Undocumented Catalina file access change - <AUTHOR> https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/macl.html <comment><USER3> If I'm reading this correctly: as soon as you drag a path into the terminal window, anything run from Terminal has access for that path apparently permanently, through a special hidden capability attribute, bypassing the usual Catalina permissions dialog.

Assuming it's true - I've no reason to think otherwise but I'm not using a Mac at the mo so can't try it - this is fascinating. It has the ring of a quick workaround for something: in desperation we bung in a whole new capability for this, let's hope nobody notices, we'll do it properly in a later release. Is there a better explanation? If it is a grubby workaround, what would it have been a workaround for?

<comment><USER4> It's a workaround for the new permissions system in Catalina being a complete mess from the get go. Previously, the Terminal in Catalina would pop up a dialogue asking for permission to access the file you'd just dragged in.

Good security or not, this entire system should not have been rolled out unless/until Apple had a sane UI for handing it. They don't.

<comment><USER5> > It's a workaround for the new permissions system in Catalina being a > complete mess from the get go.

I fucking hate it. Programs can write to my user dir and folders within it freely, but god forbid they touch my sacred Downloads, Documents, and Desktop folders! Better ask me first!

It's like it was made by the iOS dev team but also the iOS dev team has _never_ used a computer before.

I had to add ruby to full disk access to get emacs to work, because emacs is launched by a ruby script and it was insane that I couldn't ls my Downloads folder from it.

<comment><USER6> Given how absolutely terrible "real" computers are at having a meaningful security model (see also [https://xkcd.com/1200/](https://xkcd.com/1200/)), I am entirely in favor of letting the iOS dev team, who have implemented a meaningful security model, design things while making sure they never hear about how "real" computers work.

<comment><USER7> The problem with that is iOS is only a consumption device, not an actual computer, their security model makes no sense if you are using the device like a computer.

<comment><USER6> I use my iPhone like a computer. (I think. I mean, I don't spend a bunch of time cleaning up malware on it or reinstalling my Python environment because something got screwed up one day, does that mean I don't use it like a computer?)

<comment><USER7> You can but it's not really designed for that usage, hard to access files, unability to create a folder hierarchy, a lot of use-cases are outright forbidden by Apple...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The motivation seems laudable: obviously if I drag a file to the terminal I want it to be able to access it, one less confirmation dialog the better.

But it's the implementation that seems deeply flawed: that there's no obvious way to remove the permission afterwards, or even a record of it where you'd expect to look.

There seems to be a reasonable solution, however: as soon as the terminal window gets closed (and perhaps any background processes ended), the permissions get revoked. And even if your terminal process gets killed without cleanup, permissions would be revoked when your terminal app reboots or your computer restarts.

That could work, right?

<comment><USER9> The problem is that whoever implemented this change did not care to consider the full workflow lifecycle/consequences of enabling that change. And whoever did the code review on it ALSO failed to consider, or push for, dealing with it holistically and thoughtfully instead of just GSD'ing it ("gettin' shit done")

This is not the Apple I grew up with.

<comment><USER10> What if they did fully consider it, and reached a decision that you disagree with?

<comment><USER11> I have a hard time buying that anyone deliberately shipped a security feature that permanently opens access short of rebooting the system into a special mode. A "full deliberation" would presumably include input from a dedicated security team, who would almost certainly say "better not to ship this at all and leave the old behavior in than ship this". So either the security team missed this entirely, or the security team was not consulted, or the security team is not empowered to stop this sort of half-baked feature from going in... I really can't come up with a pleasant scenario here.

<comment><USER12> "We're trying to ship a system-wide permission lockdown, but we ran into unforeseen complications that will require more than a single release cycle to properly address. Instead of holding up the entire rollout for a release cycle, we'll ship the lockdown today and most users will benefit from it, but users that would otherwise run into the complications get a permissive bypass. Once the infrastructure to address the complications is in place, we'll get the lockdown working for them as well."

<comment><USER11> The near-complete inability to revert the permission is what argues against this. You could get this past a security team if you had the ability to revert it and Apple could document it away. It is the fact that it is a _non- revertible_ thing (in any reasonable manner) that is the key here. The odds that there's some way to chain this in an interesting way are just too high, even if the security team couldn't immediately come up with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank god.

Yes, logically, if I drag a file into the Terminal, I want Terminal to be able to access that file.

Should be documented somewhere, probably, but very clearly a positive change.

<comment><USER13> By the same logic, typing out the filename should make the same permissions change, no?

<comment><USER14> No. The action of pasting or dropping the file is what gives access.

<comment><USER13> I wasn't saying that to suggest a practical use of this "bug", just to point out that if it were as intentional as the above commend suggested then it should have been expanded to other methods of listing the file directory like typing it in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It used to be you could trust your software—even most closed source—because only bad guys wanted to exfiltrate data from your system. The simple advice of "never run an unknown executable" was an effective security practice.

Now, the incentives of software vendors—even open source—have changed to include data exhilaration en masse. Off the top of my head:

* Games that scan and upload the file hierarchy of your system.

* Software sync packages that casually provide third parties for research (Dropbox).

* Keyloggers embedded in the default operating system (web search in windows start; Ubuntu web search; Siri web search.

* Pervasive practice of running untrusted code with JavaScript and the seemingly inexorable march of granting web pages greater system access. Copy something to your clipboard, open a web page, and it can grab it, along with so much more.

* The push toward ever greater "telemetry".

* Automatic background file uploads, like Microsoft defender sample submission.

* Pervasive ingestion of our data by governments.

The greatest threat to our security has become the vendors and government—the very entities whose job it is to protect us.

<comment><USER14> > Keyloggers embedded in the default operating system (web search in windows > start; Ubuntu web search; Siri web search.

How exactly are these keyloggers?

<comment><USER16> They send each keypress in a search to a remote service who is able to log it.

<comment><USER14> I mean, how else do you expect web searches to work?

<comment><USER17> I would expect them to send search the query if and when I search for something and send exactly nothing when I don't

<comment><USER14> Aren't you literally searching for something in this case?

<comment><USER18> Yes, searching for a local file or program 100% of the time because I would never intentionally search for anything else from there.

That's specifically for Windows Start. If Ubuntu or Siri "web searches" are clearly distinguished from OS searches, then of course I'd expect them to send data somewhere.

<comment><USER19> Wait, how do you know that does search per keypress? I've just tried in Windows, and it doesn't seem to do anything until I press enter when the loupe is selected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know what use a terminal application is without full disk access: the first two things I do on a new Mac are disable SIP (so I can use dtrace effectively) and grant all my terminal applications full disk access. I'm getting really tired of Apple's "security" policies that have no user- controllable ways to override the defaults.

<comment><USER21> What it has made me actually very grateful for is the sudden revelation - <USER2> me - that Dropbox, Google Drive and others are secretly reading files that I never explicitly asked - or wanted - them to read. macOS now asks and allows me to block by default.

No, Google, I DIDN'T intend for you to snoop in my Mac ~/Downloads folder - that area is PRIVATE. So in a way it's good for user Privacy, Apple Inc.-aside.

<comment><USER22> Hang on, Google and Dropbox are snooping around on the filesystem outside of their configuration or explicitly shared folders?

<comment><USER21> Yes. I was shocked at it, but on second thought I'm not surprised. Since Catalina, security prompts come up early on about Dropbox and Google Drive wanting to access your "Downloads" folder. Caught red-handed.

I know there's been third-party macOS apps providing this 'filesystem firewall' functionality for years now, but it's nice to have some of it come from Apple directly.

I think I will eventually move to Linux, I just don't feel private on my own damn computer anymore. I don't trust Apple either. Or I will harden macOS more and more because of this abuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Remember when Windows Vista first came out, and people reviled the utterly useless intrusive UAC security dialogues that would pop up every 10 seconds? And the inexplicable confusing security model that just broke most things? And the fact that it was a waste of time because it just trained people to hit "yes" all the time?

Apparently Apple doesn't remember, because they seem intent to make all the exact same mistakes.

<comment><USER24> Is this alert appearing multiple times for every app on the system, or just for Terminal and only once ever?

Since I'm only hearing about this in a techie article about Terminal, I think it sounds completely different from Vista UAC.

<comment><USER14> It's once per app that tries to access something restricted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Personally I'm all for increased protection in an OS, the old model of users having permissions no longer works. You can't trust your users, they don't know what they are running when they install software. This new model of each "app" having permissions is far more sensible, more of that please!

<comment><USER26> I'm one of the users and I don't need protections, I need freedom.

<comment><USER27> Do you run as root on all your systems?

<comment><USER26> I run as root when I need it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> after updating to Catalina I was suddenly unable to edit my own ~/.ssh/config. I still can't figure out why not. I could rename it and make a copy, though, and the old one shows this:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 aaaaaaa staff 2571 Sep 15 2017 config~

com.apple.finder.copy.source.checksum#N 4

com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineNewestSnapshot 50

com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineOldestSnapshot 50

that file remains read-only to me. what is going on?

<comment><USER29> It doesn't say "config" above, it says "config~".

Isn't that like a Vim backup file? Or that's the copy you renamed?

<comment><USER30> I think that's an emacs backup file. Does Vim also use the <filename>~ format too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> c-smile Another trap with this that I found myself in.

I had an XCode project sitting in folder on desktop. Small utility that I modify frequently.

After Catalina upgrade compilation of that project stopped working.

XCode started complaining "file is inaccessible" or something like that. Peculiarity is that you can open that file from IDE through Open containing folder / Finder.

And XCode provides absolutely no clue why it cannot access files of the project...

Road that is seeded by such good intentions goes where?

<comment><USER31> Try running xattr on the file in the terminal. It might include why it can't open it

<comment> c-smile Yeah but that would be the last option you will think of when you will try to re-compile project that was working just yesterday ...

<comment><USER31> I learned about this option last week after a app I installed wouldn't open, but from a different zip it would while they both had the same MD5 and SHA hash. There was a xattr flag on it that prevented it from working. Just a hunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not related, but my "/backup" folder was removed by Catalina upon upgrading. Of course I backed up "/backup" to an external drive daily, but still...not cool.

<comment><USER14> It should have been moved to a "Relocated Items" or "Previous System" folder, or something similar.

<comment><USER32> Interesting, thanks! They moved to /Users/Shared/Relocated Items .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Millennials are killing Unix" — well put — in what world does a _system shell_ application need permissions to access files?! It's _supposed_ to let you poke under the hood, shouldn't it have that permission to begin with?

Plus, if drag-and-drop somehow enables Terminal to get that file permission, then I guess either of two things: (a) Terminal is special -cased to be the only such app capable of gaining that kind of permission from a drag-and-drop, in which case well why didn't they just grant it permission from the start; or (b) it can be exploited by any other app to gain similar permissions on drag- and-drop of a file onto the app... ?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't think this is new? Applications usually get automatic access to files you drag or copy into them; this is a Powerbox feature that has been around for a while. This presumably just extends the feature to the new restricted directories, using a new xattr instead of the one used previously (com.apple.security.private.scoped-bookmark-key, I think?).

</comment><comment><USER34> Okay this is very strange. It seems like OSX is regressing in the file permissions experience and heading towards a more Windows like experience. Considering how incredibly annoying the Windows file permissions experience can be, I think that's a terrible direction to head towards. There are so many complaints of people being unable to access files after the Catalina upgrade. I hope they simplify their permissions and adopt a more sane/less user hostile model. Security needs to be implemented in such a way that it doesn't get in between using my device for work.

</comment><comment><USER35> > because Millennials are killing Unix

How is this our fault?

<comment><USER36> Everything is our fault. Haven't you been paying attention?

<comment><USER37> According to my millennial son, boomers screwed up everything.

<comment><USER38> Exactly!

<comment><USER39> The boomers knew you'd blame them, so they preemptively blamed the silent generation.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > because Millennials are killing Unix.

This is where I closed the article.

</comment><comment><USER41> I can't get these disk restrictions to work.

1) I granted full disk access to iTerm2. Later I removed them in the UI and I can still do everything in iTerm. 2) I have "Documents" granted to a Java app. Tried opening or saving a file in various locations and didn't notice any restriction other than my ordinary UNIX user's 3) I created an app bundle containing a plain shell script that reads my firefox cookie file and curls the file somewhere. This app runs just fine with no prompt whatsoever.

Am I being stupid here or what's up?

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm reading comments and I think some of them are unfair.

First of all, I can see how this functionality is oriented towards the average Joe, not developers, sysadmins or hackers in general.

This helps the user, to an extent, to protect his assets from malware or accidents.

Also, it is undocumented, probably for a reason, this could be an early version that will be evolved and announced once the feel comfortable.

</comment><comment><USER43> Tangentially, for pages like this that don't have any sort of max-width set, you may want to use a bookmarklet like "Force Narrow Page" available here [https://alanhogan.com/bookmarklets](https://alanhogan.com/bookmarklets) — or of course one of the reading-mode browser extensions, etc

</comment><comment><USER44> Ok, so this isn't about Tomcat...

</comment><comment><USER45> See Apple does a bunch of breaking changes "for security", and we don't know whether to thank them or curse them, but then stuff like clears it up.

They are unsystematicaly doing whatever the hell they like, without regard to consistency or compatibility.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Something sounds weird about a terminal app (running as me) running a shell (running as me) not being able to access a directory owned by me.

<comment><USER14> This is the entire goal behind sandboxing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Don't you mean illegal Catalina file access change?

Did you just change the permissions on that file? That's against the rules isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER47> I wish I could just stick with my 2015 Macbook Pro (USB-A and no touchbar) and MacOS 10.12 forever.

I feel like that was the pinnacle of Apple hardware/software.

<comment><USER4> Why Sierra over High Sierra? To me, that's like saying Leopard is the pinnacle when Snow Leopard exists.

(I have very strong feelings about individual OS X versions)

<comment><USER13> Can't forget the migration to APFS. For me that was reason alone to upgrade from Sierra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > It's well known

I didn't know that! Lovely feature.

<comment><USER49> I remember reading if you drag an NSAttributedString with background/foreground color, that will change your terminal colors too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It really feels like Apple's OS updates have started to become user hostile in an attempt to "iOS-ify" MacOS.

<comment><USER51> How is this user hostile? The behavior described is that the Terminal is granted access to the file automatically when the user specifically tries to access the file in Terminal.

<comment><USER52> Because you cannot revoke that access either through GUI tools, or through sudoed terminal commands.

I think this is most likely a bug, but if not, then it is definitely user hostile.

<comment><USER14> I doubt this is a bug; a similar feature has been available in the app sandbox for a while.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The amazing numbers behind World Of Warcraft (in 2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thegamereviews.com/article-1515-World-of-Warcraft-by-the-Numbers.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I poached this from the answer in a StackExchange submission cellis made, pretty incredible numbers and it's had two _more_ years of development since then.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2585212></comment>


Paul Graham Steps Down From Daily Hacker News Duties - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/03/29/paul-graham-steps-down-from-daily-hacker-news-duties/

<comment><USER2> This is a perfect specimen of what I spend my day clearing off the front page: a knockoff story that has been covered much better by a primary source—in this case our own front page.

Normally I'd kill this, but I'll bury it instead, in case anyone wants to comment. We're not going to crack down as hard on meta-stuff for a few days, while all this moderation business sinks in.

</comment><comment><USER3> reference to main thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7493856)

</comment><comment><USER4> We know.</comment>


Laura Poitras Reveals Her Own Life Under Surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/02/snowdens-chronicler-reveals-her-own-life-under-surveillance/ <comment><USER3> >a book she's publishing to accompany the exhibit includes her journal from the height of that surveillance, recording her first-person experience of becoming a spying subject, along with her inner monologue as she first corresponded with the secret NSA leaker she then knew only as "Citizenfour."

That line really highlighted the fallacy that "mass surveillance is effective" for me.

They were actively spying on her concurrently while she was "the subject of a grand jury investigation" and still were unable to deduce that she was _actively conspiring with Edward Snowden_ which would ultimately decimate their reputation worldwide.

<comment><USER4> >>a book she's publishing to accompany the exhibit includes her journal from the height of that surveillance, recording her first-person experience of becoming a spying subject, along with her inner monologue as she first corresponded with the secret NSA leaker she then knew only as "Citizenfour."

> That line really highlighted the fallacy that "mass surveillance is > effective" for me.

Ohh it is so much worse than that. For me eye opening moment was CCC 2015 talk "What does Big Brother see, while he is watching?".

The main takeaway. People engaged in surveillance are not "evil", "villainous", "dark", "shadowy" or "dangerous", or even "malicious". They are bunch of very sad, very pathetic wankers. Their job has less meaning than any other job I can think of. (Even TSA airport checks may be more meaningful)

This is a powerful talk. And it frames global surveillance just as it should be framed. As a waste of money, people going through soul killing, democracy killing, privacy killing motions. Without any chance of getting closer to declared goal, using methodology that if anything, hurts their declared goals.

Unless their real goal is control! But in such case they should be called out on that and de-funded.

<comment><USER5> I think Mass Surveillance is a bad idea, extremely high risk and the potential for abuse is high. I also think that it consolidates too much power in one place which is dangerous for the future and the secrecy is a big problem.

That said there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks and pretending there isn't is weird to me.

> That line really highlighted the fallacy that "mass surveillance is > effective" for me.

Specific evidence of success is likely to be classified. It's possible attacks have been stopped - the classification of information makes it hard to know either way.

Though mass collection can help, if you have intel of suspicious people you could look through the entire history of their communication - see what they've been saying and to whom. When you newly learn that a person is a part of ISIS (for example) you can look through their entire communication stream retroactively. Since the attackers are not always that sophisticated (they used SMS in Paris) you can potentially learn a lot of information by doing this (their network, maybe plans).

They're posting videos of themselves on youtube showing off weapons and locations - I suspect there's a lot of information available in their communication that's useful for stopping attacks. It's a tool you would obviously want if you had to do the job.

That said I think the secrecy is dangerous because it prevents the public from being able to determine what level we'd accept (and legal recourse against abuse). It also is more likely to encourage abuse and since James Clapper lied to congress about it we can't trust the organizations that have tasked themselves to do it.

Thinking long-term, it took a long time to get relatively benign governments - consolidating this much power in one place (especially in secrecy) is something we probably shouldn't do.

<comment><USER6> _there is an obvious use for it in helping stop attacks_

It's not that obvious to me. Can you explain why you think this is obvious? Because in order to stop attacks, you need specific, actionable intelligence. Indiscriminate collection of data just muddies the water.

I was going to do a simple calculation here, but wikipedia already has a nice illustration from Cory Doctorow: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox#Discuss...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox#Discussion)

<comment><USER5> Sure - as mentioned in my previous comment it gives you an entire history of communication to retroactively analyze.

It's not likely to reveal much alone (too much noise - like you suggested), but given a lead from some other means you can use it as a tool to look through the recent communications of that suspect and their close network.

This would be a tool that would be useful to have and since people planning violence are likely communicating about plans - looking at comms could lead to actionable intelligence.

Is this potential intel worth the risk of abuse? I think probably not, but that should probably be decided by the society being surveilled. Either way it definitely should not be done in secret.

I worry that trying to argue surveillance is entirely useless will do more harm overall because to those 'in favor' of surveillance it's a dumb position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was in Iraq at the time, and probably interacting with people one step away from the people involved in persecuting her. Based on everything I saw at the time, they were perhaps well meaning but utterly overwhelmed and without any handle on the situation, and once something like this starts, it snowballs and has a life of its own. The terrifying thing is when this happens to someone who isn't a white US citizen journalist...they can easily end up in local detention or even theater detention or more, indefinitely, or be killed.

I wish I could apologize to her for what she went through. It probably is better for the world that she went through it, was then an even more effective journalist, and then in contact with Snowden, but it was a huge sacrifice I'm sure.

<comment><USER8> The iraq war, where we gave the bottom 10% of your high school class the ability to cause the US to harass this woman for a decade on a hunch. Sans evidence. As you obliquely mentioned, it also explains half or more of the people in Guantanamo.

The whole thing should be viewed as a horrific embarrassment, but I think it reveals quite a bit about our actual (as opposed to our rah rah freedom) principles.

<comment><USER9> > The whole thing should be viewed as a horrific embarrassment

Even if her problems are something which can easier provoke empathy in readers here (as in "I could be her") they are insignificant compared to the problems of the people in Iraq in which they are as the effect of the political decisions of the government for which we assume that it did what its duty is and which got the wide support for the war: the US government which according to their own press statements did this "to bring democracy" and "because of WMD" in Iraq. It turned out there were no WMD there and that the "proofs" were a lie.

[http://www.salon.com/2015/05/20/george_w_bushs_cia_briefer_a...](http://www.salon.com/2015/05/20/george_w_bushs_cia_briefer_admits_iraq_wmd_intelligence_was_a_lie/)

The US soldiers who were there are probably the most credible source to talk about what they've actually brought there. For the current results just look at the map that includes ISIS controlled territories:

[https://pietervanostaeyen.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/img_50...](https://pietervanostaeyen.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/img_5089.png)

And the statistics:

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraqi_insurg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraqi_insurgency_%282011%E2%80%93present%29)

Not to mention neighboring Syria and what's left from the country there.

Are we able to have empathy for the people there too?

<comment><USER10> Its not about democracy. What the US govt did is fool its citizens by telling them they were going to war over wmd and democracy. US is protecting saudi govt which is not a democracy. And usa did overthrow a democratically elected Iranian govt. So much for wanting to give people democracy.

US has no business meddling in other soverign nation's affair. That nation has people who will bring about a change if they really want change. US doesn't need to force democracy on those people as it ends up only destabilizing the whole region. Trying to change too much at once never flies. Not to forget democracy isn't even the ideal form of govt, especially when US itself isn't improving its own democratic process. First improve things at home.

Its real pity some citizens had to go through this much pain to bring to light illegal mass surveillance activity. I fail to see any difference between an oppressive govt and us govt now a days. This is becoming an orwellian nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ___Excuse blatant Plug_ __:)

When we built Umbrella, we had in mind the example of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras meeting Edwards Snowden. Initially Snowden tried to make contact but Greenwald found the process of digital security too cumbersome and awkward. Poitras however was more persistant. Also, when Greenwald and Poitras went to Hong Kong, they knew little or nothing about physical security. We wanted to change that and make it easier to have everything a journalist like Glenn Greenwald would need to do to meet a source in their pocket - <USER2> from sending a secure email to meeting a source in a high risk location where they may be under surveillance from a regime which may threaten their vital work. So we launched an open source Android app called Umbrella -

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.umbrella)

[https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_android](https://github.com/securityfirst/Umbrella_android)

It's still a long way from being perfect but hopefully will make the life of future Laura Poitras, just a little bit easier.

<comment><USER12> While I think your cause is noble, can you really trust Android, and even if you can trust Android, can you really trust the baseband firmware?

<comment><USER11> No. But as we all know, there is practically no firmware which can be trusted. I think the issue is always about measuring risk versus the threat level. Journalists that we train every day all over the world are always going to carry out high risk activities. The temptation is always to try to build a tool for the most extreme threat model and in the process, bypass the most common threats - leaving the average journalist with even less protection. Indeed, we increasingly find far much focus amongst our trainees on high level NSA Prism the stuff while little consideration of the basics - passwords, who has access to information in your own office, dealing with physical surveillance etc etc - all of which oir experience has taught us is far more common security hazard to journalists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > the surveillance targeting Poitras had transformed her into a nervous wreck. > [...] she describes feeling constantly watched, entirely robbed of privacy. > "I haven't written in over a year for fear these words are not private," > [...] She sleeps badly, plagued with nightmares

Poitras and others being surveilled by people in the US and other governments represent an extreme point on a spectrum. Lower down the spectrum are many more people who each have one or more busybodies from government, academia, the media, business, entertainment/sports, or religion, etc after them for some reason/s. Those busybodies often discover and collude with each other. The resulting surveillance and interference against us is probably quite tame compared to what the US govt has done against Poitras, but intense enough that we can extrapolate to more easily appreciate what she's gone through.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _She notes her computer glitching and "going pink" during her interviews > with NSA whistleblower William Binney, and that it tells her its hard drive > is full despite seeming to have 16 gigabytes free._

Peculiar. There's a decent chance that it wasn't related to espionage. There's also a smaller chance that it was espionage gone awry, but I highly doubt state level actors are that clumsy.

If it was espionage it was probably intentional. To what end I'm not sure. Attempts to interfere with the interview seem pointless at best, at least for the sake of interference itself. Probably some sort of psychological game or intimidation. A unit like TAO likely has encyclopedic manuals dedicated to the art of using their capability to mess with people's heads.

On the bright side, it's at least comforting that we aren't seeing privacy activists being locked away due to planted evidence that appears forensically legit. State actors have the capability to do this if they want.

<comment><USER15> _She sleeps badly, plagued with nightmares about the American government. She reads Cory Doctorow's Homeland and re-reads 1984, finding too many parallels with her own life._ , the psychological aspect is very troubling. A government state doesn't actually have to put you under constant surveillance, they just have to make you think you're under constant surveillance.

The unintended consequence of the surveillance may have hardened her resolve to be a privacy advocate, but it certainly didn't do her mental health much good.

<comment><USER16> _A government state doesn 't actually have to put you under constant surveillance, they just have to make you think you're under constant surveillance._

It's the old idea of the Panopticon as envisioned by Jeremy Bentham: Achieve compliance not by watching everybody all the time, but by creating a system where everybody could be watched at any time.

<comment><USER17> I like how the Panopticon concept is complemented by the Synopticon one, as in "many watches few". It's close to the "sousveillance" concept.

What may save us from a dystopic totalitarism is the freedom and agency we get through our devices and networks. Certainly software freedom, use of cryptography and uncensored, inclusive basic communications infrastructures are needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you imagine yourself in the future(maybe 50 years in the future) and look back at the present and think about the present,specifically regarding privacy,mass surveillance,data collection,the state of the law and the power that the Government and corporations have over people's life, it seems totally ridiculous to me.

This is a problem that can only be solved if the vast majority of the population gets involved and cares about the pressing issues in the world.

One of the great side effects of the explosion of the internet is that it has created a potential medium for everyone to participate in the process of democracy and law making. With the awareness and the right tools to enable participation of the masses in every decision that the Government makes, we can limit the power that the Government and corporations have in the process of democracy and law making.

And with participation of the common man,we can finally move towards a democracy in the true sense of the word.

<comment><USER19> Which is exactly why the totalitarian state has been kicked into high gear in response. Throughout history technological change that has enabled communication and the passing of information has been responded to by the oligarchy by taking control of and limited that media. Telegraph/gram, radio, telivision, the printing press and so on.

Part of my theory is that it just took them a little while to understand exactly how dangerous the internet is to them, but now they have fully realized this it has almost forced the implimentation of the surveillance state so that later the cat can be walked back on dissidents.

Its what William Binney and Thomas Drake call the "turn key totalitarian state". It may not be turned on yet, but the structure is being put in place. All it takes is a martial law enabling event and a potus willing to turn the key.

Which is why I think everyones going to be amazed when Jeb gets the nom and steals the election.

<comment><USER20> And the 2 degree climate change over the next 50 years is likely just the trigger needed to justify martial law (much of coastal Florida is expected to flood, the North East of the US will have the extremes of weather that we've just started experiencing, much of the farm belt is expected to undergo drought).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every time I hear one of these Bernie supporters talk, I want to remind them of Obama in '08\. We thought Obama would be the guy to save the country this. But reality is a lot more complicated than ideals. It's actually a bit like startups in that sense. You can have all the ideals you want but it doesn't matter a whit without execution.

<comment><USER8> The structure of the US government has an unusually high number of veto points. Presidents have, as opposed to similar positions in other countries, much less power to push their agenda. People who don't understand that change comes slowly in the US, and requires serious organization to push through the house and senate, are being silly and simultaneously sabotaging their ostensible goals. viz Obama supporters not voting in off-presidential year elections and hence crippling his ability to push legislation.

<comment><USER21> Well go ahead. All of you mod me down. But you cannot explain the executive Branch's response to Snowden. Did the Republicans in legislature do that? No. That was purely the administration's choice.

<comment><USER22> > _Well go ahead. All of you mod me down_

The HN guidelines ask you not to comment like this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> With regards to the excerpt below and out of general interest (since I'm not a journalist, nor know any), what ethical responsibility should journalists have concerning intervention when reporting in wartime?

      He later told the Army investigators that he "strongly
      believed"—but without apparent evidence—"POITRAS had
      prior knowledge of the ambush and had the means to report
      it to U.S. Forces; however, she purposely did not report
      it so she could film the attack for her documentary."

Should they remain objective in such a hypothetical situation? Are there standard rules of guidance for journalists?

<comment><USER23> [http://keywiki.org/Laura_Poitras#Pre- knowledge_of_ambush.3F](http://keywiki.org/Laura_Poitras#Pre- knowledge_of_ambush.3F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > it tells her its hard drive is full despite seeming to have 16 gigabytes > free.

If she has a lot of small files she might have run out of inodes [0] which will report "no space left on device" when trying to create a new file, although there's still space left. Inodes store a file's attributes. In ext4 they're limited to total disk space / 16Kb, so a lot of files <16kb will cause trouble.

You can check inode usage via `df -i`.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I'll preorder the book, interestingly it wont be available until May in the UK but Amazon will ship from the US.

Can anyone recommend any other similar books in the meantime?

</comment><comment><USER26> I pre-ordered her book on Amazon a few days ago and am anxiously looking forward to the day it arrives.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wish they would focus on releasing more documents instead of navel gazing...

<comment><USER28> > I wish they would focus on releasing more documents instead of navel > gazing...

Both are useful. In this case, it is providing an explicit, human narrative for the harm that surveillance can inflict. Many people respond more strongly to emotional anecdoes than to hard data (pretty much the reason why low- probability terrorist attacks are disproportionately feared over more common ways to die), so having a more emotional, anecdotal account of the actual effect of surveillance on people is also important.</comment></comment>


Logs of compromised Tor site released - <AUTHOR> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-November/007731.html <comment><USER2> Am I understanding this correctly?

* Attacker has control of X number of tor nodes

* Attacker DDoS-es a hidden service, sending millions of requests to it

* Attacker hopes that at least one of these requests will be routed exclusively through their own tor nodes, thus revealing the IP address of the hidden service

That sounds neat. Is it a viable way to de-anonimize a hidden service?

<comment><USER3> Is there actually anything you can do to prevent this kind of attack?

I'm assuming once your network is compromised to such an extent there is not much you can do.

<comment><USER4> Cut the hardline. Well, but seriously, shut down the network temporarily.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't that only make it easier to confirm that this network/ip is associated with given hidden service?

This made me thinking btw about the latest hetzner hiccups which never happened before.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, assuming a global adversary, you'd just watch which servers went dark and the investigate them. We really need a "defensive mode" for TOR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To grab everything:

      $ mkdir foo
      $ cd foo
      $ wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent http://doxbin.strangled.net/

Or you can grab a tarball here: [http://evilrouters.net/mirror/doxbin.strangled.net.tar](http://evilrouters.net/mirror/doxbin.strangled.net.tar) (~37 MB)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand the context of this post on torproject.org

Who is this guy? Nachash? Is he an operator of one of the illegal websites that were seized as a result of Onymous? He is talking as I would expect a sysadmin, so is that what you'd call him? He talks about inheriting PHP code, is he referring to the original SR source code? If so, how could he have acquired this source code?

<comment><USER8> > _Who is this guy?_

He was the guy running doxbin [0] before Onymous seized the servers.

He's trying to provide any relevant information he can to the Tor devs so that they can better prevent attacks against hidden services in the future.

> _He talks about inheriting PHP code, is he referring to the original SR > source code?_

He's referring to the doxbin source code [1], which he didn't write entirely but just improved upon.

[0] doxbinzqkeoso6sl.onion

[1] qhlkmirbijvet2dp.onion

<comment><USER9> >Who is this guy?

To add on to what tux3 has posted, nachash has been involved in various other illegal happenings on the net over the past few years, usually with other ED hackertypes.

You can just use google to find irc logs to get a general idea of who this guy is.

<comment><USER10> ED?

<comment><USER7> encyclopedia dramatica?

<comment><USER10> Thank you - now that I know I feel silly not making the connection, as I had just been looking at some Encyclopedia Dramatica after Googling Nachash.

These guys seem to be pretty smart, but constantly embroiled in some seemingly petty feud or scandal within their scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What if we just started using keys with tor and setting a few (trusted) default nodes...

Update to clarify: I'm talking about every user setting a few distinct trusted nodes.

<comment><USER12> A few nodes makes it easier for a global adversary to attack, I'd think.

The FBI could seize those nodes and replace them with rooted boxes. The NSA could use their little boxes in Sprint/ATT/L3's broom closets to forward packets to Ft. Meade.

What Tor needs is lots more traffic going through lots more nodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't freenet or I2P more resilient to such attacks ?

I mean tor is great because it allows to browse webpages, but aren't there thicker means to be anonymous ?

<comment><USER11> Every system is susceptible to a graph attack at some level...

<comment><USER14> Freenet doesn't have the concept of a server that hosts a site though. Data is distributed across the datastore in nodes in Freenet. When users request a site or data then it is gathered from the nodes that hold the information.

This means sites can't have dynamic functionality but for those that host only static data then it would seem to be an alternative.

They are possibly vulnerable to being discovered when inserting data if the attacker knows what they are inserting.

<comment><USER15> > They are possibly vulnerable to being discovered when inserting data if the > attacker knows what they are inserting.

If we go by the theory that compromising a single Tor user is not feasible, then connecting to the Freenet network through a fresh Tor connection every time you want to insert new data should make it a lot more difficult to find the identity of the person who is inserting this data.

I'm thinking here in the context of operating a black market, where new items are signed with the operator's key, and uploaded to Freenet, along with a list of all items on the market in question, also signed by the operator (with an increasing nonce).

<comment><USER16> _new items are signed with the operator 's key, and uploaded to Freenet, along with a list of all items on the market in question, also signed by the operator (with an increasing nonce)._

It really confuses me why people insist on thinking about electronic systems of exchange in broken physical world terms: market/store, buyer, seller. See [https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/issues/961](https://github.com/OpenBazaar/OpenBazaar/issues/961)

<comment><USER15> I don't see what's "broken" about these terms. People understand them, and they serve their purpose: explaining the roles of various nodes in the network.

However, I understand your argument that there's really no need to differentiate between "buyers" and "sellers": every node on the network could be either, both or neither at any point in time.

I don't think changing the language used in OpenBazaar really makes much of a difference though. I doubt people are that interested in doing barter trading via an online market. That seems very inefficient (ie. sending a pound of beef jerky in in the mail in exchange for receiving five LED bulbs). The only reason for doing this would be if the two parties don't have proper money available.

It'd be a lot more efficient for either party to sell their good (beef jerky or light bulbs) for money locally (for example bitcoins), and pay for the other item in bitcoins, so only a single good needs to be sent via mail. The party receiving money can then just buy the goods he wants locally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> also of note: [https://blog.torservers.net/20141109/three-servers- offline-l...](https://blog.torservers.net/20141109/three-servers-offline- likely-seized.html)

</comment><comment><USER18>
        From the standpoint of someone with root access to a
        dedi with OpenVZ vms, finding hidden services that are
        hosted by customers is a matter of looking for files
        named private_key anywhere under the /vz folder.

        [...]

        2. Cross your fingers and pray really, really hard that
        the money trail is correctly obscured.

Hetzner is a popular German hoster and as far as I know payment requires either a valid credit card or a German bank account. How is it possible to obscure the money trail at all?

<comment><USER11> Can you use a prepaid credit card?

<comment><USER18> From their payments page [1]:

        The following credit cards are accepted through this
        payment facility: Visa, Master, Diners and Amex.

I don't know if any of those companies offers prepaid credit cards.

[1] [http://www.hetzner.co.za/helpcentre/index.php/articles/conte...](http://www.hetzner.co.za/helpcentre/index.php/articles/content/category/payments/what_methods_are_ava_87/)

<comment><USER19> This page states they also support Direct Deposit, which means you can walk into any bank and deposit cash, no ID required.

<comment><USER11> In the US there's no option for this... Most banks will not allow you to deposit funds into another persons account.

<comment><USER20> This is false; I've done it several times with no issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So this is perhaps a little naive but could any of these boxes be shell shock vulnerable? If they were that would make this whole thing trivial...

</comment><comment><USER21> %5C%22 stands for \"

Not sure if that's significant in any way, could be just a unique identifier.

<comment><USER22> It looks like guard discovery was one component of the attack, and DoS could have been used to boot HSes into choosing a malicious guard, or at least, a raided (but no logs?) or somehow-rooted guard. So it's probably just a badly- coded script-kiddie-grade DoS script. It doesn't have to be an _amazing_ , novel DoS to have an effect - it just has to be a DoS, and they don't have to show their hands by using anything particularly amazing.

What I think is that they probably _don 't_ have anything that we don't know about already as being theoretically possible. They just tried every attack we _do_ know about at once, and some of it proved fruitful given their reach. Tor stinks - but it still _works_ , and we can improve it.</comment></comment>


Tony Fadell Q&A: Why I sold Nest to Google - <AUTHOR> http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/13/tony-fadell-why-i-sold-nest-to-google/ <comment><USER2> _Once Google made its pitch, did you reach out to other potential acquirers?

Our goal was about accelerating our vision, and how many companies are really in position to do that? I'm going to a new home, not selling a used car._

\-- > Translation: No

 _Okay, more specifically: Did you discuss a possible deal with Apple (AAPL)?

I'm not at liberty to discuss that._

\-- > Translation: Yes

:)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think apple would buy nest. They are a very focused company. They like to sell products that people will buy ever few years.?

I do believe google will buy Uber next. Makes perfect sense.</comment>


Amazon are now offering warehouse tours (and even advertising them on TV) - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboutamazon.co.uk/amazon-fulfilment/tour-an-amazon-fulfilment-centre/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just saw an advert for this on TV. The advert shows multiple employees talking about the advantages of working in an Amazon fulfilment centre. They offer tours so that you can see this first hand.

While this is clearly an effort to help shed the negative image that they have for their employees, if they are willing to put it under the microscope, then hopefully that implies that there really have been improvements that will stick?</comment>


Bootstrapped and Profitable - <AUTHOR> https://postmake.io/bootstrapped <comment><AUTHOR> This was inspired by Sahil's twitter thread [1] the other day. I included the number of employees along with any relevant blog posts or interviews for each company to provide more context.

Interestingly enough, it turns out Basecamp's founders actually kinda sorta got some money from Jeff Bezos [2] when they were starting out, but apparently the money was never used to fund the company so technically they're still bootstrapped.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/shl/status/1220111852312518656](https://twitter.com/shl/status/1220111852312518656)

[2]: [https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-deal-jeff-bezos-got-on- baseca...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-deal-jeff-bezos-got-on-basecamp/)</comment>


Show HN: OCR Agent to extract text from images and pdfs in batches - <AUTHOR> https://www.agenty.com/products/ocr-agent/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Hackers,

We've launched cloud based OCR agent in Agenty to extract text from almost any type of images or pdfs. You can just enter the URL of images or can also upload in a Agenty bucket to extract text easily.

No setup, no configuration, no coding requires.

Here is the video - [https://www.agenty.com/docs/video- tutorials.aspx](https://www.agenty.com/docs/video-tutorials.aspx)

Let me know your feedback.</comment>


Whole House Fan and Evaporative Cooler - <AUTHOR> https://www.jefftk.com/p/whole-house-fan-evaporative-cooler <comment><USER2> As the owner of a whole house fan + evaporative cooler, and someone who lives in a city where hundreds of thousands of people own and operate them, I invite Mr. Kaufman to visit Albuquerque, to watch them in everyday operation, where we've been swamping it up for over 50 years. It's a bit bizarre to read about it as if it's a brand new theory.

Let me clear up a few misconceptions: You put the fan on the inlet next to the "pad" where the water soaks in (nowadays usually located at a central point on the roof). This works a lot better than a single outlet point for a number of reasons, not least of which the source of air can be made to have reduced dust. (Imagine a leaf blower or old diesel next to a window on a structure with negative pressure).

There are never circumstances where a whole-house fan is made less effective with humidification. It may be no more effective, but for those 100% humid nights where it's cool enough to cool down the house, the swamp still runs. In humid environments, it may warm up the house at night (due to temperatures, not humidity), which is why swamps don't get used in most places.

<comment><USER3> > _There are never circumstances where a whole-house fan is made less > effective with humidification. It may be no more effective, but for those > 100% humid nights where it 's cool enough to cool down the house, the swamp > still runs._

This. Put simply, the wet bulb temperature is _always_ colder than the dry bulb temperature.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet- bulb_temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea is older than one might realize. Ancient Persians and other Middle Eastern civilizations knew how to combine a windcatcher, or _bâdgir_ , with a _qanat_ , an underground channel, to create an effective evaporative cooler.

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

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

<comment> saiya-jin Many people don't understand how effective Qanats are, but they were/are used to store freakin' ice in the middle of freakin' Iranian scorching desert - seen one near Yazd.

Big respect to the builders/engineers. It's 2400 years old

<comment><USER5> Just FYI: You seem to have been shadowbanned for quite a while. I vouched for this comment to let you know, because I didn't see anything obviously deserving such treatment.

<comment><USER6> He was banned and notified of it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13606809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13606809)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A while ago a Low-Tech Magazine article discussing compressed air as energy storage got a lot of traction here[0][1]. One of the more promising approaches it included was _combining_ the compressed air energy storage with heating and cooling solutions. This integrated approach should result in much higher energy efficiencies, since problems with one technology basically become solutions for another. Evaporative cooling could be yet another low-tech tool in the toolbox here.

Aside: that LTM article made me think of a complaint of a friend of mine on that the solar panels on his house are almost never at optimal efficiency due to temperature. At which point I asked him if active cooling of solar panels using heat transport + a heat buffer underneath the house + re-using said heat in winter might be a win-win solution for that - he thought it was a good idea but also too ambitious a project for him to undertake.

Shared all HN links with the author, hope he joins in on the discussion here.

[0] _" Ditch the Batteries: Off-Grid Compressed Air Energy Storage"_, [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the- batteries-o...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the-batteries- off-the-grid-compressed-air-energy-storage.html)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17143163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17143163)

<comment><USER8> These ideas are very cool, but I don't believe they will see succeed in the mainstream marketplace without price signals.

I also don't trust government bureaucrats to figure this all out, either.

A carbon tax basically would just reward good ideas in the market, and punish the bad ones.

However, almost no one supports it. You get some big figures like Musk and the economist, Mankiw; but both the left and the right of mainstream politics don't want it. The right doesn't want new taxes nor to particularly combat global warming; the left is ideologically opposed to market-based solutions and instead supports big government/power-grab solutions--specifically cap and trade.

TL;DR consider supporting a carbon tax if you like these ideas and want to combat global warming

<comment><USER9> The left is by no means a monolithic block in these respects. A lot of the left - perhaps not so visible in the US - are ideologically opposed to big government. Libertarianism started with an anarchist, after all (Joseph Dejacques; who criticised Proudhon - the "founder" of anarchism - for being a "mere moderate anarchist, liberal but not libertarian").

Lots of left-wing ideologies favour using market mechanisms this way, and I wish more would - you can want to use market-mechanisms this way whether or not you're for free-market competition in terms of valuation and trade of company shares.

<comment><USER10> Among the USA war media's most important tasks is the maintenance of the false binary. They've done yeoman's work recently: how else could one explain that mainstream progressive thought is now to constantly foment nuclear war with Russia? (I'll quote Chancellor Merkel here: "I think it must once again become normal for Russian and American presidents to meet.") Alternatively, how is it that the party of Lincoln is now prominently associated with Nazis? (Go ahead, tell me _one_ of these observations is wrong...)

In reality, the two "choices" imposed upon us are Coke and Pepsi, two noxious compounds that require extended chemical analysis to differentiate. They both want more war, all the time, in every case, for whatever reason. The real reason, of course, is so that they may skim some of those sweet armaments manufacturing profits. No it's not a conspiracy. Important influencers know which side of their toast is buttered, but they are a small minority and they don't need to coordinate in secret. Everyone who _doesn 't_ revolve from bureaucratic post to public office to lobbyist to executive board to think- tank sinecure, is a mere useful idiot. If 10-20% of American voters ever learn about horseshoe theory, they'll be screwed. Therefore the media mentions that about as often as they mention e.g. Libya or Yemen.

So, it's little surprise that we Americans have no clue about leftist thought.

<comment><USER11> I was mostly with you until the "horseshoe theory" stuff, which seems out of place. If anything, "horseshoe theory" is a recent fabrication to reinforce the notion that the space outside of our false-binary choices are all invalid, and equally so. Social Democrats, Anarchists, and Nazis all get sort of lumped into the don't-even-think-about-it box together.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure it has been used that way! I'm thinking more about the areas of agreement that exist among people with different politics. Maybe we don't agree on the exact right destination for e.g. some $2T chunk of money, but we agree that it shouldn't be used to kill random people overseas. That ain't centrist! I occasionally lurk over at Caitlin Johnstone's site and I get a kick out of the "cross-ideological collaboration" she's doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As the cofounder of a heavily HVAC-related tech company, I can echo that this is indeed nowhere near a new idea.

Many large commercial buildings already do something similar, but instead of blowing cool, humid air through the structure, they use evaporation to cool the water itself in a condenser loop (with large cooling towers moving outside air across the water as it cascades down within the towers). The condenser water then enters a heat exchanger where it cools another loop of water that flows to the cooling coils in blower units throughout the building (you don't want dirty water that's been in contact with outside air going through cooling coils, so they are isolated loops).

Bear in mind, as others have mentioned, this approach is humidity-limited and is therefore rarely seen outside of arid regions. And also note that humidity levels tend to be highest at night when the air is the coolest, which further limits the effectiveness of evaporative cooling at night. Once relative humidity reaches 100%, you get absolutely no cooling from evaporation.

<comment> gm-conspiracy The domain in your profile is not currently active.

<comment><USER13> Yikes! Thanks...I need to fix that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Evaporative cooler owner here. Thought I would add a few data points in case people were curious. We live in Denver, CO (arid climate, typically mid 90Fs in the summer but can reach over 100F. We tied the all time record of 105 in June FYI).

We inherited a MasterCool evaporative cooler (think big metal box where the evaporative pads are made of aspen fibers) when we bought our house. It wasn't very well sealed so we were only able to drive the temperature down ~10-15 degrees F so it would get pretty uncomfortable once it got above 90.

Replaced recently with a Breezair unit and it's been way better. The air it draws in seems to all be going through the evaporation media so we've been able to maintain 72-75 degrees in our old drafty house throughout the summer so far. I mostly don't mind the added humidity as I get fairly dry skin but we have a few doors which swell and stick due to absorbing the additional moisture.

I really wanted to get a Coolerado unit but they only seem to be readily available for commercial applications. The difference with this unit is that it is an indirect evaporative cooler so the air it blows into the cooled space has no added humidity (and it claims to be able to achieve > 100% wet bulb temperature due to its design [1]).

[1] [http://www.coolerado.com/pdfs/PowerMagMCTCfiguresCooleradoTI...](http://www.coolerado.com/pdfs/PowerMagMCTCfiguresCooleradoTIC.pdf)

<comment> gm-conspiracy The Coolerado looks like a self-contained evaporative cooler with a heat- exchanger.

What are the costs and specs on such equipment?

<comment><USER14> The specs seem fairly detailed (at least to a non-HVAC person) on their website [IE: 1].

Cost on the other hand doesn't seem to be readily available (my guess is expensive since they seem to be targeting businesses vs consumers).

[1] [http://www.coolerado.com/m50-energy-efficient-air- conditione...](http://www.coolerado.com/m50-energy-efficient-air-conditioner/) (Downloads tab)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My family lived in Phoenix, AZ since i was 6, and he had an Evap Cool and a traditional AC. Early in the summer the Evap works great and is way cheaper. Once it gets too hot or too humid, you switch over to the AC. The fun part was, my Dad would hold off switching as long as he could, and kind of compete with a friend nearby to see who could "stand it with the evap" as long as possible.

The hardest part i couldn't ever keep straight, was with the Evap you need doors open and with the AC you close them. i would get it straight by the time he'd switch over to the other system..

</comment><comment><USER16> If you have a smallish house and a centrally located fan, a whole house fan is amazing. The rooms get cooler and the attic gets cooler too. You can shut doors to make a specific room cool in minutes. Seriously one of the best things you can do to a house imo.

<comment><USER17> The attic getting cooler is one of the most important aspects of a house fan. The thermometer in my attic regularly reads 20° F above the outside temperature. Blowing that huge pocket of hot air out makes a huge difference.

<comment><USER18> My last house had a hot attic with a window at each end - I always intended to set up four fans on relays, two in each window, so it could blow cool air in from either end, to take into account which side was cool and shady (and night they could just switch off to to reduce wear).

<comment><USER19> In case this ever comes up again... they have attic fans that are activated via temperature so that would your overnight issue and I'd imagine the gains by rotating which side is pulling in air is negligible compared to the effort to control it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> House fans are pretty cool, but as someone who has had one before: be cautious of the airflow blowing out the flame on your gas stove / pilot light of various appliances.

It has only happened to me once or twice, and is a non issue if you choose which window(s) to open carefully.

That being said, we love our total home fan, and it's also great for clearing out various odors

Edit: if people are having campfires near your house you'll want to shut it off asap

<comment><USER21> Isn't there a temperature sensor that will shut down gas supply if heat stops?

<comment><USER22> This is true for gas heaters (actually it's usually a physical valve that opens on thermal expansion, not a sensor). This prevents a blown pilot from being a safety concern, but it's a pain to manually relight them.

I know of no gas stove that has such a feature, though.

<comment><USER23> Gas water heaters have this, as do older gas furnaces (any newer furnaces will have electronic ignition not a standing pilot).

For kitchen stoves, most have electronic ignition as well. For an older stove, the amount of gas released from an unlit pilot is not significant enough to pose a danger.

<comment><USER22> The issue isn't pilot lights for the oven itself; it's the stovetop. Most of the ones I've seen have individual electric lighters for each burner, which must be semi-manually activated (by turning the knob past "maximum" to a "light" setting until it catches). If you turn it to on without lighting it, or turn it off enough to put out the fire but not enough to completely cut off gas flow, you'll get a constant gas leak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _Another option would be to use the wall, ceiling, or floor as an > evaporative surface._

This proposal may seem over-complicated at first, but low-tech cob walls naturally exploit this effect by "breathing" humidity.

"these results show that earth buildings in diverse climates have significant potential to cool themselves evaporatively through sorption of moisture from humid night air and evaporation during the following day's heat."

~~ _Intrinsic Evaporative Cooling by Hygroscopic Earth Materials_ , [http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/6/3/38/htm](http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/6/3/38/htm)

</comment><comment><USER24> My parents have a whole house fan in their Atlanta, Georgia, home and its not been intentionally used in 30 years. Growing up I remember accidentally turning it on a few times and it was incredibly loud. Given the high summer heat and high humidity I don't understand why the builders included it.

<comment><USER25> I grew up in North Georgia, near Athens. My grandparents had a whole home fan like what you're describing. Extremely loud, terrifying as a child. The house is well shaded by trees and has a full basement. The basement provides a reservoir of cool air and the fan pulls that air up from the basement into the main area of the house.

This solution wasn't very effective in July and August. My grandmother had A/C installed not long after my grandfather died. Apparently he just refused to accept it as a necessity.

It's interesting though. The principles have been around for a long time. I've been told that it's the reason for very high ceilings in Victorian homes. The idea is that the hot air in the room rises and draws cooler air from beneath the house. In my experience, even with A/C it can be hard to stay comfortable in a house like that during the summer.

<comment><USER26> The whole-house fan was useful in swampy Waycross, GA, but we never had a house with such a fan in Athens.

Our house in Clearwater Florida, on the Gulf coast, desperately needed a whole-house exhaust fan; the compressor on the air conditioner would routinely trip a current-limiting circuit breaker, and the house would be 15 degrees F hotter than the outdoor temperatures.

Our whole-house swamp cooler in southern New Mexico worked really really well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is a somewhat new company out of India which has an improved approach. As others mentioned, swamp coolers have been around for a long time, especially in India. They are not popular anymore but AC's are expensive.

Their approach is use the refrigerative compressor to chill water for an cooler instead of chilling the air.

The efficiency is greatly improved and they claim 10% of running costs.

[https://www.thebetterindia.com/52984/vaayu-hybrid- chillers-c...](https://www.thebetterindia.com/52984/vaayu-hybrid-chillers- cooler-air-conditioner-indore/)

[http://www.vaayuindia.com/](http://www.vaayuindia.com/)

<comment><USER28> Large buildings commonly use chilled water HVAC systems. The scale at which these systems make sense is larger than a single family residence.

[http://www.york.com/for-your-workplace/chilled-water- systems](http://www.york.com/for-your-workplace/chilled-water-systems)

<comment><USER27> Yes I edited my comment. Looks like the approach of vaayu is to directly do evaporative cooling. So a chilled water swamp cooler. The commercial systems use the chilled water in closed coils.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A home built in the 1860s uses the principle of the whole house fan, but without the fan: you just open the windows at night and close 'em during the day, and you can regulate more with an attic trap door. It works well _most of the time_ , but sometimes there's problems.

Namely, if humidity gets trapped in the house, when you shut the house during the day, it can smell like mildew. It can be near-impossible to remove the humidity from the house without an air conditioner of some sort, or a dehumidifier. An evaporative cooler at night would make this worse because you're adding humidity.

Another problem is multiple storeys. The top floor will always be hotter, and it can build during hot days and leech the cool air from below. You need a powerful attic fan to remove excess heat and humidity or the top floor will become a swamp.

If you live in a big city, the average ambient temperature during the summer is probably going to be high enough that a whole house fan will not replace air conditioning, but could supplement it.

</comment><comment><USER30> My parents have had a whole house fan for around 10 years and love it. They can probably get through about 75% of the summer without turning on the air conditioner, leading to significant cost savings. They also have a very well insulated house, so once the cool air is inside, the house is really good at staying cool.

<comment><USER31> This would be a more valuable comment if we knew where your parents lived, approximately. The solutions for Maine are not necessarily the solutions for Minnesota or New Mexico.

<comment><USER30> Late on the reply, but Iowa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I thought you need pretty dry air to cool air via evaporation. The most unbearable kind of heat is a humid one wonder how well evaporative cooling would work in tropics for that.

<comment><USER33> Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

48 degrees dry heat is pretty unbearable.[1] Bagdad can get hot too, hot and dry, 51.1 record high.[2]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Augusta#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Augusta#Climate)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad#Climate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Since warm air can carry quite a bit more moisture than cool, this specific idea is likely to result in condensation as the cool outside air joins the moistened warm house air.

If the roof insulation is less than perfect, simply wetting the roof periodically will go a long way toward drawing heat out of the house.

If the roof insulation is good enough that this wouldn't work, you very likely don't have a problem to begin with.

<comment><USER35> In the Southwest it is common to use roof-top heat exchangers to warm backyard pools, but the same houses have A\C and may have solar as well (which incidentally shades a section of the roof), so I suspect "watering your roof" would not be terribly effective. Worth a try though.

<comment><USER23> Watering the roof should be quite effective, but rather wasteful if you are using utility/drinking water. If you have a way to collect rainwater, and recapture what runs off of the roof, it could be effective, but evaporative losses will be large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo3psiMZjGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo3psiMZjGc)

</comment><comment><USER37> My concert with swamp coolers is the increase of humidity along with warm temperatures. Creates a breeding ground for mold growth. The idea is great but application depends on your structure.

</comment><comment><USER38> My condo has a whole house fan, which is rigged up to a wireless remote that the former owner couldn't find. I need to spend twenty minutes setting up a new remote wiring setup, but it's only punishingly hot 2-3 days a year in Oakland, and on those 2-3 days, I know that even if I prime it, the heat will be over by the time the remote arrives, so I never pull the trigger.

Tldr, this is why we need same day voter registration.</comment>


Real-life Tron on an Apple II GS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple-iigs.html

<comment><USER2> This has been posted before[0], two[1] and four[2] years ago, and is a delightful and fascinating read every time. It's fun to anthropomorphize the AI running amok in the system's memory, and wonder if we'll ever see something analogous happen with more sophisticated AIs in the future.

[0] [http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on- an-a...](http://blog.danielwellman.com/2008/10/real-life-tron-on-an-apple- iigs.html)

[1] [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2087367](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2087367)

[2] [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326356](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=326356)

</comment><comment><USER3> My first thought was "OMG he has a working Apple II GS?" and then I realized it was already 4 years old when it was written, and the author was recounting a tale from his childhood.

Lots of Amiga stories from the late 80's early 90's dealing with the fact that the Amiga was a multi-tasking system with an unprotected address space. Great when all the tasks are written by the same group, not so great when they aren't :-)

Of course the notion of anyone being able to write anywhere was the basis for ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing Service) at MIT which was a great counterpoint to Tenex (DEC 10 Executive) which was locked down pretty hard. It changes the way you think when you realize you can tell the computer to do anything you want and it will try to do it, up to and including killing itself.

<comment><USER4> Daily Apple IIGS user here, with one 65816 project on github. :) There are still a few of us. For what it's worth, mine is stable at 12MHz (hot-rodded Transwarp GS), and is completely solid-state: CompactFlash and LCD only, no floppies or CRT monitors. I may not have used it to write this post, but I'm still busy trying to beat all the games.

<comment><USER5> Just recently snagged a mint Apple IIGS "Woz Edition" and can't wait to get it set up. Need to figure out how to do this solid-state conversion though, that would be really helpful. Any guides you can point to?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This made me think of CoreWars:

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/04/core-war-two- progra...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/04/core-war-two-programs- enter-one-program-leaves.html)

First read about it a few years after Tron came out.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is really fascinating how humans immediately crash when they break out of the screen while the AI can follow the 0's in system memory fast enough to stand a chance.

<comment><USER8> That I think, is the most thrilling part of the story. Imagine how much longer it could go if it didn't leave a bit trail. I bet if you ran this in an emulator, you could arrange the memory array to resemble the screen, and watch it drive around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know if there are any hackers here who used to go to a high school called "H-B Woodlawn" where they had made a way, way, way more exciting version of tron called "trench".

Anyways, it would be neat to bring that back.

</comment><comment><USER10> Uh oh... The AI just fired its second missile at my unsaved thesis edits.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's sad is that huge amounts of software are still not provably memory- safe, and this sometimes has disastrous consequences, particularly for security. I hope that Mozilla's work on Rust will significantly contribute to solving that problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> Delightful. I love this sort of thing. My jaw almost hit the floor when I realized what was happening when the cycle drove off screen. Does anyone know where I can find more stories like this?

</comment><comment><USER12> reading this while accidentally listening to the awesome TRON Legacy Soundtrack by Daft Punk :)

</comment><comment><USER13> omg we must go rescue him</comment>