FBI: Companies should help us 'prevent encryption above all else' - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/06/04/fbi-official-companies-should-help-us-prevent-encryption-above-all-else/ <comment><USER3> > "Privacy, above all other things, including safety and freedom from > terrorism, is not where we want to go," Steinbach said.

It's where I want to go. Also you have YET to show ANY evidence that we are more safe or more free from terrorism by surrounding our rights to privacy.

>He also disputed the "back door" term used by experts to describe such built- in access points. "We're not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious," he argued, saying that the agency wants to be able to access content after going through a judicial process.

You mean "Rubber Stamp Judicial Process"? Even if you didn't the mere fact that these backdoors (you can rename it all your want it's a BACKDOOR) exist make the whole system LESS secure. What a clown and this is the AD of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division??? Fuck....

<comment><USER4> > It's where I want to go. Also you have YET to show ANY evidence that we are > more safe or more free from terrorism by surrounding our rights to privacy.

If they could show that, credible evidence would have presented by now. ;)

But in all seriousness, the 1st & 4th amendment protections are the most vital freedoms we have and they should not be abridged outside of a direct link to harm. [e.g. Things like child porn, words designed to incite violent harm, violent prisoners shouldn't have privacy ]

So you have to be rational about it but yeah, mass surveillance and reducing self-defense tools to protect ourselves against criminals isn't "rational" behavior.

Criminals are going to do illegal things and we have the right to protect ourselves. If it inconvenience the government? So be it. I'm not going to bend over for any criminal who wants access to my financial data "because Terrorism".

Similarly, banning tools of self-defense [e.g. encryption for financial data, access keys] are simply guaranteeing the criminals will be the only ones to possess them.

I'm aware alot of people will be like "what about the 2nd"??

Yeah, that provides no protection against the government since they'll always have the ability to drop bombs on you. When you can afford a F-16 and the ability to pilot it for "self defense" purposes, let me know.

<comment><USER5> People who make that argument about the second amendment always seem to forget that the U.S. military has been getting its ass kicked for more than a decade now by people mostly armed with Toyota pickups, AK-47s and IEDs.

<comment><USER4> > People who make that argument about the second amendment always seem to > forget that the U.S. military has been getting its ass kicked for more than > a decade now by people mostly armed with Toyota pickups, AK-47s and IEDs.

People who make that argument seem to forget that if you decide to rebel, the 2nd amendment doesn't matter _because you are a criminal and can bring guns over the border through Mexico or via other channels_. The same is true of IEDs.

The "people" with AK-47s aren't getting them legally as common citizens.

That doesn't change the fact the majority of the US isn't going to rebel and that such "rebellions" in the US tend to look like this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do these guys seriously not realize that "the terrorists" will use end-to-end encryption whether it's legal or not? This literally makes no sense to me unless "the terrorists" is code for "the local weed dealer".

<comment><USER7> Remember that it's pretty much impossible to decipher a message, but it's trivial to tell if a message is encrypted or not.

Once you outlaw encryption all encrypted communications will be illegal and the people that use them terrorists.

This is how it begins.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any supporting evidence?

I believe it may be incorrect because in my (limited) understanding, good encryption is indistinguishable from random sequences of characters.

How can you tell a string of random characters is simply random, or is an encrypted message, unless said encryption includes some kind of header or marker information?

I may simply be wrong but I'm curious about the answer too.

<comment><USER9> They will start making random strings illegal

<comment><USER7> As absurd as this sounds, I agree. Just look at all the 09 F9 controversy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A wise man once said "shove it up your ass!" (george carlin)

Regardless, This guy doesn't know what he's talking about, and should not be speaking, at all. Above all else.

I'm not against the FBI; I understand why they want this and what it means to not have this kind of access. But they can't have it, and there are hundreds of reasons why its a truly horrible idea.

This is just ANOTHER excuse to strip away our rights for the sake of "fighting the terrorists" and "keeping us safe." Enough is enough. Just do your fucking job and stop trying to power play everything.

I don't care what legal blessings or rights of passage you get; if something of mine is encrypted, and i didn't give you access, it's not for you. That I could encrypt crazy stuff or plots or whatever is true; tough shit. There are other ways to sniff out nefarious people, and bring them to justice; the FBI just wants everything served to them on a plate.

Also, please stop putting stupid fucks like this in government. Infuriatingly dumb. Sacrificing our rights is not the way to fight terrorism; it's a path to self destruction from within.

</comment><comment><USER11> "companies shouldn't put their customers' access to encryption ahead of national security concerns"

Encryption IS a national security concern.

When government agencies discourage encryption, or fail to report known software vulnerabilities, they're acting against national security interests.

<comment><USER12> With all the companies getting hacked and leaking my credit card information, I'd say it's a very BIG national security concern.

I honestly don't know a single person that hasn't been caught up in at least two of the bigger breaches of the past few years alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fire this guy and dismantle the FBI. Does anyone remember why we fought the Revolutionary War, why we follow the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

This joker should lose his job. He does not represent the values of this country,

<comment><USER14> We fought the revolutionary war so that rich factory-owners could more freely sell their wares without paying taxes to fund the war against the French and Native Americans that they sent Ben Franklin to London to beg the king for.

<comment><USER15> Yeah lets forget about taxation without representation, being forced to quarter troops in your home, being controlled from thousands of miles away, and the Boston Massacre. It was all corporations. Got it.

<comment><USER16> The signers of the Declaration of Independence were all wealthy men, largely physicians, lawyers, and merchants.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_of_the_United_States_De...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signing_of_the_United_States_Declaration_of_Independence#List_of_signers)

The common people of the colonies were likely in a situation very similar to where ordinary citizens today are when deciding between Google/FB/etc. and the NSA. Distrustful of both sides, but more inclined to go with the weaker of them, because then they'd be _less_ fucked over.

<comment><USER17> Wasn't President John Adams the defense lawyer representing the British Soldiers at the Boston Massacre?

<comment><USER16> He was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

So they would argue that this doesn't apply once we eliminate paper as a medium.

Also, but, but, but... They're only collecting metadata, right?

<comment><USER19> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

\-- Benjamin Franklin

Seems pretty straight forward to me ...

<comment><USER20> I've cited this message by Franklin in the past but I've since learned that he was making the case for the legislation to have the power to tax wealthy landowners in order to fund the French and Indian war.

He's not saying this in anything like the context we tend to use it now.

[http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins- famous...](http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous- liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century)

<comment><USER21> Even if Franklin didn't intend it in the same vein, it still seems like sage advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Jesus Christ - way to bury the lead. The headline reads 'prevent encryption above all else', but three paragraphs in:

 _" But Steinbach's testimony also suggests he meant that companies shouldn't put their customers' access to encryption ahead of national security concerns -- rather than saying the government's top priority should be preventing the use of the technology that secures basically everything people do online."_

Here is the actual hearing: [http://www.c-span.org/video/?326360-1/hearing- cartoon-contes...](http://www.c-span.org/video/?326360-1/hearing-cartoon- contest-attack-garland-texas)

The hearing was concerning ISIS use of social media as a recruitment platform and how it related to the recent shootings in Garland, Texas and in Boston on Tuesday.

The subject of encryption is not the primary focus of the hearing, but when it does come up I think he makes his point clear at about 39:30 when says this: _" I think we need an honest conversation and get past the rhetoric of what we are talking about. We're not talking about large scale surveillance techniques. We are talking about going before the court, whether the criminal court or the national security court, with evidence, a burden of proof/probable cause, suggesting a crime has been committed or in our case there is a terrorist and showing that burden of proof, having the court sign off on it, and then going to those providers and requesting access to the stored information or communications that's ongoing. So we're not looking at going through a backdoor or being nefarious - we're talking about going to the company and asking for their assistance. We suggest and we are imploring Congress to help us seek legal remedies to that and asking companies to provide technological solutions to help that. We understand privacy. Privacy above all other things including safety and freedom from terrorism is not where we want to go. "_

He later goes on to suggest expanding he scope of CALEA to include more than just telecommunications companies.

If people are going to debate this topic, I think they should start from his actual position and not a half sentence soundbite.

<comment><USER23> He's arguing categorically against end-to-end encryption. All encryption, according to the FBI, must be negotiated through centralized points that can be served with a warrant and made to MITM the communications.

It's not even clear that's the extent of what they want. They probably also want the communications to _always_ be MITMed by the centralized nodes, so that warrants can request _historical_ communications dating back to some retention limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I propose a new protocol: HTTPSUFBIHCO - HyperText Transport Protocol Secure Unless the Federal Bureau of Investigation Has a Court Order.

The logo will be a semi-open padlock with a FBI agent holding a FISA court order.

<comment><USER25> You may want to remove "Court Order" to future proof the standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've been hacking up a facebook clone at work. I've discovered that it's easier than ever to have end to end encryption. For example, there are now good working RSA and symmetric javascript crypto libraries that work in the browser:

       for RSA: https://github.com/travist/jsencrypt
       for AES: https://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/

This includes generating your own private key for a totally in-browser "sign up" process (browser can save your private key in a file, you then point to it to "log in").

Add to this: a distributed message passing system: something like torrents with channels shared by multiple users so that you can't easily see who is sending to who with enough traffic.

Also for identity verification: use the bitcoin block chain as a CA.

Anyway, think of a single-page web-app, where the page is stored along with your private identity file on a USB-key (this avoids the security hole of having to download it every time).

<comment><USER27> This works very well until someone knocks on your door and kindly asks you to place some javascript on your site that tells everyone's browsers to send their private keys to your server where they can be subpoenaed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _to build technological solutions to prevent encryption_

There is one way and one way only to do that. Remove all general purpose computing devices from the hands of the public, and make it illegal to manufacture or distribute them, or knowledge of how to do so. I can't see it happening, myself.

Cory Doctorow, on the coming war on general purpose computation (although he thought it would be the copyright lobby) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg)

<comment><USER29> > _I can 't see it happening, myself._

It's already been happening for some time, and we're quite far in the process. The mainstream population stops buying computers in favour of mobile devices - tablets and smartphones, which are locked down and dumbed down. Then you have DRM, and the cloud. I fear the next step will be professionalization of software engineering - you may suddenly find yourself in need of an engineering license to be able to legally use a Turing-complete language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Yeah, cool, let's all just stop using encryption for sensitive customer data so we more easily can catch the least sophisticated criminals who don't figure out how to do it themselves.

Let's also make it crystal clear to the more sophisticated criminals that they do, in fact, need to do it themselves.

Giving the FBI an easy way to put small time drug dealers in their pocket should obviously be a top priority of software companies.

I will vote for _any_ politician who will tell these people to go fuck themselves.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm curious how many people think he understands the technology and just doesn't care if he's undermining security, or is he just clueless.

<comment><USER32> He can't see himself as the bad guy, or enabling the bad guys in the future by making the law enforcement apparatus all powerful.

Of course he'd fling the same accusation at us, from his point of view. What if there was a terrorist attack that could have been prevented if only they'd have been allowed to see through the encryption? I mean, let's be honest, on its own merits, that's not the worst argument in the world.

It's just that as an old-school true-blooded American patriot, I can't help but notice that "just giving them all the powerz" is not the way we do things around here, and there are reasons for that.

(Before reflexively downvoting because I dared sound a bit patriotic, consider _why_ I feel compelled to wrap myself in the flag here....)

<comment><USER33> Of course the "what-if" argument falls flat on its face because we can always go further to create more safety, and if you first use that argument you need to justify why you stop just _there_.

E.g. why is terror getting this level of attention vs. child murder, which in terms of numbers of victims is a far bigger problem?

By the "what if" logic, these people ought to be prepared to go far in curtailing privacy to get at child abuse given the magnitude of the problem compared to terror.

We know how to profile the likely perpetrators very well too. The vast majority of such crimes are carried out by a few very specific groups of people, namely dads, brothers and other close male family members.

Surely if the - on average - few terror deaths are worth these types of sacrifices, the many hundred child murders and thousands upon thousands of abuse victims would justify far more extensive curtailment of privacy?

It quickly becomes very clear that the "what if" argument is rationalisation: if harm reduction was as important to them as they like to imply, they would not be spending their attention on terror.

What the "anti-terror crowd" need to be made to answer when they ask for more rights is _what makes terrorism different_ , and why are they not spending their energy on the many problems that have far more serious effects.

<comment><USER34> "namely dads, brothers and other close male family members".

You're right about it being close family members, but the rest of your profile is wrong.

The majority of child abusers are female: [http://www.safehorizon.org/page/child-abuse- facts-56.html](http://www.safehorizon.org/page/child-abuse-facts-56.html)

<comment><USER33> My information comes from an extensive NSPCC survey, but I don't think the two contradict each other - the question is the exact definition of abuse that is being used and I should have looked it up and been more precise about that.

Without going back and digging up the exact NSPCC survey, the article you in to appears to take into account a much wider set of criteria, though it's hard to say since it doesn't state its definition either and I couldn't find its source. The wording does also seem to imply that it is looking at reported cases as opposed to use a survey, which would give different numbers.

In terms of type of abuse you consider, it will drastically shift the balance. E.g. for sexual abuse the numbers are completely dominated by male family members. Once you add in violence it shifts a lot, and other neglect will likely shift it further if for no other reason than simply because women are still more likely to be the primary carer.

Of course in any case it doesn't alter the main point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> As fweespeech says here also, criminals will encrypt regardless of what is going on. The people the FBI is "after" are going to encrpyt, so fighting to make public systems store data and hand to the FBI when desired is pointless.

If the FBI isn't mining normal citizens data for loose connections to stuff that is none of their business, then their is no need for them to have access to the systems they want.

The only argument that could be made is that criminals are stupid and may not use proper encryption on their own, therefore we should watch what everyone is doing so that we can catch these particularly dumb criminals.

The goal of the FBI in all their statements is to try and convince the public that "only criminals need encryption; everyone else should let us watch everything they do." 1984 anyone?

</comment><comment><USER36> From [http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-terrorism-statistics- every-...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-terrorism-statistics-every- american-needs-to-hear/5382818) :

 _" – You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack

– You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack"_

So terrorism clearly isn't the issue they are trying to address. That's what makes the people that run the various fiefdoms within our government - <USER2> that are not elected, do not answer to the public, and who rarely leave their jobs - so scary. We know they are lying, but to what end? What will their successors do with the power they garner using fear of terrorism? We are rapidly approaching Orwell's worst nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Freedom from terrorism"? There is no such freedom.

And I'm not interested in the FBI trying to create one.

<comment><USER38> There's literally no way to break down that idea without turning it into some kind of negation of rights.

For you to ever be 'free' from others doing [thing Z], everyone (you, them, everyone else) would have to be precluded from doing anything that might lead to [thing Z] - and suddenly no one can do [thing A], [thing B], [thing C]...

Not only that, but now all it takes is for someone to make a shaky argument for some action potentially leading to [thing Z], and suddenly you or anyone else can be accused of committing that action in pursuit of committing [thing Z], and/or get locked up because of it.

I'm as averse to getting blown up as the next guy, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing a loosely-defined slippery slope when I see one.

It'd be nice to see a world in which it's very rare/difficult for _anyone_ to do certain things - but let's not pretend we can create a world completely 'free' of anything without sacrificing most of our inalienable rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This seems so horribly wrong that I can't believe this was actually said in public. And the Washington Post apologist writing is very strikingly clear too.

</comment><comment><USER40> Merriam-Webster defines _terrorism_ as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" [1].

[1] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terrorism](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/terrorism)

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the headline here is misleading. A casual reader could get the impression that the FBI is asserting that the most pressing issue facing the country is "prevention of encryption". Above all else: prevent encryption".

Really, what the FBI is saying (clumsily) is that companies should work with the FBI to ensure that sound encryption doesn't trump every other concern.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm not far left. I broadly support law enforcement. I understand opposition to Silk Road and I support prosecution. I even support Snowden going to trial. But my reaction to this is "screw the FBI if that's what they think." Unless Congress outlaws domestic use of encryption, I'm still going to have access to open source encryption and I'm still going to prefer companies which use encryption to maintain my privacy.

So the FBI has a tough row to hoe here, if the people who would otherwise support it are alienated as I am

</comment><comment><USER43> It is astounding how little most people in government understand how 'cybersecurity' works. Do they imagine it like how baby's think they're hiding when they can't see you?

<comment><USER44> That quote around "someone's job depending on them not understanding something" comes to mind...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Let them outlaw encryption. Let them backdoor all the softwarez. Let them isolate themselves from the intellectuals.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." \- Lincoln

</comment><comment><USER46> I do find it a pity security organisations like the FBI and NSA are interpreting their remit so narrowly focused on the "attack" side of the role, rather than the "defense" side. It's probably a consequence of the effect of bad publicity on the politicians who provide budget for such things, but I really wish they saw their role as preventative and defensive rather than data gathering. There's so much good could be done to improve the security of critical infrastructure if they put their minds to it.

Also, though I'm not surprised by the fact they're against encryption - They've been against it all through the court case against Phil Zimmerman for example - I am surprised how tone-deaf their arguments are beginning to sound. It's like they don't understand there's a real public debate happening around them.

</comment><comment><USER47> "companies shouldn't put their customers' access to encryption ahead of national security concerns"

Which "companies" and which "nation"?

Is he proposing Baidu need to work with the FBI to further US national security? Or Xaiomi? Is he proposing Apple and Google should provide whatever- he-wants-to-rename-backdoor-keys* to the Chinese and Iraqi governments for their "national security"?

[*] I propose "Freedom Keys" to replace "backdoors"…

</comment><comment><USER48> When the US Government stops their encryption of data and makes everything available to the public, then I will agree with them.

<comment><USER21> Not only available, but immediately and readily available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > He also disputed the "back door" term used by experts to describe such > built-in access points. "We're not looking at going through a back door or > being nefarious," he argued, saying that the agency wants to be able to > access content after going through a judicial process.

Back door: any circumvention of normal access. Normal access in this case would be access after decryption. It's irrelevant whether it's supported by judicial process, it's still a back door, just one that they aren't hiding the use of.

He says he's not looking for a back door (which is a lie, but members of Congress don't understand that, nor the public), and he associates it with the word "nefarious."

The FBI, masterfully twisting the language since 1908.

</comment><comment><USER12> Diffie-Hellman already paved the way for encryption for everybody. There's no stuffing that genie back in the bottle.

</comment><comment><USER50> Nothing annoys me more than ignorance. How are you going to outlaw math?

<comment><USER51> Reminds me of the Indiana Pi Bill: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill)

<comment><USER52> Considering spaces other than Euclidian spaces pi can be rational (when defined as ratio beween circumference and diameter of a circle).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> They want us to communicate over insecure channels so they can ensure everybody's safety.

<comment><USER12> I sure hope his bank's online portal isn't HTTPS or that'd make him a hypocrite.

<comment><USER54> It's not entirely unlikely that he stopped doing banking himself, instead of through an assistant, well before online portals for banks were a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > Encryption [...] is "a good thing," Comey has said, even if he wants the > government to have the ability [to] get around it.

Doesn't the government already have the ability to get around it, without compromising security? They can subpoena your password or private key.

If this is not good enough for him, that means he wants the ability to decrypt messages without judicial process. Like messages in other countries where the FBI is prohibited from operating. Or mass data collection, reading the messages of millions of innocent people in an attempt to catch one criminal. I don't want the FBI to do either of these things.

<comment><USER56> AFAIK, it's still not settled whether cryptographic keys/passwords/passphrases can be subpoena'd. Existing case law from physical security distinguishes between keys--like the one to your door or a cabinet--from combinations--like those to a safe. The state can legally demand the former, as the law views them as physical evidence as any other that may be rightly relinquished with a proper warrant. The latter, however, are the contents of one's mind, and as such requiring their divulgence runs afowl of 1st amendment protection of free speech and/or 4th amendment protection against self-incrimination. To me, it seems obvious that encryption 'keys' are much more like 'combinations', and were only called 'keys' as a word play (like many concepts in IT). Prosecutors, however, see that word and go "hey, wait a second, we're entitled to those!!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> And if Apple gave encryption keys to Russia or China I am guessing the USG would be OK with that? Or would that "betray their customers right to privacy"?

<comment><USER58> Obama actually denounced the Chinese government for pressuring companies into giving up encryption keys, that same week he had criticized U.S. companies for not giving up encryption keys. I was blown away by the immense cognitive dissonance. This was earlier this year, I'll have to see if I can dig up the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Let's say FBI has those backdoors they want, how can they make sure that the terrorists won't take advantage of those backdoors? When they can just allow China to come in and steal U.S government worker's data like [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/breach-in-a-federal- com...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/breach-in-a-federal-computer- system-exposes-personnel-data.html)

I am more worried about them handling the backdoors.

</comment><comment><USER60> What bothers law enforcement is simply the idea that there is something they can never have access to. The reality is that it has always been that way. Two conspirators could walk into a pub and sit a corner booth in the days before ubiquitous electronics and the law would never have access to that conversation.

There is nothing about the advent of new communications technologies that gives governments the authority to mandate circumventions for them. It's a attempt to preserve a status quo that never existed.

</comment><comment><USER61> >He also disputed the "back door" term used by experts to describe such built- in access points. "We're not looking at going through a back door or being nefarious," he argued, saying that the agency wants to be able to access content after going through a judicial process.

"Back door" does not imply nefariousness, it just implies a way around normal protections, which is exactly what they want. Tim Cook used the term "a key under the doormat". I like that description.

Anyone can see that if you leave a key under the door mat for a friend, an enemy may find it. It's inherently unsafe.

Now add to that analogy: 1) unlike in meatspace, the homeowner can't pick an unlikely hiding spot; instead, the authorities would mandate the exact same hiding spot for every house, 2) unlike in meatspace, the enemy has an automated swarm of invisible robots looking for house keys and committing theft and arson, 3) unlike the situation where you hide a key for a friend, the key would be there permanently, not just for a day or two.

All of these issues make it clear that this is a bad idea, even ASSUMING that the government is perfectly trustworthy.

</comment><comment><USER62> This seems like a pretty clear signal that the ability of the state to conduct mass surveillance may be slipping.

</comment><comment><USER63> The FBI should first clearly spell out a definition for encryption. Encryption is a function[&] that maps a number on another number. ([&] technically, this is a simplification because encryption tends to map a given number on an entire set of other numbers). What the FBI is asking for, is that some number mapping functions would be declared illegal. But where is that list of illegal number mapping functions? The problem that arises now, is that no matter how long their list of illegal number mapping functions, it will always be possible to design a number function that is not on their list but that would still be entirely valid to use for encryption. Furthermore, how can they actually enforce a law that says that particular number functions would be illegal? You see, they do not like that people use encryption functions on their numbers and they also do not like it when it rains. In both cases, however, their desires cannot overrule the laws of nature.

</comment><comment><USER64> General thought...

Two things strike me about these issues. Firstly there is a disconnect between a lot of citizens and those who are supposed to be there to protect those citizens; and second, we need to decide how much risk we are prepared to accept for freedom.

The FBI, MI5, and their ilk are there to protect the people. Yet an awful lot of the people talk about the likes of the FBI as thought they are just doing what they do because it pleases them, and them alone. But Im pretty sure the FBI believe that they are there to protect the people. To that end, I believe the people who work in the FBI are sincere. Somehow this must be reconciled.

As must freedom v's risk. I think there needs to be a rational debate about how much risk we are prepared to accept for an agreed amount of freedom. We simply cant have freedom with out risk. The only way to eliminate risk, is to eliminate freedom.

People need to address these two issues fairly soon, other wise, I think we are all in a while lot of trouble.

<comment><USER65> > The FBI, MI5, and their ilk are there to protect the people.

I'm not at all convinced of this anymore. They exist to protect the government and the status quo. Whatever that may be at the time.

Even civil liberties groups and charities are spied upon and labelled 'domestic extremists'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I don't understand, who else than the government has the right to tap internet lines ? If there's nobody, encryption does not protect your privacy, since investigations require warrants.

The problem is that the more the government watches everybody, the more people will encrypt. The logical path would to forbid anybody to tap lines. Then, of course, encryption would not be necessary, since data would flow securely.

Also, as long as its the authorities, as long as data does not fall into the hand of private interests (which is a risk), I don't see what the government would do about this ability to spy on its people since government represent the interest of voters. Ideally of course, in reality there would be many abuses.

By the way I don't understand why the authorities benefit for using Tor.

<comment><USER67> > The logical path would to forbid anybody to tap lines. Then, of course, > encryption would not be necessary, since data would flow securely.

Why does forbidding someone from tapping somehow make data more secure? Just because it's forbidden doesn't mean it won't happen.

> as long as data does not fall into the hands of private interests

This is a risk because it's impossible to prevent. Especially as wireless networks become more and more common. It's impossible for all practical purposes to prevent wireless signals from being collected.

<comment><USER66> Well internet infrastructures should be made secure and be considered as sensitive. That way it would be shielded from many small criminals.

> impossible to prevent

Well putting good encryption standards would mitigate this by a lot. And isn't the sector of mobile antennas a walled garden ?

Of course if nothing is regulated to give the government a chance to tap it, then consumers will always try to conceal their behaviors and criminals will never be caught.

On the other hand, if the government properly regulates how data infrastructures are kept safe from private interests and if it's properly audited and made public, it will gain the trust of consumers and it will make the FBI's job much easier.

I honestly doubt the government will really want to let everyone have the opportunity to get away with the law because the technology allows it. There are strategies to protect citizens from private interests while doing investigations.

The problem with tor is that the government can end up systematically crack if they want, so using stealth tools isn't the road that makes sense.

It boils down to trust. If trust goes down, it makes things much easier from criminals, since the FBI's job will be so much harder, since everyone effectively doesn't trust government.

Anyway, I'm not so knowledgeable about all that, but it's true that the law must evolve on technology. Guilty until proven otherwise should be the norm, and privacy matters, but if everybody is paranoiac like a criminal would and protects their data because nothing is regulated and because private companies always take a peek, then nothing will change.

<comment><USER67> > guilty until proven otherwise should be the norm

This is a scary statement to me. Why should it be assumed that I am guilty of something because I don't want my communication to be read? This amounts to saying that I have no right to privacy.

It seems that you're saying that I should just trust the government to not read my messages if I am innocent. However, I don't think it's fair to say that I only have the right to privacy if I trust the government to stay out of my communications because that's not really privacy at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's an unpopular opinion amongst techies, but I do think people should recognize the genuine nuances to this issue.

It probably won't ever happen, but as a "live and let live" kind of guy who nevertheless recognizes there are truly evil people out there, and the purpose of government almost above all else is to protect society from them, I think the policy which would make the most sense for this sort of thing would be for a government to simply come up with a sort of digital social contract with its citizens:

We couldn't care less if you're buying weed on the internet, or cocaine, or if you're selling them, or emailing your mistress, or pirating HD tentacle hentai. You can do these things in public or private, as you so choose. In the digital realm, we respect your privacy and subscribe to the principle of _de minimis._

In return, we're going to require that encrypted internet traffic in our country be routed through our servers, with software that flags a limited amount of suspicious, IP-anonymized traffic for human review. If the algorithm turns out out to be wrong in your case and the email was only about the nuclear bomb-grade heroin you snorted off the Pakistani general's long-range missile during your secret gay tryst in Islamabad, _we don 't care._ We'll destroy those records immediately, and there's no way for our human reviewers to see your IP address. We know exactly who reviewed your records and we'll throw the book at any one of them who leaks any private data.

And because we have lent our citizens this exceptional freedom to use the internet for any peaceful purpose, that means encrypted traffic that isn't routed through our servers must be treated as suspicious. It may or may not be legitimate, but much of it may well be related to terrorism or violent crime, or child pornography, or financial crime, or foreign agents. So, we will continue our policy as stated above; we won't punish you just for using encryption illegally, but doing so does give us reason for questioning you and requesting access to your private keys.

<comment><USER69> The reason techies find solutions like these unpalatable is because there is no technical way to provide these capabilities without simultaneously weakening protections against attacks from other entities (criminals, other governments, etc).

Also, while you, personally, may think it's okay to buy and sell cocaine over the internet, many of the other people signing/writing this social contract would disagree.

<comment><USER38> > The reason techies find solutions like these unpalatable is because there is > no technical way to provide these capabilities without simultaneously > weakening protections against attacks from other entities (criminals, other > governments, etc).

Right, the golden key problem.

> Also, while you, personally, may think it's okay to buy and sell cocaine > over the internet, many of the other people signing/writing this social > contract would disagree.

'Social contracts' rarely refers to specific stances on policies/issues. He was likely using it to refer to the underlying implicit agreement the term usually refers to (the agreement to live by laws, etc) as opposed to any actual document you might be thinking of (like a constitution or something).

From that standpoint, I agree with him - there are some issues which will only ever be 'resolved' by reconsidering the underlying stance we take on what our societies can or can't do, and revising the underlying social contract the societies we choose to live in are built upon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Well, at least he is being more straight forward than Comey was. He's laying it out there that in his opinion it's key escrow or else!

Of encrypted device users, just how many have not opted to have the key backed up by Apple or Microsoft? Backing up seems to be default, which is self- elected key escrow. 99% of the the rest of everyday users probably have a 4 digit PIN that can be cracked very quickly under forensic examination. Anyone with a real security need is going to be following their own opsec protocols anyway, which they would do with or without a law preventing good default security for everyday users.

They really do seem to be overblowing just how dark the network is to them under their investigatory powers.

</comment><comment><USER71> Is it incorrect to say that America is the biggest threat to world peace? American military industrial complex seems like the biggest terrorists in the world. Which country has killed more innocent people across the world and started most wars since WW2?

<comment><USER65> Much of the behaviour of the US towards other nations can easily be considered the actions of a rogue state. I can't see how one could deny this when looking at the facts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Law enforcement and detective work in this century is very lazy. They want to strip privacy for an easier job.

Engineers that get rid of security or do it half way are seen as bad.

Yet people enforcing the law, stripping away laws and rights they are here to protect, do this to make it easier for 'national security'.

Respect for the law has taken a huge dive down with the War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs with many similar parallels. It appears to be diving even further. Good quality detective work is being worked out in favor of constant surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER73> Any marginal gains that US might achieve in terms of security are not worth the resources and human liberties they need to sacrifice. Of course for those who are in power there is an incentive to paint a needlessly scary picture take our money and destroy our freedom.

I think public schools without bullying would be better and more beneficial objective than protection from terrorists who do not exist.

</comment><comment><USER74> Honestly, I don't understand how this can work as a practical matter. For companies and their customers to have a chance of surviving criminal hacking attempts they have to be as secure as they can be.

If it's easy for the FBI to track people they have a legitimate interest in it'll be easy for some guy on the other side of the world to lift your SSN.

</comment><comment><USER75> It is time for a moderate Libertarian government. It really is. We need to bring the train back onto the rails.

<comment><USER76> Heck, moderate _anything_ would be a good place to start.

Even the Democrats are right-wing extremists by European standards.

<comment><USER75> No, no. No.

Democrats use, lie and abuse the middle and lower classes just to get votes. They promise crap, they create division and tension along racial, economic, and any other line they can find. It's a playbook right out of the best South American dictatorships. The masses vote for them based on stupid shit like "Hope and Change" and then they get nothing. Frankly, I don't understand why these people keep voting for them. Look at what's happening to the black community under a black president. If there was ever an indication that Democrat's mode of operation is to use the masses for votes there you have it, playing live right in front of on us TV nearly every day.

The only good thing about Democrats are some of the approaches to social issues. Things like gays are not evil and the war on drugs is stupid.

Republicans? Crap. The religious right represents delusion and insanity. They too, when you produce a few key words, will vote for you at the push of a button. They manipulate a different set of audiences for different reasons.

The only good thing about Republicans is the leaning towards fiscal responsibility, low taxes and low spending.

A good moderate Libertarian will be for small government, low taxes, a moderate liberal social stance, fiscal responsibility, not fucking with the world with armament and getting the hell out of our lives, homes, businesses and bedrooms.

I for one am glad to see someone like Rand Paul making the moves he is making. He is smart. He knows that in this country it is still impossible to win as a Libertarian due to the dominance the main parties are granted by the electoral college system. So, he sits as a Republican. Yet, it is obvious he is not a bible thumping Republican. He is a Libertarian, there's no doubt about that. The chances of him getting the nomination are probably not good, but you never know.

If voters just stopped to think for a moment to realize that the average politician is not much more than a bad used car salesman working hard to use and abuse them every day for their own gains we might just have a chance to start doing things differently. That's a tall order. How do you convince a bible thumper to vote for someone that isn't going to push their buttons and won't demonize gays or other groups? How do you convince a union leader to have their membership vote for someone who isn't going to promise free goodies and favors to their membership?

Probably won't happen. But that's the root of the problem in American politics. We are being pulled to the right or left by a process of buying votes. Those of us in the middle who see things for what they are and really want to do the right thing for the country and future generations have no voice in this because the big parties and the electoral college system push us down into the noise. Voting Libertarian in California or Texas is wasting your vote.

The electoral college, for all it's virtues, has created a system where the party that should be in power right now has no chance at having a voice. Collectively Libertarians are in the many millions across the nation. However, our system of government is designed to pretend that every state is a homogeneous voting block, allocating all votes to one or the other party, which is utterly ridiculous in today's reality.

While I really wish for a Libertarian shift in our politics I fear this is almost impossible to achieve given the realities of how the game is designed and played.

<comment><USER76> What are you disagreeing about, exactly?

The European "right-wing" is socialist by American standards and the American "liberals" are right-wing by European standards.

Heck, the only reasons Americans think "small government" is the solution (and that it has to be an all-or-nothing decision) is that the government they have is bullshit.

You can have regulations without having a "nanny state" that dictates every aspect of your life. You can have privacy and welfare and socialised health care and various other kinds of good things _without_ "socialism".

Americans, generally speaking, _don 't care about other people_. Personal responsibility is the highest good: if you made it, it was your personal achievements that got you to where you are; if you end up in a bad situation, it was your own failings and bad decisions that got you there.

But that has nothing to do with liberalism or capitalism. In fact, it's quite anti-liberal. Without regulation, capitalism eats its children: you get monopolies and oligopolies, innovation stagnates and new competitors are either acquired or driven out of the market; you also provide no incentive for moral responsibility to the consumers. Randian "libertarianism" is deeply flawed and sociopathic.

<comment><USER75> I think the problem with the way you are seeing things is what I call the "Star Trek View of the Universe". This is where all Vulcans are the same, all Klingons are the same, all <insert planet> are the same.

Example:

> Americans, generally speaking, don't care about other people.

That's not even close to being true. A cursory google search reveals that the US is at the top of the list of nations engaged in charitable donations, foreign aid and other metrics of generosity that clearly indicate that we do care about other people.

And, no, Americans are not a homogeneous herd that thinks and behaves the same way. And that's why the problems and the solutions are sometimes very hard to sort out. Yet I'll take this any day to some of what goes on in many nations around the globe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Me: 'Go fuck yourself'

</comment><comment><USER78> It's a power grab, plain and simple. The FBI and CIA are probably happy that 9/11 and neverending terrorism occurred as it gave them the excuse to do it.

"It's for your own good."

</comment><comment><USER79> You know how you know you're on the right track? When the fascist scumbag terrorists say what you're doing should be prevented "above all else"...

</comment><comment><USER80> Terrorists are already going to use encryption... so "stopping the terrorists" is a weak argument (not the one used here, but just saying).

Beyond this, given that every level of access the U.S. government has been given in any kind of automated fashion has been abused... "Fuck 'em" ... They do not have a right to violate the 4th ammendment at any given level just because "papers" and posessions are digital in nature.

<comment><USER76> But then at least we know you're guilty if you use encryption.

It's kinda like the reasoning that banning marijuana was better for the police because they didn't need to distinguish between illegal drug use and legal drug use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I think one thing clear is that anyone who follows the news will be hard press to use technology that doesn't implement open source encryption. That's the only way we can be sure there isn't a black door. I think we should let every major tech company know that this isn't the time to reinvent the wheel or roll out their own in house solution, but to work on bettering proven open source technologies.

</comment><comment><USER82> I find it interesting that the FBI is saying we don't need encryption while 4 million government workers' information has been hacked.

</comment><comment><USER83> you can't prevent encryption. There is no barrier to entry to people writing encryption from scratch. You could even do it with a combination of computer and paPer, if you don't trust the computer... People using 3rd party closed source encryption tools don't really have a reasonable expectation of non- backdoored software.

</comment><comment><USER84> At the risk of getting some list, these guys are the reason that we formed a country. It was people like this guy that made everyone here get a gun and fight. Literally. I'm not some gun nut, but wow, our government has gone off the rails.

This is not what I want for my country, not what I want for my kids.

</comment><comment><USER85> I think we are focusing in the wrong thing when encryption is all about privacy discussions. If we want to build distributed systems, for example for money transfers, we will need "unbreakable" encryption for signing.

</comment><comment><USER86> "Privacy, above all other things" is not the same meaning as "Companies should help us 'prevent encryption above all else'"

Some one has an axe to grind and is deliberately misusing the FBI's quote.

</comment><comment><USER87> ..and we pay their salaries.

</comment><comment><USER88> Is it just me, or is the irony of this story colossal:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9662421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9662421)

</comment><comment><USER89> Again? I thought we went over this in the 90's. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER90> When will we have the option to enable multiple layers of encryption at the IP level? It would put to rest so many of these power grabs.

</comment><comment><USER91> I wonder how many terrorist attacks have been prevented BECAUSE OF encryption?

Having all information in plain text frankly scares me more...

</comment><comment><USER92> holy crap, they have lost their damn minds! I can't believe this horse shit :(

</comment><comment><USER93> That's some ripe security state propaganda, there.

</comment><comment><USER94> Unclear on the concept:

I use the Tor Browser Bundle to read my gmail. I figure it's helpful to those working for legitimate regime change, that I put encrypted traffic on the net.

<comment><USER95> LOL

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Me to the FBI: "The FBI should help me help them fuck off"</comment>


Github - find your github user id - <AUTHOR> http://caius.github.com/github_id/

<comment><USER2> They mentioned something in a hiring post about someone having a low user id, then someone created this using that post as inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the point?

<comment><USER4> Determining who was there first, maybe?

<comment><USER5> That was my though. Kind of like on Slashdot how people used to like their 4 digit user id's</comment></comment></comment>


The Big Bang never happened? - <AUTHOR> http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/02/10/watch-the-big-bang-never-happened/

<comment><USER2> Oh, geez, the headline says "Big Band" while the article says "Big Bang". I was really hoping that somehow, "In the Mood" was merely a figment of the collective imagination, that Tommy Dorsey, Cab Calloway, Ish Kabibble and Glenn Miller were just products of some particularly contorted and perverted conspiracy. Imagine my disappointment!

</comment><comment><USER3> Frankly, I'm cool with the idea of the quantum corrections being inserted into general relativity's field equations. And I'm cool with the idea that this might imply a universe that didn't start with a bang.. But how does the new hypothesis explain the (increasing and accelerating) red-shifts found when observing distant galaxies?</comment>


Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca <comment><USER2> Allthough everything in this medium article might be factually correct, it doesn't seem to me that Tomas Pueyo has any kind of relevant medical or microbiological education to base the content in this article upon. It content just seems to be just a mishmash of stuff gathered on the internet. My fear of this kind of medical bro-science writing is that it is probably doing more harm than good. Please leave this kinds of writeups to the experts. The situation is far too serious for armchair experts to be doling out advice.

<comment><USER3> What are you complaining about? He's taken some available data, made some points and illustrated them using graphs.

You might not find it edifying enough (PS I like the bro-science phrase!), however, it might spur an actual medical science specialist to do some real figures.

PPS. I put up coronavirus posters up at work a week ago last Monday and brought some hand-sanitiser in. Everyone laughed and poked-fun, some even baulked when I demanded they hand-sanitise at my desk. No jokes any more, people are even washing their hands.

<comment><USER4> > people are even washing their hands.

Mind blown.

<comment><USER5> Hands washed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nonetheless, the point stands: social distancing now. That's what we and everyone can act to help. There is no getting around.</comment>


Richard Posner on "How I Became a Keynesian" - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnr.com/article/how-i-became-keynesian <comment><USER2> "But for a confidence-building public-works program to be effective in arresting an economic collapse, the government must be able to finance its increased spending by means that do not reduce private spending commensurately. If it finances the program by taxation, it will be draining cash from the economy at the same time that it is injecting cash into it. But if it borrows to finance the program (deficit spending), or finances it with new money created by the Federal Reserve, the costs may be deferred until the economy is well on the way to recovery and can afford to pay them without endangering economic stability."

Doesn't new money creation have the same effect as directly taking cash from the economy? After all, it does cheapen all available money. How, then, can he say that these costs are deferred?

<comment><USER3> _Doesn't new money creation have the same effect as directly taking cash from the economy? After all, it does cheapen all available money. How, then, can he say that these costs are deferred?_

Time-delay effect. In theory if everyone knows how much new money is being pumped into the economy (and exactly when it arrives, etc.) then the adjustment to reduced value of money happens instantly and you haven't accomplished much.

If instead the new money is injected stealthily into the economy (or at least: knowledge about it doesn't spread everywhere instantaneously) then the cost (in inflation) will be _deferred_ (until "everyone figures it out" / prices re-adjust).

Thus in the short-term private sector spending would be mostly unaffected (b/c people have about the same nominal amounts of money as before and prices are still at about their previous nominal amounts) and over the longer term the inflationary effect kicks in and you pay for it.

In Keynes's time it would be pretty likely you could stealthily inject money and also it would be pretty likely that readjustment to the increased money supply would happen slowly; no internet, for one, and generally nowhere near as tightly integrated an economy as we have today.

That's not as clear today (information moves faster), but on the other hand information still takes time to work its way through the economy.

<comment><USER4> That is what makes it even worse. Those benefiting from that would be those who get to spend the extra money first and those affected are those that save. That would defeat the whole point of money as a store of value, since it would be losing its value.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a feature, not a bug. Keynes's whole point is that recessions are caused when too many people want to save and too few people want to consume. Putting more money into circulation puts weight on the other side of that scale.

<comment><USER5> The numbers tell a different story.

[http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...](http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&s\[1\]\[id\]=PSAVERT&s\[1\]\[range\]=5yrs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else here remember how politics articles became ever more popular on reddit a while back?

<comment><USER7> I think there is a difference between politics and economics. Not to say that they can't be mixed, but I think economic theory is of interest to a lot of hackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "There is almost no mention of inflation in The General Theory"

Combined with the apparent lack of explanation for bubbles, doesn't that meant there is a gigantic gaping hole in the entire theory?

I don't quite see why The General Theory was enough to convert Posner to Keynesianism.

</comment><comment><USER9> the General theory rests on a faulty premise: that the failure of the markets are to provide full employment and income inequality.

both of these are features NOT bugs.

income inequality is covered by the Graham essay mind the Gap, the lack of full employment has to do with the marginal utility of labor, suffice to say full employment would represent a labor market in disequilibrium (even by Keynes' definitions).

The General Theory is crap.

<comment><USER10> I haven't read the original book, but from what I can tell from this article, at least _part_ of the general theory is about _explaining_ why there is less than full employment and income inequality. As far as I can tell, you are calling the entire theory crap based the author's desire to create full employment and income equality. I'm not sure Keynes wanted governments to try for this or not, but at there seems to be at least two separate parts of the theory to evaluate.

<comment><USER9> creating full employment or income equality would be INCREDIBLY stupid. any country that attempts to do so will be throwing money into a giant hole until they stop or go bankrupt.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility></comment></comment></comment>


As Electric Motors Impove, More Things Are Being Electrified - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21728888-better-motors-go-better-batteries-electric-motors-improve-more-things <comment><USER2> Yes, there's action in rotating electrical machinery again. For decades, this was a dull and boring field.

Tesla and Steinmetz figured out the theory of AC machines in the early 20th century. This was the first industrial technology where you needed advanced math to get anything to work right. Complex numbers. Calculus. Laplace transforms. That bothered some people, such as Edison. By the 1930s it was figured out, and generations of EEs struggled through rotating machine theory in college.

Then all the cool kids went off to radio and transistors and computers. Rotating electrical machinery was a mature field. Maybe a few people at GE in Schenectady worked on it.

Then came power semiconductors, and chopper-type motor control, where power was being turned on and off at moderately high frequencies. At first this was just applied to existing motor designs. But AC motors were designed for sine wave power. Choppers didn't produce clean sine waves. Much effort was put into making variable-speed controls that produced the nice sine waves motors needed. Classical AC theory was built around sine waves, and engineers knew how to do that kind of analysis. This worked, but it made AC motors buzz at the chopper frequency, and as chopper frequencies went up, whine. When you ride on BART, that's what you're hearing from the motors. The waveform mismatch also led to unwanted heating in the windings and inefficiency.

Variable-frequency 3-phase AC motors went from exotic to normal. Today, everything from a Tesla to a drone to a Diesel-electric locomotive uses such motors. The big power semiconductors required aren't that big. Here's one for a locomotive.[1]

In recent years, motors have started to be designed for the non sinusoidal waveforms that come out of chopper power supplies. This required new theory and much simulation of magnetic fields. There's plenty of compute power available and commercial packages for that kind of analysis. Now we're seeing more advanced motor designs that match well with their control electronics.

After most of a century, rotating electrical machinery design is cool again.

[1] [http://www.ametrade.com/eng/electronics/products/IGBT_IGCT.s...](http://www.ametrade.com/eng/electronics/products/IGBT_IGCT.shtml)

<comment><USER3> >When you ride on BART, that's what you're hearing from the motors.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdNCrj14cK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdNCrj14cK0)

<comment><USER4> That's brilliant!

There are some trains on the London Underground that use gate turn-off thyristors, which make a sort of Star Trek klaxon sound when they start up:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pagB58tGpRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pagB58tGpRY)

<comment><USER3> My favorite bit of electric locomotive technology: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjMZ5qtyCUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjMZ5qtyCUc)

Closely followed by dynamic braking, or as it is more accurately and much more awesomely called in the UK, rheostatic braking.

<comment><USER5> Someone posted one of these on /r/electricians the other day running an elevator in New Zealand; very cool piece of tech.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/6vpg8n/the_me...](https://www.reddit.com/r/electricians/comments/6vpg8n/the_mercury_arc_rectifier_that_powers_the_durie/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretty bad article. Its conclusions are broadly correct, but the way it gets there is not. There hasn't been any major change in motors- the major change has come in Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs). Older motors are hooked directly into the grid and deal poorly with changing speed and torque, and can drop _drastically_ in efficiency. A motor can be 60% efficient at low load, and 98% efficient at its rated load.

VFDs are very complex pieces of circuitry- far more than you'd expect. Efficient drivers require a great deal of computation, and 16 or 32 bit processors are not uncommon. That also requires high-power, _cheap_ silicon transistors which are only gradually taking over from simpler control schemes. They make a huge difference in a lot of cases.

The author is also very wrong on Synchronous Reluctance-assisted Permanent Magnet motors, but its hard to fault them on that; it's complicated even for many engineers. The purpose is not to increase the power density, it's to increase efficiency. The magnets act like a "cruise" motor. At low torque, they provide all of the rotor magnetization at a very high efficiency. At higher torque, the stator induces a stronger field into the rotor, causing it to act like a reluctance motor. That allows you to turn on extra power as demanded at the price of lower efficiency (the same as a reluctance motor).

If, instead, you just used a larger PM motor, it would be more expensive and it would also have an efficiency drop at low torque (where the motor spends most of its time operating). The magnets are highly efficient but they "set" the operating torque of the motor somewhat, so there is a loss at low power/high speed to hysteresis. A reluctance motor meanwhile never reaches the peak efficiency of a PM motor.

Anyway the article doesn't really say much convincing and feels mostly like fluff.

<comment><USER6> Here's some comparison [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOH1PoOOeuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOH1PoOOeuY)

<comment><USER3> Great video! NB to anyone watching that this is a standard reluctance motor, not one with magnets like the one in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> you ought to get into the habit of looking at a spectral analysis of the sound in your home. modern power supplies and motors rely on the ever more powerful and cheap power transistors that we have these days -- they are able to switch power on and off at very high frequencies and thus reduce the size of the rest of the circuitry needed to raise or lower voltage. but this often results in extremely high pitched sound coming from parts that, for whatever reason, physically move or expand in response to current or voltage changes. in cheap electronics, this effect is not accounted for and controlled with vibration dampening materials applied to the vibrating parts, and the result is a maddening high pitched squeal. even if humans arent able to hear it, there could be devices in your house that make some kinds of pets uncomfortable. ive been meaning to buy something that will let me detect ultrasonic sound so that i can smash those devices with a hammer.

ive always wondered what it would be like if you used a dual motor system in a car, where one motor is wound and sized for very high torque and the other motor is wound and sized for very high speed. i think it would be great because, as long as they were induction based motors, you could run one and leave the other off with no interference from the one that is turned off. it would be like having a transmission without any of the energy loss or maintenance problems. you could also distribute power however you want among the two motors, and in a way have something like an infinitely variable transmission. that would be really cool.

<comment><USER8> _I 've always wondered what it would be like if you used a dual motor system in a car, where one motor is wound and sized for very high torque and the other motor is wound and sized for very high speed._

The dual motor versions (D) of Tesla electric vehicles (models S and X at least) use this principle. As far as I know, they have induction motors. However, I am not sure to which extent one of the motors is used primarily for high torque and the other for high speed.

<comment><USER9> Yup, the front motor is the cruising motor and the rear one is the accelerating one(since weight distribution means that the rear wheels get a bit more traction).

They shut the rear motor down at highway speeds giving the Dual Motor cars slightly better range.

<comment><USER10> Do the single motorcars only have one of those two? If so which?

Or do they have a third kind of motor which is wound to be a better balance?

<comment><USER9> My understanding is that there's 3 configurations

Single motor, non-P: 1 large motor in the rear.

Dual motor, non-P: 2 small motors in front/rear with front motor geared for cruising, rear for accel.

Dual motor, Performance: 1 small motor in front geared for cruising, one large motor in the rear.

There's really no reason to have a front motor only. It's done in ICE cars to save cost/complexity since the engine is up front. With how the center of gravity shifts during accel you want the drive wheels to be on the rear since they have better traction.

Same reason in reverse you have large disk brakes on the front wheels and drum in the rear.

<comment><USER11> > you want the drive wheels to be on the rear since they have better traction.

But you need a powerful motor to act as the brake (you want to avoid friction braking as much as possible). And that needs to be in the front.

<comment><USER9> Not really, unless you're in a panic brake situation(where I want friction brakes anyway) Tesla only brakes to 60kW which is more than plenty for normal driving.

You also want friction braking for cases where you've got 100% charge or the battery is cold and you can't dump energy into the pack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Expense of motors (not to mention batteries to support them) is still a problem with electrifying smaller equipment. I was looking at repowering one of my old 12hp Gravely walk-behind tractors -- to find an equivalent torque / HP EV motor to replace the Kohler 301 in it would have been upwards of $2-3k. And that's not including sourcing batteries, supporting electronics, etc. A little diesel engine would be about $600.

I hope to see the day when projects like this could be cost effective.

<comment><USER13> Where you likely want to search for affordable electric motors is 'electric golf cart motors'. When I was looking at refurbishing a golf cart in the early 2000's I was a bit surprised to see high performance brushless dc motors being used.

<comment><USER14> Also forklift motors. I don't know about the price, but I've heard of them being used to build experimental electric vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is there to improve in motors ? They are already 95% efficient, and some BLDC motors even 99% efficient. The most efficient machinery created by man. What really needs improvement are battery storage, to be more dense and lightweight.

<comment><USER16> I worked for a BLDC company in their research division for a few years and there are many things that can still be improved. At the time we were working on reducing the size of motors without sacrificing torque or efficiency. This was particularly the case for industry motors where we developing a motor half the size of an older industry standard AC motor, but with the same power and 94% efficiency.

Size is where the majority of advancements for BLDC motors will come.

<comment><USER17> Advances in size and weight is what will enable innovation in new applications of motors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice to see Visedo getting recognition.

They are essentially an offshoot from the decision made nearly 20 years ago: Lappeenranta University of Technology decided to focus on energy tech, and added environmental tech as a second leg a few years later. Visedo is one of the results.

I also remember, while their offices were still in the tech incubator warehouse, trying out their prototype electric "car". Lightweight, all sheet metal, uncomfortable to sit in and steer - but went from stand-still to ~50km/h in no time at all. Looks like they've managed to scale up and refine their technology quite a bit since then.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone researching motors that use elerctric charge instead of magnetism? Couldnt those be cheaper to build and possibly more efficient and powerful?

<comment><USER3> > Is anyone researching motors that use elerctric charge instead of magnetism? > Couldnt those be cheaper to build and possibly more efficient and powerful?

In general the magnetic permeability of materials is 1-3 orders of magnitude higher than the electrical permittivity. Materials with high permeability are also 2-3 orders of magnitude cheaper than materials with high permittivity. It makes much more sense to make magnetic motors because of those two facts.

However charge-based motors have existed since the mid 1700s[1]. They're exclusively novelties, but they are exceptional novelties indeed. You can even use a kite to power them from atmospheric electricity[2]! That's the same voltage difference that eventually creates lightning, but without a storm the electricity is quite weak and the motor quite inefficient. The voltage is high enough to be unpleasant though.

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

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhXxSAv6rMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhXxSAv6rMg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Typo in article submission title

> _As Electric Motors Impove,_

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised to read in an age of LEDs lightning is supposed to use more electricity than computers. I'm not even sure that on average the motor uses that much more energy than all the other appliances in an electrical car.

<comment><USER22> Even LED lights have a typical efficiency of only 10-20%. Low pressure sodium lamps (many yellow street lights) can reach 30% efficiency. But in general, lighting is far from being a solved problem even if you assume everyone is using state-of-the art lighting solutions.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but that doesn't explain why all the computing we are doing should spend less electricity than light. I bet I can run all the light in my apartment for 24 hours and don't use as much energy as when I'm playing a AAA 3D computer game for an hour.

<comment><USER22> If you play your AAA game on a PS4, that's about 120W [1].

Assuming you have three 60W-equivalent light bulbs on in your appartment, using halogen lamps your lights use as much power as the PS4. If you still use incandescent lamps, that's 180W, about as much as much as the PS4 and a 55" LED TV. With 7W LED bulbs you need 5 hours of lighting to match the PS4, or 8 hours to match PS4+TV.

Of course you might have a computer that uses significantly more power. But the best current-get Intel i7 still has a TDP of only 112W (165W for i9). Add to that a GeForce GTX 1080 TI with a TDP of 250W. Even during gameplay both will on average use less power than their TDP. Without going with dual-GPU configurations you can't build a reasonable current-gen computer that matches the 500Wh that our three 7W LED use over 24h. And I suspect you actually have more than three light bulbs.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specif...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specifications#Power_usage)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Impove?

I think that's a spelling error. ;)

</comment><comment><USER24> I know its kind of a ofshot question- but is there research in non-chemical batterys? As in storing energy mechanically in nano-structures? Goggle did not reveal much there.

<comment><USER3> Batteries are chemical by definition. The closest thing to storing energy in nanostructures would be nonchemical supercapacitors, which use nanostructures or nanofabrication to achieve high surface areas. As a side effect of electrical attraction they store some energy mechanically too.

In general storing mechanical energy at the nanoscale is not efficient. As you get smaller mechanical properties become less relevant due to the increase in relative surface area (aka square-cube law). That makes electrical and chemical properties much more powerful.</comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi 3 already available for purchase in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/02/where-to-buy-the-raspberry-pi-3-pricing-and-full-specs/ <comment><USER2> Sure is. Just confirmed an order now. The power requirements are going up (2A 5.1V), and suggest the additional power supply. [0] I've never had power supply problems in either 1 or 2.

[0] [http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/plug-in-power- supply/9098126/?...](http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/plug-in-power- supply/9098126/?origin=PSF_430702|acc)

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe the power requirements have actually jumped to 2.5A for the charger (~12.5W). I'd be surprised if the Apple 12W charger couldn't power one of these without issue for most use cases (2.4A, vs 2.5A reference charger).

I can't help but notice that the power supply description is incorrect on RS- online's site. They're saying 2A in the text, but then their own spec sheet says the power supplies are 2.5A [0]

[0] Data sheet: [http://docs- asia.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/14ba/0900766b...](http://docs- asia.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/14ba/0900766b814ba718.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Is that you R. Daneel?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm all alone and with a galaxy to care for.

Or should I say my name is Eto Demerzel?

Alas, poor friend Giskard is no longer with me..</comment></comment></comment></comment>


$10 K to burn - <AUTHOR>

Marketing question -
We are trying to increase transactions and users. Budget of $10K - timeline of one month.
Does anyone have suggestions of how you would spend the money & manage our campaign? <comment><USER2> Since you didn't provide details on the product, it's safe to assume you're selling seats for Mars colony as well as Martian real estate once the flight actually gets there.

Ads in Popular Mechanics and 2600 is likely to be the best bet interest-wise. But you also don't want people on tight budgets, so probably a full-page ad in Robb Report, and a small one in WSJ classifieds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Retargeting adverts might not be bad -- most ad networks can serve ads to those who have already been to your site, which can draw them back

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, I would start by posting a question on Hacker news...</comment>


The Mythryl programming language - <AUTHOR> http://www.mythryl.org <comment><USER2> You can go directly to [https://mythryl.org/index3.html](https://mythryl.org/index3.html) and bypass the first two billboards.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember checking this language out a few years ago and discovering (and worrying about) the author's health issues.

The initial excitement to see it mentioned again in HN has been replaced by something akin to a kick in the balls.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's the actual GitHub repository: [https://github.com/mythryl/mythryl](https://github.com/mythryl/mythryl)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. Is it possible to know from the function signature if a function will be pure or not? Or does one need to drill all the way to the bottom manually to determine that?

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like something I would check out</comment>


How is the Linux kernel tested? - <AUTHOR> https://embeddedbits.org/how-is-the-linux-kernel-tested/ <comment><USER2> We run our own ci for building Linux kernels with clang. (ClangBuiltLinux.github.io). We take Debian's nightly package of ToT, make a docker image with the minimum tools we need, and use buildroot ramdisks that have a custom init script that powers down the machine once it reaches init. Our CI fetches various kernel trees and branches, builds them, then boots them in Qemu. The machine has 2 minutes to power up and down (usually takes less than 10s), otherwise we consider the machine hung and fail the run. We use travisci for the reporting, but are looking to offload the building.

Also, Linaro's Tool chain Working Group runs a ton of CI on the kernel as well. There's an effort from RedHat called KCI to aggregate all of these reports.

<comment><USER3> so you have a very well tested boot sequence -

is this not a slightly better kernel equivalent of 'it builds, ship it' ?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > a slightly better kernel equivalent of 'it builds, ship it' ?

Surely, "it _runs_ , ship it"? That seems quite a bit better.

<comment><USER4> The grand majority of code in the Linux kernel will never be hit by booting it in a QEMU with init=/bin/shutdown. The pure line coverage of these builds is probably like 5 or 10 %.

<comment><USER5> The majority of code will never be hit in QEMU or any testing in general, because 56%+ lines are in drivers. [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/223763/29119](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/223763/29119)

With 16%+ lines in all 24 architectures combined, you're not going to reach more than one of them at a time.

10% is going to be an extremely happy case. If we can test 5-10% that's a great achievement. To get past that you need to start booting real hardware with specific configurations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is there such little emphasis on "traditional" testing, that is, regular unit tests? At least some portion of the code base is surely suitable for normal unit tests. For example data structures, scheduling algorithms, file systems, ...

<comment><USER7> I think the main reason is that the Linux kernel (and similarly the *BSD kernels) are written in a programming language (C) that doesn't make it easy to do that. Code is often directly built on top of other kernel subsystems without any dependency injection whatsoever. This means that it's still possible to do unit testing of parts of the kernel, but it takes a crazy amount of effort, such as overriding symbols, overriding include paths and provide stub headers, etc..

I am well aware that it's also possible to have dependency injection in C by using structs with function pointers, but I think we can all agree that it's a lot less pleasant to use than C++ abstract base classes, Go interfaces or Rust traits. This is why the Linux kernel only tends to use this sparingly (e.g., inode operations).

<comment><USER8> You don't need a dependency injection framework to write unit tests, you just need cleanly separable units with well defined interfaces.

<comment><USER9> And, in the absence of a dependency injection framework, it's likely that the units are _not_ cleanly separable - because, without a DI framework, all classes are (presumably?) instantiating their dependencies directly.

Unless I've missed something? I've only ever worked in Java so maybe things are different in C-world,

<comment><USER10> > without a DI framework, all classes are (presumably?) instantiating their > dependencies directly. ... I've only ever worked in Java so maybe things are > different in C-world,

Well, for one thing, there are no classes in C. :) It is possible but unfun to emulate them with function pointers. Iiuc, little of the Linux kernel is written in that style.

Also, FYI, for many years we did DI without frameworks, using the factory pattern and other techniques. It wasn't always fun but it can certainly be done without Spring or whatever the new thing on the block is.

<comment><USER4> > Well, for one thing, there are no classes in C. :) It is possible but unfun > to emulate them with function pointers. Iiuc, little of the Linux kernel is > written in that style.

object-structs with function-pointers-for-methods are super-common in the Linux kernel and basically used everywhere for everything where modules can plug something into the kernel (e.g. virtually all drivers have at least one of these).

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the correction. I was going off the little bit of Linux code I've read, which seems to call most functions directly. And also another comment on this story. I don't know what to think now.

<comment><USER4> Linux is monolithic, but also modular. While drivers are almost entirely implemented with these kinds of objects, "core" modules have less pluggable functionality, and so you don't see it as much. For example, contrast the page cache code (that's basically mm/) with the VFS code (fs/). You'll notice how almost anything I/O uses these kinds of objects heavily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Another major challenge is to automate device drivers and hardware platform > tests because they require the hardware to be tested.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to automate testing of coupled hardware- software systems? This is really hard; we've attacked it in the past by writing hardware simulators in accordance with the ICD. This falls flat once you find that the hardware doesn't precisely match the ICD, and usually it's much cheaper to change the software than the hardware. And at that point, the simulator hasn't actually helped you at all.

I recently built a system which involved several tightly coupled hardware components and we fought many bugs on a tight schedule. It would have been nice to find a good way to think about this beyond the basic hardware-in-the- loop manual testing.

<comment><USER12> I can't tell you precisely how it was done but I worked at a company with many different types of hardware that contained many complex configurations of FPGAs, lasers, optics, and microcontrollers, coupled to a computer and they managed to simulate it quite well for what seems like a decade. One of the scientists there was one of the few geniuses I've ever met and they managed to simulate all those devices and a sufficient amount of their variations. So I can confirm it's possible, maybe it just requires an overworked genius?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h So I can confirm it's possible, maybe it just requires an overworked genius?

I believe that, but unless you can find a genius and/or mass-produce their work, does it help the rest of us?

<comment><USER12> Maybe. Knowing something is possible is sufficient for enough people to give things a try.

I know I've been successful in doing so; I've never built a simulator of this magnitude but I've successfully solved difficult problems with novel solutions simply from hearing it was possible to solve them in a given manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is automated static analysis from smatch for over ten years now:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/691882/](https://lwn.net/Articles/691882/)

This has found thousands of bugs in the kernel.

</comment><comment><USER14> So what happens when Linus Torvalds dies? Is there someone else who will become BDFL?

<comment><USER15> Greg Kroah-Hartman has filled in before when Linus has had to take time off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Long way of saying "it's not".

<comment><USER17> No, it is.

[https://github.com/linux-test-project/ltp](https://github.com/linux-test- project/ltp)

<comment><USER18> This has not been mainlined as far as I know.

<comment><USER19> The commit history looks pretty healthy

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h "Mainlined", not "maintained".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oh my! I though they were doing TDD :)</comment>