Making Insider Trading Legal - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/making-insider-trading-legal <comment><USER2> > Many people on Wall Street felt that Bharara's crusade against insider > trading was recklessly broad: An analyst like Horvath might knowingly obtain > an illegal tip, but if he feeds his information up the chain to a Steinberg > or a Cohen, and they take his word that he is not passing along stolen > goods, should they really go to prison for that misplaced faith? Is it fair > to convict someone of engaging in insider trading if he didn't know he was > doing so at the time?

This quote is interesting. I know that in some countries (including my own,) dealing in stolen goods is in fact illegal, regardless of whether or not you knew the goods were stolen in the first place. The onus lies on the buyer of the goods to remove doubts of where the goods came from, which often amounts to simply asking the reseller for a receipt. If you're given one which is bogus, you can claim ignorance and whoever you bought it from would be guilty of fraud as well as dealing in stolen goods.

Now, I don't know what the law says about dealing in stolen physical goods in the US, but if it's anything like the above then why should illegally obtained information be any different? Shouldn't it be reasonable then to ask whoever is dealing in this information to ask for a receipt, as it were?

<comment><USER3> Which country is that? Does "illegal" mean criminal liability or just that the sale is void?

<comment><USER2> Sweden, and in the case of not knowing you were dealing with stolen goods but still found guilty it seems the worst case scenario is six months in prison. [1]

[1]: [https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K9P7S1](https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K9P7S1) (Text in Swedish.)

This wasn't always the case, but I can't quite remember when the law changed. It used to be that you could claim you bought the goods "in good faith" in which case you'd be free of liability unless there were other hard evidence to connect you with the crime – even if you bought that high-end watch off of some dude selling watches on the street out of a cardboard box.

These days however, it's much easier to convict someone (whether selling or buying) because of a clause that includes anyone who didn't _know_ but had _reason to believe_ the goods were stolen. It's easier for the prosecution to prove the latter, and probably gets rid of most "it fell off the back of truck" arguments. That high-end watch from that shady dude on the street would probably get you a fine these days. (Putting people in prison is costly, after all.)

<comment><USER4> No. If you bought a high end watch from a shady dude well below market price and without any papers, you could be found guilty of a crime (posession of stolen goods) before the law changed as well as after the law changed. Nothing has changed there.

However, if you bought a used watch at a reasonable price with some plausible documentation, this is where things has changed somewhat.

Before, if you had bought the watch in "good faith", i.e. there was no obvious reason for you to suspect it was stolen when you bought it, you were entitled to keep the watch even if it was later found out it was indeed stolen. Even if they later found the previous owner, he wasn't allowed to have it back. He had to go after the thief to get compensation (even if the thief is unknown).

That last thing is what changed. If they find out the watch is indeed stolen, you have to give it back to the previous owner, even if you bought it in "good faith". But you have not committed a crime, you will simply have to give back the goods to the right owner. Now it is you as a buyer that has to go after the thief for compensation (because he scammed you by selling stolen goods).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Insider trading does harm people, and does reduce liquidity. Many people who understand classical economics get this wrong [0], because financial markets are a very degenerate kind of market from the point of view of classical economics.

The fundamental error in all cases is to conceptualize insider trading as buying _from someone who would have bought /sold anyway_. This is precisely failing to think at the margin. It is as erroneous as saying "eating meat is ok because those cows would have been killed anyway". Put more technically, when you buy a share, you do so by shifting up the demand curve a tiny bit, with your demand, which in turn shifts the price slightly up and causes a seller to sell, who would not otherwise have. Market microstructure, together with the fact that supply/demand curves really form a single curve, can obscure this fundamental economic fact.

Given this, insider trading does cause harm to some people. And how could it not? If a person can make money from insider trading, then, to first order, someone else must lose money. There are some externalities from information revelation, but only a tiny fraction of these benefits go to the marginal buyer/seller who lost out because of insider trading.

How does this compare to public releases of information? Well unlike insider trading, public information can shift prices without any transactions occurring (or in practice, very few). This is because while insider trading only moves the price by the mechanism of moving the supply/demand curve, while public information is revealed to all traders at once.

So while insider trading does reveal information (which is a good thing) it does so in a way that reduces liquidity, because people don't want to be on the wrong side of insider trading.

I'll admit that the above narrative isn't watertight. I think it's the best analysis that can be done verbally. The only models that allow a meaningful discussion of welfare in the context of financial markets are so called noise- trader models, which explicitly model the (irrational) reasons why most people trade. The whole field is vastly complicated by the fact that theory predicts almost no trade in stocks if people were completely rational.

[0] [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-insider-trading- should-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-insider-trading-should-be- legal-2011-05-17)

<comment><USER6> You completely ignore the benefit of the more accurate price.

Let's say the price of a share with the inside info is 110. It is now 100. The inside trader does cause some volume that wouldn't have happened otherwise, and moves the price to 105 -- to the detriment of someone who would not have traded otherwise. But then every subsequent trade is at a price closer to the true one, a clear benefit.

It is true that greater information asymmetries will decrease liquidity/widen spreads, but is this a sufficient justification for banning inside trading? Also, information asymmetry is a matter of degree, not a binary thing. A skilled fund manager may have assembled public information (the "mosaic" view) that when put together is tantamount to insider info. You could use the exact same argument to ban him from trading.

<comment><USER7> But there's also bad incentives tied to it - with inside information, you're incentivized to keep others in the dark so that you can maximize the impact of your trades. Things like borrowing money to short stocks in a company likely to go bankrupt, while telling people to buy.

<comment><USER8> Telling people to buy stock you shorted is a bad idea. You're goal is for the stock to go lower.

<comment><USER9> Yeah but conversely you want to talk the price up _before_ you lock in your short so that you get in at a better price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If "material nonpublic information" is illegal to trade on, then the entire job of the intelligent investor ceases to exist. It becomes illegal to do thorough research.

So of _course_ the source of the information matters.

I'm sympathetic to the argument that it's bad to take illegally obtained data and pass it along in a don't ask, don't tell manner to avoid prosecution. But that Dell data? The guy's _job_ at Dell was to share company info with investors. To say the information was obviously dodgy is total nonsense.

<comment><USER11> > It becomes illegal to do thorough research.

Ridiculous. Having access to information others don't is privilege, not thoroughness. You can be just as thorough as you want, so long as others are not prevented from being likewise. Without that, capital markets cease to be open. That way lies oligarchy.

<comment><USER10> You can figure out information other people don't have through pure diligence, without privilege.

<comment><USER12> Required diligence doesn't make information non-public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Profs Fischel and Easterbrook were working on the analytical framework (efficient continuous release of information, if i remember), starting in the 80's: [http://www.law.uchicago.edu/node/514/publications](http://www.law.uchicago.edu/node/514/publications)

</comment><comment><USER14> If everyone with inside information could trade on it without fearing the law, they would reveal the predicted effect of said information via movements in the price of the security.

Therefore, free and legal insider trading would actually increase fairness in the market.

<comment><USER15> Nope, what would happen is that everyone without inside information would simply not trade in that security. You would not have a stock market because only people that know the company very well would dare buy stock in it. The cost of capital for companies would skyrocket and the US economy would tank.

It is amusing to me how when all these amateur game theorists create these hypotheticals to prove that insider trading is good, they always assume that there is an endless supply of chumps with an endless supply of money willing to take the opposite end of the trade. Well, let me tell you, people are not that stupid. Especially people with money.

Back in the dark ages, most people with money felt the best place to keep them was locked in a chest in the deepest room in a large castle. There was very little investment, and the dark ages were a time of extreme poverty. It is only through a long series of laws and institutions developed over couple of hundred of years, that we have reached this point of mobility of capital, which allows capital to go where it is most useful, and greatly benefits the economy. But if we remove investor protections things can slide back very easily and very quickly.

<comment><USER16> Have you actually looked into stock markets (in other places and other times) that did not penalize trading on insider information?

<comment><USER17> That question almost reads like a criticism, but I'd like to throw my hat into the ring here and say I'd like to know how markets cope in this situation. Do we have real world examples?

<comment><USER16> Lots of real world examples. Eg Japan and Germany still have lighter regulations on insider trading, and in the US and UK people used to trade before insider trading was banned.

Insider trading probably ought to be thought about when designing regulations ---but I am not convinced either way that it should be banned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only chance for the regular guy to make money for retirement is through the stock market. No pensions and polices like 401k and low interest pretty much leave no other chance.

I am fine if Wall Streeters rip off each other but with the regular guy pretty much forced into the stock market I think there should be very tight regulation and certainly no insider training.

<comment><USER19> What is a 401(k) if not participation in the stock (and/or bond) market?

<comment><USER18> That's my point. 401k pushes people into the stock market.

<comment><USER19> Ah. I misparsed your sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I naively assume that the only way to succeed big in wall street is to rely on insider information. The rules against insider trading only hurt those trading at home believing the playing field is level. But I don't know how it really works.

<comment><USER9> In a perfectly efficient market with perfect information there's no profit to be made. So to make money you either have to be more efficient - either by market-making where you do millions of small trades, or the kind of value investing where you just buy what other people are selling and vice versa and hold them for a while - or you have better information. (Which doesn't have to mean inside information. It's certainly possible to make a living out of good old-fashioned detective work based on public information - recent clever tricks have been e.g. tracking the tail numbers of CEOs' private planes to know when they're on holiday and/or negotiating a merger).

<comment><USER20> A perfect market, which is a stupid assumption, can indeed make profit. You are assuming that an economy is a zero sum game but it is not. Transactions are made because both parties come out ahead.

<comment><USER21> Economy _is_ a zero sum game in a perfect market. It is not a zero sum game because markets are not perfect.

<comment><USER22> This assumes (quite wrongly) that the same goods have the same utility across the population. It's similar to saying, in a perfectly efficient economy, there would be no trades. There are, because there is a benefit to that trade -- and there is no reason for that benefit to be evenly distributed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Insider trading is just one more thing that increases income inequality. Not surprised that the Supreme Court passed on this.

A little off topic but I am so pissed off that US Congress members have passed laws that make themselves and their assistants immune to being prosecuted for insider trading.

You know the system is getting more corrupt when such bad behavior is not even hidden from public view.

<comment><USER24> Hold on. It's not the market's job to correct for income inequality. It's the job of a market to rapidly incorporate information into prices, so that everyone who needs to participate in commerce can do so with a shared picture of the value of different things.

Income inequality may be worth correcting for (I sure think it is), but it does not follow from that view that markets should be distorted to try to accomplish that. There are plenty of other instruments we can apply to that problem that will be more effective and will harm the economy less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487042240045744893...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704224004574489324091790350)

</comment><comment><USER26> Unfortunately the headline is mistaken. Insider trading law was only ever intended to reserve for senior executives the privilege of trading on inside information. This latest interpretation is a confirmation of that purpose, not a repudiation of it. Bharara has been a true believer, but if he's going to stray from the South Asian beat, he's going to have to learn the _real_ rules.

<comment><USER5> What does "if he's going to stray from the South Asian beat" refer to?

<comment><USER26> Perhaps I'm influenced by those cases that the news media has chosen to publicize. Clearly Mathew Martoma would still be "guilty" under the newly- clarified rules. I really wonder about e.g. Raj Rajaratnam, Anil Kumar, or Rajat Gupta, however.

<comment><USER27> Didn't Gupta sit on the board of public corporations and slip Rajaratnam earnings information right after a board meeting? That seems about as clear- cut as it gets. Gupta had a clear duty of confidentiality serving as a high- level executive and the information was obviously material to the share price. You don't get much more material than quarterly earnings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not related to the actual article, but I got stuck on the word "coöperating".

Originally, I thought the "Umlaut" is a typo or a mistake, but, according to wiktionary, "coöperate" is an actual word! I still feel like pronouncing the second "ö" like in German though.

<comment><USER29> It's called a diaeresis.

Used in this way, a diaeresis tells the reader that it's pronounced as "co op" and not "coop".

[http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse- of-t...](http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the- diaeresis)

Most people would just write "co-op" nowadays -- I've only ever seen this in the New Yorker.

<comment><USER30> Just to add further explanation, it's the same reason we write naïve: to hint it is to be pronounced /na-yeev/, not /neivə/.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Same article posted yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10483032)

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry you didn't get upvotes out of randomness or timing but it doesn't help to link a previous submission with no comments.

<comment><USER31> Thanks but I'm not looking for upvotes, I just wanted to signal that the dupe detector isn't working very well since it's the same title and url and have been posted only hours before this.

<comment><USER32> Please see the FAQ. It doesn't count as a duplicate until the story has had significant attention on HN. If we didn't have this rule, many good stories would go unnoticed because there's so much randomness in what gets liftoff from /newest.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

Edit: One side-effect of our recent experiments in resuscitating solid articles is that it increases the number of reposts in the story stream. Given the number of comments we've seen about that, it seems users don't like this, so we've begun working on an alternative approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Bring back the Inquisition for these guys.

</comment><comment><USER34> Could an attorney chime on on this article? I'm hung over, and a bit fuzzy. Yea--Halloween!

"It's not that it will be impossible to bring insider-trading cases from now on; it's that, at a hedge fund, all of the legal liability will now rest with the analysts and traders on the front lines of information gathering—with the initial knowing recipients of a tip. (Incidentally, if you're a junior portfolio manager, this might be a good time to ask your boss for a raise?"

1\. This means anyone, such as a home trader, hires a worker who receives insider financial tips from and passes that information on to me. I can then make the trade, and profit. I am legally protected, as long as the employee didn't tell me about the origins of the tip? The only person liable would be the employee?

"With billions of dollars to be made in betting on the market, whether or not you see cause for alarm in any of this will likely depend on just how scrupulous or unscrupulous you think the average investor is."

Of course the average investor is unscrupulous. For as long as I can remember, the successful investors used insider information to make money on investments. Growing up they openly exchanged tips at church functions. Hell, the only real money my father made in the market was off an insider tip. My father didn't even know it was inside information. He just trusted his new father in-law.

My point is ever successful trader, I tangentially knew, used insider information to make a profit.

My second question to the lawyer. The boys at Google/Bing can see every every IP. They can map every IP to an address, and most likely a name. They probally know exactly who's who in all financial institutions throughout the world.

Could Google/Bing hire an analyst to scrape the data/information are pass that information to a higher up. The "Higher ups" could then make stock trades on this in data. (yes--I know Google only scrapes information in emails for "advertising" data.) 2. Could, if a search engine was combining IP to a name, address, and maybe where an stock trader works. Could The search engine put all that info. together and use that information to buy stocks? They might even call it big data mining for financial gain?

Or, would this senerio be invasion of privacy, and wiretapping?

(I have two questions poorly laid out in this mess of a paragraph. Sorry. I will number the sentences with my final question, as 1, and 2.)</comment>


Dark mode using CSS blend-mode technique - <AUTHOR> https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/friends-dont-let-friends-implement-dark-mode-alone <comment><USER2> This is probably a bad idea :P Blend modes are VERY expensive operations, running a blend mode over your whole site may set a few of your users computers on fire. I'm exaggerating of course :P but I wouldn't recommend it.</comment>


Interview: Caterina Fake of Hunch.com - <AUTHOR> http://trueslant.com/garyandrewpoole/2009/06/15/interview-caterina-fake-of-hunchcom/

<comment><USER2> And hunch.com is down... Bad thing on big press day.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with the pain of programming? - <AUTHOR>

Programming is often a very pleasant activity.
However, there are times this is not true, we as programmers usually get stuck with something that is complicated to solve.
That might be a bug, a non-trivial problem that we need to solve, or whatever it might be that we cannot solve quickly.
How do you deal with the stress though? <comment><USER2> If it weren't for that stress, I wouldn't be a programmer. It is that variability, and challenge that keeps me coming back and satiates my desire to problem solve. But I understand, in the moment, it is hard to step back and see programming this way.

The only thing I do when feeling stressed, is to physically step back. I walk away from the computer, go on on a run, or get some sleep.

It is often within this absence that the solution to my programming problem emerges.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand, but combine stress with pressure from your employer, deadlines and such.

And then you get real stress.

That's what I'm referring to, how do you deal with that?

I'm not saying I don't enjoy challenges of solving real problems with programming, I do enjoy them.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think you need to deal with it any differently as a programmer than you would in any other office/desk job?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't need to deal with it. I asked how most of you deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use TDD. No matter how complicated the task may be, I have found writing tests first really reduces stress.

<comment><USER5> According to your blog, you discovered TDD less than a year ago.

<comment><USER4> I fail to see your point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What your describing is the best part for me. Obviously spending days languishing in confused and lonely impotence is horrible, but no job (in my experience so far) has the same high of going from producing nothing (ie. program doesnt work at all) to producing a perfect working product in one second, one line, one moment of insight.

As I get more experienced I get stuck or encounter problems less and less, I think I just keep doing more challenging or unfamiliar work in order to keep chasing that high.

<comment><USER6> Also if I have to do an unknown unknown which could result in getting stuck for a while I will schedule loads and loads of time for it. Like make a reasonable estimate and then double it. Then it often turns out that you solve it in a fraction of the alloted time and you feel awesome! Definitely dont compound the stress by adding time pressure if at all possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I usually nap. More often than not, I wake up with a solution. Check this link for a good napping procedure [http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/02/18/hypnagogic- nap/](http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/02/18/hypnagogic-nap/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I deal with it with an old trick.

(1) Backing away. Pushing through stressed produces inferior results.

(2) Using a different constraint. That's the real trick.

Only I can't make myself pick the right constraint from the get go if I'm feeling stressed, so I stay stuck in a loop. I need to back away for the subconscious to reveal the right constraint.

It's as if I have to give up first. It seems it's only then I finally let myself attempt a solution I haven't tried before.

So ironically the way to deal with the stress of getting stuck and having deadlines is to manage to reach the point where, after trying everything, you sincerely no longer give a damn.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some of you guys are misunderstanding me, I also enjoy the challenge of solving real problems.

But mix that with the pressure from your employer and deadlines and you get even more stress.

This is what I'm referring to.

How do you deal with that?

<comment><USER6> That seems like a problem of your employer imo. If they understand software development they'll know that blockers and problems habitually crop up and should be expected and timetabled for. Putting on pressure to get stuff done hastily or creating artificial deadlines will just make things much worse + create a load of technical debt for later. In my experience manager types who have little or no experience actualy building stuff themselves think this is a good idea, 'they must be goofing off I'll, light a fire under them!'

From the simpsons... Hank Scorpio: I'm gonna leave everything to you. We're on a tight schedule. You keep them motivated. [he leaves] [his staff is busily working] Homer: [to staff] Are you guys working? Man 1: Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson. Homer: Could you, um... work any harder than this? Man 2: Sure thing, boss. [they do]

Also relevant if your self-employed. In that case you must not be creating realistic schedules for yourself.

If I'm doing some project with a hard _real_ deadline say, 3 months away. I'll arrange my timetable to have everything completely finished at least a week early cus I know, something or other will crop up at end end.

In conclusion perhaps scheduling/planning/timetabling issues are the route cause here. If you arent self employed you should definitely bring this up with your employer. If they are even halfway decent they should take this very seriously.

ps. I've only been working in software for a few years now but I have a good few years of experience working as an architect (building buildings) Architecture is all about project management and stuff _always_ goes wrong! + If you delay the project everyone sues your ass off!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like to talk about the problem with other engineers. It sometimes feels like you learn everything the hard way but it usually turns out that's how it is for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER10> The joy of fixing the bug/creating a solution for a non-trivial problem is enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> The complicated problems are not the pain to me. The trivial things are the pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not what I asked, see my other replies.</comment></comment>


DuckDuckGo Search Engine Erects Tor Hidden Service - <AUTHOR> http://search.slashdot.org/story/10/09/25/0242244/DuckDuckGo-Search-Engine-Erects-Tor-Hidden-Service?from=rss <comment><USER2> The guy in the slashdot comments complaining about the duckduckgo toolbar warning against his site is amusing. His legit domain has a warning on it because formerly it was parked (or perhaps worse, he doesn't say) and he refuses to go through any process to get this undone because he thinks the practice should be stopped. Well I think that's the main reason I use DDG sometimes, the basic index is worse than google, it's slower, but they filter out a whole lot of the SEO blogspam crap and that improves many of their results vastly (along with the bang domain specific syntax).

Google should do this too, or at least provide an option. I don't ever want to see a link spam, expertsexchange (yes I know scroll down, I don't care) type site again. Just like I don't ever see spam in my inbox, there is no difference to me between search engine spam and email spam. Both are cognitive overload caused by opportunists.

I worry about DDG's eventual revenue model though. As I still use google a fair bit and so paying for DDG would require a few more features. A DDG/stackoverflow/email/linode-like slice big enough for your irssi sessions could be rolled into a service with a focus on privacy/spamblocking and adblocking I think many would pay for.

<comment><USER3> > A DDG/stackoverflow/email/linode-like slice big enough for your irssi > sessions could be rolled into a service with a focus on privacy/spamblocking > and adblocking I think many would pay for.

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean. Are you suggesting renting out VPS's that provide DDG/SO/email access over an encrypted line, so your ISP wouldn't be able to spy on you?

<comment><USER2> Basically yes, it's just a bundle of the kinds of things a hacker type would like - both in terms of privacy and in terms of information customisation. So someone pays $5 a month, they have their https to a no-advertising DDG, an email address with them, an optional VPN link (cost more? depends on the economics) and jabber/irc permanently connected even when offline (available ram measured in 10s of MBs not 100s). So all your messages, searches, and browsing is nicely handled, advert and spam free. For people who don't want to pay, perhaps they could pay with tokens/karma from the stackoverflow-like part of the site to generate a helpful community.

The key is costing less than the money (AND the trouble) of doing the same thing through a VPS for yourself. However, I see lots of people here who in their younger days were using more raw versions of linux but these days they use Ubuntu because they realise they haven't got their whole life to be fiddling with things that _should_ be just working.

I've heard similar discussions elsewhere about taking a sheevaplug-like approach to making a product for people to have at home that does this. Goodluck to anyone who can pull it off, I will be a customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is no reason for news aggregators to link to other news aggregators that find interesting content. This is "blog spam." I wonder how many levels of indirection would be needed before the content disappears entirely.

<comment><AUTHOR> What should I link? The Tor hidden service? The /. post explains the thing a bit, so why not linking it?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo- now-o...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-operates- a-tor-exit-enclave.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. Too late, I guess.

Edit: Wrong. That post is about a Tor exit node that allows to search the domain duckduckgo.com through Tor. What the Slashdot article talks about is a new .onion server for DuckDuckGo, inside Tor, without Tor network at any moment:

<http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/>

You can visit the link above only if you use Tor.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Azul Partners with Eclipse Foundation to Brew IoT Steeped in Java - <AUTHOR> https://www.voxxed.com/blog/2015/05/azul-partners-with-eclipse-foundation-to-brew-iot-steeped-in-java/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to do some Java development, but it's commonly done with Eclipse, and I find Eclipse quite painful to use.

Someone suggested netbeans to me, I tried that too but it is just as bad.

What I'd like to see is something like CodeWarrior Pro 8. That's long discontinued, but FreeScale CodeWarrior is popular for embedded work; you can download an almost full-featured demo version from [http://www.freescale.com/](http://www.freescale.com/)

My guess is that most people who actually like Eclipse or NetBeans have big screens, or even multiple screens.

I do just about all of my coding on an Early 2013 Retina Display MacBook Pro. On that screen, the space for the text editor is quite small.</comment>


Create a certificate authority for local development - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/latentflip/dev-cert-authority <comment><USER2> Not the poster, but the creator: if anyone has suggestions on how to package this up for windows, or wants to suggest the best instuctions/test on linux(es) do let me know!

Also keen to hear suggestions for improving the security section of the readme so people understand the risks etc.</comment>


Introducing the McLaren MP4-X - <AUTHOR> http://www.mclaren.com/formula1/car/mclaren-mp4-x/ <comment><USER2> The best thing about this page is that amongst all of the techinial features, they snuck in "Targeted Ads" as a feature of the car.

</comment><comment><USER3> The video looks like a bad Tron parody</comment>


What bugs cause cloud production incidents? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/06/21/what-bugs-cause-cloud-production-incidents/ <comment><USER2> 112 high severity software bugs in just 6 month. It means one new firefighting every single working day. And equal amount of non-software high severity incident. That's just frightening.

Is there similar data on other cloud vendors?</comment>


Part of Ham Radio AMPRnet IPv4 Space Sold to Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://www.ampr.org/amprnet/ <comment><USER2> A response I saw on the 44net mailing list:

      On 7/18/19 10:57 PM, Majdi S. Abbas wrote:

      What's interesting about this is it was not an ARIN allocation,
      and the ARDC folks are not the original registrant.  This IANA /8 was
      initially delegated to a community, not an organization.

      So, to the individuals listed in the blog, that I've excerpted
      below, what do you have to say about this?

      Brian Kantor
      kc claffy
      Phil Karn
      Paul Vixie

I find it interesting how AMPR can sell these IPs vs leasing them.

The community (including myself) only learned of the sale when 44/8 reverse DNS lookups returned NXDOMAIN today. There was no consultation with the community. The decision was made in private by the four listed above.

<comment><USER3> It actually predates that even - rfc790 defines it as AMPRNET as part of ARPANET in 1981.

I spent a bit of time tonight trying to find the old pre-ARIN iana/isif Usenet group and failed. I'd imagine a list that predates ARIN would have some interesting history around this. ARIN's history has the net block assigned by IANA in 1992-07, but their records only show it in existence from 1996.

Additionally, ARDC (the nonprofit that currently owns 44/8) was only registered as such in 2011.

I'll keep looking when I have time.

[1] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc790](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc790)

<comment><USER2> Great work on this! NANOG has a good thread going (as one can imagine...). Good post here: [https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2019-July/102131.h...](https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2019-July/102131.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon, or "A very big company with a significant internet presence" like it states on the page?

Nothing of value was lost to ham radio, as no ham or ham organization indeed ever used or would ever use that much address space. I guarantee as this makes the rounds on QRZ a dozen OM's will speak up in fiery, yet misplaced passion, but really, this is a much better use of the addresses and gives the amateur community in general an absolutely massive boost.

<comment><USER5> I'm more concerned about the lack of transparency and where the proceeds from selling off a public resource are going.</comment></comment>


Segment Open Fellowship - <AUTHOR> https://open.segment.com/fellowship <comment><USER2> This is fascinating -- likely one of the biggest moves a company has taken to foster and cultivate open-source.

Working full-time on anything that isn't providing a reliable source of income is frightening and I think it's prevented a lot of people from developing useful tools.

Will be watching this!</comment>


HBO to Outsource Streaming Technology - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3625931/hbo-outsource-streaming-technology/

<comment><USER2> How can an office with 55 engineers cost $100 million a year?

<comment><USER3> 55 engineers probably have at least 10 managers, 10 QA people, 10 other miscellaneous positions.

They were persuaded to leave Microsoft sounds like, so they are probably getting paid a lot, especially the managers.

On top of that health care costs, hardware, and probably a really big Seattle office with free food and who knows what else.</comment></comment>


U.S. Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison.aspx <comment><USER2> One thing that always amazes me about the U.S.'s defense spending is how little they seem to be able to buy with it.

Yes, they have all sorts of cool gadgets, but the U.S. military can't even establish order in a primitive backwater like Afghanistan, and that's with help from a dozen other nations! The "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq (a.k.a. terror bombing, as it would have been called in WWII) was a tremendous display of military might, but what did it accomplish besides ensuring that there would be lots of rebuilding work for contractors and royally pissing off the populace? Any hope for U.S. forces to be greeted as liberators went up in Tritonal-fueled fire with that campaign. Old-fashioned boots on the ground with constant close contact with civilians might have helped with damage- control, but that's not the U.S. military's way. The U.S. military's way is to bunker down and send out choppers and mechanized patrols that shoot up anything that looks remotely suspicious, only to be blown to bits by an IED the locals would have told soldiers about if they had walked through instead. Iraq is still in the grasp of terrorism (5 killed today: <http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8545451>) and is more anti- American than ever.

The latest technology to be abused is drones. They're deadly. They're sexy. They're completely safe (for Americans)! It must seem like a coup to military brass to be able to blow terrorists into a hot mess of crispy giblets without sending a single human being within a hundred kilometers of the target. Meanwhile, civilians are killed, sovereignty of allies is violated, and enough anti-American sentiment is sown to more than make up for the deaths of a few terrorists in the long run. Then some American pundit asks, "Why do they hate us?".

This is just the latest chapter in the U.S. military's long obsession with technology. The Vietnam war didn't turn out the way the U.S. wanted for a host of reasons. Just one was that the military thought they could control territory by flying from hotspot to hotspot without bothering with permanent forces on the ground. A site would be labelled as a hotbed of enemy activity so the military would fly in several choppers full of troops and airlift in some artillery. Those forces would typically not stray from the safe radius of artillery coverage, so all the NVA had to do was get outside that radius if they didn't want to engage. The U.S.'s obsession with technology functionally handed complete initiative to their enemy.

The U.S. military needs to stop viewing wars as a proving ground for the latest high-tech killing devices and start focusing on results. Put the toys away and focus on what works. Get out of the humvees and apaches and walk through those contested regions, talking to people. Yes, some will get sniped, but this is the only way to establish order, and that will save more lives in the long run. Instead of spending billions on drones to kill terrorists in Pakistan, spend a few millions to make Pakistan want to hunt them down themselves. In short, stop trying to solve everything with new hardware and use some brains!

<comment><USER3> I am a bit confused at your statement..."little they can buy for it". Your post highlights lots of technology that is being used, just perhaps it is either not necessary or the wrong use of force. Two very different statements.

I think your comment was meant to say and back up two different opinions...that defense spending is not efficient due to lack of market forces, corruption among procurement and military personnel, and overall government overhead costs and regulations. The second point is that our military directions and missions are misguided. We are not making the correct trade off analysis for our wars and methods of warfare (e.g. trading precision of human operations and saving US soldiers lives vs. the inaccuracies of drone missions while saving US lives OR should we even do the missions in the first place).

<comment><USER2> I meant for "little" to refer to practical results. I wasn't trying to bring up corruption or inefficiencies in procurement. I _was_ trying to highlight the U.S. military's obsession with tech to the point of neglecting low-tech solutions that actually work. e.g. How much has the F-22 Raptor program really helped in Iraq in Afghanistan, and how much better off would the situation in both countries be now if that money had simply been spent on more troops?

The U.S. relationship with war is evolving in a difficult to predict fashion. Most nations operate on the premise that the best way to win a war is not to get into it in the first place. However, war serves a useful purpose for the U.S.. It gives them a chance to test out the latest tech, make their contractors some money, reduce unemployment, and give the latest batch of west-point kids their manhood rights. The U.S. will likely keep getting involved in wars periodically no matter how flimsy the pretext for them is. What nature those wars will take is what is really interesting.

Obama's "we can kill anyone we want, anywhere we want, anytime we want" policy really does put an interesting spin on things. If extraterritorial strikes had been commonplace ten years ago the Afghanistan war might never have happened. Assuming bin Laden hadn't gone to ground by that point, they might simply have executed him without the Taliban state's permission, just as he was eventually killed without Pakistan's knowledge or permission. Avoiding a war might have been worth the dubious legality of such an action, but it would have let a truly nasty genie out of its bottle (one that the U.S. later released anyways without stopping a war!). What will happen when other nations inevitably follow the U.S.'s example? Also, it's one thing to execute terrorists in this manner, but could the U.S. eventually pursue "regime change" this way? How many pentagon generals are currently chomping at the bit to send drones out after Ali Khamenei?

In the end , the root of the problem really is that war is good for business and the U.S. political system is a thrall to business interests. Fix that and everything changes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems a little orthogonal to HN... but the numbers are not that surprising when you have a huge raft of billion-dollar-a-piece "IT Projects and Systems" that are literally _incentivized_ not to ship, ever - and they hire no-show military officer retirees with a wink-wink-nod-nod to keep pumping money into the corrupt coffers of their consultancies. If normal citizens knew the extent of waste and fraud behind the "clearance" screen in the Dept. of Defense, they would throw up a little in their mouths.

<comment><USER3> Agree that better measurement processes need to be in place for government IT projects. At least your post realizes that the government is to blame as much (if not more) as the contractors (and thus the people are truly to blame for electing leaders who allow this to go on under their noses).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not a very interesting graphic with obvious deficiencies (e.g. not comparing defense spending to GDP).

Why do we spend money on Defense? The first answer would be to protect stuff we have (hence my compare against GDP example above) but that would be incomplete. The real value is in protecting the system that generates that value. Think of it in terms of a company. A companies value is in the system for generating additional value and is the reason why companies are bought or traded at multiples of their current earnings. Sometime extreme multiples for fast growth, high potential companies. If you look at the US as a value producing entity (which most folks do and still do contrary to most news articles on US brain drain) we probably trade at a pretty high multiple of our current GDP. Comparing are Defense spending in that light will make our spending seem like a pretty good deal.

That said, we clearly have reform and efficiencies to pursue in the defense sector.

</comment><comment><USER5> Well of course we should cut back on defense spending.

But not for any of the projects being done by contractors in _my_ state. We need those jobs.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, how would entrepreneurs go about disrupting the military? Half-silly, half-serious question.

<comment><USER3> Defense industry is too small and too regulated to create a meaningful market for startup companies. In addition, the needs of the military are often highly customized and niche.</comment></comment>


The EARN IT Act Violates the US Constitution - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates-constitution <comment><USER2> It's strange to me that technology workers are seemingly unwilling to unionise and hold general strikes to protest these kinds of policies -- if we aren't willing to take real collective action, we aren't ever going to have our voices heard. When Australia passed an even more ludicrous anti-encryption bill a year ago, the only real response by the technology community was a handful of blog posts (after it was too late to do anything about the legislation[+]) and grand-standing on twitter.

Why are we so shocked when politicians don't listen to us? We act like petulant children -- small bursts of outrage, but with no consequences for the people in power.

[+]: Most posts were published either a day or two before it passed through the House of Reps, and some were posted _during the day of the Senate discussion and passage_. I did submit comments during the comment period, but we all know that had zero effect on their decisions.

<comment><USER3> Unions exist primarily to engage with employers, not government. Governments are very weary to permit any union to become politically important for historic reasons. And any wise union thinks twice before getting involved in politics.

So you'd need workers to unionize (which they have NOT done to deal with their employers). AND for that union to pick the federal government as it's first opponent (and not it's members' employers!?). AND to get that all done before this bill becomes law (and in a time of epidemic). AND then for them to win an uphill battle with the most powerful political entity on earth despite the fact that ~80% of voters don't know what you're campaigning about and if they did wouldn't care.

I think the real question here is why tech companies (or rather their CEOs, founders etc) are not making a fuss. I was disappointed by the revelations from Snowden about how Google, FB, Apple, ISPs and everyone else turned over everything without asking any questions before it was even legal after sept. 11th. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt: they were afraid, they wanted to be patriotic, it's hard to say no when someone asks nicely etc. Then they were all "outraged" by the revelations. If they were really outraged, they'd be buying senators, hiring PR firms and making public statements decrying this.

The cynical answer to that is that these companies have made a calculated decision not to pick a fight most users don't (yet) care about.

I'd also be careful calling us petulant. Politicians ignore us because 90% of people are not informed and choose not to think about history when these issues come up. But the audience here are mostly members of the other 10%. Since we're overwhelmingly outnumbers, out voted and ignored, what can we do but be outraged, share some articles about self-service-encryption and then move on?

Sorry, I've been quite confrontational in this comment. I also think there will be a lot more "outrage" than action on this. But when the possible action is very limited... Unionization would likely be positive too, I just think it would be a small part of a large and complex solution.

<comment><USER2> > Unions exist primarily to engage with employers, not government.

Labor parties in countries like the UK and Australia specifically exist to act as union-supported (and funded) parties. Unions do exist to help deal with members' employers, but they also exist to allow for collective political action.

An obvious example worldwide is teachers' unions (though you could argue because their employer is the state government, the union _is_ fighting against their employer). Another example would be the strikes in the UK during Thatcher's time in office. Not to mention that basically all workers' rights legislation in most countries came out of battles between unions and governments, hence why they are so "weary" to "permit" unions to take political action -- because collective action works.

> So you'd need workers to unionize (which they have NOT done to deal with > their employers) [...]

There's a saying about the second best time to plant a tree being today, and that applies here. This battle is most likely already lost, but actively choosing to not learn a lesson from it (unionise and mobilise for the next time this happens) is simply foolish. Ideally the technology industry would've unionised 30 years ago, but you'll never have any strength if the immediate response to someone saying "we should unionise" is "even if we unionised right now we couldn't solve $current_problem". Even if that is true, maybe having that infrastructure in place will allow you to solve tomorrow's problem?

> I think the real question here is why tech companies (or rather their CEOs, > founders etc) are not making a fuss.

I hope by "fuss" you mean "shutting down operations until demands are met". Plenty of CEOs blogged about how insane the aforementioned anti-encryption legislation is (as they have in most of these cases). Looks like that doesn't work, maybe we should stop trying the same tactic?

> Politicians ignore us because 90% of people are not informed and choose not > to think about history when these issues come up.

If (hypothetically) Google shut down for a week over this or any other bill, it would not be passed. They ignore us because all of our complaining _is_ petulance -- it's not a substitute for action. That's the entire historic purpose of general strikes.

<comment><USER3> The last Labour (UK) government launched the Iraq war, started privatising the NHS, brought in student fees and cut benefits for working people. They supported measures far more draconian than this, including detaining people without charge for 28 days.

The party was founded to empower workers and unions. But that was in 1900. Things have changed a lot on the last 120 years.

>If (hypothetically) Google shut down for a week over this or any other bill, it would not be passed.

Assuming that's true, its irrelevant. No one here can turn off Google (or Facebook or whatever else) for a week. So no one here is being petulant are they? A few very rich and powerful people might be able to. I'm happy to agree they should do more. But 99.999% of people can do nothing but complain.

Edit: FYI, I agree they should get on and unionize. But that will be a multi- year (maybe multi decade) process...

<comment><USER4> The most recent U.K. Labour government _also_ reintroduced national minimum wage, raised the zero-tax threshold, and passed the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

I don't like _everything_ they did, but they did do various things which supported worker rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im with most of the tenets of the post, however its worth noting the US Government and its member states tend to generally ignore the fourth amendment unless you've got the cash to file a lawsuit.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/removing-a- gps-t...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/removing-a-gps-tracking- device-from-your-car-isnt-theft-court-rules/)

[https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/michael-bloombergs- stop-a...](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/michael-bloombergs-stop-and- frisk-violates-the-fourth-amendment)

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

[https://reason.com/2019/09/10/the-supreme-courts-next-big- fo...](https://reason.com/2019/09/10/the-supreme-courts-next-big-fourth- amendment-case/)

and lets not forget, the star of the 21st century...

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and- surv...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and- surveillance/nsa-continues-violate-americans-internet-privacy)

<comment><USER6> It's incredible how far we've fallen; the border exception is particularly terrible.

I was once driving along I-10, which is an 8-lane / 80mph interstate. CBP had blockaded the entire road, and were pulling every single car and truck off to be questioned and searched.

My truck had a canopy with heavily-tinted windows that could have easily fit a few people, but I don't "look foreign", so they waved me through without even glancing at my ID or vehicle. From the people who had been pulled off, it looked like their job was to hassle people with brown skin.

I can't fathom how it isn't a violation of the Constitution to (ostensibly) search every individual driving along a major highway. What ever happened to 'probabale cause'? Is living in the US considered evidence of committing a crime in the US nowadays?

<comment><USER7> Within 100 mi of a border it doesn't apply

<comment><USER8> I don't live near a border, I had never heard of this before, and I found a nice description on the ACLU website.

[https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border- zone/](https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone/)

It appears the 4th amendment certainly still applies in the 100 mile zone, and if it did not that would be _insane_. According to that page, 2/3 of the population lives inside the 100 mile zone.

The CBP officers _do_ apparently have more leeway as far as detaining a person roadside (see 'reasonable suspicion'), or boarding a bus/ train and the like, but probable cause is still required to search a vehicle, or arrest a suspect.

 _" An immigration officer also cannot search you or your belongings without either "probable cause" or your consent. If an agent asks you if they can search your belongings, you have the right to say no."_

In the past, I have successfully denied an officers request to search my vehicle at a routine traffic stop. He backed off immediately. It is easier said than done, being stopped by law enforcement is always stressful. But simply saying in a polite manner, 'No, sir. I prefer you didn't search the vehicle', is one of our greatest tools the 4th amendments provides us.

Officers _WILL_ ask and try to gain consent if at all possible. I suspect that most of the vehicles the other commenter saw being searched by the roaming patrol, either did not know they _could_ say no, or did not have the nerve to say no in a tense stressful situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dear Thomas:

Thank you for writing to me to share your concerns about law enforcement access to encrypted communications. I appreciate the time you took to write, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

I understand you are opposed to the "Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020" (S. 3398), which I introduced with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Josh Hawley (R-MO) on March 5, 2020. You may be interested to know that the Senate Judiciary Committee—of which I am Ranking Member—held a hearing on the "EARN IT Act" on March 11, 2020. If you would like to watch the full hearing or read the testimonies given by the hearing witnesses, I encourage you to visit the following website: [https://sen.gov/53RV](https://sen.gov/53RV).

The "EARN IT Act" would establish a National Commission on Online Sexual Exploitation Prevention to recommend best practices for companies to identify and report child sexual abuse material. Companies that implement these, or substantially similar, best practices would not be liable for any child sexual abuse materials that may still be found on their platforms. Companies that fail to meet these requirements, or fail to take other reasonable measures, would lose their liability protection.

Child abuse is one of the most heinous crimes, which is why I was deeply disturbed by recent reporting by The New York Times about the nearly 70 million online photos and videos of child sexual abuse that were reported by technology companies last year. It is a federal crime to possesses, distribute, or produce pictures of sexually explicit conduct with minors, and technology companies are required to report and remove these images on their platforms. Media reports, however, make it clear that current federal enforcement measures are insufficient and that we must do more to protect children from sexual exploitation.

Please know that I believe we must strike an appropriate balance between personal privacy and public safety. It is helpful for me to hear your perspective on this issue, and I will be mindful of your opposition to the "EARN IT Act" as the Senate continues to debate proposals to address child sexual exploitation.

Once again, thank you for writing. Should you have any other questions or comments, please call my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841 or visit my website at feinstein.senate.gov. You can also follow me online at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and you can sign up for my email newsletter at feinstein.senate.gov/newsletter.

Best regards.

Sincerely yours,

      Dianne Feinstein
             United States Senator

<comment><USER10> "Please know that I believe we must strike an appropriate balance between personal privacy and public safety."

Why do you believe that, Dianne? Do you disagree with the spirit of the Fourth Amendment? Are invasions of personal privacy only justified by probable cause, or is that not the case? What is your standard for the "appropriate balance"?

\</comment></comment><comment>----

Is it even worth assuming sincerity with somebody like Feinstein? Child pornography is a heinous crime, but not nearly as heinous as using child pornography as a lever for industrial scale human rights abuses. Frauds and/or useful idiots.

<comment><USER11> What's more absurd is the assumption that they can stop child porn or sharing of anything "subjective" in the sense that it's a bunch of bytes difficult to distinguish from other bytes without manual filtering. You just can't automate distinguishing between legitimate porn and child porn. Even if you could, you'll just drive sharing of such content underground, while trampling all over the personal rights of those doing nothing wrong.

If they really want to address child pornography as a problem, they would treat it as a social ill/disease and go after the users instead of the platform. The goal should be reform that minimizes recidivism because it makes it easier to find those partaking in this content. At least with something like Facebook, they have a shot at identifying those sharing such content. Make it impossible to share on a widely used and understood service like Facebook and people will migrate to platforms that are much much harder to police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So what? If the supreme Court refuse to heard the case, like they have with the Patriot Act and pretty much every similar case since Sept 11th, nothing will stop it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like to see legislation as similar to computer code, where the "computer" is society & the courts.

There are a lot of parallels: the actual laws that are passed often look like diffs explained with words (insert this word here, remove this sentence, etc), every concept has to be explicitely defined, and you have to think of all the corner-cases otherwise you get unforeseen consequences, etc.

Unfortunately, most bodies of law have amassed a huge amount of technical debt, and nobody seems interested in solving it.

The fact that most legislators are actually terrible coders doesn't help at all either.

<comment><USER13> This analogy is commonly drawn by programmers. Like many analogies it's imperfect.

Law in the Common Law countries (the UK, US, Australia, Canada, NZ etc) has two main sources: case law and legislation. They are both the law. Case law derives its power from precedent, legislation from declaration. But they are _both_ the law. Legislation read in isolation will not give you a correct understanding of the law.

More specifically:

> _Unfortunately, most bodies of law have amassed a huge amount of technical > debt, and nobody seems interested in solving it._

Reform acts are passed all the time, often consolidating caselaw, or consolidating legislation, or both. Just as often there's a process of cleaning up the attic and finding old legislation that needs to be repealed. Where I studied law, the _Law of Property Act 2000 (NT)_ included repeals for Acts going back as far as 1266[0].

But a legislature has limited bandwidth. Within this bandwidth there is a fat tail distribution of attention. Contentious issues frequently absorb legislative time and effort out of proportion to their size or complexity. This is not a matter of legislation-as-code, this is a matter of the economics of public choice and bargaining.

> _The fact that most legislators are actually terrible coders doesn 't help > at all either._

Legislation is typically drafted by professional drafters working for the legislature. Some comes from "model acts" provided by lobbyists, these too drafted by professionals. Drafting legislation is as hard or harder than coding. There are no debugging tools, no test suites, everything is done live in production with potentially unlimited consequences. Those drafters work with _immense_ care and often under absurd deadlines.

[0] [http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nt/consol_act/lopa200...](http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nt/consol_act/lopa2000198/sch4.html)

<comment><USER14> The court system is the team that applies patches or updates the configuration for the Society OS.

<comment><USER13> "Yes, but no", as analogies are.

It varies according to the case. Whether courts _create_ law or whether they merely _discover_ law is a matter of serious scholarly debate. Patching or reconfiguring is closer to creation and legislatures jealously guard that privilege. Courts must apply the implications of existing laws applied to novel circumstances. Code can crash, but a court must _always_ provide an answer, even if that answer is "you have wasted the court's time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's the EFF's job to advocate for a strong position on this kind of stuff, but it's a little hard to square those strong 4th Amendment claims with the existence of the third party doctrine.

<comment><USER16> Let's say a service builds a system with end-to-end encryption, such that the service provider itself is unable to decrypt and read any messages sent using the service.

How would the third party doctrine apply to that scenario? I haven't voluntarily given any decrypted information to the service provider. Instead, I specifically _avoided_ voluntarily giving them that information.

So, at least in the context that the EARN IT act may threaten end-to-end encryption (or may attach significant civil liability to adopting end-to-end encryption) I'm not sure I understand how the third party doctrine applies. Can you expand on that?

<comment><USER15> The trouble is that the argument isn't that pressuring providers to eliminate end to end encryption itself violates the 4th Amendment, but that, in the new scheme required under EARN IT, that when a provider _does_ scan your information, _that_ will violate the 4th Amendment.

So at the time this argument applies, you _have_ provided them readable information and the doctrine would apply.

To be fairer to EFF in the light of the morning, their argument actually does account for the third-party doctrine: it instead rests on the theory that courts would find EARN IT so coercive that the service providers should be effectively treated as an arm of the state. I take a pretty dim view of the likelihood of such an argument's success, but it's a game attempt.

The 1st Amendment case is probably stronger, especially given the tendency toward maximalism in that area by the Supreme Court lately... but I wouldn't call it _very_ strong. Defeating this politically is a much better bet.

<comment><USER17> This only holds water actually if you accept a program run on someone's computer is not 'theirs'.

I.e. it going into an encryption routine as part of the software package does not constitute me accepting the service provider's access to meta information about the transaction or to the contents of the original stream.

That's like saying putting something in a Post Office envelope/box is to accept that the post office can open and inspect it will. Which is patently ridiculous.

The legal system needs to come to terms with the fact that the usage of a program to transfer or transform information to the ends of achieving communication is in and of itself A) an act of speech, and B) qualifies as letters, papers, etc on light of the 4th Amendment. Further, the Court needs to do a better job at holding companies to account for informing when their tools are built in such a way that Third Party Doctrine applies. Furthermore, the implementation of that communication that Third Party Doctrine applies of should not be tolerated if it turns into some traditional template document that everyone tucks into something no one is going to read if we really care about civil rights at all.

It's worthy of ridicule the way we've let legal doublespeak undermine our fundamental civil rights.

<comment><USER15> The trouble is that there's already a significant amount of precedent here holding that the Constitution _doesn 't_ treat this kind of information passing through intermediaries the same as letters through the mail. Congress had to pass the Stored Communications Act to provide any sort of halfway- reasonable protections for email stored on third-party servers, for example. And it can be pretty _un_ -reasonable itself.

Encryption changes things substantially, at least for practical purposes, but the whole idea of EARN IT is to coerce services to disincentivize the kind of encryption that would matter.

The Court has made some baby steps in the direction of fixing the more "core" deficiencies of the 4th Amendment's protections given the realities of the modern world, but they're not showing any signs of rushing to go further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So do a lot of things our government does. I am glad that my monthly donation to the EFF at the very least is being used to push back.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's funny (to me) that people are surprised that Feinstein is so willing to trample over Constitutional protections while blithely ignoring the objections of the citizens she (in theory) represents.

For _years_ , this has been her approach to the 2nd amendment, and to be honest, most geeks have either remained silent, or applauded her actions.

 _Now_ she's coming for the 4th amendment, and geeks are up in arms (humour intentional).

<comment><USER20> Many people believe the second amendment is wrong and it does not require protection, but they still care about the 4th. The only thing I always think about when I see this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_..).

<comment><USER21> The Second Amendment was probably a bad idea when it was written. Its proponents made a bunch of assumptions that look laughable in hindsight. Today in the hands of a Supreme Court increasingly disconnected from reality it's interpreted as an excuse to let people who clearly shouldn't have guns at all have as many guns as they can buy.

"First they came..." is about _people_ not about ice cream flavors, or video games or constitutional amendments. Changing laws is a normal function of society. It is an anomaly (and a grave defect) that the US has become unable to even think of changing these particular laws, to the point where many of its people enshrine them as holy principles rather than recognising they are just laws of men.

It has been forever since America had judges brave enough to argue that something can't be lawful because it is evil, and so the EFF is obliged to frame things as "unconstitutional" instead. In a way that's America's legacy, the observation that slavery was evil pre-dates its founding as a country built on slavery, so it has always been necessary to its function to pretend that it's somehow important to allow evil if it's legal. In such an environment any potential judge with strong moral character could only be discouraged.

<comment><USER22> How do you propose the People should resist a despotic government. Supposing, as we must, the government literally becomes tyrannical, how do propose people resist it at that point?

That is the whole reason we have a 2nd Amendment. That's what it's _about_.

We went in with _everything_ to Iraq and Afghanistan and did we subdue them? No. Why not? Because they had guns, and with guns, they acquired further weaponery to fight us; No other reason.

So you remove all the guns from "people who shouldn't have them" and how do you propose people should resist a tyrannical government?

Serious question, I am not mocking you.

<comment><USER23> If the people were ever willing to use those guns to resist a despotic government, then why do we essentially have one now?

<comment><USER20> Because the easy way to rule over people is to convince them it's a good thing, not to force them. If you find enough people to agree with you and to vote, they will vote ever worse (the worst: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power))

<comment><USER22> Please, move to America... and bring all your friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would a republican-heavy Supreme Court agree?

<comment><USER25> If the ruling voting to overturn on these grounds were 6-3 I'd guess it was 4 repubs, plus Soto and RGB. If it were 8-1 I'd guess it was 4 repubs + 4 dems, with Thomas dissenting. Edit: Well, nah, it'd be some breakdown with concurrences in part.

<comment><USER26> Haha, RGB. 'The Notorious RGB' sounds like something people in the printing industry say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What is it about weak encryption that has these politicians convinced that using it won't lead to higher incidents of hacking and identity theft? We're already dealing with one blow to our economy, should we bracing for a second?

</comment><comment><USER28> It's amazing what you can get done in the name of saving the children.

<comment><USER29> Fear-mongering is strong. Look at all the freedoms we lost after 9/11\. Pedophiles and terrorists and porn are always the scapegoats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Like the EFF cares about free speech. Like they have showed up even once to campuses across the nation to defend the Constitutional rights of their ideological opponents.

Everyone knows the EFF and the ACLU are thinly camoflaged shells of their former selves, tactically pushing for whatever will advance their quest for power. Yeah, we know that if we want help defending our Constitutional rights, we go to non-psychopathic organzations like FIRE and Judical Watch and Project Veritas.

They defend strong encryption because it's a tool their side still needs, for now. Defending the Constitution and free speech is just a temporary tactic for them until they get more power, the sort of power they now wield openly on campuses across this nation and which you use to silence anyone who disagrees with them.

After that, they'll start talking about how old the Constitution is, how its from another, quainter time, and how it needs now to be put aside.... and how important it is the government oversee people's speech lest someone utter hatespeak .....and consequently we must ban strong encryption.

Or, in their own words: [https://www.eff.org/pages/speaking-freely-sandra- ordonez](https://www.eff.org/pages/speaking-freely-sandra-ordonez)

<comment><USER30> The EFF didn't change. You just went off the deep end. They don't care about your pet issue of alt-right 4chan stars not getting rooms at universities because there just is no right to get meeting space at public universities.

(And what a surprise that what bothers you most is the EFF supporting a woman)

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure whether the EFF changed, but the ACLU certainly has.

Once upon a time, the ACLU believed so deeply in the First Amendment that they fought _National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie_ all the way to the supreme court. You may remember the plaintiffs from the Blues Brothers movie, perhaps? The Illinois Nazis? Skokie, the town, was deliberately chosen because it had a large Jewish population, and many Holocaust survivors, yet the ACLU went to court to fight for these bona fide Nazis, and won them the right to wear their Nazi uniforms and their swastikas when they marched, carrying their hypocritical signs about "white free speech."

Can you imagine the ACLU doing that today?

<comment><USER22> The former President of the ACLU has decride the current positions taken by the ACLU. I believe she wrote a book on it.

I actually remember the Skokie march. We were kids. I loved the ACLU and so did everyone else I knew. They were like Free Speech super-heros. They were an institution, a force, feared and respected.

Now, yeah, well....</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SponsorBlock; auto-skip embedded video ads - <AUTHOR> FOSS browser addon seamlessly skips embedded video ads on youtube. Interfaces a global SQlite DB (can download a local snapshot) for user votes of what constitutes an ad.
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
Chrome and Chromiums: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-for-youtube/ajjollijmimolcncegpgkbilohbhjnhi
Author website: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting it, but I already made a post about it semi-recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778926)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your work!</comment></comment>


Twitter Blog: Soon to Launch: Lists - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2009/09/soon-to-launch-lists.html <comment><USER2> Twitter's features seem to be focused on continuously mashing, stirring up, and re-presenting the same old content over and over again rather than change or add things that provide _real utility_ to users and the platform. So now I can organize all the unorganizable tweets; big deal: I still can't easily follow a conversation through the shitty @reply link-hell. This is a much bigger UX nightmare than not being able to group the people I'm subscribed to. Another way they encourage rehashing the same stuff is by lessening the visibility of people's favorited tweets, thereby encouraging retweeting, which doesn't add significant _new_ content, nor makes available space for new content. With such a big valuation and so much money in the bank, users should expect more. Us armchair CEOs sit around and, rightfully, wonder at twitter's lack of monetization not because it's so distinctly doesn't exist but because twitter provides nothing else compelling to talk about.

</comment><comment><USER3> this feature to me feels bloatly and unnecessary.

The beauty of Twitter is in its simplicity and in users' ability to completely personalize their account. I'm compelled to access my account because I know the sources of the content I'll find there were hand-selected by me and relevant to my unique interests.

I was under the assumption that most users have issues with following too MANY people and having trouble keeping up with 'the stream'. It could be argued that it's the fear of missing twitter updates that keeps people glued to the service (and other real-time status services). If such is the case, do users really need another way to clog up their stream and pull attention away from their real-life friend/family's updates - the ones that "really" matter?

While I could see the Lists concept being useful to new users who'd like a jumpstart into the 'twitterverse', doesn't Twitter already suggest popular twitterers to follow during account registration?

It seems to me that Twitter should be spending its time adding more languages/international support as well as figuring out how to better deal with spammers - instead of building new features that only select power-users will take advantage of and that will confuse more people than they benefit.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting way to do categorization.</comment>


Major Takeaways from the U.K.'s Proposed Surveillance Rules - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/11/05/seven-major-takeaways-from-the-u-k-s-proposed-surveillance-rules/ <comment><USER2> >The logs will show every web site you visited – for example, bbc.com – as opposed to the specific pages on that website, for example bbc.com/news.

>This information, especially when accumulated over a period of a year, would still be highly personal, potentially revealing your political preferences, sexuality, religion, medical problems, and other details that could be used to draw inferences about your private life.

Would there be any merit in people installing a script en mass to regularly access a list of legal URLs? If the logs show that everyone was visiting VD Clinic, Text-files.com, pastebin, Catholic News, Muslim News, Atheist News, 4chan, pornhub, and so on regularly then surely it must make the spying less effective and also offer some plausible deniability?

This may be a terrible idea, just thinking out loud.

<comment><USER3> Looks to me like it will be a log of your DNS lookups.

Deep sniffing Host: headers from HTTP seems like too much work.

But I wonder how it will work with Proxies / Manually setting DNS lookup to outside your ISP?

I can SSH tunnel my desktop (or phone when using Wifi on Android) computer requests both HTTP and DNS to my VM on another network. It makes me wish I was interesting enough to be snooped on.

<comment><USER4> > It makes me wish I was interesting enough to be snooped on.

Oh, but you are. Having access to VMs on other networks makes you a sysadmin, which automatically raises flags[0] within NSHQ.

I've used DNScrypt[1] for some time now, which tunnels all DNS requests to a remote site over SSL. Coupled with a local DNS server[2] to cache lookups, this works amazingly well.

It will be interesting to see how this "snoopers charter" will be implemented, if at all. I get the impression it's mostly to legitimize (and scale out) what GCHQ and MI5 have been doing for a long time already, while adding some form and structure to it.

0: [https://theintercept.com/2014/03/20/inside-nsa-secret- effort...](https://theintercept.com/2014/03/20/inside-nsa-secret-efforts-hunt- hack-system-administrators/)

1: [https://dnscrypt.org/](https://dnscrypt.org/)

2: [https://unbound.net/](https://unbound.net/)

<comment><USER3> Cool, I feel important. Mood: lulz</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: JIT Compiler Landscape of 2019? - <AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News,
in a little project of mine I wanted to add some JIT. Without going into details, the goal of this project is to create the blocks in a DSP chain at runtime from the signal graph. Right now I'm producing compute shader GLSL code. The next step is to skip the GLSL entirely and directly produce SPIR-V.
In addition to targeting GPUs I also want to be able to fall back to CPU execution. The current kludge is glslc, spirv-cross and the system's C++ compiler glued together.
Long term I'd like to have two backends, one generating SPIR-V to load into Vulkan, and one that through some JIT emits host system ISA code.
I looked at a number of candidate JITs
- GNU libjit: small and just about the right set of features I think I need. Also maintenance status unclear (last commit was about 1 year ago)
- LLVM ORC: huge feature set, but also huge library and comparatively slow. Seems like overkill to me.
- Mozilla NanoJIT: In the same ballpark like libjit, but no longer maintained
Then there's the JIT of LuaJIT and it's companion DynASM. I got the impression that this JIT requires some retargeting for each architecture you want to support in your own code, but I might be wrong (have to re-read the docs). And then there's AsmJI, which is not a compiler, but a JIT assembler for x86_64 archs.
Did I miss something? <comment><USER2> \- if you are willing to do LLVM, you might look at Julia as (in some sense) a Lispy LLVM frontend. See: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBUrQId0HhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBUrQId0HhQ)

\- re LuaJIT, take a look at the RaptorJIT fork: [https://github.com/raptorjit/raptorjit](https://github.com/raptorjit/raptorjit) ... They have (for now) stripped out all targets except x86_64. lukego has built some neat tooling for understanding traces, and folks are working on a straight C interpreter to reduce the porting effort for new architectures.

\- also re: LuaJIT, [http://terralang.org/](http://terralang.org/) might be of interest

\- JVM is still around! Has some very interesting development around the Graal/Truffle combination.</comment>


Japanese Banks Are Planning to Launch J-Coin, a Crypto Currency to Kill Off Cash - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/608963/japanese-banks-are-planning-to-launch-j-coin-a-digital-currency-meant-to-kill/ <comment><USER2> Why does it need to be blockchain? It sounds like what Japan needs is credit and debit card infrastructure powered by regular banks.

<comment><USER3> The "need" for blockchain is likely better assessed by their engineers, who presumably have access to more information about their requirements than you do. Alternately, why not blockchain?

<comment><USER2> Whether it is blockchain or not, they will need infrastructure to process electronic payments. The last time I went to Japan I noticed a real lack of payment infrastructure that is common in the US (this may have changed in the past few years). In the US we have vending machines, subway ticket kiosks, parking meters all with credit card slots. Also, nearly every business accepts credit cards, from restaurants, hotels, and stores to farmers markets. When I stayed at a hotel in Japan I had to pay upfront in cash, pay for nearly every meal in cash, carry coins for vending machines, taxis and subways. At the time these were all things I would have used a card for in the US. At the very least they will have to get this infrastructure in place first before moving away from cash.</comment></comment></comment>


SAGESecured OS: Process Based Security for Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sagesecured-os-process-based-security-for-android

<comment><USER2> That promo video looks like a low grade 90's commercial, doesn't really inspire for security and trust.

I'm using Avast security, how will this do a better job, I think a server grade security is a bit of an overkill.

"are you tired of the security model that leaves you as the owner of your mobile devices/computer trapped on a security treadmill that requires continual updates to try to keep up with the latest exploit?" What? That's kind of what a security program is supposed to do, keep up with the latest threats and update their clients.

They claim that they want to go on a crusade to eliminating cyber-threats & invasions. I failed to see how you are going accomplish that.

This also fails to explain to backers what Process Based Security is and how its more effective than every other security protocol and applications out there.

ps. And a hack-proof Android? Isn't that an oxymoron, a hack-proof open-source OS?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is still still needed now that Android has SELinux implemented?</comment>