Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms - <AUTHOR> http://cryptome.org/2012/12/assange-crypto-arms.htm <comment><USER2> I think this is very relevant here - interview with the NSA whistleblower, William Binney, on how NSA is storing _every post_ people are making online, so they (and FBI) can use it later:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM>

No wonder NSA and FBI want warrantless access to private companies by lobbying for new laws like CISPA, and trying to build backdoors in services like Facebook, Skype, Twitter etc. They want to know absolutely everything you do online, besides your public posts:

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-seeks- internet-...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/fbi-seeks-internet- backdoors/)

I don't know if they are doing it out of malice/power grabbing/control, or purely as a way to make their jobs more "efficient". But their #1 priority should always, _always_ , be respecting the Constitution, and not trying to skirt around it. And I think they've forgotten all about that long ago.

<comment><USER3> Forget about the Constitution. Rather, they should respect basic human rights and the principles of the Enlightenment. All this focus Americans put on their Constitution makes it _easier_ for their government to become oppressive, because it encourages complacency. As though you could write the perfect set of laws, that you could define the perfect set of operating principles for your government, and in that way free yourself of tyranny forever and guarantee a free and open society for you and all your descendants. No, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

<comment><USER4> Insightful. I'm curious as to what you think are the basic human rights and the principles of the Enlightenment.

<comment><USER3> Does it matter? I'm not debating the principles of the Constitution here, but rather the American focus on the document rather than the principles themselves.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the principles are common knowledge. Of course they matter.

<comment><USER5> I think his deflection of your question suggests he was using them as rhetorical literary devices.

<comment><USER4> Insightful. ;)

Yes, I was surprised by his responses, I thought his initial remark was great, but people mean quite different things by those lofty abstractions.

<comment><USER3> How about the both of you rub those brain cells together and see if you can organize a cogent point. Otherwise, piss off.

<comment><USER5> So much for insightful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _First, recall that states are systems through which coercive force flows. Factions within a state may compete for support, leading to democratic surface phenomena, but the underpinnings of states are the systematic application, and avoidance, of violence. Land ownership, property, rents, dividends, taxation, court fines, censorship, copyrights and trademarks are all enforced by the threatened application of state violence._

As if we lived in a halcyon utopia prior to that. I can't buy into Assange's Manichean view of government, given the pre-governmental state of society as war of all against all, _qua_ Hobbes: "In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Back when Wikileaks first came to prominence, it exposed malfeasance by private actors as often as states, notwithstanding the desire of those private actors to keep their doings private or even encrypted; Trafigure being a prime example (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafigura>).

States can certainly be destructive of liberty, but the absence of a state (either literally or by legal limitation ) does not necessarily yield liberty; often it results in mere libertinism.

<comment><USER7> Your argument is a non sequitur: states are necessary, therefore states are not systems through which coercive force flows.

If you want to argue that states are necessary, fine. But call a spade a spade. Can you imagine a state that doesn't wield violence? That's what a state _is_.

The lack of clarity on this issue leads to a lot of bad conclusions. When we argue that the state should solve any particular problem, we are explicitly saying the problem needs to be solved by coercive force. Maybe that's necessary. But let's not have any illusions about how states work and how laws are enforced.

<comment><USER6> _Your argument is a non sequitur: states are necessary, therefore states are not systems through which coercive force flows._

I did not say that at all. I am OK with states being systems through which coercive force flows, because I think channeling and supervising said force usually results of less of it flowing than otherwise would.

 _Can you imagine a state that doesn't wield violence? That's what a state is._

It's hardly the only distinguishing feature. States also build infrastructure, promulgate laws, provide forums for resolution of disputes and so forth. Your argument as made here is both narrow and immature.

<comment><USER8> I believe his point is that taken to its logical conclusion, states are able to do all of the things that they do because there is inevitably the consequence of violence for non-compliance. All of your examples result in violence for disobedience: destroying infrastructure, breaking laws, ignoring subpeonas. A core idea is that property ownership requires the threat of violence to work; don't pay your rent but don't move out and the sheriff will show up sooner or later. Do you have an example of something a state does that is not actually supported by its power to wield violence?

<comment><USER9> Regardless of whether a state exists or not, the only meaningful definition of "property" includes a threat of violence. It is not meaningful to say "this is mine" without the implied threat of violence against those who would take it - whether carried out by the individual themselves or outsourced to the local emperor.

Without property there is not commerce, there is not agriculture, no civil growth and development to speak of.

<comment><USER10> There is a difference between defensive violence and offensive violence. For example, do you believe that you own your body? I do, and I would defend myself if necessary. I would only use violence against those that are threatening me though. If you hold that you own your body, then by extension you own the output of the things you create with your body.

There has been much thought on this line of philosophy, it's called the non- aggression principle (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- aggression_principle>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree with the sentiment, but Assange's prose is a little dense. Maybe it's OK for his target audience, as I assume the layman won't be reading cryptome.org.

What we really need is a champion to explain in relatable, plain English why encryption is essential even for mom and dad, and to explain it in a more mainstream venue. I think a big reason why people don't encrypt mail, etc., is because:

1) they don't know why it's important because nobody can explain it to them in relatable terms (like saying: when you send an email, Google keeps a copy forever, and the FBI can read it just by picking up a phone and asking nicely), and

2) if they do know the importance, the practicalities of encryption are explained impenetrably. A blur of acronyms, bad metaphors ("keys?" terrible choice of metaphor, considering how a pair is intertwined and their actual use), and no well-known authority you can trust to explain it all simply.

The problem isn't that people don't care. They would care if they knew the realities of how their communications are stored, processed, and exposed to their governments. The problem is that nobody can explain it to them in a way that's not ridiculously complex or laden with terms like "Platonic realm" and "transnational dystopia".

<comment><USER12> The main reason I think, is because its hard.

Either you use a 3rd party service to encrypt, its easy and also extremely dumb (since its not end to end encryption).

Either you use PGP or SMIME and guess what: it's too hard. Their design is fine. I especially like GnuPG (PGP), but the UI, even in CLI, is terrible, terrible!

Most people don't even understand that a GnuPG keychain generally contains 2 private keys, not one (one for signing, one for encryption!) or the concept of master signing key and subkeys.

These concepts are relatively simple, but their use is hard. Terribly hard.

<comment><USER13> My idea was that public key cryptography should be done under the hood, so I created a easy to use ResoMail, but people still were not interested (or I was a bad marketer).

<comment><USER12> It uses it's own protocol/port/programs it seems. Too many people rely on email right now. Else, we could just use XMPP.

Thus the solution should work over email, and with our current email clients. S/MIME/GnuPG/PGP do, but their implementation is far from friendly.

<comment><USER13> The part of the solution is to switch to secure domain names, each domain name comes with bundled key pair (like SSL) this is why it's easier to work securely with public key encryption under the hood - the signing of the e-mail public key is done under the hood, the user doesn't have to do it manually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A sufficiently motivated government has a nearly infinite amount of tools available for breaking encryption. Ignoring the possibility that it might know proprietary weaknesses to various systems (a hypothesis that is unknowable), there's just so much you need to secure at each node in a computer system.

Are you personally sure no backdoors exist in the physical hardware you use? In the operating system you use? In the compiler used to build your OS? In any of the applications on your system? Are you sure that there's not a hardware keylogger on your keyboard, and do you check every day before sitting down that there's not one? Are there any secret cameras pointed at your keyboard, or sensitive microphones hidden nearby that can distinguish what keys you hit?

And once you're sure of all that, are you just as sure everyone you communicate with is equally diligent?

And, while we're at it, have you come up with a solid patch to prevent the well-known rubber hose vulnerability that exists in all cryptographic systems?

That doesn't mean the crypto-anarchist project must fail. Encryption is invaluable: while the vast majority of other technological advances--sedentary agriculture, writing, maths, roads, sewage systems, paper, the telegraph, electricity, the light bulb, cars, "computers," satellites, Google--have all increased the legibility of the world to the State, encryption does the opposite. The panopticon isn't an existing, established system but instead an equilibrium point that the State has to constantly push us toward: anytime the economic cost of that push is increased, it gives us more opportunities for creating spaces of genuine human autonomy.

But once you recast crypto-anarchism in that more moderate and stronger form, encryption moves from "our one hope against total domination" and a "hope that with courage, insight and solidarity we could use to resist" to something more banal: one tool of many. Not even a particularly effective tool: governments don't care about a bunch of nerds throwing PGP parties, and all the encryption in the world hasn't prevented the State from throwing Assange into jail (a pleasant jail with some fine Ecuadorian decor, but a jail nonetheless) and obliterating his organization.

<comment><USER2> In Cory Doctorow's talk at Google, he said that all routers today have interception technology in them. It's only a matter of being enabled or not in some countries or in others. But it seems so many have asked for it, that they don't even bother to build routers _without_ that interception technology in them, so now their default router has interception built-in by default.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI>

<comment><USER15> Sigh. Routers _are_ an interception technology.

<comment><USER16> Routers are a routing technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of over-the-top writing confirms what I already thought, which is that despite whatever good he might do in terms of exposing corrupt governments in the world, Julian Assange is just desperate for attention.

Being this paranoid he should be advocating "post-quantum cryptography", i.e. cryptographic methods that are secure even once somebody develops a quantum computer.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography>

<comment><USER2> Nice username you got there. So you're saying this all conspiracy theory stuff? I think we've gotten way passed the point where the fact that the government monitors everyone online is just a conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER8> Thanks :) I don't think it's a conspiracy theory, I just think that the way he frames it is a bit overly dramatic. Personally I just try to stay relatively anonymous and I operate under the assumption that whatever I say or do is basically public information. I can't be bothered with encryption when I'm talking to my friends because those conversations usually consist of things like, "Where do you want to eat?"

<comment><USER17> I see, so you think if you just try to be as boring as possible, then you have nothing to fear from surveillance? Good luck with that.

What if the world changes, and yesterday's orthodoxy is tomorrow's heresy? This used to happen in the old Soviet Union, all the time.

What if, unknown to you, you are friends with a guy who the government doesn't like? This very thing happened to Maher Arar - actually it was _two_ hops away, his friend's brother signed his lease, and that's all that was needed for the US government to whisk him from JFK airport to be tortured in a Syrian dungeon. Maher Arar is a guy just like you and me - he works in wireless tech, and crossed from Canada to America all the time. See <http://maherarar.net/> .

Why do I have to explain this to someone whose nick is georgeorwell?

<comment><USER8> Why would I mention anything except boring stuff over an insecure channel? Why would I even assume that secure channels or trustworthy conversation partners truly exist? As for Arar, like it or not, it seems like his problem was that he was born Syrian.

<comment><USER18> Times change. 12 years ago being born Syrian wasn't such a risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think that more focus, at least in the short term; needs to be put on making crypto accessible to windows users. As an example, consider the following project website:

<https://www.gpg4win.org/>

An invalid security certificate, and even that only if you go out of your way to specify https. If the vast majority of users saw this, they'd go running; including myself. I can't in good conscious recommend crypto that doesn't have it's own security certificates under control.

I have as yet not seen any less shady open implementations of PGP out there.

Of course, because of the proprietary nature of windows, it is totally possible for them to have back doors which will break your encryption, but I'm fairly sure that there are ways to verify, even without source code; that Microsoft isn't pulling any funny business.[0]

[0]: Besides, I'd prefer a situation where politically unsavory backdoors have to be used to read your data, as opposed to it being plain text and free for all.

<comment><USER20> I feel pretty safe predicting that most communications are moving to mobile, vs. desktops. Even if you have a desktop, most of your communications will happen on a mobile device.

The thing we really need (and what I'd fund if I had a spare $Xmm or so) is a great crypto API and solution to the user key management problem for iOS and Android, hooked into apps. It's technically easier to do on Android. On iOS, you're kind of stuck due to the core apps (mail, messages, etc.) being first- party Apple). It basically would take Apple deciding they cared about this issue, then building it into the OS in a way which didn't actually require trusting Apple completely, to work very well. Android has some steps toward this with some NSA projects, and wouldn't even necessarily require a full forking.

Some way to do tokenization and thus fairly transparent encryption on the client (phone) inside apps like the Facebook App, Twitter, etc. would also be nice. That's both a technical challenge and a UI/UX problem.

Silent Circle (from Jon Callas, Phil Zimmerman, Vinnie Moscaritolo (the PGP team...) and some Navy SEALs and defense contractors I knew from Iraq) actually seems like a pretty viable choice for sms, email, and voice right now. It unfortunately doesn't integrate into the social networks and other services people use, though.

<comment><USER21> Silent Circle appears to be for people who both

1) Want military-grade(ish) hardened coms

and also

2) Aren't willing to set it up themselves, but trust a service provider to do it for them

I read their docs a bit ago and don't really get it. I didn't really get Whisper Systems offering either as it appeared to have a broken trust model on a variety of levels.

If I cared about this kind of thing, and I really don't, I'd likely want to own all parts of the transport system and have the only available threat surface be the encryption algorithm as much as possible <http://www.voip- info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+encryption>

Might it all be pointless without massive amounts of traffic padding based on this attack? I wouldn't know. [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10207-010-0111-4...](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10207-010-0111-4?LI=true)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd prefer to stick to <http://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html>

I also find Eric Hughes much easier to rally behind than Julian Assange, although John Gilmore is better still (although largely focuses on drug policy, now). Or John Perry Barlow or Mitch Kapor.

<comment><USER22> I'd be interested to know what you think of the Cryptoparty 'movement', rdl? Eric Hughes talked in Amsterdam. Would you get involved?

<comment><USER20> It's too broad in scope for me to be really interested, I think -- meetings more focused on specific problems and solutions to those problems, vs. "the overall concept of cryptography and secure communications" seem more likely to be productive.

There are really no shortage of events like this in the Bay Area. I think "how to help mainstream developers build and operate services securely" would be the only thing I'm really into; end users are too varied and stressful for me. (there are usually a critical number of true tinfoil hat, "I've been marginalized by society and need someone who hack my girlfriend's email" types at open end-user crypto meetings...) At least based on the previous several attempts at this kind of thing (2600, Ian/Len's key signing parties, cypherpunks physical meetings, etc.)

<comment><USER22> I've certainly found the experience of talking about Tor to end users quite stressful, but I haven't had the experience of tin-foil hat users. There was an obvious low-level cop asking about the Silk Road at one of them.

In-fact if I look around the room, I'm the one talking about what William Binney has said & Echelon, so I'm probably the tin foil hat.

I agree about the focus. What's interesting is some of the bugs that I've found because I don't often see things from a UI perspective, and talking to end users has made me see some new bugs, also see problems that remain to be solved that I am currently working on.

I think the bay area is unique, there is nothing much of it's kind like this in Sydney.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. > This development has not been properly recognized outside of national > security circles.

I agree with Moxie Marlinspike on that, we were preparing for fascism but got social democracy[1]. Assange is still preparing for fascism.

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk>

<comment><USER24> "Assange is still preparing for fascism."

You mean the guy who is in internal exile in Britain because as a journalist he revealed war crimes committed by Britain's partner the United States? He's the guy who is delusional about the form of government that surrounds him, huh? Glad it's as simple as that.

<comment><USER25> To add some more complexity: the reason he is in a dodgy situation in the first place are rape allegations. Looking at some "leaked" parts of his biography this doesn't sound too far-fetched to me.

I definitely appreciate his engagement in disclosing many interesting documents about the micro-social diplomatic environment. But after all, what about the more interesting stuff? Leaked documents from the center of the turbo capitalist universe are still pending. (IIRC those were promised for around last christmas...)

<comment><USER26> There have been no charges laid against Julian Assange. The only 'dodgy situation' as you put it is that there has been so much effort to get him extradited to Sweden by a UK government who would not normally be interested in 'allegations' without substance from abroad.

<comment><USER5> _There have been no charges laid against Julian Assange_

Isn't this because he refuses to undergo questioning? As I understood it, the laws under which he is to be charged prohibit laying charges against him until they question him. So in this case, to say he has not been charged is devoid of meaning.

<comment><USER27> He offered to be questioned from the embassy, where he cannot be extradited from. Officials said no.

He offered to go in for questioning under the condition that it was agreed that there would be no extradition. Officials said no.

So he sought asylum in the embassy under the pretense that he would otherwise face torture and death at the hands of the United States. Ecuador agreed that this was a valid concern, so they let him stay.

Seems telling.

<comment><USER5> I don't remember the reason for the first one, but in regards to the second line item, I am told that again, their legal process simply does not allow them to make such promises.

Honestly, to me it looks a lot like Assange's argument boils down to, "I've asked for special treatment, but they won't give it to me. Clearly, they are conspiring against me."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In maybe five to ten years, the internet will effectively split in two. There will be major, commercial service providers such as Facebook-type social media hubs, major news sites but there will also be an invisible internet that is everything internet used to be, and in addition to that encrypted, anonymous, and untraceable.

How it shows most prominently at the moment is file sharing. Setting the endless copyright debates aside, what happens is that governments and large companies want to interfere with the privacy of what citizens are doing with their own bits. They say copying is theft while citizens consider twiddling their own bits a private matter that's none of anyone else's business. The citizens don't understand that while it's de facto legal to form a sneakernet—the actual legal status probably varies from place to place but nobody has ever been sued for sneakernet filesharing because nobody else never knows about it—it's illegal to form a filesharing network over the internet.

I don't promote or demote filesharing per se: it's just the cutting edge where the future trends will show years before they land elsewhere and that's what it makes it so interesting. A marginal slice of file sharing has already moved to anonymous darknets but in a few years and after a few more bad copyright/freedom-of-speech incidents with bad publicity, there will eventually be a breakthrough and the whole filesharing activity will go underground en masse.

When the masses go for it, the capacity and availability of invisible darknets will raise in orders of magnitude. That means there will be other providers in the anonymous networks as well, websites and services. There already are some, from anonymous wikis, anonymous project pages to anonymous forums but currently those are playgrounds. That is not so in ten years: there will be a major "bazaar" going on underground. While everything is anonymous and untraceable, everything is also secure. An online bank could very well operate in the anonymous network because the traffic is already cryptographically signed, and users _can enjoy strong authentication_ if they wish to or remain a pair of anonymous public/private keys.

At that point the traditional grasp of internet control is lost.

The institutions governing the internet and the copyright and whatnot are faced with a big dilemma: do they dare to ban and make illegal anything that's not specifically permitted on the internet and if so, how to go about it in actuality. Do they lobby for laws that only allow ISPs to let citizens connect to a http proxy that validates all traffic to be "approved"? Do they extend the charges for any use of the invisible internet that is deemed illegal, to cover all users of the invisible internet?

We're still in the _shadowdancing mode_ but the stakes are going higher, and in at most ten years the problem of control versus anonymity will have come out in the public.

We better know what we want, at that point.

<comment><USER29> > _I don't promote or demote filesharing per se: it's just the cutting edge > where the future trends will show years before they land elsewhere and > that's what it makes it so interesting._

One interesting thing I've noticed that the people behind the best filesharing networks tend to have tremendous success with their later projects.

Napster is the obvious one. After Napster went down, Shawn Fanning co-founded Rupture and Path, and Sean Parker went on to become the first president of Facebook, key investor in Spotify, and managing partner at the Founders Fund.

Kazaa is another great example. After their legal walloping, the founders and development team behind Kazaa regrouped to form Skype.

And then there's The Pirate Bay, which is still rolling merrily along, court rulings notwithstanding. Its team hasn't created any billion-dollar companies yet (we'll see what happens with Flattr), but they created a political party that's won elections in multiple countries, as well as the webhosting company PRQ, which was Wikileaks' home in its early days.

I don't think all of these later successes are a coincidence. Filesharing involves hard technical problems, hard logistical problems, and intense competition. If you were an investor, a blind strategy of giving money to the best pirates you can find seems like it might be surprisingly sound.

<comment><USER30> _they created a political party that's won elections in multiple countries_

"won elections" is a bit of a stretch. In countries with multi-seat constituancies and proportional representation, there are often minority/niche candidates.

<comment><USER29> They haven't won many heads-up elections, but they have won a few.[1] They're also pulling significant percentages in Germany, and close to a full percent in a few other countries. They're active in 40 at the moment. They're hardly a major party, but doing pretty well for one that's only six years old.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party#National_Pirate_Pa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party#National_Pirate_Parties)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> This is why I'm glad HTTP 2.0 intends to implement SPDY's always-on encryption. It probably won't be long until governments find a way around that, especially the US government, who can pretty easily gain access to companies like Google, Verisign, and even ICANN, but it would be a good first step in the right direction. Hopefully future steps like web crypto will help increase the security of people's conversations online further.

<comment><USER31> Alway-on encryption is necessary but not sufficient. As long as Facebook or Google have the decrypted information, you are still subject to the transnational dystopia.

The other day I found this fellow's idea for a peer-to-peer social network service: <http://code.google.com/p/peer-book/>

"Your data is stored in a distributed fashion, across the network, so that even when you turn off your instance of PeerBook, your friends will still be able to view your Profile and send you messages.

"Of course, all of this data is encrypted and backed up several times, so that even if Alice's data is being stored on Eve's machine, Eve will only be able to read it if she is Alice's friend; and Eve will only ever be able to delete her local copy of Alice's data which has no effect on its overall availability to the rest of Alice's friends."

He's got the right idea. I haven't examined the project, and it doesn't seem active.

<comment><USER7> <https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora>

<comment><USER32> How on earth can you bring up diaspora in this context? Some kind of cruel joke?

I'm downvoting parent and giving you the right link: <https://freenetproject.org/>

<comment><USER7> Heh, I probably should have said it's not an endorsement. Just another example of a (dubious) attempt at a distributed social network.

<comment><USER31> Thanks, it was useful to learn of the project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This xkcd strip was never more on-topic than now.

<http://xkcd.com/538/>

<comment><USER34> Yeah but,

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose_(file_system)>

<comment><USER33> They will torture you just in case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does it seem strange to anyone that the whole book isn't available for free? This doesn't appear to be intended as mere entertainment. This is supposed to be about maintaining freedom . . . it seems like a case where you'd want to get your ideas out and save the day over earning money from it.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think his call to action at the end is too abstract. It's important to understand that there is a problem, but the solution lies in understanding why the government is the way it is and why people vote to have such a government (fear).

The battle is winning the minds of the average person, by showing them that an encrypted, unmonitored, uncensored internet is in their best interests and not something to fear.

Or in the worst case, show that an all powerful (and therefore eventually corrupt) government is the greater of two evils. The proper tool for this is probably cheap, scalable marketing stunts and compelling media that spells this out in layman's terms.

</comment><comment><USER37> _Strong cryptography can resist an unlimited application of violence. No amount of coercive force will ever solve a math problem._

Not entirely false, but <http://xkcd.com/538/>

<comment><USER38> Long before Wikileaks, Assange worked on a project called "Rubberhose". (A hidden encrypted filesystem designed to offer protection against cryptanalysis by torture.)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis> | <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose_(file_system)>

Wired in 2008: "Among other achievements, he [Assange] co-invented Rubberhose deniable encryption, which would let a dissident being tortured reveal one key to unlock a hard drive, while not giving away that there was a second or third password-locked folder of information."

[http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/07/wiki...](http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/07/wikileaks?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER39> See also: TrueCrypt hidden volumes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It is interesting that this preface has been extracted and hosted on Cryptome. Given the history of Cryptome and Wikileaks; and having had the opportunity back in 2009 to ask Assange in person about his views of Cryptome, I am no doubt his eyebrows would raise as well. I wonder if John Young posted it himself or it was submitted. IIRC part of Assange's concerns around Cryptome were some well reasoned arguments around editorial and source protection policy.

</comment><comment><USER41> I feel that we have to understand that using technology to fight legal battle never is the right answer. As soon as the government sees a particular technology as a hinder, threat or even an inconvenience, they can legislate against it. This holds true for encryption, VPNs and all other technological "saviours" that internet evangelists keep ranting about.

The truth is that the only reasonable thing to do is to become politically active.

If you can't beat them, join them.

<comment><USER42> Yes and no. Sure, we have to fight bad laws. Here's the thing: Encryption is legal now, but what good is it if we don't use it?

We need to build and use technologies that respect human rights _and_ we need to fight to make sure that they remain legal. One without the other is nothing. There is no point fighting to keep something legal if you don't have the technology and infrastructure to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > and if all else fails, to accelerate its self-destruction.

Unfortunately, that is how you know if someone has gone off the deep end.

I agree though that we should all be encrypting communication, but our government helped develop the methods of encryption, and some methods have been known to have backdoors: [http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs201/projects/...](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs201/projects/ethics-of- surveillance/tech_encryptionbackdoors.html)

Why it is highly recommended not to implement your own encryption method, we shouldn't be using something that could easily be decrypted by the wrong people either. We need to study methods that we use extremely well, and be aware that encryption susceptible to decryption via brute-force with significant resources are just as dangerous as backdoors.

I also advocate development of wireless mesh networking technology to handle larger adhoc networks. While those that wish to spy could still become a member of an adhoc network, it would significantly complicate things for them.

</comment><comment><USER44> Tim Bray said it better:

 _Why It Matters: [...] This blog isn't terribly controversial. But if only the "controversial" stuff is private, then privacy is itself suspicious. Thus, privacy should be on by default._

<https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/12/02/HTTPS>

EDIT: Ironically, I accidentally linked to the non-HTTPS version. Fixed.

</comment><comment><USER45> My initial thoughts are, I don't know if this is the right way to combat widespread warrantless search and seizure, although maybe it is. I'm not sold either way.

Let's say there were some massive breech of probable cause before billions of people used the internet every day. Maybe some king is issuing multitudinous search warrants to go and seize all postal mail correspondence within some large sector of the population. I'm thinking of something "old tymey" here.

Okay. Well, it seems to me, the 18th century version of Julian Assange would essentially argue that people need to start getting good at writing in and decoding cryptograms. What we really need is the 21st century version of James Otis.

I know, it's a very, very unfair analogy. But it explains my point. If this stuff that William Binney is talking about is really going on, wouldn't a legal or a socio-political (not sure if I'm even using that term correctly) response be more lasting and effective than having everybody start writing letters in the form of a NY Times crossword puzzle?

</comment><comment><USER46> This article seems to propose that encryption is the solution to everything. However, it should be relatively easy to discern an encrypted message from an unencrypted one. When everbody starts encrypting and this really poses a threat to intelligence agencies and governments it will simply be outlawed and payload that is deemed encrypted will not be routed.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm toying with a very low bit rate protocol for short length messages. Low bit rates are associated with high signal to noise ratios at low power. Most of the messages people send aren't worth sending or receiving, and among those that are worth sending, many are short and non-urgent. There is a need for a slow, highly obfuscated messaging service...

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's another excerpt from "Cypherpunks" at Salon:

[http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/julian_assange_the_web_can_c...](http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/julian_assange_the_web_can_create_revolutions_or_jail_revolutionaries/)

You can only buy this book direct from the publisher. Amazon isn't carrying it.

<comment><USER20> You can also find it on popular torrent sites, as information wants to be free. (I would have bought it if it had been on Amazon, but, well.)

1dc2e5b6f0d5036a182e85ab34da839d15eaf1ed cypherpunks.epub

5d546aaa83aebd43a2342f6dc737d271a34ff684 cypherpunks.mobi

ccaf1c45fc31633c9728dcd2cd4545b55a27be7c cypherpunks.pdf

<comment><USER48> Wait...so your two options are buy from Amazon or pirate? Amazon is basically the worst corporation on the face of the earth. Supporting a small publisher -- especially a small publisher willing to publish Julian Assange, books about Bradley Manning, and books about Wikileaks, is basically a decent thing to do.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, it's not so much a moral argument as that I'm willing to pay ~10 seconds and up to $20 (and ideally, $10) for a book.

<comment><USER20> Actually I poked around the site more; it's not as bad as I thought (it takes normal credit cards, although authorize.net is kind of a pain). And the non- DRM ebooks are fairly acceptable. I'd still strongly prefer Amazon, but wouldn't pirate out of spite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Even the strongest encryption is only as strong as the will of the person who knows the key. And what if the state decides to enforce controls over access to encryption algorithms and software? What if it's a crime to use unbreakable encryption?

The only defence against tyranny is the effort of a sufficient number of people, with the will and means to resist, choose to actively support freedom and dismantle tyranny. Specifically, people in power: politicians, judges, lawyers, and police. If the people who run the state, and exert force in its name, prefer tyranny, then tyranny is what we'll get. And that's exactly what happens when those who oppose tyranny abandon the state those who support it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm afraid until most people will understand the use of cryptography, there will not be move forward.

I've spent a lot of time on ResoMail, a an easy to use open source secure alternative mail, but during beta testing it didn't show user interest, people don't understand the dangers of trusting their data to corporation and didn't use it, so now the project is on hold, now I'm looking for new opportunities to develop it.

</comment><comment><USER50> >"Strong cryptography can resist an unlimited application of violence. No amount of coercive force will ever solve a math problem."

No, but most average citizens' crypto is still ridiculously vulnerable to the three Bs: Burglary, Blackmail, and Blunt force trauma.

</comment><comment><USER51> very platonic, but totally oblivious to "rubber hose cryptanalysis" ...unless you have a group of fanatically loyal people at the core of your "freedom protectors" group and the "engineers" that implement your cryptography systems part of this group, force and bribery will always win.

...and if you have a group of people truly loyal to freedom, then you don't need much crypto anyway ...just spoken words, physical transfer written/printed papers or usb sticks (this is how bin laden supposedly communicated his speaches if I remember well, right?) or other media and a brotherly handshake...

<comment><USER52> You might be interested to learn that Assange had developed the Rubberhose file system. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubberhose_%28file_system%29> So I don't think he's oblivious to the concept.

<comment><USER51> do you how does it compare to similar features offered by TrueCrypt?

<comment><USER21> TrueCrypt's plausible deniability system is dependent on a passphrase instead of an auth key iirc.

Another likely difference is that truecrypt works.

Neither will stand up to scrutiny for the purposes of deniability. It's obscurity which is effective in the scenarios that the docs outline below.

<http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> And you can't donate with Bitcoin? What is this?

<comment><USER54> This is Cryptome, who isn't associated with Wikileaks. You can donate to Wikileaks using Bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Many governments now have no fear of encryption - trust no one....

<comment><USER16> SHA-1024 Should only take a million square foot datacenter filled with GPUs an hour or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> TLDR: P ≠ NP

<comment><USER52> It's not proven that anything in TFA is actually NP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> It's funny, I've come to think of the HN community as being the most skeptical and contrarian of all internet forums. (Jokingly, to the point that if someone posted a blog about how Hitler was evil, there would be an a reliable proportion of posters here pointing out how the citation free post was rhetorically weak and that there were some little understood benefits to the Nazi regime).

Now, this short excerpt of Assange's argument strikes me as outlandish, and there's only a couple of skeptical posts to be found!

There are a bunch of problems that I can see with it, I'll just list a few off the top of my head.

1) It's a predictive argument, which is hard (prediction). The prediction is that society will become worse because of the internet.

2) Glorification of the past: a casual consideration of societies and governments of the past highlights that they are, all of them, horrible. You don't have to go back far in US history to get to an amazingly evil government (1970s CIA activities for example)

3) The increased transparency brought on by the internet is a good thing. ,I'm glad Petraeus got his ass busted, as the phony hero creation meme has been weakened that provides cover for US misdeeds in the war theaters. Governments have been literally getting away with murder since time immemorial. There is a better chance of stopping them if there is, in general, more public, unencrypted communication (this is precisely what brought Petraeus down)

4) There is no way the public at large is going to start encrypting their communication. That kind of secrecy is just not that useful to the average citizen. It is also too complicated to understand for busy non-hackers.

5) The benefits created by network effects will be significantly diminished by introducing private encryption. One of the main uses of the internet is the creation of large scale markets. Markets are by definition public, or at least open to a group. To get efficient markets you need a sizable group. To keep access to a market private gets harder the more participants it has. Fairly determined efforts to conduct secret, anonymous actions by hacker groups like Anonymous have proved to be easily broken by law enforcement. And these are hackers!

6) Efforts at resisting tyranny can be demonized, and crushed, more readily if conducted in secret. The fact that Wikileaks acted somewhat non-anonymously to release supposedly secret data to public is what made it effective. If Assange had tried to undermine the secret making apparatus of the power structure in secret, he would have been just another terrorist (and maybe dead)

I could go on, but my point is that I think what Assange is promoting here is pointless. I can't even conceive of how private keys could be distributed to a large network without being easily compromised. I would love to hear some of you smarter folk comment on this.

<comment><USER58> _1) It's a predictive argument_

We might be there already.

 _2) Glorification of the past_

I don't think so. More like a broken promise.

 _3) The increased transparency brought on by the internet is a good thing. ,I'm glad Petraeus got his ass busted_

That's just disingenuous. The secrets that really matters about military operations are not public in any way, while you are happy because this guy gets caught cheating his wife. Meh.

 _4) There is no way the public at large is going to start encrypting their communication._

Oh, that's a predictive argument. Make something usable and we'll see.

 _5) The benefits created by network effects will be significantly diminished by introducing private encryption._

So that networks effects are more important that freedom, aren't they?

 _6) Efforts at resisting tyranny can be demonized, and crushed, more readily if conducted in secret._

Sorry, that's total nonsense.

<comment><USER57> I can see how you can think I'm being disingenuous on point three, let me expand a bit. I'm not glad he got busted for cheating on his wife just because. My point is that the military uses propaganda, spread through the mainstream media, to further it's agenda (which I think is bad). Petraeus' image as a straight shooting, old school, unimpeachable hero type was used as a cover for the morally unsavory aspects of our recent wars. It just happens that he was brought down by a very human indiscretion which was revealed through the use of an insecure network.

It illustrates that the indiscriminate sharing of information on public networks gives increased transparency into the lives of people, including the rich and powerful. Even if they know how to cover their tracks, they can be exposed through the insecure practices of "civilians" with whom they interact.

Something that Assange doesn't quite address in the excerpt is that not only do people not care about about secure communications, they actually want their personal information on the "public" web. Most people do not have a group of people they would like to communicate with but in a highly secure manner. The exception would be for affairs.

Even people working for companies that have requirements for secrecy need low friction method of exchange of information with larger networks of individuals that they don't know well.

There are negative consequence to this (specifically the ease with which the govt can spy on its citizens, as Assange points out).

But the cost to individuals, and to society, is too high for whatever benefits a widely used "darknet" would have. The value of the internet is connecting large numbers of people who are engaged in the various life activities that people do. It is not compatible with secure networks. The porousness is a feature not a bug.

I mean really, what sort of activities would an average person find it useful to use a secure network for? Illicit, illegal, or insurgent. Not a real high demand for this.

FWIW, I think what Assange has done with Wikileaks is heroic. I just think his vision of a sort of private internet is impossible. It would have to be based on "insiders" and "outsiders," a sort of division in the population. Those sorts of division are only maintained through nasty applications of "real life" power as far as I can see.

<comment><USER58> _I mean really, what sort of activities would an average person find it useful to use a secure network for? Illicit, illegal, or insurgent. Not a real high demand for this._

I think that that's our fundamental point of disagreement. Demand doesn't follow needs at once because people still doesn't know what they need. But they will. Cases like Petraeus' will contribute to raise awareness.

Also sometimes people tend to use at home what they've learned to be useful at work. Increased security in companies could contribute to the success of an easy-to-use product.

More: piracy, people living under tyrannic regimes, cheaters, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file- decry...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decrypted- names-of-informants-exposed/56553)

Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by governments. There's just one minor problem... This is effectively publication with delay, and it forces governments to go after them hard rather than deterring them.

AES is based on computationally difficult to crack algorithms. If you assume there will be no advances in algorithms, no new types of computers, no weaknesses found in the implementation of AES, etc. then it will take a comfortingly long period of time for these files to be cracked. These assumptions are bad. Cracking algorithms are advancing rapidly. It is astronomically improbable, but not impossible that someone could come up with an efficient algorithm for factoring tomorrow that would render all factoring- based cryptography impotent overnight. The prospect of quantum computing on the horizon also places a time limit on how long these files can remain secure.

 _When you commit secrets to a current form of encryption based on computationally difficult problems and distribute the cypher text broadly, you have effectively published those secrets with an unknown delay._

This is why governments want Assange so badly. He's not keeping secrets to deter them, he's publishing them with a delay because he doesn't know what the heck he's doing when it comes to encryption. If he used a one-time-pad (Vernam cipher) and kept the key on his person he'd be in a far better position, but he's apparently too stupid to do this. How do you use a one-time pad?

Cipher = message XOR key (XOR = exclusive OR)

10110101... (secret message in binary)

11010111... (true random key)

\</comment><comment>--

01100010... (ciphertext)

For this to work, Assange would have to distribute the ciphertext and keep the random key secret, perhaps on a USB key around his neck. This method of encryption has been mathematically proven to completely secure provided the key is truely random and not from a pseudo-random number generator. True random number generators can be bought for relatively cheap these days. If Assange had encrypted the files this way they would be safe from any cryptographic attack, safe from quantum computers, or anything else out there. For all time. The only thing that could unlock these files would have been his USB key. Obviously, this is not a convenient method for online transactions, since transmitting the secret gives eavesdroppers all they need to decode the ciphertext. However, for the use Assange has been putting AES to, one-time pads are _perfect_.

Why didn't Assange use a one-time pad? The only answer can be that, for all his bluster, he remains utterly ignorant of how encryption works. Thanks to his ignorance the governments of the world have a vested interest in taking him down. Even if someone else picks up where Assange left off, hopefully that someone will understand how encryption works.

<comment><USER60> > AES is based on factoring.

And you say _he_ doesn't understand cryptography?

<comment><USER59> I'm not in classical crypto, so I occasionally mess up and call algorithms based on computational difficult "based on factoring". The end result is the same though. Publication with delay.

<comment><USER61> RSA and AES are _wildly_ different animals. You break RSA by factoring very large numbers. Currently this is done with GNFS, which is steadily improving. Theoretically, it may also be possible to do it _much_ faster. Nobody brute forces RSA.

In order to crack AES though you need to either brute force it (which you will _never_ do. Not that many bits, just forget about it.) Or you need a cryptanalytic attack that allows you to do it with reasonable computation and memory complexity. An attack that is currently unknown.

But surely such an attack could conceivably appear.. so what is the difference? The difference is that while RSA _is_ a ticking clock (worse case scenario: slap on another ~256 bits to "factor-able" every 5 to 10 years), AES is only a ticking clock in the sense that we cannot rule out the possibility that one day it may start to tick.

If anyone in the world can crack AES, or will be able to crack AES anytime soon, it's the NSA, And it _does not matter_ to Assange if they can crack it (unless the entire insurance file is a bluff).

AES was and is absolutely the correct choice for an insurance file. _(I believe this is about when tptacek steps in, correctly calls me an idiot, and points out that another symmetric key cipher is a better choice.)_

<comment><USER62> The NSA doesn't use code it can't crack...

AES is broken on-the-fly now.

Even if information is encrypted. They now just store EVERYTHING indefinitely until they can crack it.

Makes you wonder if in the future, when they crack your encrypted content if your grandchildren will get a visit...

The nazi's did that kind of thing too...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Screech - Tweet your answers to real questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.screechapp.com

<comment><USER2> Good idea! Sometimes, if a tweet goes to 3 lines, the next & reply buttons get pushed a little below the footer text, which stacks on top of them. You can still select the top of the buttons, but just so ya know. In fact, just positioning those buttons consistently so you can rapidly scroll through the possible questions would be nice.

Anyway! I like it, if you decide to keep developing it with better parsing of questions (identifying and removing rhetorical, etc.) and show "other replies" below the actual question to show if others have attempted to answer already.

Also, also, I saw someone on your twitter feed suggested you take it off- twitter, but I think the real joy of this is the potential to help a complete stranger who had no idea the whole world was actually listening.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much! About the frontend comment - I'd not really heard anything about the actual design, so that's a very welcome piece of feedback - I'll add that to the bugfix list.

I think half the reason I really built this app is because I keep saying on my own Twitter "I want to learn how to do ____ - but I don't know where to start!". When I don't hear anything back, it's a little bit demotivating. I really love the idea of strangers helping strangers with their work and goals too; but I also feel that the questions would be better suited to those who have specified exactly what kind of questions they can answer.

Food for thought, I guess. Thanks so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it :)

<comment><USER2> No problem! You definitely have a bit of a double edged sword on your hands. Personally, I love the idea that you could help a complete stranger who thinks they are just yelling into the void, at the same time, it would probably be a more useful service if the queries were sent to it directly and tagged by expertise, blah blah blah.

So, do you integrate both behaviors? Cut your baby in half? Whatever you choose to do, I'll be interested in the result. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I also liked the idea. One way to ask questions would be using a hashtag (#screech?). So questions that use the hash would have a better chance of being selected. It would be nice if you could choose some keywords to filter the questions in your area of expertise.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's so strange that you say that - I actually initially coded it with this exact idea in mind! The only reason I pivoted to regex queries was that in its initial stage, I would have no questions to serve up - but I think #screech is subtle enough to be integrated when the userbase is there!

Thanks again for the feedback, I really appreciate it!

<comment><USER4> I think the suggestion is that you first look for questions with the hashtag and then if you don't find any look for questions the way you currently are. That way a small user base can make use of the feature but for everyone else it stays the same.

You should also take a look at youasked.it. They're very similar. I think giving the user a chance to filter questions by topic is a very key feature that is missing right now from your implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea! Just one suggestion. Make the name linkeable to their profile or better to the tweet itself, because sometimes you need to understand the context to answer a question.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't even considered contexts...! Great stuff, thanks - added to the list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think [http://www.lazytweet.com/](http://www.lazytweet.com/) is a similar idea that has been around for a while but never got especially popular, maybe there is something you can learn from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went looking for something that existed when I first set out, and I didn't come across this - thanks for the pointer.

<comment><USER6> I guess what you can learn from that is "write some copy that is easy to google ASAP" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a neat idea, though the quality of questions is terrible. Would probably be a good way to garner a decent amount of followers if you spent 20 minutes answering a ton of questions. Not very clear on how to 'ask' questions though..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey John, thanks for your comment. I'm working on the questions at the minute - I agree, it's tricky to filter out what are/aren't questions, so that's something that I'll develop to be a little more sophisticated for a future version.

I suppose the purpose of the app was solely to answer questions, really; I didn't even think about the "asking" side - again, something that I think the app could benefit from in the next version.

Thanks again John, really appreciate your feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The quality of questions is the main problem, yes. May be they can be upvoted or downvoted, so they would appear more or less frequently?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great concept - giving each question a score and allowing it to gain/lose exposure based on it, similar to HN/Reddit.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't that make it a minimal quora/SO that you don't have to specially post your questions on?

Or, and while we're at it — location filters for location-based questions would be the greatest (although much more hard to implement) feature. I don't want to answer someone's question about his homework, clearly directed for his friends, but I would gladly give advice to a tourist who found himself in a place I know.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that the system requires some form of filtering - be it by location, score, hashtag or otherwise. A featured which allows a user to get to the questions they can answer quickly is definitely something that needs to be developed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A wallet that charges your phone. - <AUTHOR> https://everpurse.com

<comment><USER2> i like the the wallet and the fact that its clasp doubles as a usb plug. but moving from one battery to two batteries, creates all kinds of problems.</comment>


Sites that block adblockers seem to be suffering - <AUTHOR> https://thestack.com/world/2016/04/21/sites-that-block-adblockers-seem-to-be-suffering/ <comment><USER2> Sites that detect ad-blocker usage have bigger problems to worry about, at least here in Europe.

I haven't seen this reported in the media yet but here is a Twitter message from privacy researcher Alexander Hanff with photos of an official letter confirming that detecting ad-blocker usage client-side is _illegal_ in the EU. [https://twitter.com/alexanderhanff/status/722861362607747072](https://twitter.com/alexanderhanff/status/722861362607747072)

Here's his initial message from yesterday, kicking off the thread: [https://twitter.com/alexanderhanff/status/722506381451010048](https://twitter.com/alexanderhanff/status/722506381451010048)

I've got my popcorn ready and I'm waiting for what may be a very amusing discussion between publishers, advertisers, and lawyers in various European countries. Fascinating, regardless of which side of the debate you are on.

<comment><USER3> European lawmaking is beholden to newspapers, based on the trouble Google has been going through with linking and citations, so I would be truly shocked if this came to anything.

<comment><USER4> This is not a meaningful summary of the complexities of the lawmaking process of a multinational political entity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _In all cases the warnings presented to the user instructed them to whitelist the site in their adblocker – or go away._

And the answer from the visitors seems to be clear: we'll go away.

<comment><USER6> They may well not give a damn.

Hell, they might be happy.

If traffic numbers are down and ad revenue is stable- guess what, lower operating costs & higher margin.

<comment><USER7> Are scalable web hosting costs really a significant portion of the operating costs of most news publishers with websites?

Additionally, losing visitors means losing the links they share on social media, so ad revenue may not be stable either (assuming adblocking users' links are visited by non-adblocking users.)

<comment><USER8> looking at some numbers people are starting to wisen up and chances of getting viral are diminishing as the average viewer's immune system reacts to clickbaits.

as they learn views are money and share are worthwhile, they start thinking twice before sharing and liking. growing an audience today is already insanely harder than compared 5 years ago and the situation looks like it's only gonna get worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My own response to sites adblocking adblockers has just been to stop visiting those sites.

<comment><USER10> yep. i dont even bother visiting links to wired articles anymore

<comment><USER11> Me too, and I'm trying to figure now if its a matter of laziness or that the content wasn't juicy enough for me to lower my ad blocking defenses.

<comment><USER12> I'd guess the latter. Wired has become pretty lame the last several years. I loved it as a kid but it's just crap now anyway. Mostly just top 500 things to buy lists anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The interesting question is not Alexa counts but has their revenue changed. In particular what is their revenue per 1000 page views that are post ad-blocker. If they stop getting traffic that wasn't going to click then its a net win for them, they don't use the network resources serving up pages to people who will never click on an ad.

<comment><USER14> Network resources are usually the cheapest part of their operation. They'd have to fire humans to improve their margins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Out of five sites profiled, only one actually shows any correlation between blocking users using adblockers and having a decrease in traffic. The others just continued a pre-existing trend.

<comment><USER16> It looks very much like wishful thinking on the part of the author.

<comment><USER17> The article itself seems to be written alright though, it's the headline that seems in conflict with the data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Forbes was essentially dead to me after they blocked their articles if it detected an ad blocker.

<comment><USER19> Agreed, I even disabled the ad blocker but couldn't get the site to load (still got stuck in the warning page)

<comment><USER20> Similarly, I added Wired to a whitelist, but they still showed me the anti- adblocking modal - possibly due to my hosts file. Figuring out what caused it was more trouble than it was worth, so I just don't read Wired anymore.

<comment><USER21> You can always open such content in an incognito tab, to disable the adblocker completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The argument is that traffic is down. I wonder the impact it had on revenue.

<comment><USER23> I don't see how it had an impact on revenue if ads weren't displaying, which would mean that this article is missing a key point. Not sure that each of these down-slope ranking charts are associated with an equivalent down-slope revenue chart.

<comment><USER24> Because some people don't use adblockers as a binary setting. You can choose which ads to block, for example blocking full page ads while allowing banner ads to let be. Blocking users outright is also counter productive you piss them off instead of giving them a reason to want to support you.

Not to mention is that loss of users impacts another important revenue source for many sites other than just ad networks and that is sponsored content, referrals and syndication. If I'm running a full out adblock and can't access your content I can't read sponsored content, and I can't share your content with others that might not be running adblock, or do and will be more inclined to disable it, or to even pay for that content through other means.

Boycotting rarely works, and boycotting your customers is pretty much the dumbest move any business can make.

<comment><USER25> With the site being not accessible for some part of the readers (maybe high- value, high social media impact individuals), the sites could be losing revenue because less links are created (which again would attract a lot of non-adblocker visitors).

<comment><USER24> Yes that's why I said if I can't read it I can't link it. An interesting study might be actually using platforms like HN I think "wired" is/was blocking adblcokers but might be an interesting experiment of getting like 10-20 sites and checking the amount of submissions to HN from those sites before and after they implemented their boycott policy.

<comment><USER26> I snooped around to figure out a way to bypass Wired's block (and was successful), but in the end I just don't care about their content. It has definitely fallen off the radar for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those using greasemonkey and its copies on other browsers, here's an adblock blocker bypasser that works great [https://github.com/reek/anti- adblock-killer](https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer)

<comment><USER28> This is also available as a third-party filter for uBlock. No greasemonkey necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's OK to shame me for using adblock and asking to whitelist you, but please, please do not thank me for doing so. It betrays you 're tracking my every step and you re acting like a strict nanny.

</comment><comment><USER30> The ad block blocker on Wired.com has been giving me trouble on my Surface Pro, which I've done nothing to. In fact, I'm not even running a version of the browser which has ad block. And opening an article on Wired then scrolling down the site lectures me with a full screen overlay and copy like "Here's the thing..." It's ridiculous. I've stopped going to the site. Instead I'm checking slashgear and subreddits.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sites that block adblockers successfully forced me to... install a blacklisting script blocker.

</comment><comment><USER32> I suspect there is a hidden variable here: the degree to which management is embracing "new rules". All of these declines seem to have started before ad- blocking-blocking. All of the development effort and management energy that went into blocking didn't go into content or marketing. A company who is losing the content game is exactly the kind of company who would try to win through content controls.

And in the case of the Washington Post, the reason they only "experimented" is because Jeff Bezos is not that kind of thinker. He likes change, and doesn't mind reorienting around new rules. If anything he sees them as opportunities.

These choices don't happen in a vacuum. They look like a proxy for cultural issues to me.

</comment><comment><USER33> They are probably going to stop blocking adblockers eventually. Since their brands weaken, fewer users are sharing links, search engine positions weaken, etc. All of which has a long term impact on their revenue. More interesting is how are they going to recover?

</comment><comment><USER34> When I am confronted by an anti-ad block website, I go away, or I find a way around it. Viewing ads does not bother me. Viewing obtrusive advertisements, and those ridiculous scripts that pull you out of the site and into the App Store, pop ups, auto play videos, audio, and every other intrusive, ridiculous advertisement, is what I hate. Ads don't bother me, websites that act like assholes bother me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Why bother having ads anymore? I would just make an entire article or video one big advertisement for a product I am trying to sell.

This is the next logical step for ads..and all of the people that think they have some sort of power right now, will be surprised when there is truly no way to block it in a few years. Because popular sites need to make money to pay for hosting and when enough of them do this, you won't really be able to ignore it all.

Other alternatives might include major paywalls for content (if it gets bad enough) or a tech-savvy advertisement company that gets around these ad blockers (I actually have lots of good ideas that would work and might start a company myself).

The same thing happened with software. Companies were tired of fighting piracy, so they made everything in the 'cloud'.

I used to sell software and got tired of piracy. When I just ignored it, my sales would go down to almost nothing. The issue just isn't the copying of software. It's that these sites also start ranking higher than my own in Google and many people will get to the counterfeit copy first. Price never mattered. I could charge 99 cents and the piracy would stay pretty consistent.

I would also get people contacting me up trying to sue me because they downloaded an illegal copy, thought it was mine, and they got a virus/lost data. Of course they have no real basis for a case, but the time and effort involved in answering the inquiries was a huge waste of time.

Now, my customers don't even get to have a copy of it. They get to rent it for a fee every month (all hosted on our servers). It's great for me, but not for software freedom. It's really the only way to survive these days.

The app markets are pretty dismal as well. The only apps actually making a profit are the ones that are in the top 5. The rest are fighting for scraps. It's much better to give away your app for free as part of a paid, monthly service.

The price of the app alone really can't be used to sustain a business.

The sad thing is that the end result of all of this is the concentration of wealth to fewer, large and wealthy companies. Small companies can't handle the loss in revenue and it will mean less power for all of us.

You are actually contributing to further wealth inequality and ironically, trying to stop it at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER36> Don't most ad blockers also block third party trackers? I know uBlock Origin blocks Google Analytics for example.

I don't know Alexa's fallback/tracking methods, but couldn't these be an indicator of adoption rate of ad blockers, as these charts are not precisely an indicator of traffic, but specifically a measure of trackable traffic.

</comment><comment><USER37> This article needs more data points to be significant. There are reasons other than ad blocking that could be causing that effect.

</comment><comment><USER38> I had problems with these sites even though I wasn't using an adblocker, I just didn't have Flash installed.

</comment><comment><USER39> Uh yeah, no shit.</comment>


Gitlab.com makes tracking/telemetry compulsory - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/jwildeboer/status/1187107059608764416 <comment><USER2> Drew DeVault already wrote an article in response to this:

[https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users- first/](https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21339006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21339006)

And is having a Pinboardian heyday with it on Mastodon:

[https://cmpwn.com/@sir/103013369408178912](https://cmpwn.com/@sir/103013369408178912)

</comment><comment><USER3> This was bound to happen. The "community" always finishes last if a company is involved with investors on the table and as far as GitLab's is concerned, they must please them with evidence of "growth" to attract more funding and more investors.

It is foolish to think that GitLab would really listen to the priorities of the "community" and so would do anything to turn a profit. Even disrespecting your privacy whilst "promoting" themselves as an alternative with zero spyware seems to have driven many devs to the platform.

I won't be surprised if another repository exodus happens again.</comment>


Programming is a way to Procrastinate - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cubeofm.com/programming-is-a-way-to-procrastinate

<comment><USER2> Apparently in the writer's world, people who make things are _"lazy...mindless...procrastinators."_ On the other hand, people who sell things that have already been made are _"thinking, and doing hard work in areas [they] barely understand. It's real work compared to programming."_

Pure troll.

<comment><USER3> No, he's talking about programmers who want to sell software without spending time on marketing it to their potential customers. Unless you've got an incredible product you'll have to get off your ass at some point and actively try to sell it. That's where the procrastination part pops up and I've been guilty of this myself.

<comment><USER4> But if it's procrastination because I'm trying to avoid it (because I'm not good at it), isn't that the perfect opportunity to bring in the "marketing guy/gal" cofounder to do that work for me? Ideally, you would then only have to actively "sell" it to one person who can pass it on to the rest.

What's being called procrastination here, I'd prefer to call specialization. But I'm probably being naive about this.

<comment><USER5> How can you tell if your marketing guy is any good if you don't spend some time at it yourself? You know your own product better than anyone else. If you're passionate about the problem you're solving then start telling people who are experiencing that problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree -- for software engineers, programming is a popular way to procrastinate. Refactoring doubly so :-)

Whereas, for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to procrastinate.

<comment><USER7> > for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable > making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to > procrastinate.

No, no, you did the hard bit, coming up with an idea, and you have the connections and the sales know-how to make the business succeed. Now all you need is a cofounder who will come in and implement it in exchange for some sweat equity, say 1% of a business that will be worth at least one hundred million dollars.

<comment><USER8> Hello sir. I had this idea yesterday for a site like facebook but with classifieds like craig's list in it and I'm looking for an experienced C/C++ coder...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There can only be so many minimalist apps, some startups have to aim a little bit higher than the low hanging fruit where it isn't so much about good marketing and a clean intuitive layout. For these people I don't think a long time programming is procrastination but rather a necessity.

Also if you have money tucked away to survive in some cases it would be better to sit back, re factor, add/ improve features until you have something your really confident about spreading it around widely. There is a lot of talk about release early, but for smaller unknowns you may only get one chance to make a good initial impression.

<comment><USER10> I strongly disagree that you only get one chance for a first impression. Minimally, you get one chance at a first impression _per customer_.

None of you saw my site when it launched, because you were not among the 70 people who were subjected to that horror. (Those brave souls gave me many insights on how to make it better.) For the 60% of 5,000 people who visited yesterday who had never been to the site before, the past 3.5 years essentially didn't happen. To them, my site launched on Valentine's Day.

I also think people vastly, vastly overstate the degree to which you will develop a "reputation" or "brand" as being (whatever you are currently). Large companies pay Madison Avenue staggering sums of money to get people to remember them. They do it because it is inherently hard work. 99.99% of the time, a user having a negative experience with your site ends with the back button. 99.99% of the remainder, you get an email with, ahem, variable levels of politeness. Respond to it with grace and humility, and you'll avoid almost all long-term issues.

<comment><USER9> Very true, it depends on your product though. If your getting a lot of your business through things like adwords/search and occasional articles/ recommendations your exactly right. Although if your developing something big the first impression is going to mean a lot. Take something like Google Buzz (admittedly even bigger than the range I'm advocating it for), I think that kind of first impression, where the service is all over the tech media and being talked about in social media, the first impression is going to mean quiet a lot in terms of future adoption.

Another example, Age of Conan, great game idea, early execution was off and it set them on a path where they were never really going to get back to initial subscription numbers no matter how much effort they put into the game.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, games are quirky in that ongoing development on them is largely a lost cause (sole exception in the industry: Blizzard) and that they have a shelf- life measured in weeks. If I were head of a game studio my first action would be to fire myself because everything I know is wrong for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A very interesting article that points out that a start-up business requires more than just code. Once the code is done, you need marketing, support and sales. At that point, adding features is just procrastination - far too tempting for many hackers.

I think it is likely this is one reason why PG says you have to go fulltime, fully commit to your startup - once you run out of money you are forced to go to the market place and actually sell. Many people who are creating a startup in their free time can put this off forever.

Imagine how much better Segway would have done if they had gone to market earlier and discovered that few people actually wanted a slow, gyroscopic bike.

<comment><USER12> I thought Joel's point was a bit better way of putting this: sales acts as a multiplier on product quality (and vice versa). So if _either_ factor is zero, your total revenue will be zero too. If you try to sell a crappy product, you won't get any bites, and if you have a great product but never try to sell it, nobody will know about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The author seems to be under the impression that programming is same as building a product. Building a decent product is much more time consuming and mentally exhausting especially if you are on your own (sure being on your own gives you a lot of flexibility in making decisions quickly). If you want to build a product that does good business, what you need is a decent team with at least one developer/product owner, one sales person/marketing person and one customer.

</comment><comment><USER14> I actually should have been programming instead of playing video games. Am I doing double layers of procrastination?

Seriously something programming is very hard, like tracing down an elusive bug or getting the performance to go higher. These things are what make or break a product. Doing the programming is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123175>

</comment><comment><USER16> Not sure if it's _laziness_ , but a lack of courage, confidence, trust and... dare I say it... faith.

The unknown is scary.

</comment><comment><USER17> Writing blog posts is an even easier way to procrastinate than programming.

<comment><USER18> Currently, I'm replying to a comment about a blog post, so I can avoid writing Matlab code. I must be the ultimate procrastinator.</comment></comment>


The inventor of microfleece refused to patent it. - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_fleece

<comment><USER2> Another fascinating story about Feuerstein from his Wikipedia page:

 _When the Malden Mills factory burnt down on December 11, 1995, Feuerstein decided not only to use his insurance money to rebuild it, but to also pay the salaries of all the now-unemployed workers while it was being rebuilt. Feuerstein spent millions keeping all 3,000 employees on the payroll with full benefits for 6 months. By going against common CEO business practices, especially at a time when most companies were downsizing and moving overseas, he achieved a small degree of fame....it appears that applied ethics in business has positive consequences as Malden Mills continues to garner lucrative Department of Defense (DOD) contracts for 'smart' products that interweave fiber optic cabling, electronic biosensors, and USB ports into polar fleece fabric._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Feuerstein>

<comment><USER3> While I commend any sort of philanthropy, I have always had a certain amount of repulsion for the type that ruthlessness exploits the people that help him stay at the top. While jet setting around the world to save the the next village that is in vogue. While it is noble to help people it has always stunk of hypocrisy and giving in public for popularity. I always like when a story highlights a man that takes care of his own as those are people he is directly responsible for. Thanks for digging that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A guy who spends $25M for what he perceives as good ethics and doesn't try to self-promote the good deed has my kudos indeed! regardless of where his ideology comes from. Something that many fame and money crazed entrepreneurs should learn from these days...

 _While it would cost Aaron Feuerstein $25,000,000 to 'do the right thing' as well as the turmoil of a November 2001 filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it appears that applied ethics in business has positive consequences as Malden Mills continues to garner lucrative Department of Defense (DOD) contracts for 'smart' products that interweave fiber optic cabling, electronic biosensors, and USB ports into polar fleece fabric. Malden Mills was awarded a $16 million dollar DOD contract in 2006[2]._ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Feuerstein>

</comment><comment><USER5> My dad has worked at malden mills for over 30. Aaron has always wanted malden mills to compete on new innovation. He believed that no one could keep up with him and imitators would always be a few steps behind. Couple that with the extreme high quality of the production process and patents seem opposed to the companies secret sauce.

Unfortunately, in he is no longer there. Was it a successful experiment? It's hard to say. He really took a beating on the 95 fire. He kept all employees on the payroll through the entire episode, even after getting totally screwed by insurance. He saved Lawrence from an even worse fate then its had. That was probably more import to him then his own success.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another example is the way Volvo made their 3 way seatbelt patent available to other manufacturers, and motorists, to benefit from it.

[http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/strapping-success- the-3...](http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/strapping-success-the-3-point- seatbelt-turns-50/)

<comment><USER7> Or indeed, given the context, how the inventors of the Web allowed everyone to use their ideas without patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just out of interest. What's to stop some other guy coming along and patenting it, then unleashing lawsuit city on all the other vendors? Is there some kind of protection for that, to assure it remains free to all?

<comment><USER9> Abundant prior art.

<comment><USER8> Cool thanks, looked that up. Seem to be a stateside only thing though.

<comment><USER10> Prior art is definitely not just a US concept.

<comment><USER11> Definitely not, it's the whole core of the idea of a patent that you can't go round patenting things which already exist.

The term "prior art" might be US-specific though, other countries' patent law systems have different words for the same thing (wikipedia suggests "background art" and "state of the art").

<comment><USER12> >you can't go round patenting things which already exist

Not strictly right but close enough, better (but still not the whole story due to US differences _) would be "things which have already been made public".

Prior art is the globally recognised term. It means any [relevant] disclosure prior to the priority date of the application in hand.

As an ex-patent examiner (not US) I'd use "background art" to represent the general status of the field (often presented in the preamble of the specification) and "state of the art" is strictly the whole gamut of prior art disclosures.

\--

_ most jurisdictions have first to file whilst US has a "first to invent" system

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just curious, is there some sort of GNU for patents? If I were going to not patent my invention I'd want some way to make sure nobody else came along, filed for some trivially new derivation, and then managed to extract most of the value of the original invention.

Maybe some central licensing organization that would license patents for free as long as the licensees agreed to some GNU-like terms... or is this not an issue in patent law?

<comment><USER14> As vidar mentioned in a different thread of this story[1], prior art plays a large part in this process.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1797836>

<comment><USER15> But prior art doesn't have the viral effects of the GNU licence. This would be an actual patent, but with licensing terms that required anyone creating derivatives to either release them or to patent them under comparably-free terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Decycle the bottles into Old Navy fleeces.

If he had patented it, would there be the same 'push' for residential plastic recycling? Would we just bury or burn it?

</comment><comment><USER17> Can't imagine surving the oncoming winter without my fleece clothings. Thanks for digging it up.

</comment><comment><USER18> He is an idiot which is why he has gone bankrupt. As much as people here do not like patents because they have some negative side effects, on balance it is only fair that the inventor benefits from his invention. If the inventor is a scientist, he can license his invention to the men of business. Giving it free for all does no one good. That is not how we have advanced to this day and age. Laws have reason. They are made by people of reason. Not congress mind you, but the very rational and experienced judges who are imminently familiar with the intricacies of every day circumstances.

If a man who invents something beneficial ends bankrupt is to be applauded is anything but fair.</comment>


Reddit Gives Remote Employees Until End of Year to Relocate to San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3036660/fast-feed/reddit-gives-remote-employees-until-end-of-year-to-relocate-to-san-francisco

<comment><USER2> I think several people live in a vacuum and forget how 99.9% of companies would have handled this. Granted forcing people to relocate to San Francisco will be a cultural and major geographical change but they are getting 3 months severance if they decide it isn't worth it. I don't know what promises were made to the NYC employees prior but if living in NYC is seen as a higher value than taking the leap to the San Fran that should be enough time to find other employment. It would be a much larger deal if the office was based in a low cost of living area and asked to move to San Francisco where it is much more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER3> It will be interesting to know what proportion of them did.</comment>


I quit my job to walk across the world doing live Google+ hangouts - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/100125012078853567494/posts/5cuxJex8MPf I quit my job to walk across the world doing live Google+ hangouts in every village and city from Beijing, China, to London, England. <comment><USER2> From [http://travel.cnn.com/rise-big-unnecessary-crazy-travel- adve...](http://travel.cnn.com/rise-big-unnecessary-crazy-travel- adventure-910186) :

 _Johnson hopes the walk will help create a name for himself in the Internet industry._

 _He wants to develop cross-platform Web applications that engage nations._

Not sure I could think of a worse way of doing this than spending 5 years hiking across Siberia.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not just about what you do, it's about what you do and how you do it.

\- Let the story unravel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Imagine if an American said he was going across the "world" from New York to California.

<comment><USER4> If one were to attempt to "walk across the world", this would be about as close as they could get. :)

It makes for a much better headline than "Man attempts to walk across the largest section of the earth that you can."

And also, to "walk across" sort of implies you only need to do half of it.

I'm too tired to check, but Internet, is there any continuos stretch of land that connects one point on earth to it's polar opposite on the sphere?

(too "tired to check" should also imply "too tired to post comment", but oh well. it already is resulting in "too tired to properly edit")

<comment><USER5> >If one were to attempt to "walk across the world", this would be about as close as they could get. :)

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I've sometimes fantasized about walking around the world and the best you could do in theory is about 10x the distance from New York to California: South America to West Africa (assuming you can cross a frozen Bering Strait). That's 20,000 miles. In reality, you'd probably face insurmountable political and legal difficulties with crossing borders.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumnavigation#Human- powered](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumnavigation#Human-powered)

The 9,000 miles Michael Lee Johnson is attempting is pretty impressive. I've got a lot of respect for this guy for trying.

>I'm too tired to check, but Internet, is there any continuos stretch of land that connects one point on earth to it's polar opposite on the sphere?

Yes! I believe so, based on what I said previously. Here are some tools to get you started:

[http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/antipode- map/](http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/antipode-map/)

[http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance- calcu...](http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance- calculator.htm)

<comment><USER6> There are hundreds of people who have visited every country on the world.

It definitely isn't an insurmountable challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> ...and his project has already been banned from Facebook:

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/100125012078853567494/posts/LS9V...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/100125012078853567494/posts/LS9VpnTyPwy)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the first time this has happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice! Let's all do that.

> _Imagine if an American said he was going across the "world" from New York > to California._

Imagine if they did it too. It would be quite mind expanding for people to see that not everybody lives like they do in California or Iowa or New York or Texas.

TV can only get you that far -- you have to experience it too. There are people in New York that are more provincial (in relation to the ways of the world) than people in Idaho, and vice versa.

<comment><USER8> It's a cold substitute, but for those who are interested in life in the American Midwest, Malle's film gives a small taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of a scene from Pulp Fiction: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPfPYVVNgVw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPfPYVVNgVw). Doesn't seem so ridiculous to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> Will there be a book, and if so, will the book be as interesting as "Danziger's Travels?"

<comment><AUTHOR> There will be a book, yes... Possibly a couple. And of course it will be interesting. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google+ is banned by the great firewall of China...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what VPN's are for. - At least in this case anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Alternately: Please, please, Google notice this!

</comment><comment><USER12> It'd be pretty great if it was sailing.</comment>