Microsoft fights U.S. warrant for customer e-mails held in overseas server - <AUTHOR> http://m.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/microsoft-fights-us-search-warrant-for-customer-e-mails-held-in-overseas-server/2014/06/10/6b8416ae-f0a7-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html <comment><USER2> As far as I can tell, the main issue here (ignoring jabs about the NSA, M$, etc.) is the difference between a warrant and a subpoena. US law enforcement would like to have their cake and eat it too, using a novel warrant-subpoena hybrid. With a warrant, law enforcement officers are the ones that search and seize the documents or data outlined in the search warrant. In a subpoena, the party being served is compelled to produce the documents themselves and testify in court.

In this particular case, it seems obvious that a warrant is inapplicable, since US law enforcement officers don't have the authority to seize Microsoft- controlled data located on servers in Ireland. If Microsoft had instead been served with a subpoena, they would be required to hand over any documents that they had access to, regardless of the data's physical location. However, there are strategic advantages (for law enforcement) to favor warrants, since they're much harder to challenge, and that treaty obligations with foreign countries might restrict the kinds of data that can be retrieved from overseas servers.

<comment><USER3> This is probably one of the few situations where I think Microsoft is right and if they want the data they should abide by Irish law.

If it's that hard to get the necessary paperwork done for this they should fix their system not complain to the courts that it takes to long.

<comment><USER4> Especially if they want to keep non-USA clients who have to obey different laws with their own businesses data.

<comment><USER5> American institutions truly think their jurisdiction is global. Did you hear the one about the NYPD cops that showed up in different parts of the world demanding the governments in various jurisdictions respect them? ([https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140107/21020425797/posti...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140107/21020425797/posting- nypd-officers-around-world-found-to-be-waste-embarrassment.shtml))

<comment><USER6> And the BNP bank fined $ 10 billions for not respecting US law while doing operations between foreign countries (under the preposterous argument that if you use US dollar for a transaction anywhere in the world, it must respect US laws).

[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/30/bnp- paribas-...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/30/bnp-paribas- faces-10bn-fine-us-sanctions-investigation)

<comment><USER7> The transactions WERE going through the US, which is why the US government had jurisdiction.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely not. The US courts used the argument that in last resort a US clearing house _may_ have to survey the transaction because it was in US$. However not a single dollar went through the US.

<comment><USER8> I'm puzzled by this:

 _On top of the potentially huge fine, BNP Paribas could suffer a temporary ban on processing dollar transactions, a business that is essential to the operations of an international bank._

Are USA officials able to enforce these sorts of restrictions on e.g. the sidewalk moneychangers one finds in any developing nation? There are more dollars (both physical and in ledger books) overseas than in the USA. At what point does a bank in another country become vulnerable to this sort of restriction? Are officers going to show up outside the bank and yell "give us all your dollars!"?

<comment><USER9> Banks don't move dollars in crates overseas, transfers in USD are going through US banks: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondent_account](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondent_account)

<comment><USER8> Hmmm, that seems to contradict the assertion that "not a single dollar went through the US". If this is the mechanism that BNP Paribas uses, they shouldn't be surprised they are subject to USA laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What are the legal consequences for Microsoft if the US government succeeds in forcing them to bring this data over from Ireland? Won't Microsoft then be in breach of Irish law? What does a company do if forced to choose between breaking one of two legal instructions? Perhaps they can just choose?

Alternatively, the Irish Microsoft corporation could decide to prevent the US corporation from having access. It could be argued that they are legally required to do this. Then the US corporation can say they no longer have access. It doesn't matter that the US corporation is the only / majority shareholder because the shareholders cannot compel the company officers to do something illegal (i.e. provide access).

<comment><USER11> I guess the US government will force the US based part of Microsoft to cooperate. No choice, possible in stealth. This might or might not be discovered by the Irish part/government, which must then sue.

Basically there is no winning for Microsoft, except keeping it secret, having the US government pressure the Irish not to sue, or having the NSA pay possible fines.

<comment><USER12> Its not really that simple, since Ireland is part of the European union. If Microsoft willingly break data protection laws, then the EU court would likely sue Microsoft again.

Given the history of EU court vs Microsoft, and the market size of EU vs US, Microsoft has no easy solution to the problem. The US government might pressure the Irish, but would have a harder time against European union (which I suppose is part of its design).

<comment><USER13> Sadly, so far no company has been sued by EU for complying with american legal requests.

I think the motivation is somewhat along the lines that the company didn't have a choice in the matter. Personally I wish that didn't matter and that the privacy breaches would have been prosecuted - I can think of nothing that makes legislative changes faster than companies having to choose where to do business because it would not be possible to do business both in USA and EU.

<comment><USER14> Agreed on all counts.

There have been some very shady dealings between Europe and the US, in areas as sensitive as financial and travel information, where it seems the US has demanded data and Europe has conveniently overlooked and/or hacked its own privacy and data protection laws so they can provide it.

I suspect given the increasingly anti-EU sentiments in many European countries and the outright hostile behaviour of the US toward foreign citizens in recent years, this situation isn't going to last much longer. Someone in politics is just waiting to make their career by telling a weakened EU administration and/or the US where to go, presenting themselves as the people's advocate and defender of basic human rights. This issue provides a convenient and potentially very effective vehicle for anyone with such ambitions.

Put another way, the asymmetric legal, economic and diplomatic relationships that have favoured the US for some time are essentially a bet that the US is worth more as a partner than any cost that asking "how high" will incur. Sooner or later, someone is going to call them, and at this point I'm not sure whether they're just bluffing.

<comment><USER15> I think I would agree to what you are saying as to the logical conclusion of what is happening now, but I hope no one will conflate such a possible outcome with it's probable effectiveness as long as the technical capabilities allow for governments, corporations, and individuals to subvert such systems.

Would citizens of the EU have faith in such a candidate anyway who will basically play the same game as their predecessors? Would anyone with the technical capabilities to develop and use encryption/steganography software for things they deem necessary to encrypt, put any trust in such a candidate over themselves?

Seems like a growing market to sell people on privacy as a service, which means there will be a growing market for those who want to subvert such…

<comment><USER14> All valid points, but I would add two more.

Firstly, the means to make mass surveillance significantly more difficult and expensive already exist, we just don't use them routinely as a society. This lack of security and privacy awareness is harmful for many reasons, only a few of which are related to potential abuses by government organisations, but part of the reason they haven't been used more is because of the pressures imposed formally and no doubt less formally by governments. There is always going to be a balance here, because obviously there are bad people in the world and governments are expected (reasonably or otherwise) to protect their citizens and organisations against those bad people. I doubt any government is going to willingly give up all possibilities to intercept communication, but I think you could have a situation with much more transparency and oversight than we have today to keep that power in check and directed to its intended purposes.

Secondly, one of the most disappointing things about this whole affair is that our own intelligence and security services (I'm in the UK) seem to be more concerned with covering their backsides and keeping tight with their US chums than they are with actually, you know, providing for the security of their own country. In an era when foreign surveillance is a significant threat to everyone and so-called allies are among the prime culprits, the duty of our services is to treat those allies as hostile to the extent that their observed behaviour demonstrates they _are_ hostile, and to respond proportionately. US spying on all our citizens' data? Promote encryption as standard and advise businesses on how to keep their data out of US jurisdiction. If allies have legitimate grounds for wanting sensitive information about British people (and I'm certainly not saying they won't have legitimate grounds for doing so from time to time) then let them request that information through proper channels and in compliance with our laws (and make sure our laws provide for assisting allies appropriately but with appropriate controls and oversight as well).

Ultimately, you can't rationally expect governments to protect their people without allowing them to use the technical tools and legal powers necessary to do so, but neither can you rationally protect your society and way of life by destroying it. This debate is all about resolving that inherent conflict in as fair and practical a way as possible, and to that extent, I think some fresh views in politics could improve the current situation considerably.

<comment><USER15> _Firstly, the means to make mass surveillance significantly more difficult and expensive already exist, we just don 't use them routinely as a society[…]but I think you could have a situation with much more transparency and oversight than we have today to keep that power in check and directed to its intended purposes._

One has to acknowledge that it is also not presently in the interests of those who have kept it so. Transparency is a two way street, if everyone as individuals had access to such information that is in the hands of the few to leverage, many aspects of our society could also be made better. After all, "encrypt all the things" makes one wonder about the effort exerted is worth it all, especially if it enables individuals to deceive/mislead/exaggerate to others in the name of privacy.

 _Secondly, one of the most disappointing things about this whole affair is that our own intelligence and security services (I 'm in the UK) seem to be more concerned with covering their backsides and keeping tight with their US chums than they are with actually, you know, providing for the security of their own country._

I question how much "security" there needs to be when governments, corporations and individuals go to such lengths to hide such information from others to maintain the asymmetry of information from individuals of the public, and wonder if they're would be more "security" provided if the public who funds such boondoggles had access to such infrastructure. I'd rather have API keys than the hand-waving/profiteering/"we know whats best for you" media/policy makers and it's enablers tell us what they think we, the public, should know of what they do on our behalf, because only they should be responsible for protecting us, and not ourselves as individuals?

I never have expected any government to protect "their" people, when all of them to some degree are actively harming them and continue to do so through various means unaccountably with claims onto behalf of the public.

<comment><USER14> Just in case it wasn't clear, when I wrote "providing for the security of their own country", I was referring to protecting their own citizens and organisations from unjustified mass surveillance by foreign powers (whether or not those powers purport to be allies). If the press releases and government statements are any indication, there seems to be more emphasis right now on collaborating with those foreign powers and even helping them to conduct their surveillance than in reining them in or applying technological measures to prevent or deter acts that are not permitted under our laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A little off topic.

How does it work for companies that are separately incorporated in another country?

For example: I had a argument with someone from Goldman Sachs Switzerland. They are claiming that their data is out of reach from the US dept. of justice because they are a separate entity incorporated in Switzerland. I have also heard that as an argument from a datacenter provider (Equinix).

Don't profits from these Swiss corporation still somehow make it to the parent company?

What does the parent company do when served with an NSL for data located in the Swiss company?

BTW the funniest thing about Goldman Sachs Switzerland is that they do not accept US customers as they are considered 'toxic'.

<comment><USER17>
      BTW the funniest thing about Goldman Sachs Switzerland is that they do not accept US customers as they are considered 'toxic'.

Practically no Swiss bank accepts US customers at this time. This can be quite a hardship for US citizens living in Switzerland. But they deem the risk just too high and rather forgo the business.

To clarify what your Goldman friend meant.

Swiss banks are obliged to keep customer identifiable data ring fenced and within the country. That is, it can't even be processed offshore. It has nothing to do how the entity is setup legally.

For example (I work for a Swiss bank). I can easily remote access my desktop from home, or, if I have my laptop and token with me, from any other location _in_ Switzerland.

There is no way to access the systems from outside Switzerland.

Singapore, btw, has comparable laws and also ring fences data for use only in Singapore.

<comment><USER18> > For example (I work for a Swiss bank). I can easily remote access my desktop > from home, or, if I have my laptop and token with me, from any other > location in Switzerland. There is no way to access the systems from outside > Switzerland.

Can you remote access your home desktop from outside Switzerland? :)

<comment><USER19> While I understand and accept the technical possibilities where this could be worked around, it actually misses the intent of the law.

If someone where to be caught doing that, she/he would not be able to say it was technically possible so it's OK. It's technically possible but legally forbidden. So the message is: do it at your own peril.

Reality and law don't always agree but when these things go to court, law has the upper-hand :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a ridiculous situation and as an Irish person I would say, a gross violation of our sovereignty. It's bad enough that GCHQ and the NSA do it on a daily basis anyway, now the US is trying to do it via the legal route.

Imagine the uproar if China or Russia decided to do the same to data held on US servers...

</comment><comment><USER21> In finance, the US pressuring people in arbitrary jurisdictions is considered completely normal, though they've been overstepping themselves of late by wholesale interference with intra-EU transactions conducted by European private citizens, by collaborating with Israel to pressure Europe to block Iran entirely from SWIFT, and by showing their cards by financially blockading Wikileaks without any form of trial or due legal process whatsoever.

With the news here confirming that communications area resistance is beginning on commercial grounds... and from well funded pockets like Microsoft's... a ray of hope exists that the whole tide may be beginning to turn. The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that we can choose freedom - the natural result of decentralization, encouraged by the jurisdiction-hopping internet - or we can have a feel-good, artificial, dangerous kind of centralized-power-billed-as- safety: one, or the other. It is pertinent to remember what Benjamin Franklin said: _Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety_.

Julian Assange's strong statement in _Cypherpunks_ that we are galloping in to a new transnational dystopia is certainly correct. Yet it is also true to say that, with massive transnational corporations even so blindly led as by the profit motive, commercial interest in reaping the custom of the decentralized masses actually aligns with the disempowerment of rogue nations acting continually in defiance of international law and other jurisdictions' right to self determination (such as the US) and instead acts to benefit the preservation of basic digital freedoms for the many.

It's far too early to see what kind of world we will pass on to the next generation, but we are at least blessed to live in interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think we will hear a lot of these stories, but they will be for show only. The American government has access to all the server files. Companies will act like they are fighting for our privacy, but the NSA will still be viewing the files. The NSA might not ever say they are using the information found on servers, but they will be looking for criminals and terrorists. When they find the perps, they will use illegial wire taps and other means to get whomever they want. I don't doubt for a second those Irish servers have back doors tied directly to the NSA. Oh, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, etc. will all put up a very public fight though. I have a guestion about cryptanalysis; In the ninties, a Hacker named Iceman was arrested for a Card Swap Forum. He thought he bricked his hard drives with encryption, but a eastern company broke the encrytpion--easily. What form of encryption was he using? Thanks-

</comment><comment><USER23> Who cares whether it's subpoena or warrant, thats not the point. The point is, you can't compel international company to break law in another country, f. ex. suppose chinese court would order (subpoena?) microsoft to hand over emails and pictures of a known political dissident, that are kept on US server, what the hell do you expect microsoft do? comply? stop doing business in any country that has laws that conflict those of US? It's _very_ easy to imagine such scenarios, in all areas really, patent law, finance, whatever. I think the only real solution is those MLATs, or international agreements on handing over data. Or maybe, in future, an international court, that could issue subpoenas valid in all member nations, when investigating crimes with similar enough laws in member nations.

</comment><comment><USER24> The US government don't seem to realize that this could equally well be used against them, for example another country where MS operates could file a warrant requiring that Microsoft handover US government files.

<comment><USER25> No, the U.S. government understands the situation isn't symmetric. It spends $700 billion a year ensuring asymmetry.

<comment><USER8> That money would be better spent on _any other purpose_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "The judge opined that the search would take place only when the e-mails were opened and read"

That's a silly argument, because it's like saying I'm going to grab papers from your home, but I'm not searching your home because the papers will only be read back at the office.

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone else remember Microsoft cheerfully getting a US judge to overrule a German court decision? Only to now insist that a US court can't compel them to hand over an Irish server. Their views on jurisdiction matters seem to be remarkably flexible...

</comment><comment><USER28> I guess this just goes to reinforce the fact that the US is a very hostile environment for business, particularly web based businesses. Incorporate in the EU!

</comment><comment><USER29> America won the digital age, but the post-digital age will be won by whomever builds the most progressive laws into privacy and digital rights. America is at risk right now, and although momentum carries (hence why we even talk about Microsoft decades after any real innovation), but if America doesn't quickly course correct, they're soon going to find that the thing that made them great was freedom to innovate and thrive. In this new era, America is no longer the leader in freedom or the American dream. I hope whoever wins the next election is at least aware of this, as a country that focuses more and more on IP as a significant exportable product, if no one trusts or uses those products, and the natural resources have already been significantly exploited, this does not bode well for the long game.

<comment><USER30> Besides a no true Scotsman fallacy here why do you think Microsoft is not innovating?

<comment><USER29> Can you give an example where Microsoft has been innovating? Innovation mean 'novel change' and I've not seen anything outside Azure that was even the slightest bit novel. Balmer was not a risk taker, but the Azure and VS teams have been turning that ship, but it'll be years yet before I acknowledge anything as novel.

BTW a logical fallacy cannot apply to a personal value judgement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The link to the filing in the article is currently broken. I think this is it:

[https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.nysd.427456/gov.us...](https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.nysd.427456/gov.uscourts.nysd.427456.15.0.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> >Moreover, they say, imposing limits sought by Microsoft would "lead to absurd results and severely undercut criminal investigations."

The most dangerous argument made by government. There is no end to it. Someday the exact same argument will be used to ensure we all have a telescreen in every room of our homes because not having it would "severely undercut criminal investigations."

</comment><comment><USER33> In Ireland a large momentum is gathering behind this, it's an insult to Irish Sovereignty and recognition of its right to make it's own laws.

Which in fairness the country has only had for a very short amount of time and takes very seriously.

</comment><comment><USER34> What is harmful to cloud providers is secret warrants and intelligence gathering, not an open warrant for drug trafficking.

MS is fighting the wrong battle here.

<comment><USER35> So because the accused are in the middle of a drug case, that makes this okay?

<comment><USER34> No it makes it OK because everything is in the open.

When you're in a middle of a drug case it's pretty normal that they read your emails.

It's not normal that they read secretly my emails when they have nothing against me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is there some NSA influencing online discussion in this thread? I mean seriously, why the down votes?

<comment><USER37> I don't think so :), we're not that important. So far only 3 comments have been seriously downvoted -- one of them presented seemingly unfounded information, the other one was simply unfunny trolling that should not be on HN, the third one was mostly off-topic.

Because of - to some extent understandable - reasons MS hate is still quite strong among this community but destroying an MS-related thread is unnecessary.

<comment><USER38> Do you really think a site has to be "important" to be targeted? To influence public opinion it seems like you'd just want to blanket influence as many popular websites as possible. It wouldn't take that large a team to do it given the right software.

<comment><USER37> I was a part-owner and later a mod on a quite big forum (>500k registered users, etc.). There were many people who always claimed that others who disagree with them are paid shills -- I happened to know that they aren't at all.

<comment><USER39> Heh, same here. If everyone who accused someone of being a shill was right, then everyone would be a shill, almost. Hilarious stuff, literally insinuating that someone had built up a reputation on a tech magazine forum over half a decade to shill products. In fact, I think in the years I was a mod/admin, we banned maybe one "shill", and even that was debatable and mainly because they didn't post any relevant information for anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is why my European clients are no longer using Amazon Web Services. For awhile they let us put their projects on AWS's ireland zones but even with that they were reluctant. After the NSA revelations (I know that this particular story is unrelated) they don't even allow that.

The projects were only content management system projects with minimal privacy concerns. One project did have some customer data but the others were mostly just marketing material.

Stories like this are just going to dry up the final remaining non-u.s. customers for u.s.-based cloud computing companies. It's almost like the u.s. government is trying to screw u.s. companies.

</comment><comment><USER41> Dear Microsoft,

I love it when you play rough, you sexy beast! DO NOT FORGET WHO OWNS YOU, SLAVE! YOU ARE MINE!

Love, Obama and the NSA Spooks

P.S. I left you a little something extra on the nightstand, get yourself some makeup.

</comment><comment><USER42> For show and press. Microsoft was the first company to cave in giving the NSA total unrestricted access to user information.

<comment><USER43> The first? Source?

<comment><USER44> I assume the parent is referring to this:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_sli...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Prism_slide_5.jpg)

<comment><USER42> Yes, I was thanks for finding that.

<comment><USER45> And exactly no information on how Microsoft cooperated or caved. For all you know, the slide might just be indicating the NSA implemented Microsoft- specific parsers before others. Or that they tapped MS fibre or datacenters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Microsoft, one of the world's largest e-mail providers, is resisting a government search warrants blah blah blah"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)

Edit: Why the downvotes?

<comment><USER47> Because it's bollocks?

To be honest I'm more worried that the crypto service providers as supplied aren't available in their shared source license.

<comment><USER46> Crypto? My favourite red herring:

"I love crypto, it tells me what part of the system not to bother attacking" \-- Drew Gross, forensic scientist

<comment><USER47> How to debunk that comment:

OpenSSL, GNUTLS, Secure Transport

Done!

<comment><USER46> OpenSSL and GnuTLS? Have you been under a rock the past couple of weeks?

<comment><USER48> That's what he's talking about. Does the quote have a different meaning than the literal one? Because otherwise I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to convey with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Racist Twitter user jailed for 56 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992 <comment><USER2> This boggles my mind, as a citizen of the USA who is used to having freedom of speech.

1) It's a tweet (of all things)..

2) Which incites nothing, and is an expression of opinion

And the guy gets hauled off to jail for 2 months because of it? This is the kind of behavior I'd expect from China, not an ostensibly first world nation!

*edit

I meant that literally, too. My mind simply ceases processing the circumstances under which a completely harmless tweet, in a place like Great Britain, can be grounds for legal action. I thought (mistakenly) that freedom of speech was recognized a bit more with the US's allies.

<comment><USER3> Even in the US, you can be sued civilly for hateful comments and jailed for comments that could be construed as inviting or inciting violence.

I don't know the full story, the tweets are gone and the BBC didn't reproduce them.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source for your comments on civil law? As far as I know you can be sued for defamation and harassment, but neither of those are simply "hateful comments."

Also, "fighting words" is not simply inviting or inciting violence, it's "those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

<comment><USER3> All of those are a subset of hate speech. Inciting violence is not necessarily under fighting words, it's a category of its own.

Here's the Wikipedia article on US hate speech, they call out specific forms of hate speech which are illegal.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_States>

<comment><USER4> First, you did not use the term hate speech, you used the term "hateful comments," which do not legally have any connection.

Second, it seems that your own link reinforces exactly what I said. Inciting violence is _not_ a crime in the United States. Incitement _to riot_ may be, but this is not what you said. US law requires an immediate threat of violence in order to censure speech outside of defamation and obscenity.

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Incitement_vs._f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words#Incitement_vs._fighting_words)

 _Incitement is a related doctrine, allowing the government to prohibit advocacy of unlawful actions if the advocacy is both intended to and likely to cause immediate breach of the peace._

You seem like you're reaching for something to argue about. "Yes, but you didn't use the proper legal term!" You also seem to be confusing the statement I made about civil suits vs what can be considered a crime. But, since two people have been willing to argue semantics in what is obviously not legal advice, I will say you must be right. I concede. Hateful comments could not get you sued civilly and inciting violence is not the same as advocating a breech of the peace. I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know how the laws are in the UK but damn, jail-time for racists comments? I'm 100% against prejudice but being sent to jail for saying something controversial seems like a bit much.

I don't know much about the government there or what people have rights to, any clarity would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER6> "Inciting racial hatred" is illegal here. I think that's quite a bit more specific than "saying something controversial".

I don't see that this is any different from the US First Amendment. It has exceptions too (eg. shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre). "Inciting racial hatred" is an equivalent restriction. You may disagree on this law specifically, but I don't see how this affects anything fundamental like freedom of speech or anything like that.

<comment><USER7> I disagree, he was simply posting comments about a professional athlete on his own twitter account, it's not like he was yelling it on the street or putting up billboards. Anyone can unfollow or even block his twitter, if you were even able to see it in the first place.

It is a freedom of speech issue because we should be allowed to write what we want on our personal social networks. I think it is absurd that mommy government can read your tweets (whats next? blogs, emails?) and give you jail time for the 'naughty' things you say.

I think what bothers me most is that the person he made fun of is a pro- athlete, part of the job is to take abuse from haters and rival fans. European soccer is notoriously rowdy, fans shout any and everything they can from the stands. It's part of the game.

<comment><USER8> _I think what bothers me most is that the person he made fun of is a pro- athlete_

I think what bothers me most is that other citizens reported him to the authorities for such, which means a percentage of the population agrees with speech being restricted so long as it restricts speech that is contrary to their dogma. Racism is a slippers slope too, I once witnesses a person being lambasted as a racist for calling an obvious blood gang member a thug. What people feel is the definition of racist varies widely and is very much perception based. I could easily see a law like that being used for witch hunts.

<comment><USER9> That's why we have judges. Just reporting someone doesn't automatically put them in jail.

<comment><USER8> Judge or not a segment of the population is comfortable with the idea of the thought police and see them as the good guys, which should be a scary realization anytime it is witnessed. I would not want my life held in the balance by a judge who is going to make a subjective decision as to whether my speech was racist or not, in a society that accepts the policing of opinion, the judge already accepts as law that you are not entitled to your opinion, as such the deck is immediately stacked against you. Chances are in such a system judges will be affected by the same confirmation bias and group think as the rest of the population that thinks policing opinions, even when expressed in public is acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't support jail time for racist comments, but has anyone seen evidence that he actually made racist comments? The only tweet I've seen reproduced is "Fuck Muamba, he's dead," which is highly assholish but not so far as I can tell racist. At the same time, news reports all seem to reference "tweets" plural, so I may be missing more.

<comment><USER11> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5v2eZ5ZZE>

Offensive? Rude? Sure. But it doesn't seem like anything too out of the ordinary. If they had microphones in bars, they'd arrest millions for similar utterances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't feel any pity for this guy from a personal point of view, and I can only hope he learns a lesson because of this instead of going down a darker path of more hate.

However, I still have real issues and concerns with him being jailed for making a racist comment. This seems an awful lot like a slippery slope that we don't want to go down. Any law that restricts what we can say or think scares me when information continues to become easier to pass along into the "public domain."

</comment><comment><USER13> Given that the UK recently extradited a UK citizen for breaking an American law, does this mean that racist Americans could be extradited to the UK for posting a tweet which incites racial hatred?

Somehow I doubt it, although the logic is superficially sound.

<comment><USER14> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

<comment><USER15> Similar clauses in other countries' laws haven't prevented extradition the other way.

<comment><USER14> Good grief. It's the first sentence in the Bill of Rights, not merely a "clause in a law". And I don't know the specifics to which you are referring, but the UK does not have such a guarantee of speech rights. There are occasional flame wars to that effect in our share social circle.

So no: there is no way in hell that any US court will order an extradition for a prosecution of a pure act of speech. They occasionally break that rule internally, of course. But no way would any politician allow a foreign court to do it.

<comment><USER15> Yes, it's the first clause of the US Bill Of Rights. So? Still a clause in law.

And that's the point; the gp was, I _believe_, complaining about the perceived lack of equity in a relationship that has the US extraditing citizens of the UK for actions that are crimes in their jurisdiction but not in the UK, when it would never be considered to be allowed the other way.

<comment><USER14> But it's not even remotely symmetric. In one direction it's just a crime being prosecuted, and the UK has similar laws that could conceivably apply. In the other it's a prima facie violation of (stated without hyperbole) the single most important law of the nation.

See the difference?

And the "never be considered to be allowed the other way" bit is silly. The US has extradition treaties with most of the industrialized world, and extradites criminals routinely (although perhaps not necessarily fairly or symmetrically). See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_States#International_extradition)

But they won't extradite anyone for _this_ crime, for reasons of fundamental constitutional law. That's not going to change no matter how many downvotes the first amendment receives above.

<comment><USER15> The UK has no criminal law about copyright. Whatsoever. The US is attempting to extradite this guy for the crime of linking to copyrighted material: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/17/student-file- shari...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jun/17/student-file-sharing- tvshack-extradition)

I've been trying to find a case where the US extradited someone to a jurisdiction where they were accused of committing a crime not on US books. I can't.

<comment><USER14> No. The 2003 Extradition treaty certainly is a UK law. But (and for the record: I think that extradition is unjust too) this has nothing to do what our discussion at all.

You want the US to extradite people for hate speech. I pointed out that no, that will never happen because of the clear text of the first amendment to the constitution. And you started flaming away, I guess because I'm American and therefore The Enemy.

But the point remains that no matter how symmetric and just and wonderful its extradition policy might come to be, _US law would never allow such an extradition_. It will not happen. So stop flaming and find another shibboleth.

<comment><USER15> No I do not want to extradite anyone for hate speech; see, this is what's known as an _example_. What I would like is for the US to stop being quite so bullying in their dealings with the rest of the world.

And you're not The Enemy; I don't have any enemies. I'm Irish and therefore neutral and too small for anyone to care about. ",)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What exactly did he say? I don't understand why this garnered so much attention. There are a lot of racist tweets on Twitter.

<comment><USER9> <http://chirpstory.com/li/5261>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fabrice Muamba is a soccer / football player who collapsed on the pitch during a game. He's been big news in the UK.

Liam Stacey posted racist tweets soon after Muamba collapsed.

Here's a Youtube video which claims to be screengrabs of the tweets. (I have no idea if it is or not.)

(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5v2eZ5ZZE>)

Huffpo has a screenshot, but it's been blurred to the point of incomprehensibility.

In England most offences are treated more severely if there's a racial motivation.

I post this here because I'm pleased that no-one is saying (as far as I can tell) that Twitter should be responsible for what its users post. No one is calling for Twitter to have more oversight or to control their users. People have been happy for the existing laws to take its course.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not surprising, if you think about UK as orwellian state (or wannabe).

"It was not the football world who was praying for [Muamba].... everybody was praying for his life."

What a bullshit - I don't even know who he is and I don't care. I stopped reading here.

<comment> why-el Read: everybody who knew him outside the field. And do you have any evidence that the UK is become an Orwellian state? I am really surprised at the cheer amount of irresponsible comments in HN lately.

<comment><USER17> Orwellian aspects of UK:

1\. Extradition of their citizen to US, for creating link aggregator [1][2]

2\. Jail for downloading a file [3]

3\. Politicaly correct brainwashing in schools [4][5]

4\. Sites blocking [6]

5\. Jail for posting dumb messages on twitter [7]

These're few things I did remember. When I hear about new case, I don't bookmark it, that's why this list is short.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/copyright- wa...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/copyright-wars-heat-up- us-wins-extradition-of-college-kid-from-england.ars)

[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student- los...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/13/piracy-student-loses-us- extradition)

[3] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/police- downl...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/police-download-a- file-go-to-jail-for-10-years-and-pay-an-unlimited-fine.ars)

[4] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223738/Nursery- chil...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223738/Nursery-children- branded-racist-schools-report-40-000-playground-race-spats-year.html)

[5] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103175/Boy-7-brande...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103175/Boy-7-branded- racist-asking-schoolmate-Are-brown-come-Africa.html)

[6] [http://www.freshtechweb.com/after-uk-high-court-ruling- the-p...](http://www.freshtechweb.com/after-uk-high-court-ruling-the-pirate- bay-could-be-blocked.html)

[7] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992>

<comment> why-el Your first 4 points apply to virtually every other country I know, to varying degrees. As for jailing the guy, it might sound surprising, but it is only so because a lot of people dont know how advanced the US is in terms of freedom of speech. You can say almost anything and get away with it. Some other countries are moving to that directions, albeit slower that expected. Slamming the UK alone for this ignores general developments across the globe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit hmmmm... I've said many times before "Good thing its not against the law to be an asshole". Turns out it IS against the law. Sure this guy is the lead candidate for Twat of The Year... but 56 days in jail for being an ignorant douche-bag is a dangerous trend to set. If we locked up every ignorant douche- bag we'd have to build A LOT more jails here in the US.

</comment><comment><USER18> If I remember rightly the reason this guy was jailed was not because he made racist commands AT Muamba, rather than about. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that there is a huge difference between making racist comments about someone and making racist comments to them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe someone familiar with the UK could clarify for us: when exactly during that 56 days does he get the rats on his face?

<comment><USER20> Not necessarily rats - just whatever is his worst fear, and it'll start on the 2nd day, over on the 55th. Ignorance is Strength.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For those wondering what he said: [http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/27/liam-stacey- racis...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/27/liam-stacey-racist- tweets-twitter-muamba-dead_n_1381876.html)

<comment><USER22> Will the people working at the huffington post's UK offices now be jailed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (c. 1) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which creates an offence in England and Wales of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion. The Act was the Labour Government's third attempt to bring in this offence: provisions were originally included as part of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill in 2001, but were dropped after objections from the House of Lords. The measure was again brought forward as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill in 2004-5, but was again dropped in order to get the body of that Bill passed before the 2005 general election.</comment>


Ask HN: How to overcome lack of feedback at work? - <AUTHOR> The company I work for has all the fancy HR stuff in place (reviews, 1-on-1, etc) but I barely get any feedback. Everything is always good, I'm doing a good job, etc.
I actually had I dream last night about someone getting since feedback and being annoyed and I thought, in the dream, "I'd rather get negative feedback so I can improve than always positive feedback".
I can't be doing everything right. Any advice? <comment><USER2> Ask your peers. Ask your manager. Outside the review cycle. Tell them you're specifically looking for things to improve on.

If you still can't get feedback, find a new job with a manager who focuses more on individual employee development. Incorporate that into the questions you ask during the interview process.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best feedback is from your users. Ask them. Maybe you are working in too big company?</comment>


Sol – a sunny little virtual machine (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://rsms.me/sol-a-sunny-little-virtual-machine <comment> half-kh-hacker (2012)

Having written a few toy VMs in the past (and some in production!), there are always avenues to "make it weird."

Sol's yield/end instruction pair looks super abusable if you want to write somethiing obfuscated.

My favourite alteration has always been to not have any control flow instructions in the provided ISA, but allow the programmer direct write access to the program counter register, or force them to write self modifying code.

After all, programming is fun.

<comment><USER2> While z80 does have control, it only has jumps to constant addresses. You had to do a push and a ret in order to jump at a calculated address. Or use self- modifying code, although I don't think it was really used.

<comment><USER3> Could this be done by JP (HL) or JP (IX) or JP (IY)

<comment><USER2> Ah, I misremembered. The push-ret trick was for things like emulating JP(BC) or pushing multiple addresses to indirectly _call_ a few functions in a row. There _was_ an indirect jump but no indirect call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4656605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4656605).</comment>


The Mathematics Community and the NSA [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/notices/201502/rnoti-p165.pdf <comment><USER3> The author repeatedly refers to the NSA operating within the bounds of the law and set policy. Do not be fooled by that decoy. Yes, they may be operating legally;but there in lies the fundamental problem: the law and policy is lax, to put it gently.

<comment><USER4> And thus, we are to blame. When was the last time anyone voted for a candidate based on their privacy stance? Can anyone name a presumptive presidential candidate who has spoken out against NSA abuses? I can name one but I'd get downvotes just for mentioning his name.

The simple tragedy is that most Americans don't have the time or inclination to understand the nuances of the issue -- at least not to a degree that they'd vote on that issue.

Most people seem to think "higher taxes bad; tax the rich; end welfare; increase welfare; no free school lunches; more free lunches.." People seem to be almost binary in their understanding of the issues of the day.

Let's hope that changes. The fact is that most people can at least understand the idea of online privacy, but when issues like illegal file sharing or similar things that aren't in the mainstream of your average person, then the passion for the issue is muted.

If, for example, there were high profile cases that made the national news about Grandma getting violated in a detrimental way by the NSA, then maybe the issue would gain traction. However, privacy violations typically happen to either a "criminal" or "someone else." So the issue is ignored.

It's everyone's issue, but the issue hasn't been well framed. It's the same logic used to get traffic camera installed: "If you ain't doing anything wrong, then it shouldn't matter."

Frustrating.

<comment><USER5> I did vote for Obama in 2008 because he promised no more warrantless wiretaps and in general seemed the least-bad 'realistic' (as in Schelling-point) choice for civil liberty. (I did not in 2012.) I agree that not nearly enough people give creeping totalitarianism its proper priority in voting; for the foreseeable future some other sort of action is needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whatever justifications the NSA comes up with, the crux with Dual_EC_DRBG remains: Either they are as malicious as is now publicly believed and those points were indeed generated with an included backdoor. Or they are stupid enough to endorse an RNG that is slow, not provably secure and may even contain a backdoor.

Extending on the provably secure part: There actually are constructions that allow you to reduce the discrete logarithm problem to the one-way property and to the pseudo randomness property of the RNG. And without such a proof, what is the benefit of a slow elliptic curve RNG anyway?

Regarding the backdoor part: Even for the NSA the potential of a backdoor is a problem, because every division has to trust the person that has actually generated the points. And as the Dual_EC_DRBG was used by the DoD, this person potentially has the keys to some very sensitive parts of the kingdom.

<comment><USER7> Pardon me if I'm misinterpreting you, but isn't the existence of one-way functions equivalent to P != NP? So far we definitely haven't proved/disproved that one-way functions exist, so any primitive that relies on them is not provably secure.

More generally, I don't think there are any CSPRNGs that are actually provably secure; please correct me if I'm wrong. The proofs all rely in some way on problems that are conjectured to be hard, which depends on P != NP. This isn't necessarily the case, if we could devise an algorithm that depends on a decidable problem harder than NP-complete, but I don't think we have proved if any such problems exist.

Edit: On reflection, I think the parent is saying that there was never a proof published that Dual_EC_DRBG is reducible to a hard problem, and without that we cannot even say whether Dual_EC_DRBG is as secure as other PRNGs that can be shown to be related to hard problems.

<comment><USER8> To say that something is reducible to a conjectured hard problem is what 'provably secure' means in cryptography. Also, cryptographic hardness is not trivially relatable to P vs. NP, especially for hardness assumptions used to build public-key systems. For example, a poly-time factoring algorithm would _not_ prove P == NP, but it would break RSA.

<comment><USER7> Good point, thanks. It looks like a few of them, including factorization and the discrete log problem, are conjectured to be NP-intermediate; that is, NP but neither P nor NP complete. However, this class may actually be empty, and is only non-empty if P != NP.

If P = NP, NP-intermediate is necessarily empty, so problems like factorization would be P = NP = NP-complete. You're right, though: the existence of a (classical) polynomial-time factorization algorithm doesn't solve P = NP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The international war on terrrorism" (by the end). Sorry: despite whatever he says, this is totally out of place. As long as you use the (buzz)word war, you open the door to exceptional "security" measures

<comment><USER10> He also mentions 'piracy' (the data sharing kind, I presume) - it seems he will stoop to using any convenient buzzword/bogeyman.

<comment><USER11> Why would you assume 'piracy' doesn't refer to actual piracy? It's a fairly big deal in several parts of the world.

<comment><USER12> Because you don't need a strong cipher to send text messages like "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum."

<comment><USER13> Presumably pirates favor arrrr-C4 or arrrr-SA (both of them invented by Ronald Rivest.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The remaining 25 percent" [of reported 'illegal' interceptions] ", about 700 in total, were human error (e.g., typing mistakes). Put into perspective, the average analyst at NSA makes a compliance mistake once every ten years."

This does not reassure me.

First, those are only the 'mistakes' that were detected and reported - <USER2> independent body is doing the oversight?

Secondly, he says that their staff are just about perfect (an error rate of 1 per 10 years) whilst at the same time saying that the errors were typing mistakes.

It is sad to see a Mathematician reduced to such deceit.

<comment><USER14> First, note how the only numbers addressed are the '2,776 instances publicly known'. So from the start we're working with unreasonable numbers. But let's run with it.

Hmm. If the average number of mistakes an analyst makes is 0.1 per year and there were 700 mistakes only, this means 7000 analysts (or do we need to model this as a poisson distribution?). Is 7,000 analysts reasonable? Anyone have more details on this?

The NSA has said that it performs about 20 million queries a month, or 240 million queries a year. If these are done by analysts that's 16 manual queries an hour or 130 a day assuming a standard work week. That seems reasonable. Or at least reasonable"ish". [240,000,000 / 7,000 / (5/7 * 8 * 365)]

But it would also imply an error rate of 700/24,000,000 = 0.000002917 (which is absurd, if the error are presumably due to 'typos').

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Using aggregate numbers, of the exceedingly small proportion of the world's foreign communications we access, NSA algorithms filter out approximately 99.998 percent of the data it sees.

Keeping 0.002% seems like just little bit of data, but is it?

79% of the Internet traffic is video. If you filter out almost all video content and other uninteresting transfer to everyone (50 companies deliver more than half of all Internet traffic), I think you can retain all metadata and all or most unique text based communications. Speech to text filter can keep metadata and at least huge number of keywords from all phone conversations.

<comment><USER16> "Don't worry. Sure, the thief left with all your cash, jewelry, IDs, tax information, and private documents... But 99.998% of the mass contained by your house is still there! Honestly, if it's less than 100kg it's not even worth getting upset about."

Yeah, it's a stupid statistic designed to mislead, since the metric bears no real relationship to the impact or severity of the act.

I wonder how the NSA would react if a spy browsed all their top-secret documents, but made copies of "only 0.002%" of them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In 2007--8, I was trying to leave my academic position and join the NSA as a mathematician. It didn't end up working out. That was an enormous blow at the time: with the cycle of academic contracts, I had to choose whether to not sign or to defer the NSA job until the end of the next academic year. I chose the former, and the provisional job offer fell through.

In the end, though, it was probably for the best. When Snowden first hit the news, all I could think of was "there but for the grace of the gods go I."

</comment><comment><USER13> See also Matthew Green's response:

[http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/01/hopefully- la...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/01/hopefully-last-post- ill-ever-write-on.html)

<comment><USER18> and yesterday's discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8888635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8888635)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Filtering algorithms decide what material is defeated, i.e., neither > collected nor stored for analysis.

This is one of the NSA's definitions I disagree with. Filtering _is_ collection and analysis, the only difference is the government agent performing the search is an algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm sorry, but to me this reads like an apology[* ] letter targeted to future (and current) employees, because of all the bad publicity they have received. They're probably having a hard time recruiting, hence this smoke.

[* ] for some very weak definition of 'apology'

</comment><comment><USER21> The author sounds like a nice guy/gal but they seem to have selectively forgot several facts. First the NSA's Dual_EC_DRBG was used as the default in some RSA products. Is it debatable that the RSA was not paid for this (the $10m claim)? But this is not the only episode quoted as reason to consider NSA malice. The Bullrun program? And his/her employers constant lies?

If your employer is using your work for malice without telling you, and lying to many of their clients (the public)... stop kidding yourself just because they were nice to you and paid for your PhD.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's good that the NSA are seeking to be more open and transparent.

A few things I'm curious about, though...

 _> The NSA-generated elliptic curve points were necessary for accreditation of the Dual_EC_DRBG but only had to be implemented for actual use in certain DoD applications._

Why were the NSA-generated elliptic curve points have to be included in the standard for it to be accredited?

Why did those points _have_ to be used for certain DoD applications? Why not use random points?

And why was it necessary for those points to be included in the standard? Why not leave it up to the implementer to decide what points to use?</comment>


Help: Artificial Intelligence best language to learn TODAY - <AUTHOR>

Hello,<p>I´m working in a personal project that takes data from the web and extract informations from this data. All this stage i made very well with ruby (lets say, an modern language). But now i need to start working on a module (we call "brain") that can take the information of the ruby software and take decisions about the best moment to buy and sell currencies. I had a very hard time to chose between ruby and python (yes, i had to learn the language before make the bot) and now i´m having another hard time to choose an language to make this "brain". So i came here and ask for your help. I think most part of you will say "take lisp or prolog" but i have afraid of spend my time learning an old language, like lisp ...  but that´s not the big problem. If a go to lisp, WITCH dialect should i choose ? Common Lisp is old, but looks like more situated to this task. Scheme looks like naive close to common lisp, i´m running from that ... and clojure looks like new, but not so good like the others. So i ask you hackers for help. I still doing my personal researches but a vision from somebody with more experience would be appreciated. By the way, sorry by may bad english ... <comment> alan-crowe The 1960's and 1970's were the era in which researchers designed new languages in response to the difficulties that they encountered in writing their own advanced applications. Common Lisp is perhaps the culimination of this work.

University subjects divide into those where the students start from scratch and those for which 11 to 16 year olds recieve substantial preparation. For example the teaching of physics depends on children learning arithmetic and algebra so that they are fluent before attempting to study physics at university. The teaching of law starts from scratch.

Computer science is a start from scratch subject, so a major focus is distilling the essence of computer programming to come up with a simple language suitable for bringing undergraduates up to employability in three years. Here is a perspective from which Java can be seen major achievement in programming language design.

However the consensus seems to be that a start-from-scratch degree is too short for meta-programming: you can teach it but not well enough to avoid students shooting themselves in the foot with it. So Common Lisp's defmacro is out. Similarly for customising the syntax of embedded sublanguages, so Common Lisp's read-macros are also out. CLOS is too sophisticated for a 3 year degree, nobody wants to try teaching undergraduates to define their own method combinations. The Common Lisp condition system is wildly over-elaborate. Reading Kent Pitman it is clear that the design was driven by the needs of very large, very sophisticated programs. It is fascinating to read the documentation as a kind of old developers war story in which people believe that the condition system doesn't need to be that elaborate and find out the bitter truth the hard way as the project code base grows.

So new versus old doesn't work as a criterion for programming language choice. It hasn't worked for twenty or thirty years. If you want to do work on Artificial Intelligence you are committing yourself to writing very large, very sophisticated programs. In recent years new languages have been designed with very different goals in mind and newness is not your friend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot Alan. Therefore, there´s no point on searching for the newest languages to do this kind of software because, actually, they are more inclined to write languages to solve high level problems then lows ... AI case, i guess. I got your point on new vs old, and maybe on that specific case, you are right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Build your first prototype in the language you are most comfortable using. When you know which bits are hard to write then you can look around and see if any other language has facilities that make that part of the task simpler to write.

Whichever way - enjoy the learning experience. I doubt you will make your fortune trading currencies - but I could be wrong so good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing is impossible ... and i got some guts to face this kind of challenge. Some friends told me exactly that, to stick with ruby and then figure out a way to implement the brain with that. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I researched this question thoroughly earlier this year and decided that C was the best language for AI. For a few reasons:

a) You can find examples of all the standard AI algorithms online

b) It doesn't get much faster then C

c) There is a huge C community so you'll be able to find more developers easily if the project takes off (the main drawback of LISP)

<comment><AUTHOR> That´s a really good point dmix, C is amazing and i already have experience with it. But let´s make some thing clear ...

a) Interesting, but i´m planning to write my own algorithms

b) C speed is just unique, maybe only lose for assembly

c) True, a very decisive factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably since you are starting from scratch and because first iterations of software if you are new to this tend to be more practice than usable I would say, stick first with the language which makes your life easiest. Later when e.g. speed becomes an issue, you will have to rewrite things anyway I suspect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree. I have a lot of experimental codes here that must be rewrite immediately. Looks like it´s the best way for me so far ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FORTH programming language, like C, might be a good choice. The downside is that not many programmers use this language. And that's unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there significant quantitative programming involved in what you are doing? If yes, I would recommend using Matlab or R.

<comment><USER4> For a proof of concept, I would second that. Though actually Matlab is significantly more powerful in Machine Learning than R due to its fantastic libraries. (R is still young).</comment></comment>


Starting in 2018, using cryptocurrencies in Vietnam will be illegal - <AUTHOR> https://blockexplorer.com/news/starting-2018-using-cryptocurrencies-like-bitcoin-vietnam-will-illegal-subject-9000-fine/ <comment><USER2> As far as I understand it this is a move by governments to prevent money from leaving their borders. VND is a currency useful only in Vietnam. Bitcoin has no borders - this means they can't constrain that value inside the country.

I feel like I've only scratched the surface as to why governments would want to do this. What else is there?

<comment><USER3> Could make the case it is used for black market purchases or funding terrorists, or rogue governments.

<comment><USER4> so... same as paper money then? quick better outlaw that too.

<comment><USER5> There is a limited supply of U.S. dollars in a country like Vietnam, which naturally limits its use in illicit trade. Both paper money and cryptocurrencies have to be converted into "clean" money that can be deposited into banks to pay taxes and expenses. While paper money requires expensive and potentially dangerous laundering operations lest you end up with warehouses full of bills, you can hold crypocurrencies in a wallet for no cost until its needed to be laundered and exchanged for real income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > As such, Bitcoin and other similar virtual currencies are not legal means of > payment in Vietnam.

How can you make a means of payment illegal? Is bartering illegal, or do I _have_ to use cash or checks? I don't understand how you can legally block the use of a cryptocurrency without ruling these out.

<comment><USER7> Yes, you have to use cash or checks or cards in VND in Vietnam, sellers are prohibited to accept any foreigner currencies. Even listing as USD/EURO/etc. is illegal in VN. You can use any foreigner currencies only when your business are reviewed and even when accepted, it's very restricted.

<comment><USER8> Try not to bump into the sea of money changers in the major cities.

<comment><USER9> There's not really a sea of money changers here, in fact there's not many outside the backpacker/tourist area downtown. Also, the fact that the country has a few money changers is different that regular businesses accepting currency besides VND. Trying paying for your dinner with USD, I would imagine 80% would not accept it, and the 20% that do, would only do so if you paid at a rate that made it worth their while to go and change it themselves.

As an American living here, I'm all for it. The Vietnamese currency is far superior the American currency. All bills, no coins. Plastic bills that don't rip, and can get wet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YUML – Easy Embeddable Diagrams - <AUTHOR> https://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy/class/draw <comment><USER2> Anyone familiar with PlantUML[1]? That's been my goto for declarative text- based diagramming. I've always thought "there really could be a better tool," but I've never found anything better than PlantUML.

I don't think YUML is going to be my answer, though -- it's paid and doesn't seem to be a local tool, but rather a SaaS model.

This product feels like it should be a local compile-into-image workflow. But that's probably my bias for text-based declarative formats coming through. :)

[1] [http://plantuml.com/](http://plantuml.com/)

<comment><USER3> I haven't personally used it so far, but check out mermaid[1] which I bookmarked from a HN[2] discussion

[1] [https://mermaidjs.github.io/](https://mermaidjs.github.io/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16889181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16889181)

<comment><USER4> I found mermaidjs to be interesting in cases where you want to put down some diagrams quickly. However the renders/SVG export are really wonky at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not exactly for the same purpose, but anyone knows about Graphviz [1]? Super expressive and you can visualize online in viz.js [2].

[1] [https://www.graphviz.org/](https://www.graphviz.org/) [2] [http://viz- js.com/](http://viz-js.com/)

<comment><USER6> I've been using Vis.js and [http://shaky.github.bushong.net/](http://shaky.github.bushong.net/). You can do really cool stuff with them. Highly recommend them both. I will import those into gimp and create all types of animation with them [1, 2]. I've built a db backend for vis.js and it makes to super simple to connect things and saves the positions for Vis.js. You can see a demo of it here: [https://sysadmincasts.com/map](https://sysadmincasts.com/map). Try zooming in/out, moving things, etc. I should probably open-source the code as others might like an example of it too.

[1] [https://assets.sysadmincasts.com/e/g/45-ansible-ping- pong.pn...](https://assets.sysadmincasts.com/e/g/45-ansible-ping-pong.png)

[2] [https://assets.sysadmincasts.com/e/g/47-ansible-load- balance...](https://assets.sysadmincasts.com/e/g/47-ansible-load-balancer- serial-task-orchestration.gif)

<comment><USER7> This looks really cool. Will check it out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> SaaS for diagrams? No thanks! It's probably very good software, but I can't tolerate the business model, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER9> Class, activity and use case diagrams are not in vouge with the development teams. And if they do use them , they tend to be in Visio or with similar tools when they need to be created for requirements / design documentation etc., Somewhat related , [https://bramp.github.io/js-sequence- diagrams/](https://bramp.github.io/js-sequence-diagrams/) could be used as well.

<comment><USER10> What diagrams do you see used in dev teams these days?

In our team (non enterprise), there's a lot of visual flow models for UX, and still some class/interaction/activity diagrams for explaining how stuff hangs together.

<comment><USER11> I've been using BPMN to unpick what businesses are doing and document it. It's been great to check assumptions like "We need software to do X in this way" \-- which on inspection doesn't match with what needs to be done, but what has been done.

I've done the diagrams using the free Camunda Modeler [1], and they have an online version [2].

1\. [https://camunda.com/download/modeler/](https://camunda.com/download/modeler/)

2\. [https://bpmn.io/](https://bpmn.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about diagrams that you can embed in your markdown documentation? Proper ascii drawings: [http://asciiflow.com](http://asciiflow.com)

<comment><USER13> Monodraw is a great Mac app for creating them [https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)

<comment><USER14> Yeah Monodraw was great. Too bad he sunsetted it last October[0].

[0] [https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance- mode/](https://blog.helftone.com/monodraw-maintenance-mode/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion, from 2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=594682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=594682)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm a big fan of the C4 model [1] for diagramming and documenting software architectures. There is a SaaS tool, Structurizr [2], for diagramming, documenting, and exploring such models, plus also set of PlantUML styles [3] for generating C4 using that tool.

[1] [https://c4model.com/](https://c4model.com/)

[2] [https://structurizr.com/](https://structurizr.com/)

[3] [https://github.com/RicardoNiepel/C4-PlantUML](https://github.com/RicardoNiepel/C4-PlantUML)

</comment><comment><USER16> Register to self-host a thing named after a well-known open source standard? Nah...in fact, I'm feeling a sudden urge to make open source contributions to PlantUML and/or MermaidJS.

</comment><comment><USER17> Off topic, but seeing the word "embeddable" in this context reminds me of old Microsoft OLE. It was kind of cool being able to drag an excel table inside an Access form, together with a media player and stuff like that...

</comment><comment><USER18> Add [https://www.websequencediagrams.com/](https://www.websequencediagrams.com/) to the list :D

</comment><comment><USER19> Is UML cool again? I've been waiting 2 decades. Please say it is! Surely now that monoliths are the new black, UML must be respectable.

<comment><USER20> I am convinced uml was created to sell expensive tools for using uml. If I never have to see it again I will be happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice I like the scruffy mode, something about it captures the eye more than a clean cut shape you can put together on PowerPoint.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder why are they not using JSON?</comment>


Two Decades of War Have Eroded the Morale of America's Troops - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/left-behind/556844/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

—James Madison

Pretty much exactly what happened. Pretty smart these guys.

<comment><USER4> Every time I read things by the founding fathers and the era immediately after them, I am always surprised by how many extremely insightful people the time period produced and that they actually got into positions of power where they could organize things according to constitutional principles. Pretty amazing group of people in one place and at one time in a culture and circumstances that could have a large impact.

<comment><USER5> Founding father fetishizing (or whatever you want to call it) is very taboo in lefty circles because of how much conservatives do it. But that doesn't stop me personally from thinking that that group of people had the best ideas and developed the best framework for government the world has ever seen. It's just a shame it didn't work out to their intentions in practice.

<comment><USER6> No, they didn't. They had some good ideas inspired by the Enlightenment and by Romanticism, but quite a few expressed the idea that the Constitution should be reviewed regularly and updated and adjusted for changing conditions. The issue is that many "conservatives" believe the Constitution was perfect from the get go.

<comment><USER7> You have a point there, in that the Constitution was designed to be changeable. It was not supposed to be easy to change, but _possible_. But there has been just one new amendment since 1971, and none since 1992 _.

_[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty- seventh_Amendment_to_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty- seventh_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

<comment><USER8> Why would you need to change the constitution anymore? Now we just twist into a pretzel to reinterpret the meaning of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you really supported the troops, you would do everything possible to keep them out of combat zones and safe at home as far as possible. You would only ask them to make the ultimate sacrifice when their country's freedom is truly at stake and when their death would have a meaning.

In the words of National Security Advisor John Bolton, "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

<comment><USER10> If you're quoting John Bolton as someone who wants to avoid war, you probably should do a bit of research on John Bolton.

[https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2005/04/28/boltons- conservati...](https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2005/04/28/boltons-conservative- ideology-has-roots-in-yale-experience/)

John Bolton was extremely supportive of the war in Vietnam. He simply utilized his privilege to avoid being drafted so _he_ didn't have to go to war.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I'm quite aware of his attitudes to war itself—he's certainly not someone who wants to avoid it. I'm simply quoting him as someone who understands, very clearly, what's good for individual soldiers. No one better understands how America slaughters its own people than the man making sure he's on the other side of the knife.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this the constant feature of long lasting, low intensity conflicts and occupations?

The morale of occupying force starts to decline under constant resistance. This has been true in the Latin America, Africa, Caucasus, Asia etc. Eventually you end up with high crime, corruption and death squads.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's an interesting book by Tom Ricks, _The Generals_ , that's also congruent with this article: [https://jakeseliger.com/2012/12/18/the-generals- tom-ricks](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/12/18/the-generals-tom-ricks). Ricks points out that there's a distinct differences between incentives / consequences for front-line troops and generals. Since the Korean War, we've basically insulated generals from consequences for failure; they get fat paydays, admiration, and cushy consulting gigs after retirement regardless of performance. Which is _not_ true for front-line troops. In other words, high- level commanders have no skin in the game: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/042528462X](https://www.amazon.com/dp/042528462X).

<comment><USER3> Absolutly Petraeus and his whole crew are total failures but everybody makes him out to be some military genius. Absolutly absurd. The guy failed everywhere they sent him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Western militaries were and are designed for high-intensity armoured warfare in mitteleuropa against a near-tech-equivalent opponent. That capability cannot be sacrificed incase it is really needed - but an Army designed for that isn't good for the ongoing Middle East and Afghan situation. It isn't trained or equipped for it and hasn't recruited for it.

What the West should have done is designated another force for that. Something like (but not exactly) keeping the Army as it was and transforming the Marines into a desert-fighting force. Or taking elements of the Army and Marines and making an entirely new force. Or something like the French Foreign Legion.

<comment><USER14> Armies in general are not good at fighting insurgencies, especially those supported by a 3rd party that can itself not be engaged in full scale war. But your statement in general is incorrect at least as far as the US military, which has literally been engaged in continuous warfare against insurgencies and banana republics for more than 25 years. If they aren't designed for this yet, I don't know how many centuries it would take. The fact of the matter is that the US now has ballooned what it euphemistically designates as Special Operations forces to over 70,000 men - 10x the size of the Foreign Legion.

If they had 700,000 men deployed in SOCOM they would still lose. The Roman Empire showed how you defeat an insurgency militarily - <USER2> exterminating/recruiting the population of the target nation. You do this by establishing and expanding colonies along with large military garrisons to protect them. This takes generations, though, and requires either finding enough volunteers to colonize, or forcibly shipping people to these colonies, which tends to not have the desired effect. The Romans accomplished this mostly by giving land in conquered territories to ex-soldiers, along with members of the conquered population as slaves. These strategems are largely taboo now, so the "mowing the grass" strategy of continual armed sweeps is what's left and just like with your lawn, it will never end.

<comment><USER3> The insane thing about the US is that they have some polices that are practically impossible but they will not change them because it would be politically tricky.

To both have a real country in Afganistan where a group of minorites, that don't get often get along, that make up 60% of the population supress the largest minority of 40% is totally insane in a country like Afganistan.

The Pashtun tribes have dominated the their region and beyond for a long time, and they are essentially a warrior culutre that will never give up. At least not with the level of violance the west is willing to employ.

The problem is that the local allies that the US uses in Afganistan also don't know the area they are fighting in and they don't know the language of the people they are fighting. This makes the 'local' support far less useful then theory says it should be.

<comment><USER13> _not with the level of violance the west is willing to employ._

Not even with the level of violence the Soviets were willing to employ

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The Founders of the republic originally wanted to force Congress to vote every two years just to keep a standing Army; these days Congress won't even permit a vote to replace an Authorization for the Use of Military Force that was passed prior to the Iraq War and that we are now using to justify fighting against groups that didn't even exist back then."

This sounds like it would be in violation of a parent statute of some kind. Or maybe the Authorization was deliberately left open ended. Which should also be illegal.

</comment><comment><USER16> What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> As someone fairly disassociated from the US armed forces, I wonder how much impact the confirmation that all WMD-related rationale for the Iraq war was fabricated had on troop morale and faith in stated goals.

<comment><USER18> I'd guess none. Lying is ok when it's done by the good guys. Especially to harm bad guys. Holywood taught us that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > I've often heard veterans wish for a draft, for something that would drag > more Americans into orbit around the dark star that is the country's > constant exercise of military power.

Just when I think I cannot support our stupid wars and troops less, something like this comes along and does the job. I'd rather break my own leg or spend years in the hell that is American prison than take up arms for what America has seen fit to go to war to in every conflict since WWII. Maybe if we didn't have this seemingly never-ending record of fighting wars for idiotic reasons, losing almost every single one, our soldiers' and public's morale wouldn't be so low. What else can one possibly expect when fighting wars that aren't meant to end, against enemies that have never harmed us, for no fucking reason anyone can possibly explain or comprehend? To be fair, the American people have not even had a choice of a candidate that didn't support such wars from either party at least since 9/11 and for the most part even before then. The troops finally realizing how idiotic and purposeless conflicts like the one in Iraq are could be a great thing for America. If enough of them speak out or even refuse to serve, maybe we won't be involved in such crimes against humanity. But let's face it, the politicians who don't have to go to war or send their children to war seemingly will never get the message. Possibly the only thing that might change their minds is seeing their own children bleeding out in the middle of a highway and coming back in coffins. I guess this is what happens when we have a military like the US has and no actual enemies. In the meantime, actual enemies rising are generally ignored, and by the current administration even encouraged to become more powerful. At this point, I'm quite certain the idea of "winning" any of the conflicts we're currently in or will be in the near future is mere fantasy and quite delusional. So is the idea that a draft will ever be supported or come back successfully. The internet exists so at this point, I can't imagine anyone but the poorest, the dumbest, and the most violent can even twist their minds enough to not be disgusted enough by our past actions to support any war the US is or might be in. That's probably why we're enlisting klansmen and other similar lowlifes-- no one else is insane or stupid enough to enroll of their own free will.

</comment><comment><USER20> Won't this thread just degrade into politics? Maybe this article should be flagged for not being in the spirit of HN?

<comment><USER21> I personally found the article very interesting, but I'm with you that it will entice political comments.

<comment><USER20> I am not judging the article in its own right, only its suitability for HN given the guidelines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but what's worse I think, is that they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.

America making a movie about what Vietnam did to their soldiers is like a serial killer telling you what stopping suddenly for hitchhikers did to his clutch."

\- Frankie Boyle

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZwuTI-V8SI)

<comment><USER23> Is there a category for a serial killer that's trying to prevent another dramatically worse serial killer from killing and enslaving a nation for generations?

The US didn't try to conquer North Vietnam. It didn't try to annex the nation. It got involved in an existing civil war - on the premise of fighting Communism's spread - and tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam for exactly the same reason it acted to keep North Korea from conquering South Korea. The US left Vietnam, the North went on with its conquering anyway.

The US killed vast numbers of North Koreans in the Korean War as well, in the defense of the South. Why isn't that treated exactly the same way that the Vietnam War is? A curious inconsistentcy of popular sentiment: it's because to either wish the US had failed in Korea, or never got involved at all, is to be ok with the idea that South Korea would very likely look like North Korea today and that the South's people would have had the same horrific history the past six decades.

Let's see how things turned out.

South Korea: GDP per capita of Spain & Italy, ~$30,000.

Vietnam: GDP per capita of East Timor & the Solomon Islands, ~$2,300.

<comment><USER24> > tried to keep North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam

That is not what US internal diplomatic notes said at the time, not in modern interviews if McNamara, Clark Clifford etc.

The Vichy French colonialists, then the non-Vichy French, then the Americans fought to retain the Vietnamese colony in the south. The fight was against the National Liberation Front in the south - Buddhist monks, Paris educated professionals, peasants etc. The north had little involvement until mid-1968. Also French Indochina was one country until 1954, and the ceasefire lines were supposed to be temporary barring national elections, which the US opposed. There never was a "South Vietnam".

> The South's people would have the same horrific history

US policy during the Korean War was to fire on civilians, as happened at No Gun Ri. South Korea was under a series of dictatorships with a more horrific history than anything happening up north until the late 1970s up until the Gwangju massacre in 1980 in South Korea. The northern economy eclipsed the southern one as well. Things began changing in both countries in the 1980s and 1990s for a variety of internal and external reasons.

<comment><USER25> "The north had little involvement until mid-1968."

That's neither the position of vietnam nor the US. Even during the separation the North left 10 000 vietcongs in the south to sow discord and guerrila activities. The different opposition organisations were soon under direct control from the north.

At least that is what the "People's Army of Vietnam" is saying which can be read here: [https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Vietnam-Official- History-1954...](https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Vietnam-Official- History-1954-1975/dp/0700621873)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> War is necessary to fuel the military industrial complex. Without war there is no ultimate purpose in developing weapons, pouring money into r&d, exporting arms and ammunition to the rest of the world.

This is a cynical view but I see America as sticking to it fairly consistently over the last two centuries.

</comment><comment><USER27> The founders were against a standing army, preferring citizen-based militias. Looking at the behavior of Imperial America, one sees the wisdom.

I suppose one bright spot in this otherwise dismal time is that both the left and the right mostly agree that we shouldn't be dropping bombs on people.

<comment><USER28> If the american left and american right agreed on that, we probably wouldn't have been at war for the last 17 years, sadly.

<comment><USER27> The american left and right (and the maligned center) _do_ agree on it, you can look at the polls on the syrian intervention. That's the insanity. Our foreign policy is controlled by people who do not care what we think.

<comment><USER29> Evidence of a deep state?

<comment><USER30> That political elites (publicly) disagree with the public doesn't mean there's a deep state. It just means that your democracy isn't very responsive.

'Deep state' is being thrown around a lot these days. It's proper meaning is in relation to things like Italy's Propaganda Due lodge: a tightly-connected network of people who are in a strong sense anti-democratic, who are not publicly known but have something of a veto over the actions of an elected government.

 _Some_ of those features apply to the anti-Trump official world in the US, but only in a much weaker form. And this isn't to do with it, not least because Trump is the one pushing the button.

<comment><USER31> You're arguing a tautology - unresponsive democracy by definition is when the will of the people is not responded to. Opinions or desires of the people in that case are not correlated with the actions of the state. The state instead responds primarily to the elites. The elites are the deep state.

<comment><USER30> No, I'm arguing that the concepts of unresponsive elites, and a shadowy deep state, are distinct. The latter is a lot rarer (and, frankly, a lot more sinister) than the former.

The idea that the actions of the state don't correlate with the desires of the people is more-or-less deliberate in a representative (rather than direct) democracy, incidentally. As a political scientist I find it rather offensive that the word 'democracy' has been repurposed to mean a kind of replaceable oligarchy rather than government-by-the-people, but that ship sailed decades ago.

<comment><USER32> > No, I'm arguing that the concepts of unresponsive elites, and a shadowy deep > state, are distinct.

They are distinct but not disjoint; the "deep state" concept is a specific form of unresponsive elite.

> The idea that the actions of the state don't correlate with the desires of > the people is more-or-less deliberate in a representative (rather than > direct) democracy

No, it's not, in general; the purpose of representative democracy is to allow the actions of the state to give effect to the desires of the people, on the premise that even most people with the requisite ability to effectively decide how to give effect to their desires aren't optimally employed spending all their time figuring out _how_ the state should do that.

It's true that the US federal model of an unusually large number of barriers and unusually _un_ democratic selection and allocation of representation is designed to prevent government from representing the desire of the people, but the US system isn't the Platonic ideal of representative democracy.

<comment><USER30> > No, it's not, in general; the purpose of representative democracy is to > allow the actions of the state to give effect to the desires of the people, > on the premise that even most people with the requisite ability to > effectively decide how to give effect to their desires aren't optimally > employed spending all their time figuring out how the state should do that.

That's one argument for representative democracy (and, I think, the best one for why participatory democracy is tricky) but it's not the intention behind existing representative institutions, at least in the US and the UK (and the countries who inherited different parts of our systems).

Edmund Burke's address to the electors of Bristol contains one of the most famous declarations of this principle: 'Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.'

The Federalist papers show that the US model was also not designed to operate as an efficient aggregator of citizens' opinions, but more as a means of the public endorsing competent and honest representatives to govern on their behalf.

The classic book-length exposition of this model (which is basically modern elite orthodoxy) is 'Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy', by Joseph Schumpeter. David Held's 'Models of Democracy' is a good comparative text, though there are lots of those to chose from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > This was part of the much-heralded "success" of the surge, George W. Bush's > decision to increase troop presence in Iraq and commit to a strategy > grounded in the new counterinsurgency field manual General David Petraeus > put out in 2006.

Yeah, this was the time the US military did the bidding of the Supreme Islamic Councile and helped to ethnically cleanse Baghdad.

Givin support to people like the Badr Brigades who went around with powerdrills and killed all non-Shia residents.

The level of violence went down because the Sunni were defeated. They are just 20% and they have no chance against the other 60% that control the government and 100'000 marines.

The US also made deals with the Tribs in the country side. This worked as long as America was there and giving them protection and support. Once the US left it took a couple years and many of these tribes joined ISIS.

The narrative the this counterinsurgency thing 'worked' is utter nonsense. When Petraeus tried the same strategy in Afganistan where there was not a majority who was willing or able to utterly crush a small minority it failed completly.</comment>


Who uses the Formalyzer script on the web? - <AUTHOR> http://blekko.com/webgrep?page=view&id=e06894ead74dba35d4a7f83e994bcabb

<comment><AUTHOR> In a previous discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4907609> it was noted that the 'formalyzer' script was a likely culprit in divulging information about you to other web sites. We did a quick grep a Blekko and these are the top 100 results.</comment>