Everyone who can now see your entire internet history, including the taxman - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/investigatory-powers-bill-act-snoopers-charter-browsing-history-what-does-it-mean-a7436251.html <comment><USER2> I am not from UK, but listen to me if any folks from UK are reading this.

This is one of the things that is harmful to your privacy. Should the list of websites that you visit be available for government unless you are under active investigation? Its not just the list of websites but every packet data that your devices send out, which means government could see your messages, data sent to dropbox, online spreadsheet like google docs etc. This is mass surveillance. You should be proud that your government have a website were you can start petitions. Now please use this feature and sign the petition so that this surveillance law can be repealed.

The petition against this bill is at: [https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

You sign the petition and ask your close friends and family to do the same. What you do not need is an intrusive government. I am voicing this because even though I am not a UK citizen, I do not want law makers in my country thinking "Oh those chaps has a fine surveillance law and their citizens are okay with it. Lets adopt that law".

Now get to action. Sign the petition at [https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

<comment><USER3> I'm from the UK, and I'm not signing that petition.

Maybe we do need an intrusive government? Maybe we, as a populace, believe that the data will save lives? That the cost of it existing is worth it compared to the cost of not having access to information on ~insert bad person here~. Maybe you value your privacy differently to us?

That's ok, btw, and I respect your point of view. Please, however, consider that alternative viewpoints are valid before telling everyone else what they must do to _ensure their country is governed in a way that suits you_.

<comment><USER4> I don't believe the end justifies the means, nor do I believe that data will be as useful as meatspace intelligence. Terror will continue anyhow. The war on encryption and privacy persists despite the fact that terrorists haven't even bothered to use encryption in the last attacks.

Obviously we don't get to tell you how to run your country, but at the same time we can certainly be troubled by your country's actions.

<comment><USER3> tbh my personal view is not entirely aligned with the one I made the comment - I just get incredibly frustrated by the tone of some posters. Statements of how all right minded people _must_ behave, because no other viewpoint is valid.

I suspect that many of the people for whom this is a non-issue are demographically similar to those who voted for brexit. Their perspectives are different, and shouldn't be dismissed as merely ignorant.

Of course you can be troubled, and you're free to make arguments for why it may be considered a bad thing™ - influencing Brits to give a shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Petition Repeal the new Surveillance laws (Investigatory Powers Act)

A bill allowing UK intelligence agencies and police unprecedented levels of power regarding the surveillance of UK citizens has recently passed and is awaiting royal assent, making it law.

[https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

<comment><USER6> Signed but I suspect this will be treated with as much contempt as other petitions have.

I think the best way of handling this is to have a private code of ethics in the IT industry in the UK. If you are involved in any collection infrastructure, do like a government IT project, and make a complete fucking mess of it I.e. make it cost a fortune and bring bad publicity for any sponsors. Use O(n!) algorithms, use IO heavy storage patterns, piss all over cache lines, spend the entire budget having meetings in Wagamamas, write yourself a new minivan, overestimate everything and play solitaire.

<comment><USER7> Contempt is the word. I emailed my local MP about this, highlighting how it put us all at risk and did nothing to stop "the bad guys".

She ignored all my points and just said "we cannot let the terrorists and pedophiles communicate".

edit: [http://pastebin.com/THvjAvAL](http://pastebin.com/THvjAvAL)

<comment><USER6> Stick the reply on pastebin with a note explaining how it doesn't stop pedophiles and terrorists, explain how it protects incumbent pedophiles in the political class as per pizzagate, then post it on reddit, 4chan and to the opposition (actually forget the latter as they're just as bad).

Time is up for this attitude.

<comment><USER8> I do wonder (perhaps naively) whether this is a genuine misunderstanding of the argument for privacy/encryption or something more malicious. Is it that politicians haven't spent enough time thinking about this or are they willfully ignorant of the wrongness of their argument?

<comment><USER9> That distinction doesn't really matter. Willful ignorance by anyone in power should definitely be classified as malice. Remember that as your representative, they should be able to explain their actions to you.

<comment><USER10> It's an interesting point. If they are _ignorant_ (perhaps without the _wilful_ ), then perhaps when you present them with facts and information, they might change their mind. If they are _malicious_ , they won't change their mind in the face of any facts or information, because their motivations are underhand and cannot be reasoned with.

I suspect in cases like this it's probably a bit of both (and perhaps in the case of this particular MP, she might just be toeing the party line).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The privacy concerns nonwithstanding, I'm puzzled how ISPs are supposed to actually implement that load of bollocks.

We're talking DPI here, applied as a dragnet on each and every connection. The bill explicitly states that _every_ connection is to be tracked, which means it disallows the stochastic methods that normally are used for traffic instrumentation.

And even storing "just" the metadata, over the course of a year, that's quite a significant amount of data. Where the hell are ISPs supposed to store that? And store it securely in a way, that only "lawfull" access is possible.

That bill is stupid and ludicrous and the people who came up with it should be institutionalized, IMHO. Not just because of the privacy concerns.

<comment><USER12> > implement that load of bollocks

They are retrospectively making legal things which have been going on for years.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/gchq-mass- su...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/gchq-mass-surveillance- spying-law-lawyer)

<comment><USER4> But it's more than that. If it's illegal to spy, that means you can't disseminate the fruits of that spying far and wide. You need to resort to parallel construction and carefully safeguarding your sources.

This allows a massive expansion in the scope of capture and use of that information to more agencies in a "legitimate" manner. At least when it was illegal they had to contain the "conspiracy" lest it get out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I will seriously never understand the imbalance of resources spent and the bills and laws passed in the name of "fighting terrorism" and "think of the children" which affects less people every day than pretty much every alternative way to suffer and die.

It doesn't make any sense. We spent trillions of dollars every year making intelligence and the military war machine one of the largest shadow economies in the world... We could pretty much solve every other form of death and illness with that money in less time, we could raise everyone in the country out of poverty with that money so they could stand on their own two feet. We could educate those that need education so they could get jobs and stand on their own without the need for Government handouts. So what the fuck.

Some days though, all you can do is throw your hands in the air in resignation and say "Fuck it, you're all crazy! You cause problems and you spend billions of dollars to band-aid the symptoms, just like you do with your medical system."

The underlying cancer is this mentality. We'll do what the fuck we want and treat people the way we fucking want because it makes us rich and then we'll spend billions to deal with the symptoms of this dumbass behaviour.

I hope the riches are worth it because the behaviour is (and I don't treat this word lightly, nor do I mean it with any disrespect whatsoever to those that unfairly get labeled with it) retarded.

<comment><USER14> Humans are absolutely terrible at assessing risk probabilities.

People worry about flying when stastically they are far more likely to die on the drive to the airport.

They worry about terroism when they are 50lbs overweight.

...and on and on, You'd rather hope the government would be better at assessing these risks in terms of a policy framework but they aren't they appeal to whatever the papers are focussing on and subscribe to the "we must do something, this is something ergo we must do it" school of thought.

It's worrying how far we haven't come.

<comment><USER13> I always find myself saying the same about humans... usually when I'm sitting on an airplane:

It concerns me that in approximately 195,000 years of human history (arguably), this is as far as we've managed to come in terms of intra- planetary travel.

It boggles the mind that with the combined ingenuity of the human race, over a period of 195,000 years, we haven't come up with anything more efficient than airplanes. I find it quite pathetic honestly. I expected better of us. It's quite disappointing really.

We wage pointless wars to extract resources from countries we don't want to negotiate fairly with in the name of riches and greed and frankly we've got better things we could and should be doing.

<comment><USER2> Its very possible humans may have been advanced enough within last 30000 years and could've nearly killed itself off the face of earth. We may be descendants of some tribe living in very primitive conditions who started with old generation tech artifacts. Could we have built pyramid with tech we(the current humans) had a thousands of years ago? I think those tech and knowledge has been looted/confiscated by people(us) who invented looting and overtime got destroyed as they didn't have the know-how required to operate or maintain it. Old technologically advanced humans may have never researched on to build weapons as there was no need for it until someone invented killing and looting them, but by then there wasn't enough time to develop defensive weapons. So theyall died and got there tech destroyed and looted by us. We may have only recently within last 2000 years started to develop tech.

<comment><USER14> No it's really not.

Any technologically advanced civilization would have disturbed the earth in ways that would still have shown today (mining, top soil removal, vast irrigation works etc) as well as used at least some of the natural resources, We'd find strangely high concentrations of materials even if it was spoil.

Advanced technologies don't just spring out the ground full formed, you have to bootstrap up the tech tree, something as 'simple' as an iPhone requires _vast_ industrial capabilities backing it from mining and refining the metals, the oils for the plastics, the silicon for the processors, the copper for the traces, each piece of technology is the center of a massive web of interconnected industries and finally people, for advanced technologies you need thousands/tens of thousands of specialists in every single part of the production chain.

As for your Pyramids thing, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_century_in_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_century_in_architecture) ... yes?

The pyramids while wonders of the world required nothing we'd remotely consider advanced technology to build, ingenuity and a crap load of labour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shame about David Davis -

From this: David Davis: British 'intellectually lazy' about defending liberty

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/08/david- davis...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/08/david-davis- liberty-draft-investigatory-powers-bill-holes)

To this:

David Davis: Most public opponent of Theresa May's snooping laws stops opposing them as soon as he enters cabinet

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-davis- mo...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-davis-most-public- opponent-of-theresa-may-s-snooping-laws-stops-opposing-them-as-soon-as- he-a7144296.html)

<comment><USER16> AIUI, he is now only allowed to oppose them in private (or leave the cabinet):

"All ministers, whether senior and in the cabinet or junior ministers, must publicly support the policy of the government, regardless of any private reservations."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_(government)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_\(government\))

<comment><USER17> Doesn't sound democratic. Hmm...

<comment><USER18> Well we could vote him out although that is unlikely as he is in a safe Tory seat.

<comment><USER16> Assuming you are in support of his former public position, I think you'd be shooting yourself in the foot by doing that.

We don't know his private position any more, and it may have changed. But I think it's quite likely that his opinion hasn't changed; he just isn't allowed to state it publicly any more. In this case, it would be better for supporters of this position to keep him in the cabinet, where he can at least have a private influence. Consider this: if we could get everyone in the cabinet to share his opinion, we wouldn't have a problem any more. We need more David Davises in cabinet, not fewer.

The MPs to vote out are all the ones who are publicly in favour of the Snoopers' Charter. We can be far more confident in having an influence in our favour this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like it is both intrusive and useless at the same time.

If you're not going to see what people did on a site, what's the point? Presumably nefarious stuff like pedo rings and dark markets will not stay in the same place very long.

At the same time, people can see what kind of politics you're into. Or porn. Or dating. Which is not terribly useful for the public interest, but you can see a cop abusing this for personal gain. I think Snowden mentioned his colleagues used to stalk their exes.

Also, anyone who's accidentally left WireShark open will know how much data you're sucking up. It's not actually a small amount, and it compounds if you're an ISP. And it sure isn't easy to filter huge pcap files, which you'll have to do if you want to find something specific. And then you have to glue the clues together, totally non trivial.

Last, how will this be used in court? Knowing what sites someone visited is not evidence they did something. Some guy visits an ISIS homepage, is that because he's curious or he's getting bomb manuals? At best you can use it to suggest some guy is a sympathiser, when he might well not be.

<comment><USER12> > If you're not going to see what people did on a site, what's the point?

Because you are not a unique and special snowflake. If you regularly go to /r/The_Donald, it says something specific about your politics (probably). Same for /r/LateStageCapitalism or /r/trees. It might not say much, but it adds up to a profile of who you are and what you think about.

If you are emailing certain people, or tweeting them or whatever, GCHQ can build a social graph of people you know, who they know, etc. If you are the friend (or friend of a friend) of a person of interest, you're more likely to be of interest yourself. There are not many criminals like the una-bomber working entirely on their own - most of us need encouragement and/or provocation, and nowadays much of that happens online.

If your search phrases include things like "how to make a bomb", you're probably going to be on a database somewhere. There have been numerous serious court cases (e.g. murder trials) where the prosecution have presented evidence that the accused's search history included phrases like "how to dispose of a body" or "how to poison someone". In other cases, jurors have been dismissed for using Google to research the background to the case they are serving on. I wonder where the information about these searches came from?

Metadata is important for identifying "interesting" people. When you have found them, you "zoom in" and start hoovering up all the information you can find, not just the metadata. It's the greatest spying tool ever, and a way to implement highly repressive government too - just start monitoring people with different lifestyles or "way out" opinions.

[http://ghanadailies.com/2016/11/22/uk-government-plans- porn-...](http://ghanadailies.com/2016/11/22/uk-government-plans-porn-user- database/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/23/niche-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/23/niche- porn-sites-sex-spanking-website-videos-pornography)

<comment><USER20> > Because you are not a unique and special snowflake. If you regularly go to > /r/The_Donald, it says something specific about your politics (probably). > Same for /r/LateStageCapitalism or /r/trees. It might not say much, but it > adds up to a profile of who you are and what you think about.

They won't be collecting that information though. They'll only see that you visited reddit.com in all those cases.

<comment> J-dawg Excuse my ignorance but won't they have access to the whole URL?

<comment><USER21> From the article: "Those ICRs in effect serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, rather than collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them."

And from another site on the same issue: "When you visit a website you usually start at the websites homepage such as www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/ the Government define this part of a website address (the part before the first forward slash) as communications data which they consider to be non-intrusive information." ([https://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2016/0...](https://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2016/03/Internet-Connection-Records.pdf))

<comment><USER14> In fairness the law mandates they record the domain, it doesn't say anything about capturing more it just sets a standard for the minimum.

Given that the ISP's have now been given cart blanche to collect data that is very commercially valuable I can see some of them doing it with the hope they can sell it later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Copy of my comment on other thread:

I would urge everyone who can to sign the petition against it.

This, in my mind is a problem, not because of the obvious costs (ISPs storing _literally all_ metadata for a year), and the insidous privacy concerns, but how bad Govts are at keeping information secure. Below are 3 recent and well known examples of Government Mass Data leaks- this information will be compromised at some point, for profit or espionage.

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

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449927.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449927.stm)

[https://www.troyhunt.com/when-nation-is-hacked- understanding...](https://www.troyhunt.com/when-nation-is-hacked- understanding/)

IMHO, trotting out "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" BS doesn't mean that at some point, that data will be misused, even if the UK (My) Government doesn't suddenly turn dictatorial.

<comment><USER8> This is an important point.

Even if, for whatever reason, you agree with governments being able to access this data in extreme cases (suspected terrorism, whatever) and even if we put aside concerns about governments misusing this power, this bill also relies on ISPs keeping data safe. That is a huge risk in itself.

Not to mention the number of government agencies and departments that can access your data [0]. Does the Department for Transport, Food Standards Scotland or the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust _really_ need access to my browsing history?

[0]: [http://yiu.co.uk/blog/who-can-view-my-internet- history/](http://yiu.co.uk/blog/who-can-view-my-internet-history/)

<comment><USER22> Yes, I have no idea how an Ambulance Service Middle Management (For Example) needs to know my information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The petition against this bill is at: [https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for that link - only 35k signatures so far. People are sleepwalking into 1984.

<comment><USER25> Nobody wants to sign the list of "People whose internet history we should look at first"

<comment><USER26> Might be a flippant comment, but that's the first thing that went through my mind. I've never gone deep into caring much about government overreach, but that was a terrifying subconscious reaction.

<comment><USER14> Welcome to the Panoptican crossed with a somewhat gilded cage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I would urge everyone who can to sign the petition against it.

This, in my mind is a problem, not because of the obvious costs (ISPs storing _literally all_ metadata for a year), and the insidous privacy concerns, but how bad Govts are at keeping information secure. Below are 3 recent and well known examples of Government Mass Data leaks- this information will be compromised at some point, for profit or espionage.

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

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449927.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449927.stm)

[https://www.troyhunt.com/when-nation-is-hacked- understanding...](https://www.troyhunt.com/when-nation-is-hacked- understanding/)

IMHO, trotting out "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" BS doesn't mean that at some point, that data will be misused, even if the UK (My) Government doesn't suddenly turn dictatorial.

<comment><USER25> I have lots to hide, and I have plenty to fear from the current government. I sincerely doubt that there's anybody out there who doesn't. I'm not going to worry too much about GCHQ and other Security Services, because I seriously doubt they'll be making any requests - I have no doubt that they have a far more comprehensive database in place already, and they're only included in the proposal to lend an air of legitimacy to the proceedings.

What concerns me is the sheer number of groups that are being given access from the start, not because of who is on it, but because somebody has compiled that list in the first place. It suggests that there is already a longer term plan in place for the use of this data, and these are the entities who will need access to achieve that end. Otherwise, surely the approach would be a lot more cautious - "We'll limit it to GCHQ and the Secretary of State for now, and all requestss can go through the SoS. That will give us an idea of who actually needs this data on a case by case basis, and we can tweak the legislation as necessary based on that."

Then you look a little closer at some of the entries. Why would the Fire Service need access? Nothing in their job involves anything to do with individuals, at least not to the degree that they have any requirement for access to any data about them. Well, it doesn't say Fire Service. It says "Fire and Rescue Authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004". Take a look at that act. Unless you're in Greater London, your fire and rescue authority is your local council. Why did they feel the need to slip your council in through the back door like that? Granted, access is limited to "Watch Manager (Control)", which sort of sounds like a Fire Service position, but it's vague enough that you could legitimately assign that job title to a Traffic Warden's supervisor without anybody batting an eye.

Why do the Food Standards Agency need access? Access for them is restricted to Grade 6, which doesn't seem to have any job title definitions, only a pay range - as of August 2015 it was £54,000 to £69,500. So any person who commands that salary, regardless of whether they need it for that job, will have this access? That doesn't seem a particularly clever way to manage data access.

<comment><USER23> > Granted, access is limited to "Watch Manager (Control)"

FFS, are they deliberately choosing the creepiest sounding job titles to give access to?! Sure, it sounds fine when it's linked to the Fire Service, but it sounds dodgy as hell when applied to the Internet Snooper Service.

<comment><USER14> "Access restricted to SS-Standartenführer or higher"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Kepler-125c Anyone reading this from the UK: don't lose hope. You can change things. The recent uptick in fascism in the UK is really disheartening but your voice needs to be heard.

For example, they tried to bring in censorship in Australia and failed. Change is possible. Don't be a pushover. You must fight.

<comment><USER27> Careful, those will sound like terrorist words to someone like Theresa May

<comment><USER5> Easy, she will be banned once porn is banned too, she fucks entire nation after all.

<comment><USER28> Isn't there already an opt out porn filter in the UK?

<comment><USER6> Only on mobile devices usually. I had to opt out to look at the thinkpad wiki so you can see how well that works.

<comment><USER29> And I thought it was just me for thinkwiki.org... why on earth is that an adult website?

<comment><USER6> Probably a shared host. All the other sites are porn.

Which makes the point about how ridiculous recording an IP address is.

<comment><USER28> I some how doubt that thinkwiki is on a shared hosting.

Tons of developer/security websites are blocked on O2 "hacking tools"....

They are using the same nonsensical lists that some web gateways use, anything that is even remotely objectionable is blocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I predict that a year from now there will be a massive data leak (perhaps known to some underground circles only) with personal details matched to browser history - why - because most agencies in UK does not know how to handle your data securely.

Meanwhile, you better setup your VPN on DO or one of the cheap ARM-based cloud hosting companies. That's what I did and it works flawlessly for as cheap as $5 a month - or the price of a cup of coffee.

This setup is fine for all types of activities except downloading larger data files, which can be offloaded elsewhere with some clever routing or just jumping on a different box.

I do understand that this might be too much for the average Joe but if you care about your privacy, that exactly what it takes.

<comment><USER31> Or I suspect some bent copper will be caught selling celebs data to the tabloids again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Those ICRs effectively serve as a full list of every website that people > have visited, not collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done > on them but serving as a full list of every site that someone has visited > and when.

So running search engine crawlers like yacy or using browser link prefetchers, could cause sites to appear on this list, you haven't even visited?

Even if you don't use that, you have to investigate every link and external site resource, if it points to a domain/site that also hosts illegal stuff? And how do I do that? Using VPN?

Also content and owner of sites change. I can't imagine such "prove" holding up against a good lawyer in a fair court.

What exactly are they logging? IP addresses, reverse domain names, dns lookups?

They just should provide a white list of sites the lawful citizens are allowed to visit. That would make things much easier and safer for everyone. And the government exists to keep the citizen safe, isn't it?

"The first duty of any government is to keep our country and our people safe." \- David Cameron

<comment><USER33> That will be the ultimate end game: whitelist of sites, all of them large companies controlled by the government. Either do what we require or be eliminated from the list. Even VPNs only work if the connection to the VPN is permitted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if they understand how the internet works...

<iframe src=[http://www.isis.com](http://www.isis.com) style="visibility:hidden">

Welcome to the watch list.

<comment><USER22> Copy of a Comment Elsewhere:

I don't have anything to hide- but a malicious attacker could easily cause me to.

Step One: Maliciously cause the target to click on a link or open a url (Phishing, Exploit, RFE, XSS etc)

Step Two: With JS, one can easy introduce HTTP connections to any number of websites, such as maybe the Talibans official website (They have one!), Google Searches for (to think of a few) "Gaziantep Places to Stay", "Turkey Flights", "Opposition to the Kuffar at home", "Dabiq Magazine", "how to join the Khalifah" etc

This could easily be done in a realisic appearing manner, especially to ISP/GCHQ filters and alerts.

Step Three: If any of this tallies with any physical activity (Let's say the target wanted to go Clay Pigeon Shooting, or Visited a Gun Club because he has in interest in .22 target shooting), then they have a case.

Sure, it's defendable, and this is a really simplistic example. But it's basically ruined the target's life.

Remember, it's probably not the "Government" doing this, as this info will be leaked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> UK citizens, help me out: Is there a way you can appeal against laws like this? In Germany, something like that would be thrown out by the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the federal constitutional court. Is there nothing similar in the UK?

<comment><USER35> The law is being appealed to the ECHR by Liberty and the Open Rights Group and others, so those organizations need people to join and fund them.

Link: [https://www.dontspyonus.org.uk/](https://www.dontspyonus.org.uk/)

<comment><USER34> Ok - so hyptothetically, if Brexit should happen, there would be no "internal" instance for something like this. That sounds scary.

<comment><USER36> Slightly more complex than that, as the ECHR isn't an EU institution, so Brexit won't result in any significant change to the relationship with the ECHR (it's a little more complex than I've made sound, as there are some relatively minor links with the EU).

However, May has stated her desire to also leave the European convention on human rights (and replace it with a UK owned Bill of Rights). This is not something that's happening as part of Brexit, and no bills have been presented before Parliament with this as a component or purpose.

I would assume that the government would take the pragmatic approach that it's better to focus on Brexit for now, and deal with the ECHR once Brexit is over with. However, I have no inside knowledge of this, and that's just my wild and unsubstantiated assumption.

<comment><USER34> Thank you - damn, i fell right into the "I thought Europe = EU" trap.

<comment><USER37> No worries – so did most of Britain. I believe the ECHR was a argument for Brexit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is really bad. Using a vpn or other kind of service to hide that data from them will now make you even more of an outlier to even more eyes/people. You will stand out from being hidden, you will stand out for having a minimal "internet history", and you will stand out to those who can really fsck your life.

Unfortunately privacy is not being taught and propagated to the general public in order to prevent this from harming you either you want it or not.

<comment><USER39> New product idea:

Sell a pre-loaded rpi with an automated "average user" browser that you install on your network, while you keep using VPN for everything else.

<comment><USER40> Just do:

        wget -r http://wikipedia.org

This is a joke.

<comment><USER32> Careful, you might download a picture of forbidden female anatomy there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> South Park is on the money again: [http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/TrollTrace.com](http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/TrollTrace.com).

</comment><comment><USER42> The list of agencies that will have access without any form of court order or warrant is truly terrifying. I had not realised it was so severe. It was promoted as being something that can only be "responsibly accessed". But this does not appear to be the case at all?

I'm concerned that information gathered from this will be used in court prematurely to perform "character assassination". And as we know, UK courts have a public gallery full of news reporters searching for juicy stories.

</comment><comment><USER43> Our whole civilization leap frogged forward with the invention of the Internet. Because it connected us humans mentally. We able to share thoughts and ideas and have conversations with anyone on a planet without physical movement. It is a mechanical telepathy if you think about.

What we are seeing with implementing such laws is a more larger trend. Mental world is being taken under control by Mr. Smiths, agents of the matrix. Our thoughts and self-expressions more than ever are under the surveillance.

What I don't know is whether it is a good or bad thing in general for the mankind, but they way our technology worshipping civilizations develops it seems to be unavoidable. It seems we are way too far in this to go back.

<comment><USER44> I would imagine telepathy being something more accurate than other forms of communication, this is more like having a transcript of every communication and loosely assigning accountability to content.

<comment><USER43> So true. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How can something as intrusive as this make it into a law? This is way worse than SOPA / PIPA was imho. Sucks to live in the UK now.

<comment><USER46> Because there is rarely anyone arguing against the state being more involved in peoples lives, against making activities of the state harder by safeguarding systems against abuse.

<comment><USER45> But why is that? I mean in Hungary (where I live) there were demonstrations against Internet Tax which is a much smaller concern. This is a country where a lot of people live in apathy and there is no true democracy. UK is a much mature democracy where people care. Or not? I don't understand this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When China does it it's oppression but when we do it it's for our own good.

<comment><USER48> When China does it they just do it without mentioning it.

When we do it, we announce it in the Queen's speech then have a law be published, read and voted through both Houses.

As much as I don't like it, an awful lot of other people either don't care or are fine with it. I wish the result was different but this is what you can get when you have a democracy. I absolutely would not want to swap the systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Now is an excellent time to set up a custom home router (I'm thinking pfsense to send all traffic through a VPN).

The excuse of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is not only intellectually feeble; it permits a gradual erosion of civil liberties that can easily find the average citizen on the wrong side of the law should any agency casually find it convenient for them to be so. It is a snowball.

On that note. What VPN services are recommended and has anyone got some good guides to this?

<comment><USER50> To avoid this particular issue, it should be sufficient to rent a server outside of the UK and use OpenVPN. Maybe you even already have one.

<comment><USER49> What would the benefits of this be over a dedicated VPN service?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think for many people nowadays, privacy is a quaint, antiquated notion, like Victorian modesty. Things like social media and YouTube have encouraged people to make their lives public, so having the government gather data seems fairly minor.

I find this all very disturbing, but, having grown up without the Internet, perhaps I'm just a relic from a bygone area. Still, I can't shake the uneasy feeling that this all will lead to a very bad place...

</comment><comment><USER52> Slightly unrelated, but there have been a couple of stories in this area recently which have been widely circulated here and on Reddit all by the Belfast Telegraph.

I wonder why that is, just really good SEO on their part?

<comment><USER53> Mostly SEO. The "Bely Tely" has been moving towards more mass-market tabloid for several years after losing the quality market within Northern Ireland to the Irish News.

Yes, within NI a 'southern' paper now achieves about the same circulation as one from Belfast and a considerably better reputation for journalism. Quite a remarkable failure on the BT's part.

As a result the BT has been trying to adapt by widening its news remit and shifting into the tabloid space, as a visit to one of its web pages will quickly show. But most of its 'world news' stories are just AP feed, nothing special.

My neighbour's fiance is a night-club photographer who sells to the BT; 20 years ago such a thing would have been unthinkable in that paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Like I said in the other thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13034747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13034747)

I am not from UK, but listen to me if any folks from UK are reading this.

This is one of the things that is harmful to your privacy. Should the list of websites that you visit be available for government unless you are under active investigation? Its not just the list of websites but every packet data that your devices send out, which means government could see your messages, data sent to dropbox, online spreadsheet like google docs etc. This is mass surveillance. You should be proud that your government have a website were you can start petitions. Now please use this feature and sign the petition so that this surveillance law can be repealed.

The petition against this bill is at: [https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

You sign the petition and ask your close friends and family to do the same. What you do not need is an intrusive government. I am voicing this because even though I am not a UK citizen, I do not want law makers in my country thinking "Oh those chaps has a fine surveillance law and their citizens are okay with it. Lets adopt that law".

Now get to action. Sign the petition at [https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it better to go with a VPN service, or rent your own server and DIY?

<comment><USER54> It was clear the UK was going this way for a while so I switched to a small cloud host for VPN which exits in another country. $5 a month and it took only a couple of minutes to setup OpenVPN with a simple shell script[0].

Also important is to setup outbound firewall (or other mechanism) so that if the VPN goes down, you don't spew your traffic over the open connection [1].

I don't notice any speed difference from daily usage over the last year. Large file downloads I task my NAS to download outside the VPN.

My purpose is only to prevent the ISP from collecting logs about usage, I don't expect it to have much effect if I'm targeted for surveillance and I'm fine with that. Who knows how ISPs will handle the data (we've seen targeted advertising and content injection in the past) let alone all the agencies with less than stellar security practices.

[0]: [https://github.com/thomascannon/scripts/tree/master/vpn](https://github.com/thomascannon/scripts/tree/master/vpn) [1]: [https://github.com/thomascannon/scripts/tree/master/vpn/vpn-...](https://github.com/thomascannon/scripts/tree/master/vpn/vpn- firewall)

<comment><USER7> Very interesting, thanks for this.

Large downloads is a concern of mine. I downloaded 1TB over PIA this month and it was never a problem. I can probably do these outside the VPN though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> In typical UK surveillance state fashion they pander to base fears and unforgivably overlook how bad censorship and surveillance is in places like China.

It's not that the UK GOV "doesn't understand how the Internet works" as claimed by many on this topic, but that the citizenry don't care enough to encrypt. The citizenry aren't scared enough to encrypt.

Education is the key here, and it needs to be bashed into a citizen's skull that The Internet is not a black box, and that traffic moving _en clair_ is fair game by Governments, even criminal threat actors in Starbucks with their fake Free Wifi.

We need to keep building abstractions on top of The Internet to make it expensive for spying to take place. The usual solutions apply; TOR, VPNs, TLS/SSL, PGP, et al.

</comment><comment> interweb-spider It should be noted that over HTTPS even the ISP can only know the domain connected to but not the URL.

<comment><USER56> The data that ISPs will be forced to record is just the domain and time of access, not the full URL. The devil is in the metadata.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Time for ToR/VPN

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- setu...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-setup-your- own-vpn-with-pptp)

<comment><USER58> Which droplet would be best for between one to three people?

From what I gather, the ISP has to record the sites you visit—but not the specific pages. Does VPN stop my ISP from seeing the loaded sites? Or do I need Tor for that? I'm not too concerned about complete privacy, I just don't want every website I just don't want my browsing history to be leaked.

<comment><USER59> Just route everything though a 4G router and change the prepaid sim card every month, it's honestly the best way for now.

<comment><USER60> Not especially viable for 100GB+ consumption per month. There's no cost- effective option for this volume, AFAIK?

<comment><USER59> With Three it's unlimited for 25 pounds, I use around 100GB/month.

<comment><USER61> How is your opsec - i.e. do you vary your purchasing pattern, using random numbers to pick intervals between purchases and a variety of vendors?

I only ask, because routing everything over a VPN provides the illusion of privacy while flipping contracts every month provides some element of real privacy. It is easy enough to check on the activity of people pretending to hide their activity (assuming GCHQ has access to the same access that the NSA do), but real resources have to be spent tracking down people who actually hide their activity.

I have no idea how they allocate their budget for tracking potential threats, but somebody flipping prepaid sims would warrant a closer look if I was analysing the logs.

<comment><USER59> Indeed, that's a good point and I'm aware of that. They can absolutely track me given enough effort; they probably do it anyway since I'm a developer, I just try to make it a bit costlier for them I guess. For now, I don't bother much rotating vendors but it should be something I do indeed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I rarely sign anything, but I had to do it this time.

[https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199](https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199)

</comment><comment><USER63> How do they think they can map connection logs with specific persons using the connection? All they can see that from one physical address these particular websites were visited. Sometimes that can actually map to a single person but mostly not. This makes the data more useless than they think but also potentially dangerous if they do not understand what the data means.

<comment><USER64> In court they don't often bother with that distinction. If you own the connection, it's considered it's you sending/receiving the data.

Not saying that's a correct interpretation, but that's likely the conclusion they'll come to.

<comment><USER6> This why I do anything nefarious on Tesco free Wi-Fi!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> The only people that this is good news for are the VPN providers. Do we really trust "the state" with this information. History should tell us that once can never be sure of what use data can be put to by future regimes. It's time to educate people about the value of encryption and the security and safety it provides, each of us, one by one.

</comment><comment><USER66> There's currently a very good (and timely) deal on PureVPN lifetime subscription for Black Friday. I have no affiliation here, but figured this might be of interest to a lot of people in the UK.

[1] [https://deals.geekwire.com/sales/lifetime-of- purevpn](https://deals.geekwire.com/sales/lifetime-of-purevpn)

</comment><comment><USER67> Is this possible with TLS? How would they know anything more than the host you're connecting to?

Still, though, disgusting.

<comment><USER68> The bill details that only the host name is collected anyway.

The ISPs will not be compelled to store and share the full URL you visited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Any ideas who will pay ISP's for supporting this kind of tracking? Customers or goverment?

<comment><USER56> The government has budgeted a massive £175m for implementation, so I guess the answer is both, but mostly consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Only the connection history - hostname and date/time of access, and only if authorised for an investigation.

It's akin to the phone companies logging each number called. This isn't as intrusive as people are making it out to be.

</comment><comment><USER71> This is a good thing. With such a wide "readership," the data's bound to leak.

When it does, it will make Ashley Madison look like a small thing, and be a good argument against future surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER72> How long before they extend this to VPN users?

<comment><USER73> It's not clear how that would be technically possible. ISPs could report users which use VPNs, but assuming the VPN isn't in UK jurisdiction, the govt has no way of forcing the VPN to keep or hand over logs. Their best bet would probably be to hack the VPN provider...

<comment><USER72> > has no way of forcing the VPN to keep

Are we sure of that? they might require that for UK customers

<comment><USER73> If you use an international company, they have no jurisdiction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Might as well make it available to everyone then. If we can't have privacy we should at least have transparency.

</comment><comment><USER75> Glad this topic came up here. So my question is...how to block it? VPN?

Also what stops them selling access to this?

</comment><comment><USER76> Reading the legislation its not "Entire Internet history" as most people would understand it. It looks very much like they are asking for NetFlow data without saying that explicitly. They want a Time stamp, port, source and destination IP and amount of data transferred. This is terrifying, I think the "Internet history" narrative is being setup to be deliberately confusing.

</comment><comment><USER77> Mwahaha. Let skankhunt42 worry about this.

</comment><comment><USER78> Pff, vpn + a service that simulates behavior of a generic user, if one is so scared about suspiciously short browsing history.

<comment><USER64> yeah ok, tell this to the casual user. The flippant response doesn't help anything.

<comment><USER78> casual user doesn't see a reason to care about its privacy anyway. if it changes its mind, google already has a lot of guides on the first page of like "protect privacy internet".</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your strategies for booking cheap plane tickets? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I value my time and don't particularly like airports so when I search for flights, I look for ones with no connections. Of those, I look for flights with a departure and arrival time that works for me. If there is a Southwest flight that fits all those criteria, I book it because I've generally had good experiences on Southwest. If Southwest isn't in my search results, I just pick pick the least expensive option in my results set.</comment>


Show HN: Physics simulation stress toy, smash random objects - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smashcorp.smashmash

<comment><AUTHOR> iOS version: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/smashmash/id912719653?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/smashmash/id912719653?mt=8)

First time game-dev experience for me. I was looking at some nvidia object destruction sims and thought it would make a pretty cool game by itself, so I made this over a few weekends.</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a tech co-founder - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, Im an entrepreneur currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I have spent most of my time trying to find a good technical cofounder.
Im a decent designer (some of my web designs were featured in webcreme, designshack, etc) and I have a pretty good knowledge about biz development, marketing, pr, seo, domaining and user experience.
Im trying to find someone with the same energy I have for building things online or starting my own startup.
I love markets like dating, classifieds, domains, sms, etc.
If you love coding and building awesome stuff for the interwebs drop me a line at nicogarcia at gmail
Nico. <comment><USER2> You may find section 2 of [http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/11/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Cknew%E2...](http://blog.wepay.com/2010/03/11/5-things-i-%E2%80%9Cknew%E2%80%9D-or- should-have-known-before-starting-a-company-but-didnt-fully-understand-until- now/) to be very enlightening about why you are having trouble finding a technical cofounder.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't you mention (albeit generically) what you're looking at making? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a couple premium domains that I would like to develop but like I said im interested in markets like dating, classifieds, domains or mobile apps (sms, etc)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is my browser so energy inefficient when playing YouTube videos? - <AUTHOR> I thought this would be a problem long gone in 2020 but it's still not. I had it for decades like everybody else I guess: when I'm playing a video on YouTube using any browser (FF/Chrome) my laptop spinner is going crazy and I can feel the heat. If I download the same video with YouTubeDL and watch it with VLC/MPC-HC or any other player the laptop stays cool.<p>Any idea why browsers are still so bad at using the specialized video decoding hardware built-in processors for a decade? <comment><USER2> It is using hardware decoding in the browser. Try playing a YouTube video on an old computer with no hardware decode or an OS with it lacking like Haiku.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are on a mac try safari, for some reason safari is far more efficient with youtube.</comment>


Darwinian Theory of Legal Obfuscation - <AUTHOR> http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/msg02919.html <comment><USER2> I have strong views on this subject, as developed in 30+ years of practice as a business lawyer in Silicon Valley (they are articulated here: <http://grellas.com/articles.html>).

The best legal writing has the same goal as an other form of expository writing - that is, in general, to communicate clearly and concisely with an intended audience.

Legal writing can (and often does) also carry with it the goal of persuading a target reader in some fashion and in this sense is best deployed using not only clarity and concision but also the tools of rhetoric, which can often be quite refined and which can but most often do not include obfuscatory tactics. The shyster model of lawyering says play for advantage to the disregard of truth. Carried to the extreme, it can include amazing tricks aimed at dissembling and hucksterism but it does not necessarily involve using language that is badly written - indeed, the finest forms of flim-flammery come from top legal echelons, where very high-priced lawyers are often paid to craft misleading arguments that will benefit their clients (including the government).

The so-called Darwinian theory alluded to in the OP, however, is _not_ a good explanation for shoddy legal writing or, indeed, for legal writing that is not shoddy but rather unduly complex.

Many years ago, when much of law consisted of small-town practice and when very little information was inter-linked or easily accessible, hack lawyers would draft contracts using case digests and or similar third-rate resources (often not even written by lawyers) for guidance of what was or was not acceptable to the courts in matters that might eventually be litigated. That sort of practice got the defenestration treatment several decades ago and survives today primarily in narrow specialty areas (such as certain forms of insurance contracts) where "tested" language is sometimes used simply because it has been upheld by the courts.

In the vast portion of the business-law field, however, contracts are generally drafted with the aim of making them clear and unambiguous and a very good way to get fired at a large law firm (or any other firm that maintains high standards) is to put together a shoddy contract that shows you have no ability to state things clearly and unambiguously.

Of course, in a negotiation over a contract, one might try to slip in some "snake oil" language which has as its goal the aim of putting something over on someone. In such cases, a deliberate choice is often made to use ambiguous language in order to further that goal. A good lawyer on the other side will usually pick up on this and come back with cleaner language, but many times people miss the subtleties and someone gets had. This scenario, however, doe _not_ define any significant portion of the contract drafting that is done but rather constitutes the exceptional case in customized deals that are negotiated in private and usually kept private. In the event such a clause is litigated, believe me, in modern law, it will not serve as a model for future drafting.

By far the greatest reason why legal drafting can become hard to read has to do with the complexity of the subject matter and the nature of the deal and not with any goal of obfuscation. For example, one can indemnify (hold harmless) another party with simple contract language that says, "I will indemnify and hold you harmless from all damages resulting from x." That same simple clause can be expanded to fill two or more pages of a single-spaced legal contract if enough is at stake and if the parties are motivated to protect their interests with a detailed contract that covers all the possibilities. In the example just cited, for instance, you can add elaborate clauses describing the exact types of claims against which indemnity will be provided and you can specify the types of claims against which it will not be provided. You can include notice requirements and specify consequences if they are not met. You can include caps and limits of various sorts. You can state that indemnity must be made when a claim is first asserted or you can state that it will only apply if there is a final judgment. These sorts of details can be replicated in great number, depending on how important it is to the parties to have them in the deal. This can easily lead to a fairly complex clause with a lot of legal terms of art in it, but the overriding goal is to keep it clear and unambiguous, not to obfuscate. This sort of contract language gets drafted every day and does not normally get litigated. It is an example of lawyering at or near its best, provided a deal warrants it. If not, you can always say "I will indemnify you from all claims" and leave it at that.

Thus, the point made in the OP is either wrong or at least vastly overstated as applies to modern business lawyering.

<comment><USER3> > to communicate clearly and concisely with an intended audience.

how's that working out for you?

<comment><USER2> Actually, I worked on my writing skills for years precisely because they were so deficient (at least in my own mind) many years ago - this was time well invested and, as a result, this skill set has been one of the most valuable assets I can offer to clients in my practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Examining the use of language by modeling them with Game Theory may provide some interesting insights to what makes legal writing so unique.

Natural language, in a normal context, is (usually) co-operative, to the extent that the speaker and the listener both have the common goal that the listener understands what the speaker is saying. This is what gives natural language a higher tolerance for ambiguity, as the listener will be using generally amenable heuristics to discover meaning.

A programming language involves a human communicating with a generally imbecilic partner. This is like a game against a deterministic opponent, or even a single-player game, trying to optimize expression under the constraints of the language. This is what gives programming its literalness. Language designers try to solve the dual problem by designing the constraints. Arguably, the goal of a well-designed language is for the expression-under- contraints to approach the cooperative communication of natural language.

Legal writing is best modeled as a game against an adversarial opponent, which is actually not far from the truth. In a sense, it's also dual to language design, in that the goal is to design constraints that limit the expressive ability of an adversary.

While this is not explicitly mentioned in the OP, it's worth pointing out that bureaucratic writing is slightly different than legal writing, although it has a similar eliminate) the need for the judgement or ad-hoc decision-making of the individual contributors to the system, by spelling out the results of all possible decisions beforehand. This system may best be modeled as imagining an imbecilic adversarial opponent, rather than a powerful one, making it share the worst qualities of both legal contracts and FORTRAN.

<comment><USER5> Your theory cannot be true, because legal writing is equally dry and opaque in non-adversarial settings:

\- litigation, where the aim is to persuade a judge

\- court opinions, where the aim is to persuade the parties and other judges

\- I'd add law journals as well, which are written for peers

I'd say that the reason legal writing gets singled out is that people are expected to read and understand it, while people are not expected to read and understand equally difficult writings from different fields, such as something from a medical journal.

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that an adversarial opponent is a game-theoretic abstraction. The useful thought-experiment of an adversary is often used even when there is not a literal 'opponent,' eg in natural-disaster-proof design. In essence, imagining an adversary is a useful thought experiment for reasoning about worst-case situations. In the situation of a natural disaster, an adversarial opponent is not the literal truth, but you won't go far wrong by designing against one.

I would say that any form of persuasion benefits from imagining an adversarial opponent (in face, they're usually called a Devil's Advocate!). In this case, your judge you are persuading can be modeled as an adversarial opponent, characterized as being Maximally Skeptical of your position, within the constraints of still being Perfectly Rational.

You may also be confusing "adversarial" with "confrontational." An adversary can still be very dry. In fact, in game theory, they probably are very dry because they're assumed to be perfectly rational. Adversarialism defines the other participant's goals, not their approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Peter J. Wasilko has a great reply in that thread.

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/m...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/msg02933.html)

<comment><USER7> An awesome reply by a lawyer who understands computing. If I ever need a lawyer in the applicable area I want this guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is an interesting theory, but I am not sure whether it is true because I do not know much about other attorney's drafting styles. My personal philosophy is to make everything as clear and unambiguous as possible.

But I have to point out that one reason why legal language tends to be complex, is because natural language is very ambiguous. Thus, it takes a lot of careful writing to actually remove all the ambiguities from something. What often happens when one writes a contract is one writes a first draft and then starts thinking "how can this be misinterpreted or wiggled out of." And then one continues to add or change wording to prevent misinterpretations, and then finds new ambiguities with the new wording etc., etc. And in the end we usually end up with something long and rather difficult to read.

To put this in a software perspective, this is the same reason why there will never be a natural english programming language.

</comment><comment><USER9> Legal writing is the only type of writing for which copying someone else's ideas (i.e., precedent) is a virtue rather than a vice. But it's easy to slip in "snake oil," even in a business context. Let's say you have two contract parties in different states (or one in another country) and each has a local lawyer. How do you use which state--or country's--law will apply. A contract isn't just an agreement, it's an attempt to predict the future. Because U.S. law is forever changing, it's difficult to know what it is likely to be. But I don't think that the "language that survives" in contracts is necessarily opaque because of Darwinian principles. Look at the almost universal notarization clause. That's pretty clear, I think.</comment>


Another Kind of JavaScript Fatigue - <AUTHOR> http://chrismm.com/blog/the-other-kind-of-javascript-fatigue/? <comment><USER2> I would not call this javascript fatigue but sheep fatigue.

> Remember Google's Polymer? Angular 1? Express? Perhaps the organizations and > individuals which cause these abrupt termination events should carry a > stigma. After all, misleading thousands of people does not generate a > positive attitude toward open source, and can lead to bitterness and more > fragmentation.

> Instead of nurturing narcissistic language ambassadors that drop their > projects like they change fedora hats every time they get a new idea, let's > create more tools to improve code quality and foster a sense of community.

Instead of labeling others as "narcissistic" for "misleading" you, stop blindly following them. Just because someone has found a better way to solve their problem does not mean that their solution will solve your problem. Understand their problem, understand their solution to it. And when you think "this is awesome, I just had this problem yesterday", ask yourself "and when did I have this last time before yesterday?". If your response is "2 years ago", you probably don't really have a problem at all but are just caught in "oh, this is grunt-work, I wish there was a better way". This rarely justifies the time required to learn and adopt a new "way of doing things."

</comment><comment><USER3> This is nothing new, JS just evolved the problem to the next level. Perl and CPAN had notoriously bad modules and each subsequent language has made packaging easier. And now JS is available with easy packaging or just by including a URL to the package. This problem is inevitable. JS just is the current most widely distributed and used language.

I think we have to learn live with crap code and find ways to surface the diamonds. A rating system for packages would be great. Maybe based on developer ratings, amount of contributors/community interaction, and number of unresolved issues?</comment>


Everything I Ever Learned about JVM Performance Tuning At Twitter (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/JVM-Performance-Tuning-twitter

<comment><AUTHOR> The video was posted on InfoQ on December 23. Since the presentation's slides got a good reception on HN two months ago, I thought HNers might be interested in the video.

Previous discussion of the slides at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3169678></comment>


Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/20190310231110/http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics <comment><AUTHOR> I linked to the Internet Archive so as not to give the little board the hug of death, but I didn't actually check the link to be sure it works and cannot edit it any longer. Apparently crawlers are blocked on lispm.de.

Here's the original URL: [http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine- ergonomics](http://lispm.de/symbolics-lisp-machine-ergonomics)</comment>


Nematode Neural System Uploaded to a Computer and Trained to Balance a Pole - <AUTHOR> https://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/125597/ <comment><USER2> I first learned about C. elegans neuron-mapping project from this Society of Mind video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Px0livk6m8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Px0livk6m8)

My immediate interest was in seeing the differences and similarities between real and simulated worm. I haven't spent much time searching for resulting papers, but it's been 7 years since then and I'm not aware of any ground- breaking publications on the subject.

Unless I'm missing something massive, describing this paper as training the worm to "balance a pole at the tip of its tail" is highly misleading.

In this paper researchers use an external algorithm to tweak parameters of a part of worm's neural model until that part can perform a certain task. The neural circuit effectively serves as a controller for a mechanism that has nothing to do with the original worm. The task, the setup, the subset of the model and the training algorithms are all chosen by the researchers.

<comment><USER3> From the summary, they're not altering the topology of the network at all, just the connection strength between neurons.

While this isn't the way a natural neural network would learn (I'm not sure a nematode can learn), it's still interesting that you can take a copy of a natural neural network and force it to learn in this way.

<comment><USER4> I would expect there is an enormous set of random topologies that could be trained to balance a pole. Indeed, part of the elegant 'magic' of neural nets is that the topology is fairly irrelevant... the number of layers, the number of nodes, the manner in which they are connected... pretty much any configuration can get you into a mid 90% accuracy on MNIST (and emulating a basic PID algorithm is simpler than MNIST). Of course, I'm referring to basic tasks; clearly topologies matter a great deal with more sophisticated things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I vaguely recall that experts consider artificial neural networks to be a very gross approximation of biological ones. They often state that one reason we don't have AI today is that we don't really know how the brain and the neurons it is made of work.

Then I wonder : how does openworm deal with that lack of knowledge? Is there any chance progress in modeling C. Elegans could be used to improve machine learning?

<comment><USER6> We believe that the underlying implementation (biological neuron vs logistic function) doesn't matter as long as it has the fundamental properties from which intelligence can emerge. Like how you can build computers from gears, relays, vacuum tubes or silicon - as long as you have a transistor-like nonlinearity to work with, you're good.

<comment><USER7> From what I understand, the complication is that each neurone acts behaves like a complex neural network by itself, so to get the same overall behavior, you would need many more fundamental units.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It'll become interesting when we can teach the worm before "uploading"it, and the resulting NN already knows how to balance that pole without any further training. As is, The article sounds underwhelming

<comment><USER2> The worm isn't "uploaded". Scientists painstakingly mapped out the physical structure of its neurons using some genetic engineering and lasers. This structure does not change from worm to worm.

<comment><USER8> I'm clear. That didn't prevent the authors from using that term anyway. And in their title, just to make sure not to confuse anyone.

EDIT : the author(s) of the press release used the word "upload". That term is nowhere to be found in the original paper as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wait until we can 3D print a C. Elegans. A new kind of matrix printer.

<comment><USER10> Maybe The Great Filter (in the context of the Fermi paradox) is this: People printing their own organisms? (only half-joking)

<comment><USER11> More likely people uploading themselves into a virtual world, securing the planetary data center and dialating time to feel like everyone lives forever in the manner of their choosing.

<comment><USER12> There's something sad about a civilization closing its eyes and turning inward on itself instead of exploring the vast universe that it has been presented with.

<comment><USER13> "Conquering the galaxy is what bacteria with spaceships would do—knowing no better, having no choice."

From Diaspora, by Greg Egan :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A very well written article, simple to understand and short!

</comment><comment><USER15> Neural network balances pole while programmers mumble something vague about C. Elegans. Non-story.

<comment><USER16> This uses a more accurate neuron model than your everyday neural networks.

<comment><USER17> Nevertheless, Cartpole is a trivial RL task which only requires a few neurons to solve, much less hundreds. Since they're training it in silico, I'm not sure what this demonstrates other than you can cudgel a vaguely spiking-like neural network into learning a simple task. It's not a C. elegans behavior.

<comment><USER18> Cartpole solved with 1 neuron, no weights.

[https://gym.openai.com/evaluations/eval_A7rFUDisQiOsADyvqYhV...](https://gym.openai.com/evaluations/eval_A7rFUDisQiOsADyvqYhVSA/#reproducibility)

<comment><USER17> I rest my case. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What a confusing title.

Tldr; NN based on real life nematode learned a simple thing.

<comment><USER20> This is why I always read the HN comments first. Thank you.

<comment><USER21> Me too, I tend to decide whether to read an article based on the comments. I find I hardly ever read an article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Uploaded" no, copied into a perfect or near-perfect simulation.

A perfect copy of an organism is still not the organism, but a copy. Just like your twin brother is not you. You won't live forever in a computer.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Antivirus/Internetsecurity for Windows - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to know what antivirus/internet security (i.e. Kaspersky, GDATA, Avira, etc.) is the safest today?
I was using the free version from Avira Antivirus but I'm not satisfied anymore and I'm thinking about switching to Kaspersky.
Is it safe to say, that Kaspersky is the safest solution or are there better Tools to protect my windows machine?
Thanks in advance for your answers. <comment><USER2> Windows security essentials from Microsoft. It's free, kept up to date. and has no interest in telling me what it is doing so I will buy it again.

Commercial antivirus has become mostly a big tracking cookie that comes with a yearly fee and pop up advertising. Microsoft security essentials has a value model of aligned interests: Users don't want carp on users' computers and neither do the users themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have a look at it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've used the following tools to protect several of my Windows machines from malware:

* [http://www.linuxmint.com/](http://www.linuxmint.com/)

* [https://www.freebsd.org/](https://www.freebsd.org/)

;)

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be the safest solution, of course ;) but I have a windows machine and I can't switch to another OS.

In the media, Kaspersky seems to be always up-to-date and they seem to provide a good solution. Is it just PR or do they really offer a good solution (I'm thinking about the Internet Security Suite and not just the Antivirus).

<comment><USER3> Actually, you might be able to. E.g. create a Linux VM and use that for Internet banking, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any recommendations for getting a logo done? - <AUTHOR>

Tried searching for but couldnt come up a good thread for recommendations on how to and where to get a good logo done? Came across thread that had some conversation about how to not get it done on oDesk.<p>Where did you get your logo done? Did you design it yourself or any one/place you would recommend? And how much it might cost to get a simple decent logo, just trying to figure out a ballpark average to budget for. <comment><USER2> $300 for [http://99designs.com/how-it-works](http://99designs.com/how-it- works). Used them before. Solid work if you don't have a designer on board yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are lots of designers on the market places right? (dribble,etc)</comment>


List of books on the history of computing [Wikipedia] - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computing/List_of_books_on_the_history_of_computing

<comment><AUTHOR> One more list on the same: <http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/></comment>


The Cost of Smarts  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07wed4.html?ex=1367899200&en=a83981426a2a12be&ei=5124&partner=digg&exprod=digg

<comment><USER2> Already debunked on news.yc here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183339>

<comment><USER3> So, a few people, speculating about what the paper _might_ say, constitutes a debunking?

Scientists are not all idiots. Parsimony suggests that -- somewhere during the months of planning and thought that goes into the average publication -- they probably thought about the questions that one might raise, 30 seconds after reading a newspaper summary of the work.

<comment><USER2> A) There is no way to control for side effects of single trait selection, so it's impossible that they did.

B) If they really had solved one of the biggest problems in science then that would have been the headline, not that learning reduces fitness. In fact they probably would have been handed Nobels on the spot.

C) I read the scientific paper and they never even take the issue into consideration. It's literally not even mentioned in the methodology or the discussion, and there's no citations of prior research indicating that fruit flies aren't susceptible to this problem in the introduction.

The fact is that this "research" is a joke and the NYT got snowed plain and simple. If you don't believe me, just Google for Kawecki + quinine and read the original paper.

EDIT: The claim made by the original research article is that selecting for increased learning ability results in lower fitness. The claim being made by the NYT is that increasing learning ability results in lower fitness. Those are two completely different claims. The fact that people are still downmodding me only shows that news.yc is slowly assimilating mainstream culture, a culture that glorifies ignorance and scientific illiteracy.

<comment><USER3> Dude...people are down-modding you because you're being a jerk, not because of some misunderstood intricacy of your brilliant scientific argument.

First off, a quick search tells me that Kawecki has been publishing on this topic for years:

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=kawecki%20quinine%20lear...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=kawecki%20quinine%20learning&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=ws)

He's had numerous publications in PNAS, Science, Evolution, and other top-tier journals, building this hypothesis step-by-step. So perhaps you should back off your rhetoric about the research being a "joke" just a tad, okay? (At the least, perhaps you should go read one of his other papers before you decide that the man is a fraud.)

Now, to directly address your argument: "intelligence" is not a single trait. It's a complex, emergent phenomena, presumably involving many genes, in many different genetic loci. It's therefore _highly unlikely_ that selection for the abstract trait of "intelligence" is _also_ going to select for a decreased lifespan (another complex trait).

Thus, even if you're right, and even if the whole result is attributable to single-trait selection for "intelligence", _it's still an interesting result._ You've done nothing do "debunk" the interesting premise of the article -- _that selection for intelligence appears to decrease overall fitness in flies._

Your obsession with single-trait selection seems to rest on the notion that if the result could be attributable to linkage, then it doesn't count. That's silly. We can debate the mechanism of action, but there appears to be a very real trade-off between learning ability and survival in this particular species. Arguing that it might only be a consequence of selection is to completely miss the point.

(Aside: I think it's interesting that you've now latched on to a subtle difference in wording between the NYT article and the claims made by the researcher. The NYT may have (debatably) been exaggerating the claims of the researchers, but your posts have all jumped to the conclusion that the original research was a "joke". Bad form, man.)

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, I apologize for being a jerk. That said, if the NYT had really said that "selection for intelligence appears to decrease overall fitness in flies" then I would have had no issue with the article. However, what the article actually said was that, "Learning also turns out to have dangerous side effects that make its evolution even more puzzling." That's not a minor error or a small exaggeration, it's outright fraud. And what's more, the entirety of this new article is based off the false premise of the original. That's why I'm upset.

Anyways, my apologies to the researcher. My issue is mainly with the NYT.

<comment><USER4> don't back down or apologize because some jerk yelled at you "for being a jerk". :(

you made good points, which does not constitute being a jerk. he made invalid points about how the guy has a reputation and history that don't address whether the particular ideas at issue are true; plus, he literally called you a jerk, which is name calling.

<comment><USER2> No, he's right, I was being a jerk.

I still stand by my argument though.

<comment><USER4> Did you delete text from your post, or is it all visible now?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Challenges and Trade-offs in Building a Web-scale Real-time Analytics System - <AUTHOR> http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/02/11/ChallengesAndTradeoffsInBuildingAWebscaleRealtimeAnalyticsSystem.aspx

<comment><USER2> Impressive. We were building a high dimensional cube just last year for some click stream analysis. Wish I had done some research in the literature at that time.</comment>


Web Playgrounds of the Very Young - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/business/31virtual.html?ex=1356757200&en=57047898e7866973&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> A friend recently told me about a guy he knows who sold a web site to Disney for $700M (it was Club Penguin). I was incredulous at first, as that number is staggering. But they have 4 million users paying $5/month. Sony offered them $150M and they turned it down as they were making more than that in a year.

The guy didn't start with empire-building intentions. He just had small children and couldn't find anything for them to do online. It turned out a lot of other people had that problem as well.

There was an interesting benefit of being acquired by Disney. Apparently CP was defending itself against a flood of lawsuits claiming rights to the penguin brand. When Disney bought CP they called everybody up and said, "You don't understand. _We're_ suing _you_." The lawsuits stopped.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1980: (Alan Kay) let's help children build and explore things on their own to make them passionate about learning!

2008: (Disney) let's help ourselves buy another yacht by blasting pre-teens with ads!

</comment><comment><USER4> These games are not about high quality rendering, and really can't be -- the computing environment they ship to is not homogeneous enough. Pirates of The Caribbean looks like _Ocarina of Time_.

While snazzy rendering won't really go anywhere with these games, server side physics just might -- you can control the platform, and as the games move from "pre-teen" to "young adult" you get into domains where realism (in the sense of convincing motion, compression of rubber objects and the like) can add a lot even without fancy rendering.</comment>


Exclusive Time interview with Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://poy.time.com/2013/12/11/runner-up-edward-snowden-the-dark-prophet/

<comment><USER2> Article Title is " _Edward Snowden, The Dark Prophet_ "</comment>


Show HN: Kubetap – kubectl plugin to deploy intercepting proxies to K8s Services - <AUTHOR> https://soluble-ai.github.io/kubetap/ <comment><USER2> Hope you consider distributing with [https://krew.sigs.k8s.io](https://krew.sigs.k8s.io) to reach more platforms and users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I actually cover this specifically in the project site: [https://soluble- ai.github.io/kubetap/kubetap_development/cav...](https://soluble- ai.github.io/kubetap/kubetap_development/caveats/#krew-plugin)</comment></comment>