Betting My Life On Transgender Hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.tcombinator.blogspot.com/2012/04/betting-my-life-on-transgender-hackers.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Where's the substance? "I'm gonna do something" with little explanation of "something" or the motivation behind doing it. I can support living your passion, but I'm not motivated to provide much of any other kind of support without more background information.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am moving to Mountain View to run TCombinator out if the HackerDojo.com. My apologies for not being clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great! I read some of your blog, and your story sounds like a tough one... I can only assume that it s like that for a lot of other transgender folks.

What is your general plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be in MV at the hackerdojo in 1-2 weeks. Once I am there, the first thing I will be building will be a front end to crowdfunding platforms like kickstarter featuring free/libre projects as the alpha for the Copyleft Media Foundation, with Richard Stallman and the FSF interested in my idea. Since my first incubee is an artist, a startup to sell her paintings is next. CubicleCurator is me asking offices to hang up her art, and hoping they buy some when I threaten to take it back and put it back in rotation. Third will be the TCombinator web site. I can't say for sure what will be next after that. At some point I will walk into YC and lay out my hand. For food, I'll try to always have a date lined up for lunch/dinner. For places to stay, I'm just winging it hoping somebody comes through for me. That's the part I am trusting my charm, enthusiasm, and unbelievable luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you believe transgender hackers are specifically discriminated against or disadvantaged in the startup community? Do you think that a startup incubator built around the all the participants being transgendered and drawing attention to their gender identity will help address this?

Or is the idea just to give something back, in general? It's not clear what your purpose is, or why you decided to go about it without any resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking at the data. 1 in 500 people are trans. 0 in 10000 venture funded startup founders are trans. Why is there such a disparity between their proportion of the population, and their representation in the startup world? I am not going to speculate as to why that is, I am just going to hack it. I don't intend for all incubated startup to have all transgender founders. My only condition is that they have at least one. It might seem like I am doing this with no resources, but my gut tells me that I am building wealth by doing it this way, that the story it creates will catalyze events that make those resources available. All I need to do is get picked up by YC.

<comment><USER5> While I admire your intentions, I think you should first look at the actual number of transgender people starting companies before drawing a conclusion that they "don't get funded". For all I know (and I don't know the numbers, I'm speculating here) we could use the same argument about Latinos and African Americans (jeez, do I hate those stupid terms).

It'd be interesting if you could backup your intentions with some numbers. I think you'll find the startup community, specially in San Francisco and the Bay Area, is specially open to all cultures and sexual orientations.

In any case, the best of lucks! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because you could make the same argument for any group, does not invalidate the argument. It speaks to it's universality. If getting them funding were the problem, it would call for a different fix. The problem is getting them to apply, to make them aware the option even exists, and to get them to think like entrepreneurs to prepare them for the rest of a YC like process. We just come in earlier in the life cycle and are using a succesful business practice as a tool for social good. We got 5 new incubees over night, so they do exist, and we are rolling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like an interesting concept, but I feel like you're jumping the gun a little. I would expect, though I don't pretend to know, that starting an incubator would require a lot of contacts/money/etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Moving to where the contacts are, so I can make them, and leading a life such that my story gathers attention, in hopes of attracting funding; seems like the way to go. I want to inspire future transpeople with my story. If I can make this work, starting from nothing, then there is no excuse for a transperson that has nothing not to apply to TC

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The name is a little derivative...

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought I'd make the idea easy to convey. My first name for it was TIntegrator but the word tint throws one off.

<comment><USER8> TIncubator? I can't tell if that's better or worse.

<comment><AUTHOR> So we either apply tint to windows or keep tin warm? Thanks for the thought though!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What billing system do you use? - <AUTHOR> Wondering what sort of billing systems people here use to support mobile/web transactions and if it integrates with native mobile transactions like the app store/play?<p>I searched around a bit for related posts, but everything was pretty dated. <comment><USER2> I think you are looking for a payment processor.

If so, Stripe is great, and it appears to have mobile libs as well:

[https://stripe.com/docs/mobile](https://stripe.com/docs/mobile)

</comment><comment><USER3> Most companies use Stripe.</comment>


Prof. Ross Anderson's response to a takedown request about security research - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/ukca.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Some background information.

The fundamental reason why this is a big deal is that in the UK, the repercussions of fraud are skewed towards customers rather than the banks. The relevant legal standard is that customers must exercise "reasonable care" with their PIN if the bank is to bear the cost of fraud. Of course, banks always insist that their systems are secure, and that it was the customer's fault. [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/consumer_affairs/arti...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/consumer_affairs/article6249940.ece)

The Cambridge team has been investigating vulnerabilities in the EMV standard underlying Chip and PIN (ubiquitous in the UK) for a long time.

From 2006: <http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/03/15/chip-and-skim/>

If I understand correctly they first started to find serious vulnerabilities in 2009.

Blog post: [http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/08/25/defending- agai...](http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/08/25/defending-against- wedge-attacks/)

Paper: "Optimised to Fail: Card Readers for Online Banking" <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sd410/papers/optimised_fail.pdf>

Media: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1QAnb-wnTs>

They escalated that attack in 2010. [http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and- pin-i...](http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and-pin-is- broken/)

Paper: [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.p...](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.pdf)

Media: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pMuV2o4Lrw>

<comment><USER2> I don't really understand the logic behind chip and pin cards. Do you really want me to disclose my card _and_ my PIN to a completely untrusted machine a stranger hands to me? How do I know the vendor won't just record both and replay them, charging me for things I didn't pay?

<comment><USER3> Chip cards cannot be "replayed" or cloned, that's why there's a chip in the first place. The chip stores card's private key that is used to digitally sign a (purchase) transaction. Each transaction is a multi-message _exchange_ in real-time between the terminal and the bank and it includes an unique ID generated by the bank, which is covered by the signature. This effectively prevents a replay.

The private key cannot be read from the chip without the use of a tunneling microscope or other hardware exotics. In fact it is not untypical for a chip to have a built-in protection against key retrieval that is set to physically fry the chip. The PIN is used to tell the chip to do the digital signing. No PIN = no signing.

That's how it works in general. This application of the smartcard technology is almost 20 years old, so while there are some variations one could still call it sufficiently _mature_ :grin

<comment><USER4> _Each transaction is a multi-message exchange in real-time between the terminal and the bank and it includes an unique ID generated by the bank_

That may or may not be case (there is no way for customers to check that), but the problem is that this encrypted communication is between some third party's terminal and my bank, not between my chip and my bank. IIRC correctly, the protocol in the end boils down to:

\- bank asks terminal 'Can you verify that the customer is who he claims to be?'

\- terminal asks user for PIN

\- terminal asks chip: is this PIN correct?

\- chip replies: yes.

So, I have to trust that the terminal will not e.g. put my PIN on Twitter.

Worse, that terminal-chip communication is not encrypted. Hence, it is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. That is what 'chip and PIN is broken' demonstrated.

<comment><USER3> Actually, no, that's not how it worked when I last looked at it. At the high- level it was:

\- bank asks terminal "Here's a random token, have the chip sign it with its private key"

\- terminal asks the customer for the PIN

\- terminal feeds PIN into the chip, and this enables signing function

\- terminal feeds bank's token into the chip, gets the signature back and forwards it to the bank

What you described looks like something designed by a layman with very basic understanding of the cryptography. I will not be _shocked_ if this was in fact deployed, but I still find it very unlikely.

<comment><USER4> I reread [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.p...](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/papers/oakland10chipbroken.pdf), and things are indeed similar to what you describe. If I understand things correctly, the difference is that the "and this enables signing function" part isn't there. It is enabled by default, and gets disabled only when PIN check fails. That is 'necessary' because the terminal can skip this step if it wants to do a transaction without PIN check.

A man in the middle can hide the "check this PIN" request that the terminal sends from the chip and send a "PIN is OK" reply to the terminal. That way, the terminal thinks PIN check succeeded, and the chip thinks it is doing a payment without PIN check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An important but often overlooked fact is that while there's no universal freedom of speech in British Law (although the UK is a member of the European convention on human rights which has such a protection), universities specifically are required to act to protect freedom of speech of their members.

The University of Cambridge is legally obliged to stand behind this research under the 1986 Education Act which states:

      (2) The duty imposed by subsection (1) above includes
      (in particular) the duty to ensure, so far as is
      reasonably practicable, that the use of any premises
      of the establishment is not denied to any individual
      or body of persons on any ground connected with—

      (a)the beliefs or views of that individual or of any
      member of that body; or

      (b)the policy or objectives of that body.

Full text: <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/61/section/43>

<comment><USER6> _while there's no universal freedom of speech in British Law..._

Perhaps not in _written_ law, but I think you'd have a hard time convincing a judge that the British constitution does not guarantee freedom of speech.

As my legal friends as fond of pointing out, an unwritten constitution has the important advantage that its words can't be twisted the way that a written constitution can.

<comment><USER7> But an unwritten constitution is easier to change, because there is nothing written down to refer to as a 'base.'

<comment><USER6> Canadian constitutional law has something called the 'living tree doctrine', which states that the constitution can grow and evolve over time, being reinterpreted in new contexts. To push the metaphor a bit further, I'd point out that a living tree is considerably more resilient than a dead tree, and is likely to adapt to conditions which might otherwise destroy it.

I don't think anyone can seriously claim that the commerce clause of the US constitution was intended to grant the vast powers which it has been used to uphold; but because the US constitution is -- theoretically -- not subject to growth and reinterpretation the way that the Canadian or British constitutions are, a legal fiction has been adopted instead.

If the commerce clause had been interpreted within the context of the Canadian or British constitutions, it would probably have been handled as "we're going to read _one new power_ into this" on a number of occasions, rather than the "yes, this clause gives you the power to do _everything_ " which seems to have occurred in the US.

<comment><USER7> I find it extremely disingenuous to say that because the Canadian (or British) Constitution can easily be re-interpreted in different contexts, that it will always be interpreted in 'the correct way.' You seem to be pointing to examples of the US Constitution being interpreted poorly, making the implication that a 'dead tree' constitution can _only_ be interpreted poorly, and a 'living tree' constitution can _only_ be interpreted in a good way.

A constitution that can be easily re-interpreted may allow for your government to 'turn on a dime,' but it makes no claims to whether your government is turning in a good or bad direction.

As to the US Constitution:

* The US Constitution can be re-interpreted by the US Supreme Court through the setting of legal precedent.

* The US Constitution can be amended by Congress. (Prohibition was a Constitutional Amendment).

* The current interpretation of the commerce clause could be overturned by the US Supreme Court should a case come before them, and the make-up of the justices leans towards overturning the current state of affairs.

<comment><USER8> The U.S. Constitution absolutely cannot be amended by Congress.

<comment><USER7> Amended by Congress with the approval of the States. It's a slight difference. In the grand scheme of things like checks and balances, it matters, but in the real-world Congress is the only one that has the power to start the process. The States themselves can't float a Constitutional amendment so far as I understand it.

<comment><USER9> In fact they can, but it has never happened. The relevant text is here: <http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Article5>. The basic idea is that 2/3 of the state legislatures must call a Constitutional Convention, where the Amendment(s) will be proposed and sent to the states for ratification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If one of the smartest computer security guys was prepared to do all this work and throw lots of expensive experts (well grad students) at finding your bugs - would you:

1, Send developers to all their seminars to learn something

2, Buy them drinks

3, Sue them

<comment><USER11> If anything, the banks promoting this technology should be sued for false advertising.

 _in many cases banks refused to reimburse cardholders who reported unauthorised card use, claiming that their systems could not fail_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_and_PIN>

<comment><USER10> 2 decades earlier they prosecuted people who reported ATM losses for fraud - because ATMs were perfectly secure.

<comment><USER12> reference?

<comment><USER10> Numerous paper's on ross's page

<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/wcf.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading that letter makes me proud of the Security Group at Cambridge University. Ross Anderson took us for a couple of Security courses in second/third year Computer Science and was interesting, direct and completely no-nonsense. He emphasised that policy and ignorance were often the main causes of failures, especially with LAS, NHS centralisation (UK government projects). I find strong individuals like Anderson inspiring when they take on organisations who attack knowledge rather than being hands-on and fixing their systems.

The Security II course is especially relevant. I am not sure that everyone can access these resources but the lecture notes cover a variety of modern hardware approaches to security (including chip-and-pin). Try: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/SecurityII/>

I highly recommend Anderson's Security Engineering, the first edition is available online: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> Every university, scientific and social community, and research organization that think they _have_ to pander to the requests of corporations and those in power, must make note of this.

We have had enough "Dark Ages" in the past. Let's learn something from history.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really enjoyed the language!

<comment><USER16> Same here. After the first page, I was laughing aloud. The whole letter reads like a two page, very official statement claiming "You sir, are an idiot." Then again - he's British :) I love it, especially that my course this year included exactly that paper and we spent considerable time on it for comparison to many other types of attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Lovely. The project looks very interesting.

<http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~osc22/scd/> "Smart Card Detective"

</comment><comment><USER18> Dear Jeff Bezos and Amazon: Take note of how it's done by real men. By your actions WRT Orwell and Wikileaks, you've shown that you aren't worthy to shine the shoes of a real information-bearer, and you aren't fit to host my cloud nodes either. Sincerely, Marsh Ray

<comment><USER19> A service provider terminating Wikileaks for AUP violations after they began publishing classified diplomatic cables; one of the oldest educational institutions on Earth standing up for a student's MPhil thesis.

Totally the same thing. How did I miss this?

<comment><USER20> It seems that the point is that Wikileaks apparently broke no laws.

<comment><USER21> You don't have to break a law to violate an AUP.

<comment><USER18> You have to live up to more than your own AUP to be worthy of respect in my book. I'd go so far as to say anyone who does only the minimum required by policies they themselves wrote and defers the rest to extra-constitutional influence from the likes of Sen. Lieberman is pretty darn low.

So sure, do whatever you can get away with under your AUP, just don't expect me to respect you for it (or trust you with my data).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On Google docs viewer:

[http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~r...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/ukca.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> _Cambridge is the University of Erasmus, of Newton, and of Darwin_

CMOA

</comment><comment><USER11> Do you have some details on the background of this issue?

<comment><USER24> No the OP, but:

A news story about the initial issue: [http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and- pin-i...](http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and-pin-is- broken/)

The take down notice (pdf): <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/20101221110342233.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Baller!</comment>


The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan - <AUTHOR> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?page=0,0 <comment><USER2> I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth.

But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge.

Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?"

Well dang, Action X could be just about anything. The fact of the matter is that all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation; it's an amalgam. The logical structure of trying to support a statement such as "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan" is flawed. It's like saying the landing on Tarawa didn't beat Japan. Well no, and yes. The assertion itself is flawed.

While I love all sorts of semi-non-fictional essays, I have a little warning bell that goes off when I'm mostly through an essay and the essayist starts telling me a story about how I've been misled. Smells of a political agenda and manipulation.

Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear. Atom bombs did not cause as much building and population damage as the fire-bombing did. That's also clear. But atom bombs represented one thing that Stalin and fire-bombing did not: the end of Japanese culture. A few dozen atom bombs would not only have made huge holes in the landscape, it would have erased the culture of Japan.

Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories. In fact, the more details people know, the happier I am. But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war, and it saved thousands of allied prisoners whom the Japanese were ready to execute. It also allowed the great Japanese culture to continue.

Most serious historians don't get into counter-factuals, except maybe as fiction. It just doesn't work.

<comment><USER3> This comment is contentless. It doesn't address a single specific thing the article says. Instead it offers woolly generalities ("Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear") and platitudes ("all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation"). It sounds like it's saying something; indeed, it sounds like it's saying something wise and avuncular. But I've read it three times and can't find a single part that is saying anything at all, other than where it repeats exactly the bromide about how the Pacific war ended that the OP is critiquing ("dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war")—ironically, right after it says "Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories". If you're going to respond to a critique, shouldn't you answer what it actually says?

It's unfair to put the article in the same bucket as "UFO stories". No one who has read it (and is being fair) would describe it as "speculation". It isn't anything like counterfactual fan fiction. Almost the entire piece does nothing but cite facts, such as: the dropping of the nuclear bombs does not figure significantly in historical records of the Japanese leadership's discussion about surrender; the Japanese war council decided on August 8 not even to discuss the Hiroshima bombing; damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not out of scale with the earlier fire-bombings of other cities; Japanese leaders had expressed a willingness to sacrifice their cities if necessary; Japan's war strategy was predicated on the Soviets staying neutral; and so on. Are these wrong? If so, how? Are there other, more important facts omitted? If so, what are they?

The negative responses to this article so far are so insubstantial that they form a defense of it by omission. I'm very curious now to hear a credible counterargument. Surely there is one?

<comment><USER4> >"Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?"

I think it was addressing the overall idea of speculation in historical events.

<comment><USER5> What meaning of speculate do you mean? There are two that are nearly the opposite of each other (making this an almost-Janus word):

1\. To meditate on a subject; reflect. 2\. To engage in a course of reasoning often based on inconclusive evidence.

If you mean 2., the article doesn't do anything of the sort. It lays out specific pieces of evidence based on observed historical fact and draws specific conclusions from them. On the other hand, the top-level comment above is pretty vague in its rebuttal.

<comment><USER6> In talking about causality, the article makes two counterfactual claims: had the Soviets not invaded Manchuria, Japan would not have surrendered and had the bombs not been dropped, Japan would have surrendered. (In my opinion, the first claim is well-defended, the second less so). Since the bombs were dropped and the Soviets did invade, any discussion of these possibilities is a little speculative.

<comment><USER3> This seems reasonable—thanks. Can you quote where the article actually claims those two things? I'm curious, and I don't disbelieve you, but I really don't want to have to go back and comb through the whole thing again :)

<comment><USER7> This section, primarily, argues that the atomic bomb created a political out for the Japanese government:

> Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan's interests > in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the > war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. > diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase, and U.S. > security would be strengthened. The $2 billion spent to build it would not > have been wasted. If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was > what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were > able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four > years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic > influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting > that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been > tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

It basically argues, yeah, both Stalin AND the bomb likely contributed to a surrender. This part is not cited as well, however. It relies on implication based on the dissonance between records before the surrender and statements by the Japanese government after the surrender.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but that passage is about the political uses of the causal argument that happened to win (and that the OP thinks is incorrect). It makes no counterfactual claims.

dspeyer's point is a good one if (but only if) the article actually does make the two claims he mentioned. Does it? I don't remember.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article seems determined to assign a single cause as the reason for the timing of the surrender when I think it is quite more likely that it was an accumulation (and a rapid one at that) of serious developments that precipitated that end.

Claiming "Stalin did it" when there had also just been an atomic attack and an entire summer of horrendously devastating attacks, that the Japanese were almost powerless to defend against, on cities not to mention the ever tightening noose of allied encroachment throughout the region and the anticipation of an imminent final invasion, just seems like someone is trying to come up with a catchy article title... not honestly looking at the situation.

<comment><USER3> Article writers don't come up with the headlines. In this case the headline does the author a bad disservice by making his piece seem simple-minded. It isn't. Its strongest parts come before he even gets to discussing the Soviet invasion. Those are (a) his dissection of the timeline by which surrender unfolded, and (b) his case that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not outliers in the destruction of Japanese cities and thus not game-changers in the minds of Japanese leaders. When he does turn to the Soviet invasion, his argument isn't that the Japanese surrendered because they were overwhelmed by it, but rather because it closed off their remaining strategic options.

Agree or disagree, these are serious arguments that deserve to be met with more than platitudes and belief-repetition.

<comment><USER9> I'm starting to think not many people actually read the article. Though to be fair, the first 3 or so pages are just build up, and I almost ejected out of skepticism, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the first couple pages there is an argument made that the Japanese supreme council didn't seem to react to news of the first bomb and the associated casualties.

I don't think it is easy for us today to understand how slow information was to travel during the time of the war nor is it easy for us to understand how incomprehensible it would be to accept reports about a single bomb creating as much destruction as was reported at the time.

While the slow reaction of Japan might be incomprehensible if the same events happened today I think it is dangerously misleading to apply todays standards regarding communication loops and the destructive force of atom bombs to the events of the late 1940s.

<comment><USER11> That's why the author lists a number of examples from roughly the same time period (or earlier e.g. Lincoln/McClellan) as a means of comparison. It's anecdotal, to be sure, but then again this is history, not science.

<comment><USER12> The two examples given were of a singular leader responding to something that called for immediate action.

The Japanese were hardly in a position to strike back against the atomic bomb. In the absence of an obvious response, it's not surprising that it took time for their leaders, a group, to come to a decision to surrender, considering their culture and society.

(I do agree that the role of the Soviets is indeed underplayed, but in its desire to make a point the article overreaches.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The accusations of 'revisionism' show an underlying bias - in the former soviet union and much of Europe, this is has been the accepted historical perspective for some time.

</comment><comment><USER14> The challenge I have with this, and pretty much all 'alternate history' foreign policy discussions, is that they try to argue an indefinite (Japan would have surrendered if we hadn't done this) against a definite (We bombed them and they surrendered immediately).

There isn't any way to prove that stuff of course, and you can tweak the indefinite to be whatever you want to overcome the definite. So in some ways it is simply mental gymnastics and great fodder for writers of fiction.

The further we get away from the events of those times the easier it is to second guess those decisions and not be challenged by someone with first hand knowledge of the events.

<comment><USER3> _they try to argue an indefinite (Japan would have surrendered if we hadn't done this) against a definite (We bombed them and they surrendered immediately)_

No, the article is not arguing against a factual claim like that, but against a causal one: that Japan surrendered because of the atomic bombs. The latter may be the mainstream view but it's just as "indefinite" by your standard. And causal claims can be weakened by evidence, which is what most of the article tries to do.

Also, one of the article's major claims is that Japan _didn't_ surrender immediately. That argument is more intricate and interesting than I expected.

<comment><USER15> > _Also, one of the article's major claims (its first, in fact) is that Japan > didn't surrender immediately._

I find it hard to reconcile this idea with the relatively persuasive reasoning that the second bomb was unjustifiable: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Nagasaki_bombing_unnecessary)

I am not entirely convinced that it was so, but I do think it is reasonable that a few days is not sufficient time to understand the full magnitude and novel nature of such an event. The second bomb was probably necessary, but even in an alternative universe where it was not, I think it would be foolish to expect a surrender that immediately.

<comment><USER16> I believe the logic of the U.S. military planners was that they were worried the Japanese would assume the bomb was _truly_ unique and novel. They didn't want the Japanese to assume they could simply hunker down and expect a bomb every 2-3 months or so; the Japanese were already surviving equivalent damage from mere conventional bombing raids.

That doesn't mean the U.S. couldn't have waited more (the Nagasaki bombing occurred while Hirohito's Supreme Council were discussing Hiroshima and the Soviet invasion), but I don't think they would have waited much longer either.

<comment><USER15> The second bomb and the surrender were probably both independently inevitable. Better to drop the second bomb before there were Soviet troops in the same country laying claim to it though. I find it easy to believe that they rushed the second bomb because they didn't want to miss the opportunity to use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow, what an annoying travesty that sign on page is, and whatever all that other stuff was. I understand they have to make a buck and can do whatever they like with their content, but that was powerfully annoying. I imagine content providers have spent a lot of time anguishing over how they can extract money from users, but I wonder if this is the best way. No way am I going to figure out how to get through the multiple layers of dismissals and whatever to figure out how to get to the content.

<comment><USER18> I was able to view the entire contents (annoyingly spread across many pages) without pop-ups, a sign in page or any issues at all. I'd politely suggest that on HN, designed for those technically minded in the sphere, you should be able to cure your own browsing problems.

Whitelists, AdBlock, Ghostery, NoScript, HTTPS everywhere and so on and so forth should fix any issues you have.

You are perfectly able to choose when / where ad revenues are paid, rather than being tied to someone elses business model.

<comment><USER19> > You are perfectly able to choose when / where ad revenues are paid, rather > than being tied to someone elses business model.

You can do that by just not visiting the website. I find it to be a lot more worthwhile because you actually find legitimate alternatives instead of [in my personal opinion] cheating the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Surprised to see this on HNs front page when there's an Oscar-winning documentary that makes this pretty clear (Errol Morris's "The Fog of War").

Vonnegut also talks about this on Slaughterhouse-V:

"The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as the result of an air attack with conventional weapons. On the night of March 9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people. So it goes." (Chapter 9)

The nuclear attacks served their purpose, sure, but they were definitely not decisive for the outcome of the war.

<comment><USER21> Vonnegut was very probably wrong about the Dresden numbers. One of the people to popularize a disproportionally high death toll from the firebombing of Dresden was David Irving — later discredited and now largely known for his fascist leanings and his denial of the Holocaust — in his first book [1]. The modern estimate, from a report done by the city of Dresden in 2010 [2], is is that around 25.000 people died.

He's more right about the Tokyo bombing. Richard Rhodes, in his fantastic "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", cites 100,000 dead and 1 million injured.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Falsification_of_evidence)

[2] [http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommi...](http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommission_Dresden1945_Abschlussbericht_V1_14a.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Defense Analyst James Dunnigan, in his highly influential book _How to Make War,_ argued that late in the war, the blockade and mining of Japanese Shipping had by far the largest effect on the Japanese ability to wage war. Given enough time, the Japanese military machine would just have bled to death. However, it may have been political rough going to continue the war in Japan long past the defeat of Nazi Germany. By other accounts, the Japanese were pretty much ready to surrender without the bomb anyway.

</comment><comment><USER23> The author touches on this, but I've always been fascinated with how little awareness there is in the USA about Japanese atrocities (like the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731) compared to the well-known and oft-discussed atrocities of the Nazis.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731>

<comment><USER24> _Some_ of us are familiar with it. Contemporary Americans certainly were (obviously not Unit 731, but Nanking, various atrocities revealed by the liberation of the Philippines, etc.), and the fact that the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was by the end of the war killing something like 250,000 of the occupied peoples per month was one of the many inputs into the desire to finish the war quickly by any means necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've never heard a defense of nuclear weapons based on their ability to end wars, only as a weapon to prevent them. I think most policy makers are in agreement that use of a nuclear weapons means they have failed their primary purpose.

As for the "uniqueness" of nuclear weapons, there's an interesting parallel to the uniqueness of chemical weapons use in Syria. Even as conventional weapons are ripping the country to pieces, there is a heavy amount of focus on chemical weapons. I think it has to do with the desire to draw lines of acceptability somewhere, but an inability to draw lines on anything but a technological front.

<comment><USER26> > _I've never heard a defense of nuclear weapons based on their ability to end > wars, only as a weapon to prevent them._

TFA aside, it is generally accepted that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused Japan to surrender. Besides, the bomb was not invented until well into the war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can you imagine if we had not dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Without the horrific evidence of those bombings, we would have inevitably dropped a warhead in the future. Except 7 years later, we would have dropped an H Bomb instead, with 1,000 times the power. The other side would probably have warheads by then, and would answer back. I think we were very lucky that history proceeded as it did.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is why I've started to dislike revisionist history. The premise that the threat of Stalin alone forced Japanese surrender is at least as ludicrous as saying that the nuclear bombs alone forced Japan to surrender.

I closed the page immediately because of the full-page popup ad, but I've encountered the premise elsewhere so it warrants examination.

The first thing to realize is that for Japan, whatever else happened an invasion of any sort would be harshly contested. It's not simply a matter of manpower either, there was a lot that was needed to be able to provide a workable invasion:

* Control of the air.

* Gunfire/artillery support to suppress the defenders prior to the assault wave.

* Logistical support, including landing craft (LOTS of landing craft), means of turning a beachhead into a supply terminal.

* More importantly for logistical support, a working supply chain to feed materiel to the battleground.

In almost all military aspects the U.S. was already in much better shape to host an assault on Japan. Even assuming the U.S.S.R. could pull all their troops from the occupation of Eastern Europe fast enough via the Trans- Siberian railroad they still would have needed to accumulate sufficient landing craft, field Naval support assets, build more airstrips and air bases, etc. etc. etc. As a side note, the whole reason Stalin would have needed to move the masses of troops _back_ to the east was because he knew from his diplomats in Japan that Japan would respect the ceasefire that had been signed after Gen. Zhukov decisively defeated the Kwantung Army at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, a military result that may have proven invaluable in the later defense of Moscow.

The Soviet troops fighting in Manchuria/Manchukuo in 1945 were in a _much_ better military situation by comparison: The Kwantung Army's best troops had been continually bled to fight on the real front lines, Mao and Kai-Shek's guerrilla armies represented a constant drain on the Kwantung Army, and years of garrison duty had the effect of further reducing the martial ability of the KA compared to battle-hardened Soviet troops arriving from the Eastern Front.

But at this time the Soviet gains were achieved only overland. In fact the Soviets proved unable due to logistical difficulties to completely overrun Korea, a failure which would itself significantly alter the course of later history.

Sometimes proponents of the "Soviet shock" theory mention that it was the threat of attack on the Japanese Home Island from the undefended north which truly drove the spectre of fear amongst the Japanese leadership, but that's missing a very big point: There's a _reason_ the Japanese defenders on the Home Islands were concentrating on the south! The Japanese could certainly have redeployed to the north if they had wished, so it seems that they feared the imminent U.S. invasion more than the potential threat of Soviet invasion.

But the Japanese _knew_ the Soviets were going to attack. They in fact had been re-deploying the Kwantung Army to east Manchuria where they expected the attack to fall. The Soviets surprised the Japanese by attacking from every possible direction instead, but the surprise wasn't that the Soviets attacked at all, it was that it came sooner than expected and from the wrong directions.

None of this is to say that the atom bombs were _the_ reason that the Japanese surrendered either. But it bears repeating that the Japanese were quite willing to fight an invasion of the Home Islands. Whether the invaders were American or Soviet was relatively immaterial, and given the massive American advantage in both air cover and Naval support the Americans could have invaded into a weak spot if that were the only concern.

In the actual event the news of the Nagasaki bombing had come during a Supreme Council being hosted by Emperor Hirohito amongst his closest advisers. The news drove the Council to split evenly on whether to surrender (but maintain the Kokutai) or surrender with further conditions.

An American B-29 pilot was tortured into "confessing" that the U.S. had a 100 more atom bombs, which would be used in the next few days, news which was used by Japan's War Minister to push for surrender. Likewise, when Emperor Hirohito broke his Council's tie (in favor of surrender) he explicitly mentioned the destructiveness of the atom bomb. One of the emperor's advisers even mentioned the 'twin shocks' of Soviet invasion and the atom bombs as being gifts in a sense, as it meant the Emperor could say he was forced to surrender and not that Japan "gave up".

So it seems clear that the Soviet invasion was core to the decision-making, but not that it was the only concern, and certainly not that the atom bomb was not factored in at all.

<comment><USER3> It's uncool to post a long comment on an article you didn't bother to read, let alone dismiss it with a slur about "revisionist history", whatever that is. The article is clearly a serious one, and since it challenges the #1 belief _by far_ that nearly everyone (in North America if not elsewhere) has about the end of the Pacific War, it deserves attention.

Unsurprisingly, you haven't addressed most of the article's arguments. Even where your material does overlap, it does so incoherently, because one can't figure out where you actually disagree with the author or are even talking about the same things.

A serious counterargument to the OP would be very interesting. The comments on the FP site itself are terrible. So far, the only real argument I've seen is that the article is old hat, since we already know that it wasn't just the bombs that ended the Pacific war. It may be old hat among specialists, but it isn't to the millions of us who were taught and still believe exactly that.

<comment><USER12> If you're seeking serious responses to the claim that the Soviet invasion was paramount and the atomic bombings irrelevant, /r/AskHistorians has had several threads on the subject: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_japan_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_japan_and_the_atomic_bombs)

(I think mpyne's reply is "serious", though. It's always preferable to read first, but the argument presented in the article is not new. I did read the article, and I'm not surprised mypne managed to address several of its points without even looking at it.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. But the first thread I ran across there could hardly be more supportive of the OP's argument:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_h...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_has_been_some_controversy_on_the_true/)

If you can point me to counterarguments more specifically, I'll look at them.

<comment><USER12> Well, there was also a short discussion about this very article: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fhhf7/the_bo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fhhf7/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_stalin_did_opinions_on/)

As the top comment by /u/restricteddata points out, the argument about the Soviet role was made by Hasegawa (who the FP article did not cite). There's no refuting that the Soviet side of the story is important and relatively unrecognized (by the public). But it's hard to say exactly how events would have played out without the bomb. And the FP article's subheading, that US policy has been based on this "myth", is just a puzzling conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> (This is not about the content of the article, this is about the site.)

Why oh why do they have a sign-up/sign-in? The content is clearly there in the background! So obtrusive!

This is how I was able to read the article:

      (function(){var o,w,h,b,n,s,h,i,j;o=document.getElementById("TB_overlay");w=document.getElementById("TB_window");if(!!o){o.parentNode.removeChild(o);}if(!!w){w.parentNode.removeChild(w);}h=document.getElementById("art-mast");b=document.getElementById("art-body").getElementsByClassName("translateBody")[0];n=document.createElement("div");n.style["max-width"]="625px";n.style.padding="150px 0 0 150px";n.innerHTML=h.innerHTML+b.innerHTML;document.body.innerHTML="";document.body.appendChild(n);s=document.getElementById("share-box");s.parentNode.removeChild(s);h=document.head.getElementsByTagName("script");i=h.length;while(i--){j=h[i];if(!j)return;j.parentNode.removeChild(j);}})();

</comment><comment><USER29> Why revisit the issue? Modern society has evolved morally to be utterly revolted by the killing of civilians of another country intentionally and would never support the use of a nuclear weapon in this fashion. Isn't that all the moral judgement we need?

<comment><USER9> Studying history is always useful. We should have known from WW1 what happens when we don't help rebuild effectively, and from WW2 what happens when you do, simply speaking. Yet we pretty much ignored all that info for Iraq.

Also, "intentionally" can always be fudged. We "intentionally" bombed the house with the suspected terrorist in a dense neighborhood, but "unintentionally" killed a lot of civilians in the surrounding area. We don't seem to be revolted enough by that to stop doing it.

<comment><USER29> The first paragraph contains this: "Obviously, if the bombings weren't necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong". I don't see why articles need to go there. Studying history is useful but making moral judgments mixes societies at different levels of moral development.

Unless "unintentionally" can be fudged to morally sanction wiping out a city with a nuclear weapon today, I don't see the point. Maybe I slightly exaggerated the moral repugnance of society today towards civilian death. But the difference between moral attitudes toward civilian death today and civilian death in WW2 is so dramatic, a little bit of exaggeration does very little to weaken the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Apologists often give the excuse that the Civil War was unnecessary to end slavery because slavery "would have ended soon anyway".

Ask yourself if the would-have-ended-soon-anyway defense works well for the Civil War.

</comment><comment><USER31> I find the article rather convincing: I want to play a related alterna-history game that takes the article as a given.

Did the Soviet Union make a serious strategic error in declaring war against Japan when it did?

Remember, we're taking it as a given that Japan surrendered to the Allies because of the Soviet Union. Moreover, it surrendered to the USA because it for very good reason preferred USA reconstruction to USSR reconstruction, in a way that mirrors whom German troops very strongly preferred to surrender to.

What if, instead, the USSR had simply decided to bide its time?

Some results:

1) Two rivals would continue to claw at each other for months, draining massive amounts of blood and treasure.

2) In the meantime, the Allies would be forced to have at least some number of fewer troops in Europe than they did in actuality. I don't find it plausible that the Soviet Union would see it in their interests to, say, invade France and Italy. But it would give the Soviet Union a much stronger negotiating position, and a United States devoting its resources to crushing Japan would be a United States not focused on rebuilding Europe. And a vacuum of power in the more developed parts of Europe would have been very tasty for Stalin.

3) On the con side, the USA would likely end up in a more powerful position in East Asia, if it won, decreasing Communist influence from China to Indonesia and Vietnam to India.

3.5) If the USA lost (let's define that as the cessation of hostilities while Japan managed to hold on to many of it's earlier imperial acquisitions), the USSR would have an embittered, genocidal, and highly authoritarian state with the capacity for total war on its border.

4) Also on the con side, Soviet influence would have been quite limited in Manchuria and northern Korea. The main base of operations for Mao in the Chinese Civil War would have been limited.

5) The USSR wouldn't have regained some positions in the Far East that it imagined were legitimately Russian. It also wouldn't have been able to uproot the large amount of industry that the Japanese had invested in Manchukuo.

6) Violating the Potsdam agreement that required the USSR to invade by August 9 would have decreased trust in the Soviet Union on the American side.

7) All those cons acknowledged, all of them except 6) could have been mitigated by the Soviet Union dragging its feet for six months or even a year more, drawing out and sabotaging back channel negotiations with Japan as much as possible, and then invading at the very end.

7.5) If it waited longer, Japan's willingness to surrender might have evaporated, leaving more time to get a full scale invasion of the whole of Korea, northern Japan, and a wider area of China going. That's on top of allowing for more preparation time, which may or may not have been useful.

Thoughts, HN? If anything, I think this indicates that the Soviet entering when it did wasn't the main factor that ended the war, because from the Soviet strategic perspective dragging the war out as much as possible seems very preferable to what ended up happening.

<comment><USER32> "Did the Soviet Union make a serious strategic error in declaring war against Japan when it did?"

I've always wondered why American troops stopped at the Elbe and left Berlin to be captured by the Soviets.

Was there a deal? Soviets get Berlin in exchange for attacking Japan?

<comment><USER33> The Western Powers had already determined the occupation zones for defeated Germany. Ike didn't see the point in spending lives taking something he'd have to turn over to the Russians... Russia did agree to enter the war against Japan, and it did so. One might argue that it accelerated its entry as it learned of the Bombs so as to have a seat at the table.

And having seen the damage from the Tokyo firebombing all the Bomb provided was efficiency. The US had already come up with the proper means of erasing cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Looking at the massive logistical effort that was the D-Day landings, did the Soviets even have the strategic lift/naval capability to transport their army onto Japan's northern islands? I guess that the Germans had fortified the coast better, and maybe Japan hadn't, never expecting an invasion from the North, but still, you need a Navy, and at that point, did the Soviets even have one?

</comment><comment><USER35> _> It could not have been Nagasaki. The bombing of Nagasaki occurred in the late morning of August 9, after the Supreme Council had already begun meeting to discuss surrender, and word of the bombing only reached Japan's leaders in the early afternoon -- after the meeting of the Supreme Council had been adjourned in deadlock and the full cabinet had been called to take up the discussion. Based on timing alone, Nagasaki can't have been what motivated them._

I've not read the whole thing (just starting work, have it marked for later) so I may be jumping the gun with this comment, but that paragraph jumped out. A lot of arguments I see for why dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary seem fairly rooted in hindsight - this doesn't make the arguments wrong, but it does mean we can't judge the decisions made on these metrics because at the time people did not have that hindsight to help them.

Did they _know_ that the effect of soviet actions would be so detrimental to Japan long-term?

Did they absolutely _know_ that Japan, or one of its allies, didn't have something up its sleeve had the potential to turn that situation around? Or that a sudden change of fortunes wouldn't disable a large chunk of the relevant forces against Japan such that they could pull themselves "back into the game"?

No one thing beat Japan. War isn't about doing the _one_ thing that will probably stop an enemy: it is about trying to make sure they stop and stay stopped long enough for you to solidify your position and deal with your other problems (particularly, in a large war, battles on other fronts). This often means hitting an enemy while they are down just in case. Rule 4: The double- tap.

Of course as taps go dropping a nuke over a civilian target is at best morally dubious, this is undeniable IMO, but I find a lot of the arguments against to be ill considered from the point of view of what people making the decisions at the time _definitely_ knew, definitely knew that they knew, and the long list of things that they could not confirm so strongly.

</comment><comment><USER36> The article does make a convincing argument as to the reasons why the bomb was highlighted as the main reason for the surrender of Japan, very interesting. I suppose fear of invasion from S.U wasn't nearly as serious as the loss of diplomatic ties. In which case an eventual two front war would have done them in. Also, as much as the Japanese high command didn't react to the city bombings, I doubt they ignored them as much as the article comes to say. Loss of production power is absolutely a strategic concern. On the other hand, the cultural preference of Army over Navy in Japan in a war that was largely Naval may mean that other ludicrous claims about the way they strategized and conducted war may have merit. Interesting read!

</comment><comment><USER37> I would like to see more comments on Ward Wilson's larger point, that atomic bombs should not exist.

This is merely one piece to that larger argument, which I find convincing, that atomic bombs are not useful in a modern world as a militaristic or diplomatic tool. Maybe some of the commenters that are demonstrably far more expert historians than I would explain whether they think this recollection supports that idea, or that atomic bombs are merely less influential than a large scale invasion from Stalin, a scary dude.

</comment><comment><USER38> The speed at which the Soviets defeated the Japanese in Manchuria is what motivated the USans to drop the atomic bomb, to end the war quickly and keep the Soviets out of a post war Japan.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is why Google and technology in general should stay away from foreign policy where the end always justifies the means, no matter what the rhetoric is.

</comment><comment><USER40> Stalin hustled to make war against Japan because he knew the US had the bomb and he did not want WWII to end without any strategic gains in the Pacific.

So either way, the bomb caused Japan to surrender or Stalin caused Japan to surrender. Both precursors were directly or indirectly caused by the bomb. In summation, the bomb caused Japan to surrender.

I want my 20 minutes back for reading this garbage.

</comment><comment><USER41> I thought it was a very well written piece. I've seen lots of debate on this subject. The author brought a lot of evidence and work to the table for this. While its implications can be debated (what lessons can we draw from this?) a very strong case is made for the invasion being the cause for the end. Thanks for sharing. =)

</comment><comment><USER42> "Why did it take them 3 days to sit down and discuss it?"

His argument seems to come down to this 3 day delay between Hiroshima and the Supreme Council meeting. He is not looking at this through the lens of the Supreme Council, or even any Japanese citizen.

Remember: this is the first use of the atomic weapon in front of the entire world in human history. As far as the Japanese were concerned, on August 6, 1945 the sky suddenly lit on fire and destroyed an entire city in seconds. To the mind of 1945, this event was indistinguishable from magic. He cites many examples of military emergencies inciting a quick response but none on the level of total, wholesale destruction like the atomic bomb. Indeed, the atomic bomb was completely unprecedented in all of human history.

It is therefore not completely mysterious why the Supreme Council would initially not know what to do. They would be a) in a state of complete confusion b) in a state of complete defeat and c) trying to shore up the nation after what must have appeared like a supernatural force leveling an entire city and killing many, many thousands of people.

<comment><USER43> The article does talk about this though and effectively dismisses your "indistinguishable from magic" argument:

" Japan had a nuclear weapons program. Several of the military men mention the fact that it was a nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in their diaries. General Anami Korechika, minster of war, even went to consult with the head of the Japanese nuclear weapons program on the night of August 7. The idea that Japan's leaders didn't know about nuclear weapons doesn't hold up."

As for your " none on the level of total, wholesale destruction like the atomic bomb":

" if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer."

In other words, there is nothing to suggest any of the state of shock that you suggest would prevent them from meeting earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The article's 5th paragraph says it all. From today's perspective, Japan's defeat in the war is obvious. But Japan's leaders still needed an eye-opener then. One bomb obliterated an entire city, and they were still deliberating about the possibility of surrender?

About the bomb, it's not a question of necessity, but of economics. That was a time of war. American forces beat the enemy every step of the way in the Pacific. The Allies may have enough power to bring Japan down to its knees during the war in the long run, but how tempting is a weapon that wreaks destruction unseen yet on the planet, but gives zero casualties, instead of sending your fellow soldiers to their deaths on a foreign land? Who wouldn't get sick of a long war and not seek to end it as soon as possible?

Of course, someone may argue that since it's a question of economics, then it is unnecessary, and therefore, the bombings were wrong. But surely, if there is something you wouldn't want to give to your enemy, one of those is time. The author mentioned a Japanese nuclear research program, and that really deserved a red flag.

It took 6 more days after the Soviet invasion and Nagasaki bombing, before Emperor Hirohito publicly announced their unconditional surrender. If the emperor made the public announcement before the Nagasaki bombing, then the second bombing may be wrong.

If there is something I would admire of the Japanese people, it would be their sense of patriotism. Stalin did not beat Japan. What kept the country from surrendering and hold that long was Japanese Pride.

Little Boy and Fat Man are very weak compared to today's nuclear weaponry. Historians and article writers should be discreet when discussing sensitive issues like this, as they can fuel hatred. Focus should be on preventing nuclear war, or there would be no more history left to discuss.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is one of those cases where submitting the article with the original article title would be very helpful. Both on the page, as visible to readers, and in the HTML source code title element, the title of the article is "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan... Stalin Did." The timeline that the article sets up claims that the (belated) declaration of war by the Soviet Union against Japan, which came only after Allied victory in Europe, is what forced Japan to consider surrender to the Allies.

Responding to this, I would point out that it was a known historical facts for a long time that Stalin had spies (plural) in the Manhattan Project, and generally had a good idea of how far the United States was progressing toward developing an atomic bomb. So one could just as well say that it is the advanced development of the bomb by the United States that prompted Stalin to declare war against a new enemy, right after a brutal and prolonged war against the European Axis powers.

Over the years, I have read many proposed ways to defeat Japan without dropping the atomic bomb in a variety of American sources. Submarine captains thought that submarine warfare alone could defeat Japan. (Near the end of the war, American submarines were operating freely very near the coast of Japan, and even in the Inland Sea between Shikoku and the other main islands of Japan.) American aviators were glad to have the bomb to continue to justify their existence, of course, but many have expressed the opinion that conventional strategic bombing alone could have defeated Japan.

Japan set up a rather harsh set of expectations by how fiercely it fought against the Allied landing on Okinawa. That made Allied war planners revise upward their estimate of the difficulty and cost in lives (both civilian and military) likely from a forced invasion on the main islands of Japan. That had to be part of the consideration as Allied war planners decided whether or not to drop the bomb. It's still a historical fact that no surrender was offered until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.

</comment><comment><USER46> I wasn't aware that US carpet bombed 66 major cities full of civilians. That's kinda hard to spin as life saving solution. A-bomb was most wonderful political invention. Much better than technical one.

</comment><comment><USER47> Pearl Harbor beat Japan.

The bomb was tactically economical, and nothing else. It did the work of 500 B-29s. Guess what? We had those 500 B-29s, and the bomb did nothing more than save petrol.

Quit hand-wringing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is there a link that doesn't require the user to login?

<comment><USER21> I'm not getting a login box. It would seem that it's defeated by Adblock (Chrome).

Edit: I am getting the login box when I go to the "single page" link. Removing the DOM elements works.

<comment><USER49> I have ABP installed (Chrome + Mac). Still getting the login/signup/paywall. This is what I did: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5814168>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This smacks of coming up with a conclusion first, then massaging "what ifs" and unsubstantiated viewpoints to support the conclusion. Historians should operate in the reverse.

</comment><comment><USER51> There are numerous problems with this article, but the one that jumps out at me the most is that it doesn't seem to have occurred to the author that maybe the Soviet Union got off the fence and declared war on Japan _because_ of the atomic bomb. If it looked like victory was going to be achieved without an invasion, why wouldn't Stalin have jumped onto the bandwagon and declared a war he knew he'd never have to fight?

</comment><comment><USER52> It seems the implication of the article is to say that we have potentially drawn the wrong conclusion on "which straw" broke the camels back.

And that if we drew the wrong conclusion that somehow this might impact or could have impacted the rationale for developing nuclear arsenals.

It's also popular in the US war college that officers attend, the statement that "Wars cannot be won by air power alone".

But beyond these details, whether the history is exactly right on what caused the Japanese to surrender, there is no doubt that the conclusion of WWII precipitated an arms race and a space race as Nazi scientists and technology were divided among the superpowers.

Nothing would have stopped the advancement of war making technology, no convenient conclusions about the strategic causes or effects.

Technology will advance whether we want it to or not. And whether or not its in out best interests as we perceive them in our posited "future".

</comment><comment><USER53> what on earth does this have to do with technology or computer science?

</comment><comment><USER54> Stalin has always been under-rated in the United States. Truth was, he was a hero who helped to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan. But saying that undermines those who want Churchill and FDR to take all the credit.

<comment><USER55> Maybe the fact he sent >12 million of his own citizens to slave and die in the Gulag in Siberia could have made it difficult to cast him as a hero. For a depressing account of the Gulag and other aspects of life under Stalin's rule, read a few of Solzhenitsyn's books.

<comment><USER56> Where did you get that from? The total number of Stalin's victims is around 1.5 million.

EDIT: I misread. It's about double, 3 million. Unreliable figure in any case.

<comment><USER11> 1.5 million is a comically low estimate. Where did you get your figure? Over 3 million died in the Ukrainian collectivization political famine alone.

<comment><USER56> I want to start by saying that's controversial. Famines were frequent in that area way before the Soviet Union even existed. Can you attribute these to Stalin's policies alone? Nobody would blame Coolidge for the Dust Bowl.

But you're right that 1.5 million is too small. I read again and there's about 3 million officially recorded victims. I cannot trust or distrust the higher figures, as these were reported either by western media or political dissidents, both of whom have very good reasons to demonise the USSR.

Just as the USSR spread a lot of lies about the Western world, I don't trust the Western media about these controversial subjects.

<comment><USER11> I suggest you read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

The artifical famine of 1932-1933 was not a natural famine. It was a calculated effort by Stalin to undermine the Ukrainian peasant farmers, a class he viewed as a threat, and force them into collectivization. It was perpetrated by the Communist party through the steady increase in grain quotas. It is a matter that of historic fact that Ukrainians starved to death while trains shipped away mountains of grain that they themselves had grown.

Feel free to distrust "Western media", but there are primary sources that support this narrative. For instance, Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko's account, or the narrative of American (and up to that point Soviet sympathizer) William H. Chamberlin (although perhaps you might not trust his account since he's a Westerner).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google I/O 2013 - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/events/io

<comment><USER12> 01010011 - 8-bit mode

01110101 - <USER2>

00101010 - <USER3>

00111001 - <USER4>

01111111 - ascii (via heelhook)

01000101 - <USER5>

10001000 - <USER6>

11011011 - <USER7>

11010011 - <USER8>

11100111 - <USER9>

10000001 - <USER10>

10010000 - <USER11>

<comment><USER13> If by some chance they decide to add more later, can find them with:

for (var a in ww.mode.modes) { var b = ww.mode.modes[a].pattern; var c = b != null ? b.toString(2) : ''; console.log(a, b, c.length > 0 ? Array(9 - c.length).join('0') + c : ''); }

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 01111111 gets you to ascii art

</comment><comment><USER15> 11010011 - a logo game</comment>


Adobe confirms major Flash vulnerability - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2015/10/15/adobe-flash-player-security-vulnerability-warning/ <comment><USER2> Arrgh, pisses me off so much that Firefox constantly bugs you to upgrade Flash due to security vulnerabilities only to be informed that the new one also suffers from some horrific security vulnerability. Time to ditch it. Thank god BBC Iplayer is changing over to HTML5, which I don't assume is free from vulns but at least its one less piece of malware for me to worry about.</comment>


SkullConduct: Biometric User Identification Using Bone Conduction [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://perceptual.mpi-inf.mpg.de/files/2016/01/schneegass16_chi.pdf <comment><USER2> My head is fairly asymmetrical, so I wonder if there would be some kind of strange signature which wouldn't allow a standard system to work, or perhaps it would identify me as a monkey or something.</comment>


How Microsoft Perfectly Predicted the World Cup's Final Stage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/14/how_microsoft_perfectly_predicted_the_world_cup_s_final_stage

<comment><USER2> They actually got one result wrong actually. I believe they predicted 15 out of 16 match results correctly.

</comment><comment><USER3> so did gambling sites.</comment>


Show HN: DIY Position Tracking Using HTC Vive's Lighthouse - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ashtuchkin/vive-diy-position-sensor <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, author here. I used the system described in the link for indoor stabilization of a drone, plus precise landing, to support an automatic battery swap station project (have a video there). Worked pretty well, so I decided to open-source it in hopes this would help fellow hackers.

Let me know if you have any questions!

<comment><USER2> This is awesome!

Curious what your thoughts are on this vs one of the official SteamVR tracking modules[1] which use the TS3633[2]? For $10 this is an awesome hack for off the shelf components. However, for $70 + Shipping you can pick up 10 of the tracking modules which filter out noise and do accurate envelope calculation.

[1] [https://www.triadsemi.com/product/ts3633-cm1/](https://www.triadsemi.com/product/ts3633-cm1/)

[2] [https://www.triadsemi.com/product/ts3633/](https://www.triadsemi.com/product/ts3633/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I actually haven't seen those, they look pretty good, basically replace the custom schematics I needed to build.

The timing calculation still needs to be done somewhere though, I wish there was a module that would do it internally and just publish the timing numbers - that would be more scalable and then even Arduino would be able to handle several sensors.

<comment><USER3> From what I understand, the official kit includes software for calibrating a specific configuration of sensors in fixed relation to each other and figuring out the timing parameters. Guess I find out for sure tomorrow!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great project! When listening to an interview with Alan Yates[0] (main designer of the Lighthouse) I was thinking about an application like this.

I recently did shop around for motion capture system (cameras tracking markers) and one of the cheapest systems with comparable performance to OP's came out to cost $5-8.5K.

[0] [http://embedded.fm/episodes/162](http://embedded.fm/episodes/162)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's crazy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A bit off-topic, but I was wondering:

How was the base station visualization[1] done?

[1] [https://camo.githubusercontent.com/d9241f231a03d177d215f98bd...](https://camo.githubusercontent.com/d9241f231a03d177d215f98bdb2cdcd8e648ddab/687474703a2f2f692e67697068792e636f6d2f696a4d7a585246334f59425a362e676966)

<comment><USER6> [https://youtu.be/J54dotTt7k0](https://youtu.be/J54dotTt7k0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fantastic!

Having been developing with the Vive for most of the last year for Left-Hand Path ([http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760](http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760)), and given I've got a lot of mocap experience before that, I can confirm that Lighthouse's tracking is _ridiculously_ good.

It's not just as good as something like an Optitrack system: it's significantly better.

If this provides comparable tracking to what the Vive offers, it's an absolutely unbeatable price / performance combo.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was really inspired by that too! The tracking is comparable, but not on par yet - you need multiple sensors and IMU fusion to achieve the smoothness of Vive. This is only a first step :)

<comment><USER7> Ah, they're doing sensor fusion with inbuilt IMUs? That makes sense...

I have a colleague with some deep technical knowledge in this area - he's the guy who did the heavy lifting when I built an inertial mocap suit a while ago. I've pointed him at your project. If it turns out that it is of interest, perhaps you can get some useful collaboration / suggestions out of that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I actually just arrived in Seattle to take the official HTC course on using the Steam VR positional tracking system, and this was one of the first things I saw as I got off the plane.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's so cool :) let me know if I got anything wrong with the device or geometry calculation! Also I would be happy to get any feedback from Steam VR people!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been mulling a installation work based on exploring video solids[1] around using cheap phone-VR mounts. This project is exactly what I need to find the viewers position in the video/space. Any cheaper way to do this without the Lighthouse devices?

[1] [https://theblackbox.ca/blog/vector- video/](https://theblackbox.ca/blog/vector-video/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice project!

There's a whole bunch of indoor positioning methods, having different precision/simplicity/cost profiles, so you might need to shop around. Probably cheapest and closest to my sensor is ultrasound sensors like [http://www.marvelmind.com](http://www.marvelmind.com)</comment></comment>


Free MongoDB courses starting Monday the 22nd - <AUTHOR> http://education.10gen.com/?

<comment><USER2> 10gen has really been pushing this on HN. I guess all the negative press has had an impact.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there will be something about row-level locking and fail-safe defaults?)</comment>


Docker 0.5: external volumes, advanced networking, self-hosted registry - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.io/2013/07/docker-0-5-0-external-volumes-advanced-networking-self-hosted-registry/

<comment><USER2> That's pretty great, I can finally use Docker for my Django apps (I didn't want to include the Postgres data in the image).

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! I'm looking forward to the self-hosted registry among other things (for all of us that are corporate schmucks).

So much more to start to tinker with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there documentation somewhere that shows how to setup our a self-hosted registry?

<comment><USER5> We're going to release a blog post about this tomorrow morning. Send me your twitter handle to @sam_alba, I'll ping you when it's out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> the private registry seems awesomly easy to get set up. This has been the only thing keeping me from using docker for deployments, super excited to try it out!

<comment><USER7> Please let us know if you have any questions or comments. We're always in IRC ready to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this a typo:

> __ _" For example:

        -p 80:5000 redirects public port 80 to private port 80***"

because it later says:

        -p 5000:80 to bind the port 80 of the container to the port 5000 on the host

EDIT: yep - but its now fixed in the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you sam. As you mentioned, we fixed it :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hypervisor toolkit for low cost dual core Cortex-A9 platform - <AUTHOR> http://l4dev.org/news

<comment><USER2> Just curious, in a nutshell, what are the differences between your L4 implementation and OKL4 (or older pistachio kernels)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Codezero was a result of dissatisfaction from earlier L4 kernels and we worked through the engineering details. It is a simpler kernel with a smaller API, linux virtualization interface and source code. We also have better ARM support including multicore and focus only on ARM and Linux. See here for some of the features: <http://bit.ly/ifGXxN></comment></comment>


Overnight success takes years - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/overnight-success-it-takes-years.html

<comment><USER2> I'm all for reading Jeff's blog but this is from 2009, you should label it as such, many people will have already read it.</comment>


Medical Staffing Company Slashed Benefits for Doctors, Nurses Fighting Virus - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-er-doctors-nurses-benefits <comment><USER2> > Private equity investors have increasingly acquired doctors' practices in > recent years, according to a study published in February in JAMA.

PE in healthcare seems to be more problematic than simple for profit hospitals. Treating a medical practice as a business to cut costs, raise margins and dump for a profit can't do anything but degrade the quality of care.</comment>


WordPress.com / CNN.com redirecting to superfantastically.com (hacked?) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sucuri.net/2011/02/something-is-wrong-at-wordpress-com-cnn-com.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Good reply from the WP.com guys:

Hey folks – I work for Automattic. Around 9:53AM CST this morning, while troubleshooting an issue, one of our developers accidentally pointed all mapped domains on WordPress.com to their test site. We quickly became aware of the problem and replaced the test site with an error message, since some site owners were concerned that their sites had been compromised. We then began the process of restoring good data from our backups. By 10:48AM CST, all data had been restored and we had cleared various caches which may have been polluted with bad data. There was never a risk to the content associated with any site on WordPress.com, or any security compromise. Instead, it was an important mapping table that was accidentally overwritten during debugging. We apologize for the problems and are looking into ways to prevent this type of issue from happening in the future.

<comment><USER2> The reply may _sound_ good but this issue still exists for my cousins Wordpress yoga website <http://www.yogabanbury.com> so I don't see how the issue can be fully resolved. Does this URL work for anyone else (i.e. am I hitting some proxy I'm not aware of?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I am seeing this too on a Wordpress blog I put up for my cousin. You can see it happening for <http://www.yogabanbury.com>

Contacted Wordpress.com support. I suspect a hack.

</comment><comment><USER3> All the examples work for me. Something local? Solved?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems they fixed already (not local, as you can see from the twitter stream).</comment></comment>


The Dream of Usable Email Encryption Is Still a Work in Progress - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/read/google-yahoo-end-to-end-email-encryption-work-in-progress <comment><USER2> I think keybase has the best attempt at a solution. They solve two fundamental problems.

1\. Identity. its the sum of your online presence.

2\. Insecure devices. In keybase devices have unique keys and can can be revoked when lost

I have been trying Protonmail, they have been deploying gpg in browser and apps. The interface is nice and I would have no problem recommending it to my parents. The problem is that it currently only works with other Protonmail users. Once they allow adding public keys for contacts and searching keyservers/keybase it will be quite nice and useful.

They have no solution for the key security on the mobile phone. I personally dont want my key on my phone.

I would really like to see a product that interfaces keybase and protonmail. Nicely designed apps and webinterface that all have different keys. Directly integrated with my social media contacts.

Thanks to everybody working these problems.

<comment><USER3> Your mobile should be one of the safest places to store a key. Think of the work it takes the FBI to open an iphone. You have a closed, encrypted device which runs app whitelisting. Nothing is perfect but compared to a desktop computer it is a safe vs a shoe box.

You just need to keep a copy offline in case the device is stolen.

<comment><USER4> > _" Your mobile should be one of the safest places to store a key."_

I have to take issue with this. I think your mobile is probably one of the least secure places to store a key, due to the 'baseband problem'[0]. Your mobile in its normal (powered-on and connected to a network) state is probably less secure than using a fresh un-patched install of Windows XP today. I mean the original version of XP, pre-SP1 with the firewall disabled.

This is why people say to choose a device without a mobile radio chip at all for secure communication, such as an iPod Touch[1].

I'd really like to have PGP/GPG encrypted emails on my mobile and I had it tested and working for a little while before looking into the baseband issue. I've since revoked the keys I used for that test and I am resigned to the fact that I will not be able to securely use encrypted email on my mobile phone for the foreseeable future.

I keep my keys off the phone now, along with an unpublished email address at a different domain which is to be used for account recovery for those email accounts in use on the phone.

[0][http://mobile.osnews.com/story.php/27416/The_second_operatin...](http://mobile.osnews.com/story.php/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone)

[1][https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/686035633949818881](https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/686035633949818881)

<comment><USER5> The iPhone baseband processor speaks a point-to-point USB-like protocol to the AP, and does not have access to secrets stored in the AP or the secure enclave. Secure applications on the phone have to assume that the cellular network is insecure already, so the colocated baseband processor doesn't much impact the threat model.

So, no, this is not a good argument.

<comment><USER4> Not a good argument for the tiny fraction of smartphone users who happen to use iPhones, or not a good argument at all?

The comment I replied to mentions the iPhone, but made the blanket statement _" Your mobile..."_ plus the article I linked to addresses multiple mobile OSs.

It would be helpful to explicitly state which make and model smartphones you believe are not susceptible to baseband threats. I think Blackphone has also integrated countermeasures but information on this topic is pretty sparse.

<comment><USER5> Modern iPhones are generally _significantly_ more secure than modern Android phones, but so long as we're talking about (a) modern mobile devices (b) provided by Apple or Google, then I'm comfortable saying that all these devices are more secure than your computer --- which, for what it's worth, is littered with all sorts of little embedded doohickeys with code you can't see.

<comment><USER4> Okay good to know. Not sure who's downvoting you because this is useful info.

Now if we can forget the comparison between smartphones and computers, it would be great to know exactly which smartphones are a good choice for users of encrypted email. I'm on Android now only because it easy enough to root and use without any Google services (I prefer to self-host and use F-Droid for apps). I don't particularly like Android but it is the 'lesser of two evils' for now.

If I can do the same with an iPhone and never have an account with Apple I would definitely be interested as the iPhone hardware seems pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another reasonable way to look at this situation is to conclude that trying to provide safely encrypted email is _not a good idea_. The protocol is, in this argument, simply too hostile to sound cryptography to reliably encrypt things. Instead, we should focus on:

* Getting providers to safely engage TLS for MTA-MTA mail relaying, for instance by deploying key pinning.

* Making existing non-seamless cryptography (PGP) functional enough that it can be used in exceptional cases.

* Deploying new asynchronous encrypted messaging systems --- things like what Adam Langley was shooting for with Pond --- that were designed from the start with security in mind.

Secure-by-default email would be nice to have, but it's not the only option. We could, instead, deprecate SMTP email.

<comment><USER6> > Making existing non-seamless cryptography (PGP) functional enough that it > can be used in exceptional cases.

Hm, I don't believe it's a technical problem, although it's a recurrent theme among techies. PGP is hard to explain to someone who didn't spend the time to digest certain concepts but installing GPGTools on your mac, generating a key and using it is not hard, nor complicated... You can even store the passphrase in the keychain.

I believe that most people using email don't feel there's any added value in using GPG, that's all. This might change in the future, but we're not there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Keybase + Thunderbird + Enigmail. It's not the most user-friendly approach but honestly I think whoever is not willing to go the distance now doesn't really value encryption/their privacy and thus won't quite care when encryption is more usable/ mainstream.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you, but I think that we should try to make encryption something that you don't have to "do". HTTPS is widely used even by people who don't really care about their privacy, because it just happens automatically. I'm not sure whether it will ever be possible to do the same with e-mail, but I think it would be cool if all messages where encrypted and authenticated by default.

<comment><USER9> The challenge here with authenticated end-to-end encryption, is that it depends on having the user's private key available. Whereas for HTTPS no secret knowledge factor belonging to the user is needed (unless you use client-side certificates). That simplifies matters quite a bit.

<comment><USER10> Trust would be a better problem to solve then encryption, at least initially. The big problem plenty of people have with email (and for me at least, the phone) is establishing who I'm actually talking to when dealing with a business.

It would be really great if when my bank emailed me, the message was signed with the key they use on their website so we could seamlessly establish that it was really from them.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, banks (at least in The Netherlands) seem to favour a different solution altogether, which is not to send e-mails at all, but expect you to log on frequently on their on-line banking environment to look in your banking 'inbox' there.

Banks, insurance companies, pension funds, the revenue service, the local municipal government; they all expect you to frequently log on to their portals, and look at their digital correspondence addressed to you there. Some do send a notification e-mail stating that 'a message is waiting for you', but you never know if that message is actually important or merely trivial noise. They have declared e-mail dead.

I abhor this situation, because with e-mail (and coincidentally, old-fashioned paper mail) all correspondence addressed to me comes to me in a single inbox, where I can archive and backup important stuff. I really wish I had the option to simply upload my GPG public key to these portals so that all these phony inboxes simply mailed me my correspondence encrypted!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there something that I'm missing here? Google and Yahoo are developing an encryption mechanism which will prevent themselves from reading users emails? I thought that was part of their business..

<comment><USER12> It's not just Google and Yahoo, it's the other email providers, i.e. Your employer.

It's pretty common for corporations to use their own root certificate so they can snoop your HTTPS, one would have to assume security officers wouldn't be really interested in individual employees encrypting their mail at the MUA and the company losing visibility on outbound messages.

The thing I never got though, is why signing messages never really caught on. You'd think banks and financial service providers would have an interest here. Maybe they don't want to deal with the support headache.

<comment><USER5> Employers that care about this will simply ban origination of E2E secure messages from their networks. Plenty of large companies already ban web mail providers entirely, for similar reasons. So this isn't much of a factor in adoption of encrypted mail.

<comment><USER12> Right but my point is, big corporations are actively opposed to E2E secure messages and that's a barrier to adoption.

Few if any big companies are going to be sending you GPG/PGP encrypted or signed email or be willfully receiving it. Take the Fortune 1000 off the list of potential secure email users and you've got a large portion of the professional class who won't know how to use this technology. I think that's a barrier to adoption.

<comment><USER5> Big _employers_ don't care; web mail is already problematic for them, and E2E doesn't significantly change things.

<comment><USER12> Different issues entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> E2E encryption has a very long way to go. If PGP or S/MIME were the answer it would had successes (conquered the world) by now. I do appreciate the security advocates preaching PGP, but in all fairness it may be a lost cause. Some security is better than none and so we should applaud google and others' initiative to improve the encryption at the transport (SMTP protocol) level, without too much involvement of the end-user. And hope more will follow, whatever it may be.

[https://gmail.googleblog.com/2016/02/making-email-safer- for-...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2016/02/making-email-safer-for-you- posted-by.html) [https://openbit.eu/projekte/trusted-internet- services/](https://openbit.eu/projekte/trusted-internet-services/)

<comment><USER5> Because of the way technology adoption works, pushing for "some security" over "no security" is a good way to end up with "some security" (and, because attacks only get better, over the long run back to _no security_ ) forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been eagerly awaiting the release of this e2e plugin. However, I'm not holding my breath. Go take a look at GitHub repo[0]. The last commit was a merged pull request on Feb 24th and the commit before that was Jan 27th.

[0] [https://github.com/google/end-to- end/commits/master](https://github.com/google/end-to-end/commits/master)

</comment><comment><USER15> Surely the idea that all email providers/clients/services will all suddenly work together and solve the ui and technical problems inherent in PGP use is a bit of a dream, and in fact the answer is to just not attempt it and instead use encrypted im sessions which already exist.

</comment><comment><USER16> Its not email, but a "similar" protocol (similar in the way the user interacts with it) that is secure is Bitmessage([https://bitmessage.org/](https://bitmessage.org/))

</comment><comment><USER17> There is this nice guide: [https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/](https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/)

It has instructions for all major operating systems.

<comment><USER18> This guide is nice for people that are motivated, but a large chunk of users (probably the majority, but I have nothing to back that up except a guess) will only encrypt their emails when it's as frictionless as sending an unencrypted email.

Encryption tends to be successful when it's baked in to the system (e.g., WhatsApp theoretically), a preset default (e.g., Android 5.x+ and iOS), or requires absolutely minimal effort (e.g., the HTTP -> HTTPS "switchover"). This has been a known issue for a pretty long time [1, 2].

[1] [http://www.gaudior.net/alma/johnny.pdf](http://www.gaudior.net/alma/johnny.pdf)

[2] [https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/sheng- poster_abst...](https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2006/posters/sheng- poster_abstract.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Once you've set up Enigmail with your PGP key, it _is_ as frictionless as sending unencrypted mail.

I use Enigmail to send encrypted email on a daily basis. It couldn't be much easier than it is already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd prefer to see decentralized email before "encrypted" email.

Recipient runs qmail listening for connections on some personally chosen port from among 1000's of choices. She is also running a firewall such as pf. authpf might also be useful.

Recipient tells sender her chosen port number and a personally chosen address to use. How does she do this? In person. Through the postal mail. Over the telephone. But _not_ over the Internet. Of course she does not have to use the same port and address for every sender.

In addition to the potential randomness of the port, the address she chooses could be any string of legal characters up to 250 whatever in length.

The approved sender runs qmail to connect to recpient's qmail and leaves a message on recpient's computer.

No DNS. No "email provider". No POP3.

How two users can discover each others' IP address and connect to each other through firewalls _without forwarding traffic through a third party server_ is left an as exercise for the reader. Chances are most users have used software that does this at one time or another, maybe without even knowing it. The methods have been around for decades. It works.

Centralized DNS and the need for a "domain name" is not needed.

Centralized "email providers" who store users' email are not needed.

There are a number of disadvantages and limitations to this approach. Yes, I know what they are. But I have already tested this and it works so I'm biased.

My opinion is that the _advantanges_ of "peer-to-peer", SMTP-to-SMTP email easily outweigh the disadvantages of store and forward and POP3 and make this a useful _alternative_ (not a replacement) system for centralized email. It's an _option_ users could have that would be quite useful.

The status quo approach to email has become highly centralized in both the need for ICANN DNS and "email providers". Not to mention the commercialization of email and the need to have "permission" to be able to send mail "because of" the proliferation of spam. It's far too difficult for any user to control their own email under the current centralized system. Solution: Give users another system where they _can_ control their email.

IMHO the centralization and protectionism of the current system (email is a business, but it doesn't need to be) is a bigger problem than lack of encryption. It's also what makes spamming viable. Everyone knows your email address or can get it easily enough. In many cases, that is not necessary.

As it stands, email is concentrated in a limited number of locations (the servers of email providers), transferred over a few ports (25, etc.) and users are limited in the addresses they can use (commercially registered domainnames).

<comment><USER21> It's just the nature of decentralized + secure + anonymous (at least to the transport layer) ... you can't realistically have all three without being open to effectively a DDOS, poisoning the system as a whole.

I'd worked on a proof of concept that would have all three of the above features using a DHT for delivery, relying on collisions for addressing, so that targets overlap, but a given target could only decrypt messages actually to them... the down side is it would be possible to send _MANY_ messages to a target, so many that the system would be brought to a crawl and effectively useless.</comment></comment>