Grumman X-29: An impossible fighter jet with inverted wings - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/style/article/grumman-x-29-nasa-darpa-fighter-plane/index.html <comment><USER2> Is this really called an "inverted wing", I've always heard such configurations referred to as "forward swept wings".

For reference, see the Russian Su-47.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-47](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-47)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward- swept_wing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-swept_wing)

<comment><USER3> Ya, inverted wing means something else, a wing tuned for inverted flight... at which point it becomes just a normal plane with the pilots seat upside down.

<comment><USER4> Is that actually a thing? Landings would be terrifying.

<comment><USER5> It's not a thing, however acrobatic aircraft often have symmetrical airfoils, such that they can fly inverted.

<comment><USER6> > such that they can fly inverted.

Make that, such that inverted flight has the same stall margins as normal flight.

<comment><USER5> Right, even a Cub with its flat-bottomed USA-35B will fly inverted, but in terms of angle-of-attack you would have no room for error, and the gravity-fed fuel system is going to cause you some problems too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An interesting footnote: the proposal Grumman beat to win the DARPA contract that led to the X-29 came from General Dynamics, who were pitching a forward- swept wing variant of their ubiquitous F-16 called the F-16 SFW.

[http://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article26.html](http://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article26.html)

GD really wrung as much mileage out of the F-16 airframe as they possibly could, coming up with all sorts of weird proposed spinoffs from it. They bid on the fighter-bomber contract that was eventually won by the F-15E Strike Eagle, for instance, with a delta-winged F-16 they called the F-16XL ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16XL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16XL)), and they attempted to jam thrust-vectoring into the platform with the F-16 VISTA ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_VISTA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_VISTA)).

<comment><USER8> Makes sense as the F16 really seemed to be a successful system cost to utility wise.

<comment><USER9> Same with the F/A-18.

I remember being really into naval aviation when I was a kid, and I'd look at carrier air wings. There would be F-14s for air superiority, A-7s for light attack, A-6s for heavy attack, EA-6Bs for electronic warfare, KA-6Ds for tankers, S-3Bs for anti-submarine warfare, etc.

Now I look at a modern carrier air wing, and it's F/A-18E/Fs for air superiority, F/A-18E/Fs for light attack, F/A-18E/Fs for heavy attack, F/A-18E/Fs for anti-submarine, F/A-18E/Fs for tanking, and EA-18Gs for electronic warfare. Same for the Marine Corps and a bunch of foreign nations.

For that matter, the X-29 was itself a variant of the F-5, another lightweight, low-cost design that got _a lot_ of mileage in different roles, including being the starting point for the F/A-18 design. Sometimes it pays to be cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Real Engineering show has a really great and detailed video on these types of inverted wing designs:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN6vGxyMcVU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN6vGxyMcVU)

It has a lot more detail about the aerodynamics and advantages than this article. It's worth the watch if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER11> An interesting fact about this aircraft is that as the wings are positioned behind the center of gravity of the plane they typically induce the plane to pitch down. This is in contrast to a more normal layout that will typically pitch up.

On the conventional layout this means that the horizontal stabilisers at the back need to produce a downwards/negative lift to stabilise the plane.

The X-29 has canards at the front that have to produce positive lift to balance the plane. This means it's actually more efficient as both surfaces are producing useful lift and avoiding the penalty of the negative lift of traditional horizontal stabilisers.

This is of course more complex in practice, with the CoG not being in a fixed position and careful positioning of wings to reduce the pitch-up tendency.

</comment><comment><USER12> "But its highly experimental design made it the most aerodynamically unstable aircraft ever built."

I'm not sure if that's true. The F117 was aerodynamically unstable in all three axes due to its design prioritizing stealth over all else, needed constant corrections by the fly-by-wire system, and it first flew in 1981.

<comment><USER13> How is when it first flew relevant to how unstable it is?

<comment><USER14> Because it is an example of a _totally_ unstable plane which flew three years before the plane under discussion.

<comment><USER13> Ah, I see. You want to argue that since the F-117's instability did not prevent its becoming a success, despite using fly-by-wire computers that were 3 years older (and consequently more primitive) than the X-29's, then instability cannot be the root cause of the failure of the X-29.

<comment><USER14> The person you replied to was expressing _skepticism_ that the claim that the X-29 was "the most aerodynamically unstable aircraft ever built", on the grounds that the F-117 first flew in 1981 (which implicitly predated the X-29 which first flew three years later in 1984), and was unstable on all three axes.

You asked of what relevance the date first flight was, and I made the relation of first flights explicit, which answers your question of what relevance it is. That is all. Your claim about what I want to argue exists only in your own mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The technically-minded will enjoy Prof. Bill Mason's inside detail regarding his time as one of the principal aerodynamicists on the X-29: [http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~mason/Mason_f/AnX-29StoryV3.pdf](http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~mason/Mason_f/AnX-29StoryV3.pdf)

Also, NASA's e-book on the program is far more useful than these superficial enthusiast articles: [https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/sweeping_forward_detail....](https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/sweeping_forward_detail.html)

For anyone wondering, one of the main reasons forward-swept wings never became commonplace, the configuration is at odds with low radar observability.

Dr. Norris Krone, the principal DARPA instigator behind the program, recently passed away: [https://aero.umd.edu/news/story/distinguished-umd-alumnus- an...](https://aero.umd.edu/news/story/distinguished-umd-alumnus-and-faculty- member-dr-norris-j-krone-jr-passes-at-88)

Some other nitpicks:

\- The article indicates thrust-vectoring obviated the need for FSW, but you'll note no thrust-vectoring on western jets outside of the F-22 and experimental aircraft.

\- They make a big deal about the degree of instability, but talk about that with respect to longitudinal static stability, not dynamic stability or stability about other axes.

\- Both TACIT BLUE and HAVE BLUE were quite unstable as well, and HAVE BLUE, unstable in all three axes, flew well before the X-29.

I'm not going to go find numbers, just pointing out the article sounds very hyperbolic. Artificial stability requires vastly less computational power than the breathless words tend to imply. We should be more impressed with control systems theorists, and flight control design has come a long way since then.

</comment><comment><USER16> I suppose it is literally true that the X-29 is "an impossible fighter jet", in that it was never put into production and fitted with weaponry.

The phrase "inverted wing" is more troubling, because of the potential for confusion with actual wing design terminology: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gull_wing#Inverted_gull_wing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gull_wing#Inverted_gull_wing)

Perhaps this link could be migrated to style.ycombinator.com?

</comment><comment><USER17> Looked up an interesting photo from the article: Dryden "Research Aircraft Fleet on Ramp, X-15, F-18, SR-71, X-31, X-29" link: [https://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/Fleet/HTML/EC93-4101...](https://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/Fleet/HTML/EC93-41012-3.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34de_aDKnQ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34de_aDKnQ8)

</comment><comment><USER19> Maybe I'm missing it, but does the article actually say what the benefits of this are?

<comment><USER20> When aircraft pull too much angle of attack, the wing abruptly suffers a loss of lift anywhere the maximum lift coefficient has been exceeded. If your entire wing loses lift all at once this can be very dangerous. As a result, most wings are designed with what's called Washout, wherein the angle of incidence at the root is greater than at the tip. This causes the wing root to stall before the tip, which allows a pilot to maintain control as the onset of stall appears.

Using a forward-swept wing causes the spanwise (along the wing's length) flow to be net inward, rather than outward which is the case in a conventional aircraft. With the right mix of composite materials to control aeroelastic twist this causes a similar effect to washout wherein the wing root will stall before the tips, but greatly reduces wingtip vortices and thus reduces total aerodynamic drag. As someone else pointed out, you also get an induced drag benefit because both the canards and main wings are producing upward moments, so the total magnitude of lift force required for a given weight is less.

The "so what?" of all that is it lets you build a smaller, faster, more agile aircraft at the cost of significantly increased aerodynamic and control complexity.

<comment><USER21> > This causes the wing root to stall before the tip, which allows a pilot to > maintain control as the onset of stall appears.

I think I've read and been told that also you want the root where the flaps are to stall before the middle where the ailerons are. Because stalling and losing your aileron control during a turn is bad news.

<comment><USER22> If one of your wing tips stalls, you will have a very fast roll and there is a high probability of entering a spin.

Also if a part of the wing that is far aft stalls, then that can cause pitchup, making the stall worse.

An aircraft with benign behavior stalls so that the nose stays pointing straight ahead with no roll or yaw but it drops (pitch).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Absence of certain features in IRC considered a feature - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IRC.html <comment><USER2> I love the simplicity of IRC, I still use it to this day, but I have to say, I understand why IRC cannot be used for any serious team communication.

The two biggest pain point that I see is: 1\. Because there is no real account management you don't have any proper authentication, which make administrating a channel real dodgy (even with network provided bots).

2\. No offline history: You have to have a client/bouncer running 24/24 if you want history.

One thing though, because of how IRC work, you don't have the problem that other protocol like XMPP faced with multy-device sync (there is a extension for that in XMPP but, like almost every extension in XMPP, not many client support it).

Also, nowadays we should consider end-to-end encryption standard.

I feel like IRC is in the same space as email: It's a very good technology that just lack a few feature to be perfect but any project that try to replace them just end up over-bloated with features ...

<comment><USER3> The author specifically calls out ephemerality as a feature of IRC.

If it's easy to get history people will assume everyone is reading what they're typing. This would make people feel obligated to play catch-up every time they miss some messages due to being AFK or in the zone.

By making history hard to obtain, IRC simulates real-world conversation -- you're either in the room or you're not.

<comment><USER4> And then lots of people have bouncers to be there 24x7.

<comment><USER5> Personally, the main benefit of a bouncer is not missing highlights when someone wants to turn your attention to something interesting, reading up the logs for even a single channel isn't a reasonable way to invest your time.

<comment><USER6> It's not about scrolling up, it's about search. Which is another thing that IRC, even with a bouncer, is not good at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article here claims that IRC is better than Matrix because Matrix supports pasting long snippets and IRC doesn't. The author furthermore claims that Matrix users are being a "nuisance" by posting long snippets to IRC with a link fallback, like this:

        ihabunek [m] sent a long message: < https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/blahblahblah >
        ihabunek [m] uploaded an image: image.png (39KB) < https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/blahblahblah >

This is "being a nuisance"? It's just two chat lines, and the first line isn't meaningfully longer than a link to pastebin. Maybe pasting the image was a bit excessive, but it's very likely to be auto-expanded in GUI IRC clients, making it an excellent fallback. It's not "being a nuisance." It's two links. It's fine.

The truth is, IRC folks do need to share long snippets and images, and they do it by linking to them; that's exactly what Matrix does when integrating with IRC. That's one among many reasons that Matrix is better than IRC.

<comment><USER8> I expanded on this here:

[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/public- inbox/%3Ca6e64b69-c0cf-...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/public- inbox/%3Ca6e64b69-c0cf-22b1-94e4-d948209392e8%40adelielinux.org%3E#%3CBV82SMB8KEDN.16DDFWUTXGJTE@homura%3E)

<comment><USER9> That seems like an extremely handwavy motivation, not much of an elaboration.

> When one side sees it embedded in the chat but the other side sees it as a > link, it affects how the former uses the feature and how the latter > perceives the former, in ways that could be unexpected to the former. The > point of my article is that these features have a social effect which is not > necessarily positive.

 _How_ does it affect it? _What_ ways? _What_ social effect?

This explanation is totally devoid of any concrete examples of a mismatch of expectations and resulting social effects, it just alludes to them existing without any concrete basis - essentially weasel wording.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It isn't that the features don't exist. I think most people on IRC just see the internet as their platform. Integrating image hosting into IRC seems absurd when there are perfectly good browsers and ways to host or self host images. Stuffing everything into one client, or worse, one corporation just restricts features and provides a single point of failure in both technical and censorship terms.

<comment><USER11> An example of how this could work is that a client could support receiving an image. When this happens, it could upload it to an image host of choice, get the url, and send that.

It's what users already do, but without having to pop a new tab, head to imgur, upload the image, and copy paste it back etc.

<comment><USER10> But why? Why add extra steps and add in having to keep the code to adapt to APIs or URL paths that change every 6 months? It's not like keeping a browser and IRC client open are mutually exclusive.

I personally just $ cp whatever.jpg ~/www/ because I host my static site from my home connection and have for 20 years. I know self-hosting is not for everyone but everyone self hosting would literally solve all the problems of the web.

<comment> crooked-v "Just run your own home web server to share images in chat" is the kind of self-parodic response that's made Slack so successful in contrast.

<comment><USER12> It's at the same level as "just run curlftpfs on a remote server and trivially run CVS on it" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)). The HN crowd is quick to find a good reason why the proposed solution isn't the correct one, but unfortunately it's only true in very niche cases. When it's working for the 80% we're always complaining about it not working for the 20%.

<comment><USER10> It's really not. Everyone thinks it's super complicated and dangerous because everyone is thinking about running a webserver, a database, and some active scripting language.

Just running a webserver is dead simple. The only technical stumbling block would be forwarding the port from the router and a good chunk of internet users understand that.

<comment><USER12> > Just running a webserver is dead simple.

You can't seriously say that and talk about port forwarding in the next sentence. Some people still think internet is the web is Google is Facebook. Some people (understandably) don't want to have something running 24/7\. Most people won't be able to maintain their server, turning them into the biggest botnet ever created. I'd love the internet to be more decentralized, but this is just not reasonable.

<comment><USER10> I can. Lets use an metaphor. Forwarding ports is the replacing turn signal bulbs in car of computing. Yes, it is too much for some people. But it is objectively simple and anyone could do it.

People who are absolutely ignorant and incapable of learning aren't who I'm talking about. Most people can learn to change a turn signal bulb.

And no, running a static webserver will not cause vulnerabilities. Again, like in my prior comment, that only happens when you use some complex combination of webserver, database, and scripting language. A static webserver is significantly more secure than opening up a page in your browser with javascript enabled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > IRC messages are always lines of characters terminated with a CR-LF > (Carriage Return - Line Feed) pair, and these messages shall not exceed 512 > characters in length, counting all characters including the trailing CR-LF. > Thus, there are 510 characters maximum allowed for the command and its > parameters.

Yeah, lets just forget how painful it was for non english speaking users to use IRC. 255 characters for unicode and 510, but you have to guess encoding.

<comment><USER14> I remember when this was a significant problem but with the rise of UTF-8 it is less so (even if that is strictly against the letter of the spec, it works fine in practice). Are there languages where the 510 bytes per message are a significant limitation?

<comment><USER15> I can only speak from experience, but Thai language uses 3 bytes per character in UTF-8 and rely on vowels and tone marks to compose a word, so the number of bytes can grow pretty quick. A headline of an article in Thai have a good chance of exceeding 510 bytes.

This is why one of the major Thai IRC networks were stuck with TIS-620 for a long time (ThaiNet/irc.thai.com, though I'm not sure if this is still the case) which is 8-bit compatible with ASCII (uses 0xA1 to 0xFB for Thai characters).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Kooky "reaction GIFs" in work chat are so inane. I mean, there's certainly a time and a place for browsing funny GIFs on the web, but making it a first- class part of work chat is so juvenile it's unreal.

<comment><USER17> This mindset is alien to me. Humor is a generally positive thing and can't help but improve mental state while working.

<comment><USER18> > can't help but improve mental state

Unless you regard it as inane.

Throwing reaction gifs at a happy birthday/congratulation post is one thing.

Throwing them into the oncall production ops channel and context switch everyone so they can see Homer back into a hedge is another.

<comment><USER19> > _Throwing them into the oncall production ops channel and context switch > everyone so they can see Homer back into a hedge is another._

This is part of the reason I like the "reactji" of slack / discord / etc. They _don 't_ cause a new message notification.

Because of that, they're less interruptive, and you can do some interesting, useful things. Like lightweight interaction - we "seed" an up/down arrow pair for voting, people just click one. Or controlling bots more easily - we use one to add Qs to a queue, others to shut them up when they're being noisy, or there's fancier options: [https://codeascraft.com/2018/10/10/etsys-experiment- with-imm...](https://codeascraft.com/2018/10/10/etsys-experiment-with- immutable-documentation/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm glad Freenode has a user base for work related stuff, but I man do I miss when Undernet or Dalnet was still popular. I know I'll never run into my mother on IRC, and it is probably because of the format.

<comment><USER21> I used to run a server on Dalnet (then later on Espernet). Good times; nobody knew I was 15 so I learned a ton about programming from some smart people

<comment><USER22> I think it's the opposite; I was never accepted on Espernet precisely because they could somehow smell I was older. That community was pretty young.

I'm pretty sure Dinnerbone was around 18? at the start of Bukkit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've certainly encountered channels where lack of image embedding is less of a feature and more of a mental health necessity!

</comment><comment><USER24> Lacking support for pretty much everything other than lines of text alongside a handle enables one of my favorite aspects of IRC: a 10-row terminal is more than sufficient for the entire client UI.

</comment><comment><USER25> This really comes back to the Capability vs. Suitability model that Gary Bernhardt has spoken about: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NftT6HWFgq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NftT6HWFgq0)

IRC is capable. It is a box of nuts and bolts that lets us communicate and build awesome bots and so on.

Bloating the protocol gives us suitability: features that are robust and can federate.

</comment><comment><USER26> We are running our own IRC server (UnrealIRCd + Anope for services) for 10+ years. We have bots for gitlab/github, schedulers, management bots (you can basically control whole infrastructure and all services from IRC), event logging channels, alerting, jobs/tasks bots, status checking etc. all with authentication and authorization.

This is working well for us, without any issues for years.

</comment><comment><USER27> IRCv3 notwithstanding, the protocol from a software engineering point of view is horrible. It doesn't support asynchronous operations because responses cannot be tied to their corresponding requests, and many commands, successful or not, require a human to parse. Too bad that IRCnet only runs whatever has been written down in an official IETF RFC.

Despite all these deficiencies it's still widely used – My guess is that nobody has come up with a chat medium that would replace it completely. It's still pretty much the only decentralized, push-pull, clutter free real time discussion medium.

</comment><comment><USER28> IRC is one of the few Internet venues I still frequent. Been using it since 1998. Some years ago an important (but small, private) channel moved from EFnet to Freenode, so that is the network I now use. Seeing Freenode IRCops looking to fix what ain't broken ("but it's opt-in" they'll say..) makes me have doubts about the move. If this sounds "get off my lawn" to you, you're getting it.

<comment><USER29> What are some good channels to visit in 2019? I feel like most of the ones I used to frequent are dead silent now. And my small friend channels have since moved to Discord.

<comment><USER28> I guess the programming language related ones are a good start. In my experience they have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Otherwise, it depends on your interests... you can always start your own, making sure it's good... There is/was a /list command, but I never really used it as all the good channels were at least +s ;) It's all word of mouth, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think if most people saw the limitations of irc as the author then it would still be the dominant protocol

And it doesn't seem to me that "fixing" irc is just a matter of adding the bells and whistles, but there's some work to be done on the lower levels as well

For example, how well would irc work on mobile? Keeping logs requires a bot usually on irc as well.

<comment><USER31> For mobile, I had a bouncer setup that would keep me up to date whenever someone would message or mention me. I could pull up AndChat and connect right up to all of my channels, I was never actually offline. I had an icon on my taskbar that would connect me to my VPN and pull up irssi. I see now that there is a cloud client for mobile called "IRC Cloud", it sounds like a one step setup kind of bouncer for someone that doesn't have an always online machine to run a bouncer on.

I really do miss using IRC all the time. My favorite server got taken down and I never bothered to find out where everyone ran off to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I agree, IRC, it is what it is, it's done, if you want something else, you want something else, not IRC.

</comment><comment><USER33> This reminds me of what Apple does to the SMS/MMS ecosystem.

MUDs face a similar set of issues. Some new MUD frameworks skip over these by ignoring telnet and going HTML/JS.

There's an interesting third path, GMCP, which is basically treated by the server/client (once support is negotiated) as out-of-band communication. If either end can't negotiate support, you get the basic experience. As a pressure-release valve, options like this _can_ be better than clients or servers trying to overload the primary protocol with magic messages that other servers/clients without support are still forced to digest and display.

</comment><comment><USER34> The idea of embedding links to multimedia is a good one. They just need to form an open standard for encoding media and rich text in text streams, and let clients parse the standard and decide how to format it. Text clients could remove any multimedia/rich text, GUI users could render it all, blind users would receive alt-tags in a way that's easily spoken by TTS, etc. Because it's a standard for encoding media in a text stream, you don't have to change the IRC protocol, just add a plugin to the client. You could even format it so the simplest clients could just strip everything but the text.

Something like:

      %M!i=//shrt.url/j3f87h38f;t=fr,bb;a=Kitten Mittens!
      Finally, there is an elegant, comfortable mitten for cats.

This indicates an image link, a text foreground color of red, text background color of black, and alt-text for the image as "Kitten Mittens". Any existing IRC client can simply remove everything from "%M!" to the "!" \+ newline, or if they don't, the text just shows up on its own line below the metadata, which isn't hard to read. You could even encode it in-line, such as _" This is some %M!t=fr,b!text!."_ Harder to read if the client doesn't implement the standard, though.

</comment><comment><USER35> Formatting is pure fluff - it's convenient to have bold/italic/spoiler/code tags, and it is possible to implement them in a TUI without degrading anybody's experience. Link tags are not really necessary and a lot of clients don't even have them.

The image upload thing, though, the convenience there is being able to just upload an image directly into the client, rather than having to deal with some external service. That's it. There isn't much preventing this from being implemented in an IRC client.

Character limits are silly and should be removed - enforce them with a moderation bot if you really have to.

Just because most modern chat services are Electron trash does not mean we should throw out every bit of convenience learned. IRC (clients) could stand to gain better text formatting and file sharing options - things that make life easier for users, and in most cases don't really affect how the actual protocol works.

</comment><comment><USER36> I like IRC a lot. Simple, light, and a very good example of the minimalist principle that _" less is more"_.

</comment><comment><USER37> Anyone else still using microsoft comic chat?

<comment><USER38> It's dangerous to go alone. Take this.

[https://gist.github.com/richardg867/bb19ca2b03545f71ae15](https://gist.github.com/richardg867/bb19ca2b03545f71ae15)

[http://www.mermeliz.com/cchat.htm](http://www.mermeliz.com/cchat.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _P.S. A friend pointed out that the migration of non-hackers away from IRC is like a reverse Eternal September, which sounds great_

I was a part of the original Eternal September in the 1980's as the Internet was opened up to undergrads. The idea of a "Reverse Eternal September" sounds super awesome! I wonder how it can be implemented? (In a limited context, not across the whole of the Internet, of course.)

<comment><USER40> Tilde servers were sort of the start in my mind of things like that, as is SDF

<comment><USER39> I only know SDF as the abbreviation of the Sol Defense Force from the Robotech anime translations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The article doesn't talk about the best feature of Slack: a consistent message history for all the users. In IRC messages can easily get lost due to network splits or client disappearing. Not having everyone with the same message timeline can make some conversations quite awkward.

This is really the only feature I miss in IRC.

<comment><USER42> In exchange, you have gut-wrenching systemwide outages of Slack once in a while. The CAP theorem says you can't have it both ways. News from 3 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20303479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20303479)

<comment><USER43> Are you living in a world without netsplits?

<comment><USER44> Netsplits are pretty rare these days.

<comment><USER45> Yeah? I just counted six netsplits in the past 24 hours that affected a channel I'm on on IRCnet.

I still love IRC. My second home.

<comment><USER44> This is because of IRCnet is operated by multiple entities and has rather peculiar links, other networks are not like this.

[http://dx.fi/alt/ircmap/fdp.png](http://dx.fi/alt/ircmap/fdp.png) here's a map of IRCnet, they're _really_ going out of their way to generate netsplits.

A network operated by a single entity doesn't need such a silly amount of nodes, you can support hundreds of thousands of IRC uses on a single server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ability to remove spam messages would be awesome, these days it is very hard to deal with on a public channels. Also log out of the box. None of them are distraction. And proper authentication out of the box. Better design for poor, unstable connections, i.e. mobile phones.

</comment><comment><USER47> Perhaps a side pan for embeds makes sense. upload images or code snippets by providing irc style references in the chat while not interrupting the flow of conversation because images and whatnot are expanded on the embed pane.

</comment><comment><USER48> Counterpoint: The lack of accessibility in Slack does not mean it shouldn't be solved. Baby with the bathwater. Why dump all of slack when instead we can work on an accessible interface.

</comment><comment><USER49> I just use [https://www.irccloud.com/](https://www.irccloud.com/) and it's the best of both wordls ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER50> Now let's talk about the inherent lack of a good centralized identity service, the danger of the majority of IRC servers and clients being written in C and the inefficiency of the protocol itself for applications like high latency links? We might also talk about the lack of important modern features like basic negotiation of client encoding capabilities and what an absolute tire fire DCC-based features continue to be due to the "just link to an external website" mentality that stifles all discussion of replacements?

<comment><USER51> I'm not sure if "festues" is a word I don't recognize or a typo for a word that I can't mentally correct into something I'd recognize.

<comment><USER52> I think it was meant to be features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is called being stubborn.

If you don't adapt, you die. Wanna die? Sure, no one is stopping you.

</comment><comment><USER54> Have the author tried to write bots for Matrix? It's much simpler than for IRC and doesn't require a persistent connection.

<comment><USER55> I don't think the author would agree its much simpler: [https://drewdevault.com/2018/03/10/How-to-write-an-IRC- bot.h...](https://drewdevault.com/2018/03/10/How-to-write-an-IRC-bot.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Give me irssi or give me death

<comment><USER57> You should give weechat a whirl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> IRCv3 is a scourge because of this. They're looking to bloat the protocol. IRC is good because it's IRC.

<comment><USER59> IRC was made a spec in 1993. Not 2003, or even 2013.

And when that RFC was made, they made strong decisions about bandwidth costs. They gave up things like federation and more.

So yeah, it's time that it's revisited in making a IRC that can be federated, multiple login/endpoints without using bouncers, and more. I welcome their new RFC. And it it doesn't work, we're free to keep what we currently have.

<comment><USER60> What you're after is called XMPP.

<comment><USER61> No, it isn't. XMPP was designed primarily as an IM protocol to replace proprietary messengers like AIM and ICQ, not as a service for group chats. It's a flawed protocol even for IM, and its conference features verge on broken. (For example: A user's visible presence in a conference is neither necessary nor sufficient for them to send and/or receive messages in the conference.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I love this blog. When I read it I find myself repeatedly smashing the table with my fists and shouting "YES! OH MAN, YES!".

</comment><comment><USER63> > "Remember that not everyone is like you."

Of course they aren't, but most people aren't like Drew Devault either. Most people don't use ancient hardware to prove some sort of point. The "Drew Devault will approve of it"-argument generally doesn't show up in a business case.

In a perverse way, I am glad that programmers come up with better and better ways to waste hardware resources. In doing so, they ensure the continued progress of the semiconductor (and battery) industry through mass market demand.

I do not believe it is a coincidence that Moore's law has slowed significantly right at the time when computers became "good enough" for the everyday user. If it wasn't for gamers spending hundreds of dollars on pushing more pixels on-screen, we'd be way behind on deep learning.

Buy a new computer, Drew.

<comment><USER64> > Buy a new computer

I've purchased a number of computers over the last several decades, yet using facebook/slack is still slower and less responsive on a computer with a Core i7 processor and 16 MB of system memory and a 100 Mbps downstream connection compared with using usenet/irc on a 486 with 16 MB of system memory and a a 28.8 kbps downstream connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Well, I consider stuff like the absence of server-side friend lists, server- rendered embeds and formatted messages a bug at best, though in IRC's case it's simply the lack of ability because the protocol is horribly outdated, modern approaches and limitations could afford a lot of QoL improvements.

</comment><comment><USER66> IRC is forever tainted by graybeards that won't give up their terminal clients. People who want to get work done have moved on. The next generation of developers have no interest in IRC. It's a dead end.

<comment><USER31> I think you misunderstand the real quality of running an IRC client from anywhere on anything. I don't need to carry around a $4000 laptop to get my work done when I can use my home dev server from anywhere using a 10-year old Thinkpad junker. Break it? Pitch it and buy another for less than $100 on ebay.

<comment><USER67> Saying Slack requires a $4000 laptop is a bit of hyperbole don't you think? I've used the Slack web client on a $300 Chromebook and it was just fine.

<comment><USER31> You don't need that for Slack but if you want a quality machine to carry around to handle your workload, that's the price neighborhood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It seems that the author references different IRC clients but at the same time ignores (can't say if on purpose or not) the fact that there are also alternative Slack clients which address many of the pain points.

<comment><USER8> To stefan's point, Slack clients are unofficial and unsupported software built on top of proprietary protocols which are subject to change at any time according to the whims of a private company which has their bottom line at heart instead of your communication needs.

<comment><USER68> I don't disagree with you on that - but that's not written in your post so my point still stands.

Many of the paint points are solved when using alternative clients. Alternative clients will allow you to, for example:

* Use Slack on an ancient computer

* Use TTS systems

* Not use threads (you can just dump everything in the channel)

* Not have link previews

* Use keyboard only

* Get a less distracting experience

I'm also an IRC user and I like it but I just wanted to point out the post isn't fair with Slack if only one client is evaluated.

Edit: list formatting

<comment><USER69> They can crack down on alternative clients at any time they want. You are living on borrowed time. A guest who is wild camping in their gated community walled garden private property.

<comment><USER68> I also agree with you. It was painful when e.g. Twitter basically killed 3rd party apps.

What happens here is that I don't see any significant portion of Slack users moving to IRC anytime soon. Therefore, if you're forced to use Slack, you should know that alternative clients are available as of today.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HOLY CRAP Wasteland 2 kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2

<comment><USER2> As I write this it's circa $7000 from goal and I'm tempted to put it over myself. I loved that game back in the day, and it's being produced by the same guys who made the original.

I am very impressed with the prospect of how much Kickstarter could change the startup scene if you've already got a reputation to build on.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's been very entertaining watching the pledge amount go up every couple of minutes. I really hope this gets funded!

What a stacked dev group as well!!

</comment><comment><USER4> I quite enjoy the pitch videos on Kickstarter and this one is no slouch.

"Would I f-n be here if I made Angry Birds?"

Too funny.</comment>


_why Used to Publish a Zine - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_30/http://soccerriot.com/*

<comment><AUTHOR> There's more here (the spam filter quite reasonably rejected it):

<http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/>

Especially relevant:

 _I often question what I do. I often feel like leaving. And when I go, everyone's going to know I'm gone._

[http://web.archive.org/web/20031208133226/soccerriot.com/rea...](http://web.archive.org/web/20031208133226/soccerriot.com/ready/)</comment>


Musicoacher – a new free music teaching tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.musicoacher.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

I'm really excited to announce my free music teaching tool Musicoacher!

This release contains a tool that allow for people to add chords annotations for videos on Youtube, think on it as a new modern way for learning the music, instead of the old way where you have the chords with the lyrics, now you have chords over videos and showing up on the correct time (the provided editor contains the tools to annotate the chords at specific times).

I linked an introduction video that I created that explains how to use the editor.

The project still very young and this is it's very first alpha release, a lot should change soon and all feedback is very welcome.

Please let me know what you think about it, the chords annotation is just a first tool in an idea to provide many more musical annotations (like tabs, lyrics, piano, etc...) that will come and your feedback will help to decide the way forward.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome! Love how the UI helps you to play the song on the correct timing.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a site that lists which businesses don't require masks? - <AUTHOR> If no shoes no shirt no service is a thing.<p>Certainly, no mask no service should be a thing. <comment><USER2> >Certainly, no mask no service should be a thing.

Now that's something that would help both people and the economy. Business in no need of mask would include stuff like hospitals, police stations, prisons.</comment>


"Ad Astra" and Former Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/10/ad-astra-and-former-poet-laureate-tracy-k-smith/ <comment><USER2> > if you are one of those people like me who stays to watch all a film's > credits

Sometimes I do, I almost left the cinema two times during Ad astra though, such a painful movie to watch.</comment>


Best of Quora 2010–2012 Available for Download - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/blog/Top-Writers-2012-Book-Available-for-Download <comment><USER2> I downloaded it a while ago. And I had fun reading the questions and their best answer. The Best of Quora is a good source of knowledge ala "FYI".

Your life may not improve by reading them, but it is good that you know those things. The best one I read so far was about what the boys feel about girls effort in their appearance (makeups, etc). I like how he compared the effort in making a tuna sandwich!

</comment><comment><USER3> I converted it to other formats like, ePub, MOBI and LIT if any of you want to download it.

[http://lightyoruichi.tumblr.com/post/40565014985/quoras- new-...](http://lightyoruichi.tumblr.com/post/40565014985/quoras-new-book-of- wisdom-131-tips-on-spiders-steve)</comment>


Republicans Push Bill Requiring Tech Companies Give Encrypted Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/republicans-push-bill-requiring-tech-companies-to-help-access-encrypted-data/ <comment><USER2> I think politicians must win prizes or something for showing who is the stupidest:

> The bill also allows the attorney general to create a competition with a > prize for anyone who can come up with a way to access encrypted data while > protecting privacy and security. Security experts have long noted that this > is an impossible request.

Why they're at in, why don't they push a bill for permanent rainbows.

Also, the article states "The proposed legislation stops short of requiring tech companies to create a backdoor", so if end-to-end encryption is still available, this legislation does nothing. And if lawmakers try to _ban_ end- to-end encryption, well then "banning math" should be the name of this legislation (yes, I realize politicians have tried to do that before). Sure, large companies may comply and average joes may get less E2E encryption, but anyone who knows anything about tech will be able to get access to E2E encrypted messengers.

<comment><USER3> Serious question (about practicality, not ethics): people always say that it's impossible to provide government access to encrypted data without opening a huge security hole for hackers to exploit. Why couldn't an encryption scheme be used that, for decryption, requires either a) the user's private key (a usual), or b) some sort of combination of private keys of all the relevant government entities required to authorize accessing the user's data? So that something like the combination of a judicial private key and an fbi private key were required to access the data?

Of course the data would still be hackable if a bad actor were to get their hands on both of those keys, but security could be increased by, for example, increasing the number of parties needed to authorize the access.

(Please don't critique the ethical premise here - I make no claim that this is the "right" thing to do, just that it could be plausible)

<comment><USER4> That's exactly it, it's very possible, but all the eggs would be in one basket.

Scheme: multiple copies of symmetric key followed by symmetrically encrypted body (pgp-style). One copy of the symmetric key is secured by user's private key, another is wrapped in an onion of all required "side" keys.

The issue is that the government-held keys only need to be exposed once, and then someone has a key to all of everything, everywhere.

<comment><USER5> They mentioned having multiple keys with different government organizations. What if there are 12 keys and you need 6 keys to decrypt the data. The user has 6 keys. The company that created the device or service has 2 keys, the judicial branch has 2 keys, and the executive branch has 2 keys. All of the non-user keys are required to be in different systems. The compromise of any one system still requires cooperation from the non-user groups to decrypt. You couple that with some system that allows the data to be decrypted and reencrypted with new keys in the case of a breech of keys. You can add as many keys to this scenario as you want until you feel like a breech of the necessary number of keys is not going to happen. Are we sure a system along these lines is impossible?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, each key will be poorly protected, because each group will rationalize that "it would be impossible for someone to get all those keys" while someone gets all the keys.

The US government couldn't even keep the most sensitive information about its personnel secret, see the OPM breach: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach) The Inspector General had warned Congress of "persistent deficiencies in OPM's information system security program" and nothing was done. This resulted in some really sensitive data being exfiltrated, probably some good blackmail info. The US government has not done a great job even protecting its own employees.

The biggest problem here, though, is incentives. A government cannot be sued, or suffer any other negative impact, if it accidentally loses keys that lead to others' death, blackmail, or job loss. Too bad, so sad. If tomorrow it becomes illegal or unacceptable to do something that today is legal, a government can retroactively punish those who engaged in it. In short, the government has no strong incentive to protect the keys, only you do.

<comment><USER5> It sounds like we have already moved from _this is an impossible request_ to _this is a difficult and impractical request_. Setting up a government competition with a prize to solve a hard problem seems reasonable.

<comment><USER7> > It sounds like we have already moved from this is an impossible request to > this is a difficult and impractical request.

I am not sure how you got this from conversation above. Still sounds impossible to me.

Problem as stated is, that if skeleton keys are broken, then everything everywhere gets broken.

The fact that government has bad initiatives to keep keys secret, just means it will be easier for bad actors to steal them. But that is just a side argument.

<comment><USER5> >I am not sure how you got this from conversation above. Still sounds impossible to me.

When discussing encryption, many people say that this is an impossible problem to solve because of math. This conversation has shifted to being a problem about incentives. Math is impossible to change. Incentives are changeable. If the only problems here are the specifics of the scheme and the incentives of people involved, those are solvable.

>Problem as stated is, that if skeleton keys are broken, then everything everywhere gets broken.

Which is why you build redundancy into the system that would require multiple independent breaches and a system to reencrypt data in the event of a breach.

<comment><USER7> > When discussing encryption, many people say that this is an impossible > problem to solve because of math. This conversation has shifted to being a > problem about incentives. > Math is impossible to change. Incentives are > changeable. If the only problems here are the specifics of the scheme and > the incentives of people involved, those are solvable.

It's still a math problem in the end.

Today if you want to break into someones encrypted data, you either have to break encryption algorithm (which is hard and by hard I mean even stuff we consider insecure like 3ple DES are still not broken) or you have to break each data individually.

With skeleton keys that changes. Suddenly all the world secrets are one* key away. That is the big difference. Doesn't matter how you do it, it fundamentally changes the equation

And you open up HUGE attack vector, by enabling bad actors to bribe/coerce people with access to skeleton keys.

* Doesn't matter if you split it up, have different org have parts of keys etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is the senate page on the Bill [https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/graham-c...](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/graham- cotton-blackburn-introduce-balanced-solution-to-bolster-national-security-end- use-of-warrant-proof-encryption-that-shields-criminal-activity)

> Bad actors exploit warrant-proof encryption to shield dangerous and illegal > activity —including terrorism, child sexual abuse, and international drug > trafficking — from authorities.

Bad actors also exploit warrant proof use of their voice to send sound waves directly at other bad actors ears to shield dangerous and illegal activity —including terrorism, child sexual abuse, and international drug trafficking — from authorities.

I realize that end-to-end vs speaking verbally is a bit of a leap but bills like this make it seem like they don't want US citizens to have a voice.

<comment><USER9> Dang, they were so close to mentioning all four:

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

I guess money-launderers are no longer on the target list. Too much of a white-collar crime, these days.

<comment><USER10> Money launderers are in command of the Justice Dept at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We in tech have to stop thinking that these politicians don't understand or know what they're proposing. Or that they would change their minds " _if only we could explain it right_ ". It's not a problem of information.

The fact of the matter is some parties (by which I mean groups, not political parties) have an abiding interest in keeping strong encryption and privacy out of the hands of the population at large. Banning E2E encryption either outright, or through the backdoor (EARN IT act) from major Internet platforms will accomplish this. Therefore, arguments like "You can't ban math" or "The real criminals will just move to platforms that use E2E encryption" don't work.

What's worse, they try and pass these laws using Think of the Children[1]. It's tested, and effective. It works because it's an emotional appeal and most voters are emotional creatures (including me, and you). Like a popular Internet meme says "You can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into."

Fortunately we can (honestly) use Think of the Children to fight back. Literally every child in the US uses the Internet to chat with their friends and send pictures, write their journal, do their homework, get their grades, and communicate with their doctors or therapists. Weakening encryption therefore endangers _every child_ , risking exposing their innermost thoughts and conversations to the worst sort of people online.

We have to start couching this issue in terms that regular people understand.

"Would you lock your backyard gate, where your children play, with a TSA lock?"

"What if your pediatrician's office told you their doors and file cabinets have a TSA lock on them? Anyone can just buy a key on Amazon, walk in, and rifle through everything they have."

I honestly worry about a future where my children have no privacy. Where any online predator can potentially access everything they say, send, post, or do online. That makes me anxious and frankly, a little angry.

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

<comment><USER12> As the Wikipedia article demonstrates, 'think of the children' is not usually a motivating factor, it is a way of stymieing criticism by implying the opponent is sociopathic and doesn't care about children. It is similar to accusing someone of racism or sexism, in an effort to shut them down. These tactics are all very effective in our currently sociopolitical climate.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to use this tactic to advocate in favor of something (rather than against it).

I wish I had a suggestion for how to parry the accusation, but I don't.

<comment><USER11> I think we have to go on the offensive. We can use Think of the Children to promote legislation that mandates strong encryption on online platforms. It can also prohibit any legislation that tries to incentivize companies to weaken encryption, like the EARN IT act. Maybe the latter will require a constitutional amendment, I'm not sure.

Without a law like this, we're just going to keep fighting the same battle every 4-6 years. They only have to win once, we have to win every time. It's not a fair fight.

<comment><USER12> I strongly favor end-to-end encryption, but I just don't see 'think of the children' working as an effective message in favor of anything.

I happen to believe that it was protected by the first, fourth, and ninth amendments, but I am not sure it is possible to erect permanent legal bulwarks against ever-expanding federal powers. As an example, the second amendment specifically enumerates gun rights, yet it is under constant assault. The only way I can see to protect this type of individual liberty would be to radically de-scope the federal government, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Again, I really wish I could be more optimistic, but I just don't see any realistic hope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm an African. I've lived through fantastically corrupt, despotic, authoritarian rule riddled with nepotism and kleptocracy. I find GOP politics to be disturbingly familiar. And it reeks of regulatory and state capture.

<comment><USER14> I don't really think it is that cut and dry.

Case in point, a similar bill (as I understand it) - The EARN IT Act was spearheaded by the same people as this bill, plus Dianne Feinstein (Democraft of CA):

 _" The EARN IT Act was introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican of South Carolina) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Democrat of Connecticut), along with Sen. Josh Hawley (Republican of Missouri) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Democrat of California) on March 5."_

[https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/3/12/21174815/earn-i...](https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/3/12/21174815/earn- it-act-encryption-killer-lindsay-graham-match-group)

Also:

[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/17/earn-m17.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/03/17/earn-m17.html)

<comment><USER15> Feinstein is widely despised by progressives for, among other things, being a hawk. That she would also be anti-freedom here is not a huge surprise.

<comment><USER16> There's plenty of others like her. Neither party seems to have many in congress who want the government to have less dragnets and power to micromanage.

<comment><USER15> I think there's quite a few Democrats like that, actually, but certainly not all.

<comment><USER12> There are a bunch of Republicans too.[1]

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We've all been shown recently how law enforcement only protects certain segments of society. This will only get worse with draconian surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes I imagine a secret meeting that happened some decades ago between Republicans and Democrats, dividing up the Bill of Rights.

"Well, we have to at least _look_ like we're fighting for them. If we all just agree to protect the Bill of Rights, then we aren't really _working_ for them. How about Democrats get 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9; and Republicans get 1, 2, 3, 6, and 10?"

"Hey, why do we get the Third Amendment?"

"It was our idea."

(This comment is not meant to be taken literally and I'm sure that others will have a different mapping between Amendment numbers and parties.)

<comment><USER19> Basically everything is neatly divided between the two political tribes now. If one says they're for X, the other is automatically against X. It's become comically predictable.

The people endlessly fight amongst themselves as the rich get richer.

Divide and rule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They can't catch domestic terrorists who are in the USAF using their existing overreaching surveillance on non-encrypted traffic.

How does breaking encryption get them closer?

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/17/boogaloo- st...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/17/boogaloo-steven- carrillo/)

<comment><USER21> Easy: it's a bad faith argument.

Most of the stories I've read about terrorists and mass shooters report that they were using bog standard instant messaging, unencrypted e-mail, and social media. Most of these people are not highly technical and do not practice good opsec. Hell Dread Pirate Roberts _was_ pretty technical and still got busted because of bad/lazy opsec, not (as far as anyone knows) because encryption or Tor were broken.

The child porn thing is a bad faith argument too. Child sexual abuse is under- investigated and under-prosecuted already even when the information is there or when actual reports are made. (Adult rape is under-prosecuted too.) They don't do enough to go after child predators using existing tools, so why would more tools matter?

<comment><USER22> There are some bad fallacies on their part too.

Large amounts of child porn detected equals platform being used on similar scale for producing it / distributing new content / grooming. By playing with equivalence, you can push for tougher policy.

It is under-prosecuted for frankly embarrassing reasons. Tech companies can't submit it on the spot. They have to wait for them to come to them, and have to delete it if they take too long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "If passed, the act would require tech companies to help investigators access encrypted data if that assistance would help carry out a warrant."

Isn't that already required? If someone shows up with a warrant (presumably signed by a judge and listing the particular things being searched), then basically you need to do everything you can to help them (as you should). Subpoenas are a little different and there's more room to argue about them, but are also important in general. Regardless, if it's encrypted and you don't have the key, then it's a dead end and that's the way things go.

So what is this law _really_ doing? My guess is that it's actually asking tech companies to do something in advance of any specific criminal act, that would somehow preserve private information or prepare it so that it's easier to comply with hypothetical warrants that might be issued in the future against anyone on the platform. That's really a different kind of thing than just assisting in carrying out a warrant.

<comment><USER23> It's much worse than the article describes. From the press release:

"Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) today introduced the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data Act, a bill to bolster national security interests and better protect communities across the country by ending the use of "warrant-proof" encrypted technology by terrorists and other bad actors to conceal illicit behavior."

[https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/graham-c...](https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/graham- cotton-blackburn-introduce-balanced-solution-to-bolster-national-security-end- use-of-warrant-proof-encryption-that-shields-criminal-activity)

I haven't read the exact text, but to me 'ending the use of "warrant-proof" encrypted technology' means banning end-to-end encryption, not just "requiring the assistance" of technology companies.

And according to Eric Geller, who is one of the main cybersec reporters at Politico, it DOES require backdoors:

[https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1275813434123186177](https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1275813434123186177)

"shall ensure the manufacturer has the ability to provide the assistance"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So... the legislators seem to be targeting "warrant-proof" encryption. Now... correct me if I'm wrong, but law enforcement can use due process to obtain access to a suspect's phone, and that phone will then decrypt the communication for them, right (even if the service provides true end-to-end encryption, which most don't)? So what's the problem?

<comment><USER25> Often not if the phone is password protected, though increasingly popular biometrics provide no such protections. The idea is that providing a password is equivalent to providing testimony and is thus protected. The law on this is not fully settled yet and varies by jurisdiction.

<comment><USER24> Are there issues with removing that protection from providing passwords? Intuitively, it feels to me like if police can compel an individual to let them search a house with a warrant, the same should be true of a computer (there may be incriminating evidence on it, but there may be incriminating evidence in the house, too, so I don't see this as being any more or less self-incriminating than textbook warrants). Moreover, if this didn't introduce glaring problems I'm overlooking, it would be a great way to cut out the legs from the "let's just backdoor everything" agenda.

The key thing being the law enforcement agent has to present their warrant to the suspect.

<comment><USER26> Searching your phone might be more like searching your mind, as phone usage is almost an extension of your mind: containing notes, photos, messages, etc. That it's protected with a password which would require compelling self incriminating speech for makes it even more troublesome to acquire.

<comment><USER24> I've seen that argument while reading up on the current state supreme court cases, but I disagree that it's more like searching your mind than searching ahouse is. To mirror your examples, a house may have handwritten notes, photos, and voicemail messages (well, if it still has a landline) all of which can potentially contain incriminating evidence. Yet we compel people to grant entry to an officer with a search warrant.

As to the protection afforded by a password, a house is protected with a lock and ordinarily someone cannot compel you to grant them access, which is what the warrant is for, stating that they have reason to believe there is evidence on the premises.

If we want to say, "But unlocking a door doesn't require speech while telling someone your password does" then fine, silently punch that password into the device.

Mainly I'm looking for problems with this in the vein of "If we install backdoors into our software, that compromises security for everyone and grants unprecedented surveillance power to the government". A hand-delivered court- issued warrant to the owner of an individual device seems like a promising compromise to let law enforcement get on with investigating specific crimes without broadly crippling everyone's security in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If they get such a law enacted, then people who really care about end to end encryption will simply "opt out".

There are so many open source crypto tools out there with no backdoors that anyone savvy enough to find them and use them will do so.

Of course the average user probably wouldn't care enough to do that, but maybe a few privacy scandals could change all that.

<comment><USER28> I agree, but I also think that, if successful, the law could have the knock-on effect of criminalizing all unsanctioned (read functional) crypto tools.

edit: *leading to arguments like "Oh, you have Signal on your phone, only criminals use Signal."

<comment> dane-pgp Unfortunately such arguments are very likely to be made, given that Chief Justice Roberts already suggested in 2014 that a person carrying two cell phones might reasonably be suspected of dealing drugs:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140501/01194327086/supre...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140501/01194327086/supreme- courts-real-technology-problem-it-thinks-carrying-2-phones-means-youre-drug- dealer.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes I wonder if politicians are trying to get us to not vote for them.

Like, what problem is this solving? Are there tons of criminals that are running wild, and if only we had their secret correspondence we could catch them?

And is social media not already some huge gift to law enforcement? Forget about tapping an encrypted line, just follow them on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER25> Luckily they seem to have no concept of timing. Why they think they can get away with something like this when trust of the police and authorities is so low is beyond me.

<comment><USER22> They're hoping we're distracted by the virus / riots / rhetoric of spooky criminals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Can't companies already be compelled to push updates to select devices adding a decrypted sidechannel to "e2e encrypted" apps, effectively providing a wiretap when a warrant is in hand?

There's no need to weaken the encryption at all when end-users don't actually control the software they run day-to-day. Just replace the software while they're asleep.

<comment><USER30> > Can't companies already be compelled to push updates to select devices

Nope. Can you link to an example?

<comment> dane-pgp That may be the case in Australia at least. From [0]:

"if an agency were undertaking an investigation into an act of terrorism and a provider was capable of removing encryption from the device of a terrorism suspect without weakening other devices in the market then the provider could be compelled under a technical assistance notice to provide help to the agency by removing the electronic protection"

As for the US, I wouldn't be surprised if the government has sought to achieve something like this using the All Writs Act[1]. However, in the recent case of Facebook helping the FBI with a targeted use of a vulnerability[2], it seems that they cooperated voluntarily, even paying a third party contractor to help.

[0] [https://www.computerworld.com/article/3460071/encryption- has...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3460071/encryption-has-the- government-stuck-to-its-no-backdoors-pledge.html)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act#Application_to_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act#Application_to_electronic_devices)

[2] [https://gizmodo.com/report-facebook-helped-the-fbi- exploit-v...](https://gizmodo.com/report-facebook-helped-the-fbi-exploit- vulnerability-i-1843988377)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> oh-4-fucks-sake GOV: Is it true that your servers hold encrypted data.

AWS: Yes.

GOV: Decrypt it, please.

AWS: Lol all we have is the public keys, bruh.

GOV: Use the public key to decrypt, please.

AWS: Uhh...

</comment><comment><USER22> A criminal could use a service provider which isn't located in the U.S. or peer-to-peer communications. Only stupid criminals and the general public will be hit by this.

Is this a last ditch effort for a Law & Order Bill prior to the election?

<comment><USER31> I suspect so. Never mind that it wouldn't really work – politics is a game where scammers get away with impunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The original "warrant proof" evidence was just saying something. Whoever was within 30 feet heard you, but otherwise, it was just gone.

<comment> dane-pgp Exactly. Encrypted phones are "warrant proof" in the same way that past spoken conversations, or suspects' brains are "warrant proof".

If memory-enhancing brain implants are developed in the future, it will be interesting to see whether data stored on them will be subject to subpoenas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What's the tally on support? Otherwise it's difficult to know whether this bill is symbolic or serious.

</comment><comment><USER33> Also posted yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23622169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23622169)

</comment><comment><USER34> How often will this stupidity come up? Looks like some never learn.

</comment><comment><USER35> Do these dolts not realize that their supporters also use encrypted platforms (like signal and telegram) to communicate, especially things that are considered fringe or dissident. One might expect such cluelessness from someone like Lindsey Graham, who is a neocon's neocon, but from Tom Cotton, who is on the Right-wing's preferred side on immigration? Especially, when that position is the sort of position that can get you fired these days?

Madness. I wonder what would happen if the NRA started defending encryption as a second amendment issue, as encryption technology has historically fallen under munitions export control legislation.

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMDXdxQc4SU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMDXdxQc4SU)

<comment> dane-pgp I hope I'm not spoiling the joke, but the title of the video above is:

"Tale As Old As Time - Lyrics - Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson"</comment></comment>


Any surfer dudes here? Check out this surf-reports app I developed - <AUTHOR> http://SwellPhone.com

<comment><USER2> There's definately a market for _recieving_ timely surf reports. But don't expect surfers to _post_ the reports.

As a surfer already at the beach, it's not in your best interest to tell everyone its pumping. You might call your best mate to tell him to get his arse out of bed. But everyone else you'll be gladly informing some time in the future, about the epic uncrowded session you had.

Instead, think of who benefits telling people when there is surf happening right now. The nearest food shop/cafe would do more trade when the surf is on. Local surf shops too. They might post reports.

They're are also likely to splice the report with their own advertising...

</comment><comment><USER3> I surf plenty. While this idea seems nice in theory, community surf reporting is very tricky. The entire culture of surfing is an exclusionary one. People do not want other surfers on their break taking their waves. There is no incentive to tell everybody that your particular spot has excellent conditions because you want the least amount of other people around.

The only site that I have seen that is able to somewhat get people to provide reports is www.stokereport.com, a bay area surf/social networking site. They had to institute a word filter that masks the specific names of breaks, and they will ban you if you repeatedly violate calling out spots [1].

[1] [http://stokereport.com/content/what-are-community- standards-...](http://stokereport.com/content/what-are-community-standards- follow-stokereport)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not the first time I get feedback in this spirit. And I can somehow understand the motive. However, it is very narrow-minded, don't you think? You can look at it the other way around -- let's say I check the site for conditions in a certain spot and see it's packed. Surf is awesome but it's already packed. So I go elsewhere... if I hadn't seen this report I would have come and add myself to the already packed lineup.

<comment><USER4> App looks nicely done, but I would never use it. I live close to several surf spots and I surf every day that it's good. Like others have said here it's not in my interest to tell others when it's good. My ideal surf session is when the surf is good and there's nobody else out but me. In fact I go out of my way to surf when it's not crowded e.g. early morning on weekends, mid-morning on weekdays etc.

This isn't me being narrow-minded, it's simply a matter of waves being a limited resource. Sharing waves is fine for beginners surfing inside and heading directly towards shore. But when you're out back surfing green waves there's not that many waves to go around. It doesn't take many people to paddle out before your wave-count drops and you have to start competing for waves. It's just a lot less fun.

As regards knowing when the surf is good, I know by looking at weather forecast. When I first moved here I put in the time checking the forecast and checking what the actual waves are like for that swell, wind, period etc. I know what any of my regular spots will be like just by looking at the weather charts for the day. I don't need an app to tell me. Anyone who surfs a spot regularly will similarly be able to tell what it's like from checking the charts.

I think the market for this kind of app is really just beginning and occasional surfers. They will certainly be consumers for the app but they will probably not be much use in providing data for the app.

Just naming surf-spots on the internet is a sensitive subject so putting almost-live photo updates of spots will be even more so. Don't expect regular surfers to provide this information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool. I'm building <http://SurfsGood.com> which is basically the same thing. I've been meaning to put more time into it, and one thing, as dlokshin and others point out, the public vs private pics is definitely a very real concern with surfers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a reformed surfer (not many good waves in Washington D.C. unfortunately), but I like the idea.

I can understand the sentiment from folks who don't want to broadcast good spots, but I suspect there's a good amount of people who aren't so territorial.

When I did last surf (Steamer Lane mostly), I occasionally checked the surfline cams, but more often than not would just head down regardless.

If you ever make an iPhone version, I'll happily buy it (even if it's nowadays mostly for nostalgic reasons).

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice one. Maybe a photo or video of a spot isn't enough. You could allow users to contribute optional info on the conditions, like how often sets are coming through, wind etc and maybe a rating.

<comment><AUTHOR> No rating system yet... However you can add some textual commentary while reporting. Thanks for the ideas!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I surf, and also build websites. What does this actually do? Store a photo/video of a surf spot by location. Is that all? What incentive is there for people to do this?

<comment><AUTHOR> If many surfers start doing this, you would soon be able to check [close to] real-time surf conditions from anywhere in the world by simply going to the website.

It's kinda crowd-sourcing of surfcams (coz those don't really deliver)

<comment><USER8> Ok, I just really don't see the incentive for most (i.e. 95%+) surfers to do this, for various reasons including: crowds at their favourite waves and no mobile signal at remote spots.

In general, surfers don't want to help other surfers find the best spot of the day. Once you're there it's different, and many surfers are really helpful/friendly. But hardly any will say "this spot X that you've never heard of is going to fire today", especially when they know you'll head to the big town beach break away from them ;)

I know surfers that'd give me a lot of shit if I posted video of a spot firing. I know I might do the same if I found out ;)

My suggestion would be to make this a private group thing. Create a, ahem, "circle" of surfers and share reports with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice. What backend are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> LAMP.</comment></comment>


NASA at Home: activities for children home from school - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/specials/nasaathome/ <comment><USER2> When I homeschooled, I did a survey of all books, TV shows, software and even games that my kids had access to and rated which ones I felt were _educational_ and what subject I felt they counted for. If they were doing any of those things for any reason, I wrote it down and counted it as educational.

If you find yourself homeschooling your kids, you don't have to spend all day trying to teach them. Set up a spread sheet with the days of the week listed and the subjects you are teaching (math, grammar, history, etc) and fill in what the kid did that day that would count for that subject.

I was flexible with my kids and if they spent four hours straight one day doing stuff that I felt counted as history, I wrote down one hour per day for four days of that week.

I found an online listing for grade level competencies for my state and went through them every six months. Once my kids were good enough in an area (exceeded grade level requirements), they got to do enrichment for that subject instead of assigned work.

Homeschooling does not have to be a nightmare. Especially these days, there is lots of wonderful material readily available, much of which is highly engaging so the kids are actually interested.

Nasa is, of course, almost always an excellent resource.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been having my HS-aged daughter watching the Mark Rober "science class" videos (M/W/F at 1pm Pacific), and then using Google Classroom to ask her questions. She's the one that suggested using Classroom.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPn- Bay_ANU&t=165s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPn-Bay_ANU&t=165s)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes! We highlighted these in yesterday's Orbital Index ([http://orbitalindex.com/archive/2020-03-31-Issue-58/](http://orbitalindex.com/archive/2020-03-31-Issue-58/)).

See also NASA's free history e-book collection: [https://history.nasa.gov/books_sort_SP.html](https://history.nasa.gov/books_sort_SP.html)

NASA at Home also highlights citizen science opportunities, such as learning to process raw JunoCam images of Jupiter. Here's an interview with Kevin Gill about this: [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/21/world/modern-explorers- ju...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/21/world/modern-explorers-junocam-nasa- photography-intl-scn/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's an article which briefly describes what NASA provides. THe actual activities are here - [https://www.nasa.gov/specials/nasaathome/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/specials/nasaathome/index.html)

<comment><USER6> We've changed the URL to that from [https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/coronavirus/nasa- offer...](https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/coronavirus/nasa-offers-tons- of-at-home-activities-for-children-home-from-school). Thanks!</comment></comment>


Just Months of American Life Change the Microbiome - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/11/how-immigration-affects-microbiome/574585/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> They always focus on obesity but microbiome also affects the mood and behavior.</comment>