Ask HN: How does your company manage secrets like API keys? - <AUTHOR> Fellow HNers,
I'm collecting data on how companies of various sizes handle sharing and deploying secrets like API keys, database credentials, etc. in both production and development.
If you have a minute, I would love to get your answers to this anonymous, 4 question, multiple choice survey:
https://goo.gl/forms/Mx97T9HD3s91DFLv1
In a couple days, I'll aggregate and post the results along with some analysis and pretty graphs.
Full disclosure: I'm the founder of EnvKey[1], a secrets management service, which is why I'm especially interested in this topic.
1 - https://www.envkey.com <comment><USER2> We use Segment's chamber[1] as a frontend to AWS System Manager Parameter Store[2].

I've found it pretty easy to set up, use, and not think about it. It's great for integrating with AWS IAM and whatnot.

[1]: [https://github.com/segmentio/chamber](https://github.com/segmentio/chamber)

[2]: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/the-right-way-to-store- secre...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/the-right-way-to-store-secrets- using-parameter-store/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.vaultproject.io](https://www.vaultproject.io) and so should you

<comment><USER4> Well, maybe not the founder of envkey... he might have colleagues depending on him :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually a big fan of Vault and greatly respect/look up to the Hashicorp team :)

I think Vault can be great for teams that are sufficiently large and sophisticated on the DevOps front. I felt there was a need for more of a Heroku/1Password-style tool for teams that want a secure way to manage secrets without undertaking a big project to setup/maintain their own secrets server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> badly

</comment><comment><USER6> I started building a tool like this for internal use last year, but it was too busy to actually get something noteworthy done, now I would have to get motivated again.

The idea was to have a simple encrypted storage of markdown (or something similar, I actually prefer Asciidoc myself) files, with possible binary attachments. I wanted to build in a break-the-glass function: if something goes wrong somebody authorized can click a button at which point all alarms start ringing but the person can read the contents (perhaps after a certain time delay during which opening can be prevented).

Would be great for secrets, emergencies, and also for non-tech uses.. wills for example :)

(if someone decides to build this just let me know because I'd totally use it :P )

</comment><comment><USER7> We aren't quite sorted enough to use hashi vault everywhere, so a few of our teams are using [https://dotat.at/prog/regpg/](https://dotat.at/prog/regpg/) which is a wrapper around gpg that enormously simplifies key management, in a way that works well with a version control system. It has hooks to work with git and ansible, because that's what we use, but the core functionality can work with other tools equally well.

You might also consider [https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox](https://github.com/StackExchange/blackbox) which does the same job in a similar way.

</comment><comment><USER8> CredHub had been developed by folks at Pivotal to manage secret storage and generation, in an arguably more opinionated way than Vault [https://github.com/cloudfoundry- incubator/credhub](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/credhub)

</comment><comment><USER9> pass [1] is great. The simple folder structure is great, it's built on git, it works with multiple pgp keys, and different folders can have different keys.

[1] [https://www.passwordstore.org/](https://www.passwordstore.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Vault. AWS KMS. GCloud KMS & IAM.

More on "secrets at scale" from recent Real World Crypto 2018 talks:

[https://rwc.iacr.org/2018/](https://rwc.iacr.org/2018/)

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://github.com/Zemanta/go-secretcrypt](https://github.com/Zemanta/go- secretcrypt)

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt](https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt)

</comment><comment><USER13> We print it in a paper, seal it in envelope and give it to company owner. He then keeps it in his Safe.

</comment><comment><USER14> Always keeping the best practices that were already in place... So obviously not good :D

</comment><comment><USER15> Paste into word doc.

</comment><comment><USER16> No offense, but anyone who is serious about securing their keys is not going to plop that information into a Google form.

<comment><USER17> Anyone who is serious about securing their keys is not going to rely on security through obscurity.

Any good design should be able to withstand public scrutiny.

<comment><USER16> Who said anything about relying on it? But feel free to hand over your specific security details to someone you don't even know. And make sure to attach your email address as on the form. :)

<comment><USER18> From a risk management point of view (I'm over 40 so I can say that with a straight face), relying on obscurity for key management is an unbelievable shitshow. If you rely on nobody knowing how you store your keys to protect your keys, you might find yourself obligated to change how you store your keys every single time that someone quits.

Secret storage should really be solid enough that you could publish how you manage your secrets on a billboard without any meaningful impact to your probability of breach.

<comment><USER19> So your only argument is that if someone quits, the secrets will spill out ?

I am a big fan of security by obscurity actually. I mean, by announcing to the whole world how you store your secrets, you are telling all the hackers in the world what protocols, what algorithms should they target against. Then one day you suddenly have a 0-day vuln and boom, everything is gone.

Compare the risks of that to an employee leaving and leaking the secrets.

<comment><USER18> First, in practice, don't ever minimize the risks of an employee spilling secrets. Employees are a massive source of leaks. Some good research suggests that 60% of data breaches are caused by employees.

Maybe they're just being helpful, maybe they're outright malicious, or maybe they have no idea what they're doing, but insiders are always a massive source of breaches. Don't minimize that; accept it.

And second, I said "risk management". Risk management not only looks at probability of breach but at the probability of a judicial or (worse) a legislative response to the breach. If you rely upon security by obscurity, you have to assume that someday, you'll be deposed by an attorney who will want to find out how you protect those secrets.

That gets tough because protecting secrets is notoriously difficult, even for government organizations with massive budgets for employee screening and training. It's not impossible, but it's so difficult that you should assume that the probability of a secret remaining secret is close to zero.

And, this is where obscurity by obscurity get complicated. It's very hard to tell if a secret has leaked. So, when do you revoke a secret? There is always an organizational cost to changing a secret, yet there is potentially a massive organizational cost to holding onto a secret for too long. That looks too much like a coin toss to me and I don't like playing odds like that.

Instead, I like playing the odds by using trusted algorithms and protocols to protect secrets and backing those trusted algorithms and protocols up with some hardcore monitoring, solid policy and well drilled process.

<comment><USER19> Thanks. Good points.

I won't be rolling out my own crypto of course. I like to use existing known parts. But add some slight improvements of my own. Customizations to my use- case. It's a layered defense approach against attackers. The point is to make them work hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish KeyBase would take it on.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not telling …

Sorry, couldn't resist.

</comment><comment><USER22> AWS KMS</comment>


DietPi: Lightweight justice for your single-board computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.dietpi.com/ <comment><USER2> Underlying GitHub repo: [https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi](https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like you get a lot of install customization</comment>


Ask HN: Can the US House and Senate be replaced with a website, should it? - <AUTHOR> I am very interested in discussion around this topic. Thanks for taking the time to look. <comment><USER2> If you meant, instead of tossing out representative democracy, "can we make the legislative branch one of virtual meetings so that representatives stay home with their constituents rather than going to Washington, I think that there would be a more interesting discussion.

<comment><USER3> Pro: more difficult for lobbyists.

Con: voting fraud on roll call votes, AKA "Ghost Voting" when done in chambers[0].

[0] [http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/09/23/ghost-voting- cal...](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/09/23/ghost-voting-california- assembly-members-caught-breaking-the-rules/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know this question is rather vague, but the basic idea is that a web-based application could be created with every American having an account. The purpose of the application would be to allow votes on each political issue from participating citizens (instead of representatives and senators) as it comes up for a vote.

I know that I am glossing over a lot of technical issues, but in theory it should be possible. The question is mainly designed to spark discussion around representative democracy vs direct democracy and whether politicians actually contribute to or even help the country and its citizens.

I have purposely left out my opinions on this matter so I could hopefully see more sides of the conversation.

<comment><USER5> The US government was _deliberately_ not set up to be a direct democracy. Those writing the Constitution looked at the historical examples before their time, and concluded that direct democracy was too prone to degenerate into mob rule. So they didn't do that - they set up a republic instead of a democracy.

Yes, you could replace the US House and Senate with a web site, at least in theory. In doing so, though, you are changing the form of our government. You'd better think _hard_ before you decide that you know better.

And, if you conclude that your idea is still a good one, then to actually implement it, you have to amend the Constitution. Unless you have a plan for doing that, the answer to the "can" question is "technically yes, politically no".

(In fairness to the idea, though, Congress _has_ been showing a clear trend toward increasing dysfunction and uselessness for the past few decades...)

<comment><AUTHOR> > direct democracy was too prone to degenerate into mob rule

Do you think its possible that new advances in technology since 1776 might just enable direct democracy to avoid the degeneration you cite?

> to actually implement it, you have to amend the Constitution

I think we would actually have to rewrite the constitution. The definition of congress is a major section of the constitution and any amendment would basically have to rewrite large swaths of the original document.

<comment><USER5> > Do you think its possible that new advances in technology since 1776 might > just enable direct democracy to avoid the degeneration you cite?

No. It's the people who are the problem, not the technology. (In particular, think about all those people on Facebook amplifying false information during the last election cycle.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Korean Artist Transforms Small Studio Into Dreamlike Worlds Without Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.demilked.com/jee-young-lee-surreal-photography-studio-room/

<comment><USER2> "Art hacking?"

No, it's art, full stop. What a sad commentary on the state of things that it's intrinsically interesting to create something "without Photoshop."

<comment><USER3> It's just a linkbait title...no more no less

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its annoying that people have started using hacking for everything. Isn't art hacking just art? Isn't growth hacking just growth. I hate how these buzz words catch on and are then used for anything and everything.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is truly impressive. Thanks for posting the link.

</comment><comment><USER6> Weird title. Let's just use the word "hacker" until its completely meaningless.

Anyway, these are beautiful, well done!

</comment><comment><USER7> That Titian was quite the art hacker, too.</comment>


Assessing the net value of children - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/31/magazines/fortune/children_value_benefits.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009090106

<comment><USER2> I might be crazy, but I believe a pretty significant reason that many people have kids is so that they... can have a family?

I'm also fairly sure that most people are not expecting their kids to make them any money, or go bragging about their hefty ROI from a son who went on to be a successful lawyer.

It's nothing new that kids cost money. Sure, college is a big cost that maybe not everyone was expected to need years and years ago, but in this day and age its more and more likely that students are paying for it themselves to an extent, through either scholarships, loans, or part-time work.

For other expenses, I would think that having kids is almost like "paying it forward". YOUR parents must have spent money on you and your potential siblings throughout your life, so why is it suddenly a huge burden when you're expected to do the same for someone else?

I feel like the article made it seem like having a kid these days was a poor investment decision (which is an understatement of course), and nothing more. I'd almost feel sorry for his son, which he seems to give absolutely no credit to for being a success.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you interested in picking up "idea sunday" threads again? - <AUTHOR> > A HN experiment. Every Sunday, a thread will be started to share product ideas. Why? Because many people have ideas they will simply not have the time to implement, and many need product ideas to work on.<p>I've seen the idea pop up a few times past week, are you interested in picking this up again? <comment><USER2> Weekly is far too frequently. At most it should be monthly.

If you can think of a way that it can happen without creating extra work for the mods they might consider it.

Some of the problems with previous threads were people begging for upvotes, and people competing to start the threads.

</comment><comment><USER3> I vote 'yea'. I always found them to be one of the more interesting and thought-provoking types of posts on this site.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7693262)

I don't think dang will allow it. While I did like reading through the threads, overtime they didn't really contribute anything meaningful to HN. Just my 2c

<comment><USER5> Cleverly shift it to Saturday to avoid any unwanted scrutiny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really wish it would exist, though I agree that it should probably be monthly.

I would also like to see some sort of regular reading/recommendations thread.

</comment><comment><USER7> Perhaps you should do a poll. That feature still works, no?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd like that. Yes from me if we're voting.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes plz

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes definitely!

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes, please.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes.</comment>


One Big Net for Everything - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08864 <comment><USER2> Is it just me or does the abstract become a bit uncanny just by the constant use of "ONE"? Maybe it was the ambient jazz I was listening to while reading the abstract... :D</comment>


While Google fights on the edges, Amazon is attacking their core - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2010/05/22/while-google-fights-on-the-edges-amazon-is-attacking-their-core/ <comment><USER2> The author makes a really good point. Personally, about 90% of the time I buy something online I just go straight to Amazon.

<comment><USER3> Me too, ever since I got Amazon Prime (do you have that as well?)

<comment><USER4> Amazon Prime has shifted my buying habits to where I go there first for even small things like personal care items I would have otherwise bought at, say, Target.

I used to travel 4 days every week and so my weekends at home became extremely precious time. By buying that stuff on Amazon on Wednesdays from my hotel room, the free two day shipping meant it'd be delivered when I was working from home on Fridays. I was able to do the things I wanted to do on the weekend rather than spending time at the store doing what I needed to do.

I don't have that horrible travel schedule anymore but I still appreciate how I can just order shampoo from my mobile phone when I realize I'm running low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "[Google] competes with Amazon in a number of areas, particularly web services and big data."

I believe Amazon treats web services and big data seriously, but IIRC they're well under 1% of revenues. These services are of particular interest to the HN crowd of course, but just wanted to point out that it's far from a core offering for them.

Amazon has become the incumbent in this space, which may have some value in the future, but it's entirely possible they're happily losing money on it at the moment.

<comment><USER6> They might be 1% of revenues, but more interesting to my mind is what % of profits they are. One of the core motivations, as I understand it, was to utilize the excess capacity Amazon had built for peak seasonal activity. These sunk costs don't necessarily count against the EC2, S3 etc. revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amazon's "attack" relies upon its continued physical goods dominance. Perhaps Google should find ways to help out Amazon's competitors.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a very interesting observation with respect to what Facebook is doing with their 'real-world things' Open Graph (<http://goo.gl/xn4c>) strategy and their plans for an internal currency. I say this will be at least a 3-way race:

1\. Amazon attracts users with inventory, content. They will win share through selection, ease of purchase and branding. 2\. Facebook attracts users through social interaction, peer-peer trust. They will win share by facilitating transactions within their community. 3\. Google attracts users by helping find what they want to buy. They will win share by meaningfully indexing content and putting ads in the right place.

Its an over-simplification, but you go to Amazon when you know what you want; you go to Google to figure out what you want; and you go to facebook to buy something from within your network (when trust matters). When none of this matters, its all about the brand.

<comment><USER9> Saying Facebook has a hand in the ecommerce market is still very speculative at the moment. That may happen but right now it doesn't even look like they're moving that direction really.

And also, Amazon attracts me definitely for their vast inventory but primarily because of their reviews which falls under the social interaction / peer-peer trust you ascribe to Facebook.

<comment><USER5> True, and Facebook can't truly leverage any of its "friend-based" data without ugly privacy skirmishes. Because Amazon didn't start out claiming that your opinions (eg. reviews) were private, they have no trust issue to overcome. Trust is the elephant in the room for Facebook.

<comment><USER10> >> and Facebook can't truly leverage any of its "friend-based" data without ugly privacy skirmishes.

Oh if only that were the roadblock that it ought to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just wanted to point out, that is a really misleading graph. All the lines start at "100%", so the scales aren't comparable at all.

<comment><USER12> Actually, this makes perfect sense. The sales data at any given point of time is given as a percentage of the baseline, which is set at Q1 '03.

<comment><USER11> Of course, it makes sense if you interpret it right -- but it looks at first glance like it's comparing absolute sales figures, rather than change from baseline for each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think this is a fair comparison. While Google does make most of their money from ads that result in a purchase, that purchase is not always the sort of thing Amazon sells.

For instance one of the highest grossing per-click terms has consistently been mesothelioma. I'm guessing Amazon won't be selling legal services this year.

My suspicion is that much more of Google's revenue comes from purchased services (and I'm counting their #1 spender, eBay, as a service), digital or otherwise, than tangible, shippable, durable goods.

</comment><comment><USER14> Google's core business is AdSense. This article doesn't take into account services. While amazon can take up an increasingly larger chunk of the internet retailer pie, presumably not all of Ads on AdSense are for goods. As long as people still use search engines to find services in addition to goods businesses will stay pay for ads and AdSense can keep growing. Amazon isn't really entering the ad business or killing off the need for advertising.

<comment><USER15> you are mistaking adsense with adwords. Currently adwords revenue dwarf adsense

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amazon's sales portal and Apple's iAd adverts are aimed at Google's money. Amazon has its web hosting and storage services. What Apple is planning for their Maiden, North Carolina DC isn't yet clear.

</comment><comment><USER17> If anyone is going after anyone's core here it's Google going after Amazon's with the to be launched 'editions' service, also they don't have the legacy tax and inertia as they don't sell physical product. As long as people are searching Google the'll find a way to make money, direct intent is but a fraction of search ads.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, but the reality is that Amazon has over a decade of experience in dealing with publishers. Neither Google nor Apple is going to catch up with that. Google just realizes they have a risky high-margin business and they need to diversify. They're doing so on both novel and established areas.

Outside the obvious A9 disaster, Amazon doesn't usually chase the competition. They have a low margin business, meaning they don't have a fierce bite, but do have a long breath. They start early to become the leader and then try to maintain their position. Apparently quite successfully.</comment></comment>


Kali Linux's 8 Most used Subdomain Enumeratings finder tools - latest-release https://www.nmmapper.com/kalitools/theharvester/email-harvester-tool/online/ <comment><AUTHOR> Damn, you really are posting a lot about this site.

Do Offensive Security know you're using their OS for this service, and if so did they approve you to also have ads on your site, therefore making money off their product ?</comment>


Avoiding the Fark Effect - <AUTHOR>

By the Fark effect I mean - at first a social news site is really cool, then over time there are more and more political posts, top ten lists, nsfw links, and pictures of cats. Inside their algorithmic brains, every social news site wants to turn into Fark.
In the wake of being linked on techcrunch a lot of people seem worried the same thing will happen here.
Here's a suggestion - build a bayesian filter specifically to prevent Hacker News from turning into reddit / digg / fark. Positive training data can be hacker news articles before today. Scrape the contents of each link before it goes live. Negative training data can be the current top n articles from those other sources. Don't apply this filter in a boolean way; instead do something like
score *= similarity-to-classic-hacker-news
By making it non-boolean, we will still get articles like "Google announces huge new product". It will just cost you a 0.1x in score whenever the article mentions Ron Paul.
Any other good ideas out there? <comment><USER2> Fark isn't in the same ballpark as reddit and digg. The only users that get to vote on stories are the core users who have ponied up $50/year for a totalfark membership and I believe only the admins can put a story on the front page. All the filtering is done by the core group who has incentives to keep the links on topic (if fark can be said to have a topic).

/farker but not a tf'er

</comment><comment><USER3> That's the point of the voting system. The articles that the most people want will be voted to the top. Unfortunately, the minority can't stay a minority if their site gets too popular.

<comment><USER4> If and when necessary I'm sure HN can leverage the seniority of the current users (time since registered and karma points).</comment></comment>


'Plogging' is the Swedish fitness craze for people who want to save the planet - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/02/23/plogging-is-the-swedish-fitness-craze-for-people-who-want-to-save-the-planet-its-making-its-way-to-the-u-s/?utm_term=.db492cc1f1da <comment><USER2> The sad thing is, we won't run out of trash for the ploggers to collect.</comment>


Show HN: A generic router to manage url like object state - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Routility/routility <comment><AUTHOR> Where it really shines is when you want to combine routing with state management layer, e.g. Redux. This way route information can be fully consumed by your data layer.</comment>


The Secret Coach - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/21/technology/reingold_coach.fortune/index.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there a role/need for a "Bill Campbell" type in a startup? Perhaps as an early employee/team member?</comment>


Carl Icahn is Betting on a Stock Market Crash - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/05/10/carl-icahn-crash-stock/ <comment><USER2> He may well be right. If you say it often enough, eventually you will be.

2011:

 _> You've got to be myopic if you're not at least concerned that there might be a major correction_ [1]

2013:

 _> Activist investor Carl Icahn on Monday said there was a chance the stock market could suffer a big decline, saying valuations are rich and earnings at many companies are fueled more by low borrowing costs than management's efforts to boost results_ [2]

2014:

 _> Carl Icahn says 'time to be cautious' on U.S. stocks_ [3]

 _> Carl Icahn Reiterates "We Are In A Major Asset Bubble"_ [4]

2015:

 _> Icahn warns of potential looming catastrophe...Icahn said he's "more hedged now than I've been in years."_ [4]

[1] [https://next.ft.com/content/c9612302-4c09-11e0-82df-00144fea...](https://next.ft.com/content/c9612302-4c09-11e0-82df-00144feab49a)

[2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-investment-summit-icahn- id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-investment-summit-icahn- idUSBRE9AH11720131118)

[3] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-investing-icahn- exclusive-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-investing-icahn-exclusive- idUSKBN0FF2DV20140710)

[4] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-12/carl-icahn- reiterat...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-12/carl-icahn-reiterates- we-are-major-asset-bubble)

[5] [http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/-of-potential-looming- catastr...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/-of-potential-looming- catastrophe.html)

<comment><USER3> Yeah...the problem with your analysis is that Icahn was never really "short" the market when he said those things. He owned big momentum stocks, as a matter of fact, Apple, Netflix, etc. Now he has a massive short position in the market, his money is now where his mouth was/is.

The first time in your analysis that he actually said he was hedging, the market took a nose dive of 20%. I think his advice is worth warrant, especially when you have people like Bill Gross saying similar.

It's of my opinion that we are in an asset bubble, but we could have a "blow off top" before we really see what happens. Stock declines also generally occur during election years after a 2 term President, so it's a generally good bet for a correction at the very least. But, if I really knew what was going on, I'd be rich.

<comment><USER4> "It's of my opinion that we are in an asset bubble, but we could have a "blow off top" before we really see what happens. Stock declines also generally occur during election years after a 2 term President, so it's a generally good bet for a correction at the very least. But, if I really knew what was going on, I'd be rich."

What's missing right now is the taxi driver sentiment ...

I don't hear inexperienced investors talking about playing the market or about average folks day trading. Yet.

<comment><USER5> That's because they're all starting start ups. Day trading is so early 2000s.

<comment><USER6> There was an ad that recently played on the radio for some service that will help you take your money from a retirement account to fund a family member's start-up.

I haven't heard it recently, so hopefully some people had enough sense to pull it. Investing retirement money in a family member's start-up is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To repeat the well worn quote from John Maynard Keynes. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." This is especially true in the post financial crisis world of financial engineering, quantitative easing, and zero/negative interest rates. This market will come down hard at some point, but shorting it has been a losing proposition 99% of the time.

<comment><USER8> I find it somewhat poetic that Keynes is the author of that often used quote, as the irrationality of our current market is a direct result of the abuse of his own theories.

<comment><USER9> Not really. Keynes prescribed fiscal stimulus. We are currently engaged in a very large experiment on the limits of monetary stimulus.

<comment><USER8> Constant demand side stimulus has been de facto US economic policy since the Great Depression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't see how this article adds anything over its source [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-09/historic-150-net- sh...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-09/historic-150-net-short- position-carl-icahn-betting-imminent-market-collapse), that article has strictly more information.

Can the url be changed?

<comment><USER8> HN has an irrational aversion to ZH, with some posters here suggesting it should be banned as a source entirely.

<comment><USER10> If it should be banned, then any article sourcing only from it should be banned as well. That's an obvious loophole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He may be onto something. There's a huge and widening gap between GAAP vs. Non-GAAP earnings: [http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2016/02/24/S%26P%20PE%20GAAP%20non%20GAAP_0.jpg)

U.S. corporations have issued more than $9.9 trillion in debt since 2008. Last year, corporations issued a record $1.5 trillion in debt.

76% of the companies in the S&P 500 bought back their own shares ...most companies used debt to pay for these buybacks, in a clever move of financial engineering to boost EPS.

To top it off, we've been in a multi-quarter earnings recession for the S&P, and total retail sales growth has dipped below 3% which has always correlated with a recession:

[http://i0.wp.com/bawerk.net/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://i0.wp.com/bawerk.net/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/Retail-Sales-since-1968-w-recession-threshold.jpg)

<comment><USER12> The stock market seems sane when compared to real-estate prices in major cities. In Canada, people are mostly pointing fingers at foreign buyers. People are generally ignoring the elephant in the room - lowest rates in a generation. Despite being in the 1% of wage earners, we personally are so badly screwed ... we'll never be able to afford property in hour home towns unless there is a 50% crash. I don't think that is likely at all ... so we're (and most of our friends who missed the buying opportunities of 2011-12) are figuring our what remote town to move to so we can earn some fraction of our salaries but have a shot at home ownership. As rational people, we know we cannot afford million dollar homes if interest rates ever normalize. In Canada, you cannot get mortgages longer than 10 years ... so it is very grim for us. People who don't know math are raking it in while we are suffering in no uncertain terms. But no one seems to care.

<comment><USER13> I am just hoping self driving cars come out in the next 5-10 years and hopefully that expands the geographic area you can reasonably live in and still commute to work.

<comment><USER12> The LA to SF bus comes to mind. Seems like a miserable existence to spend so much time couped up in a car but the self-driving option will allow more productive use of time.

<comment><USER14> Traveling long distances is a pain even by transit -- mobile data needs to catch up first. Dropped calls, dropped vpn connections, slow speeds... it sounds great to work during your commute until you have to actually do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My favorite chart is to superpose the S&P for the past 10 years with the size of the Fed balance sheet. It's almost a perfect match. What is certain is that the Fed B/S isn't going up anymore (but it isn't reducing either). I don't know if we are heading toward a crash, but unless we have QE4, stocks are certainly not going up.

<comment><USER7> Negative interest rates and company stock buy backs might be able to allow markets to keep going for a while. Negative rates cause investors and sovereign wealth funds to pour money into equities. The Bank of Japan owns 50% of the ETFs in Japan. That should scare people.

Stock buy backs artificially inflate reported company earnings. Companies take on cheap debt to buy back shares of their own company (at historically high valuations) to keep investors happy and beat earnings estimates.

This game of musical chairs can run for a while.

<comment><USER16> And analysts aren't wise to this practice? Wouldn't the market have priced in that charade already?

<comment><USER7> Everyone knows it's happening, the real question is whether it is a charade or not. Buy backs are a legitimate practice for companies that want to reward shareholders and gain a bigger chunk of their own business. Nothing sketchy there. The question is why would a company like Nike want to buy back it's own stock at historically expensive valuations rather than use that money on new products or to expand their market share? Are they doing it to gain a bigger piece of their own business, or are they doing it to juice earnings because top line sales are decreasing and they need to beat earnings expectations to keep the share price up? The jury is still out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Icahn thinks the market will crash, enters a short position. Then lobbies the media to help it crash.

<comment><USER16> I wonder how much the media practically begging for it to crash could create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The analysis needs to factor overall market earnings [1]. It is more level- headed to look at the S&P 500 P/E ratio, which does show a historically over- valued market, though not dramatically over-valued at this time [2]. S&P 500 overall earnings hit all-time highs in 2013 and 2014, but have fallen back somewhat in 2015.

So it's a pretty safe bet to short, if that is one of your investment tools. But I don't think you'll really make a killing, unless earnings decline substantially. I've chosen to just divest stock-based investments and increase cash somewhat, and then cherry-pick value in dividend stocks.

[1] [http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-earnings/table](http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-earnings/table)

[2] [http://www.multpl.com/](http://www.multpl.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Not a bad idea. Greece and its "debts" will rear their heads again this summer, as there are some pretty significant payments due in June and July: [http://www.ft.com/ig/sites/2015/greek-debt- monitor/](http://www.ft.com/ig/sites/2015/greek-debt-monitor/). Just the spark un-needed in global markets where it seems everyone is in that pre-dive mood of complacency.

The continuing question is: do you play chicken with the central banks of the world?

<comment><USER20> Closer to the US, don't forget the debt default by Puerto Rico: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36184250](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36184250)

<comment><USER19> Excellent point, I totally forgot about that. $2 bils due July 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> And previously, he was betting on AAPL to raise to 200$.

To be fair, the coming Trump victory might not be priced in yet. Also, Brexit could bring some turbulences.

<comment><USER22> How do you think a potential Trump victory will affect the market, in terms of short term immediate effects? (I'm actually asking, not being sarcastic).

It's hard for me to predict in this case, but if Bernie were to win, I kind of expect a temporary downturn as people panic due to Bernie's promise of attacking "wall street".

<comment><USER23> He favours a "temporary" ban on nearly a quarter of the world's population entering the US, delays to company's ability to hire anyone from overseas and a trade war with China... and also talks a lot about attacking Wall Street though without appearing to have any concrete policies to deal with it.

I don't think an unfunded plan to cut corporation tax is really going to tip things in his favour.

<comment><USER24> uh, his wall street plan is to get rid of carried interest and increase taxes on fund managers. i think we found some funding a corporate tax cut (if that's in fact what he's proposed).

<comment><USER25> He also proposes taxing _all_ income from pass-through vehicles (such as private equity funds, VC funds, and hedge funds) at 15%. Trump may eliminate the carried interest loophole, but he does so by lowering taxes until the loophole is irrelevant.

I consider this clear proof that he thinks his voters are chumps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To badly paraphrase the words of Jack Bogle - "I don't know anyone who can successfully time the market, and I don't know anyone who knows anyone who can either."

</comment><comment><USER26> _" In April, Icahn argued that stock prices have been pushed artificially high by low interest rates, but that economic fundamentals could not support those prices."_

That tells me that his bet is actually that the Fed will keep raising rates, which would likely push down stocks.

</comment><comment><USER27> One thing not yet discussed here is the demographic profile of the US: Baby Boomers are now retiring.

Over the next 20 years, they will be drawing down on their retirement accounts, putting slow yet constant negative pressure on the market.

Japan has had similar pressure and it is one thing that contributed to the Lost Decade.

<comment><USER28> I wonder what kind of effect that will actually have, given the stark divide in retirement preparations. On the one hand, we have a lot of people who have little retirement savings, who play a small role in the markets and will delay retirement (or just never do it). On the other, we have some people with well- planned retirement accounts. I would not be surprised if a fair number of the latter have planned to live only on the proceeds of their investments. That will introduce some bias towards dividends over reinvestment, I suppose. This is speculative, granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not really surprising there are a lot of reasons to think there will be a market downturn the thing that seems to be a big question mark is will/can it happen with the fed's current policies.

</comment><comment><USER30> The guy is quotable, but I don't understand why anything Icahn says about the market is actually newsworthy. He never says or does anything that isn't about benefiting the interests and net worth of Carl Icahn (inc.). May as well be quoting press releases from SCO lawyers about software patents and Unix.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article feels like some pretty lazy reporting. Icahn's strategy, I'm sure is much more nuanced than - "The market will crash."

</comment><comment><USER32> Market going down 20% is what, going back to mid 2013 levels? Hardly a scary crash.

<comment><USER33> Look up how far stocks fell in 1929.

Most corrections are 20-40% - which is bad enough.

But every so often you get something much, much worse.

<comment><USER34> The fed has shown they're not willing to let that happen. They'll start up the printing press again, then.

Quantitative easing has effectively been the biggest gift in the last 50 years to the wealthy.

<comment><USER35> Very true, but... Eventually all that money shows up as inflation. Which devalues the SPX. The wealthy have been net sellers of SPX for over a year now. It is only the collapsing velocity of money which has prevented an inflationary tear so far...but that has a hard limit at zero ( unlike interest rates) which can only be reached by either obliteration of technological society or a reorganization of economic activity to be uncorrelated with money flows

<comment><USER34> If you believe that, then you would do well to swap your dollars for some other currency used by countries with low inflation and a more prudent fiscal policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "-150% Net Short Position"

What does it mean?

<comment><USER37> For example: you have $1000, borrow another $500, and use the whole $1500 to short Apple.

Icahn has a much more complex position, but essentially, he's borrowing and using derivatives to get a $1,500 return for every $1,000 drop in value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What goes up, must come down. The stock market is cyclical and a correction is bound to happen. I don't see why a Trump presidency would be bad for the market. Maybe it would take a short term dive because of his stance on protectionism, but long term it would probably rise because of his goal to repatriate dollars and stimulate domestic manufacturing. Right now, it's the uncertainty about Senate and presidential outcomes that might spook investors. Even the Supreme Court is in play. We live in interesting times.

<comment><USER39> Protectionism would send the market in a tailspin down. You should read some more about the great depression and its causes

<comment><USER38> Yes, the stock bubble burst, and Hoover's attempt to impose tariffs backfired badly.

I doubt that Trump would implement protectionism. His rhetoric generally points to leveling the playing field rather than simply banning foreign imports.

He talks a good talk about screwing the Chinese, but when push comes to shove there's nothing he'd be able to do about the trade imbalance.

<comment><USER40> > His rhetoric generally points to leveling the playing field rather than > simply banning foreign imports.

His rhetoric is consistently vague, which allows people to read what they want into it.

> He talks a good talk about screwing the Chinese, but when push comes to > shove there's nothing he'd be able to do about the trade imbalance.

There's plenty he could do about the trade imbalance; for instance, net imports necessarily must be balanced by a capital inflow; obstruct the capital inflow and you prevent the trade imbalance.

Of course, doing so would likely be disastrous, but its not impossible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hansdezwart/ai-weiwei-is-living-in-our-future-474e5dd15e4f <comment><USER2> We'll all take the red pill someday, but I swallowed the blue one already. I found the article enlightening, reminding me of the continued complacency and abject indifference in favor of convenience and other affordances of mindless empty rewards (yay, startups!) much like the Radiohead 1997 song, Fitter Happier [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Computer)

I missed the whole Ai Weiwei media storm due to disinterest and made up assumptions about yet another dissenter getting hammered down by the State; like duh? What else is new over "there"? Well on the internets, where is there or here? The article actually made me pause playing FTL to Google Ai WeiWei and watch the streamed Netflix documentary: [http://aiweiweineversorry.com/](http://aiweiweineversorry.com/) Wow, here was someone who could have kept his mouth shut and kept kowtowing to rake in the bucks, but instead choose a new "career path" out of politics and got a fat tax bill for the trouble. Gutsy move or sending a message? Let's hope the next generation gives damn.

<comment><USER3> Ai Weiwei Never Sorry is surprisingly enjoyable and it does a great job of giving some in-depth understanding of Chinese culture.

You can watch it a few minutes at a time. Ai Weiwei is a troll who has some degree of safety due to his and his father's fame.

His arrest was encouraged by a work of art whose title could be interpreted as, "fuck your mother Communist Party Central Committee" (NSFW) [http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/379212-baidu-10-mythical- crea...](http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/379212-baidu-10-mythical-creatures- grass-mud-horse)

Less accessible, but still potentially informative and hilarious is his music video of his detention: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACj86DKfWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ACj86DKfWs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have always been fascinated by computers and passionate about programming. I never taught I would ever feel ashamed of my passion ... that maybe I have been part of the decline of freedom and privacy, the same things I've always believed in and fought for . I've finished reading again 1984 a short time ago, and I felt sick reading this article and realizing we're making a monster.

I stopped using Facebook a few months ago and it was not so easy as I thought. Since then, whenever I people ask me I give them my views about keeping privacy and such ... they always have the same reply: Why would you want to hide something ? or We can do nothing about it, everyone does it ... it makes me even sicker when it comes from Tech friends who understand the consequences but just don't care about it.

<comment><USER5> You feel awful now, but what you've written is very encouraging. You're doing the right thing.

Coding can be put to good use too. Perhaps there's an open-source project you can contribute to that has a positive benefit to offer society? What social injustices are you most passionate about?

I also intend to leave Facebook (again) very soon. The only reason I haven't in the past is that I didn't want to lose contact with some people, but I figure if I share my email address as I leave anyone that wants to contact me can do. We don't have to employ a scorched earth policy every time we want to change, losing everything we got from something, we often have better alternatives.

I should move away from Gmail for similar reasons, does anyone have suggestions of a secure email service with webmail and Android app access?

<comment><USER4> You're right, we should use our skills in open source projects. I think decentralized technologies are the way to fix the problems with Internet.

Speaking of Gmail, I also want to stop using Google services. I went back the good old times, just setup a mail server on a linux dedicated box and started sharing my new email address. It's going to be painful but there's no way around it. You can then setup POP or IMAP on Android like we always did before.

I remember a discussion with a friend of mine about the source of these problems, we came up to the conclusion that Internet was an amazing technology when poeple could speak up their minds freely, this is how Internet itself was built and the same for good Open Source projects like Linux. But now we let the greedy guys run businesses with internet and they are trying to replicate the physical world. We are basically transforming what was a door to creativity and freedom to a mirror of our daily lives. And the common factor to all these problems is "identity". Most internet technologies and new startups are obsessed with identity. We are linking authentication to more social networks. Linking our phones to online services and always giving our identity in the process. I wonder what would be the Internet if there was no way to have "identity" at all supported in the protocol level. Maybe it's too late.

<comment><USER5> I can reassure you it's not too late. If you wish to get involved in the decentralised web as a coder, could always participate in the technologies surrounding the Darknet Plan... [http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/](http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/)

Personally I believe the Darknet Plan is doomed to fail on a large scale unless they tackle the downsides of decentralisation, but that's just my personal opinion. There's plenty of work to do, I'm sure you could find some tasks that interested you.

With email, you're right that POP/IMAP on a dedicated box is preferable from a security standpoint. Food for thought, thank you.

<comment><USER6> > With email, you're right that POP/IMAP on a dedicated box is preferable from > a security standpoint.

This depends on your threat model, and I'd argue that this statement is untrue for the vast majority of people, even people who have the technical know-how required to run their own email server. Running an email server, keeping it up to date with the latest security patches, managing SSL certificates, blocking spam, blocking malware, and blocking phishing attempts are all things that Google is better at than you. Part of the reason for this is their access to incredible volumes of data, which lets them analyze trends and emerging threats across an relatively large subset of the email-using population.

The average user's threat model is much more along the lines of phishing, malware, or spam-related fraud. Google is incredibly good at protecting people from these threats (as is obvious when I compare the volume of spam, which often contains malware or phishing links, that I receive on my Gmail account against my other, non-Gmail accounts).

Of course, if your threat model is that you require protection from law enforcement or government surveillance, then Google may be a poor choice as they are legally obligated to turn over information about you that is requested by such entities. If that is your adversary, however, than you should have a lot more work to do to protect yourself than just quitting Gmail and setting up your own mail server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is easily the most important article currently on the front page. At times its poignancy reminded me of some of the talks by Maciej Ceglowski, aka the guy who runs Pinboard, but this talk is a bit more direct and a bit less funny.

The world of coveillance or sousveillance sounds attractive, but I think that a quick look at the state of computing for the average person, and their ability to organize photos, run their own email server, or any number of tasks that would be somewhat analogous to the ability for citizens to have some form of meaningful technological power against large corporations and the government, should dispel this notion pretty quickly.

The frog is being slowly boiled right now, and I honestly don't have any answers about what to do. All I can think is just to do what I can to use free software, support organizations like the EFF and Mozilla, and work to make sure that my life isn't completely captured by giant companies like Google and Apple, as I also try to remain politically engaged at home.

Maybe that's all any of us can do.

<comment><USER8> I would like to design my next side-project to be decentralised and federated, giving people the option to run it on their own hardware. It's a small step in the right direction, I think, and it makes me feel slightly happier about the direction we are heading in. (With the frog definitely in the pot, but not boiling yet.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even if his criticisms of coveillance are correct, I still think the world is headed that way.

Simply put, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We passed a similar threshold with industrialization, and the consequent removal of autonomy for workers on several levels (is the 1800's factory of exacting time cards and constant repetitive movements that far behind the warehouse the author describes?). It was a tumultuous transition (strikes, revolution, communism, etc.) but we made it through. The transformation in state and corporate power that tools like surveillance bring will be similar, but just like in the industrial revolution we can't turn back the clock and have to instead ride out whatever happens.

<comment><USER10> Serious question: where do we start when we want to fight this? We made it through the industrial revolution because people stood up for their rights. I'm at a total loss for where to start. (Edit: grammar)

<comment><USER11> Like with many other causes, you start with yourself -- and that might be enough.

These days, not participating in the latest electronics and social sites and whatnot is enough to make people ask you questions. If you think carefully enough about why you're making the choices you make, then you can give pretty reasonable answers.

I don't own a smart phone, or have a Facebook or LinkedIn account. I still buy paper books. I don't blog (much). And I don't really evangelize these choices; I don't do any of this for attention or to try to change other people's minds. But, when someone notices their tech guy is carrying an old-school flip phone, they ask questions.

Usually the first thing I say is, "they're really convenient, really good tools," immediately followed by, "but, I've noticed that people seem to have a lot of trouble ignoring them, and I don't need another distraction in my life. I don't really want an internet connection to follow me everywhere."

As far as I know, I haven't made anyone else give up their smart phone or Facebook account or whatever. But a surprising number of people take a moment to think about that. They often kinda look at their phone and go, "...huh, I wonder what that would be like..."

And, y'know, just the fact that I get by and live pretty well without these things I think speaks more about how valuable they really are than any sermon I could think of.

<comment><USER12> Eh, by that reasoning, you could equally live without electricity or running water.

Technology is leveraged, not because it's strictly necessary, but because it's useful. After all, the very website we're having this conversation on isn't necessary. You could get by just fine without it.

But it's useful, isn't it?

Frankly, I don't think quietly opting out solves anything. Would it have helped if some folks opted out of the industrial revolution, content to sit on their farms eking out a living? No. It was those folks participating in the system, but determined to change it, who ultimately lead the charge and catalyzed change.

This technology is here, and it's enormously powerful and useful. But that necessarily means it's also enormously dangerous. The solution isn't to attempt to convince people to abandon that technology and somehow roll back the clock. The solution is for folks to understand the good _and_ the evil these technologies can enable so that we can have intelligent conversations about their use and abuse; conversations that can ultimately inform a new generation of law makers, business owners, and citizens, so that we can realize the advantages of these technologies while minimizing the downsides.

Fortunately, things like the NSA leaks may be just the thing necessary to start those conversations.

<comment><USER11> I disagree that living with a flip phone instead of a smart phone is in any way equivalent to living without electricity or running water.

You're more than welcome to fight the good fight -- good luck to you -- but I'm not convinced that I'm so right that it should be my mission to change others' minds, and regardless the advice I gave is a good first step for anyone that is interested in changing others' minds.

<comment><USER13> I don't think the parent comment wants you to get people to downgrade. I think the intent is to get people to demand better protections from abuses of technology.

<comment><USER11> Maybe I'm not imaginative enough, but I can't figure how that would happen.

Who could be trusted to safeguard privacy? The government? The services that depend on advertising revenue, which these days is most of them?

Downgrading and opting-out has been the only option that has made sense to me. (But I'm probably weird.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty alarmist writing. "I therefore can't resist showing a new piece of Google technology: the military robot 'WildCat' made by Boston Dynamics which was bought by Google in December 2013". And goes on to show a video of something that was funded by DARPA well before Google purchased Boston Dynamics. Google has already said multiple times that it won't be pursuing any military contracts.

<comment><USER15> > Google has already said multiple times that it won't be pursuing any > military contracts.

And you so quickly trust one of the biggest corporations in the world to "keep its promise" over following whatever its biggest interest will be in the future?

Google also said it won't deal _at all_ with the military before they bought the robots, and a few months later it was selling them Google Glass...so yeah.

And Google Glass is something anyone barely wants. Imagine Google's robots were so great that it would cause a "revolution" in what we can do with robots. Do you really believe that if Pentagon came knocking at Google's door saying "Here, we want _1 million_ of these robots for $100,000 a piece". Google would say "Um, no thanks buddy, we already said in public 10 years ago (under a different CEO) that we wouldn't sell to you...but you could pay that $100 billion to Microsoft's robot division if you like. Our shareholders won't mind".

Is that how you imagine it going down? That said, I'm already pissed off because Oculus/Facebook have decided to sell Oculus Rifts to the military to make drone assassinations that much more convenient.

<comment><USER16> That's not _exactly_ the same thing though. Google glass wasn't made _for_ the military, but of course Google isn't going to refuse to sell them a product that they have made publicly available.

Perhaps the military will want to buy more of Google's tech, but it sounds like Google isn't (currently) planning on building robots for the military.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The uncomfortable truth is that many HN readers are the ones gleefully building these tools.

<comment><USER12> Do you really think said hackers are "gleefully building these tools" specifically in order to enable a surveillance state?

Of course not.

It's been said a million times before: every technology can be used for good or for ill. After all, the technology that enables you to drink the water coming out of your tap, one of the most important developments in the history of mankind, is the very same technology that makes mustard gas possible.

And of course there's that quintessential example: nuclear fission, equally capable of saving or destroying billions.

In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that every technology mankind has ever invented to benefit itself has eventually been turned against us. After all, last I checked fire was a pretty common weapon of war.

So is it possible that folks at Google are nefariously turning us all into biological components of their computing infrastructure, and in the process deliberately and consciously empowering a government-corporate surveillance state? Yes, it's possible.

It's equally (I'd like to believe more) likely someone just thought it'd be cool if my phone tracked my location and could provide me sight-seeing suggestions when I'm in a new city.

Now, this doesn't take away from the fundamental point of the article: that technology available today is changing our lives with consequences we have yet to fully comprehend, and will likely fundamentally change the way society functions. But I think it's unnecessarily cynical to believe those inventing said technology are deliberately attempting to bring about the dystopian future the author envisions.

<comment><USER18> > It's been said a million times before: every technology can be used for good > or for ill

But what is the "good" about what we're building? The most cringe-worthy justification I have ever read for giving up privacy was this post by an Ex- Googler[1]:

> Digital identity unlocks universal personalization (i.e. better ads), > payments and commerce (i.e. Snapcash), environmental adaptation (i.e. an > Uber that plays your Spotify music), communications (i.e. Path Talk), and > access (i.e. Sosh Concierge). Today's most exciting apps are barely > scratching the surface of what will be possible when there are years of > preferences data stored up on each of us, that we can leverage at a moments > notice, in any context.

An Uber that plays your Spotify music and better ads! This is the "good" we are chasing. I have never felt more ashamed to sit in front of a computer.

[1] [https://medium.com/@chrismessina/thoughts-on- google-8883844a...](https://medium.com/@chrismessina/thoughts-on- google-8883844a9ca4)

<comment><USER19> The general idea from that is: computer systems that know a lot about you can provide personalized services for you or about you. Those services can be to your benefit or detriment, depending on who controls the data, their intentions and their priorities (e.g. quick cash grab vs sustainable customer relations). If you want better examples: Google maps knowing your location allows you to navigate in places where you don't know the surrounding area or where you are exactly; Gmail reading all your mails allows you to filter crud out of your inbox and pretty much solved the spam problem that plagued the 90s; Facebook makes a lot of your life transparent to corporations, but it also does allow you to keep up with the lives of friends in distant places that you don't meet often. Now, I am all for solutions that make your private data more opaque to the services that consume it, and the way they consume it more transparent to you. But services based on your personal information will not disappear, and the reason is not some dark evil conspiracy to monitor your every step (or, at least, not _just_ some dark evil conspiracy to monitor your every step) but the fact that people find this services useful. Like the industrial revolution, the issue is not that we are going forward with this new uses of energy/information, but that we are doing so largely without consideration of their harmful externalities (pollution in the case of the industrial revolution, misuse of private data in the case of the information one).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the efforts to improve surveillance they have given us the tools to subvert it. Yes, they can watch us all, but we can also all watch each other. Yes, we have nothing to be ashamed of, and they no longer control the ability to spread ideas about what is shameful. When they are abusing one person, everyone can know.

Ai Wei Wei would not still be in communication with the world without the same technology that is permitting his surveillance.

At the same time as the surveillance state is growing, we are being told that all of the platforms that have the broadest potential reach are lame. That facebook is not cool, so any messages you send out on it will be judged by the medium, not the message. We have more than enough power already to reach other with messages that spread faster than a security state can quash them. The Chinese government's control isn't growing, its faltering. The US government's control isn't growing. They know more about us all, and can do less to us.

<comment><USER11> > _Yes, we have nothing to be ashamed of_

I'm going to mostly side-step the de facto response to this ("surveillance isn't about shame, it's about control, etc. etc."), because the more interesting thing here is that there's a good chance your point of view is going to become the predominant one in future generations.

Generations like mine were taught that privacy was important for freedom (e.g. 1984), and even though the lesson didn't really stick with all of us, I think that there's still some clear generational divisions when it comes to privacy.

Younger people seem to see this as old-fashioned, or are completely uninterested in privacy and happy to accept the tradeoffs for convenience.

Year by year I'm increasingly expecting that the future won't hold some kind of social agitation for more privacy and less surveillance, it will instead have nearly complete surveillance and absence of privacy, and everyone -- or almost everyone -- will be glad for it.

<comment><USER21> I disagree. Public opinion polls clearly show that the younger generation is more intolerant of the NSA mass surveillance[0][1], for example.

Sometimes the difference can be startling:

 _Once again, there was a significant relationship between age group and support for monitoring everyone's online activity. Only 15% of Canadians aged 18 to 29 believed that the Canadian government should monitor online activities if officials say it might prevent future terrorist attacks compared with 34% of those aged 30 to 44 and 43% for those aged 45 to 59._ [2]

That's almost a three fold difference between the 18 to 29 group and the 45 to 59 group.

[0] [http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa- ph...](http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone- tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/)

[1] [http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/17/public-split-over- imp...](http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/17/public-split-over-impact-of- nsa-leak-but-most-want-snowden-prosecuted/)

[2] [http://abacusinsider.com/politics-public-affairs/nsa- snowden...](http://abacusinsider.com/politics-public-affairs/nsa-snowden- canadians-terrorism-online-privacy/)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the studies. That's good news.

I'd nitpick though that there's a substantial difference between "government surveillance to stop terrorism" and "volunteer my personal information everywhere because I get cool things for it". For instance, most Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 25 (according to [http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-snapchat-and- its-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-snapchat-and-its- demographics-2014-7)).

<comment><USER21> _most Snapchat users are between the ages of 13 and 25_

Isn't that an argument _for_ the younger generation being more privacy- conscious? I.e. that they're willing to forgo the convenience of a message history in exchange for more privacy in their communications?

<comment><USER11> No. Snapchat has been under fire from several directions for a while for promising more privacy than was actually provided. They had a major account leak, there have been applications for a while that can save received photos, they got a pretty poor privacy review from the EFF...

Being privacy-conscious would have to include caring at least a little bit about privacy-related news (and not just Snowden-related).

 _sigh_

Maybe we're struggling a bit here because privacy can mean so many different things in different contexts.

There's privacy from parents. That's something that I think young people have cared about for a long time, and that's not likely to change soon. So, Snapchat is popular.

There's privacy from the government. This situation is harder to read because there are a lot of nuances. You can be politically opposed to a government spying on its own citizens without necessarily caring about personal privacy; if you distrust your government, then politically you're resistant to giving it more powers, even if you don't see how those powers might be abused.

And then there's personal privacy: control over who owns information about you and what they can do with it, and that doesn't seem to be getting very much traction in younger markets. There certainly hasn't been a revolt against online services ([http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2014/01/09/forbes-where- are...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2014/01/09/forbes-where-are-teens- hanging-out-in-2014-hint-its-not-facebook/)), even post-Snowden, even after it's generally accepted that the business model for each of those services is to gather as much personal information about their users as possible.

<comment><USER22> I think the problem here, that will catch other online providers, is that snapchat's success is still based on the flawed presumption that it's actually private (by any of your definitions).

Hopefully the realization that these services aren't as private as advertized will have a ripple effect in the "younger markets", but I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For me as the author of the piece, it is wonderful to find an informed and critical discussion of the themes that I tried to discuss here in the comments. I will likely try and answer some of them here in the next couple of hours and am happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER24> how about more background info on the "US Warehouse (think amazon)" that will actually fire someone "on the spot" for taking a 31 minute lunch? (think actual company / location names, backing documentation?) I find it hard to believe that's not just a bit exaggerated.

<comment><USER23> I got it from this podcast: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown- box/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/brown-box/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those in the SF area, I highly recommend going to Alcatraz to experience some of Ai Weiwei's work. [http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei- alcatraz/](http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/)

Never Sorry is a fantastic documentary on Ai Weiwei's life. I contributed to documentary while it was Kickstarter and got to see it in a theater in DC. [http://aiweiweineversorry.com/](http://aiweiweineversorry.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Sorry to digress here. Just want to comment on Ai. He is like many other iconic/famous people in the country, who got awards aboard, do things that seem against the ruling party in the country and basically walk away with way less consequences almost every time. Some of them get into short-term jail like hero and after that their experiences worth much more. This is very interesting since average people would probably face fatal consequences, if they did something like that, even once.

<comment><USER27> Good point. The government in the propaganda domain at least is bound by high ideals and promises -- "We are for freedom. We represent the people. We don't stiffle expression. (Unlike those other countries out there...)". So doing anything too harsh to a public figure, known internationally, is going to create a big hassle.

At another level you can argue that he is also a token, and thus implicitly somehow part of the system. He is a representative example of how "tollerant and open" the country is. "Hey look, a harsh critic of the system is still alive and still working". So it is important to keep him around but tighten the screw periodically a bit so he stays in check, so to speak.

On the topic of the article. I think the interesting part is how Ai tried to manage the surveilance and how he responded to it. Installing cameras around and basically making his life completely public, for everyone. At some level that mocked and maybe emasculated the watchers. Monitoring, is a power play of course too. This mocking was probably rather infuriating for them. "Oh you want to monitor me, fine I'll monitor myself 10x better than you and will let everyone participate".

But also this is also possible because he is already a public figure. His public image is the only thing that shields and protects him and allows him to do this. He knows it of course.

The other example, is him approaching the undercover officers watching him. Also a great way to mock and in way difuse their power.

Extrapolating to how we (in US) are watched and monitored by Apple, Google, NSA, not sure how and what can be learned here. The difference that it is rather impersonal and mocking doesn't work in the same way. You know people insert signatures with [al-Qaeda, bomb, president, blah blah] in their emails. Not sure what that does. We might never know.

<comment><USER26> Based on my observation of those iconic people in China, I have to say that a sad truth is nearly 100% are performers in media. It took me a long time to accept this. I was looking for some really contemporary thinkers in my nation but failed. Instead, I found a "career path" for some iconic guys. I know it sounds unbelievable, given the context of life in US.

<comment><USER28> I saw the Ai Weiwei show recently and I was noting that he uses his brief imprisonment for its performance value and I was a bit critical of this. There was one room that was just all the artifacts laid out (police reports, confiscated computers). This didn't seem like much of an artwork compared to his much better and more complex ones like [http://www.zodiacheads.com/about_exhibit_gold.html](http://www.zodiacheads.com/about_exhibit_gold.html)

But after a while I understood that this is his strategy to simply transform all oppression and government intervention into some artistic response. Both he and the government understand that this makes it into a stalemate. Whatever they do, he echos it and gets publicity out of it.

But those pieces are not his major works at all.

[http://nprberlin.de/post/ai-weiweis-evidence-exhibit- opens-m...](http://nprberlin.de/post/ai-weiweis-evidence-exhibit-opens-martin- gropius-bau-berlin) [http://www.designboom.com/art/ai-weiwei- straightens-150-tons...](http://www.designboom.com/art/ai-weiwei- straightens-150-tons-of-steel-rebar-from-sichuan-quake/)

<comment><USER26> The interesting part is, in my experience, his famous works in Chinese media are all political ones and I see little art in them, if those can be called true art. Most of what I see are just iconic man doing visual protest in art's name. This is actually such a privilege in China, if you know the consequence average people face by doing this. This is maybe where my bias comes from. And he seems quite enjoy people in developed world see him as a fighter and some in his own country see him as one of the most famous artists. I just want to point out what I see since no one mentions this online and HN readers may be able to accept some different point of view.

<comment><USER28> I think its because that's what the media and non-art people focus on both in and out of China. Its easier to understand than zodiac heads which has lots of historical backstory and questions what is traditional.

But of course he is milking it. (after all the exhibit is called "Evidence")

aesthetically I'm much more impressed by this guy: [http://www.caiguoqiang.com/projects/inopportune-stage- two-20...](http://www.caiguoqiang.com/projects/inopportune-stage- two-2004-north-adams-ma-usa)

but you could accuse him of being decorative and of using stereotypical Chinese imagery. I still like it.

<comment><USER26> Perhaps I'm just not into Chinese culture of the past 500 years:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That was a painful essay. No real point hammered through, jumping from one topic to another without clear logic, and again making it look like companies will be ruling the world in the future, while the surveillance capabilities of goverments far exceed what companies can hope to achieve because they cannot centralize all channels of information.

<comment><USER30> I agree, but then I noticed at the bottom it was originally a speech, and in Dutch at that, so I let them have some slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hm. This was a hodgepodge. I really sympathized with many criticisms, but others lacked focus.

Specifically, I'm frustrated with the author picking on the idea of police officers wearing cameras. I'm interested in how we can decentralize and unpackage law enforcement services, so this hit home for me. I'd like to expound on (de)centralization, community and transparency for a sec, if I can be indulged.

Democracy and society today implies distributed power (citizens) mediated by necessary centralized power (law enforcement, elected representatives, judicial systems). This was a choice we made as our societies grew, as it was the only one that technology (postal service, telegraph, horse, guns, etc.) allowed at the time we were working through our options.

The small, manageable communities of our past were ones where everyone knew everyone else. There was gossip. Secrets were hard. But this was bundled up with the security we had in these communties. We're being dishonest if we become nostalgic for that security and community, and yet conveniently deny the nakedness that is implied.

Democracy has been the only way we've known stability in recent history. But it doesn't mirror these small communities of our past. We trusted centralized powers to mediate the trust relationships the we lost when we grew up. This allowed us to live in a world where we didn't need to ask transparency. So we got used to that being a norm in a society where we felt security and stability.

But if we want to build more decentralized a robust societies, we need to accept that sometimes radical transparency is needed for certain institutions to lose their corruptible centers. We need radical transparency for any institution that operates at the scale where we can't know and trust one another through the nakedness of personal relationships. We CAN build a decentralized society that has privacy, and we should demand that privacy for situations where it need not be sacrificed. But we can't always demonize all forms of radical transparency, as this is the crucial element that will allow the most corruptible of our institutions to be reimagined.

OK, sorry, this was perhaps a bit of a rant. If you're thinking in similar areas, perhaps the words above will resonate with you. Otherwise, it might sound like an abstract rambling :)

</comment><comment><USER32> Eh... in my experience, most people simply aren't worth watching very closely.

Favorite part of the article... "he used Craigslist to hire somebody to help him improve his productivity. The idea was that the person would come sit next to him and give him a slap whenever he would not be working..."

Love the idea. I recently had a talk w/ my boss about I was thinking about leaving because I was making many times more on the side than I was with the company. But the one caveat... I needed him to keep being my boss and check on what I was doing. Make sure I was at my desk at 7:30 coding away and didn't go home until 5. He laughed quite a bit and said to think about it. I am.

I'm not in favor of massive surveillance, but sometimes knowing we are watched a little helps us at certain times....

</comment><comment><USER33> The mentioned novels seem cool, but an even better reference is Feed. Published in 2002 before MySpace was a household name, it pretty much hits the nail on the head in terms of surveillance, marketing and connectedness.

<comment><USER23> Thanks! I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Hannah Arendt's understanding of the political domain of the classic city would agree with the equation of walls with law and order. According to Arendt, the political realm is guaranteed by two kinds of walls (or wall like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm.

The almost palindromic linguistic structure of law/wall helps to further bind these two structures in an interdependency that equates built and legal fabric. The unwalling of the wall invariably becomes the undoing of the law."

"The breaching of the physical, visual and conceptual border/wall exposes new domains to political power, and thus draws the clearest physical diagram to the concept of the 'state of exception'."

"Future military operations in urban terrain will increasingly be dedicated to the use of technologies developed for the purpose of the 'unwalling of the wall'.

This is the architect's response to the logic of 'smart weapons'. The latter have paradoxically resulted in higher numbers of civilian casualties simply because the illusion of precision gives the military political complex the necessary justification to use explosives in civilian environments where they cannot be used without endangering, injuring or killing civilians.

The imagined benefits of 'smart destruction' and attempts to perform 'sophisticated' swarming thus bring more destruction over the long term than 'traditional' strategies ever did, because these ever more deadly methods combined with the highly manipulative and euphoric theoretical rhetoric used to promulgate them have induced decision makers to authorize their frequent use. Here another use of 'theory' as the ultimate 'smart weapon' becomes apparent. The military's seductive use of theoretical and technological discourse seeks to portray war as remote, sterile, easy, quick, intellectual, exciting and even economic (from their own point of view). Violence can thus be projected as tolerable, and the public encouraged to support it."

Eyal Weizman

Lethal Theory

[http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf](http://www.skor.nl/_files/Files/OPEN18_P80-99%281%29.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER35> Egger's book that he mentions, The Circle, has unnerved me since I read it. I've noticed myself looking at things I do through the lens of that book, and then continuing with that action. It's like I'm on a bus that's headed for a cliff, and I've resigned myself to the fact that it's going to go over, so I might as well sit comfortably than make a fuss.

</comment><comment><USER36> Ai Weiwei isn't living in our future, he's living in an _actual totalitarian- ish nationstate_.

The degree to which there's this encouraged ignorance to what the Chinese government is all about is the story which is of greater concern here: they're never not been a brutal regime, they're just a trade partner now so the narrative has shifted.

What they do, and what they can do isn't _enabled_ by technology. It's enabled by the simple political and military _will_ to actually kick in doors and arrest and execute people.

You want to not live in _that_ world? Then you inform people why the no-fly list is stupid, for a start. _How_ such a list is distributed, generated or updated is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER37> Beautifully written and expressing most of the concerns that bother me in today's world.

If you liked the article, I'd also suggest [1] by moxie. I really liked how he dismantles the I-have-nothing-to-hide argument. Scary, but so true.

[1] [http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have- somethin...](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to- hide/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Pardon me for "going meta" but it seems that power in the internet age may be less about how much information you have than on how much information you can keep out of the hands of others.

For example, just how transparent is Schmidt's or Zuckerberg's lives compared to ours?

Or why the US govt seems to be classifying greater and greater quantities of information?

And whether such asymmetries of power help or hurt our welfare.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Your lunchtime is exactly 29 minutes. You are fired on the spot if you take a 31 minute lunch as that messes with the planning capabilities of the system."

This is meant to describe "a large shipping warehouse in the US ... (think Amazon)" logistics system. Is this actually in any meaningful way true? If so, I'm disgusted, naive and disappointed.

<comment><USER39> Abusive work practices and tax avoidance are complementary pillars of the model. What a world we live in.

[http://www.motherjones.com/print/161491](http://www.motherjones.com/print/161491)

See also

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week- amazo...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon- insider-feature-treatment-employees-work)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the links. It's always somewhat gratifying to find my cynicism well-placed. But depressing all the same...

Is there a word for that? Something like "Schadenfreude", but including yourself in the suffering, and taking the "joy" as some form of second-rate consolation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "According to him, we have allowed efficiency thinking to optimize our world to such an extent that we have lost the flexibility and slack that is necessary for dealing with failure. This is why we can no longer handle any form of risk."

This rings true to me in many ways, particularly in the way we treat our children. I may have to read Anti-fragile.

<comment><USER41> Please do. Not an easy read, but totally worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wish I had read this before Christmas as I was stuck for gifts for younger people.

</comment><comment><USER43> This documentary looks fantastic. I'm looking forward to watching this and Citizen Four.

A note to anyone who might be reading this before the article, don't read it all as it contains spoilers from the documentary.

</comment><comment><USER44> I wrote quite extensively about this. For example:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169)

</comment><comment><USER45> The Pavlok is really disturbing but cool at the same time. It's such a perfect example of technology that could be used for good or evil.

</comment><comment><USER46> That's a fantastic trailer. I need to see this.

</comment><comment><USER47> That picture of him in a cell with two guards looks like something out of a wax museum.

<comment><USER23> I actually is a piece of art he made about his experience in the cell.[1] It is titled S.A.C.R.E.D.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2013/06/ai-weiweis-self-referential- wor...](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/ai-weiweis-self-referential-work-in- venice/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> We don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. We just need to make sure government doesn't get too much power. This doesn't have anything to do with Google or Apple (they can't put you in jail).

<comment><USER49> I guess I'm confused. Aren't Google and Apple under the government's power? Couldn't congress make a law mandating big technology companies give the government access to user data?

<comment><USER21> Arguably they don't even need to pass such a law, since national security letters already enables the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't really buy the privacy paranoia anymore these days. It was the internet that first grew the distance between people so that we could pretend- anonymous say things about anything without repercussion an it will be the internet that shrinks that distance down to where you better be talking about what matters to you and putting your money where your mouth is.

In ten years I'll be sharing and leaking at least 10x as much information out of all kinds of devices. 90% of my engagement will happen inside programs will be automatically syncing data across cloud services. Security is inevitably a growing target in the networked world, and privacy requires security. Increasingly for the sake of productivity and collaboration, everything I use will be sharing and syncing more and more. The desire of most people to be connected and productive, not some autocratic slide in the worlds governments will be the death of privacy.

One of the features of Facebook I liked in the early days was just the slight exclusiveness that made it basically okay to talk about having a giant hangover without fear of looking like an alcoholic to an interviewer scratching up dirt (I think zero interviews I care about do this). When Facebook started making the defaults public etc without notifications, there was understandably some uproar about being unknowingly thrust out into the public. Eroding privacy causing blunders is not the same thing as not having privacy. For the most part anxiety about not being able to control your privacy or security really need to be analyzed in the context of just how hidden you really need to make your words (in the case of anti-dissent government) or actions (in the case of socially conservative laws) to be able to practice or advocate what it is you care about. To an almost absolute degree, very little of things you want to see in the world that don't exist yet are going to require going to war for the cause of security or privacy before your end goals can be pursued, so it's just not really worth it.

EFF does great work to defend people against stupid laws and to promote better laws with regard to IP etc. They protect anonymity for regular people that happen to cosplay and have very odd taste in character appropriateness. However, the area where the EFF pulled really hard to ensure that the future of the internet would be egalitarian in the United States was about Title II common carrier law, not about privacy. The 1st amendment protects what you say, not some mythical right to say it without consequences; you only get that when nobody cares about your opinion. Even in the case of socially conservative laws, stand up for respect for individual beliefs before you stand up for privacy as an extra-social cure.

Privacy is not close to as fundamentally important as the security that is required to achieve it, and privacy advocacy is to an extent like whining about how someone took your tree-house and you can't have any secret clubs anymore. Most privacy is not used to do productive things, and few productive things outside of already entrenched, authoritarian governments require privacy to pursue.

<comment><USER51> One thing which requires privacy is being an actual _thinking human being_ and not a fearful automaton.

<comment><USER50> If you believe what you think, you can be vocal unless you're a coward. Someone will likely be shot today because they wouldn't renounce some belief. Privacy advocates are not winning my sympathy in claiming that being watched all the time as opposed to being shot is bending what they are willing to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page.

I was so amazed the author can connect Ai Weiwei with the WildCat robot, an image of Obama's calling from a camp, and a kid in a car using Disney product.

How this can connect together?!

If you want to talk about surveillance or privacy, won't NSA's Snowden be a more famous and impacting example?

<comment><USER53> Read the damn article. The author goes through many examples of things that are eroding privacy.

Ai Weiwei lives under total surveillance. Google is producing technology for the military. Obama has to use a tent in his hotel room to block surveillance. The disney wristband tracks your movements and spending.

Surprisingly the NSA is barely mentioned at all. The author is primarily concerned with how technology is enabling surveillance, not the organizations currently using it.

<comment><USER54> What technology is google producing for the military?

<comment><USER21> Boston Dynamics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, produced the WildCat robot for DARPA's Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) program[0].

[0] [http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/dso/programs/maximum_mobility_...](http://www.darpa.mil/our_work/dso/programs/maximum_mobility_and_manipulation_%28m3%29.aspx)

<comment><USER55> Most of that work was done before Google bought the company, and Google is not renewing those contracts.

Google is not a defense contractor. As frequently beaten as a dead horse on HN, Google sells ads, not weapons.

DARPA funds lots of projects that eventually get inherited by the private sector. SIRI funding at SRI was provided by DARPA, does that make Apple a defense contractor?

Guilt by association usually produces bad analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> No, he's not.

</comment><comment><USER57> > The young boys that had to guard Ai Weiwei in his cell had to stand > completely still, weren't allowed to talk and couldn't even blink their > eyes.

This is complete nonsense. You can't order someone to not blink.

<comment><USER58> Yes you can - at least my experience of seeing some Chinese guards (e.g. outside an embassy) is that they don't blink.

This article claims 1 hour shifts of not blinking for a guard: [https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not- allowed-...](https://www.recruiter.com/i/blinking-on-the-job-not-allowed-the- demerits-and-bounds-of-extreme-job-discipline/)

<comment><USER59> You can order people to do all manner of things, but i think you'd be much harder pressed to enforce such a stricture.

You're not going to shut down someone's corneal reflex obviously: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex) but that requires poking a guard in the eye or shining a bright light at them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> "One of the best artists in the world." Since when do people rank artists. For me, this ruins the whole article. Maybe successful artist or artist with a high media profile. But best? Seriously?

<comment><USER61> The article is a translation of a transcript of a speech originally given in Dutch.

Shift "best" to "renowned" if it helps you read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Ai Weiwei is not living our future. I'm a big fan of Weiwei but being the best known opposition figure against the worlds largest dictatorship is something that's unlikely to happen to most of us. Also his "Fuck your mother, the party central committee" themed photos are obviously trying to wind them up. Here in London we have CCTV everywhere and the secret services no doubt have the ability to bug me and read my mail but it effects me and most people not at all - no one is interested especially. I'd be honoured to be Weiwei.</comment>


Fixing Bad Data in Datomic - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datomic.com/2014/08/stuff-happens-fixing-bad-data-in-datomic.html

<comment><USER2> That was a fantastic read. I can't count the number of hours I have wasted trying to figure out a bug (or trace a problem) in the system because someone decided to update the data silently. I think this is the kind of database which should be standard in finance industry. I have been working for financial companies in NYC for last 8 years and I have yet to see anyone use this product. Does anyone on HN have used this on a live system?

<comment><USER3> I ported my 7-year-old vBulletin community to a forum I wrote from scratch with Clojure + Datomic earlier this year.

Datomic was a nice choice since it makes it trivial to expose a post's edit history. It also makes it easy to query for all the actions a moderator is responsible for. And if a moderator goes rogue and deletes everything, it's easy to revert.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing your experience.

How much effort was it? Did you run in to bugs? How is the performance for a public facing website? How hard was to adopt to this new mindset about immutable database?

Ever since I started using Git, I have been wondering as to why we don't have a database product which works like Git. When I read through this fantastic page on their rationale ([http://www.datomic.com/rationale.html](http://www.datomic.com/rationale.html)), I was furiously nodding my head in agreement. Their approach makes so much sense in this day and age where hardware is cheap.

<comment><USER4> This may interest you: [https://github.com/mirage/irmin](https://github.com/mirage/irmin)

<comment><USER5> I would _love_ to see a comparison of the ideas behind Datomic and Irmin - they're actually seem quite different, but a blog comparing the two could really help clear things up and frame the tasks they're both suited for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like the fact that facts are immutable in the Datomic model. It actually makes it easier to reason about eventually consistent, because you can rely on causal consistency between facts. Eventually consistent systems can give you durability, isolation, and atomicity, but it's typically hard to reason about, because the interface that's given to the user is some sort of multi-value, vector-clock tracked thing, and it's hard to reason about.

Datomic can manage a commit protocol under the hood, and deal with causality tracking without requiring the developer to "get dirty." It's query language is declarative, and doesn't provide the same implicit guarantees that SQL queries need.

<comment><USER7> Datomic is not an eventually consistent system. All writes pass through a single "transactor," which serializes transactions and provides the same ACID guarantees as a traditional SQL database.

<comment><USER6> But, the data storage can be in a AP system, allowing better stories around data availability.

<comment><USER8> The Datomic docs at [http://docs.datomic.com/acid.html](http://docs.datomic.com/acid.html) describe it's ACID properties quite well.

> Another way to understand this is to consider the failure mode introduced by > an eventually consistent node that is not up-to-date yet. Datomic will > always see a correct log pointer, which was placed via conditional put. If > some of the tree nodes are not yet visible underneath that pointer, Datomic > is consistent but partially unavailable, and will become fully available > when eventually happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any promising open source alternatives with similar philosophies to datomic?</comment>


The High Cost of Cynicism - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/the-high-cost-of-cynicism <comment><USER2> Thankfully, making money is not the purpose of life.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's news to some people.</comment></comment>