where this information comes from or why anyone should care how many teams there were. I get the feeling that there's a message for someone, but I'm certainly not the intended recipient.

The advice on avoiding similar hacks in the future is a grab bag. Near the end it encourages using /etc/shadow on POSIX systems. I installed Linux on my personal computer in 1999. Since then, I've installed several Linux distributions, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Plan 9, Inferno, etc. I can't remember any installation offering to store password hashes in /etc/passwd. Some of the advice is better, but not all of it is. I'm honestly disappointed. Perhaps this is a wake-up to somebody, but I would hope Sony's hack would have already served that purpose.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've done security remediation for the U.S. Govt. About the same vulns you would expect on 2003 PHP apps that haven't been updated since (OS or otherwise). Congress doesn't budget for server/app maintenance, simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER41> We'll probably never know the name of the poor intern tasked to slap this together overnight.

Hope the main report due in 3 weeks has some substance.

</comment><comment><USER42> >In spring 2016, APT28 compromised the same political party, again via targeted spearphishing.

I think I might have missed it, but how did they conclude that it was 'APT28' ?

> APT28 is known for leveraging domains that closely mimic those of targeted > organizations and tricking potential victims into entering legitimate > credentials. APT28 actors relied heavily on shortened URLs in their > spearphishing email campaigns.

Aren't these standard phishing 101 techniques. What makes them specific to 'APT28'. This 'report' looks like someone googled 'phishing 101' and 'web security 101' and copy pasted bunch of stuff from wikipedia.

<comment><USER43> An intelligence agency won't declassify how they determined who it was. That would compromise their ability to use the same method (informant, vulnerability, etc) in the future.

They are standard techniques. It doesn't say they are unique. Just that this hacker relies on these specific standard techniques as opposed to other ones.

<comment><USER35> >An intelligence agency won't declassify how they determined who it was.

Yeah, just like a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. We can't tell how we got this information, but we know for sure. Then few years later it turns out there is no WMD found. Ooops. Sorry.

Give me a reason to trust them again?

<comment><USER44> Why trust them in the first place, look at the evidence and if you disagree with a conclusion, be able to say why.

This is the whole problem we're dealing with right now - people just decide they do or do not trust something. Don't agree with a fact check? Just call it bogus and move on, even though it might be a 50 point case they make why bother finding a flaw in their reasoning and using that to refute their conclusion when you can just be a cynic and shrug it off. Don't agree with climate change? Just pick the 1 totally debunked study that supports your case and ignore the 1000 that don't that haven't been debunked.

So I ask, in the analyses that have come out (not just this one), what do you disagree with? As far back as June crowdstrike released a report [1], I assume you went through it in detail and can point to flaws in its reasoning as well?

[1] [https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion- democ...](https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic- national-committee/)

<comment><USER33> The basic flaws I'd mention are:

\- Multiple state actors (or well-funded non-state actors) likely compromised the emails.

\- A state actor could also have faked the "trail" that points to Russia.

\- The rest of the evidence is circumstantial.

Sure, if we pretend we live in a pre-stuxnet, script kiddie sort of world, this was likely a high level state sponsored attack, but it seems preposterous that a state actor would be so sloppy:

If you were Putin wishing to try to use spearfishing to get access to specific accounts, you would not source that work to groups that were known to work with your government. You'd set up a fake Nigerian operation so that if found it would look like the email address had been randomly chosen from a list of many used by some Nigerian person to try to scam a few thousand dollars.

This is not akin to thinking three or four moves ahead, it's simply thinking one move ahead.

<comment><USER45> Exactly, it could just as easily be China making it look like Russia did it...

<comment><USER46> Yea, This made me think of chinese black pr groups too.

Hillary was not liked in china or korea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Wtf? Majority of report is copy & pasted security risk descriptions

</comment><comment><USER48> Interestingly it says only one political party was hacked.

<comment><USER49> Only one (the DNC) was compromised, yes, but the phrasing about which organizations/politicians were targeted by the emails is ambiguous, so one might think that they also targeted Republicans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> 'The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed.'

Who in US Government?

What information was leaked?

<comment><USER51> Are you under the impression that different parts of the US government typically "speak" with difference voices? This was an official government publication, that means "Who" is "The US Government", period.

<comment><USER52> Yes, I am under that distinct impression. Most noteworthy political and legal matters amount to precisely that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> That big list of code names is a hoot, it seems they mixed the names of soldiers from metal gear solid 5 with a list of names they got off a small IRC server as well as some codenames out of James Bond novels Ian Fleming never wrote plus some fragments of mime headings salted with just a little bit of line noise.

</comment><comment><USER54> "At least one targeted individual activated links to malware hosted on operational infrastructure of opened attachments containing malware" \- I pity that individual, like I'm sure he's getting blamed in the party like 'Hey, aren't you the piece of work who clicked a link'

<comment><USER55> It may have been many, I hear stories that the average user isn't that clued up. Dumb users should be sandboxed but if its your main people its a bit tricky i guess

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> First step to prevent "Russian hackers": Don't make your password "p@ssw0rd"

[https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/22335](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22335)

<comment><USER57> Trying to understand the context of the email.

From: Eryn Sepp <firstname.lastname@example.com> To: firstname.lastname@example.com

      Though CAP is still having issues with my email and computer, yours is good to go.=20
      jpodesta
      p@ssw0rd

It looks like it was a temporary password assigned by the sys admin (or tech savvy friend).

Also, It is not clear how this was hacked since it seems a gmail to gmail communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The report released by the US govt only contains a birds-eye view of the hacking incident and not much technical details. But they do reference APT28 and APT29 which are described in reports from FireEye in 2014 and 2015:

       http://www2.fireeye.com/rs/fireye/images/rpt-apt28.pdf
       https://www2.fireeye.com/rs/848-DID-242/images/rpt-apt29-hammertoss.pdf

The evidence is circumstantial, but there is so much of it that I think you can confidently say that Russia is behind it. For example, compile times pointing towards office workers in Moscow, Russian language settings and so on.

Read the reports and make up your own minds!

</comment><comment><USER59> tl;dr - "ultra advanced cyber persistent cyber threat cyber actors" are sending phishing emails and people are still clicking on them.

<comment><USER60> And these people want to write laws on encryption...

<comment><USER61> +100

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Nothing about this supports a Russian attribution.

<comment><USER33> We're supposed to trust them that it was not just Russian geographically but the Russian government and also the highest levels of the Russian government.

<comment><USER63> WMDs were in Iraq, too, didn't you hear?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> They ought to encourage the use of prepared statements to defend against SQL injections. It's the only way to handle that threat, yet the report does not mention it:

 __ _" 5\. Input Validation - Input validation is a method of sanitizing untrusted user input provided by users of a web application, and may prevent many types of web application security flaws, such as SQLi, XSS, and command injection."_ __

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_statement
        https://www.owasp.org/index.php/SQL_Injection_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet

</comment><comment><USER65> Throwaway because I work in a related field.

Folks, now is the time that we need to make it clear that posturing and PR statements do not constitute valid, independently verifiable evidence. As a citizen of the United States, I am beyond terrified that our government has made public statements, buttressed by newspaper articles supported by nothing but anonymous sources[1], vilifying Russia for a nation-state-level cyberattack. The support for such claims, as presented, is the "sophistication" of the attack, which is not evidenced here (phishing is not a particularly sophisticated means of entry). At best, this is a mistake, and at worst, it wreaks of anti-Russia propaganda that will only serve to escalate tensions between the two countries. Every single person who absorbs a report like this without seeking supporting evidence (note that this report immediately starts by claiming Russia's involvement, and never provides support) is, to some extent, culpable in a hypothetical reality where the US Government is blatantly wrong about this one.

There's only one thing we can do at this point: File Freedom of Information requests. The fine folks at Muckrock[2] make this absurdly easy. Send requests to the CIA and FBI -- hold them accountable to their statements, which have to date been unsupported, that Russia as a nation-state entity was behind anything.

1: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia- election-h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election- hack.html?_r=1) 2: [https://www.muckrock.com](https://www.muckrock.com)

</comment><comment><USER66> I think that there is a second assumption which is overlooked: Hypothetically, let us assume that the Russians did break in and steal emails etc. Governments do so all the time so it could well be true. Now the question to me is: why would they release all the emails to Wikileaks? The emails seem relatively benign and not very damming of HRC. Why not keep the information in your back pocket until they can be researched and leveraged? Releasing them diminishes their value to an intelligence agency. And why not release selected HRC's (herself) emails? Surely the Russians could have gotten those of they tried. Assuming she's not squeaky clean, they could have released selected individual emails anonymously and ensured a Trump win, plus keep other assets for later. Would a better hypothesis be that US intelligence services saw break-ins and so released the information they knew foreign governments could be used as leverage aagainst a likely future president? This way they immunize against the information's use, plus blame the Russians but the US would dearly like to punish Russia for their victory in Syria anyway. This makes more sense to me but am interested in why this hypothesis is wrong or less likely.

</comment><comment><USER67> Seriously!

Here is technical analysis of one of the malware used. [http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2015/07/unit-42-t...](http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/2015/07/unit-42-technical- analysis-seaduke/)

Why does everyone thinks that only Russians can write such a malware, that too in python!

Also, does it dawns on anyone that anyone can actually take this malware up and reverse engineer it and repurpose it. All it takes is changing one JSON blob embedded in the code to point to your own servers for CNC, use your own AES IV/Key.

Also, I find it funny that they use embedded time stamps and resource locales as a proof of anything. Didn't anyone ever use Resource Hacker or 'strings' command? Is it really this hard to scrub or falsify timestamps in a DLL/EXE?

The most damning proof would have been some SSL certificate reused in a known compromised server for CnC. I heard rumors around it but nowhere in the analysis this was highlighted or discussed.

<comment><USER23> This doesn't deserved to be downvoted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Interesting date in footnote:

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff648653.aspx](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ff648653.aspx). Web site last accessed April 11, 2016.

Have they just copied this report from some general security advice and prepended the latest attack at the top?

(Also, no https?)

</comment><comment><USER69> Page 7: "Firewalls can be configured to block data from certain locations (IP whitelisting)"

</comment><comment><USER70> At least some of the DNC users who had VPN access (which, presumably terminated "behind the firewall") had local Administrator rights on the PCs they used [1]. Getting one of those people to load malware and piggybacking on their VPN connection (letting them enter 2FA if there even was any) was likely a cinch.

There's nothing that I've read anywhere that makes me think the DNC was any kind of difficult target to compromise. Likely their information security posture was on par industry norms for small office networks-- absolutely terrible.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/8763](https://wikileaks.org/dnc- emails/emailid/8763)

</comment><comment><USER71> I remember two spates of gmail phishing, one in early 2015 that Google responded to:

[https://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/protect-your- goog...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/protect-your-google- account-with.html)

I think it's quite possible that this sort of warning actually may have increased phishing attempts because it made malware authors aware of increased possibilities.

From the report ... > In summer 2015, an APT29 spearphishing campaign directed emails [ .. ]

PS. please don't seasons instead of dates in reports, specify the quarter of the year.

</comment><comment><USER72> Nonsense. I'm doing cybersecurity analysis for a Navy program this very day. To the person that says "The attackers did use stealthy persistence techniques often called 'rootkits'" \-- you know exactly nothing about what you're talking about.

A rootkit is the means to obtain "root" permissions which is an exclusive feature of UNIX/Linux operating systems. Powershell is a Windows product... these systems are Windows based. No rootkit. Period.

</comment><comment><USER73> Calling it a "report on the DNC hack" is a fine example of fake news.

</comment><comment><USER74> What about the disclaimer at the top of the document?

</comment><comment><USER55> Multiple failures in network security and silly users fall victim to unsophisticated hackers, is this news or an apology ;)

</comment><comment><USER75> They may have evidence it was the Russians, but it sure isn't in this report.

</comment><comment><USER76> ok i think i know what happened: Obama forced FBI to produce the report, but they got nothing, so they filled it mostly with irrelevant slightly-more complicated mumbo jumbo than Obama can understand to slide under his scrutiny, and then he pushes it out to the public without first consulting an actual security professional.

</comment><comment><USER77> It's clear that this is being done to validate their lies about the Russian's hacking. The US-CERT report came out today on this. I understand all this content and it is very limited scope. It does not provide any validation that Russia was involved in any kind of hacking against the US. They described what is probably the most common form of spear-phish hacking, put Russia's name on it, and listed a bunch of other hacking tools which are made by hackers who actually claim to be part of ISIS (probably CIA assets, looks to me like they are trying to false flag this) [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fancy_Bear&oldid=...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fancy_Bear&oldid=678878855)

</comment><comment><USER78> Ummm what piece of information in the leak caused Clinton to lose?

Reality check nothing because there were no bombshells found like James Coomey re-opening the FBI's investigation against that woman. A woman who nationally especially compared to Obama is highly unlikeable with a horrible public image. Though we're stuck with that crazy man... losing game either way!

<comment><USER79> \- HRC campaign got debate question before debate.

\- HRC campaign dictating what language journalists should use

\- DNC colluded with HRC campaign to attack Sanders before primary was finished (or had even began in some cases)

\- Evidence of DNC "Pied Piper" strategy to make the RNC nominate a 'crazy' candidate like Trump.

\- Discussing how to paint the Sanders campaign as sexist.

I don't know if leaks were the deciding factor, but I think a handful of leaked things contributed.

<comment><USER23> All of which are odd things to be mad at Russia about.</comment></comment></comment>


What nosql data store is good for location data with more than 2 dimensions? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for certain nosql recommendations which I can examine for our data set. Data is coming in the form of geographical system. It has lattitude and longitude and timestamp component. Also there are more dimensions also but right now I would first want to look at spatio-temporal component. Looking for suggestions which have decent documentation and support. <comment><USER2> MangoDB perhaps? I have never actually used it myself, but I've read a lot about it. It supports have as many dimensions as you want. Also, maybe Redis hash tables if need for the data to be stored in memory for speed.</comment>


How many of you tried kickstarter for raising money - <AUTHOR>

Did you find it useful? Did your attorney freaked out? Raised money for your tech project? <comment><USER2> While I haven't used it, a good friend of mine has used it successfully twice, once to help send a play [i.e. the actors, and musicians] she wrote to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, and again to send another play to New York from LA.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is what my concern is. Is that good for things like doing a theater/play and for some legal issue does not work well for tech startups who envision it to be a high growth company and have C/S corp incorporated.

I know there are certain limitation on how many private investors a C-corp can have. Would these people putting in money via kickstarter be called as investors?

<comment><USER3> Legally and technically, they're not investors.

Kickstarter cuts you a check via Amazon. You don't have any contact with the donators except as mediated via Kickstarter. There's not even a requirement that you fulfill your promised obligations to your backers (although they'd probably never let you use them again).

People are literally giving you money out of goodwill.

That said, Kickstarter is a terrible platform if you don't already have a social network into which you can cast a wide enough net. It works best as the way you enable all the friends you already have and who are already willing to give you money, to do so.

It doesn't have a huge pile of people who are just looking to spend money on hairbrained startups with no return. That active curation, cutting out projects like that, is why it's succeeding.

<comment><USER4> This. Kickstarter is generating revenue in exchange for goods and services you're providing. It is not investment. I believe this is described in the Kickstarter FAQ.

I however disagree that it isn't worth doing if you aren't already popular. You can use it as a place to become more popular than you already are, or use it as a means to show some traction even if you only raise $10,000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, I live in Canada, so no Kickstarter for me.

<comment><USER6> Ditto. I don't live in the US too. I've been eyeing to crowdfund a personal project in indiegogo instead. But haven't really looked into how the process goes.</comment></comment>