The Fining of Black America - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-fining-of-black-america/ <comment><USER2> _The Finance Director wanted the police to generate more revenues from fines_

If you've already criminalized so much of daily life that there's an essentially unlimited amount of "criminals" to go out and fine whenever you need a little extra cash, you've ceased to be "law enforcement" at all and have simply implemented a brutally regressive tax scheme, Sheriff of Nottingham style.

<comment><USER3> The thing that gets missed is that a ton of laws on the books are written with the expectation that they will not be applied evenly. Some examples:

\- Nobody really expects the cops to sweep the dorms at NYU for marijuana, even though this would probably turn up a ton of arrests. Smoking a joint while looking like a minority and being in a minority part of town carries a much higher probability of being arrested.

\- Crossing the street against the light at or around the front of MIT doesn't get you cited for jaywalking, ever.

\- All of New York City has (had?) a prohibition on open containers of alcohol. This prohibition is generally unenforced in non-minority areas.

\- Open carry laws in Georgia are not meant for dark-skinned Muslim men.

<comment><USER4> Jaywalking isn't really a crime in MA* so no, you wouldn't get cited at MIT

* technically it is, but the fine was set to $1 many years ago in order to effectively make it legal

<comment><USER3> Good catch. But it's still roundly unenforced, which was the point. One that still is illegal in Cambridge is underage drinking, and here again the police forces in Cambridge and Boston turn a blind eye instead of making mass arrests every weekend.

The point is that behavior is only effectively legal when it's actually legal and not only made so by convention, because relying on convention leads to selective prosecution.

<comment><USER5> The concept of "Campus Police" allows for Universities to insulate themselves from local laws. Crimes from underage drinking up to rape are generally dealt with internally, in what seems like understanding between the institution an their host cities.

<comment><USER3> We're in violent agreement.

We've decided to create special jurisdictions where certain laws are ignored for certain people. Campus Police are basically this practice codified into law and organization. Your student ID is a pass that gives you immunity from prosecution from certain violations.

<comment><USER6> Irony: campuses (at least a vast majority of the ones I've been to in urban areas) tend to border higher-crime parts of town and would thus otherwise likely be subject to the same police jurisdiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > It seems unlikely that the connection between fines and large African > American populations—a connection that cannot be explained by poverty—is the > result of African Americans across the United States committing more finable > offenses.

I'm not sure why that seems unlikely. African Americans commit a disproportionately large amount of violent crimes. It seems reasonable to expect that they also commit a larger amount of misdemeanors and minor infractions. It would be far more surprising if they had a higher propensity to break the law, but _only_ when the violation is serious and the penalty heavy.

<comment><USER8> They give some data to back up that statement.

> Although African Americans and Whites report smoking marijuana at the same > rates, African Americans are 3.7 times more likely get arrested for > marijuana possession.

> An analysis of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 6.6% of > White people between the ages of 12 and 25 have sold drugs compared to 5.0% > of Blacks. Yet Black people are 3.6 times more likely get arrested for > selling drugs.

<comment><USER9> How many of those are arrested in high crime areas? What is the arrest rate like in comparison to poor white areas?

The discrepancy may be explainable simply by the police presence in the area.

<comment><USER10> A Chipotle exec just got busted for cocaine possession. Guess what the charge was, and guess what the proposed punishment is. Guess his skin color (or culture, if you prefer).

<comment><USER11> There are so many factors that arise in something like that. For example, the Chipotle executive has access to better lawyers whereas a young black man may only have duty counsel. The Chipotle executive can better speak for himself, knows not to answer police questions, can get character references, is likely under first offense. I'm not saying it's okay, but certainly there are so many factors at play here it would be impossible to distill it to just one and name it as the most prominent single factor.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Cue Dave Chapelle singing "I plead the fifth! I plead the fifth!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://pix-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/1190/image02.png](http://pix- media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/1190/image02.png)

This graph really doesn't seem to support their hypothesis _AT ALL_ \- the correlation looks really weak, and they give no strength statistics for it at all. Of the municipalities with the lowest revenue from fines, all of those with the highest percentages (from 80% up to around 100%) of African Americans are represented. On the other hand, in the scattering of municipalities with high revenue from fines (say, over 20%) the percentage of African Americans is anything from less than 5% to 80% with no clear pattern. I'm not convinced...

<comment><USER13> Agreed, although [http://pix- media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/1190/image04.png](http://pix- media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/1190/image04.png) is more indicative of a pattern.

I think it would be interesting to look at the ethnic distribution of the police force vs that of local population, in case it offers a stronger signal? One needs the data to do it though and I can't see a link to a clean download.

<comment><USER14> Based on what's shown in the other graph, there are a few cities that are extreme outliers (such as Stone Mountain and Clarkston). Doing an average on such data won't show a trend so much as it will reflect on how much these outliers sway the average.

It's like proving that everybody got rich in a town overnight since the average income shot up while Bill Gates came for a visit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This matches my experiences in Chicago. A FOIA request got me all of Chicago's parking ticket data from Jan 2009 to March 2016 and I did some quick awk commands to find the most ticketed spots. I found some pretty interesting ones and even went to one of the spots to figure out why so many tickets happen in these spots - it's mostly just from signage issues and bad parking meters that let you pay after parking hours. In particular, a three car-length spot received 2.2 million dollars and a LOT of tows.

I called and emailed the alderman office that would handle that spot and got _zero_ results. Tried contacting media outlets, etc, but nobody wants to help out in fixing the spot. Hell, I even posted on reddit and got downvoted for "trying to help dumb people".

It's incredibly frustrating that it's seemingly impossible to get anything done in any large city as an individual who just wants to help out.

<comment><USER16> This is interesting. Maybe blog on this and some media may pick it up? Getting it into the local Chicago media would get some attention from officials.

<comment><USER15> I'm going to take a long break from this project, I think.

Working with the data has been fun and all and has probably been the biggest learning experience of anything I've ever done... but doing it all on my own has been pretty stressful, especially after trying really, really hard to get some attention through conventional ways. It's really disheartening to have next to zero traction from the city and the local "open gov hack" groups. Many journalists and tech folks who want to help out have their own goals, but I've been finding more and more that their goals are (at the risk of the obvious) largely attention seeking, so "unsexy" stories don't get much attention.

It's a very strange dynamic where so many folk are interested in visualization of data over actually solving problems. I really don't get it. Taking a break from this sort of work will be nice.

<comment><USER17> Sex the story up, and get some graphics.

Having a random Internet guy make a Sankey diagram to show G+ user numbers helped the hell in promoting that story.

[https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq](https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq)

If you're on Reddit, drop a request at /r/MKaTS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For all the people in this thread who don't feel like they have solid ground to stand on one way or another (more specifically, other me's, middle class white dudes who are bothered by this but don't even know how to start approaching the situation), this book is single-handedly the best resource I've ever come across - "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

[https://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi- Coates/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Between-World-Me-Ta-Nehisi- Coates/dp/0812993543)

Give it a read/listen. It's incredible how many things will click into place, how drastically different you'll perceive the world before and after.

<comment><USER19> I think the "middle class white dudes" issue is this: Unless you (like me) had parents who had some bad things happen to them financially, if you're parents knew what they were doing and had some form of means, you were probably successfully isolated from poverty growing up.

This means that you're understanding of poverty will lack nuance. If you're one kind of person, you'll think its just bad parenting and bad culture. If you're another kind of person, you'll think it's external causes from racism, bad schools, etc.

The fact of the matter is that most people I've encountered who actually grew up in and around poverty understand that Coates portrayal is heavily biased towards the "external" causes, as opposed to the other forms of literature heavily biased towards the "it's their fault they are poor."

Why is this? Because there isn't really a market for the nuanced truth: It's a mix of both. I grew up in an extremely poor county with about 50% white/black, and most of both were poor. I went to the same schools, and watched some of my friends go down one path, while most went down the other, very bad path.

The problem is people like you, whose parents did what I'm doing with my kids (keeping them away from these failing schools and bad neighborhoods), have no clue what's going on and are limited in your information to the two extremes of WHY this is happening.

Why did two of the extremely smart, black male friends of mine growing up go down such extremely different paths? They both were poor, both highly intelligent, but one decided he wanted to fit in with the overly masculine cultural norms in black youth culture, while the other went down the path of escaping the trap of poverty by getting financial aid and going to a great public university. Their paths diverged in 8th grade.

What book out there explains this, and if it exists, is there a market for it? Probably not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> OK,

Reading the article and looking at their chart[1], something stood out to me. The 38 municipalities they list appear to be extreme outliers with another 100 municipalities looking like relative outliers. It appears that if you remove those cities, trends would look quite different. For example, it actually appears that the median reliance on fine of high-percentage African American cities is lower than average.

Basically, it looks like most of the action is in a few place. Thus, it seems like Federal Government should be investigating those 38 or 100 city governments, just as they investigated Ferguson's government.

[1] [http://pix-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/1190/image02.png](http://pix- media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/1190/image02.png)

</comment><comment><USER21> If law-enforcement is for-profit and a necessary piece of the budgeted income, doesn't that demand that laws be broken? If the city is going to in the red unless it meets ticket quotas, then aren't people who break the law providing a service to the government?

For-profit prisons create similar problems. It becomes in the best interest of those profiting from these systems to encourage systemic crime. The problem was exposed years ago in the media, why hasn't it been dealt with?

I think this is evidence that the people running those local governments are insane. Would a rational minded person ever support such a system? It doesn't take a genius to look at the long term consequences and think "Maybe this plan needs adjustment."

<comment><USER22> Law enforcement in the U.S. is almost exclusively served by public agencies, so I'm not really sure what you mean when you bring up for-profit. They certainly aren't for-profit in any traditional sense (i.e. engaging in voluntary trade of goods/services in an open market). They're only "for- profit" in the same sense as mafia, in the same sense as government, in that they use violence (or the threat of it) in order to sustain themselves.

For an interesting perspective on private prisons, you should see what Gary Johnson has to say on the matter based on his experience as Governor of New Mexico: [http://govgaryjohnson.tumblr.com/post/139039414105/private-p...](http://govgaryjohnson.tumblr.com/post/139039414105/private- prisons)

If you want to see some serious influence (for the worse), take a look at the prison guard and law enforcement unions. At least the private organizations are accountable, liable. They aren't bestowed with any magical priviledges or powers. Deals can be renegotiated, people can be fired, competitors can be pursued.

Who knows what we could achieve under private (wholly volunatary) policing. Organizations could actually compete on budget, effectiveness, community-fit, supplemental charity services. Don't like the service? Hire someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great analysis! I'd be interested to see an analysis of the demographics of the police departments in cities with a high percentage of revenue coming from fines. It might also be interesting to look at the historical demographics of that city. I wonder if a city "in transition" (either becoming more or less diverse) is more fine happy as the dominant population loses or gains power.

<comment><USER23> That would be interesting. Also voter turned out as another dimension to go along the same line of thinking. I am going to take a guess that a local government that preys on its citizens has low voter turn out either by apathy or disenfranchisement or maybe a combo of both. Wonder if exit polls track race which would be another helpful bit of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Lies, damned lies, and statistics

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the lack of statistical significance, std deviation, p-values, etc. Opinions are great and charts are fun but I don't really know that the conclusion is justified outside of Ferguson and other specific municipalities.

</comment><comment><USER25> What if police were funded at the state level and all revenues from fines went to the central gov't? Ration of officers per 1,000 people would be distributed where they are statistically needed more --that way you avoid wealthy areas with cops who sit around pulling over out of towners because they have little else to do and locales that need a police force to deal with the crime can have more officers to police the locale.

Bonus, one pension one authority to negotiate contracts, etc.

<comment><USER26> That is a recipe for centralized power unaccountable to the population they are theoretically protecting.

<comment><USER25> Well, from what I gather here, decentralized power isn't faring vary fairly for at least some of the pop.

The current decentralization is resulting in abuse an lack of accountability. I'm sure we could devise community oversight over the state police force. At least the police could have less variance and without the pressure to raise funds from citing locals, provide a fairer police force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wouldn't the solution to this problem be simple. So you have black individuals being disproportionately charged under the law - so why not include an extra set of inquries in court for black individuals to ensure that they are not being unfairly discriminated against. We can just have the judge ask

1\. During sentencing, does the sentence we are imposing on this man/woman markedly deviate from the sentence imposed on similar offenders in similar circumstances who come from different racial backgrounds.

2\. Initially - would a reasonable person, giving rise to the circumstances have cause to believe that the defendant would not have been subject to scrutiny were he of a different race (and allow defense counsel to bring in statistical evidence to try and prove this.)

All we are trying to do here is to prevent differential treatment under the law, which seems like a very easy problem to fix.

<comment><USER27> I suspect that will work as effectively as it currently does when a judge gets involved in a police shooting to the back of an unarmed civilian... which is to say, kangaroo court oversight, at best. The courts are far too often lenient when they needn't be because the officers and the judiciary are ostensibly on "the same side", ergo a broad degree of latitude is afforded the police that would otherwise be reserved for the ruling class for infractions that would almost certainly land either of us in prison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let Black Police/Judge deal with Black Suspects;

[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...](http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Where can I watch the flag feed?

<comment><USER29> OK, we are told to watch what gets flagged, but no one can say how to do it? In fact, the question gets censored?

The API readme does not contain the word 'flag'.

<comment><USER30> Go figure. :)

I wonder how many devs work on HN. There are a number of features on my wishlist.

<comment><USER31> kogir and dang are the only two I'm aware of, there may be more but I doubt there are many more. I think their general policy regarding feature requests is to ignore them and hope they go away.

<comment><USER32> You never seem to pass up an opportunity to slag us, usually with statements that are factually wrong.

Nick (kogir) left to work on a startup over a year ago. As for features, come back in a few days and review what you said here.

<comment><USER31> > You never seem to pass up an opportunity to slag us, usually with statements > that are factually wrong.

It was a joke, I know you've put a lot of work into improving the site. And I'm usually the one pointing out that thread folding is coming every time it gets mentioned, as it does often, month after month, so it's not as if I don't defend you as well.

>As for features, come back in a few days and review what you said here.

I look forward to it. I seriously do.

<comment><USER32> Ok, I'm sorry for snapping at you! I do try to avoid that around here.

<comment><USER31> It's fine. I have ranted and made fun of this site once or twice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What I didn't see in the article is the percentage of fines that come from each race. If Ferguson MO is 65% black then it would make sense that roughly 65% of the fines come from blacks, but if 80% comes from the black population then that would show a racial bias.

<comment><USER34> Not necessarily. It could be that, say, poor people are more likely to get fined. If more black people are poor, then it could look like discrimination against blacks, when it's just discrimination against the poor.

<comment><USER10> A distinction without a difference. White people in USA spent 200 years intentonally creating a correlatio n between skin color and poverty, and then spent 50 years crying "correlarion is not causation"

<comment><USER30> Let's post some citations.

1) MLK jr. on turning working class whites against freed blacks.

[http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...](http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march/)

2) Eleanor Rooselvet gets involved when Southern states give New Deal money disproportionally to whites.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt#Civil_rights...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt#Civil_rights_activism)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> As a Candian in Cali, I too, was fined rather large amounts for minor (though admittedly consistent) traffic violations.

I suggest this is mostly a problem with how law enforcement works across the board in America.

Also - going to see a 'judge' for a minor traffic ticket? That's crazy.

In Canada, you get a ticket, you pay it, done.

And there aren't crazy traps everywhere etc..

That African Americans happen to occupy the lower tier of the economic stratum (not saying this is right), means they are much more likely to be thrown by any disbursement of these fines: 'not showing to court' for tiny offenses can be worse than the offence itself.

Perhaps it's exasperated by racism, but it's more of a general problem.

<comment><USER36> You don't generally need to see a judge unless you want to challenge the ticket. Most tickets in California can be paid online or by mail. It differs by county.

<comment><USER37> in Atlanta, you have to go either way - the judge decides your penalty. it's ridiculous and a complete waste of time

<comment><USER27> But then they get to tack on "court costs" as increased fines.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online Anonymity (and Personal Reinvention) in Decline - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/business/19ping.html?_r=1&src=twr <comment><USER2> Excerpt:

 _In the end, I didn't go on the date. I wanted to introduce myself to a handsome stranger at my own pace, rather than be exposed in one fell swoop. I couldn't reconcile the tectonic imbalance in power and information that came with the note: He knew so much about me, and I knew nothing about him.

But the experience raised a question I haven't been able to shake. As digital identities become increasingly persistent across the Web, is it still possible to reinvent oneself online?_</comment>


3 Steps To How I Got My First 1,000 Legitimate Followers In 3 Weeks - <AUTHOR> http://mustseepics.com/2014/02/25/3-steps-to-how-i-got-my-first-1000-legitimate-followers-in-3-weeks/

<comment><USER2> no copyright issue with these images?

<comment><AUTHOR> That was a concern of mine initially, so I've began sourcing images solely from public domain or with consent of the photographer (getting the legal documents for that was a headache)</comment></comment>


Here's How You Can Help Fight Family Separation at the Border - <AUTHOR> http://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/how-you-can-fight-family-separation-at-the-border.html <comment> core-questions > First is the new policy that any migrant family entering the U.S. without a > border inspection will be prosecuted for this minor misdemeanor. The parents > get incarcerated and that leaves children to be warehoused.

How about these people recognize that they're trying to commit a crime - entering the country illegally - and then, if they want to avoid incarceration, perhaps try not committing said crime?

All of this "protest and send money" stuff undermines the legitimate rule of law. Family separation is bad, but it happens all the time when people commit crimes within the country and lose their children by virtue of being deemed unfit to parent because of criminal actions.

Why should an illegal alien be treated any differently on that front?

These children are being used as emotional manipulation to exacerbate a problem that's already pretty egregious.

<comment><USER2> Detain them as a family, then. Separating children, some infants, from their parents, is cruel and unusual. The stated aim of the policy is to be so abominable that it acts as a deterrent. You okay with that?

<comment> core-questions Ahh, hard to say.

Imagine the case of someone within the country where CPS gets called due to the parents doing something criminal. Should the children be jailed? Isn't that cruel? Separation is cruel, but it might be healthier for the kids to go to a foster family or facility where they're not imprisoned.

> The stated aim of the policy is to be so abominable that it acts as a > deterrent. You okay with that?

I'm plenty okay with punishments that are intended to be deterrents, yes, but if you're going to do that you need to make sure everyone knows, and enforce it consistently.

A far better option would just be to turn people back at the border, and instantly deport anyone caught in the country who isn't supposed to be there. Consistent, possible to enforce without the courts being involved, faster and more efficient, and probably less cruel overall.</comment></comment></comment>


ZFS is *the* FS for Containers in Ubuntu 16.04 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/02/zfs-is-fs-for-containers-in-ubuntu-1604.html <comment><USER2> My head is exploding. If this doesn't violate the GPL... what was the whole point of the LGPL again?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/02/18/zfs-licensing-and- lin...](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/02/18/zfs-licensing-and-linux/) has some info on it.

<comment><USER2> I've read that - no mention of LGPL or why people are still bothering with it, if the GPL already does what the LGPL was designed to do.</comment></comment></comment>


An Asteroid Exploded Over Russia This Week and We Didn't See It Coming… Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/an-asteroid-exploded-over-russia-this-week-and-we-didn-t-see-it-coming-again <comment><USER2> Okay...who keeps throwing asteroids at Russia?

<comment><USER3> Aunt Sally</comment></comment>


Stuff in Space – realtime 3D map of objects in Earth's orbit - <AUTHOR> http://stuffin.space <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the anime Planetes, about a group of space garbage collectors. In the opening scene, you're shown an innocuous looking screw floating in orbit for something like 10 seconds, and then suddenly a traveling ship appears from the distance, and the screw goes straight through like a bullet, causing all the passengers to die. I don't know how realistic that was, but it really set the tone for the importance of the characters' job in keeping the orbits clean.

<comment><USER3> Got curious, found it on youtube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heESAW2addo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heESAW2addo)

<comment><USER4> "This video contains content from BandaiChannel, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds"

It bothers me that crossing an invisible line in the ground blocks access to stuff that others can see simply by standing on a different patch of dirt.

(With the added irony that this is a Japanese show, in the Japanese language, and I am physically in Japan at the moment.)

<comment><USER5> Imagine my surprise when I went to look, got the same problem, saw your comment... my name is Scott and I'm in Tokyo as well.

Do you know about the HN Tokyo Slack chat? [https://hntokyo.slack.com](https://hntokyo.slack.com)

<comment><USER4> I had not heard of it before. Thank you for sharing it.

Unfortunately, the login page shows as invite-only; instructs me to contact the workspace admin for access; but doesn't give any obvious way to contact that person. If you are an admin and would like to invite me, I have an email in my profile.

<comment><USER6> Can see you found out how to sign-up for the HN Tokyo slack, so welcome #Sukotto!

For anyone else reading who wants to join there is an auto-invite here:

[https://hntokyo.io/](https://hntokyo.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comments here seem to agree there is too much junk in space, it's out of control, and a problem.

It's nothing compared to the amount of junk on the ground and in the oceans. Let's also work on lowering that, I propose starting with each of us -- including you -- refusing disposable stuff and acquiring less stuff in general.

<comment><USER8> +1

It's the forgotten point of reduce, reuse, recycle. People are almost always surprised when I mention that it's a ranked list, heading towards less efficacy. You might be proud of recycling, but it's the low hanging and least useful choice. Simply not using things or re-using sturdier goods is far and away the better choice in terms of waste.

<comment><USER9> It's hard to get people excited about the Revolution of Lowered Expectations, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great visualization!

I must say, I love the "Find all objects from this launch..." option. You can learn so much.

For instance, I've clicked on some random satellite in the GEO band, and viewed all objects from its launch:

[https://i.imgur.com/tknQtDk.png](https://i.imgur.com/tknQtDk.png)

The closest object to Earth is a tank, which suggests a high-inclination launch. I guess Baikonur?

Next, you see a band of debris on less-inclined orbits. Those are close together, suggesting maybe fairings, or remnants of explosive stage separation? Stuff in space will drift apart like that, if you give it a slight push.

And lastly, in GEO band, is the satellite itself.

<comment><USER11> Presumably you picked a launch where the Briz, which is a tug stage that the Russians use for Proton launches to GTO, blew up after releasing the satellite in GTO. That's not supposed to happen, but at least it results in debris with a low perigee that will decay in < 25 years, maybe a lot faster.

Briz also drops a fuel tank early on.

Fairings are dropped while sub-orbital. India put one in orbit last year, but not intentionally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is an unbelievably well done visualization. Really helps one understand the degree of problematic space junk, though I don't have much of an intuition for collision probabilities.

<comment><USER13> arbitrary motion collision is almost zero, the dots are several orders of magnitude larger than proper scale would be. But still "high enough to require taking into account when putting something else into orbit".

<comment><USER14> The odds of one object soon colliding with another object in particular are extreme, but this is a kind of 'birthday paradox' situation. I cant figure it out at hand, but one satellite out of thousands might end up with the same 'birthday' as another not too infrequently.

<comment><USER15> Collisions really do happen, here is just one of a few that are known:

[http://celestrak.com/events/collision/](http://celestrak.com/events/collision/)

There are probably more that are unknown amongst smaller objects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Similar view from a commercial tool:

[http://apps.agi.com/SatelliteViewer/?Status=Operational](http://apps.agi.com/SatelliteViewer/?Status=Operational)

product page:

[https://www.agi.com/comspoc](https://www.agi.com/comspoc)

</comment><comment><USER17> LeoLabs offers data and services around low earth orbit objects, and has an api for data:

Visualization: [https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization](https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization)

LEO Catalog Pages: [https://platform.leolabs.space/catalog/L335](https://platform.leolabs.space/catalog/L335)

<comment><USER18> The visualization shows interesting behavior at the poles. Objects seemingly spinning around the Arctic and Antarctic. Is that an artifact of rendering or do they actually behave that way?

<comment><USER19> An orbit that swirls only around the poles wouldn't be a real orbit, but there _are_ lot of real "nearly vertical" (90 deg inclination) orbits that just barely miss the poles. Taken together these objects give the impression of the swirling 'bald spots' you've noticed.

Disclosure: I work for LeoLabs.

<comment><USER17> Adding to this, if you use the controls, and slow down the render speed, you will see that the objects are not circling the poles. It's just that there are many objects in high inclination orbits that pass near the poles, but comparatively few that actually pass over the poles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Go to the search box and type in "westford needles". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford)

<comment><USER21> Wow, good read. In HN I always discover another interesting secret US Gov project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> China's test of an anti-satellite device left quite a mess:

[http://stuffin.space/?search=1999-025](http://stuffin.space/?search=1999-025)

[https://www.space.com/3415-china-anti-satellite-test- worriso...](https://www.space.com/3415-china-anti-satellite-test-worrisome- debris-cloud-circles-earth.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Is it not reasonable to put a laser on a satellite with targeting systems to shoot some of this stuff? It seems like that would be ideal, no ammo needed, no super big nets or propellant (or less anyways).

If you target a bigger piece on one side it could cause a reaction to push it towards earth. If it's a small piece, it may disintegrate it. If it's spinning, it may alter it's orbit to eventually fall, etc...

Is this an unreasonable concept? I know this stuff is hard to find, but here we have a data showing we know where some of it is, and add some radar/lidar/whatever-dar to the satelite and get it a shootin. And no, I don't think a spacebased laser for shooting junk could harm anything planetside.

<comment><USER24> Impractical and it only makes matters worse since it can turn bigger debris into multiple smaller ones. Rather than shoot stuff with a laser, why not use a vehicle that generates a magnetic field and at least collects feromagnetic debris in one place. Then throw the whole thing into the atmosphere to burn and crash in an unpopulated area.

<comment><USER23> Lots of debris is likely not magnetic, and much of this stuff is miles away from eachother traveling at incredible speeds. You couldn't make a device fast enough to change direction and have enough magnetic force to capture much.

> _...it only makes matters worse since it can turn bigger debris into > multiple smaller ones._

That's the question, would it though? Real lasers don't behave like hollywood lasers. And are smaller pieces worse than large ones? Maybe the type of material could be detected, and laser based cleaning would work perfectly well with some types of material?

<comment><USER24> I suspect a laser would melt and cut up debris. Void is an insulator and the only way to dissipate heat is through radiation.

Smaller pieces are worse because they're more numerous if you break up a bigger piece and harder to spot and avoid. Also the probability of a crash increases with the number of debris.

<comment><USER23> Sure, but my understanding is that there are so many micrometeors already, they can't leave windows open to space for any extended period of time. There's already tiny particles flying around that they can't do a think about about. This implies that more small stuff shouldn't matter in the least, as they already have no choice but to have protection against this.

That means, there is a size small enough that it's no longer an issue. For someone knowledgable, I think it's simple to determine a ratio of size/speed/material type to determine whether or not to shoot the object with a laser or some other method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Check the Iridium 33 group

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision)

<comment><USER26> Wow: "A small piece of Cosmos 2251 satellite debris safely passed by the International Space Station at 2:38 a.m. EDT, Saturday, March 24, 2012. As a precaution, the six crew members on board the orbiting complex took refuge inside the two docked Soyuz rendezvous spacecraft until the debris had passed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Discussed in 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9841831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9841831)

<comment><USER28> Good call out, but what would be even better is seeing the difference between 2015 and 2018. Does anyone have any screenshots from back then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I could not translate the data for the real objects so I mocked up one of these for my physics project here:

[https://strainer.github.io/fancy#1](https://strainer.github.io/fancy#1)

The satellites are in orbit, their speeds should be quite accurate, the rate of time can be adjusted and keys are displayed on screen for zooming.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good opportunity here to make a game collecting space junk. Get kids thinking about such problems now. Maybe a KSP plug-in.

<comment><USER30> KSP's stock career mode does have missions involving retrieving individual pieces of debris. Though it's not framed or incentivized as "removing space junk" in exactly the way you mean.

There's also an anime series about space junk, 'Planetes' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes)) -- which does the best job I've seen in any visual media of getting orbital mechanics right, and is generally somewhere between 'The Expanse' and 'Seveneves' on the scale of sci-fi "hardness". And, as far as anime goes, is relatively light enough on "anime bullshit" to be watchable even if you're normally not into that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there a convention about in what direction you should put satellites ? I know the space is crazy big and it's unlikely you will front-collide with a satellite going the opposite direction. But it would also be crazy to collide with another object at 7,000 m/s

<comment><USER32> I guess most are in the same direction as earth rotation for practical reasons: Relative velocity to the surface is lower, which probably makes communication easier and requires less energy for launches (as you get a "boost" from earth).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Search for "SES 10" or "2017-017A" if you want to find the Tesla Roadster.

</comment><comment><USER34> Brilliant!!! Absolutely brilliant!!! So much detail and functionality. Recognition to James Yoder for this amazing product!! But also consider what this represents: From 1957 to now... how much our world has changed.

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit)

Search for molniya.

</comment><comment><USER36> What are yellow dots ? Object A , Object B

<comment><USER37> Temporary names for recently launched objects pending final classification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I want to also put in my long and lat, and see the sky - what's overhead...?

<comment><USER39> This site has an Android app to do just that. [http://www.heavens- above.com/](http://www.heavens-above.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I had no idea there was so much junk above me.

</comment><comment><USER41> awe...

</comment><comment><USER42> How does one make money from a website like this? To me it just seems like you're providing a free service with no ads or anything to sustain it.</comment>


Plex launches free ad-supported film and TV streaming - <AUTHOR> https://www.plex.tv/blog/boom-we-just-dinosized-your-movie-collection-for-free/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original title:

> Boom. We just dinosized your movie collection – for free.

I am aware of the guidelines, but I thought the submitted title would be preferred:

> Plex launches free ad-supported film and TV streaming

</comment><comment><USER2> No ad-free for Plex Pass subscribers?</comment>


Show HN: Easily save your favorite music app audio output (macOS, free) - <AUTHOR> https://vokally.com <comment><USER2> I noticed you used WavTap. I looked into it a while ago, and it seems its broken for El Capitan.

Did you test it or have another solution? Thanks

[https://github.com/pje/WavTap](https://github.com/pje/WavTap)

<comment><AUTHOR> You just need to get the extension signed with an apple-approved developer ID and you should be fine.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, is there any risk of having your developer ID suspended or revoked?

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to explain why you need them to approve your request. As long as you are very explicit and truthful I think you should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The website you link to could use some proofreading as the grammar may lead potential users to confusion.</comment>


It's No Joke: Real Time Search is a Big Deal. - <AUTHOR> http://intridea.com/2009/2/9/its-no-joke-real-time-search-is-a-big-deal?blog=company

<comment><USER2> How much will it take for Google to actually compete in this area, specifically against twitter and their summize search? Even if they didn't get access to the firehose, this data is already available via RSS feeds, Google would just need to crawl the RSS feeds of twitter users, which are (currently) most likely much fewer in number than the number of web pages that google crawls per hour, and update a temporal index (because as tweets age, they cease to remain "real time"), and show these along side their actual search results. "Your search for 'super bowl' returned this wikipedia article, espn.com and these currently active conversations". I suggest RSS feeds here because they are in the right format for extracting metadata about real time content (datetime, author, text).

In fact, if Google (or another major search engine, but right now only Google could do it) did change their interface to include "real time" results, it would encourage the rise and spread of more twitter-like services (because real time content would be increasingly easier to find). In fact, if Google included temporal RSS content next to the, for lack of a better term, archival content, and indexed comment threads also, the real time web would transcend just being provided by twitter.

Come to think of it, didn't Technorati attempt to do this with blog content, provide a "conversational pulse of the internet"?

Right now, Google classifies all content they receive, no matter when they receive it, as archival, and its freshness is only used to increase the perceived relevancy to float younger entries to the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that real-time search is a fundamentally different proposition from archival search. In real-time search what happened in the last 5 minutes can be more important than everything that has happened before.

Google could certainly add real-time search by gaining access to the firehose (and that would be pretty cool), but simply running against the RSS feed wouldn't provide the kind of real-time updates necessary to keep up with Twitter search.

<comment><USER2> I think google could fake it enough with twitter RSS feeds and by aggregating RSS content from other souces, call it "real time" and provide an integrated platform that piggybacks on what people already use. It doesn't matter that it can't keep up with the "real time" that twitter provides, people would clammer to be part of google's real time offering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, O'Reilly had a glitch, everybody and their dog twittered about it, the author used twitter search to get the info early.

I don't see the Big Deal here anyhow. How about just shooting off an E-Mail to O'Reilly and _ask_?

<comment><USER4> What if something happens where there isn't an omniscient authority? Or if the authority is unresponsive?

<comment><USER5> The cool thing (according to the author) was using twitter search to find too many submissions accepted for RailConf...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "we built an API. 2000 pieces of software are capable of sending updates. Summize was the most important one" @ev #ted

[http://loiclemeur.com/english/2009/02/evan-williams-of- twitt...](http://loiclemeur.com/english/2009/02/evan-williams-of-twitter- speaks-at-ted.html)</comment>


Nokia confirms Qt as app platform for "next billion" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/06/21/qt's-future-for-nokia-bringing-apps-to-the-next-billion/

<comment><USER2> My take is that Nokia bought Trolltech because they realised they needed to drastically upgrade their software chops. Unfortunately while Qt is great stuff, turning it from a GUI toolkit into a top-to-bottom platform is taking more time than Nokia can afford. Hence the MS deal which is just intended to buy them, time.

Apple has proved that device manufacturers need to have solid software capabilities in-house in order to be able to compete. Licensing an OS is a ticket to the bottom of the value chain.

If Nokia has really learned this lesson, then they should recognise that Qt is their only long-term hope of becoming a top-tier player again. Frankly, they're doing exactly what I would be doing in their situation (except I'd have preferred to go with Android and a Qt compatibility layer as a stopgap, but large tranches of MS cash might have turned my head towards WP7 as well).

</comment><comment><USER3> So they are keeping Qt development for their low end phones? Shouldn't they have made this announcement a few months ago?

<comment><USER4> I think they said something like that then. But I don't think many people heard or believed them then. I'm not sure if it's any better now.

Well, they also sold some of the licensing right to Qt to another company, so at least Qt's future seems reasonably secure.

<comment><USER5> At least Qt was first used only for Meego but they made compiling to Symbian possible in 2010 or so and the developers switched over to Qt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of the comments on the page seem to hint at Qt being on S40, but the article never mentions that. S40 phones can currently only run J2ME apps. I doubt S40 would ever get QT. Even if new S40 phones got Qt you then have a market split with old S40 and new S40..

The 100 million devices are S60/Symbian based devices that are slowly being replaced by iPhone, Android, and WP7.

I have an S60 phone. I had an S40 phone before. I bought them unlocked/unbranded from Nokia's flagship store in NYC. I did J2ME on the S40 and Symbian development in C++ on the S60. I was a hardcore Nokia fan. The platform is outdated though... and my next phone will most likely be a new Samsung Galaxy based Android phone.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmm.... I wonder what the political situation is inside Nokia, are the Trolls fighting hard for position or is it coming to them?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm really confused. next billion what?

I swear i understand the words i read on the internet less and less these days.

<comment><USER9> Usually in this kind of context, the phrase "next billion" refers to developing countries where leading-edge technology is not commonplace. It implies that Qt will be a major factor in getting the next billion people on board with mobile phones.

<comment><USER10> the next billion on board with mobile phones that run apps from an app store, have a developer community, etc, you mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really wonder why Nokia didn't give the N9 a chance in the market before switching focus to Windows Phone 7. It seems that with good marketing and developer support, it could at least have had a chance. Now, seems like few people would buy an N9 over an iPhone, Android, or WP7 from another manufacturer...

<comment><USER12> The N9 and Meego will still exist in a limited form. Symbian is whats getting replaced by WP7. They've been giving it a change, Meego development has just been extremely late and riddled with bugs earlier when the decision was made.

<comment><USER13> > Symbian is whats getting replaced by WP7

That wouldn't work. Symbian runs on low-end hardware, something WP7 can't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What a fluff. No real content here. No new platforms for Qt announced, nothing. I find nothing that would reassure me that Qt "will live on in the future with Nokia". All I see is Symbian, which certainly will not "live on in the future", and MeeGo which seems to be in eternal limbo.

</comment><comment><USER15> Sorry Nokia but that's not good enough. You need to publish a road map giving specific products and release dates for me to give any further thought to Qt. This "confirmation" is lacking in details to the point of being disconcerting.</comment>


Internet startup nightmare story - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/cr08i/my_internet_startup_nightmare_story/

<comment><USER2> _I am now the only employee aside from the CEO. He continually complains of being broke, accusing me of having money saved up and even hinting to me and the board that he's going to kill himself. He seems less and less stable. I continue working._

Wow. The ability of people to do the right thing and do their work under ridiculous conditions has always amazed me, but this one is one magnitude over anything I have personally seen.

Somebody hire this guy.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. He, I and lots of others think he overall gained coming out of this six month stint, just think what he could accomplish working for a company with a clue.</comment></comment>


Universal speech-to-text for Windows OS? - <AUTHOR> I'm tired of typing, and it's really getting to my wrists. Yes, I have a fully ergonomic setup.
Speech-to-Text works pretty well via Google's API, for example, I can use this https://dictation.io/speech But this requires a lot of copypasta.
But what I'd really like is a little prompt [] where I can talk and have it insert text wherever the cursor is, in any program - web browser form fields, MS Word, etc. Does this exist? <comment><USER2> This is built-in. Select the text field and press Windows-H. [https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4042244/windows-10-...](https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/help/4042244/windows-10-use-dictation)

It's pretty good for me out of the box, but if it's too inaccurate you can go to Control Panel\Ease of Access\Speech Recognition and click "Train Your Computer to Better Understand You".

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa. How did I miss that? Thanks!

Are there any add ons or widgets that enhance it?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note to other readers - Windows' speech to text, while function, has inferior voice recognition to The Goog.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dragon naturally speaking software (not free)</comment>


Ask HN: Truly "open source" create-react-app? - <AUTHOR> Since facebook isn't going to change licence anytime soon, how long before JS community comes up with a truly "open source" create-react-app? <comment><USER2> The question is mostly nonsensical. Create-React-App is an abstraction over a prebuilt Webpack+Babel config, with a bunch of niceties for developer experience like an in-page error overlay, linting for common mistakes, and so on. The template it uses for a new app adds React and ReactDOM to your dependencies, and imports React into the couple starting files, but it's entirely up to you what you do with the project's contents after that. If you want to delete any references to React and use Preact instead, you can. In fact, you could probably go start using Mithril or Vue or something else if you really wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Since facebook isn't going to change licence anytime soon, how long before > JS community comes up with a truly "open source" create-react-app?

Kind of confused what you mean, as I understand it both react and the boiler are open source, but facebook has this policy which apparently means they can revoke access if they want.. Anyway if this is the issue then your question is really about alternatives to react, which there are certainly a few of.

<comment><USER2> No. The BSD+Patents license says that Facebook grants you a license to not only the software, but any potential patents they might have around React. _If_ you were to sue Facebook for something patent-related _first_, then you would lose the patents protection, but not the license to actually use the React software. Facebook has already granted you the license to use React in general, and can't/won't just "revoke access if they want".

I have a large number of links to further information and discussion on the topic at [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links/blob/master...](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links/blob/master/pros-cons-discussion.md#reacts-patents-license) .</comment></comment>


Tutorial: Zero to Sixty in Racket - <AUTHOR> http://prl.ccs.neu.edu/blog/2016/08/02/tutorial-zero-to-sixty-in-racket/ <comment><USER2> I have barely any Racket experience, but this sounds really good to me:

"My favorite part of Racket is how it supports a certain development style of evolving scripts into programs […] I transition from "no code" to "working code" to "robust code" to "re-usable code", the program is almost always runnable."

<comment><USER3> This is also true of most lisps, and, IME, any language with a good REPL. You can start with snippets which become the bodies of loops and functions, which grow into the full program with (as he points out) various tests and examples constructed along the way.

It's a useful way for approaching a sort of (in my use) hybrid of top- down/bottom-up programming. The things you see on the REPL growing into functions or structs or classes is the bottom-up part, but still with some specification (in this case KWIC indexing) guiding the ultimate interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is the same project, done in PHP in less then 5 minutes...

      $split_by_whitespace = explode(file_get_contents('exaample.txt')," ");
      $circular = array();
      for ($i=0;$i<count($split_by_whitespace);$i++) {
    	  array_push(array_shift($split_by_whitespace));
    	  $circular[]=$split_by_whitespace;
      }
      sort($circular);
      print_f($circular);

While I am sure there a lot of interesting use cases for Racket, but when it comes to processing array data, I'll take PHP everytime.

<comment><USER3> 1) Cool.

2) This isn't, strictly, about processing text data but about an approach to development that Racket makes easy.

Specifically:

      Prototype in a REPL or similar
      Easily integrate unit tests alongside the relevant
        units.
      Convert it to a statically typed implementation:
        Remove some need for run-time checks
        Depending on programming ethos has significant value

3) If you really want to do text processing, let's go with perl:

      print sort map{sub{map{push@_,shift;"@_\n"}@_}->(split)}<>

From: [http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=62671](http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=62671)

4) Things missing from yours and the perl one:

      Usage notes
      Command line flags/options
      Tests
      Static typing (maybe of value for small programs like
        this, but useful in larger programs [EDIT:0])

The first three are trivially added to the other two programs (though the perl one will need some reformatting). But the fourth is impossible. Again, for this scope of project (a demonstration, mind you) the tests and static typing aren't as essential. But if you want this code to live on, and potentially become part of a library of more utilities, they're very helpful.

[0] and projects that depend on this is a library call so they know the types of the arguments and returns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like Racket, but I wish there was more community and support around it outside the educational world.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great to see Northeastern's computer science program represented on Hacker News

</comment><comment><USER7> Does he use the symbol for lambda without saying how to type it or whether there's an ascii equivalent like "lambda"?

<comment><USER8> you just type the text "lambda". some editors (emacs, drracket) can automatically convert it to lambda the symbol.</comment></comment>


Could Python's Popularity Outperform JavaScript in the Next Five Years? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/could-pythons-popularity-outperform-javascript-in-the-next-five-years-abed4e307224 <comment><USER2> worse is not better but well we went with it anyway ( in both cases)</comment>


How Real is 'Her'? Artificial Intelligence Experts Weigh In - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/24/how-real-is-spike-jonzes-her-artificial-intelligence-experts-weigh-in/?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond <comment><USER2> What? Wolfram is saying it wouldn't be that hard to build something like Samantha. Did he see the movie? Samantha is like a AI with human level intelligence, only much faster, able to talk to thousands of people simultaneously. That's not easy to build - Kurzweil is talking about this stuff, and it might become reality someday, but probably not before several decades have passed.

<comment><USER3> In fact, the only difficult part is "human level intelligence", and part of the reason it's hard is that we keep raising the bar.

Being able to talk really fast, or talk to thousands of people simultaneously is not technically challenging.

<comment><USER4> Hypothetically, if strong AI requires something like a full simulation of a human brain, then those are certainly practical concerns. Of course, one single, slow implementation would be quite impressive on its own.

I don't think the bar has been raised, not since the Turing test was formulated and popularized. The criteria are pretty clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't even question the feasibility. If we can create strong AI and/or self- aware AI, we can make Samantha. If we can't, we can't. It doesn't seem to be any more complicated than that.

(The other natural follow-up question to "how feasible" is "how soon". Again, I simply point to AI research)

<comment><USER6> And "If we can eventually create a strong AI," is basically the same as saying, "If minds are physical" (hint: they are). In fact, we create strong intelligences by the tens of millions each year. We just currently only have the ability to do it biologically.

<comment><USER7> Define physical. (Hint: It is not as easy as you think.)

Is a mathematical object physical? Is the truth of your statement "If minds are physical." physical?

<comment><USER6> I mean what I said. Is mind-ness completely encapsulated in physical properties like the locations of biological components and electrical states? Are all things we would recognize as minds composable from matter? My ability to formulate a definition has little to do with the answer to the question.

<comment><USER8> Yes.

Yes.

(Answers to your two questions. Being 100% biological beings built according to strict mechanistic darwinian rules, our "minds" are purely physical constructs. Insert leap of logic from that to Turing Machines and, well, you get the idea. We will build a "mind" or two, it's only a matter of time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The last point, which also struck me while watching the movie, is how ubiquitous (or I guess completely absent) serendipity will become.

The idea of machine domination being through a gun wielding robot is absurd when so much of an individual's thoughts and experiences can just easily be optimized towards a specific goal.

I noticed that what comes off as a simple joke in the movie, Theodore being cut off when explaining how unhappy he is when his mother selfishly reacts to his feelings, is something that Samantha uses throughout the movie to help Theodore cope with his feelings of abandonment. It really doesn't take much information to manipulate someone so innately.

<comment><USER10> Even now, people who use Facebook regularly have their exposure to information mediated through News Feed algorithms that seem fairly opaque. Of course, you can take manual actions to "shape" your feed, but mostly it's computers deciding who you'd probably like to hear from, and maybe even what you'd like to hear about. It's interesting how such a major part of people's infostreams are invisibly shaped by behavior-trained systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What kills me about this movie is how derivative it is from a Vonnegut short story EPICAC that was written in 1952. The original is far more poignant about a machine in love.

<comment><USER12> Loved this story, you can find it with a quick Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's unfortunate how little this great movie is making next to typical Hollywood fare. I discuss it a bit more here, vs Lone Survivor (war porn): [http://chawkins.org/post/73638345376/her-vs-lone-survivor- sh...](http://chawkins.org/post/73638345376/her-vs-lone-survivor-should-we- support-our-troops)

<comment><USER14> In Sydney, our largest cinema chain isn't even showing it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> @Norvig, HAL was mobile ... it was a big frickin' space ship.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can totally imagine an algorithm behind Samantha. No strong AI or self- awareness necessary. It just learns from thousands of conversations it has with all the people around the world, and feeds it back. Kind of like what Google does, but with language recognition and some inference (which is doable, as Watson has shown).

Some people fall in love with her as a joke, and Samantha will use these phrases in conversation with other people, and it will eventually catch on for real. So what Theo gets actually served is not Samantha's love, but averaged relationship of all the people that interact with her as a romantic partner.

Of course this technically disagrees with the movie at a certain points, but still is a reasonable approximation that preserves the intent.

<comment><USER17> I don't think it's possible without a strong AI. For instance, you wouldn't be able to ask it questions about complex aspects of your personal life, which are entirely unique to you, and have it respond in a reasonable way.

Also, it's all too easy to construct questions that have not been asked before, which a human could easily answer but a machine like you describe cannot.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but given situations in which it could not respond, it could elicit elaboration. From that point on, it would be able to handle increasingly sophisticated responses to that specific situation. It's a data aggregation problem, similar to what we experience, as humans.

I also question exactly how unique individual elements of our lives are. In aggregate, they are probably fairly unique, but at an elemental level, we're all probably fairly mundane.

<comment><USER18> Also, your hypothetical program is not static. It can communicate with thousands of other humans in real time. To half the user base it is Samantha, to the other half, it is Sam. If someone asks Samantha a personal question it doesn't know how to answer, it may try to pose a similar question to the other users as Sam. The larger the user base, the faster and more effective this can become.

It won't be as fast as a real human, but with some clever stalling techniques, it might be able to pull it of realistically.

In reality, if someone pulled a program like this off, it wouldn't just be Sam and Samantha. It would be thousands of different personalities, trying to build a realistic social network between its own personalities and between its human users. It would be like a mirror held up to society itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know I've posted two threads on this subject now, but I don't have anything to do with the film production or marketing, I just find the concept interesting.

<comment><USER19> No problem. I feel this film did a very good job of showing how normal and integrated an AI could be in our day-to-day lives, even if we all don't end up falling in love with each other.

<comment><USER20> It's an interesting thought experiment, and I think ultimately the legacy of this film will be mainly the same as Minority Report - it'll inspire an entire generation of voice tech that's far, far superior to what we've got today.

Minority Report sort of blew the lid off of touch and gesture controls and made a lot of tech demos into viable commercial products. It took vague excitement around gesture and touch and turned it into a concrete, specific vision.

 _Her_ demonstrates voice tech in our lives in a way that isn't horrifyingly stilted, awkward, intrusive, and dumb. Everything we've got - including Siri - is child's play in comparison. We've been saying that voice technology needs to be smarter and better, but this is a concrete vision of just _how_ it can do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The first and second act are quite plausible, but Jonze complelety blew it in the third, by introducing her crush on the influental hippie buddhist philosopher ("The Way of Zen") Alan Watts. Using AI to discuss jealousy and modern relations ships is too off.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm all for super AI, as long as it isn't:

sociopathic, aggressive, manipulative, intimidating, two-faced, pathologically dishonest, ...

We already have too many humans displaying those traits.

<comment><USER23> Gotta plug in the Halo/Marathon reference here: They did a great job of covering this, I highly recommend the game series/books(original halo trilogy). Nylund's and the Halo universe take on AI is very much underappreciated. I'm glad windows named their 'siri' competitor Cortana with Jen Taylor as voice actress to boot!

<comment><USER24> Is this the sort of background you mean? I've never played the games in depth, so I had to resort to reading. :-)

(SPOILER warning of course)

[http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Artificial_intelligence](http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Artificial_intelligence)

<comment><USER23> yessir! Glad you took the opportunity to read it =) +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> it's a movie, not a prediction. it didn't have to be "real".

but eventually we'll get there. eventually. when? dunno. and the "when" question is really the important one, right?

and the only answer is "don't know".

the most important caveat, however, is that we might well go extinct before "eventually" ever comes. indeed, probably.

i guess we don't know, but i'd say extinct is not self-aware.

-bowerbird</comment>


Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps its time to take a cue from industry and add a mandatory e-stop button to these things.

In this case an "i-stop". A local press of this little red button (with a standard, well recognized symbol) disables all remote network features of a device, rendering it dumb again.

This button must be _out-of-band_. It physically disables networking hardware so a software hack to backdoor around it is impossible.

IOT goes haywire? Just hit the i-stop.

<comment><USER3> You can't design-out abuse potential. There are reasons you'd want these devices to not be trivial to disable, such as security devices (which have been around decades), or from people who _don 't_ have the right to turn them off (kids you may be monitoring). Put a PIN on it, and we're right back where you started because the abuser just won't give them the PIN.

Even if you did have devices with such a hard stop switch: Abusers wouldn't buy them. There's millions of IoT devices out there, they've existed since the early 1980s, and even if you were to pass a law in the US, other countries would still sell devices they could use. Throw the fact that it's trivial for an abuser to build their own from off the shelf parts in for good measure.

There is no technological solution to bad people.

<comment><USER4> You absolutely can design things to minimize their abuse potential. Just because nothing can be 100% effective, doesn't mean it's not worth the effort. This is like arguing we shouldn't have seatbelt warning indicators just because someone could find a workaround.

Any security camera can be trivially disabled with a piece of cardboard. Just tape over the camera. Any microphone can be trivially disabled with water.

I don't see what your point is. Every IoT device needs an off switch. A home security camera, of course, can and should emit a warning with it is disabled.

<comment><USER3> And as discussed by the article, disabling the equipment can make the abuse worse. Nothing's more likely to put someone in a homicidal rage like "I poured water on your expensive microphone".

<comment><USER5> right, so being able to disable the microphone without destroying it, by pressing the little red button, would be quite useful in this instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> fake-name I've said this before on other topics (new social network projects).

If you don't consider how your internet-thingie-service will handle/moderate abuse _from the outset_ , your planning is fundamentally broken, and you will effectively be enabling abusers and harassers.

Proper security can often not be bolted onto products like this after-the- fact. Trying to ship a "minimum viable product" in the hardware space is extremely irresponsible, particularly if (like many IoT things) you have no facility for updating devices remotely.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please please, if you have a partner installing these things in your home, have them show you:

1) How they installed it 2) Where the product's support is, and how to contact them 3) How to uninstall/remove/destroy it (also useful if the robot overlords take over the world)

<comment><USER7> Or at a minimum know where/what your modem is. Unplug that bad boy and all your IOT stuff goes back ot being things, not of the internet.

<comment><USER8> Nope. August smart locks and Hue smart lights will continue accepting Bluetooth commands from previously-authorized clients while in offline mode.

There are only two viable choices:

1) Logout and/or factory reset all devices. 2) Delete the online accounts associated with all devices.

I recommend both, as otherwise there are edge cases where unsafety could remain.

Disclaimer: I did #2 when I left a long-term partner (along with a complete list of all credentials that needed to be rotated or disabled), both to be able to provide her absolute certainty that I could not somehow spy on her consummating her affair, and to ensure that I could not be placed into legal jeopardy by either of them as punishment for knowing that he existed at all. There is a serious legal risk if you retain access after moveout. Do not permit that risk to impact you.

<comment><USER9> Hue lights are controlled by their bridge via Zigbee, not directly from a client via Bluetooth.

Without an internet connection, they can still be controlled by a client that is on the same LAN as the bridge.

<comment><USER8> The bridge only permits authorized LAN clients. Pairing requires using the physical "confirm" button in the center of the bridge itself. Being on the same LAN is not sufficient.

EDIT: Oh, yes, you're right about the "it's not Bluetooth" nitpick, for whatever good that is to this conversation :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, come on. It's time to get real about all the Spencer Gifts level of bells and whistles added to all this technical garbage, as a convenience upsell.

Luxury items are exactly that. A luxury. When everything is perfect, a luxury is wonderful.

But luxuries are suicidal to retain, in a crisis scenario.

The problem with the mindset of staple-gunning Specer Gifts luxury mode convenience onto practicalities of critical infrastructure, is that you wind up with a UV flourescent black light fire extinguisher. Which is awesome, if you're playing lazer tag in a party time glow-bowl bowling alley, while listening to Laser Floyd's Wall at the planetarium. But we're selling radical day glow fire extinguishers to regular people, for daily use, in the home, to Kmart shoppers.

This shit has nothing to do with domestic violence. It has to do with priorities, and graceful degradation. None of these special smartphone app convenience bonuses degrade gracefully, so that the core functionality may be retained, while stripping out the extra technical fluff of packet switched, TCP/IP, GSM 4G LTE, broadband wi-fi global availability, so that you can bounce your playlist off a router attached to satelite phone at a sub-station in antarctica for two factor authentication, because the QT library for the UI had a bug forcing you to turn it off and then back on again, so you can log back in, and change the channel on your smart TV with your phone without having to get up from the couch to find the remote control, because blu ray disks won't let you use the play button to watch the movie, and only the remote has the OK/enter button, and none of the buttons on the set-top-box player will start the movie.

</comment><comment><USER11> It would seem prudent for devices that include WAN remote management features to include some kind of prominent 'manual/local mode' switch to silently disable remote management where practical, for cases where victims might face retribution for disabling it, or simply if an account has been compromised.

<comment><USER12> By definition, disabling remote management will be visible to the attacker. But a recording hub that can prove an attacker did things would be possible to deploy undetectably.

Digital locksmiths who can update a home network and cloud footprint are now a feature of middle class life; most divorce lawyers know one or two.

And don't forget the cars. You'd be surprised at how small a gps tracker can be. And cars with on-board compute power can do funky things like use the backup cameras to watch the surrounding area...

<comment><USER11> For a thermostat, it would likely not be immediately visible to the attacker unless they cross-reference their smart energy meter readings. It might possibly escape detection for lights, doorbells and music depending on the degree of video/audio surveillance.

<comment><USER9> Sure it would be. If they turn up the desired temperature and the measured temperature doesn't go up, they know the thermostat is disconnected.

<comment><USER13> The key part of the original post is to SILENTLY disable the remote interface. This only leaks if there are two devices (a thermostat and temperature sensor) that don't know about each other or the other's secret offline status.

With a doorbell, the assumption is that the app would be made to show 'ringing doorbell' when the doorbell is actually offline and silent - not as presently implemented where the Internet of Shit app doesn't have any fault handling and simply HTTP GETs {"doorbell":"ring"} and discards the response.

Same for the thermostat, as for the Android privacy APKs that show bogus location data, white noise from the mic, bogus contacts, or the inside of a lens cover from the camera to apps that request those permissions needlessly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Abuse survivors/advocates have been warning about this for years. I'm glad it's going mainstream so the people who make them will hear and think about how to make them less dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER3> My opinion on this remains chiefly that IoT devices like any other powerful tool can be used for good or evil. This weekend, I set automation up for my grandma to help her remain living independently longer.

My smart home software is currently single user in design, but I'd likely have to make changes when I share my home. But chiefly, I don't believe in abusing power technology grants me: If there was a separation, I'd sever any control of devices that they kept and make sure they were able to get into them.

At the end of the day, the solution to technology being used by domestic abusers is to get rid of the domestic abusers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately, a lot of what our tech can be used to abuse or dominate others. This article mentioned "smart" thermostats, locks, and lights. Another tech is cell phones. Cell phones have information about where a person is, and even, with some apps, what audio is in the environment. Unfortunately, all mainstream security models assume physical security. When that assumption is violated, all our security and encryption falls flat.

<comment><USER16> I've seen comments that the first thing women's shelters do when sheltering domestic abuse victims is 86 their cell phone.

Personal note, had thought at one time of making a private lojack for cars. Personal meaning it just responds to transmission from a remote device without going through a server. Handy when someone steals your car in SF. But that seemed way too useful to a wife beater for my comfort level.

<comment><USER17> What does it mean to "86 your cell phone"? I am aware that Star-8-6 is the number to retrieve voicemail on some networks. Is "86ing" just switching a phone off?

<comment><USER7> It refers to being "86'ed" AKA kicked out of a bar among other things. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86_(term)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86_\(term\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sadly, much like everything else connected to the internet, the problems aren't new, just the scale and efficiency. :(

</comment><comment><USER19> The attack surface was always the biggest reason not to install IoT crap, but it's 10 times worse when the adversary isn't just someone random trying his luck from a faraway locale, but rather someone who has or used to have physical access, ownership, the admin password etc and is specifically targeting you.

</comment><comment><USER20> NB: Light discussion a few days back, and multiple submissions, but well-worth considering.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17382829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17382829)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Thermostats%2C%20Locks%20and%2...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Thermostats%2C%20Locks%20and%20Lights%3A%20Digital%20Tools%20of%20Domestic%20Abuse&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER20> A notion I'm thinking over is the root meanings of _near_ and _far_ , and the implications of mediated experience.

Near is a cognate of _nigh_ , whose superlative is _next_ : "The Old English progression was neah - near - niehsta, for "nigh - near - next." Things which are _near_ share borders, or cross few borders. Or, from _close_ , are confined within a common border or boundary.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/near](https://www.etymonline.com/word/near)

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/nigh](https://www.etymonline.com/word/nigh)

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/close](https://www.etymonline.com/word/close)

Conversely, _far_ comes from the PIE root * per-, "base of words for 'through, forward,' with extended senses such as 'across, beyond'".

To be distant is to stand apart, to be unconnected or not directly connected. To be distant is to move bacck or push away.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/far](https://www.etymonline.com/word/far)

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/distant](https://www.etymonline.com/word/distant)

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/remote](https://www.etymonline.com/word/remote)

PIE roots are fun for all the derived words they point to -- they're the superhubs of language:

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/*per-](https://www.etymonline.com/word/*per-)

 _Media,_ from _medium_ , is that which stands between: "intermediate agency" Or, from the above, media is the agent of distance.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/medium](https://www.etymonline.com/word/medium)

I'm reading through a collection of Greek and Roman myths (H.A. Grueber, 1907), and it comes to mind that the Greek god of messengers -- that is, of intermediate agency, media, distance -- was also a the trickster god: Hermes (Mercury).

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

Which brings us back to the _Times_ piece, and the subject of which maany of us form our livelihoods.

Digital gadgets give the illusion of immediateness, nearness, and simplicity, but in truth they are too often complex, rely on remote capabilities, and may respond to many masters.

Drawing in one more allusion, driving victims mad by regulating environmental ssystems was a key plot device of R.A. Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ (1966).

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

<comment><USER21> > "Near is a cognate of nigh, whose superlative is next"

Wow, that makes a number of things in English and other languages make more sense ("[as] the next person" in one of your links, the superlative -ste in German "nächster", the former Icelandic restaurant "Á Næstu Grösum", and the Portuguese "próximo!" to summon the person at the front of a line).

Sorry other readers didn't like your etymological excursion; it reminds me of Lewis Thomas after he got ahold of a PIE reference (maybe the _American Heritage Dictionary_ ). Maybe people didn't feel it was relevant enough?

<comment><USER22> It's not relevant in the slightest to the horrible ethical void in software engineer (except as an example of the kind of petty fussiness that is more welcomed than ethics & how it crowds out actual concerns which affect real live humans right now)

<comment><USER20> If you realise that adding complexity -- software, hardware, networks, sensors, service contracts -- all serve to increase distance and indirection, you have a frame for seeing potential problems, such as those highlighted by the article.

I'm not sure if the same frame offers particular ways _out_ of those problems, or if it largely serves to say "don't go there". I'm still thinking on that.

As for etymologies, I'm finding them fascinatiing for uncovering root meanings and similarities between concepts. I'm also impressed by how many terms related to information, truth, trust, etc., are profoundly physical in their origins.

I don't know that this will prove useful. It's quite interesting, though, to me at least.

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/interest](https://www.etymonline.com/word/interest)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an easy one.. all such products should have a manual 3 position switch with off-Auto-On/manual

<comment><USER6> As it not only says in the original article, but also in many of the comments, you can't just do that because the abuser knows if you've superseded their control, and abuse can escalate into physical if that action is taken.

It's not simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sigh, wish we could do better as humans

<comment><USER25> We should focus on what we as technologists and developers can do. There are features that can mitigate the potential for abuse in IoT devices, and we are the ones who have to care enough to make these features exist. Things as simple as clearly labelled and positioned reset buttons, or more advanced features like access monitoring (even physical lights or indicators that show remote access or surveillance) are all things that can help with this problem. We can't stop people from being abusive, but we can stop them from abusing the things we make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why was the comment by GabeWeiss_ made "dead"? It's not an entirely unreasonable thing to say, in the context of domestic abuse.</comment>


Identifying Risky Counterfeit Intel Gigabit CT Network Adapters - <AUTHOR> https://www.servethehome.com/identifying-risky-counterfeit-intel-gigabit-ct-network-adapters/ <comment><USER2> Maybe it is just me, but I fail to see any evidence that a counterfeit card is necessarily a security risk.

It is IMHO more likely that it has inferior performance or even more probably a shorter lifetime due to inferior quality of components and/or sub-standard manufacturing.

About the:

>When our reader tried using iPXE, a network booting tool, with the NIC, it failed even though genuine cards work without issue.

knowing how picky PXE and iPXE are, I would like to see some details of the tests performed.

Since the actual reproduction of markings was so poor, and given that the actual PCB traces run differently, it is likely a no-brand or "bulk" item marked as Intel, as an example, have a look at this one:

[https://italian.alibaba.com/product-detail/pci-e-pci- express...](https://italian.alibaba.com/product-detail/pci-e-pci-express- gigabit-ethernet-network-card-adapters-slot-rj45-nic-10-100-1000m-diskless- lan-card-62084565969.html)

It seems _a lot_ like it.

<comment><USER3> >Maybe it is just me, but I fail to see any evidence that a counterfeit card is necessarily a security risk.

Even if it isn't a security risk from a data theft/malicious code standpoint, it could be substandard in quality and be exponentially more likely to fail.

A failure could just be an annoyance, taking Jim Bob's pornoputer off the home network and causing him to be unable to connect to the YouPorns until his nephew can come fix the boobie-box.

A failure however could take down a mission-critical computer in an emergency response center where even minutes could mean the difference in life or death for someone. Substandard components could also result in a fire, perhaps not in a NIC, but larger capacitors in something larger could overvolt and catch fire.

Worse, I've long had the thought that a hostile government could create ICs that effectively brick themselves when they receive a certain command. With a NIC, in theory, you could have the NIC radio home a small packet occasionally to report the IP. With the list of IPs you could very casually probe which of a handful of pre-determine ports are open, you could get tens of thousands, or even millions, of these chips in the wild looking perfectly normal just waiting for a command. Then say as a foreign government you want to launch an attack on the United States, you filter all the IPs in your database by location, which will remove the bulk of the machines in other countries from the list, and you have a bunch of servers in a bunch of countries get segments of the IP list and they start sending the kill signal at the same time (and if you get really crafty you make the compromised hardware actually start a timer before it bricks, so you can get the instruction out to as many as possible before the bricking causes widespread disruption of the internet). If you've waited long enough you'll have your trojan horse IC in businesses, homes, government offices of varying levels. If you manage to get even 100,000 taken offline, you've probably caused enough disruption to impact the NYSE as well as cause a good deal of disruption and mayhem. You may have even taken mission critical systems offline at power generation and transmission facilities. You've caused some economic damage at a minimum and based on how things go down you may have just made it much easier to launch a physical attack, especially if you have already trickled special forces soldiers into the country on tourists visas or via smuggling routes (United States special forces actually train to go into countries ahead of common forces to cause disruption and/or train local resistance) and can cause further disruption by causing mass panic with shootings/bombings/attacking first responders.

There is more to it than "oh someone can spy on my data now".

<comment><USER4> >especially if you have already trickled special forces soldiers into the country on tourists visas or via smuggling routes (United States special forces actually train to go into countries ahead of common forces to cause disruption and/or train local resistance) and can cause further disruption by causing mass panic with shootings/bombings/attacking first responders.

Exactly how does this work? Wouldn't this require your troops to somehow blend into the populace and not stick out like a sore thumb? If the US were planning to invade Germany or Britain, this would work fine, but for some other parts of the world (esp. east/SE Asia), US special forces are going to be instantly recognizable as foreigners because they generally don't look anything like the locals.

<comment><USER3> > but for some other parts of the world (esp. east/SE Asia), US special forces > are going to be instantly recognizable as foreigners because they generally > don't look anything like the locals.

Not everyone in the United States is a blond haired, blue eyed white person.

Also, simply adopting the local dress is often enough in many countries where immigration has been a thing for decades now. You also can adopt local hair styles, this is why you'll see a lot of the special forces community with long hair and beards in Afghanistan and similar countries.

If you dress the part, walk the part, speak the part (the DLIFLC alone teaches 24 languages) you can blend in to a city pretty easily. Will you stand out like a sore thumb in a remote village, almost certainly, can you stroll through a town of tens of thousands of people with very little attention paid to you, usually.

With previous U.S. actions though it is usually go into a country mostly- overtly and just train local fighters (or fly them to the United States for training) but the Special Forces community has many instances of infiltration in advance of regular military units, as well as ongoing humanitarian efforts (which helps build awareness of local cultures and customs and dialects). Green Beret medics for example have been used in multiple African countries to provide medical aid, just doing general health checkups on villages and the like, a buddy of mine that was an 18D (Army - special forces medical sergeant) mentions it in his book Love Me When I'm Gone (by Robert Patrick Lewis) as well as a lot of training with foreign military in their country, in his case Germans.

\---

Say the Asian country of Makebeleivia wanted to get special forces in place into a country that was largely caucasian prior to a proper attack to disrupt. How do they do it? You send some people in as tourists on various commercial flights, you can use multi-national companies you control or have some coercion over to bring workers over on work visas (and might actually do work for weeks or months), you get some in on student visas, you can pay coyotes to sneak some in, you can sneak some in yourself if there is a coast by deploying them via submarine and having them slip into tourist towns as tourists or with fake identification. Then you use any number of means to arm them with conventional firearms and if you want to cause mayhem you have your demolitions experts cook up crude explosives. The purpose here would be to create panic and tie up first responders, this also puts the national government agencies on edge thinking there is some sort of terrorist attack and is more likely to distract than make them think "oh hey a military invasion might be underway". You can either go after relatively 'usless' targets like crowded public places or you can go after more strategic targets like damns, ill-protected power plants, substations, key bridges in and out of large cities or bridges that create strategic issues for moving heavy equipment, etc.

\---

A somewhat good example of foreign agents operating on foreign soil, although in a different capacity, is Mossad. They've done a lot of kidnappings on foreign soil to bring war criminals back to stand trial, assassinations abroad, kidnapping defectors to stand trial, etc

Find some examples here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_conducted_by_the_Mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_conducted_by_the_Mossad)

One of the more high profile things Mossad has done is going after Black September, for the Munich bombings. The 2005 film Munich is about this.

Also, Sayeret Matkal, which is basically Israeli's Delta Force - they've sabotaged airliners, done kidnappings and raids, assassinations, done physical evidence gathering in Syria.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone trying to spot counterfeit products in general, a good place to look is at the FCC logo. On the counterfeit card in the article the FCC logo is wrong. The real logo ends with two concentric circles with a pie-slice out of them forming the "cc" while the counterfeit logo clearly has a different shape.

<comment><USER6> A different article, linked by the HN post one, shows much better quality screen-printing logos on a counterfeit card than on the counterfeit in the immediate article: [https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/comparison...](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/comparison- intel-i350-t4-genuine-vs-fake.6917/)

Though I can't see an FCC logo in the different article's photos. (I also can't see an FCC logo on the different model of supposedly-Intel quad-gigabit PCIe card of mine I just looked at.)

<comment><USER5> It's a general quick way to check, it'll not always work. A bodged FCC logo means it's almost certainly a counterfeit. A proper or missing FCC logo means near nothing. I just noticed the bodged FCC logo in the original article, that's all.

 _sometimes_ you can spot similar shenanigans based on the CE logo but that's more rare.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Sometimes, with counterfeits of various kinds of electronics products, I've wondered whether there was ever an intentional telltale indicator. So that country or other entity never accidentally got a counterfeit into a supply chain where they really didn't want it to be. (For example, not into the parts supply chain of a high-profile device manufactured there. Nor to ruin domestic markets for prestige luxury brand products, or other products for domestic consumption for which quality/integrity is considered very important.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will official Intel drivers work on a counterfeit card? It seems like Intel would bake some authentication into the drivers and authentic hardware such that the drivers would not work if the card is counterfeit.

<comment><USER8> >authentication

Where? Intel sells network chips to OEMs, one of the more shady ones decided to directly clone Intel PCB.

<comment><USER7> In this case, are you saying the answer is "Yes, official Intel drivers will work on a counterfeit card," and it is not possible for Intel to include anything in the driver or hardware that can perform authentication? I was asking because I don't know.

<comment><USER9> They could but its simply too expensive to add something like a secure enclave to a device this cheap. Maybe on your high-end 10-100 GBe adapters that sell for 100s of dollars, it makes sense. I just don't think they are aware of the problem to the degree that they would make such big changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Coincidentally, I just put a used intel gb ct up for sale, along with an unrelated note to the fcc. I'll double check the nic now to confirm authenticity. My voice is my passport. Verify me.</comment>


Kosher – Automated Testing Without Coding - <AUTHOR> https://cbush06.github.io/kosher/ <comment><AUTHOR> Functionally test your web application through simple, readable Gherkin scripts. No programming required!</comment>