Fake Linus Torvalds' Key Found in the Wild, No More Short-IDs - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/8/15/445 <comment><USER2> Hi, Eric here, co-creator of evil32. I posted a brief note on our site about this, but here's a little more detail.

I found an old (local) backup of the private keys and used it to generate revocation certificates for each key. Fortunately, there is no way for anyone else to access or regenerate the private keys for this particular clone of the strong set, and I have been very careful with my copy - it is only available on my personal machine, and I have only used it to generate the revocation certificates. I will not use these keys to generate any fake signatures nor to decrypt any messages intended for the original recipients.

We wanted to bring awareness to the dangers of using short key IDs in the 21st century, since that ID is very easy to fake, and most of the contents of the key body are not covered by the signature, so they can be changed at will. However, we feel that the keys uploaded to the public keyserver are, on balance, more of harmful to the usability of the GPG ecosystem than they are helpful in highlighting security flaws.

It's important to realize that anyone could repeat our work pretty easily. While we did not release the scripts that automated cloning the web of trust, the whole process took me less than a week. Cloning a single key is even easier - it could be done with only a few minutes of effort by someone familiar with GPG. The GPG ecosystem needs to develop better defenses to this attack.

Our original talk (and previous work) seems to have convinced people to stop using 32-bit IDs in documentation or on their business cards. However, there is another common and harmful pattern: users who want to email someone discover their key by searching the keyserver for that email, then taking the newest key. This is akin to trust-on-first-use, and opts out completely from the web of trust or any kind of external verification.

Proof of identity: [https://keybase.io/aftbit](https://keybase.io/aftbit)

<comment><USER3> > users who want to email someone discover their key by searching the > keyserver for that email, then taking the newest key. This is akin to trust- > on-first-use, and opts out completely from the web of trust or any kind of > external verification

Well, yes? What is the alternative, if I want to email someone who exists only in the form of a pseudonymous online identity?

<comment><USER4> Most of the time there's some at least semi-trusted communication channel. If they have a website, ask them to publish the key or the full fingerprint on their website. If they frequent some IRC channel, ask them on IRC for their key's fingerprint. If they regularly sign their emails you can check mailing lists they participate on to confirm they use the same key there.

If the key is just for their pseudonym, I usually offer to sign the key if they can send me the key through one service of my choice (where their username is public knowledge) and the fingerprint through another (meaning an attacker would have to compromise both accounts I chose). The offer to sign their key often makes people much more willing to jump through hoops, and I get to improve the web of trust.

But for some people I just don't care enough and just add the first best key.

<comment><USER3> I guess you're talking, here, about identities that are at least in some way connected to the "public" social network. Identities that publish things on public websites, etc.

But if this isn't true—if, for example, you are someone who wants to get in contact with a terrorist group (maybe for an interview, maybe because you want to _join_ them, etc.) then there's not much to do but to trust-on-first-use _some_ channel that seems to be them, no? No public channel can possibly be vouched for as being "the real them", or that channel would have been chased up by the CIA. Which means that any/every channel might just be a honeypot _from_ the CIA or whoever else, trying to either frustrate your efforts, or convert you into a double-agent.

<comment><USER4> The bigger terrorist groups all have websites and/or a social media presence.

As you say any one of those channels could be a CIA operation, that's why asking for verification from two independent channels (i.e. asking for the keyfile on one channel, for the fingerprint on another) is preferable. A terrorist group that actually uses pgp might even entertain you if you ask on more than two channels for the fingerprint. The more channels you chose, the less likely it is that a single attacker controls all of them.

Another factor is that any public channel that is a front is likely to be called out sooner or later as a non-official channel. Most people and organizations are wary of the dangers of impersonation.

Of course there will always be situations where it's impossible to establish trust, like a leak by a group who tries to stay anonymous to the point of not associating with any previously used pseudonyms. Here you can't do anything but trust the first communication. But I think those cases are extremely infrequent: most groups and individuals try to establish a reputation, which nearly always gives you more points to anchor trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All the fake keys that I've seen mentioned are from the data set at [https://evil32.com](https://evil32.com).

It appears a couple of researchers decided, back in 2014, to demonstrate this issue by cloning the entire strong set of the PGP web of trust (not just Linus' key, but basically everyone who uses PGP/GPG for Free Software development - myself included).

It would appear that sometime quite recently, someone decided it would be fun to upload all of those keys (there's ~24,000 in their tarball) to the keyservers...

One would hope that the researchers behind evil32.com are ethical enough and sensible enough to have permanently destroyed the secret keys - but obviously, anyone could mount this attack quite trivially with modern hardware.

So, check your fingerprints!

<comment><USER6> At this point this is INSANE that GnuPG still defaults to short IDs...

<comment><USER7> It doesn't anymore.

With GnuPG 2.1 listing of keys shows the fingerprint.

<comment><USER8> But for server installations (auto-signing, checking, etc.) you are often directed to GnuPG 1 because "less dependencies". Also "apt install gnupg" / "dnf install gnupg" both give you version 1 on the most recent Ubuntu/Fedora.

For desktop usage many prefer GnuPG 2.0, because they fear compatibility issues that the new 2.1 key storage format could have with 3rd party software, and you can't go back (at least this is the reason why the Homebrew maintainers still default to 2.0, but at least not to version 1 anymore since a few days).

So you have a mess of 3 stable versions, all used by many at the same time.

<comment><USER7> I don't know where people would run three versions at the same time. The information from the GnuPG project is clear: You can run GnuPG 1.x and GnuPG 2.x at the same time, but you should not have GnuPG 2.0 and GnuPG 2.1 installed at the same time, as bad things might happen.

What 3rd party software is using the keystorage mechanisms directly? Do you mean how information is output from GnuPG?

It sounds like the situation you are describing is the keystore, which has changed formats. GnuPG 2.1, as far as I can remember, will oll use the older versions keystore, but you are correct, once you have a 2.1 keystore it can't be used by GnuPG 2.0 and 1.x.

It's a tough call for the GnuPG developers and something distributions should help with. On one hand there is immense pressure to improve GnuPG, on the other hand, you have many actors who kick GnuPG around when it makes any deviation.

I would say defaulting to GnuPG 1.x is a bug and new releases of Linux, Homebrew, etc., should use GnuPG 2.0 at the very least, but better yet, use GnuPG 2.1 which has many of the things that people complain about fixed or in process of being fixed.

<comment><USER8> > I don't know where people would run three versions at the same time.

Not on the same machine, but server/automatic -> GnuPG 1, desktop 2.0 or 2.1. Also different people may run different versions, even GnuPG 1 on desktop because they are used to. This compatibility mess that seems to persist for while was what I meant why people prefer to use the lowest common denominator in their sigs/cards/slides -> evil32.

> What 3rd party software is using the keystorage mechanisms directly?

Aren't there any? Good, then I misunderstood that argument in the Homebrew debates I read, sorry. That leaves only the fear of automatic upgrading and the inability to downgrade again as a blocker.

<comment><USER7> In practice you can use all three versions of GnuPG on three different devices without a particular difference. One problem you might see is if you are using the newer experimental curve-based algorithms on a computer running GnuPG 1.4 and you get blocked, but you really ought not to do that anyway.

As for the downgrading issue:

It used to be you could just copy your .gnupg directory from computer to computer to computer and that's what constituted migrating your PGP keys.

This was also true for moving frmo GnuPG 1.4 to GnuPG 2.x. If you are starting with a new GnuPG keystore from 2.1 you can't just copy .gnupg and use it in a GnuPG 1.4 system, you have to export your public keys, your private keys, and your trustdb (although I am iffy on what this does) and import them on the systems where you are running GnuPG 1.4 or 2.0

I am unaware of any 3rd party software directly accessing the GnuPG keystore, but that doesn't say much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've attended security conferences in the past two years wherein representatives of companies that claim to see 80+ percent of all Internet traffic in their threat intel offerings who were presenting about Android malware reverse engineering used short IDs in their slide deck and business cards.

When I mentioned Evil32 to them, they looked at a loss.

[https://evil32.com](https://evil32.com)

If this is news to you, don't feel bad. Many infosec conference speakers don't do this right either, and those are the sorts of people you'd expect to get this right.

<comment><USER10> I'm just some guy, but I've got a stack of cards with my short ID on them - what do I do now? Toss them?

<comment><USER11> Destroy them carefully and use the opportunity to create new ones with QR codes on them with your full public key (or just the full fingerprint).

<comment><USER12> I've written software to help me create QR codes for my business card, including PGP, address, web site etc. There are many gotchas, some apps ignore some VCard fields, hence it puts copies into generic comment fields, too. Seems to work OK now. Maybe I should turn this into a web service.

[https://github.com/pflanze/vcard-scm](https://github.com/pflanze/vcard-scm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This has also been discovered with the Debian project, as I submitted a while ago [1].

The really scary part is the follow-up [2]:

      > € gpg --search-key email@example.com
      > ...
      > (1) Samuel Thibault <firstname.lastname@example.com>
      > 4096 bit RSA key 7D069EE6, created: 2014-06-16

      And it has 55 signatures from 55 colliding keys...

Edit: even the 64-bit fingerprint is probably insufficient, see [3].

[1] [https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00143.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00143.html)

[2] [https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00144.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00144.html)

[3] [https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00215.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00215.html)

<comment><USER14> Why is this scary?

<comment><USER13> Because it removes many obvious tells of a deliberate key collision targeting a specific key, and thus is harder to detect.

For example, pgp.mit.edu and Enigmail would currently output information for both keys that would be almost identical per 2014-08-05, the day evil32 apparently generated the keys. I say "almost" only because they didn't set the correct timestamps, and apparently did not duplicate all UIDs -- but they easily could have.

The diligent PGP user will of course not fall into such a trap, but an inexperienced user easily might, and there are many of them.

<comment><USER15> The whole point of this research was to underscore that PGP key acquisition is commonly broken. You could choose to blame PGP software, users, documentation, or the web-of-trust model itself, but in any case what a significantly number of people commonly do is unsafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems some people are playing havoc with key ids.

I got a mail earlier today I couldn't decrypt for unclear reasons. Now I understand why: It seems it was encrypted with a copy of my public key that is on the keyserver colliding with the keyid of my real key.

Right now there is a revoked copy of my key there: [https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=hanno%40hboeck&op=inde...](https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=hanno%40hboeck&op=index)

What's exactly going on here? Other commentors indicate that someone uploaded keys from the evil32 page to the keyservers. Have the authors of evil32 now used their private keys to revoke them?

Anyway, the conclusion seems obvious: Keyids are dead, use full fingerprints. Latest gpg 2.1 versions already show full fingerprints by default.

I still had a short keyid on my webpage, will change that now.

<comment><USER17> From evil32.com:

> _I saw that your clone of the strong set is revoked?_

> _Someone downloaded our copy of the strong set and uploaded all of the keys > to the SKS keyserver network. :( While we took on this project to help > prompt GPG to build a more secure ecosystem, this mass clone made the > keyservers harder for everyone to use. Of course anyone could use our tools > to regenerate their own strong set clone and do this again, but we 'd rather > our keys not be used that way._

I take that to mean that yes, they continued to be in possession of the private keys.

<comment><USER18> Seems it is not _merely_ the strong set.

Mine is not in the strong set and it had a collision uploaded. It has the same upload (creation?) date -- 2014-06-16 as many others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know why more folks don't display keys and fingerprints as Base64; it seems to me that "q68RxlopcLEwq+PEeb4+QwBBGIY=" (Linus's real key) and "D2oUZTLYaa7kOPdLYhGqOwBBGIY=" (Linus's fake key) are pretty easilt- distinguishable, and not terribly verbose.

<comment><USER20> You can do what PGPfone did and encode the fingerprint as a series of dictionary words:

Real gregkh: 647F28654894E3BD457199BE38DBBDC8 = style tactful newcomers file gallows adored insist flags athletics

Fake gregkh: 497C48CE16B926E93F49630127365DEA = jukebox governor fashionable mahogany prepares gobble surprised martha apostles

There's even an Internet standard for this: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1751](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1751) , although its dictionary isn't very large or interesting. Here's another implementation intended for BitTorrent magnet hashes: [http://pythonsweetness.tumblr.com/post/56715292510/cheatcode...](http://pythonsweetness.tumblr.com/post/56715292510/cheatcodes- turning-bittorrent-links-into-spoken)

SSH keygen has a mode where the digest is printed as ASCII art, I imagine by using the key as input into something like a fractal function. I can't find the option for it, but I'm sure you've seen it on the console at some point

<comment><USER21> This is just turning one hash into another, so would be just as easy to brute force.

<comment><USER22> The point is to turn one fairly _big_ hash into a representation where humans can easily spot the differences.

<comment><USER23> Pretty sure most of the time people only read the first few and last words and e.g. don't concern if the words in the middle are in correct order. Not sure about the size of that dictionary, but it would seem to greatly diminish the entropy.

<comment><USER24> It's asking for a solution with more gestalt impact. Turn the key into a painting or some sort of visualization.

<comment><USER25> It has to be a visualization in which changing a few pixels make it look significantly different. Otherwise we can still make a 'low distance' brute force attack.

<comment><USER22> I don't understand.

What you need is a picture that makes the visually salient information tot up to about 160 bits.

That's tough, but since the human visual system is so powerful, it's not hopeless. But we would need real psychologists to help design the art generators, backing the results with experiments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Linus' fake key [1], as well as all the others from the random sample I took, have been revoked as of today.

[1] [http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0xEA185A5E76E...](http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0xEA185A5E76E21CBB).

<comment><USER26> So the evil32 people kept the private keys. That's exciting.

<comment><USER27> Not necessarily, they might have just generated revokation certs which are separate (so that they can be used in case your private key is lost). Keeping a revokation cert would be a responsible thing to do, just in case something like this happens.

<comment><USER28> They had an old backup that contained the private keys. See this comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12298230)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Personally I like the keybase approach for this of tying GPG keys to a set of accounts.

Generally when I'm talking to someone online I know someone via other sites (e.g. twitter, github), so being able to say "the person who controls the account xxx on github, uses this key" lets me establish a level of initial trust.

Obviously for high trust applications that's not enough, but better than nothing...

</comment><comment><USER30> Just to point out, this attack goes back at least 22 years. According to [this thread]([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.crypt/JSSM6Nbfwe...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.crypt/JSSM6NbfweQ)), credit is due to Paul Leyland.

</comment><comment><USER31> Take a leaf out of urbit's book, and convert hex strings into readable nonsense syllables that are a lot easier for humans to compare.

<comment><USER32> UTF-8 v9.0 contains 1085 emoji, that should be even easier to compare than random symbols.

<comment><USER33> I'm not sure if you're sincere but I don't think emoji would be easier to compare. +Might be less friendly to screen reader users?

<comment><USER34> > I'm not sure if you're sincere but I don't think emoji would be easier to > compare.

The point is to leverage human pattern matching so you want short-ish figures with large differences.

Each hex digits is 4 bits, but each emoji is 10 bits, a 128 bits key is 13 emoji which is significantly more eyeballable than 32 hex digits, and chances are you'll notice EGGPLANT being replaced by CAMERA in 13 pictures easier than you'd notice B being replaced by 8 in 32 characters.

<comment><USER35> > Each hex digits is 4 bits, but each emoji is 10 bits, a 128 bits key is 13 > emoji which is significantly more eyeballable than 32 hex digits, and > chances are you'll notice EGGPLANT being replaced by CAMERA in 13 pictures > easier than you'd notice B being replaced by 8 in 32 characters.

Compare like with like - what are the two most similar emoji from that set of 2^10 ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 32 bit seems so obviously bad I'm not sure why we still have it..

<comment><USER19> The 90s were a different time, that's the only explanation I can come up with. Short key IDs are yet another 90s-crypto wart.

<comment><USER37> Even in the 90s it seems odd to design a system trivially vulnerable to birthday attacks (with maybe a simplification, but that's how primitives are evaluated: if it fails in a slightly simplified version or environment, it's unfit for service). Now birthday attacks are not exactly applicable to the "how to forge a key with the same short id as that exact person", but with an high number of keys available there may be other ways to ease your attempts to generate collisions, even if that means relaxing your target requirements somehow. Even if there are not, you must be extremely paranoid when designing anything security related: here barely doubling the size of the short id would have mitigated today's problem, but we see that now 64 bits is not even enough. So there _has_ been a fuck-up (with, I agree, a (lack of) security climate in the 90s that might have contributed a lot to that fuck-up), it has enormous consequences right now (given some distro still default their gpg packages to an obsolete version, it seems). We must take what happened _and_ happens right now into account, and learn our lesson: trivial conveniences decreasing security against abstract hole shall be considered an absolute no- go, and something to fix ASAP with absolute priority.

Sadly I do not expect the security approach to change before at least one more people generation, and then to be honest I'm not even sure it will ever change at all if we consider the mean global situation: the approach of far too many people is still "we don't give a fuck, we don't know anything about that, actually we don't even know that we should know something about that, this will just not happen to us, this is only a cost we can skip". Unless they are personally fucked, I don't expect half of that kind of people changing their mind. And then there are now so much software everywhere that I expect that the vast majority are so full of holes this is not even funny, and I expect that the ratio of insecure software will actually increase unless some kind of regulation are put in place -- but then I don't expect regulation to actually be sane and mandate for real security, given that politics want back doors at least every 4 years.

To optimistic people, please consider the following: even in a mainstream IT field, on one of the most used kind of device today, handling personal data all the day, the market leader designed an ecosystem where the OS that most people are actually using is most of the time not patched during most of the lifetime of said devices. If Google can get away with having such insane and shameful approach, why would you expect a random car vendor to have any real security in its embedded software? Obviously it is even worse for gadgets that VC currently think should/will be installed everywhere.

We are heading to security nightmare unless each of you who think security is important wake up and push the hardest they can to improve the situation. Relentlessly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As mentioned in debian-devel lists, add this to your ~/.gpg.conf:

        keyid-format long

as a stop gap measure, it will show long IDs (64-bit). Obviously comparing full key (`--with-fingerprint`) is the best.

<comment><USER30> Someone claims ([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.crypt/JSSM6Nbfwe...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.crypt/JSSM6NbfweQ)) that it's just as easy to spoof 64 bit as 32 bit keys. I have no idea whether to believe him, but even if he's full of it, it's prudent to assume that if the 32 bit attack was practical 20 years ago, 64 bits is within reach today.

<comment><USER17> That's a post from 1996. I'm not sure how "easy" was calculated. Possibly both were hard but tractable, but 64 bits should have been much harder.

Today it is significantly easier to collide a 32-bit key than a 64-bit one, but both are pretty easy. A 32-bit key can be collided in 4 seconds on a GPU, according to [https://evil32.com](https://evil32.com). It can certainly be done on normal desktop hardware in hours. For a 64-bit key, 'JoshTriplett calculated (last week) that a collision would take 15 days if someone built hashing hardware of comparable quality to a commercial Bitcoin miner:

[https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00215.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- devel/2016/08/msg00215.html)

(Incidentally, I am very pleased with Bitcoin having created a liquid market between cryptographic computational speed and money, so we can answer these sorts of questions precisely.)

<comment><USER39> This means state actors like three letter agencies already have this capability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Fry-kun I've mentioned an idea in Phoronix forums[1] yesterday: Since most users won't bother comparing the entire signature (also applies to comparing md5/sha*/etc. hashes), it might be a good idea to map & display blocks of the sig as English words to the user.

Care must be taken to avoid similar-looking and similar-sounding (homophonic) words, but since there are >150k words in Oxford English Dictionary, so it should be possible to get 65k usable ones.

In fact, someone pointed out something like this already exists to a degree: [2]

A contrived visual example (suppose someone matches first two and last two segments!):

      Fake Linus Torvalds: ABAF 11C6 32D8 69AE E438 F74B 6211 AA3B 0041 1886
      Real Linus Torvalds: ABAF 11C6 5A29 70B1 30AB E3C4 79BE 3E43 0041 1886

With a word salad approach:

      Fake Linus Torvalds: lopsided crate threatening hydrant peep bumpy art work earth spurious
      Real Linus Torvalds: lopsided crate symptomatic equal kaput chunky kettle include earth spurious

Even with an even-spaced font, it's hard to confuse the two

(random words from [3])

[1] [https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest- phoron...](https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoronix- articles/891066-the-brewing-problem-of-pgp-short-id-collision-attacks)

[2] [https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki)

[3] [https://www.randomlists.com/random- words](https://www.randomlists.com/random-words)

<comment><USER35> The pgp word list was created for exactly this purpose. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just make the keys 256 characters and add an ASCII art penis in the front, just to make it very clear that humans should not be seeing these things.

</comment><comment><USER41> [http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=B9E39278](http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=B9E39278)

<comment><USER42> wait, this looks interesting. Can someone comment on this? Are you supposed to know the fingerprint after you input name and stuff or before? Or is this just modification of data like how you can add email IDs?

<comment><USER35> You're supposed to confirm the fingerprint with the person. At the time the recommendation was a phone call (if you knew their voice) using the PGP word list - it was felt to be computationally implausible to fake that up in realtime. Or people publish fingerprints on their site etc.

Obv. the fingerprint only matters if you want to be sure you are talking to someone specific, in which case you usually have a way to know who they are or why you care. For some use cases trust-on-first-use is adequate.

<comment><USER42> Thanks for taking the time, but seems like you didn't click on the link. When you look at the name of the keyholder of the fingerprint (B9E39278), the User Name of the keyholder is same as the fingerprint of the key. I was asking if the User Name is set after the key is generated or before. Or if one can change user name after key generation. And I think you can, so there's nothing interesting here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The e-mail includes a couple of links. The linked site at [http://gwolf.org/node/4070](http://gwolf.org/node/4070) returns "page not found?" for me currently. Here is an archived version of that page which works: [http://archive.is/sSXvX](http://archive.is/sSXvX)

</comment><comment><USER44> So my solution to this was to sign a ton of publicly archived email with my full fingerprint. Then I stopped signing email and not a single person noticed/cared, so yeah. Meh. CVE assignments, no big deal I guess.

</comment><comment><USER45> apt package manager uses short-ids with a repository key is not recognised, as well as when you use apt-key to add the key to your keychain.

When using 3rd party repositories, you will often see something like the following, which also uses short-ids:

> apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 7F0CEB10

So it makes me wonder if any commonly used repositories (or PPA's) have fake duplicate keys with the same key-id.

</comment><comment><USER46> These keys have always seemed remarkably short.

Roughly how many CPU-hours does it take to find a collision?

<comment><USER47> "It takes 4 seconds to generate a colliding 32bit key id on a GPU"

source: [https://evil32.com/](https://evil32.com/)</comment></comment>


Candy Box, a clever browser toy/game - <AUTHOR> http://candies.aniwey.net

<comment><USER2> It's almost impossibile that anyone on HN noticed this.</comment>


Show HN: Audio/Video Calling and File Sharing on your local network - <AUTHOR> https://web.trango.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

We created trango, a (W)LAN based audio/video calling and file sharing solution. Ideal for talking to colleagues, family and friends in any shared space. Can be used by offices, hotels, factories, off-grid establishments and any shared space. It is free, open source and cross platform. A self hosted version is also available for Linux and Windows machines/servers. With self- host, you completely bypass the internet which can be found at [https://github.com/trango-io/trango-self-hosted](https://github.com/trango- io/trango-self-hosted). The web version only uses the internet to discover those on the same network as you. In either case, your data never leaves your own network. We have even encrypted it for further security. Group calls and online calls are being added as we speak.

We are working on an Android and iOS mobile app along with desktop apps for more convenience. We are also enhancing the functionality of the self-hosted version so that it can work on an enterprise level with a slew of admin and security features. The program is still in beta so please bear with us.

Background: We started using trango in our factory of 100 or so people since the internet connectivity wasn't great. Also, due to Covid, we were shunning meetings and reluctant to meet eachother in person. Other establishments around us liked the idea of communicating over LAN so we deployed trango for them and now they too are using trango instead of their local landlines (intercom/pbx). Trango is very simple to set up and we would like to keep it that way. On the client side, trango is also easy to use due to its visual nature. The goal is to create an instant messaging solution which works online and offline seamlessly.

We would love your feedback on trango. If anyone of you wish to contribute to open-source, you are most welcome. You can also subscribe on our webapp [https://web.trango.io](https://web.trango.io) to keep yourself updated to our full launch and other feature additions.

Thanking you,

T. Khan</comment>


Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America - <AUTHOR> http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/edward-snowden <comment><USER2> For once I'll avoid Godwin's law and link instead to this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_58)

> The article was used for the imprisonment and execution of many prominent > people, as well as multitudes of nonnotable innocents. (...) Article 58 of > the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on 25 February 1927 to arrest > those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities.

So the point is that even in Soviet Russia people were sent into the Gulag based on written laws and going through the legal system, so I'd say that the US Government's reply that "it's all legal! it has gone through the courts" doesn't mean a thing as long as said laws are against the spirit of the US Constitution.

And I'd say that's the gist of it, the current laws are against the spirit of the original fundamental law of the United States. As long as its current citizens are ok with that (no mass protests etc) then I'd say there's nothing that the minority can do (if it matters I'm not from the US)

<comment><USER3> > I'd say there's nothing that the minority can do (if it matters I'm not from > the US)

No, not at all. The situation is still all well within the US Constitution in the sense of want people "can do". In particular, as I will outline, there is a very fast, simple solution well within what "the minority can do".

Background: In the US Federal Government, there are three branches, executive (e.g., headed by the president), the legislative (i.e., Congress), and the judicial (with the Supreme Court).

In the case of the Snowden leaks, the actions Snowden was objecting to were by the executive branch which (more or less) was following laws passed by the legislative branch and signed into law by the executive branch. So far so good, that is, within the Constitution. Note that the judicial branch is not involved in passing or signing such laws and so far has not been involved in this whole matter.

But looking at the laws and what the executive branch did that Snowden revealed, a "minority" might conclude that the Constitution was violated. Really, still, so far so good because it's not up to the legislative or executive branch to determine if the Constitution was violated. It's been common throughout US history for the legislative branch to pass laws and the executive branch to sign and use those laws but later the US courts, usually including the US Supreme Court, to find that the laws were "unconstitutional" and strike them down.

So for what a "minority can do" in this case? Sure: Bring a law suit in the judicial branch where the suit claims that the Constitution, e.g., First or Fourth Amendment, was violated. Typically the case (I don't know the details of the process) makes it to the US Supreme Court. For the role of a "minority", in principle only one person need bring the case.

We should guess that people highly concerned with the situation leaked by Snowden will bring such cases. So, we will look for the ACLU and the EFF. But now we also see that Google is bringing a case. The legal costs for bringing a case might be significant, but there are plenty of organizations and individuals with much more than enough money to pay for those costs. Likely cases will be brought.

My guess is that much of the relevant laws will be struck down.

So, why has the judicial branch or the Supreme Court not yet struck down the relevant laws? Because they don't do that; instead, there has to be a legal case brought.

In all of this, the Supreme Court will act very cautiously. And in principle there is nothing important to keep them from acting quickly.

Net, so far the US Constitution is working just as intended. No riots in the streets are needed yet. We just need for some cases to be brought. That the laws mandated a lot of secrecy may have helped slow the bringing of cases, but likely Google, Microsoft, and some individuals have plenty of 'legal standing' to bring suitable cases.

So far the legislative branch passed some laws. They can do that. The laws can later be found to violate the Constitution and even then we don't line up the people in Congress who passed the laws and shoot them. Similarly for the executive branch: Once Congress has passed a law, the executive branch can sign it and use it.

Net, there is only one branch that can say if a law is constitutional or not, the judicial branch, and so far apparently no suitable case has been brought and the judicial branch has yet to speak.

Indeed, I have a letter drafted to my members of Congress but have not sent it because the letter really just claims that the relevant laws were unconstitutional, and for the members of Congress such claims are nearly irrelevant.

Net, we just need a suitable case in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court will have no difficulty at all understanding all the relevant issues, and that court has plenty of ability to slap down laws passed by Congress and signed and used by the executive branch. Slapping down unconstitutional laws is much of just why the Supreme Court is there, and they are 100% fully aware of that point.

Some of the recent appointees to the Supreme Court are quite 'liberal', but nearly always they are plenty bright and will see the constitutional issues in the activities Snowden described with crystal clarity and intense concern.

The fight over the constitutionality of the relevant laws is not nearly over and, indeed, has yet to begin but apparently is about to begin. Don't bet on those laws coming out whole.

In particular the Constitution says nothing about violating the Constitution with secret orders of the executive branch based on wacko laws and approved by a secret 'court' of persons appointed by a member of the judicial branch with secret oversight by committees of Congress. Maybe the people who dreamed up this wacko nonsense thought that they were clever, but they were not: What they constructed has nothing to do with the Constitution, and the Supreme Court will have no difficulty at all seeing this point.

If the Supreme Court strikes down the laws, they will be gone -- out'a here. And that's just the way the Constitution says the process is supposed to work.

We're a government of laws, not men: What matters are the laws, not what Presidents Bush and Obama say, what General Alexander says, what the FISA 'court' says, or what the Intelligence committees of Congress say. Instead what matters here is what laws the Supreme Court says are constitutional.

<comment><USER4> > My guess is that much of the relevant laws will be struck down. > If the > Supreme Court strikes down the laws, they will be gone -- out'a here.... > > What matters are the laws, not what Presidents ... say.... Instead what > matters here is what laws the Supreme Court says are Constitutional.

I wish I shared your optimism.

I sincerely hope that the laws will get struck down, but I also fear that the classified nature of many things that touch this will lead the courts to say that we can't show we have standing, and therefore decline to rule on the constitutionality.

More importantly, what matters is NOT just what the laws say, but whether the government follows them! The core issue here is that we believe the laws and constitution are NOT being followed, and that the government feels that What the King Does Is Legal. That was Nixon's claim, and in effect is what the Bush administration claimed re: treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. This time around, the fact that it's being done by the NSA with the President's permission allows them to claim that the classified nature of nearly everything at stake here means we should trust them.

Getting the laws overturned will be a HUGE first step, though, and you laid out in excellent detail things that we citizens can (and should) do and expect.

<comment><USER5> Part of the NSA's surveillance program was already found to be illegal and the executive branch _classified the court 's ruling:_

[http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/06/court-finds-nsa- surveilla...](http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/06/court-finds-nsa- surveillance.html)

How screwed up is that?

<comment><USER6> I had no idea about this issue, thanks for the link! Looks like the FISC overruled the executive branch's argument about classifying the ruling. Kudos to the EFF.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/public-first-secret- co...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/public-first-secret-court-grants- eff-motion-consenting-disclosure)

Honestly, what does the executive branch hope to accomplish by classifying the ruling that it was illegal? It sounds like everyone already knows what the ruling was even if the documents themselves are classified. Seems like a weak measure that makes them look worse, that they are willing to exercise the power to hide things (a power one would hope would be used responsibly) even in cases where it doesn't seem to help their goals in a meaningful way? Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER3> > Am I missing something here?

No. Money is the mother's milk of politics, and secrecy is the favorite dessert of bureaucracies.

Much of why W, Obama, etc. want the Patriot Act is to have power to catch the bad guys so that they, W, Obama, etc., won't get blamed. Indeed if a president doesn't defend the Patriot Act, the NSA, etc. and there is another Boston bomber, then some people will try to sell the charge that "The president is soft on terrorism." So, a president will want to defend the Patriot Act, etc. right up until the Supreme Court strikes down the act. Then a president will say that he did all he could to protect us against the bad guys, and the part of government soft on terrorism was the Supreme Court or just say that the Supreme Court showed us what we have to do to defend the Constitution.

A politician wants to avoid chances that opponents could say that the politician was to blame. Generally politicians get an A+ in CYA.

Generally the hope that a politician will be more responsible is a well informed citizenry making their opinions heard. That's why here on HN I'm putting out there that my view is that we need to protect the Constitution; the Patriot Act, etc. and the NSA have been trashing the Constitution; it's not worth trashing the Constitution to catch Boston wackos with pressure cookers; so, let's get the NSA, etc. back within the Constitution and otherwise do what we can with Boston police, the FBI, etc. about Boston wackos. Indeed, the Russians told us that the Boston bombers were dangerous wackos, and still we didn't do enough.

One more point is that so far a few wacko Muslims have caused us to suffer over 4000 deaths among our soldiers, tens of thousands of serious casualties among our soldiers, blow ballpark $3 trillion (net present value) of our money, and trash the Constitution. We've taken a sucker punch. We need to find some ways to get more security per unit of effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I wonder is at what point words like stasi become reasonable or acceptable.

OK, I don't like what is happening, and almost day by day thing happen that I feel are pushing the west, led by the US, more and more towards something highly controlled and not in any way free. Liberty is slowly being eroded, and I genuinely feel that is a true statement objectively. Right now, words like stasi, fascist, etc are an exaggeration, but used by people who see it going that way. They use such words to warn, but we all know those words do not really stand up objectively.

So, what is the tipping point, what has to happen for such words to actually apply? Or is it merely a case of presentation? If society, superficially, doesn't look like old Nazi Germany, is that enough for a majority to be content, even if underling that is something deeply nasty?

<comment><USER8> For me it would be when people disappear. Being spied on is one thing but being afraid of getting arrested is another.

I grew up in Western Germany and visited the East several times. Living in the US now I have to say that it feels an order of magnitude "freer" than either of the Germanies of my youth. However, I'm very concerned about the NSA thing.

<comment><USER9> As they say in Germany, "Wer sich nicht bewegt, spürt seine Fesseln nicht." (who doesn't move doesn't feel his manacles)

<comment><USER10> _My dear,

Have you noticed how those who move, move fast? And those who don't, just stand still; motionless?

Yes, you can go ahead and rant to me about how an object in motion stays in motion, and how an object at rest stays at rest. But, I think there's more to this than physics.

I think those in motion have seen something the others have not; their imprisonment.

While those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

Truly yours, Rosa Luxemburg_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fun fact: The NSA actually requested data that was collected by the STASI in East Germany.

[http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=de&to=en&a=n...](http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=de&to=en&a=netzpolitik.org/2013/erschreckende- statistik-geheimdienste-und-polizei-nutzen-stasi-akten-auch-amerikanische- behorden-wie-die-nsa/)

German original:

[https://netzpolitik.org/2013/erschreckende-statistik- geheimd...](https://netzpolitik.org/2013/erschreckende-statistik- geheimdienste-und-polizei-nutzen-stasi-akten-auch-amerikanische-behorden-wie- die-nsa/)

<comment><USER12> Just yesterday the former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives and civil rights activist Johannes Gauck met with Barack Obama.

<comment><USER13> To clarify for those that don't know: Gauck is now the president of Germany, so he didn't meet Obama because of his history.

Also, his first name is Joachim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've got an answer for all the people who say, "I've got nothing to hide".

That might be true but you would have to be naive to think that the information that could be gathered from these NSA activities would not be misused by people.

Imagine an up and coming politician. Squeaky clean but was friends with a few people who got prosecuted for drug dealing. Those useful NSA phone records could easily lead to the press asking the young idealist if he often hung around with drug users. Irrelevant and potentially career ending.

Civil rights campaigners who could be accused of having an affair because of call records.

A journalist investigating a corrupt politician... is he a terrorist sympathizer... comb through the records.

You may have nothing to hide but often the people trying to improve your country for the better and root out corruption and crime will be more vulnerable to this. Because the corrupt individuals in positions of power will not respect the laws and procedures and will use this information for evil.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER15> The second problem with "nothing to hide" is that it's really "nothing to hide based on today's laws". Laws change. Things become illegal or looked down upon that were previously just fine. What you did with a peaceful conscience today could be used to throw you in jail in 20 years.

The third problem is that due to the complexity of the penal code, this is already the case. You have already done stuff in the last 10 years, that you didn't think was illegal, but somewhere in the tens of thousands of pages of the penal code someone can find a reason to throw you in jail if they have enough information about you. As Richelieu put it, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." \- the NSA has billions of lines about you. They can hang you a million times over.

<comment><USER16> Everyone keeps saying that everyone has committed a jail-able offense if you just look hard enough, but no one has any examples. I'm not denying that it's true, I just have no response if someone says, "like what?"

Are there any examples of crimes that many people have probably committed? Maybe software piracy, but isn't that just a fine? And I hope that isn't the only example.

<comment><USER17> _> Are there any examples of crimes that many people have probably committed?_

Have you ever ordered anything off Amazon? Did you declare and pay the appropriate use taxes for what you bought? Did you ever discuss with anyone that buying things off Amazon meant there was no tax?

Depending on where you live, that's tax fraud and conspiracy to commit. If you had the discussion over email or on a message board, then it's an inter-state crime...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As for the "potential" chilling effect of all the spying, you don't need to theorize about whether it will happen or not. It's already happening:

[http://www.france24.com/en/20130619-us-seizure-journalist- re...](http://www.france24.com/en/20130619-us-seizure-journalist-records- called-chilling)

The 4th amendment is all but obliterated, and now this is how the 1st amendment and the freedom of the press will be destroyed, too, by killing any sort of investigative journalism left, and by prosecuting all leakers.

I used to think that Wikileaks and other such secure leaking is the _future_ of investigative journalism. If you believe the print media will die, and blogging will take its place, then investigative journalism will die, too, because I doubt many bloggers will go out and do that. So in a way Wikileaks would serve as a "disruptive innovation" for investigative journalism. Actually, most investigative journalism is only about finding "sources" that are willing to leak stuff to them, anyway. Wikileaks is kind of a "user- generated" investigative journalism/leaking, or _investigative journalism 2.0_.

But if the government is trying to kill both at once, then I'm not sure what's left to uncover illegalities inside the government.

</comment><comment><USER19> The fact that these conversations are happening is indicative that we do not have a Stasi.

We have serious problems, as evidence by the unwillingness of any member of Congress to really speak out on the issue, and the sheer scope and reach power of this poorly regulated surveillance regime.

There's no gulag archipelago, but the tools used by repressive totalitarian regimes are being built for other purposes, and many of us believe that these tools are not compatible with a free and democratic society.

Let's focus on the real and stop running down the slippery slope.

<comment><USER20> I'm not so sure. Europeans stopped conquering and colonizing in favor of economic colonialism, which is just as bad perhaps, but now with a veneer of credibility. They are just doing business. Nevermind that the despot du jour was installed by the CIA.

Similarly we can talk about NSA overreaches all we want, as opposed to the old way of actually silencing the dissent. Great, except everyone is just talking, they are probably continuing with impunity under a different program name.

<comment><USER19> In East Germany, this thread would likely have led to our arrest.

<comment><USER10> In a free country on the other hands, every last (healthy adult) citizen would be able to think without employing sophistry, and to see woods despite the trees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The NSA leak is troubling, yes. It is NOT comparable to the horrors of communist authoritarianism - where 20 million people were killed, starved, or simply disappeared. To me, this seems like a cheap shock tactic more common on stations like Fox News where the labels "nazi" or "socialist" are thrown around without thought. These words have deep historical roots and deep meaning, and to use them in situations where it isn't appropriate is trivializing. A government can be intrusive and overstep its bounds without earning the label of 'Stasi'. We can have a conversation about the power and role of government in this country without drawing these hyperbolic and historically inaccurate parallels.

</comment><comment><USER22> This whole thing has reminded me how prescient the movie "Sneakers" was.

"There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!"

"The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons."

<comment><USER23> From getting paid for pentesting to phreaking to the nick I've used for fifteen+ years, that movie changed and shaped my life indelibly.

<comment><USER24> I missed it when it first came out, and only saw it for the first time about 2 years ago. I've probably watched it 20+ times since then. It really is a great movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The current uproar will do us no good unless we develop ways to either disrupt the technology or protect ourselves from it.

Because even if we win this round, the state will find ways to bring these programs back in some other guise. For example, the FISA courts were part of the reforms that emerged from the abuses of the CIA and FBI during the Red Scare and Civil Rights eras.

In other words, we need a technical Rosa Parks. Well, more like a million of them.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there _anything_ in this article, aside from an overblown metaphor in the title, that hasn't been posted here fifty times in the last couple weeks?

<comment><USER27> its written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg)

<comment><USER28> So, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is no hope if that's the extent of the "solution", no meaningful work will come in the form of more politics and oppression.

The only reasonable conclusion is that to stop the bloodshed and invasion, one must stop supporting the oppressors.

You are quite literally paying many thousands of thugs to fly to the middle east and support a paedophilic, incompetent, oppressive regime which directly hurts people's lives. At home you're paying many more thousands to pick on people carrying small amounts of plant trimmings, specifically targeted by the colour of their skin. Those people are then sent to buildings and force fed in contract-incestuous CEO-laden prisons with an economic incentive to cost more money to their handlers.

Aggression is the problem, and paying people to use it against you, or anyone else for that matter, is probably not going to help.

</comment><comment><USER30> In all the talk about this, I haven't seen any proposed solutions. What is the way out?

Stop all domestic surveillance? What about US Citizens in other countries? What about foreign nationals inside the US?

Increase oversight? What about for rare unambiguous national security threats? How can that be enforced?

And it sounds a lot like learned helplessness, but what is an individual supposed to do?

<comment><USER31> Don't cause waves, pay taxes.</comment></comment>


Assets of Palo Alto gaming company OnLive were sold off for just $4.8 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21735364/onlive-assets-palo-alto-gaming-company-were-sold-4-million <comment><USER2> Just hate to see this part:

 _OnLive was a frequent customer or Prolific Oven Bakery in Palo Alto, said Regina Chan, daughter of the owner of the local chain. By the time the company went through its insolvency in August, it owed the bakery $2,000, which represented about a month's worth of Onlive's orders, she said._

<comment><USER3> I would have disliked it more if it was the original owners, once Ms. Chan bought it the quality of the cakes suffered, especially in the Saratoga store. It went from being my 'go to' place for a delicious chocolate on chocolate cake to 'I've not been there for like 3 years now.'

<comment><USER2> Come on - your local bakery (even if it's a chain, even if you don't like it as much as you used to) is a low-margin enterprise. Getting screwed out of thousands of dollars is tough on places like that.

Plus that was just the example. If they were net-30 on the break room food, it's a safe bet a bunch of freelancers and other local businesses also had losses.

<comment><USER3> This particular bakery was pretty legendary for a long time in the bay area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "In a statement, the new OnLive said its predecessor's basic problem was not its business model but that it simply hadn't raised enough cash for its business to take off."

How do you tell when a startup is just desperate for cash and when they actually mean something like this?

<comment><USER5> Came to comment on this specifically. OnLive was doing "cloud gaming" as in pre-render frames in the cloud and stream them to the device. It has the initial wow, but the devil is in the details, and OnLive had to solve them all at once:

1\. Data caps are now the norm. A service that streams video 100% of the time is swimming upstream. OnLive would also need to recoup the significant costs of an uplink capable of serving all its customers full-HD streams. Typically a video service heavily uses a CDN (think Akamai) to only upload a few streams and then have the CDN push those out to edge servers. OnLive needed enough bandwidth to be its own CDN. And cellular data is an even thornier problem in terms of reliable throughput AND latency, which both have a direct effect on OnLive's service.

2\. Game Studios are famously protective of their high-value assets. OnLive needed to convince some AAA studios to do a new release of their titles on its service. Engineering the games to work well with OnLive isn't the only problem here: it would be easier to be wholly acquired by a big studio than to convince anyone in the industry to do a deal that fit OnLive's marketing. Game studios want to see big up-front profits on opening day. OnLive's marketing was more along the lines of a trickle of profits over a longer term.

(Yes, they had some titles, but they needed bigger ones.)

3\. The OnLive marketing about enabling some amazing capability (like cinema- quality graphics or breakthroughs in AI) swims upstream against what the "cloud" is supposed to offer. An OnLive session for one customer takes several machines, while the "cloud" basically makes money by stacking idle VMs so it's many customers to a machine. The only way OnLive would make money is if everybody rented the AAA title and nobody played it.

There is some really interesting tech in that space, but those are some basic problems with what OnLive was trying to do.

<comment><USER6> >(Yes, they had some titles, but they needed bigger ones.)

The tragedy here is, they had bigger titles. At the last minute before launch, they pulled all EA titles from their service. When rival Gaikai got the rights to offer demos for EA games (not to actually sell them,) CEO Steve Perlman went batshit-crazy irate and pulled the plug. From then, even games that had been confirmed or greenlighted were pulled if Gaikai got them first.

I recommend anyone who's interested in what went wrong read this story from The Verge:

<http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/28/3274739/onlive-report>

<comment><USER7> If you leave the battlefield to your competitor that's not really a winning strategy.

How is GaiKai doing now that OnLive has folded? Are they headed towards running out of cash as well at some point or are they doing better?

<comment><USER6> They were bought by Sony a bit back, actually.

And OnLive folded, and sold themselves to a newly created company named OnLive. So, it's still there. And I think still has a lot of potential under the right person. (With enough money.)

I still half-expect Steam to eventually offer streaming of games players already own for a small monthly fee. I'd expect them to make gangbusters if they did.

<comment><USER8> Not only were they bought by Sony, they were bought by Sony for _$380 million dollars._

Shows what a difference a business model can have. They both had cloud gaming technologies, but while OnLive wanted to sell it right to consumers, Gaikai went for the publishers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To say nothing of the people! We've hired three just in my group alone. At least some of their assets haven't lost value...

</comment><comment><USER10> I kind-of hope they make it as a service. As a pure consumer of their product, I quite enjoyed it.

<comment><USER11> I'm wondering if you could expand on that some? I had tried the product several times and just consistently found it lacking (sluggish controls, etc.).

<comment><USER10> Sure.

I got out of hardcore gaming, and quite enjoyed the idea of booting up a game in a few seconds on my laptop, playing it for an hour and forgetting about it.

It worked very well for things like Borderlands and a few indie titles (Madballs, The Ball).

I also owned the physical console, so the transition of "I want to play Borderlands for an hour on my laptop immediately after finishing this work thing" to "My day is over, let me pick up that same game on the TV" was pleasant.

As far sluggish controls, on a connection that exceeded 10Mbps, the experience was only slightly worse than a wireless controller on a console, and after a few days of it being the only time I picked up a game I adjusted quite well.

I've since accepted that the service was aimed squarely at the market that my situation happened to exactly occupy (high bandwidth, casual gaming, multiple physical devices, just the right titles..), so your mileage may very well vary.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for taking the time to explain that some more. I'm in a similar spot and _really_ was hopeful that OnLive would be awesome, but just for connectivity reasons I think it was never sufficiently playable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In modern gaming responsiveness is the prerequisite to everything. You can't fight the laws of physics. Server-side only latency hiding just does not work: there is always a noticeable delay between a key press and visual response.

In addition a decent gaming PC doesn't cost much these days and games on mobile devices are as enjoyable as desktop and console ones. They will get even cheaper and cooler with time.

There is no reason for existence of such a service.

<comment><USER13> Did you actually play OnLive? I've played FPS shooters on it for hours quite happily.

<comment><USER12> It is not available in my country, so no. Actually after your comment I've read and watched several modern reviews of the service. Players don't seem to be complaining about the latency so maybe it is really not that noticeable as I thought it would be. Thus my initial point about the latency does not hold much water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > OnLive's assignment came less than two months after Sony bought rival > streaming game company Gaikai for some $380 million.

I heard about OnLive all the time, but never Gaikai. Was it big in Japan perhaps?

According to jeffool, it seems Gaikai got EA demo rights, and OnLive then self-imploded <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4635405>

</comment><comment><USER15> That's not bad. What really does a software company have other than IP and a few computers? Even considering this, IP is a risky asset which probably won't create much cash flow on its own the way a piece of real estate would. The real assets are in knowledge, but those can only be rented.

<comment><USER16> I was talking to a person who had started a company and went toast. He bluntly put it, what remains after a software shop shuts down are 'just files' on the hard drive.

This is especially true when the company doesn't own any real estate at all. After the shops shuts down, nearly everything gets sold for half price.

My chair at home costs 25K INR if I buy it in the showroom, I bought it from a scrap shop for 2K INR, the guy in the scrap shop told me the chair came a software shop which closed recently. That is how low things like infrastructure get sold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this was the time when OnLive could have gone for "debt restructure" and save the company for a few years. Either it would have been successful in business or could get more payout.

</comment><comment><USER18> I always wondered why they never made a service for the Wii. To me, it seemed like the perfect device to test out whether console streaming has merit.

<comment><USER19> They blew their budget on cupcakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am so, so glad that I decided to apply at Gaikai and not OnLive... :'D</comment>


Esteban Sosnik (Reach Capital) - Why it's hard to make educational games [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://kosmosschool.com/podcast/ep4-esteban-sosnik-educational-games/ <comment><AUTHOR> Can from Kosmos School here. Really enjoyed this conversation between me and Esteban, as he has a unique background in gaming and education, and also led co.lab, which was an accelerator funded by Zynga that focused on companies at the intersection of gaming and education.

The most intersting thing I thought was that Esteban described a lot of educational game companies as "broccoli with a chocolate cover", meaning that they try to trick player's into education which never works.</comment>


Aluminium: The metal that just keeps on giving - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25020651 <comment><USER2> I've worked in aluminium smelters. Three interesting things:

They are hugely energy intensive and a good way of exporting cheap electricity from otherwise hard to connect locations. The very bottom of New Zealand, The North east of South Africa as well as Mozambique, the Middle East and of course Norway and Russia. Hydroelectric power, free once the dam is built, is ideal, but oil (Middle East) and coal (Southern Africa) are also used.

They are generally located next to a port so that bulk shipments of alumina and carbon (coal) are easily transferred. The carbon is used to make the anodes and cathodes used in the giant 'pots' where the reaction happens.

The metal itself is alloyed up in final form, but is generally shipped from the smelters in pure ignots, at a price related to the LME quoted price.

And a bonus - we were forbidden to have aluminium cans on site. If they ended up in a pot (full of molten bubbling alumina, cryolite and aluminium) then any fluid left inside the can would get super heated and result in an explosion.

<comment><USER3> I _knew_ I recognised your user name (maybe the fact you mentioned NZ first triggered something in my mind). Quite off topic, but you may be able to answer this: do you have any idea whether shutting down Tiwai Point would indeed affect NZ electricity prices significantly? It's kind of moot now (ugh), but I'm curious.

<comment><USER2> It would release demand (15% of total) back to the market, so yes it would. It would also reduce our CO2 emissions, lose jobs from an area that needs them and reduce GDP from exporting that Aluminium and increase profits for the newly sold-down electricity companies. And so on. It's all quite complex but a good analysis should show the net gain or loss. But my take is that the plant can be a lot more efficient.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly what I had expected. I had a suspicion that Manapouri may not have been adequately connected to the grid for sufficient power distribution in the very short term; but even more so, I thought National's assertion that closing down Tiwai wouldn't affect power prices was quite likely disingenuous.

It is quite a complex issue, yes. Looks like treasury was fairly firmly against subsidising the smelter from an economic standpoint. Of course there are social issues, too.

More efficient how? Power consumption? Or just better margins? If power consumption; presumedly not enough to significantly alter electricity prices for others? Is there anything I can read on this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The spelling with more legitimacy is Aluminum.

Sir Humphrey Davy, its discoverer, called it Aluminum when he published his work Chemical Philosophy in 1812.

Some anonymous dilettante (anonymous to this day!) thought, upon reviewing said book, it sounded better (more classical) with the extra I and syllable.

Everybody calls Aluminum's oxide Alumina, not Aluminia.

Nobody else seems to feel the need to rename Platinum Platinium, or Molybdenum Molybdenium, or Tantalum Tantalium.

We Americans too often like to mock other cultures for being different, and our basis is usually wrong when we do. Maybe mocking our pronunciation and spelling isn't a habit you want to hold on to.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for this explanation. I'm always telling people the same thing. We should respect the name which the discoverer gave to it.

<comment><USER6> > We should respect the name which the discoverer gave to it. Why?

I have a feeling if Americans said "aluminium" and Brits said "aluminum", you wouldn't be saying this. I see no reason why the discoverer's naming deserves any special status.

<comment><USER7> > I see no reason why the discoverer's naming deserves any special status.

At its most basic, this is one of the main currencies of science. Remember what happened with apatosaurus / brontosaurus?

This is a practice that most people will agree without persuasion is "fair", that certain people care about a great deal, and that costs society nothing. What's wrong with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just don't spill any mercury on it.

[http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-09/amazing- rustin...](http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-09/amazing-rusting- aluminum)

<comment><USER9> After reading both your article and the OP, I'm very keen to see a video of mercury spilled on sapphire.

<comment><USER7> Well, sapphire is quite easy to obtain, and I believe that's also true of mercury. I'd be a little hesitant to expose mercury to the air near myself, though. :/

If you know how to do it safely,go for it!

<comment><USER10> Liquid mercury is quite boringly safe. There are a bunch of entertainingly toxic (and mobile) compounds, though.

<comment><USER11> The vapor pressure goes up surprisingly fast with temp, such that a contaminated cold room temp in the winter might be "eh" but it could get bad on a hot sunny summer day. Modern home insulation probably doesn't help much.

Another comment is sulfur is cheap and widely available at garden stores etc and cinnabar toxicity is greatly exaggerated, because historically anyone who mined it, smelted it, and the smelting is a very effective way to get killed just by being nearby. I wouldn't eat it intentionally, etc, but after sulfur neutralization its mostly harmless. Its a much lower vapor pressure and relatively stable compound compared to elemental Hg.

And it'll amalgamate with gold jewelry, if I recall. I'm old enough to have played with Hg bare handed as a kid. Its kind of like gunpowder, respect it and you'll be safe, make a habit in your life of doing dumb things and nothing is ever safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Next up should be titanium: [http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110720/DEFSECT04/107200...](http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110720/DEFSECT04/107200305/Breakthroughs- Promise-Cheaper-Titanium)

<comment><USER13> Or as Americans like to call it, _Titanum._

<comment><USER14> Did you know that "Aluminum" was the discoverer's own spelling, and was actually used in Britain soon after the naming? "Aluminium" was an arbitrary revision made because influential people just liked it better.

In other words, the British spelling was just a matter of British cultural hegemony at the time, just as American spellings are matters of American cultural hegemony today.

[http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm](http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm)

I didn't know any of this until just now.

<comment><USER15> The link you posted says:

"Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812."

To me it reads that British academics (Sir Humphry's peers) prefered the -ium spelling. It doesn't say they used political pressure to force him to change it.

While the use of both spellings were in almost equal use in the general British and US populations for a long time, the article hypothesises that the -um spelling became dominant in the US because of Webster's -um entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16>
      Indeed, there is a growing industry for manufacturing
      industrial sapphires the size of a large bucket, suitable
      for use in bullet-proof glass, aeroplane windows and soon
      - unscratchable smartphone displays.

seriously - Transparent Aluminum :-)

<comment><USER17> Plain old corundum - you can get pieces of it the size of your fist if you see what is left after welding railroad tracks with termite.

<comment><USER18> "... welding railroad tracks with _termite_."

Sheesh! With the above post the state of spelling on the Internet reaches a new low.

<comment><USER19> If anyone else was wondering, it was supposed to read 'thermite'. (I had to DDG it, and then still, I had never heard of the stuff.)

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

<comment><USER20> Thermite is amazing stuff. There's some thought that part of the reason the Hindenburg burned so much so fast was a thermite reaction in the stuff it was painted with:

[http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/videos/hindenb...](http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/videos/hindenburg-minimyth.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Even storage of the metal may bring benefits: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of- alum...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but- to-banks-pure-gold.html).

</comment><comment><USER22> A PBS show on a few nights ago had a history of aluminum and its uses. In the show it mentioned aluminum is too soft when pure so copper was added but the discoverer found even after copper was added it was still too soft, he got fed up went away for a few days and when he came back the alloy was harder; age hardening.

My phone was damaged and I wondered if my keys scratched my SG3 smartphone, Gorilla Glass has a hardness from what I have read anywhere from a 3 to a 6 but corundum (oxidized aluminum) has a Mohs hardness of 9. Then I found out scratch resistance is not hardness. I think the SG3 screen's scratch resistance is significantly inferior to the SG2 screen.

</comment><comment><USER23> While it's true that there a wide number of applications, and Aluminum is theoretically perpetually recyclable, there is still a small problem. When an alloy is formed and elements added to pure Al they are exceptionally difficult to remove. This means that for alloy-specific applications the recycled 'aluminum' must have extra elements added to create the alloy desired.

With continued recycling [over a long period of time] there is concern that alloys will converge upon a final aluminum alloy and we will no longer be able to create new application specific alloys.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've always liked Aluminium in a powdered form and mixed with iron oxide in the correct proportion: Thermite :D

<comment><USER25> Make sure you know what you're doing. This happened in the apartment building we were living in last year: [http://www.denverpost.com/kiszla/ci_20952038/apartment- fire-...](http://www.denverpost.com/kiszla/ci_20952038/apartment-fire-at- willow-run-near-128th-and)

<comment><USER24> Thanks! As far as I'm concerned, Thermite is a wide-open-spaces/designated area, no-children-or-small-animals kind of substance. Definitely not for home use (well, unless your objective _is_ to burn the house down..).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That Sapphire iPhone glass sure seems a lot like Transparent Aluminum, now... "hello, iPhone"

<comment><USER19> The iPhone display is covered by Corning's Gorilla Glass (not sapphire). The iPhone 4S' TouchID sensor (the home button) is covered by a small synthetic sapphire pane. However, given Apple's substantial investment in GT Advanced, the company might use sapphire for larger panes in the future.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/04/apple-to-build- new-700-e...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/04/apple-to-build- new-700-employee-sapphire-glass-manufacturing-plant-in-arizona/)

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/12/apples-new- manufacturing...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/12/apples-new- manufacturing-partner-gt-advanced-uses-particle-accelerator-to-cut-sapphire- glass-production-costs/)

<comment><USER19> /u/aivaomo is hellbanned, but here is his reply to my earlier comment:

 _Make that the 5S' home button /TouchID sensor. Plus the outermost element of the rear camera lens is rather sensibly sapphire, IIRC._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprise no-one mentioned ALICE - aluminium + ice (water). A paste-like substance that's quite a powerful rocket propellant.

[http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanoaluminum-rocket- fuel.html](http://news.discovery.com/tech/nanoaluminum-rocket-fuel.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Would the recycled aluminium Range Rover cost less?

<comment><USER29> It seems that they already are. From the article:

> _Novelis has seen a 25% increase in demand from the motor industry in the > last year, most of it coming from one of its biggest customers, Jaguar Land > Rover, which has just begun manufacturing Range Rovers with aluminium._

> _Currently, Novelis obtains almost 50% of its aluminium used to make a new > Range Rover from junk - empty cans, scrapped vehicles, demolition sites - > and it aims to raise that to 80% by 2020._

It makes a lot of sens, if you ask me.

<comment><USER30> The question is, would the recycled aluminum (I'm in the US) Range Rover cost less than what?

1) Less than a Range Rover made of aluminum which came straight from bauxite? Assumedly the answer is yes, otherwise the motivation for recycling would be unclear.

2) Less than a Range Rover made conventionally, that is, out of steel? Very unlikely, steel is really, really cheap.

<comment><USER31> Steel is cheaper, but unfavourable in modern vehicles, generally, due to its weight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _" Budoucnost patří aluminiu!"_

\-- Jára da Cimrman

</comment><comment><USER33> Wow. Learned a lot from the linked shared here. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER34> Good guy Aluminium.</comment>


Lacc – A simple self-hosting C compiler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/larmel/lacc <comment><AUTHOR> Previous submissions didn't get much attention sadly but here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13477028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13477028)</comment>


Forecast the Number of Likes a Photo Will Get on Social Media - <AUTHOR> Hey! So I am an engineer and i have made a system that a user can upload a photo and get an estimate for the number of likes the photo will get on social media. It's not bullshit,the user login to my system through his facebook or instagram so i can use his data to make the prediction.I am wondering,is this service valuable to anyone?
I mean who would actually pay for this? <comment><USER2> If there is a demo, people might try it out.

If there is a demo, I expect more people might try it out if the demo does not require logging in...even if the end product does.

This might provide better feedback on the idea and its implementation.

Good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no system without logging in,the login via facebook or instagram is crucial to the process.I have a demo, actually is more than a demo but for now i am trying to figure out how to turn it into a business and not just a game.Almost every social media user wants his uploaded photos to be nice and some social media users are actually making an effort to maintain a good image but who cares so much that he would pay? When i first had the idea i made a research and found something similar but different.It's called photofeeler.People judge photos based on how trustworthy the person in the photo looks or how smart etc.On the other hand i say people if based on their previous photos they make a good or bad upload,i give them an estimate of the number of likes they will get.It's like reading a review for a movie from a magazine and listening to a review from a friend of yours that you know he has the same taste as you.It's completely different.

<comment><USER2> I can see how logging in might be necessary for a business model. But it seems that there is not one yet.

If the project is at a "would you pay for my service stage", I suspect better answers will come if people know more about what your service is.

Maybe it might be more important right now to show people the service than it is to implement a full set of features for monetization.</comment></comment></comment>