Apple ordered to bypass auto-erase on San Bernadino shooter's iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160216/17393733617/no-judge-did-not-just-order-apple-to-break-encryption-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-to-create-new-backdoor.shtml <comment><USER2> A thought experiment: Let's say the government makes hardware encryption standards in the style of FedRAMP that sets standards for preventing tampering by foreign governments. Then, imagine that a consumer electronics company voluntarily makes all devices comply with this standard. Could a court attempt to compel the company to defeat the standards which the government set as tamper-proof against governments?

A second: What happens if Apple states that it will take a 50-person team with an average annual labor cost of $200K/person approximately 5 weeks to fix the problem with a 50% chance of success. Can Apple bill the court a million dollars to try to fix the issue?

A third: Apple open-sources their encryption modules and firmware. They no longer have proprietary information for how to unlock the phone. Are they legally required to be the ones who defeat a system to which they hold no proprietary information?

A fourth: The small team that built the system no longer works for Apple. Perhaps their visa was revoked and they left the country, perhaps they were poached by a competitor, or perhaps they retired in the years since this module was published. Who is responsible for complying with the order?

A fifth: The data is actually corrupted. Apple presents this conclusion under penalty of perjury after a thousand hours spent on the project, which it requests are compensated.

A sixth: Apple requests that trading of its stock is frozen for one month while it expends considerable resources on complying with an unexpected court order relevant to national security.

<comment><USER3> 1: Yes.

2: Yes.

3: No, but they will probably be the ones asked anyway, and then yes, they would be legally required.

4: Apple.

5: What's the question? Is the question will they be compensated? Then yes.

6: They can't. They don't own their stock. Bad PR is not a good enough reason.

You are treating the court like a mathematical proof and finding edge cases. I used to as well. But courts don't work that way at all - they don't care in the slightest about your proof. They analyze things on a human level, not a mathematical level.

<comment><USER4> >They analyze things on a human level

This (and the job prospects) are the reason I choose computer science/software engineering over being a lawyer even though most people who commented on what I should be say I should be a lawyer. The law requires not just thinking like a human, but accepting such thought as valid. To me the logic is exactly the same behind any racist who makes special exceptions for all minority people they know while still holding their view in general. In effect the system is built on a mix of emotion and logic, and in doing such it is insanely unjust to those who fall on the unpopular side. A President who admits to smoking pot leading a government that ruins the lives of people who use pot... it is just as bad as some older men I know who admit to having tried pot but who think anyone currently trying it deserves to be put in prison.

Analyzing something on the human level is always a horrible standard when viewed outside the context of our own emotional fallacies.

<comment><USER5> This is an amazing meta-point here; the people on the other side of this debate seem to have no need for logical cohesion.

I might extend that a bit to ask 'what is the consequence of such lack of cohesion'? Perhaps first that getting agreement on anything needs to be done at a close to case-by-case basis since there is a weaker adherence to standards. This can introduce favoritism (e.g. some people get hit for pot and others don't). Another consequence might be up-front costs. Not needing to think too deep about edge cases and whatnot is clearly less time-cost to run first-time-seen cases. This in turn means people won't hesitate as much in setting new precedence because they won't notice when they do. Another consequence would be inability to get consistency across and entire system since not everything can be debated by all and there's not clear rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remember, this is an iPhone 5C, which doesn't have Touch ID or the Secure Enclave; the security model for this phone is significantly different from that of more recent iPhones.

On phones with a Secure Enclave, the wipe-on-failures state is managed in the coprocessor (which runs L4), and is not straightforwardly backdoor-able.

If you're worried about the police brute-forcing your phone, enable Touch ID and set a passcode that is approximately as complex as the one on your computer.

<comment><USER7> Even if touch id, it would be of no use. TouchID requires a password after 48 hours. or after the device resets.

Which is interesting. If you happen to use TouchID, is your best bet to hope a court will not be able to compel you to unlock it within 48 hours of arrest? That sounds very probable.

<comment><USER8> After five failed fingerprint attempts, your password is required to unlock the phone. That seems pretty safe to me. If you're ever ordered to unlock the phone, just touch an unregistered finger to it. Fingerprint sensors aren't foolproof. It'd be hard to prove you deliberately sabotaged the effort.

Though, one feature I'd like would be to register a distress fingerprint. Then I could touch say... my left index finger to require a password unlock.

<comment><USER9> If you do this on purpose after asked to unlock your phone you will probably be charged with destruction of evidence or something like that.

However, while a court is (afaik) able to ask you to put your finger on the fingerprint reader, you do not need to tell them which of the fingers the correct one is. So instead of purposely using a wrong finger, I'd ask the court to explicitly tell me which of my fingers I should use to unlock the phone.

<comment><USER10> I think the court would similarly consider that obstruction and contempt. If they tell you to unlock your phone and you try to play some "first you have to guess which finger's the right one!" game, the judge will slap you with either contempt of court or refusal to comply with a subpoena.

<comment><USER9> IANAL, but I don't think there's much of a difference between asking someone to reveal the correct password and asking someone to reveal the correct finger. In both cases you would be asked to incriminate yourself.

If it would be lawful for a court to ask you to "unlock the phone with the correct finger" then they might as well also ask you to "unlock this harddisk with the correct keyboard keys pushed in the correct order (as a password)".

<comment><USER11> _I don 't think there's much of a difference between asking someone to reveal the correct password and asking someone to reveal the correct finger._

There's a huge difference. Authorities can force you to give up your fingerprint, but not your password[1].

1\. [http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/telecommunications/court-...](http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/telecommunications/court- rules-police-may-compel-suspects-to-unlock-fingerprint-protected-smartphones)

<comment><USER12> It's the "which finger" that becomes similar to a password, not the fingerprint (ianal)

<comment><USER11> All the court cares about is for the person to supply the one that unlocks the phone, they're not going to play guessing games.

<comment><USER12> Courts care about precise distinctions of law (that's their purpose!). Seems clear that fingerprints aren't protected, basically the same thing as your face in terms of privacy given a good enough camera.

But they would effectively be asking you the question "which finger did you use to lock this phone" to which you may plead the 5th.

<comment><USER11> It'll be contempt and possibly more if you don't unlock the device with your fingerprint.

It's not hard, the "precise distinction of law," is "unlock this with your finger, whichever one does it." I don't know what complicated back and forth you're imagining, but it's never occurred in any case that I've heard of.

 _they would effectively be asking you the question "which finger did you use to lock this phone" to which you may plead the 5th._

We already covered this in the link above: the 5th Amendment covers passcodes, not fingerprints.

<comment><USER13> But, as _Schrodinger_ says, this is not about your fingerprint; it is about a bit of information you have that the government does not have: which of your finger(s) this device knows about.

 _" A bit of information you have that the government does not have"_ is a password.

<comment><USER11> I really don't understand this line of thinking. What is the scenario you imagine where the question of "which finger?" is relevant? I'll lay out the beginning:

\- Police want to get into your phone for some reason \- You refuse to help them based on 5th Amendment or admiralty law or whatever \- They go to court for a order compelling you to operate the touch lock to open the phone \- You receive the order \- ?

Please lay out the "?" part, if you don't mind. I'm highly curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you read the iOS security guide you'll know Apple built the phone in such a way as to wash its hands with these types of request. They'll say it's impossible and they won't be lying. Nothing is ever impossible, but it will be very impractical. The hardware and software is built to ensure this.

I think the real game here is to compel Apple to build a backdoor into future models. I expect to see a lot of rhetoric around this fact, until something forces Apple hand.

<comment><USER15> That is possibly true for current models of the iPhone. It is significantly less true for the 5c in question, which has less robust security features. See other answers referring to the Secure Enclave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article at Errata Security [1] is better. There is an HN submission for it [2], but it hasn't drawn any attention.

In particular, it addresses technical issues not covered in the Techdirt article that are relevant to many of the existing comments here on HN.

[1] [http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/02/some-notes-on-apple- decryp...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/02/some-notes-on-apple-decryption- san.html#.VsPXQ_krIdU)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11115251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11115251)

</comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately, there's no good outcome here.

If Apple can unencrypt the phone, it will prove to everyone that backdoors exist. If they can't, and they tell the FBI as much, it will just give politicians more reasons sound off about how we have to have backdoors, because this shooter was a "terrorist" after all, and we just have to suck it up and do whatever is necessary to go after people like that.

Either way, we end up with backdoors.

<comment><USER18> Did you read the article? The court didn't order Apple to decrypt the phone. Instead, Apple has to disable the phone's feature that automatically wipes the hard drive after 10 failed password attempts. This is so that the FBI can brute-force its way into the data.

<comment><USER19> This could be example of parallel construction[1]. They may already have unencrypted it via a backdoor, but they wouldn't be able to use anything they find as evidence in court because they'd have to reveal the backdoor. If they can plausibly show they brute-forced it instead, they keep the backdoor hidden.

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

<comment><USER20> "it could be parallel construction" is true in literally every instance since it's impossible to prove the negative case.

This is becoming my cue to stop reading the comments; when parallel construction is the most obvious argument, you've read the interesting ideas up thread.

<comment><USER21> However, the US Government is known to have gathered hidden evidence in drug cases, then used parallel construction to hide the violation. So, now the government's presentation of evidence should always be considered in question. As it has shown dishonesty at the presentation and gathering of evidence and there's nothing that says they haven't changed their unethical ways, how can they be trusted to present evidence legally gathered?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2013/08/05...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the- dea-is-covering-it-up/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For me, the most interesting question I would have is absent from the article.

The court is basically ordering Apple to produce new firmware that doesn't block brute forcing. If Apple were to comply, who keeps this firmware after the fact?

There's no mention of this at all, but if the firmware image stays with the FBI then the implications are much more profound with regard to privacy.

<comment><USER23> >The SIF will be coded by Apple with a unique identifier of the phone so that the SIF would only load and execute on the SUBJECT DEVICE.

If I understand the cited order correctly the firmware is ordered to be constructed in a way that it runs only on the target phone.

<comment><USER22> I do wonder though that had Apple not predicted this exact scenario ahead of time (likely), how would they control this?

It's unlikely they can rely on hardware protections to provide this device locking, so is it the case that they would build the unique identifier into the image.

Optimistically some obfuscation could help but are the FBI/CIA/NSA really more than a few hops away from opening the binary image in a hex editor and changing it by hand?

If Apple firmware images for the iPhone are signed per-device then fine, but is that the case?

I don't know this but it seems unlikely to me that a custom device-signed build of iOS happens for every iDevice, and if that's not the case, I can't see how Apple can reliably restrict this with confidence.

<comment><USER23> I agree with you that this will be difficult or maybe impossible to implement. However the court has foreseen the upthread argument as the order shows.

As many here I believe that once this backdoor exists it will be somehow exploited (at the very least by further orders).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Apple ... will probably have little time to debug or test it overall, > meaning that this feature it is being ordered to build will almost certainly > put more users at risk.

Eh? They are not being asked to install it to the public at large, just one phone.

Of all reasons to object, this reason makes little sense.

<comment><USER6> That's true. In fact, if it's possible for Apple to accomplish what DOJ is demanding of it, the best outcome would be for DOJ to succeed, and do so publicly:

* There is an authentic need to get at the data on that phone

* There's no likelihood at all that other users will be impacted by the backdoor

* We'll all be on the same page about how secure these phones are versus the USG.

It's possible that they can prevail against the 5C but not against the 5S or later, since the security architecture of the 5S is very different from that of the 5C.

<comment><USER24> > There is an authentic need to get at the data on that phone

What is the authentic need? The shooters are dead. Do we have reason to believe that there is evidence of any pending crimes or any old unsolved crimes on the phone?

<comment><USER25> If you shoot a bunch of people while declaring allegiance to an organized group known for shooting bunches of people then I think that pretty clearly demonstrates that reading your communications has a pretty high likelihood of turning up something useful in preventing future incidents. If this doesn't clear your hurdle for reasonable search then what would?

To be clear, I don't think the order to Apple is necessarily altogether a good idea or is even going to produce the desired results, but your complaint seems to be with the fact that this data is being pursued at all.

Edit to reply:

> Evidence of a conspiracy would help. You said they declared allegiance to an > organized group. When they did that, did they say or hint that they had been > in contact with that group, other than, say, watching public YouTube videos?

The woman in the couple declared it right before the shooting[0]. Do you want a notarized letter from the deceased?

> Would you agree that "high likelihood" is too low a bar for justifying > searching the phones of people who live in high-crime neighborhoods?

I'm pretty sure neither "high likelihood" nor "authentic need" were being used as a term of art here, but I would bet that any judge would view the commission of murder declaredly for an organized militant group to be probable cause that there is information pertaining to more criminal activity by that group on these two's phones and in their communications.

Do you really view this as a government overreach or are you just trolling? Under what circumstances, if any, would you see as justified a search of someone's email? phone? house? So far you've equivocated between living in a bad neighborhood and committing murder-suicide.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/tashfeen-malik- islamic-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/tashfeen-malik-islamic- state.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER24> In response to your (first?) edit:

> The woman in the couple declared it right before the shooting[0].

I'm not questioning that she declared allegiance. I'm asking if she was in private contact with anyone. If you were responding to that, can you show me where that is in the NYT article you linked? I don't see it.

> Do you want a notarized letter from the deceased?

Let's try to keep this civil, please.

> Do you really view this as a government overreach or are you just trolling?

I actually believe the things I am saying. I am not saying them to anger or upset you or anyone else. Please do not let the fact that we disagree about the scope of the 4th Amendment cause you emotional suffering.

I am not ready to declare it overreach, because I do not know all of the evidence yet. This is why I have been saying things like "Do we have reason to believe that there is evidence of any pending crimes or any old unsolved crimes on the phone?" and "did they say or hint that they had been in contact with that group" and "I have not followed the news on this shooting, so I would not be shocked if the answer were 'yes, there is some evidence of a conspiracy'."

If there is no such evidence, I do think it is overreach, but my opinions on policy are not fixed in stone, and I sometimes change my mind about them when presented with new arguments, ideas, or philosophies.

> Under what circumstances, if any, would you see as justified a search of > someone's email? phone? house?

I doubt anyone has a complete enumeration of all circumstances under which they feel a search is justified. I would feel torn if there was lousy circumstantial evidence that the phone would solve or prevent crimes, I would be in support of a warrant if there was strong evidence, and I am opposed to a warrant with no evidence. One thing I would call strong evidence is a shooter having announced that he or she was part of a terrorist cell in the US.

I will no longer reading or responding to your edits that are "edited to reply". If you want to discuss with me further, please reply to reply by using the "reply" button. I will not be editing any of my posts to "edit to reply".

<comment><USER25> You keep switching between legal and normative requirements. We disagree on the 4th amendment in the same way that scientists and climate change deniers disagree about global warming. You have a fringe understanding of it with no support from the relevant literature and your arguments about it are poorly structured, deny evidence, and rely on intentionally misunderstanding context and terms of art.

The legality of searching for evidence is pretty open and shut because you need probable cause. The point of a search is to gather evidence, requiring the evidence that would be the result of a search is obviously a non-starter as a system.

Shooting a bunch of people and saying you're with ISIS is plenty of probable cause for a search. I don't see how you're waiting for "all the evidence" here since all the relevant facts are in and they're sufficient. Whether or not she was conversing privately with ISIS counterparts would be the resulting information of the search.

> One thing I would call strong evidence is a shooter having announced that he > or she was part of a terrorist cell in the US.

The only way to read this in light of our previous discussion is that saying "I'm in ISIS!" and then shooting up a bunch of civilians is insufficient to prompt a post-mortem search of the attackers' affairs, instead they need to say "I'm in ISIS and there are a bunch of us!" and then shoot a bunch of civilians.

Bravo sir, I have been well and properly trolled.

<comment><USER24> > You keep switching between legal and normative requirements.

If I did so, it was a mistake. My reference to the 4th Amendment, for instance, should have said "how the 4th Amendment ought to protect us". I did not mean to imply that I am trying to predict what warrants the justice system will or will not grant.

> You have a fringe understanding of it

I think I mentioned the 4th amendment just the once. I have been trying to stick to normative arguments.

> The point of a search is to gather evidence, requiring the evidence that > would be the result of a search is obviously a non-starter as a system.

I think this is a point where we truly disagree. I think a system can function in which some evidence that a search will yield results is required before the search is conducted. I do not think that the evidence must be airtight. Note that I am speaking about what I think is possible and just and right, not what the law says now or the justice system does now.

> The only way to read this in light of our previous discussion is that saying > "I'm in ISIS!" and then shooting up a bunch of civilians is insufficient to > prompt a post-mortem search of the attackers' affairs

Did the shooter say she was "in ISIS", or that she pledged allegiance to the leader? There might be a difference in this case. I have read that there is religious significance to a pledge of allegiance in ISIS's theology that might make a pledge indicative of ideological alignment and a membership "in ISIS" indicative of being in actual conversations with ISIS.

> Bravo sir, I have been well and properly trolled.

Please, let's try to be civil.

<comment><USER26> > Did the shooter say she was "in ISIS", or that she pledged allegiance to the > leader?

Either one would seem to constitute probable cause for an association. Of course we don't know if she was actually in ISIS, or just agreed with their beliefs. But how would we know without conducting further investigation? You seem to be demanding a somewhat unreasonably large burden of proof, when all that is needed in this case is probable cause. Frankly, even if she hadn't verbally declared allegiance to ISIS, I don't think it's a stretch to say there's probable cause for connection to other terrorist groups. The fact that she did say that makes it a slam dunk.

> I think a system can function in which some evidence that a search will > yield results is required before the search is conducted. I do not think > that the evidence must be airtight.

We do have such a system. The evidence you're describing is called probable cause, and that's the whole point. I'm not sure of any reasonable definition of probable cause that this situation wouldn't satisfy. Moreover, your objections seem to be in the form of vague misgivings rather than concrete arguments. You haven't precisely described what would constitute sufficient evidence for an investigation, but instead seem to just be saying "there's not enough right now." I think this is what's behind GPs frustrations responding to your posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So if I get this right, they want to (1) disable the delete feature after x retries (therefore enabling unlimited retries) and (2) enable to submit tries via a connector/wifi, bluetooth (therefore enabling a bruteforce approach). What good is an encrypted filesystem in that scenario?

<comment><USER28> Plenty of good if you have a reasonable passphrase and the vendor hasn't been compelled to assist.

"Can only try 10 times" isn't anything guaranteed by encryption. My laptop has an encrypted partition, but an attacker can brute-force it at will. Even if I had software to say "only let it happen 10 times, then erase the partition" the whole drive could just be cloned. That's why I have a 20+ character passphrase.

<comment><USER6> Apple goes _way_ out of their way to avoid scenarios where they can be compelled to subvert iOS security. For instance, see pg44+ of the iOS security white paper:

[https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

... the HSMs that manage the escrow scheme for credentials stored in iCloud are themselves rigged to blow up on 10 failed tries, and, not only that, but the code that implements that process is burned into the HSMs and the keys Apple would need to change that logic have been destroyed.

<comment><USER29> Thank you for the link. I was unaware how seriously Apple takes their security. Self-destructing HSMs to avoid brute-forcing is extremely impressive. THIS is a model of how to implement proper key escrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The key parts of the Federal order:

"Apple's reasonable technical assistance shall accomplish the following three important functions:

(1) it will bypass or disable the auto-erase function whether or not it has been enabled;

(2) it will enable the FBI to submit passcodes to the SUBJECT DEVICE for testing electronically via the physical device port, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or other protocol available on the SUBJECT DEVICE and

(3) it will ensure that when the FBI submits passcodes to the SUBJECT DEVICE, software running on the device will not purposefully introduce any additional delay between passcode attempts beyond what is incurred by Apple hardware.

Apple's reasonable technical assistance may include, but is not limited to: providing the FBI with a signed iPhone Software file, recovery bundle, or other Software Image File ("SIF") that can be loaded onto the SUBJECT DEVICE.

The SIF will load and run from Random Access Memory and will not modify the iOS on the actual phone, the user data partition or system partition on the device's flash memory. The SIF will be coded by Apple with a unique identifier of the phone so that the SIF would only load and execute on the SUBJECT DEVICE.

The SIF will be loaded via Device Firmware Upgrade ("DFU") mode, recovery mode, or other applicable mode available to the FBI. Once active on the SUBJECT DEVICE, the SIF will accomplish the three functions specified in paragraph 2. The SIF will be loaded on the SUBJECT DEVICE at either a government facility, or alternatively, at an Apple facility; if the latter, Apple shall provide the government with remote access to the SUBJECT DEVICE through a computer allowing the government to conduct passcode recovery analysis.

If Apple determines that it can achieve the three functions stated above in paragraph 2, as well as the functionality set forth in paragraph 3, using an alternate technological means from that recommended by the government, and the government concurs, Apple may comply with this Order in that way."

</comment><comment><USER31> Robert Graham (Errata Security)'s notes on this: [http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/02/some-notes-on-apple- decryp...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/02/some-notes-on-apple-decryption- san.html#.VsPuiFIq1Ec)

</comment><comment><USER32> The implications are quite important for future technologies. Neural implants for example. Neural implants are currently used for prosthetics and paralysis. A forced backdoor would kill all research to develop a co-processor directly linked to the brain. Who would want a government backdoor directly to the brain

</comment><comment><USER33> If Apple is capable of compromising security on its devices (by using its root key to sign a custom version of iOS, or through some other method), then I see no way that they will avoid eventually being subject to a court order in some jurisdiction that compels this action. If that's true, then device security is _already_ compromised and Apple knows this. Let's say the facts of the case were slightly different, that the FBI "knows" a terrorist attack is about to occur, and Jack Bauer-style demands that Apple assist in compromising a specific device that has the top seekrit plans on it. In that instance, do you think Apple would comply with a warrantless request for cooperation? Hm...

Reading Tim Cook's announcement in light of this thought experiment, methinks he doth protest too much! Apple does not have any objection to compromising user security at the root level, and in fact has already done so by creating a device that has some limited vulnerability to malicious action by the manufacturer signed with its root key. (By the way, no doubt every other manufacturer has done worse, so this is not to deprecate Apple vs. any other big company.)

I would speculate that Tim Cook's goals with this announcement are largely PR- based, and that the goal of Apple's legal strategy is not to avoid cooperation but rather to retain the ability to decide _whether_ to cooperate, and/or to impose a higher perceived cost on the government for such requests. No doubt Apple is correct to say that once a precedent is established, then it will be widely used by law enforcement even in routine cases.

At the end of the day, I am not optimistic that we can avoid a world in which large device manufacturers are compelled (legally and practically) to build security flaws into their devices. Perhaps not the flaw of a back-doored crypto implementation, but other flaws such as those that have been identified in current iOS devices that allow the government (with commitment of sufficient resources) to chip away at some of the more superficial protections.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why the worry about auto-wiping? Is it not possible to make a copy of the encrypted data and then play around with it as much as you want?

<comment><USER35> Can someone answer this? Raw read the memory to an external device and then brute force that shit using super computers until it cries.

<comment> X-Istence If you can break AES... then the NSA would love to have a word with you :P

The FBI is going after the lowest hanging fruit, the users password that was used to create the crypto key.

<comment><USER36> The user's password is _not_ used to create the crypto key; it is randomly generated and burned in at the factory.

<comment> X-Istence It is used to create the crypto key, using a password based key derivation function, using the user's password fed into the PBKDF the output is the key used for encryption/decryption.

The users device key is mixed into that PBKDF. Without both parts of the equation, you have nothing.

For your reading enjoyment: [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

Specifically page 11 the diagram at the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does Apple get to bill the FBI for the time that their engineers and legal department will be busy on this request?

<comment><USER38> Yes. In the court order section 5 (on line 8 of page 3) "Apple shall advise the government of the reasonable cost of providing this service."

Perhaps only engineering resources. (it's always gonna be a big legal hassle)

<comment><USER39> A reasonable cost may still be $150 to $200 per hour. Engineering time charged to a third party is never cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> """To the extent that Apple believes that compliance with this Order would be unreasonably burdensome, it may make an application to this Court for relief within five business days of receipt of the Order."""

If what Apple's security guides claim is true, "unreasonably burdensome" should be an easy standard to meet on practical technical feasibility grounds. The issue is whether they'll want to challenge this on non-technical grounds.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why wouldn't the FBI just clone the phone disk contents and crack the encryption on more dedicated systems?

<comment><USER42> Are there tools to dump and resume iPhone/Android states? Could easily dump state, null "tryCounter++", and resume cracking?

<comment><USER36> The PIN is an input to the HSM, where the key actually lives. HSMs are designed from the silicon up to resist inspection or modification of internal state. There are certainly no baked-in debugging/JTAG interfaces, and the hardware is designed to blow away the key if the chip is under physical or logical attack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So, Apple says that "the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation."

[https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/](https://www.apple.com/customer- letter/)

If it's possible to make such a "backdoored" build of iOS, then there are state actors who will be throwing $Millions at doing it already, with or without any willing help from Apple.

<comment><USER44> I'm guessing this would need to involve stealing Apple's private code signing key.

<comment><USER43> This is mentioned here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11116390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11116390)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I thought this was an excellent write-up regarding how the iOS security platform (recent iPhone models) works from someone obviously in the know, as posted in the forums of Apple Insider. (Source: [http://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/191851](http://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/191851))

" Apple uses a dedicated chip to store and process the encryption. They call this the Secure Enclave. The secure enclave stores a full 256-bit AES encryption key.

Within the secure enclave itself, you have the device's Unique ID (UID) . The only place this information is stored is within the secure enclave. It can't be queried or accessed from any other part of the device or OS. Within the phone's processor you also have the device's Group ID (GID). Both of these numbers combine to create 1/2 of the encryption key. These are numbers that are burned into the silicon, aren't accessible outside of the chips themselves, and aren't recorded anywhere once they are burned into the silicon. Apple doesn't keep records of these numbers. Since these two different pieces of hardware combine together to make 1/2 of the encryption key, you can't separate the secure enclave from it's paired processor.

The second half of the encryption key is generated using a random number generator chip. It creates entropy using the various sensors on the iPhone itself during boot (microphone, accelerometer, camera, etc.) This part of the key is stored within the Secure Enclave as well, where it resides and doesn't leave. This storage is tamper resistant and can't be accessed outside of the encryption system. Even if the UID and GID components of the encryption key are compromised on Apple's end, it still wouldn't be possible to decrypt an iPhone since that's only 1/2 of the key.

The secure enclave is part of an overall hardware based encryption system that completely encrypts all of the user storage. It will only decrypt content if provided with the unlock code. The unlock code itself is entangled with the device's UDID so that all attempts to decrypt the storage must be done on the device itself. You must have all 3 pieces present: The specific secure enclave, the specific processor of the iphone, and the flash memory that you are trying to decrypt. Basically, you can't pull the device apart to attack an individual piece of the encryption or get around parts of the encryption storage process. You can't run the decryption or brute forcing of the unlock code in an emulator. It requires that the actual hardware components are present and can only be done on the specific device itself.

The secure enclave also has hardware enforced time-delays and key-destruction. You can set the phone to wipe the encryption key (and all the data contained on the phone) after 10 failed attempts. If you have the data-wipe turned on, then the secure enclave will nuke the key that it stores after 10 failed attempts, effectively erasing all the data on the device. Whether the device- wipe feature is turned on or not, the secure enclave still has a hardware- enforced delay between attempts at entering the code: Attempts 1-4 have no delay, Attempt 5 has a delay of 1 minute. Attempt 6 has a delay of 5 minutes. Attempts 7 and 8 have a delay of 15 minutes. And attempts 9 or more have a delay of 1 hour. This delay is enforced by the secure enclave and can not be bypassed, even if you completely replace the operating system of the phone itself. If you have a 6-digit pin code, it will take, on average, nearly 6 years to brute-force the code. 4-digit pin will take almost a year. if you have an alpha-numeric password the amount of time required could extend beyond the heat-death of the universe. Key destruction is turned on by default.

Even if you pull the flash storage out of the device, image it, and attempt to get around key destruction that way it won't be successful. The key isn't stored in the flash itself, it's only stored within the secure enclave itself which you can't remove the storage from or image it.

Each boot, the secure enclave creates it's own temporary encryption key, based on it's own UID and random number generator with proper entropy, that it uses to store the full device encryption key in ram. Since the encryption key is also stored in ram encrypted, it can't simply be read out of the system memory by reading the RAM bus.

The only way I can possibly see to potentially unlock the phone without the unlock code is to use an electron microscope to read the encryption key from the secure enclave's own storage. This would take considerable time and expense (likely millions of dollars and several months) to accomplish. This also assumes that the secure enclave chip itself isn't built to be resistant to this kind of attack. The chip could be physically designed such that the very act of exposing the silicon to read it with an electron microscope could itself be destructive."

<comment><USER46> Thanks for this explanation. Does Android have anything like this?

<comment><USER47> There are probably Android devices which make use of ARM's TrustZone [1]. Apple's Secure Enclave is a bit more thorough, though, because it actually uses a physically separate co-processor running a custom L4-based microkernel with a secure boot process. It is hardware isolated from the rest of the system, and uses a secure mailbox and hardware interrupts to communicate. Whereas ARM TrustZone appears to be implementable entirely on a single CPU.

[1] [http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzon...](http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzone/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Why can't they just pull the flash memory and work on it directly?

<comment> X-Istence AES crypto does not lend to easy cracking...

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> >> _A magistrate judge, an Apple employee, and an FBI agent agree to meet at a local bar. Only the Apple employee makes it. Why? Because the bar didn 't have a back door._

</comment><comment><USER50> The phone in question was not owned by the shooter, but by his employer, who has consented to the search. This seems like a poor basis to contest protecting someone's privacy.

</comment><comment><USER51> Big problem. People will generally stop using phones of which they suspect that they are back-doored. At the same time, it would be a hopeless endeavour for law enforcement to get a swarm of (Chinese or other Asian) companies to help with unlocking their phones. They would literally not even answer the phone. Therefore, this may very well spell the end of highly centralized, Apple-style companies that can be effectively pressured and browbeaten into "compliance".

</comment><comment><USER52> Do I sound conspiratorial if I suspect this is all PR and NSA has already ways to get around the encryption?

It would entice $EVILDOERS to use a compromised platform.

</comment><comment><USER53> Fortunately for the future, this kind of attack can be thwarted through key stretching (making each attempt intrinsically long to perform, by making it computationally expensive).

I expect to see an optional, configurable key stretching setup in future phones, for those whose privacy is worth a couple of seconds' delay when unlocking their phones.

</comment><comment><USER54> Who goes to jail if Apple flat out refuses?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody would have to go to jail. They'd hold Apple in contempt and charge them a non-trivial sum of money for every day they refuse. If they continue refusing, the amount increases exponentially until the company is threatened with bankruptcy.

In short: they can't refuse without a justified explanation of why they are unable to comply.

<comment><USER55> In which case the best way to proceed would be to say that they will try to do it and after few months of investigation say the data became corrupted before they even got the phone. Who's going to verify it? No one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The headlines keep changing, is it crypto, is it auto-erase, is it a purple unicorn? sheesh lets muddy up the actual issue with incomplete, or inconsistent data. Its the American way!

</comment><comment><USER57> Literally the one time the west coast would have needed Scalia...

</comment><comment><USER58> It's not his phone. He worked for the government It belongs to the government.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's at times like these they're surely knocking on the door of every company whose R&D in quantum computing, information theory and algorithms they've been funding for at least the past 2 or so odd decades. "So, is it ready yet?"

<comment><USER60> I'm assuming you are referring to quantum computing for it's speed computations? That wouldn't make a different here. They have only X amount of tries before the phone locks them out. It is the number of tries that is the issue here.

<comment><USER61> From my understanding, if you had for example a 128-qbit quantum computer, it would be able to crack any 16 character password in a single operation.

<comment><USER62> It's not really a single operation though. How would that quantum computer test against an iPhone when each test is a mark against the 10 max test count? An iPhone is still based in standard silicon using bits; you can't exactly pop a process that uses qubits into it and expect it to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> It bothers me that Tim Cook lied: he stated in his open letter that if they provided the modified OS it could be used on other phones, but the court order specifically says Apple should make the software only work on the specific phone in question.

<comment><USER64> the second software like this exists that was signed with Apple's release key, the second they can no longer control it

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> The 5th amendment protects evidence inside the brain of the accused. As devices becomes more and more an extension of the brain, the more I think we'll need to adjust the rule of the 5th amendment to cover things outside of the brain.

<comment><USER25> Think about what we want as a society though. If you did commit a crime, we want to convict you. The reason the 5th protects you from compelled self- incrimination is to prevent unjust interrogation and investigation techniques from the cops[0], not to make the overall likelihood of conviction lower, although it incidentally has this effect.

From a policy standpoint the ideal world would be one where all criminals are convicted and no innocents are convicted. In our system we _try_ [see 0 again] to err on the side of letting criminals go rather than convicting innocents.

One of the interesting things about the new normal of everything being recorded always and everywhere is how this might change our laws. Laws are supposed to accomplish something, speeding law is supposed to improve road safety for example. If automatic enforcement instead imposes massive taxes on everyone while not improving road safety, society (should) modify the law since it didn't get them to where they wanted to go.

Sorry, long winded way of saying, our electronic artifacts aren't really all that different than letters. If I wrote an email to my friend demonstrating premeditation in murdering your puppy, you and everyone else have an interest in that email being valid evidence. That's a wholly separate discussion from the encryption debate. I definitely you're right that we need to think about it but I just wanted to play devils advocate here for why we might want to think twice.

[0] Yes, shit still happens, but the system is SUPPOSED to limit these abuses.

<comment><USER4> >If you did commit a crime, we want to convict you.

There are too many bad laws out there. If I meet a bad guy, I can defend myself. If I cross the government, I'm doomed. I much rather support things that increase my likelihood of meeting a bad guy that I can defend myself against while reducing my ability to cross the government and being doomed without recourse. This is the whole reason I justify that it is better to let 99 guilty go free than to jail 1 innocent (assuming the government doesn't also take away my ability to defend myself, which it does seem intent on doing).

<comment><USER25> It is unjust to jail Rick for jay walking and ignore that Morty jay walks. A system of partial enforcement is not intrinsically more just because we haven't jailed Morty. It's actually unjust because if Morty is free to jay walk then how can we justify locking up Rick if jay walking is the crime? We probably just like Rick less.

Partial enforcement is a practical reality because we're willing to accept the injustice of partial enforcement rather than live in an Orwellian police state (a decision I'm thrilled with!).

> There are too many bad laws out there.

That's the point! If bad laws stay on the books and aren't generally enforced then they can be enforced capriciously as punitive weapons by government officials. If bad laws are fully enforced, they won't stay on the books for very long.

This is why it is in the best interest of a society to have as high an enforcement rate as possible before increasing false positives. It discourages bad laws from existing in the first place and surviving in the second.

<comment><USER4> >Partial enforcement is a practical reality because we're willing to accept the injustice of partial enforcement rather than live in an Orwellian police state (a decision I'm thrilled with!).

False dichotomy. If all laws are fully enforced, bad laws will soon be done away with by popular demand. If the government won't do so willingly, then they will be forced to do so by the people.

<comment><USER25> Can you clarify? I just said that bad laws would go away with full enforcement, which is the core of why it is good for a society to enforce its laws evenly and thoroughly.

I don't think there's any false dichotomy produced by simultaneously noting that on a practical level you will never achieve literally 100% enforcement of laws without some serious damage to civil liberties which is why we err on the side of partial enforcement as the lesser of two evils.

Edit: Is the issue is the use of the phrase "accept the injustice of partial enforcement"? I was trying to communicate that there is some injustice in not fully applying the law (the fact that some murderers go untried is unjust for instance). However we're willing to accept that because getting literally 100% enforcement would require things we don't want. When I say full enforcement as something to aspire to I'm not suggesting literally 100%, I'm referring to the way we roughly fully enforce murder laws and do not fully enforce drug laws. One of those crimes (more or less) gets treated as a crime regardless of who commits it, the other does not. I don't think we'd tolerate drug laws as they are if they were enforced with the same degree of universality as murder laws.

<comment><USER4> >I don't think there's any false dichotomy produced by simultaneously noting that on a practical level you will never achieve literally 100% enforcement of laws without some serious damage to civil liberties which is why we err on the side of partial enforcement as the lesser of two evils.

My point being there is the third option that the laws will be removed. And it seems like in part of your post you agree with this, but in part of your post you act like this isn't an option. I'm kinda confused in that regard.

<comment><USER25> Sorry, I specifically pointing to Orwellian nightmare a false option. It's like Cake or Death? Cake's really the only thing people are going to pick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I always wondered why more people don't go around bricking iPhones by entering the wrong pin several times. Same goes for any other lockout. Why not do this to someone famous by constantly logging in as them from a botnet?

<comment> X-Istence Because you need physical access to the device to put in a pin?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is wrong. Engineers who make encrypted devices should do their best to make them undecipherable. This is an universal standard - to do your best.

If encryption cannot be broken it means it has been done right, and engineers should have the highest respect.

Govts, on the other hand, should use appropriate policies, not orders or force or backdoors.

</comment><comment><USER68> Why no one is attacking on hardware level? Cut the processor to get the GID and UID, dump the flash, pregenerate rainbow tables with pin, power flash chip externally and give the codes ...

Yeah it is expensive, but I would not be surprised if there aren't such labs that could provide such service. Why does FBI goes trough such pains?

<comment><USER62> While I'm also curious why this isn't possible (as per everyone else's comments), the phone in question doesn't even have the same level of security so does it even have a dedicated chip with the GID and UID?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> this is smoke screen. Purely.

they can already desolder the flash memory chips and brute force the data, programatically no less, all they want.

<comment><USER70> Are you suggesting they can brute force AES-256?

iOS's security is quite sophisticated: [https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf](https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf)

<comment><USER69> well, now that you mention...

i was commenting only on the article that says they wanted apple to remove the "wipe data after X tries"

<comment><USER69> actually, no. most people use 5 digits pins. why break anything other than that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> They're effectively asking for a backdoor, plain and simple. I'd be highly surprised if Apple complied with this court order.

Even if they removed said feature, the only way to decrypt the FS would be if and only if the owner had a weak strength passcode.

Can somebody explain to me how this warrant is not a direct violation of this individual's 4th amendment rights?

This seems like yet another case where the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are selectively applied based on your skin color.

<comment><USER72> > Can somebody explain to me how this warrant is not a direct violation of > this individual's 4th amendment rights?

The person is dead and it's reasonable and the 4th isn't even applicable (depending on the interpretation of "make a backdoor in a product" as opposed to "we're looking at someone's data they own on a device they own"). Even the very liberal interpretation of the 4th doesn't apply here, when the right violation would be the act of accessing the data, not just asking to have a way to look at it.

Techdirt is full of fiction by design, so I'm not surprised by the confusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Can't they use the dead guys finger print?

<comment><USER38> The phone in question is an iPhone 5c that doesn't have a fingerprint sensor.

Also even if it did, simply rebooting the device will require a complex passcode instead of a stored fingerprint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Ok someone murders a bunch of defenseless people... Why is Apple dragging their feet? This is tasteless. I'm NOT for backdoors, but this is ridiculous.

<comment><USER75> > I'm NOT for backdoors

I think you've just learned that you are, in fact, for backdoors. A backdoor doesn't become any less of a backdoor when it's only used against bad people.

<comment><USER74> No, don't put words into my mouth. I think Apple should go to some extraordinary means to assist here. Any system is hackable if have physical possession and control over the input.

<comment><USER76> It's true that we haven't seen perfection yet, but there are tamper-resistant devices where the above is not trivially true. If each device were protecting the same keys or we just needed to break the platform, I might be more inclined to agree, but given that they have individual keys and a failed break could leave the data unobtainable, I'm not so confident.

That said, I think this particular phone doesn't have the secure enclave, so it may be breakable here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> If Apple can jailbreak the phone in its current state, Apple (or the NSA) may be able to help.

</comment><comment><USER78> This order says Apple must... \- bypass the auto-erase feature \- enable the FBI to "submit" passcodes \- not purposefully introduce additional delays

I don't see that this requires Apple to do anything in particular with whatever passcodes the FBI submits.

bool tryPasscode (string passcode) { return false; }

Reasonable cost of service: $5?

<comment><USER79> Judges are not strict compilers. They will interpret "submit passcodes" to mean what a lay person would read it to mean: if the submitted passcode is correct, the phone will be unlocked.

Games like this will get you contempt of court. I don't know if an obstruction of justice charge could come out of this, but I wouldn't test it myself...</comment></comment>


Why Apple must come out with iPhone (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r12798022-Why-Apple-must-come-out-with-iPhone <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR: Someone on this forum correctly predicted the iPhone in 2005, 2 years before it came out. And no one else on the forum believes it would be a good idea...</comment>


Why Enterprise Software Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/669-why-enterprise-software-sucks <comment><USER2> I remember leading the test drive of a popular ERP system for one of my enterprise clients. The salesman had never had a prospect force him into a "test drive". My number one rule was "Nobody touches the keyboard except me."

As I entered an order, I asked, "How do I find my Customer Number?"

As I entered a part number, I asked, "How do I see how many are in stock?"

As I scheduled the order, I asked, "How do I see the current factory schedule for this item?"

It drove the salesman nuts. He couldn't explain how to do anything without grabbing the keyboard.

I asked, "What good is this system if I can't even enter one order?"

His response..."Are you going to train your people or not?"

That's pretty much their attitude. He was so upset with me, he went directly to the CEO, who asked me what was wrong. I handed him one of our orders and said, "If you can enter this order into that system, we oughta buy it." He couldn't. We ended up buying another system that people could use.

The dinosaur is big, but it is dying. Hack on, and let the one who delivers the value win.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is shallow and thin, although I agree part of the problem is that the buyers are not the users.

The bigger problem is that the buyers have already spent god-knows how much other money on dozens of software solutions that all were supposed to walk on water. Now the poor schmuck writing some simple app has to take into account leveraging all that other previous investment by the organization.

Ever buy Enterprise Software? Every vendor loads that stuff up with so much junk that it's a wonder they can fit it all on a stack of DVDs. Most of them can do everything but the laundry. And for each of those purchases, there's some executive somewhere wondering "why aren't they just implementing that software we bought last year?" -- it quickly becomes a political process where nobody wins. It's not a simple users-aren't-the-buyers situation. Even if the users were the buyers, you'd still have the same situation. EDIT FOR CLARITY: That's because there is no single user with a single set of needs. Such situations rarely exist. It's more complicated than that.

<comment><USER4> I think you are partially right as well. The deeper issue is that _because_ buyers aren't the users, makers of enterprise software have make stupid things like feature comparison checklists.

Because buyers aren't the users, enterprise software companies must stuff in every possible feature they can. We all know that more features != better system.

We're still stuck with the question of why stupid things like comparison charts exist though. It all comes down to accountability. Buyers need to have something to cover their asses if the system doesn't work out. "See, look at this comparison chart - I bought the best system out there. Just look how many more features it has."

<comment><USER3> Yes. These systems gravitate towards comparison charts and cost-per-seat discussions, when they should gravitate towards ROI discussions. But ROI is notoriously difficult to compute on large enterprise systems.

And let's not forget that even if you make the buyers the users, even a really small number of users will have conflicting requests for features. You could give everybody in the organization fifty bucks to spend. That would make the buyers the users. But what would happen? Everybody would be happy that they'd solved the 3 or 4 things that were most important to them in the simplest way possible. The remaining situation would be lethal for the larger organization: loss of reporting, command-and-control, re-use of data, standardized products to train newcomers on, etc.

In the end, it's a choice. You can make "solve the simple problem" programs and sell them to lots of users who will then create chaos in the organization (because they fix only the perceived immediate needs of a subset of users) or you create feature-rich, bloated software that does everything for everybody and that's hard to use (and possibly impossible to adapt) but is attractive to the larger organization. Companies have been making lots of money on both of those options.

Put a different way: users in an organization have immediate, day-to-day needs that only reflect a very small part of the greater needs of the organization. So somebody has to compromise. There's no free lunch.

<comment><USER4> Or, you can get really good at convincing buyers that your simple-to-the-point solution IS what they need. That's so much harder to do though.

<comment><USER3> I think this is one of those big wars that will go on forever. You see great products, like IM, making inroads into the Enterprise Software space. I think you could make a great go at it selling simple software that does simple stuff directly to the users, bypassing the CIO guys.

But that's not going to make you a lot of friends. :)

<comment><USER4> Bah. Friends are overrated anyway! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess "not being a big enterprise" is one answer to the enterprise problem (one that I'm inclined to agree with), but it leaves me with nagging doubts. Those companies most likely exist because in one way or the other, at that size, they are the most efficient for whatever market they are in. If you decide that software for those companies sucks, throwing up your hands and walking the other way is one answer, but it doesn't really address the problem in a meaningful way.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think one of the big problems is that the buyers don't know how to buy software. Users like new versions with long bullet lists of features-- and they buy 'em.

On the plus side, if you actually create simple to-the-point software, your users are probably a smarter breed of cat (read: less support costs?).

</comment><comment><USER7> Enterprise software sucks because it is a hard, extremely complex problem space. Enterprise software is hard in the same way that it is hard to create and maintain an effective and useful quality system. Each individual (successful) business is uniquely organized and operates in a manner peculiar to itself. The unique qualities of a business is what gives it a competitive advantage. A successful businees is not going to adapt its business practices to some generalized, abstracted ERP system. To do so would risk the loss of its competitive advantage. All the ERP systems I have seen suck at the ability to be easily adapted to the unique and peculiar qualities of a specific business. Many businesses spend a lot of money on services or consultants in attempts to adapt general ERP systems to their business without much success.

I wonder if this dissonance between what businesses want from an ERP system and the capabilites of ERP systems is due to programmers desire to elegantly abstract and generalize software. Businesses want ERP software to be specific to their business. Motorola, Nokia, GE, Sam's Muffler Shop do not want to be generalized into MyAbstractBusinessClass.

<comment><USER4> >Enterprise software sucks because it is a hard, extremely complex problem space.

I couldn't disagree more. I don't know how many enterprise systems I've worked on that are _unnecessarily_ complex.

<comment><USER3> Solving multiple, overlapping problems for thousands of users all over the world is non-trivial. Pick any solution space, and I can give you a dozen things you haven't thought about. 95% of them aren't important to one or another subset of users, and probably actually get in the way of their work. The problem is that the 95% of feature bloat isn't the same for all the users!

The trick is not to deny complexity or embrace it. The trick is to make rational compromises. Start with something simple and add just enough bells and whistles to get most of what's needed done. But that's a much more painful and difficult process than just buying some big product off the shelf.

<comment><USER4> Great points. What I mean by unnecessarily complex is: I've seen to many enterprise systems that are simply electronic versions of manual processes.

The problems that enterprise software system really try to solve are masked by trying to genericize them for every situation and everyone. It still comes down to solving one specific problem and solving it well.

<comment><USER3> We are very close to agreement. There's hard work in picking the best and most competitive business processes, and it's going to be different for every organization.

That's why "project management software" isn't the same as "software to help us plan and control building and deploying industrial power transformers in a union environment where we have high governmental reporting obligations" or some such. Companies either want to sell generic products with feature bloat all over the place, or home-grown shops try to take fragile systems and glue them together with more and more code. Either way you end up with a lot more complexity than the organization needs.

But it still might not be a simple answer. And nobody wants to do the work of figuring out what the minimum amount of complexity is for each situation. (Even though there's probably more money in that than anything else)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who still works in an IT department at a large company, I think 37signals has a valid point. It's not the only point (and there are many), but it is a good one.

As much as most enterprise software sucks, it's at least 3 times as bad trying to install or upgrade it.

Enterprise software companies know their customers have deep pockets, which is what support contracts are all about. They purposely make the documentation too confusing or too sparse so they can push the "value" of their yearly support contract. Once you've bought the basic support contract, they tend not to have many more answers than what you can get from the documentation. Of course, you can buy higher levels of support where they'll send someone to be onsite to work on your problems (which means even more money).

By this time, you've already spent so much time and your manager has spent so much money on this stuff, that it's too embarrassing for your manager to admit to his bosses that he's made a mistake and your stuck with the crappy software.

</comment><comment><USER9> People like 37signals and web designers should stop talking which software sucks. Especially Enterprise software.

This group of people have no idea or whatsoever the requirements of an enterprise software. All they know is how to create a beautiful websites. I'm not saying that sarcastically, I like beautiful websites.

But this group of people judge the quality of the software from the UI perspective; if UI == sucks then software sucks. They believe that a wonderful UI == best quality software. That may be true but it's a wrong generalization.

Not to mention that web-designers and 37signals NEVER work on any enterprise software. They simply work on small projects because it's their specialty.

<comment><USER10> It is not about the UI. It is a matter of usability and _general_ design.

A friend of mine works in a company that develops airport traffic control software. More than one time I heard him say how the features that are pumped into the software are not features that are wanted by the users, but by managers that are responsible for buying the software.

In telecommunications, where I have a little more experience, it is similar. Things that we were supposed to work on are not the things that people required. I spent a whole year on a team of 15 SDEs developing a bunch of "features" that would never be seen or used, but that _had_ to be developed if you want to have a Class-5 Phone Switch that complies with Brazilian regulations.

<comment><USER11> Useability suffers with scale. When the designer caters to the needs of many it is hard to please everyone. But it's more than that: when he caters to the needs of many it becomes less important to please any of them. Instead he can focus on bureaucracies that 'represent' them.

Of course, when I refer to 'him' I am completely ignoring the tragedy of the commons dragging down every any large-scale enterprise[1] over time.

Enterprise software is just an extreme example of these two phenomena.

[1] no pun intended.</comment></comment></comment>


An iPad stylus that may have even tempted Steve Jobs. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1593705756/motive-stylus-the-ipad-smart-cover-has-a-new-sidek?ref=live

<comment><USER2> > _may have even tempted Steve Jobs._

[citation needed]</comment>


Is Sam Altman really this ignorant of the history of Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/941720539143405568 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935873)

</comment><comment><USER3> No, but it's possible that his ideology matters more to him than other people. That seems to fit.

</comment><comment><USER4> At a minimum, he's got the right to say what he wants. Works for the SJWs.</comment>


Bitcoin on vim's splash screen for children in Uganda - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=207559.0

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there's really no good reason why this shouldn't happen.

We're talking about potentially a significant amount of money here going to what I assume to be a good cause. (I don't know who the actual charity is, but I'd bet it's a good one)</comment>


Mac, Linux skills grab higher salaries than Windows - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10208061-16.html <comment><USER2> I don't think this is true. I think the keyword "Windows" is much more common, and low-paying jobs dilute the high-paying ones. Consider, for example, a low- level secretarial job. Would the job posting include wording like "Must be familiar with Microsoft Windows and Word"? Probably. (The idea is that non- technology jobs, which tend to be lower-paying, include the keyword Windows, but not OS X or Linux. This drives the price of "Windows" down, but it doesn't say anything about the price of a Win32 developer or an AD admin.)

Then, as we move into the real IT jobs, the word "Windows" probably doesn't show up, since it's assumed that you already know it. (I forgot to ask "what OS do I have to use" at my first job interview, and ended up having to use Windows without having any Windows experience. Fortunately, VMWare made that problem go away.)

 _If you're a student hoping to get a job after graduation, your best bet is likely to aim for the largest and/or most resilient markets._

No, please don't do this. Focus on something that you really like, and get really good at it. Then you will always have work, regardless of the market's whims. (If you took this advice 4 years ago, you'd just now be ready for a lucrative career securitizing mortgages. Have fun working at McDonalds...)

</comment><comment><USER3> The original article - while showing Windows itself as attracting a lower salary - shows that jobs involving Microsoft/proprietary technologies are paid significantly more than OS counterparts. It seems to me that the author (certainly of the cnet article) jumped to conclusions based on the first graph of the story, not the full picture.

Here in the UK, developers using Microsoft technologies are easily paid double what your average LAMP developer earns (in my experience).

<comment><USER4> "easily double" doesn't sound likely at all IMHO if you're comparing like for like.

<comment><USER3> This is my experience only so is likely to differ based on location (for example, salaries are so widely different in London compared to where I'm based, that I couldn't even begin to hazard a guess) and industry (I have only applied for jobs in education and small businesses - never a large corporation).

However, back when I was looking for a job a couple of years ago, I interviewed for ASP positions - same hours, same benefits, same location, etc - that paid twice what was being offered to PHP developers. If I hadn't been so much more experienced in PHP I definitely would have gone the Microsoft route.

I keep an eye on the local job market (every few months) and this doesn't seem to have changed. Be interested to hear if it's the same by you? (Are you UK based? I can't think why I've got that in my head...)

<comment><USER5> Ditto in Phoenix (5th largest US city by population) where the job market strongly favors Microsoft tech. I search indeed.com every few days and the lamp/open-source/mac jobs here are super rare compared to .net demands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Scarcity + Demand = Higher Prices

Surprised?

<comment><USER7> or could it be that windows is just easier to manage, therefore the barrier of entry is much lower?

<comment><USER8> Have you used any of the Win32 API(s)? Windows Forms is about the first generation that isn't too painful to use. VB6 before it was manageable too, but all the abstractions are leaky and you have to delve into the raw C API sooner or later. MFC was a complete train wreck.

<comment><USER9> You're completely right, but since when did someone need to know the Win32 API to _manage_ windows?

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I can't find mention of that in the article. The article doesn't exclude development as far as I can tell. Besides, are you telling me scripting in windows is easier?

<comment><USER9> The person you replied to mentioned it, not the article. I'm not making any claims either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The thing that surprises me about the graph is that MacOS jobs pay _significantly_ more than either Linux or Windows; the advantage of Linux itself over Windows is so small that it might be a statistical fluke.

Maybe anyone who can afford to fill their office with Macs can also afford to pay top dollar for engineers to program and maintain them.

<comment><USER11> I think there are a couple of factors in play there. One is the iPhone, and the big spike in his graph would indicate that demand shot up when the iPhone SDK was released. The other is that there just aren't very many traditional MacOS jobs.

<comment><USER10> iPhone. D'oh!</comment></comment></comment>


UK refuses Assange safe passage to hospital - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/uk-refuses-assange-safe-passage-to-hospital-to-diagnose-shoulder-pain/ <comment><AUTHOR> The UK is right, IMO.

Assange doesn't have some magical special status. Rule if Law means, among other things, that he shouldn't get preferential treatment, just because he has an illustrious post address now.

<comment><USER2> Assange simply isn't sick enough. Based on the British precedent with Augusto Pinochet, and applying the rule of law non-preferentially, once Assange is of frail health, he should be allowed to return to Australia.</comment></comment>


Automated Feature Engineering - <AUTHOR> https://www.featurelabs.com/blog/launching-featurelabs/ <comment><AUTHOR> It seems the ability of this tool to extract features from regular enterprise databases will save lots of manual effort

Github repo url [https://github.com/Featuretools/featuretools](https://github.com/Featuretools/featuretools)

Python notebook for NYC Taxi 1.5 million trips training dataset [https://github.com/Featuretools/NYC-Taxi- Demo/blob/master/NY...](https://github.com/Featuretools/NYC-Taxi- Demo/blob/master/NYC%20Taxi%203%20-%20Simple%20Featuretools.ipynb)

How this automated feature extraction compares:

        Received a score of 0.45288 on the Kaggle competition.
        Placed 685 out of 1257.
        Beat 45% of competitors on the Kaggle competition.
        Scored 4% better than the baseline solution
        Had a modeling RMSLE of 0.40196</comment>


Increase in delirium, rare brain inflammation and stroke linked to Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-delirium-rare-brain-inflammation-linked.html <comment><USER2> Much more detail and link to original paper through here: [https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-delirium-rare- brain-i...](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-delirium-rare-brain- inflammation-linked.html)

<comment><USER3> Ok, we've changed to that from [https://montrealgazette.com/news/world/scientists-warn-of- po...](https://montrealgazette.com/news/world/scientists-warn-of-potential- wave-of-covid-linked-brain-damage/wcm/73937fe3-1530-42f6-a854-6a393ec73c1a/). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll admit - I'm skeptical and think we should take this headline with a grain of salt.

There's plenty of reasons to fear COVID but is brain damage really any more reason to fear it than the standard fever? i.e. are people getting brain damage from COVID itself or as a result of uncontrolled fever?

43 cases and the lack of wider spread makes me want to see more data before trying to sound any alarm bells.

<comment><USER5> I feel like there's a weird god of the gaps element to covid harm. Instead of recognizing that seemingly an overwhelming majority of people are fine and don't suffer much adverse effects if any, there's this automatic dwelling on extremely low probability extreme "invisible damage". I'm increasingly convinced people are unsettled by the possibility that this could be anything other than civilization ending and the mask averse amongst us aren't murderers. The desire for moral condemnation is too strong.

<comment><USER6> The pandemic could be over if 100% of the population wears them for just 2 months. That's a way better deal than what the mask averse are going to give us which is 12-15months and probably a few million more US lives over that timespan.

<comment><USER7> No way. Sure you could get it down to a few cases, but compliance is never 100% and it would flare up very quickly.

The only things masks do is slow the spread (which is obviously a good thing for hospitals). If we don't get a vaccine we'll be maintaining some sort of protection (masks, distancing) but every single person will be infected eventually.

<comment><USER8> Other countries have managed to get it under control by testing and contact tracing. If we could "get it down to a few cases", as you say, we could do the same thing. In the current environment in the US, that seems impossible.

<comment><USER7> Sure and those countries have effectively closed their borders. How long can they keep that up for?

<comment> ben-schaaf I'm not fully up to date on the US situation but haven't they effectively shut down all borders as well, or at least have had their borders closed on them?

<comment><USER7> The US has restricted travel from certain countries (not all), but there are several exceptions for US citizens, permanent residents and their family.

So there is still a decent amount of air travel happening into and out of the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > a detailed account of neurological symptoms of 43 people

The sample size is extremely small, and there is already selection bias because of pre-screening for neurological symptoms

> who had either confirmed or suspected Covid-19

really, they couldn't test the 43 people for covid that they were doing a study on?

</comment><comment><USER10> > Given that the disease has only been around for a matter of months, we might > not yet know what long-term damage COVID-19 can cause

Statements like this, are quite disingenuous, especially when taken out of context. Using qualifiers like "Might" and "can" in the same sentence is par for the course for the propaganda I have seen over the past few months. Headlines and reports are repleat with what ifs and every sci-fi pathogen trope you can read.

Coronaviruses are not new to science. Pick any pathogen and take the rare cases of odd symptoms and spread it on every network. See how the public reacts.

Give me science! Few if any of our politicians are going on stage talking up the need for randomized studies. They scare us and we panic.

<comment><USER11> A nature article with 7 references from medical journals scientific enough for you?

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01403-8)

It is still too early for conclusive statements. However, it looks like there is more to this than fear mongering.

<comment><USER12> Classification as fear mongering should depend on the frequency and harm caused.

I tend to think that the reporting on these complications focuses on the fact that it _can_ happen, without sufficient detail on how often, and how bad it is, and how often it happens in the absence of Covid-19. This information is necessary to inform people of how concerned they should be. Without it, readers are left up to their imagination.

If covid has a 0.X% infection fatality rate, and a 0.0X% chance of a less severe complication, how much _more_ concerned should the public be?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this just the man on the deserted island losing his grip, talking to a volleyball and having delirium / psychotic symptoms? A symptom of lockdown, side effect of the preventive treatment.

Wikipedia:

Solitary confinement has received severe criticism for having detrimental psychological effects[2] and, to some and in some cases, constituting torture.[3] According to a 2017 review study, "a robust scientific literature has established the negative psychological effects of solitary confinement", leading to "an emerging consensus among correctional as well as professional, mental health, legal, and human rights organizations to drastically limit the use of solitary confinement."[4]

"Psychological effects can include anxiety, depression, anger, cognitive disturbances, perceptual distortions, obsessive thoughts, paranoia, and psychosis."[21]

<comment><USER14> You don't get encephalitis from being lonely.

<comment><USER15> "Dr. Raji said, "Gray matter volume is a key marker of brain health. Larger gray matter volume means a healthier brain. Shrinking volume is seen in Alzheimer's disease. Gray matter includes neurons that function in cognition and higher order cognitive processes. The areas of the brain that benefited from an active lifestyle are the ones that consume the most energy and are very sensitive to damage." [1]

But you can experience bad brain health from inactivity.

1\. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes- way/201...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes- way/201212/the-brain-drain-inactivity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In other words, try not to catch this thing before vaccines or treatments are here. Not one infected person has praised it, AFAIK.

Strokes, heart attacks, thrombosis, kidney failure, lung problems (possibly for life,) nervous system issues, brain damage...what else is left?

<comment><USER17> Why would an infected person ever praise a virus?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a much more sensationalist piece than it ought to be. When a patient has a stroke, they will obviously develop brain damage. That is the definition of a stroke - a cerebrovascular accident. The title should be "brain injury causes brain damage".

<comment><USER19> How is it sensational? The linked medical paper [see other parent comment] shows a link between COVID and brain inflammation, stroke, etc.

<comment> spaced-out Comments like the one you responded to are what some people do to cope with all this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not counter-narrative. Not-flagged</comment>


Oracle opensources Coherence Core, an in-memory data grid - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oracle/coherence <comment><AUTHOR> Website: [https://coherence.community/](https://coherence.community/)

Blog post: [https://medium.com/oracle-coherence/announcing-coherence- com...](https://medium.com/oracle-coherence/announcing-coherence-community- edition-297913cae433)

From the blog post,

Coherence Community Edition contains all In-Memory Data Grid functionality necessary to write modern cloud microservices applications, including:

· fault-tolerant automatic sharding

· scalable caching, querying, aggregation, transactions, in-place processing

· polyglot programming on the grid side with GraalVM

· persistence and data source integration

· eventing, messaging, and streaming

· a comprehensive security model

· unlimited clients in polyglot languages and over REST

· Docker and Kubernetes support, with Kibana and Prometheus dashboards</comment>


Uberdata: Rain's Effect on Uber Ridership - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/2011/03/12/uberdata-uber-for-style-and-comfort/

<comment><USER2> Talk about a misleading chart, cumulative rides on the axis. Looking at the slope since last November, it's pretty linear, which would imply no growth at all.

<comment><USER3> Man you folks are more harsh than peer-reviewers! :)

And here I was thinking to myself when I wrote the post, "people don't want to be drowning in data; they want something interesting based on the data". Dang. I was wrong!

On its own, that chart would be shady, you're right. For the purposes of the data I was trying to show (that weekend and weekday rides are quite similar), that was the best way to plot the data.

Of _course_ if I take a linear function, and plot its integral, it will be exponential. By definition. I recognize that.

But that's why I also plotted the weekly averages farther down. You can see the non-linear growth very clearly in that chart. In fact, if I log-transform the average rides per week, the plot is quite linear (as would be expected for exponential growth). r(ln(rides)) = 0.83

Your comment about the slope since last November being "pretty linear" is misleading, too, though!

If you take an exponential function, and arbitrarily select _any sub-segment of it_ , that sub-segment will _always_ have a better linear fit than the linear fit for the whole function.

So by definition, mathematically, you're right. Our growth since November has been more linear than the overall history of our growth. Just as the first three months were also more linear. Or during any other arbitrary time period.

So I happily submit my revised manuscript for your reconsideration. I hope I have adequately and thoroughly addressed all of the reviewers concerns. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _...black swan events such as holidays..._

The 'black swan' has definitely jumped the shark if it's now being used to describe events that arrive so reliably they can be printed on calendars, years in advance.

<comment><USER3> Touché. I was definitely being technically unclear. My usage there was meant to indicate that the _effect_ of the holidays on ridership was wildly higher than we had expected. Now that we've had a few holidays, we can begin to build that crazy surge into our models.

So yes, certainly the holidays _themselves_ are predictable, but their _effect_ on rides was not.

But now is. :)

<comment><USER5> On another note, glad you guys have expanded to Palo Alto. I'm moving up there end of the month, and will be relying on you and a bike for transport.

Was not impressed with public transportation in SF either. Got off the Caltrain on my first visit to the city a few weeks ago, and was expecting a line of cabs waiting outside with train arrival schedules glued to their steering wheels, but not a single one. WTF. Wished I'd known about Uber that night, would have saved me a hike to Market St.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess someone is trying to emulate the okcupid folks, albeit with less interesting data.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hilarious. :)</comment>


Make Flet Great Again - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/10/27/ <comment><USER2> Please don't use fascist propaganda slogans like this. It's not clever or funny.

<comment><USER3> Was this slogan used by an actual facist party or am I just missing some joke?

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

One might dislike Trump, but calling something facist just because one doesn't like it is a bit of a stretch.</comment></comment>


Kid's internship cover letter goes viral - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/student-sends-great-cover-letter-for-internship-at-bank-and-its-now-going-viral-on-wall-street-2013-1

<comment><USER2> I am not really sure why this kid is so proud that he can shine shoes and fetch coffee. The whole set up of investment banking is disgusting. He guy is basically saying he is willing to be a bitch for little to nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interns don't shine shoes, there's a shoe shiner guy who comes around and does it.</comment>


Google Glass Usecase [video] - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/b/106602236252005267001/106602236252005267001/posts/SF8LaDLUtc4 <comment><AUTHOR> Even if people are freaking out about possible privacy problems, I believe that glass or a similar product will be useful one day</comment>