82nd Airborne unit told to use Signal or Wickr on government cell phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2020/01/23/deployed-82nd-airborne-unit-told-to-use-these-encrypted-messaging-apps-on-government-cellphones/#.XinQapgtOkY.twitter <comment><USER2> Given how much of that $700B is likely to go towards developing such a system - likely somewhat less than all of it - and the general care towards usability in DoD-built systems? I think it might not be a wildly unreasonable position to take. Doubly so when you consider that DoD procurement and development practices are not widely renowned for being quick.

With those in mind, and that Signal already exists, it's worth considering if there's actually something for the DoD to gain by sinking millions of dollars and years of time into developing and maintaining something new that might not be an improvement. The answer might legitimately be "No, that's not worth it".

<comment><USER3> I suppose I'll take a shot at a counterargument.

The problem with the military using an off the shelf system like Signal isn't the tangible features (re: encryption, usable ux). The problem is one of control. What happens when the government gets into a dispute with Signal (say, over a warrantless wiretap) and Signal decides in protest that it will no longer have any DoD affiliated customers? What happens when, through a series of shell companies and legal loopholes, a controlling stake in Signal ends up in Chinese or Russian hands?

From the PoV of the DoD, owning the system from end to end is a feature they shouldn't compromise on, even if the other features suffer and it costs more than it otherwise would.

<comment><USER4> You are assuming Signal is not already subverted by US Gov.

<comment><USER5> You don't use covert intelligence capabilities to satisfy enterprise IT policy controls.

"Oh don't worry about TLS interception for the office firewall, we can break RSA anyway" is not how a bureaucracy thinks. Come on.

<comment><USER6> >not how a bureaucracy thinks. Come on.

Conspiratorial bureaucracies operate that way. Trust no one, allow nothing that can be used to undermine...

Read Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are we witnessing the start of the combat iPhone? These devices are staggeringly useful, I guess it just makes sense that they find their way into this aspect of human life as well.

> Squad: the #1 small unit combat App

>What's New in 3.14: Enhanced Scout/Recon route setting- select up to 7 types of perimeter security

>In-App Purchase: Unlimited "Friendlies" List - avoid unwanted friendly fire incidents.

<comment><USER8> CGI Federal/Raytheon has been working on something like this for the last 5-6 years for (AFATDS)

<comment><USER9> I'd argue that ATAK is closer to a "combat iPhone" system than AFATDS, which is uniquely focused on field artillery coordination.

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

<comment><USER10> I've worked on ATAK. It is a very capable combat tool.

<comment><USER11> How do they secure baseband?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This has been rolling out for a couple years across parts of the US government. The primary objective, as I understand it, is to eliminate the pervasive use of WhatsApp and Gmail for unclassified communication for security reasons.

<comment><USER13> The ironic part is the military lives on regular text messaging as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Turns out the US military also buys lots of commercial off the shelf stuff, including vast quantities of #10 letter envelopes for their mail. The US Defense establishment has thoroughly accepted the fact that they can't out- innovate commercial companies in a commercially viable space. Using the COTS top 5 or 10 is entirely reasonable in such cases.

We fly troops on Delta and American too. I bet a few even flew in Boeing 737 Maxes. Perfect? No. Excellent decision among some number of possibly better decisions, that could have been made at the time? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER15> ATAK already has several hundred thousand end users, and is likely going to continue growing in popularity in the domestic environment. Extensions of the FBCB2/BFT concept have been none stop since the 90's really. The tactical cell phone has already found its place on the modern battlefield.

This directive however, likely has nothing to do with combat. Its more likely related to trying to maintain some semblance of OpSec when things which shouldn't be sent over these cell phones ends up being sent over these cell phones _and_ to help avoid every other private from texting mom/dad/gf things which will then be immediately leaked, by reminding them of the "seriousness" of the situation.

</comment><comment><USER16> "told to"

Why do they not have some MDM like InTune or Knox and have the apps they need pre-installed and the phone locked down to prevent any other apps from being installed?

<comment><USER17> the acquisitions procedure to do that would be a nightmare

<comment> crooked-v I can alrady imagine a three-year waiting list to get new apps remotely installed, which then inevitably fails under common international travel circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everyone here is speaking like there HAS to be a backdoor for the messages to be auditable, forgetting that they could modify the application to abide to some sort of device management strategy that uploads a backup to some server when connected to a LAN for example.

Signal already gives encrypted backups with a password you see one time when setting up. I imagine you could easily modify that to lock the app with tye Android administrator shenanigans, and then periodically upload incremental backups.

The messages would of course remain encrypted but the key would be in the IT administration's hold.

I believe the end-to-end part of Signal is very interesting if you consider the whole NETWORK to be hostile, but that both ENDS are friendly once authenticated.

I can see a very FoA-friendly implementation of this.

It always seemed kind of stupid to me that they would spend billions of dollars to reinvent another wheel. It's like saying "Physics are good and we could add some more research and engineering for our case, but no, physics is opensource so let's make our own physics"

Not exactly the same but ...

<comment><USER19> I think the idea of a backdoor comes because CIA/FBI/NSA has incentives to be anti-encryption. It is their job to break it. So they want their lives to be easier. But the DoD has an incentive to have strong encryption. It is their job to defend their communications.

But I'll disagree with you (while agreeing with you) on this

> Everyone here is speaking like there HAS to be a backdoor

The DoD __does__ have a backdoor. It is the cellphone, not Signal. There doesn't have to be a backdoor in Signal for them to have full access to these communications.

<comment><USER11> > The DoD __does__ have a backdoor. It is the cellphone, not Signal.

How? By compromising the baseband, and then pivoting to compromise the AP? But what about IOMMU? Or is that pwnable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a lot of comments here about Signal being better than Wickr, but little information on why yet. A quick Google search didn't give me any decent answers, so can anyone fill in why Signal is better?

<comment><USER21> Signal is open source [https://github.com/signalapp](https://github.com/signalapp)

<comment><USER22> Even their server code?

<comment><USER23> Yes! [https://github.com/signalapp/Signal- Server](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server)

<comment><USER24> But how can you be sure there's no additional code being run on their server?

<comment><USER25> It doesn't matter as the messages are end to end encrypted and the way it is done is continously verified by multiple leading/up-and-coming cryptographers as far as I understand.

This is the _huge_ advantage that Signal has over mail, the default mode in Telegram and pretty much anything there is: it does matter if NSA, FSB, MI5, Mossad, Google and Facebook all have root on a server that all the traffic passes through. To the best our knowledge - long as they don't compromise one of the endpoints - the only thing they'll get is metadata and the only thing they can do is disrupting the service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> " Electronic communications and text messages sent as part of official government business are part of the public record, and should be accessible via a Freedom of Information Act request."

Unless it's classified and it would be very easy to make the case that all of the communication being sent on Army-issued cell phones would be Confidential at a minimum. The important stuff all gets copied into OPORDS and will be available for declassification someday.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm curious why Wire wasn't recommended. I prefer it because you don't need a phone number to use it.

<comment><USER19> Signal talked about how this is actually a security flaw. I believe they are working on implementing the feature though. It is about being able to create social graphs. So like if you get a new phone you can keep your social network (also that if you discard a phone an adversary can't pick up your identity trivially). With the current implementation you'd lose your social graph every time you got a new device. I didn't check very hard but I think it is this blog post [0]. They don't have many posts, so I'm sure you can find it if this isn't the one.

[0] [https://signal.org/blog/private-contact- discovery/](https://signal.org/blog/private-contact-discovery/)

<comment><USER27> [https://signal.org/blog/secure-value- recovery/](https://signal.org/blog/secure-value-recovery/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Everyone's making comments about this indicating there could be a backdoor. Wouldn't that be impossible for Signal without putting it in the open source app? Otherwise wouldn't it have to be a protocol-level vulnerability?

<comment><USER29> How do you know the binary in the App Store is actually compiled from the published source. Is it possible to reproduce iOS binaries?

<comment><USER28> Great question. I would assume Signal has some sort of signed reproducible builds, but I have no idea what the Apple store process is like. Do you not just submit a binary to the store?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Didn't Bezos' phone get hacked through a WhatsApp message? I know they're not talking operational comms, but how confident are we these two apps are exploit-free?

<comment><USER31> We are not. It's software.

E2E encryption is tight until you hack a client or system on either side, but at least it makes it nearly impossible to attack the middle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > "I don't have confidence that DoD could build a unique texting system with > proper security protocols that would beat any commercial, off the shelf, > version," the former official said.

so $700B in defense spending can't match some motivated, talented FLOSS devs? that's rich.

<comment><USER33> That's the sad reality. Not just on the DoD side, but from the entire federal IT workforce/teams.

With the exception of:

18F [https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/)

USDS [https://www.usds.gov/](https://www.usds.gov/)

The motto seems to be: "Open Source is BAD! How are we going the get support?! Let's just buy a product or solution from a vendor" Even though they have people/teams who were hired as developers. I have so many horror stories, it's not even funny.

<comment><USER34> Check out Kessel Run as well. [https://kesselrun.af.mil/](https://kesselrun.af.mil/)

DoD mindset re: digital acquisitions is changing.

<comment><USER17> how each branch is implementing tech commands is fascinating. \- DDS in general seems like a great program.

\- KR dudes are great and will probably unfuck the AF's tech if they have enough wiggle room and command support against Lockheed and co. Hiring at GS-12s, few weeks approval, quick clearances, other unheard of comp strategies to get good civ talent.

\- Army futures command is ..... near retired E9s and O6s in cargo shorts and underarmour polos, hiding out in the Austin Wework

<comment><USER35> Sadly it's hard to argue the effect that KR is having is "positive".

KR stood up by working closely with Pivotal who supplied both the Pivots to pair program with the comparatively inexperienced AF devs as well as the deployment platform.

While the means are debatable, the ends that Units supplying devs to KR had to face we're not. Those Units got back programmers completely reliant on Pivotal Cloud Foundary. You would get devs that had no concept of what happens to their code after they run `cf push` and the Units had to face the reality that their devs were ineffective without PCF which costed 10's of millions to purchase and maintain by a team of Pivotal engineers.

Obviously Pivotal is a company that exists to make profit but smaller units that supplied devs to KR largely felt taken advantage of. And after that you had things like SpaceCamp, LevelUp, Platform1, that are very similar to KR just without the heavy reliance on Pivotal or their products popping up left and right.

Now that it's gone on for so long even leadership in KR is getting pressured to actually produce a product ready app for all the money that's been dumped. They have plenty of MVP's but afaik nothing to big AF's satisfaction.

At least from a lowly enlisted programmers perspective you can live in Boston in civilian clothes for 6 months.

<comment><USER36> This is no longer the case.

While we do have spring applications running on PCF, we have a significant and growing number of services and applications that are not built on PCF and PCF isn't required to build a production application and be CATO compliant. In fact almost all of the applications and services in my branch are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> According to the article, they also require a VPN. So why use these apps? Is the VPN purely optional or do they not trust the _inner_ network?

<comment><USER38> Signal supports local encryption doesn't it? Maybe they are worried about physically losing their phones?

But they probably don't fully trust their vpn, good spycraft assumes that the adversary has (partial) access to your systems.

<comment><USER39> It doesn't have any mode that's not encrypted.

<comment><USER40> SMS?

<comment><USER41> the app supports SMS for convenience, but that's not "using signal" as in the protocol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> AG Barr, what now? Signal/Wickr use only allowed with govt employment?

Good though, although most AD have been using Whatsapp anyways for comms back home

</comment><comment><USER42> The irony that Edward Snowden also recommends Signal is so thick. Isn't this a gateway drug for other whistleblowers?

<comment><USER43> In what sense would it be a gateway? Because of the possibility of data exfiltration?

<comment><USER42> This allows people to communicate securely with certain people, say journalists, if you have something you want to share in private. If you don't know about this kind of app you might be fearful of doing that. I meant gateway drug as a joke but hopefully you get the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why not keybase?

<comment><USER45> Keybase comes with social tools to verify identity. Would be pretty silly to see a military personnel profile in public view.

<comment><USER44> Good point, its been a while since I signed up and I forgot about the whole "verification" process. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why wouldn't they just install and use a boring old corporate style XMPP system with auditing? Everything would be open source and entirely under their control.

Why would you want something that had to send traffic outside of the VPN?

</comment><comment><USER47> "[...] where adversaries can _exploit_ American communications systems, cell phones and _the electromagnetic spectrum_." (emphasis mine)

Wait, what?

<comment><USER48> >the electromagnetic spectrum

EMP, signal jamming, GPS spoofing etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Signal's auto-delete feature is optional and off by default.

<comment><USER50> It could still be problematic if "With regards to transparency and records keeping requirements, Foote said he 'cannot confirm if any personnel have Signal or Wickr settings which allow auto-delete of messages at this time.'"

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Wickr makes little sense. Maybe they meant Wire?

<comment><USER52> Why? I'm genuinely curious. I've never used their product, but their Wikipedia page says they are a San Francisco based company with end-to-end encrypted messaging and video conference calls[1]. And their home page[2] says "Fully encrypted. Enterprise-ready. Private."

At first glance it seems like a reasonable choice. US based and end-to-end encrypted seems to be what the military wants in this case.

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

[2] [https://wickr.com/](https://wickr.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> why not backdoored whatsapp? it would be perfect government endorsement.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is probably because Signal and Wickr are actually intelligence operations.

</comment><comment><USER55> Definitely not Wickr.

<comment><USER56> Why?

<comment><USER55> As one who studied protocol state of many Internet-based protocols, Wickr isn't as closely guarded protocol as Signal is with regard to being able to do MitM (between a specific two protocol states). This is from a theoretical analysis. No time to do actual jerryrigging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> CKN23-ARIN DARPA literally invented the Internet for this kind of use case and now they can't even write their own secure messaging app?

<comment><USER57> And they now recommend an app developed by anarchists?

<comment><USER58> Source? I didn't know that.

<comment><USER59> Moxie Marlinspike (owner of the world's greatest name) is the lead of the Signal project is often described as an anarchist (as in this wired article: [https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike- anarchi...](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/meet-moxie-marlinspike-anarchist- bringing-encryption-us/), which is better than it's headline).

He is not, in truth, an anarchist. He is a crypto-zealot, most definitely eccentric, and opposed to a lot of government intrusion. In today's world, I guess that's an anarchist

<comment><USER60> An anarchist who collaborates with WhatsApp (Facebook), that's rather comical :o)

<comment><USER61> An anarchist who works to get all the major messaging platforms end-to-end encrypted, so that normal people who don't think to explicitly opt-in to encryption get the benefits by default? Makes perfect sense to me.

WhatsApp was (maybe still is?) the most popular messaging application in the world. Getting it E2E encrypted is a huge coup.

<comment><USER62> true, but storing all conversation histories locally and in the cloud is an anti-coup. Not that Moxie had any influence on these decisions one way or the other (to the best of my knowledge).

The upshot is I worry that E2E encryption has given folks a false sense of security.

<comment><USER63> E2E means it is encrypted before transmission, so if that data is stored in the cloud, wouldn't that mean that it would remain encrypted if it does get stored in the cloud?

<comment><USER62> not according this announcement by WhatsApp.

> Media and messages you back up aren't protected by WhatsApp end-to-end > encryption while in Google Drive.

[https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28000019/?category=52452...](https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/android/28000019/?category=5245251)

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-warns-free-google- dri...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-warns-free-google-drive- backups-are-not-encrypted/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Good to know they are only US-backdoored then

</comment><comment><USER65> A bit alarming to see the government embracing an end-to-end chat system with perfect forward secrecy, considering both the head of the FBI and the CIA have confirmed that the lack of a back door would impede the fight against ISIS.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/08/fbi- chief...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/08/fbi-chief- backdoor-access-encryption-isis)

<comment><USER66> Why is that alarming? The FBI and CIA requests for backdoors are alarming. Unless you're positing that these apps may have secretly complied with CIA and FBI requests?

If anything, this is a really good thing, as the utility of publicly available comms are embraced by government entities, it should somewhat guarantee that us consumers will also have access to this.

<comment><USER67> >If anything, this is a really good thing, as the utility of publicly available comms are embraced by government entities, it should somewhat guarantee that us consumers will also have access to this.

I largely agree with you but a more cynical take would be that it allows the following argument to be advanced:

"If the 82nd Airborne uses it, then it is a weapon of war. Why should civilians have access to the same communication equipment as a soldier needs in a time of war."

That is, they associate the technology with combat and the military. Then, they use that association as a way to argue the technology is only inherently useful for those planning to engage in combat.

It also allows governments to advance the argument that if it useful for our soldiers then it should be denied to enemy soldiers and thus it should be tightly controlled (see night vision googles[0] or cryptography as a weapon[1]).

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night- vision_device#Legality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night- vision_device#Legality)

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

<comment><USER68> If they make that argument, it shouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the 2nd amendment should apply to this technology then.

<comment><USER69> There's certainly a case here. If Barr goes forward with his nutty anti- encryption push, I hope the opposition uses this argument. Google lists definition #1 for "arms" as "weapons", and definition #2 of "weapons" as "a means of gaining an advantage or defending oneself in a conflict or contest."

I doubt any would argue that un-breakable (at least, theoretically) comms would provide no tactical advantage. If anyone would, I'd refer him to the second world war as a prominent example. This argument could help built a bi- partisan pro-cryptography group by pulling in support from the 2A crowd. I support cryptography remaining fully legal (even if classified as a munition or armament) for the same reason I support the 2A, practical security considerations aside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I don't trust Wickr

<comment><USER20> Why not?

<comment><USER70> Closed source, compellable US based company, lack of emphasis on being installable on privacy OS' like Tails and Whonix.

They don't do anything to dispel the notion of being a honeypot and basically do the exact opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Well signal is not supported on non-phone androids (there was some option on the desktop dev build but it's not supported anymore, so it's not even usable on desktop). I've heard that this limitation increases security but I have a hard time understanding why. So I can't really vouch for Signal, but I wish I would. I guess requiring a physical android phone makes it hard to create bogus accounts?

I wanted to try jami to do some p2p voip on windows. It crashes when I create an account.

It really sounds like secure alternatives are "disappearing" or just not usable or mature enough, in favor of mainstream apps that are known to be monitored. Not to mention the call quality of skype/discord can suffer because it's using servers.

</comment><comment><USER72> While I appreciate that there are only 2 CVE's for Signal [1], it doesn't appear to tell the whole story.[2][3][4]

I don't need 'Perfect', I do need 'Better'. OS independent: *BSD, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS

I'm willing to run my own server, but the wife-unit needs something "easy" (hence the Windows requirement).

What are some reasonably secure E2E IM platforms?

[1][https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-1791...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability- list/vendor_id-17912/product_id-45789/Signal-Signal.html)

[2][https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinde...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/10/05/signal- messenger-eavesdropping-exploit-confirmedwhat-you-need-to-know/amp/)

[3][https://www.fastcompany.com/90444005/hackers-could-have- expl...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90444005/hackers-could-have-exploited-a- whatsapp-flaw-to-create-mass-chaos-say-researchers)

[4][https://www.scmagazineuk.com/researchers-reveal-easily- signa...](https://www.scmagazineuk.com/researchers-reveal-easily-signal- telegram-whatsapp-messages-hijacked/article/1521145)

<comment><USER73> Hmm. Define "reasonably secure". Your link [3] is about WhatsApp and [4] is a about a compromised platform. No app is secure once you hack the phone.</comment></comment>


Thirteen Million Wikipedia Paragraphs at your Fingertips - <AUTHOR> http://duckduckgo.com/blog/wikipedia.html

<comment><USER2> The info box is cool but the layout of it is really annoying. Since it's a div, I can't resize it and scrolling to the bottom scrolls the page down as well when I hit the bottom so the whole thing is very jarring.

It would be a lot better if the text were simply in a textarea instead of a div so that I could resize the box (in Chrome at least, IE is screwed either way) when I want to read it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions--I'll give it a second look. It scrolls the box first, then the page. But yeah, if you overshoot like with a mouse wheel, then the page eventually scrolls. I was resistant to a textarea because people think they are for typing in them.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, you're right.

Maybe something like this then?

<http://jqueryui.com/demos/resizable/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed that these days, Google's answers to search questions are generally "why don't you try Wikipedia?"

These days, the Web is somewhere between three and five titans plus a complex of secondary sites (specialist wikis, newspaper sites, news aggregators, major blogs), with a background noise that chiefly consists of spammers mirroring 90% of Wikipedia to improve their search-engine rankings.

So, in a way, this search engine is inevitable -- but I wouldn't have imagined it as early as thirty minutes ago, so it's probably not inevitable, just an idea so good that you forget that it ever didn't exist.

"Duck It!" seems to work _really_ well, too; I'm switching. My only concern is that "Duck It!" doesn't include a way of telling you whether a given paragraph is true or false...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point on the try or false, which is why we don't promote that stuff into the Zero-click Info boxes. I have some ideas on how to address that problem, however. It should be one of the next major feature improvements.

You're absolutely right about major sites ruling content. However, I'd add to that there are many vertical search engines that do a great job searching more deep content in their verticals.

Originally one of the things I wanted to do was be a conduit to those engines, but throwing the user there proved too jarring a UI experience. So all that code was commented out. I'm now looking for good ways to revive it.

<comment><USER3> From playing around with DuckIt, I agree, there's more information out there than I'd imagined -- it's just strangled by a thick forest of spam, which you have devised a superb method of clearing.

My comment on the accuracy of zero-click info was inspired by an "acid-test" test search that turned up some zero-click information that was excellent, but some that was howlingly wrong. "Iberians" produces _splendid_ zero-click info, including a thumbnail of the Lady of Elche; "Y-haplogroup R1b" and "mtDNA haplogroup H" also worked very well; but "Iberian race" turned up zero-click info that's been refuted completely by genetic genealogy and was pseudoscience even before then.

Of course, there's an element of "garbage in, garbage out" here. I would hardly condemn a merely _mortal_ search engine for being less than up-to-date on the very young (<30 years) and distinctly arcane fields of forensic anthropology and genetic genealogy -- but Zero-Click Info mode makes it sound like this is _your_ information, not _the Internet's_ information.

Perhaps you could add a disclaimer to the effect that your elite team of ninja ducks has scoured the dark corners of the earth and returned with the best information they could find, but there's still a risk that their findings are a complete load of HealthBase?

(I would also _love_ to see a picture of your elite team of ninja ducks returning from their investigations. But maybe that's just a sign that I'm easily amused -- the kind of person who _still_ finds "All Your Base" to be funny...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. I've been using it for a while, and DDG's Zero-click Info results is like asking the smartest guy in the office: "Hey Bob, what is [INSERT SEARCH TERM HERE]?", and having them respond with a relevant, informed, & concise answer.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is very similar to Powerset (<http://powerset.com>). They were bought by Microsoft a while back for a fair chunk of change, so you might be on to something.

</comment><comment><USER6> I switched to DDG to try it out - and have been using it very often since.

Too bad you don't see the text you are typing in if you're using a dark gnome theme (the background of the input box is black, and the text is set to dark grey). On google it's ok (white text).

The same thing happens here on HN comments, btw. :)

</comment><comment><USER7> I really dig duck duck go, its possibly the greatest google competitor on the net (in my opinion) I love the ajax populated results when you scroll, and the results are usually pretty relevant. If I have any complaints, its that some of the graphics seem less than professional. Anyways, while I've been watching it for a while this feature encouraged me to make it my default search engine in chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx! Any particular UI suggestions? I've been thinking lately of offering some settings to change font sizes/faces/colors/etc. Would that help?

<comment><USER8> Hey, I'd love your site, a lot of my friends have started using it regularly over Google.

As for UI suggestions, I know you're trying to keep it cute, but I'd try to use a little more serious design. I think a lot of people might miss the high quality of the results. Even if you decided to keep the theme, I'd change the Century Gothic font. I've been using a custom made stylesheet to modify that thus far :P

<comment><AUTHOR> What's in your stylesheet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does the same thing as Googlepedia does for Firefox. What impresses me more is the "Try search on" box on the right. It would be nice if that were customizable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx! Googlepedia displays whole articles next to search results (<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/images/p/6210/>) and not relevant paragraphs.</comment></comment>


Free Android App maker - <AUTHOR> http://freeandroidappmaker.com/

<comment><USER2> As zrgui said (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2242098>) that these sites add " low-quality content apps " into the market but something simple like this does serve its purpose, in my opinion, for the younger, growing up, geek generation. Looking back at how I got interested in programming, something like this probably would have sparked my interest in mobile development by jump starting my baby steps in creating "my own app", ragardless of how simple the app might be.

</comment><comment><USER3> It basically says "give us your idea for an app, so that we can code it and then put our own ad code in there." Great way to get ideas from the crowd for free.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone tried Google's Android app maker?

<http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/>

<comment><USER5> It was pretty good for simple apps. But you cannot upload the apps created to Android market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> while I like the general flow and the resulted applications, I think this is just one more tool to add lots of low-quality content apps to the Android Market, already full with useless stuff. There are at least a dozen of similar services available right now (mostly paid though) doing that.

<comment><USER7> If you click right through this one is a paid service too, really. While you can put a "free" app out there it's "not guaranteed" to be owned by you and they'll make ad. revenue from it. Useless.

<comment><USER6> yes, I saw that. But adding a "free" option will generate loads of free crap apps, and only very few will actually pay for the service. Check out the AppLoop case, which was the first service of this kind, but for the iphone: <http://gigaom.com/apple/apploop-iphone-app-generator/> . I remember they had over 400 submissions in the first hours, and while they were shut down by Apple shortly it shows a good estimation of the kind of result this could have.</comment></comment></comment>


Bare Metal STM32 Programming and a Quadcopters Awakening - <AUTHOR> https://timakro.de/blog/bare-metal-stm32-programming/ <comment><USER2> Hi, interesting article, but I would like to suggest you something. While it's OK to do bare metal just using the memory locations like you did:

        *(uint32_t *)0x40021018 = 0x00000004;

after a few days, it will become tiresome to read and to remember all those addresses. I suggest you to use the header [0] that the ST provides for STM32F1, which is included in packages such as STMCubeF1 [1], STMCubeF0, etc.

For instance, instead of using the memory address directly, you could just do

        RCC->APB2ENR |= RCC_APB2ENR_IOPAEN;

so it's easier to remember what is what. STMCubeF1 is a big package, but you won't be using the API/drivers ST provides (such as HAL and LL), just the header. As I understand, the STM32 community kind of rejects this API as "bloated".

I have some examples here if you would like to take a look:

[https://github.com/dbolgheroni/arm- makefile/blob/master/drv/...](https://github.com/dbolgheroni/arm- makefile/blob/master/drv/gpio.c#L29)

Cheers,

[0] [https://github.com/dbolgheroni/arm- makefile/blob/master/stm3...](https://github.com/dbolgheroni/arm- makefile/blob/master/stm32cubef1/cmsis/include/stm32/stm32f103xb.h) [1] [https://www.st.com/en/embedded- software/stm32cubef1.html](https://www.st.com/en/embedded- software/stm32cubef1.html)

<comment><USER3>
        *(uint32_t *)0x40021018 = 0x00000004;

Actually that line is not ok. But for another reason. Without "volatile" in there, the compiler may reorder this access with others, or remove it, or combine it with others. None of that is good.

<comment><USER4> That's a very important call-out. This is the kind of tear-your-hair-out stuff that's going to be very difficult to track down unless you get it exactly right. I echo that using the definitions makes the code infinitely more readable and writeable, and makes zero difference in terms of performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok, this drives me nuts

ARGH! Seriously? The STM32F103? Crazy (or should that be Craze) hobbyists using "blue pill" boards because they are cheap (and they are, like $3 on ebay) which use this bastard chip of the ST Cortex-M line and they say "gee, its a really simple circuit and since they sell for so cheap on ebay it should be a good idea to use this chip!" BZZZZZZT!

ST Micro makes _much better_ CPUs that would be ideal for this application, they have things like on board DSP instructions in their _floating point_ units, and can run at internal clock rates of _180_ MHz with a megabyte of Flash and 384K of RAM, some of it very high performance (core coupled memory). These CPUs are no harder to put onto a PCB than the STM32F103 and they are _so much more capable_. And sure, they are $10 apiece instead of $1 apiece which is fine if you're making BILLIONS of these things, but a bespoke quadcopter?

Oh but its Open Source, cool, except I can't find the PCB files anywhere, if I could I could pull out that crap chip and put in a real CPU and have OSHPark make me a few. I did find the software repo : [https://github.com/Crazepony](https://github.com/Crazepony) and yeah, another budget quadcopter maker with a bunch of things they want to sell and an "open source" tag to try to get people to come and look. Fair enough, it made me look. It is sort of the 'freemium' hardware company model.

Sigh. I'd love something bigger than the Crazflie[1] which is like real open source (PCB and everything) and smaller than a DJI Phantom that I could play around with.

<comment><USER6> Shoot the Crazepony people an email and ask about the PCB design files for their 'open source' quadcopter?

<comment><USER5> I did one better than that, I shot my ST Micro rep an email and asked them if they would like a open source design on the web that showcased their new STM32F4 series with built in Wireless support and their new STSPIN BLDC controllers with built in Cortex-M0s. He was quite taken with the idea :-)

<comment><USER7> Quadcopter pilots have been using STM32F3 for years. Check out: [https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight](https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight) one of the more popular flight control projects. They've been supporting STM32F4 and STM32F7 for quite some time.

A typical quad flight controller with an STM32F4 and a decent MPU will set you back less than $30.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Little bit off topic, but if anyone is on the fence about STM32, I strongly suggest trying out STM32 Black pill 3.3V version ([https://wiki.stm32duino.com/images/5/52/Black_Pill_Schematic...](https://wiki.stm32duino.com/images/5/52/Black_Pill_Schematic.pdf)). It's an _amazing_ board, Arduino-compatible, 72MHz, i/o, adc and pwm pins, uart and i2c.

You can get it cheaper and just solder the header yourself. Even has a micro USB support.

Truly remarkable board.

<comment><USER9> I'm not an expert wrt. the clocking of these boards, how does it achieve the 72MHz? In that datasheet it looks like the onboard crystal is just 8MHz.

Does it use some kind of internal clock multiplier to achieve 72MHz? Would such a magnified 8MHz to 72MHz provide a good stable clock?

<comment><USER10> The clock source is typically generated by a phase locked loop from the external crystal oscillator. There's a PLL multiplier and divider value that you can set obtain the desired frequency.

I _think_ the MCU starts running at a low speed from an internal RC oscillator, and then setting up the high speed clock source happens early in the initialization code. This code can be generated by ST's STM32Cube software, which is useful as a reference implementation even if you don't use the generated code in your project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like a nice write-up!

ST actually sells an evaluation board for learning about drone control; it has a BTLE module, four small FETs, sensors for pressure and a 9-axis IMU, a 1S battery charging circuit, and source code for some example firmware on Github. Search for 'STEVAL-FCU001V1'.

I've also seen a lot of cheap STM32-based FCU boards from the same places you'd get one of these 'blue pill' boards.

These are very useful chips to learn about, because they come in all shapes and sizes. Some focus on power efficiency, others on speed, others on connectivity or signal processing, and there aren't too many differences that you need to account for in your code.

Also, you can program and debug these using OpenOCD with a generic "ST-Link" module; they only cost a few bucks from cheap sources, or many of ST's evaluation boards have a built-in STLink probe which you can use. That lets you connect to the chip from GDB and step through your code like a normal C program, which is often a lifesaver.

<comment><AUTHOR> On-chip debugging with OpenOCD was actually one of the next things I wanted to try out with my drone. I need to get an ST-Link dongle because the drone doesn't have one on board.

I'm not sure if JTAG will even work or if they connected a pin to some sensor or similar on the board. SWD will work for sure, I saw the two SWCLK and SWDIO connectors on the board.

<comment><USER11> Cool, good luck! If you end up wanting a more 'official' STLink probe which is still pretty cheap, the ones on their 'discovery kit' and larger 'nucleo' boards can be disconnected from the main board and used with other targets.

They're a little bulky, but if you're interested in bare-metal programming, the embedded Rust ebook[1] currently uses an STM32F3 discovery kit[2] as a target, and that board's user manual has instructions for using its ST-Link to program/debug an external application[3] like your drone.

[1]: [https://rust-embedded.github.io/book/](https://rust- embedded.github.io/book/)

[2]: [https://octopart.com/stm32f3discovery- stmicroelectronics-241...](https://octopart.com/stm32f3discovery- stmicroelectronics-24148288)

[3]: [https://www.st.com/resource/en/user_manual/dm00063382.pdf](https://www.st.com/resource/en/user_manual/dm00063382.pdf) (PDF, see section 6.2 for STLink info)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have no idea about the load carrying capacity of the drone, but it would be an awfully cool project to add an ultrasound sensor(s) and write a program for flying it around randomly indoors without hitting walls. A fancy feature might be to solve a real-life maze by flying through it. Would such a thing be possible?

<comment><USER13> Not ultrasound but at one point in my life I made this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig8IRTejn8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig8IRTejn8A)

(I'm even piloting in this video)

<comment><USER12> Very cool. Thank you for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just FYI, I don't recommend charging LiIon or LiPo batteries in parallel, as shown in one of the pictures.

There's a greater risk of fire or just general damage to the capacity of the batteries.

<comment><USER15> For the small 1S batteries you can get this style of charger for $16 that will charge in parallel: [https://www.amazon.com/Happymodel-Battery-Charger- Mobula7-Qu...](https://www.amazon.com/Happymodel-Battery-Charger- Mobula7-Quadcopter/dp/B07K7H5H6C)

But for bigger batteries I recommend buying a charger that can handle 4 or more separate batteries at a time like the SkyRC Q200 or the Turnigy TQ4, or just do like me, charge each battery individually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> STM32 chips are used on a lot of quadcopter flight controllers, often using open source firmware like Betaflight

[https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/wiki](https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/wiki)

<comment><USER15> I am tracking this issue: [https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/issues/5516](https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight/issues/5516)

I can't wait to see how a STM32H7 will perform on a quadcopter, and what it will allow for :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Keil has a completely free version of their compiler for STM32F0, STM32G0, and STM32L0 micros: [https://www2.keil.com/stmicroelectronics- stm32/mdk](https://www2.keil.com/stmicroelectronics-stm32/mdk)

<comment><USER18> I cannot reccomend against Kiel, iar, and atollic enough. They are garbage ide's (can only do string based auto complete, no dark theme, very poor window management), yet still cost a small fortune if you want to go above 32KB of flash usage or whatever other the free versions do. They also have their version of a linker script which is even worse than normal linker scripts, and if you are forced to use their compiler then often it doesn't even handle c++11. Or if it does have c++, the auto complete doesn't.

Go for gcc or clang with cmake (or even just make) and use qt creator or visual studio code or others. You will get cmake based auto complete, access to a proper IDE color scheme of your choice, get to use your own compiler (clang, gcc, etc), and it's much more flexible. And for debugging be able to use a much more capable ozone from segger, or even gdb enabled backend in qt creator or clion.

My work flow for example is cmake and gcc regarding tooling, qt creator or visual studio code which works with cmake to give me proper context aware auto complete, and clang-tidy as a linter running in the background. I am incredibly productive with this, and am able to make use of c++17's features to go for true zero cost abstractions, while shifting checks from runtime to the compiler via types and static asserts and whatnot.

Plus, this is far more portable. No longer having to worry about project files working across diffirent versions of keil (this bit me in the ass at my last company). It's just a simple text file.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, iffy IDEs are pretty common in the embedded world. I too dislike Keil's uVision IDE, but sometimes you need to take the bad with the good. At work I use Keil + MDK-Pro and now and again also use ETM trace for debugging really tricky problems. AFAIK armcc also produces higher performing binaries than arm gcc (but this probably irrelevant in a lot of use cases).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can't help but wonder whether quadcopters will be where governments finally legislate control over general computation. Having access to bare metal means nobody can stop inexpensive and socially-disruptive quadcopter applications. How many years before quadcopters join rats and pigeons as the scourge of urban life, always on the prowl for unguarded power outlets or perches on power lines?

Governments and/or corporations have control of the bottom layer of cell phones and TCP/IP networking. Not so for firmware and cryptography, though not for lack of trying.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing the article! I think it would make a good addition to my WeeklyRobotics[1] series. Would you mind if I reshare it there?

[1] [http://weeklyrobotics.com/](http://weeklyrobotics.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice series you got there, I just took a look and found some really interesting projects. I would be honored for my article to be featured there!

<comment><USER13> I'm glad you found some interesting projects, it means I'm doing some things right!

I'll most probably feature your article in the issue coming out this Sunday or a week after.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What tools did you use to make the drawings in the post? They look great!</comment>


Traders scratch their heads as financial stock soars 2,800% - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/mysterious-2572-25-stock-rally-has-traders-scratching-their-heads/ar-BB13SS1S <comment><USER2> I wonder how prevalent it is to launder money through stock listings by inflating prices, and if there are traders out there who attempt try to track such schemes and get in and out before the launderers switch stocks.

<comment><USER3> "money launderers" tend to avoid commodities that keep their name on the paper trail, as do equities brokerage accounts. They usually uses shills+fences, but the SEC has the ability to prosecute these crimes using financial forensics.

<comment><USER2> But in a case like this the launderers could just be rich princes trying to move money out of the country without domestic blowback, but otherwise not breaking any laws, foreign or domestic. If you're Putin or some Venezuelan general, all you really need is a mechanism that flouts currency controls primarily intended to restrain the commoners, plausible deniability, and a sufficiently clean paper trail to satisfy international regulators. Schemes like 1MDB seem to usually go under the radar and are rarely prosecuted, even in the U.S., which is somewhat unique in its long-arm statutes. Anyhow, you may be okay with avoiding dollar-denominated transactions altogether.

Also, I may go ahead and just say it, but I wonder how much Middle Eastern and Chinese money has found its way into the Silicon Valley VC ecosystem, and specifically the degree to which those sources are tolerant of low or even negative returns. Sometimes I daydream about a Middle Easter shell company offering a few million in seed money, perhaps on the condition I provide a nice salary to a princely board member's third-cousin recently graduated from Stanford. Though in truth I'm not sure why they'd even care to involve someone like me, anyhow :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Something fishy is going on here...

</comment><comment><USER5> seems legit</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a market for user scripts? - <AUTHOR>

I have developed several Greasemonkey user scripts for the company I work for, and they have measurably increased efficiency.
My guess is that Javascript-based user scripts could similarly improve efficiency for a number of businesses.
But is there a market for them?  Basically all of the user scripts I've encountered have been freely shared.
And if there is a market for them ... how does one go about explaining a user scripts (and its benefits) to someone who thinks a greasemonkey is an auto mechanic? <comment><USER2> It would be hard. Like you said they're usually free, which gives people the expectation they'll be free. Then they come across yours, and they'll be surprised to see a price. Unless you're really offering something different I don't see it happen.

A donate-button could work though, if your work is good people will often be willing to give a few dollars.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is possible to sell web apps and extensions (almost same thing as greasemonkey scripts) on Chrome Web Store at <https://chrome.google.com/webstore>. For Chrome only obviously.

</comment><comment><USER4> You might find some luck on <http://codecanyon.net/></comment>


Stuxnet Authors Made Several Basic Errors - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/stuxnet-authors-made-several-basic-errors-011811

<comment><USER2> I'm so confused about Stuxnet--some people were saying it was among the most brilliant viruses ever, (from memory) using several 0-day exploits and doing things like recording normal activity to play back to machine operators while it did its damage. That alone sounds pretty impressive to me. Then on the other hand I've seen a few articles in the past few days calling it "nothing special after all." Which is it?

<comment><USER3> Whatever people say about the theoretically optimal nature of the virus, the fact is that it's practically the only example we have of governmental-level sabotage through black-hat arts.

This is direct action. It isn't script kiddies, it isn't Anonymous, it isn't a random 1337_h4xr pulling off some minor corporate sting. It's the real deal, it's programmers putting their lifeblood into an endeavor that changed the fate of nations.

So whatever flaws that happened to exist don't change the inherent absolute confidence of the maneuver, nor does it change the precision you praise in your post.

But it also means that it can't be perfect. Anything that's so grounded in reality will not be perfect. That's the rules of playing the big games--you can't please everyone, you can't perform to the theoretical maximum that the weak articles that call it "nothing special after all" espouse.

Because that theoretical maximum was out of the reach of stuxnet's writers from the beginning, and they fucking dealt with it. People writing articles now have had nothing to do with crippling Iran's nuclear capability, if even for a moment, and the hogwash in the blogosphere that exists is so much shallow posturing.

<comment><USER4> You clearly believe the press Stuxnet is getting. I don't. Neither, to some extent, does this analysis in Forbes: [http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffreycarr/2011/01/17/the-new- york-...](http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffreycarr/2011/01/17/the-new-york-times- fails-to-deliver-stuxnets-creators/)

<comment><USER5> He does not exactly make a cogent argument. Paraphrasing part of it, "Stuxnet was made in China because Realtek and JMicron are Taiwanese, which is basically China."

<comment><USER4> I may have read the article less carefully than you, but I remember one sentence about China, referring to some other article the guy wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "Whoever did this needed to know WinCC programming, Step 7, they needed > platform process knowledge, the ability to reverse engineer a number of file > formats, kernel rootkit development and exploit development. That's a broad > set of skills. Does anyone here think they could do all of that?"

Sure, I could do that and I am nobody special. That's absolutely nothing compared to the "minimum requirements" stated in most job ads for jobs that pay crap.

<comment><USER7> One must be careful about admitting to possessing skills that could be used in the creation of digital "weapons..." But yes, it's not all that uncommon to meet career generalists that have gathered both the breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to write something like Stuxnet.

<comment><USER6> I'm not admitting to any special skills whatsoever that's the whole point.

Programming logic controllers is very simple. They are designed to be like Excel, something that non-programmers can program.

The hard part of this operation was getting the information about the Iranian labs, which was surely beyond top secret. There were probably dozens of special ops guys involved in that part. But that's nothing to do with the programming.

As far as zero day exploits, they are widely for sale to the highest bidder, one only needs money not skills. But if one has no money, that's not a problem either. It's not like there's a shortage of them, I've made plenty of vulnerability reports myself to various vendors. So have most people who are even moderately competent. There are thousands of vulnerabilities to choose from. I don't find it hard to believe there are people holding some back. If you're a government agency monitoring all the hacking boards though you already know about a bunch of unpublicized vulnerabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Parker wrote a tool that analyzed similarities between the Stuxnet code and the code of some other well-known worms and applications and found that the code was fairly low quality.

well isn't that hand-wavy.

>For example, the command-and-control mechanism is poorly done and sends its traffic in the clear and the worm ended up propagating on the Internet, which was likely not the intent.

this is part speculative and part, in my subjective mind, stupid. propagating on the Internet seems a highly reasonable method to me. what do you expect it to use, facebook? maybe the constraint is that it has to express itself on the internet and therefore 'in the clear?'

>"This was probably not a western state. There were too many mistakes made. There's a lot that went wrong,"

Is that really so western-centric? this guy is seriously just reaching for criticism in order to grab headlines.

>Lawson concludes that whoever wrote Stuxnet likely was constrained by time and didn't think there was enough of a return to justify the investment of more time in advanced cloaking techniques.

That's at least reasonable, because in all honesty maybe there wasn't enough of a return. Lawson seems a better analyst than this Parker fellow.

<comment><USER4> No, it is the opposite of hand-wavy. It is a guy getting up on stage and performing an actual technical analysis in front of his peers, rather than posting an anonymous message board post insulting someone they presumably don't know.

<comment><USER8> If he wrote a tool that broke up the decompiled stuxnet binary into n-grams and did principal component analysis, then used a a boosting classifier to put it in clusters of similarly machine-analysed code deemed by some group of experts to be "high," "medium," or "low" quality, that's an actual technical analysis. Its merits could be debatable, but it's technical.

If all we know is that he wrote a tool that found the code to be of fairly low quality, he got up on stage in front of his peers and waved his hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As far as I can tell, Stuxnet did what it was supposed to do, and left no provable trace to its authors.

Seriously, what more could the authors want? Additional sophistication, just to keep some random bloggers happy?

I'm pretty sure their mission was "destroy some Uranium centrifuges" and not "create the perfect stealth cyber weapon". They succeeded at the former, so it doesn't matter that they "failed" at the latter.

<comment><USER4> How about "not disclosing the manner in which it disrupted the target, thus leaving precisely the same avenue of attack open at multiple sites in the future"? The fact that this is plastered all over the newspaper would, were this a professional intelligence operation, be a major flaw in the operation. So much so that I don't think that's what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What? A state-funded program that appears to have been somewhat hampered by bureaucracy?

Say it ain't so! ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how much making this virus cost taxpayers. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?pagewanted=1)

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess the author was not an early adopter. He'll like Stuxnet 2.0 I'm sure.</comment>


Contact Gmail re: spam addressed from my account - <AUTHOR> I'm getting gmail spam purportedly from my own email address. My passphrase length borders on absurdly long, so I doubt they hacked my account. It looks like a mailserver (telus.com) that Google trusts got 0wned and is relaying. How do I report it to gmail SRE's? In this case, I don't want to click the "This is spam button". <comment><USER2> See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16894593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16894593)

</comment><comment><USER3> Even me too</comment>


OpenPGP SEIP downgrade attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2015-October/026685.html <comment><USER2> The flaw he appears to be talking about is that the OpenPGP MDC doesn't cover metadata; the message must be parsed to recover the authenticator before the authenticator can be checked, and so the ciphertext is malleable.

The properties he's talking about for CFB are largely true of CTR as well (the gold standard in streaming modes). I think, by suggesting PGP use a "different mode", he may instead mean it would be better if PGP used an authenticated encryption mode.

Authentication is a weak spot for PGP, since its design predates much of authenticated cryptography.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, further down the thread Werner Koch suggests the solution is deploying AEAD modes, but the bottleneck is other implementations picking it up.

As an aside, I'm surprised this got posted to cryptography@metzdowd, the S/N on that list is so low I'm surprised anyone still bothers to read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So the message is: don't trust the integrity of encrypted mails unless the signature is valid? That doesn't seem too terrible.

</comment><comment><USER5> GPG comes through again. Not ideally but acceptably for the paranoids. :)</comment>


A/B Test your copywriting: do it before you submit a post to HN - <AUTHOR> http://abclick.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> nice job</comment>


Show HN: Reddit keyword tracking - <AUTHOR> http://public.getredditalerts.com/94a013e5-0204-4843-9196-8fe6129475c3/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. Out of curiosity, what are most of your users' use cases?</comment>


Google dodges lawsuit over Genius lyric scraping - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363692/google-genius-lyrics-lawsuit-scraping-copyright-yelp-antitrust-competition <comment><USER2> That's insane. So google just gets a free pass despite being caught red-handed scraping & 1:1 using content that isn't theirs?</comment>


Facebook advances the new unit of reporting? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnewmark.com/2010/05/facebook-advances-the-new-unit-of-reporting.html

<comment><USER2> "I want to suggest abandoning the article for the constantly updated topic page (a la Wave). The problem with an article online is that it has a short half life and gathers few links and little ongoing attention and thus Googlejuice. It's for this reason that Google's Marissa Mayer has been advising publishers to move past the article to the topic."

I like the idea. A lot. I would want an updating history of immutable canonical versions of a story, to reduce the re-writing of history that the internet makes relatively easy.

But I wouldn't want Facebook to actually _be_ the repository of objects.</comment>


Vuepress: a minimalistic Vue.js-powered static site generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vuejs/vuepress <comment><USER2> Vuepress is indeed nice, and it's the most simple static site generator I have ever used. can't wait for the next stable release I am planning to develop many plugins for it :P</comment>


Facebook executive admits to 'trust deficit' on call with advertisers - tech-historian https://www.ft.com/content/a6410a72-6e30-4f6d-9f5b-adaba1c1588e <comment> tech-historian [http://archive.is/epmHd](http://archive.is/epmHd)</comment>


It All Ends in Tears: UK PM Theresa May Resigns - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-resigns-latest-brexit-deal-conservative-leadership-race-european-elections-tory-party-a8928321.html <comment><USER2> UK politics are a dysfunctional shitshow run by power-hungry leaders pushing policy they don't believe in putting their parties first.

<comment><USER3> It's the same here in the US.

<comment><USER4> We're working on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This wont change a thing. Regardless who her successor is, be it a brexiteer or a remainer, the country, and the house is split on what to do about Brexit.

The next PM will try to bring yet another withdrawal agreement to the house, and for all the same reasons it'll get rejected.

The only upside that may come out of this, is that we'll get another vote about leaving. Then one way or another everyone will be forced to agree about what to do next.

<comment><USER6> Well they had a vote already, so then with a do over precedent, do officials just keep asking for do overs until they get the desired results? It's messy.

<comment><USER7> If the "people" do not "accept" the result of the previous vote, but are more accepting of the results of the new vote, there's nothing wrong with it. That's kind of how democracy works. It may feel wrong, but if the people's opinion change, then so can the result

<comment><USER6> And if the second vote fails, do you have a third and a fourth vote? Until the outcome is desired?

<comment><USER8> if you agreed to get ice-cream next year, then become lactose-intolerant, do you refuse to reconsider?

<comment><USER6> Not the same issue really.

Political stunts can cause damage. I call it a stunt because it was never meant to pass, but it did...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> She put party above country and made a right mess.

Good riddance.

<comment><USER9> Her party has been trying to get her out for a while. She's been a lame duck. I'll give her tenacity but it had to end. The negotiations are a disaster. Her own party is at odds with her. She should have stepped down last confidence vote.

<comment><USER10> >Her party has been trying to get her out for a while. She's been a lame duck. I'll give her tenacity but it had to end. The negotiations are a disaster. Her own party is at odds with her. She should have stepped down last confidence vote.

Nobody else is dumb enough to want to be left holding the bag, though.

<comment><USER11> > Nobody else is dumb enough to want to be left holding the bag, though.

I present to you one Boris Johnson.

<comment><USER12> My favourite interview with Boris Johnson - a liar: [https://twitter.com/eliistender10/status/1131868559259439104](https://twitter.com/eliistender10/status/1131868559259439104)

<comment><USER10> The photo at the top of this article says it all: [https://www.politico.eu/article/a-very-british-betrayal- mich...](https://www.politico.eu/article/a-very-british-betrayal-michael-gove- boris-johnson/)

Those are not the faces of men who are happy they've won. Boris looks like he's at a bloody funeral!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Goad – AWS Lambda powered load testing tool - <AUTHOR> https://goad.io <comment><AUTHOR> Goad was our entry in this year's Gopher Gala and was built in under 48 hours by a team of 4.

GitHub repo: [https://github.com/gophergala2016/goad](https://github.com/gophergala2016/goad)

</comment><comment><USER2> Any plans to include a way to "script" the urls, types of requests, etc?

Load testing is more than hammering a single URL thousands of times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely! Not something we could have done properly in 48 hours though :)

<comment><USER2> Take a look at the work by [https://stormforger.com/](https://stormforger.com/)

They offer a ruby DSL last time I checked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool.

I wish Lambda supported Go natively, the node.js wrapper hack to invoke the binary and proxy the stdin/out is really dumb.

</comment><comment><USER4> Drat. "Goad" \-- as in the "prod" or "poke" sense of the word -- has been my defacto default name for the inevitable build script in my golang projects (once I grow out of the single-word `go` tool commands). I'll have to rename if this catches on :D

</comment><comment><USER5> The idea is interesting, but I wonder how this isn't very expensive to run...

<comment><AUTHOR> A test that would use 100 lambda functions in parallel from each of the 4 regions and run for 5 minutes would cost about 3 USD. That should achieve a concurrency level of 100,000. That would be the most expensive test possible at the moment. Smaller tests are basically free.

<comment><USER6> Not to rain on anyone's parade but you could generate A LOT more load using regular old EC2 instances if all you had was $3...

<comment><USER7> Lambdas might be easier to launch and coordinate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Indie.vc: Unicorns Are Out, Profits Are In - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/indie-vc-unicorns-are-out-profits-are-in-648d2576319 <comment><USER2> In short: this author is endorsing a funding model focused on low initial investment and faster profitability. The benefits key benefits are that this funding model results in more women and minorities getting funding, as well as higher rate of companies surviving (10% vs. 44% [1]). The former is good, but probably isn't sufficient to motivate most investors. The latter doesn't necessarily translate into better returns on investment. Throughout this whole piece I was looking for a comparison on the net return on investment of the traditional VC model and this Indie.vc model. This comparison is never done. A high-risk high-reward investment model may still produce higher rates of returns than a low-risk low-return model.

Right now we're seeing a trend of larger companies taking an ever larger piece of the market share, and the total number of firms decreasing. While encouraging founders to form smaller companies with shorter time to profitability undoubtedly results in more companies surviving 3, 5, and 7 years after founding, that's not what we're optimizing for. An investment strategy with high rates of failure, but producing larger companies with those few successes is still yields the potential for larger overall returns.

1\. What does it mean by 10% vs. 44% of companies surviving? Presumably it means that 10% of traditionally funded companies exist X years after founding versus 44% of Indie.vc founded companies. But this is a strange metric to give without specifying how many years we're talking about.

<comment><USER3> I think both worlds can exist. You can have the "traditional" VCs going for the high-risk, high-reward model. And you can also have "new" VCs going for low-risk, medium-reward.

As an anecdote, in 2014 we looked for ~$250k investment. We had a business model that realistically took us to ~$5mm/year revenue in 5 years. We pitched various "traditional" VCs. The overwhelming feedback we got was that nobody doubted our team, the product, or the model. The problem was that the returns weren't big enough. The product was niche and could never become an "Uber" without really stretching the imagination. In the end, we found an angel investor in our space. We indeed did turn that $250k into $5mm/year revenue in 5 years and sold the company for 8 digits.

<comment><USER4> Is there any existing term for "funding for business that will never be a unicorn but can clearly become profitable and provide good returns"? Is there an equivalent of VC for "lifestyle businesses"?

If not, if someone can establish a term it'll be easier to talk about this.

<comment><USER5> There's tons of existing finance infrastructure for this already, it just doesn't reach tech. Small business loans, traditional banks, franchisors, local business investor groups, etc all facilitate these sorts of businesses today.

They just don't do tech. This is because their risk models are built on 30+ years of priors and the financing is very often business sector specific. Tech is too much of an unknown for this model.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying banks won't provide loans to small tech businesses, but they will to things like restaurants?

<comment><USER7> Differentiating between "small tech businesses" and VC-style startup tech might be useful here.

There are many tech businesses that can and do qualify for traditional financing/funding. The difference is that banks aren't interested in funding high-risk moonshots.

Simplified examples:

Tech Biz #1: Founder identified a niche, has a few customers, and has been working on making the consultant -> product jump. They're paying the bills but see an opportunity to offer their product to many more customers and would like to work on the business instead of working in the business. They want to hire a programmer and invest in marketing but need to borrow money to make it happen.

Tech Biz #2: Founder wants to build X for Y and change the way people do Z. It's going to take many programmer-months to build the product and a sales and marketing team to change consumer behavior. There's no guarantee that they'll find product-market fit but, if they do, the business has the opportunity to scale rapidly with strong margins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a founder of a bootstrapped & profitable company, I don't really get what's so attractive about this funding model.

It seems like it's just a really, really, _really_ expensive loan. They make it sound nice with their anti-VC, pro-founder marketing angle. But at the end of the day, they are charging you 3x what you're borrowing.

<comment><USER9> I agree. This isn't quite an apples-to-apples comparison. But middle-market companies with okay-ish financials can easily get covenant-lite leveraged loans from the gigantic private credit market, for well under LIBOR + 1000 basis points. The current yield-to-maturity on the leveraged load index is 5.64%[1].

3X in 7 years implies a yield-to-maturity of 17%. Why would any company pay more than three times the cost of capital they can get from much larger, more liquid, and established Wall Street financing?

[1] [https://us.spindices.com/indices/fixed-income/sp-lsta-us- lev...](https://us.spindices.com/indices/fixed-income/sp-lsta-us-leveraged- loan-100-index#overview)

<comment><USER10> Virtually no startup can get loans without a PG at any non-loanshark rate.

This would be very attractive to someone who wants to grow their business without taking (more) personal risk than they have already.

<comment><USER9> The historical default rate for leveraged loans is 2.9%. This VC program claims a mortality rate of 10% over a 5+ year horizon. I.e. a 2% annualized default rate.

Now I'm sure they're not using exactly the same definition. Plus we have to take into account recovery rates. But the point is that this VC program almost certainly is not funding the "average startup". To achieve those low levels of default, their investment pool has to be _significantly_ safer and more stable than the typical Valley startup.

So either their typical investment is safer in obvious ways, like interest coverage and EBITDA multiples. In which case they should be able to access traditional credit markets at much more favorable rates. _Or_ the VCs in question have a unique ability to identify sure bets in opaque ways. Ways that other investors just can't see. In which case the secret sauce isn't the funding structure, but the preternatural giftedness of the firm's general partners.

(Or there's a third option, which is that the fund's track record has just represented a string of good luck. They've been fooled by randomness and future returns will not live up to past history.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's see how long that lasts when follow-on financing doesn't materialize and limited partners pull capital and give it to Unicorn.VC because their results are more "exciting".

I say this as a founder that prioritized profitability and outlasted many VC backed competitors and was sick of VCs telling me to increase burn and growth and ignoring my warning of the long term perspectives and risks. We decided not to take VC and are smaller but killing it.

I am glad to see this perspective but it only lasts during a financial crisis then it's right back to fetishized hyper growth.

As far as I am concerned go ahead and keep your hyper growth VC dollars, I'll buy your bankrupt portfolio company in a few years with our profit.

As YC says, get to ramen profitability as early as possible and be a cockroach that will survive.

</comment><comment><USER12> in my humble and unwarranted opinion (see also not having run a vc company or a company for that matter) profits should have been the idea from the get go: all of this effort to get large and then use economies of scale to defeat rivals and then start making a profit is just wrong

<comment><USER13> For some products, this is just not possible.

Consider that you want to make an App store where you add value by manually validating every app available through your store and build trust with your customers by only serving the best apps.

How can you compete with the Apple App store? You can't. At least, not without creating a hardware/software ecosystem with millions of users.

You could shortcut that buildup of scale by only targeting android users but then your competition against the Apple App store will be entirely dependent on the strength of Android ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh really! I would like to see the day.

Our company, Qbix, is a poster child for the preaching of the Basecamp folks. We raised $107,000 from friends and family and then generated revenues, then another $135,000 and generated more revenues. We are up to almost $1MM in revenues now. Also we have attracted 8 million users and growing.

But many VCs have turned us down because they look for hockey stick growth and zero friction, and don't like "the agency model" companies which make money. Actually, they're just applying pattern-matching to reject the vast majority of startups unless they are hockey stick growing.

<comment><USER15> If your firm is making money (especially to the tune of $1MM -- is that per month or per year?), it might be a perfect match for the more old-fashioned form of non-dilutive fundraising: lending. There are a lot of firms out there which capped revenue based funding, but the biggest one I know is Lighter Capital [1] (no affiliation), and I believe there's a good amount of competitors [2] which do the same thing. Why not consider reaching out to them and seeing if you're a fit?

[1] [https://www.lightercapital.com/](https://www.lightercapital.com/)

[2] [https://www.owler.com/company/lightercapital](https://www.owler.com/company/lightercapital)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember this being a theme during the 2001 recession. I can't find the link right now, but I remember more than a few articles about this trend back then. I was able to find VC capital investment. [1]

Clearly there was more silly money being throw around in the late 90s and into 2000, but by 2002 the mantra in was "ROI, ROI, ROI!"

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot- com_bubble#/media/File:US_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot- com_bubble#/media/File:US_VC_funding.png)

</comment><comment> awinter-py in a recession it's better to be a cockroach than a unicorn

</comment><comment><USER17> > _Just four months after closing a $7 million funding round for his first > startup RetraceHealth in 2016, Aderinkomi was pushed out of the startup by > the new board. This was after he had spent three years and taken on $1 > million of his own personal debt to build the company._

Seems like you're doing something wrong if you raise seed and A rounds[1] and have given away enough board seats that they can push you out 4 months later.

Also, why would anyone take out a million dollar personal loan to fund a startup? I have heard of founders spending their own money to get things off the ground, but usually it's $50k or so, and it's never a bank loan.

I'd agree that this guy is rightly wary of going back to VCs, but his experience seems like an edge case (which is perhaps why it's featured in this article).

1: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/retracehealth#sectio...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/retracehealth#section- overview)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is probably silly but I have often wondered why you don't get straightforward loans in Software. If I were to open a restaurant I would hardly go for a VC.

Do banks have something against software businesses ? Are there software companies that have bootstrapped themselves with loans (not friend/family loans) as opposed to VC ?

<comment><USER19> The market structure is pretty different. Restaurants have geographic barriers to entry - your restaurant is probably only serving customers within a ~20 mile radius. And the economics and business model are well-known: you know exactly how much rent is going to cost, how much labor is going to cost, how much food is going to cost, and how many tables you can turn over a night, and so you can build reasonable financial models for how much you might make.

Software is global, and is fundamentally an innovation business. Once you've written a piece of software that does something useful, you can sell additional copies at zero marginal cost. This tends to make software into a winner-take-all market: there is realistically only one Google, only one Facebook, only one Salesforce, one Amazon, etc. If you try to get into a known market, you are almost certain to fail, because you have to pay all the R&D costs that your competitor has already paid and they can just sell to the customers you would otherwise have gotten at close to zero cost. That means that successful software businesses are almost always doing something fundamentally _new_ \- either selling into a new market, or selling a new and different product into an existing market that has changed in some way. Banks are really bad at forecasting the success of new business models that have no financial data to go on - their whole core competency is evaluating financials, so if a company has no revenue but lots of expenses and an uncertain prospect of ever making money, it looks like a universally bad bet for a bank loan. The venture capital industry is all based around answering "How do we finance businesses where success is binary and information about whether the company will be successful is scarce?"

<comment><USER18> 1\. Developer Salaries

2\. Marketing Costs

3\. Compute Power

4\. Software Pricing

can all be quantifiable in numbers. Again I don't know how loans operate.

To be a cynic, I think the software free lunch is over. Data will be increasingly localised. More draconian laws to come, let's hope they are stupid. Algorithms have also become "scary" for normal folks.

<comment><USER19> Sure, and once you have those in place you have a startup that eats money and doesn't necessarily make any money. The vast majority of software startups end up building something that nobody wants anyway, because if there's something that lots of people want, somebody has already built it.

Whereas if you open a restaurant, you can make solid projections where "If we fill every table, we make $Y. If we're 1/3 full, we make $X. We're unlikely to be less than 1/3 full", and these are typically completely reasonable because you can see how other similar restaurants have done. For a restaurant, having a similar restaurant be successful is a very positive indicator. For a software company, having a similar software company be successful is an indicator that the market niche is already filled.

<comment><USER18> Thats a simplistic view of restaurants. From a purely market perspective, people already do this with personal loans, credit card or otherwise. I do agree that evaluating the final software's value is difficult but for a loan lender, it's only a matter of credibility rather than success.

As long as market actors don't do anti-competitive practices, I still don't see why a successful software can't be replicated and you can't compete in the same market niche. The user interfaces are one area which can obviously be different. Enterprise software is full of replicas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know a VC similar to Indie however that doesn't convert to equity if more funding occurs from another party? Give me $100k and sure I'll pay you back $300k, however let me use that $100k to see how much more valuable I can make my company and therefore leverage its new metrics including revenues.

These current models don't only want the icing (their returns on initial investment) but they want to eat their cake too; they're currently doing this because they can get away with it because their current competition, traditional VCs, is far worse - but once a new competitor comes in that only wants the icing but not the cake from the transaction, they'll lose out on potentially a lot of this deal flow.

<comment><USER21> [https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/who-are-the-major- revenue-...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/who-are-the-major-revenue- based-investing-vcs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So VC's are out, bootstrapping is in?

<comment><USER23> Debt convertible to equity is in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _the companies that receive Indie.vc funding seem to be much more robust > than their peers, especially in a challenging economic climate. On average, > they're growing 100% in the first year, and 300% the second year, says > Roberts._

Is this measuring revenue, users, profits, or something else? If it's revenue or users, I would guess that most VC-backed startups grow faster than this. If they're looking at profits, then probably the VCs do worse.

> _Plus, the fund's mortality rate is 10% — compared to about 44% with > traditional VC-backed companies._

Are they looking at the same time period? If Indie.vc's portfolio is younger, then they would obviously have fewer deaths than traditional VCs.

Basically, it looks like the author wanted to put down impressive-looking numbers without the context that would make clear if the underlying facts are actually impressive or not.

</comment><comment><USER24> What I take away from this is that soon it may make sense to invest in unicorns! Initially investing in money losing companies was a contrarian investment strategy. Then everyone piled in, making it an even better investment strategy as assets became overpriced. Think Uber. And authentic opportunities became scarce, think Zume.

The Indie.vc model is contrarian and probably doing well. It will continue to do well as it becomes imitated. And then the cycle will repeat. So keep your eye on unpopular unicorns!

</comment><comment><USER25> Let's say the model is to get 3X return in 5-7 years - 10% mortality. Sounds like a great instrument to me.

It also sounds like it could work, if there's enough demand = enough obvious good apples, which are willing for the deal because of not enough supply in financing instruments.

I can understand that investing in unicorns can also work. As many unicorns fail after their initial hype, investing in these normal companies sounds less like gambling on hype than investing in unicorns.

</comment><comment><USER26> So this is initial seed/angel venture capital without huge ROI expectations? Is that the idea?

If so, how is it different from what VCs are doing now?

<comment><USER27> VC without huge ROI expectations doesn't work. Like the actual economics don't work. I don't really understand the point of any of this. VCs need massive outsized returns because 99% of the companies they invest in will return $0 to the fund. You need that one company that returns the entire fund (ex: $500m) + some percentage.

Also, from the article "And founders can even buy back the stakes (ranging between 10% and 15%) by hitting certain revenue targets"

10-15% interest on a crazy high-risk loan makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

<comment><USER28> Another part of VC economics to understand is to look at Uber. Total disaster, right? Softbank and retail investors got totally _screwed_ by the IPO due to questionable economic assertions made by Uber. But the angel and early series investors, circa 2011? Still made out like bandits. An IPO price of $72, when you paid pennies per share, times several hundred thousand shares equals a cool $10mm, easy. Perhaps not as much as they would have liked, but that's still a pretty good payday considering later investors lost money.

WeWork entirely failed to IPO, so early investors not named Adam Neumann got screwed. Thus, on the spectrum of gregarious companies, with WeWork and one end and Uber at the other end, a company just needs to be on the Uber level of gregarious.

<comment><USER29> > Total disaster, right? Softbank and retail investors got totally screwed by > the IPO due to questionable economic assertions made by Uber.

I wouldn't call making a bad bet getting screwed. There was no fraudulent numbers I am aware of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Alternate: [https://docdro.id/ueWWcKf](https://docdro.id/ueWWcKf)

<comment><USER31> I think that site just popped me a scareware scam?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> @Indie.vc ... you spent a ton of time writing this post only to have it paywalled by medium. I can't read it... Ditch medium as they aren't compatible with your business model :-P

<comment><USER33> It's not paywalled. You can read it with a free account.

<comment><USER31> Or in a private tab.

But the point still stands: they are using a medium that hurts the message, and in a way we are paying - with our time and patience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Poor independent founder who spent $1M out of pocket on his first startup. Let's hear his story.

</comment><comment><USER35> TLDR: Advocating for fundraising that at its core is a less risky bank loan except here you part with equity.

</comment><comment><USER36> Paywalled.</comment>


Face recognition in European police forces - <AUTHOR> https://algorithmwatch.org/en/story/face-recognition-police-europe/ <comment><USER2> Austria is one of the countries listed in the article, and it refers to an Austrian newspaper which reports that police _plans_ to use facial recognition starting late December 2019 ([https://futurezone.at/netzpolitik/das-kann-die- gesichtserken...](https://futurezone.at/netzpolitik/das-kann-die- gesichtserkennungssoftware-der-polizei/400534747)).

On a tangent, the Austrian constitutional court of justice just today ruled that security forces are not allowed to use traffic camera data beyond using it to enforce traffic laws. They also forbid police to install hidden malware on people's phones ("Bundestrojaner"): [https://www.vfgh.gv.at/medien/Kfz- Kennzeichenerfassung_und__...](https://www.vfgh.gv.at/medien/Kfz- Kennzeichenerfassung_und__Bundestrojaner__verfass.de.php)

While the use of facial recognition might not be a good thing in any case, it looks to me as if currently police is limited only to use it to retrospectively investigate serious crimes ("schwere Straftat").

<comment><USER3> "using" facial recognition is some form or another is so vague, that it's effectively a useless classification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Relevant:

What facial recognition steals from us: [https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/21003466/facial- recogn...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/21003466/facial-recognition- anonymity-explained-video)

How to avoid a dystopian future of facial recognition in law enforcement: [https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20996085/ai-facial- rec...](https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20996085/ai-facial-recognition- police-law-enforcement-regulation)

<comment><USER5> Relevant for an exaggerated,fear based perspective. Both is these articles condition the reader to believing in inevitable failure. These are completely black and white views and as we know, everything is grey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course they do. Western technology corporations provide the tools, the Chinese regime proves it works and then everybody else wants it as well. This is the process. It is not democracy though. The police should not dictate the policy.

<comment><USER6> I referred to the headline "At least 10 police forces use face recognition in the EU, AlgorithmWatch reveals". Now it has been changed on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Was in Korla, Xinjiang. So many cameras. You get a picture of your face taken and then a gate lifts when going into a lot of public areas or communities.

<comment><USER8> Damn, did you take any pictures? That's a place many of us in the West just hear about, but not really see. I'd say blog post about it, if you can.

<comment><USER7> I have a lot of pictures. I'll blog about it. If anything, you feel really safe once you get past the dystopian aspect.

We always left our bags in the car since a lot of parking areas had an officer walking around. Beat that San Francisco. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When the author writes:

"Even if face recognition can match a face with 99% accuracy, the sheer amount of faces available in police databases makes false positives inevitable. (The 1% error rate means that, if 10,000 people who are not wanted by the police undergo face recognition, 100 will be flagged as wanted)."

The author is not being fair.

Usually with technologies like these, developers will not aim for an accuracy of 99%, but a precision of 99% (that is what we do with Congestion Charging in London, where the ramifications of FPs are much lower [I work in Transport for London]). That means that for 10,000,000 people undergoing facial recognition, only 100 may be flagged as wanted, and only 1 will be a false positive. If we were talking about 99% accuracy, that doesn't necessarily mean what the author claims either. Accuracy is (TP + TN)/(P + N), meaning that the decrease in 1% from 100% can be in any of:- a lowering of TP or TN; or an increase of FP or FN. There is no reason to think that the 1% will all mean false positives.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is expected, yet still scary.

What are some easy / cheap / unobtrusive ways of thwarting face recognition software? I've read about masks, umbrellas and even makeup, but these are all obvious and difficult to use. Is there an inconspicuous solution that would only prevent face recognition without alerting human authorities? Would using these methods even be legal?

<comment><USER11> The only way to thwart face recognition is the Hong Kong method: put a mask on and tear the cameras down.

Any clever technical solution you can think of will be swiftly declared illegal. Technology won't save you from government abuse.

<comment><USER12> Wearing a mask was also swiftly declared illegal in Hong Kong. (Currently off the books pending appeal, but you get the idea.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I do not object to facial recognition as long as a rigorous screen on use is in place. Known paroled felons who are going about their business legally in conformance with their parole might allow us to parole far more people that an excess of punitive zeal keeps locked up. Each one of these would require a warrant and be limited to end of their parole. Once done, they are out of the net. They need to improve the competence of these types of camera on various racial subtypes to make sure the error rate is the same as the whiter groups to avoid selective over reach on these groups. Like all things with sharp edges, they can be used badly - as we see in China versus the Uighers as well as Tibetans. Sadly, we lack the power to meddle except via trade restrictions - which misses the crooked rulers and harms the Chinese people - for whom I have great respect.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whenever I hear about mass surveillance I think that the sci-fi movies with weird haircuts and make-up are starting to look more and more like a possibility.

CV Dazzle [0] (not affiliated) has an interesting set of examples.

[0] [https://cvdazzle.com](https://cvdazzle.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> "Almost all", says the title.

"10", says the article, "the majority (that answered questions)".

The EU has 28 member states.

Yes, we should be wary of allowing the police to use face recognition, but this sort of sensationalization helps no one.

Mirror, because the site is not responding well: [https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmSkQZKnY4mdNmVnya2MVM2ZgnAj5H7...](https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmSkQZKnY4mdNmVnya2MVM2ZgnAj5H7DjWf5Yr6ahY5EHj/)

<comment><USER16> In the case of Ireland where they categorise the country as "facial recognition in use" it states:

 _It is unclear if the Gardaí use face recognition in real time, but face recognition is widely use to spot welfare fraud._

There are no documented cases of the Gardaí using real time facial recognition in Ireland. In the case of welfare fraud, a facial imaging system is used when registering or renewing your welfare status to prevent people registering under multiple or false identities.

<comment><USER17> It is also predicated on the Public Services Card, a de facto national ID card by stealth (the electorate in Ireland has resisted any attempts to implement a national ID card) which is "not compulsory but is mandatory for services" (from [https://www.thejournal.ie/regina-doherty-public-services- car...](https://www.thejournal.ie/regina-doherty-public-services- card-3564489-Aug2017/) ) and of which the Data Protection Commission has ruled "that the State's retention of personal data on the 3.2m cards in existence is unlawful" (from [https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/data- comm...](https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/data-commissioner- issues-enforcement-notice-in-respect-of-public-services-card-968977.html) ).

The government contest this result (and have been accused of using budgetary measures to hamper the DPC's ability to investigate and enforce their findings), but the use of facial recognition in Ireland is currently unlawful, and, personally speaking, a disgrace.

In terms of the use of facial recognition by the Gardaí, the truth is that we don't know whether it has been used - only that its fruits haven't been included in any book of evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> And we gained nothing from it...

This is mainly driven by people around the age of 60 with a profound fear of death and almost no knowledge about implications of certain technologies.

It is not restricted to public safety, surveillance will also be employed against normal employees and workers, your health providers and any form of communication.

The police is trimmed to meet certain quotas and will try to get anything that might give them an advantage.

I want to get off this continent. Not that there are many alternatives left.

I still have to plan to laser any public camera I see. Luckily my region is still too boring to see mass deployment.

It is not important to not getting seen by cameras, it is important to spit on them wherever they surface.

<comment><USER19> "This is mainly driven by people around the age of 60 with a profound fear of death and almost no knowledge about implications of certain technologies."

I thought most surveillance tech is developed by young bright people. You are making a big mistake by making this an age issue. You are sort of implying that once these old people are gone things will get better. They won't.

<comment><USER18> Developed perhaps, but then they sold it to old paranoid people. I understand every interior minister that tries to try to amp up surveillance beyond any reasonable level, but we have increase any form of security since a few decades throughout the western world. And most of it because of irrational fears, because life didn't get exactly more dangerous, just complete madness instead.

> once these old people are gone things will get better. They won't.

No, we would have new old people.</comment></comment></comment>