Where in the World Is Larry Page? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-13/larry-page-is-a-no-show-with-google-under-a-harsh-spotlight <comment><USER4> It's kind-of Congress' own fault here. They so often have these... events, that are mostly for show and for the politicians to grandstand making them seem tough to voters but really have very little substance. I doubt any meaningful policy ever comes of them. Doesn't everybody know by now that they're grilling these CEO's in front of the cameras and begging them for money behind the cameras?

"outrage" indeed.

<comment><USER5> The Senate Intelligence Committee hearings are usually pretty facts-first unlike the other random hearings and sessions. I watch them on C-SPAN whenever they happen (which isn't that frequent).

Edit: I strongly recommend watching these directly from C-SPAN rather than the summarized spin-version from random news companies. You might be surprised how little of their time is wasted on grandstanding. Yeah, some politicians will throw in their jabs, but that's not the purpose of those committees and it's a fractionally tiny amount of the dialog. But that's what the news focuses on because it's the most sensational.

<comment><USER6> > The Senate Intelligence Committee hearings are usually pretty facts-first

Granting, for the sake of argument, that SSCI public hearings are _on average_ more substantive and less grandstanding around pre-set narratives than other public Congressional hearings [0], there was ample advance reason to believe that _this_ hearing was not going to further that pattern.

> Yeah, some politicians will throw in their jabs, but that's not the purpose > of those committees and it's a fractionally tiny amount of the dialog.

It may be a tiny amount of the dialog, but even then it's often the tiny amount that actually is decisive in motivating the hearings, in much the only way that advertising may be a minority of the airtime on commercial TV networks, but it's 100% of the purpose.

[0] I don't think it's true on balance, but I do think it seems true based on the selection of public hearings that get major media attention, because substantive, non-showboating hearings of other committees rarely get attention.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any examples? I watch almost all of their public hearings and it's rarely ever grandstanding. Again, you might have a couple of people take quick jabs but if you watch the actual hearings (don't watch reporters take parts of them out of context) it's usually very straight forward and constructive.

Part of it is also to function as a communication channel to the people. It shows their constituents that they're asking the questions people want them to ask and it would give Google's leaders a chance to explain their company-wide position on issues in this case. But they have to care enough to show up.

<comment><USER6> > Do you have any examples? I watch almost all of their public hearings and > it's rarely ever grandstanding.

That's true of most committees; the difference that makes SSCI seem better is that non-grandstanding hearings (or moments of hearings) from, say, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry have roughly a 0% chance of ever getting coverage from the major media, whereas, due to subject matter, SSCI hearings can be newsworthy without grandstanding (though the grandstanding still gets far disproportionate coverage.)

> Part of it is also to function as a communication channel to the people. It > shows their constituents that they're asking the questions people want them > to ask and it would give Google's leaders a chance to explain their company- > wide position on issues in this case.

If Google needed the opportunity of an SSCI hearing to get any message it (or a client) wanted to virtually any audience of concern, the uncontroversial portion of the premise for inviting them to the hearing would collapse. Page showing up improves the ability of the Senators that have prejudged Google to get media coverage of their grandstanding, but it does nothing for Google's ability to have it's message reach any audience it cares to have it reach. There's no value to Google in voluntarily cooperating in a hearing concerning matters on which so many members of the committee had publicly, explicitly, and in quite immoderate terms prejudged Google and where the terms sent clearly were incompatible with an intent of productive information gathering rather than political scapegoating.

It's, of course, the prerogative of Congress members to use hearings for grandstanding with high value PR target witnesses as props as a means of gesturing to their constituents about their concern on an issue. It's also a very good idea for those high value PR targets to decline to voluntarily cooperate when it is clear that are being invited as punching bags. (It's both good for the punching bags _and_ good for the integrity of the process of government.)

<comment><USER5> Did you even watch the hearing?

[https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing- fo...](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-foreign- influence-operations%E2%80%99-use-social-media-platforms-company-witnesses)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From a PR point of view Google has handled this whole privacy debacle very well. By keeping a very low profile on privacy, they've made sure Facebook takes the heat. Facebook's horrendous management of the issue has also allowed Google to slide under the radar on the topic. Generally I think Page is doing the right thing by keeping a low public profile.

<comment><USER8> Google didn't play as fast and loose with sharing data as Facebook did. That helps.

<comment><USER9> They never got _caught_ doing it. That doesn't mean they never have.

<comment><USER10> You've never been caught murdering anyone, I assume.

<comment><USER11> Not the second time, and that's really the important part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The European Union fined the company $5.1 billion this summer in an antitrust case over the dominance of Google's Android mobile operating system."

Damn, that's sloppy reporting. The EU didn't fine Google because of its dominance, rather it was accused of using that dominance in an abusive manner to advance the search/ad business [1].

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-be-fined-5-billion- by...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-be-fined-5-billion-by-eu-in- android-case-1531903470)

</comment><comment><USER13> _At this point, though, such a public-relations strategy feels dated. On balance, the celebrity of even the most caricatured CEO (Zuckerberg) appears to be a net positive for his company._

I disagree totally with that point. The "superstar CEO" Zuckerberg is now ridiculed, hated, and negatively "meme-ed". He is now the face of censorship (for some) and a laissezfaire strategy threatening democracies (for others).

Even the previous paragraph stated: " _Bill Gates had become a media caricature during Microsoft Corp.'s three-year antitrust lawsuit_ ".

Page staying in the dark only generated this one article, not a real national scandal. 99% of people don't know him and won't know him after that no-show. Google's reputation is untouched.

Only loss is for the Senators not getting the spotlight.

<comment><USER14> The real loss is Senators no longer trusting Alphabet/Google after this snub.

You really don't want to turn the government against you.

<comment><USER6> > The real loss is Senators no longer trusting Alphabet/Google after this > snub.

The Senators that wanted Larry or Sundar to voluntarily submit to and draw more media attention to their spectacle of abuse directed at the firm (and others in the industry) obviously didn't trust Google in the first place, and the rest know the game and aren't going to be effected by this except perhaps by realizing that Google's leadership isn't completely braindead politically.

There was no possible net upside for Google participating in the charade of a hearing, and the committee rejecting Google's offer of the most qualified person to address the substantive questions notionally at issue in response to the voluntary invitation for participation was an unmistakable signal that that was the case.

> You really don't want to turn the government against you.

You also don't want to voluntarily cooperate with the parts of the government that have already turned against you and are trying to scapegoat you to build support for policies hostile to your interests.

Law enforcement isn't the only part of government that can seemingly innocently invite you to talk with malign intent, and it's not the only part of government you should decline voluntary cooperation with when you don't have good reason to believe that the intent of the invitation is aligned with your interests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand people on here complaining about the Senate demanding that the leaders of a business answer for its actions. Sending your lawyer or an underling is (1) a show of disrespect, (2) it shows you're not taking responsibility for your company, and (3) when the person answering the questions isn't really in charge, they can't answer properly and they can't commit their companies to behaving differently.

People just seem propagandistically pro-Google on here. You're mostly pretty darn smart people. I don't get it.

<comment> y-c-o-m-b I don't think it's pro-Google, I think it has to do with the fact that these hearings are made up of a gang of angry old people with God complex that not only do not understand technology, but don't really have a desire to understand it nor the desire to really change anything. I don't blame Google one bit for not wanting to waste time and be ridiculed by these clowns.

<comment><USER16> > these hearings are made up of a gang of angry old people with God complex > that not only do not understand technology, but don't really have a desire > to understand it nor the desire to really change anything.

Those angry old people were chosen by their constituents to represent them in public affairs. Supposedly their roles and their actions are the basis of a democratic regime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is why I more or less stopped reading or watching the news. If something is important I will find out. If I want to understand the world better I will either read a book about a given subject, ask someone who knows something, explore it on my own or debate it with someone who holds the opposite view of me.

News especially these days is mostly sensationalist gossip made by people who's primary incentives is to get you to click their link or share it because you are outraged so they get more clicks.

I don't mind debating politics or other more problematic subjects but I don't get riled up by some article trying to paint the world in black and white, seen the other side of how the media is reporting something too many times.

If you want to have another example besides this weird can completely forced article look no further to the Elon Musk interview on Joe Rogan last which made their shares drop 8% for the day because he took one puff. Everyone went berserk because you are not supposed to do something like that if you are the CEO of a large company. Instead of actually listening to the interview which was almost 3 hours and super interesting, that puff became what the media took away from it. The media is no longer in the service of the people it's in the service of the clicks that's about it because it's much more fun to be outraged and gossip than to actually try and understand.

Each to their own of course but that's why I stopped following the news cycles. Now go and watch that great interview with Elon and while you are at it go watch Peter Thiel on Dave Rubin an equally great show that takes the time to unfold subjects even if that means three hour formats.

<comment><USER18> "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

It's kind of interesting how this feels like such a relatively new problem, yet that quote is from Thomas Jefferson, 1807.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I don't think the problem is new it's just the consequences of the problem that are different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google offered to send someone to the hearing, but the Senate didn't feel they were high ranking enough, so they didn't let the person fill the seat and let it remain "empty" even though Google offered.

Disgraceful grandstanding by Warner.

<comment> forgot-my-pw Can't blame him for not going. They tried to crucify Mark Zuckerberg on live broadcast last time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing this article completely neglects to mention: Larry has vocal chord paralysis and so has difficulty speaking.

[https://www.wired.com/2013/05/larry-page-vocal- chords/](https://www.wired.com/2013/05/larry-page-vocal-chords/)

This could have something to do with why he's reluctant to do a lot of public speaking nowadays.

[UPDATE] I was wrong: the article does mention this, I just missed it. I would delete this comment but I can't since it has been replied to.

<comment><USER21> While it's true (sibling comments) that this is indeed mentioned in the article, it's well into the body, about two-thirds down. This strikes me as extremely relevant information: Page acts "as if [he] had only so many words left to speak." (ftfa)

Why would he waste his breath, if it's actually limited? The mistake here wasn't in Page not showing up--it was in _nobody_ showing up.

<comment><USER22> That's not on Google - as the article states, Google offered multiple other officials, but that was declined, they wanted Page or nothing and so got nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd wondered about this when I heard Google wasn't sending any of their top brass. In my experience, it's very out of character for Google's top leadership to not predict when people are going to be pissed off about a decision. And it was stupendously easy to tell that Congress would be pissed off by this decision - when I mentioned the news to my wife she was like "You can do that? Just stand up Congress?"

I'm reminded of Margaery Tyrell's line from the season 6 finale of Game of Thrones. "Cersei understands the consequences of her absence, and she is absent anyway, which means that she does not intend to suffer those consequences."

Lest we start panicking, I don't think that this necessarily means we're all going to die in a fireball of wildfyre (though that could happen anyway). But it's likely Google actually welcomes regulation, because it will entrench their position and serve as a barrier to any new competitors emerging. They know that neither the average Congressperson nor their constituents understand economics, and so will likely pass legislation that harms Google's unborn competitors far more than it harms Google.

<comment><USER24> Google tried to send their top lawyer, Kent Walker, but was rejected by the Senate [1] less than two weeks before the hearing.

[1] [https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/08/23/senate- intelligen...](https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/08/23/senate-intelligence- committee-rejects-kent-walker-as-googles-pick-to- testify/?slreturn=20180813125638)

<comment><USER25> Nitpick: Dave Drummond is, or at least was, Kent Walker's boss, board member and the top lawyer. He focused on business, though.

Kent Walker was the policy guy. Ironically, this article from six weeks ago makes the point that he's the new Eric Schmidt when it comes to governments:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/30/google-kent-walker-svp-of- gl...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/30/google-kent-walker-svp-of-global- affairs.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I might be missing something here but my thinking is that Google Inc/Alphabet is bigger than Larry Page. If for whatever reason he was not able to attend he could have sent a representative chosen from among the senior executives. It seems that neither his attendance nor Google's participation in the whole thing was not mandatory

<comment><USER27> They offered their legal guy who is also one of the main leaders at Google and is probably the right person to talk about this but Congress refused. They want figureheads.

<comment><USER28> This is correct, they rejected anyone but top officials.

[https://www.law.com/2018/09/04/after-senate-intelligence- com...](https://www.law.com/2018/09/04/after-senate-intelligence-committee- rejection-googles-kent-walker-posts-testimony-online/?slreturn=20180813100518)

(Disclosure: I work at Google)

<comment><USER29> Of course they only wanted the senior flesh.

I'm not trying to dunk on Congress too hard, but so much of their public hearings are about the spectacle of gov officials holding "someone" accountable.

And it's bipartisan too, the spectacle.

The Dems were looking to further the Russia election manipulation spectacle, and I'd guess Repubs were hoping to advance their narratives of "shadowbanning" and ideological search results bias.

<comment><USER30> To be fair to Congress, their job is really to shape events in the public interest. Considering these hearings to be pure fact-finding is a category error. If they browbeat a celebrity, this shapes events in multiple ways: it affects fundraising, it affects the behavior of the individual browbeaten and those in this individual's orbit, it affects the public narrative, and if affects actions at the voting booth. And that is only the beginning. It is an extremely complicated game with numerous players and feedback loops. You can call it "grandstanding", as though it's purposeless and ineffectual, but obviously it isn't, and really this is their job. They want to speak to certain people because they calculate that this will give them leverage to shape events in a certain way.

This is how the sausage is made.

<comment><USER29> Certainly. One name for that for that entire phenomenon you're describing the functioning of is 'The Spectacle'.

I don't mean just the dictionary definition of spectacle, rather I'm referencing the Situationist + Critical Theory concept of The Spectacle. Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" is a wild piece of thought.

It's an absolute tome, but essentially society is now mediated by social relations of spectacle which are symbols / signs / abstractions of actual material relations. And like you're saying, politicians play a huge role in wielding spectacle towards their material goals. Some of this might seem strangely familiar / redundant but that just speaks to the impact Situationist thinking has had on our conception of society and culture.

Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle (Paris, 1967). [http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm](http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would feel much better about being a google user if they were standing up strongly for the original "do no evil" ethos. Where is Page indeed? It really seems like the ethical stance has faded away.

<comment><USER32> Idealism goes away once a company has reached a certain size and has to reach for big growth like Google. They all have to turn into big faceless corporations.

That's why we shouldn't celebrate things like trillion dollar companies or the richest man in the world but we should celebrate small companies. That's where ethics and also innovation can happen .

<comment><USER33> Big companies are just successful small companies.

IBM, Bell Labs etc. did far more innovation than any Mom and Pop shop.

<comment><USER34> > Big companies are just successful small companies.

That would imply either that big companies all started as small companies which became successful and grew large, which is false (some big companies start big). Or that big companies operate the same way as small companies, just at a larger scale, which is unequivocally false.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The vision was to stretch this tube system, arced hundreds of feet in the > air, from a ground-level entry point on Google's Mountain View campus to an > exit 35 miles north, in San Francisco, so Google's rainbow-colored beach > cruisers might one day be seen flying over U.S. Highway 101. Yes, it sounds > like a Hyperloop for bikes.

And you're telling me this ran into problems!?

</comment><comment><USER36> Disclosure: I didn't fully read the article as it's rather dull... "404 - <USER2> not found", doesn't Bloomberg have more _niveau_ than that?

It's known that Page has problems with his vocal chords. So I wouldn't be astonished that he doesn't show up for a hearing if he's not forced to so.

<comment><USER37> I could totally understand that in a vacuum, but Google also chose not to send Sundar Pichai, Google's current CEO, whose vocal chords work just fine. Which sends a much stronger message that Google just doesn't want to talk to Congress.

My personal impression of Page and Brin's near silence of late is that they have semi-retired by effectively promoting themselves out of Google during the creation of Alphabet. Still on top, still in charge, but having delegated pretty much everything down to a lower level.

<comment><USER38> Benioff is in the process of doing the same. None of these people have any desire to run Ops for a giant corporation. They want to focus on the stuff they like. For Page, it's the tech. For Benioff, it's the philanthropy, social responsibility, equality, political stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I like him giving the the middle finger. Why does he have to satisfy a bunch of egomaniac corrupt politician who has been net negative for the society. Why we have to watch in awe of their complete disconnect from current affairs of the society due to their total ignorance?

<comment><USER40> Because as a voter and citizen, I want my politicians keeping Google and other tech companies in check, and regulate them if necessary.

<comment><USER41> Are you sure they are your politicians and have any of your interests in mind?

<comment><USER40> They're closer to my interests then those running large tech companies.

I care about my privacy more than free Facebook and Gmail, and continue to evangelize GDPR style legislation with US legislators.

<comment><USER39> When you start your argument by comparing company CEOs to politicians you are already lost it.

<comment><USER40> Perhaps. Politicians are far more powerful than CEOs, and have the ability to breakup companies or prohibit their operation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't know, if I were a billionaire with a private island in the Caribbean, had paralyzed vocal cords and knew damn well what would happen at the hearing (see Zuckerberg), I'd also agree with my colleagues that showing up would do no good and that staying on the sidelines would be the best course of action. Why indulge a bunch of bloodthirsty politicians when you can do pretty much anything else please like working on things you love. Bonus: stock won't tank if you slip up and say the wrong word.

</comment><comment><USER42> It is interesting that Larry Page stays out of the spotlight so much. Everyone knows who Mark Zuckerberg is, but many probably couldn't tell you who the CEO of Google/Alphabet is.

<comment><USER43> But could we not flip that around? That is, Zuck goes for the limelight (why?) while his peers do not?

On the other hand Dorsey isn't low profile and I don't think most (non-tech) people would recognize him. Ev Williams? Even less so.

Prehaps, sometimes, it's also the media who makes or breaks public perceptions?

<comment><USER44> Facebook got "The Social Network", Google got..."The Internship"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Larry Page probably didn't attend the Senate hearings because he knew that this video was going to get leaked:

[https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video- googl...](https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google- leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/)

He would have been grilled for hours over it.

<comment><USER46> At the risk of sounding partisan, why should I trust a breitbart dot com link?

<comment><USER45> You shouldn't. It's an internal Google video. So unless you're a conspiracy theorist who thinks it was faked, it should be eye opening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > "What I didn't see in the last year was a __strong central voice __about how > [Google's] going to operate on these issues that are societal and less > technical,"

That's not careful phrasing when talking about a man with paralysed vocal chords.

<comment><USER48> This sounds like being offended purely for the purpose of being offended. I doubt even the subject of the article himself would have caught that.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I can honestly see him being withdrawn as just not caring or not wanting to be apart of the company or the culture. He shows up every know and then again just to keep his standing. He can reap the financial stability it offers and still work on his moonshots or other pet projects.

I know a lot of college buddies who were some of the smartest people I knew. When they hit their 30's, they just had enough of the go go go lifestyle and they suddenly wanted to be alone and just enjoy life either by themselves or with a very small group of special friends.

I can see Larry being like this. He just wants to be by himself and out of the spotlight.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Alphabet said in a statement that it had offered its head of global affairs > for the hearing and that "enabling Larry to focus on the other bets and > long-term technical problems is exactly what Alphabet was set up for."

So basically they had offered someone of authority here, but the politicians wanted to have their show trial with the celebrities instead.

<comment><USER5> In the domain of information warfare and propaganda campaigns public awareness and attention is a large part of the counter strategy. So even if it were just to attract eyeballs to the issue that doesn't mean it was a "show trial".

If you watch these Intelligence Committee hearings I think you'll find them to be focused on strategy, partnerships, and actions rather than some form of "trial".

<comment><USER49> Then they should have invited the actual experts on the topic at these companies. Google, again, says they offered someone to speak and were told it could only be Page. What if they told Facebook it could only be Mark and not Sheryl?

Either way, if they actually wanted the CEO of Google, that happens to be Sundar Pichai, not Larry Page (he's the CEO of the holding company).

<comment><USER5> I was under the understanding that they asked for either Page or Pichai.

And Google basically responded with "it's either our legal team or nothing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It is interesting they had "GOOGLE" printed on the reserved seat. Where in reality Sundar Pichai is the ceo of Google and Larry Page is the ceo of Alphabet. So the Senate committee was actually expecting Mr. Pichai and Bloomberg got it wrong.

<comment><USER51> > It is interesting they had "GOOGLE" printed on the reserved seat. Where in > reality Sundar Pichai is the ceo of Google and Larry Page is the ceo of > Alphabet. So the Senate committee was actually expecting Mr. Pichai and > Bloomberg got it wrong.

But only technically. Google is Alphabet and Alphabet is Google, just like Blackwater is still Blackwater no matter what obfuscating name they're using this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't see why this would be smart move for Google/Larry Page at all. If He goes, either he will fail, which would be disaster similar to Facebook for Google, or he will come out clean, which wouldn't change anything. The majority are still going to use google products regardless of public image, so not going best maintains that image.

</comment><comment><USER53> Who are these guys thinking they can make anyone show up and get grilled by a bunch of politicians looking to score some easy points? That's offensive. That Dorsey and Sandberg showed up shows that they are desperate for attention or approval. God Bless America where the government can't force you to waste your valuable time talking to Marco Rubio.

</comment><comment><USER54> Doing the smart thing and retiring?

Theres not much that can be said about communication online. Its going to be terrible, even without VC money thrown at it.

This isn't hyperbole, its just history - even with the first ever online game, back in the text days, the first griefer existed. In old forums, we had eternal september.

Communication online is just hacking the human brain more efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER55> It was worth reading the fine article just to see this fibbed screenshot of a common error message:

[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ir0HVqer5h2...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ir0HVqer5h2c/v2/600x-1.jpg)

> Image text: 404 Page not found

</comment><comment><USER56> Long before the hearing Google said they would send Kent Walker to answer questions. He was not allowed to attend the hearing, in order to create the stunt of an empty chair.

Bloomberg I'm disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER57> Isn't he building Ava robot on his remote island?

</comment><comment><USER58> Didn't know he was missing till now. Maybe he is just doing some heads down work and letter another person take media duties.

</comment><comment><USER59> What if Google knew through data-mining what the Congress was up to and thus didn't send Page to the hearing. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER60> TLDR

> He was also averse to the internal politics common to running a > 60,000-employee conglomerate. A former senior director at Google remembers a > heated debate among the "L Team," as Googlers used to call Page's circle of > executive consiglieri, that escalated to a point where it required his > mediation. "Can't you sort this out on your own?" he told his deputies.

> The company's abrupt reorganization in 2015 elevated Pichai to CEO of Google > and Page to chief of its umbrella company, Alphabet. It was perhaps the > cleverest retirement plan ever devised.

</comment><comment><USER61> At this rate, I can see Mr. Page being the rich (evil?) guy from the movies that no one ever sees or has heard from in decades, and everyone is scared of. He will pull up in a limousine, slip you a piece of paper (with bad news on it) out of a crack in the window, and drive off again.

</comment><comment><USER62> In all seriousness he probably didn't show because he was offended they'd make him. He has been a large proponent of perfect data preventing crime and maintaining society and is very cooperative with the IC.

</comment><comment><USER63> _Elon Musk interview on Joe Rogan last which made their shares drop 8% for the day because he took one puff. Everyone went berserk because you are not supposed to do something like that if you are the CEO of a large company._

The stock dropped because the CAO departed less than a month after starting at Telsa. Not because of the puff of marijuana.

<comment><USER64> I don't think that's actually true though it's been repeated a lot - <USER3> have left without that large of a crash (and in this case it looks like they joined to help with going private so it's not a huge surprise they left).

The fast crashes seem more related to stupid media freak outs - similar to FB and the Cambridge Analytica thing.

<comment><USER65> I don't see Cambridge Analytica as a "stupid media freak out", it exposed a concerning and far reaching privacy issue with the Facebook platform.

Concerns about Tesla's solvency have been building for months. The departure of several high-level executives is a big concern and what moved markets. It might signal that people are jumping ship.

<comment><USER17> I am unconvinced about that.

If it was the case that CA actually was able to do the things the media claimed they didn and affect people like that, FB would be in an even better position to affect people which means FB shares should have risen not fallen.

We do not live in the world created by the media about the capabilities of CA not even close.

But as they say. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. That irrationality is further fueld by the medias attempt to dumb down things IMO.

<comment><USER65> I don't think it was about CA capabilities per se, but the privacy blowback which followed.

The issue became mainstream and gave rise to the "Delete Facebook" movement which regular folks as well as celebrities[1] piled onto. It's fair to discuss the faddish nature of the #delete movements, but I don't see any positive angle in it for FB.

It also forced FB to overhaul their platform, most notably applying larger restrictions[2] to the amount of data available via APIs. This wasn't grandstanding, it cut revenue streams for many advertising and data companies. I'm not sure this had a direct effect on FB's revenue, but indirectly it makes FB less attractive as a platform for hyper-targeted advertising. This can eventually lead to a lower ROI on FB ads vs. other channels and thus, lower share of a marketing budget.

[1] [https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/will-ferrell-delete- fa...](https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/will-ferrell-delete-facebook- account-cambridge-analytica-1202738924/)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-instagram-api- shu...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-instagram-api-shut-down/)

<comment><USER17> I don't think I agree.

This wasn't anything new for most people who knew just a little bit about how FB worked for 3rd parties.

What changed was Trump. Had this been Hillary we wouldn't been talking about it at all and I am pretty sure FB wouldn't have been called to the hearing.

So I would say it's mostly a media driven thing but of course don't have any final proof. Just pretty sure it wasn't the privacy part that was the problem but rather Trump.

<comment><USER65> I think we're talking past each other a bit.

I responded to someone drawing similarities between Cambridge Analytica and Elon Musk's joint toke, claiming both were examples of "stupid media freakouts" which caused a drop in the stock price of their respective companies.

I think those 2 media events are very different from each other and have very different consequences for their respective companies. I might be proven wrong though if Musk is brought to task in front of a senate committee for his pot- smoking ways.

I agree with you that Trump's election may have made it more likely that Cambridge Analytica became a big deal in the public eye. There's more controversy to fuel media frenzy if the person who got elected is seen to have unjustly ascended the throne.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> > According to one Larry loyalist, Page's privacy, besides being a personal > preference, is also a carefully considered company strategy.

That's gold, given the fact that his company has set out to completely destroy the concept of privacy for the rest of the population.

</comment><comment><USER67> the guy who invented Perl? ..probably trying to figure out what a script he wrote a few years ago actually does ;)

<comment><USER68> That's Larry Wall

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I wonder if he's been diagnosed with something that could potentially be terminal if it goes uncured (e.g. aggressive cancer) and he's trying to keep it a secret so that Alphabet's stock price isn't severely damaged

EDIT I'm not sure why this is receiving so many downvotes. Is it that unlikely? I'm not saying I _want_ him to be sick, it's just speculation.

<comment><USER70> Or maybe he's on a secret spy mission to another planet!

<comment><USER71> Well, the FBI just closed down the NM solar observatory for Page to communicate with aliens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> To be fair, the government heavily relies on the data Google collects... I highly doubt the consequences are going to be too dire for them.

On the other hand, it does appear as if Google (and many of the other mega- corps) are pretty much acting as if they are sovereign in their own right. In this case, it appears Page honestly just ditched it, but if he gets away with it - he sets a precedent.</comment>


Why Uber And Airbnb Might Be In Big Trouble - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/05/13/why-uber-and-airbnb-might-be-in-big-trouble/

<comment><USER2> I think this article is exactly right. These types of businesses are not prohibitively expensive nor time consuming to start and leaner competition without the "rents" is always a danger for them.

In addition, companies like Uber and Airbnb will have to do work clearing regulatory hurdles leaving a "free" path for competitors.

"The early bird gets the worm. The second mouse gets the cheese".

<comment><USER3> Uber probably and Airbnb for certain are working to build regulatory hurdles behind them. In exchange for being allowed to compete against the same traditional real estate and hospitality businesses they came in to disrupt, they're working with municipalities to rewrite the regulations such that the Airbnb business model is specifically permitted while future would-be competitors are presented with similar or higher regulatory barriers to entry.

In a decade or so, if Airbnb and Uber are still around, expect to see them on the same side of regulations that they are currently opposing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN : How do Twitter verified accounts work? - <AUTHOR>

I was reading about Bill Gates joining Twitter (http://twitter.com/billgates) and wonder what's the process for having a verified account. How do they evaluate that someone is known enough to have a verified account? Is it twitter that communicates with the account holder or he has to make a request to twitter? How do they verify that it's the real person behind the account (probably with a special CNAME but maybe not?) <comment><USER2> Presumably the same way anyone else verifies someone is who they say they are: by looking at their ID.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't imagine Bill Gates giving personal informations to a company just to have a verified twitter account. Maybe you're right and if you are, I still can't believe it...

<comment><USER3> No, he has a ~50 person company called "Watermark LLC" that manages his family's personal life. When one of them signs up for something, it's done by an assistant there that handles all contact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm surprised that username "billgates" was available. Did some poor schmuck or imposter get the boot? Or did MS or his own PR lock it up early on?

Edit: (Hmm, or did someone make a tidy sum?)</comment>


What's with the flurry of non-tech related articles? - <AUTHOR>

I'm not saying the articles aren't relevant (they are), I'm just wondering why they are being voted to the first page. On one hand, I want to stay up-to-date on tech news, but on the other hand I'm one of those people that avoids other news because it just depresses me. And what I keep noticing is that this other news keeps making the front page of what should be a tech/startup news site. What's the reasoning behind this?<p>I get depressed every time I come here, and everywhere I go these articles just keep "following me around." <comment> mkr-hn Can you be more specific? I scanned the front page and only see two submissions that would be complicated to justify if HN were strictly about technology.

<comment><USER2> I sometimes see spam and astroturfing...in /newest and very briefly, before it's flagged into oblivion and the offending user banned. IMHO the voting system works as designed - keeping such abominations from the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > What's the reasoning behind this?

Votes? Like in a democracy?

From the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting."

> I get depressed every time I come here, and everywhere I go these articles > just keep "following me around."

So don't read the "depressing" articles. Vote with your mouse.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you grade programmers? - <AUTHOR>

Prompted by many discussions and comments I've seen recently about what makes a programmer greater than the average I thought I'd ask you clever people how would you come up with some standard ability test to give something like an IQ for programmers?<p>Of course there are reasons why this might be a bad idea but I think the thought experiment might be instructive. <comment><USER2> If only it were that easy, sadly human brains are all different and they are all affected by the environment in which they are operating, so you cannot know if this person in this job will be a star or not, unless you try them.

</comment><comment><USER3> you don't, everyone is different so interviews are probably the way to go.</comment>


Finding a programming job with no experience? UK/Ireland - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible to find a programming job in the UK or Ireland with no experience straight out of high school for minimum wage ? <comment><USER2> Define no experience - no experience programming at all (i.e. C is where fish live, Lisp is a speech impediment, Python is a type of snake) or no professional experience working as a dev?

<comment><AUTHOR> No professional experience working as a developer. I've been learning C++ at school and I've won places in programming competitions and have been learning Python and Django at home for quite a while now.

<comment><USER2> In that case I'd guess you best bet would be to look at doing some kind of internship somewhere first to gain some professional experience, and also work on your own sideprojects. It doesn't really matter what your background is - if you can show that you're able to produce decent projects in your own time then this is a pretty hot indication.

The other issue would be where in the UK are you? The obvious place to try and get internships would be London, but if you're not already there moving there would probably be prohibitively expensive (on an in salary, or lack thereof).

If you're still living at home and can afford to just hold up in your room for a few months, it might be worthwhile putting some time into building something substantial. Without a formal background you need to prove your worth, so maybe look at a few companies you're interested and try building something related to their product (browser extensions?). Also any connections through programming competitions. Hate to say it, but you'd be amazed how often jobs come from knowing someone.

As I've said though, before you start applying, have something to show off.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis <comment> D-Coder TL;DR: Did read it. Excellent and amazing article. Do read it.</comment>


Startup has supposed game changing battery tech, 3 million from Kleiner Perkins - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/

<comment><AUTHOR> From the comments on that article, it sounds like they don't actually disclose what makes the battery work in the patent, which probably renders the patent worthless. Still, I'm hopeful because game changing energy technology might actually positively benefit all of our lives.

They got 3 million investment from Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, as per [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=3547157&page=2](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=3547157&page=2).

</comment><comment><USER2> In the ever-annoying stealth mode. _Sigh_.

</comment><comment><USER3> heh. I'm still waiting for WiTricity!</comment>


Nvidia deeply unhappy with TSMC, claims 22nm essentially worthless - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/123529-nvidia-deeply-unhappy-with-tsmc-claims-22nm-essentially-worthless <comment><USER2> Very interesting. Those really are pretty stunning words for a business relationship as big as this. If I understand correctly, Nvidia has nowhere else to go since TSMC is so far ahead of other independent foundries (I'm not sure how independent GF really is - is it conceivable for Nvidia to work with GF?) and it can't very well go to Intel given the amount of competition they are engaged in. Maybe Samsung?

Also, I'm not clear on the arguments presented in the slides. The transistor normalized price curves for 20nm and 14nm do eventually cross over the preceding curves, unlike the 40nm curve. And even putting the same transistor count on a smaller process node can result in lower power consumption once the leakage problems are mitigated, so the value is increased.

Edit: For historical background, here's a fascinating conversation from 5 years ago between Morris Chang (founder and chairman, TSMC) and Jen-Hsun Huang (CEO, Nvidia):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-x7PdnvCyI>

<comment><USER3> _it can't very well go to Intel given the amount of competition they are engaged in_

That's not the reason. Intel's fabs are at capacity producing chips with much higher margins than GPUs. Check the price per die area on Geforce card vs. the CPU that goes on the same motherboard, and then remember that the video card is assembled and stuffed (with a ton of DRAM) and board tested where the CPU just has to be packaged and shipped. The economics simply wouldn't allow it even if Intel wanted to play.

<comment><USER4> > remember that the video card is assembled and stuffed (with a ton of DRAM) > and board tested where the CPU just has to be packaged and shipped

I used to design CPU tests for a major x86 CPU manufacturer. 100% of manufactured chips are tested, sometimes at a length of many hours.

<comment><USER3> Maybe that was unclear. Obviously all ICs are tested. But the integrated board requires an extra step that the packaged CPU does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm sure there's a lot of interesting dirt here. But some of the analysis is a little weird. The cost-per-transistor metric isn't the right one, for a start. Imagine a world where you could get all the 1975-era 5v 74HCxx chips you wanted for free, with zero manufacturing cost. Would you choose to build a smartphone out of them? Of course not. The newer transistors are better (faster, lower power) and the products built out of them are more valuable.

So yes, production costs have increased. And that may have (is having, I guess) effects on the speed at which new technologies are adopted (i.e. the crossover into "worth it" is delayed).

But isn't that just a way of saying that semiconductors are finally becoming a mature technology? That's not really such a shock, nor does it justify the poo-flinging at TSMC.

So the real question in my mind is whether TSMC is having problems that the other foundries (Samsung or Global Foundries, say) are not. Given that Intel has been sampling 22nm parts already, it seems like the real news hers is that TSMC sucks and the bit about production costs are just ammunition.

<comment><USER5> Thanks to the end of Dennard scaling, newer transistors are only marginally better. If NVidia doesn't care about those marginal improvements in performance and power, it seems legitimate for them to complain about price.

If an entire industry's financial projections are based on exponential improvement then becoming a mature technology is apocalyptic, especially if it happens earlier than predicted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, the other day I was talking about exactly this with a coworker. This being that transistor cost is not getting exactly cheaper when you factor in R&D and complicate the manufacturing process.

I think Intel will be able to bundle a "good enough for playing AAA games in 1080p with maxed out graphics" video processor into the main CPU in about one/two years, maybe less. Those CPUs will be more expensive that the tinier (in transistor count) ones. This will happen around when they hit 14nm. NVIDIA will go out of bussiness or become a niche company dedicated to vector processing for scientific computation or heavy workstations, and maybe a small player in the ARM market with their Tegra architecture. Maybe AMD will go the same road, making something similar to Intel but using their ATI technology.

Bonus 1: too bad, no more Singularity mumbo-jumbo in less than two years.

Bonus 2: I am one of the few that believes ARM will never be relevant in the desktop/laptop/console/gaming segment, because of what I think Intel will come up with.

<comment><USER7> I don't buy it. The transistor counts of modern GPUs far exceeds that of even multi-core CPUs. It's not rational to say "oh, well, that's all just trivial engineering, it'll go away". Especially as GPU performance continues to be taxed to a far higher degree than the CPU typically is. Modern popular AAA PC games like Battlefield 3 or Starcraft 2 will eat all of the GPU you throw at it and then some.

And then you see what game devs are working on for the future such as this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf26ZhHz6uM> or this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4MCqM6Jq_0> or this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhwZ7Sb0PHA> and the notion of "good enough" quickly flies out the window.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm, you are right... maybe I shouldn't have said "maxed out" but "mostly acceptable". I think that "maxed out" will be a niche market, specially since the computers able to really max out games are _already_ niche, and PCs in general are loosing market share. I'm not implying its a trivial engineering problem, just a problem Intel will be able to solve in one/two years and deliver processors for a small box you plug into your TV and happily game without investing money and real estate space into a PC.

<comment><USER7> Niche? <http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2012/03/PCGA-2010.jpg>

<comment><USER8> Many people play games on computers, true. I think pvarangot's contention is that most of them don't need high-ends graphics cards to do so.

<comment><USER7> I should have mentioned, that chart is for sales in 2011. Some of that is low graphics gaming, but people aren't spending $18.6 billion on bejeweled (maybe on Farmville though). If you take just the segment of the market that is "high-end graphics gaming" then it's still a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Why would a self-sustaining industry of that size just spontaneously go away?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This presentation is more evidence that Moore's Law is dead. Nvidia and AMD can blame their partners, but the reality is that they're hitting increasingly costly technological hurdles.

Of course Nvidia can't just throw it's hands up and say "welp, we've hit the wall" when it has someone to blame.

It's fascinating to watch those predictions about the end of Moore's Law come true.

<comment><USER10> Intel seems pretty confident that they will be able to get to 11nm in the next 5 years or so. Past that, pure shrinkage of transistors via purely "conventional" methods will mostly hit a wall, but everyone saw that coming.

There's been a lot of work on nanoelectronics. For example, some scientists recently announced at a semiconductor conference that they had found a way to bypass the diffraction limit completely, making 2nm features with a 650nm laser. Similarly, I know an engineer who worked on a massively-parallel electron-beam-based etching device, which could also be applied similarly at very small node sizes. There's a billion other technical challenges, but there's been a lot of progress in making features on the molecular level.

If anything, this is better than expected: EUV has had some serious problems over the past few years, yet its delay hasn't stopped the next few nodes.

Moore's law doesn't require that shrinkage continuing, though, as there are other technologies available. Memristors in particular may allow scaling _faster_ than Moore's law would otherwise predict.

<comment><USER11> And then there is the third dimension to consider:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/3d-chips- gro...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/3d-chips-grow-up)

That comes with a very large set of engineering challenges but if those are overcome you can expect another big jump.

<comment><USER12> You still have the problem of dumping the additional heat. So AFAICT, 3D will only provide some incremental advancement.

<comment><USER13> There's the intermediate step to 3D - 2.5D. it's when you lay all you dies side by side, on another chip, instead of a pcb. It makes relatively easy to manage heat and you can get much more bandwidth at much lower power(much shorter wire distances). And it's already in use for high end fpga's.

<comment><USER12> You mean the multi-chip module (MCM) ? <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- Chip_Module> Those have been around forever.

Or something different?

<comment><USER11> He's talking about this:

[http://www.eetimes.com/electronics- blogs/other/4210170/Xilin...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics- blogs/other/4210170/Xilinx-multi-FPGA-provides-mega-boost-re-capacity-- performance--and-power-efficiency-)

<comment><USER12> Cool! Thanks.

I wonder if the price will ever come down to the point where it's used in consumer devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Somewhat off topic, but does anybody know how to disable extremetechs craptastic mobile interface? I've got twice the resolution of my laptop on my iPad, and the mobile site looks like it's been optimized for my circa 2002 palm treo 650.

<comment><USER15> +1 can't stand how Extremetech's mobile site hijacks an otherwise fine rich web experience. On Opera for iPad (which is great for browsing HN stories btw, because of its awesome tabs) Extremetech defaults to the mobile site and its just a blank white page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel like this is a tech-problem that will have a tech-solution. No idea how that fits into an "International Trade Partner Conference".

That said, you can't outsource your complete manufacturing process only to come back later and wish for "virtual IDM" partnerships. Thats all of the benefits and none of the risk.

<comment><USER2> Rhetoric aside, Nvidia is the designer who keeps breaking transistor count records and is a dominant OEM supplier. That makes them both a technology and business leader among TSMC's customers, so it makes sense for TSMC to devote resources to them, since the experience they get in working with them can't be gained elsewhere and is applicable to their other customers down the road.

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure most of the (logic) transistor count records are held by FPGAs, no?

<comment><USER17> Not at the clock speeds that nvidia chips run at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What do they mean by "rough justice" in this context?

<comment><USER5> Reading between the lines, it sounds like NVidia thinks that TSMC is taking all their profit and they'd like to get a fair share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If cost/transistor continues to not improve, industry-wide, it spells the end of Moore's Law, at least for mainstream applications where _cost is a primary factor_.

However... where size itself (and power consumption) are the primary factors, there will be demand. Which means that SoC GPUs will adopt new process nodes more vigorously than video card GPUs. [http://www.embedded.com/electronics- news/4304118/Imagination...](http://www.embedded.com/electronics- news/4304118/Imagination-outstrips-all-other-GPU-IP-suppliers) Sounds like disruption.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit surprised by a wafer pricing chart. Sure, the individual wafer cost goes up; but if you have a design with the same transistor count, the size of your chip is going _down_, which means that you'll have _more_ chips per wafer (assuming comparable yields), which means that individual chip cost will go down.

(40/28)^2 ~ 2, so if 28nm is not that bad comparing to 40nm, assuming, again, comparable yields.

<comment><USER21> This is precisely the analysis given in the per-transistor pricing crossover chart. That shows that the old rate of wafer price increase still allowed for significant per-transistor cost advantage fairly quickly. The whole point is that the rate of wafer price increase has _itself_ increased to the point where these crossovers are barely happening anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nvidia Doesn't have a choice no matter how unhappy they are with tsmc. TSMC is the biggest fab that every fabless manufacturer uses. Every single fabless semi has no choice but TSMC. If tsmc can't deliver on the 22nm technology, no other fab will be able to. The 22nm is extremely difficult most skus fail. Hence intel wins.

</comment><comment><USER23> why do companies want to be design only?

<comment><USER24> These days, it's not really up to a company whether it wants to be fabless or an IDM. Apart from the several billion dollars needed to build a competitive fab, you'll also need to contend with the 20+-year head start existing IDMs and foundries have on you in terms of experience and expertise. As far as I can tell, there are too many moving parts in a fab for a new company to simply poach a few key people and be competitive quickly. I can't think of anyone apart from Apple or a nation-state that has enough money to wait around while their new division learns how to build chips.

That aside, assuming a fab better than TSMC's showed up on your doorstep today, you're not out of the woods in terms of being dependent on suppliers. On the contrary, designing fab tools is also a very capital-intensive business and tends towards an oligopoly, so the TSMCs and Intels of the world are just as dependent on tool vendors as NVIDIA is on TSMC. The same holds for the very specialized materials and consumables fabs use, like the glass to make mask sets.

<comment><USER23> who is the best company that makes fab tools?

<comment><USER24> Most companies only make a small fraction of the tools you need for a full fab; for examples of heavy hitters in key areas like lithography, chemical mechanical polishing, and ion implant, see ASML, Nikon, Canon, Applied Materials. For any given tool, there are usually 1 to 3 major vendors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Norway publishes source code for electronic election management system - <AUTHOR> https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fvalg.no%2Fvalg-i-norge%2Fvalggjennomforing-i-norge%2Felektronisk-valgadministrasjonssystem%2Fsystemdokumentasjon-og-kildekode-i-eva%2F <comment><USER2> Had a brief look at the source code. It's Java EE based and they seem to be using JBoss as application server.

I haven't spent much time looking at the code, but it's definitely quite neat and well written, with separation of concerns and test coverage.

Frontend seems to be using JSF which is built into Java EE.</comment>


Genome of a Man Born in 1784 Recreated from the DNA of His Descendants - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180118/08580639031/genome-man-born-1784-recreated-dna-his-descendants.shtml <comment><AUTHOR> This article is for "Genome Of A Man Born In 1784"</comment>


DEF CON report on vulnerabilities in US election infrastructure [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://defcon.org/images/defcon-26/DEF%20CON%2026%20voting%20village%20report.pdf <comment><USER3> The conclusion:

Over the last 26 years, DEF CON, and for the last two years, the Voting Village, have operated under two core principles:

1\. It is important to derive facts through reason and inquiry rather than blind faith.

2\. When we discover new facts, it's important we share this information with the general public so individuals can decide how best to use the information.

We did not make these principles up ourselves. Rather, these principles are the foundation of the Enlightenment, which has guided modern science to achieve the medical, engineering, and IT advances, among others, that underpin the modern world. Since these principles have largely guided the human race toward progress for the last 500 years, we plan to continue to follow them.

These principles matter most when we put them into practice. Therefore, it is relevant to ask what new facts all the poking and inquiring into our voting systems has identified since the Voting VIllage was established. Among the dozens of vulnerabilities identified in the last two years, four key DEF CON Voting Village findings are grave and undeniable:

1\. Supply Chain Insecurity: The voting machine parts supply chain is global and has essentially no security procedures to determine whether the machine parts are trustworthy or pre-hacked before the machine is assembled. Thus if an adversary compromised chips through the supply chain, they could hack whole classes of machines across the U.S., remotely, all at once.

2\. Remote Attacks Proven: Despite insistence the fact that machines are "air gapped" from the Internet protects against all remote attacks, both DEF CON 25 and 26 found exploits to hack machines remotely, requiring physical access to the machine.

3\. Hacking Faster Than Voting: This year DEF CON also demonstrated that while, on average, it takes about six minutes to vote, machines in at least 15 states can be hacked with a pen in two minutes. It is thus possible for someone to hack a machine while voting in a polling place on Election Day.

4\. Hacks Don't Get Fixed: Finally, we discovered that even when vendors are told about serious flaws in machines by their customers, those flaws go unfixed.

<comment><USER4> > it takes about six minutes to vote

Why does voting take 6 minutes? I think I used a voting machine maybe once in my life (in the Netherlands and apparently young enough to not have used those more often). Casting a vote on paper is usually checking a box with a red pencil, takes maybe a minute of dealing with the huge sheet of paper with all the candidates.

Just curious.

<comment><USER5> When you are voting for a dozen candidates and a dozen ballot measures, it takes time to read through all of them and make sure you are marking the correct boxes, even when you know how you will vote in advance.

<comment><USER6> This is another reason (along with preventing remote hacks etc.) that vote-by- mail[1] is much more reasonable. It provides you with as much time as you need to look up candidates and issues.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by- mail_in_Oregon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote-by-mail_in_Oregon)

<comment><USER7> Sure, but you lose vote secrecy.

<comment><USER8> First, the vote is double enveloped, should you choose to do that. Not everyone does.

It gets validated, then passed along for counting.

Second, if you want, you may drop your ballot into any drop box, or hand deliver it to elections, who will validate it and put it into the counting queue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Virginia went back to paper ballots and optical ballot scanning several years ago. I think the only drawback to this approach is storing the ballots for X years after an election (takes up space). But, it's far more secure and easy for everyone to do. Just like taking a high school test... pencil in the circle.

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

<comment><USER10> And IMO they should do away with "optical ballot scanning", and should move to regular humans counting them with their own eyes.

An electronic scanning system could easily be vulnerable to many of the same issues that are presented here.

Instead, have everyone mark their ballots like normal, then get a bunch of people in a room who all don't trust one another and have them count/tally votes together. Just about everyone that can vote can help count (unlike with electronic counting machines where only a very competent engineer could even begin to audit a machine like that, assuming that they were allowed to even do so), and in places that run elections like this, there is almost never a shortage of people willing to assist counting votes, especially when the election is particularly controversial ("I'm not going to let that [side a] person from screwing over us on [side b]! Let's go get 20 of us there watching to make sure nothing bad is happening!")

Voting should be hard, voting should be expensive (for the country, not for individual people). Why "optimize" the one thing that secures our country with alternatives that are less secure, have more points of failure, and are overall less understood both by the voters and by the people using the machines to tally votes?

<comment><USER11> > _An electronic scanning system could easily be vulnerable to many of the > same issues that are presented here_

In New York City, optical scanners are used. As a check, random precincts' ballots are manually tallied. This is a good compromise between cost and security.

(There are additional checks, like a public and private count and vote aggregates being publicly posted at every precinct at the end of the night. Observers can also audit the public and private count of any machine at any time of the day, and they do.)

<comment><USER10> But what is the motivation for the optical scanners? Why do away with a system that has proven to work and has known, mitigatable (is that a word?) downsides with one that is consistently found to have dangerous gaps in security and time and time again found extremely vulnerable?

Do they significantly improve accuracy? Do they save a significant amount of money? Do they increase the speed that things are tallied, and does that make a significant difference or improvement anywhere (because unless i'm missing something, getting results a few hours earlier is not a good reason to lessen the security of an election)?

I genuinely don't know, and I'd love to see more information if anyone has it on this.

Because to me, without knowing all of the details, it reads like "we trade some security to save costs by just not tallying some precincts at random".

If it's saving a significant amount of money, to the point where the state is much better off because of it, or if the usage of them somehow increases turnout by decreasing the time it takes to count votes, then I would agree with you. But without evidence like that, I'm sitting here wondering why these machines keep getting used.

Often times things that seem like they shouldn't be secure often are, and I'd love to be wrong about this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any specific data here, just a gut feel.

> Do they improve accuracy?

I think they pretty clearly would increase accuracy, modulo any potential tampering. Some of this is structural -- each ballot has multiple elections, some in which the same candidate can be featured multiple times under different party affiliations. Tallying this by hand seems intrinsically error- prone. It's arguable that simplifying the ballot could help both tallying and voting, but given the current design optical scanning seems like a huge increase in accuracy.

> do they save a significant amount of money?

Once again, I suspect yes -- tallying the votes by hand takes a lot of time and a lot of people. Poll workers aren't well-compensated by any means, but there's still a cost.

> Do they increase the speed that things are tallied, and does that make a > significant difference or improvement anywhere (because unless i'm missing > something, getting results a few hours earlier is not a good reason to > lessen the security of an election)?

I think yes to the first and a matter of opinion on the second. I'm with you that speed of results is either a non-goal or an anti-goal -- states that release precinct-level results when voting is still open elsewhere in the country are implicitly engaging in electioneering in my mind, and should be explicitly forbidden from doing so.

An automated system combined with random manual tallies seems pretty good to me from a security standpoint. As an aside, in addition to the random tallies I believe there is a process where any party can request a certain number of explicit audits if they feel that the results seem questionable from a given precinct, and an additional layer of election supervisors who can make a non- partisan request if there are inconsistencies from previous election cycles) seems like

In New York I would prefer that the focus be on distributing voter information earlier and more widely would be a much better use of time than further changing the actual voting. When I lived in Washington state, you got a voter information guide with all the candidates and ballot measures, statements for and against, and an explicit statement as to what is being voted on, well in advance of the election. In New York, half the time I have to really dig to even find out what is going to be on my ballot, and finding the full text of ballot measures is an exercise in futility as you try to navigate through the NY Department of State to try to find the information. Third-party sources like local newspapers actually do a significantly better job than the state does here.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I agree that they increase accuracy to the point that it would be worth the downsides. A room full of people who all don't trust one another I feel can do a fairly good job of reducing the errors down to a minimum. Again, I could be wrong, and I'd love to see a study or some research in this area that proves me wrong! (after all, history shows us that a crowd of like-minded people are capable of some very shitty things without some kind of checks and balances)

And while I'm sure they save some money, is it worth it? I'd like to get an idea of the scale involved. Because saving a few hundred thousand dollars a year for a state would make it absolutely not worth it in my opinion, but a few hundred million might be.

And finding exact numbers is extremely hard (at least for me), combined with the fact that these companies basically never release that kind of information, and I know it's not the best idea to read into these things, but I can't help but think that they would release these numbers if they were significant and showed the company saving tons of money for the state.

But i completely agree that there are much better things we can do to improve voting overall (personally my vote is for changing to a "ranked voting" system), but these machines still feel like a giant red flag to me. There's not a lot that can be done to swing an election by just a few people, but put some kind of electronic or computerized system in the mix, and now there's one dock worker that has access to a large number of the machines as they get shipped, and now you have a single point of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the "Next Steps" section in the report:

>Congress Must Fund Election Security: National defense is not the role of state and local government. Further, no state or local government will ever be able to raise enough capital to defend itself from a determined nation state. Thus, having codified the basic security standards developed by local election officials above, Congress must finance the implementation of these security standards.

Well. We tried: [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-block- bid-...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-block-bid-to- extend-election-security-grants)

<comment><USER13> Elections are not national defense.

State and local governments have been handling their own elections since before the country was founded. This is a _good thing_ , because it keeps elections close to the people, accountable to the people.

The last thing we need is nationalized elections. That would make _all_ of our elections vulnerable together. And that includes federal funding for state and local elections, because federal funding always comes with extensive rules and regulations, which would effectively put elections under federal control.

We need to move more government and accountability _closer_ to the people, not to Washington, D.C.

<comment><USER14> All it means is a foreign entity like Russia just attacks each state differently. It won't stop them. Clearly, we are doing literally what you're saying, and it hasn't worked.

Elections, in the 21st century, should fall within the range of national defense. Power grids and other types of infrastructure are, why not the democratic infrastructure like elections and voting?

> The last thing we need is nationalized elections. That would make all of our > elections vulnerable together.

Or you know, the ability for elections to actually be fixed in a systemic fashion. It's really the only way.

I really don't understand this attitude. To take an example from the software industry, would you rather have your users on one OS, for you to secure, or 20+ different ones, where you need to plug holes independently?

Fix one issue with a voting machine, fix them all, as opposed to just fixing Florida's specific homegrown crap.

<comment><USER13> > All it means is a foreign entity like Russia just attacks each state > differently. It won't stop them. Clearly, we are doing literally what you're > saying, and it hasn't worked.

This country has been around for over 200 years. Our elections have worked well, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.

> Elections, in the 21st century, should fall within the range of national > defense. Power grids and other types of infrastructure are, why not the > democratic infrastructure like elections and voting?

No, they shouldn't. I want my city, county, and state elections run by my city, county, and state, so that when something goes wrong, I can go to the city, county, or state to see about making it right, and even run for office locally to fix it myself, or go to the state capital at worst--not have to go to _Washington, D.C._ and complain to some bureaucrat that hasn't even heard of my city and couldn't care less about my state.

> Or you know, the ability for elections to actually be fixed in a systemic > fashion. It's really the only way.

Bald assertion.

> I really don't understand this attitude. To take an example from the > software industry, would you rather have your users on one OS, for you to > secure, or 20+ different ones, where you need to plug holes independently?

You're looking at it the wrong way. What is easier to attack: a homogeneous network in which every machine has the same, known vulnerabilities, or a heterogeneous network in which only subsets of machines have certain vulnerabilities? What is easier to destroy: a forest comprised of a single species with the same vulnerabilities to certain pathogens, or a forest with a variety of species?

Recent history shows the inherent risk of homogeneous networks, e.g. the NotPetya worm that took down global IT infrastructure for the biggest companies in the world in a matter of seconds: [https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine- rus...](https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code- crashed-the-world/)

This country was designed around compartmentalization. If one state enacts bad policies, has corrupt government, etc, it doesn't necessarily affect every other state. But when the federal government makes bad decisions and becomes corrupt, it _does_ affect _every_ state.

You want our elections to be more easily compromised, more easily controlled by third parties? Nationalize them. Use the same systems and rules and policies everywhere. Make every election, everywhere, have the same, known flaws and vulnerabilities. Make every election, everywhere, reliant on the slow-moving federal government to fix problems that states and localities could fix independently and quickly.

> Fix one issue with a voting machine, fix them all, as opposed to just fixing > Florida's specific homegrown crap.

How about letting Florida worry about fixing Florida's elections, and you fix yours. I don't think you'd like Florida telling you how to run your elections, but that's exactly what you propose in reverse. It's antithetical to liberty.

<comment><USER15> > This country has been around for over 200 years. Our elections have worked > well, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Doesn't follow; countries can exist for a long time without elections at all, and, a fortiori, without elections that "work well". Our existence and ability to debate th topic doesn't prove our elections worked well on average over history, or that they've been working well in their most recent form. Or much of anything else.

<comment><USER13> The point I'm making is that our elections have worked well, because they're still going on, and our nation still has its original form of government. If we ceased to have elections, as you hypothesize, it would no longer be the same nation, because it would have abandoned its form of government. So the fact that we're having this conversation, talking about elections that have been going on for over 200 years, indicates that, yes, they're actually working pretty well.

When we eventually stop having them, then we can revisit this conversation and long for the good old days. Meet you back here in...a few centuries?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are a lot of words in this document. What we need is some infographics that boil it down into something people without the time to read and parse all of those findings can understand easily. A map showing vulnerable states, some pictures showing how easy it is to circumvent a particular system. Something that shows what percentage of machines are vulnerable and an easy way to know if the machines in my district are susceptible without having to wade through pages and pages of text.

<comment><USER17> You should bring this to the attention of USAFActs. Even if you're not a Ballmer fan, they do have the necessary resources for this sort of work and it seems like it would align with their mission.

[https://usafacts.org/](https://usafacts.org/)

Maybe we could start tweeting them? [https://twitter.com/usafacts/](https://twitter.com/usafacts/)

<comment><USER16> Good idea. I tweeted at them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some of the vulnerabilities are, appallingly, mundane multi-user operating system misconfigurations that have been known about since the 1960s and 1970s. The one where simply connecting a serial terminal yields a root login session with no password is particularly egregious.

</comment><comment><USER19> > A second critical vulnerability in the same machine was disclosed to the > vendor a decade ago, yet that machine, which was used into 2016, still > contains the flaw.

Sometimes I wonder how some people manage to keep their jobs, and how companies manage to keep their contracts. This is gross negligence.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was surprised to read that this remote vulnerability is possible in 23 states. I thought that the United States prides itself on its democracy? How come voting machines are possible in a democracy?

<comment><USER21> This isn't a remote vulnerability, btw. The attach involves picking the lock a and inserting a device to a parallel port.

<comment><USER22> The surprising part of most of these vulnerabilities is they are hardware attacks. I had a talk with someone the other day that said she heard people were hacking votes from iPhones. The over simplification of the topic is doing just as much harm as good.

I don't know any security professional that would tell you physical access isn't equal to the ability to hack a device.

The reality is subversion of people managing processes is of a higher probability that attacks of the machines themselves. It's also not unique to electronic voting, people are always the weak link in security and will always be the weak link.

<comment><USER21> The first new attack described in last year's report was that you could DoS a machine by removing its CPU.

Which, sure, is something to think about. But it's not what I think people are imagining when you say "voting machine hacking."

<comment><USER22> Right!! It's like saying you could DoS a car by removing it's spark plugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> With partisanship rising to bitter, angry levels in the US while trust in just about every social group on the decline outside of the record defenders, my nightmare scenario has been a contested election result. Having no way to establish to friend, neutral third parties if there was/was not fraud means we can only rely on people's trust in each other to find a reasonable solution. That seems unlikely to end well right now., so all I can hope for is that we dont have such results.

</comment><comment><USER24> During the last 2016 automated elections here in the Philippines, the company responsible for it was Smartmatic and just found out their source code was licensed by Dominion.

Now finding out that Dominion's equipments mentioned here is a little bit worrying. There was also an incident during our elections hours before a voting machine was accessed just because they have to change a single letter. It is still disturbing to this day.

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember when people were laughed at thought of as cooks and quacks if they claimed voting machines were easily hack-able.

</comment><comment><USER26> Combine modern polling data/models with these exploits and the hackers would only have to target a dozen counties _(?) to change the outcome of the presidential election because of the how the Electoral College works.

(_ This is a guess. Trump won in 2016 by 107k votes across 3 states - <USER2> those states how many counties were actually "swingy"? [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/swing- state-margins/))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a quick summary of the machines that they have reported vulnerabilities in. I've used [ed] to mark where I'm adding relevant content not present in the report.

In my non-professional opinion, none of these vulnerabilities seem earth- shattering, although the potential lack of paper trails makes some of the touch-screen systems very dicey. Both of the touch-screen systems have the option of a voter-verified paper trail, but it's not clear how widely those option are deployed.

Diebold ExpressPoll-5000

\- Use: Used to check in voters at the polling station.

\- Vulnerabilities: No voting-specific vulnerabilities were found; generally an insecure WinCE machine. Physical access would be needed to compromise.

\- Impact: Could change voter polls to selectively exclude individuals, forcing them to use provisional ballots. Could add voters to polls potentially, but not clear [ed] if this would pass a cross-reference with upstream voter registry.

Dominion AVC Edge

\- Use: Touch-screen voting machine. Records votes electronically and [ed: has an optional voter-verified paper ballot audit system. Not clear how widely used the paper ballot system is used with this machine.] Verifies voter eligibility with a smart card distributed by poll staff. [ed: Presumably the smart card cross-referenced with the voter rolls during tally.]

\- Vulnerabilities: Physical vulnerabilities, including swapping out the electronic storage. [ed: Not clear if this would be detected by audits against the smart card registration or voter rolls].

\- Impact: Removed or changed votes or completely synthetic votes, [ed: if not cross-referenced; or the storage could be re-written to change or spoil existing votes]. [ed: If paper option is not used, then no audit would be possible if storage is compromised].

Dominion Premier/Diebold AccuVote TSx

\- Use: Touch-screen voting machine. Records votes electronically and has an optional voter-verified paper ballot system. Verifies eligibility with smart card distributed by poll staff.

\- Vulnerabilities: Denial-of-service attacks easily available by unplugging a cable. Smart card is supposed to be reset by the machine, but a substitute smart card can be used that allows unlimited votes. [ed Not clear if this would pass a cross-reference with the voter rolls, or if the machine is equipped to allow such an audit.] Malware could be distributed for the device [ed: through unspecified channels]. Such malware would allow an adversary to compromise many machines without requiring physical access to polling stations.

\- Impact: Removed or changed votes or completely synthetic votes [ed: if not cross-referenced with voter rolls; or malware could be used strictly to change votes and still pass the cross-referencing with voter polls. The user-verified paper option could mitigate some of this, but the malware could theoretically spoil the user-verified ballot and produce a new non-spoiled ballot with a changed vote.]

ES&S M650

\- Use: Strictly for tallying of paper ballots.

\- Vulnerabilities: Physical security at the polling place, and network-based attacks in situations where the devices are networked (not at the polling place, but at the clerks office or similar centralized locations). Thought attempts are made on the device to prevent unauthorized software from being installed, there are known vulnerabilities that allow that to be changed, through a serial control port or by modifying the Zip disks (?!) that are used as the underlying file system.

\- Impact: Changing vote tallies. [ed: An audit would be possible because this machine uses a direct voter-filled-out paper trail].

<comment><USER27> The concept of xyz "villages" at DefCon was always pretty silly. Very little, if anything, new is going to come out when people have no real time or access to these devices. Combine that with the technical skill of the average attendee and you get results like this.

Anyone in security could threat model every single of these attacks on the back of a napkin in about six minutes. It is sad that you can replace hard drives in voting machines, but of course that's expected and rather obvious.

It'd be neat if DefCon would use some of its money and sponsor a device roadshow. Ship these things around to different labs and makerspaces for month long stints. Sign up someone who has a vague idea of what he or she is doing that can guide and teach others on weekends. Let people do real work and not just marketing.

<comment><USER28> They tried to. The companies manufacturing the devices refused.

<comment><USER29> Rule one (1) for voting machines should be something along the lines of making examples available for testing to all main political parties; and at cost price to all people who are electoral candidates.

The parties then can have them analysed and choose whether to use them or not, perhaps something like all those with more than 10% of the vote previously could decide whether to use machines or human counting; full consensus required.

Rule two (2) should be something along the lines of all votes requiring an agreed sampling to be counted via alternative methods.

You could even have a sample of electoral wards not use the machines at all - that would _suggest_ irregularities if there was tampering, as the hand [machine] counted wards would have different voting preferences to the others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It is an absolute farce that there are electronic voting machines in use which are closed-source.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is terrifying. Full stop.

<comment><USER22> Every electronic device is hackable with physical access. Every process that has humans involved is exploitable.

I'm more alarmed at the number of people willing to complain and moan about change, yet refuse to volunteer at their local polling station. If awareness is important, we have to start somewhere, yet the vast majority of people complaining expect it to just solve itself.

Sometimes to fix a broken system you have to become a part of it and change from the inside.

<comment><USER32> > Every electronic device is hackable with physical access. Every process that > has humans involved is exploitable.

This is a useless statement. Security is a continuum, and it's perfectly valid to point out voting machines suck on that continuum.

I store my private key on a yubikey, and sure if you had physical access and spent about $300k you could decap it and recover the private key (with a success rate of maybe 10%, an expensive hardware lab, and expertise only a handful of people have).

That's a whole different ballpark from voting machines which don't use a hardware TPM [0] to attest votes, but instead store them in csvs while running windows CE such that an attacker with a jumpdrive can plug it in and alter records using exploits which have been public for years and years.

> Sometimes to fix a broken system you have to become a part of it and change > from the inside.

Unfortunately, various people have tried to change it with no success. The voting machine companies have contracts with the government that preclude new entrants to the business.

Security researchers who contact voting machine companies have no impact.

Technology such as TPMs exist, but the voting machine vendors have little apparent interest in these new ideas and technologies.

I don't think it's fair to discount other commentors from providing information and discussing their views just because they're unwilling to go into politics to attempt to fix this silly government contracts (with a low chance of succeeding)

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

<comment><USER22> "That's a whole different ballpark from voting machines which don't use a hardware TPM [0] to attest votes, but instead store them in csvs while running windows CE such that an attacker with a jumpdrive can plug it in and alter records."

you're not getting any of these access with out modifying hardware at the poling station. If poll monitoring is being performed, they're going to notice someone taking apart a voting machine.

I was at the Voter Village, Two years in a row I spent time disassembling the machines. They're not as easy as you're making it out.

Being a part of monitoring of these systems is not something stopped by big business. That's a cop out.

TPM should be a part of medical devices, but it's not. I would argue that's even more important than a voting machine. Unless you work for a manufacturer or are building a voting machine with these systems, sitting around and saying you could do X or Y doesn't solve a damn thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Really don't like how political and advocative DefCon has gotten.

Finding and publishing vulnerabilities is fine. But DefCon shouldn't be advocating policy or fixes. That should be left to the government, businesses, etc. The more defcon mixes with authorities, the better.

<comment><USER34> If [the government, businesses, etc.] could not (or did not) find these vulnerabilities, most of which seem like things your average techie might have checked for, what evidence is there to suggest that [the government, businesses, etc.] know how to fix them either?

<comment><USER22> The same could be said for any system where a vulnerability is found.

Vulnerabilities exist, it's the efforts we put into addressing them that matters. Yelling about one party or the other being responsible won't solve the problem. The first steps to a big fix would simply be locking down processes, things that can be done by volunteers joining in the efforts of their local and or state voting agencies.

It's easy to sit on the sides lines and say this and that are wrong, I'd rather see more people standing up and trying to find solutions that work.

I volunteer and we are always short and no one every seems to "have the time". The quality of candidates that do volunteer are all over and would have far greater an impact with more tech exposed individuals instead of the common retirees that I work with.

<comment><USER34> I cannot tell from the wording of the comment, but this seems like a rebuttal. I agree that solutions should be the first thing that happens as opposed to blaming. However, the comment that I replied to seemed to be stating that the solutions should be left to the first order victims of the exploits (which I am stating is nonsense) and that the DEFCON participants had no place in offering solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Any likelihood we could get some white hat hackers on this... Including marking things on the day of, if necessary?

<comment><USER36> be careful what you wish for, one man's white hat is another man's black hat

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is a lot like consumer cryptography - yes, technical exploits are a problem, but they're overshadowed by social engineering.

In the case of US elections - even with secure infrastructure, the election will be determined by billionaire-sponsored campaign budgets and policies that entrench the 2 party system.

After the DNC email leak, I'm amazed how little attention was placed on hard evidence that the Democratic Party methodically sabotaged candidates in the primaries. Shifting public focus to the "Russian Hacking" was amazing PR work.</comment>


The strange case of Enoch Soames, time travel, Teller, and a unique photo - <AUTHOR> http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread911402/pg1 <comment><USER2> I believe it was staged by Teller, and he gives you enough context in his article to figure it out:

> "I wonder," he said, "how many Enoch Soameses will show up." At the time, I > thought he was merely musing. Later I understood. He was giving me a > homework assignment.

And then he closes the article:

> D. G. "Rosey" Rosenbaum didn't come to the Reading Room; he no longer > corrects homework assignments. He was buried seven years ago, dressed in a > smart charcoal suit, with a blood-red vest and his pince-nez, a rose in his > lapel. The mourners said there was a sly smile on his face.

Teller's homework assignment was to stage Enoch's appearance and thus close the literary loop that Max Beerbohm left open. Teller's teacher was wondering how many other people would show up to do the same thing.

By closing his article by mentioning his teacher's death, Teller is letting us know that this performance was an homage to someone he greatly respected.

<comment><USER3> As Beerbohm's short story might be quite well-known in some circles, one imagines that a local literary fan may have been up for making an appearance in appropriate costume, possibly without the illusionist's knowledge.

Nice story though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fans of (artful hoaxes of) time travel might also enjoy John Titor:

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

Later it was revealed that a rather well known "transmedia" artist had a role in that one:

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Becomes less entertaining when you realize the people there actually believe it or even disbelieve it based on different theories about how time travel "actually" works.

<comment><USER6> Not sure I understand why that changes the entertainment value. I personally think it was an elaborate obscure hoax, but I would have loved to have been there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Time travel is possible ? Maybe. But more importantly, if the story is true it means the Devil and the Hell actually exist... And therefore...

<comment><USER6> I disagree. Even if Soames were indeed transported into the future for a bit, it hardly proves anything about the Devil. Merely that someone _claiming_ to be the Devil did this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just want to say that _Seven Men_ is still in print, and for that matter some of it downloadable from the Gutenberg Project.

</comment><comment><USER9> can't find the photo, should it be somewhere?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.flickr.com/photos/allhails/8124880282](https://www.flickr.com/photos/allhails/8124880282)

<comment><USER9> thanks, took the link for a headline

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The incident remains a true time travel mystery" \- er, really? It's a nice story, but that's about it. It would have been better to post the Teller article than the link above, too. Above Top Secret is a pretty awful website.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know anything about that site. I just liked the additional context it provided, including the picture.</comment></comment>