EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/eff-heavyweight-legal-team-will-defend-internet-archives-digital-library-against-publishers-200626/ <comment><USER2> [I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se.

If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged.

I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.

But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

One thing I've thought about is a sort of "crowdfunded patronage" model, where the creator of a work declares upfront how much money they want to make off of it, and releases it into the public domain once they've received that much money.

Another possibility is drastically reducing the term of copyright to 20 years or so. That'd still give 20 years to exploit the work—and I imagine most copyrighted works make most of their money in the first 20 years—while allowing others to reuse the work much more quickly.

<comment><USER3> "If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged."

you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid. with your mentality, it can be argued the same as downloading a movie or a song or an application. now... aren't all those things illegal and a form of stealing??? so why is downloading a book any different?

i really think that alot of people just don't think things though before they open their mouth and this is one time where you should have thought through your answer instead of jumping on the "knowledge should be free" bandwagon.

<comment><USER4> Illegal does not equal immoral; copying does not equal stealing.

Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published:

[https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study- that-...](https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found- piracy-do-1818629537)

The law shouldn't guarantee you a successful business model. If you believe in capitalism, this should be self-evident. If you believe in socialism, this should also be self-evident. "We're going to enforce with a military your right to a successful business model" is _absolutely_ silly and bizarrely harmful.

<comment><USER3> "Piracy of songs, movies, and applications actually improves sales, according to a study that the European Union funded and then tried to keep from getting published"

doesn't mean anything. it's still illegal.

<comment><USER5> If something is beneficial for everyone involved, why should it be illegal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do we back up the Internet Archive? If they lose this case then it will be like losing The Great Library of Alexandria.

This is our culture. This is our heritage!

Edited to add: when I say "back up", I mean preserve the data and the archival mission (minus the legal quagmires).

The technical challenges can be solved, and we should do this before it's too late. It seems there was a previous effort, but it has lost momentum: [https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE....](https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=INTERNETARCHIVE.BAK)

<comment><USER7> It's possible that over the long term it could be backed up via torrents. However, in the short term the only way to save the archive is for IA to sell it. I hope they swallow their pride and do so.

<comment><USER8> Torrents are a distribution mechanism, not storage. Many IA items already have torrent links available (with a fallback to a "web seed" since they are mostly not seeded).

<comment><AUTHOR> Roughly 44 million items are available via torrent (I maintain a catalog of IA items independent of IA, with each item's torrent file). Wayback data is not (to my knowledge). This is important, as IA then can act as a global metadata catalog for the items, with the underlying content being served up through an uncoordinated fleet of seeders. I think many might agree that the time has arrived for this data to live on globally distributed storage nodes.

It would be helpful if IA published Wayback data files over torrents, alongside cryptographic signatures of the files (for attestation and provenance purposes, as Wayback data has been used in legal proceedings and you would want that trust in the data maintained regardless of where the bits were retrieved from for hydrating the WARC client side).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anybody interested in the IA's claimed ethical and legal justifications, they summarise and link to them at the following page:

[http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive- responds...](http://blog.archive.org/2020/03/30/internet-archive-responds-why- we-released-the-national-emergency-library/)

<comment><USER10> > Yes, we've had authors opt out. We anticipated that would happen as well; in > fact, we launched with clear instructions on how to opt out because we > understand that authors and creators have been impacted by the same global > pandemic that has shuttered libraries and left students without access to > print books. Our takedowns are completed quickly and the submitter is > notified via email.

<comment><USER11> It's nice that they have an easy opt-out system. But this is kind of like spammers who have easy opt-out... better than nothing, but I shouldn't be getting spammed in the first place.

<comment><USER12> It's worse than that. They're violating copyrights, i.e., stealing, and then saying "if you don't want us to steal from you, we have an opt out form you can fill out."

EDIT: People are downvoting this because I equated violating copyrights to stealing, which is odd because US law explicitly defines copyright infringement as stealing property. That's not debatable; it's a simple fact. (A fact that apparently bothers some people, but being bothered by reality is not a basis for disagreement.)

<comment><USER13> Violating copyright and stealing are fundamentally different things. If I steal your tv, you no longer have a TV. If I pirate a book, all existing copies of the book still exist.

If you price a book above what I'm willing to pay for it, I'm never going to buy it. Ever. If my willingness to pay is "$0", then you can't even argue that the creator has lost revenue if I pirate it. I was never going to buy it - it's too expensive at any price.

You can make the argument that capitalism should exclude me from ever being allowed to read it, because my willingness to pay is below the seller's willingness to sell. Fair enough.

However, it's pretty tough to calculate actual economic damages here - I was never going to buy the book, at any price. And I haven't deprived anyone else of the ability to buy the book. You might say to me: "But you are clearly in the target market - you wanted the book enough to pirate and read it." I disagree - by definition, the target market must consist of people who want the product enough to pay for it.

<comment><USER12> Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-113)

<comment><USER13> Wow, I mean, what a counterintuitive coincidence.

Trafficking in copyrighted works constitutes theft, but a private equity firm buying a company with debt, transferring the debt onto the company's balance sheet, allowing it to go into bankruptcy because of enormous debt load, and paying themselves huge bonuses along the way is not theft.

If it weren't for the fact that the U.S. federal code as it exists in June of 2020 is the definitive source of ethical and moral definitions, I would think that maybe something _untoward_ might be going on.

<comment><USER14> Seems coherent to me: you are not taking ownership of something without a contractual basis. It would I think constitute 'misuse of corporate assets' though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recognize some of the names here. This will be a case to watch, which ever way it goes the constructions allowed here will percolate through the law for years to come. This case hinges on the exact wording of the law that authorizes the National Emergency Library. IIRC, it basically gives copyright impunity during a declared national emergency. As far as I am aware, the coronavirus declared national emergency is still in effect. IA loses by attrition, is my guess. Many rounds of "Preliminary" injunctions and orders will stop thier income streams, then they die.

<comment><USER16> What law does explicitly allow the NEL?

If I recall correctly, the Internet Archive decided unilaterally that they would do this due to many libraries being closed.

I (not in the US) do not remember any changes to the copyright act being passed to allow this.

Edit to add: They offered this globally and therefore disregarded any laws in countries which have already settled this issue. (Hint: to my knowledge not in a way that favors their interpretation)

<comment><USER17> > What law does explicitly allow the NEL?

> If I recall correctly, the Internet Archive decided unilaterally that they > would do this due to many libraries being closed.

Exactly.

It's not even clear that "controlled digital lending" is in compliance with copyright law[1].

The NEL or "uncontrolled digital lending" is almost certainly not in compliance with the copyright statutes.

___

1\. It's not specifically allowed, and there hasn't been any case law on it. To see arguments for controlled digital lending, go here: [https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper](https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's well established at this point that IA took a big misstep here and is too important and singular an entity to run afoul of current laws.

To those who think IA is wrong not just tactically but morally on the basis of "violating the law", I'd like you to consider the following:

Unjust laws exist.

\- Shall we be content to obey them?

\- Shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded?

\- Shall we transgress them at once?

<comment><USER19> You missed the step a lot of us believe this law is moral.

So this isn't about not following unmoral laws.

More so, on top of this, many people also think it's ok in some circumstance to break moral laws.

If someone steals food they need, then many people think that's ok. If someone breaks copyright when they wouldn't have normally payed for the product, then some people also think this is ok.

But I think this is none of the above.

This is a food bank openly stealing food from Walmart. Heck, if some anarchist group broke into Walmart and stole food, even that would have more support. But when they say what they are doing is ok and do it openly in front of police, that's when they lose me.

<comment><USER20> Right, but in this scenario Walmart is closed and the people want food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the- noncen...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncentral- fallacy-the-worst-argument-in-the-world)

The IP apologists have successfully lodged a massive noncentral fallacy of "unauthorized information copying = theft." As anyone with a gram of brains can see, the force of direct arguments against piracy is much less about their consequences and instead focuses on just putting piracy in the category of theft. Categories though are but arbitrary social constructs used as a shortcut in thinking.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd love for the Internet Archive to prevail here, but honestly it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the same corporate umbrella as their archival work. At this point they should proceed with a damage mitigation strategy of selling off their servers and storage to a second entity at fair market value (maybe "Archive Cloud"), and renting continued access. This way even if the IA organization is bankrupted, the archive itself will still remain intact - the archived data isn't under IA copyright and thus wouldn't be part of the bankruptcy estate.

<comment><USER23> > it was quite boneheaded to do this legal experiment under the same corporate > umbrella as their archival work.

I disagree. This is a wickedly good idea, and a very good hill to fight on. It is not a "legal experiment" but a major battle against evil people. Everybody loves the Internet Archive, it is our sacred castle. If a decisive battle is to be won against the publishing parasites, it may be likely this one, and we have to be all on the same side! After Aaron Swartz, the book parasites have never been so potentially hated by everybody. We must go all-in.

The error is on the side of the book parasites for having decided to fight against an institution that is so loved by mankind. They cannot but lose the battle (socially), regardless of what the short-time legal outcome is.

<comment><USER24> Dude: I'm an author. The books I write pay for the food that feeds my family. Are you saying I'm evil for asking to be paid for my work?

I can tell you that if the IA/EFF prevail, professional authors will disappear and the only people who will get to be artists will be those with trust funds and rich spouses. Is that what you want the world to become?

Do you really think artists are evil for wanting to be paid?

<comment><USER23> > Are you saying I'm evil for asking to be paid for my work?

No. I love and appreciate the work of authors, and I spend more than 1000 EUR per year in books. I systematically buy technical books that the author offers for free on their website. For the authors of the free software that I depend on, I try to donate if it is possible.

To answer your question very clearly: you are not evil by asking to be paid for your work. That is a very reasonable thing to do! Can you please point me to your books? I will likely buy them (if they are tangentially interesting to me).

All of that will not change the fact that sharing books is not stealing, and that using the verb "stealing" for the act of sharing is a callous manipulation of the language, even if it is sanctioned by law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> EFF - lawyers with good intentions, a bad legal case and bad facts.

vs.

Publishers - lawyers with good intentions, a good legal case and good facts.

IA = good. IA's library service = bad.

\--

Simply put, IA will lose this case* while publicly saying they "won" the case when a settlement is reached where IA keeps the service shutdown (as it is now) and avoids paying infringement fees (publishers are not trying to shutdown the IA)

(e.g. IA arguing its service is a public good, because libraries failed to provide access during COVID, when in reality public libraries dramatically increased online access during COVID)

</comment><comment><USER26> To anyone interested in this matter, I recommend

Do Business without Intellectual Property - Stephan Kinsella [http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp- content/uploads/publicatio...](http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp- content/uploads/publications/kinsella-do-business-without-ip-2014.pdf), a patent attorney who fights the very idea of IP.

</comment><comment><USER27> In addition to thinking about ways to back up IA, we can also start backing up our own content and things we visit locally, so we don't become so reliant on centralized datasets:

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

[https://conifer.rhizome.org/](https://conifer.rhizome.org/)

</comment><comment><USER28> EFF is on the wrong side of both the law and common sense here and they will lose no matter how much they pay their legal team. Internet archive didn't just steal from 'publishers' they are also stealing from authors big and small. You don't get to give out free digital copies of books to people without permission and expect to get away with it.

This exact digital/physical equivalence idea has already been through the courts (for movies/television) and it failed miserably:

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

> In June 2019, a jury ordered VidAngel to pay over $62 million in damages for > copyright violations.

<comment><USER29> I may be misunderstanding this case, but the impression I get is that they are not defending the unlimited lending that IA did as part of their "National Emergency Library" (NEL). They are just defending the earlier "Controlled Digital Lending" (CDL) program where the number of copies lent out at any one time was limited to the number of physical copies in the physical libraries [1].

The lawsuit is going after both NEL and CDL. The defense is trying to save CDL.

I don't think VidAngel is necessarily relevant here because VidAngel was making derivative works.

[1] If someone checked out a physical copy, did they reduce the number of digital copies that could be out until the physical copy was returned?

<comment><USER30> > I don't think VidAngel is necessarily relevant here because VidAngel was > making derivative works.

And also because they were circumventing DRM, which is what the Wikipedia article would have you believe the case was about (I haven't looked closer than that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Y'all are focusing on the wrong thing. This is categorically not about "library" or whatever they are being sued for right now. That's just a smokescreen.

It's a political takedown, plain and simple. It's much harder to gaslight the public when an archive of your taken down tweets, stealth edited or censored articles, etc is a single hyperlink away from being re-surfaced.

<comment><USER32> I sympathize with the desire of average joes to take down footage of their smelling hair and rubbing people the wrong way. We need the internet archive.org. Some of the best website are only to be found there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> They should settle before even controlled digital lending is determined to not be legally compliant.

</comment><comment><USER34> "1. The current political economy is based on a false idea of material abundance. We call it pseudo-abundance. It is based on a commitment to permanent growth, the infinite accumulation of capital and debt-driven dynamics through compound interest. This is unsustainable, of course, because infinite growth is logically and physically impossible in any physically constrained, finite system.

2\. The current political economy is based on a false idea of "immaterial scarcity." It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies—for copyrights, trademarks and patents—should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits. 14

These structural contradictions have always made for reduced efficiency and irrationality. But in recent decades they have resulted in increasingly chronic crisis tendencies, which amount to a terminal crisis of capitalism as a system."

\- Kevin Carson, Exodus: General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century

</comment><comment><USER35> Well EFF won't be getting any more donations from me, just like I cut off IA when they started this.

Don't ask for money to fight a legal battle where you are so obviously in the (legal) wrong.

<comment><USER36> How do you go about challenging a corrupt and unjust law, then?

<comment><USER35> Through legislation. The court doesn't have the authority to strike down a law simply because the people don't like it ("no longer serves the public interest"). That's for the legislators to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> the reason they are doing this is the fact they are going to lose. libraries are a relic of the past too in my opinion.

<comment><USER38> well this is the bleakest thing I've read today</comment></comment>


Time to Upgrade Your Python: TLS v1.2 Will Soon Be Mandatory - <AUTHOR> http://pyfound.blogspot.com/2017/01/time-to-upgrade-your-python-tls-v12.html <comment><USER2> Test procedure that doesn't require 3rd-party libs:

* For Python 2:

      $ python -c "import json, urllib2; print json.load(urllib2.urlopen('https://www.howsmyssl.com/a/check'))['tls_version']"

* For Python 3:

      $ python3 -c "import json, urllib.request; print(json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen('https://www.howsmyssl.com/a/check').read().decode('UTF-8'))['tls_version'])"

<comment><USER3> I don't know if it matters to anyone, but stock OS X (I develop on an Ubuntu partition) shows TLS 1.0.

<comment><USER4> Two relevant quotes regarding Macs:

"the system Python shipped with MacOS does not yet support TLSv1.2 in any MacOS version;" (and notes on installing current Python 2.7 or 3.6 alongside the system version)

"Python's TLS implementation is falling behind on macOS is that Python continues to use OpenSSL, which Apple has stopped updating on macOS." It's unclear what the fix for this is going to end up being.

<comment><USER5> > _It 's unclear what the fix for this is going to end up being._

Is there some reason why `brew install python` doesn't work? (I do this on every system, and mine is TLS 1.2)

Otherwise, if you're bundling stuff to give to an end user, bundle up Python, since Apple seems intent on letting most of the core utils (not just Python) bitrot?

<comment><USER6> I get TLS 1.2 with Python 2.7.13 installed via homebrew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Over the past two years I've been working on a cross-platform crypto library for Python. One of the aspects of it is that it doesn't require a compiler (it uses ctypes or cffi), and works with the cryptography libraries shipped via your OS.

Part of this library is a TLS implementation that uses SecureTransport on OS X. If someone is inclined to get requests (and pip, etc) running on the system Python on OS X, it should be possible with the guidance outlined at [https://github.com/wbond/oscrypto/issues/10](https://github.com/wbond/oscrypto/issues/10). Unfortunately, it isn't something I have time to work on right now.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like better security but let's be honest it's a smokescreen. Python can migrate to a non-PCI CDN if _really_ needed. It is more an excuse (and a good one, I like how it sounds if I will have to tell it to my boss – we use Python 3 anyway, so it's unlikely).

I was also surprised not to find this on the page. As I understand, it will vary not only across Python versions but also on systems where it's installed. A lot of fun is about to come, I think (especially from RHEL 6 where people are stuck with Python 2.6).

<comment><USER9> I have no particular knowledge about this, but I just tried with a python2.6 (from one of Amazon's EC2 images) and it seemed to work:

        $ /usr/bin/python26
        Python 2.6.9 (unknown, Dec 17 2015, 01:08:55)
        [GCC 4.8.3 20140911 (Red Hat 4.8.3-9)] on linux2
        Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
        >>> import json, urllib2
        >>> json.load(urllib2.urlopen('https://www.howsmyssl.com/a/check'))['tls_version']
        u'TLS 1.2'

Uh, but it does have a "bad" rating for other reasons (looks like it supports some insecure cypher suites).

<comment><USER8> Actually, you are right (but should have been tested on CentOS 6&7):

        Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.32-642.11.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Nov 18 19:25:05 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
        Python 2.6.6
        TLS 1.2

        Linux localhost.localdomain 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 6 23:06:41 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
        Python 2.7.5
        TLS 1.2

<comment><USER10> Tested on RHEL 7 (actual RHEL, not CentOS), got TLS 1.2 for both:

        $ python2 --version
        Python 2.7.5
        $ python2 -c "import json, urllib2; print json.load(urllib2.urlopen('https://www.howsmyssl.com/a/check'))['tls_version']"
        TLS 1.2

        $ python3 --version
        Python 3.4.5
        $ python3 -c "import json, urllib.request; print(json.loads(urllib.request.urlopen('https://www.howsmyssl.com/a/check').read().decode('UTF-8'))['tls_version'])"
        TLS 1.2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most interesting bit about this is the mention that PCI compliance now requires this. As much as PCI seems like security theater, that change in particular may help move people forward.

</comment><comment><USER12> On macOS, Homebrew's Python links against it's own openssl which is currently @1.1, so that is the easiest way to avoid this problem (unless one is a homebrew hater).

</comment><comment><USER13> I am running a Python 2.7.13 installed with official Python installer on macOS Sierra (10.12.3). Besides the built-in openssl (0.9.8zh) which came along with the macOS (/usr/bin/openssl), I have a newer version (1.0.2j) installed with macports (/opt/local/bin/openssl).

However, even though I have configured my path variables that it will use the macports openssl-files, the Python installer seems to link by default to the /usr/... openssl-files.

I've tried quite a bit re-installing Python (with the installer and building it from source; the latter failed with some obscure error I wasn't able to resolve), so I was wondering whether there are any better options. Upgrading via homebrew seems simple enough, but due to using macports, I'd rather not use homebrew. Furthermore, I am a bit reluctant to use the macports-python, but might do that if you were to suggest me that this is the only viable solution.

I'd be happy to hear your suggestions on this!

<comment><USER14> The python.org official installers are all linked against the system OpenSSL. You need to build from source to avoid that. I recommend getting Python from macports in this case, as they should allow you to link against their provided OpenSSL.

<comment><USER15> The 3.6 macOS installer is bundled with its own, recent version of OpenSSL and supports TLS 1.2.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for your replies! It's as I feared then. The switch to macports luckily isn't all that painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is so much legacy code written in Python 2 that I can't imagine someone isn't going to have a large enough need that they will backport TLS support. Am I missing something on why that wouldn't work?

<comment><USER17> The value proposition might be there if the alternative was a python 3 port, but if you're installing packages of pypi these days it's unlikely you're running python <2.6 and I'm not sure a Python 2.6 -> 2.7.9 upgrade is of comparable difficulty to adding TLS 1.2 support to python < 2.7.9.

I mean, I know there's some old versions of Red Hat and co knocking about with 2.4 but you're probably better off to use your system package manager for those these days.

<comment><USER8> In RHEL those old Python interpreters are available precisely via the system package manager. And they won't support you if you install Python from a 3rd party RPM as I understand.

<comment><USER18> And people pay money for that?

<comment><USER19> Yes. There are people who value support for a fixed version for 10 or more years much more than they'd value "rolling" support for a "latest" version that they have to keep updating their apps for.

<comment><USER18> But none of the packages they use will be up-to-date. e.g. Django dropped support for 2.6 years ago and will drop support for 2.7 soon.

<comment><USER20> People who use RHEL this way do not keep _any_ third-party packages up-to- date. If that means a decade on Django 1.2, well, they spend a decade on Django 1.2 -- Red Hat will backport security fixes into a Red-Hat-packaged Django 1.2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> the article points to [http://docs.python- guide.org/en/latest/starting/install/osx/](http://docs.python- guide.org/en/latest/starting/install/osx/) which tells you to "You do not need to install or configure anything else to use Python." However, it suggest to install python via homebrew. Just for reference, if you install it with `brew install python` then you may also need to do a `brew link --overwrite python` then it works.

</comment><comment><USER22> Be nice if pypi stopped using MD5 for integrity checking as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> what is the minimum version then? 2.7.x <\- what x?

<comment><USER17> Likely 9, the Python 3 SSL improvements were backported to that version

<comment><USER14> No, the OpenSSL version is the only relevant factor here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm getting TLS 1.2 using anaconda on the latest update of Mac Sierra (10.12.3). The openssl is one installed by the conda command of anaconda, openssl version: 1.0.2j-0

I also have homebrew on the system, but not used in this case. Is there any reason not to use anaconda on Mac?

<comment><USER25> There's no explicit reason not to use anaconda if you're okay with being vendor locked to anaconda's interpreter/environment. Anaconda is primarily developed with the data scientist in mind over the software developer. And the ecosystem Continuum Analytics has built with Anaconda reflects that design/vision.</comment></comment>


Bubblewrap: Unprivileged sandboxing tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/projectatomic/bubblewrap <comment><USER2> For those interested in OCI-compatible runtimes, I'm currently implementing rootless containers for runC[1]. This would allow you to get the same sort of unprivileged sandboxing but with a popular container runtime.

[1]: [https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/pull/774](https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/pull/774)

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks neat, but just like the firejail guys they really need to work on their tutorial/readme/docs/manpage.

Many users including myself who want to play around with it get stuck trying to do basic stuff. My first try was using bwrap (not bubblewrap!) to wrap true provides this not very helpful error.

      $ bwrap true
      execvp true: No such file or directory

Looking in the webpage I see that this is what I want works

      ~$ bwrap --ro-bind / / true

Is this what I want to do? I am not sure, maybe I want to expose just /bin/true, but I couldn't figure that out. It may be using --symlink, but the docs give no hint as to what symlink actually does. Where does it make a symlink? And when would I use it?

      --symlink SRC DEST
               Create a symlink at DEST with target SRC

Getting the default behavior right is important as is helping the user, especially for a security tool. bwrap is a tool that wraps other tools so you would expect that if I did '$bwrap true' than it would create an empty fs, expose the one binary it is going to try to run and then run it. Otherwise it is tempting to insert the following alias which may or may not be a bad security practice.

      bubblewrap=`bwrap --ro-bind / /`

firejail gets this somewhat right where you can do 'firejail --quiet -- true' and it just works (although the fact that I have to use --quiet and it still spits out a \n is both sad and embarrassing)

Both projects should want to provide tools to help users accomplish the most common cases in a secure manor such as: access to 1 file, 1 directory, network access. As a user my goal isn't to use firejail it is to accomplish something else so the fact that firejail wants to spit out a bunch on stdout is a really weird design choice.

As a user I would want to do the following:

      bwrap --rofile foo.txt -- file
      bwrap --rodir foo/ -- ls
      bwrap --net -- curl

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the tool is (currently) poorly documented. I would have appreciated something like this:

        bwrap --ro-bind / / id

        bwrap --ro-bind /usr /usr \
              --ro-bind /lib64 /lib64 \
              id

        bwrap --ro-bind /usr/bin/ps /usr/bin/ps \
              --ro-bind /lib64 /lib64 \
              --proc /proc \
              ps -x

        bwrap --ro-bind /usr/bin/ps /usr/bin/ps \
              --ro-bind /lib64 /lib64 \
              --proc /proc \
              --unshare-pid \
              ps -x

        bwrap --ro-bind /usr/bin/echo /usr/bin/echo \
              --ro-bind /lib64 /lib64 \
              echo "to a file outside the container" > /tmp/a-file

        bwrap --ro-bind /usr/bin/sh /usr/bin/sh \
              --ro-bind /lib64 /lib64 \
              --bind /tmp/a-file /tmp/a-file \
              sh -c 'echo "editing inside, available outside" > /tmp/a-file'

But it's never going to be easy. For example:

\- The above works on my 64bit, combined /usr system, but maybe not yours. The more complicated the example, the more likely differences between systems are to show up.

\- You may want to run a program with different privileges in different scenarios, so it is hard to guess what the right thing to do is in the general case.

Both bubblewrap and firejail need to be setuid. People commented on the firejail thread that it has a lot of code to be audited. Bubblewrap addresses that by stripping down to the essentials. It's going to have to compensate for that with great documentation and error messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been wanting something like this to sandbox build systems like npm, cargo etc so you can be sure your dependency resolution can't exfiltrate your keys.

</comment><comment><USER5> The term "bubble wrap" looks like it is still trademarked[1], even though it's commonly used as a generic term. Hopefully this flies under Sealed Air's radar. I often wonder how far organizations will go to protect physical brands as the world rapidly digitizes.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks#List_of_protected_trademarks_frequently_used_as_generic_terms)

<comment><USER6> Trademarks on inflated cushioning do not apply to software.

<comment><USER3> They should take the opportunity to change the project name to bwrap to match the fact that the application is not called bubblewrap, but bwrap.</comment></comment></comment>


A letter to my students - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/08/24/a-letter-to-my-students/ <comment><USER2> There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower.

Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflation?

<comment><USER3> Using state figures and the CPI calculator:

1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars)

1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B)

2008-2009: $144B ($145)

2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B)

Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled.

 _You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less._

I feel the urge to get out numbers here, but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I think you have to go back further. My grandfather, a poor kid from west LA, went to UCLA and then UC Berkeley as an engineering student back in the late 1930s / early 1940s.

He learned Latin in high school (think inner city kid learning Latin). Grew up with all the airfields in LA and mechanical engineering seemed like the thing, I guess. So despite being interned (he was a Japanese American) he went on to be a very successful engineer and eventually businessman (owned his own hydraulics company, etc.).

It's arguable that a lot of this happened because of a golden age in California's educational system. Same thing with my parents. I've met them and they're idiots -- but at least my father benefited greatly from UC Berkeley (he's a philosophy professor).

I think PG is right to question what exactly is going on. But there really was an extraordinary investment in higher education (for whatever reason) in the early- to mid- 20th century. And arguably, that affected a lot of things which we Californians take for granted.

I think what the OP is trying to say is that our attitude about public education has changed. It was irrational, the level of investment that was made into higher education pre-1980s (both raising and allocating funds). And today's set of challenges may require a different emphasis (e.g., charter schools, leaner campuses, more online learning, etc.) -- but that generous spirit that, afaik, built California into a great state -- that's not worth overlooking.

<comment><USER5> If you want to see how CA as fucked themselves look at spending on prisons, pensions, and personnel.

Prisons ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline- clean.svg) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Incarceration_rate_of_inma...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Incarceration_rate_of_inmates_incarcerated_under_state_and_federal_jurisdiction_per_100,000_population_1925-2008.png)) Just locking up all the bad people sounds like a great idea but it's also ridiculously expensive and provides little long term benefit.

Pensions without appropriate savings represent a huge drain on the government that "suddenly appears" (after 30+ years).

Personnel costs rise not just with inflation but with the completion from the local job market. Unfortunately for the state it can't reduce benefits when times get tough.

<comment><USER6> Pity you had to use such crude language while making your point. I'd like to see these figures per state. And then I'd like to see the percentage of the budget over time that is allocated to locking up citizens.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_criminal_justice_cost_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_criminal_justice_cost_timeline.gif)

<comment><USER7> Funny, I didn't notice that bad language at all until I re-read the comment.

<comment><USER8> Wow, I had to reread it at least 5 times before I noticed it. "Fucked" for some reason is much less offensive to me than other forms like "fucking"... not like that is extremely offensive either, but "fucked" doesn't even seem at all bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Education is actually a very substantial part of the California budget. According to <http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html> it's 31% of the budget, with the next largest expenditure being Health and Human Services.

There are few major issues with the California budget.

1) Much of the revenue is required by law to be allocated in a certain way. This leaves the government with very little wiggle room to make changes to the budget.

2) State workers have powerful unions that have burdened the government with an amazing out of debt and future obligations in terms of pension of benefits. No matter what the budget shortfall, the government must meet these obligations.

3) When revenues increased during the DOT COM boom, government was more than happy to spend the increased revenue on new services rather than either decreasing taxes or saving the money in a "rainy day" fund.

4) California is a mess of red-tape and bureaucracy. I'm actually surprised how many startups do business in California and the Bay Area with the all the labor laws and extra benefits that businesses have to pay for that other states don't, like CA SDI that pays for paid leave, while other states don't have it. Also, state land use laws and regulations were directly responsible for the increase in housing prices by making it so difficult to build new developments (among other factors, of course).

Californians have burdened themselves with a massive amount of debt and regulations that have severely hampered the ability of businesses to grow and contribute to state job growth. A article posted a few weeks back showed that there's a huge exodus of people from California to other states. I personally left California (East Bay) because I couldn't afford to buy a home and settle down with my family, not to mention the 9.75% sales tax on purchases from Newegg.com!

<comment><USER10> Since he's coming from the perspective of someone noticing a decline in the UC system, he might be partly noticing a shift within the education spending, rather than overall spending declining (and over-generalizing that perspective). Here's some funding data for the UC system, which has a downward trend in per-student terms since around 1990, except for a brief upward blip during the dot-com boom, and is now lower than it's ever been (as far back as I can find data, anyway):

      Year  State funding (2010 $)  Enrollment  Per-student funding (2010 $)
      1965  $1.37 billion              59,000   $23,000
      1970  $1.84b                     73,000   $25,000
      1975  $2.31b                     84,000   $28,000
      1980  $2.75b                     94,000   $29,000
      1985  $3.23b                    108,740   $30,000
      1990  $3.47b                    125,044   $28,000
      1995  $2.68b                    123,948   $22,000
      2000  $3.94b                    141,028   $28,000
      2005  $3.09b                    158,933   $19,000
      2010  $3.02b                    181,520   $17,000

That probably understates the decline somewhat, because the cost of living in California has grown faster than inflation, so funding should probably be adjusted against a wage index of some sort. Going by pure inflation-calculator adjustments like I used in the above table assumes that you can pay staff in 2010 the same salary as they would get 1965, adjusted only for inflation. That would mean getting professors for around $55,000, sysadmins for around $45,000, etc., which you aren't going to have much luck with.

Benefits outside this direct funding were much more generous in my parents' generation also--- my dad went to a _private_ university in California with his tuition mostly paid by the state, courtesy of the Calgrants program, which used to pay for any California student with grades above a certain level and with financial need to attend any California university, public or private. So to some extent it is sort of annoying that a generation that benefited from those kinds of programs, getting their degree without incurring student-loan debt, _now_ thinks that they need to be cut.

<comment><USER11> It's interesting that the enrollment has grown much faster than population growth (and I'd suspect, much faster than the population of the age 18-22 population, since there was a bulge in that age group in 1970). So what really may be happening is that the spending is spread thinner, as the "everybody should go to college" meme has spread.

<comment><USER10> True, although the spending is down from 1985-1990 levels even without the per-student calculation. It doesn't seem to be for explicitly partisan reasons either, since the UC system was well-funded under Deukmejian (a Republican) and then had its funding cut under Wilson (also a Republican).

Interestingly, most of the faster-than-population enrollment surge is in the past 5 years. If enrollments had grown from 1970 to 2000 in line with the results of the 1970 census versus the 2000 census, they would've been 124,000 in 2000, which is not that much lower than the actual 141,000 (that's only a 15% growth in enrollment rates over 30 years).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the author is mistaken. You see, what happened in years past is that they "took out a loan" to pay for now with the promise that they'd pay it later. However, later has come and now those that benefited the most can't understand why those that have to pay for it need to tighten their belts. None of us want to stop paying for it but we've learned what they haven't: you have to live within your means.

My father said it best, "I had it great, you're screwed. Thanks for paying for it."

<comment><USER10> They didn't take out a loan, though--- the generation of Californians he's talking about (pre-1970s) built a bunch of infrastructure while _also_ balancing the state budget.

<comment><USER3> One quibble: those "balanced" budgets included pension guarantees and other contractual terms offered to state workers (1962: health insurance) which

a) cost "nothing" to just write in the paper -- quite easy to balance

b) were actuarial suicide

c) will never be repealed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less, trained worse and worse, loaded up with more and more mindless administrative duties, and given less and less real support from administrators and staff."

What evidence does he provide that the decline in quality of education is due to lower budgets? As technology improves we should expect costs to decline. We should expect higher quality for less cost! When this fails to happen it usually because of artificially erected barriers to entry in an attempt to capture rent for a select few. And just who are loading up teachers "with more and more mindless administrative duties"? Taxpayers? Who benefits when it is increasing difficult to acquire the "skills" necessary to become a new teacher?

He doesn't really provide any unique insight besides blaming all of society's ills on tax cuts. Food has gotten cheaper, electronics have gotten cheaper, why has our government gotten more expensive!?

<comment><USER14> _As technology improves we should expect costs to decline._

Only if you assume labour isn't the prime mover. Assuming that technology improvements help education at all (I'm skeptical -- I learned more about logarithms in math by using an abacus than I did using a calculator), we would ideally want education quality to increase, not decrease. Therefore, we should probably assume costs will stay approximately the same percentage over the years.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is education as related to teacher salaries. In general teacher salaries are pretty poor, but they've always been pretty crappy. However, the civil rights movement has had a big impact since the 50's and there's a big difference. Teaching was and is a female dominated profession -- what's interesting are the opportunities for women since the civil rights act. Now, instead of teaching, the brightest women are more likely to hold more prestigious, higher paying jobs that were previously reserved for white men. In effect, it's as though we were placing a restriction on women that said "If you're smart you can work -- but you can only work as a teacher." I'm not sure how much of a difference this makes, but it seems like it could make quite a bit.

<comment><USER15> _In general teacher salaries are pretty poor,..._

Yes, but they get great fringe benefits (early retirement, defined benefit pensions) and easy hours. The salaries aren't even that bad if you multiply by (12 months of pay / 9-10 months of work). The underpaid teacher is a myth.

<http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf>

[http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be...](http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_benefits.pdf)

<comment><USER16> You think that teachers have easy hours? Have you ever _known_ any teachers?

When you just look at hours in the classroom it doesn't look that hard. But add in the time for grading and preparing classes, and you find that teachers work long hours.

I don't have any statistics on it, but [http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_hours_per_week_do_teacher...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_hours_per_week_do_teachers_work) is in line with the anecdotes that my mother and sister have given me about how much work teaching is.

<comment><USER15> I've known a few teachers and I used to be a professor myself [1]. Prep takes up very little time after you've already taught a class.

But I'll certainly take your 2 secondhand anecdotes and some random internet guy over a scientific survey done by the BLS.

Incidentally, your random internet guy is pretty obviously exaggerating. He claims 30 min putting grades into the computer. If he has 40 students in his class, then it takes him 45 seconds to type one number into a spreadsheet! (Entering grades took me 3-4 minutes back when I had students.)

[1] Postdoc, actually. A moot distinction for the purposes of this conversation, but I'm not into self aggrandizement.

<comment><USER17> _I've known a few teachers and I used to be a professor myself [1]. Prep takes up very little time after you've already taught a class._

I'll echo this: I'm a grad student in English lit and entering my third year. I've taught Engl 101, 102, and 109 (the honor version); the first year I taught, I spent a lot of time in preparation, thinking about activities, and so on. My second year, somewhat less. Ditto for this year.

That isn't to say I'm not changing things from year to year, because I am, but the big hurdle is at the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An article like this without a single reference to the impact and influence of unions is absurd, like trying to explain the workings of the solar system without invoking the concept of gravity.

</comment><comment><USER19> Reality check: "The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm: California taxpayers don't get much bang for their bucks." <http://www.city- journal.org/2009/19_4_california.html>

Excerpt:

California is the only Sunbelt state that had negative net internal migration after 2000. All the other states that lost population to internal migration were Rust Belt basket cases, including New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, and Ohio.

As Tiebout might have guessed, this outmigration has to do with taxes. Besides Mississippi, every one of the 17 states with the lowest state and local tax levels had positive net internal migration from 2000 to 2007. Except for Wyoming, Maine, and Delaware, every one of the 17 highest-tax states had negative net internal migration over the same period.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's common knowledge that the founders of the United States favored the separation of church and state because they didn't want government interfering with freedom of religion by telling people what to think.

At that time, there were no government-run schools in America. If someone had suggested that government should be involved in running schools, maintain massive "Education Departments", etc., I'm sure Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest would have had the same reaction that they had to the idea of government- run churches.

If it is dangerous to a free society for government to be involved in telling people what to think via religion (and it is), how much more dangerous is it for government to be involved in telling many of the youngest and most impressionable members of society what to think?

We should demand the separation of school and state and end government control over education in the United States. Schooling is not the only means to getting an education (Mark Twain famously said "Never let your schooling interfere with your education"), but if universal schooling is deemed desirable, you could simply take the amount of money spent by government to run schools and maintain bureaucracies, divide it by the number of students, and issue each student a voucher to spend at the non-government, voluntarily funded community school of their choice.

To support freeing children from the dangers of government indoctrination and control, visit and join the Alliance for the Separation of School and State -- <http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm>. As authoritarians are so fond of saying, "Do it for the children!"

-Starchild, candidate for School Board, San Francisco

</comment><comment><USER21> Perfect timing for this

[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100822/ap_on_re_us/us_taj_mahal...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100822/ap_on_re_us/us_taj_mahal_schools)

<comment> mkr-hn "In Los Angeles, officials say the new schools were planned long before the economic pinch and are funded by $20 billion in voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget."

Even in good times that's a lot for a school that will only house 4200 students. That's almost $140k for every student it holds. I wonder how long it's going to take for students going through it to generate enough economic activity to cover it.

Is there an economist in the house?

<comment><USER22> $140k per student? Is the school only going to stay open 1 year then?

<comment> mkr-hn Last two sentences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> tell me where a man gets his corn-pone and I'll tell you what his 'pinions are.

<comment><USER24> ?

<comment><USER25> It's from an essay of Mark Twain's* where he talks about how people's opinions depend on their social situations – where they get their money from, who they talk to, etc. (Corn-pone was a staple food.) It's a little like the famous Upton Sinclair line: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

So I take nazgulnarsil to mean that the author's position is a trivial function of who pays him.

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=MEX5JlUu60IC&lpg=PA2...](http://books.google.com/books?id=MEX5JlUu60IC&lpg=PA2&ots=Qa8_aEXCbe&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER24> Ah Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think that this is somewhat disingenuous for the reasons noted by others, but also the failure of the writer to acknowledge that colleges and universities have embraced business models and focused on revenue generation in ways that distract from the core mission.

I hate to say this but while most of the guilt should be borne by fat-cat administrators, faculty are greedy whores who are easily divided and conquered.

</comment><comment><USER27> He bashes the older generation for not spending enough to support the government. Then he excuses them by talking about how they work 2 jobs just to put food on the table.

This guy should run for congress.

</comment><comment><USER28> Edit: You know what? This post sucked. Here's a good link I used while babbling thoughtlessly (unless it wasn't good per _delirium): [http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/information/docu...](http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/information/documents/CHART-B.pdf)

See my reply to reynolds, which was the only valuable part. The second paragraph is my real point, and I mean that "if" clause.

<comment><USER10> > on expenditures growing faster than inflation and faster than the growth of > the economy

I can buy that they've grown faster than inflation, but have they indeed grown faster than the growth of the economy? I haven't been able to dig up good data on what CA state expenditures were as a percentage of state GDP in, say, the 1960s. (They're currently around 24% of state GDP, if you can find something to compare that to.)

Incidentally, the document you linked doesn't appear to cover most of the actual budget; it's the kind of fake official budget that's passed every year, which currently covers about 1/4 of actual spending. This site has better estimates for the past 20 years, but doesn't go back past 1992: [http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=19...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1990_2010&view=1&expand=&units=b&fy=fy10&chart=F0-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=CA&color=c&local=s)

<comment><USER28> See bokonist's post(s), caveats and all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great candor, great article. Displays some very critical perspectives that people often miss, they want safety, they want good roads, they want good education for their kids, etc, and still not pay the taxes that enable these things. One has to invest now, for a better future.

But there is a paradox, I couldn't find an answer.

The provision of safety, social support systems, equal opportunities, low cost education, etc are critical to getting out the best of a population of a civilization so that that 'advancement' of that civilzation continues.

Yet, the more advanced a civilization becomes, the larger the systems required to sustain that advanced civilzation becomes. And the larger a system becomes, the more in-efficiencies and over heads creep in and the costlier it becomes to sustain that system, at a per-capita level.

The more you charge (taxes) the population to sustain that advanced system, the lesser that people will have to spend on themselves, on their own dreams and development. And the less that people spend on their development, the lesser is their ability to contribute to the advancement of the civilization.

How does one break this paradox?

</comment><comment><USER30> Manhattan Project cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in present day value).(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project>) It employed more than 130,000 people. Many labs and plants built in 1940s for the project are still in use today.

We have just spend $760 billion on so-called stimulus. The money is gone, and nothing to show for it.

That's how bloated gov't works nowadays, in CA, federal, and all other states. And the letter is calling for more of this!

PS Great book on Manhattan project: [http://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb- Richard-Rhodes/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard- Rhodes/dp/0684813785)

<comment><USER31> The reasoning seems to go:

1) The stimulus was supposed to mitigate the effects of the recession, and

2) The recession was still very bad, therefore

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

3) The stimulus had no positive effect/was not worth the cost.

Now, who wants to play the game "find the fallacy"?

</comment><comment><USER32> That song he links to at the end is quite awesome. I guess this is the original version

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP7ggY2cNcs>

</comment><comment><USER33> I live in Michigan. It's no secret that Michigan is having severe budget problems. In fact, there are several counties in Michigan (38 comes to mind) that are actually UN-PAVING roads because they are too expensive to maintain. I often wonder how Michigan would look if instead of making tax cuts, and then cutting services, we instead paid .5% more taxes a year to the state. Would it improve our situation? I hope so. At the very least, we might not be un-paving roads.

<comment><USER34> The raise in taxes might actually have the effect of decreasing the tax base by being the point at which people leave the state. Michigan has a lot of years with a strong Detroit. Now, they have to look at getting new industry and/or belt tightening. It looks like they went for the "in your face" version instead of reducing staff in the counties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> (edit: reply to _delirium, not sure this might be out of order, oops)

As you mention, those stats are only for the UC system (no source), but leave out a whole chunk of other relevant data. The author is addressing what he believes is the decline of public educaiton _in general_ in California, not just UC.

Some people outside CA may not understand that the UC system (University of California) is only one part of the public college and public education system in California.

As far as colleges, California also has substantial state funding for a lot of other non-UC California state colleges (CSU, California State University -- 23 campuses compared to 10 UC) and community colleges.

Of course, additional funding goes to non-college education as well, and grants that people receive who attend private colleges and schools.

Also future liabilities and pensions which are not included on budget.

So my point being--just focusing on your UC stats is misleading.

1\. How about the whole California state college system? 2\. How about community colleges, vocational education? 3\. How about other forms of public education? 4\. How about all education grant totals made with public dollars? 5\. Also while you are at that, how about adding in future liabilities/pensions which are not included in the yearly budget?

</comment><comment><USER36> I wrote three comments and erased them all before posting. Let's try #4:

This thing bugs me in a greater sense than simply the issues or people involved, and here's why: _you're paying this guy to petition his students to pay him more_. Strip away all the (real) problems and politics and all of that, and you end up with some guy you write a check to who is doing his best to a) call you a slovenly idiot, b) get you to spend more on him and his projects, and c) use his position as educator to influence his students to advance his causes.

He may be exactly correct. I don't think he is, but whether he is correct or not doesn't matter. Even if he is 100% accurate in everything he says, it's a conflict of interest. We simply can't have people on the public dole who also are political activists -- even in their spare time. I wish there was some way around this quandary -- the military has higher standards but we still see them getting dragged into various political fights. We have scientists who are activists, teachers who are promoting dissent, and public sector unions who are playing politics with public funds.

Again, it's not that I disagree with their politics or efforts. It's that we cannot self-stimulate. The money that comes from taxpayers cannot be caught into a feedback loop to promote even more money coming from taxpayers. The people we entrust with various public functions cannot also be using the stature we give them to score political points.

The only exceptions to this are political appointees, whose sole purpose is to play politics and be party hacks. For the rest of them, I am concerned that this is a really bad thing that is only getting worse and worse over time. I really hope some of these professional organizations can come up with appropriate ethical standards. It's like I read the other day: it used to be that scientists told you what "is". Now they tell you what we need "to do". (It was accompanied by an interesting graph from Lexis-Nexis with the frequency of the words "science says we must" which is rising exponentially in popular media.)

Aside from the specific politics in this case, the trend here is not good at all.

</comment><comment><USER37> There's a lot more discussion of this post at the author's own blog: [http://www.samefacts.com/2010/08/education- policy/a-letter-t...](http://www.samefacts.com/2010/08/education- policy/a-letter-to-my-students/)

Here's the comment I posted:

I copied the following figures from the comment at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631794>

1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars)

1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B)

2008-2009: $144B ($145)

2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B)

According to the comment thread, the state population increased from 15 717 204 in 1960 to 36 961 664 in 2010, which figures I assume are from the census.

My own calculations: that's about 1.7% population growth per year on average (1.017^50 * 15717204 ≈ 36 500 000) so we can interpolate the population in 1966 as 15717204 * 1.017^6 ≈ 17 400 000. That gives a state tax burden of roughly US$1610 per person in constant 2010 dollars. The 2009–2010 tax burden is US$3200 per person.

Therefore, at least over the 1966 to 2010 time period, if these figures are correct, then far from being the victims of an "enormous cheat" or "terrible swindle" in which state taxes were cut to the bone by a generation supported by state taxes, necessitating massive cuts in public services, state taxes per capita have nearly doubled during that period, adjusted for inflation using the CPI.

Some other possibilities were suggested in the comment thread:

• Maybe the CPI isn't the right deflator to use, because most of the state's revenues go to education and health care, not vegetables and beef, and these services have inflated in price much faster than the CPI. However, this doesn't rescue the "terrible swindle ... walking away from their obligations" claim.

• Maybe O'Hare isn't referring to public services as they were provided in California during the 1960s but during some earlier period, such as the 1940s. Prof. O'Hare, can you clarify your claims?

• Maybe most of the tax money is being wasted on unproductive things such as prisons, managers and administrators, or legislators, rather than being spent on productive things like public education and road maintenance. In this case, there is a "terrible swindle", but the perpetrators are not the voters or the taxpayers but the employees of the government.

• Maybe much of the high standard of living some decades ago was paid for by externalities. For example, power plants might have been less expensive to operate before the EPA was established, K-12 schools might have had higher quality when economic opportunities for women outside of them were sharply limited by institutionalized sexism, US military power might have kept the prices of many raw materials artificially low, and unsustainable depletion of fossil fuels might have kept the prices of energy and asphalt artificially low. As some of these externalities have been internalized, taxes would have to rise. For example, to attract the best and brightest women to teaching in K-12 education, the way we used to in the 1950s and 1960s, we'd either need a massive propaganda campaign about the nobility and importance of teachers (comparable to the one we have about soldiers), or we'd need to pay top K-12 teachers US$200 000 a year or more — with a credible commitment to continue to do so for half a century into the future.

So, on the face of it, the numbers don't seem to add up to support your claim. Can you help out with that?

Other comments related to this question include [http://www.samefacts.com/2010/08/education- policy/a-letter-t...](http://www.samefacts.com/2010/08/education- policy/a-letter-to-my-students/comment-page-1/#comment-45779) which seems to not be using the same facts as the commenter whose figures I quoted above.

The California Budget Project's summary gives a lower number of US$86.8 billion for 2009-10, which is still much larger than the inflation-adjusted per-capita 1966 number: [http://cbp.org/pdfs/2010/CaliforniaBudgetBites/100329_budget...](http://cbp.org/pdfs/2010/CaliforniaBudgetBites/100329_budgetmyths.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER38> _Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers._

      —Socrates

These kind of education articles are fucking stupid and only help fan the flames on all sides of deeply flawed ideologies. Beating this dead horse is so common that I've learned to tune these from out when NYT, NPR, etc run these formulaic education scare pieces.

The flaw is that you just can't compare apples to oranges and expect any kind of meaningful conclusion. In this case, it's cross correlating some super high dimensional manifold from 1964(or whenever) comprised of easily hundreds of thousands of variables, against a similar large manifold(2010). There are just too many totally different variables between then and now for it to be a fair comparison at all.

Sure, each side sees what it wants in whatever tiny slice of the data they _choose_ to use. Blame the Mexicans, no blame the Rich, no blame the Liberals, no blame Reagan, _ad infinitum_.

And this guy, a professional in higher education, wants to step out on a far limb to make some grandiose claim about the status of California education. I am more fearful of him ruining his own students by teaching them to mimic his own flawed reasoning than I am of any of his exaggerated, inaccurate conclusions.

You know what? More likely than not, the world will keep going the way it has been, people, kids, and education will keep _improving_ , albeit incrementally, and there is not going to be some apocalyptic doomsday in the future of public education in California, or anywhere.

In summary, he's basically following the same pattern so many old people follow: somewhere along the way they lose touch with reality, with the youth, get stuck in their ways, and believe the whole world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and all because of some imagined flaw in the entire youth population. Old people forget what it was like to be young, and lose their ability to rapidly adapt and learn as children do. And without fail, each generation grows up to believe they were somehow better than later generations. Bollocks!

 _I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me._

—Abe Simpson

<comment><USER39> >Old people forget what it was like to be young, and lose their ability to rapidly adapt and learn as children do. And without fail, each generation grows up to believe they were somehow better than later generations.

I don't think this is an accurate description of the article at all. The author is specifically arguing that _his_ generation has violated the social contract that they used to their gain, leaving the current, younger generation holding the bag.

He's not saying "goddamn kids these days"; he's encouraging the upcoming generation to fix what their parents ( _his_ generation) have screwed up so that the generation after them doesn't end up shackled in the same way or worse. In fact, he's encouraging them to engage their parents ("they still vote") to help them in fixing things.

<comment><USER40> The professor doesn't adequately quantify what has gone wrong due to a generation's alleged lack of paying it forward. Generalizations like "failing infrastructure" and "less spending on schools" do not exactly get the fire started in my belly - because I don't see anything glaringly wrong with those items. And, maybe this old man's view of a failing infrastructure is a result of something petty like a crack in the sidewalk directly outside of his house.

And, maybe his generation has spent less time worrying about cracks in sidewalks and potholes in roads because they were investing in things that are now more foreign to an older person. Like biotech, wireless tech, green tech, etc. (I'm sure there are better examples)

BTW - I just used the term "old man" to add impact to my statement. I love my older generation and the insights they bring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Hippies pretty much ruined it for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER42> TL, DR: liberal tax & spend is the way O brother! Heed the call and deliver us from the hideous capitalists!

Oh BTW check out my new startup, we're going to make a ton of money.</comment>


The Economist's predictions for 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/TheWorldIn/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also relevant - their predictions from last year for 2008 (subscription required to read the articles) <http://www.economist.com/TheWorldIn/index.cfm?d=2008></comment>


MIT Startup Bootcamp (live @ justin.tv) - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/startupbootcamp

<comment><USER2> I'm at the event, a lot of good talks from an abundance of YCombinator founders. It's good to see MIT participating in the startup scene. Some of the best parts of Startup Bootcamp so far:

Kyle Vogt (Justin.tv) emphasized being flexible and remaining committed during the hard times. Iterate and morph and never quit until you have a product/service that fits the market. Make something people love, even if that means completely changing your ideas.

Dan Theobald (Vecna) gave us some warnings about the dangers of "other people's money", which he jokingly referred to as opium (OPM). He advocated bootstrapping it, mentioning that he would show up at companies with nothing but his laptop and say, "I'm from MIT. How can I help you with your tech needs?" He advised against ever hiring anyone, but said that if you have to hire then get the smartest people possible: 1 great engineer = 10 good engineers = 100 average engineers.

Dan recommended reading a paper called "On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B" (title self-explanatory). At Vecna, employees are given points to distribute to coworkers they find deserving, and these points control bonuses. People work harder when they know their employees are evaluating them, and coworkers do a better job than managers. He also spoke a lot about helping the community, and being non-self. I came away from the the talk thinking that Dan's a really great guy.

Adam Smith (Xobni), who was the first to speak, talked about raising the barrier to entry by doing something _hard_. He estimated it would take tens of millions of dollars for someone to come into Outlook and do what Xobni has done. Like Vogt, he emphasized being nimble. That is, being able to effectively change your idea and your product to fit the market. He pointed out that external deadlines (ex. demoing at a tech conference), can really work in your favor. He recommended reading Jessica Livingston's _Founders at Work_ , and also _High St@kes, No Prisoners._ According to him the latter book's out of print, but Adam brought along six copies and set them on the stage for anyone to grab near the end of his talk. Luckily, I sat on the front row, and I move pretty quick if I say so myself :)

Angus Davis (Tellme) had a really cool speech. One, he's a great charistmatic speaker. Two, he had volumes of knowledge. Three, he made use of this service: <http://www.polleverywhere.com/>. He prepared a wealth of topics and had us text the service which topics we wanted to hear about. You could see the poll behing him being updated in real-time, and he simply talked aobut whatever was getting the most votes.

Sorry for the book!

<comment><USER3> _"... He estimated it would take tens of millions of dollars for someone to come into Outlook and do what Xobni has done. ..."_

Anything on the MS platform could be replicated by Microsoft and I've seen them do this for strategic reasons. Cost is not the issue, understanding the problem & mindset is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm starting to transfer the HD video off the tapes now. Hopefully we can get them edited and up within the next 2 weeks. (fingers crossed)

Thanks for those who watched online and those who came out to MIT! :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> I took notes: [http://blog.marcua.net/post/211390022/startup-bootcamp-at- mi...](http://blog.marcua.net/post/211390022/startup-bootcamp-at-mit) .

Hope these help someone!

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have a talk schedule?

<comment><USER7> <http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/schedule.html> \- there you go.

<comment><USER6> Awesome, thank you sir.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> HD videos of the talks will be availiable a couple of days later. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER9> To anyone else at the event: I'm in the sixth row against the right wall, probably furiously taking notes on my Macbook. Feel free to say hi before the evening is over.

Aaron Swartz now...</comment>


AWS, Google, Microsoft, Red Hat Launch Kubernetes Operator Registry - <AUTHOR> https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/open-source/aws-google-microsoft-red-hats-new-registry-act-clearing-house-kubernetes-operators <comment><USER2> Is using an operator a replacement for installing a service via helm?

<comment><USER3> Not really. Operators are things you deploy to a cluster that can subscribe to updates to K8s API objects. They get notified of changes and can act on them. This effectively lets you implement new services for Kubernetes as custom resource definitions, eg letting users define database crd and then the database being provisioned for them. Super powerful!</comment></comment>


Free Will Is as Real as Baseball (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/07/13/free-will-is-as-real-as-baseball/ <comment><USER2> Yes, the external laws are well understood, but what about the internal laws? It's like saying the finite world out there is well understood, so the infinite world within must also be understood therefore. I think you underestimate how much of the world is dependent on our psyches. If there are no beings, what is the use of speaking of a physical universe?

Thus, beings are primary, their experience fundamental and non-negotiably there. Physics does not explain nor make any room for deliciousness, the color blue, or the experience of joy, so I think your argument against Free Will is about as real as the notion of Deliciousness in Physics -- not at all addressing the main point.

Oftentimes we are tempted to say that "well there is a tiny probability that this tiny book on the shelf negates our whole understanding so far, but that's so unlikely, so let's make laws without examining every last book." And thus, we forsake completeness for convenience, and the very pursuit of truth is subjugated to emotional ease. It's easier to think that there's no free will rather than to consider we are wasting a valuable opportunity. In reality, causality has been demonstrated, and the quantum while interesting in addressing spontaneity can still not address the fundamental question of if or how a seed grows.

In that case, consider that what is learned by a yogi or through meditation about the nature of reality, it's learned from accessing wisdom within, which is thusfar an unexplored realm in science. Yet, it is the one we share more intimately than even the rocks and the waves of the ocean and the dip and etude of the solar system. Our real-world experience is unaddressed by physics, so how can we negate the Anthropocentric-realism that we all experience thanks to observations made about the External World?</comment>


Image screening and comment screening - <AUTHOR>

Hi there. I am in the process of developing a dating site for a niche market. As you can expect from a dating site, I expect there to be some inappropriate content by unruly posters. Has anyone here had experience with screening images and comments (on images) to be screened for inappropriate content. I am not even sure where to start. Fwiw, this concept will be both on the web as well as on the mobile platform. <comment><AUTHOR> I found some desktop versions of image processing software, but it doesn't seem like I can implement it online. Any more ideas?</comment>


Show HN: I built a way to consult for businesses and earn in your free time - <AUTHOR> https://getwisdomapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, I'm the founder of Wisdom, a better way to consult in your spare time. I often find myself browsing Instagram or Twitter in my free time or answering surveys like Google Opinion Rewards - kind of a waste of time. It struck me that there wasn't really an easy way for knowledge workers like engineers, PMs, etc to monetize their downtime with all the valuable knowledge they have. I built Wisdom to let people with highly sought after knowledge help investors and businesses in their own time. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions.

I'm initially focused on allowing investors like PE firms and VCs ask questions, but am still learning more about who might be interested in asking questions. If you have any suggestions for directions to explore, I'm all ears!

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't even get past the sign up. When I enter an email address and a candidate password, it just says "Enter a valid email and password" (no password rules are stated). It also doesn't trim trailing spaces, and when my device's popup keyboard comes up, the page scrolls upward out of view. (Manually trimming trailing spaces had no effect)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing these out. Will fix. Firebase must have minimum password requirements

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty cool idea! Wonder how much $$ can be made and whether it can be a sustainable side income. Feels like a much better opportunity than commoditized "gig economy" jobs. Best of luck(:

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea. I've signed up, verified my email, and provided all of my details, but am still stuck on "Complete your profile to be approved"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for signing up! A member of our team will review your profile and approve it if it's complete shortly

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is neat, when will you be opening it up to other geographies?

I really think an alternative to GLG is needed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! I've seen apps like this for consumer survey questions, but first one aimed at knowledge workers.

</comment><comment><USER7> nice chicken/egg problem!

\- "Ask Questions" should be Green \- "Answer Questions" should not be Red, but rather a complementary color like Orange, Blue, Purple, or Pink ;-)

best of luck. What is your #1 method for getting Companies/Demand aware of this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

It's indeed a chicken and egg problem. Been direct selling to Associates at PE firms/VCs/consulting firms. If you can deliver value there, lots of repeat usage for each new deal/project they have. The biggest challenge here is that incumbents like GLG provide white glove service and do a pretty decent job already, even if not tech enabled. The hardest part of this business is identifying the right people for a customer to talk to and onboarding them as an expert.

Startups and enterprise using this tool for customer discovery or user research is an interesting market but there seems to be less willingness to pay for information and it's one off, not recurring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice but apparently it is not compatible with any of my 3 Android devices? What are the requirements?

</comment><comment><USER9> Not available in Canada. Oh well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. Just in the US now to make payments easier

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this a React Native app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup</comment></comment>


Won't get fooled systematically (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://gashlin.net/blog/pages/2010-12-22-wont-get-fooled-systematically.html <comment><USER2> For what it's worth, my preliminary attempt to make this game was dwim:

[https://github.com/hcs64/dwim-game](https://github.com/hcs64/dwim-game)

Fairly unsatisfactory, but I learned a lot (and I like the animation).</comment>


Tell and Ask HN: Mobile sysadmin on the road - <AUTHOR>

This is a topic that I've been exploring lately and thought I'd share my nascent knowledge and ask for your input.
Topic: server sysadmin while traveling without a laptop.
How I do it: My G1 is at the center of it all. Stored in it I have the phone numbers of my registrar, my host, and my good friends who can sub as admins.
On this phone, I have a 3G connection with excellent UK-wide coverage (I know of only real reception blackhole!) Worst case is a GPRS connection.
I use Pingdom to send me SMS alerts if something goes wrong with my web app's hardware. I've configured Pingdom to check the text of the page to see if MySQL is dead even if Apache is fine. This is very useful and an I think an overlooked feature.
The phone has an SSH client (ConnectBot) which is freely available in the Android Market. There is a profile saved (without a password in case the phone is lost) for the server. Logging in takes about 15 seconds with a 3G connection and about 25s on GPRS.
Hardware-wise: Although the screen is small, it's still very legible to have a fully functioning SSH terminal. The trackball is useful for scrolling around quickly. Also, I've found that having a hardware keyboard is immensely useful for typing commands into the SSH terminal. I can't imagine what it would be like with a soft keyboard.
Of course there is a very good browser that can render pretty much any website well. This gives me confidence that I can look up any necessary info relatively easily.
The server has nano and htop installed. I know how to use them well, and constantly learning.
In my wallet, I keep a little cheat sheet of various commands, keyboard shortcuts (like for controlling htop), and locations of important files (logs, config files, etc). It folds to be smaller than a credit card's dimensions and has lots of text in 10pt. Having this sheet is a great way to calm down and to save me time because I don't have to work from memory under stress. Unfolding it is like unfolding a battle plan you know you're going to win with.
I also have an sFTP client installed but never had to use it.
So that's me in a nutshell. What do you do? Any special tools/tips/tricks/setups?
Cheers. <comment><USER2> Nice. I don't know htop, but if it isn't a screen-alike then consider gnu screen. Also, one of those pocket projectors might make a worthwhile consideration.</comment>


Show HN: Tests that continuously monitor performance of popular web frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nparashuram.com/2015/06/continuous-performance-testing-of-web.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but this doesn't really have something for users to play with it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

The only thing actionable is to contact you if people want to participate or volunteer. I like the project, but not really Show HN material.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did want help - I was hoping to add more web frameworks and would need help with that. Also need help with adding more test cases.

I was hoping that just like Todomvc.com shows how to use a framework, this could be used to see the performance of web frameworks.</comment></comment>