Pwn the ESP32 Forever: Flash Encryption and Secure Boot Keys Extraction - <AUTHOR> https://limitedresults.com/2019/11/pwn-the-esp32-forever-flash-encryption-and-sec-boot-keys-extraction/ <comment><AUTHOR> I don't quite understand why the author considers the ESP 32 a "broken platform" now that this attack was possible.

Doesn't it definitely require physical access? If so, couldn't you just swap the whole device for a malicious one? Is the issue that you can read out secret keys burned into the firmware?</comment>


Facebook 'friends' mock 'suicide' of woman who posted goodbye message - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8241015/Facebook-friends-mock-suicide-of-woman-who-posted-goodbye-message.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Some users of the site even taunted the 42-year-old over her final status update instead of trying to save her, calling her a "liar" and saying the fatal overdose was 'her choice'."

"Yesterday her mother, Jennifer Langridge, said she was shocked and upset that nobody did anything for her daughter despite being aware of her threats."

"Mental health charities said the case was a sad reflection on today's society where friends made online are not necessarily friends in real life."

The ability to be more connected seems to have commoditized friendships.

The article admits of claims by some friends who lived far away trying to obtain help, and a claim that this woman had basically "cried wolf" before.

But the trend does seem to be a cheapening of what friendship means.

<comment><USER2> Facebook 'friends' reminds me of a derogatory phrase we have here "You don't have any mates, you just know people".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why is "suicide" in quotes in this article's title? This woman did actually kill herself, right?

<comment><USER4> To reflect the fact that people didn't believe her, I'd guess.</comment></comment>


Domain-cli: Search domain availability from terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WeiChiaChang/domain-cli <comment><USER2> Reminds me of a similar tool I wrote some time ago that checks if a given name is taken, but on every top level domain:

[https://github.com/jomo/tld_checker](https://github.com/jomo/tld_checker)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like it's a wrapper for the API on [https://domainsdb.info/](https://domainsdb.info/) which itself is based on either an API of [https://domains-index.com/](https://domains-index.com/) or a paid subscription of the latter.

</comment><comment><USER4> A text file with the TLDs, dig, and a one liner on the shell can produce the same result

</comment><comment><USER5> I like instant Domain search a lot. Well built

[https://instantdomainsearch.com/](https://instantdomainsearch.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Curious if anyone finds the boxes and colors in the output of CLI tools such as this one useful. If so, why?

<comment><USER7> It can be helpful in terminals that support it but it's easy to overdo.

Here, the box/table is literally separating two pieces of info (ordinance+domain) so there's no need to lose all that screen space. And the big logo is obviously unnecessary and probably reduces re-use - seems like I'm dialing into a Renegade BBS circa 1992.

I think there are UX benefits to introducing color and formatting when available, but it's best kept subtle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wrote something that goes through the dictionary checking domains a few years ago. [https://github.com/foobarbecue/domainance](https://github.com/foobarbecue/domainance)

</comment><comment><USER9> Really cool concept!

Unfortunately domainsdb doesn't know about 4 of 10 domains I own, so I'm afraid this service isn't too useful when precision is important (i.e. creating a service that searches for taken domains based on it)

<comment><USER10> Mind to share these 4 domains with me at firstname.lastname@example.com ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> GoDaddy has an availability API at developers.godaddy.com. Works pretty much like you'd expect...

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not just...

        whois example.com

Or is this also intended to be a domain discovery tool?

<comment><USER13> In which case why not 'dig' or 'nslookup' too?

<comment> greyface- There is one odd case where asking DNS won't work accurately: if a domain is registered but has no nameservers.

<comment><USER14> Can you give some example? I have tried some registrars and if you don't provide some NS information, the default NS information is used.

I have a tool in the past [https://gist.github.com/icy/b30893cecc8ec657317ba93831b0fd4a...](https://gist.github.com/icy/b30893cecc8ec657317ba93831b0fd4a#file- whoisvn-sh-L70) it works fine as I experience. The tool has option `--all` to check by using both google/open dns. E.g,

      $ whoisvn google-is-good.com --all
          opendns.org:   google-is-good.com   available
            googledns:   google-is-good.com   available

      $ whoisvn google-is-bad.com --all
          opendns.org:    google-is-bad.com   available
            googledns:    google-is-bad.com   available

<comment><USER15> Look at, for example, "nmu360.se". It is registered, but has no name servers configured.

<comment><USER16> Whois says it has no name server (what a weird format that of .se), but digg finds an A record with 188.8.131.52 (what seems to be a register IP).

<comment><USER15> Let me guess: Your ISP is injecting fake DNS responses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's that banner at the start of the demo? That part as good.

<comment><USER18> CFonts according to the source code.

[https://github.com/dominikwilkowski/cfonts](https://github.com/dominikwilkowski/cfonts)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't get the demo - if I enter google.com, shouldn't it check for google.de instead of google.com.de?

<comment><USER20> Huh? Why would it check for something you didn't ask for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry but I refuse to use node based cli applications. Not trying to be overly negative, just frank.

<comment><USER21> what difference does it make? There are plenty of cli commands implemented in python/ruby/dtrace/shell and you're not aware of them. What's different about node aside from your negative bias?

<comment><USER22> There are no common tools in nodejs, no system ships with node. I only have node on my production servers, because Rails needs a JS engine and node is fast.

Actually i assume nearly every techie tries to avoid installing hundreds of different interpreters with even more dependencies just to run tiny scripts which could be replaced by a smart shell one liner.

<comment><USER21> Often techies sudo apt install packages and these packages might have a nodejs/python/ruby as a dependency.

Why python/ruby would be ok but nodejs is not?

<comment><USER22> Python ships with the system. I am not aware of common Ruby scripts. I am a Ruby dev so I use a exception on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Too many emojis, or I would use this.</comment>


Uber Partner Reveals Air Taxi Design at CES - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/07/uber-partner-reveals-air-taxi-design-ces/ <comment><USER2> I saw this in person; while neat it's non-functional and effectively a cool CES art piece</comment>


Defaulting to i686 for the Debian i386 architecture - <AUTHOR> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/09/msg00589.html <comment><USER2> I missed the memo that says we have all been granted amd64 machines. damn.. out of luck again.

<comment><USER3> What does amd64 have anything to do with this?

<comment><USER2> from the article:

Indeed, the likely reasons for users to choose i386 over amd64 today are to reduce memory consumption or to run i386 binaries for which the source is not available - not because they're using 32-bit processors.</comment></comment></comment>


How your brain remembers the future   - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627545.200-how-your-brain-remembers-the-future.html

<comment><USER2> Some relevant/related papers:

# _Original paper_ : Alink, Arjen, Caspar M Schwiedrzik, Axel Kohler, Wolf Singer, and Lars Muckli. Stimulus predictability reduces responses in primary visual cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience 30, no. 8 (February 24, 2010): 2960-2966. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20181593>.

# _A relevant paper_ : Alink, A., W. Singer, and L. Muckli. Capture of Auditory Motion by Vision Is Represented by an Activation Shift from Auditory to Visual Motion Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience 28, no. 11 (3, 2008): 2690-2697. <http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/short/28/11/2690>.

# _An interesting paper to HN_ : Alink, Wouter, Valentin Jijkoun, David Ahn, and Maarten De Rijke. Vries. Representing and querying multi-dimensional markup for question answering. (NLPXML-2006): 3--9. [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.129....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.129.4698).

<comment><USER3> You should check out the papers by Renee Baillargeon on testing infants' knowledge of the physical world, they are pretty cool.

<comment><USER2> Nice, thanks. During the previous summer I tried to study how my very young cousin (1y at the time) perceived the physical world, against the movies ones (yeh, he watched movies :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ever tried to catch a ball? in the case you succeeded you "remembered the future" Correct when I am wrong, but this article said nothing other than, we can estimate where an moving object will be in a few seconds. As far as I understood the abstracts of eagleal's linked articles, the describe that by tricking those pattern recognition abilities of our brain we can create optical illusions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Whoa! I remember trying an experiment a lot like this when I was in high school with a girlfriend that was really into psychology. She would go onto my bookshelf and place a book there that was new or should be unfamiliar to me and then we measured how long it took me to find a different book that was familiar to me. We thought having a new unpredictable book on the shelf slowed down the search. I now think our methods were bogus, but there was undoubtedly something that caused the new book to stand out when I was looking over the bookshelf.

<comment><USER6> I think that this is a different type of effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be interested to see the results of this experiment on people with autism. As I understand their brains process more of the visual stimulus than normal people do.

<comment><USER8> One thing that comes to mind is that people with autism tend to react negatively to changes of plans, or disruptions of routine. (That may be a longer time-frame effect than we're talking about here, though, and not related.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is paywalled for me. Flagged.

A summary would be nice.

<comment><USER6> Weird. Here's the article as I see it:

IT'S like remembering the future. Our brain generates predictions of likely visual inputs so it can focus on dealing with the unexpected.

Predictable sights trigger less brain activity than unfamiliar stimuli, bolstering the view that the brain is not merely reactive, but generates predictions based on the recent past. "The brain expects to see things and really just wants to confirm it now and again," says Lars Muckli at the University of Glasgow, UK.

He and Arjen Alink at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, asked 12 volunteers to focus on a cross on a screen, above and below which bars flashed on and off to create the illusion of movement. To test a predictable stimulus, a third bar would appear in a position timed to fit in with the illusion of smooth movement. For the unpredictable stimulus it would appear out of sync. fMRI scans showed that the unpredictable stimulus increased the activity in parts of the brain which deal with the earliest stages of visual processing (Journal of Neuroscience, vol 30, p 2960).

The finding supports the "Bayesian brain" theory, which sees the brain as making predictions about the world which it updates when new information comes in.

<comment><USER10> So now I'm curious - is that the full article? That's what I see, too, but I wonder if there's more to the article that is behind a paywall?</comment></comment></comment>


Building a Diablo 3 AH Bot with OCR - <AUTHOR> http://lak.in/diablo-3-bot

<comment><USER2> Good idea, but train your OCR properly. There's no reason for recognition mistakes if your text is taken from a screenshot (not deformed, not randomised font).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I totally agree. The tessnet2 engine I am using didn't seem to have very in depth training. If it was a more serious project I would have looked to use tesseract 3 which seems to have more flexibility for training.

<comment><USER3> If you do, take a look at TesseractTrainer, which basically automates the entire training process: <https://github.com/BaltoRouberol/TesseractTrainer>

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks amazing, bookmarking this for sure. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome stuff. Brings me back to the days of PindleBots. I agree about the late game content being pretty boring.

</comment><comment><USER5> I make one too, has a video demo on www.boluobao.net p.s. It's in Chinese language

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool bot!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Fastest way to slice arguments in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/majimboo/node-benchmarks/blob/master/results/array_slice_varg.md

<comment><USER2> Specific to Node.js? On Firefox Nightly it got a bad result. [http://jsperf.com/fastest-slice-method](http://jsperf.com/fastest-slice- method)

<comment><USER3> Could be, I remember reading an article about how using Array.proto.slice on arguments will not get optimised by V8.

[https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization-k...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/wiki/Optimization- killers)</comment></comment>


Twilight Princess Eyes Breakdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.benjones.us/twilight-princess-eyes-breakdown/

<comment><USER2> I find it kind of magical that 3D models can be ripped out of game ROMs and then manipulated like they were any old document.

<comment><USER3> Me too. Can someone give a quick explanation of how that works? Is the data format for these models just somewhat universal?

<comment><USER4> The article mentions using 3D Ripper DX [0].

What I would guess from the homepage is that it hooks itself somewhere in the DirectX stack, and is able to extract the model from there. It probably monitors DirectX calls and pulls the data about the geometry, textures, etc from there. If it does that, it avoids the data format issue since it only has to understand the native DirectX API calls and memory structures.

[0] [http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm](http://www.deep- shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to magoghm for posting this in the discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7895301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7895301) .

</comment><comment><USER5> Lots of similar examinations at [http://simonschreibt.de/](http://simonschreibt.de/)</comment>


"Hi Guido [...]. You seem to have an awesome expertise on Python." - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115212051037621986145/posts/R8jEVrobbRj

<comment><USER2> It's missing the obligatory "We are looking for someone with n years of experience." where n > age of the project.

<comment><USER3> Golden comment response

       — How many years of experience do you have with Python?
       — ALL OF THEM.

<comment><USER4> [https://gist.github.com/dhh/1285068](https://gist.github.com/dhh/1285068)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, can't really blame this recruiter, he/she certainly found the best candidate given the requirements.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those who are not familiar: Guido created Python.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rossum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rossum)</comment>


Rebuilding the IBM 1401 - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/rebuilding-the-ibm-1401 <comment><USER2> The first computer I used. You could see each bit of memory with the naked eye: little metal donuts strung on wire grids.

<http://members.optushome.com.au/intaretro/1401Core-9L.jpg>

Though the CPU was feeble by present standards, peripheral devices like the card reader and printer were already quite evolved, and were very impressive for mechanical devices. The printer could print letters so fast that the pitch was a high whine.

Computers were not seen then quite the way they are now. It was almost as if the CPU was something that combed the data on its way from card reader to printer. That's why they called what they now call IT "data processing" then.

(IIRC it's had 3 names so far: DP, then MIS, then IT.)

<comment><USER3> My first was an IBM 7094, but over in a corner was a trusty 1401 which was used to copy card decks of programs onto tape for the 7094 to execute. The output tapes were carried back to the 1401 for printing.

The 1401 was a marvel of simplicity. Pressing the start button would read one card from the card reader and start executing the code on the card. The boot card would read the rest of the boot program from the card reader and you were ready to go.

<comment><USER4> 1401 machine language was my first assembly language experience - I wrote a one card card deck duplicator and a one card card deck printer. Those photographs bring back memories - I can hear the printer playing _The Star- Spangled Banner_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The computer history museum is wonderful. For all that our field of endeavor is (relatively) young, the museum makes it clear that we already have a rich, varied and illuminating history.</comment>


Any HN readers have ideas for improving gun safety? - <AUTHOR> Ron Conway asked me to post on HN asking for tech ideas for improving gun safety.  He asks that you email them to
email@example.com.<p>They're particularly interested in ideas for improving<p>- the safe handling, possession, storage and discharge of firearms and ammunition, and<p>- the management, scaling, and privacy safeguarding requirements for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). <comment><USER4> So here's a crazy little idea.

Most gun violence is directly linked to gang activity. Gang activity is directly linked to the money involved in the drug trade. So the best technological approach to reducing gun violence would be one that took all the money out of the drug trade, giving the gangsters less to shoot at each other over. There is precedent for this. The fact that crime, including violent crime and violent crime committed with firearms, is so low now compared to the 80's and early 90's is directly linked to the collapse in the price of cocaine.

We've made it almost impossible to stop everyday copyright infringement, why not make it almost impossible to stop physical smuggling or fabrication of narcotics? Commoditize the gangsters straight out of business. Part of what made the bottom fall out of cocaine was crystal meth. So there's one direction: freely distribute the information and materials necessary to manufacture competing drugs. Then there's the distribution: Silk Road is a start, but find a better way of doing it that will pull in more producers, consumers, and distributors. If you work all the angles, you can engineer an end run against the war on drugs the same way we engineered an end run against copyright.

Too far out? ;)

<comment><USER5> Heh. I do agree that ending the drug war is the single best thing that can be done to reduce violence, poverty, racism, hopelessness-among-minorities, etc.

Guns and gun violence are a very minor issue by comparison.

I'd rather not have a widespread "everyone a tweaker" program, though. Crystal meth is actually pretty bad. Decriminalizing existing drugs and production of drugs would probably be a lot better than replacing illegal pot/coke/etc. use with illegal meth use.

<comment><USER4> Sure, I was not being entirely serious. I'll just say that we're probably better off in the current heyday of meth than we were in the heyday of cocaine. Any reasonable approach to the drug problem is not about growing demand for drugs, just better meeting the existent demand with fewer externalities.

<comment><USER6> So perhaps one of the HN responses could be "legalise, regulate and tax most of the illegal drugs". That would certainly send an interesting message.

<comment><USER5> That's not technical, though. This is specifically for 2 technical meetings they're having on technical measures to deal with gun violence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What exactly do you mean by "gun safety"? I don't think you're talking about accidental or negligent discharges resulting in injury or death. Firearm enthusiast groups, firearms manufacturers and dealers have put significant effort in to educating the public about safe handling which has reduced unintended shootings by a large amount over the past 50 years or so. This would be a strange problem for someone not involved in the firearms industry directly to tackle.

If you were to include suicide, which accounts for the majority of fatal gunshots, I submit that there doesn't appear to be much if any correlation between suicide rates and access to firearms internationally. I'd certainly try to keep a suicidal friend away from firearms, but it's just not that hard to find a quick and reliably way to end one's life. Suicide prevention probably shouldn't focus on methods of suicide.

If you're talking about reducing gun _crime_ , I actually do have an idea. Right now, very few people who fail NICS background checks are prosecuted, yet many of them have committed a felony by lying on the background check form they're required to fill out when buying a gun from a dealer. If it's due to criminal history, the police should show up to deliver the news about the failure in person - and arrest the buyer. If it's for mental health reasons, the person should be involuntarily detained for psychiatric evaluation. Obviously, the false-positive rate needs to be low for this to work.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know enough about firearms and mechanical reliability that I don't put much faith in anything which modifies the critical firing path of a weapon. I don't even like S&W revolvers with an integrated trigger lock. However, there are lots of other areas for improvement.

1\. Figure out a way to make firearms registration easy to compute owner from a given recovered weapon, but not to enumerate a list of all guns owned by a specific person based on his identity only. There are a variety of cryptographic ways to do this -- if we had a way to do write-only storage on guns (say, with a 2d barcode or something which couldn't be removed, and which included a cryptographic signature and timestamp), it would make tracing guns recovered in crime easier (and thus catch/prosecute straw man purchasers for gangs and such), but would prevent the "nazis seize all guns before implementing the ovens" irrational fear.

2\. A way to do NCIC NICS checks without a huge amount of trust. A private party should be able to run one (with consent of a purchaser), using a smartphone and ID provided by the buyer. Something like a Square reader. Maybe something which uses both the buyer's phone and the seller's phone and an online server. It's unreasonable to require all buyers/sellers have smartphones (a lot of gun owners are old, and there's a constitutional argument to allow poor people to buy guns, too), but at a gun show, you could loan iPod Touch to various sellers for the day. This would be supplemental to normal at-dealer-premises FFL checks. You could possibly also just require all FFLs to purchase a reasonable terminal, too.

3\. Safes suck. We can do so much on locking mechanisms to rapidly open safes. For non-self-defense weapons, having safes which do periodic "I haven't been broken into yet!" liveness reporting to the owner (and maybe law enforcement, insurance) remotely, and then which alarm on tamper events, would be great. I'd love these since my safes each contain >$50k.

4\. Third-party custody. I'm more than willing to lower the bar for temporarily prohibiting someone from possessing firearms. Yet, turning them over to the police isn't really fair. There should be some kind of self- storage facility optimized for storing firearms where control can be temporarily ceded to a trustworthy third party, on a bailment basis. If you are suspected of mental illness/etc., they'd be safe, and you'd be prohibited from access for a period of time; access would be restored at some point. This would make it easier to lower the bar for removal of access to weapons. Someone like Mrs. Lanza may have considered placing her weapons in such a facility while trying to get rid of her son.

<comment><USER8> I like #3 - which is similar to one of my comments. I also like #4 - <USER2> the suspicious side of me would worry that it could be used against someone; i.e. I claim that RDL is a nutter and should not be allowed access to his arsenal! some overly cautious system then prevents RDL from accessing his cache, and instead he comes and bludgeons me with his fists out of anger, thus proving that he is a nutter!

I really think that #3 - smart safes with an sms/email/http-host alerting system is a very easy entry into this market. (I do not know if these exist yet - I'll have to go look after this post) - but it would appear, based on the current public sentiment - that a safe which can differentiate between authorized access and not (two factor) would be a good thing.

The safe can open with whatever key/code it requires for physical access - <USER3> there is a smart-phone dead-mans-switch which, if this portion of authorization is not completed - the police are notified of the unauthorized access.

An external access log, would also be good. If you specify what weapon is in what slot/location - the alert could also include the exact weapon type moved. (think of the weighted mini-bars in hotels)

My buddy from lockheed and I designed a bar system which could easily be modified for this purpose, using weight sensors and passive RFID to tell which alcoholic beverage was poured and how much - its trivial to convert this into a gun safe system...

<comment><USER5> If the standard for temporarily locking someone out from access to guns is similar to California's 5150 involuntary 72h psych hold, I'd be ok with it. There could also be a legal requirement for the police to provide constant protection during that no-firearms period, since otherwise someone might use the process to disarm a target.

I'd _love_ a self-storage model for the guns I have as investments/collection vs. active use.

<comment><USER8> You know what would be interesting: with your self storage setup: Add a range and the ability for your guns to be 'Air-BnB'd as rentals in the range.

The cost of renting your gun at the storage range would include the cost of a gunsmith (Gun Genius Bar) who takes care of them.

The gun ownership is all anonymous to all but the range/storage unit...

You can login to your account and allot weapons to being available to rental. You can set usage thresholds etc.

This would be an interesting way to also let your guns get some regular cleaning/service.

The system would keep a "gunfax" record of all its use as well.

<comment><USER5> I think that sort of gets done already when people have really rare guns at ranges (in particular, it's how ranges tend to have post-1986 dealer sample NFA items available; there's a range and then an affiliated company which sells to police and has the dealer sample letter; blackwater got in trouble for sending dealer samples to their forces in Iraq).

It would be interesting to have a "condotel" style gun range, but in general, people who have huge private collections don't seem to want to rent them out, and most of the guns used at ranges are of a very limited selection which are most popular (you could probably fully stock a pistol range with $50-$100k worth of Glocks, Sigs, HKs, and some S&W revolvers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Penn Jillette made an excellent observation when confronted with a question of how can we solve a problem together as a species?

He said, the best question to ask is how can we solve this problem with more freedom rather than less?

So my only point is that we should be looking for ways to use technology for freedom, such as spreading information about safety or getting help for mental health issues.

And not trying to restrict the average normal healthy citizens with technology. Which has been proven again and again throughout history that technological restrictions are rendered ineffective against clever hackers or criminals.

<comment><USER10> In that case we should be considering technology that allows me to disable guns in my vicinity, since I want to be free from having high speed projectiles discharged around me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a naive request.

There is plenty of tech that could create new, innovative weapons. Personal tasers for everyone, charged with USB. Peppersprayers with chemical encoding to identify assailants uniquely. Weapons that can only be used by one person.

The problem is these are NEW weapons and they do not in any way reduce the current supply of weapons. The current supply of weaponry is deadly, cheap, easily available, and apparently, no law can be created to reduce or inhibit the current supply. Under those circumstances, adoption of any new tech will be tiny and unimportant.

Gun violence is a political problem, not a technological one. Once the groundwork is laid for political action to occur, then and only then can it move into the realm of a technological problem.

<comment><USER12> Gun violence is a political problem? Really??

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that one of the major drivers of hostility to NICS is the fear that the government having a complete and accurate listing of gun purchases will enable a future fascistic government to neuter resistance by confiscating guns. So one way to reduce political opposition to NICS would be to make it useless as a database of gun ownership. Run it in such a public fashion that everyone can trust it's not keeping track of all guns, or constantly run fake queries against it for all citizens so that gun owners cannot be identified.

I unsure if what I've read about this belief is fringey or common among gun owners, so maybe this is not necessary to gain enough political support to require background checks for all firearm sales.

<comment><USER5> There's actually federal law against building a national firearms registry, so that should influence NICS design.

We saw in California and NY that registration -> confiscation. I actually trust the federal government more than the California government, but I don't think it's an unreasonable concern. Borderline guns (say, .50bmg) which are 100% registered would be at risk to confiscation in the future if possession is banned. It would be much easier legally to ban possession of the .50bmg, particularly in semiauto, than anything else, since those are so expensive and rare, and so destructive that they look great on TV.

<comment><USER14> what are you referring to with "registration -> confiscation"?

<comment><USER4> If you register all the guns, or all the gun owners, then you have a list of people so you can go knock on their doors and take their guns away from them. Gangsters exempt, naturally--they didn't bother registering in the first place.

<comment><USER15> I think the grandparent poster was looking for those specific CA and NY examples.

Were SKS somehow confiscated in CA? How did CA get around the tricky "ex post facto" thing?

<comment><USER5> There isn't a clear case:

The .50 and AW bans in California had a mandatory registration period. If you did not register during that 90 day window, you could never register them in the future, so they were illegal. There was a legal challenge during that process -- the AG said he'd extend it, someone anti-gun sued him, and the extension was invalidated; they then started sending letters to those who hadn't registered by the original deadline telling them to turn their (now illegal) weapons in.

NYC has local law 78 and there was confiscation based in prior registration. [http://www.constitution.org/2ll/bardwell/richmond_boro_v_nyc...](http://www.constitution.org/2ll/bardwell/richmond_boro_v_nyc2.txt)

Essentially, NYC used long gun registration records from the early 1980s to confiscate newly-defined assault weapons after a 1991 AW ban. There was a window given for AW registration in 1991, I believe, to get around the legal challenge.

Japanese-Americans had guns confiscated in Hawaii in 1942 (there were no mass internments in Hawaii, though)

Outside the US, registration was used to facilitate confiscation in Ireland, Bermuda, Jamaica, and Greece.

I think there wer also cases of registered handguns in Chicago where if the registration lapsed (there was an annual renewal requirement), the registration data was used for confiscation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've got a modest proposal - the second simplest idea of them all.

Instead of beating around the bush with restrictions that should be ruled unconstitutional but won't be, _simply ban all firearms_. The building-a- better-world folks would be happy to finally get their wet dream. The constitutionalists could stop deluding themselves as to its applicability, and thus choose to secede or revolt. And everybody who wants personal freedom would be free of a red herring and could better concentrate on _functional_ ways of neutering the modern governments' ability to do things like _ban personal tools_ in the first place.

<comment><USER5> If someone passes an unconstitutional law, the reasonable response isn't to secede (which is itself unconstitutional), but to challenge it in the courts (as well as to vote out of office the legislators/executives who pushed those laws).

"Cutting off your nose to spite your face" would be the cliche here.

<comment><USER16> The courts actually ruling it unconstitutional would be a decent outcome as well. And maybe they even would with such a _blatant_ contradiction. But if not, hopefully the incongruence would finally be explicit enough to dispel the wishful belief that the government is bound by a piece of paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> * Require gun insurance and make gun purchasers criminally responsible if the guns they buy are later used to commit a crime.

* Provide incentives to encourage people to rent guns if they are going to shoot recreationally at a gun range. This could be accomplished through a flat tax on guns owned by individuals, combined with storage and tracking requirements for guns at ranges.

* Basic GPS tracking would seem easy and straight-forward, and reduce the problems with stolen (or "stolen") weapons.

* Repeal the second amendment. Any gun ownership should be based on efficacy and maximize safety. Currently gun ownership can not be optimized because it does not have a defined aim.

<comment><USER7> _Basic GPS tracking would seem easy and straight-forward, and reduce the problems with stolen (or "stolen") weapons._

How do you prevent people from disabling the GPS when the gun is stolen or "stolen"? It seems like it would be pretty difficult to make a GPS tracking unit that couldn't have its power source disconnected. If you managed that, it's fairly easy to destroy electronics. A few seconds in the microwave usually does the trick.

<comment><USER17> The point is that if you introduce legislation that makes it manadatory for weapons to be location aware then this allows certain other features such as de-activation of "hunting" rifles etc. within urban environments and so forth.

<comment><USER7> Aside from the technical difficulty of designing such a system _and_ making it difficult to bypass, that sounds like a solution in search of a problem. People firing rifles of any kind in urban environments, whether by accident, for self defense or to commit a crime is quite rare. Handguns are the weapon of choice for both criminal use and lawful self defense in cities. I suppose you could disable those too, but the effect on crime would be similar to banning them: criminals would still have working guns and non-criminals wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about better ways to recognize those people that are mentally ill and violent before they strike again?

Unfortunately, this isn't really a tech problem. We're in this mess now because Thomas Szasz began a movement to destroy the profession of psychiatry. This led to the massive deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill thirty years ago, swelling the ranks of the homeless. That, in turn, played a major role in these recent killings, because of the impact the movement had on civil commitment laws: it is now very difficult (if not impossible) to commit those in dire need of effective, full-time treatment before people get killed.

<comment><USER10> Only 75% of adult spree killers have a mental illness diagnosis and the most common diagnosis is "depression". Less than 20% of teenage spree killers have a mental illness diagnosis. Tiller wasn't mentally ill at all, just racist and power-obsessed.

As convenient as blaming mental illness may be, it is also short-sighted.

<comment><USER7> Going on a killing spree is prima facie evidence of mental illness. The fact that it wasn't diagnosed beforehand is part of the problem.

<comment><USER5> Spree killers are ~100/killings/yr. "rational" criminal murders with guns, domestic violence, etc. are more like 10k/yr.

I'm also not sure how many of the ~15k gun suicides (or, say, all suicides) are mental illness/depression/etc. It may be unpopular, but I don't consider a 50-80 year old guy who is diagnosed with cancer which will painfully kill him over the next 3 months, killing himself, to be particularly wrong. (it's sad that he dies, but fuck cancer, in that case, vs. suicide being the problem)

<comment><USER7> I agree. I was just responding to roguecoder's point. Spree killings are so rare as to be irrational to give much consideration to when making public policy decisions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Discouraging or banning ownership seems to work well in many countries. It's a shame that so many citizens of the US feel intimately tied to these violent objects, and for such archaic reasons.

<comment><USER20> Having the ability to defend yourself is not "archaic".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What if guns were treated like cars.

Every single gun has a unique signature (like a VIN #), and you had to buy insurance on your gun in order to own it, transfer title anytime its sold, and be held liable for any violence damage caused by a gun you own.

Insurance companies would have to vet you in order to give you a price, and any mishaps that occurred from guns you own, would make your insurance rates increase. As such you would take as much care who has access to your guns as you do with who has access to your car, and you'd only own guns you need.

Gun owners who are responsible would see the cost of owning guns go up a bit, but more careless folks would feel the economic effects, which would prod them to behave more responsibly.

This way, we can worry less about loopholes around what kinds of weapons people should own, or deal with bans or gun buybacks (which would secretly just be a boon for gun manufacturers). The people so adamant about owning weapons would now have a mechanism to compensate society for the damage they caused (if any).

Good policy because it's a market driven mechanism for gun safety, and good politics because it's functionally the government setting the rules, and getting out of the way (which the right wants) and reducing the societal cost/damange of gun ownership by pricing in externalities (which the left once).

<comment><USER5> Guns already have to have serial numbers (equivalent to VIN, but less structured, and managed by manufacturer, and no central registry).

The issue is that car accidents are accidents (often involving negligence), whereas gun crime is generally willful (sometimes involving crazy people, but generally just criminals).

There's the issue that a lawful collector or random hunter or whatever with lots of guns is a lower risk than a gangster with one gun, and the risk per gun is _vastly_ lower for a law abiding person with lots of guns vs. a bad guy with one or a few.

In fact, I'd bet that gun crime goes down as the number of guns possessed goes up. Obviously 0 is the least, but 1 is the most, and it's probably close to exponential after that. The guy with 31 guns is way less likely to kill someone than the guy with 3.

The only risk when someone has lots of guns is that they'll get distributed to others -- either through theft or through willful straw-man purchase or other distribution. A person who holds ~30 guns for a gang, then distributes them as needed for crime, is a problem, yes.

<comment><USER21> Right - I recognize there are limited things you can do about guns illegally out and about. But if owners were held liable for the social effects of weapons they own(ed), then:

1\. You'd choose carefully what you owned and why you owned it. No matter how you slice it, its hard to justify why someone should own ~30, ~40, or ~50 firearms (dont know how often this actually happens but I believe owning multiple weapons happens fairly frequently), and any insurer seeing that, would price your risk accordingly. You'd be forced to take steps to reduce the cost of ownership, hence reducing it to the amount you actually use.

2\. As a result of this change in ownership, the likelihood of weapons getting stolen drops, and correspondingly the _flow of new guns into the black market.

_ assuming here that guns on the black market typically start out under legal ownership.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Actuarially-priced insurance for a white 50 year old male who lives in a rich area and has an 800+ credit score, and owns NFA items and ~500 guns, would be less for _all_ of his collection than for a single 21 year old black male who owns a single Raven .25acp (legally) for self defense.

(Maybe the younger guy is a military veteran, is volunteering to help his community and thus lives in a high-crime area, and has that gun to protect his 5yo niece from criminals in the neighborhood. Or, maybe he's a gang member who hasn't gotten arrested yet. The insurer would assume the latter.)

I mean, look at car insurance. There's also more of a socially-beneficial and defensible use for the 21 year old who wants to defend his family than for a collector, really.

2\. Stolen guns are minor part of the supply of guns (10-15%). The benefits of this whole proposal could come from universal background checks on transfers, to the extent that they hinder straw purchases from dealers and "outside the gun show" person to person sales across state lines.

~all guns start out legal (at the manufacturer); the issue is how they go from manufacturer to first sale and then subsequent sales. Right now, a large number of illegal guns (particularly handguns) come from straw purchases (where a criminal has a non-criminal buy a gun from a dealer) or from private party sales (generally across state lines, since high crime places like LA, Baltimore, DC, Chicago have strict gun laws; places with low gun crime have looser laws).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't think gun safety is the major issue, gun violence is the big killer.

Biometric scanners and high tech safes may help save a few people but there are more murders during a Chicago summer than all school shootings in the last 10 years combined.

<comment><USER5> The question is, are the possessors of those (mostly handguns) in Chicago lawfully able to purchase them?

If there were a 100% effective (no false positive or negatives) gun to legal owner biometric ID thing, then that should reduce Chicago gang violence as well. The problem is I don't believe it's technically possible to build even a 90% effective system like that (a trigger and firing mechanism is mechanically simple; I could just open the gun and replace the advanced biometric system with a traditional one, perhaps 3d printed), and the are the 200 million existing weapons.

Biometrics are potentially good for preventing someone from taking your gun and shooting you with it (which mainly applies to police who open-carry in close proximity to felons), or potentially for keeping children from getting access (although a traditional safe or lockbox works fine for that).

<comment><USER22> All fair points.

I guess I was looking at it from a criminal perspective. These same Chicago gangs are able to import cocaine from Colombia, ecstasy from Amsterdam, heroin from Afghanistan, hell even knock off purses and electronics from China, I don't see why they wouldn't just expand and sell Romanian AK-47's or bootleg Chinese glocks.

Personally I wouldn't mind biometrics on my guns but would HATE any kind of registry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I often have discussions with pro-gun friends of mine about reasonable solutions that would allow them to retain their weapons, which they evidently greatly favor, and would still increase overall safety.

It seems to me that the argument that a gun provides protection is a valid one. What other device gives us the ability to point and click and stop someone literally dead in their tracks? This is the problem, and as I see it one that is asking for a technical solution. Consider a device with the following attributes:

      - It is extremely quick to deploy. Just as quick as drawing and firing a gun.
      - It can be used multiple times in succession
      - It renders a potential threat (say a hostile person with a gun) inert or otherwise incapacitated
      - It is affordable, $99 or less.
      - It is difficult if not impossible to block (no Faraday cage armor)

Now, how might this be done? Can we induce paralysis remotely without deactivating critical muscles like the heart? I know about TASERS (TM), and from what I understand the primary drawback with those is that they are only one-time use weapons, once deployed they aren't easily reusable (I.E. if you miss you're out of luck) and their range is not equivalent to a handgun. Can one of you smart hackers find a link to a scientific paper about some sort of field that makes rats fall over? As a blind person, I would love it if the device could simply be pointed in the general direction of a threat and cover a wider area, say a shotgun stun device.

This has interesting second order implications which I haven't thought about -- what happens when you can easily go up to someone, shoot them, paralyze them for 30 minutes and steal their stuff? But all things considered, if someone is going to steal my stuff, I'd rather live through the experience.

Thoughts? Am I completely off base? Or is this a reasonable way to approach the protection part of the problem?

</comment><comment><USER24> An automatic gun defense device like a smoke detector that is cheap and ubiquitous. The device should cost $100-$200 and could be installed in schools, shopping malls, cinemas and street lamps.

If the device detects a gun-shot, it locates the shooter through triangulation of the sound and image recognition. Non-lethal defenses would be deployed automatically to prevent continued shooting: e.g. stun grenade/flashbang, tear gas, electric shock. After detecting a gun-shot, the device would record audio/video and call 911 automatically. The shooter's escape could be tracked through a network of the devices.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon#Wireless_lo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_weapon#Wireless_long- range_electric_shock_weapon)

<comment><USER25> Shot spotter (<http://www.shotspotter.com/>) does the detection aspect of this.

A low-cost clone might not be feasible due to patents: <http://www.shotspotter.com/patents>

<comment><USER24> A low-cost clone could be mounted on the ceiling in a room. Some stun grenades and tear gas would disable the shooter anywhere in the room. This would be a cheap solution. Include a wireless mesh network connecting the devices, and they could disable the shooter even as he flees the first room.

<comment><USER25> I think the detection and logging aspect has a lot of promise as a cheap and widely deployed system.

I'd worry about the liability from false positives with a active response system. Even something as limited as locking the doors to a room to contain the shooter could lead to liability from someone being trapped with the shooter.

If you assume a large indoor setting, something like a mall or school, maybe combine the detection network with a evacuation guidance system that leads people away from the incident. Mass shootings are pretty rare so maybe you could use it as a general "smart evacuation" system. OTOH there's probably a crowd psychology problem in there that makes that unfeasible.

<comment><USER24> Good point about false positives. The device could upload images to a human operator who would activate the defenses. This would add some reaction time, but it would reduce the potential for false positives.

If the device has image recognition to detect firearms being brandished, the operator could trigger the defenses before the first shot is fired perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In this age of smartphones, it would be possible to mandate that all guns radio 911 with the current location whenever _all_ the following events occur:

\- they are withdrawn from the holster

\- the safety is disabled

\- there is ammunition loaded

\- they are not at a shooting range or hunting area

This could help reduce the carnage from mass shootings and draw police to legitimate threats sooner. It is compatible with gun owner's rights. Heck, it could even take a picture and record audio whenever a shot is fired to aid in the legal nightmare that is sure to follow any gun discharge.

Another technological solution: RFID rings that must be on the shooting hand in order to discharge the gun. This keeps guns away from kids, prevents theft, and prevents guns from being used against their owners.

<comment><USER20> Any proposal that requires a battery pack probably isn't very reasonable.

<comment><USER5> Putting the battery/comms/etc. on the _holster_ and not the weapon would make sense. If I unholster my self defense handgun, I want a 911 call placed (ideally, with an open mic, and GPS, and open video) as soon as the gun leaves the holster, and continue for as long as possible.

You'd have to be careful how to disable it when you took the gun out at the end of the day, or whatever, but the fundamental idea would be useful for self defense guns)

<comment><USER20> A "smart" holster is an interesting idea. I wouldn't want such a thing mandated by law though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In almost all major gun incidents, the weapon in question isn't registered to the shooter. Prima facie, something as simple as a fingerprint trigger lock could be acceptable to the gun enthusiasts (much less use for a stolen weapon).

</comment><comment><USER28> Microchip all guns? Or utilize nanotechnology to hook them up with a scannable barcode that can be scanned with a smartphone app? If it's not chipped, it's not legal. All police nationally should be equipped with necessary devices to scan guns on the spot.

Why would this help? There are currently millions of guns that have been subject to very little character checking or cross-checking. A gun census, of sorts, is needed. So I would suggest a harmonized shooter's license scheme and weapon registration scheme. Similar to a buyback - all gun owners have within a defined period to re-license (read: microchip) every one of their guns, after which time any unlicensed weapons (under the new universal license scheme) are illegal and confiscated. Part of this new licensing includes universal registration - so police nationally have records of all gun ownership and licenses - providing a uniform standard of safety across the country.

Bias: I'm Aussie, and in 1996 laws were introduced banning semi-automatic weapons in Australia (via a buyback scheme). In the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings - but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect. Firearm homicides and suicides reduced dramatically. Life is safer without guns.

<comment><USER28> Edit: I'm thinking we could use nanotubes, with a strength-to-weight ratio 117 times greater than steel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This may be off-topic, but I thought I'd bring it up: in a nut shell, defensive "use once" less than lethal weapons for public areas. They would be strictly licensed and regulated by first responders, much like public defibrillators are.

While I found NRA's idea of arming teachers to be (let's be honest here, and I say this a strong second amendment supporter) absolutely nuts -- several people have circulated the idea of providing less than lethal weapons to teachers and administrators. I think most teachers (or most people in general) are not keen in owning a firearm, do not have the time to go through the training to use a firearm effectively in a high-stress scenario.

However (and this idea isn't original to me, I've seen it suggested elsewhere online) provide a modified than lethal weapon (e.g., a carbine length taser) in each classroom -- hidden behind glass door much like a fire extinguisher or a defibrillator would be. They would be given training in using this weapon to stop (or slow down) an opponent and there would be strict rules to ensure it cannot be used for any other purpose (e.g., it would have "drive-stun" capability removed and be limited to only a few rounds). Shattering the glass in any classroom would immediately set of alarms in all classrooms (giving other teachers time guide children to safety) and cause first responders to come (irrespective of time or day).

While mass shootings do not represent most of gun violence, they are especially unnerving. Generally, however:

1) Mass shootings are usually murder-suicide. Suicide here is either a primary (with murder being secondary) goal or a way of escaping retribution. If, on the other hand, the perpetrator knows they are more likely to be simply disabled and then arrested and thrown in prison, this creates further deterrence: it now makes more sense not to go through with the plan, to surrender right away before committing any violence.

Sentencing guidelines could reflect it: attempted school shooters who surrendered without firing a shot would receiving more lenient sentencing (but the case itself would be sealed, put on a gag order to prevent those seeking notoriety from making attempts), those are arrested by force would receive far stricter sentencing than those surrender voluntarily (idea being surrender voluntarily/commit no further crime crime < captured by force/commit no further crime < surrender voluntarily/commit further crimes < surrender by force/commit further crime).

Essentially the goal would be to sent two messages:

I) If you are suicidal, you're far more likely to fail, be captured, and have your life made much worse (on top of what ever is ailing you) if you try to "take others with you"

II) It is very difficult to escape retribution in a mass shooting, so the best strategy would be to either not attempt a mass shooting or to peacefully surrender without firing a shot.

2) Contrary to popular belief, mass shootings are not always in explici "gun free" zones (Giffords shooting, Portland Mall shooting, possibly the Aurora shooting) -- and usually a single armed guard or a CCW license holder might be there but wasn't be able to do much.

However, several shootings have been ended early by multiple unarmed individuals tackling a disoriented perpetrator. Obviously it is not expected for elementary school teachers to be able to tackle an assailant, yet this approach has the advantage that now there are multiple individuals (teachers in different classrooms) armed with less than lethal (which by no means means "non-lethal") tools that significant amplify their own physical ability and can disorient the assailant even without directly hitting the assailant (i.e., one volunteer using the weapon now makes the assailant more susceptible to additional uses of the weapon).

3) The less than lethal weapon should be designed with the purpose of making an otherwise untrained individual (with no firearms experience) not only able to incapacitate an assailant, but to also make them feel confident that they are able to.

That is why I think a "carbine/shotgun-length taser" might be better approach here than a hand-held tool: it would be easier to aim, look like a more menacing weapon, and fit a wider variety of individuals.

4) (Added this later) Teachers, guards, other volunteers have a "homeground advantage here" vis. an intruder. This would be more effective than a passer- by CCW holder in a mall.

5) (Also added later) Less than lethal weapon have less chance of causing serious damage to bystanders or those using the weapons.

<comment><USER5> In theory this is a good idea, but I'd be afraid of slippery slope. When a teacher comes upon two kids fighting, the temptation to use a "non lethal" emergency device to break up the fight would be a lot higher than the temptation to shoot one of them.

You might be able to deal with it by declaring use of the device the same as using lethal force, with criminal liability for any use where deadly force wouldn't have been otherwise authorized.

I would be ok with the NRA "arm the teachers" IFF the teachers were given ~10-14 week sheriff's deputy/POST level training, and volunteered, in addition to regular CCW. I couldn't imagine an elementary school teacher doing this, but a college professor or a high school science teacher or someone seems like a reasonable candidate. Putting full time armed guards at most schools is just insane from a cost-benefit perspective even if it did help (which I don't believe it would, overall). $1-5k of extra training for a volunteer teacher would be a lot more reasonable.

<comment><USER30> _I would be ok with the NRA "arm the teachers" IFF the teachers were given ~10-14 week sheriff's deputy/POST level training, and volunteered, in addition to regular CCW. I couldn't imagine an elementary school teacher doing this, but a college professor or a high school science teacher or someone seems like a reasonable candidate._

I have been teaching middle school and high school math and science for 15 years, in 3 very different schools in different parts of the country. The NRA's proposal was frightening. When I look back at all the colleagues I've worked with, most of them would not want anything to do with guns in schools. The teachers I respect most, who have been respected most by their students, don't want anything to do with guns. But I can also pick out a good number of my former colleagues who would probably like to arm themselves. A good number of these are teachers who do not have particularly good rapport with their students.

Think how many bored smart kids there are in schools. Think of the stupid games kids play against their teachers to amuse themselves. Now imagine these bored, smart kids knowing their teacher is carrying a gun. I imagine kids goading teachers to show them their gun, to take it out, to pose with it, etc. Most armed teachers would take themselves quite seriously and never have an issue. But it takes just a small percentage of armed teachers to let their guard down for some pretty ugly things to happen.

<comment><USER29> Yep, that's why I find this insane on more than just practical grounds:

1) You can't teach someone to effectively and safely use a firearm if they do not wish to do so. Most teachers do not wish to own as much as use actual firearms.

2) A firearm is more than just a machine for sending a projectile at a certain rate in a certain direction. It has street value, it is considered "cool", etc...

I still remember when a DARE councilor (a policewoman) came to our school when I was first visiting the US in sixth grade: _everyone_ kept asking to see her pistol (she had enough sense not to show it) and how she used it (her answer is once she was threatened by a man with a chainsaw, but avoided using the pistol), what would happen to her if she did, etc.... This was an absurdly upper-middle class elementary school in Cupertino, right next to Apple's Bubb Road buildings, etc. You can't even blame us "gun culture" as most of the kids were immigrants/children of temporary workers like myself (we later moved back to the United States on a permanent basis) and the community was very liberal.

It was a bit bizarre that she chose to carry it on her person to an elementary school, however. My home country is a quasi-fascist second-turned-third-world hell-hole yet majority of street police (at least when I lived time) did not carry firearms on them. Merely pepper spray and a rubber baton (which they would abuse extensively, of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are there any constraints? If not, the obvious (low) tech idea is a steamroller.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have this thought recently that firearms should be replaced with faintarms for general public. Guns for public should be designed to cause faint to the aponent if discharged rather than killing. This way individual claim to 'right to defend/protect' him/her is maintained while at the same time, his ability to kill somebody is also curtailed with the use of that gun.

Just a thought.

<comment><USER5> Non-lethal weapons are something which have gotten a lot of research. Unfortunately, there's no technology yet which works like a Star Trek phaser on stun -- instant incapacitation without serious risk of death. So, "faintarms" don't exist. If you can develop them, they should go to every police officer, military unit, etc., as well as for self defense.

Pepper spray (OC) is essentially irrelevant once you're in close. If someone wants to kill you, and you pepper spray him, not only will it also affect you, but he can continue the attack. (I've been pepper sprayed during classes a few times, and it really sucks, and continues to suck for a long time, but I was able to unholster and fire into a body-sized target at 3 meters with all shots on target).

Tasers are ineffective if someone is wearing heavy clothing. They're also single-shot -- if someone runs at you, and you miss with the taser, you're kind of screwed. They're probably the closest, though.

Contact stun guns are pretty horrible because they require you to be in close. Essentially, if I can win a fight with someone to the point where I can use a stun gun on him, I'd just skip the stun gun and stomp him. They're really useful in psych wards or other environments like that to control people who you could actually control otherwise, while doing less damage to them. Pretty irrelevant for self defense.

Knives and sticks are potentially quite lethal, and are ineffective unless you're highly trained or substantially overmatch your opponent in strength/skill/size.

Flashlights (the 100+ lumen combat type) are probably the best in that they have low downsides, and are fairly effective in defense, and can be used to identify threats. I'd never carry a pistol without a flashlight in my pocket, and all my home-defense guns have mounted lights.

Sound is an interesting idea (infrasound, in the sub 10hz range). There's stuff like the LRAD. Unfortunately it is the size of a truck.

<comment><USER33> I learned something today :)

[http://artofmanliness.com/2012/11/07/how-to-use-a- tactical-f...](http://artofmanliness.com/2012/11/07/how-to-use-a-tactical- flashlight/)

I might buy a high-powered flashlight soon, then :)

<comment><USER5> The Fenix lights are about the cheapest good ones. My favorites are Surefire (on weapons) and Novatac (handheld). I have fenixes to leave at the desk, car, etc. though, since they're $20 on sale vs. $100-800.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm sure it must have been remarked that "gun safety" is somewhat a contradiction in terms. Also, that gun crime is by and large an economic problem rather than a technical one; remove the incentive and the vast majority of it (should) go away.

Also/Alternatively this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Fc9ONu8yU>

</comment><comment><USER35> "You can't solve an administrative problem with a technical solution." (Or something like that.)

The premise of this post is very misguided and ignorant.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think gun safety is more of a political problem that anything that new technologies will much improve.

I have a few guns and enjoy the shooting range and from my perspective the safety situation would be improved by: stricter background checks, making assault rifle (type) weapons illegal, and the toughest problem: "de-fanging" the NRA.

<comment><USER37> You may own guns, but your statement is ignorant of the facts. Assault Rifles are machine guns, civilians in the US have been prohibited from buying any newly manufactured ones since 1986.

<comment><USER38> There isn't a consensus definition of "assault rifle".

Some laws or proposed laws say a pistol grip and box magazine == "assault rifle". Most gun people would call a rifle that looks like an M-16, AK-47 or FN an assault rifle.

No private citizen can buy a machine gun today.

The dirty secret of the whole gun control thing is that most of the issues associated with people stockpiling weapons and smuggling pistols were dealt with in 1934 via an excise tax.

Basically, any short rifle and some pistols were subject to a $200 tax ($3400 today). Instead of blanket bans, the law defined classes of weapons and taxed them out of the market.

<comment><USER39> > No private citizen can buy a machine gun today.

You can not buy a _new_ machine gun. The ones already registered are just like any other NFA item and can be transferred to anyone willing to pay the $200 tax.

Private citizens can import/manufacture machine guns provided they are properly licensed. These can't be sold to other private citizens however.

<comment><USER5> Subject to state law. Private citizens (i.e. not businesses in the trade) can't own them in WA or essentially in CA.

Seriously considering getting an FFL(07) for our company/office or a related entity once we have an office in a place like NV. Unclear if we want to just make suppressors (and keep post-1986 NFA items around for compatibility testing) or manufacture a range of NFA.

Mainly because now that crypto isn't so much an ITAR thing, I want a reason to register with ITAR again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So, I have this great technical solution to make all guns safe. It's kind of a hacker solution, actually. Also, it will also prevent anyone that hasn't been fiddling with their gun to shoot other people.

The solution is simple. Put an infrared camera on the front of the gun. If there's anything warm in front of the gun it simply wont fire. That will make it impossible to shoot other people and only limitting it to cans etc. Possibly you could also use a real camera and do some image analysis to keep the gun from shooting other sensitive objects, such as gas containers etc. Obviously, the firing of the gun will be locked if you take the camera(s) off.

Okay, I admit it. I'm not being serious. A gun is a weapon. The fact that guns are weapons is the problem. There's no technical solution for that.

The only technical solution that will make a gun safe is one that destroys that weapon.

</comment><comment><USER41> Require guns sold in the US to be outfitted with some kind of biometric scanner, so that they can only be fired by their legal, registered owner.

Sounds kind of like sci-fi to me, except that I read in the newspapers after Newtown that this kind of technology is being developed and is close to becoming feasible.

<comment><USER9> The USA is surrounded by massive borders. Illegal firearms can't be stopped nearly as much as drugs can't.

Combined with the fact that the vast majority of gun crime doesn't happen with legal weapons.

One quote I was able to find:

> "More than 95 percent of all gun related crimes in the Rochester area are > committed with illegal guns. That's what District Attorney Mike Green told > NEWS 10NBC Tuesday.

Is this really worth the capital investment?

Not even factoring in the fact that we can hardly keep banks or voting machines free from security flaws... let alone the lack of real-world research on the effectiveness of biometric scanners in wide scale deployments.

<comment><USER42> Ignoring the biometric accuracy conversation for a second...

I think the benefit of a gun like this would be that responsible people could own them for self defense. Statistics say that guns in the home increase the chance of violent death. I live in Los Angeles where home invasion robberies are pretty common and I would like to be able to defend myself and my family against an armed intruder, but playing the odds says that I would be putting my family in more danger by bringing the gun into my home than I would be protecting them. This creates a catch-22 and the outcome is that a responsible party does not have a weapon while the criminals all do. I highly doubt a criminal would want to use an advanced biometric gun to commit a crime because it would ID the shooter and create evidence against them while I would prefer that knowing that nobody else could use the gun to cause a violent act in my home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Certain numbers of accidents happen during firearms training with military, police, and civilians.

It is very common for flight simulators to be used as training tools for those about to pilot an airplane, so perhaps building very realistic non-violent shooting simulator (complete with felt recoil) would be a good approach: experiment with using them in several police academies or military training centers -- require recruits to gain a certain proficiency before live firearm training, then observe if there's perceptible change in accidents during live round training afterwards.

To pre-empt an obvious question, blanks aren't very useful: they will not cycle a semi-automatic, don't provide realistic recoil, but they're still capable of causing very serious injury (or death) to someone on the other end.

<comment><USER43> This already exists. You can even rent time in them as a civilian, and they are pretty interesting. Not only do you get to work on mechanics, but they put you in situations (there's a live operator determining outcome) where you have to think "should I fire or not", rather than just working on the movements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Technology isn't there yet to do much. In the future the gun could be smart, sensors could figure out the situation and make "judgements". Examples: Accelerometers could determine if user was charging or attempting to flee, they could also detect if your shooting from a moving car. Image recognition could determine if your shooting a fleeing person or an actual threat. Gyros sensors along with proximity sensors could determine if you are attempting to shoot yourself. Enough sensors and cpu power, guns could make decisions much like a human being. These won't help much because the bad guys will just have non smart guns but thats another issue.

</comment><comment><USER45> Require people who want to buy a gun to have a gun license.

You can own a gun in US without license, but drive a car without. The license should require a short theoretical, practical and legal test. License owners should be 21 (legal for drinking age), must not have a criminal record, must show that they are able to handle and clean a gun without shooting them self in their foot or eye, and must file a simple theoretical test, to check that they know the basic safety requirements like "always store the ammunition in a safe".

<comment><USER46> > You can own a gun in US without license, but drive a car without.

Man, if I had a dollar for every time I heard this argument.

I can park an Aston Martin in my back yard and not have a license for anything. I can be 3 years old or have 25 DUIs or be as mentally ill as all get out. I might have to pay property taxes in some states. But other than that I'm home free.

I need a license to DRIVE the car on PUBLICLY owned roads.

You're suggesting a license to park a gun in my backyard.

I don't really want to argue over whether or not we should do what you suggested. I just want people to stop using drivers licences as examples. It's not a 1-1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How about pulse sonar of some sort that is so detail-oriented it can detect gun shapes and alert authorities.

So in a school, every half hour -- or even based on motion detection -- some sort of pulse goes out to detect gun shapes.

Could technology for that be developed? Is that even possible? Just an idea..

If I were to guess, SONAR is currently very imprecise for something as small as a gun. But what if you had hundreds of SONAR pulses from different locations? Or what if you had many thousands of different analyses run on it?

<comment><USER48> I think airport body scanners and abuse of webcams by school personnel are memories too fresh in the public's mind for this idea to gain traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm sorry but I don't think this is something to be solved (primarily) with technology.

Until as a society, we stop utilizing guns as a cultural norm (by this I mean the use of arms for all purposes not just ownership by private citizens), all tech is going to do is at best slow down the use of weapons, to the point where they are effectively useless or make it such that only criminals have easy access to weapons.

I strongly believe in guns don't kill people, bad people with guns kill people.

</comment><comment><USER50> Remove/ban them entirely from public use in-line with most of the civilised world. Regular people don't need guns.

</comment><comment><USER51> 1, freedom is not free 2, you might pay in cash or human life 3, if you like gun control, why not went to china?

</comment><comment><USER52> Have an electronic device in the gun locker on the clip that holds the gun. Whenever the gun is taken out of this locker, an email/push notification is sent to the owner and other responsible family members indicating that the gun is out of rack. It repeats every 10 minutes till the gun is returned.

</comment><comment><USER53> Guns are absolutely safe. When was the last time one of them went of by accident?

Your question has no grounds. I guess you are asking how to improve safety in the US and the answer is easy but not acceptable by Americans. hint the days of the far west are gone, no one should walk around with a gun in his pocket.

</comment><comment><USER54> I have only an idea for gun owners of a certain type. Some gun owners reason for owning a gun is for hunting. For owners like that, location detection can be implemented. Outside of hunting locations, the guns will be "locked" and will only be enabled once they're within the hunting location.

</comment><comment><USER55> The best thing the tech industry can do for gun safety is to provide better education through the internet.

</comment><comment><USER56> "Increase bullet cost." Significantly.

<comment><USER57> I thought ammo cost was already going up because of demand.

Wouldn't that just transition people to making their own bullets? It's my understanding that it isn't super difficult if you have the tools, and can significantly reduce the cost of shooting.

<comment><USER5> I assume OP means the Chris Rock argument for 10000x increase, not the 2-3x increase we've seen. After all, a "good" gun owner who goes to the range and uses ~1000 rounds in practice in a week isn't as much of a problem as a "bad" guy who has 7 rounds in his crappy Hi Point pistol and ends up killing 2 people and throwing away the gun.

Primers are ultimately the hardest to produce part (although power/propellant is also hard); brass can be recycled, and bullets can be milled (at the high end) or cast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I for one would be interested in seeing what would happen if guns were marketed as 'sissy' weapons. Take the power out of the thing - make people think that you have to be some kind of wuss to rely on a gun to fight your battles for you.

</comment><comment><USER59> If all guns were fired before sale...

([http://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/175ibg/if_all_guns_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/answers/comments/175ibg/if_all_guns_were_fired_before_sale_and_the_shell/))

</comment><comment><USER60> Mandatory electronics. Outlaw mechanical pins, only electric pins can be used. Similarly a battery is required.

\- Safety light: red armed / green safe.

\- 5 second delay w/ blinking red after switching between safe and armed.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what the benefit is here, and there's substantial cost.

Most legal self defense shootings are probably over within 5 seconds from touching the holster to firing the weapon. Depending on clothing, a trained shooter is at 1-2 seconds (in crazy competition, it can be as low as 0.5 seconds).

An attacker can close 21 feet in a second or two. Then either stab or grapple the weapon. If someone is >21 feet from you, he's probably not a threat in the first place.

<comment><USER60> Cost - whatever.

Safety delay time can also be worked out. Maybe there can be a Rambo setting for people who need it to work instantly. It could include a "black box" chip to keep track of when Rambo is turned on and when Rambo is turned off (to keep track if the user is diligent about safety or not).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've always thought guns need keys, just like an automobile. You have to turn them on before use. The gun is useless without it.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think they'd be better off focussing on (in addition) better mental health care.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am just going to think out loud here - please let me know if any sound plausible. Note: these are NOT taking _cost_ into consideration. Additionally, anything that increases 'safety' in certain ways (like the ones I describe below, also decrease the immediate availability of the weapon to some legitimate urgent needs (unexpected intrusions, etc)

(I'd like to get RDL's opinion on this as well)

First, I am sure it goes without saying, that guns are mechanically very simple devices, so any attempt to make them more technologically advanced/complex in an effort to make them 'safer' is an uphill and easily circumvented road (i.e. - making simple guns is not difficult)

1\. Ammunition: Develop a system for (signed|registered|tracked|authorized) ammunition validation in the (civilian version) of the weapon.

Create a method and apparatus for the weapon t read the ID of the ammunition loaded into it (via barcode scanner/RFID/smart-chip/whatever) where the weapon will get a list of authorized ammunition it will fire via an external app. Basically you would have a cataloging system where you purchase ammunition, log it into your app then authorize the ammunition to a particular weapon with some form of two factor auth. A ring + plus a list of the valid ammo. When you load the ammo into the weapon, it is scanned as it is chambered, the gun receives either a list of the ammo that can be used, or it checks it at time of chambering and only fires if BOTH the ring and the list are green.

This means that if your weapon and ring are stolen/picked up by a child - without pre-auth of a list of ammo the gun wont fire.

2\. Add RTLS + camera systems to weapons. Add wifi beacons throughout a space that talk to a tag built into the grip of the gun. It tracks the location of the weapon and must be deactivated via a smart app in the same manner as the ammo scenario above. If the weapon moves around/leaves the geo-fence/whatever other rules get violated - it will remain in a locked state.

3\. add a physical combo device with a pin which locks the action/slide of the weapon physically.

4\. Decouple the actual trigger from the weapon and turn the authorization ring into the physical trigger. Meaning that even fully loaded and accessible - one could not just pick up the weapon and fire it.

5\. (more about accountability) - Require ALL LEO weapons to be tied to a go- pro style cam either on chest or on the weapons themselves - and every trigger pull shoots a burst of video/pics - bonus - have any unholstered weapon begin filming and streaming of the down-sights images. Stream to either the soldiers pack, the LEOs vehicle or a 4g network.

6\. 'Gunalytics' - in relation to #5 - we need a 'fit-bit for guns. A sensor heavy device (even if only used in a temporary, data gathering duration) which can be mounted to a weapon (grips/rail/whatever) which will capture all manner of use data. This device could have environmental parameters entered into it to track variance against. It could use the accelerometer to detect certain events (and sound - like the shot counters do) - but this device could be used to gather data for better gun safety training.

E.G.: you could have these at ranges - you mount the device to the weapons of all users and it can determine any variance in the aim of the gun, so as to determine if a weapon was pointed in any direction other than down range. Gather the average duration between trigger pulls on all weapons - use anon user data as well (male, 38, 200#s, claims proficiency level X) etc...

get big data on how people are self-training/using firearms at ranges.

Gamify this - have competitions around this data. Make some weapons specific for this purpose etc... This can go in a lot of different directions. The goal being that better training, based on better, actual and actionable data is the best thing we can do for gun safety.

\---

So, with that said - this is looking forward and pretty much only at the weapons themselves. The millions upon millions of existing weapons that will never have any Smart features will always be an issue - thus item (6) seems a good approach to making gun safety/education an increased focus...

I'd love to see real data behind the claims that communities that require all houses to have a firearm have reduced crime. You'll never have any of the above address the crazies.

<comment><USER5> Aside from cost, for defensive weapons, there's the risk of a lock on the critical firing path breaking (false negative) vs. the risk of someone unauthorized using the weapon (false positive).

For open-carry weapons (like police), some kind of biometric keying might make sense. They have a high weapon-retention risk (since they get close to suspects to handcuff them, etc.), so false positives > false negatives.

For concealed carry personal weapons, it's a lot less likely for someone to get your gun without authorization, so false negative > false positive.

I do really like the "gun cam" idea. Self defense training is "imagine there's a little lawyer attached to every bullet". The police unions are the ones against police logging, for privacy reasons..of the officers. They were against car cams, too. I'm in favor of full recording with the only information potentially sensitive being operational details (codes, etc., for a short term) and the identity of suspects; a suspect should always be able to get all the information which led to his arrest, including police cam footage.

I would love a gun cam integrated on my weapons for range use. Not sure if it's practical for self defense use yet, but it's going to be so eventually, and at that point I'd support it. I was trying to hack up a picatinny rail mount for a Contour+ or Hero Black at one point.

If I were ever in a SD/HD shooting, I'd love to have video available to play in court.

As you point out, the huge installed base of ~200 million weapons is a big issue.

<comment><USER8> I think it would be fairly easy to design a small unit using the same cams we have in cell phones... this would make a great kickstarter.

If I had any HW design chops....

<comment><USER7> Cameras that mount on the accessory rails found on most pistols and defense- oriented long guns already exist: <http://www.guncam.com/pistols.html>

<comment><USER5> None of them are either so small as to be something you'd keep on your gun for normal use, or high resolution/big sensor like the Black Hero to shoot great video, though :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Require mental health screenings for gun owners which are required to be renewed at some medically relevant and adequate frequency.

If we require basic health checks to operate heavy machinery, or drive a car. Why don't we require them for owning a gun?</comment>


How to turn small talk into smart conversation - <AUTHOR> http://ideas.ted.com/2014/07/28/how-to-turn-small-talk-into-smart-conversation/ <comment><USER2> These suggestions are dreadful.

> Instead of 'Where are you from?' try 'What's the strangest thing about where > you grew up?'

> Instead of, 'Yes, it is a beautiful day!' try 'They say that the weather was > just like this when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If that actually > happened.'

If the goal is to have a pleasant and interesting conversation, dropping non- sequiturs isn't going to get you there.

And this is advice for introverts? Many introverts I know would crash and burn using these lines -- they already struggle with being awkward without throwing out, "What would you like your name to mean?"

<comment><USER3> I agree with you that for the most part the suggested alternative conversation starters range from pretty bad to hilariously bad. But I was very glad to read this short article because the larger idea put forth in the article is very thought-provoking, and is really good advice. You'll have to use your own creativity to try to spark an interesting conversation, but I feel a little energized by the challenge.

Why do you suppose people are so interested by self-help and "life hacks," but in general we're not actually that motivated for self improvement?

(see what I did there?)

<comment><USER4> It's a much better conversation starter than the suggested ones in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Or just be genuinely interested in people. Everybody has something interesting and if you dig you will find it.

If the goal is to make the conversation interesting/smart, it starts with great difficulty because what sounds interesting/smart to one may be just dull/stupid to another.

Most people may feel a little reluctant when someone else is digging, but that is only because they have grown an instinct to honestly disbelieve anyone may be truly interested in knowing them for nothing.

Since we can't worry how people feel about our little inquiries, we can only ask and be honestly interested in knowing more about others, discovering more.

<comment><USER6> Except for those who would genuinely _want_ to be honestly interested in learning more, but ... aren't. Because wanting to be interested isn't the same as being interested, and it often shows - creating a conversational awkwardness that's even worse than it otherwise would have been.

<comment><USER5> Hackers will hack just about everything except their personality even when it can be to their advantage.

I do not go to Starbucks with the intention of striking a conversation with strangers and try to find something interesting.

I do go out with the intention of talking to whomever I want to talk to even if my second thought after realizing this is negative, and even if I am afraid of others reaction.

It fails most of the time, but I think over time I will get better at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think any smart conversation should start, at least, on the second question. A "How are you?" and "What's your name?" are great first questions. Don't bother finding very clever alternatives. But pay attention to how people respond to it. You can sense if they are in a hurry, worried about other things, not interested at all in you as a person, etc. In these cases, just leave it. Not every conversation must be the most smart and productive one. And not every person is worthy your effort (specially those don't even bother to look at you when you are talking).

But if there is room, then you can start with clever, original questions. But the second question, should also sounds friendly, not creepy. The best way to do this I think it is to make a subtle compliment. A try might be "You look like an artist,what kind of artist are you? I would guess painter/singer/writer".

Or funny self-awareness "Do you think people who make small talk with strangers are annoying?".

Then you assess again the reactions... and hopefully a smarter conversation begins.

<comment><USER8> "(specially those don't even bother to look at you when you are talking)" I often look mostly at the floor or at the sky when listening or talking to someone. It usually helps me to concentrate on the content of the conversation - and I noticed that I do that during the most engaging and interesting rather than the most boring ones.

<comment><USER7> I used it as a proxy. It is easier to notice than to describe both when someone don't want to talk to you in that particular moment or when someone don't really care about you as a person. I am not the kind of guy that looks in the eyes when talking either, but I think there is a kind of not looking that demonstrate you are concentrated on the conversation and a kind of not looking that demonstrate that you are a fly annoying the person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upvoted because the suggestions are so bad that they merit discussion.

As someone who, growing up, decided to break out of the introvert pattern by applying such non sequiturs as suggested, I can tell you truly that the only thing such a tactic will do is get you labelled as weird ;)

Also: "What's your story?"

Sounds only one step removed from: "What's your problem?"

<comment><USER9> But isn't it better to be weird than to be boring?

I'm just flat out socially retarded, and desperately lonely. Reading this, I felt a twinge of excitement at the suggestion that I might break out of the box with a little creativity. I kind of took it as saying, "don't be afraid to be weird".

I think my fear of revealing how crazy I am probably accounts for a good deal of what holds me back. The idea of it being okay to be weird, or at least, unexpectedly thoughtful and inquisitive, seems a rather hopeful one. (Sadly, I'm absolutely clueless as to whether that's actually the case.)

<comment><USER10> Sometimes it's better to be weird than boring, sometimes vice versa.

Certainly if you are "desperately lonely", that sounds like a situation where you might want to take (at least) a few (modest) risks to make a few more personal connections, absolutely. Yeah, don't be terrified of being weird, or being seen as weird.

But I think if you want to make a _connection_ , artificially-weird is not, i.m.h.o., your best strategy. And I think that's what's being suggested in TFA (perhaps jokingly). I'd consider aiming instead towards more honesty, and that means (a little) more vulnerability.

Now, if your honesty reveals that in some particular ways you are a weird person (which would, in general, be a good sign of being potentially interesting and worth connecting with), well, that might work against you in some instances. Or it might work _for_ you in some instances. If it's important that you gain the trust of this particular stranger right now (perhaps a cop who is considering arresting you), maybe you wanna try to downplay the weirdness in this particular interaction, to avoid ugly outlier reactions.

But in the making-friends department (and in the finding-lovers department, if you're not Wilt Chamberlain), the goal is not to be everything to everybody. The goal is to winnow the chaff of the public-at-large to find people whom you like, and who like you. So take some chances, put a few people off. If you get rejected (or you yourself reject) 99% of the population... well, just try making friends with 1000 people (say one a day for 3 years) and you'll have no shortage of friends. Being "normal" is a liability! Your weirdness may bore or repel most people... but someone eventually will find your weirdness interesting or attractive.

So, if you need to go with non sequiturs to break a fear of doing anything interesting at all, well, that's a start. But I think it would be better to seek topics that might be genuinely interesting to both parties (unlike, say, conspiracy theories about Pearl Harbour, which probably aren't genuinely interesting to either party, even if they're more interesting than super- boring small talk).

For example, a strategy I respect very much is to ask people about themselves or their life (hopefully in a way that flows fluidly from a sentence or two of small talk), and when their story includes something that surprises or interests you, ask questions about that interesting or improbable aspect. (I wonder if Alton is reading this.)

My apologies if any of the foregoing sounds patronizing or otherwise insulting.

Good luck with the loneliness, you have my sympathy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While most of these suggestions are terrible, think of the message they're trying to send: ask open ended questions that promote discussion and answer with real answers.

On asking open ended questions, I have a few questions I always fall back to. If meeting someone new, I ask "If you had to describe your life in one sentence, what would it be?". In an silent pause with friends I'll ask "if you had $10,000 and couldn't don anything rational, what would you spend it on?".

On answering with _real_ answers, I do just that. If asked how your day is going, say how you really feel instead of "good". Often this opens up a deeper discussion, but you can always choose to say "good" if that's socially appropriate.

<comment><USER12> "Hypothetically, if you were to launder $500,000, how would you want to do it?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the part with absurd answers could make some sense if done properly (however, mastering the usage of absurd is not easy - there's a thin line between being intriguing and pathetic), but if someone would use this "telling the story" questions during the conversation with me I'd just be annoyed - especially if that would be a stranger. That's some meaningless stuff where you don't even have any slightest idea of where to start when answering, unless you go into absurd as well, which may or may not be the way to go depending on your mood, person you're talking to, etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> If Gino responds to "It's hot today" with "In this dimension, yes." Beverley is most probably done talking to him, even if they both are all by themselves in a jacuzzi.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm sorry but the can't finish this conversation any other way that:

Ron: How was your flight? Carlos: I'd be more intrigued by an airline where your ticket price was based on your body weight and IQ. Ron: Go fuck yourself!

Beverly: It's hot today. Gino: In this dimension, yes. Beverly: Go fuck yourself!

Riz: What's up? Keil: Washing your chicken just splatters the bacteria everywhere. ...

Yip, go fuck yourself twice, Riz!

</comment><comment><USER15> I was pretty introverted until I figured it was just another form of selfishness. People stress me out, but generally it's just another "mirroring" effect. I'm stressing them out just as badly. Of course things go sideways in that situation.

</comment><comment><USER16> These will just show you are too much full of yourself and trying too hard to be funny.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can't wait to try this for the next networking event. Being an introvert in this pro-extrovert society makes me feel pretty much a square pegs in round holes

</comment><comment><USER18> Most suggestions were given by Phoebe Buffay.

</comment><comment><USER19> > "They say that the weather was just like this when the Japanese bombed Pearl > Harbor. If that actually happened."

If your goal is to get instantly binned into the same category as 9/11 truthers, moon landing doubters, and holocaust deniers, this might be a good suggestion.

<comment><USER20> That's supposed to be a joke, not an actual suggested line to use in a conversation.</comment></comment>