Apple files final response in San Bernardino iPhone case - <AUTHOR> http://www.sbsun.com/government-and-politics/20160315/apple-files-final-response-in-san-bernardino-iphone-case <comment><USER2> This seems like an instance in which a small number of people could strongly affect an outcome - in which civil disobedience could matter.

For Apple to comply with the court's order would require some of its employees to act. If whoever at Apple is told to comply with the court's order declines to do so, then what? If every Apple employee asked to supply information to the FBI refuses, then what? If every coder Apple tries to hire to comply with the court order declines to come aboard...how will the FBI get what it wants?

Of course, those critical people would have to be willing to lose their jobs or not accept employment.

Long ago, Rosa Parks declined to give up her seat on the bus in favor of a white passenger. She was arrested for it, and we have a better country for her pains.

This is an opportunity for Parks v.2016 - if you're asked by Apple to do anything to comply with the court order, don't do it.

<comment><USER3> Do you honestly think Rosa Parks risking her life and limb to protest racial injustice is even remotely equivalent to an engineer at Apple refusing to comply with a court order to look at the information on the iPhone's of the two nut jobs that killed:

Shannon Johnson Bennetta Bet-Badal Aurora Godoy Isaac Amanios Larry Kaufman Harry Bowman Yvette Velasco Sierra Clayborn Robert Adams Nicholas Thalasinos Tin Nguyen Juan Espinoza Damian Meins Michael Wetzel

?

Listen, I understand you feel passionate about securing your privacy, but it would likely help your case to keep things a little more in perspective

<comment><USER4> Your behaviour exactly illustrates the equivalent between the two: arbitrary social pressure against what is, I would argue, better for humanity.

Thankfully, we have strong smart influencal people taking a stand for us,humans. And we should appreciate that.

And I don't think I'm risking too much by saying that dodging an authoritarian surveillance regime is better for humanity.

Finally, I understand that people dying is scary, but let me put things in perspective for you: Should the death of a finite number of people put at risk 7 billions lives and the lives of their children for centuries?

Edit: few -> finite

<comment><USER3> Here's the frustrating bit for me though: the FBI going to the courts, getting a court order, and asking for that court order to be executed, is very different from "an authoritarian surveillance regime". It is _exact_ opposite. If the FBI didn't do it this way, what exactly should they do? Whenever they come up against anything that was signed with an AES key, just go "oh well, can't get it"? Today your phone content has that kind of key, what's to stop that being used elsewhere?

<comment><USER5> >Here's the frustrating bit for me though: the FBI going to the courts, getting a court order, and asking for that court order to be executed, is very different from "an authoritarian surveillance regime".

The frustrating bit for me is that many people believe that a courts power is unlimited and that simply by virtu of the FBI obtaining a rubber stamp from a court it makes their demand A OK... makes their demand ethical, moral, or constitutional.

The frustrating bit for me is that many people on the side of the FBI believe because people died in a terrorist act that justifies any loss of privacy and liberty for anyone now and in the future.

>and asking for that court order to be executed, is very different from "an authoritarian surveillance regime". It is exact opposite

Actually it is not. Almost all Authoritarian Surveillance Regime are perfectly legal, and have the full blessing of the Law and Courts in their jurisdictions. In fact by having a courts approval, and the authorization under law that makes it a surveillance __STATE __the key requirement of a surveillance state is said surveillance happens legally.

>Whenever they come up against anything that was signed with an AES key, just go "oh well, can't get it"?

Yes. There seems to be an idea that the FBI is entitled to, has a right to all information at all times provided it ordered by a court somewhere. This flies in the face of historical fact. Never in human history has law enforcement had more information about its citizen, the needle is HEAVILY pointed in favor of the government, Encryption gives the citizens some limited authority to take that back. This idea that the government is entitled to know everything about you under court order is naive and not based in reality or history.

<comment><USER6> There is an extremely significant fact that this line of argument ignores: the FBI only seeks the ability to unlock a phone if it either has a warrant or (in this case) has the consent of the phone's owner. This is a capability that it already has for virtually every other type of phone--the only difference here is the amount of technical effort required to make it happen. I have a very hard time seeing how the FBI's ability to unlock a phone under these limited circumstances means they are an "Authoritarian Surveillance Regime."

They are not asking for the ability to unlock any phone at any time for any reason.

<comment><USER7> "They are not asking for the ability to unlock any phone at any time for any reason."

When he was asked by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

Director of National Intelligence and Admiral James Clapper: "No, sir."

Wyden: "It does not?"

Clapper: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

^These are the people you're saying "aren't asking" for the ability. They are asking for a universal lock picking kit and the legal authority to strong-arm any manufacturer into allowing access to the keys for their devices as well. If you honestly believe that they wouldn't use these tools for other cases beyond this one phone, I've got this amazing bridge you may be interested in.

<comment><USER6> That's the beginning of a perfectly good argument that the activities _of the NSA_ make the U.S. a surveillance state. (Though I don't, ultimately, agree with it.) But it has nothing to do at all with the topic under discussion which is whether the capability that the FBI seeks to unlock iPhones would turn the U.S. into a surveillance state.

And I never said anything about a single phone. I fully expect that the FBI would use this capability to unlock lots of other phones either with the owner's permission, or with a warrant. (Just as they do today, with every other type of phone.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tim Cook has done a lot at Apple, but this ethical stand will likely be the most important thing he does in his life. It's a big fucking deal.

<comment><USER9> The story is that the last piece of advice jobs gave tim was to do what he thought was right. I don't think he's trying to be a martyr or anything, but I bet he's trying to do what's right in the situation. Knowing they'll fight this sort of battle really had me considering apple products again honestly, and I gave up that train long ago.

<comment><USER10> However, I still see no mention of protecting other nationalities. E.g. I'm French, since the 2015 attacks we have a law saying companies should snitch, the iPhone could very well save my fingerprint/pw outside the secure enclave if it ever needs to unlock it. I want to believe Apple is the one company that respects my privacy. Please, Apple, say your device fits my expectations.

<comment><USER11> They already did. Last time is in this latest brief where they say there is only one version of OS for all devices in all countries. Same is true for their other services (also mentioned in brief).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The fact of the matter is that U.S. founders would be appalled by DOJ IPhone request, but the common people are not; that is a problem. It is a problem because the U.S. founders made the U.S. Constitution to tell the Federal Government that the people are free, not the other way around; The U.S. Constitution has a purpose and not a meaning e.g. Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution; The fact that a federal government entity, such as the DOJ, wants access to a private 'citizens'' (yes, legally corporations are people) intellectual property is unconstitutional. This, sadly, illustrates the mindset of the Federal Government and the status-quo. What happened to the people being jurisprudence? The Federal Government is unbound and reckless and it needs to be bound; bound by the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution that was philosophically created to serve a purpose, and that is Limited Federal Government. . .everyone seems to start in the middle of a problem, but never the beginning. Beginning here being The Federal Government and the problems it has propagated. Maybe then people will realize that its solutions are just problems, solutions that solve problems they created. Now, apropos to the topic. . .yes the founders would be appalled and so should the people. The appeal to the founders argument is an appeal to look back to history and identify with true political values that made this country so great. Else you can just "sit back and listen and they will tell you when you'r wrong. . ."

<comment><USER13> The Founder Fathers would most certainly not be appalled by the DOJ iPhone request. After all, a Congress consisting of many of the _actual_ Founding Fathers passed the Sedition Act (of 1798), which suppressed the right to criticize the government, and the Alien Friends Act, which allowed for the deportation of non-citizens without any due process.

Having lived through a weak government (the Articles of Confederation), the Founding Fathers viewed the Constitution as _empowering_ the Federal Government, not restricting it.

<comment><USER12> Maybe you should read the Sedition act a little more carefully. . .it is applicable to any attempt of sedition when one criticizes the government while abiding by the constitution __ __" to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing, or executing his trust or duty: and if any person or persons. . .by the powers invested to they/them [entity] by the U.S. Constitution. . ."

<comment><USER14> Look at the people arrested under the Sedition Act and the purpose with which it was passed. It was passed, and used, by the Federalists to suppress the more outspoken Democratic-Republicans, some of whom were arrested for doing nothing more than criticizing the government.

<comment><USER12> It's interesting that you point that out; Since the Sedition Act was passed by a Federalist dominated party it only further supports my premise of the U.S. Constitution having a purpose not a meaning for interpretation, which is what the Federalists were doing. . .they wanted to expand the Federal Government (Nationalize), Central Banking System and relationships with the British Monarchy (empire) for which was the complete antithesis of the purpose for the constitution. We are getting into the follies of going against the constitution __*past and present (as Thomas Jefferson always argued); we are digging deep; and that is good. Now, why is the U.S.A a Democratic Republic and not a Democracy? Why is the power to coin money a job exclusive to the Federal Government? (article 1 section 8) (as opposed to the FIAT system of today? I ask you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's another thread about this on the front page right now [1]

I suggest that we as technologists get together and inform the public about this issue. I don't know if the EFF is contacting congressmen or not, but we should be informing them and making ourselves available for their questions should they have any about computer technology.

I propose that we,

1\. seek out public figures and media who can share our message

2\. come up with more concise messaging that is understandable by a non-techie

3\. back it up with facts and primary sources

John Oliver is not enough. All the tech companies is not enough. This is as big as or bigger than SOPA. When we fought SOPA, we didn't have the possibility that people could blame us in the future for terrorist attacks if that bill did not pass. If and when we fight an anti-encryption bill, we will be fighting that alarmist view. We will make it much easier on ourselves if we seek to educate the public about the issues and let them make up their own minds.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293949)

<comment><USER16> Bernie Sanders would have the most leverage. His stance on privacy: [http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-privacy-and- digital...](http://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-privacy-and-digital- rights/).

If contacting the campaign team directly doesn't work, you can make a thread on /r/sandersforpresident or join the Coders for Sanders slack group to influence that group. The devs behind berniesanders.com are active on there too.

<comment><USER15> It's a great idea in theory. Can you reach him or someone on his team?

I've tried to reach Bernie but have no contacts. Supposedly we're 6 degrees apart but I don't know the path. I tried contacting Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's, who is one of his supporters and an activist himself, but didn't hear back.

People are reluctant to address the issue on his subreddit. I've tried posting extensive information on the subject twice already [1] [2]

His supporters are not even informed enough themselves.

It's up to us and the EFF to get the message out there.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/474b28...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/474b28/sanders_would_look_great_if_he_sided_with_apple/)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/49otvu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/49otvu/the_mass_surveillance_debate_kicked_off_by/)

EDIT: I'm trying via the coders for sanders slack group now

<comment><USER16> I don't have any personal connections but you can try reaching out to someone on the campaign team [1] over Twitter. It's still a shot in the dark but you're more likely to get their attention there than over email.

[1] [http://www.p2016.org/sanders/sandersorg.html](http://www.p2016.org/sanders/sandersorg.html)

<comment><USER15> I've tweeted at a few groups and people recently [1]. Nobody replies or communicates on that service. They just retweet and parrot their own viewpoints.

I'll give it a shot though, thanks. I'm not really a twitter kind of person so I admit I could be doing it wrong.

[1] [https://twitter.com/studentrob/with_replies](https://twitter.com/studentrob/with_replies)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am disheartened that it takes the money, fame, and power of a megacorporation just to meet the balance between individuals and government.

<comment><USER18> I agree, but this megacorporation is a direct result of the wants and needs of individuals, so think of Apple as our collective bargaining leverage.

<comment><USER19> > "...the wants and needs of individuals"

Isn't that what the government is supposed to represent. Sigh...

<comment><USER20> To be fair, Congress seems to be on Apple's side here. It's just our ever- more-overreaching executive branch that's the issue.

<comment><USER21> But they don't seem to be doing much to help Apple, though. They're just letting this play through, just like they let the executive gain more and more power and they didn't say anything or even encouraged it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It takes the biggest, richest, most loved and most powerful companies to stand up to the insane overreach of government authority. Even then everyone sucks in their breath "Are they really daring to defy the power of the government?"

Everyone else, every other organisation is little people.

Sad that it came to be that governments rule the people instead of the government serving the people.

<comment><USER23> Yeah. Though, I would suggest that governments (in conjunction with or as tools of unelected aristocrats, feudal overlords, warlords, strongmen, etc.) have always ruled, and it's only in the past 200-300 years that the people have started to take the power unto themselves.

Democracy's a very new and quite brilliant invention, really, when you look at it in the perspective of tens of thousands of years of human social and political development.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py Ok but in the eyes of the law at the time, george washington was a terrorist (in addition to being 6 feet tall and made of radiation). Of course a guy like Paul Revere would have been pro-privacy. He needed privacy to deliver intelligence on british troop movements.

Some legal scholars view the declaration of independence as part of the constitution (and the primary part). But clearly any 'right to rebel' wasn't recognized during the civil war. So we can conclude that the climate has changed.

Notice that tim cook isn't out there fighting against apple's ability to push code or fighting for me to install debian on my ipad. He's fighting for his own institution's right to resist the orders of a larger institution. This is like the magna carta -- it was about the rights of the british aristocracy, not the lower gentry or the feudal labor force.

Now that they've crossed the IRS and DOJ off the list of federal agencies they give a crap about, next on the list might be the DMV. Apple car anyone?

<comment><USER24> There's never a right to rebel, that's sort of the definition of the word. It's a reaction that comes about when all the legal avenues have been exhausted or hit brick walls.

<comment><USER25> You've missed GP's point.

If the DoI is a reflection of understood common law, and it asserts a right to rebel (which, of course, it does), then there _is_ a right to rebel.

<comment><USER24> Well, it asserts it as a right "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism"

Which is not that different than "all legal avenues exhausted" but you're correct, it does claim it as a literal right. Thanks for inspiring me to re- read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone have a link to the response that Apple filed with the court? (The article didn't seem to link to it anywhere, unfortunately.)

Edit: I seem to have found it: [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762131/C-D- Cal-1...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762131/C-D- Cal-16-Cm-00010-Dckt-000177-000-Filed-2016.pdf)

(Found via this article: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/15505433916/apple...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160315/15505433916/apples- response-to-doj-your-filing-is-full-blatantly-misleading-claims-outright- falsehoods.shtml))

<comment><USER27> See also the supplement where Apple picks apart many technical inaccuracies of the DOJ's claims.

[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762149/Supp- Neue...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762149/Supp- Neuenschwander-Decl-Executed.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I never like the appeal to founding fathers argument as if it carries any weight.

(1) They could barely agree on anything, so it's not like they would magically agree today

(2) They would also be appalled by women's rights / civil rights, so I don't think this is a good test

<comment><USER29> Many of the founders detested slavery.

Also, most of them would be appalled at the size, scope, and influence of the federal government/bureaucracy and the Supreme Court.

Of course a better appeal would be to the principles of liberty outlined in the founding documents of the United States -- principles most of us take for granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In the same way Apple shifts global tax to Ireland, could they shift the encryption ownership (sorry - there's surely a better technical term I could use) to an overseas holding company where this is likely to be quickly dismissed? Essentially make it like suing Apple in an attempt to control Google search results type thing... its simply a different entity.

<comment><USER31> Huh... That may be possible! It would require Apple not being able to control that entity, however. They would effectively have to outsource security (seems like a dangerous plan). Also, the gov't could then simply outlaw the outsourcing of security functions for device manufacturers.

<comment><USER32> They could use multiple signing keys. One in America, one in Hong Kong, one in Germany, etc. If a firmware update is not signed in all (or N of M) jurisdictions, the secure enclave simply rejects it.

<comment><USER33> This sounds like a good case for a threshold signature scheme[1] where no one member has all of a complete key and can partially sign without revealing their piece of the key to anyone.

[1] [http://www.iacr.org/archive/eurocrypt2000/1807/18070209-new....](http://www.iacr.org/archive/eurocrypt2000/1807/18070209-new.pdf)

<comment><USER34> You don't actually need any new clever algorithms at all. At least on Windows, you can simply sign code with multiple certificates.

<comment><USER33> Aren't all algorithms "clever" at some level? I assume you are implying non- mainstream - that always carries risks, but there are some advantages:

1\. The software that verifies the certificate doesn't need to be changed - which is quite an advantage if it has already been shipped, or if you need to change the signing rules at a later date.

2\. The verification logic is exactly the same as if checking a regular, single signature certificate. Nice and simple, no bugs related to whether all criteria have been met by multiple certificates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The whole thing is a charade. Since the Snowden revelations we know that:

\- the NSA has access to any information it wants, with (coerced or not) collaboration from US companies

\- the affected companies can not talk about it. In fact, they are forced to deny any kind of interference, backdoor or collanoration.

The outcome of this trial does not matter. If Apple loses, it will give the impression that it fights for users rights, if it wins it will give the false impression that we have secure comunications.

Caveat emptor: doing business with any US corporation is putting your data at risk.

<comment><USER36> The whole thing is not a charade, but you're missing the point of it all. The FBI is trying to set legal precedent. If the FBI were trying to simply get data off the phone, they would've given it to the NSA.

"doing business with any US corporation is putting your data at risk." Governments create laws that all organizations in that country must follow. You'd be better off saying that doing business with any corporation in any country is putting your data at risk.

<comment><USER35> The US has secret laws, secret trials, secret institutions, ... Basically, your country has long been run by secret powers, and you keep believing the show. The "FBI is trying to set legal precedent" is part of the show: if they get it, they'll use it; if not, they'll access any information they want by other means.

What matters is: is your data secure, like 100% secure, on Apple devices? The answer, no matter the outcome of this charade, is "no, not even close"

<comment><USER36> Societies are fallible because they are representative of man. We agree on the statement that data is not 100% secure on Apple devices. Only a fool believes that any data is truly secure.

<comment><USER35> Criptographicaly secure would be good enough for me. If the only means of craking the data us brute force, and it takes 1000 years with current technology to do so, then I'm happy.

Iphones security can be circunvented by 6 engineers in 3 weeks (or was it the other way around?) This is mot brute force, mind you. The work done for one iphone allowd you ro crack (instantaneously!) the rest of iphones.

Has this been developed? I dont care: the fact that ut can be done disqualifies the iphone as a secure device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Do some people actually think Apple is in the wrong here?

<comment><USER38> I think Apple is legally in the wrong. What the law _should be_ is a different issue, though I also side with the government in this particular case. I don't think the government should be able to force Apple to ship backdoored phones to customers. But I think that the government should be able to require Apple to use its capabilities to hack particular devices with a court order. In other words, Apple should be free to make phones they themselves cannot hack, but not to refuse to help hack a phone that the government has a warrant for.

<comment><USER39> _But I think that the government should be able to require Apple to use its capabilities to hack particular devices with a court order._

That's not the question, though: the question is whether the All Writs Act _already_ grants that power, or whether a new piece of legislation is required.

I think that Apple is right that it is more conservative for the courts to construe the existing legislation narrowly, since the Government always has the option to put specific legislation before Congress to remove all doubt.

<comment><USER38> Legislation shouldn't be construed broadly or narrowly. It should mean what it says. Sometimes that's called 'narrowly', but that's probably in contrast to approaches where the law means whatever you want it to mean. The All Writs Act is a broad law. It grants the courts the broad authority to issue whatever orders are "necessary and appropriate" in order to enforce their judgments, so long as its "agreeable to the usages and principles of law." Congress is free to pass revisions to the All Writs Act if it pleases.

<comment><USER39> It's all very well to say _" It should mean what it says."_, but this is just begging the question - frequently what it says is imprecise, so the meaning is open to interpretation. In the case of the _All Writs Act_ , for example, the Supreme Court found a three-pronged test in _New York Telephone_.

It's precisely because it is a very broad law that it should be construed narrowly - in this case, that it is intended to be able to compel the co- operation of parties with some real involvement in a case, not to authorise open-ended civil conscription in service of the judicial branch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The whole request is absurd. If DOJ really believes Apple will ever give up its firmware signing key, they've got another thing coming.

<comment><USER41> I don't think DOJ knows what they're doing here at all. At worst, they'll force Apple and the rest to have subsidiaries off-shore with the signing key.

<comment><USER42> We been there before and unfortunately Apple will lose. One word: CALEA [1]

 _USA telecommunications providers must install new hardware or software, as well as modify old equipment, so that it doesn 't interfere with the ability of a law enforcement agency (LEA) to perform real-time surveillance of any telephone or Internet traffic._

Change to: USA cellphone producers must alter their hardware or software, as well as modify remote equipment, so that it doesn't interfere with the ability of a law enforcement agency (LEA) to perform real-time surveillance of any telephone or data traffic.

 _Carriers are responsible for CALEA development and implementation costs._

AFAIK nobody opposed CALEA and its been years since 2007 when it was implemented.

So unfortunately Apple will lose and their standing that corp cannot be forced to write a code or alter it because of their free will or cost possibly incurred, will not stand the chance :(

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

<comment><USER43> CALEA says:

 _A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government 's ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication._

Apple seems protected under this clause, since they do not possess the information necessary to decrypt. This is also why the feds can't wiretap iMessage.

CALEA text: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/1002](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/1002)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> On a technical level I really don't understand something about this situation. All the discussion I see presupposes that the only option for Apple to comply with the FBI is to build & sign this new version of iOS, and then give it to the government, who will distribute it internally to unlock hundreds of phones held as evidence in local court cases across the country, at which point it may or may not (but probably will) be stolen.

It seems like there's another possibility, where Apple takes the phone, signs the compromised version of iOS on an air-gapped computer deep in Cupertino somewhere, decrypts the phone, sends the decrypted hard drive image to the FBI, and then erases the signed version of the software. Why would this process have any higher risk of being compromised than Apple's normal release process for signing new iOS versions?

I get the reason this case matters at a more fundamental level, the precedent it sets and whether or not the government can force Apple to spy on its customers. But there's been so much focus on the technical feasibility of it, and it seems like Apple is exaggerating the argument that it's absolutely impossible to build this new iOS version without it being hacked.

<comment><USER3> This is the smartest, most well consider comment on this whole topic, and I'm sorry to say you're likely to be down voted into oblivion :)

<comment><USER45> Not really. Consider this - right now a key part of the discussion is whether compelling Apple to write this software is an undue burden. Most reasonable people would agree that it would take quite some effort. However, if Apple did it once for the terrorist's phone (which no one objects to) then every subsequent request would have minimal burden attached to it. Thus they would have to comply to any subsequent request to unlock, even if the phone didn't belong to a terrorist. What if it only belonged to a whistleblower or humans rights activist? Too bad, minimal burden.

If it becomes common enough, Congress wouldn't face much opposition if they passed a law saying that the status quo (on demand unlocking) be maintained by smartphone manufacturers.

I suggest you actually read up on the filings from both sides before talking so much.

<comment><USER3> (Trying hard not to take the bait at the end)

But, by fighting this case on the all writs, they're basically staking their whole position on: "the govt can't compel a private firm to work on their behalf". If that wins, then what's to stop the govt requesting master keys for iOS? Much less work, bypasses all writs.

My point is: the FBI did this by the book (court order). You and most everyone else here makes the assumption that granting this means the FBI can do whatever the hell they like from there on in. That's not true. They would still need court orders.

<comment><USER46> It is about the future of encryption. If the FBI wins and gets Apple to unlock the phone, will Apple be held in contempt later when they make a phone that they makes them unable to comply with a court order?

<comment><USER3> Clearly not. It does raise the issue of whether you think this would be a good thing for Apple to do. I have not made up my mind on that topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not well versed in the legal process here... I assume that the hearing is just a formality at this point, and the case is all but certain to be appealed, right?

<comment><USER48> This is their final response in their own federal district court. The district court will issue its decision. Afterwards the next appeal would be to the US Supreme Court. That level of appeal can take years if accepted, or more commonly, is ignored. In the meantime there can be orders for them to comply in the meantime or face consequences.

<comment><USER49> I think you missed a step. This is currently in District Court, the next appeal would be to the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, yes?

<comment><USER50> I thought we were at the step where the case is now fully briefed? Isn't the next step oral arguments at the district court level? Then a District court ruling. Then appeal to 9CA, and so forth. Although if someone files for an Emergency TRO, I'm not sure if that goes to 9CA or to the SCOTUS Justice that oversees 9CA (Kennedy).

<comment><USER51> The hearing at the district court level will be before a magistrate judge (because of the way that the issue arose in connection with a search warrant). Magistrate judges' orders can also be appealed to the district judge assigned to the case, which happens before an appeal to the court of appeals.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_59](https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_59)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I find it hard to believe that the All Writs Act can still be used/relevant in today's society. The All Writs Act was created in the 18th century when the technology was nearly nothing. How can we reference this act when technology has changed exponentially? If the FBI can force Apple to build a key, you can be sure authoritarian regimes like China and Russia will turn around and force Apple to hand it over to them .... And who knows what happens next, they could use that key to oppress their own people.

<comment><USER53> The Act itself is relevant as a gap filler as long as courts issue warrants, subpoenas, etc. Apple's reply brief gives the example of a court having authority under the AWA to make provision for overnight housing for a prisoner whose testimony takes more than one day.

Apple's main statutory argument is that the government is stretching the AWA to do something that it was never intended to do when there is more recent legislation from the 90s (CALEA) where Congress ultimately rejected giving law enforcement this power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> If they were to lose and lose all future appeals and Apple still didn't wish to comply, what would it take to get around such a request?

Would Apple have to re-incorporate outside of the U.S.A?

<comment><USER55> That's the beauty of the new spaceship campus - it can just land in another country if need be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This case should really be open and shut at this point.

The real question is, _what happens next_ in Obama's office, the DOJ and among the American public?

Obama has already tried to get Congress to give him legislation that would force tech companies to be able to give user data to the government [1]. It's slow going. I don't think we'll see that bill this month. Presumably, after that bill was delayed last year, he then directed the DOJ to go to court over these issues with Apple. I predict that fails.

The President has already alluded to the future in his remarks at SXSW. In his view, after the next terrorist attack, Congress will rush through legislation and it will be ugly.

At that point, we will be depending largely on the public's understanding of computer technology and encryption so that we can respond with an even hand. If people support encryption and let their representatives know, then we are good. But if they remain uninformed, there is a possibility that they will feel passing an anti-encryption bill would make them safer from terrorism.

Let's examine a possible future where the case is won by Apple and in the future there is a terrorist attack that used encryption to accomplish its goals.

What will happen? Will law enforcement point the finger at technologists? Will they claim we enabled the attack by blocking legislation that, in their view, would have solved the "going dark" problem they claim they face?

Further, how will the public respond? There is _still_ currently 42% of the population who believes the government should be able to compel Apple to write software, which they do not want to write, that aids the FBI [2].

The clock is ticking. We don't know how much time we have to educate the public about encryption until the next terrorist attack. In my view, we need to,

1\. seek out public figures and media who can share our message 2\. come up with more concise messaging that is understandable by a non-techie 3\. back it up with facts and primary sources

John Oliver is not enough. All the tech companies is not enough. This is as big as or bigger than SOPA. When we fought SOPA, we didn't have the possibility that people could blame us in the future for terrorist attacks if that bill did not pass. If and when we fight an anti-encryption bill, we will be fighting that alarmist view. We will make it much easier on ourselves if we seek to educate the public about the issues and let them make up their own minds.

[1] [http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning- cybersecurity/2016...](http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning- cybersecurity/2016/02/march-is-encryption-bill-month-hackers-going-after- japans-infrastructure-a-mixed-final-2015-tally-212865)

[2] [http://www.dailydot.com/politics/apple-iphone-doj-fbi- wall-s...](http://www.dailydot.com/politics/apple-iphone-doj-fbi-wall-street- journal-poll/)

<comment><USER56> _If and when we fight an anti-encryption bill, we will be fighting that alarmist view._

Somehow technologists have to reframe the discussion. Up to now the government decides the emotional context, sells it to the people, and forces tech companies to react within that context. The government portrays itself as the good guys, or the protectors of society, or the moderate ones, or the fair- minded ones. To the extent that they are not protecting, moderate, or fair- minded, that's what needs to change. The government's disinformation campaign needs to stop. I don't know how to do it, but the technology world needs to set the stage, make its case, and invite the government to meet on technology's terms, not the other way around.

<comment><USER15> We should argue this issue in terms of security and the economy. Those are the terms politicians and people understand.

See [1] [2] [3] about security

About the economy, Obama himself provides the best argument there. Last year he told President Xi that anti-encryption laws would hurt his economy [4]

I'm interested in starting a grassroots campaign around this issue. Shoot me an email at stillastudent using Google's email service if you're interested in helping.

[1] [https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s](https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h35m52s)

[2] [https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s](https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h11m46s)

[3] [https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s](https://youtu.be/g1GgnbN9oNw?t=3h19m39s)

[4] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china- idUSKBN0LY...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-obama-china- idUSKBN0LY2H520150302)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The Founders probably couldn't comprehend mobile phones and the internet, let alone modern corporations being granted personhood.

So, who knows.

<comment><USER58> They certainly would have understood corporate legal status, and done so much better than nearly everyone who comments on it today.

And honestly I don't think it would take most of them very long to grasp the implications of mobile phones, the internet, and encryption. The Founders whose names immediately come to mind were some very intelligent and mentally agile people. While our technology may be incomprehensible to them, the social frameworks into which it fits is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> They'd certainly side with Apple, but mostly in hopes that they could have their own iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER60> If you want to make a critical argument for people to make such a large sacrifice, stop using so much rhetoric. The story of Rosa Parks has been heavily editorialized and she was in fact not the first person to stand up to bus segregation. The first person was Claudette Colvin who refused to give up her seat on the bus March 2nd, 1955, a full 9 months before Rosa Parks [1]. The problem with Claudette Colvin was that she was a pregnant teenager, and the father was a married man.

I am by no means demeaning Rosa Parks. What she did was incredibly brave. I am however pointing out that you are willing to tell other people to sacrifice their jobs by editorializing. That strikes me as immoral, and I believe those at Apple will need to make such a decision honestly and without subterfuge if such a tremendous action is to occur.

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

Edit: I have 820 karma remaining and will happily throw the rest of it away for this comment, even if not a single one of you post a counter-argument to what I am saying.

<comment><USER61> You're not wrong about Rosa Parks, but I'm not sure how it applies any differently. Whether her example (though not the premier example) inspires someone to take up civil disobedience or not is entirely up to how she had inspired that person. The fact remains that she did engage in civil disobedience so why does it matter that she wasn't the first?

<comment><USER60> It had nothing to do with Rosa Parks specifically. I was pointing out to the OP that we can't sit here in our ivory desk chairs and tell other people to make a large sacrifice based on some superficial ethos argument. If you want to truly inspire people you do so with honesty and good intentions. You don't grasp at straws and tell people they can be Rosa Parks if they do what you say.

I will concede that explicit is better then implicit, but I seized the opportunity to clear up a historical inaccuracy in the process.

<comment><USER61> Sorry but you spent a good deal of your argument undermining Rosa Parks' contribution to civil disobedience so it's hard to swallow that it had nothing to do with her in particular.

And believe me: I'm all about not invoking easy references to drum up BS patriotism, but if that's your point, then say it like I just did.

I might also add that you yourself would probably benefit by putting something on the line before you make a career out of siezing on opportunities to clear up historical inaccuracies. Unless I somehow stumbled upon talking to Malala Yousafzi.

<comment><USER62> I don't see that as "undermining". It's more that Rosa Parks is very symbolic, but in many ways she was "standing on the shoulders of giants", and we see her, the symbol, but not the giants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Snowden's comment: [https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/709874783689826304](https://mobile.twitter.com/Snowden/status/709874783689826304)

<comment><USER64> I realize that Snowden has done a lot of good by releasing the information he has, but I really don't care what he personally has to say and his controlled release of the information demonstrates to me that what he's do is as much for attention and his ego as it is anything else.

<comment><USER65> If Snowden released it all at once, he would've lost leverage. He's playing for much higher stakes than "attention and ego". If he slips up, it's over for him.

<comment><USER64> What leverage does he have? I'm pretty sure if the NSA wanted it, he'd be dead already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> muh founding fathers

US founders would be appalled by the fact that you can't own slaves anymore too. nobody can farm 20 acres of land by himself.

</comment><comment><USER67> Thomas Jefferson just expressed his ovtrage on his twitter accovnt.

</comment><comment><USER68> The sooner they take down Apple the better. Security through obscurity is a failed strategy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious what you guys think the government should do differently here. There's a valid court order, there's a clear reason for this order to be executed, and the request is restricted. They do not, for example ask for the private signing keys for iOS. That would be less work for Apple, and actually well within the rights of the govt. An unpopular argument I realize, particularly in the post-Snowden era, but I would be curious to hear some considered reflections on how the govt should go about this differently. Assume for example that this is not Apple, but instead Enron protecting the laptop of their CTO

<comment><USER69> > and actually well within the rights of the govt

[citation needed]

It's also entirely possible Apple _can 't_ easily give them the key, since from what I've heard the key only exists in HSMs. Presumably they have more than one HSM, but I imagine the fact that they'd need to physically give the FBI hardware that's normally used in the course of their business would complicate matters.

<comment><USER3> Regarding [citation needed] specifically related to how the govt has a right to seize the keys:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11294164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11294164)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293982)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293795)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293778)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11293514)

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm glad that we have international megacorporations to tell us what the authors of the US Constitution would think about things.

<comment><USER72> Yeah the founders of the us were just regular old folk, none of them did international business.

<comment><USER71> Were they themselves corporations? Did they avoid taxes using a double Irish strategy? Do tell, this alternate history is becoming more interesting every second.

<comment><USER72> They had a fucking revolution over EVADING taxes by buying tea from places other than England. They weren't avoiding taxes, they were putting guns in peoples faces covering them in tar and then feathers, throwing all the taxed tea in the ocean and then proceeding to conduct their business however they saw fit, government be damned.

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

So yeah, in this alternate history the Founders are a lot more fucking bad ass than Apple, going so far as to commit treason to avoid taxes. (Thankfully they won so the whole treason thing was moot)

Then they teamed up with the French to cause all sorts of problems for the English King, they probably would have gotten Ireland to fuck with the English too if they weren't already doing all they could to fuck up England. They would have called it a double irish spit roast.

And now getting back to writs, you might want to see that they created the 4th fucking amendment to give a big middle finger to England being able to issue a writ for whatever the fuck they wanted.

So we don't really have to ask what the founders would have thought because they told us directly. They were so gung ho on fucking with government that they even said if this revolution doesn't work out, have another one, because why the fuck not, and created the second amendment so that if anyone wanted to put guns in people faces again to evade taxes they could.

If they were alive today they'd probably be helping Apple smuggle untaxed iPhones from China free from any sort of government restriction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cyanogen Inc. lays off OS development team - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/07/report-cyanogen-inc-to-layoff-20-of-workers-may-pivot-to-app-development/ <comment><USER2> I appreciate that this article attempts to explain the structure behind all "Cyanogen" entities, but I'm still left confused by all of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not quite as drastic as title suggests. They're just stopping focus on the open source CyanogenMod.</comment>


Facebook taking mobile numbers from other sources and adding them to profiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/08/09/how-did-facebook-get-my-number-and-why-is-it-giving-my-name-out/ <comment><USER2> Things like this are why I got into the habit of checking Facebook's settings every once in a while. Not that it would help much in this case, but hey. They seem to have a knack for fucking with my settings and reverting them to their respective defaults every now and then.

My pictures or posts are not visible to anyone but who's friends with me. Nobody can post anything on my wall or tag me in any picture or wall post without me approving the tag. Nobody can add me as a friend if they are not also friends with at least one of my friends (and I hate that I can't prevent _anyone_ from adding me, only enabling it when I actually need it or asking for friendship myself).

That being said, Facebook might as well do without asking you if you want to give them your phone number if they end up disregarding your decision and getting it anyway.

That's a dick move that might well mean I will delete my account. Not that it would make any difference for them, but being without Facebook won't make any difference to my life either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every so often FB asks me to add my mobile number and pre-fills the field with some number I'm not familiar with. Not mine, nor anyone I know. Perhaps I should celebrate. ;)

(I haven't paid attention to whether it's the same number every time I've been asked, though; I probably should, and perhaps do a reverse search on it to see if I can find out who it belongs to.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Currently you need a mobile number to create a FB account. For older profiles (I created mine back in 2007), it was not necessary, and I will not provide it to FB anyway.</comment>


Why the next iPhone screen could be made of sapphire - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/02/gorilla_glass_ipads/

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitted more because of the fascinating discusssion of Silicon wafer production.

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/motorola-x-to- have-4-8-inch-...](http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/motorola-x-to- have-4-8-inch-sapphire-screen-rumours-reckon-50010748/)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think "real" AI is possible? - <AUTHOR> A fully autonomous system capable of recognizing itself as a being and learning new concepts at a human-like level.
Personally, I don't think so. There are just too many hormones and chemicals that go into the human psyche and cause us to think and learn the way we do.
But I'm interested in hearing what you guys think. <comment><USER2> The core problem is that until you can define something precisely there is no way you can build that thing. This is the fundamental concept in designing anything artificial at all. By precisely I mean defined formally using mathematics. The problem with all the "words" that are associated with intelligence is that they are very very vague. So the question, as of now is not can we create real AI but it is more of can be even define, precisely, what we mean by real AI? What does self recognition or learning even mean?

</comment><comment><USER3> I disagree. Read a nice sci-fi story about this: [http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html](http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I believe an artificial intellect could be created one day, but I don't see how it is possible to create intelligence.</comment>


"We plan to release the source for ... Ice Cream Sandwich soon" - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/android-building/IwlEJtE1LsI/WtHcsPkUPMcJ

<comment><USER2> Well could you post the news once they did it? This has no useful information content.

</comment><comment><USER3> "…once it's available on devices"

Meaning: November. Basically, they won't hold it back like Honeycomb, this isn't a rush job.

<comment><USER4> Neither is it meaningfully an "open source project" any more, either. They do a lot of work and throw it over the wall. People are welcome to contribute fixes, but no meaningful architecture input flows inwards. I find that sad.

But it's far better than the disaster that was Honeycomb, or the fortess that Apple builds around its developers. But it's not where I personally would have hoped we would be at this point.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's a bit of a letdown in some ways, but... still. Liberally licensed project with tons of source code still isn't doing too bad.

To put a more constructive twist on things, I wonder how Google could achieve their goals and also make Android more 'real' Open Source?

<comment><USER4> The MeeGo world had a bunch of discussions on this. What ultimately (IMHO) matters to people is simple visibility into the design process. With desktop linux, we get that. We can see Gnome 3 coming and talk about it before it arrives. We can try out a new driver from a development tree. When the occasion arrives, we can grab/test/fix/rework this stuff and know who to push the changes to.

But when these processes and priorities collide with "product strategy" they always lose. Google and its partners want to unveil ICS in a big press conference, not an email message. Samsung wants to show the first ICS phone, and not be one-upped by some geek running a CM9 nightly image on a phone she bought last year. So they delay the source drop and shutter the doors on the git archives. But in so doing they kill off the "project" part of AOSP.

And no, this didn't really work in MeeGo either. I don't know what the answer is, except to decouple the OS vendor from the hardware vendor (i.e. the Red Hat model). But that won't work because apparently no one wants to sell an open consumer electronics device.

<comment><USER6> Google also does not want device manufacturers to ship pre-release versions of Android just to be first to market. This was apparently a problem with Froyo or Gingerbread.

Google could hold back the sexy UI and application changes and just develop the kernel and foundation libraries in the open. But some of their hardware partners are very secretive and do not want any details leaked about the capabilities of their new hardware that may be revealed in device drivers.

<comment><USER4> Those are certainly some of the reasons, yes. But my point was more that Google is doing a poor job of managing the conflict between the business interests of its hardware partners and the health of the Android Open Source Project. Basically, AOSP isn't a "project" anymore (if it ever was), and that's sad.

And it's not like this is an impossibility. Red Hat manages to sell RHEL licenses without killing Fedora, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They said they would do this months ago, why is it news?

<comment><USER8> Some people have been trying to one-up each other on cynicism by predicting that Google is lying.

<comment><USER9> I don't know whether they're lying or not.

I do know that Google has shown they can't be trusted to follow through on their promises of "openness" in the past. I know that the most recent public release of Android (Honeycomb, since ICS isn't out yet) was a closed-source product. I know that they did that for a reason -- controlling which devices end-users can run the software on -- that spits in the face of Freedom Zero. I know that Google's development process is the same one Apple has been flamed to a crisp for in the past (adopt an open-source codebase, do all your development in secret, and maybe chuck a tarball over the fence every so often).

I know that my attitude on Google and "open" nowadays is "I'll believe it when I see it". I know that there's an awful lot of rationalization going on in the minds of people who trusted Google and are now learning that may not have been such a smart idea...</comment></comment></comment>


Reddit Reaction to First iPhone Announcement - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/xmyy/apple_iphone_now_real/ <comment><USER2> it has wifi... had to laugh at that one</comment>


10 Inventors Killed By Their Inventions - <AUTHOR> http://listverse.com/science/10-inventors-killed-by-their-inventions/

<comment><USER2> Dugg for being a top ten list!

</comment><comment><USER3> What? No "Skynet"?</comment>


Temboo Martha - <AUTHOR> https://temboo.com/examples

<comment><USER2> Very cool. If you're looking for off-the-shelf API integrations, Temboo seems like a great solution.</comment>


VW's 'affordable' electric car to be offered from ~$30,000 in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/09/24/vw-neo-electric-car-battery-configurations-price-report/ <comment><USER2> I like the scare quotes around 'affordable'

If you actually look at the costs associated with owning a car capital costs are probably 25-30% of the total.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to track non-dev tasks/stories? - <AUTHOR>

We're big fans + users of Pivotal Tracker for managing development related tasks (stories).
We're now considering what we should use for non-tech tasks - especially for non-developers in our small startup (CEO, product development, etc).
We want to track current tasks and have an icebox to put future tasks an ideas.
We have Basecamp but use that more for collaboration rather than task tracking - the interface doesn't seem set up to do similar to Pivotal Track - which works really well for us.
What are other startups using? Thanks! <comment><USER2> I've been using Thymer, it's pretty good for me, and it should scale pretty well to a team environment. With that being said, the free trail should give you enough time to see how it works for your team, plus as I recall the pricing is pretty reasonable.</comment>


10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017 – MIT Technology Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2017/ <comment><USER2> Regarding the quantum computer article:

I can't imagine what kind of problems these machines will eventually address. I am reminded of when the Commodore 64 hobby computer came out. "What in the world," I wondered, "would require 64 K of ram?" 64 K was clearly excessive.

Comparing what computers can do now to my pathetic failure to anticipate what they might do someday suggests just how fantastic the future is going to be compared to now.</comment>


The night I Met Einstein - <AUTHOR> http://akshar100.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/the-nigt-i-met-einstein/

<comment><USER3> A brilliant article with many lessons. Some of the comments from last time it was submitted are interesting:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589608>

Another story about Einstein is told by a small girl who sees an apparently crazy man standing in a public square in front of a fountain waving his hands in front of his face. He turned to her and said:

"See! If you wave them at the right speed and look through your fingers, you can make the droplets stand still!"

 _That's_ the story that has always stuck with me, the delight in simple, elementary techniques to reveal things that otherwise can't be seen.

The story of progressing from the simple through phases to greater and greater complexity is also of value.

Oldie, goodie, and definitely worth remembering.

<comment><USER4> If you haven't already, I recommend reading a book called _Mister God, This is Anna_ by Fynn - [http://www.amazon.com/Mister-God-This-Anna- Fynn/dp/034532722...](http://www.amazon.com/Mister-God-This-Anna- Fynn/dp/0345327225)

A whole book of learning and wonder and beauty. If it doesn't make you cry, read it again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This story seems too perfect to be true.

<comment><USER6> I've seen it a couple of times over the years and always wondered. Its not on snopes either way. Think I'll submit it and let them sort it out.

<comment><USER7> That would be cool! But also a disappointment.

I've always read it under the assumption it isn't true - but that it's such a wonderful story Im going ot pretend it is anyway :)

<comment><USER8> Someone on the previous thread did some good research. I believe it's golden. Yes, RD does occasionally publish fiction but I believe, without heading to my city library's microfiche archives, that it is true.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=591165>

"3 points by gry 289 days ago | link

Seems on the up and up to me. Originally published in 1955 in the Reader's Digest by Jerome Weidman.

The table of contents are highlighted in this eBay posting, corroborating the byline."

Updated Ebay auction search for November 1955 Reader's Digest, see the TOC image from [updated] ebay listing:

"The Night I Met Einstein by Jerome Weidman . . . . . .61

[http://cgi.ebay.com/Readers-Digest- November-1955_W0QQitemZ38...](http://cgi.ebay.com/Readers-Digest- November-1955_W0QQitemZ380204103352QQcmdZViewItemQQptZMagazines?hash=item5885ee36b8)

<comment><USER9> Yes, the story was a winner of Reader's Digest's "First Person" story award - for unique, _true_ personal experiences. See page 214 of the Nov 1955 edition of Reader's Digest for more details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's hard to tell if this is authentic or not. It's easy to confirm (e.g. by Google Book Search) that it was published in Reader's Digest by Jerome Weidman in 1955. What's not clear is whether the incident ever happened or to what extent Weidman embellished it. I wouldn't hold the style of the piece against it; everything in Reader's Digest is like that, or used to be, and 1955 was probably a good year for smarm. On the other hand, "it appeared in Reader's Digest" isn't much evidence of anything.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sheep May Safely Graze <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jEXDPzqo2g>

A modern version of this story could include links to all 12 recordings, so you could follow along at home, as if with your own personal Einstein. It makes me think that the internet must be helping to accelerate technological advancement, singularity-style. Although, it might be mainly at the dissemination stage, rather than the cutting-edge. And... the same thing was probably thought of for television...

Of course, the key ingredients here are not informational resources - <USER2> someone who is profoundly interested in your growth, who is profoundly capable, and... someone you'll actually listen to.

</comment><comment><USER12> Already posted some time ago but still a beautiful story that I enjoyed (re)reading : )

</comment><comment><USER13> Beautiful story-- I love Einstein. This reminds me of this awesome book:<http://bit.ly/cprbVP>

<comment><USER14> Link routes me back here. You probably want to avoid bit.ly too, since HN shortens URLs anyway.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, here you go: [http://www.amazon.com/Driving-Mr-Albert-America- Einsteins/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Driving-Mr-Albert-America- Einsteins/dp/0385333005)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Denis Brian relates this incident in the book 'Einstein, a life', if my memory serves right. I believe it is true.

</comment><comment> dan-kruchinin Very interesting story. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very nice read but is it true ?

It seems for want of a better word - just too pat.</comment>


Minecraft sales cross 600k mark - <AUTHOR> http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp <comment><USER2> I think it is very important to note that Notch (the creator) has developed many other games before minecraft. Just check out is resume:

<http://www.mojang.com/notch/>

I think this is just more evidence that over-night success, takes lots of prior work.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, he has the experience needed to make an "over-night success". His Mensa membership and thereby accompanying massive brain doesn't hurt either.

<comment><USER4> Is mensa generally respected? I've always figured it was a pseudo-scam for intellectually competitive people, since one has to pay to take their test (and no sample tests are available.

<comment><USER5> At least for Mensa in Germany you can also take an alternative test, that's not provided by them.

I know some people who are quite involved with Mensa in Germany, and they seem sane, so far.

<comment><USER6> My GF is German, and a member of Mensa, and was involved in Germany.

When she moved to the UK and signed up with the local branch here, however, she was horrified by what she saw: self-important pretentious people lazily philosophizing about things they knew nothing about, with little intellectual rigour. The magazine still comes every month, but she wants no more part of it.

<comment><USER5> I was a bit involved with the university branch of Mensa in Germany, i.e. Mind Hochschulnetzwerk. But my contact with them is mostly through alumni from the Deutsche SchuelerAkademie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To anyone who might misread the title like I did, we're talking 600,000 _copies_ , not sales in USD.

What might be even more fascinating is Notch capitalizing on what was only the alpha version of his game. I'm sure that breaks with some of the preconceptions a lot of people on HN have.

<comment><USER8> 600,000 copies * 9.95 Euro = a lot of alpha money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't it the first time in history that a software author makes money like only athletes, writers and artists usually do?

Are we going to see the emerge of "software agents", who will help programmers make money out of talent much like "Literary agents" do with writers?

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER10> Interesting idea. However, I don't think that this is the first time. There have been several others who preceded Notch. Jordan Mechner of Prince of Persia comes to mind first.

<http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/>

<comment><USER11> Wow, thanks for sharing this. This deserves to be on the front page! We're lucky in 2010 to have a glimpse into what it was like to create things in 1986.

Also, I loved this bit:

 _October 23, 1986

Everyone in the office has been playing a lot of Tetris – a Russian submission for the IBM PC. It's a classic, like Breakout. But I don't think Broderbund is going to publish it. The knaves._

<comment><USER10> You're welcome. I actually learned about it from the HN front page, almost a year ago. I spent about 9 hours (6pm to 3am) that day reading the _entire_ journal on an iPhone (plugged in). It was the best non-book book that I'd read in a long while.

April 3, 1989

> We chatted for an hour about peripherally related topics. Broderbund, > corporate America, the rat race, capitalism, freedom. I was seducing him. At > the critical psychological moment, I remarked:

"You know, all my clipping is done on the byte boundaries." There was a pause

<http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/33>

May 6, 1989

> The other thing is, I liked them. Lately I'd been starting to feel jaded > about this whole enterprise – "Oh well, it's just a computer game" – but > watching Chris and Stu, I realized: These guys love games. They love games > the way I loved movies in college. Even more, because they're not interested > in girls yet. Computer games are like the air they breathe. If I can make > one that they can get excited about, that's a real accomplishment. That's > something I can be proud of.

So I worked till ten with renewed enthusiasm.

<http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/36/>

<comment><USER12> Another good one:

<http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/4/>

July 18, 1985

Driving me to the airport, Tomi said:

"I think you should pursue screenwriting. Go for it."

I was surprised and asked her why. She said that Broderbund is a really nice, warm, friendly place to work, but for programmers it's actually not that great a deal. The older ones, like Chris and David, are starting to get scared, because programming's the only marketable skill they have, and it's a young man's game. The new crop of kids coming up are willing to work harder and cheaper, and don't have girlfriends or families yet to cut into their working hours. And nobody knows how long the games market will be around, or what it'll be like next year.

I never would have thought of it quite like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dan Benjamin recently interviewed Markus "Notch" Persson (the creator of Minecraft): <http://5by5.tv/pipeline/30>

I thought it was especially interesting that Notch essentially hired to "business" people because he thinks that he isn't any good at it and because he wants to focus on developing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Roughly ~$8 million, without any distribution cut to speak of (other than bandwidth costs).

It'll be interesting to see what his newly incorporated studio does next, as he seems to be expanding fast and putting resources toward a sophomore effort already.

<comment><USER15> paypal fees

<comment><USER16> Since he qualifies for merchant rates due to his volume, it's just 1.9%. Better than he'd get with most banks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To anyone who might misread the title like I did, we're talking 600,000 _copies_ , not sales in USD.

</comment><comment><USER17> That should work out at ~£4.5MM profit, after PayPal takes their cut and misc. bills are paid (e.g. bandwidth.) Not bad for a one-man company (until recently, anyway.)

<comment><USER13> Don't forget taxes. I would about half his gross revenue to get a realistic handle on the kind of money he is making. Three million Euro so far seems like a realistic estimate to me.

<comment><USER17> Ah, the taxman, how could I forget thee! It'll be around ~51.3% in Sweden incl. the VAT.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure how Notch has his affairs organized, but the corporate tax rate over there is only 26%.

I remembered to check this because all European countries have lower corporate tax rates than America.

<comment><USER19> Corporate tax rates are way lower but personal income tax rates are significantly higher. So if he pays all of that money as salary to himself, that 50% number is quite realistic.

<comment><USER18> I'm assuming he will keep at least part of his money in a corporation to develop his game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here is an interview with Markus "Notch" Persson <http://5by5.tv/pipeline/30>

</comment><comment><USER19> For reference: when the hype first peaked, in mid august, there were 135k sold versions.

He generated about $5M in less than three months.</comment>


Richard Stallman on The Setup - <AUTHOR> http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't believe he uses only his netbook. I think he also uses the public CSAIL computers at Stata Center in MIT. They have a KDE Linux on them.

I have used them from time to time, and as before logging in, at the username prompt usually you can see the last user that was on the computer. Many times it was "rms".

</comment><comment><USER3> Typical Stallman... taking everything to the extreme and suffering the consequences. It's the burden of the idealist.

<comment><USER4> I admire his willingness to stand to what he believes.

Also, extremisms aside, he's contributed a lot to the community.

<comment><USER3> Beliefs are the bastion of the uninformed, and those so set in their ways they can't take a moment to think things through.

<comment><USER5> What you call beliefs, I call principles. It's nice to know he doesn't compromise them.

<comment><USER6> And what you call principles, I call dogmata.

<comment><USER7> Why not compromise and call them principles, just this once? Principles, dogma-- what's the difference, really?

<comment><USER8> Because if you compromise they're not principals...ok, bad joke. Mod me down.

<comment><USER7> I'll mod you up for the joke, but down because it was the same as the one I made.

<comment><USER8> Damn, I missed yours it was so subtle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First time I've come across the setup. Here are some interviews with a few other HN regulars:

<http://paul.graham.usesthis.com/> <http://aaron.swartz.usesthis.com/>

_why is listed on their mainpage too but his interview seems to have been removed

<comment><USER10> _why's link works fine: <http://_why.usesthis.com/>

Drawn and quirky (or precious, depending on your taste or mood) as normal for _why.

<comment><USER11> Hmmm. I think this depends on your DNS provider. This link is broken for me: I think my ISP does not like hostnames starting with underscores.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. If it helps or anyone else is curious, I'm using OpenDNS.

<comment><USER11> This is really strange. None of the browsers on my machine can access this URL. But

      dig _why.usesthis.com

returns the correct info.

According to Wikipedia, the use of underscores in hostnames is illegal, but many implementations ignore this. Anyway, the interview is mirrored here: <http://viewsourcecode.org/why/#7>

<comment><USER12> <http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.html#sec-18.104.22.168>

Looks like underscores are valid in /domain names/ but not in /host names/.

You'll see underscores used many times for SPF records and in Microsoft's Active Directory.

Also, when you use dig I'm pretty sure it manually recurses the name server hierarchy while an application will just connect to your local name server which might have its own policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It sounds as if he operates in batch mode with regard to communication.

<comment><USER14> In 2007 at least, he opted to use a demon to email him pages rather than browse the web:

        For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer.  (I
        also have not net connection much of the time.)  To look at page I
        send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
        It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.

<http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/>

<comment><USER15> I hope it's a joke. I actually did this some 12 years ago. We only had email access at my high school, and I used to browse ftp sites by email. With emails being sent only twice a day. I leaned pretty quickly that all the good stuff is in /pub... saved me a full day of browsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> RMS had actually switched to an OLPC XO laptop but then dropped it:

<http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.6/stallman.php>

Does anyone know of a US distributor for the Yeeloong netbook?

<comment><USER17> +1, that is an interesting article. I read he dropped the OLPC because it allowed running Windows on it. He expects the OLPC to turn millions of children into Windows users, and compares Windows to an addictive drug, and Microsoft to a drugs dealer supplying kids with a cheap first 'fix'. Also, Windows will not run on his Lemote laptop.

<comment><USER18> I will personally buy a Yeelong netbook and install Windows on it just so RMS has no computer to use at all if that's how he swings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _"This interview is available under the Attribution No Derivatives license."_

Am I the only one who finds that ironic?

<comment><USER18> That's because despite his dogged persistence on the FSF GNU bit, he really doesn't care about Freedom.

<comment><USER20> You think what he has quite literally dedicated his life to doesn't count simply because he didn't grant you permission to put words in his mouth?

<comment><USER18> I think RMS is restricting my freedom to put words in his mouth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand the god like status given to this guy. He's clearly crazy and from a whole other world than the one real people live in.

Who really cares if their BIOS is open source or not? Why does it matter? Are the designs used to make his laptop case open source as well? I doubt it.

<comment><USER22> Oh don't be silly, "real people"? Richard Stallman is as real as it gets. He's a decent programmer from what I can tell from emacs.

Note that there is a distinction between open source and free software. I think it's important to not conflate the two, which I see a lot these days (in the real world :)

I predict 500 years from now people will remember him. They won't remember Bill Gates. Without googling try to recall who was the richest man in Rome?

All the best

<comment><USER23> If you go up to any person on the street today and ask who Bill Gates is, they'll more than likely know who. You average person would have no idea who Richard Stallman.

If your average person doesn't know who he is today, I doubt that'll change to being more noteworthy in 500 years.

<comment><USER24> The first part is true, but in general the second part is false; in general, there is a big difference between the people who are most famous in their lifetimes and those who are most famous later from that period.

<comment><USER25> Exactly so. George Brandes was orders of magnitude more famous than Nietzsche in the 1890s. There are countless such examples.

<comment><USER26> Is there a name for the branch of history that deals specifically with "pop culture" of past societies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This reminded me of the Don Dodge GOOG/MSFT transition post. Maybe it was the displays of platform loyalties, or their perceived backwardness of the technology habits?

[http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2009/11/thank...](http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2009/11/thanks- microsoft-hello-google.html)

<comment><USER28> Stallman is pretty steady and unchanging in his habits towards software and internet access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really am not familiar with this man, but comments about his unwillingness to compromise and questioning his sanity make me think of this quote:

 _The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man._ \-- George Bernard Shaw

<comment><USER30> Pretty true indeed - as long as the mad man DOES something. As far as Stallman goes, he coded emacs (along with other people, afaik), gave a name to a movement - and lived ever after on complaining, criticizing other people and complaining some more. If we'd depend on this crazy dude for progress, we'd all be using "fully open-source" inferior hardware produced by kids in China. Oh, and most of us would be jobless too, since NO ONE PAYS A DIME FOR FREE SOFTWARE! Talk about progress...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _accidentally touching the mouse-pad and moving the pointer, which would be a nuisance_

Sheesh. One would hope he has better reasons than that for using console. It's not _that_ hard to configure X to not switch window on mouse-over.

No offense RMS. :)

I didn't know about the yeeloong, though. Interesting device.

<comment><USER5> > I didn't know about the yeeloong, though. Interesting device.

It seems to be very slow, has a small RAM and just a couple gigabytes of storage. I would love the idea of a Windows-proof computer I could use, but this is still not it.

The larger one looks promising.

<comment><USER32> Which, based on what RMS describes, is perfectly fine for his needs.

<comment><USER5> Well... It's not for me. I can't recommend it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ironic that the only laptop running free software from top to bottom is made in China.

Pretty cool little computers they make too. Check out this: [http://www.lemote.com/bencandy.php?fid=134&id=675](http://www.lemote.com/bencandy.php?fid=134&id=675)

RMB¥1699, that's about AUD$295 or USD $265.

Or if you prefer the iMac form factor: [http://www.lemote.com/bencandy.php?fid=136&id=849](http://www.lemote.com/bencandy.php?fid=136&id=849)

WTF is with the name of that PHP script though.

<comment><USER18> Right, apparently free software is more important than actual freedom in Stallman's mind.

<comment><USER34> Where was _your_ computer built?

<comment><USER18> Never said I was a Freedom (as in "Freedom") activist like RMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Full screen Emacs on a laptop? I wouldn't want a bigger screen than 13' with that setup.

</comment><comment><USER36> RMS is my favorite computing austerity artist.

The RMS Waltz: That's one, two, three internet connections. Now here's one Emacs (Gnus is not responding), two Emacs (dired and the tramp), three Emacs (at this time, Count von Count can be heard laughing in the background).</comment>


Show HN: Weekend project – StumbleUpon For Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wiki-roller/ncnhlkjnejdecdkjjdidclcgmhgfcmkn

<comment><USER2> There's several resources, both internal and external to Wikipedia, that could be used to jump start a collection of "interesting" rather than random pages e.g.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:FA-Class_articles>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles>

[http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/top/?sort=top&t=all](http://www.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/top/?sort=top&t=all)

<http://www.samdowning.com/interesting-wikipedia-articles/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GA>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Very helpful links. Some really great feedback for the tiny project. I be adding more functionality. Specially the "Interesting" and "Category Selection" for now. If you have some ideas about navigation. Please do share those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Building a Chrome extension is a good learning process so congratulations for that. I love going through random Wikipedia pages. More generally though, if "in your bookmarks bar" is good enough rather than next to the address bar, one could drag this link in and rename it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty cool. I built a backend with titles list etc. It seems in vain now. Hehe :). Any suggestions to make stumbling Wikipedia more meaningful?

<comment><USER4> I think your extension could provide value if people could choose a field of interest. Like if I could stumble through articles about China or about animals or even about broad things like people or places, that would be neat.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a Bayesian filter (or some analogous technique) that found "interesting" articles?

<comment><AUTHOR> This didn't crossed my mind at all. I wonder if extension should add an upvote button to Wiki page and use that for interesting?

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, didn't see this comment before I wrote my last one. But exactly, that would certainly be interesting if you got enough users to make the results meaningful (or perhaps curated a large bunch yourself initially).

Another thing that might be handy for something like this _long term_ is making sure I don't see the same page more than once. But that would be a lot more data for you to store.

<comment><USER5> I'd rather have it tailored to my personal taste instead of a community thing, myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nothing against building Chrome extensions here either (hell, I started learning JavaScript with userscripts myself), but Wikipedia has indeed had a "Random article" feature for the longest time, and it's right there in the main navigation too: <http://puu.sh/1BQ3O>

</comment><comment><USER7> Not to be too critical, but wouldn't the helpful StumbleUpon component here, (especially to differentiate it from the random Wikipedia page bookmark) be the ability for the extension to show random articles based on your personal preferences?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey. Thanks for the feedback. I think ability to select interests be a great addition. Working towards that.

<comment><USER8> I don't think its so much about adding interests as it is offering random but related articles to what someone views. Not everyone always checks the related articles section- and that section is not always very comprehensive. It'd be a good start to use that section though, and compensate by eliminating pages you've already visited.

I really like your idea, although the implementation still needs the actual recommendation engine. Wikipedia could really benefit from more related articles being listed/organized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this more than just (OSX-only)

      open 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random'

? I haven't installed it yet, but the above should get you a random Wikipedia page.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would like to see it for Quora.

<comment><USER11> Already exists: <http://www.quora.com/shuffle></comment></comment>


Sharing bikes in Shanghai - <AUTHOR> https://projectgus.com/2017/04/sharing-bikes-in-shanghai/ <comment><USER2> I used a Mobike when visiting Guangzhou last year.

It is amazing how fast they've overtaken the city. They seemed to be everywhere and ridden by huge numbers of people.

I'm a pretty frequent Boris Bike user in London (500 miles a year on the rental bikes) and thought the dockless GPS system was a great improvement on London's docking stations.

We cycled to a brewery and left the bikes outside the front door which was much more convenient than having to look for a cycle hire rack. There's absolutely no need to plan your route around fixed infrastructure which is very liberating.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ofo has claimed that it is the biggest transportation platform in the world, with more than 20 million rides in one day (yes more than Uber, and even Didi).

</comment><comment><USER4> Wonderful run down on the bike sharing situation in China. In regards to the notion that 1 RMB per half hour is cheap, I would say it is fair. One RMB has buying power equal to about one USD in most situations.

<comment><USER5> > One RMB has buying power equal to about one USD in most situations.

I strongly disagree, with one RMB in China you can only get a lighter (cheap one) in 7-11, I can't really think of anything else for that price.

<comment><USER6> For those of us that never held a USD in their hands: What would you be able to buy with a single Dollar?

<comment><USER7> Almost anything you can imagine.[0][1]

[1] [https://www.dollartree.com/](https://www.dollartree.com/) [1] [https://www.gobankingrates.com/personal-finance/best- dollar-...](https://www.gobankingrates.com/personal-finance/best-dollar-menus- america/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having bikes chained everywhere is a common sight in China and other developing countries -- even in developed countries where biking is a popular mode of transportation like the Netherlands.

This is less common in the US. I wonder if Americans will tolerate having bikes everywhere, like the Chinese or the Dutch do.

<comment><USER9> You tolerate cars everywhere, so why not?

<comment><USER8> Apples to oranges.

<comment><USER4> Its a fair comparison. Where I live many roads have parallel parking available, were people leave their cars in public. Since a single car spot can house maybe 10 bikes, a 10% impact on available car parking could allow all drivers the option to bike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are a few I had never heard of here. My recent experience is mostly in Kunming and Shenzhen, but also Beijing. IMHO all three places have Mobike and Ofo dominating the options, with Ofo winning and Bluegogo as an honorable mention.</comment>