Ex-NSA Contractor Stole at Least 500M Pages of Records and Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-nsa-contractor-stole-at-least-500-million-pages-of-records-and-secrets-1476991747 <comment><USER4> > "[...] he has demonstrated absolutely no interest in protecting it"

> "The filing described Mr. Martin as computer genius who easily outsmarted > government efforts to protect secrets and said he possessed an advanced > understanding of how to encrypt messages and hide information in > cyberspace."

This doesn't really make sense and the wording also hints at sensationalism. It reads like a classic case of deflection, making the accused appear considerably more powerful than he actually is.

This, to me, shows a few things:

\- the NSA clearly has no clue who accesses "their" data, when, or how

\- the NSA will throw anybody under the bus to save face

\- the NSA, to this date, still refuse to put their own inadequacy in the balance and traded their integrity for the power to sustain the organization itself at the cost of everything else (including their original purpose)

Why on earth is this organization still allowed to operate at all?

<comment><USER5> It's hard to give a concise response to a comment going in so many different directions at once, but I'll take a whack at it:

* Should NSA be broken up? I think so. It's a mainstream policy idea. NSA has two conflicting missions --- IAD and SIGINT --- three, if you want to count pure research separately. Splitting up NSA would solve some conflict of interest problems, but would also add the practical benefit of minimizing the number of people who might end up with access to documents like this guy collected.

* Does that mean NSA is lying about the Martin case? No. They could be, but I would not put money on that. Prosecutors definitely shade facts to make their cases sound stronger. But it's less likely that in an extremely high profile federal prosecution like this one, they're going to entirely make things up. With Martin, we're talking about a case where someone hoarded extremely classified documents about ongoing operations against "known enemies of the US" (that's a term that probably has pretty specific meaning). He left them laying in his car. On the back of the printouts were handwritten explanations of tradecraft and terms of art.

If I had to guess, the most likely outcome here is going to be that we are talking about someone with very serious mental health issues who NSA had no business putting within 1000 miles of the information he managed to hoard in his house.

<comment><USER6> One of the biggest beefs I have with how Americans deal with the NSA is that they're cool with them spying on EU citizens. As long as its not domestic, you guys are cool with it. Its as if when you are not an American, you have no right to basic human rights like privacy according to Americans. Add to that they even did stuff like tap Merkels' phone.. spying on your allies is a serious faux-pas and wtf all rolled into one.

<comment><USER5> One of the biggest beefs I have with Europeans who take issue at NSA spying on the EU is the misconception they have that their own spy agencies aren't doing the same thing to everyone else: us, Russia, China, and other states in the EU.

More annoying about this argument though is the fact that the leaders of the most powerful EU states, regardless of what they may say to their own citizens, demonstrably benefit from and invite NSA spying. The German NBD, for instance, spied on Austria in collaboration with the NSA --- got caught doing so just last year. It's easy for EU SIGINT agencies to get away with this stuff, because they can launder the unpopular spying they want to do through NSA in private while "blaming" them in public.

If we want to have a world without spying, we should be honest about it. More honest than the conversation is today.

But we should also be careful what we wish for. The prevailing sentiment on HN is that NSA is more or less spying on behalf of Disney's copyright enforcement corps and the Moral Majority. But a lot of the reason we conduct foreign surveillance is _to avoid large scale armed conflict_. To allow us to head conflict off surgically, and to prevent intractable problems (for instance: unchecked proliferation of nuclear arms to countries that we'd have to invade to keep them from deploying).

I have real, bigly problems with NSA and think it needs drastic reform and completely restructured oversight. But I'm not in the (very large) faction that believes surveillance to be intrinsically evil. I personally feel fortunate to have made it out of the 1970s without disintegrating in a nuclear barrage. That threat is not gone; it is far more realistic than evil AI.

<comment><USER7> > But I'm not in the (very large) faction that believes surveillance to be > intrinsically evil.

I don't think anybody on HN had that impression.

> I personally feel fortunate to have made it out of the 1970s without > disintegrating in a nuclear barrage. That threat is not gone; it is far more > realistic than evil AI.

So, essentially you're scared and that's why you are ok with surveillance. What I don't get is why you feel that all this surveillance is helping to keep you safe from nuclear barrage?

Personally I'm against mass surveillance of any kind, it is against our collective human rights (which does not stop at the border of the US or any other country), also I'm by extension against any kind of surveillance of the private individuals of any other country by intelligence operatives of my country.

Finally, 'Europeans' and 'Americans' are not entities that you can compare directly, Europeans are typically the citizens of some country and those countries have very different capabilities when it comes to surveillance and usually a very different role on the world stage. You can't compare the intelligence services of say Greece, Germany, Finland, the UK and Slovenia with respect to their capability and you _really_ can't compare their role in Europe as an entity and in the world at large. States are not countries, the USA is a continent sized country with an extremely large federal budget when it comes to things like mass surveillance, military (aka 'defense', but it hasn't been used for that purpose in ages) and so on.

Finally, the reason that you'll find a lot of Europeans taking issue with any kind of spying on allies (also by their own intelligence services, which are most likely just as unhinged as the US ones) is that it isn't all that long ago that there was a large chunk of what is now the EU under the boot of an army of occupation, and that this was kept that way to a large extent by mass surveillance of the citizenry.

I sincerely hope you'll never be given a reason to regret your stance on being 'ok' with mass surveillance, but if you do end up regretting it don't be surprised by any lack of sympathy from my end, of all the people that I know that support this stance you are probably the only one where I will never understand why your position is the way it is.

<comment><USER5> You've moved the goalposts, perhaps without realizing it. I'm OK with signals intelligence. I'm not OK with "mass surveillance" in the sense that you probably mean it --- a giant data warehouse in Utah storing and indexing everybody's email.

The comment to which I replied talked about tapping Angela Merkel's phones. If monitoring Werner Faymann's phone calls prevents a war, I'm fine with that --- as, apparently, is Angela Merkel.

Meanwhile, for those of us concerned about dragnet surveillance, the answer is to replace the janky 80s protocols we use to send and receive electronic communications with modern encrypted alternatives.

<comment><USER7> > I'm OK with signals intelligence. I'm not OK with "mass surveillance" in the > sense that you probably mean it --- a giant data warehouse in Utah storing > and indexing everybody's email.

They are to all intents and purposes equivalent, it is pointless to be 'for' signals intelligence but 'against' a giant datawarehouse in Utah storing and indexing everybody's email the one results in the other.

Besides email being only a very small part of the picture 'metadata' in the form of who-calls-who, when and how frequently is gold and there is no amount of encryption that will protect you from that data being captured and stored.

In many cases the difference between dragnet surveillance and signals intelligence is as small as whether or not someone (not something) has looked at the data stored.

And that giant data warehouse with all that email exists, it's just that there are three of them right now, one run by Google, one run by Microsoft and another by Yahoo regardless of what intelligence agencies are trying to accomplish in less direct ways. Other email servers are probably so lightly protected in comparison to those you may as well consider them compromised.

Finally, I can think of several simple ways in which even encryption isn't going to make much difference in collecting that data regardless of what is happening on the wire, and I'm sure you can too.

On the whole, the trend seems to be to store more data for longer times on an increasingly larger slice of the world population, some call that 'signals intelligence' when it suits them, others call it dragnet surveillance because that is what it is.

We're talking about: email, web surfing behavior, mobile text messages, location information and so on.

Whether Merkel is ok with having someone else's phone tapped while probably disagreeing with whether or not her own phone is tapped I'm against phone taps without warrants by the country where people reside, foreign entities should simply respect the law of the land and go through the proper channels. That way we don't have to deal with another 'Belgacom' (oh, sorry, Proximus).

It doesn't matter whether you call it signals intelligence or mass surveillance, the key is that it is _warrantless_ surveillance, and that it is usually not your own country doing it.

> Meanwhile, for those of us concerned about dragnet surveillance, the answer > is to replace the janky 80s protocols we use to send and receive electronic > communications with modern encrypted alternatives.

That's going to make a relatively small impact, it will simply raise the bar for the various agencies to attack the network infrastructure and servers of the more interesting choke points as well as the originating endpoints (consumer computers) a little harder. The only thing that will really stop that is to make it illegal in some treaty. (Not that that will every happen, but it would be a nice change.)

I'm not sure why you believe monitoring Werner Faymann's phone would prevent a war or why it prevented one. Wikipedia has him currently working at the United Nations, what are you getting at here?.

<comment><USER5> Respectfully, this is like 7 paragraphs of stuff we already know we don't disagree about, followed by the incoherent position that foreign spying is only acceptable when the citizenry of the foreign target agrees with it.

You can have an intellectually coherent position against foreign spying entirely. I'll point out the downsides of that position, but I won't tell you your argument is invalid.

But don't pretend. Either be against spying, own the potential downsides, and/or argue that those downsides don't matter, or accept that spying is coercive --- coercion is built into the concept, which is why we have the special word "spying".

 _BTW: Merkel authorized and the German NBD participated in SIGINT surveillance of Austria, is why I pulled that particular name out of my hat. Austria is interesting exactly because nobody would expect that particular spying target inside of Europe._

<comment><USER7> > followed by the incoherent position that foreign spying is only acceptable > when the citizenry of the foreign target agrees with it.

Foreign spying on citizens of another country is not ok, period.

Domestic wiretaps/monitoring and so on are acceptable if and _only_ if a judge signs off on it.

Governments spying on each other is acceptable as long as it does not devolve into spying on the rest of the citizens of that country wholesale.

In other words: ordinary citizens should be left alone, if you decide to join the government you're raising the stakes and you should be aware that you will become a 'person of interest' for many other parties.

I hope this clear up my position in a way that there is no room for mis- interpretation.

I'm sure EU governments spy on each other and I'm also sure that EU government officials are aware of this particular fact if only because they themselves are _also_ engaging in it, so nothing of value was communicated with that particular example.

<comment><USER5> I can't even tell where we disagree anymore. I think we're mostly just haggling over terminology at this point. So I'ma peace out of this now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Odd to describe this as "500m Pages"

"Fifty terabytes is equivalent to 50,000 gigabytes. One gigabyte can contain 10,000 pages of documents, the department estimated. By extrapolation, 50 terabytes can hold 500 million pages."

I can't find the court filing at the moment, but I would be amazed if even a small majority of the 50TB were 'pages of documents'. Looks like he got away with databases to me.

edit: Found the filing [http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/nsa1019.pdf](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/nsa1019.pdf)

<comment><USER9> They're just describing the data in terms that most members of Congress can understand.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that nobody can understand numbers that big either. Nobody can really understand what it's like to be 4 billion years old or 100,000 light years across or 500 million pages of documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When everyone screams about security and why we shouldn't be snooped on one of the biggest factors to consider is that inevitably someone who has access to this information will abuse their power.

It's just human nature.

The argument that there can be some process, some security apparatus, or anything in this world to prevent that is just a pipe dream. Someone will abuse their power and ruin someones life that is why no one should have access and that way we are all better off.

<comment> hash-set Yes. I am caught up in the Chinese hack that stole all the .gov background check information last year. Not only did my pertinent information get stolen, but also everyone who I used as character references. Trust is dead.

<comment><USER12> Oh wow, I've been a reference for a few friends. Looks like mine was breached too. Incidentally I got the "looks like a state actor is trying to access your gmail account" several years ago, and I think the only value I'd have is as a friend/reference of some people in fairly sensitive government positions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The most fascinating aspect about this sort of thing in my opinion is the realistic size limit of a "circle of trust".

Considering the frequency of relationship infidelity, I'd estimate the maximum reliable size of a circle of trust at roughly 1.5 people.

Chances are intelligence agencies can use vetting procedures and internal processes to increase that number, but it's still fairly small.

Many major scandals get discovered due to a broken circle of trust... via both professional and interpersonal infidelities.

Human trust and trustworthiness is an act of loyalty and intimacy. Humans are notoriously easy to offend, challenging loyalties and disrupting intimacy. In the private sector, employees frequently jump ship to leverage trade secrets for their own benefit... not necessarily as blatant corporate espionage, but by having "several years of highly relevant industry experience" and applying for a job with a competitor.

Something like Bitcoin requires us to trust any one party very little, but to trust the system's behavior in aggregate.

The safeguards put in place after Manning and Snowden's breaches seem to be intended to mitigate harm, as does "need to know" security clearance, but I wonder if there exist (or will exist) more elaborate distributed trust systems: Suppose that instead of "need to know", everyone else in the intelligence agency department knew some information about what secret information you had viewed or saved that day, week, month... both magnitude and frequency, and frequency of repeated visits to document areas... some sort of footprint that offered an easy heuristic for social detection of deceitful behavior by fellow humans, rather than relying simply on harm-mitigation measures. This culprit would have had a very distinct footprint even if none of his coworkers could themselves access the data or see exactly what it contained.

Disclaimer: I believe that government classification of information ought to be avoided in 95% of the circumstances it is used today. There are reasons to do it, but all information should be declassified within 50 years of its initial classification no matter what, and classification of information for political or selfish reasons (not directly in the national interest) should be a serious crime akin to treason or espionage.

<comment><USER13> I won't argue against the idea that we have too much classified. It's expensive and counterproductive to try to protect things that are no longer important. That said, 50 years ago, we had detailed and effective designs for nuclear weapons - likely well beyond what's known by, e.g., north Korea. There are probably people alive who'd be placed in danger by the release of information from 50 years ago. Not many, but 50 is within the lifetime of someone who was undercover at age 25. I'm not sure that such a blanket 50 year declassification policy is defensible.

<comment><USER12> Those are good points. Even if the limit was 75 or 100 years for things like that, it would likely be possible to declassify all but a few "black box" details of the tech. That's the most defensible use of secrecy, since the precise way in which it works is not likely to be the basis for a conspiracy by officials against the public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unsent letter from the suspect in 2007

"Well, for one thing, I've seen pretty much all your tech secrets wrt [sic] regard to compusec [computer security]. Thanks. You made me a much better infosec [information security] practitioner. In exchange, well, I gave you my time, and you failed to allow me to help you . . .

You are missing most of the basics in security practice, while hinking you are the best. It's the bread and butter stuff that will trip you up. Trust me on this one. Seen it. . . . Dudes/Dudettes, I can't make this any plainer . . . Listen up . . .

'They' are inside the perimeter. . . I'll leave you with this: if you don't get obnoxious, obvious, and detrimental to my future, then I will not bring you 'into the light', as it were. If you do, well, remember that you did it to yourselves"[0]

Limiting the damage disgruntled employees can cause must be very difficult. Presumably drastically reducing the amount of information any individual gets exposed to?

[0] [http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/nsa1019.pdf](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/nsa1019.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> "The Justice Department released its 12-page document ahead of that hearing, detailing new allegations... suggesting he had become heavily armed, accumulating 10 weapons"

10 weapons! It's always funny seeing what coastal types consider "heavily armed", as opposed to "a starter collection".

In my experience, the more guns one owns, the likelier they are to be a hobbyist or collector. It's not like you wield one in each limb and six in your teeth; more != more dangerous.

<comment><USER15> A loaded pistol was found in his car.. the same car which had documents stashed. The majority of weapons were unregistered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And this is just the one the found out about, mainly because of ShadowBrokers' public announcement that they have NSA's tools, which prompted the NSA to investigate the issue. But how many of NSA's employees may be selling NSA data silently to others and have been more careful about it?

Same thing with Snowden. They only found out about it when he went public with it. But they want us to trust them to store all of our data.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps the DNI should consider offering some form of clemency for other people who brought "homework" out of their SCIF to turn themselves in.

<comment><USER18> This may be a good idea, but I think the DNI would be rather embarrassed if the true magnitude of the 'homework' problem were revealed.

<comment><USER17> It doesn't have to become public. It probably shouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is everyone working in IT portrayed in press and courts as a "computer genius"?

<comment><USER20> There are 2 factors here. 1) If he's simply a mediocre IT jockey and then his NSA contractor status resulted in him pulling in $200+k a year, that's a bad look. 2) If he's average and he somehow managed to defeat the NSA at what the NSA does, that's also a bad look.

Now it's likely a policy problem, that contractors can access these quantities of data with access to physically removable media and such seems like a policy problem. On the other hand if he's some kind of computer super genius then he was given a little trust and took advantage of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it wasn't 500M pages, but 50TB of data; for some reason the press (or whoever is feeding them) is really set on demonizing this guy and making him sound as sketchy as possible.

See this discussion from a couple weeks ago where HN decided Martin was basically an eccentric guy who liked to take his work home. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12645210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12645210)

<comment><USER22> It was never written that he actually stole 50TB if data, only that they found several hard drives, computers, backups they need to investigate. If he was for example a movie or music collector, there wouldn't much room on these drives for actual stolen data.

50TB (a few hard drives worth of data) looks very sensationalistic, but is most likely not. Code is not big.

<comment><USER21> I think we are saying the same thing.

The court filing specifically noted "investigators seized thousands of pages of documents and dozens of computers and other digital storage devices and media containing, conservatively, fifty terabytes of information".

It doesn't say whether that 50TB was all classified govt docs or just that they seized his personal computing equipment to investigate whether it contained any classified data.

My point was that nowhere does it say 500M pages of documents; the press seems to have conflated the 50TB to mean approximately 500M pages (which sounds even bigger).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> According to my simplistic math using standard 10x12x15 inch boxes of pages where each box has 5000 sheets, it's about a 15x15x15 meter cube.

15 meters is approximately a 5 story building.

If it's 16lb paper, then about 3,828 metric tonnes.

Obviously the weight of the paper is a huge factor here.

Another way of looking at it: if there are 260 days in a year (not counting weekends), then over a period of, say, 10 years, it amounts to 1.47 metric ton per day.

</comment><comment><USER24> From the US attorney's response to Mr. Martin's attorney's motion for a detention hearing:

> The Defendant also had encrypted communication and cloud storage apps > installed on his mobile device.

...like...their browser linked against libopenssl and they had the stock Google Drive or Apple iCloud apps?

> The antipathy demonstrated in this letter raises grave concerns about the > Defendant's intentions and potential actions should he be released

The letter strikes me as having been written by a person who is fairly odd, but possibly has good motives. It's hard to understand the context but if indeed it was signed by "Hal" and somewhere in/on/near his workplace it's suspicious indeed.

</comment><comment><USER25> Mirror for those who cannot skip the paywall: [http://archive.is/uS6or](http://archive.is/uS6or)

</comment><comment><USER26> >Defendant has access to highly classified information, whether in his head, in still-hidden physical locations, or stored in cyberspace—and he has demonstrated absolutely no interest in protecting it," the Justice Department said.

Go on...

>"This makes the Defendant a prime target, and his release would seriously endanger the safety of the country and potentially even the Defendant himself."

That seems reasonable.

>Prosecutors in August arrested and charged Harold "Hal" Martin III, of Glen Burnie, Md., with theft of government property and unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents.

Hang on: they're indicting him? What Justice Department is this?

>The new filing said the Justice Department would likely charge Mr. Martin with additional crimes, including violating the Espionage Act, an offense that carries much stiffer penalties than the current charges.

I thought we already decided this was no big deal. What is going on here?

</comment><comment><USER27> I wasn't able to read the WSJ article due to paywall but I read another probably similar piece. At what point would or should Booz Allen Hamilton lose their "preferred contractor status" with the NSA? I mean this is the second one that we at least know about. Perhaps the NSA should rethink hiring contractors?

</comment><comment><USER28> What the hell are these people doing over there? The NSA really needs a "security section" that actively monitors the usage of resources of its employees. That someone could be siphoning terabytes of classified information over the span of decades is just beyond comprehension.

<comment><USER29> > That someone could be siphoning terabytes of classified information over the > span of decades is just beyond comprehension.

I don't know how ridiculous this is. Security is an ever-evolving field, and a lot of these stringent controls weren't necessarily in place decades ago - <USER2> example, what fraction of places were banning USB flash drives even 10 years ago?

The NSA isn't superhuman, and security is hard. I have no love for the agency, but it's not like only complete morons are susceptible to deep insiders exfiltrating data over the course of decades.

<comment><USER30> > and security is hard.

Security experts act like it's very trivial and basic to get a fully secure shop up and running if we simply do everything they say. When something fails, the security expert gets fired, and a new one comes on board who will inevitably call the old one "incompetent" and claim that super basic and trivial things were not being followed. Repeat ad infinitum. Some organizations/companies are more vulnerable than others, but I have yet to see one that cannot be compromised by a determined/patient adversary.

<comment><USER31> When a rebuttal starts with a strawman, what are the odds it's going to improve from that point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Full text because stupid paywall and web workaround is lame solution:

WASHINGTON—A former National Security Agency contractor amassed at least 500 million pages of government records, including top-secret information about military operations, by stealing documents bit by bit over two decades, the Justice Department alleged in a court filing submitted Thursday.

Prosecutors in August arrested and charged Harold "Hal" Martin III, of Glen Burnie, Md., with theft of government property and unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents. The case was kept under seal until earlier this month, when some details became public.

The new filing said the Justice Department would likely charge Mr. Martin with additional crimes, including violating the Espionage Act, an offense that carries much stiffer penalties than the current charges.

Mr. Martin's attorney, Jim Wyda, declined to comment on the new filing. In the past, he has said that Mr. Martin is a patriotic American who has served his country.

A federal court has scheduled a hearing for Friday to consider whether Mr. Martin should be released while awaiting trial. The Justice Department released its 12-page document ahead of that hearing, detailing new allegations about the scope of Mr. Martin's alleged theft and suggesting he had become heavily armed, accumulating 10 weapons, and had taken sophisticated steps to cover his tracks.

Some former associates had described Mr. Martin as a harmless hoarder who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The new government filing paints a different picture, raising questions about his motives and suggesting he was capable of sharing U.S. secrets with the nation's adversaries and potentially putting American lives at risk.

The document doesn't, however, answer one of the big questions in the case: whether Mr. Martin shared any of the stolen classified information with another person or another country. The document offers no evidence that he did but suggested Mr. Martin had the capacity to do so. The Maryland home of Harold Martin III, a former NSA contractor who the Justice Department alleges stole millions of pages of government records. ENLARGE The Maryland home of Harold Martin III, a former NSA contractor who the Justice Department alleges stole millions of pages of government records. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Mr. Martin, a former Naval officer, was most recently a contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. , a job that placed him inside some of the government's most secretive programs inside the NSA and the Pentagon. The Justice Department said that a search of his home and his automobile uncovered "thousands of pages of documents and dozens of computers and other storage devices and media containing, conservatively, fifty terabytes of information."

Fifty terabytes is equivalent to 50,000 gigabytes. One gigabyte can contain 10,000 pages of documents, the department estimated.

By extrapolation, 50 terabytes can hold 500 million pages.

In seeking Friday's hearing, Mr. Martin's legal team wrote that he "is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, and to the extent either of these factors is a concern, they can be sufficiently addressed with specific release conditions."

The Justice Department countered Thursday that Mr. Martin "presents a high risk of flight, a risk to the nation, and to the physical safety of others."

Mr. Martin worked on highly sensitive programs, people familiar with the investigation have said, including those involving an arsenal of cybertools the government has amassed to use against other countries as well as cyberweapons that were in development.

So far, it is unknown what Mr. Martin intended and what, if any, plans he had for the pilfered information.

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Mr. Martin's home and car in August, it found much of the stolen information in plain sight. Top-secret information was stored in his car, which wasn't parked in a garage. Investigators also found an email chain printed out in that car that was marked "top secret" and contained "highly sensitive information."

They also found handwritten notes that appeared to describe the NSA's classified computer infrastructure, the Justice Department said in its filing.

"Among the many other classified documents found in the Defendant's possession was a document marked as 'Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information' ('TS/SCI') regarding specific operational plans against a known enemy of the United States and its allies," the court document said.

Government lawyers argued that releasing Mr. Martin would present an obvious danger.

"As a result of the extensive publicity this case has received, it is readily apparent to every foreign counterintelligence professional and nongovernmental actor that the Defendant has access to highly classified information, whether in his head, in still-hidden physical locations, or stored in cyberspace—and he has demonstrated absolutely no interest in protecting it," the Justice Department said. "This makes the Defendant a prime target, and his release would seriously endanger the safety of the country and potentially even the Defendant himself."

The filing described Mr. Martin as computer genius who easily outsmarted government efforts to protect secrets and said he possessed an advanced understanding of how to encrypt messages and hide information in cyberspace.

In July 2016, according to the document, Mr. Martin went to Connecticut and bought a "detective special" police-package Chevrolet Caprice. The FBI found 10 firearms in his possession, including an AR-style tactical rifle and a shotgun with a flash suppressor.

<comment><USER33> "heavily armed, accumulating 10 weapons", and gasp, an AR-15!

Ha ha, here in flyover country, 10 guns is just a start. I have a 1911 on my hip as I type this.

<comment><USER34> Out of interest, why do you need a firearm on your hip as you sit at the computer?

edit: I'm from Australia and the idea of having a single weapon, let alone more than 10 close by is kind of frightening.

<comment><USER33> I don't need one at this moment, I just want one since I don't know when I'll need one. It's concealed carry; I just happened to still have it on after wearing it all day.

<comment><USER27> I am curious why you felt the need to mention it at all.

<comment><USER33> Because the media embellishes the ownership of guns for some nefarious purpose. I could have said more, as they have reported one technical error, but I did not.

<comment><USER27> Can you explain how they embellish the ownership of guns for nefarious purposes?

The majority of media coverage I see of guns is in relation to actual gun violence i.e incidents that seem to occur with alarming frequency - <USER3> someone opening fire in a mall or a movie theater.

What usually follows these incidents in the news cycle are editorials asking why there are more stringent background check as many of these incidents are carried out by unstable people. The evidence seems to suggest that the overwhelming majority of gun owners support these check because most owners are responsible law-abiding stable people. But I don't see these editorials as painting this gun owners in a nefarious light. The NRA lobby yes but responsible gun owner no, I just don't see it. And I like to consider myself as someone tries to consume varied news sources.

But I would like to hear your thoughts.

<comment><USER33> The article had nothing to do with guns, yet they mention it in two places, specifically to associate it with possible criminal activity.

The media only reports the bad use of guns. If you want to read about the numerous self defense instances, you'll have to read about it from the gun lobby. The NRA is comprised of 4 million dues paying members, which it represents just as much as it does it's corporate members. I actually prefer the GOA myself.

Also, the article mentions a shotgun with a "flash hider". Thus is pure embellishment. Besides, it's a muzzle break to reduce muzzle lift, not a flash suppressor, which would be pointless in a shotgun that would be used at most tens of yards. Though even a muzzle break would be of questionable use on a shotgun.

<comment><USER27> "If you want to read about the numerous self defense instances, you'll have to read about it from the gun lobby."

You want to complain about "media embellishments" and inaccurate coverage but then you suggest I should use the most powerful political lobby in the US as a news source? There's no embellishment there? That's an unbiased news source?

Just a cursory glance at some recent media outlet coverage of self defense shootings:

[http://www.live5news.com/story/31972984/ncpd- investigating-o...](http://www.live5news.com/story/31972984/ncpd- investigating-overnight-shooting-at-bar)

[http://www.ktnv.com/news/rtc-bus-driver-says-shooting-was- in...](http://www.ktnv.com/news/rtc-bus-driver-says-shooting-was-in-self- defense)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/naked-man-shot- chok...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/naked-man-shot-choking-dog- miami_n_2395851.html)

There is no shortage of them. So your assertion that media "only" reports bad use of guns is simply untrue.

<comment><USER33> Not as a news source, but a news aggregator. The self defense shootings are buried as a 2nd tier link on a web site, or back of news paper. Crime is on the front page. Of course the gun lobby does not highlight crime or negligent shootings, so I'll give you that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The title on the front page of wsj.com is now "Ex-NSA Contractor Stole Records for Decades, U.S. Says"

</comment><comment><USER35> He is not that Russian from Prague, right?</comment>


Show HN: 321 Website – the allround carefree designer website for 99$/month - <AUTHOR> http://321-website.com/

<comment><USER2> Not sure why anyone would pay $99/month when you have two (and probably more) great services for much less.

[http://www.squarespace.com/pricing/](http://www.squarespace.com/pricing/) , [http://virb.com/pricing](http://virb.com/pricing)

You don't seem to be offering anything unique that justifies that price point (from what I could tell).

</comment><comment><USER3> The difference is that you don't have to build the website yourself. There are many people (and probably also businesses) that are unexperienced or don't have the time to build their website themselves or take care of it. 99$/month (in my eyes) is a fair price if you get a custom designed webpage and all the maintenance etc. done for you.</comment>


Intel Processor Graphics Gen11 Architecture [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/managed/db/88/The-Architecture-of-Intel-Processor-Graphics-Gen11_R1new.pdf <comment><USER2> Major thoughts that come to my mind:

* Shared / Local memory is moved from L3 cache (in Gen9) to inside of a subslice (I presume L2 or L1 speeds?? Hard to tell... from this overview). SLM is now independent from the cache-structure, so it works far more similarly to AMD / NVidia GPUs. SLM can be used as fast gather/scatter operations without using "The Dataport" (Intel's load/store to L3).

* Bunch of DX12 features -- Hard for me to fully understand, since I'm not really a graphics programmer. Coarse Pixel Shading looks cool, and should reduce bandwidth to DDR4 (a far bigger deal on iGPUs which are very bandwidth limited).

* Seems to be 4-levels of cache? L3 is in the iGPU, but the L3 of the CPU is called "LLC" (last-level cache). So it looks like iGPU L4 coincides with the CPU's L3 cache? Am I reading this correctly?

<comment><USER3> In GPUs, in my opinion, having laggy cache is nowhere near as scary as in CPU. GPU caches are said to be all about prefetch logic.

<comment><USER2> I agree in principle, but the SLM isn't a "cache", at least the equivalent of it in AMD and NVidia GPUs. AMD LDS and NVidia Shared Memory is extremely fast. Best-case scenario throughput of one AMD LDS operation every 2-clock cycles.

That's 64-threads performing a 32-bit load or store operation (64x32-bit load/store operations) in just 2-clock cycles (assuming you have no bank- conflicts / ideal situations)... per AMD execution unit. You ain't got nothing on the power of this gather/scatter to AMD LDS. We're talking ~TBps bandwidth here, not GBps... with incredibly low latency guarantees.

My understanding is that NVidia would perform this operation at a similar speed to its shared memory (under similar "no bank conflicts" situations) per SM. NVidia shares their "shared memory" with L1 cache (so yeah, the architecture is different than AMD), but its performance is also huge and measured in ~TBps.

Note that this gather/scatter is synchronized between all 64-threads on a AMD workgroup, or all 32-threads of a NVidia warp. As such, you have ~2-cycles of latency between thread communications in the ideal case.

As such, SLM isn't "cache". Its the simplest (and 2nd fastest way) to share data between threads in a workgroup (there are harder-to-use "shuffle" intrinsics available, if you have static thread communications, such as those found in a sorting network... or in a "reduce" operation). And Intel's implementation of it in Gen9 was far slower than its competitors. Intel is at least claiming that they fixed this problem in Gen11.

I'm cautiously optimistic: 3rd party benchmarks on Gen11 iGPUs would be nice to confirm if they really sped up SLM as much as it looks like.

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

EDIT: Now that I think of it, maybe you were replying to my Point#3. At which point... yeah, I agree with you. Its hard to tell what part of my post you were addressing though.

<comment><USER3> I was thinking that cache lookups were not their stronger side as they had fancy 4+ level cache. This is what I would've expected in a regular arm soc.

The more complex is the cache architecture, the more laggy your main ram should be to mandate that. That's what I thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Coarse Pixel Shading is a cool smarter-not-harder approach for filling high- dpi displays on lower-horsepower iGPUs. The section on it shows comparisons, and it does look useful, though it requires integration by applications.

Adaptive Sync, woo! That's going to make it so much nicer on anything that misses the 60Hz budget, which is going to be more likely on these weaker iGPUs.

For compressed texture formats, they call out BC and ETC/EAC, but I'm worried that they didn't include ASTC, which is The New Hotness. Compressed texture format fragmentation is a tough issue to deal with and to solve, but the sooner we can centralized on a common good format, the better.

Dedicated subslice Shared Local Memory is going to see use, for sure. (previously part of L3) 64KB with 1-byte alignment sounds great.

Transparent dynamic lossless compression is adding srgb support, which I'm really surprised wasn't already happening.

<comment><USER5> >but I'm worried that they didn't include ASTC

ASTC has been part of the Skylake iGPU ( Gen 9 ) standard. Unless they deliberately took it out.

<comment><USER4> I thought it might, but didn't remember. That's reassuring! It was worrisome to see it left out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How come GPU instruction set architectures are relatively under-documented compared to x86? If anything, better results can be attained if more is known,

[https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/45226.pdf](https://research.google.com/pubs/archive/45226.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Because they don't want to be tied to an ISA and it's backwards compatibility requirements. They've heavily changed the underlying ISA many times in the past twenty years or so, even shifting paradigms. They've gone from horizontal microcode, to VLIW, to RISC-esque SIMD, and want the freedom to keep changing it up.

<comment><USER8> I am guessing that is a big part of it, avoiding patent litigation is another. There are a zillion patents around GPUs that it is difficult to prove the someone is using without more information about the internals. Back when I signed the S3 NDA/License agreement to get access to their underlying architecture there were specific clauses in that agreement that said I would agree to indemnify them if anyone brought patent litigation against them as are result of information I disclosed. It was unusual enough for me to remember it all these years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very surprised to see such in detail description being public.

I know that Intel's fab people are the only ones in the industry who are public about their current process in academic publications.

TSMC's process engineers, on other hand, jokingly call the famously paranoid TSMC's NDA an "omerta"

<comment><USER9> May I ask what's an Omerta?

<comment><USER10> A "code of silence" or an "enforced silence" about a subject.

Originally from the mafia who had strict rules about what to speak about, and about not talking to the police and such (not just for mafia members, for everybody in their region).</comment></comment></comment>


Oracle allegedly underpaid $400M in wages to underrepresented employees - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/oracle-discrimination-400-million/ <comment><USER2> I am a former Oracle employee, white male from Canada, who was underpaid based on my immigration status and that continued after I became a permanent resident. This seemed routine–Oracle tries to underpay _everyone_ and will use whatever advantages they have to do so. If you've worked at Oracle for any length of time you are probably not being competitively compensated unless you make a regular fuss. Even if you make a fuss they may still do nothing betting that you won't leave.

That said, I don't think it is entirely fair to pile on Oracle for this problem. Oracle doesn't seem especially atypical of the rest of the industry or even the bottom of the barrel. I saw much worse treatment at my first US employer for myself and others. Mid-tier employers and body-shop consultancy companies use underpaying people as a strategic core component of their profitability.

I had prospective employers directly say that they were pleased they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions.

If you want to end the abuses decouple visas and permanent resident applications from the employer or make it much easier to maintain or continue status and applications when moving between employers.

<comment><USER3> > they could use my immigration status to pay me less, specifically that they > would offer employer sponsored permanent residency application instead of > paying me competitive rates, bonuses, promotions.

Offering that sponsorship has very real costs to the company, well into the thousands of dollars per year. It seems perfectly reasonable to me for the employer to deduct that cost relative to what another employee who doesn't bring those additional costs.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that illegal?

<comment><USER5> I was in a similar position. It's not really enforceable because if you threaten to take legal action you get fired, and if you stop getting paid you can't afford lawyer fees, and if you stop working you're in violation and have to leave the country, and even if you win it's unclear what you will gain. If you have a family or partner you're especially in a bind.

<comment><USER6> I believe you are supposed to register a complaint with the EEOC, after which any adverse actions taken against you including firing without cause could count as illegal retaliation (which isn't the case for just threatening legal action), but I am not a labor attorney (or any sort of lawyer).

<comment><USER7> USCIS doesn't care about EEOC. And you try fighting your case from abroad. Impossible. No one is going to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my friends (white female) is a long time Oracle employee. Oracle systemically underpays "underrepresented people." She ended up finding out she was making 40-50% less than new interns were getting out of college. And was underpaid compared to her male peers with less responsibility and impact.

She ended up getting a raise and additional stock to make up for it, after her VP got involved to rectify the situation. Her boss was like "whatever."

So imagine if white women are underpaid - it is a lot worse for people for color.

<comment><USER9> Oracle pays its long-term employees less than newjoiners, that is no news. If you think you can get a raise by switching positions within the company - wrong! You get exactly the same no matter the position. Also nobody in the office got a raise in years (not even the inflation rate). The only option to get some raise is to be promoted, which does not happen very often. I don't think it has anything to do with race/gender.

<comment><USER10> So your reaction also seems to be... "whatever".

<comment><USER9> I was trying to say they don't seem racist or discriminating to me. They just want to save as much as possible. But they seem rather oblivious to the fact the system is set in a bit demotivating way.

<comment><USER11> Of course that's not racist, despite the efforts to frame that as such.

Companies behave that way to _everyone_, get used to that. When you negotiate your salary, you have your mouth. Use it. You are the only person, who really cares, whether you earn adequately to what you bring to the table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does the order of causality matter (either legally or ethically)?

What I mean to say is, the article suggests that Oracle hired women and minorities to "funnel" them into low paying jobs.

What if they set a very low wage and only minorities and foreign students were willing to accept those rates. Would that be just as bad?

The difference of course is that the former is a critique of Oracle whereas the latter is a critique of the industry.

This wording struck me as odd:

 _Oracle "impermissibly denies equal employment opportunity to non-Asian applicants for employment, strongly preferring a workforce that it can later underpay. Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers," the complaint alleges._

Does that mean that people don't know the compensation associated with the position during the hiring negotiation?

<comment><USER13> I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech. Whether underrepresented minorities are being underpaid or not the net result of all of this will end up being everybody being paid less rather than a few people being paid more.

<comment><USER14> > I'm too cynical to see this as anything more than the first move by the tech > companies themselves to push down waged for everybody in tech

What do you mean by first move? Google, Apple, Intel, Pixar, Adobe, Lucasfilm, eBay and Intuit were all found guilty of colluding to keep engineer compensation low[1][2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

[2] [http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach- order/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "These students required work authorization to remain in the United States > after graduation," the suit alleges. "In other words, Oracle overwhelmingly > hires workers dependent upon Oracle for sponsorship to remain in the United > States."

Tech company abuses H1B or other visas to underpay staff and undercut local labor market? Not surprising.

<comment><USER16> The fix to this is give more rights to H1B workers, so they aren't stuck with one employer, rather than not letting them come in the first place.

<comment><USER17> If H1B workers had the same rights and could demand similar salaries as their local counterparts (while also requiring additional effort and costs to hire) I suspect you would find that firms wouldn't hire very many H1B workers. in effect both policies have the same result.

<comment><USER16> Eh, I suspect they would. Talented people are born throughout the world, and historically, an 'unfair advantage' of the US has been our ability to attract them. Look how many big companies were founded by a 1st or 2nd generation immigrant.

It'd be a great way of letting the market figure out how many work visas we need, in any event, rather than having a number someone plucked out of their ass.

<comment><USER17> That assumes no local candidate can do the work, there will be some exceptions but why hire someone is more of an administrative hassle with greater costs for no benefit? If the person in question is somehow better than a local candidate by enough of a margin to justify the costs then they probably are priced incorrectly. (IE miss classified as a junior dev as opposed to a senior)

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty happy to let companies and candidates figure that out. If companies are only hiring foreigners because of "cheap!", greater H1B freedom would curtail that - or possibly just lead the company to open an office in another, cheaper country. I don't think it's really the business of the government to decide who is worthy and who isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a followup[0][1] to the OFCCP vs Google suit mentioned in the article. Google showed it would cost more to produce the data than the value of the Federal contract, so OFCCP did not get complete access.

[0]: [https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and- compliance/...](https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/legal-and- compliance/employment-law/Pages/Google-refusal-to-give-OFCCP-information- upheld.aspx)

[1]: [https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles- deni...](https://outsolve.com/blog/alj-rules-in-ofccp-vs-googles-denial-of- access-case)

<comment><USER19> I was curious to see what the OFCCP asked for and it seems like an insanely huge undertaking to compile it, which was probably why the court ruled "OFCCP's request was not reasonable and was unduly burdensome." My favorite one is a tie between "salary and job history for each employee going back to the founding of the corporation in 1998 for any long-term employees" without defining long-term employees (perhaps OFCCP did define it?) and "the name, address, telephone number and _personal_ email of every employee" in the 21,000-employee 2015 snapshot or the 19,539-employee 2014 snapshot.

<comment><USER20> Doesn't seem that expensive to comply with this.

<comment><USER3> Imagine that you've changed payroll vendors, HR system vendors twice, and payroll/HR leads 5x across the timeframe in question. Now how hard/costly is it?

<comment><USER21> Doesn't Oracle sell a widely used financials package? I'm guessing they eat their own dog food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ok, let me put this from another viewpoint. (I do not work for/endorse Oracle.)

Every year, hundreds of thousands of Asian students (~90% Indian and Chinese) flock to US universities for grad studies. They work hard, get a good GPA and want to continue their stay here. When they apply for jobs, the pool is very very limited because not all companies want to carry the burden of VISA/lawyers/immigration etc.

Oracle is one of the handful of big firms that feed on such students. They have the capital and resources to carry the immigration burden. And they hire students in bulk. I personally know a lot of students-turned-Oracle employees from all major universities.

At that point, the students just want to stay in the US legally, salary takes a backseat. They know the fact that if they can stay for long, money will eventually come.

<comment><USER23> Sure, the free market might allow it, but discrimination is something we don't tolerate here.

<comment><USER24> This is a hard question to ask because of how touchy this subject is, but I promise this is a question born out of a situation I personally was in.

Does there need to be discrimination for the result to be skewed in this way? The way I read the parent, immigrant employees are willing to do more for less due to a logical judgement about their situation, and from a pool of "Available jobs" may chose to throw a wider net, where someone who has more leeway can be pickier. (In my situation, I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind-blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort and my experience level for the work being done)

<comment><USER25> > I was making negligible money and when offered what seemed like a _mind- > blowing_ salary of 3x my prior, accepted off the bat, without realizing > until much later that I was being paid far below the rate of both my cohort > and my experience level for the work being done)

That still sounds like the company that made you the offer was exploiting you; they took advantage of your tough situation to pay you less than they would have if you had more leverage.

<comment><USER26> That's called a win-win in negotiations.

Btw, all (well, most profitable) are always exploiting you - paying you less than you produce for the company. You're also always exploiting the company - you're making more money collaborating with pther employees than you would by yourself!

<comment><USER25> I don't think I'd call "getting paid less than my colleagues doing the same work because I'm more desperate" a "win-win"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One of my coaching clients is a founder of a large SV tech company.

I love their salary negotiation method.

They have a top end in mind and will give the person the job if they agree on anything up to the amount.

They leave room for negotiation as some people need to feel like they negotiated well.

If you don't negotiate your pay up to 100% the preset amount, after you accept the job they just tell you they are paying you more (the 100%).

Both people are happy in this set up.

<comment><USER28> So no matter what happens during the "negotiation", the end result is always predetermined? They could just cut the silly game and come out and say what they are going to pay.

<comment><USER29> The comment stated why they do this and it's a real reason: some people want to negotiate. They're happier being offered 100 and negotiating up to 110 vs being offered 110 outright. This may be the tipping point of accepting or not.

<comment><USER27> Yes, exactly this.

Some candidates would reject the offer if they weren't given the experience of negotiating more for themselves.

This strategy emerged over hundreds or thousands of hires as the founders came from bigger companies before this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I interviewed at Oracle, was made an offer but didn't take it. I know people who took the offer. My knowledge/experience is

1) For H1B, the offer made by Oracle was higher than the minimum wage guideline by DOL for those specific positions. You get a copy of the H1B petition submitted by Oracle and it includes all of this data.

2) Your salary is dependent on what you negotiated with your recruitment coordinator (Oracle will not change your figure once an offer has been sent to you). The recruitment coordinator makes an offer and you try as much as possible to counter. If you have prior work experience, you will most likely use your previous salary information as a basis for negotiation. I assume this figure you have quoted will form a basis for what Oracle will offer you. If you don't have prior work experience, then of course, they will make you an offer that they prefer.

3) Oracle pay increases are rare and typically small. This is why your starting salary is quite important because it basically forms the basis for your income for your years at Oracle

</comment><comment><USER31> Everyone is underpayed. The work you are doing are mostly going to the pockets who do nothing. Bitter truth.

</comment><comment><USER32> Programmers should have a union.

Especially the ones that are working in the gaming industry.

</comment><comment><USER33> >Oracle's underpayment of certain employees is driven by the company's reliance on prior salary information

Anyone know how that works exactly?

<comment><USER34> Discrimination is like compound interest, it builds upon itself. If you're a underrepresented minority, its more likely that at each stage of your career you've been low balled compensation wise, if a potential employer is going to use your previous salary as a baseline, there is no way out of the spiral that initially started with your first job.

<comment><USER33> I assumed that was the case as far as the systemic problem goes.

Just wondering how Oracle was determining past pay, just asking? Using some site?

<comment><USER34> I assume they just ask, outside of the H1B database, I have not seen a 100% credible representation of salary data for tech workers. Even then, the H1B database is anonymous and you'd have to do a lot of work to try to pin someone to a salary range.

For the common man, negotiating really isnt a skill that has been developed. My girlfriend is interviewing with tech companies right now and I'm consistently reminding her to state a higher number not only if they ask for current salary (and to first off be diligent in not providing a number), but for the eventual negotiation upon job offer.

Also, most people really aren't in a position to negotiate, especially if they are in a discriminated class.

<comment><USER19> How does being in a discriminated class remove any of your "position" to negotiate? If the person interviewing you is objectively racist or sexist you're just not getting the job. But if you're talking about subconscious, systemic issues that's going to come up in initial offers but how is going to affect one's ability to negotiate?

And for what it's worth, while I am 100% on board with never discussing prior salary, I would advise against outright lying about it. On the chance that you're called out on it lying will most likely disqualify you immediately (and forever).

<comment><USER35> > How does being in a discriminated class remove any of your "position" to > negotiate?

In my experience, I've done my best negotiating when I'm almost disinterested, which is usually when I have lots of other options. Someone in a discriminated class may not get that many offers, so they may not be able to play them against each other, or be comfortable pushing as far as they could given there's some risk of an offer being rescinded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> They've hired a total of 6 black people in the last 8 years and they claim they're an equal opportunity employer?

<comment><USER37> wtf. I call bullshit. Source? I regularly see people of all sorts of skin tone as oracle has an office visible from my window. Maybe it's a US thing

<comment><USER36> Read the lawsuit. Summary here: [https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s- sues-oracle-pay-di...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3424872-u-s-sues-oracle- pay-discrimination)

"According to the complaint filed today, Oracle hired around 500 people into tech jobs over a five-year period, and only five were Hispanic and only six were African American."

Correction: OP should have said 5 year period instead of 8 year period. Either way. That's averaging one black person per year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Oracle isn't the only one, trust me

</comment><comment><USER39> Positively shocking.

</comment><comment><USER40> Leaving aside the merits of the underlying claim, the word "withheld" in the article's title seems a little misleading. I'd normally think of withholding wages as refusing to hand out paychecks which had been agreed upon.

From the body of the article, the OFCCP seems rather to be claiming that there's a differential in salary between female/black/asian employees and white male employees and that foreign-born employees on student visas worked disproportionately in entry-level jobs, which are lower-paying.

<comment><USER41> I agree, "withheld" is a specific term with a specific meaning when it comes to employee payments. The headline does NOT match reality at all.

<comment><USER42> OK, we've gone with "underpaid" as in, "Once employed, women, Blacks and Asians are systematically underpaid relative to their peers," from the complaint.

<comment><USER40> Oh, great. Out of fairness to OP, the "withheld" wording was used in the source article, but think this title is probably clearer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Oracle did something unethical (and illegal)? Zero surprise.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is is actually the case of "free market already taking care of this". Most women can't negotiate effectively and end up with lower wages. Diversity hires sometimes end up getting paid less.

</comment><comment><USER45> There is no shortage of jobs for someone working at Oracle. If someone feels underpaid, they can just jump ship. I have friends who work at Oracle and their salaries are fairly competitive. I am no Oracle fanboy but this just seems like a bunch of jobless federal employees dragging their feet around.

<comment><USER46> This is only great advice if Oracle is the only one giving lower pay to minority or female employees. Google is subject to a similar probe, and Palantir had to settle with the government. And these are the cases that we know about publicly.

Given that Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe were conspiring to limit labor competition, constant vigilance of tech companies' labor practices are totally warranted.

<comment><USER47> How were they conspiring to limit labor competition?

Completely agree constant vigilance is important. It also shouldn't matter that many employees can switch jobs. All employees cannot (personal circumstances, visas, etc). It also doesn't waive the company of its responsibility for fair pay.

<comment><USER48> This lawsuit[1] should be better well known in tech circles. I think it is one of the reasons salaries have been going sky-high at to top tech companies over the last five years. It is really too bad the class action lawyers settled for a relatively small amount and did not go to trial for a larger settlement and to expose more info on what they did.

[1][https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple- in...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/24/google-apple-intel-adobe- settle-high-tech-workers-lawsuit/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mementos of a Forgotten Frontier - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/mementos-forgotten-frontier <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting that. It's a reminder that there weren't a few bad actors pushing the idea of slavery in the south. the views were widespread.

</comment><comment><USER3> Come on. Yet another political/social piece.

<comment><USER4> Could you please stop breaking this guideline?

> _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is > spam or off-topic, flag it._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://volkfi.com/ <comment><USER2> This makes a bit more sense:

"Every Volk phone has a SIM card slot and supports use on traditional LTE networks.

However, a SIM is not necessary and the phone will always prioritize the Volk network first.

The Volk network works as such: every Volk user gets a special router with their phone. The router acts as a wireless Qi charging pad also. The router connects to your existing internet via Ethernet or something similar.

The router is what connects phones to Volk and allows calls, texts, and data to go through.

If a router isn't nearby, the phone will try to find another Volk phone to use as a hop, until it finally reaches a router.

All Volk phones have strong radios and can go more than half a mile if terrain is clear.

If there are no routers or Volk phones nearby to hop to, you'll either not have service, have to use Wifi, or fallback to LTE if you have a SIM card installed and it has active service."

([https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/aq3hul/volk_fi_claim...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/aq3hul/volk_fi_claims_it_gets_reception_everyone_and/))

So the backbone of the mesh network is their charging stations / routers, and phones can (?) mesh but not necessarily that far.

What I still don't like about this is that nowhere they talk about the frequencies on which they operate, not even in the "Specs" section of the website. This makes it very hard to verify any range claims they make.

<comment><USER3> The frequencies are what I was curious about as well. To have a half mile range at relatively low powers it would need to be a low frequency band.

I'm guessing they haven't bought licenses from the FCC, so my bet is that they're using the 900 MHz ISM band.

There's only 26 MHz of spectrum in that band, which isn't much, particularly for a mesh setup that won't be particularly spectrally efficient.

Even with a high 30 dB signal to noise ratio, the Shannon channel capacity in a 26 MHz band is 50 Mbps. MIMO helps a bit, but even in ideal real-world conditions you'll likely have at most 50 Mbps to share between all the users connected to a node. Spread that across a few users/mesh hops, throw in some packet retransmissions and noise, and it's not nearly enough to compete with LTE networks at any meaningful user density.

Incentivizing users to create as many nodes as possible is a good idea, as that allows lower power transmissions and better frequency reuse. It's still a huge struggle to get anywhere near commercial wireless speeds, particularly in areas where there are fewer nodes and a higher density of users.

<comment><USER4> I work with 900MHz radios and infrastructure, here's my thoughts:

> The frequencies are what I'm confused by as well. To have a half mile range > at relatively low powers it would need to be a low frequency band.

> I'm guessing they haven't bought licenses from the FCC, so my bet is that > they're using the 900 MHz ISM band.

Seems likely, and probably even works in controlled tests over relatively short distances. 900MHz meshing radios certainly exist, like this one (no affiliation with them, haven't used the product): [https://www.rajant.com/products/breadcrumb-wireless- nodes/lx...](https://www.rajant.com/products/breadcrumb-wireless-nodes/lx- series/)

>Even with a high 30 dB signal to noise ratio, the Shannon channel capacity in a 26 MHz band is 50 Mbps.

Impossible in urban areas without highly directional antennas (which aren't small). The effective noise floor in most even semi-developed areas I've worked in is ~-100 to -80dBm - it can be a struggle even with expensive radios and fixed infrastructure. 30dB SNR just isn't going to happen over any appreciable amount of range on this sort of device (a high gain parabolic dish? sure). Using all 26MHz of the spectrum with an omni directional antenna (again, as would be required) also isn't going to happen except over relatively short distances.

900MHz is good technology, and can get robust, long distance links with the right infrastructure (I most work on 1-10mi links). The limitations on a pocket sized device with a pocket sized antenna mean this is unlikely to work @ 900MHz- especially in their fantasized scenarios of being in areas with no cell phone coverage (cell carriers have access to better bands, and far better infrastructure).

<comment><USER5> > cell carriers have access to better bands, and far better infrastructure

What would be the best band for this kind of infrastructure? ( Disregarding any existing FCC licenses )

<comment><USER6> > _What would be the best band for this kind of infrastructure? ( Disregarding > any existing FCC licenses )_

The frequency bands that have been licensed for cellular infrastructure.

Its all a trade-off. Higher frequencies get you better data bandwidth, but require more power and get attenuated more by stuff (buildings, trees). Lower frequencies get you much better range for a given power level and better building penetration, but lower data bandwidth.

Exceptions to this are the "crap" bands, like 2.4GHz and 60GHz. Microwave ovens (which are great interferers, BTW) use 2.4GHz because it is absorbed by water. Great for heating your food. No so great trying to transmit data in an outdoor environment with rain and fog.

60GHz gets absorbed by the oxygen in the atmosphere, so that's another band that's only good for very short ranges.

The bands the cellular carriers have now are a good trade-off between power requirements, data bandwidth, and other issues (like absorption). The ISM bands exist basically because nobody would pay to use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will have Gotenna like speeds, that is it will take several seconds to send a small text message. That's in an optimistic scenario where the recipient is within a mile or two of you. In a mesh scenario, the speed is going to go way down. In an area urban enough that there are other VolkFi owners to mesh through, there is almost always going to be cell service. It's just a gimmick to let them sell some slightly modified Android phones. My guess is that they will almost always be connected through the cellular network. If the user would then like to imagine that they are connected to some kind of physics-defying mesh network, I suppose that's nice. They could probably save on production costs by omitting the 900mhz chip with almost no effect on the service.

<comment><USER8> The claim is that they'll always prioritize Volk over LTE. Which is an interesting promise, because if you're correct, they'd potentially be prioritizing the slower connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd happily put a large omnidirectional wifi antenna on my roof to help out with something like this.... if I could get a fair rate for the bandwidth used. My city has 70k people or so, and is perfectly flat.

Similarly I'd be willing to help with any p2p type wireless, with a radio, antenna, and raspberry Pi or similar. Sadly most p2p wireless <-> internet gateways are proprietary.

<comment><USER10> I've always wondered about this as well. Get independent hobbyists to setup micro wifi networks. Run all traffic through a vpn or some sort so the operator doesn't risk their IP/ISP banning their service. Monetize the whole thing on a pay as you go service. $1/gb and give 70 cents of that to the independent operators. The big telecoms already have these little mini-wifi networks in bigger cities that you can get access to but only if you are a subscriber to their services.

For me personally I would definitely pay the $1/gb to get access to such a network. Right now, I only use my cell data for e-mail and light web browsing. The cost of 3g/4g data is simply too expensive for me.

<comment><USER9> I pay $0.05 per GB or so at home ($60 per TB). I'd happily sell my data at a small profit just to offset whatever the equipment is that's required.

Someone else on this thread mentioned gotenna, which seemed like a similarly cool idea. Unfortunately they rejected the idea of allowing gotenna <-> internet <-> gotenna via a gateway I offered to write. They already have a unique id per device and I was going to use a DHT to allow all the gateways to track which user was behind which gateway. Seemed like a killer app to me, after all why limit who you message to being within 2-3 hops of you... why not allow the other few billion folks on the planet?

Sadly they wouldn't allow access to the underlying mesh meta data and instead required using their extremely limited API.

Having near free widgets that can mesh at low bandwidth (think SMS and IM like bandwidths) and then pay per GB for faster links seems like an excellent idea. I can imagine having phones/tablets without a $50 per month WAN charge if it could mesh and use wifi. Would be handy for sensor networks, home security, public safety monitoring (like cars going the wrong way on the highway), etc.

<comment><USER11> This would be a great feature for gotenna. Especially if places near where you would be using a gotenna have internet access.

<comment><USER9> Well the gotenna network is pretty slow, and internet is not particularly friendly to store and forward with high latencies. I was thinking more along the lines of sharing your location (like APRS) and SMS/IM type traffic. That way you could have cover a large area with minimal infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would bet almost any amount of money this isn't going to work.

In any mesh network, the overhead of coordinating nodes dominates network traffic. This is before you even begin to think about the terms of service violations for all of these WiFi access points.

<comment><USER13> And you haven't even mentioned the fact that mobile phones can move around, leading to high rates of dropped connections as devices come and go. There's no way this is going to work.

<comment><USER14> Whoops, my phone connected to someone on a train that just went past! My phone call just dropped.

<comment><USER9> Think of it the opposite way. You have no coverage, are trying to get a message out and the nearest gateway is miles away. A moving car/train is close to you for plenty of time to transfer a few 100 bytes, and someone in the car/train has a mesh aware widget. It stores a copy and waits to go near a gateway where it upload it for you.

Sure, it's not as nice as a WAN connection, but the average cellular contract is pretty expensive per month. Something like $10 per GB, and often a $30 and up base rate.

So sure, long distance multi-hop mesh stinks for real time voice, but could be quite usable for other use cases.

<comment><USER15> Ah, but now you're talking about solving an _additional_ problem, delay tolerant networking, on top of mesh networking. This adds a whole new layer of complexity on top of the mesh network, and would probably only work as you say for a subset of services that are made to handle this type of unreliable network.

Also many common delay tolerant network implementations rely on message replication to increase the probability of delivery of the message. This puts additional bandwidth strain on the inter-node hops of the network, which as some of the other commenters pointed out, not actually all that high.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, seems only practical for things like SMS/IM type traffic where even a Long/LAT + 30 character message every few minutes would be quite useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the idea, but I'm not sure how the abuse will work on those networks. There are two possible cases:

1\. Volk data goes out via their gateway (proxied): They get access to your data. Their IPs get CloudFlare captchas all the time. (Like tor)

2\. Volk data goes out from your router: You get to explain the CP access from your network. Your home IP gets CloudFlare captchas all the time. You get to monitor random people's traffic.

Which option is it?

<comment><USER17> Our approach at NYC Mesh is to give each donor of home internet a router which VPNs all mesh traffic through our ASN. This boosts privacy and neutrality for our mesh users, and protects transit donors from their ISP's interpretation of the traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Volk One devices can connect to each other, from several miles away.

Assuming that a voice call requires 8kbit/s of bandwidth, and assuming that you have about a watt of power, how feasible is it to connect through a phone that is a mile away?

Serious question - I don't know how to do the math here.

<comment><USER19> If you want to learn how to do the math, this is old but a good starting point: [http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/slap127/slap127.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/slap127/slap127.pdf)

(In general, radio engineering is taught at college-level and requires some basic math/physica if you are going with "rules of thumb" and fairly advanced math if you want to understand/derive exact equations).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This sounds great. One idea I had to stop abuse was to force traffic from a phone to route out to the public Internet through its own base station.

That would require a lot of hops, in some cases, but the traffic could short circuit through others' base stations back to their own through the Internet, without originating the traffic from the intermediaries. I wrote up more about this here:

[https://stevenjewel.com/2014/01/android- mesh/](https://stevenjewel.com/2014/01/android-mesh/)

In this particular case they could originate the traffic from Volk servers instead.

Also, people here may be interested in GoTenna, a portable mesh network hotspot that has been out for a few years, at roughly $75 each.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's cool. A few years back I ran an indiegogo campaign for a static mesh network. It encoded geohashes into ipv6 addresses and used physical location as a waypoint for next hop routing using Vincentys algorithm. Clever solutions were designed to handle local congestion and mobile devices. Ofc it went nowhere, but maybe Volk can steal those ideas...

Another idea to borrow: The campaign also shipped with a global WIFI app. Eg. you put your WIFI password into the global database and could use the ones other people shared.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds a bit like Fon from the 2005s.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_(company)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fon_\(company\))

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't get the invite model. Ask someone already invited to send you an invite? I guess it prevents spam reservations but I don't have Facebook or twitter, so I guess I'm out of luck.

<comment><USER23> I was also curious, and found [https://volkfi.com/whyinvite](https://volkfi.com/whyinvite) which has a constructive sounding heading

> Why is Volk Fi invite-only

followed by _blather blather about the technology_ and then finally some invite-sounding text of

> But, because Volk Fi is crowdsourced, it needs a certain user density in > order to have full coverage and reliability

which seems to run directly in contradiction to why one would want the system to be invite-only. Can you imagine starting a BitTorrent service, and then trying to ensure the swarm stayed _small_ by only telling your roommates? I guess that's why I'm not in marketing.

<comment><USER24> Speaking of Bittorrent... This is a YC '19 company and...

[https://igamerss.com/index.php/2019/03/19/here-are- the-85-st...](https://igamerss.com/index.php/2019/03/19/here-are-the-85-st..).

"Volk Wi-fi: Volk is making an Android smartphone with a free information plan, no service required. The co-founders say they're utilizing long-range wi-fi to share connections and construct a community of telephones. Co-Founder Greg Hazel was the __Chief Architect at Bittorrent __, whereas co-founder Straya Markovic was the lead engineer at mesh messaging platform Firechat. "

So yeah, they should know better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> These data collection scams are getting more and more elaborate.

</comment><comment><USER26> Very interesting. This website is completely unusable on Chrome 72 (MacBook Pro 15" Mid-2015) but is smooth as butter on Safari.

<comment><USER27> It's absolutely unusable for me on Safari. Scrolling is less than 1fps. Haven't tried another browser.

<comment><USER28> Same here. It was literally killing my CPU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What's with the name? Sounds very iffy to me. Posts like this on the subreddit don't help: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VolkFi/comments/b0xpmn/volkfi_viral...](https://www.reddit.com/r/VolkFi/comments/b0xpmn/volkfi_viral_stormtroopers/)

<comment><USER30> Volk is German for 'People'. It's like the English 'Folk'. That reddit link sounds like just a single dude trying to expand the reach, who isn't affiliated with volkfi, but I would say he is trolling using the name like "stormtroopers"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love the amount of unfettered optimism in this thread, but lets be clear this likely will amount to vaporware (at least the mesh part).

Using an invite only system to bootstrap a distributed network that inherently relies on network effect makes absolutely no sense.

Having an amateurish website that consumes so much resources it doesn't render faster than 5 FPS on an MBP should make you question the marketing prowess of this company.

Straya Markovic, one of the lead engineers for FireChat is a co-founder. This is both a pro and a con. Like most engineer led companies they don't seem to understand the tremendous effort required to bootstrap this network and focus only on the technology aspects in their marketing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Specs for those having issues with the website:

Display: 6.2 inches, 1080 x 2280 pixels, 402ppi, Aspect Ratio: 19:9

Sensors: Fingerprint, Hall, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity, RGB Ambient Light Sensor, Electronic Compass, Sensor Hub

Ports: USB C, Support USB Audio, nano-SIM slot

Battery: 3700 mAh (non-removable)

Audio: Bottom-facing speaker, 3-microphone with noise cancellation, Support AANC, Dirac HD Sound®, Dirac Power Sound®

Vibration: OHaptic vibration motor

Connectivity: Volk Fi, LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth

Dimensions: 155.2 x 76.1 x 7.7 mm

Weight: 179g

Color: Midnight Black / Snow White, Anodized Aluminum & Glass

Operating System: Android

CPU: Snapdragon 845 (Octa-core, up to 2.5GHz)

GPU: Adreno 630

RAM: 4GB LPDDR4X

Storage: 64GB or 256GB UFS 2.1 2-LANE

Camera: Dual 16 x 16 MP, Auto-HDR, 4K resolution video at 30fps, 1080P resolution video at 60fps, LED Flash, Aperture: f/1.7

</comment><comment><USER33> I wrote an article about Volk-fi for those of you looking for more information.

[https://1fixcomputermedic.com/volk-fi-promises-free-cell- pho...](https://1fixcomputermedic.com/volk-fi-promises-free-cell-phone- service-launch-date-december-2019/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm concerned that providing a bounce for someone else's call will use large amount of battery. This means, trying to conserve battery won't be possible if people keep using your phone to bounce off.

</comment><comment><USER35> The hard part will be getting enough such mobiles out in the market for the mesh to ever work and getting the price down low enough for people who are not ever so interested to buy it.

Presumably this is using something like Wimax so it shouldn't be difficult for other players to introduce compatible devices. In fact it should be possible to make a Wimax version of the portable Mifi routers that connect to mobile networks then you could use your existing devices and some kind of VOIP solution.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I first heard about Project Fi, this is what I imagined it to be like. I was a little disappointed when I found out it was just glorified wifi-calling.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is amazing. I think it delivers on the promise of [https://n-o- d-e.net/hyperboria.html](https://n-o-d-e.net/hyperboria.html) much more than Hyperboria+cjdns itself. Very excited, I expect there could be a compatibility layer with existing mesh networks which use cjdns.

</comment><comment><USER38> Website just about crashed my browser. I hope I can find out what it's about here.

<comment><USER39> confirmed... worst website experience this far in 2019! and I tried both Chrome and Safari!

Seriously Volk Fi: fix this asap (like before you continue working on your business)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How can internet connectivity be free?

Doesn't _someone_ need to pay for a connection?

<comment><USER40> To answer my own question, as per the FAQ:

 _Volk Fi counts data usage and bytes shared via WiFi. Every user gets the amount they share, unlimited. If a Volk user consumes more data than they share in a month, there is a 5GB data cap. After that, the user can pay the super cheap price of $1 /GB for additional data._

<comment><USER41> I would love for this to be just an app on a standard Android device.

<comment><USER42> Apparently because their special phones have "new, long-range radio hardware" that makes this all possible.

But radio technologies are pretty widely understood and while I'm no expert I've not heard of anything that could achieve what they're suggesting. So I'll remain skeptical until I understand better what that "long-range radio hardware" is and how it makes such a mesh network feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This type of networking will become more feasible with 5G because it has unlicensed spectrum and better support for radio convergence. 5G home routers might need just little configuration.

</comment><comment><USER44> This would work if the mesh was standardized and royalty-free, so that any company could make hardware for it.

As long as it's a mesh network restricted to one company... no dice.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would love to see a version for amateur radio that uses amateur bands with more power. It would of course need to be un-encrypted but that is fine with me.

<comment><USER30> Ham radio already does this to a certain extent I believe:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is a product I might buy - if I could actually buy it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hi everyone, I really want to test this network but I have no invitation, can someone send me? email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER48> This is slightly off-topic, but why don't we have WiFi networks that work on a scale as large as Cellular networks?

<comment><USER49> Pure WiFi lacks the range. Moreover, there is very little on inter-working.

The cellular networks standards, though truly horrible, have done an incredible job of allowing a connection to jump between base-stations, and to allow a user to connect to almost any base-station. WiMax was an attempt to do something like WiFi with higher range. But it lacked the whole inter-working back-end that would allow a user to seamlessly jump between base-points.

Moreover, a network operator tends to have a lot more 'body' if only because it works on licensed spectrum. This means, at the very least, that if things go wrong you can sue it. Thus, there is at least a simple basis for trust. For WiFi access, since anyone can easily get on it, trust is much more a no go. Not just regarding malicious users, but also about simple reliability.

<comment><USER50> An incredible job at enabling Feds (and any other amateur!) to use Stingrays/cell catchers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm not sure I would be comfortable with running a base station in my pocket all the time.

</comment><comment> CKN23-ARIN (YC '19)

</comment><comment><USER52> You should add a Bitcoin option for checkout/reservation.

</comment><comment><USER53> it reminded me of similar project open garden [https://www.opengarden.com/](https://www.opengarden.com/)

</comment><comment><USER54> There will be serious security concerns with this, opening so many possibilities for Man in the Middle attack.

<comment><USER55> Just encrypt everything in transit ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> pls someone invite me

</comment><comment><USER56> pls someone invite me - i don't do social networks

<comment><USER57> [https://volkfi.com/buy?code=6BqA19M](https://volkfi.com/buy?code=6BqA19M)

<comment><USER47> hi brother, I do not know anyone who has a volk fi but I really want to test this network and the cell phone, can you send me an invitation? firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Smartphone!

</comment><comment><USER59> Name reminds of [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger)

Probably intentional.

<comment><USER60> That prefix certainly comes with baggage. There were a lot of affordable "Volks-" (read as: "for the people") products created by the DAF (German Labour Front) between 1933 and 1945. The more (internationally) known ones are the Volkswagen, Volksempfänger (radio receiver), Volkskühlschrank (refrigerator), Volksgasmaske (gas mask).

On the other hand, the infamous "BILD" tabloid started using that prefix brand again in 2002, with the Volks-PC and has been marketing 200 products with that prefix since and other companies/projects/products followed (like Volks.Fahrrad - which had to rename because of the product proximity to Volkswagen).</comment></comment>


High Availability: MySQL master/slave now on DotCloud - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dotcloud.com/high-availability-mysql-masterslave-now-on-do

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in the underlying implementation, come hang out on Freenode/#dotcloud. Lots of fun in-depth conversations with the dotCloud team.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats guys, this should help make HA more feasible for small teams!

How do you plan to price this? Will it just be twice the price of the non- replicated MySQL service? (If so, that would seem a little high given the slave can only be used for standby and not for serving requests.)

It would be awesome if this supported having the master and slave in different AWS availability zones / AWS regions / clouds.

<comment><USER2> Multi-zone is already natively supported, and multi-region is coming soon :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you doing this weekend? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Just bought a copy of this book, and started reading it: [https://www.amazon.com/Model-Thinker-What-Need-Know- ebook/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Model-Thinker-What-Need-Know- ebook/dp/B07B8LHBVZ/)

(Authored by the same Scott Page who teaches the Model Thinking Coursera course. I came across the recommendation in a recent HN thread, but found watching videos to be too slow.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Finishing the drywall repair in my entryway

</comment><comment><USER4> taking it easy; schoolwork which includes algorithms and data structures.</comment>


Ajax Push Engine - real-time data streaming to a web browser - <AUTHOR> http://www.ape-project.org/home.html

<comment><USER2> ok, so thats APE, so what? am i missing something? those who are interested in this might also check juggernaut(its much simpler technology, but requires flash)

hmm, can anyone explain why was it posted here here on HN? are they releasing any new major milestone or whats up? i am really not getting it...

<comment><USER3> I'm going to venture to guess someone simply came across it and had never heard of it before. Then it was upvoted by someone else who had never heard of it. If enough people haven't heard of it, it goes to the front page. Otherwise it gets buried. It's how the site works ;-)</comment></comment>