Medicine Hat becomes the first city in Canada to eliminate homelessness - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-edition-1.3074402/medicine-hat-becomes-the-first-city-in-canada-to-eliminate-homelessness-1.3074742 <comment><USER3> > I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops > when I don't.' However, I've come around.

This sort of "crab mentality" makes even discussing things like basic income, minimum wage, or projects like this so difficult, let alone implementing them. People come to believe they deserve their position in life when so much of it is due to advantages/disadvantages outside their control: [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan- june13-makingsen...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan- june13-makingsense_06-21/)

> The rich players are determined randomly by coin toss, the game rigged so > they cannot lose. And yet, says Piff, despite their presumably liberal bent > going in, [w]hen we asked them afterwards, how much do you feel like you > deserved to win the game? The rich people felt entitled. They felt like they > deserved to win the game. And that's a really incredible insight into what > the mind does to make sense of advantage or disadvantage.

Successful people believe they deserve to be successful and they believe that unsuccessful people must have acted in a way to deserve it, because attributing your success and their destitution to factors outside anyone's control is scary and difficult.

<comment><USER4> I'm all for basic income and minimum wage, but I think the _luck_ mindset is quite detrimental. It strips men of their own agency and fosters cynicism.

> I even said some dumb things like, 'Why should they have granite countertops > when I don't.' However, I've come around.

Unfortunately, he ends with _However, I 've come around to realize that this makes financial sense._ Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

<comment><USER5> > Silly me, I thought the change of mind was about empathy.

It's important that it's economic.

If I work my median job, and live my median lifestyle, and I observe that people who don't work are getting more than I am, that's very challenging. I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when others didn't.

It makes it seem like the economic system is broken and unfair. As soon as that happens, there's no chance you will feel empathy to those people who are benefiting more.

Recognising that the economics is OK is therefore very important - it allows you to start to have empathy.

<comment><USER6> > I immediately feel resentful about the fact that I had to work for this when > others didn't.

I _already_ feel this to a shameful degree in regard to wealthy scions like the Walton kids, or children of mega hollywood stars. The economic system _is_ broken and unfair.

<comment><USER5> Ah, yes, I agree the economic system is broken and unfair.

Unfortunately the way to fix this is not by giving you the wealth of the Waltons.

It's by bringing everyone else up to the level of personal security that you already have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first reaction when I started reading this was, "Yeah, but what do you do with the crazy people who prefer sleeping on the streets?". Their answer was to just keep picking them up and taking them to their new home, until they chose to live there. Medicine Hat is not a big place, but doing that 70 times in some cases showed commendable perseverance.

I'd like to see this approach in other cities in Alberta, but there are some pretty big obstacles to overcome. Calgary, for example, presents the choice between very high property values in the core and remote suburbs that aren't very pedestrian friendly. Relocating someone from downtown to a likely site of affordable housing could mean a 30 minute drive. If most people they knew were downtown, this would cut them off pretty effectively, and that's a long way to take someone 70 times too! Perhaps situating affordable housing near a train station and giving residents free transit passes would help.

There are several months out of the year when living outside in Alberta is basically impossible. Some of the homeless go to shelters, but many wind up sleeping inside of derelict buildings or hiding in office buildings. The security guards working those buildings sometimes let them sleep there (the result of kicking them out on some nights is likely death), but security guards aren't the most uniformly humane and caring bunch. Some of them treat the homeless very badly. Getting these people into housing and treating them with a modicum of dignity could really help their mental state improve.

Hopefully Medicine Hat's program can prove that housing the homeless is an economically viable approach, even in bigger cities.

<comment><USER8> In the end it seems to come down to housing as shelter vs housing as investment. And in this day and age, the investment wins...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's kind of interesting that this is seen as a major achievement. To the best of my knowledge, under the standards set here (no more than 10 days on the street or in an emergency shelter), we've long had this in most of the UK and various other parts of Europe. It's almost true in London, modulo some people with mental health issues. Homeless people get picked up and moved into temporary housing about that quickly. Having everybody able to afford their own housing is a much harder problem - we're nowhere near that. But getting them into council-owned "temporary" housing? That problem's more or less solved. It's crowded, costs more than it should, and most families don't have enough space, and there's all sorts of things about the system which aren't very fair, but it's housing.

(There's a guy who lives under a road bridge, not far from my flat. He's been there for years. He wants to live under that road bridge. He's obviously crazy, but he's not a danger to himself or others, and it turns out that it's not illegal for him to live there. So he's a +1 to the permanent homelessness statistics, but he's perfectly happy with this - the standard as written will never be achieved in London because of cases like this one.)

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is an excellent data point. The article quotes an economic cost of $20,000 vs $100,000 for giving them a home vs having someone homeless. Is there a writeup somewhere on the methodology for doing that calculation? San Francisco claims to have 7,500 homeless people so that would be $750M vs $150M. I'm pretty sure the city supervisors would go for a half billion annual reduction in their expenses.

<comment><USER11> Homeless people are very "epensive" for their society, because of the effects of that homelessness. They aren't as productive as they could be, they require a lot more medical attention, they tend to vandalize more, or even steal. I'm not saying they are bad people, it's just the situation nudges or forces them to "cost" more.

Society also can't really choose not to pay the cost. If they break stuff, it may have to be replaced. If they commit a crime, they have to be housed in prison (which is expensive). And if they require urgent medical attention, doctors won't refuse not to help them even if they can't recuperate the cost...

In San Francisco the situation is a bit different. Housing is more expensive, so 20K won't be enough, and homelessness in SF is a bit more of an economically issue, rather than a mainly psychological one.

And even if SF could save money, they would have a hard time creating such a program, for various political reasons. Also it would mean investing tons of money up front, without the cost reductions being easily visible afterwards.

<comment><USER12> It's also important to note that SF is already a destination for homeless people from other cities in the US. In some cases that's by choice; in others it's because the local authorities send them there simply to get rid of them (several noteworthy stories have come up just within the past few years). So it's quite likely that such a system would serve primarily to foist the cost of homelessness in other cities onto the citizens of SF, where, ironically, it's most expensive to address. If I were a citizen of SF, this would be my primary objection to such a plan. It's not clear how to prevent this kind of abuse in a fair manner.

This aspect was not mentioned in the article. Perhaps Medicine Hat is viewed as a less desirable place to live than, say, Vancouver, and therefore this hasn't been an issue. It's also possible that the Canadian legal system is more effective at preventing this kind of inter-provincial abuse.

<comment><USER11> Homeless people prefer to go to bigger cities and frequent areas where they can beg for money or scavenge trash. So yes, small communities tend to not have many of them.

The trick with San Francisco, if the city chose to try it, would be to find housing in commuting distance which is cheaper. Such housing wouldn't necessarily need to be in San Francisco, especially if these people don't have work or other ties there...

<comment><USER13> Getting homeless people to accept housing that's any useful distance from where they panhandle or scavenge trash ranges from incredibly difficult to functionally impossible.

Which is to say that no, the homeless aren't likely to accept free housing in Walnut Creek. Not if their living patterns center on Van Ness.

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying San Francisco _should_ try that. But if they were to try it, they should coordinate their services. I also think the idea behind this housing is that the previously homeless people are encouraged to find new ways of living, and have it easier to stop drinking and get a job. Or start on medication, get treatment for PTSD etc.

<comment><USER13> It's a good idea. The intentions are laudable.

The basic problem is that you're asking people who are _extremely_ risk-averse to take what they will see as _huge_ risks with lifestyle change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Turns out, less social welfare is often more expensive for society.

I hope that over time, the social sciences will get a better (data based) grip on what works and how beneficial it is, and thus more of these problems can get solved.

<comment><USER14> I think there are many unknowns that will be revealed through implementation. Yes, it is better and more cost effective when you only consider the homeless individuals. The net impact on greater society could be more positive or negative and is particularly sensitive to implementation details and the specific type of homelessness occurring.

Britain is in the middle of a jobs miracle, attaining their highest employment levels in history. Cutting taxes on low income earners has increased the upside of joining the workforce. [1]

In my city we have youth who refuse to work the available entry-level roles and prefer to beg downtown with signs requesting beer and weed. I imagine the lifestyle would become more popular if it came with free, opulent housing further reducing the incentive to work.

[1][http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9475222/the- coalitions-j...](http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9475222/the-coalitions- jobs-record-is-miraculous-why-wont-they-talk-about-it/) (third paragraph contains figures)

<comment><USER11> I think it is very short-sighted to assume that wages (or their taxation) affect the "decision" to join the workforce. It just doesn't work that way. Most people on welfare really don't get jobs paying above the welfare limit, so it can't be that they are refusing to work, get some extra money, and higher social status because the wages are so low.

For that matter, most welfare agencies, and certainly the German one with which I am most familiar, won't let them refuse such a job...

<comment><USER14> Hi,

I don't fully understand this sentence:

>Most people on welfare really don't get jobs paying above the welfare limit, so it can't be that they are refusing to work, get some extra money, and higher social status because the wages are so low.

My best guess is that you may want to familiarize yourself with the concept of a welfare trap.[0]

As for the German system of forcing welfare recipients to take work when offered, I'm not sure how it would apply to these free housing initiatives. Also I believe that if the system is appropriately structured the desired behavior should be naturally emergent rather than forced.

How does the German welfare agency not allow people to refuse jobs?

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

<comment><USER11> Yes, I know about "welfare traps". And I don't believe it. The assumptions behind welfare traps is that people who don't get a job stop trying to look hard enough for one. To make that a significant factor, companies would have to have large amounts of unfulfilled positions, where in turn a significant amount of eligible workers are unemployed. At best, this happens when the wages for a particular job are so low, that they end up costing society rather than saving them money compared to full welfare payment. State subsidized work, effectively.

In Germany, welfare payments are reduced by some amount when poeple refuse to comply. That can be things like refusing an education program or a job offer. These sanctions may not be enough to overcome psychological factors, but it is enough to rule out financial reasons for refusing.

<comment><USER14> I'm afraid your answer makes it very clear that you in fact do not understand the concept of a welfare trap. They exist in many countries, whether you believe in them or not. It's existence was documented in Germany just two months ago. [0]

Let's be honest here: we're talking about low paid unskilled labour. The first rung on the ladder out of welfare. Such an abundance of those positions exist that the US imports Mexicans, Canada imports Filipinos, and Germany imports Turks.

The type of solution employed in Germany is essentially forced labour. [0][https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/11/germ-m11.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/11/germ-m11.html)

<comment><USER11> You seem to have a very low standard regarding "proofs". The article you cited derives broad macro-economic conclusions from storified anecdotes. In the particular case of a "masseuse course" the agency just doesn't see it as a valuable and accredited program. Such courses prefer taking money from participants directly rather than trying to make bureaucracies believe in them.

And yes, then the participants have to pay to attend. They might even have illusions on their employment prospects. If they were to attend an actual physiotherapy course, things may be different. The problem with these types of programs in Germany is that they are mostly privately funded. That is a problem yet to be addressed.

People tend to attribute the "being stuck" in welfare to the welfare system itself. That may happen, I just don't see it as a significant factor. The subsidizing of low-skilled labor is a different problem, and is partly addressed by the recent minimum wage.

The US is an entirely different place. Lower unemployment, but there, even many employed workers have a much harder life and live in poorer conditions than jobless Germans. Full Healthcare, and mostly free education, for starters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd never heard of Medicine Hat before. What a strange name for a city!

<comment><AUTHOR> As many Western Canadian cities, it has Native origins [1]. The unusual part is that its an English translation, at least instead of an Anglicized spelling or pronunciation.

Its a small city, probably about 6th in Alberta by population. Its probably most famous for sitting right on top of a lot of natural gas, immortalised by Rudyard Kipling as having "all hell for a basement" [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Hat#Name_origins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_Hat#Name_origins)

<comment><USER16> Some other place names based on translations: Moose Jaw, Battle River

Some other place names based on anglicization: Athabasca, Waskatenau, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

<comment><USER17> Awesome! I grew up in Moose Jaw and now live in Saskatoon! Not too often people talk about us!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Czech rep. had something similar for some time. There are two problems:

One has to prove to be homeless. Have some distant relative or had income a few years ago? Too bad, not homeless.

And some people will demolish their own house. It is expensive to buy firewood, floor and walls can be used instead. House gets eventually destroyed, owner become homeless, gets new house...

<comment><USER19> That's why _all_ these programs that have a cut-off are bad. We need _universal_ Basic Income. We need socialized access to certain things: minimal food, water, shelter. These things cost less than it does to deal with a world that lacks them.

If we could have public housing regardless of income, people with higher income will choose to forgo it to get something better. The problems come with the perverse incentives and bureaucracy connected with proof of status and arbitrary cut-off points.

<comment><USER20> I would rather say, "That's a bad thing about all these programs that have a cut-off." I don't think it's _clearly_ such a bad thing as to make every such program net out negative.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. The _quality_ of having a cut off is negative and actually expensive as it creates bureaucracy. But it certainly doesn't negate the positive value of these programs today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Really interesting program. Does it have any effect on the local real estate market? I would imagine it would have at least some impact on renting/purchasing prices.

<comment><USER22> > Does it have any effect on the local real estate market?

\- a quick look at real estate sales/prices over the last 4 years from the local real estate board[1], doesnt look like its had any negative impacts

period | # unit sales | avg $

2014 - 1708 - 274,655

2013 - 1446 - 263,223

2012 - 1539 - 255,538

2011 - 1322 - 247,850

1] [http://www.mhreb.ca/market_update](http://www.mhreb.ca/market_update)

EDIT: formatting

<comment><USER21> Good data, thanks. I'd bet the bigger impact would be on rental prices (which data would be harder to find).

There aren't many details listed about the program in the article, so I wonder how they prevent lower-income people from just taking the free housing instead of paying for rent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm skeptical. I mean, it's not as though the idea of public housing is new, and it has been used in places far more liberal than the US who have not eliminated homelessness.

My first question is "Where are they keeping all these people?" Previous attempts to just build enough housing for everyone[1] haven't turned out all that well, and they became cesspools of crime.

Beyond that, are the conditions in Medicine Hat such that they can be replicated everywhere? Perhaps Medicine Hat just has an abundance of housing.

And lastly, it doesn't seem clear to me that they actually have eliminated homelessness. Other news sources claim that they will eliminate homelessness "soon"[2] or that they have "almost" eliminated homelessness[3].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe) [2] [http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/14/medicine-hat- homeles...](http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/14/medicine-hat-homelessness- end-2015_n_7280232.html) [3] [http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has- al...](http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/medicine-hat-has-almost- eliminated-homelessness-by-giving-homeless-people-the-keys-to-their-own- apartments)

</comment><comment><USER24> What happens when the homeless from other cities start making their way to Medicine Hat?

I'd like for this to work out long-term, but it strikes me as unrealistic. Here's hoping I'm wrong.

<comment><USER3> Homeless people aren't as mobile as you think. When someone is homeless they depend on a very specific set of municipal services and it's a huge risk to move somewhere else and not have a way into those services or even a way to find out about them.

To put it another way, why are there any homeless people in Canada or the northern USA at all when they could just move to Florida where it's warm?

<comment><USER25> While I like the concept of this article, I think there's enough mobility that this may occur. However, I'd much rather someone get a house than move to another city just to live in the street, so ultimately I'd hope more areas adopt something similar if they see this as effective.

San Francisco and Portland both SEEM to have a problem with destination homelessness, in particular, Portland was known to have strong city services and may have led to that.

Given, the job industry there is recovering from a major source of industry, so I could be massively wrong, but it seems like the case.

Ultimately SF and the Bay Area seem to have enough wealthy corporations that, if someone were able to support it, it _could_ totally work. Though I recently remember reading an article from the Slack CEO, where he justified taking a large investment round he didn't need because the VCs were _not_ going to spend it on homelessness.

Unfortunately we still incentize the wrong things in seeking profits. Obviously, we can't call a single case out, but in the end, there's enough funding here to completely fix it if people rallied together and the Medicine Town thing could probably be done at SF or Portland level scale.

It would be crazy expensive, yes, but would also greatly improve those cities.

<comment><USER26> > Ultimately SF and the Bay Area seem to have enough wealthy corporations > that, if someone were able to support it, it could totally work.

Isn't central SF - presumably the location that homeless people for various reasons prefer to be located in - so expensive that even software developers employed by these companies on salaries north of $100k per annum feel they're being priced out of it?

<comment><USER27> There is a unique area known as the Tenderloin which only has SROs, and is much cheaper.

<comment><USER12> The TL does not have _only_ SROs, and SROs do exist elsewhere. SROs are also not especially cheap; for example, the Adrian Hotel rents SROs for $700 a week ([http://sfhomeless.wikia.com/wiki/Adrian_Hotel](http://sfhomeless.wikia.com/wiki/Adrian_Hotel)). Of course many SRO residents also receive subsidies of various kinds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reminds me of this Washington Post article about Pathways to Housing founder Sam Tsemberis

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired- life/wp/2015/05/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired- life/wp/2015/05/06/meet-the-outsider-who-accidentally-solved-chronic- homelessness/)

</comment><comment><USER29> > _With money chipped in by the province_ , the city built many new homes.

You can temporarily improve anything by getting an even larger entity or group to pay for it.

The problem is this eventually runs into issues of scale.

<comment><USER30> I don't see it. $100k per person costs drop to $20k per person costs, they should want to scale this as fast as they can. They may have had to invest a little up front, or redistribute some of the costs back to where the funding came from before, but it sounds like this scales spectacularly and is a huge win all around.

<comment><USER29> Estimates of exogenous costs, and the implied savings, are usually highly uncorrelated to any actual savings of costs.

If this was as you claim, then an entire nation or larger region would not have to chip in to pay for a program of a small city.

That small city would just simply balance its own books and ledgers - <USER2> they are saving 100K with a 20K investment!

<comment><USER30> Thank you for sharing your perspective. I'm not sure that I agree. This is more than just some people estimating off the cuff, there are many studies in the US, and more instances and evidence world wide. Fortunately it's an experiment that is being run, so we will be able to see more hard data in the coming years.

[http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/cost_of_homelessness](http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/cost_of_homelessness) [http://usich.gov/usich_resources/research_and_evaluation/cos...](http://usich.gov/usich_resources/research_and_evaluation/cost_effectiveness_studies) [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2012/mar/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donovan/hud-secretary-says-homeless-person- costs-taxpayers/)

The biggest costs are pretty concrete. They are 'after the fact' emergency services like emergency room hospital care (vs cheaper preventative care) and jail (instead of housing). It's clear that these costs are higher for the homeless than average, but that leaves the question of housing changing that for this specific group of people (e.g. maybe they are just inherently more likely to end up in an emergency room) which is a valid question.

The evidence is that people with housing are more able to get the help they need earlier (such as preventative care), and are less likely to commit crimes out of desperation, because they have housing. This leads to a much lower rate of using these expensive services, leading to a clearly lower cost to provide housing vs concrete cost of emergency services.

That's why I believe this approach is both humane and effective. This is why I believe housing first is better for everyone.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you: the costs of a homeless person are reduced when we house them. There's a glut of evidence to support this.

What I haven't yet seen is evidence of the impact on society at large.

What is the impact on society, and those who have worked hard for their housing, financially and psychologically? While it may make financial sense, humans are emotional creatures very sensitive to perceived fairness. In the ultimatum game, people refuse 'unfair' offers to their own detriment. [0]

Do the number of people on these services grow or shrink over time? Free housing enhances the welfare trap[1], where people may be better off not working. It is not a silver bullet and needs to be paired with appropriate policy to be effective.

Britain reduced their welfare trap by raising the first tax bracket, fired half a million government employees, and now has their highest employment rate in history.[2]

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game#Experimental_res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game#Experimental_results) [1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap) [2][http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9475222/the- coalitions-j...](http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9475222/the-coalitions- jobs-record-is-miraculous-why-wont-they-talk-about-it/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Snowden and the NSA reflect a millennial climate change - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2013/06/18/snowden-and-the-nsa-reflect-a-millennial-climate-change/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=snowden-and-the-nsa-reflect-a-millennial-climate-change <comment><USER2> This bit:

 _Snowden himself is I think the most interesting part of this because he's a so-called Millennial. His ethics and allegiances are not those of his father or grandfather and certainly not those of the politicians and intelligence leaders he'd love to bring down. So the old rules, old threats, and old reward structures don't work with this guy, making him even more dangerous.

I think that's good. In fact I think it's the system re-regulating itself. We created Edward Snowden by disappointing him so. Our leaders, representing the old culture even as they presented themselves as representing the new, gave him no morally acceptable way to be successful in his own culture. We made him do what he is doing now. And if you think that's bullshit I suggest you think again because this guy has been very clear about his motivation._

There's something in this. The old 'for king and country' type stuff isn't as strong as it used to be. The average person views "people in power" very differently to 50 years ago. We all have mixed feelings about power now.

<comment><USER3> We've seen this cycle all the time.

New generation comes, brings down two generations worth of powerful influences.

It's no coincidence that all the revolts in the world are happening somewhat in the same decade. Arab spring, Turkey, now Brazil... and I don't even follow the news.

<comment><USER4> From what we have seen so far in the Arab spring the "progressive elements" are getting squeezed out by the reactionarys - Just like the Iranian Revolution.

This is what the secular protestors are worried about in Turkey.

Brazil is slightly different always wondered if the hardline clearance of the favellas for the world cup/Olympics would come back to bite them on the ass.

<comment><USER5> > _From what we have seen so far in the Arab spring the "progressive elements" > are getting squeezed out by the reactionarys_

And the profiteers in some cases[0]… but alas, this is nothing new…

[0]: [http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change- mi...](http://www.cfr.org/qatar/tiny-qatars-big-plans-may-change- mideast/p26143)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _So the recent news is bad for the cloud but it's also bad for the intelligence agencies, themselves, because they've been busted. Who benefits from that? The regular military_

Cringely, too, is getting trapped in a false choice fallacy.

Of course, there's the debate that's already been going on about how much beneficial information really came out of these programs.

But on top of that, he's assuming that if we want intelligence, then this is _the_ way to accomplish it. But that's not even close to true. We _could_ still use the established, Constitutionally-approved method of warrants; there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And that's not all. He's stuck in the modern era's shift away from HUMINT (human intelligence), focusing almost exclusively on SIGINT (signals intelligence). Sure, in the rest of the world it's clear that big data can yield lots of information. But again, babies and bathwater. It's not the only choice we've got, and despite the sexy allure of technology, history shows much greater returns from HUMINT.

And HUMINT _can 't_ encroach civil liberties anything like the NSA programs, because their scale is inherently limited.

<comment><USER7> > history shows much greater returns from HUMINT.

except that signals intelligence won the battle of the north atlantic and the battle of the pacific and secured an allied victory over the axis powers in the second world war.

<comment><USER6> But how much of _that_ was due to HUMINT?

 _The German plugboard-equipped Enigma became the Third Reich 's principal crypto-system. It was reconstructed by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau in December 1932—with the aid of French-supplied intelligence material that had been obtained from a German spy._ [1]

I guess we could go on and on over which was thus more important. But it must be acknowledged that, _at least_ , HUMINT is extremely important, and can't be discounted.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "King and Country" meant something once, when patriotism was a two-way street.

<comment><USER9> When was patriotism ever a give and take? Patriotic duty has always been at the expense of the individual.

"Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die."

<comment><USER8> Maybe, but I would say that civilization cannot stand on its' own, it will need defenders. And civilization has been good to most of us most of the time.

But I agree with the gist of your statement -- people in positions of power (or in your example, a position of artistic authority) constantly try to alter the terms of civilization to their benefit.</comment></comment></comment>


Covid-19 ill effects on Earth? - <AUTHOR> Is COVID-19 having any ill affect on nature, climate or Earth as a whole in any ways? <comment><USER2> Plastic [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dygn8a/coronavirus-and- si...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dygn8a/coronavirus-and-single-use- plastic-in-environment-earth-day)</comment>


At Y Combinator, Social is Out, Revenue is In - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/03/26/at-smaller-y-combinator-social-is-out-revenue-is-in/

<comment><USER2> A "Kayak for insurance" is a huge missed opportunity for AAA, who already offers this type of service to its members. Actually, AAA should really look into an accelerator/incubator for travel startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> The thing that is salient to me is that a lot of the successful ones now seem to be hardware-prototype startups. Hardware is the new software.</comment>


The Infinity Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/infinity.html <comment><USER2> The properties of the outcome of a limit function or an infinite series are known to be, often, different to any finite part of that series or limit. Check the SEP under "supertasks"

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-supertasks/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this machine equivalent to an oracle machine for the halting problem of turing machines?

<comment><USER4> AFAICT, yes.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which companies in your opinion could get as big as Google/FB in future? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I bet on chinese companies. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and others.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it will be a robotic company, which could make practical, useful consumer robots.</comment>


Google Pixel 3 pushes the boundaries of computational photography - <AUTHOR> https://www.dpreview.com/articles/7921074499/five-ways-google-pixel-3-pushes-the-boundaries-of-computational-photography/1 <comment><USER2> _Subtle shifts from handheld shake and optical image stabilization (OIS) allow scene detail to be localized with sub-pixel precision, since shifts are unlikely to be exact multiples of a pixel._

Does that mean mounting a Pixel 3 on a tripod might actually give a worse result due to _less_ shaking?

<comment><USER3> Yes.

Certain types of noise depend on manufacturing defects in each pixel.

Dark images are used to try to compensate, but they aren't perfect, especially at higher gains.

By having deliberate camera shake, this noise can be treated like any other thermal noise.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Will you buy a 7 inch smartphone? - <AUTHOR> Question mainly for Americans and Europeans, will you buy it?<p>Not much a question for Asian countries... It already seems to be the new trend here :\ <comment><USER2> No, I have an iPhone SE. I'll just buy a used phone or one the same size. If I can't wrap my fingers around my phone or forget it's in my pocket, no bueno.

</comment><comment><USER3> At what point does a phone become a tablet? I have a Samsung Note 9 at 6.4" and it is plenty big but if they make the bezel smaller and the screen bigger for the next generation I wouldn't complain.

<comment><USER4> > At what point does a phone become a tablet?

When it doesn't have a dialer app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a 6" and didn't particularly like it, mostly because it didn't fit nicely in my pocket. I now have a 5" and I like it much more. There's no way I'm going to 7".

</comment><comment><USER6> I need to be able to use it one handed, Samsung has gestures to enable this which is helpful but feels like a hack - I really dont need a longer phone. I feel the Nexus 5 was the perfect size for a phone - with pixel densities now I will be very happy keeping it at 1080p - no need for 4k in a phone!

</comment><comment><USER7> I might have in the past; all I want now is a smallish phone that can dock as a machine (Librem 5) or slide into a laptop enclosure and "be the guts of it". Maybe, the enclosure is like 80% batteries; idk.

<comment> toper-centage My wet dreams are about standardised convergence where any phone can connect to any dumb laptop via a standard connection (like a USB type C port) and "be the guts of it". Sliding in sounds ideal but phone sizes vary widely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As much as I'd love for this to be true (I've wanted a 7" low bezel phone since I got a Note 2) 4 phones in the last year match the criteria you define as a "trend" [https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?fDisplayInchesMin=6.9&...](https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?fDisplayInchesMin=6.9&nYearMin=2017)

6.4" remains the popular choice for new high end phones but these phones remain the same physical size as the 5.4" screen phones of older generations due to decreases in bezel size.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nope.

I went from my old phone to the new S10e and the smaller size is much appreciated.

I suspect that in 3 years or so, I might buy a folding phone that goes from say 5.5" to 9", so I can use it as a full tablet.

</comment><comment><USER10> I still want something to replace my 7" Nexus tablet.

Don't care if it's called a phone or tablet provided the specs are similar, it gets updates for a few years, and isn't too expensive.

<comment><USER11> Xiaomi Mi Pad 4

<comment><USER10> Specs look good. But sounds like no official Google Play Store and not likely to get any updates.

<comment><USER11> The firmware installed by seller usually is an ugly hack, so first thing you need to do is to install official Chinese ROM (English language is included), then - if you wish - Google services and store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You need to take Aspect Ratio into account. Is it a 7" 16: 9, 21:9 or 22:9 Phone, or would it be 7" 5:3 ?

On iPhone, I wouldn't mind a 6.9" iPhone XR Max. It will only be slightly wider and taller than iPhone XS Max.

But then the question is, what do we need it bigger? Apart from Playing Games where the screen is too small for control AND display, I would actually prefer the phone to be smaller most of the time. Social Media, and other consumption type of activity don't need such a big screen.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nope. I have an iPhone 5se. When it dies (hopefully not soon!), I'll be on the market for a similar sized phone. Don't want bigger.

</comment><comment><USER14> I want the largest phone that can fit in my pocket.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not really, mainly because I like to fit my phone AND my wallet in any pocket, and because I fear I am more likely to drop a bigger phone because you cant wrap your hands around a bigger object as effectively. If I want to watch a film I prefer using a laptop or TV. If I want to read a small screen size is OK especially with iPhone reader mode or outline.com.

</comment><comment><USER16> Absolutely not. I have large-ish hands (can play chords on a bass guitar) and find the iPhone 7+ chassis to be too big. I wish they had kept the SE size and split the difference between the two bigger sizes they introduced, like a 5.1" instead of a 4.7" and 5.5".

</comment><comment><USER17> I would definitely say no. But then again I once thought the 5+" was ridiculously large for a phone, and yet here I sit with 5+" phone which I'm quite happy with, so I wouldn't listen to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> After 4.5 years of ownership, I have just today cracked the screen of my iPhone 5s (by carrying it in my back pocket) I bet that with a larger screen it wouldn't take nearly as long.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd buy one that unfolded to that size or more as long as I could continue to keep the keyboard in the bottom left corner for one handed swipe texting and folded up it fit easily in my pocket.

</comment><comment><USER20> 6 inches seems ther limit for me. I can see even at this size that my pants get stretched because it's larger than the area that the curve of my thigh can get depressed.

</comment><comment><USER21> No. I want 4.5-5.5 inch phones in 16:10ish ratio. Give me that screen size with good battery life. User replaceable battery. All I need.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like small phones. Wife has a 6" screen and would probably go bigger though. She didn't think a 5.5 was big enough.

<comment><USER23> > She didn't think a 5.5 was big enough.

I have bad news for you fam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Only if it folds into a 3.5" smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER25> yes. because I mostly use it for reading and music. I do not mind the size, I carry it outside of pant pockets.

And it fits into my coat, or back pack (if in summer).

</comment><comment><USER26> I am not waiting, I have already switched to an IPad Pro

\s</comment>


Ask HN: What copyright should I assume for HN comments? - <AUTHOR>

Some of the stories in HN comments are worth keeping or citing in articles or posts.<p>Say I saw a comment that I would really like to quote on my website, how would you like to be referenced? Should I ask for permission? Use the comment and link to it and its writer? Is there a general copyright (CC or something like that) guideline for HN comments? <comment><USER2> It is the case that every comment is copyrighted by its original author. This is actually a big deal, because it is not entirely clear that (for example) someone is allowed to republish a comment thread in an altered form (like a book or magazine) without individually clearing the copyright to every comment.

You can do so if it is "fair use", for purposes such as criticism or education, but some reproductions are not "fair", and yet would still be quite useful.

Getting permission to reproduce a comment is often not that difficult – they have little commercial value once they've been posted online for free by their author, and they were presumably intended to be promulgated to a worldwide audience – provided the commenter is alive, has a contact address posted, and responds to that contact address. Unfortunately, none of these things are true in the long run, and the bitrot sets in surprisingly quickly.

(It would be fun, for values of "fun" used by actuaries, to figure out how many comments a thread needs to have and how old it needs to be in order to have a greater than 50% chance of one of the commenters being deceased. If only I didn't have to get back to work.)

If an author dies the right to manage her copyrights passes to her heirs. If you are incredibly lucky the author took the trouble to explicitly name a "literary executor" in a will, and that executor will be a single person who has been informed of the author's wishes and is happy to play ball. Most of the time we are not so lucky. The copyrights of many famous authors are firmly in the hands of their worst enemies. The rights to other works are distributed among a score of descendants and will probably never be sorted out.

This is why copyrights need to expire in a reasonable time. Unfortunately, they no longer do.

</comment><comment><USER3> All things written which include non-trivial expressive content are copyright of their original writers, absent some other factors not present here. You have a legal right to quote judiciously for the purpose of commentary. Many individuals on the Internet consider it good netiquette to provide a link to the source of quotes, both for attribution and to allow your readers to examine the quote in context.

The general practice of news media outlets when citing HN threads (this happens!) is "A user named $USERNAME commented on [Hacker News|an Internet forum|an Internet forum for hackers] that ..." I have yet to see one provide a link.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your answers.

I guess I'll proceed like this from now on:

(1) if I use only a small snippet of a comment, I'll reference both the comment and the author

(2) if I use (nearly) the entire comment, I'll try to contact the author and present him the text and how its comment is used. The only issue in this case is that critical commentary might not be accepted.

One additional argument for contacting/informing the original author is that it is simply nice and encouraging to see one's contributions making waves, something that will be much harder to hear about if the comment is only linked to.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Should I ask for permission?

That depends. If you use the entire comment or a substantial percentage of it, and if the use isn't accompanied by your own comments as part of an analysis or critical essay, then yes -- because that's not "fair use".

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

> Is there a general copyright (CC or something like that) guideline for HN > comments?

The general copyright rules apply, nothing special for HN.</comment>


Cliff Click Language Hacking - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cliffclick/aa <comment><USER2> Nice find.

Not much to look at yet but interesting notes & comments in there.

I love how one of HotSpot's main author's java style is so unceremonious and bare bones.</comment>


The Secret Surveillance Catalogue - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/surveillance-catalogue/ <comment><USER2> I have seen this discussion evolve from the early 90's from overwhelmingly freedom loving, rational and logical to now scaremongering, feeble justifications and often just self importance.

Isn't it time to have something like the Hippocratic Oath that commits developers to some ethical standards and not engage in activities that may have negative consequences for humanity in general.

The problem with Snowden is not what he has done but what thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of others have not. And the way the freedom loving media, the EU and the US has treated him apart from being shameful doesn't help potential whistle blowers.

Given what we now know about the level of sophistication and ever growing number programs at play there needs to be more activism against the groups and individuals who enable this. And also more oversight of the level of involvement of security agencies and other vested interests in open source.

<comment><USER3> Developer ethics are definitely an issue.

But if you want to really see evil, take a look at the infosec community. "White Hat" is effectively equivalent to government contractor now. Infosec people readily sell 0days to governments or fronts for governments without hesitation. They unquestioningly collaborate with law enforcement on victimless crime cases, so long as the money is good.

Yes, this is a gross generalization. But any doubts of this generalization can easily be remedied by attending RSA or BlackHat and talking to the other attendees. CCC and Defcon may be a slight step up, but not by much.

In any other community this wouldn't be all that disgusting, except the _fundamental_ roots of the community are ostensibly in creatively and intelligently circumventing authority - and now they're rarely more than collaborators.

<comment><USER4> > attending RSA

Colbert, during his talk[1] at RSA:

        If you're attending this conference, it is your business to prevent
        security breaches, and that means learning enough about hacks,
        exploits, and leaks to scare your clients into hiring you again
        next year.

        [very subdued "ha-ha-only-serious" laughter]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gGtVScrQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gGtVScrQo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, let's get this out of the way: will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidence? The only way we know about this stuff is by someone deciding to play outside the rules and inform the public directly.

The security services and police are wildly out of control and have been intensely surveilling and scrutinizing the content of innocent people's communications without any oversight. This clearly doesn't make us any safer, as there have been two terrorist attacks on US soil during the era in which these totalitarian abuses have happened, so that argument can be discarded.

In short, we don't have security (nor could we ever have perfect security), and they've taken our liberty without our permission. Disgusting abuse of democracy. How can people attend a political rally or do any political activity when they know that their attendance and discussions are going to be analyzed for weaknesses by a malevolent third party?

<comment><USER6> Some people (including me) simply don't believe that a right to privacy makes any sense. If anything, we believe privacy to be the cause of some of today's most important problems.

You people seem to speak as if the right to privacy is unquestionably good, and don't bother justify your beliefs. Surely, no progress can be made this way.

<comment><USER4> I'm glad your have been able to live a life free from problems such as stalkers, domestic abuse, or gender or sexuality issues. Other people are not as privileged.

It would be _nice_ if we could live in an open society, but the _reality_ is that discrimination and abuse still exist. Insisting that everybody forget about privacy is not only going to get some people _killed_ and many others _fired_. Insisting that privacy is bad is effectively telling any minority that they have to stay "in the closet" if they want to keep their job and not be harassed by the bigots in society.

That's just the practical issues. A stronger argument for privacy is best summed up by Jacob Appelbaum's observation in Citizenfour:

        What people used to call liberty and freedom we now call privacy.
        And we say, in the same breath, that privacy is dead.

We have the _freedom_ to decide what we want to disclose publicly.

Of course, you still believe in privacy. If you really think privacy doesn't make any sense, post your name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, and any email addresses you've used. None of those items are "secret" information (like a password). I could list a lot more things, but you should get the idea.

<comment><USER6> > I'm glad your have been able to live a life free from problems such as > stalkers, domestic abuse, or gender or sexuality issues. Other people are > not as privileged.

There is zero correlation between the values I hold in this discussion and what best serves my personal interest. I have the capacity to completely detach myself from my arguments in a way that leads to a lack of bias. I am morally and intellectually selfless.

Legislation should never arise from anecdotes or personal preferences. Would I be abused or stalked, the fact that transparency is inherently superior wouldn't change.

> It would be nice if we could live in an open society, but the reality is > that discrimination and abuse still exist. Insisting that everybody forget > about privacy is not only going to get some people killed and many others > fired. Insisting that privacy is bad is effectively telling any minority > that they have to stay "in the closet" if they want to keep their job and > not be harassed by the bigots in society.

There is no debate to be had about the fact that pain will be involved in the transition to a transparent society. Of course it won't be easy. However, it would be unreasonable to ignore the biggest problem of our time just because of a short-term friction. Like any form of investment in life, there are short-term drawbacks.

Human reasoning is weird as it understands a loss to be worse than a lack of gain. Loss aversion is the reason why we don't change things, which is the reason we can't get nicer things. People have no idea how much they're missing by trying to preserve "their" privacy.

We're all "in the closet" in some regards. We're also all bigots. We must force people out of their closet. We must expose bigotry. Only then will things start to improve.

> We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly.

Quoting the Bible would have had the same effect.

> We have the freedom to decide what we want to disclose publicly.

Actually we don't. Should I have the right to erase something from your brain because you saw something I didn't want you to see? Of course I'm not suggesting that we should coerce people into doing anything they don't want to do, but a person's actions shouldn't be protected by any external entity. At the end of the day, an honest person has a lot more to gain by exposing themselves to the world instead of keeping things to themselves. IoT, Wearables, Big Data, AI are all concrete examples of how data gathering can improve people's lives.

> Of course, you still believe in privacy. If you really think privacy doesn't > make any sense, post your name, address, bank account numbers, social > security number, and any email addresses you've used. None of those items > are "secret" information (like a password). I could list a lot more things, > but you should get the idea.

Privacy and Transparency are not games you can play alone. They're inherently social. The society is built on top of expectations of privacy. For example, there is some information that I legally couldn't disclose, even if I wanted to. Likewise, my identity is only secured by archaic methods of authentication, which completely breaks if my password gets known. Private key cryptography is not a technology we should build sensitive systems on top of, and it will quickly be destroyed once P = NP gets proven and applied.

Your question is like asking a person to not wear a seat belt in an unsafe car. I might not think that humans should wear seat belts forever, yet I still wear one when I drive my car every day.

Fast-forward 1000 years in the future. Total transparency. Ask a person whether they'd like to keep their name, address, bank account numbers, social security number, email address (assuming these things still exist which they won't). Surely, that person would refuse to make this information private as doing so would make his life miserable considering all the benefits this used to enable.

The least I can ask from people is to discuss this issue seriously, and not just accept privacy to be the solution to all of our problems. This whole obsession with privacy is just a distraction.

<comment><USER7> > I have the capacity to completely detach myself from my arguments in a way > that leads to a lack of bias. I am morally and intellectually selfless.

The easiest person to fool is yourself.

I've read Brin's Transparent Society as well, and I agree that a functioning society along those lines would be much, much healthier than we have now. However, this article is about the privacy-erasing tools used by the powers that be, whose very existence was secret to those on the outside until now. I'll surrender my privacy just after they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Jesus Christ that's invasive!

It boggles my mind how we as a republic can allow for this. Basically, someone attacked us a long time ago, and now politicians just have to say "we're keeping you safe" and we allow them to do ANYTHING they want.

This will not end well for anyone who is not in power.

<comment><USER9> > This will not end well for anyone who is not in power.

Or the other way around.

<comment><USER10> Historically the other way round, while much celebrated (4th July, Bastille day) tends to be the statistical anomaly

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu)

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

I don't know the exact dates that are relevant here, but as recently as the late 80s people were bucking totalitarian oppression via violence.

<comment><USER11> Bouazizi's fire ended up burning quite a few government officials, even outside of Tunisia.

By my count, it started six rebellions, prompted five government reforms, and Libya's Qaddafi got brutally murdered in public. Libya, Syria, and Iraq are still in a state of civil war.

So more recently than the late 80s. As recently as right frickin now.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The only surprising thing here is just how out of date the catalog appears to be when compared to the current offerings from these (and many other) vendors. Most of these products have brochures and commercials on the vendor website and social media pages they aren't overwhelmingly classified.

<comment><USER13> The lack of any information about the Hailstorm device is notable. Hailstorm is the version that can break 3G/4G connections, supposedly. Breaking GSM is not anything remarkable because GSM was designed on the assumption that cell site simulators didn't exist. But 3G authenticates the tower. Whatever Hailstorm is doing, it's not just taking advantage of a missing design requirement, it's actually subverting the crypto itself.

Unfortunately it seems there's nearly nothing public about it.

<comment><USER14> 3G uses the KASUMI or A5/3 cipher which was shown to be easily broken in in 2010 (two hours on a PC via a related key attack):

>we have actually simulated the attack in less than two hours on a single PC, and experimentally verified its correctness and complexity. Interestingly, neither our technique nor any other published attack can break MISTY in less than the $2^{128}$ complexity of exhaustive search, which indicates that the changes made by the GSM Association in moving from MISTY to KASUMI resulted in a much weaker cryptosystem. - [http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013](http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013)

This is actually far worse than cell site simulation because it is a passive attack and so is totally undetectable. You could just setup recording equipment, hide them in a van and start decrypting conversations. Given how much weaker KASUMI is from MISTY is seems possible this was a backdoor engineered by an intelligence agency. If so, it certainly tells the lie to NOBUS (no one but us).

Odd how the GSM association always generates breakable ciphers.

<comment><USER13> As far as I know the 2010 attack isn't applicable to actually deciphering 3G in the real world. From the paper:

"However, the new attack uses both related keys and chosen messages, and thus it might not be applicable to the specific way in which KASUMI is used as the A5/3 encryption algorithm in third generation GSM telephony. Our main point was to show that contrary to the assurances of its designers, the transition from MISTY to KASUMI led to a much weaker cryptosystem, which should be avoided in any application in which related key attacks can be mounted"

The changes from MISTY to KASUMI were justified by the designers, they weren't random. The reasons were to make it easier to implement in hardware, and more efficient. They explicitly stated they thought the changes wouldn't make it more susceptible to related key attacks. I am skeptical it's the result of IC manipulation.

Additionally Hailstorm is supposed to work against 4G connections and those use AES instead of Kasumi.

I suspect Hailstorm is not doing anything more sophisticated than jamming 3G/4G frequencies to force a downgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A society where only police have access to everyone's data is a police state.

A society where everyone has access to everyone else's data is free, but uncomfortable.

A society where everyone has privacy is either behind us, or in front of us, as we choose.

</comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't see where the checkout button was, maybe AdBlock had blocked that element?

<comment><USER17> It's a known tracking cookie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In terms of the complexity here, it is quite substantial, and for the lay person to cache all the multi-layered exploits in their head is unexpected. It's disgustingly complex and multi pronged ex-filtration of data that has no bounds.

This industry is 1000 years ahead of the common UNIX neck beard / basement dweller type who probably owns no more than $10,000 worth of kit, but uses that kit on orders of magnitude more advanced levels than the catalog presented here.

If it is the case that 'they' are 1000 years ahead of us in terms of ex- filtration and their budget is apparently limitless, then this allows the citizen to dream of many strategies to avoid, overcome, and render such ex- filtration useless.

One strategy which I will announce (a public one I will give away because bragging in public forums is apparently safe) is to compartmentalize a digital life. A frustratingly common motif is the "Person A stores their life on their phone" and thus we have a central store of data about person A.

Bad OPSEC, you cry? Well the lay person is not familiar with spycraft terms like OPSEC and such a term has only flourished in use in recent times because of Snowden. Infact a great many spycraft terms have gained widespread use, like OSINT for example, which were so rare, that you would be red-flagged as a spy if you searched for those terms, or were using them in everyday conversation.

All that is needed is for the lay person to acknowledge that unless a spy-vs- spy tactic is employed, then it really is a disgusting grab fest for all one's data. Annoyingly this can lead to arms-race type scenarios where a citizen attempts to 'beef up' their digital life, and the cost can be substantial, and potentially turning citizens into digital Winston Smiths, which is never good, and the surveillance can be said to have failed.

Compartment-ed computing is but one of a whole cornucopia of techniques and strategies to reverse the Panopticon on itself though...

</comment><comment> saiya-jin wait, random example for CYBERHAWK - "Takes 4-10 mins for download; Saved and dialed numbers, missed calls, SMS data, pictures, calendar, sound files all consolidated into one report" \- how is it possible?

<comment><USER19>
        > Cyber Hawk exploits over 79 cell phones

i would say: unpublished exploits and backdoors

<comment><USER20> Or the 79 cell phone models with no security in the first place. Lots of phones 10+ years ago didn't really bother.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The blurb at the front says some of these things are in use by US government, some aren't. So why does the government's internal catalog list things the government doesn't use? Who would buy those things if they weren't in use? I'm not trying to make a point here, I'm confused.

<comment><USER22> Police departments, US state-level LE departments, the wealthy and powerful, other countries and likely corporations come to mind

<comment><USER21> But the first two are part of the government, so anything they use is by definition in use by the government. Would the other groups get the catalogue? I would think not since it's supposedly internal to the US government...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a real orgy of authoritarianism, folks.

I once knew someone who has contributed to this catalog. Their justification for participating in this heinous orgy of totalitarianism, was, simply: "I hope your children and loved ones are safe". 'twas the last I had to do with them - I cannot be friends with someone who justifies the creation of these devices, nor their continued application to society. Especially when they invoke terror to justify the crime.

</comment><comment><USER24> 1 point by lolyololol 0 minutes ago | edit | delete

Having an open discussion about state surveillance is essentially impossible on hacker news given moderation policy, liberal use of banning, astro turfing and corresponding up and down voting and flagging that occurs. HN Mod policy is to claim they take such claims seriously but nothing changes and those who complain too loudly get banned

<comment><USER5> Can you provide examples?</comment></comment>


Highlight negative results to improve science - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02960-3 <comment><USER2> There's another issue at play here that's tightly connected to this one. Underpowered studies. Here's the process. I look elsewhere (e.g. similar studies) to make an educated guess about the size of effect I'm going to look for. Let's say I land on 2 units. Then I ask how many samples I need to detect a 2 unit effect with some low false positive procedure. I want to detect my 2 unit effect with high probability if it's there.

So you end up with three numbers. The probability you find something given that there's nothing, often 5%. The probability you find nothing given that there's something (something being a 2 unit effect), often 20%. The size of effect you're using in these calculations (2 units).

The smaller effect size you're looking for, the more data you need. The lower error rates you're looking to get, the more data you need. So you make sacrifices and accept higher error rates. You make optimistic effect size estimates (making your true error rates even higher).

Using p < 5% as a positive result publishing threshold is bad enough. Using power > 80% as a negative result publishing threshold is even crazier. That's a 20% error rate for publishing negatives. Higher if you used optimistic effect estimates.

What this all means is yes we should publish negatives, but a negative worth listening to is going to be expensive. In a bayesian sense, it's the difference between me spending little money to learn that the effect of coffee on mood is probably between -1 and 1 (a bad negative result) vs spending a lot of money to learn that it's probably between -0.001 and 0.001 (a more useful negative result).

<comment><USER3> Thank you for summarizing this. Overly powered studies are rare, and this is the primary reason that null results are not given the status as positive results do. They should go into a journal of negative results and boldly state a power analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reason #37 that I am no longer a scientist: most of my time as a scientist was spent attempting to replicate the positive results of other scientists and failing, because the work was not replicable.

I actually trust negative results way more than positive results now- it's a proxy that you can trust the investigator. I wish we had a Journal of Negative Results.

<comment><USER5> Such a fascinating take. When I was young I used to think that scientists and the scientific process were perfectly objective. As you get older you learn that human beings have human being problems. Those don't magically disappear once you become a scientist.

You see this even in highly objective fields such as physics, where much progress comes from the previous generation simply dying.

Our own ego's, as well as the factors mentioned in the article, create problems much more than you might expect when you're young and naive.

<comment><USER4> Is physics truly objective? I see people still arguing about quantum mechanics, and it looks like the safest conclusion is that we don't actually live in a straightforward, temporally causal world (prediction: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed- choice_exp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27s_delayed- choice_experiment), experimental support: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed- choice_quantum_eraser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed- choice_quantum_eraser))

Nobody's making progress because people are dying (we still see many vestiges of the Cophenhagen interpretation!)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I see your POV.

Think it depends where you're coming from. Physics is objective if by objective you mean we can predict how the wavefunction will evolve according to the Schrodinger equation.

(Depending on who you ask) it might be less objective if you ask: ''But what's REALLY going on?'' Then you start getting into the interpretations of qm and different scientists will have different views.

I think it's at least likely that we'll be able to answer that question in a few decades (or at least move the ball forward). The view of Everettians, for example, is falsifiable and there are experiments going on as we speak trying to achieve that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So how many negative results has Nature published lately?

</comment><comment><USER7> If studies with negative results are as valuable as studies with positive results, do the sales curves for reprints look similar for the 100 best- selling studies with positive results and the 100 best-selling studies for negative results?

<comment><USER8> It's not monetarily as valuable, but scientifically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Applicable across mostly everything, right? Relationships, business, Amazon product reviews.....

</comment><comment><USER10> relevant [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997978)</comment>


Basic income is the worst response to automation - <AUTHOR> http://www.realclearfuture.com/articles/2016/08/15/basic_income_worst_response_to_automation_111934.html <comment><USER3> The author makes a classical mistake, thinking that the displaced low-skill workers can and will gain high-tech skills. I think that's a complete pipe dream. Yes, millions are employed in IT and engineering, but we're talking about billions of uneducated or barely educated people who will lose their jobs very quickly.

If you want to see what happens when people go into IT out of necessity, look at the Indian IT market. It's full of "programmers" who can't solve the simplest problems, who hate what they do, who produce really low quality code. (And don't get me wrong, India has their share of talented and brilliant guys, but the average case is rather bad).

Not only that, we don't have the IT jobs, even if all of them did learn to code.

As far as I can see, welfare state is inevitable, as much as I'm against it. It's still better than to let people lose their homes and/or starve.

<comment><USER4> Consider a Trump voting factory worker who lost his job. There is nothing (besides his own pride) preventing him from taking up elder care, house cleaning, nursing or something similar. This is a necessary economic transition.

As the article notes, a BI makes it easy for this person to avoid making the necessary transition into the pink collar economy. The result is that our elderly are not sufficiently cared for, our high skill labor has dirty houses, our patients don't get adequate nursing care, and similar things.

Why should the elderly suffer without adequate care simply because this person's misguided pride is preventing him from taking on pink collar jobs?

<comment><USER5> At some point there won't be jobs to transition to, though. How do humans survive when they simply aren't needed?

(And how do we make them feel valued by society?)

<comment><USER4> If that day ever comes then perhaps a BI might be helpful. It'll certainly be cheap. Right now the problem we have is too little labor, not too much.

<comment><USER6> Evidence? 95 million adult Americans are currently out of work. That doesn't sound like "too little" to me.

What you really mean is "too few willing to do scut work for a pittance". That's an entirely different thing.

[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS15000000)

<comment><USER4> You realize that your number includes children, the disabled and retirees, right?

It's not an entirely different thing that people are refusing work because they prefer the laziness that government programs enable. That's the whole point. BI only makes this problem worse.

<comment><USER6> The only "children" on that chart are those 16 and up (i.e., old enough to quit school and go to work). While there have been increases in retirees in recent years, that's not nearly enough to account for the spike on that chart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the concept of universal basic income based on the idea that everyone who is a citizen, regardless of earnings/wealth/background, gets a set amount of money? Rather than the scaling mechanism based on earnings as stated in this article.

<comment><USER8> You are correct. The article is flatly wrong when it suggests that people would lose the UBI as they start making money elsewhere. It is not global unemployment insurance.

<comment><USER9> There are certainly UBI proposals in which at some point UBI does scale back. I don't see a good reason why it scaling back would disqualify it from being a UBI, and I certainly see little likeness to unemployment insurance.

<comment><USER10> I guess the justification for not scaling it back would be that it makes it more palatable for the people paying for it. If someone received $10,000 in UBI and payed $10,000 in tax it would be neutral but their attitude to other recipients might be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The average annual income for tech industry workers is about $100,000.

Does anyone know what "tech industry worker" means here?

> If the basic income will pay you $30,000 a year to do nothing, and that > subsidy goes away as you make more money, so at an income of $100,000 your > government subsidy disappears, you are paying an implicit tax rate of 30% on > top of the taxes you are already paying to support everyone else's basic > income.

The fallacy here is that not all taxes have to be on someone else's income.

> Officially, the poverty rate has only declined from 19% to about 16%—but by > the admission of the War on Poverty's own defenders, "If government benefits > are excluded, today's poverty rate would be 29 percent." That's what it > means to make the poor more secure in their poverty.

Uhm... what? I think the author has a wildly different definition of poverty than I do. In my book, poverty means "not having enough money to afford the basic means of living and participation in society and culture". It's quite irrelevant if that money comes from a state subsidy or from a loan. It just means that I'm dependent on the state rather than on an employer. But for him, state money seems to be non-existent as far as poverty is concerned.

<comment><USER6> "Does anyone know what "tech industry worker" means here?"

Yeah, that's so vague it's almost meaningless.

You could argue that the guy who unboxes stuff at Best Buy is a "tech industry worker", but there's a pretty significant gap between him and the guy who creates market models for a hedge fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of course, there are a lot of jobs that _aren 't_ done because they're economically unviable - from dance to ministry to full-time parenting. The author is working from a hidden assumption in most economic discussion - <USER2> all value can be measured in dollars. If you can't put a dollar value on it, it has no value.

That is, of course, bullshit. But it doesn't stop them.

Beyond food, shelter, health care, communication, transportation... what are our _needs_ , exactly? What problem do we solve by having most adults devoting the majority of their waking hours to something they actively dislike?

<comment><USER13> This is _always_ the problem. I get it, activity that generates additional wealth is always preferred but it's not the only way a given person can contribute to society.

There's a economically solid argument to pay people to sit at home and not commit crime, start riots, devalue property by being homeless, or anything else vast numbers of people with no options currently do. Paying for someone's apartment and living expenses is FAR cheaper than the economic value lost by them devaluing property and tying up Emergency Services.

<comment><USER4> If the purpose of a BI is to protect productive members of society from destructive bandits, why not just wall ourselves off from them? That seems far cheaper.

Newark, NJ causes a lot of harm to taxpayers who are forced to funnel resources to it. As far as I'm aware, bandits from Newark do not generally stage raids into Hoboken to steal resources from the productive folks living there.

Can you provide a back of the envelope calculation suggesting how an economically solid argument might work?

<comment><USER13> I could but someone beat me to it:

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2012/mar/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2012/mar/12/shaun-donovan/hud-secretary-says-homeless-person- costs-taxpayers/)

That was minus 4 years worth of inflation and even then, if you take the most optimistic homeless numbers versus the most pessimistic housing numbers, it's still only a few hundred more. Frankly I'd much rather my tax dollars went to that than a ton of other things we blow way more money on.

<comment><USER4> That's not really what I was asking about. I was asking about a comparative cost between a) paying people who would otherwise "commit crime, start riots, devalue property" or b) just walling ourselves off from them.

You're just comparing two different versions of (a).

<comment><USER13> Oh, I misunderstood what you were saying. My apologies.

Anyway addressing that point, putting aside the humanitarian issues of "if you aren't going to behave the way we want you to, you get thrown out of society and are left to presumably starve and die" the simple fact is that walling them off is going to be exceptionally difficult to do, just for the logistics and the construction required. Not to mention, even if you make the laws pretty permissive, I have a feeling you'd have a lot more have-nots than haves, and at the end of the day, numbers do matter...

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what's wrong with "if you become a dangerous bandit, society doesn't welcome you". It's you who described the poor as bandits that are cheaper to pay off than protect ourselves from, not me.

I agree numbers matter, which is why I asked if you had a ballpark on them. I guess you don't?

<comment><USER13> Woah woah woah, back up a bit. I never once said that all poor people are bandits. I said that keeping people homeless who then in turn tie up emergency services (because they can't practice hygiene, eat properly or go to the doctor until they're on the edge of death) is more expensive that you'd think, and that when a number of homeless people live in a given area that it impacts property values, not to mention the image of the community. I'm not saying they're malicious about it, I'm saying that's what happens when you don't have access to basic services.

This study shows that just giving people a home is not only vastly superior ethically, but helps these people get OUT of that situation and in many ways can be cheaper too.

<comment><USER4> You said we should "pay people to sit at home and not commit crime, start riots...".

I'm asking whether paying the dane geld is really the most cost effective solution to this problem. I think we've now agreed that it's not actually a real problem, and probably just a post-hoc justification for what you really want to do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Data driven decisions please, all others are opinions and emotion.

If there is a greater (measurable) net benefit to society with Universal Basic Income vs. our socialist agenda of getting into peoples lives more directly (food stamps, healthcare, low income and child subsidies)... then who gives a damn?

If you are unaware, or lacking a deep appreciation, of what money is (fractional reserve banking) then you have little, if anything at all, to contribute to this "debate"

<comment><USER15> What is the difference between providing UBI and Healthcare?

If there is a net benefit for the society if Healthcare is provided, will you agree with the government providing it?

<comment><USER16> Not the GP, but yes I would. The problem is that this is _very_ hard to demonstrate for several reasons.

First, most analyses assume that healthcare is fungible, so anyone who "has healthcare" is considered to be in the same boat. This is untrue. Most government-provided healthcare systems rank quite poorly in terms of wait times, fatality rates, etc. compared to private healthcare.

Second, it's hard to distinguish the benefit of government medical systems from the benefit of freeing the private medical system from legal red tape. For example, many people cite lower drug costs as a benefit of government medicine. This is not an intrinsic feature of "single-payer" healthcare, but rather a result of the fact that drug agencies in the US have the full weight of the patent system behind them in order to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices. In other countries, since the government both buys drugs and controls IP, the government always has the threat of removing IP rights to a drug if a company fails to provide a "reasonable" price, which simulates actual competition. One could get the same effect by changing the nature of medical IP rather than taking the drastic measure of publicizing drug purchases. _That_ is a utility analysis I'd really like to see.

Third, one must include the utility of having a choice. There are both psychological and practical components to this, but it's better when you're not forced to pay for a service you don't want. I know how good private healthcare can be; just go to a tourist hospital in Mexico or India. Truly an awesome experience. A super easy way to get all the alleged benefits of socialized healthcare (especially affordability) is just to deregulate the shit out of hospitals. A lot of Americans are scared about that because they think deregulation is synonymous with the triangle shirtwaist factory, but it's truly a mind-bending experience how good the healthcare is in medically deregulated countries.

<comment><USER15> > Most government-provided healthcare systems rank quite poorly in terms of > wait times, fatality rates, etc. compared to private healthcare.

I suppose that you can provide sources for your claim.

> but it's truly a mind-bending experience how good the healthcare is in > medically deregulated countries

If you can afford it, can the Mexican and Indian citizens afford that health care in "tourist hospitals"?

<comment><USER16> Not really interested in finding a study that happens to support that particular claim, especially since "quality" in this case is 100% subjective, so someone else could very reasonably disagree with me. All I can talk about is my experience; take it as nothing more than an opinion. The NHS sucks, Canadian healthcare sucks, US healthcare is good but expensive and overcomplicated, Mexican healthcare is great. I have heard from friends how Indian healthcare is similarly excellent, and French and German healthcare suck (unless, in the German case, you are a US citizen with US insurance, then they'll actually treat you well because they can get paid for it).

> If you can afford it, can the Mexican and Indian citizens afford that health > care in "tourist hospitals"?

That's completely irrelevant. We're comparing the quality of care at the same price point. Obviously poorer people in poor countries won't be able to pay for the luxury healthcare that your average first-worlder can. They also wouldn't be able to afford the kind of socialized healthcare we could afford.

Just to give you a price point, 2 hours with a doctor (not a nurse), 2 x-rays, and an ultrasound was under $250 in Mexico. No paperwork, no waiting, no bullshit. Happy medical staff, happy patients. The exact opposite of any red- tape-encumbered first-world hospital.

<comment><USER15> If you say that French system suck and Mexican system is great then we can't discuss anything

<comment><USER16> Which of the two have you used personally?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article is just relentlessly wrong. People did die of starvation and exposure after each of the revolutions mentioned. Working days did become shorter and welfare expanded massively after each one. Best line: "The future doesn't come that fast". How wrong can you be? It's hard enough to predict the outcome of multiple nonlinearities interacting. But it's impossible if you're not even looking. You definitely can't assume that things are going to turn out like last time.

</comment><comment><USER18> " _Yes, the transition can be harsh for some workers. But let 's be more specific: it is harsh for those who are unable or unwilling to adapt and develop the new skills required for the new work._"

Aye, and there's the rub.

The problem isn't economic, though, in the sense that economics can be separated from politics; it's political. No one really cares about the poor. The fact that people are unemployed is unimportant.

What is a problem is social and political instability. A large class of poor are going to cause problems, from crime to religious extremism to good old fashioned bomb throwing socialists. Those transitions cause that kind of instability, in spades.

Unfortunately, hand waving that away with a minimum income probably won't work any better than retraining does.

</comment><comment><USER19> Another critical voice: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic- income-a-sel...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601499/basic-income-a- sellout-of-the-american-dream/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Just because the predictions in the past were wrong doesn't mean they can't ever be right...

I'd argue that when machines replaced the most menial tasks in the past, people always had the opportunity to move upwards (in terms of required skills). Up until now, they were replacing either animals (horse->tractor, mule->truck) or people who were overqualified for the work they did.

The animals couldn't move to greener pastures, except for a few extremely well-adapted creatures who found new jobs as pets, or in sports. Humans in general were versatile enough to find something better, and the machines added enough free productivity to the system to allow us to consume what they were producing on top of the necessities previously consumed.

It seems plausible to me that we're getting to the point where algorithms start to replace people actually operating at the limit of their capacities.

</comment><comment><USER21> Globalised world makes services and goods cheap but at what price ?

I see people and countries wanting self sufficiency and heavily taxing or even banning mega corps. If production of goods will be so cheap that it will make 90% of workforce obsolete that will effectively leave countries at the mercy of mega corps that can afford r&d and servicing the automation machinery.

People are already fed up with eating meat that has been transported from the other part of the globe or just buying nails or some other basic commodity items that could have been produced locally.

</comment><comment><USER5> I heard a proposal that UBI should provide 85% of a solid living wage, people taking it may need to work some (or sell art etc) to reach their desired level of comfort.

Then people pursuing education would receive 115% of aforementioned baseline. The conceit here is that educating oneself is always good. This would, at least, provide some impetus to develop new employable skills.

<comment><USER22> I'm not a fan of UBI. Whatever this proposal is, I do not like it.

What incentive is there for real employable skills when sitting back in a classroom is going to give one more than what is needed for survival? People are more likely to take bullshit classes.

Real employable skills come from actual employment. If we're going to blindly trust that actual employment will magically provide 85% or even 115% of the cost of living, then we're making a dangerous mistake.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you understand that the proposal for ubi comes from the futurist idea that humans won't need to work anymore.

If you take issue with that idea: fine. Let's hash it out not in a basic income thread.

If you accept the above premise, then the notion of humans needing employment is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article makes a few false assumptions, I think.

1\. That everyone _can_ transition into new jobs. Whether it be lack of education, intelligence, or just being at an age where the brain isn't as plastic as it used it, it is _hard_ to find a new job if your field ceases to exist.

2\. He correctly assesses that this will be a slow transition (if at all). This will actually inhibit people from trying to learn new skills because they won't realize their job sector is dead until its too late.

3\. He assumes that it is a bad thing to not require work.

<comment><USER24> >> He assumes that it is a bad thing to not require work.

And that's probably a good assumption. There's wisdom behind the old adage, "An idle mind is the devil's workshop, and idle hands his tools."

Experience tells us that people who don't work tend to spend their time not in beautiful creative ventures, but in frivolous (TV, gaming, entertainment) or destructive acts (drugs, crime, violence...).

A person who works is likely more well-rounded (better at handling responsibility, working with others, contributing to society in some small way, etc.) than a person who instead spends his day watching day-time television.

<comment><USER25> You'd need evidence for this position...

<comment><USER23> His position is self fulfilling. We only see the negative folks he's talking about. There are plenty of financially independent folks who continue to work because they want to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>