Britain passed the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy" - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/snoopers-charter-expansive-new-spying-powers-becomes-law/ <comment><USER4> As a UK resident, this irks me beyond belief. It's a sickening invasion of human rights[1]. To echo u/rubberstamps sentiments, it's such that there's been little to no coverage of this in the media.

But it's the same everywhere, introduce an encroaching bill, have uproar from those with the heads screwed on (the minority). Let it grow a little stale in the publics eye and keep reintroducing with slight alterations it until it passes into law.

There's a definite sense of helplessness and hopelessness when approaching the subject with the public. Even within IT there's a sense of 'who cares'. I had a conversation about it just last weekend. I asked for my roommates phone so I could look at all his emails, sms, etc. He gave it to me and said he doesn't care.

How do those who want to maintain privacy reach out to people and let them know it's not OK? Because this is not OK.

Anyway - off to study journalism.

[1] - [https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human- rights/privacy](https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy)

<comment><USER5> I've noticed that Britons, generally speaking, put a lot of trust in authority. They'll shrug it off or rationalize it when their government introduces another perverted law - the NHS works, so it can't be that bad, surely. Britain lacks a sizeable and vocal government-distrusting counterculture like they exist in Germany or the US. How you go about introducing that artificially, I don't know. The frog is being boiled too slowly.

<comment> bjelkeman-again That is interesting. Living in Sweden, and having lived in the UK for 15 years, I feel the Brits trust their government much less than the Swedes do. In the UK there is strong resistance against a national ID card, as an example. Whereas in Sweden you can hardly live without one.

I got the feeling that the Brits didn't trust their government with that info and control it implies. In Sweden we have the opposite: ID cards are seen as an asset and surveillance cameras are severely restricted by the government, for privacy reasons.

<comment><USER6> Resistance to the national ID card idea mostly came down to two things 1) cost to government, and 2) cost to citizens.

There's also the fact that ~87% of the population already hold a passport, and some of those that don't likely have a drivers license.

<comment> bjelkeman-again The funny thing is that the cost to the individual is negligible and the cost to government (and business) is low compared to the benefits. Less fraud, efficient identification processes etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any > significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said > recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to > hold the government to account".

What the hell is the point of the Labour party these days? They are absolutely not an effective opposition. Worthless bastards, one and all.

<comment><USER8> >Worthless bastards, one and all. Why write this crap? The labour party is the biggest left wing party in Europe, are you saying everyone inside it is worthless?

<comment><USER9> They are also _staggeringly_ ineffective and can't seem to decide what they stand for. Miliband was OK despite the "controls on immigration" equivocation, but since then the party has turned into a circular firing squad.

Going back into history, I'm fairly sure we saw attempts at invasive surveillance under Blair's Labour; Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and the failed ID cards scheme.

It's not even clear whether they're able to oppose Brexit.

<comment><USER10> That's because Blair's Labour Party was as right wing and authoritarian as the Tories they replaced. Both Corbyn's supporters and opponents know well what they stand for. The problem is it isn't the same things.

The only people who have any moral right to oppose Brexit are the Scottish nationalists and the Northern Irish republicans. England and Wales voted to leave.

<comment><USER11> _That 's because Blair's Labour Party was as right wing [..] as the Tories they replaced._

That's revisionist, and demonstrably false. The Blair government brought in gay adoption, a minimum wage, the Freedom of Information Act, the Human Rights Act, civil partnerships, banned fox hunting with dogs, increased NHS investment by >25% in real terms, achieved the lowest unemployment in 50 years, slashed child poverty, and more. Minimum wage alone was considered a bold left wing move at the time. Blair made modern Tories softer, if anything.

It's sad that the Iraq debacle caused people to write off what was the most progressive and beneficial government this country had seen in decades - <USER2> can't see how anyone could equate it to the governments of Major or Thatcher.

<comment><USER9> I think it's a good example of why a simple left-right dichotomy doesn't cut it. The Blair government had a lot of great social-democrat policies and was genuinely redistributive. It also relied on control-freakery and media management; all policy had to come from the Blair-Campbell office. There was no mechanism for incorporating friendly critique. And some of its policy was genuinely illiberal, especially in the antiterrorism & surveillance area.

That may have been a hidden tradeoff for taking on the security establishment enough to get a peace deal in NI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Will the citizens allow it to be passed if they knew about it via some news source? Of course "news" now a days is about kardarshians or justin beiber than about things that requires serious attention. This may have hardly got tiny little square cm area in newspapers or 30 seconds air time. Thus sinks democracy. People who are informed are way less in number than non-informed people, but all get to vote thus diluting the vote of well informed people(whose size smaller and smaller as quality of news sources declines). I think there needs to be a law that punishes false information, but at the same time protects journalism.

<comment><USER9> Quite a lot of them would be in favour of it as a means of "fighting terrorism". It's not so much what is reported as how it's spun.

The really big thing is the "internet connection record": _every TCP connection_ you make is supposed to be logged by the ISP: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/530556/Internet_Connection_Records_factsheet.pdf)

(just look at that list of justifications. Of course! It's about catching paedos! The all purpose justification for everything.)

Besides, it's been buried under the bigger politics news of the moment - <USER3> and the continuing mystery of Brexit.

<comment><USER13> This sounds like a potential (new?) attack type though. Just have software that pings certain illegal websites and bam - the target is now a paedo or whatever the attacker wishes.

<comment><USER14> Generating fake evidence to blackmail someone? No one would do that. They are too busy chasing terrorists.

<comment><USER15> For those that don't understand this comment, intelligence agencies are known for generating fake evidence and allegations to take down targets - and it's well known that intelligence agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ are not charged with missions to track down terrorists.

A very clever sarcastic comment I think will probably go under the radar because the OP omitted a "/s".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Protect your privacy with a VPN, either run your own or use one of the available providers. It's a shame you need to do this, but that's just the state of things.

Run your own with OpenVPN: [https://openvpn.net](https://openvpn.net)

VPN providers(not affiliated, just ones myself or colleagues use): [https://www.expressvpn.com](https://www.expressvpn.com) [https://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn](https://www.goldenfrog.com/vyprvpn) [https://nordvpn.com](https://nordvpn.com)

<comment><USER15> VPN will not protect your privacy, as VPN providers are monitored by state police and VPN protocols have been broken and backdoored by intelligence agencies (as disclosed in the Snowden Documents).

<comment><USER17> just setup own vps with vpn and use encryption

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_Police_(surveillance_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_Police_\(surveillance_program\))

The GCHQ sit on the internet infrastructure, decrypt TLS sessions, and correlate accounts and activity to individual granularity.

The backbone of the internet is tapped, including from the termination of IPSEC/IKE into your VPN out to the internet again.

Giving the advice to people to "use encryption" and "use VPN" is going to get people killed.

Please, be responsible.

<comment><USER17> Decrypt tls sessions? Please fuck off.

<comment><USER15> Oh there's a ton of ways to do it, from stripping, downgrade attacks, backdoored constants, precomputed tables for low order groups, shadow ca certs, etc.

I recommend reading the Snowden Documents, which disclosed a number of successful at-scale attacks on the PKI infrastructure.

I find it surprising there's so much ignorance in the Hacker News community about the state of encryption, especially given the newsworthiness of the Snowden Disclosures.

I also find the prevalence of 'shoot the messenger' regarding HN folks getting angry at me for pointing out publicly known issues with the current practice of commercial and consumer encryption.

<comment><USER17> Quote from his documents about tls DECRYPTION (exactly decryption) would be much more convincing than "oh there is a ton".

<comment><USER15> Sure, there's been good journalist work compiling the state of the art here: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents- atta...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents-attacks-on- vpn-ssl-tls-ssh-tor-a-1010525.html)

But also, being familiar with the cryptography you are attempting to have conversation about is a basic starter. For example, there were attacks listed in the prior comment following the "oh there's a ton" header. You seemed to have glazed past those, but they are familiar topics to those who habituate themselves with the technicalities of cryptography and its practice.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the link. I've read all of the docs (presentations slides) related to ssl/tls and found only one weak point (Debian sessions). And none of them have information about decryption of collected traffic - collected encrypted traffic is useless, only possible (at this moment) way is to intercept multiple things in live mode and try to decode data.

It's sad, but I'm still saying "use encryption", because alternative is "don't use encryption" and it's obviously worse. So I'm much more responsible than those who are trying to propose second option.

<comment><USER15> Sure thing!

Unfortunately I'm afraid that you missed a lot of the content! You had asked for specific documents, not news reporting that pieced the context together (for example following the code names of the various programs together to understand how the system works as a pipeline).

In doing so, I'm afraid you're deeply underestimating the capabilities of the NSA, which expert analysis of the documents in question along with the technologies, related programs and internal customer requests indicate something much more startling than Debian session issues.

To put a point on that: TLS is broken at scale for billions of internet browsing sessions across platforms.

Give the short amount of time you've looked at the documents, I understand the misinterpretation you've arrived at. At the same time it's really impressive that you bothered to try to read the documents at all and should be commended.

Please feel encouraged to continue reading.

A large number of documents are hosted on edwardsnowden dot com and search functionality is provided here: [https://search.edwardsnowden.com/](https://search.edwardsnowden.com/)

Der Spiegel, The Guardian and The Intercept provided good analysis of the documents as they were being released and that can be found at the websites respectively.

> It's sad, but I'm still saying "use encryption", because alternative is > "don't use encryption" and it's obviously worse. So I'm much more > responsible than those who are trying to propose second option.

Yes. I agree with this. Just don't recommend this as 'enough' to people who have serious need to protect their communications. If someone is worried about their porn habits, sure. But recommending this for sensitive use (journalists, dissidents, organizers, politicians, administrators) can lead to very serious outcomes.

For these cases, it is important to have frank conversations about the limitations of freely available and widely distributed tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What is the easiest way to explain to the average citizen that the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument is not a good reason to let the Government keep tabs on your online activities? Most people don't give any thought to online privacy that it truly scares me.

<comment><USER19> the only way I have had any success is to describe the problem in terms of "wrong place wrong time" \+ "misinterpreted evidence" scenarios. this is something I wrote up a while back to try to explain it to a family member:

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

 _Imagine a crime takes place in a certain area. Using surveillance technology, police identify everyone who was in the area around the time of the crime. They do this through license plate recognition, face recognition, cell phone tracking, and credit card receipts. You happen to be on that list because you were shopping at a nearby store earlier._

You're now technically a suspect in a crime, although there's a thousand other suspects, and you have nothing to hide, so no big deal, right?

 _A witness saw the perpetrator running away from the crime. They only saw them from the back, but report that the suspect is a tall white male around 40 years of age._

So police narrow down that list to just people who fit this description. Uh oh, the list is now only about 50 people, and you're one of them.

 _The crime appears to be a potential race-motivated hate crime. Using web profiling, investigators search for those 50 people to look for any history of involvement with hate groups. The algorithm they use has over-zealously classified certain extreme right wing news sources as potential markers for hate crime._

You're not particularly worried, I mean, you're obviously not some crazy racist. There's no way they'd be interested in you.

But you forgot - six months ago, you started to get interested in the immigration debate, and posted on several anti-immigration forums.

 _With the additional profiling, the list narrows down to 8 suspects, including you. You happen to fit other markers for this kind of crime as well - you live alone, work a less prestigious job, neighbors say you don 't go out much._

Now you're a suspect in a crime. You'll almost certainly not be convicted, because there's no direct evidence. But good luck explaining that to your employer, your family, your friends, and the criminal defense lawyer you now have to pay for.

Still think you have nothing to hide?

<comment><USER20> This doesn't read as very convincing to me. Do you have experience of the justice system?

There's no way the CPS in the UK would take a "well he was probably in the general area based on his number-plate, and he reads the Toadygraph newspaper and is in the 52% who are for Brexit", even along with matching a general profile for criminals, and seek a prosecution on that basis. Not to mention it would be a huge miscarriage of justice to convict. And that the courts don't have time for arsing around with people who may have a tenuous link to an area where a crime may have been committed; we don't have time, seemingly, for the "certain" cases.

But what about the people who don't support racism/xenophobia, read a mix of news sources, aren't male (and so don't match with crime profiling). Are you saying their argument for not needing strong encryption is valid? That would seem to be a corollary of your hypothetical situation, you've cherry picked long-shot situations compounded together that would lead to a case laughed out of court - no motive, no evidence, no credible witnesses.

>Still think you have nothing to hide? //

Seems like ~99% of people reading that who weren't convinced before hand would say "yes".

Also, if they're savvy they know that the store where you went has your MAC address logged for customer tracking and corroborates your story (due to "privacy violation"), the car-park away from the scene on their number-plate cam shows you stayed in the area long after the alleged crime and so weren't fleeing, another shop has you on their instore tapes at the time the police say the crime was committed.

Now the Toadygraph has picked up your story and someone leaked that you wouldn't have been picked up if you weren't a reader; the Barclay brothers are threatening to pull their Tory party funding and so the PM is putting pressure on the presiding Chief of Police to make an example of the department responsible.

Lawyers are starting to contact you (they got your info because you left your friend list open on Facebook) and are offering to lodge a case for unlawful arrest for you and the compensation they're suggesting looks promising ...

Meanwhile people are wondering why the police didn't catch the perp; the police say it's because they don't have access to all the data they need due to public privacy concerns ...

<comment><USER19> No, I don't have experience with the UK justice system, so perhaps my comment isn't as relevant for this specific article.

That said, even if this specific scenario isn't realistic, discussions about the problems with surveillance state don't have to be grounded in "what happens right now" because the information stored today is available to future regimes and the specific technology involved is continuously changing.

> But what about the people who don't support racism/xenophobia, read a mix of > news sources, aren't male (and so don't match with crime profiling). Are you > saying their argument for not needing strong encryption is valid?"

Not at all, and I'm surprised that's what you would conclude from my statement. Obviously not every crime ever has that specific profile. The point was that when you have tons and tons of information about everyone, that is all categorized and geotagged and searchable and machine-learnable, it's a LOT easier for a completely innocent person to become a suspect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oddly I can't find any other sources reporting this. I'd have expected it to show up in at least one other place else (e.g. BBC news for example).

I'm not trying to imply that it's not accurate, I'm just confused by the lack of info. And the article doesn't really reference anything other than other zdnet articles, so it's really hard to tell exactly what form of the act got passed - did all the really controversial stuff actually make it in?

<comment><USER22> Here's the Open Rights Group (a UK group who aspire to emulate the EFF) on the latest development - note in particular the link at the bottom of the article, to their "campaign hub" on the bill:

[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press/releases/2016/ipb- will...](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press/releases/2016/ipb-will-reach- beyond-the-uk)

And, for what it's worth, a brief report from The Register:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/16/british_pols_sign_of...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/16/british_pols_sign_off_on_surveillance_law/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When this was originally proposed I thought it would never get passed because it sounded like something right out of 1984. Amazing. I thought the ridiculous 'Agree to this cookie' nonsense was stupid but this is now just very creepy. National database for keylogging next?

<comment><USER24> Don't worry, the 'Agree to this cookie' thing is an EU directive. So that's what the UK is currently destroying their economy in order to be free from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is bad news for Brits. One problem I see is the storage. If the ISP stores this information it makes their users open to hacking of personal data. A bigger problem than the phone hacking scandal. [0]

The title is inaccurate. Australia introduced storage of Internet usage logs (metadata) at ISP providers for two years in 2015. [1],[2]

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/17/three-mobile- cybe...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/17/three-mobile-cyber-hack-- six-million-customers-private-data-at-r/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia#Mandatory_data_retention)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_(Intercepti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_\(Interception_and_Access\)_Amendment_\(Data_Retention\)_Act_2015)

</comment><comment><USER26> So the British government is just rubber stamping what they had already been doing in secret and technically illegally for the last twenty years.

I can't wait till they get hacked and someone dumps every parliamentary minister and lord's dubious Google searches for the public to see.

<comment><USER27> It was illegal until they brought in retroactive legislation in the middle of the night making it legal for them to hack. What's the point in having laws?

Most politicians want these intrusive powers in spite of them being against the ECHR Act. Nobody to vote for or dare you vote at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The whole planet is descending into fascism, put in place by the old generation who doesn't understand technology while the new one is too busy inventing the next toilet sharing app.

I guess everyone will enjoy this last century...

</comment><comment><USER29> It will be interesting to see the response when this data is hacked and the browsing histories of the politicians who passed it are released to the public.

<comment><USER30> It doesn't even need to be hacked. Sooner or later some politician will get that info on his/her opponent, it's inevitable. And, compared to your average person, a politician has a lot more at stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The first thing that comes to mind here is that data is only good if it is quality data... dirty data isn't good or reliable.

Coming up with a way to dirty the data from our IPs (i.e. a program that randomly hits domains via multiple browsers that everyone just runs as a background service)

<comment><USER32> Just run a tor exit node. Problem solved, sort of.

<comment><USER33> Until you're being questioned in connection with child porn. I'm glad that tor exists but the crimes that some people commit with it make it impossible for me to run an exit node. There are things I don't even want to be remotely be associated with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How is this any different from the EU Data Retention Directive we've had for a decade already?

Somebody should make a "feature matrix" and explain this.

<comment><USER35> Are you referring to the Data Retention Directive [1], which was invalidated in 2014? Or are there still other EU-wide laws on data retention?

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

<comment><USER34> I wasn't aware it was invalidated. Of course, once each member state implemented this directive into national law and I don't believe the national laws immediately became void.

For example, a quick google shows that just last month the Constitutional Court in Romania declared the Big Brother law doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights so data retention continues. All data is kept for 3 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If we can't fight them in the courts then we fight them where we are comfortable. Now more than ever we need to start outpacing the law using technology. We've done this before and we can do it again. Bits move faster than bureaucracy :)

</comment><comment><USER37> I will just leave this here: [https://www.privateinternetaccess.com](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com)

<comment><USER38> I just feel like using a VPN, while legal, might already put you on some list of "suspicious" users. Surely, if you have something to hide, then you are worth investigating closely.

<comment><USER39> Which is why we need to push as many people as possible to use VPN's, they already have too much straw and too few needles so lets give them even more straw.

The reality is that no one in the know thinks this has anything to do with terrorism and _everything_ to do with political control.

If you don't have the right to privacy then all other rights are subverted, previous governments have used the state security apparatus to monitor perfectly legal political activities, they've proven again and again they can't be trusted with this kind of power and we let them give themselves more (and legalise all the illegal shit they where already doing).

The reality is the UK (which traditionally has been a less free society for a 'free' society) is rapidly sliding into something you can't realistically call a free society.

<comment> hash-set The surveillance state has always been about political control. Terrorism is merely the justification.

<comment><USER20> >Terrorism is merely the justification. //

You've lost sight of any balance when you start claiming that terrorism is just an idea used to justify state oversight and not an actual problem of organised harm/killing of peaceful civilians.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings) \- presumably you think that's just a huge fiction created so the government can get hold of your holiday snaps.

<comment><USER38> I think one can acknowledge that terrorists and terrorist attacks are definitely a real thing that exist, and at the same time one can think that the current reaction is completely out of proportion, where the whole society is giving away its freedoms to prevent a really minor threat?

<comment><USER40> I'd happily live with the lightning strike probability of being involved in a terrorist attack than the certainty that the government will abuse this data to subvert opposition.

Trading the rights of millions of people to combat terrorism hurts more people than the terrorists could ever hope to touch.

This doesn't even factor in solutions terrorists can use to avoid surveillance, or answer the question of if all this surveillance even reduces terrorism in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a UK resident: I know that I can only avoid logging traffic by using a vpn.

But the domain logging part bothers me the most. Does anyone here know how they will do it? Could I just use another dns server? Or will they intercept http header?

If I'm not mistaken, they could still extract the domain names from https traffic but no exact history?

Anyway, a reason more to use https everywhere, reduces sharply what they can see.

<comment><USER15> VPN has been thoroughly defeated. China, UK and US state law enforcement monitor VPN use. (Snowden documents, for example, revealed that VPN traffic can be readily decrypted.)

ISPs and police will use every mechanism including DNS, HTTP, IP addresses, CRL behavior, ad tracking markers embedded in pages and more to determine your browsing behavior and history.

The best way to defend yourself against this is to lie down and comply.

<comment><USER41> Do you have a link to the "VPN has been defeated" documents? Didn't Snowden say exactly, that the only thing to trust is strong encryption?

> ISPs and police will use every mechanism including DNS, HTTP, IP addresses

Surely VPN will protect you from all of that?

My main concern is police/isp's logging all VPN traffic, and then when they want to use some of it, they subpoena your VPN provider for the keys. Though, maybe forward security fixes this? They could also secretly force every provider to log everything at all time? But surely there are enough providers that some would have leaked it?

<comment><USER15> I was going to write up a dossier, but found one created by Der Speigel here: [http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents- atta...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents-attacks-on- vpn-ssl-tls-ssh-tor-a-1010525.html)

Yes, trust strong encryption.

VPN isn't strong encryption. Or rather, VPN is not necessarily strong encryption as most of the VPN standards and implementations have either been backdoored or weren't designed for strength against state actors.

<comment><USER42> > most of the VPN standards

What VPN standards are you talking about?

<comment><USER15> IPSEC, IKE.

<comment><USER41> From the (excellent list of) papers you listed, it seems the weaknesses are not so much that the encryption can be broken, but that you can do all kinds of man in the middle and timing attacks. Does this mean, that as long as you are not being actively attacked, the security is acceptable? That is, if you are only trying to avoid passive logging?

I guess in either case, it would be better to just go with openvpn. I really don't understand why it isn't natively supported in Android, OSX etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I know this is not a great solution, but wouldn't a week long ban on UK IP addresses by major websites (Google, Facebook etc.) raise awareness? (or a redirect to a page describing why this law is the issue)

<comment><USER44> Share holders ain't gonna love that

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> How difficult would it be to swamp the monitoring system with noise?

<comment><USER46> That's what I'm thinking as well. I only need to do a crawler, doing HEAD requests only, piping into /dev/null, in theory.

<comment><USER47> So all your head requests get filtered out when the db gets queried. Leaving all your gets and posts etc.

Also better hope your crawler doesn't hit any illegal sites (there are loads according to UK law).

<comment><USER48> > (there are loads according to UK law).

No, there really aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> It sickens me that Britain passed the most extreme surveillance law ever.

America is supposed to be number 1 at everything. C'mon congress, get on the ball! Don't let America be out done by Britain.

<comment><USER50> In America,the government doesn't need a law to conduct extreme surveillance. They just do it and don't give a shit what the public think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> After I heard this was likely to get passed, I set up a VPN on my server based in France. I now funnel my traffic through this VPN, so now all web connections are end-to-end encrypted and not subject to UK ISP logging. I suggest to everyone who is capable of setting up and running a server to do something like this.

</comment><comment><USER52> As other people have said, there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself in the near to medium term future:

1) Use Signal 2) Use Tor 3) Use a VPN 4) Reduce your digital footprint - especially if you use social media

What was once paranoid fantasy now just seems like prudence. What a time to be alive, eh?

<comment><USER15> 1) Signal does not and can not protect information about who you are in contact with, when you contact or are contacted by them, and how long your conversation is.

2) Tor has been both infiltrated organizationally, academically broken, and is occupied by police on most of its exit nodes. This without the operational burden it puts on users. Tor is 'just okay' at protecting users, and should never be used alone.

3) Use a VPN you can trust. Most VPN (especially cheap and free services) are monitored by state police.

4) To add here, try not to have your pictures and locations uploaded online and do not carry a cell phone.

I want to add to the list:

5) Do NOT be a target. This is the opposite rule of the usual "if you have nothing to hide": DO NOT have anything to hide. Your opponents in the game of 'hide' are intelligence agencies and state police. It's much better that you comply and focus on narrow interesting technical problems than social or civil rights - as being outspoken and interested about the latter makes you a target.

<comment><USER53> 5) is probably the most depressing thing I've read for some time. We should all make the effort to do exactly the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is it possible to confidently bypass this intrusion of privacy using vpn's or some other system?

</comment><comment><USER55> Wow, didn't realise it had made it this far let alone being passed today.

Does this law cover non-residential IP traffic? I would like to set up a VPN but would prefer to be recognised as being physically located in the U.K. while browsing Google and Netfix.

</comment><comment><USER56> Since people are mentioning VPN, be aware which server you use. You might want to stay away from servers in 14 eyes countries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes.2C_14_E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes.2C_14_Eyes.2C_and_other_.22third_parties.22)

Few useful resources when deciding between VPNs

1\. That one privacy guy - [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison- chart/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-comparison-chart/)

2\. [https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/)

</comment><comment><USER57> Isn't this sort of thing inevitable? I mean, the more technology advances the easier and cheaper it becomes to build terrorist devices or WMDs. Therefore society, in order to protect itself, has to be vigilant about how the relevant knowledge disseminates. An analogy might be an individual guarding against suicidal thoughts.

More interesting to me is how to create mechanisms to control who gets access to the data and under what circumstances. I think in the UK we have a pretty bad record of local councils and other busybodies using snooping powers not intended for them.

</comment><comment><USER58> So, they just codified what they have been doing for the past decade. Much like the E911/etc bill here in the US, apparently ones use of technology removes _ALL_ pretenses of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER59> I hope the ISP's add a separate line item to internet bills for all of the costs to implement this system so people can see how much this is costing them.

</comment><comment><USER60> BTW, these would totally be incompatible with EU privacy shield laws. Enjoy your 'deregulated' post Brexit state

</comment><comment><USER15> Outsourcing to companies what its intelligence agencies have been doing for decades.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_Police_(surveillance_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_Police_\(surveillance_program\))

</comment><comment><USER61> Who exactly is going to pay for this? The govt or ISP/consumer?

And if as another comment suggested, what happens if there's a concerted effort of spamming the system? How much data are they actually willing to hold?

People aren't so apathetic on issues when told they have to pay more.

</comment><comment> koga-ninja The way I read the story, this law which was passed is Modifying surveillance laws, rather than completely Oppressing people with something new.

What can the average British subject do? I know they Do not have the funds nor the legal and political Acumen to do anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER62> This leads me to consider that although ISPs previously weren't forced to collect users' browsing history, they had the legal right to. The only difference the bill does is to share the power corporations had with the government.

</comment><comment><USER63> This is just crazy. It like anyone could be a criminal, so let's treat everyone like one? Feels like a huge invasion of basic human rights.

Alas, I feel like the US isn't far behind. It feels like this will be the norm soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER64> What do you do when your leaders go against the will of the people? You get new leaders. When they do t again? Try again? When they just keep doing it? Then what?

<comment><USER65> What do you do if this _is_ the will of the people?

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's time for user-friendly p2p, local internets.

<comment><USER67> packet amateur radio

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> What are the most effective measures a British citizen could take right now to escape this surveillance?

</comment><comment><USER69> Why are people in UK tolerating this?

<comment><USER70> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Soo... What is the UK government so scared of that they need to do this?

<comment><USER72> Assuming these decisions are bred out of any sort of 'necessity' is assuming sincerity from the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Is there a way that I can browse privately or just not at all any more?

</comment><comment><USER74> Let's fervently hope we won't see a demonstration of how to organize a devastating terrorist attack in the UK without using a single telephone or internet connection.

</comment><comment><USER75> The "extremest", one could say.

</comment><comment><USER76> Blofeld is happy, at least.

</comment><comment><USER77> What a sensationalist title, I was expecting a comparison with other surveillance law in others countries and the result to be something outrageous. Turns out it's just sensationalism and it ends up being the kind of surveillance that has been enacted around the world in the last few years, mandatory ISP data retention has been active for 10 years in France[1].

It was even a European directive, directive 2006/24/EC or data retention directive[2], for all members of the European Union from 2006 to 2014 when it was invalidated through the Court of Justice of European Union. Interestingly this directive came into existence while the Uk had the presidency of EU in 2005. >According to the directive, member states will have to store citizens' telecommunications data for a minimum of 6 months and at most 24 months.

Why is zdnet trying to put this UK law as if it was something out of the ordinary ? Switzerland[3], Canada's bill C-51[4], Germany[5], Australia[6], Italy[7], and more [8] (Estonia, Greece, Spain, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Ireland) all have mandatory data retention law.

Then again none of those are actual democracies (the closest being switzerland) and that's pretty much the reason these laws made to spy on citizens are possible.

[1]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_the_fight_against_terro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_on_the_fight_against_terrorism) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive) [3]: [http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-37465853](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37465853) [4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- terrorism_Act,_2015](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-terrorism_Act,_2015) [5]: [https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2015/10/16/german- parliame...](https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2015/10/16/german-parliament- adopts-data-retention-law-with-localization-requirement/) [6]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_(Intercepti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_\(Interception_and_Access\)_Amendment_\(Data_Retention\)_Act_2015) [7]: [https://edri.org/edrigramnumber3-16italy/](https://edri.org/edrigramnumber3-16italy/) [8]: [https://www.purevpn.com/blog/data-retention-laws-by- countrie...](https://www.purevpn.com/blog/data-retention-laws-by-countries/)

<comment><USER78> > Why is zdnet trying to put this UK law as if it was something out of the > ordinary ?

Because the 2006/24/EC data retention directive [1] didn't say anything about browsing history and even then was invalidated by the Court of Justice of European Union. The new UK law however:

"The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand -- though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch."

[1] [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:105:0054:0063:EN:PDF) (read "Article 5" "Categories of data to be retained")

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Brazil has passed that a few years ago as part of Marco Civil - 1 year period too, which can be extended per request from the authorities:

>Art. 13. Na provisão de conexão à internet, cabe ao administrador de sistema autônomo respectivo o dever de manter os registros de conexão, sob sigilo, em ambiente controlado e de segurança, pelo prazo de 1 (um) ano, nos termos do regulamento.

It demands the storage for 1 year of "connection access registers", defined as:

>VIII - registros de acesso a aplicações de internet: o conjunto de informações referentes à data e hora de uso de uma determinada aplicação de internet a partir de um determinado endereço IP.

I.e. user IP, access data, and info on the accessed website/application.

<comment><USER80> Its not the same thing, as in Brazil the investigation forces will need to get a warrant from a judge to have access to that data. Exactly the same way it happens for phone records or private bank accounts.

This data is protected by law, and is considered private.. so only a judge, in a ongoing investigation, when asked by police forces, when investiganting crimes for instance, can grant access to this data.

As i understand from what i read in the article, the UK government has direct access to that data, so the privacy of its citizens is not respected or granted by the rule of law.

<comment><USER79> They do not need a warrant, read Article 11.

<comment><USER80> It says exactly the opposite of what you are trying to imply.

>Article 11. In any operation of collection, storage, custody and treatment of records, personal data or communications by connection providers and internet applications in which at least one of these acts occurs in the national territory, shall be _obligatorily respected the legislation and the rights to privacy, the protection of personal data and the confidentiality of private communications and records_.

[http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/...](http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2011-2014/2014/lei/l12965.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> The new Prime Minister Theresa May does not hold any principles that would place limits on the powers of the government. She was a well known "champion of the snoopers charter," (wiki) when she was home secretary. There is a british tendency to be overbearing authoritarians that provides fuel to their various secession movements. Britain is unlikely to maintain its current borders for many years after Brexit.

<comment><USER46> > does not hold any principles that would place limits on the powers of the > government

This is why opposition exists. If only the were doing their job, instead of fighting amongst themselves.</comment></comment>


An Open Letter To Business People - <AUTHOR> http://dave.is/businesspeople.html

<comment><USER2> This is a nice piece overall but, having seen founders negotiate their splits countless times over nearly three decades, I would add that such negotiations tend to be more nuanced than equal splits in most cases.

Idea people may not be able to proceed without solid technical people but what they do or don't have to give them for their services is always governed by supply and demand. An exceptional technical person who will drive a company will get an equal split (or more) but someone whose skills can be supplied by a good number of people will likely get far less. Strong technical expertise does tend to be _hugely_ important in a typical startup but is only marketable consistent with what people are willing to pay for it in light of other alternatives.

So too with idea people. Abstract ideas may not have much value but many of the best ideas come from those "in the field," i.e., who have worked extensively in a given area and have special insights about how, e.g., customer pain points can be addressed effectively. Such ideas can be incredibly valuable and they do not necessarily come from technical people. They can come from managers, from sales people, or from a broad variety of sources - even from those with a technical background who later moved into sales or management and who combine their skill set with their experience to derive special insights. When people like that want to found a company, they may lack the particular technical expertise to execute on the project but they will know enough about the industry to know where to find the best candidates to fill such a role. That may result in a 50/50 deal but it could easily result in all sorts of splits, even if one of the roles is prominent enough to be called "technical co-founder."

So, as a technical founder, you should push for as large a split as your personal qualities can command but you should not use any arbitrary formula for determining splits. The rule is and always will be to assess the situation based on the real value each person is contributing and this often leads to a wide range of founder splits that are far from equal yet are perfectly suitable for the persons involved.

That said, this again is a fine piece reminding those with technical skills not to sell themselves short in dealing with business people. There are all sorts of hustlers out there who are more than willing to take advantage of you and, if you do not value yourself properly, you will likely fall victim to them. If people really do have valuable things to contribute, however - whether on the business or on the technical side - then the process is not really that adversarial because smart people will know an opportunity when they see it, whether or not they get equal shares in the venture, and they will usually work these things out in a way that is amicable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely agree that 50/50 is nowhere near a hard and fast rule. The split depends on how long the company has been around, how much progress has already been made, etc.

The larger point I was trying to get across is the discrepancy between the amount of value many businessy types ascribe to technical skills and the actual value (at least from my perspective).

If the only progress you've made on your company is the initial idea, I really do believe that the you'll up your chances of success significantly if the split is close to 50/50. The odds that you're even going to end up succeeding with the same idea is pretty low. At that stage, you really want to build a team of equals, not get employees.

<comment><USER3> I think the problem is extrapolating from simple examples used to illustrate thing.

eg Rich Dad or similar: You have an idea for a company. You create the company and deposit $10k in it's account. You bring on a programmer to build the project paying him in equity. The company could be worth $100m in a few years, so his 10% is better than a salary.

I'm sure parallel toy ideas exist in people's minds about investors. If someone puts $1m into a company that's still mostly an idea and a prototype, it doesn't seem all that far fetched that the investor would expect to basically own the company. What have the founders contributed? An idea and 6 month work. What has the investor contributed? $1m.

In the absence of actual experience, people develop biases based one imagined experiences where they are the hero. I don't mean that in a bad way. Everyone does it. It's hard to see an outside perspective unless you encounter it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _A startup without a business plan isn't a business. It's just some code._

I disagree. Users make it a business - and users don't care if I have a business plan. They just care if the product (i.e., code) makes their lives better.

<comment><USER5> I mostly agree, though I don't think "business plan" in this context is meant to read "a 100+ page analysis of the market and other bullshit." Rather, I took it to mean a sense of how you're going to get the product out to users and (maybe) how you'll eventually make money. Both of those things are required if you want your business to become sustainable.

<comment><USER6> In spite of this being repeated so many times still it is so easy to fall into the trap. At-least it was for me. Working on my latest project we discussed so much on the feature, design and others but never on how to get users. We kinda assumed that once the project is done users will be waiting for us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I liked the piece a lot and it is roughly right. However, as a technical co- founder, I think a good measure of a business co-founder is whether he tries to solve the technical problems himself. e.g. by learning a bit of php and hacking something together.

Not only does that show that he's resourceful and scrappy, but it also makes it more likely that he'll be able to talk about the product coherently i.e. understanding and keeping in mind the constraints that software development has. It calibrates his intuition, if you will.

<comment><USER8> Are you willing to try to solve non technical problems by yourself?

You know, researching the market to assure you're actually building something people will want to use, finding paying customers or advertisers, dealing with investors, finding decent PR people, recruiting etc... nothing too fancy.

<comment><USER7> Yes.

A bit less snarky: a good measure of a technical co-founder is him trying to solve the business problems himself. For the same reasons I cited above.

<comment><USER8> That's the right attitude. Unfortunately, that's not the norm at all.

Mostly, technical folks tend to behave as spoiled brats when dealing with non technical people as cofounders (which amazes me given that one of the best performing tech companies today is run by a non technical guy - Steve Jobs).

Update: no need for the technical guy to actually work on non technical issues... given the current scenario, respecting the non technical guy within his domain would suffice. It's not like non technical people try to tell programmers how to do their job.

<comment><USER9> Steve Jobs soldered with everyone else at Atari. Just because he didn't engineer at Apple doesn't mean he's non-technical.

<comment><USER8> Just soldering doesn't make anyone "technical". Woz's designs were the technical assets that made Apple a successful startup.

Furthermore, that experience certainly didn't mean a thing for his second tenure at Apple since 1997, during which the company became bigger than ever. I also doubt he had anything to do with the technical aspects of the operation during this time.

<comment><USER10> You can be technical without being an engineer. Steve Jobs has been working closely with some of the best engineers in the world full-time for 30 years.

He probably knows more about display, memory, graphics, processor, and battery technology than 99% of programmers. Not to mention his knowledge of a dozen other technologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a few things to add to this.

Know something I don't. Plenty of people seem to operate under a false dichotomy between code and business, where "not programming" gets treated as a business skill. I consider myself a hybrid hacker/businessman, but stronger on the hacker side for now. If I am to take a "business person" as a partner, I'm looking for that person to do things I couldn't learn easily from a day of reading. This could mean lots of things: truly understanding markets and pricing, being a professional member of a specialized target market, legal and accounting training, unlimited patience for customer support, etc.

I see some "business" people making the same mistakes they're supposed to prevent. The stereotype is of a programmer who builds and builds without testing the market, but how many non-programmers try to recruit techs to hack together a totally untested but "revolutionary" idea?

Another thing I've gotten wiser to is the use of vague terms, like "leadership" and "networking." To me this comes off as "I wanna be the boss and hang out." If you really are good at these things, try to give some specifics.

Finally, if I wanted to have a boss and live in a hole, I'd get a job at X big corporation. This is the point I expect the most disagreement on. I don't want a business founder who will "take over" all of the networking. By deciding to be a founder, I've already bet that I can manage myself better than someone else can manage me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why do we always hear about non-technical cofounders looking for technical co- founders, rather than the other way around?

Is this like some singles bar where 80% of the people are male?

I for one would like to find a hustler who really knows how to hustle.

<comment><USER13> At it's core, yes. You (and me) are in the wrong place. It's like going to the Apple store and hoping to hear great things about WP7.

I don't want to be snarky, but I'm having a hard time resisting. Two technical co-founders have shuttered a business and moving on to work "hard on a new product which we're super excited about." It's great that you're super excited about it, but wouldn't it even be more exciting if you had a business minded co-founder who could demonstrate the market opportunity, or lack thereof, and make sure the time, energy, and sweat equity you're dumping into this will have some payback?

I do appreciate the use of "'technical cofounder' and not 'developer.'" I think a lot of technical co-founders that also write code have been annoyed to hell by the non-technical business people who don't understand the effort required to realize their big awesome idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see how this might look a bit ironic ;). The reason we're shutting down HireHive and launching something new is precisely because of what we've learned in the past 8 months working in the hiring space. The only way to find out if there's market opportunity is to come up with a hypothesis and test it. So we've done that once, learned a bunch of stuff about hiring, and are pivoting to what we think is a bigger problem (still in hiring).

I doubt there's a business minded co-founder who could have told us the direction we should be going in without learning what we did about hiring first.

<comment><USER13> _I doubt there's a business minded co-founder who could have told us the direction we should be going in without learning what we did about hiring first._

You're absolutely right, and I agree with this statement. I'm left with the feeling that you don't think this could have been learnt without first writing code, testing the application, and learning the expensive way.

It's tough, awkward, and often frustrating, but you can connect with potential users ("prospects" or "strangers") and flesh your idea out without writing a line of code. People are willing to talk, but you have to approach them -- and go outside of your comfort zone to find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author makes the assumption in this relationship that the technical co- founder is a talented hacker who has read all of Paul Graham's essays, maybe a Steve Blank book or two, and is well connected in the startup tech scene, all while the business co-founder is just some marketing shmuck. The characterization is unfair; there are plenty of marketing shmucks, but they should be compared against socially inept code monkeys, not this superstar technical co-founder (say, the kind that read Hacker News).

A great "business person" doesn't just flip open a roledex and start dialing for dollars once the technical co-founder has laid a magical golden software egg.

And hopefully, a technical and non-technical co-founder can find a way to work together where they don't perceive their partner as a parasitic dead-weight.

</comment><comment><USER15> Pretty good explanation. A couple of tweaks: 50/50 is a bad split, because it will lead to paralysis, argument, flying chairs, and eventually bankruptcy.

Second, the advice here is to not pitch the idea when you first meet potential technical co-founders. I disagree: I think sharing the same passion is key, so you definitely should tell me that you plan to revolutionize the music industry (a bad example, I know...). Small talk won't get me, the developer, interested.

<comment><USER16> whats your suggested equity split?

<comment><USER17> I think it really depends on how far along the idea/business guy has taken the project. If he has talked to tons of angels/VC's, or lots of potential customers, especially if those customers have indicated or even signed things saying they are ready to pay money to use the product, the split might favor the idea/business guy more than if he has just been "noodling" over something and has some "sketches" of what it might be.

<comment><USER18> This. The later you come into a given project, the less equity you would be justifiably entitled to.

As to the original question, if you are starting from zero and you want a means of avoiding critical shareholder deadlocks, you can split 45/45/10 with the smaller portion going to a party both founders agree will be impartial. This person can be the initial angel, or perhaps a minor founder who accepts a smaller chunk in order to maintain his dayjob.

You can also maintain 50/50 splits of ownership but still break executive deadlocks via a third vote by mandating a third seat on the board. This won't help fundamental shareholder deadlocking, but disagreements rarely go to the shareholder vote level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wrote basically the same thing a month ago.

[http://comments.apreche.net/166/no-you-need-a-technical- co-f...](http://comments.apreche.net/166/no-you-need-a-technical-co-founder/)

The one thing that I don't understand is how people are willing to be paid in equity. Do you people not have to pay rent? Are you living in your parents basements with someone feeding you?

In the words of many a Taxi driver "NO! You pay me cash now!"

Lottery tickets don't keep the lights on.

<comment><USER7> _The one thing that I don't understand is how people are willing to be paid in equity. Do you people not have to pay rent? Are you living in your parents basements with someone feeding you?_

Hint: savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The problem is you don't need a technical cofounder, you need a good technical founder. Just because someone is at a meetup or on Github doesn't mean they're a good technical cofounder.

Finding a technical cofounder isn't too difficult. If you can't sell your idea to one developer you probably can't sell it to customers. Finding a good technical cofounder is very hard.

<comment><USER5> It's even harder than that: You need a good technical co-founder that you have good chemistry with.

<comment><USER21> Finding this _is_ hard, especially because we non-techies are likely on a learning curve when we're having substantive discussions with you about the evolution of our product.

But I think that as long as we're informed on technology (opportunities and hurdles) and have truly crystallized some initial business plan, I think we're better poised to experience that essential chemistry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This piece gave me a couple of red flags even before I started into the article - primarily the adversarial premise in the title and implied put down of "business people". Remember the time when your VP or manager walks into the room and begin with "you people need to ..."?

As a tech founder, I realize how many aspects of technologies and competencies I need to get right to move the startup to somewhere near a profitable business. There are very few super techs who "know it all". There are legal techies, business techies, hardware techies, etc and probably will look down with similar disdain that a "coding techie" who just don't get it. That attitude is not going to be conducive to building relationship all around.

I would suggest looking at any proposition that comes your way as what a good angel or VC would - ask the right questions, be helpful, do your due diligence, say no politely and walk away if it does not interest you. We techies must educate ourselves how to evaluate a startup proposition and be helpful where possible to build our network because the network may yield answers in our "next" startup.

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe the title should read, business focused entrepreneurs with no money. If I am a entrepreneur and I have money, I will not be looking for a "technical co-founder". I will hire technical teams to build and iterate the product to my liking and specification, with their expert input of course (which I can choose to accept or not).

</comment><comment><USER3> I listened to a Mixergy podcast earlier this week where the founder (a "business founder") started by doing some customer development, getting a prototype developed (paying to get it done, raising a round and then going to find co founders. Andrew (interviewer) assumed this meant a higher equity portion, but Rafael said it was close to an even split. The logic seemed to be that he could get better co founders this way.

To anyone who sees themselves in David's (the poster) position: How would you feel about coming on board at this stage? How would you feel about coming on board at this stage minus the investors?

</comment><comment><USER24> Before embarking on new venture, everybody should watch the "Treasure of the Sierra Madre", a great movie, directed by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart. There you will see that the real problems begin once you have a whiff of success.

Oh forget it. Go see the "The Social Network" if you want to see that. Give a huge majority of shares to your technical cofounder and try to stay on his good side.

</comment><comment><USER8> btw, a good technical cofounder isn't "just" a good programmer (or even a great one)... actually, he doesn't even have to be the best programmer on the team

</comment><comment><USER25> Guy says he doesn't value the "vision guy" that much...has he looked at the photo he's using? It's not even sized properly. Simple, simple fix: <http://i.imgur.com/o73DX.png></comment>


Show HN: Extractr, HTML content extraction as a service - <AUTHOR> http://extractr.lisant.io/

<comment><USER2> Thats nice man. Nice indeed.</comment>


Change We Can Profit From: A start-up inspired by Barack Obama - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13031214&source=hptextfeature

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have a link to the "green venture fund" discribed as organized on facebook, where individuals contribute as little as $100 ?

It sounds like it could be something like Prosper, but more focused on small startups, which would be pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flash mobs for not only fun/doing good, but also profit? This doesn't sound like something you can get wealthy doing, but if you have other priorities, seems reasonable.

Does anyone have figures/stats on how much of an impact social or "web 2.0" for-profit do-gooders are having?

</comment><comment><USER4> As a side note... Check out <http://www.carrotmob.org/> and watch the little video. It's cute and get's the point across.

Consider using something like this in your startup's web site, HN readers. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> (profit vs. nonprofit) vs. (do good vs. be greedy)

Let's untangle some dichotomies.</comment>


Geary: New lightweight email reader for GNOME designed around conversations - <AUTHOR> http://yorba.org/geary/

<comment><USER2> The Yorba Foundation is doing some pretty interesting work with limited resources. They write well-designed apps with attention to the UI.

Shotwell and Geary are both written in Vala, a C#-like language layered on top of the GObject system. It will be interesting to see how Vala matures. It has always seemed like a messy abstraction, building it upon GObject, rather than its own type system.

<comment><USER3> Why should it build upon yet another type system? Vala was designed around GType for a reason, so that it would not have to deal with the same language- interop issues that occur with languages that use different type systems from GObject. Vala originally compiled into C, so implementing another type system in C that isn't GObject would be kind of silly.

If you develop in C#, Java, Python, or Ruby then you need a layer between GTK and your language which can make their type systems work together. But Vala was designed around the existing GObject system, and since it compiled directly to C it didn't need much in the way of a glue layer, at least for GObject-based libraries.

<comment><USER2> I agree that it removes some complexity there, but it also introduces some ugliness for example: [https://live.gnome.org/Vala/FAQ#Why_can.27t_I_chain_up_to_ba...](https://live.gnome.org/Vala/FAQ#Why_can.27t_I_chain_up_to_base_constructor.3F)

In fact, Jurg, the creator of Vala agrees on that enough that he created Dova: <https://live.gnome.org/Dova> it's no longer actively maintained, but it stands to illustrate the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > we're planning to add lightning-fast searching

I don't see the point of discussing a mail client that doesn't have fast full- text search that scales to a million messages. If it wasn't designed in from the beginning, why should we have any confidence that it will actually work, when so many still fail to deliver? I use Gmail and Notmuch, both of which I think are best in class, yet are still only _barely_ fast enough.

<comment><USER5> Your comment doesn't make much sense, to me. It's obvious that they've thought about adding search to their client. What about it not being in, at launch, makes you think that it'll be slow? Why is it not worth discussing the mail client? We have a basic web app that we built at work that stores information about tasks that our automated applications perform, so that we can monitor them as they run. We added full text search to it almost six months after building it, and search was a complete after-thought. We chose elastic search and store about 12 million records in a small cluster. We add maybe several thousand per day, on a busy day. This is not a large amount of records, from what I've seen of other clusters. We easily average less than 200ms response times of search queries across all documents, while testing it with about 100 queries per second. I don't know whether or not you consider this fast or slow, but it's pretty snappy, in my opinion. So search doesn't seem all that mystical and complicated to me, but maybe our scenario just makes it appear that way.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Can somebody with the patience to build this, try running it through <https://emailprivacytester.com/> please and share the results here.

<comment><USER6> "DNS Prefetch - Link" turned red, everything else stayed grey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Is Vala type-safe? Ie, can I exploit stack overflows in this?

2\. Does it support S/MIME or PGP?

3\. Can I configure it to view and respond only in plaintext?

3a. When not in plaintext mode, what this guy asked: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974983>

<comment><USER8> > Is Vala type-safe? Ie, can I exploit stack overflows in this?

Vala resembles C# most closely. It preprocesses down to C, and gives you a great API to the GObject C object system, and in particular gives you good access to glib, including its string, list, etc. libraries. It also is intended to give you reasonable access native C libraries (optimized for those that follow the GObject conventions, but not restricted to those) and has a much richer type system than C.

I'm not particularly sure there exists a language where you can say that you can't exploit stack overflows, but it's probably much harder than in your average C application and on par with C#, Objective-C, Java, Python, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It wouldn't let me add accounts with unencrypted transports, so I can't evaluate this program. The 'Continue' button just led back to the account setup dialogue.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very impressed by the quality of this app although it's targeting GNOME. Only thing missing for now it multi-account support...

<comment><USER11> For me it's signatures ( <http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/5458> ) and a decent full-text-search (on the roadmap). Only thing remains is what to do with events/invitations..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is interesting how they are going to monetize their software.

</comment><comment><USER13> This isn't new at all... The latest version (which is still beta) was released in October...</comment>


XML to JSON Converter. By a 15 year old. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/karlcoelho/xml-to-json

<comment> nezza-_- I'm not sure what your age has to do with this submission, I know a guy who wrote a simple operating system with 15 and never put his age online just to get 'real feedback' as he put it.

Edit: After looking at the code it also becomes apparent that you did not write an "XML-to-JSON converter" but just put a (very simple) web-frontend in front of the crack-library. ( [http://www.railstips.org/blog/archives/2009/04/01/crack- the-...](http://www.railstips.org/blog/archives/2009/04/01/crack-the-easiest- way-to-parse-xml-and-json/) ) Not to discourage you, but I don't think the title is really honest this way.

</comment><comment><USER2> It falls over with an internal server error if you enter invalid XML. That's not good. Besides that, it's ace that you're learning and putting code out there for snarky old people like me to complain about. ;)

Regarding your age though, you're old too. [http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_suarez_a_12_year_old_app_dev...](http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_suarez_a_12_year_old_app_developer.html) ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> The useful part: [https://github.com/karlcoelho/xml-to- json/blob/master/app.rb...](https://github.com/karlcoelho/xml-to- json/blob/master/app.rb#L11-L12)</comment>


Eric Schmidt criticises education in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14683133

<comment><USER2> _He said he had been flabbergasted to learn that computer science was not taught as standard in UK schools, despite what he called the "fabulous initiative" in the 1980s when the BBC not only broadcast programmes for children about coding, but shipped over a million BBC Micro computers into schools and homes._

It really was a fabulous initiative. I'm not exaggerating when I say pretty much everyone in my classes when I was around the age of 11 or 12 knew at least _some_ BASIC or LOGO programming (though nobody really thought of LOGO as a programming language - it was sneaky that way!).

I am sad to see nothing like that initiative in place today.

<comment><USER3> Here is an exam paper from a Scottish Advaned Higher school exam:

[http://www.sqa.org.uk/pastpapers/papers/papers/2010/AH_Compu...](http://www.sqa.org.uk/pastpapers/papers/papers/2010/AH_Computing_all_2010.pdf)

I had a quick flick through it and for a school level course I actually thought the content looked pretty good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A couple of quotes from comments on the Guardian's version of the story:

" _There is no need to teach people in the UK how to be a computer programmer because the work can either be shipped out to India or companies can employ people from India to work in their IT companies in the UK._ "

Which is bad enough, but this one really takes the biscuit for me:

" _How can this be true when our exam pass-[rate has been climbing for yonks? The guy's obviously talking crap. What would hr know about education? We should listen to our teachers and ignore capitalists like this._ "

Wow.

<comment><USER5> I think you might need to put your sarcasm detectors into British mode.

Questions around outsourcing, the standard of secondary education, and how education meets the needs of industry all loom fairly large in the British political landscape.

<comment><USER6> Except I honestly don't think these answers weren't meant to be sarcastic. I sometimes skim through Guardian comments and these seem par for the course.

<comment><USER7> I've lived in the UK for way too long now, so my sarcasm detector is finely tuned... and I do think those are satyrical comments. It'd be hard for a clueless idiot to hit these buttons quite so precisely. Must be some smart commenters on the Guardian website!

<comment><USER7> *satirical ...

<comment><USER8> now now swombat. i can't tell at all whether you are being sarcastic here. (newcomer to HN, won't be surprised to fail the tuning test)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't had an average education, but even other, much lower, poorer schools in my area still did IT early. Microsoft Research is in Cambridge, I'd say more but I'm annoyed at Schmidt for clearly not looking at it. I've never seen a BBC Micro, but I've seen all sorts of people, even ones who are sure their success is somewhere else, be engaged by IT (if only to get round the filters, which still counts).

</comment><comment><USER10> It really is true. From my time in the British education system, I can honestly say there have only been very few instances where a teacher inspired me and ignited my interest. This shouldn't be the case. Every teacher should do that.

Most teachers, however, are only interested in one thing: passing tests. The goal of what they teach is not to build a foundation for future education, that's only really secondary. The primary goal is to pass what ever test it is that you must take at the end of the year. After all, the test tests the foundation right? _sigh_

The reason why teachers do this is simple really. If kids don't pass tests, they get fired. It's a constant fear. So teachers in the UK have been boiled down to "These kids must pass the test or I will get fired".

I.T was especially bad. I don't even think the teachers were THAT competent on a computer. In one class, I remember suggesting encryption as a way to secure your computer and the teacher told the class the rest of the class encryption was password masking (where your characters are hidden by asterisks). The only programming I ever did was in my own time or maybe some horrendous chain of conditionals in Excel in said IT class. Computing only becomes available when you reach college and even then it's an option which most people don't take.

To be fairly honest with you, I only knew about programming because of my mother, who took a course on BASIC in the 80s. In my 13 years of compulsory British education I never really heard about computer programming.

The problem is that it'd be quite difficult and wrong to expose children to programming in education with the current mentality. Can you really imagine what it'd be like if children were taught how to code just to pass a test? No I think that wouldn't do any good. The deeper issues in education would do well to be fixed first, namely igniting interest and not hammering a bunch of facts into memory.

<comment><USER11> Actually, NO - it's not at all like that.

Teachers are the 'instruments' of government education policy. Sure, there's an inevitable variation in teaching quality between individuals, but the way the system works is that a set curriculum is delivered, and assessed, by teachers. 'Creativity' and 'innovation' has to be quashed to fit within these constraints. This is the cause of much frustration amongst teachers who entered the profession to 'make a difference'. (And this last sentence is very understated.)

Education is a factory: it processes young people through an assembly-line of set ideas and knowledge, much 'political correctness', and 'dynamic range compression' (an analogy to audio processing) of the highest and lowest intellects - culminating in an individual suitable to place in a working society.

Please don't blame teachers.

<comment><USER12> Teachers are in a bit of a weird position. On the one hand, they want to be considered as professionals, as a lawyer or a doctor might be, empowered and trusted to make decisions in the best interests of their "clients" (e.g. parents and children). But they organize themselves as labour, with rigid unions and collective bargaining. Do you know many teachers a year are dismissed for just not being very good at the job? None, yet as a society we have no problem dismissing doctors, airline pilots, whoever, if they can't do the job, despite passing the qualifications.

Given this, _all_ policymakers can do is try to limit the damage that can be done by e.g. the worst 10% of teachers, by imposing strict syllabuses. The other 90% suffer for it - but hey, they are the ones who place protecting their union brothers ahead of the best interests of the students.

<comment><USER13> Other professions have professional organizations which try to look out for the interests of their members.

The AMA (American Medical Association) is a very powerful lobby in Washington, and has a lot of influence on the profession.

People in IT often belong to organizations like the IEEE, which (though not a fraction as powerful as the AMA) also try to look out for the interests of their members.

In America, most lawyers belong to the American Bar Association, which serves a similar function to the AMA and IEEE.

As for airline pilots, you might have heard of the Virgin Atlantic strike that was in the news lately. It was initiated by the Balpa pilot union.

Many other professions, from electricians, to engineers, to construction workers, to architects, to nurses, firefighters, police, etc have unions and professional organizations which strive to look out for their members interests.

This is a good thing.. as is collective bargaining. They are a valuable check on the ridiculous amount of power employers in the US have over their employees, and a way to attempt to prevent a race to the bottom in terms of employee wages, benefits, job safety, quality, and satisfaction.

To say that teachers belonging to unions somehow makes them "unprofessional" is disingenuous. If anything, it's the other way around.

Furthermore, it's ridiculous to claim that teachers unions want to keep bad teachers at work. They don't. And there are procedures in place for firing them.

Finally, as to "the best interests of the students", what are those exactly? And who gets to decide what they are? The parents? The teachers? School administrators? Congress? The students themselves? Do any of them really know what is in "the best interests of the students"? This is a complicated issue, and the "one size fits all" approach of standardized syllabuses, standardized tests, and bumper sticker rhetoric does very little to address it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was 16 when they stopped Computing at A-Level. This was in 1998. Students before complained A Level material was duplicated in their first year at Uni, apparently.

Now I.T. is basically vaguely proficient use of MS Office. That, and a vague understanding of TCP/IP, or was when I was 17 at least.

I can understand I.T. will be more useful to 14-16 year olds. But at A-Level-- where they choose what to learn--to only have proficient use of MS Office, a small bit of theory, and an optional bit of Visual Basic, is ridiculous.

In India C++ is mandatory to all at a certain age. I even know an accountant who was forced to learn it. I would rather be in that situation than "Oh, you've done an A-Level in IT? Great. Then you can make me an Excel spreadsheet."

(As an aside, to assess my A-Level I.T. teacher: he told me C was the first version, C++ was the next version, and by now there'd be a C+++.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Someone said somewhere that most people are over-educated. How much education do you need to work checkout in Tesco? To listen to some, British education has been a mess since the 60's (apostrophe?) Despite that, Britain still muddles along nearish to the top of the wealth league. The kids are spending all their time on playboy (as my dad refers to games consoles) but maybe that will yet somehow be a blessing cos they'll all have exactly the skills needed in the future when human and computer work as one! Till the day I die, I expect education and the NHS to be in a 'state of crisis'

<comment><USER16> In a democracy you supposedly need enough of an education to work checkout in Tesco, to also be able to take informed decisions about who should lead your country and to vote in referendums on important issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> And? Perhaps it is not the life goal of the majority of people to push advertisements to their fellow human beings.

If the criticism came from Knuth - fine - but Eric Schmidt? Who is he to make such a remark?

<comment><USER17> The 15-year-old fanboys are downvoting in realtime again. Who else has time to guard threads so closely?

<comment><USER18> I find it funny that you are seriously lacking in CS knowledge but blame your downvotes on 15 year olds. In addition to being on the boards of two of the most successful technology companies in history he also has a PhD from Berkeley in EECS and co-wrote lex. God I hope you've heard of lex.

<comment><USER17> My sincere apologies to Eric Schmidt, and thank you for the information.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Getting started with AI today? - <AUTHOR> I have a growing interest in AI. There are lots of videos to watch. I can do this.
But what libraries are available to learn from? I'm on OS X. OpenAI.com seems to be more in planning than implementation, currently.
Companies like Apple, Facebook, etc are using AI more and more, what are they using?
Self-driving cars (and even tractors) are using AI this must be in house developed. GeoHot developed a slef driving car, literally in his garage.
There must be libraries to help get started for those wanting to learn and not write from scratch. <comment><USER2> I would recommend a first-principles approach, if you're really interested in the field, building a career around it, and not just jumping on something because it's "hot".

To that end, start with Convex Optimization [1]. You'll develop an incredibly versatile - but not esoteric - mathematical background. You'll link the mathematics to solving real engineering problems fairly quickly. You'll tackle the basics of machine learning as well.

After this, you'll have a pretty strong background to get into more traditional machine learning and deep learning. Regarding the former, Andrew Ng's notes are pretty solid [2], and for DL, Karpathy's Stanford course is great [3].

Self-studying all this material could take up to a year (part time, assuming you do it while having a job), but I don't know of a better way to gain the skills and get into the field. This approach balances your learning of fundamentals, engineering applications, real software, numerical computing, and the more fun "new" stuff.

Hope it works out well for someone else.

[1] - [http://stanford.edu/class/ee364a/](http://stanford.edu/class/ee364a/) Great video lectures available too.

[2] - [http://cs229.stanford.edu/materials.html](http://cs229.stanford.edu/materials.html) Also has great video lectures on Youtube.

[3] - [http://cs231n.stanford.edu/index.html](http://cs231n.stanford.edu/index.html) Ditto on the lecture vids.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fantastic. Yes, principles is what I care about most at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Recently I have bought the book "Deep Learning with Python"[1], and I can't recommend it enough. Very gentle introduction into deep learning, through creating several practical projects. If you know the basics of ML - you should get it, it's amazing.

To learn the basics of ML, you can check out the awesome tuts+ course[2].

Also I wrote an article [3] with the collection of the best free resources, I think you'll find it useful.

[1] [https://machinelearningmastery.com/deep-learning-with- python...](https://machinelearningmastery.com/deep-learning-with-python/)

[2] [http://code.tutsplus.com/courses/machine-learning- distilled](http://code.tutsplus.com/courses/machine-learning-distilled)

[3] [https://medium.com/@rayalez/list-of-the-best-resources-to- le...](https://medium.com/@rayalez/list-of-the-best-resources-to-learn-the- foundations-of-artificial-intelligence-934dbce5939)

<comment><USER2> This first book doesn't seem great.

> For example, a common response to the question "how do I get started in deep > learning" might be: > Develop a strong grounding in statistics, probability, > linear algebra, multivariate statistics and calculus. > Develop a deep > knowledge of modern machine learning algorithms and techniques. > Study and > become one with the mathematical theory of each deep learning algorithm and > a bunch of related techniques for using them. > Oh and if there is time find > a library and start applying deep learning to your problem. > It could take > a decade or more to follow this advice and that would be a decade delay that > you cannot afford.

Those topics are deeply important if you want to be anything more than a coder monkey, and with a decent undergrad education under one's belt (STEM-related) and half a year of dedicated part-time study, they could get up to speed in many - if not all - of those topics.

But I guess whatever sells the easiest, a la "Get Rich (Smart) Quick".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> May not be hot tech like ML, but traditional symbolic AI is still pretty useful in stuff like Natural language processing. Plus, it's a great way to learn functional programming too.

Book rec: Computation Semantics with Functional Programming. It goes through the whole gamut of formal languages, lambda calculus, propositional logic, predicate logic, logical inference engines, nl semantics etc. It uses Haskell to build concrete examples for each section, and contains a concise tutorial on the language too. Very self-contained. No prerequisites required.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the book rec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course there is (even plenny):

Caffe (Deep learning framework by berkeley) / C++ mainly

Theano / Python

Tensorflow / More Python fully support, but also supports C++

NLTK Natural language processing Toolkit / Python

scikit-learn / Python

Torch / Different interfaces

CNTK / C++

Opencv / C++ Python

I haven't covered them all, but please at the bottom of this list I am maintaining there is everything you need to know to get started

[https://github.com/Kiloreux/awesome-robotics#related- awesome...](https://github.com/Kiloreux/awesome-robotics#related-awesome- lists)

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, great list. I have been working with openCV.

I see an understanding of the differences between machine learning vs computer vision vs AI, vs deep learning, vs reinforcement learning is my next step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If looking for job opportunities, in addition to tech think of a field / industry or two you like and focus on their business model for your AI applications. Also make sure you understand when AI and machine learning are actually useful instead of merely silly: not every correlation is useful. Many times, nothing meaningful comes from them, however big your data sample is. Machine learning "emergency" is not going to replace the scientific method.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a software company (the basics)? - <AUTHOR>

Looking at 2 possible avenues:
1. Software products and
2. Custom software development in Australia.
I tried Google and got eHow pages and I tried searching HN but didn't find what I was looking for.
I know this is a place about start-ups, but where does one find the basics, from the start? And in Australia?
Software Products:
I am going to develop a product, and host it online. What kind of company do I register for that. What lawyers do I need? If people pay for my product what and where do I get the T&Cs from? How much should I save up before I begin the adventure?
Can I own two companies? Say I want to create a separate company with a couple of graduate developers and we just work on small customised software solutions.
Can I own a parent company that owns these 2?
So many questions, I need a bearing of where to begin. <comment><USER2> In Australia:

You need to register either as a sole trader (get an ABN) or register a company (PTY LTD, with an ACN).

The first is free, but you can't have employees and you have no personal protection from anything that happens to your business.

The latter costs around $1,000 to set up ($4-500 if you do it yourself, the forms etc), and you will have a proper company where you will be the Director, and it can have it's own bank account, it's own everything.

Find a local accountant who has experience setting up companies and running the books (it's a bit more complicated than your usual personal tax returns) and they can usually handle it all for you, that's what i've personally done.

Yes you can run multiple companies. Yes you can have a parent company. It's all just a matter of how you set it all up with ASIC.

There's lots and lots of information on how to set up and run a business in Australia at:

<http://www.business.gov.au>

<http://www.abr.gov.au>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Andrenid.

I think I might go for the solo ABN approach for now and move to a company approach once things improve.

Don't people recommend an 'incorporate' company as well? Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html>

Some good information.

I think I envision my path as moving to contracting, then consulting, and creating a consulting company, while this funds my product company. pg suggests this is difficult though. However once the consulting side hits of, I could hire a reputable manager for x amount of profit share, while I receive enough to invest in my product based company.

How naive am I about all of this?

<comment><USER3> You sound hugely naive. How old are you? I would suggest not worry about the legalese for now, or even looking so far ahead.

Just start your project, try to get a few customers, and go from there. Those steps alone will take you far longer than you'd expect, and teach you more than you can learn in researching how to start a company. You don't need lawyers, you don't need T&Cs, you don't need to incorporate. Just build out your idea and get to market as fast as you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking through your previous comments history. In some it seems you have had some success with websites. Do you consider yourself successful?

Did you build your products on the side whilst holding a full-time job? And you just went at it, creating products and getting cash from users from it?

Are you a good programmer?

I've been thinking about these things a lot, but finding it hard to actualise everything around it. From what you've said, it appears to be as simple as it is. Build a product, try to get customers, and maybe make some money. Worry about everything else later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should look a little further before I comment. <http://coryliu.com/> Looks profesh. And HiveDesk. So a lot of experience? Do you have a blog entry on some starter tips?

<comment><USER3> I don't consider myself particularly successful compared to many people here, but yes, I've created products which got users/customers, and made a few bucks.

Its good that you have questions and curiosity, but some things you need to figure out or learn on your own. So in short: • If you need to accept money, use paypal or google "accept credit cards online". Thats your research.

• If you have unhappy customers, you talk to them and resolve it. Don't worry about terms unless you have a good reason to.

• If you want to know more about Twitter, look them up on Wikipedia.

Don't worry about other people or about trying to follow a pattern to success; there are no patterns. Just work hard, and do what you gotta do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>