Mysterious Planes Over Baltimore Spark Surveillance Suspicions - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/mysterious-planes-over-baltimore-spark-surveillance-suspicions <comment><USER2> If you're big into crowd-sourcing:

There are super-inexpensive RTL-SDR dongles[1] that can be used to track airplanes such as this.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've fooled around with these dongles and a few programs enough to discern that Gov't aircraft absolutely need to broadcast their info on the 1090MHz band.

It wouldn't be much of a stretch to have a few people pop these up and see if they could monitor the airplanes that are monitoring the city! :)

Just to expand a little bit:

You get an SDR, plug it in and use a program like `dump1090` or FlightAware. The repurposed TV Tuner will then listen to data on 1090MHz and decode airplane's Active Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) messages.

The ADS-B messages typically contain flight callsign, location (lat,lon), altitude, heading, and a few other tidbits.

There's a really active community around things like this. [2]

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-DVB-T-Stick- RTL2832U-R820T/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-DVB-T-Stick- RTL2832U-R820T/dp/B00C37AZXK) [2] [http://www.rtl-sdr.com](http://www.rtl- sdr.com)

<comment> sjm-lbm Since, for whatever reason, I enjoy tracking flights as a hobby, here's a couple of extra tidbits:

1) If you are in the right area, Flight Radar 24 might actually give you the equipment for free. See here: [http://www.flightradar24.com/free-ads-b- equipment](http://www.flightradar24.com/free-ads-b-equipment) for info.

2) It is unlikely that even aircraft that the government desires to be secret will stop broadcasting ADS-B anytime soon, as one of the major usages is avoiding mid-air collisions when airplanes are in airspace shared with commercial airliners. Secret surveillance planes might be unpopular, but they'll only be headline news if they were to run into a 757.

3) ADS-B broadcasts won't be required for all commercial airplane traffic[2] in the US until 2020. As such, there's still quite a few airplanes without it, particularly those that airlines plan to retire within the next five years.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance_%E2%80%93_broadcast) [2] IIRC, the actual regulation is a requirement for ADS-B on all airplanes flying at 10K feet or above.

<comment><USER3> genuine question, what do you get out of this hobby? i'm not trying to sneer or trivialize it, i'm sincerely curious about what makes it interesting to people who enjoy it

<comment> sjm-lbm It's just an outgrowth of the fact that I find commercial aviation fascinating, really. I'll occasionally pull up flights near where I am, but I usually use tools to track whatever flights I find interesting for other reasons (off the top of my head, for instance, American Airlines' first revenue 787 flight was today, and I watched that one this morning).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The one tail number that the initial Washington Post article linked to is N39MY[1], which is a Cessna 182T registered to NG Research, PO Box 722 in Bristow, VA. That company's web presence is close to zero, basically below the noise floor.

If you google [po box bristow va] you find FAA records for a bunch of other oddly named companies that all have similarly close-to-zero web presence and addresses that are PO Boxes in Bristow: FVX Research, NBR Aviation, NBY Productions, OBR Leasing, OTV Leasing, PSL Surveys, PXW Services. They all seem to like Cessna 182Ts.

If you Google the tail numbers of aircraft registered to those companies, you start to find forum and mailing list posts (often at sites that tilt toward paranoid/conspiracy/right wing, but not always) with people discussing these specific tail numbers and linking them to the FBI. Some of the supposed evidence includes details of radio communications that people have heard, e.g. talking about "being on station" or using callsigns that start with JENNA, JENA or ROSS, which are supposedly used by the FBI. Other posts claim that DOJ/FBI surveillance aircraft often squawk 4414 or 4415 on their transponders.

I monitor aircraft in Los Angeles using an RTL-SDR dongle. I keep a database of almost every transponder ping I receive. You can see some more info, analysis and examples of stuff I've seen (U-2, AF1, AF2, EXEC-1F, E-6 "Doomsday" planes) at [http://viewer.gorilla- repl.org/view.html?source=github&user=...](http://viewer.gorilla- repl.org/view.html?source=github&user=wiseman&repo=orbital- detector&path=stats.cljw) I decided to check my database for planes that have squawked 4414/4415 or used one of the suspicious callsigns: I found 8 aircraft in the past 2 months, several of which exhibit suspicious behavior: Flying for hours at a time without going anywhere in particular (I don't have position information for them, but I know they're in the air and not leaving the LA area), flying almost every day for months at a time, squawking 4414 or 4415, and one that used a JENNA callsign. 2 of them are registered to companies with PO Boxes in Bristow, VA. Another is registered to AEROGRAPHICS INC. 10678 AVIATION LN, MANASSAS VIRGINIA, which googling shows has also been linked to the FBI/DOJ. Several others are registered to WORLDWIDE AIRCRAFT LEASING CORP and NATIONAL AIRCRAFT LEASING CORP in Delaware, similar to other suspected FBI front companies (e.g. Northwest Aircraft Leasing Corp. in Newark, Delaware[2]).

(I call what I'm doing "persistent sousveillance": using historical sensor data to retroactively identify and track new subjects, it's just that my subjects are the government. One of the surprising things I've found is that all you need to do is look: the weird stuff jumps out right away, e.g. Cessnas registered to fake-sounding companies that loiter overhead for hours every day.)

It's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but at this point it doesn't seem far- fetched that I'm monitoring aircraft involved in persistent FBI aerial surveillance.

My twitter has more info: [https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/595814966382469120](https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/595814966382469120)

Edit: One other thing worth mentioning is that I was surprised at how many local news stories I turned up while googling these planes & companies that fit the template of "Citizens complain about mystery Cessna flying low, circling over their neighborhood".)

[1] [http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NN...](http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=539MY) [2] [http://www.wired.com/2006/06/mystery_planes_/](http://www.wired.com/2006/06/mystery_planes_/)

<comment><USER4> Many of these planes have more antennae than I typically see on a small plane, e.g. [https://flightaware.com/photos/view/168017-a0096f5188154b56a...](https://flightaware.com/photos/view/168017-a0096f5188154b56abc8224b804966f698bb500c/aircrafttype/C182) which makes me wonder. I'd like to try to monitor and detect aerial Stingray- type equipment as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> " Among the companies offering this technology are major defense contractors working for the Pentagon and an Ohio company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, which is trying to sell it to local police departments."

I know this is an unpopular opinion these days but the people working for these companies should be ashamed. There is little use for this technology, especially on US soil, except mass surveillance of the population.

<comment><USER6> Also an unpopular opinion is that some people (I am not one of them FYI) think mass surveillance of the population is a good thing. It can be hard to understand that position, but there are people who believe mass surveillance, security theater, and the like really are protecting them and that it is all for their own good.

As long as sufficient numbers of these people exist there will be not shortage of people who are not ashamed to staff the government agencies implementing these things and the private companies that support them. Some will even see it as a duty.

<comment><USER7> It a tool like any other. It can be used for good or evil. What you are doing in the middle of a Baltimore street isn't in any way private information. It's a public as you get.

Sure, it could be used to perpetrate a Holocaust or something, but so could the 101st airborne.

If the government wanted to go all Hitler on us, they already can get google data, facebook data, medical records, essentially everything that is kept on you. Hell, I bet google location services tracks me better than a drone does (if the war in the Pakistan tribal areas is an example).

And drones are way easier to shoot down than googles datacenters.

<comment><USER8> Do we really want to tie a noose at the end of all the rope we already hand the authorities?

There are tools people with power shouldn't have access to, because people with power do not have a good track record of using them in good faith.

<comment><USER7> We trust the federal government with the power to, no exaggeration, annihilate the world.

If the government were going to use its power for evil, it'd go knocking on google/facebook/visa/amazon/comcast/grocery store/school/medical/whatever database to find its enemy.

What do you honestly think is a bigger risk for you? Getting murdered by a criminal or the US government via drone. Cause it's like 40k:2 for the past couple year.

<comment><USER9> The government has quite a bit of power to do things other than actually kill people. It can take away people's lives in many other ways.

Which is are the bigger risks for you? Getting your money taken from you by the government via fines or getting it stolen from you by a criminal? Being forced, under threat of imprisonment, to show up in a location at a specific time and account for your actions by the government or by a corporation, your work, your neighbor? Getting locked up in a basement by a criminal or locked up in a prison by the government?

We give the government quite a lot of power. It behooves us to ensure that power is kept in check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some advice about cellphone OPSEC seems appropriate.

Protesters, or at least key organizers, need to be running apps to detect and block IMSI catchers. And everyone not using them needs to put their phones in Faraday bags.

I don't use smartphones, and so don't know what works best. Searching on "detect IMSI catcher" yields hits for Android, but I see no apps for iOS. AIMSICD looks like a good app. Maybe someone who knows this stuff well can recommend one.

It's easy to make Faraday bags from aluminum foil.[0] To test, you just put the phone in the bag, and call it. If it rings, there are leaks. It's important to turn the phone off before putting it in the Faraday bag. That will prevent rapid battery discharge through high-power attempts to reach towers.

The hardest aspect is getting good electrical contact on all seams, including the access flap. The maximum dimension of any hole in the bag must be small, less than 1-2 cm. A gap at the seam that's 1-2 cm long, even if it's very narrow, will leak (re-radiate) a lot.

The other thing to keep in mind is that aluminum foil gets brittle with bending, and will crack. So you need multiple layers, and the layers must be in electrical contact. Narrow strips of double-stick tape between layers are OK to provide structural stability. But it's a trade-off.

[0] [http://www.instructables.com/id/RFID-Secure- Wallet](http://www.instructables.com/id/RFID-Secure-Wallet)

<comment><USER11> If you're shutting off the phone. What's the point?

<comment><USER12> I believe certain signals are transmitted from your phone even if it's "off". Removing the battery might stop some of them, but even this supposedly doesn't stop everything.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a source for this? It seems completely wasteful and against the interests of the manufacture not to sell a piece of shit.

<comment><USER10> Here's How Others Can Easily Snoop On Your Cell Phone[0]

My phone at your service [1]

[0] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2014/02/18/heres- how-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2014/02/18/heres-how-others- can-easily-snoop-on-your-cell-phone/)

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/techftc/2014/02/my- pho...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/techftc/2014/02/my-phone-your- service)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Working from the IR surveillance mentioned in the article maybe they are operationalizing ARGUS-IR ([http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Autonomous_Real-t...](http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Programs/Autonomous_Real- time_Ground_Ubiquitous_Surveillance_-_Infrared_%28ARGUS-IR%29.aspx) and PBS video: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=13BahrdkMU8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=13BahrdkMU8)). It is a sort of "dirtbag" system but for visible and near-visible light.

[Note to self: don't be lit from below when being interviewed on camera, see at min 1:08.]

<comment><USER14> This was my thought as well.

You deploy a system like this on an aircraft with long loiter times and you have a visual history of the movement of as many individuals or vehicles that it can keep track of. You pair this with a stingray on the ground or air, and you can put names and electronic communications to the people being tracked from above.

You can have a history of where a person has been, who they've been talking to, what they've been saying if it's electronic, and you can get a great picture of what they've been doing at each location, without a warrant, with no way of opting out. This is an Orwellian dragnet. This is a police state.

The NSA-style rebuttal to this is that they're only capturing metadata. This technology suite gives "only" where you've been, who you've talked to, and when you've done those things. Of course it's fascist nonsense, knowing that I was at a bakery at 9 AM leaves very little to the imagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the planes mentioned by the ACLU has done this before:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/nova/comments/2bgj1p/plane_circling_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/nova/comments/2bgj1p/plane_circling_over_mcleanlangley_area_last_few/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't really see how we can roll back mass wide-area surveillance. It's much too useful a tool. Hell, I'd want it.

I think the best we can do is to get transparency and at best to subject the authorities to the same level of surveillance.

<comment><USER17> I also believe mass surveillance is inevitable as the cost of cameras falls to nothing. Once there are drones/balloons for $100 that can monitor a square mile, they will be everywhere. And even if the government gets stopped from using it, private businesses and citizens can't be stopped.

Our only hope is to fix the government so people are not put away for acts that shouldn't be crimes. Let the brunt of this technology fall solely on violent criminals and thieves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I believe this must be the case but who has the resources to deploy something like this? Does Palantir or some other contractor help mine captured images for data? What is done with this data? There is no way BCPD has the resources for this, does the FBI come in and feed them info? for what, arresting rioters?

<comment><USER19> It's probably to detect a mutation from protest to violence and likely looking for heat sources (fires). I'd certainly hope that in the event protests turn into rioting and fires are lit someone is ready to send in the FD. A destroyed neighborhood does not help the locals and only inconveniences them. Large destruction would serve to disincentivize investment in a community which needs all the investment it can get.

It's unfortunate that while protesters are a good portion locals, most inciters of the rioting are people who don't have to live with the residue of destruction.

<comment><USER18> This is interesting. I was playing volleyball yesterday in the inner harbor (there is a small volleyball beach between Federal Hill and the water). The fire department set up a bon fire right next to us and at some point a helicopter started doing circles around us, I assume because it spotted a fire. The helicopter is definitely different than the plane that has been flying around though, maybe the plane triggered the helicopter or maybe they have as many eyes in the sky as they can get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I once spotted a plane going circles over North London.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/nasonov/status/484027620993273857...](https://mobile.twitter.com/nasonov/status/484027620993273857/photo/1)

</comment><comment><USER21> They mention gigapixel cameras, my (brief) googling couldn't find any evidence that such a thing exists, except for an experimental one at Duke [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldQXHP7TFUE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldQXHP7TFUE). Although I suppose a gigapixel photo can be made by taking pictures by multiple cameras at the same time just as well. Still, wouldn't that sort of thing be available commercially, at least for the enthusiasts out there?

<comment><USER21> I also found this detailed post on ARGUS-IS [http://ambivalentengineer.blogspot.com/2012/08/argus- is.html](http://ambivalentengineer.blogspot.com/2012/08/argus-is.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Do blimps have to file flight plans? I lived in DC when they first started testing surveillance blimps there around 2005 or so.

They were completely white with a black box on the bottom. I assumed that they had a similar function to rc-135s with some sort of side radar that can track all vehicles in real time.

Ah, well, here's an answer to one question: [http://www.computerworld.com/article/2475827/data- privacy/ma...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2475827/data- privacy/massive-blimps-over-maryland-to-conduct-24-7-domestic-aerial- surveillance.html)

The blimps in 2005 looked a bit different - they didn't have such a large obvious radar hump. Also, I'm pretty sure the blimps I saw were not tethered, but hard to say definitively.

I still haven't found any info on filing flight plans though.

<comment><USER23> When flying under Visual Flight Rules, one is not required to file a flight plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The rise of skynet. John Connor needs to stop switching faces every movie and take down these machines.

</comment><comment><USER25> The government also runs high resolution satellite cameras, and runs the census.

<comment><USER26> Not just satellite mounted cameras but thermal imagers that can see bodies as they move around inside houses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > _The answer is, these are not your parents ' surveillance aircraft. _

But your grand-parents'. Nowadays they would use drones.

</comment><comment><USER28> Have these folks ever been to a major sporting event? Like a MLB all star game, for instance? Same planes are there as well. They just circle around slowly to give security an eye in the sky. If you have an important event or large scale protests, this seems like a logical thing to have.

This article is a little out there and belongs on some conspiracy website. Reads like an Infowars piece.

<comment><USER29> It's the ACLU. I imagine they're more circumspect than Infowars. If they're concerned, there's good reason to be concerned.

<comment><USER28> Ehh... it's written by one of their writers, who doesn't seem to have a great grasp of technology in general.

This alone disqualifies him:

> "super-high, gigapixel resolution cameras on planes, which are then used to > monitor entire cities"

> "Every moving pedestrian and vehicle can be tracked: the beginning and end > everyone's journeys, and the route taken in between"

> "This gives the authorities the power to press "rewind" on anybody's > movements"

Sorry, but he's watched too many bad TV shows and movies. Can you imagine the storage needed to record gigapixel level video that would allow you to do this? The real explanation is in the middle of the story, but it's so benign that it hardly merits any discussion:

> "the flights were apparently carried out by the FBI at the request of local > law enforcement, and that they were using infrared cameras of some kind "to > monitor movements of people in the vicinity.""

So, you had a large amount of people out at night, spread out in a city, with some acting violently. Not using this type of technology to get a handle on the situation would be negligent. It's not some super secret mass surveillance tech, it's fairly basic cameras that can be used to help police, fire, and medical services respond as necessary. But the ACLU can't fund raise and get clicks off that, so this guy wrapped it in nonsense and now its getting lots of clicks.

<comment><USER30> In regards to the gigapixel cameras on uav's:

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel- dro...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel-drone- surveillance-camera-revealed)

"DARPA's frightening ARGUS-IS, a record-setting 1.8 gigapixel sensor array which can observe and record an area half the size of Manhattan. The newest in the family of "wide area persistent surveillance" tools, the system can detect and track moving objects as small as six inches from 20,000 feet in the air."

<comment><USER31> To be fair, it's not only incredibly expensive to operate but expensive in general. I highly doubt it's been used for any real purpose in the US.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Six easy ways to run your Jupyter Notebook in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.dataschool.io/cloud-services-for-jupyter-notebook <comment><USER2> Interesting comparison and so far there does not seem to be a clear winner in this space - although there clearly is demand ("web shell for scientific work in a managed Linux environment").

At the moment CoCalc is my favorite, although I would prefer a slightly less cluttered user interface and _less_ features (the distinction between Jupyter and Sage notebooks can be confusing - which is mostly historic as Sage built the groundwork, but Jupyter notebooks got more popular).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is an extensively researched post comparing most ways of running Jupyter Notebooks completely for free via a cloud service. The author had extensive discussions back and forth with developers of all of the systems (including me, for CoCalc).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm the author of this article, and I'm happy to answer any questions!</comment>


The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/ <comment><USER2> The world championships are this weekend www.ptks.org/wdc2018/

I'm currently here (it's the last day), and I wasn't quite sure what to expect with it being my first time playing in a large tournament— but I have to say it was pretty damn fun. The face to face hobby is definitely alive and well. If you enjoy strategy games, and have a bit of a masochistic bent, you'll get along just fine.

Definitely would recommend you get some experience under your belt beforehand, to get a feel for general strategy and tactics. If you want to join the major discussion channels online to find some good games, hit me up and I'll invite you.

</comment><comment><USER3> I absolutely loved this game in high school. It's very special, in that it's primary mechanic is real world relationships placed into a tactical context. The downside is that it pulls real world relationships into a simulated zero- sum environment where the game ends but the relationships persist.

I've never played any game quite like it.

Unfortunately, I can't think of a situation in which I would ever play it again, because when played well it will almost certain damage relationships, and when played poorly it's just sort of a disappointment.

This may be my favorite game of all time, and I don't think I'll ever play it again.

<comment><USER4> I've been brutally betrayed twice in Diplomacy. I'm still good friends with those people. It's only a game. If you can't separate player's behavior in the context of a game with who they are outside of it, then maybe board games is not the hobby for you, or at least not social/negotiation board games, which are very common in recent years.

<comment><USER5> Games are supposed to be fun. A lot of people don't find lying, manipulating, and betraying fun, in any context. That's not a psychological failing, and it certainly doesn't mean you should avoid board games. There's plenty of socially competitive board games, but damn few of them are half as vicious as Diplomacy.

If you and your friends can enjoy Diplomacy, that's great! But I do get tired of all the people insinuating that there's something wrong with me I don't like it.

<comment><USER4> Personally I'm pretty burnt out on all those social games myself. I'd rather just play a 2 player abstract nowadays, like the GIPF series. Please don't take what I said in my original post as a scathing indictment or that there's something wrong with you. I get along with most people and I'm sure I'd have no issues playing with you at a game night.

There are certain personality types that tend to lead to negative experiences in gaming, though, and being a poor sport is one of those, and I do try to avoid gaming with those people when I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been a while now, but a group of seven of us would very occasionally set aside an entire Saturday to play Diplomacy. While online and play by mail have their own flavors, the tension and negotiation strategies while face to face have a character unlike any other board game I've played.

Between sets of moves, groups of people would scatter to different corners of the house for hushed discussions, and unlike online play, you could make a decision based on who you saw talking to whom. With a large board on a dining room table, it felt like being in a war room with all of Europe at stake.

All in all, it is an extremely compelling game with strategy in both moves and alliances leaking from all seams.

[0] [http://www.diplomacy- archive.com/resources/strategy.htm](http://www.diplomacy- archive.com/resources/strategy.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> You can play online if you have ever wanted to give it a try. It's probably the best way to learn, since you can take your time communicating and planning your next moves.

Diplomacy is probably the emotionally hardest game I've ever played. It feels bad when people betray you, it feels bad when people utterly outsmart you, and after this happens to you (on say, turn two) you still have a couple hours in person to play, or a couple more weeks in person. You have immediately roll with the new situation, try to get help from previous enemies, and keep going with loosing your cool or your will to fight.

[0] [https://www.playdiplomacy.com](https://www.playdiplomacy.com)

<comment><USER8> >it feels bad

Even when you win it's not great because chances are you did something shady and your friends are mad at you. This might explain why I haven't played/ thought about this game in 30 years.

I like board games (competetive and co-op) but have no desire to play this again.

<comment><USER9> This is the same problem I have playing Risk.

I don't enjoy deceiving my friends and having them deceive me. It's hard for me to understand what kind of person enjoys basically trying to manipulate other people for sport.

<comment><USER10> > It's hard for me to understand what kind of person enjoys basically trying > to manipulate other people for sport.

Your question contains the answer: it's _for sport_. Sport and games are a place we can play out desires we'd never want to in real life. Tons of gamers like to pretend they're shooting people. Strategy gamers orchestrate war and genocide. In sport, boxers pummel each other to unconsciousness, and many boxers are lovely people.

<comment><USER9> You're not pretending to manipulate though, you're actually doing it. There's a massive difference between deceiving an NPC in D&D and actually manipulating your friends to win at Risk. This is what makes it uncomfortable for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shout out to subterfuge, another great diplomacy/strategy game involving inevitable betrayal. Takes about 7-10 days to finish a game. [http://subterfuge-game.com](http://subterfuge-game.com) (mobile only)

<comment><USER12> Another related game is the Game of Thrones board game - very similar to Diplomacy mechanically but tuned to shorter game lengths (on the order of 2-4 hours).

[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/game-thrones- boar...](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103343/game-thrones-board-game- second-edition)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This American Life did an article about the writing of this article.

[https://www.thisamericanlife.org/531/got-your- back](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/531/got-your-back)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the turn sequence in Diplomacy is actually the genius of it, and I am surprised it isn't incorporated into more boardgames.

</comment><comment><USER15> I college, I'd do 18 player games on a world map. Definitely changed your impression of people, particularly when you'd only vaguely know them otherwise - but it also got you into long-term close contact (these games were a turn a week, and would last for ~18 months before a winner was obvious).

<comment><USER16> Which variant map did you play? I have seen a few world maps but hard to see the potential balance issues without playing a few rounds…

<comment><USER15> We did two games. One used [http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/i/imperial2.htm](http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/i/imperial2.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's interesting is how the macro-cooperation game gets completely ignored by so many people when they play a game like this. If you're never going to interact with someone again, then betrayal has no long term consequences, but if it's someone you plan to continue a relationship with in real life, then betrayal, even if it's "just a game", will damage that relationship, possibly terminally so.

It's almost like our instinctive zero-sum behaviors short-circuit our higher reasoning just enough in this simulated environment to suppress thought of the long term real-world relational consequences of our actions.

<comment><USER18> > _if it 's someone you plan to continue a relationship with in real life, > then betrayal, even if it's "just a game", will damage that relationship, > possibly terminally so._

Do you also hold it against someone in real life, if they bluff you while playing poker?

What you're saying might be true as a descriptive statement - many people can't separate gameplay from reality. But betrayal is a key mechanic that's designed into the fabric of the game, and I would encourage everyone not judge someone for using a intentionally designed feature in the game.

<comment><USER19> A poker "bluff" has always seemed poorly named to me. You aren't making any claims about your hand either way, you're just making bets. So a "bluff" is actually just the _other_ players guessing wrong at what you're holding.

<comment><USER13> That's an overly reductive view of poker that misses the point of the game. If a high bid isn't an implied threat of high cards, what is it? Bidding is correlated to hand strength and player stacks, so a bid is a statement about your hand and the game, albeit a fuzzy one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Top board for WDC live updated at [https://www.backstabbr.com/sandbox/5978906570522624](https://www.backstabbr.com/sandbox/5978906570522624)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a trip down memory lane. Back at HuskyCon 2009 I was on a board with Brian Ecton. When it was my turn to read orders, he stepped away from the board for a smoke. Since he was gone I made up new orders for his fleets. Boy was he livid when he got back.

Unfortunately it seems like the face to face hobby is aging out. The last decade has seen several luminaries of Diplomacy retire from the game or pass away.

<comment><USER22> > Since he was gone I made up new orders for his fleets.

How does that work?

<comment><USER23> Cheating, to be blunt. The person reading out the orders (OP) decided to ignore what was written on the paper and make up something. Difficult to pull off though - in every game I've played the written moves are shown to everyone, just to make it easier to keep track of who's doing what.

<comment><USER21> Yep, in some circles the prevailing law is that cheating is fine until you get caught. The issue here is that Brian walked away from the board while orders were being read. No one has a responsibility to make sure your orders are adjudicated correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I play Diplomacy online with a group of friends, where we normally have a turn lasting 2 days. We need to do this sparingly, though, because invariably we all end up spending huge portions of our workdays messaging each other and plotting instead of actually getting anything done.

</comment><comment><USER25> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183)

</comment><comment><USER26> We used to play this at work with weekly turns. There was a lot of scheming throughout the week leading up to each turn day. I even learned the OS/2 display list (retained graphics api, forget the name) to make an interactive Diplomacy game reference map that lived on the LAN. Good times. Don't recall any friendships being ended.

</comment><comment><USER27> The experiences of individuals playing this remind me of when we got first an 8 man and then a 16 or 24 man game or something and it was quite an experience. The two weeks we played this at work were probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in productivity lost.

<comment><USER27> I didn't even mention the game it was similar to. Incredible mistake.

The games were of Neptune's Pride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have this game but I've never been able to play, because I've never been able to find willing players. One day...

</comment><comment><USER29> How long does a game of diplomacy usually last? Does someone often win?

<comment><USER30> It's unusual for someone to win outright in my experience. But the presence of an outright victory condition affects player behavior.

<comment><USER31> It depends on the group attitude. There are a lot of people who keep alliances until the end then call draws. In a lot of ways this is a behavior that earns points for next time someone plays (e.g. That person will keep their word). On the other hand, there are groups that treat it as a winner-take-all game and play to win. It really depends on which group you get in with.

You'll probably know about a group victory in a short period of time (under four hours if you use a turn clock[edit]5 or ten minute turns[edit]), but it will be a long night with the must have a winner group. Most in a concede.

Colonial Diplomacy is faster and really, really brutal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What's the difference between a nerd and a geek? Are they the same?

<comment><USER33> My understanding is that a nerd is someone who is very intelligent or involved in pursuits associated with intelligence like academia, science, or programming. A geek is someone with an extreme interest in something like pop culture or science fiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Diplomacy breaks up relationships.

<comment><USER30> This needs unpacking, because it's true but not very complete. Diplomacy is correlated to human behavior that causes people to reevaluate relationships. This pattern is not caused by losing players being unable to take a game as a game. It's having a game reveal real-life patterns of manipulation and deception that ends relationships.

That said, I do recommend a game with your friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apologies in advance if this is somewhat off topic, but I have some pushback against the title of this post.

No disrespect to Diplomacy, I think it's a great game. However I would respectfully submit that chess might have a stronger claim to being "the board game of the alpha nerds". (Or go, arguably, in the eastern world. But despite go's supremacy in terms of complexity, it hasn't captured the world's imagination like chess has.)

There's a reason why chess scenes always pop up in movies and literature featuring, e.g. criminal masterminds vs Sherlock, or the venerable doctor teaching strategy to the protégé. The reason is, chess (rightfully or not) is universally recognized as the quintessential game symbolizing human intelligence.

In my opinion as a former competitive chess player, chess skill actually _isn 't_ correlated with general intelligence, in the sense that if you're smart enough to get good at chess, at some point you realize that there are more worthwhile things to be doing with your time. But that's neither here nor there.

My main argument is that if we did a vote among all the world's "alpha nerds" to determine who is the alpha-est and nerdiest of us all, I suspect that current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen might place higher than any of these Diplomacy masters. I have no idea how this survey methodology would work (could anyone declare themselves an alpha nerd, or would they need to be confirmed by other nerds with official titles in nerdy activities?), but you get my point.

<comment><USER13> "Alpha nerds" as a term is unhelpful and distracting.

<comment><USER36> To say the least. This concept of "alpha" humans has no basis in psychology, biology and anthropology.

It implies that humans are evolved to live in a hierarchical and purely competitive society which is known to be false (not only for us but for many mammals). Humans are not insect nor lobsters.

There are various books from prof. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sapolsky) and youtube videos with good analysis of social behavior in primates including humans.</comment></comment></comment>


Killing processes that don't want to die - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/754980/ <comment> fake-name

      Step 1: Install a kernel driver.
      Step 2: Do blocking IO in the kernel that will never finish.
      Step 3: Your process is now literally impossible to kill in any way.

This works in windows too (for similar drivers).

This happens fairly regularly with devices with crappy drivers. If something gets wedged in kernel IO, there is literally nothing you can do to kill it, bar rebooting. IIRC, the kernel won't do anything until the IO finishes.

When shitty <hardware driver tool> craps out this way, it's _extremely_ annoying. I have semi-fond memories of trying all sorts of interesting tools that attach to a process and inject faults to kill a wedged TV-Tuner application when I was in high school. I never found a option that works.

Literally zero of the examples here for preventing unkillable processes would work, too. If you can load kernel drivers, you're hoseable.

<comment><USER3> This happened to me once in ~2006 on Linux with a scratched CD. I hope it's been fixed.

<comment><USER4> I think you're out of luck. I once accidentally scratched a CD and ten years later it only got worse.

<comment><USER5> You made me laugh a lot. Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fun article!

A modern way to do this on Linux (specifically) is to use PID-namespaces for isolation.

You can pass CLONE_NEWPID to the flags argument of clone(2) so that the new process is PID 1 in a new PID-namespace. One of the special properties of PID 1 is that when it dies all of other processes in the PID-namespace will receive SIGKILL.

So, create a new "shim" process in a new PID-namespace and have that process fork&exec the rogue program (it's probably better to fork&exec than just exec because of the special properties of PID 1 that the rogue programming you're running may not be built to handle.)

If you want to kill the rogue program, just kill your shim.

You need to be root (have CAP_SYS_ADMIN) to create a new PID-namespace. If you're not (or more likely don't want to be) you can first create a new user- namespace with the CLONE_NEWUSER flag. You'll be root in that user namespace and can create a new PID-namespace. You'll probably also want to launch the rogue program as a non-root user though, so make sure to figure that out.

Docker does this sort of stuff.

man pages:

* [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/pid_namespaces.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/pid_namespaces.7.html)

* [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/user_namespaces.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/user_namespaces.7.html)

* [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/namespaces.7.html)

* [http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/clone.2.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/clone.2.html)

<comment><USER7> In a shell you can do this with `unshare -prf` which will create an unprivileged user namespace (mapping only yourself -- if you want more complicated stuff you'll need to use rootlesskit[1] or a shell script). Note that most programs really don't like being in an unprivileged user namespace (something the rootless-containers project has been working on fixing so you can have completely unprivileged containers in every sense of the word "just work").

[1]: [https://github.com/rootless- containers/rootlesskit](https://github.com/rootless-containers/rootlesskit)

<comment><USER8> You might also want to have a look at bwrap [1], a handy little sandboxing tool for unprivileged users.

[1]: [https://github.com/projectatomic/bubblewrap](https://github.com/projectatomic/bubblewrap)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I increasingly find myself looking at pledge...

[https://man.openbsd.org/pledge.2](https://man.openbsd.org/pledge.2)

It's objectively the right model, if my assumptions are wrong, the program fails. I like that.

Maybe it could be taken further... to lie to the app and report back about it's sandbox... or halt and log it's image.

<comment><USER10> pledge is objectively the _wrong_ model, because it's an ad-hoc set of fixed- function rules. By contrast, Linux seccomp-bpf allows much more flexibility, because you can actually write an arbitrary program to implement whatever sandboxing policy you want.

In fact, your wish list highlights the problems of pledge precisely. You _can_ implement "pretend to succeed" and "dump core for inspection by a trusted supervisor", but only on Linux with seccomp-bpf, not with pledge.

<comment><USER11> It's objectively the right model, because it's simple enough to implement that the vast majority of OpenBSD is pledged, including many ports like Firefox. The vast majority of other systems do not have the equivalent, in spite of having mechanisms that are in theory more powerful than pledge.

Flexible sandboxes don't help if your programs don't run in them.

<comment><USER12> Maybe it's objectively the right model for right now, and the wrong model for tomorrow, which would make you both right. It's hard to get programmers and packagers to add new OS specific features, at least until most OS's support from variant of that feature, and then they either bite the bullet or they use from library to abstract it.

Pledge is simple, and that helps people adopt it and start using it. When most operating systems are providing something equivalent and most programs are making some use of it, it then becomes a selling point to do it better, because the status quo has moved. At that point, pledge might not compare well, unless it has evolved.

<comment><USER11> > Maybe it's objectively the right model for right now, and the wrong model > for tomorrow.

I'm using my computer right now. And pledge is evolving over time, as we gain experience in what real programs need by implementing protection for them.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but some things are hard to evolve after a while, and it may be that a clean (or older but more complex) implementation has advantages at some point. I have no idea if pledge will fall under this or not, but it's a common theme in computing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most old-school shutdown init scripts called the following at some point before shutting down or rebooting:

       kill -TERM -1 # sending all processes the TERM signal...
       # ...
       sleep $SOME_SECS
       # ...
       kill -9 -1 # sending all processes the KILL signal...
       # ...
       sleep $SOME_MORE_SECS

Also old-school local DoS from root:

       # used to be very bad
       rm -rf / ; kill -9 -1

Another classic:

       # bash fork bomb
       :(){ :|:& };:
       # creates a function : and calls it
       # spawns a background process that pipes to itself, which creates another process... effectively two recursive calls per call.

<comment><USER14> Why are the pipes useful for the fork bomb? Or is it just a visual thing?

<comment><USER15> I think it is important to make it explode exponentially. Without it, the bomb will be linear.

<comment><USER16> FWIW, pipes aren't necessary to achieve explosion. Here's an example fork bomb without pipes:

        :(){ :&:& }; :

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> During "its bad, but not that bad" situations over the last couple decades I've had positive results with dropping the init level to single user mode "1" and then going back to normal multiuser mode which historically could be any number "2", "3", or "5".

Obviously this doensn't help with processes stuck in a kernel call. But for other sorts of malfunctions, or simply testing init scripts and their dependency tree, there's really no reason to reinit the kernel and check the filesystem and all that, and it can be very fast compared to a complete boot process.

This is not exactly a "gui-generation" solution for problems, but it has occasionally helped very quickly clean things up.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's absolutely infuriating that you can, with a simple NFS, cause an unkillable, unremovable, always there process to exist. There is simply no reason to require this.

<comment><USER19> For non vital filesystems, I use "-o intr,soft,timeo=5" at NFS mount time. This causes syscalls to return EINTR and timeout without hard locking. It can sometimes confuse userspace, but at least you don't get a stuck process.

<comment><USER20> I always preferred "intr,hard", because having filesystem operations fail really stresses out a lot of userspace applications. Most developers haven't thoroughly tested their handling of "what if this disk operation fails?", because it's a pain to do and a rare case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Articles like this give me a better understanding of computers and how they fundamentally work. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER22> I cannot get the first simple example working.

      int main()
      {
          while (1) {
              if (fork())
                  _exit(0);
          }
          return 0;
      }

If I run `htop` _immediately_ after typing `./a.out`, it shows a error,

      Could not create child process - <USER2>
      fork: Resource temporarily unavailable

However, if I wait a second or more, I cannot find `a.out` in the process list.

<comment><USER23> You can apply a filter in htop before running your binary, it'll only show matching processes.

I think the hotkey is F4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Our product occasionally does this at the moment. We've set up asserts in our application to launch a "phone-home" process (on the theory that launching a new process is more likely to succeed than trying to phone home from the borked process). However, the phone-home program uses the same assert library, so the rare assertion failure in the phone-home will launch a new phone-home.

</comment><comment><USER25> How is that not a fork bomb? ("The author disagrees with this characterization, which was added by an editor late in the publication process.")

<comment><USER26> I propose the term "forkworm", or perhaps "forxolotl"[1] for these processes that continuously reproduce but don't grow exponentially.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl#Regeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl#Regeneration)

<comment><USER27> It already has a name - processes like this were historically called "comets".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Hacker News paydirt!

I love an interesting programming article, this is a nice read. Kudos to the author.

</comment><comment><USER29> A namespace freeze option for halting app process might be a helpful feature in these cases.

However this still doesn't solve the Zombie process problem where something has blocked on IO/another resource. Failure should absolutely always be an option.

<comment><USER30> [https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v1/freezer-s...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/cgroup-v1/freezer- subsystem.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A comment in the article has it right -- use SIGSTOP not SIGKILL.

In a tight loop.

</comment><comment><USER32> Can't say I took much away from that article.

Next time my RabbitMQ broker goes nuts and refuses to die (thank you Erlang), I'm still going to go ahead and reboot the whole machine.

</comment><comment><USER33>
       sudo dmesg -w -H --level=err

displays the exact problem

</comment><comment><USER34> * 'Kill Dash Nine' by Monzy starts playing _

</comment><comment><USER35> Can it kill sync process?

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there really no cross-platform way to do this that works o both *nix and windows?

<comment><USER37> There isn't even a cross platform way to start a process, never mind killing one.

In Windows you can launch the process in a paused state then assign it a job object which all sub processes will inherit. Then the job object has a function to kill all processes in it.</comment></comment>


MEMP : Mac, EnginX, MySql and PHP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jyr/MEMP

<comment><USER2> Why bundle PHP 5.2.16 when MacOSX ships with 5.3.3?

Why bundle a legacy version of nginx and add an "E" to the name?

<comment><USER3> PHP 5.2.16 used php-fpm compiled, The name is just to make it look good, MNMP not I like.</comment></comment>


Show HN: PhoneNumberKit – a Swift take on libphonenumber - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/marmelroy/phonenumberkit <comment><AUTHOR> Just pushed the first release of my new project - PhoneNumberKit.

The idea was to write a Swift take on Google's libphonenumber - not a direct port but a smaller, lighter and Swift-ier framework that still uses libphonenumber's best-in-class metadata and regular expressions.

It's still a work in progress and feedback and ideas for improvement are welcome.

<comment><USER2> Hey, good work! I've never had to work with phone numbers in a mobile app, but I have with web development, and so many people do it just so, so wrong. I like what I'm seeing here, and will definitely keep it in mind should I ever have need of something like this.</comment></comment>


The Demon Machine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2011/10/demon-machine.html

<comment><USER2> _Henry Kissinger has famously said that power is better than sex. Well, clearly he isn't a programmer!_

Actually, what Kissinger famously said was that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac, which is something somewhat different. I imagine he is describing it as a one-way function...

<comment><USER3> Just to test my understanding on this sentence (I have re-read it 4 times now), JGC is saying that if Kissinger was a programmer, he would be saying "sex is better than power"? I think I have totally missed the meaning of this - could someone please point it out to me?

<comment><USER4> My interpretation was that programming is better than either sex or power :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > It's the same little voice that still drives me on to write just another > line of code, to perfect just another little routine.

I've experience this feeling myself, and I don't think it's a phenomenon limited to programming. I've had similar 'demons' urging me to do just another edit-pass over my writing, or in some web project, to tweak a UI/UX component just a little bit more. If there is a demon here, then it's likely present within all human creative endeavors.

</comment><comment><USER6> Odd, I don't hear any audio on the video; is it just me?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no audio; I had nothing to say.

<comment><USER6> > Truly, that voice is demonic.

Being Halloween, I was waiting to hear something scary.

<comment><USER7> The phrasing is somewhat confusing, I had to reread it after being confused at the lack of sound in the video and the mention of a voice synthesis module. The "voice" refers to the voice in the subsequent paragraph, the one driving the programmer, not the computer.

<comment><USER7> That works.

Interestingly, it shows that the previous commenter and myself both read the article the same way, one that I don't think a typical author would necessarily assume. I skipped the video entirely, upon reading the first words of the following paragraph went back and played the video, eager to hear that voice module.

Humans are weird.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>