Why you can't buy a high-end graphics card at Best Buy - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/cryptocurrency-boom-creates-insane-global-graphics-card-shortage/ <comment><USER2> I'm legitimately worried about the long term future of my hobby (PC gaming) at this point.

Prices like this have a cascade effect because when less people can afford to build a PC and/or upgrade there's less incentive for developers and publishers to spend time on the platform. Consoles are shielded by the ability of Sony and Microsoft to take losses which will be absorbed by online fees and higher game prices but no such cushion exists for PCs (this is a strength to be sure, but a double edged sword in this respect).

PC gamers have spent years disproving the image of PCs as prohibitively expensive and now it's coming crashing down due to people in a faux gold rush wasting hardware and energy. I wish it would stop, but I don't know how much of the damage to the hobby can be repaired.

Of course there are other factors. Machine learning is eating up cards, smartphones and tablets are eating RAM, and I don't doubt there's price fixing. But ML is at least useful to humanity (sometimes), smartphones and tablets are tangible products, and price fixing can be investigated and punished.

I'm relatively shielded from this as I just built a high end machine (i7-7700, 1080ti, 32GB DDR4) that will last a while but the next time I want to build a machine might be painful. While I would probably pay the price, others will not, and the hobby will suffer.

<comment><USER3> Most PC gamers aren't using high-end machines and don't upgrade very often. The Steam Hardware Survey shows that the majority (74%) of PC gamers have a 1080p monitor and a plurality (37%) have a video card with 2GB of VRAM and 8GB of system RAM (47%). The GTX 1060 only recently overtook the GTX 750 Ti as the single most popular video card.

Pricing of high-end hardware is largely irrelevant to the success of PC gaming as a platform. The majority of users have always opted for value-oriented hardware.

[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/)

<comment><USER4> I can't get a mid level graphics card either. These cards in the article are $200 and $250 cards from AMD. They are going for over $400.

I am the person that buys $200 graphic cards and high end is $500+ like a 1080ti or some sort of Titan. I always thought that $200 was the sweet spot with the best price to performance ratio. I can't buy a $200 card now.

I was lucky and got a new AMD 480 last year for $220. It sadly has an issue and needs to go in for warranty (3 years). It can only handle the simplest of graphics or it hangs and freezes the computer. No big deal, I wanted to make my kids a Minecraft and coding computer and I can't buy a decent $150 card either.

RAM is also sky high and I do video editing from time to time an want at least 16 GB in my rig. That would cost $100 18 months ago and now thats $225+ also due to the miners.

<comment><USER5> The effects on prices are quite bad, but the pendulum always comes back in the other direction two. Every GPU shortage leads to the second hand market getting flooded a few years later with used mining GPUs.

So in effect we get short term problems, but if you time your purchases correctly you can get deals too.

<comment><USER6> Would you want to buy a piece of hardware that had been run at 100% of it's capacity for years, without any warranty?

<comment><USER7> Well, not everyone is aware of this, and 2nd hand mining card price points on various market platforms probably will push down the prices of everything else to varying extents. (both new, as well as 2nd hand gamer cards).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The shortage is not entirely because of miners. Nvidia manufacturers switched to using slower RAM in some of their cards. This was actually a very smart move (they should expand it to all their cards IMO). If you want the fast RAM, you have to buy the "mining" version of the cards. So in theory, it should have no impact on the gaming market.

For some of the popular mining cards (e.g. RX 470/80), well they simply haven't been available in many places for over a year now. Their successors aren't that great for mining either because of the increased power usage and RAM "lottery" (you don't really know what type of RAM you're getting when you buy a card). But most gamers don't generally care about RAM speed. This is also why the 5 series is generally cheaper than the 4 series (where you can find them).

However, the biggest problem is that there simply isn't enough RAM. The RAM shortage is being driven by smart phone and GPU production, and suspected price fixing. Samsung said they plan on increasing production (apparently they don't like it their competitors who make inferior RAM are making similar profits), but we will probably only see the effect mid-2018.

[https://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4815.html](https://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResearch/Post/2/4815.html)

[http://www.pcgamer.com/samsung-to-increase-dram-output-as- ra...](http://www.pcgamer.com/samsung-to-increase-dram-output-as-ram-prices- continue-to-climb/)

<comment><USER9> AMD gambled on HBM2 and it paid off in ways they never expected. They were simply getting dominated by Nvidia and threw a hail mary pass on memory bandwidth and speed, knowing they couldn't compete on compute loads.

Enter the CryptoNight and Dagger-Hashimoto algorithms, and well, the rest is recent history for the RX architecture, primarily the Vega line.

<comment><USER10> And yet the most efficient (hashrate/tdp) GPU for Etherum mining is GeForce 1070, not any of the Radeon models. Even Vega 64 couldn't beat it.

<comment><USER11> Vega 64 has improved since launch, beating the GTX 1070 in efficiency this past Sept 2017 by achieving 0.20 mHash/W over the 1070's 0.18 mHash/W.

They're still within 10%, so it's not a great margin unless you're very focused on density.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its bad. Its never been this bad before. Just go on pcpartspicker and realize that there are GTX 1080 Tis selling on third party websites for over $1500, and that's the only place you can get them beyond getting lucky.

Nvidia isn't going to ramp up production significantly because crypto could crash any day, simultaneously destroying their new sales and flooding the used market with old mining hardware. Combine it with the industry-wide RAM shortage... What a disaster.

The funny thing is, I remember back when ASICs first started coming out for Bitcoin, and a whole bunch of new cryptos came out saying "we're specifically designed to thwart ASICs so everyone can mine on the cards they have!" Well, here's what you've created. No one can afford cards anymore, and you made making more efficient hardware harder. Thanks for destroying the planet.

<comment><USER13> ASICs aren't saving the planet either - people are incentivized to burn up to $BLOCK_REWARD of electricity per block, the number of hashes it takes to do so is irrelevant. If you come up with a better ASIC, people will buy more of them, the network difficulty increases, and you're back where you started. It's just another stage in the Red Queen's Race.

The only thing ASICs do is centralize control (because economies of scale favor companies who can produce+operate their own chips). Full stop.

Proof of stake doesn't actually work either, or at least not without a centralized master key to prevent stake grinding/rewriting history (at which point why have staking in the first place). And in many cases, it may devolve to proof of work anyway.

There is no efficient cryptocurrency, and the cat's out of the bag now, there is nothing that can (practically) be done to stop it. Apart from charging people exponentially-increasing rates on their utility bills, that is, but China isn't going to do that, so the planet is just going to have to take another one for the team.

<comment><USER14> Though there is some benefit to cryptocurrencies that rely on ASICs for mining: it means that someone with a significant amount of CPUs/GPUs under their control (such as botnet operators, or government groups like the NSA) can't waltz in and trivially 51% attack the blockchain with their existing general-purpose hardware, and then go back to using it for other things. An attacker would have to commit to buying/building specialized mining hardware for the attack, and then that hardware can't be repurposed for anything else after the attack other than mining.

<comment><USER15> ASICs are supposed to be orders of magnitude more efficient at their job than GPUs. So NSA can make a 0.01x the investment and "waltz in and trivially 51% attack the blockchain", all while not touching their existing equipment.

<comment><USER16> The only reason to invoke NSA in this context is for their ability to make a 10000x investment, with no concern for this being (directly) economically viable. The question then is, what will they _do_ with control of the blockchain?

<comment><USER17> Idea: prevent North Korea from spending their coins?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bought some cards during the Christmas break season and prices/availability were fine. I was surprised when I went to buy some more and saw the prices! I reason that if crypto currenices crash I can re-purpose my nice new collection of GPU's to do Deep Learning training. It's got me pondering how one could do a distributed deep-learning training as the proof-of-work for a crypto- currency. Then the POW would be doing useful work anyways!

Along with causing issues with GPU card supplies there's been a lot of articles talking about how crypto-mining wastes electricity and hurts the environment. That's not necessarily the case across the board. Instead of running an electric heater this winter I am running a few GPU miners which produce a decent amount of heat. That helps me get a two-for-one benefit for ~9 months of the year since it's relatively chilly here year around. Might not work in all climates, but in many places its nice way to produce heat that'd just be waste heat anyways.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, heat and (80dB of noise) the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner in both power and noise. You can't have these near humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the supply cost issue is more related to memory production shortages and cost increases. RAM has increased in price over 100% in 12 months in a number of markets. Crypto isnt the only culprit here.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interestingly the French market (and more generally the European Market?) seems to have been spared from that trend, at least for now. The prices have remained steady during the last year and there is still stock available for a large choice of card flavors. See for example [https://www.materiel.net/achat/gtx-1080/catNom- cartes+graphi...](https://www.materiel.net/achat/gtx-1080/catNom- cartes+graphiques/?f%5Ben_stock%5D%5B0%5D=1&ppp=50&sens=0&ordre=prodPrix)

<comment><USER22> Perhaps electricity costs there are higher than in the U.S. so mining is less profitable?

Although I don't have these issues in Ohio, either. You can find any NVidia card you want easily, and only AMD Vega is in short supply at the moment. Still doable though, if you're willing to put in a bit of effort.

<comment><USER23> France famously derives >70% of it's energy from nuclear energy and has vastly lower prices than neighboring countries.

<comment><USER24> Electricity in France is 0.10 to 0.20 E/kWh. Depends on the terms and the time of day.

It's more than China and USA cities with hydro. It's less than some other places.

We may have lower production prices but it's either not significant or not passed down to the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the long run, explosion in demand for GPUs will help lower prices and push the technical envelope for enveryone, including the gamers complaining in this article.

<comment><USER26> This is an oft-repeated article of faith, which I have yet to see realized despite _years_ of sustained extra demand for GPUs.

<comment><USER27> I'm not saying doitLP is right, but "years" is not a long time for building extra production capacity across the manufacturing process. Hell, they probably need a couple years of sustained demand to even consider upgrading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's (unsurprisingly) pushing the used market up. I'm selling a 1070 I don't need anymore, and it's already at more than I originally paid for it, despite being over a year old at this point.

<comment><USER13> My local Microcenter has an open-box 1070 they want $800 for, an open-box 1060 3 GB they want $475 for, a couple new 1060 6 GBs they want $600 for, and a couple 1050 Tis they want $350 for. That's their entire stock apart from some misc GTS cards from like 10 years ago.

So yeah, they're marking everything up to double MSRP basically.

<comment><USER22> That's crazy, where are you located? My Microcenter is basically fully stocked with whatever GPU you'd want (aside from Vega)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wanted to buy 2 1080 for deep learning experiments, but that's going to have to wait.

I picked up a used 32core 128gb server for $1000 recently... It's only a matter of time before these 1080 will be sold for pennies on the dollar.

If your lively hood doesn't depend on it, wait.

<comment><USER30> I understand most people are wishful to see Cryptocurrencies crash but what if it doesn't?

What would happen if Crytpo booms big time?

<comment><USER31> First, segmondy didn't attribute future low GPU prices to a cryptocurrency crash. Second, it isn't necessary for a crash to happen to collapse demand for GPUs.

Bitcoin isn't driving GPU demand; Bitcoin is mined with ASICs. Ethereum is mined with GPUs, a consequence of deliberate design. However, when `Casper' lands (Ethereum's Proof of Stake scheme) mining will end, and so will the extreme demand for GPUs. If that happens Ebay will fill up with thousands of discrete GPUs and you'll buy them with a song.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am curious as to what we'll do with all that surplus computing power after crypto currencies (or mining on general purpose hardware) fade out of fashion.

Better weather forecasting? AI?

And don't forget the investment on cheap power sources.

<comment><USER33> It could be used for decentralized cloud computing.

<comment><USER32> Yes, but it's numerics-heavy, so the workload would be very specific. Think SETI@Home on steroids. If we could solve the trust issues, pooling retired mining rigs into distributed supercomputers for rent would be viable.

<comment><USER33> About trust: You could distribute the load randomly, and do double work, if two data sets doesn't give the same output you do the calculation again and blacklist the node that was wrong.

<comment><USER32> Yes, but you won't want any sensitive data to be processed on the platform unless an irreversibly unrecognizable transformed version of it is what is processed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It seems as though the large PC companies like Dell are still getting high end graphics cards. Ironically It's probably cheaper to buy an Alienware right now, as opposed to making a PC from parts.

<comment><USER35> I was this close to buy a hackintosh with high end parts (before this help me in save a lot) and now the iMac 27 5k not look bad..

If only Apple put bigger ssd at lower prices...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One of the biggest culprits, Ethereum, is working to change its consensus model to Proof of Stake, which will remove the need for mining. This should help with a lot of the demand.

</comment><comment><USER37> After finding and disclosing a vulnerability in a graphics card manufacturer's site they offered me cash or a brand new GTX 1070. Which was sold out everywhere at the time and was selling for about 2x the retail cost on eBay.

Not sure what you can take away from this, but could it be possible that the "storage" is in part manufactured by the card manufacturers themselves? (or maybe they thought this would be a special reward I might have wanted?)

</comment><comment><USER38> Curious: what will happen when it's not economic to mine Ether anymore? Especially if it happens suddenly (e.g. after a crash or a switch to proof-of- stake).

Won't the opposite situation suddenly appear, where second hand GTX1070's and GTX1080's suddenly flood the market and sell for $100?

Or will miners just switch their rigs to whatever coin is possible to mine with their rigs, instead of selling off their rigs?

<comment><USER39> Probably depends on if it's a broad crash or a single-currency one.

If it's just one currency people would probably switch.

I suspect that when there's a crash it's going to shake confidence in all crypto and you're going to see them all drop significantly in value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Isn't this a pricing problem then?

<comment><USER41> Not really; if NVidia set their MSRP to $1,000 then gamers would still complain.

<comment><USER42> To be fair, any time anyone does anything, gamers complain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Maybe there's something I missed about GPUs and mining, but how can an amateur rig like these hope to keep up with ASIC rigs? Can you profitably mine with residential electricity and GPUs still? How long can that possibly last?

<comment><USER41> Some cryptocurrencies are mined using only ASICs and others are mined using only GPUs (because there aren't any ASICs for those algorithms).

<comment><USER22> Some (like Monero) are also still able to be efficiently mined by CPUs. Mining Monero isn't very profitable right now though. It's probably half as good as ETH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Shouldn't be surprised that the stock prices of the graphics card makers are skyrocketing

</comment><comment><USER45> It's great. Once ethereum etc. crash we can buy used high end graphic cards cheap.

<comment><USER30> What is the basis for an overwhelming assumption on HN that Cryto will crash? I am genuinely curious. What specifics indicate that it will crash?

<comment><USER46> Most people here are engineers and can see through the buzz words all these crypto tokens are throwing around to lure in naive investors. So it's assumed that it is a bubble as majority of tokens are worthless from technical perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Sell pickaxes (during a gold rush).

<comment><USER48> Go out of business after gold rush ends, because market is flooded with barely-used pickaxes being sold at a loss by failed miners.

<comment><USER9> I'd be glad to make a bet with you that the 1080ti doesn't collapse significantly after the "gold rush ends."

Come to think of it, I'd like to hear your predictions about when the gold rush will end. Or what the gold rush even is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny that in this image in the article:

[https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/bare_...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/01/bare_shelves-1-640x378.png)

The entire shelf is sold out of GPUs, but it's a near-lock that the RX550 2GB model for $71.xx had a higher ROI than any single card purchased for cryptocurrency mining.

Now, that being said, gamers (and to a lesser extent, deep learning researchers) need to shut up and enjoy a good thing while it lasts. Gamers who have 1080tis (who don't get close to their maximum performance, nor need it) just walked into a situation where they can print money for owning equipment they already have or would already buy - in their spare time when they aren't gaming.

It's very odd to watch a group of people bitch that they are handed a bunch of free money, but gamers manage to do it.

<comment><USER49> That is in my opinion an overly simplistic way of looking at it.

First of all, many people (myself included) would not _want_ to have to burn electricity in order to offset the increased price. Even if you disregard the obvious environmental reasons, people sleeping close to their computers simply do not have the choice of leaving it running 24/7 unless they want to have vivid dreams about vacuum cleaners every night.

Second, even if the higher prices can be evened out in the long run from mining, this forces people to pay more money up-front in both hardware and electricity. Buying gaming equipment suddenly became an investment.</comment></comment>


userfox (s11) launches custom data: even better welcome emails - <AUTHOR> http://www.userfox.com/blog/better-welcome-emails-better/

<comment><USER2> Hey Peter, looking great. You should release your REST API documentation so people could integrate from the server.

Also, I'm already using SendGrid so ideally I would like for you to be able to use my existing email account, or better yet, let me provide a webhook URL so I could do the sending myself.</comment>


SQLAlchemy Roadmap for 0.8 Published - <AUTHOR> http://www.sqlalchemy.org/blog/2012/04/01/roadmap-for-0.8-published/

<comment><USER2> You should link this story to here <http://www.sqlalchemy.org/trac/wiki/08Migration>

That is the actual information about the release.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, just submit it prematurely .

<comment><USER3> More like postmaturely... it was released on April 1st, and the roadmap has last been changed nine days ago.</comment></comment></comment>


Android N beta - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/09/google-surprises-with-early-preview-of-android-n/ <comment><USER2> Android M is still at 2.3% usage. Google should devote more time solving upgrade issues.</comment>


Why are US companies buying tech from Chinese firms that spy on Muslims? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/31/why-are-us-companies-buying-tech-from-chinese-firms-that-spy-on-muslims <comment><USER2> The higher up won't even care about the moral implication until the masses point it out, the higher up only cares for obtaining the balance between 'cheap' and 'best'.</comment>


An Excerpt from "Keef," a Novel About the Magical "Witching Drug" (1897) - <AUTHOR> https://merryjane.com/culture/keef-t-w-coakley-1897-excerpt-feral-house <comment><USER2> What would be the picture that he painted and does it really exist? Would love to see what he considered to be perfection.

<comment><USER3> "perfect" in a mundane sense derived from the literal Latin translation means _done_ , nothing more. In that sense, this comment is also perfect.</comment></comment>


How Google DataWiki Differs from FluidDB - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/google-datawiki-fluiddb.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d137b49af99567f%2C0 <comment><USER2> I've pasted a copy of the original email I sent to the ReadWriteWeb guy below. Inevitably some of the interesting stuff was edited out in the article:

<quote>

In a nutshell, FluidDB is an openly writable hosted service for storing, sharing, searching and annotating data. While this is an accurate description it doesn't tell the whole story (in the same way as describing Twitter as, "writing messages to friends in only 140 characters or less" doesn't tell the whole story).

Perhaps the best thing to do is take a look at a recent (short) presentation I did that attempts to answer exactly the questions you're asking (what is FluidDB?, how does it work?, what's different about it? etc...). The slides and notes are on Slideshare here:

[http://www.slideshare.net/ntoll/fluiddb-in-a- nutshell-628958...](http://www.slideshare.net/ntoll/fluiddb-in-a- nutshell-6289580)

With regard to Google's DataWiki, the obvious similarity appears to be that both accept contributions from everyone (i.e. they're openly writeable). However, I've just had a look around their site and it appears that it's quite a different project to FluidDB in several important ways.

If I understand things correctly, each page in the DataWiki represents a discrete dataset conforming to a pre-defined structure/schema (in FluidDB we don't impose schema on our users and individual things are represented by objects rather than entries on a list).

In addition, there doesn't seem to be any way to validate the trustworthiness or source of the data (in FluidDB the permission system makes sure there is control over who uses specific tags and namespaces - for example only I can add data using tags under the "ntoll" namespace).

Also, DataWiki's search seems to be on a per-page basis rather than across all datasets (in FluidDB it is possible to search for and retrieve anything using any tag for which you have a "read" permission \- including tags created by others).

Finally, the DataWiki site says they're a wiki for structured data. FluidDB is more forgiving about the structure of data - in fact one of its strengths is how easy it is for the structure of data to evolve and change to reflect changes in the "real" world.

</quote>

</comment><comment><USER3> Man, why do I keep getting overlooked? Sure I may not have fancy investors, or google in my name, but my wiki database has demos and online reports =).

<http://www.formlis.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of <http://www.caspio.com/></comment>


Soul on wheels: How music for the roller rink impacted the club - <AUTHOR> https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3481 <comment><USER2> An invigorating documentary was made about this topic last year: United Skates

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6RbzPZmat8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6RbzPZmat8)

<comment><USER3> Full version is also available for download if you're outside of LA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article and history.

Here's a short on JB in Chicago. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcNWS8dsxIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcNWS8dsxIg)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting - would be interesting to see Levannas take on this> \- She is a Northern soul dancer and DJ, and some times works with Craig Charles AKA Lister from Red Dwarf

</comment><comment><USER6> +1 for Underground Resistance. I haven't lived in Detroit for 20 years but damn it's good to see UR on HN.

<comment><USER7> And Moodymann! What a scene</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could secure hash functions prevent UK bank transfer fraud? - <AUTHOR> I was reading https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/nov/11/couple-scammed-57000-homesless-bank-transfer-fraud over the weekend. This involves a 3rd party hacking or imitating the email of a small business and sending invoices for expected amounts with false bank details.
My initial thought was that, with minimal infrastructural investment, Companies House, the UK government site that stores publicly available data on UK registered companies could include an option in which companies could decide to display a secure hash of their sort code / account number made with a common, salted, open-source hash function (ie BCrypt)
Before transferring large amounts of money individuals could either verify bank details via the Companies House website or online banking apps and websites could implement the hash comparison functions.
Would this be usefully functional or are there huge security implications that I am missing? (I'm not a cryptographer)
If the consensus is that this is simple and secure to implement (especially as the gov.uk sites are introducing high quality multi-factor authentication), it is something that I would like to suggest to my local MP. <comment><USER2> Why the hash? Why not just have the actual bank details? Given that companies print these bank details on their bills in the first place they clearly aren't supposed to be a private piece of information.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was imagining that publishing bank details would expose them to a slightly higher risk of Direct Debit fraud, but again i'm no expert...</comment></comment>


PG: Arc Likely To Be Open-Sourced This Winter - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=98297

<comment><USER2> I hope someone makes a framework for Arc called de Triomphe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Arc Based Webapps etc ;)

      ArcAde       - Retro Games
      ArcAne       - Obfsktd Programs
      ArcHer       - Dating Website
      ArcHetype    - PDF Generation Tool
      ArcHegonium  - Porn website for hardcore mosses & ferns freaks
      ArcHipallium - Image recognition framework
      ArcHosaur    - 'Enterprise' apps
      ArcHlute     - Anywhere.fm competitor

Thanks: <http://InstantWordSearch.com/>

<comment><USER3> Arc compiler: NOAH

<comment><USER3> And the tutorial: Arc in 40 days and 40 nights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The sooner the better. I bet a few people here would want to help out. With the documentation and the like.

<comment><AUTHOR> People would want to do their startups in Arc too. So, yeah, sooner the better.

<comment><USER5> So you're waiting for Arc to start your startup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Now that you put it this way, I may have to invent a new reason.

<comment><USER6> use 'inspiration'

<comment><AUTHOR> First comment? Welcome to YC Hacker News!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Note that Paul did not say that Arc will be open-sourced this Winter, just that he hopes it will. That's a big difference. So much of a difference that this headline seems Reddit-ready.

<comment><USER8> I meant I was planning to, unless there's some disaster. I'm working on it now. Anyone have any preference for licenses? BSD? Or should I not have asked that...

<comment><USER9> i'll take the bait :-) why not just public domain it?

<comment><USER8> If someone publishes a bug fix, or finds a cleaner way of doing something, I'd like to be able to incorporate it without being accused of having stolen their IP. That's the main thing.

<comment><USER10> BSD license allows you to re-use fixes of others (assuming they also release their fix under BSD), but it does not compel them them to reveal their fix if they distribute only a binary.

GPLv2 requires modified _public_ distributions to also be under GPLv2, so you could both see the fix/change and use it (in the sense that you won't be infringing on copyright).

GPLv3 adds patent protection, so someone adding a fix/change that they have also patented explicitly grants a license for that patent.

I think GPLv3 is the most comprehensive way to keep fixes/changes of others available for reuse.

<comment><USER11> If you use the GPL you will want to add a lisp-specific preamble such as is found in the LLGPL (<http://opensource.franz.com/preamble.html>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does 'this winter' mean eg February, or eg December?

<comment><USER13> It depends on being optimist/pessimist.

I'm realist, so I predict: this spring (to be clear: there's only one in 2008).

<comment><USER14> There are two! One in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this an example of setting a timeline for your users to force yourself to stick to that timeline?

</comment><comment><USER16> PG, any thoughts on when the documents for startups will be open-sourced (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=62998>)?

</comment><comment><USER17> Feature Request: Why not have the "new" comments in a thread visually distinct from the "old" ones?

When there's a big thread like that I'd like to check the new comments but I can't be bothered to read again the 64 comments I read earlier to find the 8 new ones.

</comment><comment><USER18> You could dual-license Arc, like Gambit Scheme does. I believe Gambit uses Apache 2.0 and LGPL 2.1. I hope that the open-sourcing of the language won't cause it to become too stable and end its evolution, like what happened with Java. I think languages should have a breaking-reverse-compatibility release scheduled every five years.

I guess this announcement puts an end to my plan to read everything PG has written about Arc and then write my own implementation.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well, that just complicates my "language to learn this year" decision.

Last year was Common Lisp. I was planning on doing Python this year. Then recently Scala has been looking very interesting, with the functional/static thing with not bad performance and access to the whole Java stack (I program Java at my job).

Now Arc might be a possibility. At this rate, it will be December and I'll still be trying to decide.

<comment><USER20> Choosing Python would leave you 49 weeks left to learn something else this year. That's discounting the two weeks you've been taking to decide.

<comment><USER19> Touche. :)

I think you're right. I already found a task for Python to do, spent a couple weeks (off and on) refining it, and at the end I seemed to have used all of the prominent features of Python somewhere in that script. At the end of that, I had this vague feeling that I now "knew" Python and wasn't sure what was left to learn.

So, you are confirming my vague feeling and I can now move on to Scala and decide whether or not to switch to Arc once it emerges. :)

<comment><USER21> Since you're feeling cocky, have a look at the Zope/Plone source. You'll almost certainly realize you don't know Python (and possibly that you don't actually want to).

<comment><USER22> There is a difference between a language and its common idioms. "Generator expressions" is a good phrase to test how much people know. For example: <http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>

Python can definitely fit in your head, as far as the language. Reading lots of code is a good way to learn the idioms.

<comment><USER21> I wasn't actually referring to the usual Python idioms, but if you're unfamiliar with Zope/Plone, you can be forgiven for not knowing that. The Zope developers (and to a lesser degree Plone) don't actually seem to like Python, and so they've reinvented many common language features and libraries. Partly this is historical...the Python that Zope was originally written in didn't have most of those features or the standard library that exists today. It's one of the problems of developing a large codebase in a language that is still in rapid flux and doesn't mind throwing out backward compatibility (my Perl code written before Zope existed still runs on modern Perl, while practically none of my Python code from 1.5 through 2.2 runs today unmodified).

But, regardless of the very sound reasons for it to be the way it is, it's a very intimidating codebase, and a really good case study in the "reinvent everything" mindset. (It's quite powerful, and I've worked with several of the guys who built it, as I did contract work for Zope Corp for a few years, and I have the utmost respect for their talent and intellect. They're some of the smartest developers I've ever met. But it's not quite like anything else I've ever seen when it comes to having a learning cliff, even with some pre- existing Python knowledge.)

<comment><USER22> Yah, I assumed they were doing something fancy, not knowing what they actually are doing.

I'm told a great place to read good code, both Python and C, is to read the code that makes Python.

<comment><USER23> Yes, C is another good example. The language is fairly small, and it's not terribly difficult to learn the language itself and write your own programs. But to be able to look at an arbitrary piece of C code and understand all of the implications is another matter entirely.

This is true of any language to some degree, although some are worse than others, and if the code was purposefully written in some non-traditional way it can be even harder.

<comment><USER22> It is most certainly not true about C++.

<comment><USER23> Touche'; I should have grouped my sentences differently. C++ is not a small, easy-to-learn language.

<comment><USER22> I'm reminded of Duff's Device <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff%27s_device>

      send(to, from, count)
      register short *to, *from;
      register count;
      {
        register n = (count + 7) / 8;
        switch (count % 8) {
        case 0: do { *to = *from++;
        case 7:      *to = *from++;
        case 6:      *to = *from++;
        case 5:      *to = *from++;
        case 4:      *to = *from++;
        case 3:      *to = *from++;
        case 2:      *to = *from++;
        case 1:      *to = *from++;
                   } while (--n > 0);
        }
      }

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a Lisp success story. I wrote a decompiler in C++, building cruft on top of cruft, until it became too unwieldy (c.70,000 lines), so I rewrote it from the ground up in Lisp. Now it's 20,000 lines, far more elegant, and works a heck of a lot better.

However, I did experience a certain amount of burnout on this - I haven't written anything nearly as extensive since (eg, no more than 1000 lines of Lisp).

</comment><comment><USER25> just clarifying, does this mean that it will be released by March 2008, or is it going to be november?

</comment><comment><USER26> pg has said in an earlier post that he likes designing his own custom languages to fit a particular need. I'm interested to hear what the tagline for Arc will be.

<comment><USER27> The language's language?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just curious, what language is it written in?

<comment><USER29> mzscheme (PLT)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11994>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Totally overhyped language! Why isn't anyone paying attention to Lintel, my new dialect of COBOL?

</comment><comment><USER31> But it's already open-sourced for all those who are coding in it now?;)

</comment><comment><USER32> Finally. ;)</comment>


I'm a woman, and I want to be a founder.  Please don't assume you know why.   - <AUTHOR> http://meetthefounders.com/im-a-woman-and-i-want-to-be-a-founder-please

<comment><USER2> _> After cooling off, I realized that I was angry because I had just found remnants of the prejudice I thought was gone from startup circles._

Why would you think this? You don't have to be particularly socially enlightened or progressive to create a startup. I'd imagine that "startup circles" sample from the general population of smart people, and as such would have their fair share of any proclivity you can imagine. Sounds like you bumped into a run-of-the-mill chauvinist. As much as we may like to believe, "smart" does not imply any particular worldview -- I've met academics at research conferences who would take off their wedding rings before talking to a female colleague of mine, and other distinguished faculty members who would consistently talk down to female colleagues. Hell, read James Watson's (of double-helix DNA fame) book _The Double Helix_ for some prime sexism, if aggravation is your thing.

The rest of the article was quite interesting though...

</comment><comment><USER3> _"A young, but influential, entrepreneur I talked with remarked that I was probably "only interested in doing a startup to be supportive of my husband." I was, to be frank, incredibly angry."_

I'm not sure why she felt angry[1]. People judge, get over it; if a pattern of judgements becomes a problem, work on your credibility. I think reducing emotion at work has value in a lot of circumstances.

[1] or: "allowed herself to feel angry", which fundamentally reduces to "chose to feel angry" (edited in later)

<comment><USER4> I can understand her anger to a degree, provided the person she was talking to knew she was married (or anything about her home life, for that matter). It would be on another level entirely if it was an assumption based on sexism, but without knowing the full context of the conversation I suppose we'll never know.

As for "people judge, get over it", that is a sorry state of pragmatism. Not saying it isn't true, just a bit sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for this post, misstatiana. There's always been a bit of a tension between my startup aspirations and my wife's vision of our life. Your post has put into words some of the motivations and reasons for my wanting to do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER6> "First, being a founder requires courage, grit, and an ability to get shit done, and I like people like that because they set an example I want to aspire to."

So I think this insight on 'being a founder' is accurate, and I applaud your aspirations. I'd like to twist your thinking 90 degrees though, being a 'founder' is an artifact not a goal. What I mean by that is first:

"Get shit done." - you know, actually do stuff, build a web product, design a new line of swimwear and get it into production, convert the PTA to using Google Docs. Whatever, become a force to be reckoned with, see a need and address it.

"show your grit" - you know, do stuff someone else thinks is stupid but in hindsight is brilliant. To do that ...

"show your courage" - you know, in the face of someone telling you something is stupid or impossible, do it anyway.

And I'll add one

"show your humility" - when you fail, admit it, do a post mortem, learn from it and then go back to getting stuff done.

It sounds trite but really if you want to found a company go out and start one. Your first one you'll pretty much have to do without a lot of support (unless you've done something nearly like it already) because nobody (even you) knows if you can cut it running a company. So I would _not_ try to start a company that involves say, designing a new type of semi-conductor, or requires large government purchases.

If you demonstrate you can execute then the next time you have a problem that takes more resources than you can scrape together you can go to someone and say, "This is what I've done, this is what I'm going to do, I'm wondering if you want in on the ride?" Its you're history that makes that second clause powerful.

</comment><comment><USER7> i'm a man, and I wonder what "I'm a woman" has to do with in that title?

<comment><USER8> It makes more sense in context of the lengthy post.

I think the tl;dr is "sexism still exists".

<comment><USER7> >"sexism still exists"

to me it "she is still able to see sexism when she intends to do so".

For example, if i wanted, I could also see sexism in the respect for me at the worksplace - "they respect me because i'm a man!"

<comment><USER8> You would be able to see sexism in the workplace is a coworker explicitly came up to you and said, "you only work here because you want to support your wife!"

Serious question: did you read the post?

<comment><USER7> >"you only work here because you want to support your wife!"

that pretty much true. That is my point - if i wanted to see sexism i'd see it in everything i choose to.

>Serious question: did you read the post?

yep, and i'm trying to reclaim the wasted time by voicing my disagreement with that promotion of sexists stereotypes

<comment><USER8> I dunno, "you, WOMAN, only doing X because your HUSBAND is" is pretty sexist. Explicitly so. But whatevs, time spent is time wasted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So when I read the title I tried to guess what the reason was going to be -- but it was really hard. All I could come up with that was reasonably plausible was: "To prove the people who say there are no women in tech wrong."

You can imagine my surprise upon reading the actual article... some guy thought you only wanted to be a founder to 'support your husband'? I can't even wrap my head around why that makes sense (or, well, why it made sense to the guy who said it anyway).

Can someone willing to play devil's advocate explain why this might come to someone's mind as a reason for starting a startup? How exactly does her having a company 'support' him? Unless it's in a financial sense, and then, well, that's a fairly valid reason for anyone to start a company (to support their family financially).

<comment><USER10> Well, they have a company _together_. One could assume that her husband (male/provider/aggressive) wanted to start a company and that she (female/nurturer/passive) joined to make it easier for him (as a real-world example, my girlfriends' mother does most of the administration for my girlfriends' father dentist business, but even if this work is highly appreciated it's clear which one of them is the dentist/owner/boss.)

In short, this thinking is rooted in a rich tradition. Of stupidity, but still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I apologize if this comment makes HN readers uncomfortable, but this article is just another one of those trite "There is discrimination in [field X]" articles with the whole basis of argument on anecdotal evidence. I don't profess to know any better, but are there empirical evidence (Say, experiments with the same resumes with male/female names sent around)?

Perhaps I'm the only one who cares about data integrity, but making a conclusion from small observations is pretty flawed at best. Decisions should be data-driven.

<comment><USER4> I see where you're coming from, but sociology is a soft science. Even in an experiment like your resume example, there are many uncontrollable variables (company sizes/values/morale, hr staff, etc) that render the data somewhat anecdotal, even if it follows a pattern.

Moreover, this post is a personal outlook, and doesn't necessarily need hard data to prove an individual experience. There is really no "If A, then B" implied here.

<comment><USER11> Of course there are uncontrolled variables, but there are those in every experiment. With large enough samples, those uncontrolled variables become less significant. That's how statistical sampling works--if you expected everyone to be exactly the same, then you would only have to ask one person.

I understand that this is a personal outlook, but I feel like it is trying to make a more general point than "This is my story".

BTW: Would you consider economics a "soft science"? I study economics with some background with econometrics (statistics, essentially, where the entire focus is on controlling for unknowns)

<comment><USER4> I haven't really thought about economics as a soft science. I suppose its more objectively measurable, so I wouldn't necessarily lump it in with fields like psychology. Good point to ponder though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If there is any prejudice against women in technology, I am very disappointed. I have met some very hard working and smart tech entrepreneurs who were also women. I notice that they fly under the radar because they'd rather their business be judged on its merits, not because they are women.

Anyone who still has a prejudice against women in tech is just insecure imo.

<comment><USER13> "Her background meanders ... art, history, education, and massage therapy"

Male or female, a person who describes themselves as such will not be taken seriously in today's micro-biz scene. If you can't write code, you don't get a seat at the table unless you're a [very] good and successful sales person who sells and doesn't fancy themselves as a CEO-in-waiting.

I've never met this person and have only read half of that one post, but it sounds like she's more enamored with the aspect of being a founder and blogging about it than anything else. No serious person would take offense at the jibes from other entrepreneurs, let along post an eleven-paragraph self- justification on their blog.

<comment><USER12> I was talking more generally but I'd value someone with varied experience more than someone who was a specialist, unless that was important.

<comment><USER13> In theory, I'd value someone with varied experience as well, but we're talking about the technology industry here, nothing else, and albeit a somewhat enlightened community, the same social paradigms exist within as the do without to a varying degree. The same prejudices exist but what may be different is the way in which they're projected, perceived and handled.

The fact that the author found this shocking was, well, shocking. Coming from a lightweight, non-technical background and spouting off about what the startup scene should or shouldn't be based on her assumptions is very naive.

I wouldn't assume to delve in her decision-making process in regards to her current employment, but again, from what I've read, it seems that she has a bad case of founderitis and that shit gets old after a couple of minutes. It's embarrassing when people regard that as some sort of status symbol when they don't even have a half-baked app to show for it. Male or female.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having a woman as co-founder is one of the best things a startup can do. It gives you much better insight into half your customer base. I like the article, but I find that too many articles fail to highlight the benefits of having a woman on your founding team. In 2011 if you're starting up I think it's absolutely essential to have a woman on your founding team.

In the tech startup scene the needs of women are definitely under served, it's a virtually untapped customer base. Ignore women founders at your own peril.

</comment><comment><USER15> You know, I wasn't there and she really doesn't give much context for the remark. But a) She has a kid and this is a reason she has put off starting her own company. b) In place of actually starting her own company, she is interviewing other founders with the reasoning that it will help her prepare to someday do it herself (which maybe it will, I don't know). c) She "shied away from" being an entrepreneur when she was young because of what she saw her father go through.

So, she had a secure, stable job, got married, had a baby and makes a blog about "some day wanting to have her own company". She has apparently never actually tried to found anything at all. It makes me wonder if she got mad because the remark hit a nerve. (My therapist used to say "If you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelps is probably the one you hit.") Which in my book wouldn't be indicative of sexism at all.</comment>


Content Banned from Front Page, Why? - <AUTHOR> My submission was getting a lot of votes and active discussion up to 50 votes on the front page (very unexpectedly!) and then suddenly disappeared from the front page and nobody else gets to see it.
Why is this? Is it because it is in Notion?
Secret NSA op?
Horcrux Encrypted Messaging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24322069#24324516 <comment><USER2> It has more comments than upvotes. Usually that's an indication that a flamewar is going on, so submissions like that are downweighted automatically.

In any case, it's back now. Probably the mods got a notification that the flamewar detector was triggered and went to check.

The next time you have a question about HN's mysterious workings, you should email email@example.com (contact link in footer). You're more likely to get an answer that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's bad that this disincentivizes me from answering people's questions...

<comment><USER3> Just always upvote a comment before replying to it - that should balance it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That isn't banned. Consider yourself lucky, because lots of stuff does get banned. Take this article for example, submitted by caseysoftware:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320591)

Referring to this article:

[https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains- vot...](https://nypost.com/2020/08/29/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud- with-mail-in-ballots/)

You can see it marked [flagged] [dead].

It's a very interesting article that details a number of effective ways to steal an election in the USA today. We could have discussed ways to secure our elections, but the suggestion of corruption probably upset some people. Even if you think that stuff isn't actually happening, you should want to make it impossible because otherwise there will be lots of people who refuse to believe the results of elections. The legitimacy of our government is undermined if we aren't able to prove that fraud of this type could not have happened.</comment>


Russian researchers expose breakthrough U.S. spying program - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/16/us-usa-cyberspying-idUSKBN0LK1QV20150216 <comment><USER2> Given that a lone dude was able to modify the firmware on a HDD controller CPU ([http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=3](http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=3)) it doesnt surprise me that full-blown malware of this sort is in the 3-letter- agency toolbox.

Didn't someone else also manage to run Linux on a HDD?!

 _edit: it was the same guy, it 's just hidden on the last page of the series and it's just linux, no userspace_

<comment><USER2> Oh, and another thing. I just remembered that videogame console hack where a manipulated USB descriptor led to a jailbreak.

Who says one can not use bugs in e.g. SMART or other (S)ATA protocol implementations in order to spread malware by disk?

And... isn't data transfer of HDDs usually handled by DMA? Is there a way for a malicious HDD to compromise a system? Everyone locked down their FireWire port, but is eSATA vulnerable?

<comment><USER3> eSata itself is not vulnerable. The sata lanes themselves have no DMA, it's the controller where the DMA requests are generated, so a malicious hard drive on its own would not be able to compromise a computer. I guess it's conceivable that some three-letter agency has hacked together some hard drive that can compromise a specific chipset, but at that point, it becomes a lot easier to just present a compromise in the filesystem of the hard drive, because filesystem drivers are entirely too easily confused by bad data, such as [http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux- ext4/msg47160.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-ext4/msg47160.html)

<comment><USER2> > I guess it's conceivable that some three-letter agency has hacked together > some hard drive that can compromise a specific chipset

I was more thinking of Linux or Windows hardware driver level compromises, as a filesystem exploit requires that the drive in question is actively mounted and a protocol driver exploit pwns your system as soon as you attach the drive.

Combine a OSX, a Linux and a Windows exploit in the ATA protocol drivers and you have a cyberweapon capable of infecting even a forensic analysis system. And in contrast to USB, I don't believe that ATA and other low-level hardware protocol implementations in kernels get very much attention from developers.

Forensic imagers are pretty much standard equipment in any police lab, but I doubt that a normal investigator will disassemble a disk and do raw forensics on the disk platters... heh, if I were a guy with something to hide, I'd hack the firmware to either wipe the disk upon imaging or compromising the investigator's machine.

<comment><USER4> You've seen Travis Goodspeed's work there?

[http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/events/5327.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2012/Fahrplan/events/5327.en.html) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8)

It's _really_ nice...

<comment><USER2> Oh indeed. I did not know about this, thank you very much.

I came up with yet another, truly weird plan. Take a 2-platter disk with 500GB (so 250GB per platter), scratch off the label. Modify the firmware so that:

a) both platters are encrypted with a hardcoded, generated-at-lowlevel- reformat secret key to delay forensic efforts

b) the ATA identify and other ID values point to a 250GB drive (half the original capacity!)

c) the bootloader is two-staged, boot0 running on the HDD CPU and boot1 running on the host before the OS bootloader. If e.g. a specific key is pressed during boot, boot1 asks for a password and gives this password to boot0 (e.g. via custom ATA command). boot0 now uses this password to apply a second decryption to platter1 - so there is no TrueCrypt or anything on the "hidden" OS which impacts performance (you can reveal if you're using TrueCrypt via a sidechannel attack. Determine the HDD model and compare write speed with a reference value. If you're inside spec - no crypto. If you're slower - crypto).

If no key is pressed, then boot0 boots the bootloader from the unlocked platter2 - the "clear" OS will have no way of seeing the data on platter2 and even if the reported HDD size is compared with the specifications of the (manipulated!) HDD model name as reported to the OS, a malware has no way of knowing that this HDD in fact has a hidden area.

<comment><USER5> 1/ This is pretty much how for example Seagate refurbishes drives (or used to). They disable whole bad platters in firmware, rewrite drive capacity, slap REFURB sticker and send drive back as a replacement for smaller one.

2/ you can do this _yourself_ today on off the shelf drive using HPA/DCO

3/ Dont really understand your plan, you want to prepare drive like that to hide your own data from others? average foresic investigator will immediately tell your 'clear' OS is an unused decoy (no signs of regular daily use).

<comment><USER2> ad 3) indeed, you're right. Better idea: make the firmware act like a SATA hub and pretend two different disks (of course, the "second" disk is only visible after unlocking at boot time). This way, OS is used regularly - and all evidence on the system will point to an USB stick or eSATA disk being used.

<comment><USER5> FTK will immediately identify there was another volume mounted regularly, if you are hiding stuff from the law it will be used against you as obstruction of investigation or some other bs

<comment><USER2> That depends on the jurisdiction; I agree with you in UK/US, but in Germany an accused can not be forced to provide evidence for his/her guilt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Too bad the article doesn't mention that Kaspersky actually is very closely tied with the FSB (ie KGB) - most likely he works for them. That doesn't mean the original article is untrue - just that the 'research' really comes from Russian spies.

Profile here: [http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/](http://www.wired.com/2012/07/ff_kaspersky/all/)

"Kaspersky's rise is particularly notable—and to some, downright troubling—given his KGB-sponsored training, his tenure as a Soviet intelligence officer, his alliance with Vladimir Putin's regime, and his deep and ongoing relationship with Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB."

<comment><USER7> It should come as no surprise that a Russian anti virus vendor is the one reporting about all this NSA software. Kaspersky has less to loose and more to gain then their western counterparts and the Russian government would probably be happy to help even if Kaspersky didn't already have these ties.

The question is: is Kaspersky going to abuse all that trust and good will they are gathering?

<comment><USER8> hmm. even snowden lives in russia now. hmm.

the sad side effect of the moral elite proving hollow is that those you may consider _enemies_ might become _allies_. Despite everything there is little proof of malice at kaspersky while the same cant be said for many companies in the west.

If the FSB is funding research that brings unwanted transparency to the NSA, allowing us to better understand and criticize the US corporations and agencies compliment with them, then I welcome it. I doubt it is the case but if your fantasy turns out to be correct they would also deserve some poli sci props.

<comment><USER9> > _Malice_

Have proof of actual malice being committed? Intelligence gathering in of itself isn't malicious. That's literally the very reason for the NSA's existence. It's like saying the FBI is malicious because they "investigate". That's what they do, that's their job. I'd be more pissed if they weren't doing this sort of thing. I'd wonder where the hell my tax dollars are going.

The only thing that bothers me is _when they spy on their own citizens, us_. I have no problem with them spying or hacking Russia, China or Iran. Their job is to protect their country and their allies from foreign aggression and international criminal organizations. When you wake up in the morning, China, Russia, Iran, Etc... are all still going to try and hack U.S businesses, governmental services and try to gain access to classified information. Pretending like these acts don't happen doesn't make them go away.

<comment><USER10> American citizens have been involved in planning and executing terrorist attacks, identified as enemy combattants and even been targetted for drone strikes. If foreign terrorists operate in the US, the only way to find them is to search. That means looking at everyone's communications, citizen or not.

I'm not an American, so it would be wrong of me to assert what you or your government should or should not do in this regard. However in general I think GCHQ and the NSA have a case for some of the kinds of monitoring they are doing, I just think it's lacking in legal basis and appropriate oversight. They have shown repeatedly that we can't trust them.

<comment><USER7> Both data from foreign citizens and from your own citizens are useful, but usefulness shouldn't be the only consideration.

If you have lots of private information about someone that means you have power over that person. For starters it makes blackmail a whole lot easier. In combination with data about other people it helps you determine who you have to remove from a group to make that group collapse.

Now if somebody has this sort of power about some foreigners, that's not really a big problem for you country. But if somebody has that power about the entire population of your own country, that's a bit worse. That somebody could disable any form of democracy by silencing citizen protests before they even start while covertly controlling key politicians.

If communism has thought us anything it's that you don't want anybody to have intimate knowledge over large parts of your population, it doesn't tend to end well. Oversight is a nice idea but there was already supposed to be all kinds of oversight which apparently failed. I don't really trust oversight in things this important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is a link with some more technical details

[https://securelist.com/files/2015/02/Equation_group_question...](https://securelist.com/files/2015/02/Equation_group_questions_and_answers.pdf)

<comment><USER12> "One such incident involved targeting participants at a scientific conference in Houston. Upon returning home, some of the participants received by mail a copy of the conference proceedings, together with a slideshow including various conference materials. The [compromised ?] CD-ROM used "autorun.inf" to execute an installer that began by attempting to escalate privileges using two known EQUATION group exploits." Cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What would americans and especially the us government do if germans would bug every car they sell in the US? (this is a serious question)

<comment><USER14> You realize new BMWs have telematics data sent back to BMW ?

<comment><USER15> Also Samsung Smart TVs.. or have we already forgot about that? it has been a whole week.

I know it's not Germany.. just wanted to provide another example, so we know Germany isn't special.

<comment><USER16> A whole week, yes... It all started exactly 1 week ago...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I'm not an expert but I imagine any bit of code you put into firmware will target very narrow configuration of other software on the PC, will be pretty fragile and susceptible to bit rot.

To be able to routinely steal something from the PC it will need to be tailored to specific configuration.

Am I wrong?

<comment><USER17> I don't understand what do you mean by "bit rot". Bits don't rot like vegetables. They could last just fine for centuries, specially in protected, privilege parts of memory were firmware stays.

NVDIA driver is the same for all cards.

Tablets and smartphones are very homogeneous and the most widely used, Apple's totally closed source, including the hardware.

Most people use Intel processors.

Any of those vectors are very easy to target if you have the hardware and software source code.

<comment> guard-of-terra It's in wikipedia under "software rot".

The problem is, firmware is pretty small. You can't fit much function there.

Or it was; I imagine modern hard drives might have many megabytes of firmware which allows for pretty sophisticated hacks.

<comment><USER18> Firmware also operates on an extremely basic level, it's not suffer the same usability/compatibility like normal end users software.

<comment> guard-of-terra Once it needs to communicate via network, it needs a gateway into normal user software somehow.

Ditto for accessing the file system.

<comment><USER18> I think that is even possible to do at a low level, see how they embed encrypted packets within other packets to sneak out of a network undetected [1]. Even if this technology only lasted 10-15 years that is a LONG time to have the upper hand.

[1] [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers- nsa-e...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/02/ip-over-avian-carriers-nsa-edition/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Patriot Act means the US three letters agencies could get whatever they want from whatever US company(or company that sells in the US).

As the article says, they could ask for the code for making an audit. Of course they can do whatever they want with it.

They can abuse this power in so many ways, from giving this source code to competitors but "closer to home", individual members of those agencies selling it for profit, or analyzing vulnerabilities and not reporting them to you.

</comment><comment><USER19> It doesn't seem unreasonable that the NSA working in conjunction with the CIA could place moles in various high tech firms of interest and thus obtain all the source. Following this to its logical conclusion then it's not unreasonable to assume the NSA has the source to most firmware and operating systems in use today.

What the article doesn't reveal is the attack vector, how did the firmware in these drives come to be infected?

<comment><USER20> > What the article doesn't reveal is the attack vector, how did the firmware > in these drives come to be infected?

If criminals can target a bank to steal $300M from clients, the NSA can target a HD company to steal the source code.

It's really not that difficult.

Remember, the best attack isn't a direct assault. It's a sneak assault.

The story is that during WWII, Ian Fleming was part of a group of spies in training, who were asked to get into a secure nuclear research facility. Everyone else got caught. Sneaking in under the wire, etc.

Ian called a professor friend to vouch for him. Then, call the facility, and asked for a tour, as a visiting "researcher". After the tour was over, he called his boss, and told them his briefcase was hidden next to a critical part of the facility.

Bugging HD firmware is a brilliant ploy. Who looks there?

<comment><USER21> There is no need to steal the source code. As mentioned in the article (or a different article?), they can just demand the manufacturer send the source code for NSA review before the government buys any drives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the team working on this has a "wrap party" when the vector is inevitably exposed, or if there's some kind of politics/fallout if they didn't show quite enough ROI. Sort of like modern NASA and ESA (and now ISRO) missions, you know?

Anyway, I'm not interested in getting into a debate, but it sounds like an impressive bit of work.

<comment><USER23> Or the program continues uninterrupted because even once exposed, it still works. All major hard drive makers have been infiltrated. Where's everyone in the world going to buy hard drives?

<comment><USER5> All it takes is a sata key doing ROT13 on passing data to defeat it, or stripping raid array.

<comment><USER24> One would imagine that raid cards would be an equally appealing attack vector.

<comment><USER5> There are driverless/non firmware upgradeable RAID controllers, for example Sil3726 - SATA port multiplier with RAID functionality buildin. Connect couple of drivers and host sees only one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do ssd/hdd drives with open source firmware exist?

<comment><USER26> Sorry, not an answer to your question, but I did think about this while reading the article, and these new findings do seem to make Richard Stallman's 'entirely free and open laptop' efforts seem not so crazy, after all.

<comment><USER27> No one thinks the rationale for the free and open laptop is crazy. Just the cost and capability.

That said, right now there is not a single hardware manufacturer in the world who is not open to government pressure.

Perhaps the only answer to all this is to make our institutions irrevocably open - that there are open publicised hardware standards and means of verifying the circuits are the design expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this the same thing as IRATEMONK that was revealed a year or so ago in the NSA ANT catalog? [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/iratemonk_nsa...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/01/iratemonk_nsa_e.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Would this not be mostly thwarted by using full disk encryption and a TPM? FDE means the firmware cannot do anything with your data; just view the disk as a remote server and store like you would on AWS or so.

A TPM can then read the boot sector and ensure it hasn't been modified, so the firmware can't take advantage of the unencrypted code there.

Of course there's other things the firmware can target, but at least not being able to directly read/write data is a huge bonus. And it'll greatly reduce the surface area for exploits, since just the encrypted block device code can be messed with, not all the internals of various filesystems.

<comment><USER30> If they are hooking the full Windows boot chain, it's only a small step to also hook the encryption/decryption process during the boot.

<comment><USER29> Hence the part of the TPM and other DRM-capable technologies (Secure Boot, I think). You can sign and seal the boot code, so just owning the firmware doesn't get you there. (Of course the NSA might also compromise the Windows boot keys, but then that's a detectable, major incident.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Surprisingly, there's not one comment in this entire thread with either the word "remove" or "uninstall".

Question: If there's a good chance a machine w/ one of the said HD's has the NSA spying app, how do you remove it??

<comment><USER32> You can't. Unless you write your own HDD firmware. Buying new HDD won't help much as well, because all major HDD manufacturers have been infiltrated/persuaded by NSA.

<comment><USER33> The drives get infected if the virus is executed, they don't come pre- infected.

<comment><USER32> It's not a mainstream malware, so if you get infected it means you are on NSA list and buying new HDD won't help, because vulnerability remains unless HDD manufacturer fix their firmware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Noob question: Is it reasonable to think that the spyware on these hard drives is targeted for specific OS's?

I have a Seagate HDD and I run Linux (Ubuntu), so I'm wondering if I'd be immune to the spyware.

<comment><USER35> If you're targeted by a 3-letter agency you can assume you're totally screwed no matter what OS you use.

If they don't have an exploit for your OS yet, they'll write one.

Also, there's an independent OS running inside your Intel CPU (vPro).

<comment><USER36> Does the agency need to have 3 letters in its acronym for the attack to be that effective?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You hace secret courts with secret orders. Nothing can be trusted....

</comment><comment><USER38> FTA: "the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware"

Is this really a breakthrough? Hasn't this type of attack been around for a long time? Yeah, Reuters. It _is_ interesting that likely a state actor is using this type of attack in a coordinated way. Interesting, but is this really surprising?

In other news, Apple and Google now make a device you can connect right to you skin 24/7.

<comment><USER32> I find it strange too that people (even some with more technical background) refer to a firmware as something obscure/magical. Chip technologies are so advanced today that you can run a code, that was only possible on a PC a decade or so ago, on a tiny controller. It would plainly stupid for NSA and the like to ignore such opportunity.

<comment><USER39> Remember report on Toyota accelecator firmware, which had like 10K global variables? Someone 'with technical background' could call this kind of software organization 'obscure' and that fact that it actually (somehow)works - 'magical'))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I hate to say it but I think the average person just doesn't care, even a lot of HNers don't really think it's a big deal. I personally think it's time for a revolution or at least mass social upheaval.

Politicians pretty much treat us like we're all mentally challenged, which, compared to Ivy league educated officials, I guess most of us are. But it really makes you wonder why such smart people just don't give a fuck.

<comment><USER7> Well, what is the big deal? What is even the real news here? "NSA does intelligence gathering abroad"? "State founded malware uses known attack vectors to attack computers in countries the US doesn't like"? "NSA probably employs some programmers to write decent malware to infect selected targets"?

It's interesting insight from a technical perspective, but apart from that, is it really surprising or upsetting?

Some things about the NSA like Prism are genuinely upsetting, but I don't think this particular story is.

<comment><USER41> I agree. Also the reality is that most of us are working hard trying to accomplish our own goals.

As long as the central bankers and whoever else is in power doesn't turn up the heat too high too fast this isn't that relevant to most of us.

We're all pretty aware they can get our data so this isn't surprising. Just search NSA on LinkedIn and you can see their army of programmers on there who care about real threats and not people who read hacker news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> _It is not clear how the NSA may have obtained the hard drives ' source code._

Probably just a nicely worded letter:

        To whom it may concern,

        Under the authority of Executive Order 12333 and
        pursuant to Title 18 USC Section 2709, you are hereby
        compelled to provide the NSA with the source code of the
        firmware of your company's line of hard-drive products.

</comment><comment><USER43> > "There is zero chance that someone could rewrite the [hard drive] operating > system using public information," Raiu said.

Anybody have anymore info on this? I've always been under the impression that it's at least theoretically possible to copy the firmware off of something and decompile it at least.

<comment><USER44> Unless the someone invented state-of-the-art anti hacking hardware and couldn't think of any better use of it then protecting the secrecy of hdd firmware, then that is just a lie (or knowledge gained by reverse engineering the firmware is not considered "public" information). If you are interested, here is a story of someone modifing hdd firmware [1].

[1] [http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack](http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> We already saw IRATE MONK and friends a couple of years ago, right? Is this different, or independent verification?

</comment><comment><USER46> Does it worry anyone else that China is starting to review code before allowing it to be released? I can definitely see the US doing some thing like this, especially if companies continue to get hacked.

Imagine having to wait 3 months before you can launch your start up because you have to get the corresponding permits and have your code reviewed.

</comment><comment><USER47> In Soviet Russia the hard drive reads you!

</comment><comment><USER48> This is Kaspersky's advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER49> Time to shut down the NSA. They have no place in a free society.

</comment><comment><USER50> > _Snowden 's revelations have hurt the United States' relations with some > allies and slowed the sales of U.S. technology products abroad._

God damn it. Again with the "kill the messenger" attitude. It's not the disclosure of the acts that harmed the relationships. It's the spying and hacking acts themselves. It's like your friend telling you your girlfriend is cheating on you, and getting mad at the _friend_ instead of the girlfriend, for "harming your relationship".

You don't want your relationships harmed? Uhh..here's a solution for you, US government: _don 't fucking do it to your allies in the first place_ if you don't want your relationships "harmed". It's not rocket science.

<comment><USER51> International relations is not as simple as your girlfriend cheating on you.

<comment><USER52> I agree. How come as software engineers, we like to talk about larger emergent behavior from large groups of simple pieces, but when we talk about governments and nations (large groups of complex pieces) we use analogies to simple systems? For example, the national debt does not operate like a household debt. The cacophony of systems at work in a nation makes it exponentially more nuanced. Some rules are emergent only at the larger scale. Or, international relations. Nation to nation relations don't consist of just the heads of state, but whole organizations of people interacting. Again, a large group of complex things (people) interacting probably creates some emergent behavior not visible in small groups. It's frustrating to see these systems reduced without any thought.</comment></comment></comment>


Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/technology/personaltech/12basics.html?_r=1&src=twr

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty fascinating angle on the whole online privacy issue. Most of the focus is on potential misuse, primarily burglary. Conceptually, it reminds me of Bruce Schneier's idea of a "data shadow" that follows people through their lives. Schneier writes specifically about banking data, corporate aggregations, etc. and the need for people to "take back their data."

<http://www.schneier.com/essay-219.html>

However, the article brings up the point that a significant portion isn't our's to retake:

 _Protecting your privacy is not just a matter of being aware and personally responsible, said Mr. Sommer, the researcher. A friend may take a geotagged photo at your house and post it.

"You need to educate yourself and your friends but in the end, you really have no control," he said, adding that he was considering writing a program to troll the Internet for photos with geotags corresponding to users' home addresses._

Given that this is in some degree out of anyone's ability to control, how can people use this data shadow to their own advantage? For example, who needs an ID card if you have a large number of photos from across a large number of people who all agree that you are who you say you are?

</comment><comment><USER3> Warning! Pictures contain EXIF data. Camera phones frequently geo tag photos.

In other news, your computer broadcasts an IP address.</comment>


Time to Stop the 'Doomsday Clock'. – Lawrence M. Krauss - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/time-to-stop-the-doomsday-clock-11579734922 <comment><USER2> _> The clock is a publicity stunt—and a successful one._

Is it? I had no idea it was still a thing. I associate it first and foremost with fiction. Specifically, _Dr. Strangelove_ : the campy black comedy that's _fifty-six_ (56) years old.

If pushed, I probably would have guessed it was a real thing from the Cold War. Let me be clear: I couldn't have said with certainty that the Doomsday Clock was a _real thing_.

I had no idea that it was maintained in 2020. It belongs in the era of Burt Ward in tights. "Time to Stop the 'Doomsday Clock' — Because No One Cares" might be a better title.

<comment><USER3> It's not quite so "campy" when you realise how seriously people who were actual _nuclear war planners_ regarded Dr. Strangelove:

[https://www.wired.com/2018/03/geeks-guide-doctor- strangelove...](https://www.wired.com/2018/03/geeks-guide-doctor-strangelove/)

I can recommend Ellsberg's book on nuclear war planning if you have difficulties staying awake at night.

<comment><USER4> > I can recommend Ellsberg's book on nuclear war planning if you have > difficulties staying awake at night.

Are you implying it's boring?

<comment><USER3> No - I meant its literally the only book that I have read that caused me to have difficulties sleeping for a few nights.

Edit: Don't downvote jmkni - my fault for wording things strangely.

<comment><USER5> Some books kept me awake, but I wouldn't say I was calm enough to be functional in that period.

<comment><USER3> The book includes accounts of his time at BLAND, sorry RAND, the sheer banality of it all makes it all the more shocking - young men calculating whether it would be 100 million, 600 million or far more and oops shame about Finland.

[A job where you feel that meetings you attend feel like the Wannsee Conference can't be good.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, of course.

According to them we have never been closer to doomsday. Not when the Soviet Union got the atomic bomb, not when North Korea attacked, not during the Cuban missile crisis, not during the wars in the middle East with Israel, not during the Berlin crisis on the Tiananmen square protests, and most recently when the US used conventional warfare against a country that supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction.

No, right now is much closer. (sarcasm)

<comment><USER7> The clock now includes threats from climate change and disruptive technology, which global civilization is doing next to nothing about.

<comment><USER8> How does one estimate the probability of doom from either of those things with any sort of reliability, given that they would be one off (future historical) events? Where's the science in predicting the future of civilization?

<comment><USER9> Since you asked, here's some (old) science predicting the future (current state) of civilization:

In 1980, the American Petroleum Institute correctly predicted the current environmental crisis would happen now.

From the report:

"Timescale for significant impact, very roughly 50 years" "1°C Rise (2005): Barely noticeable" "2.5°C Rise (2038): Major economic consequences, Strong regional dependence" "5°C Rise (2067): Globally Catastrophic effects"

They also predict that climate problems will cause global economic growth to halt in about 2025.

There's no reason to think the trend lines in the report are suddenly incorrect. In fact, current events are well within the error bars of their model.

Averting it requires billions of people to agree to change course, and so far our leaders are doing nothing to make that happen.

It seems much worse than the nuclear scare to me.

Here's a HN discussion of the API report:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325359)

Here's a report from the same organization walking through the math:

[https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/...](https://insideclimatenews.org/sites/default/files/documents/API%201982%20Climate%20models%20and%20CO2%20warming.pdf)

Of course, much progress has been made in climate modeling since then, and now we're more sure we're screwed. On the other hand, since the report is 40 years old, it's trivial to go back and confirm their predictions were correct so far.

<comment><USER8> That's a climate prediction with future predictions on what they expect to happen to civilization. But since it's not 2025, we can't say whether economic growth will halt. 2067 is the predicted doomsday year.

Of course if we overlay that with Kurzweil's singularity in 2045, then all bets are off. To the extent we take such predictions seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In other news, the Doomsday Clock has moved closer to midnight:

 _Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society's ability to respond. The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode._

[https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current- time/](https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/)

<comment><USER11> This is a great example of the author's point - what can nuclear physicists say about "cyber-enabled information warfare," other than by copying the ambient claims floating around Washington?

<comment><USER10> They say more in the link if you care to read it:

 _Continued corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision making depend has heightened the nuclear and climate threats. In the last year, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet._

<comment><USER11> Exactly, a typical policy statement, and not at all related to nuclear physics or any scientific expertise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh goodness. He is trying to tell us that scientists cannot use this to keep the public aware of nuclear war threat. I didn't even see one negative of having the clock in the article. Just saying over and over science is not politics.

<comment><USER13> It's fear mongering.

<comment><USER14> Entirely correct.

My question is: if there really is a crisis (e.g. nuclear war threat, climate change, etc.), these days, how do you get the general population to notice and act accordingly without fear mongering? I'm not sure I have a better solution, unfortunately.

I tend not to support fear mongering and typically lean on providing education, but that requires time that some situations don't allot for. In the case of the doomsday clock, it makes some sense. The problem is the fear factor has really disappeared and few today experienced the fear of real nuclear threats like those during the peak of the cold war.

<comment><USER15> > The problem is the fear factor has really disappeared and few today > experienced the fear of real nuclear threats like those during the peak of > the cold war.

Few even know about the clock, or what it represents, or historically represented.

Few understand the existential dangers humanity is under threat from; those that do shout into a void of apathy, hardly even receiving an echo.

Some are patted on the head with a "That's nice dear..." or worse, met with scorn and anger.

The world has forgotten the we have the literal power to destroy ourselves, to make the planet virtually uninhabitable for humanity, if not most of life, by our acts. Some in power have even had the gall to ask why we shouldn't use these weapons we have, otherwise why have them? Ignorant. Fools.

The only way humanity will learn its lesson is by abject overpowering demonstration. Of course, by then, it will be too late. But the lesson will be learned, in the most harsh manner possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jagged-chisel I'm not sure how such a 'device' could be anything other than political. There's not a mathematical formula, based on science, driving the setting of the clock. It's set at the whim of its caretakers according to their perceptions of the risks in the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's a chance to ask - I've been trawling my history and searching like mad to find an article I read a year or two ago which I'm almost certain was linked from HN. It was an essay or opinion-piece about nuclear war which I believe was written in the 50s or thereabouts by someone who was an involved in the Manhattan project. In my head I think it was called something like "the meaning of war in the age of atomic weapons" or something along those lines. Does anyone have any idea what I might be remembering? For what it's worth the tone was negative!

<comment><USER17> Something by Oppenheimer perhaps? E.g. [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1949/02/the- ope...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1949/02/the-open- mind/305431/)

Or Einstein: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/atomic-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/atomic- war-or-peace/305443/)

<comment><USER16> Luc these both seem so close to what I have in mind, but neither are it. Thanks so much though - if nothing else they're both great reads!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So many Wall Street Journal articles. Do that many people pay for the service?

<comment><USER19> Everyone's using archive.is to get under the paywall...

<comment><USER20> How come they have access?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We may need a non-nuclear one too. We are getting increasingly creative in self-destruction methods.

<comment> murph-almighty I thought they incorporated other existential threats like climate change?

<comment><USER21> That "clock" is more like a thermometer or a melting snowman

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hate to say it, but I agree with the author. The scientists running the Doomsday clock nowdays bump it up for things like Trump tweets, while in the past it would get advanced for things like the invention of the Hydrogen bomb. If it is following the zeitgeist of what everybody is already saying then it is not useful on its own.

<comment><USER22> At the time Twitter didn't exist, and Trump has - more than once - come close to declaring war on another country through Twitter.

<comment><USER11> Nothing happening today is even comparable to the past events of a world where nuclear attacks were seen as a legitimate first strike option. There has been a lot of "doomsday time inflation," where inconsequential things today move the clock just as much as serious threats yesterday.

<comment><USER15> Trump wanted to nuke a hurricane.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/what-if-nuke-nuked- hurricane...](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-if-nuke-nuked-hurricane- trump-detonate-2019-9)

Trump has asked in the past why we have nuclear weapons if we don't use them.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant- use-n...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes- msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html)

Trump, during a visit to the war memorial in Hawaii - had no idea what Pearl Harbor was about, at least according to one book:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor- memorial-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pearl-harbor-memorial- tour-john-kelly-stable-genius-2020-1)

You don't believe a man this ignorant about such things, who is "commander in chief" and "carries the nuclear football" \- ie, he is in command of our entire nuclear arsenal (let that sink in for a second) - you don't believe that the clock moving on a tweet of his nearly taking us to war (or anything of that nature) isn't a reason for it to move?

<comment><USER11> I don't think there is much of a correlation between Trump tweets, Trump thoughts, and Trump actions. Of course I could be proven wrong at any moment, but I would not be around any longer to observe it... In any case, judging how much panic should be had every time the President mouths off is something that nuclear physicists are not abnormally qualified for, at least not above anyone else. There really doesn't need to be a special panel of atomic scientists dedicated to reading Trump tweets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Did we have to read it? A scientist saying scientists can or can't do this doesn't mean much...

Scientists discovered ozone depletion. Scientists discovered what caused depletion. Scientists pushed for a political resolution.

Scientists and politicians can be both scientific and political. In fact, our system is better when they're both.

I love Lawrence's books and some of his speeches. I just don't buy this kind of stuff.

Also, "publicity stunt" is "in the eye of the beholder". Not quantitative and unscientific so meh. If doomsday clocks can get people to take action, they should.

If it was as easy as education - we wouldn't need this post or Lawrence saying what he did. We have a society that shuns education as elitism, anti- capitalist, socilist or whatever they believe.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss)</comment>