Don't use VPN services - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29 <comment><USER3> This seems like bad advice because it doesn't address the legitimate need for keeping your browsing history private from overzealous, data-mining ISP's [1].

And even in the case of a known-hostile ISP that engages in invasive practices like supercookies or ad injection, it's unrealistic to ask users to set up and maintain their own VPS servers.

For the average internet user, a "glorified proxy" service that is hassle-free to set up is a simple and effective means of protection against such a menace.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/everything-you-need-to- kno...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/everything-you-need-to-know-about- congress-decision-to-expose-your-data-to-internet-providers/)

<comment><USER4> It seems like bad advice because it is, frankly, just bad advice. Nearly all of his arguments fall down, even within his own post.

He says that VPN providers don't provide more security. They do, and he mentions this himself when it comes to the public wifi argument.

He says that VPN providers don't provide more encryption. They do. Another layer of transport encryption is another layer of transport encryption.[1]

He says that VPN providers don't provide more privacy. They do. Turns out a lot of networks do things like log DNS, which a decent VPN client can tunnel.[2]

He says there are two use cases for VPNs: There are a lot more.

He says that tunneling all of your traffic is a _worse_ case for obfuscating your identity to a third party service. It's not, or at least I can't imagine how it would be.

He says that instead of a VPN, you can use a VPS with a VPN: That's just a VPN. It does all of the same things, including being outsourced to a third- party provider, except you lose a ton of the functionality of a real VPN service like geographical redundancy and spread.

He asks why VPN services exist, if for any other purpose than stealing traffic or data, but fails to understand any way in which a VPN service could be useful.

The entire piece is just the opinions of someone who is failing to see that other people have significantly different use-cases and threat models than he does.

-

[1] Especially if you think of "local -> internet" as easier to intercept than "somewhere internet -> otherwhere internet". Which it usually is. One involves something dumb simple like ARP poisoning. Another involves compromising a telco or the VPN provider itself, which is a teensy bit harder. All of this is even sillier if you consider the hostile-network scenario as well.

[2] Yes, you are offloading 'trust' that the VPN provider doesn't _also_ log your DNS. There's more chance that they don't when they say they don't, than your corporate network doesn't when they say they do.

<comment><USER5> A VPN tunnel in the abstract provides the benefits you mentioned, but a VPN _service_ is a slightly different beast. It doesn't solve the problem with your untrusted ISP, it just gives you effectively a different untrusted ISP.

Imagine if, in response to the question, "how do I protect myself from snooping ISPs" someone provided the answer, "Just use an ISP that specializes in providing anonymity." You'd probably object on the following grounds:

* Saying you provide anonymity doesn't mean that you actually do. And track records tend to demonstrate otherwise.

* Your ISP still knows exactly who you are, even if they promise not to tell.

* ISPs who specialize in shady customers are more likely to be under surveillance themselves, meaning you're now _more_ likely to be under surveillance rather than _less_.

* You're solving the wrong problem: you need end-to-end privacy, not just customer-to-ISP

You'd be right. But more importantly, these same objections apply to VPN providers. They more-or-less ALL specialize in aggregating known-suspicious traffic, which is not the bundle you want to be tied in with.

In fact, any argument you could make against using a Cloud VPN endpoint can also be made against a VPN service provider. Because, and this should be painfully obvious already, VPN providers just terminate their traffic through Cloud and/or Colo hosting providers as well; usually optimized on bandwidth cost over all else. So by setting up your on VM, you're just cutting out one of the middle men. There's nothing they can do that you can't do just as well without them.

<comment><USER6> _> There's nothing they can do that you can't do just as well without them._

That applies to any service out there. Are you running your own mail server?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, yes you should assume that your VPN provider is 100% logging your IP, traffic, referrer, etc, but you should also assume that any public wifi is being sniffed. A VPN won't magically hide your traffic, you're shifting the attacker in the threat model. But all this is also means that a VPN provider is less dangerous than public wifi is, which is really the reason you should be using VPN's.

<comment><USER8> If you already have an SSH client (which implies that you have somewhere to SSH to) and Firefox installed on your machine (not sure about Chrome) then you can prevent public wi-fi snooping right this very instant with a SOCKS proxy. This requires no new software on your machine, no money to change hands, and takes literally 30 seconds to set up. VPNs are overkill for that use case.

<comment><USER9> Only for firefox's traffic. There's almost certainly other software on your machine using the network and thus not going through the proxy unless you explicitly tell it to.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure you could use [https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle](https://github.com/sshuttle/sshuttle) though I haven't looked into it (does it proxy DNS? UDP? DHCP? I'm not sure)

<comment><USER11> Just a note, it doesn't work with Windows, only Linux and OSX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I suggest people lookup "The Market For Lemons"[1] as it is a good warning for what can happen to markets with extreme information asymmetry. VPN providers like many tech companies have a huge information asymmetry over their customers. There is no way to really verify many of the claims that a provider is making, especially when it comes to something like logging. The result is that the consumer can't actually distinguish a low quality product from a high quality product. This creates a disincentive for companies to actually provide a high quality product when they can provide a product that is lower quality and cheaper to produce and still pull in the same revenue from users. If this is allowed to go on without any form of third party intervention, the end result is a market filled of products with dubious quality.

[1] - [https://www.iei.liu.se/nek/730g83/artiklar/1.328833/AkerlofM...](https://www.iei.liu.se/nek/730g83/artiklar/1.328833/AkerlofMarketforLemons.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Exactly what you say. Maybe the solution is to use two VPNs. That way the second doesn't know your home IP and the first has no info on the content. Like a home baked Tor.

<comment><USER14> You don't thing a legal authority wouldn't subpoena both?

<comment><USER15> I think that's not his point. There is a probability p that vpn providers are not providing the service they advertise (ie lemon). But the probability that both are lemons become p^2 which is much lower (subpoena-ing a provider that maintains no log is useless).

Where it breaks I think is that you can chain as many VPNs as you want, only the last one sees what you are downloading, the others only see traffic to another VPN. So the authority just needs to subpoena that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well then why is it if you actually try and sue a VPN provider for the logs, you won't be able to get them. this is the case for one scenario I know of where a subject got hacked and it was traced to a VPN service. Article is just FUD -- which this conversation could be warranted in some cases, but realistically I've found that it isn't the case. This doesn't mean that their outbound service isn't being logged by a third or unknown party like a government entity (which we know all traffic is logged), but hey it is what it is.

<comment><USER17> Can you give us some known examples of VPN Providers that were sued and didn't give logs?

I'd imagine a list of those ones would be considered more credible

<comment><USER18> A quick google shows a few.

I know PIA had an actual FBI subpoena.[1] (literally the first link I find) Of course there are collision based identification methods, but knowing that you use a VPN and were using something on the East Coast isn't much to go off of. Worst case I can see here is "User was the only one connected on the East coast at this time", but with PIA's userbase, that seems like an unlikely scenario.

There's also a list [2] (little old)

I remember looking a little closer back when the ISP stuff was happening and it wasn't too hard to find cases where specific VPNs were "tested in the field". But I remember coming across a few, I think Norad was also one of them.

[1] [https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-providers-no-logging-claims- tes...](https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-providers-no-logging-claims-tested-in- fbi-case-160312/)

[2] [https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your- anonymi...](https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymity- seriously-2013-edition/)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, except when PIA gave copies of the subpoena to the media, they only blacked out the content by adding a layer in the PDF.

So you can open it up in Acrobat, and see everything below.

Are you going to trust a VPN provider that can't even black out text in a PDF?

For reference, here the content with the blacked out info un-blacked-out: [https://i.imgur.com/u1hYerD.png](https://i.imgur.com/u1hYerD.png) and [https://i.imgur.com/1a9YD0f.png](https://i.imgur.com/1a9YD0f.png)

<comment><USER20> There's nothing confidential in those images. It is a matter of public record that Detective Andrew Perley #660 wanted to know who was routed through 184.108.40.206 on 2013-2-19, and that his interest was communicated to the VPN provider on 2013-4-22.

I'm not sure why they went through the rigmarole of pretending to black something out. Maybe they were just fucking with him?

<comment><USER19> They sent the blacked out version to the media, and Ars and others published them like that.

So why did they black it out? As a childish joke? Also not inspiring trust in them.

And if they just blacked it out, without need of doing so, and fucked that up, then the question is if they're trustworthy if their security team doesn't double check their blacked out PDFs.

The problem isn't with the content, but with the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As always the title is a bit of an overreach.

If you are going to attract the attention of governments (PSN and Sony hacks, etc), yes, don't expect a VPN to shield you.

If you're pirating a show that isn't available in your region, or checking up on an old workplace website, etc, a VPN is likely perfectly fine and will save you from legal scare letters, an old employer seeing your visit, etc.

<comment><USER22> Wait, we're supposed to worry about an old employer seeing a visit to a public company website? How would that even happen, and why would anyone care?

<comment><USER23> Only justification I could think of is a strict reading of CFAA, where in your exit paperwork the employer commands you not to access any company systems, and the Web site is technically a company system. Though "protected" would be quite arguable there.

I occasionally have crons from my personal infrastructure running into an employer for operational purposes (offsite monitoring or whatever), so I've blackholed outgoing traffic to former employers to be on the safe side in case I miss one. So I can see where that sentiment is coming from, though I think it's a legal stretch.

<comment><USER24> So for the 99.999999% of the rest of us who don't use personal systems to provide monitoring services this argument doesn't apply. Seems like it would be easier to just use outside monitoring or setup some monitoring instances in the cloud that your employer owns than going through this effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Steve Gibson specifically recommends TunnelBear because they submitted themselves to a public security audit.

[https://www.tunnelbear.com/blog/tunnelbear_public_security_a...](https://www.tunnelbear.com/blog/tunnelbear_public_security_audit/)

Other than TunnelBear, ProtonVPN is run by the ProtonMail folks and is based out of Switzerland, so they would respond to any foreign subpoena with a polite "fuck off."

<comment><USER26> > based out of Switzerland

Switzerland is no longer the bastion of privacy it once was. In fact, it's been _nine years_ since every single Swiss Bank rolled over on their customers to placate the IRS. And it's only been downhill from there since.

<comment><USER27> I'm really okay with this. Taxes are the price we pay for civilisation and people dodging them are stealing from you.

<comment><USER28> Surveillance of money, and surveillance of speech, association, location, etc. are not the same, and one does not justify the other.

<comment><USER29> I believe they were saying that they were OK with the Swiss banks giving info to the IRS about tax dodgers. Which I'm ok with too. I'm not ok with random web traffic being disclosed to authorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> So what's the alternative? Trust my ISP not to do the same? No thanks, I'll take my chances that my well-regarded and relatively cheap VPN service has both less resources to handle massive data storage for as long term, and is no less incentivized to turn huge profits or protect themselves by spilling everything to the government, even if both would under extreme duress. For what I pay, the VPN is a worthwhile little extra protection, not to mention the extra portable security when I have no choice but to use public wifi.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If you're reading HN, one alternative is spin up your own VPN on AWS/Gcloud/DigitalOcean/etc. It's not hard, and there are some scripts / ansible playbooks to automate the process.

<comment><USER15> The movie studio will send a DMCA to AWS who will pass it on to you, then what?

Helps with ISP snooping yes, though I expect it to be more expensive (VM and bandwidth in clouds isn't cheap).

<comment><USER31> What do you consider expensive? You can easily get a VM with 1TB bandwidth for $5 a month.

<comment><USER15> I had AWS and Azure in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It depends what you want to do with the proxy. If you're doing serious crimes like child porn, terrorism or mass hacking the government will probably ask the VPN for logs.

But if you're just doing stuff like P2P to download content illegally, at least in France they only track IPs for the consumer ISPs. Any other IP, especially out of the country, they'll ignore.

So it doesn't matter if they have the logs, for minor things the government agencies or copyright holders will just give up and focus on the easy targets.

<comment><USER33> Also in some countries some torrent websites are blocked and a VPN gives access to these too. It's also useful to watch TV channels in other countries since they are often geo-blocked.

In other countries like China there's no question that a VPN is useful. Actually whoever wrote this article seems a bit clueless about why a VPN is useful. They suggest setting up your own on a VPS but doing this in China will get your server blocked right away. That's why a third party is useful since they can offer various IPs in many countries and quickly setup new servers when they get blocked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm sure the intended audience for enemies of the state are googling "should i use a vpn?" right now. What a silly article.

Understand vpn's, understand public VPN providers, evaluate the risk for whatever you're trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER35> Plenty of good points here. I'm disappointed the author did not know about Streisand, a tool to help set up a number of VPN and related services on cloud hardware you control: [https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand)

When the setup is complete, you end up with some incredibly well-written instructions that make setting up the tools with any OS dead-simple. It's a really fantastic project.

<comment><USER36> or Algo: [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The author makes good points but forgets to key considerations:

1) Reputation. A well known,well reputed provider (Fsecure or protonvpn for example) for most users would not be less trustworthy than their ISP. ISPs can easily get away with injecting malware into your http traffic or selling your data. A security company or VPN provider based in a jurisdiction with strict privacy laws and with well known business owners however has a lot more to lose and a lot less legal fighting power.

2) Threat model - you are already trusting someone (ISP) with not only monitoring your traffic but manipulating it. That should already be part of your threat model.when comparing a vpn provider with your ISP, which potential attacker poses a greater risk? For many users,sadly,it is their ISP.

Last note,most vpn users just want to bypass IP restrictions,they don't care all that much about privacy(although that seems to be changing)

<comment><USER38> I don't know where you live, but in my country ISPs are not well known for injecting malware into the traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > If somebody wants to tap your connection, they can still do so - they __just > __have to do so at a different point (ie. when your traffic leaves the VPN > server).

I feel like this sets up false equivalency. Tapping VPN provider and tapping individuals last mile are very different things. Of course it is debatable which one is more secure etc, but the fact remains that they have very different characteristics. I'd say that for almost any single attacker moving the hypothetical tap will not be happening at a push of a button, more likely it will not happen at all.

<comment><USER40> Furthermore, what is even meant by this "tap"? For most attackers breaking OpenVPN + HTTPS is just plain impossible, even if they somehow intercept the connection and position themselves between the VPN end point and the target server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The argument seems to be "since VPN does not provide perfect security and privacy, you should not use it". This is obviously a fallacious argument - <USER2> need to evaluate "using VPN" vs. "not using VPN", not "using VPN" vs. "using some perfect theoretic unicorn privacy system that nobody has".

Yes, VPN providers can track - but they make it harder to track you to third parties, unless they are in collusion with those parties, but for average user the chance this is happening - unless they are on the FBI/NSA radar already - is pretty low.

Yes, third parties can fingerprint and use other techniques to track people. That's not the reason to offer them the most easy and readily available means of tracking on a silver plate.

</comment><comment><USER42> His whole argument against VPN providers seems to depend on this statement:

"Statistically speaking, it is more likely that a VPN provider will be malicious or a honeypot, than that an arbitrary generic VPS provider will be."

But is that really true - how do I know that Linode, Bluehost, and other VPS providers aren't looking at my traffic?

<comment><USER43> > _" how do I know that Linode, Bluehost, and other VPS providers aren't > looking at my traffic?"_

I would assume that it's because they have no financial interest in the content of your traffic, whereas a VPN-specific service might. Most big VPS providers know that the bulk of their customers are technically minded people who read their own logs and monitor their own traffic, so there's no technical interest for them either.

That said, if you end up abusing their terms (higher than allocated traffic or sustained heavy CPU time, for example), you can expect them to investigate if only to see if it's malicious in nature (DoS, spam, etc) or just a bad configuration.

But again, those are just assumptions on my part. If you have any doubt about a particular service, it's probably best to move on to one you can vet/audit.

<comment><USER42> _But again, those are just assumptions on my part._

Well yeah, that was the point of my comment -- it sounds like unsubstantiated opinion.

 _If you have any doubt about a particular service, it 's probably best to move on to one you can vet/audit._

How is that even possible? Assuming you want to connect to the internet, you have to hand off your traffic to some upstream provider than you can't trust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> So we've seen several VPN services that have proven to be malicious, insofar as selling your browsing history to advertisers (see Hola Better Internet[0]), but have we actually seen a VPN provider being a 'honeypot' yet?

I guess we should qualify the term. In my mind, that would be a hostile government who sets up a VPN service for the purpose of attracting citizens who wish to avoid their censorship, and then arresting the users.

[0][https://lifehacker.com/hola-better-internet-sells-your- bandw...](https://lifehacker.com/hola-better-internet-sells-your-bandwidth- turning-its-1707496872)

<comment><USER45> Some Tor relays are absolutely honeypots

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There's a third, valid reason you should use a VPN: accessing geo-restricted content. This use case doesn't require any privacy guarantees above a normal user-ISP relationship.

<comment><USER47> Is that still possible? Around a year ago services like Netflix started to block VPNs to avoid exactly this usecase.

<comment><USER48> EarthVPN has stopped working for me for BBC iPlayer, but NordVPN works fine. I think they change the IPs every so often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> In UK, all ISPs have to log your browsing history for a year now. And from April, all adult websites have to verify your identity(proposals as to how include giving them your passport scan and credit card details). And British government has just announced a tool that will automatically flag extremist content on the internet using AI.

I'd much much much rather take my chances with a VPN provider and still route all of my traffic through any other country other than UK, thank you very much.

</comment><comment><USER50> > And remember that it is in a VPN provider's best interest to log their users > - it lets them deflect blame to the customer...

Data is a liability. Keeping it is assuming responsibility. It is in the provider's best interest to keep the minimum information. If any agency were to ask for data, you can honestly say there is none and be free to continue running your business.

And if you must keep data, keep it encrypted and only decryptable by the customer wherever possible.

</comment><comment><USER51> As someone from an African country with govt affiliated ISPs, even if my vpn service logged almost everything, I'd still use it as compared to the alternative

</comment><comment><USER52> I view VPN services more as "Kabuki Theater": The major governments need to keep up the pretense that they aren't reading our traffic via arrangements with the VPN providers, and in return they promise to keep our actions secret BUT ONLY if we aren't engaging in a national crime such as terrorism or espionage.

</comment><comment><USER53> Wha? Isn't the VPN market about accessing geo-restricted content? My non-geek friends often ask me "Can I stream X for free?" Moral and legal questions not- withstanding, the answer is often yes, using a VPN service.

Could restriction-avoidance come back to bite you someday via logged behavior? Perhaps, but it sure wouldn't be in the interest of a VPN provider to allow that to happen. Should one lose sleep over appearing to be in the UK in order to stream Eurosport? Tough sell.

"Send all of your traffic through us so that we can keep it private and secure" is absurd on the face of it. I'd like to think many non-technical people can see this, yet want to watch the Olympics on CBC because, more curling!

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm not overly concerned with traffic being traced back to me via my ISP, so I just run OpenVPN on my pfSense router. Whenever I'm on remote WiFi that isn't run by me, I hop on the VPN and route all traffic through it. Minimizes my exposure on public hotspots, which is what concerns me most.

It's irritating that I have to worry about my ISP, but not irritating enough for me to care. If that changes, I'll spin up a machine on some hosting provider and route traffic through there. It'll suck to have reduced speeds in that case though.

</comment><comment><USER55> I have much higher trust in my VPN than my ISP, which used to make you pay more if you didn't want to be spied on (AT&T).

It also stops them from sending me copyright notices which is a verifiable service.

</comment><comment><USER56> If you're going to use a VPN, please read about its policies and try to understand them. I was horrified to learn about this VPN service from Facebook that is now being promoted in its iOS app (I don't use the app, but anything to do with Facebook generally worries me). The Onavo VPN service from Facebook is disguised as a protection mechanism but tracks the user for the benefit of Facebook.

Quoting from this recent news: [1]

"But Facebook didn't buy Onavo for its security protections.

Instead, Onavo's VPN allow Facebook to monitor user activity across apps, giving Facebook a big advantage in terms of spotting new trends across the larger mobile ecosystem. For example, Facebook gets an early heads up about apps that are becoming breakout hits; it can tell which are seeing slowing user growth; it sees which apps' new features appear to be resonating with their users, and much more.

This data has already helped Facebook in a number of ways, most notably in its battle with Snapchat. At The WSJ reported last August, Facebook could tell that Instagram's launch of Stories – a Snapchat-like feature – was working to slow Snapchat's user growth, before the company itself even publicly disclosed this fact."

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing- it...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-starts-pushing-its-data- tracking-onavo-vpn-within-its-main-mobile-app/)

</comment><comment><USER57> I use a VPN all the time on my laptop because I'm frequently on public wifi at coffee shops. That alone makes a VPN worthwhile. The logic of "you can't 100% trust them so its useless" seems really extreme and detrimental. Yeah it won't stop a determined government agency... but unless you're Edward Snowden what you probably should be more worried about is some sketchy hacker listening in on wifi traffic, which VPNs are super useful for.

</comment><comment><USER58> My direct ISP is a local monopoly.

My direct ISP is also a vertically integrated global media conglomerate which lobbies for abusive copyright practices, and maintains a large catalog of entertainment IP, which it walls-off from other providers, for the purpose of limiting competition.

My VPN provider may collect data. But they're not fucking evil monopolists.

And the other not-too-delicate point: MOST of the harm that comes from data collection is not Gillette learning that you have sensitive skin and might benefit from a 7-blade razor.

MOST of the harm comes from LARGE corporate entities aggregating huge datasets from large quantities of people, such that they can draw statistical inferences. There can be a small subset of weirdos - who adblock and vpn. Doesn't matter, because all their neighbors share their data openly. The weirdos who protect themselves are still statistically outed - and even if they aren't the idiot neighbors are exposed to fake news, shitty campaign ads, and they vote, and that affects policy and law which applies to all of us, and that's why we should ALL be using VPN, but that's certainly not going to happen, and if it did, the VPN companies would just sell our data to aggregators anyway.

</comment><comment><USER59> The bayesian guess that customers of a VPN service, specifically, are going to have more interesting traffic, is an interesting thing i hadn't really thought about.

I would think that setting up [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo) and getting good at moving around from cloud-provider-of-your-choice VMs wouldn't be a horrible idea.

<comment><USER60> A while ago I saw a link to [https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand) (probably here in HN) and I have it in the list of things-to-do to try it.

In the meantime I have a OpenVPN server at home just so I can log into my internal network from everywhere and use it when on public wifi... For the moment it's more than enough for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> As always, you have to do what is right for _your_ threat model. I personally run my own VPN mainly for peace of mind when I'm on untrusted LANs. It's actually not that hard to do, and I can easily serve both my phone and my computers.

And as always, if you have an APT after you...you have bigger problems than what VPN provider you should use.

This gist is at best a straw man.

</comment><comment><USER62> Slightly tangential: Today, one of my staff (we're an IT company, I'm CREST accredited etc etc) connected up a NextCloud client to our NextCloud instance on a laptop and noted that the SSL cert was untrusted.

The cert. on our NextCloud is a Let's Encrypt job. He was using a laptop provided by a customer (he works there a lot) and they deploy a MitM web proxy that he was perhaps only dimly aware of. I haven't look too deeply into the laptop config but it looks like either the MitM CA wasn't installed as trusted or the NC client is a bit clever. Now, I'll plump for: screw up in other corp. IT.

So we have a techie ignoring warnings from an app that is designed to share data safely. OK, the customer's IT dept have their policies but I would have hoped that the default from _my_ employee would have been to quietly walk away and uninstall NC from that laptop (he did after a few words.)

</comment><comment><USER63> VPNs are very useful in lots of situations. My wife was in the hospital after delivering a baby, and whatever QoS they had going on in the router was making it painfully slow. Fired up PIA and off to the races, a normally functioning internet connection. There are _a lot_ of networks where this is a legitimate use case. With cell phones such as they are today, people connect to public wifi frequently.

There's another benefit of VPN that people don't discuss much: your traffic can be compressed with LZO. This can make an unusably slow connection usable. The applicability to web browsing may be somewhat limited if the sites you use all set up their gzip headers properly, but I think that's a stretch when you're going off major properties, and it will compress all the traffic at the network level regardless of protocol-specific options, so it should help some.

</comment><comment><USER64> If you want to setup your own VPN for personal use or for friends the StreisandEffect project[0] on Github has made it dead simple for anyone with basic Linux experience.

[https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand)

<comment><USER65> If I'm doing that on OS X, what actual app/service do I use to connect to the VPN i set up? For example with NordVPN it uses a mac app... so if I create my own what do I use instead? Please dont say tunnelblick

<comment><USER66> You could try Viscosity[0], it's a great client but has a price tag, which I feel is worth it.

[0] [https://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/](https://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Obviously, this guy has never been to China (or any other censored country for that matter).

</comment><comment><USER68> I use a VPN to (a) prevent my employer from recording my visits to anywhere and (b) my government from doing the same. I use ProtonVPN. This seems like a good use case. And Proton seem like a good bunch. Anyone have any feedback?

<comment><USER69> your employer doesn't have access to your computer? if they do, they more than likely can see the traffic before it reaches the VPN...

<comment><USER68> It's my own machine but of course I'm using their WiFi network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Great site for going into the differences between VPN providers and all that goes with the ratings: [https://thatoneprivacysite.net/](https://thatoneprivacysite.net/)

</comment><comment><USER71> It's reasonably easy to set up a l2tp VPN on AWS, using cloudformation. Running an EC2 instance for a full month for this costs roughly $5 USD. I don't really get why someone with a bit of tech skills (=using github) would use a third party VPN service from an unverified provider. Sure enough, if Five Eyes want to get your logs from AWS they will, but for avoiding airport or hotel WiFi's snooping a simple l2tp VPN over AWS serves quite fine, and it works with mobile phones and laptops without requiring any additional software.

<comment><USER72> Do you suppose that Amazon, which actively sells cloud services to the US intelligence community, is less able or willing to spy on your setup than a VPN provider would be? I have some bad news for you.

<comment><USER73> AWS would lose lots of business if their complicity became public. Foreign customers have lost confident in the security/data compliance of public cloud in the wake of the NSA revelations.

It'd be bad for the NSA, too. I assume they are spying but only rarely act on the data they're slurping. If Amazon loses customers, and the NSA has eyes inside, the NSA loses their eyes.

<comment><USER72> > AWS would lose lots of business if their complicity became public.

So would any VPN provider. The incentives are no different, and neither are the opportunities, so recommending one over the other is a bit suspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> ...Or any network where it is not known whether it is hostile or not. I.e. any network that isn't known-non-hostile. Which is most networks, possibly up to and including your own home WiFi.

But if you want VPN service, why not simply setup your own server? They're cheap. There are hosting services that accept cryptocurrencies if you're into anonymity, and then you can be certain there are no logs (unless the hosting provider logs you, of course).

</comment><comment><USER75> There are also multi-hop VPN services (similar to onion routing) that offer privacy beyond a "glorified proxy" [1], [2].

[1] [https://restoreprivacy.com/multi-hop-vpn- chains/](https://restoreprivacy.com/multi-hop-vpn-chains/) [2] [https://secure.cryptohippie.com/resources.php](https://secure.cryptohippie.com/resources.php)

</comment><comment><USER76> > But I want more encryption! > Use SSL/TLS and blah-blah

Uh, DNS?

</comment><comment><USER77> My analogy for non-IT people for a VPN is that it's a tunnel between houses so you don't have use the road or footpath.

Then I point out that if it's easy for you to get out, it's easy for others (in the other house) to get in. And by extension anyone who visits their house.

That usually makes them think.

Managed/service VPN makes the hole wider or tighter depending on how trustworthy the manager is.

</comment><comment><USER78> Just run your own, its two clicks. Load this into cloudformation and stop it when you're done. [https://github.com/webdigi/AWS-VPN-Server- Setup/blob/master/...](https://github.com/webdigi/AWS-VPN-Server- Setup/blob/master/src/output/Unified-Cloud-Formation.json)

<comment><USER79> What problems does this solve? It ensures you still have a unique IP on the internet which can be traced by governments trivially, while a VPN service which actually doesn't log will keep you safe from simple attacks like that by sharing your IP.

If you assume the service provider is malicious and DOES log, then why is a VPS provider any better than a VPN provider?

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Yeah, but it's easier to coerce a local ISP into giving my logs than it is to force a VPN settled in god knows what country to do so.

</comment><comment><USER81> BTW, I use a private VPN server which can be setup on aws in a few minutes [https://github.com/webdigi/AWS-VPN-Server- Setup](https://github.com/webdigi/AWS-VPN-Server-Setup)

No logging on server side guaranteed. AWS could monitor but I do not thinking of that as an issue for my use cases.

</comment><comment><USER82> So we can't absolutely trust a VPN provider - but do we have more trust in Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/etc?

</comment><comment><USER83> Sometimes, a glorified proxy is just the thing you need. You have to weigh in the risk in having some random schmuck knowing where you've been and _maybe_ getting subpoenaed against your Wifi hotspot provider, your ISP and your government easily knowing where you've been.

</comment><comment><USER84> I use a VPN for one reason only: to watch Olympics coverage that is good. I'm not ashamed of that.

</comment><comment><USER85> There is a good question about whether or not a national security letter holds any weight with a VPN, especially an endpoint outside the United States.

I believe if supplied an NSL, I would expect the VPN provider to grant the request. But that would be only for those operating in the US.

</comment><comment><USER86> I've made this argument several times. I'm a psybouncer sort of guy. #shellz

It is super easy to get a 2 dollar a month shell account and run psybouncer with a list of hosts you can hide behind. At least then I can double proxy cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER87> If anything, a better title would be "Use VPN services for security, not privacy". I don't know about others, but whenever I'm using a VPN, I pretty much only have security in mind for when I'm using public WiFi's.

</comment><comment><USER88> awful advice. use a threat model, which may or may not include commercial VPN services.

I can think of many situations in which I'd prefer a commercial VPN provider to a private one, or even to running meek on a tor bridge. there are also many situations in which someone else keeping logs is extremely useful :)

</comment><comment><USER89> personally, i always side with greed/effort on this one.

"wait -- we don't have to pay to keep/store/rotate/maintain logfiles? and that's a value proposition? yes! pipe them badboys to dev null!"

</comment><comment><USER90> Can we get a '(2015)' appended to this article title, please?

</comment><comment><USER91> I only use a VPN when I need to get around geo-restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER92> just dont use the internet, it's all untrusted network. every option u take is shitty. enjoy our glorious internet!

</comment><comment><USER93> facepalm, your doing it wrong

</comment><comment><USER94> so encrypted dns and https ?

</comment><comment><USER40> We've seen this little bit of FUD several times in the past and it's as inaccurate as it has always been. VPNs cover some scenarios but the author makes unreasonable, extreme demands and wants them to provide security no entity lower than major government-level can provide. A VPN is just one of many steps in hardening your machine and connection, it's not a silver bullet. A setup that's truly hardened against internet surveillance directed towards the average user _should_ also include a VPN as one of its components, that much is sure. A VPN will not protect you against Mossad, because as Mickens said, if Mossad is after you, you are going to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. But a VPN will provide a very effective layer protecting you against location and IP based tracking and fingerprinting.

</comment><comment><USER95> My guess is US authorities already own, operate, or have otherwise infiltrated some of the major VPN providers out there.

</comment><comment><USER96> The title is very misleading. One should always use VPN to encrypt traffic when connecting to untrusted network (wired or wireless).

Just use your DIY VPN (IPsec - strongSwan is very good option, or OpenVPN), don't use any free or untrusted VPN services</comment>


How I Went from Graduate School Student to Amazon Warehouse Janitor - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/from-graduate-student-to-amazon-warehouse-janitor.html <comment><USER2> >I was going to be able to eat this week, but after having spent the past 14 years of my life getting a bachelor's degree in English, getting a master's degree in creative writing

This has nothing to do with the color of her skin, and actually this entire article seems part of a growing trend in American society wherein negative life outcomes are handwaved away with excuses of racism and sexism, as opposed to critical self introspection.

Good on you for dedicating 14 years of your life to subjects you were passionate about. Now welcome to the real world where certain skills are simply not in high demand.

This is stereotypical millennial entitlement, irrationally justified by false victimhood. Par for the course with Slate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. The author seems to think she has the right to find work in "her chosen field."

Anyway, I think Slate's strategy is working fine. The outrageousness of this piece is what compelled me to share it here.</comment></comment>


Syncing vs. saving, and the case for a home storage cloud - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080601-syncing-vs-saving-and-the-case-for-a-home-storage-cloud.html <comment><USER2> To me, it sounds very similar to just using some sort of revision control system.

I keep my home directory in revision control on dreamhost (svn now, but meaning to upgrade to git) to keep my three desktops and laptop in sync (plus a pretty web gui for doing stuff remotely).

And, for media, several years ago I put together 8 250G drives into a RAID5 (with 1 hot spare) giving me 1.5TB of storage. It was fairly impressive at the time ...

I think the biggest problem with the idea of a 'storage cloud' is the lack of ubiquitous bandwidth/internet access ...

It would be amazing to have network access be so pervasive that we didn't need iPods with storage - they could just access our 'cloud' of media from anywhere in the world. I don't know much about EM - would something like that even be technically possible (ignoring the feasibility issue for a moment)?

A guy can dream ...

<comment><USER3> I don't think you'd absolutely need ubiquitous internet access if the underlying "cloud" was based on a network filesystem that supported disconnected operation. So some files would be synced/cached locally. And then when you went off-network you'd still have access to (some of) them.

<comment><USER2> that still doesn't solve the problems of different devices having different capacities.

For example, my entire music collection is ~100GB (on my file server at home). On my laptop, I can afford to devote ~40GB to music, and on my iPod I can get ~30GB. The only way I can think of to solve this sort of problem (i.e., guarantee that I always have access to the song I'm looking for) is to have network access. And then I get 'synchronization' for free since all my data is in one place anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a Mac Mini at home with 2TB of attached storage (mirrored RAID to 1TB).

I use Offline Files to keep a copy of my data on all my laptops (including VMWare Fusion for my Macbook). For my laptops with smaller hard drives, I keep less stuff available offline.

It works perfectly - I couldn't function without it, and the redundancy/convenience is awesome. Having a Mac Mini I can then use as a media centre as well is a nice bonus. Cost the same as buying an embedded Linux solution too (such as a Thecus box).

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this what Ray Ozzy is trying to do with Live Mesh?</comment>


iPhoneX facial unlock can be bypassed by twin siblings - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8-yupM-6Oc <comment><USER2> [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208108](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT208108)

> The statistical probability is different for twins and siblings that look > like you [...] If you're concerned about this, we recommend using a passcode > to authenticate.

They know, they mention it, they suggest a passcode.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that identical twins do _not_ have matching fingerprints.</comment>


Ask HN: What sci-fi most resembles the Strugatsky brothers' "Roadside Picnic?" - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Roadside Picnic" is one of those books that stick in your brain for a very long time, which in turn makes it one of the books I most love. I do not know ANYTHING about the novel (or movie) "Annihilation" but whenever I see the trailer for the movie, it makes me think of "Roadside Picnic". Perhaps there are some similarities there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Opens Friday February 23; can't wait! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Roadside Picnic" is a science fiction novel written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in 1971. The novel was first translated to English in 1977 by Antonina W. Bouis. By 1998, 38 editions of the novel had been published in 20 countries. I have read it countless times. Here's a PDF, in case you've never had the pleasure: [http://soviethistory.msu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/picn...](http://soviethistory.msu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/picnic.pdf)

<comment><USER3> wikip says: Tarkovsky's _Stalker_ is loosely based on it, as are quite a few video games, movies and plays.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two similar books by Stansislaw Lem would be His Master's Voice and Fiasco.

<comment><USER5> Would like to add Solaris (Stanislav Lem) as well. Not only Tarkovsky has directed a movie based on Solaris as well, but it definitely has that soviet russian desperate hope of ones achievable freedom. Also the sci-fi part is also very organic as it was in Roadside Picnic

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent, I'm all over this. Thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin Vending Machine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.maschinenraum.tk/2012/07/15/bitcoin-vending-machine-exchange-euro-coins-for-bitcoin-wallets/ <comment><USER2> Note the carton it comes out in; the bitcoin receipts are printed out ahead of time, and stuffed into the vending machine like a pack of cigarettes.

A more advanced vending machine would purchase the bitcoins in real time, with the correct exchange rate, and print out the receipt on the spot. That would actually be pretty cool! Especially to think about security; you can rob a standard vending machine, but you can't steal it, disassemble it, and trick it into ordering thousands of bitcoins.

While just as functional (assuming a stable exchange rate), this particular device has zero notability as far as cool hacks go. It's a bog standard vending machine with bitcoin für euro painted on the side.

<comment><USER3> Declaring it has zero notability as far as cool hacks go is highly subjective. I for one think this is much cooler then the usual CRUD to-do list webapps we see around here so much.

<comment><USER4> I like the cut of your jib

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi, artist here. I want to use the moment of attention to ask around for ideas on how to conceptually build the reverse of this. The current idea would be to also use a web wallet, ie. you would preload an easywallet.org wallet with some coins, then give the URL to the machine (type, QR, whatever) and it spits out cash. There must be something more clever to solve the problem of transaction verification (inside easywallet it's instant and we don't have to wait 10m) and authentication (if the machine would receive your bitcoins on a special address, how the machine know you sent it?).

<comment><USER6> There are NFC bitcoin wallet apps for android aren't there? And "POS" NFC apps? Just cram an android board and an NFC reader in it set to accept taps, look up the exchange rate and spit out cash.

<comment><USER5> NFC has 0 users in my area, so later on this would be an option. But what about something right now, not involving complicated tech?

<comment><USER6> Bitcoin probably has less users in your area than people with NFC capable phones. I think for an art project this is a non-issue.

I also think if you consider my solution so "complicated tech" then this probably isn't the project for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If there was a moment to use QR codes for something useful it would be that receipt. The last thing I want to do is type some 34 character case-sensitive id into my browser to get my money.

<comment><USER5> There is a QR code on the receipt, it is just hidden under the small box so the internets does not steal my 1 €.

<comment><USER8> Send the E to your main wallet and show to QR code.

It would be quite intresting to watch later the statistics of access

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there any way a practical Bitcoin ATM could be done? I.e. a machine where you can get cash Euros/Dollars/Gold from your bitcoins. The naive approach is it just has an address you send BTC to, but then you have to stand around for 30 minutes while the transaction is verified.

<comment><USER10> Something like that, but it could be done ahead of time - receive a bitcoin address & redemption code online, send your coins then ~30mins later go to the machine, enter your redemption code and receive your BTC.

Redemption code could also be a QR code. Put it on your phone & hold it up to the machine.

<comment><USER11> You can instant accept any bitcoin value that is lower to the investment to do the 51% attack or similar. Example: no one is going to make a 51% attack to steal only 10 bitcoin from a vending machine.

Simply put a limit, or just say to the user that any amount of bitcoin over X will need Y time to get verified. Anything lower that X amount will be instantly processed.

<comment><USER12> Doesn't it require ~10 minutes to solidify into the record to prevent double- spending without having the 51% attack?

<comment><USER13> Correct - there are various attack vectors besides the 51% attack. Ideally, a transaction shouldn't be closed until there have been 2 confirmations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still think NFC proliferation would be a great thing for Bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of the fingerable Coke vending machine of 1982 (<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt>).

</comment><comment><USER16> You should definetely use QR Codes if you want to print it on paper. I think a "secure enough" ID would be really a hassle to insert into your browser just with your fingers. Or you sell small USB sticks with just enough flash to store your link on it (in which case increasing the minimum to 10€ would make sense).

Or maybe I'm just too simple minded and you have some creative ideas to make your IDs secure and handwritable for my Grandma?

</comment><comment><USER17> I thought this would be a vending machine that would accept bitcoins. That would have been more interesting

</comment><comment><USER18> Funny how the inverse would not work.</comment>


The unrecognizable Internet of 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2009/02/jurassic_web.html

<comment><USER2> That wasn't the Internet I had in 1996. I'd had unlimited free dialup to a UNIX system since 1992 or so, and by 1996 was at MIT with 10 or 100Mbps connections to ~3x45Mbps backbone.

Big UNIX systems with either black and white huge monitors (the ones which were already outdated, and thus free), or in some cases (on the oldest systems), or huge color trinitrons (Indy, Crimson, Suns, and my P90-based Linux workstation in my dorm).

Pervasive IM from 1992 onward (IRC + screen), and then Zephyr at MIT. Great filesharing via AFS (huge overhead to run, but once set up, better than even Dropbox is today). USENET.

<comment><USER3> That's what broadband was for.

So you could have dramatically better speeds than the vast majority of users.

That way, pages which nominally took 20 slow seconds to load over a phone modem, would appear instantly for you if you were privileged enough to have broadband.

Nowadays, "everybody" has broadband. But instead of the rapid browsing experience which everyone was looking forward to, we now have a slower user experience with broadband on most web sites than there was in 1996 with dial- up modems.

Back in 1996, most people did not yet have 56Kbaud modems, so the wise webmasters made sure their sites were optimized enough for mainstream consumers having 28.8K or at most 33.6K which would guarantee outstanding performance to the widest variety of visitors. When they were really serious about engaging users who did not have brand new computers, a site would need to perform decently at 9600 baud which was what the majority of installed modems still ran at, originally purchased for faxing.

When you occasionally went went to a slow, bloated page from a major technology company you knew right away it was "privileged idiots" on broadband without a clue as to how slow their "masterpiece" website behaved compared to what was expected from modem users.

Downloading files was expected to be slow, but web sites were not. Actually lots of MP3's were downloaded over modems, that's what MP3 was developed for. If you posted something, copyright was not a problem since you were not sharing it with the public, only those few who were online.

Almost 20years later, technology has progressed but it's clear that PEOPLE used to be more advanced than they are now.

There are probably engineers who are making sure their sites perform at 2G speeds without sinking below 1996 performance experiences, but from what I've been reading about interviewing & hiring trends it looks like they are excluded as extreme minorities within their percentiles.

Oh, well, I don't make the rules, just observing their disfunction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We had something really great back then: Usenet. We used it much like most people use social media nowadays I guess, talking about stuff, sharing images, etc

Usenet even allows noting threads, blacklisting users, etc. But not controlled by any single company... I miss Usenet.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to get down-voted into oblivion, but I never saw the love for Usenet. Sure, every topic under the sun was covered and anyone could access it, but it was far from perfect.

Impossible to search until things like DejaNews came along

Even going back a few months was a huge PITA on slower connections

Your ISP might not have carried every newsgroup, or it might update very slowly

I never cared much for mailing lists either, but at least many of them had a search interface that worked well.

For all the problems that web-based bulletin boards had, they were a huge improvement over Usenet. Much easier to use and faster to browse through. You can argue that if you want to, but they were adopted so much faster.

<comment><USER6> On the contrary, Usenet was very fast when used as intended, from a local news feed. Indeed, it'd work even were the network down.

Web forums took off because users wanted to use browsers for everything, and ad-supported had lower barriers to use than subscription-based.

<comment><USER7> People also started downloading binaries in earnest, which made ISPs want to get rid of the NNTP server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a routine. I would go online and start or continue a big download using some downloader tool. I don't recall when continuing a download over ftp and http became a thing, but it was a big improvement when your connection dropped out once an hour and you couldn't download more than a few megabytes in that time. The download could be a game or a new netscape or mcafee version (mcafee had a backdoor on their ftp that let me download the full version). I also remember downloading 3ds max 1.0 some time in 1996 or 1997, all 100 mb of it, at 5 kb per second. Then while the download was running i would surf the web, with images disabled ofcourse. Start from yahoo's directory and follow new links, which led to more links, which led to more links. I didn't really visit the same sites all that often, it was the newness that interested. Surfing wasn't visiting the same 5 sites in a round robin pattern, it was like tracing a path through wikipedia, but without wikipedia. There were a lot more webpages with wikipedia-like content, or so it seems in retrospect.

The first site i recall visiting on a daily basis was slashdot, to which i immediately developed an addiction. But that was 1997, not 1996. I also started university in 1997, and would hang out in the computer class to surf at megabit speeds, which felt like what happened when picard said 'engage'. Ofcourse, webpages were measured in kilobytes, not megabytes, so at the network speeds of the university I was typically gated by the speed of the web server on the other end.

I frequented usenet a lot, but just to read, not to post. Irc didn't interest me. I only started chatting when icq showed up, which led to my first online friend, a very kind south african girl, who I ended up visiting in the late 90's. I have a hard time imagining that scenario on the modern web.

I miss the old internet, but I would miss the new internet as well. If only we could have both.

<comment><USER9> I was the same but rather than 3ds Max I downloaded Bryce 3D. I spent so much time planning out and rendering what seemed like amazing landscapes. Oh those were the days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I found quite a bit to do on the web in 1996, I was getting online with a UNIX machine and a modem. No mention of USENET or IRC in this article? You could check webcams like the coffee pot webcam [1], finger the coke machine [2], and telnet into your university's CS lab.

[1] [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html)

[2] [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-coke- machine](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/internet-coke-machine)

</comment><comment><USER11> MUDs. We played MUDs.

<comment><USER12> CircleMUD forever.

And Quake/QuakeWorld.

<comment><USER13> I don't even know how much time I spent on IRC (dalnet) and when I discovered my local ISP had a Quake server it was huge!

We used to play Duke Nukem or Doom 1 vs 1 via a direct dialup connection, but playing agains 20 other guys on a Quakeworld server was just something else. The server was so badly run that every now and then something would happen to it that we used to be able to outrun our own rockets. I shot myself in the back with my own rockets many, many times.

I don't know how I even managed to graduate from high school really.

<comment><USER14> Hah, this. I thought it was pure magic being able to play Doom with a person not the the same room/house (we had a LAN setup for playing against people in different rooms), but it was so laggy.

Also, I played a lot of MajorMUD and LORD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember getting lost on hornet.org somewhere around this time frame, impressed by _so much free music_ (if a bit cheesy by today's standards). There was plenty to do, if you knew where to look, and like others have said: IRC/Usenet were helpful to that end. Local BBSs were still around but starting to fade, but some (WorldGroup) had the capability to serve as Usenet readers or IRC clients for machines that didn't have their own installed.

Gosh, I think I still have an archive of MODs, S3Ms, and others somewhere on a backup drive.

This article _does_ offer a window into the life of the average person who saw little use in the Internet, either by lack of curiosity or the walled gardens of AOL. I think it should also serve as a warning to us to keep the Internet open.

</comment><comment><USER16> LOL, an article about 1996 Internet that doesn't contain "Usenet" once. #slatefail

</comment><comment><USER17> The first startup I joined, in 1995, was GolfWeb[1] which was an online magazine about Golf. It was a bit early :-). Although earlier that year I had shown my inlaws the "Internet" using HotJava and they were amazed that I could get data from Brazil in real time like that. Like others here though the "internet" for me was largely email, ftp, and netnews (aka usenet). That net still exists, sort of like cosmic background radiation, but its there.

[1] [http://web.archive.org/web/19961105120854/http://www.golfweb...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961105120854/http://www.golfweb.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Hours and hours of IRC

</comment><comment><USER13> I always think about all the time I wasted on IRC or playing Doom/Quake/Duke Nukem back then or building crappy sites on Geocities.

I always think if only 15 year old me had looked instead in to trying to make money off the internet back then...

I remember reading back then that you could put up an adult website with 20 images, add Adultcheck (some of you have to remember that) to it and just lay back and count the money. Of course, I was much more innocent back then...

</comment><comment><USER19> Kali to play IPX games.

</comment><comment><USER20> Archie.</comment>


Coin, Wocket, Plastc: The all-in-one cards trying to sprint ahead of Apple Pay - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/12/coin-wocket-plastc-the-all-in-one-cards-trying-to-sprint-ahead-of-apple-pay/ <comment><USER2> I'm fully aware I'm buying into a rather risky and possibly disappointing piece of tech with Coin. That's a risk I was aware of when I paid up, because the potential gain for me is pretty big. I'm always forgetting gift cards, my card looks just like a bunch of my friends, making mix-ups common, and I like to carry as little as possible in my pocket — generally I leave the house now with my license, one card, and a twenty. A smart card helps me achieve this. I'd like to give it a shot.

Just about everything I've backed on Kickstarter and elsewhere has been delayed or had its features tweaked. I kind of assume that will be the case now! If you're not okay with that, the early adopter game is probably not for you, and that's a perfectly reasonable reason to avoid it.

<comment><USER3> This kind of talk is what bothers me about investment in this industry -- I've never seen anywhere else where people are so OK with no ROI. This is where all the dumb money in SV is coming from.

<comment><USER4> Not sure I see your argument. Credit cards can obviously be improved upon and it doesn't seem that credit card companies are doing much in regards to its form factor and ease of use.

We've got a couple choices. 1) Wait for companies that have enough R&D budgets to develop something that doesn't directly cost consumers or 2) fund another company to do so.

For #2 it doesn't differ much if that comes from a VC firm or crowdfunding campaign besides the VC firms adding a layer of abstraction.

I agree that we don't see this kind of money flowing around in other industries but you also don't see much change on most industries.

I'm not advocating the VC model or saying that SV spends money on what I believe are the most important problems. But I'm also not seeing how it's dumb money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Five years ago, these would be futuristic.

Now, compared to a pure-phone solution, they're retrograde: an _extra_ thing to carry, perhaps useful to interface with legacy, insecure magstripe-readers. "A day late and a dollar short."

<comment><USER6> Do you honestly shop at only places w/ NFC readers? Do you not eat at restaurants? Do you not take cash out at ATMs? I mean - sure Apple Pay is slicker and maybe more secure - but I can not imagine anyone now ditching plastic to go 100% Apple Pay, Google Wallet, whatever.

I like it when internet folk comment about current technology as legacy because some tiny fraction of its market now uses something new and shiny.

<comment><USER7> With the prospect of fraud liability in the US shifting to the merchants starting next fall, many merchants will be swapping in terminals that are EMV compliant. I suspect many of these merchants will go for a terminal that also has NFC.

[http://money.usnews.com/money/personal- finance/articles/2014...](http://money.usnews.com/money/personal- finance/articles/2014/10/28/coming-next-fall-more-chip-and-pin-cards-in-the- us)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I backed Coin on kickstarter, and am yet to get mine. It was supposed to be in my hands in November after delays, and now it is nearly January and haven't heard a word from them.

<comment><USER9> I actually just got a shipping notice for my "Beta Coin" yesterday. So at least something is happening.

<comment><USER6> Note. Shipping notice does not actually imply actually shipping, as I just discovered from their customer service agent. It just means they've created a shipping label for you and some time in the future (exactly when he didn't know) it will be used to ship you your coin.

<comment><USER9> Late reply, but they definitely shipped it, and it works really well: [http://i.imgur.com/WsuBttk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/WsuBttk.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does the EMV compatibility work? I thought the point of EMV is that you couldn't copy/forge it.

<comment><USER11> I think the plan is to partner with issuing banks and convince them to reissue emv-like tokens to plastc when a card is added (similar to what apple pay does with tokens over an NFC link).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Also Stratos [https://stratoscard.com/](https://stratoscard.com/)</comment>


Without right policies, automation risks shift of income from labour to capital - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/without-the-right-policies-automation-risks-the-transfer-of-income-from-labour-to-capital/ <comment><USER3> All: if we're to have non-boring discussion on a hot+divisive topic like this one, please have the restraint to not post anything unless you have something thoughtful to say. Most first reactions are reflexive, i.e. predictable, i.e. uninteresting, i.e. off topic for Hacker News. Repetition is the enemy of curiosity.

A good antidote is to stop and ask yourself if your comment engages at all with anything specific and/or unpredictable in the article. If it doesn't, consider not posting it; odds are you're moving discussion quality in the wrong direction for this particular message board.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Popular uprising can and does occur over these power imbalances - <USER2> historically you need a level of animosity from the monied and powerful towards the underclass, and in this era the capital rich have been very innovative at manufacturing consent and quelling, appeasing, or splitting discontent.

I'm reminded of what's been going on in Iran the past few weeks - one of the most grasping anecdotes is that poor and middle class people are seeing the children of the powerful absolutely flaunting their wealth, driving maseratis and Porsche's down the streets of Tehran, and spending more on dog food for a month than people make in a year. Those optics (just how rich the rich actually are compared to you) have been hidden from a lot of American society via exclusive neighborhoods and private airports and a general amount of discretion.

We also don't have discussions around class because our class hierarchy involves a lot of different verticals by virtue of not having only one culture. The elites of the culture that one belongs to look both a lot more attainable, or at least more inclined to interests that align with the rest of the culture.

So instead of the conflict being up the ladders, the conflict happens between different ladders. That's at least how I view the current political climate.

<comment><USER5> Except in the US you can just turn on the Kardashians. New money in the US is not at all hidden and flaunted just as it is everywhere else.

The difference between wealth in frontier/emerging market economies like Iran and developed market economies like the US is corruption.

If you see someone driving a Lamborghini in Tehran, it's fairly safe to assume acquiring that car involved a level of government corruption. If you see someone driving a Lamborghini in any US city, it's fairly safe to assume that person acquired the wealth to purchase that car through lawful free market activity.

Is there corruption in the US? Of course. But it pales in comparison to what you find in developing economies.

<comment><USER6> I'd argue that new money (e.g. Kardashian, <$250 million in the immediate family) is a drop in the bucket compared to real American, old money wealth.

E.g. the kind where your son being set up to run for President in 20 years is negotiated at a private golf club while ensuring the references are lined up for his children to get into the right schools

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The linked IPPR report is worth reading. For this crowd, the section on "partial automation" is probably most important. Web dev is... up there... in terms of potential for partial automation.

There are a few important observations that the article and the IPPR report don't stress enough.

1\. The jobs most likely to be automated, will be automated using technology that's inaccessible to the employees whose jobs are being destroyed.

This point is often optimistically papered over using observations like "coal miners can go to coding bootcamps!" I know a few truckers and I have no doubt that each of them could go through a relatively short coding academy for web development work if it became a "do or starve" situation. But I doubt that most of them could become much more specialized autonomous vehicle software engineers, either due to raw intellectual ability or -- more often -- due to an inability to make a substantial half-decade investment in retraining (most of these folks would need to (re-)learn a lot of high school algebra).

So just because we're replacing truck drivers with programmers, doesn't mean that the folks displaced by self-driving are somehow getting jobs that were created via the destruction of their prior employment opportunities.

2\. "Partial Automation" could mean less hours worked, but is more likely to mean lower pay and more hours worked, and not all "partial automation" is equal. I.e., to destroy trucking as a middle-class profession, you don't need a self-driving truck. You just need to automate enough of the hard stuff so that anyone can learn to drive truck in a week.

I think it's useful to separate the partial automation that de-skills work (level 4 autonomy for trucks) from the partial automation that simply means less equally-skilled work (web dev). The former creates more job opportunities, but turns a middle-class job into a low-class job. The latter just eliminates from middle-class jobs altogether.

<comment><USER8> I agree that there won't always be new jobs for those that are lost. There is some hope that the truck drivers can become mechanics and robot repair persons even if they can't learn coding. There is also a hugely underfunded part of our society that a lot of jobs will have to become in the future (imo) around elder care. Basically, low skilled people whose job it is to help other people, likely paid for by the government.

<comment><USER7> But truck drivers are paid _substantially_ more than the lowest educational rung in the nursing hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At least in the US, the "labor share"--which is the fraction of income that is paid to workers in wages, bonuses, and other compensation--has already been steadily declining. According to the Economic Report of the President (2013) [1], the labor share fell from 72 percent in 1980 to 60 percent in 2005. Increased automation can only make this problem worse.

1: [https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/ERP-2013/content- detail.html](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/ERP-2013/content-detail.html)

<comment><USER10> Automation is not a new phenomenon, it's what has been making us wealthier for the past century and a half.

Labor share actually went up for 1950 to 1970, and I don't think increases in automation were absent in that period: [http://www.macleans.ca/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/fredgraph_...](http://www.macleans.ca/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/fredgraph_labour_share.png)

<comment><USER11> It's possible that automation worked to decrease labor share in that period, but other factors(communism, GI bill, etc...) had a stronger influence in the other direction.

<comment><USER10> Sure, that's possible. But unless we can point to supporting data, it just amounts to seeking to reinforce our preconceived notions.

<comment><USER12> Of course it's not possible to show cause and effect between labor share and abstract 'automation'. Especially since not all automation is equal in this regard. Automation in some areas may increase labor share (accessible automation like PCs and washing machines) while others decrease it (expensive/in-accessible automation like assembly lines and machine learning). This means that automation could increase labor share one decade and decrease it the next as the types of automation change.

However, the argument for a current/recent causative link between the two is not a "preconceived notion" but rather a reasoned hypothesis arrived at based on observation of trends and application of logic to economic theories.

It is more reasonable to suppose that:

overall, automation has had a role reducing the labor share (which has been going down despite a couple of brief spikes in the 50s and 60s)

than to suppose:

overall, automation has been increasing the labor share, but this is overshadowed by other causes which have been decreasing labor share.

Thus, if you want to argue for the later supposition, the burden of proof is more heavily on your shoulders to explain the other causes which somehow outweigh the effects of automation on the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think an interesting thought experiment around this is:

Imagine we could automate literally every job. Even jobs that install, upgrade, and maintain the automation are automated. Any "work" that anyone wants to do is effectively unnecessary and would be considered volunteerism or someone learning and practicing new skills to expand their horizons. There's also artistic work; even if we had "creative AI" that could create music, radio, television (all completely lifelike CGI, of course), etc., there'd surely be a desire from creative people to still do this sort of work because they enjoy it.

Regardless, in this world, no one has a job and therefore no one gets paid. How do people live? Who gets what? Obviously you have to distribute "wealth" (whatever that means in this kind of society) in some manner that is independent of a person's contribution to society, since, by definition, it's not necessary to contribute to society at all. But how do you decide who gets how much? Do you just distribute the fruits of automation entirely equally among every person in the world?

Obviously we're many centuries or millennia away from this scenario, if we even ever get there without destroying ourselves in the process. But I think there needs to be some replacement for people whose jobs get automated away. Since our civilization still requires work in order to progress, I don't think we should just give those people a monthly check and say "have fun not working anymore", but at the very least we need to help these people along until they can find a new, better job. Perhaps companies that eliminate jobs due to automation should be required to pay out some portion of their new profits to employees who lost their jobs for a certain period. Think of it as extended severance pay. Some form of government assistance could also be an option after the terms of the severance pay expire, and could be funded by corporate taxes or simply a new branch of an expanded unemployment insurance program.

<comment><USER14> If every job is automated, someone will invent a new job that isn't. There will always be some people who will only be content when they have some amount more wealth than their neighbors, and will be willing to work to make up the difference.

<comment><USER15> If Earth reached that kind of point, I could certainly see people attempting to colonize other planets, to mine asteroids and all of the labor associated with that. I really think a lot of this automation eliminating labor talk way early. There was similar talk a century ago.

<comment><USER13> Sure. I'm talking about an unimaginably far away future when we've colonized all planets in the universe that we care to, and have unlocked every imaginable and unimaginable secret before us.

Obviously this is a future that's wildly fantastic, and one we're unlikely to ever attain, but... that's part of the thought experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> IMO, there will always be work that needs doing. Once a particular kind of work becomes worthless another will replace it.

Will the rapid increase in automation cause a "correction" in the labor market? Yup. Will it negatively effect lots of people in the short term? Sure. Will automation destroy the labor market entirely? No.

Even if a majority of jobs were in creating automation you still have to pay those people to automate.

I am wary of the people who feel the need to try and prevent the correction by way of government regulation. That seems like an easy way to create artificial markets like the housing bubble of 2008. At least at the current rate of automation there is not going to be a sudden massive collapse.

<comment><USER12> Nobody is claiming the labor market will be destroyed.

> Once a particular kind of work becomes worthless another will replace it.

Yes, but the question is if the new jobs will pay, in aggregate, as much as the jobs that disappeared:

"Aggregate wages will be reduced if workers are substituted for technology without new jobs of equivalent worth in aggregate wages being created elsewhere in the economy."

> I am wary of the people who feel the need to try and prevent the correction > by way of government regulation.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. The only way to prevent the correction(s) is to prevent the automation(s).

There are many ways we can make the correction(s) less painful. We can provide funding for re-training. We can provide unemployment benefits. We can provide basic income.

<comment><USER17> > Nobody is claiming the labor market will be destroyed.

Well, let me claim it then. The labor market will eventually be destroyed. That's the end goal of automation and it is an achievable goal. It's very likely decades away what makes it both too far to be an emergency and too near to ignore.

<comment><USER18> The auto industry is heavily automated and yet more people than ever work on it now.

<comment><USER19> If you're talking about US that's incorrect. There's a fall from peak 1.3m in 2000 to 940k in 2017 employees in automanufacturing[1] despite total population rising from 280m to 325m. Percentagewise it went from .46% to .28% of population.

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm](https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm)

<comment><USER18> A 0.2% fluctuation is noise and doesn't detract from the point. According to the automation fear mongerers we should be seeing massive unemployment.

<comment><USER19> That's not a 0.2% fluctuation, but 1.6x decrease. Treating it as 0.2% would treat completely wiping automanufacturing jobs as "only", 0.46% fluctuation.

<comment><USER18> Again, where is the massive unemployment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Decrying the lack of education of laborers is a bit of a red herring. The Industrial Revolution led to both a rise in standard of living for commoners and education reform (ie expansion of education) .

Off the top of my head, the average education level for women in Lincoln's era was 2nd to 4th grade. They were destined to be homemakers. The world did not think that needed an education. Lincoln's wife had a 12th grade education. She was considered headstrong and difficult. Her own child had her committed to an asylum, iirc. My opinion is that basically her high education caused de facto aberrant behavior for a woman. She had crazy ideas like wanting to make decisions for herself and her era did not tolerate this well.

Now, a woman who drops out of high school is viewed as an uneducated loser who failed to do the minimum. Twelfth grade is considered bare minimum acceptable for a functioning adult in the US today. That expectation apparently grows out of the evils of automation of the Industrial Revolution "taking" jobs. Keep in mind the US school schedule provides spring break for a week and summers off because historically even children were expected -- aka _needed_ \-- for planting crops in the spring and tending crops during the summer.

Yes, we need to design good policies that help effectively distribute this new wealth across the population. That kind of goes without saying in my eyes. It is an unprecedented level of wealth. Of course it means we are in new territory requiring new policies.

That does not mean it needs to be framed as a doomsday scenario. Hopefully folks will be proactive about this rather than reactive. Waiting until the peasants are revolting to conclude that maybe your policies are wrong, broken and stupid is the unnecessarily hard path forward.

Some sources:

[http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandth...](http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/IndustrialRevolutionandtheStandardofLiving.html)

[https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KristinaBowers/educational...](https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/KristinaBowers/educational- reform-1790-1860)

<comment><USER21> I take a bit of offense at casually pairing not finishing secondary school with status as a "loser". I don't want to derail the disscussion, I just want to express support for my fellow dropouts. Many of us are quite successful. That said, if you're a dropout and reading this, go get a GED and follow it up with an associates degree. It's definitely worth your time and effort, and it's pretty inexpensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since the 2nd derivative of population has been negative for quite some time, maybe this is a good thing?

</comment><comment><USER23> The current debt-based economy fundamentally depends on stocks going up every time debt increases.

</comment><comment><USER24> If the interest of individual business is to automate away your workforce but the interest of general society is to increase employment we're at a bit of a crossroads aren't we?

Perhaps Marx was right and it's time to move to a new phase of history.

<comment><USER25> The interest of society is not to increase employment - the interest of society is to increase prosperity.

Rounding up all the unemployed people, and forcing them, at gunpoint, to dig ditches and fill them will certainly increase employment, but will not do anything worthwhile for society. (I guess the ones that survive might end up in better shape.)

Having them fix potholes or educate children will increase employment, as well as prosperity. (Setting aside the obvious moral problems of the means by which this took place.)

Rounding them up and putting them into workhouses, where they build things for the benefit of a few well-connected individuals is how we have traditionally done this. It combines the worst of both worlds.

What people forget is that jobs are the means, not the end.

<comment><USER16> I agree with your point on increasing employment, but I disagree as to the "interest of society".

There is no one interest of society. Even defining prosperity is relative to who is talking. Having the wealthy subsidize the prosperity of the poor is not very prosperous for them.

<comment><USER25> It's true that society has no particular interest. An ascetic might take issue with increased social prosperity, as would, for entirely different reasons, a workhouse owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't the transfer of income from labor to capital a _good_ thing?

<comment><USER27> Only if capital is equally distributed, otherwise you end up with large numbers of people who cannot earn an income (or significant income) which I can only imagine negatively given how willing current holders of capital are to share their wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> risks? We're well down that path, aren't we?

</comment><comment><USER29> Well that's great. Give everyone an index fund when they are born; by the time they turn 18 they will have their basic income.

<comment><USER27> Children already have different starting positions in the "race" from even before they are born from a variety of different factors but most factors are likely linked to the wealth of their parents (their education, their careers, how they value their children's education, the amount of money they spend on their children, the opportunities they have access to etc. etc. etc.).

Giving every child an index fund (which should probably start being accessible when they are teenagers and become fully accessible in late 20s) would only solve some of the broader problems beyond the article.

I also think it just isn't going happen because it effectively devalues the wealth of the wealthiest. It's like a wealth tax, right? Also, if everyone has 100-10000K it probably doesn't mean the same thing it means now. The general problem, as stated in the article, is the distribution of wealth - but the wealthy want to stay wealthy not be equally wealthy.

Norway successfully implemented a sovereign wealth fund - currently work nearly 200k per citizen - on the back of their finite natural resources (oil), and I think that is the model that the UK (my country) should have followed. Otherwise, the sources of the funds is likely to be more direct taxation which doesn't seem likely to actually happen.

<comment><USER22> _Norway successfully implemented a sovereign wealth fund - currently work nearly 200k per citizen - on the back of their finite natural resources (oil), and I think that is the model that the UK (my country) should have followed_

Are you only interested in Norway and the U.K., or do you not see a likely fallacy of composition here?

<comment><USER27> I selected a successful example of an attempt at a sovereign wealth fund (in fact the only example that I know), and an example of a country that chose not to implement a sovereign wealth fund despite being the same situation. I'm not entirely sure if the examples I chose constitute a fallacy. I was merely suggesting one approach that could work for some countries to establish equal funds for their citizens. Some countries may not have access to abundant raw resources though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Will any policy keep the wolves from eating everything? I don't think so.

<comment><USER31> From 1910-1945, each country's richest 1% lost a lot of their wealth, all falling to (somewhat) similar levels. But in the time since, different countries 1% have built up wealth at very different speeds.

This suggests that a country's policy can actually have some effect - a lot is beyond each country's control, but it's not hopeless.

This is based on reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty First Century" (I'm halfway through) - really good read if you are interested in this.

<comment><USER32> I would wager that the two World Wars impact on capital had a lot to do with the decrease of the 1%'s wealth.

<comment><USER33> Not to mention absolute destruction of capital. Not just casualties of war, but capital investments that are either lost or used up in the process of war (airplanes, boats, fuel, etc)

<comment><USER32> This is basically what I was referring to, along with the redistribution and redirection of capital towards the "war effort."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> COMMENT REMOVED

<comment><USER24> >Is the right policy a heavy emphasis/propaganda campaign advocating birth control among people who are no longer employable in this future distopia?

You think there is a genetic component to their unemployability? This is even beyond social darwinism, it's straight up eugenics.

E: I just saw your edit:

>Eventually this will be solved with genetic manipulation of children, of course, which will eliminate any kind of permanent underclass that develops, but will also be the beginning of trans-human civilization.

The only explanation for genetic manipulation ending any kind of permanent underclass is if you believe that underclass exists only because of genetic reasons. You don't believe that do you?

<comment><USER34> COMMENT REMOVED

<comment><USER7> _> However, people tend to move towards communities of their same 'status'_

This makes no sense. A smart but poor kid does not have the option to move to a rich suburb with excellent schools.

 _> so if you have a really smart kid you aren't nearly as likely to find that kid still in the trailer park when they are 30 as one of their more average peers._

1\. But, you're just as likely to encounter that extra bright kid smoking pot in a trailer home in 20 years. Poverty is a hell of a burden and barrier. Intelligence can help you _stay out_ of poverty, but it's far less powerful when you want to _get out of_ poverty. And can even function as a disadvantage.

2\. Furthermore, lots of dumb but rich kids will go on to six figure incomes for the rest of their lives.

Intelligence isn't as strong a determinant as you claim, in either direction.

<comment><USER34> > Intelligence isn't as strong a determinant as you claim, in either > direction.

Your claim is incorrect.

[http://www.emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp- content/uploads/Intellige...](http://www.emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp- content/uploads/Intelligence-and-socioeconomic-success-A-meta-analytic-review- of-longitudinal-research.pdf)

EDIT: over the course of one generation, higher intelligence leads to a dramatically higher income. In the long run, if this effect continues, this will be compounded as higher intelligence parents are also higher income parents (by hypothesis).

<comment><USER7> From the abstract:

"The results demonstrate that intelligence is a powerful predictor of success but, on the whole, not an overwhelmingly better predictor than parental SES"

I.e., intelligence is about as likely to explain success (or lack thereof) as parental income. This is exactly what I was saying -- if you want to guess whether a 5 year old is going to succeed, take a look at their parents.

In short, I don't think this paper is the home-run for your case that you think it is. If what you're claiming is true, we'd expect intelligence to be radically better as a predictor than SES. But it isn't.

The paper also notes some important criticisms that cut that right to the core of your use of this paper in the context of the "nature vs nurture" debate.

Edit: the second component of your edit (" In the long run...") is absolutely _NOT_ justified by the paper you cite, and is wild conjecture at best.

<comment><USER34> I didn't advocate neutering the poor, and I strongly disagree with your suggestion that we murder rich people and take their stuff.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough. I've stricken that sentence.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>