WA Gov. Inslee issues emergency proclamation that limits large events - <AUTHOR> https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/inslee-issues-emergency-proclamation-limits-large-events-minimize-public-health-risk <comment><USER2> Correct move. Should be done statewide and nationwide as well.

Sorry about your trade convention, I had a show I wanted to go to next month as well, but this is probably the single largest move that could be done to help limit the spread. I'd even say to reduce that to 50 people or so.

Kinda awkward to have to tell people they can't go to church but even that's not the best idea right now.

<comment><USER3> 250 people is a pretty large church draw. Most will be smaller than that anyway with some people self-isolating.

<comment><USER4> I thought that sounded small, but the median church size is around 75 people (as of 2009 anyway). [https://internetmonk.com/archive/michael-bell-what-is- an-ave...](https://internetmonk.com/archive/michael-bell-what-is-an-average- church) So the majority of churchgoers will be affected, but a minority of churches.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it impacts mostly the evangelical megachurches and less typical protestant or catholic churches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Proclamation full text: [https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/20-07%20Coro...](https://www.governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/20-07%20Coronavirus%20%28tmp%29.pdf)

Gist: "Gatherings of 250 people or more for social, spiritual and recreational activities including, but not limited to, community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based, or sporting events; parades; concerts; festivals; conventions; fundraisers; and similar activities"

… in the 3-county area including Seattle, initially through March 31.

<comment><USER5> Seattle resident working downtown and living in the city. Not an alarmist but I am a realist on the situation. The situation is getting spooky and the press conference, though expected, was eerie to say the least. This is like living a movie.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also a Seattle resident. I was glad to see Trevor Bedford endorse their approach unprompted: [https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1237802324409516033](https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1237802324409516033)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seattle public schools just announced a two-week closure starting March 12 as well.

<comment><USER7> Same for Lake Washington School District. (Redmond/MSFT area). [https://www.lwsd.org/](https://www.lwsd.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "WA Gov. Inslee" is Washington Governor Inslee. Not part of TFA's title, but useful context if you don't recognize the last name or the URL.</comment>


Hacker finds way to (re)use Emergency Broadcast System - <AUTHOR> http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=8431845 <comment><USER2> I don't think it would be as easy as the "hacker" claims. It's been close to 10 years since I worked in radio, but the EAS system was one area I had responsibility for. There are a number of radio stations that are designated as primary stations, and the alerts would start with them, and no single station can trigger the alert across the country. You might get a signal to propagate across a few states, which, while bad, isn't quite as big of a deal as they make out.

<comment><USER3> I second this.

It may seems odd to "hackers" that the system is so simple, lacking encryption, authentication, or human checks and balances, but thats kind of the whole point. If it actually needs to be activated, nobody is going to be around to press the big red button or verify encryption keys. They will all be home evacuating their families.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else get the feeling that all of this "hacker" stuff in the media is serving to raise the profile of "hackers" and position them as the new "terrorists" in an effort to create an environment of fear that will lead to support for upcoming Internet regulations?

<comment><USER5> Maybe if "hackers" started showing a little judgement and self-control, and stopped acting like a Penn State coach on a grade school playground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank god he wore the official t-shirt for the interview.

<comment><USER7> How else would the people watching know that he's a hacker? I mean, he doesn't have a six-monitor setup with a spinning rubik's cube compiling a hydra, he's not wearing 3D goggles, and they didn't have to go past his mom into a basement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> With a text writeup: [http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/iteam&id=8...](http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/iteam&id=8431876&pt=print)

<comment><USER9> And a youtube link to the DefCon talk mentioned in the article: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdmkTkWB40Q>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is the code in the video:

[http://anonymous-lulzsec.com/entries/encoders/same_enc- same_...](http://anonymous-lulzsec.com/entries/encoders/same_enc-same_enc-c)

<http://pastebin.com/gT7qErZF>

<comment><USER11> Any code that starts with a long quote from V for Vendetta is not worth my time.

I think anyone thinking about attempting this should read the story about the boy who cried wolf. If anything you reduce trust in the emergency broadcast system. This would be very bad, especially if a genuine emergency shortly followed a B.S. hacker broadcast

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I also wonder with #spacepunk tech brewing if it's possible to actually overpower a satellites signal. There is someone on kickstarter working on low earth orbit satellites that would stay in orbit for 2 weeks.

<comment><USER12> As far as I know, all rockets are heavily regulated by the FAA, including have representatives at launch. I'd be willing to bet that an unauthorized launch wouldn't last very long.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but what are they going to do about it once it's up there?

<comment><USER14> The US, Russia, and China all have proven anti-satellite weapon systems. IIRC they are very similar to missiles designed to intercept ICBMs.

<comment><USER13> It would have to be a very irritating satellite indeed to justify the expenditure of hundreds of millions and loss of secrecy to those programs involved in shooting down a random satellite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jake? Or Jack? <http://i.imgur.com/ITCwN.jpg></comment>


How Social Discovery will transform Location Based Apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.urbanq.com/post/2881214022/how-social-discovery-will-transform-location-based-apps

<comment><AUTHOR> There is new trend in LBS powered by Social Discovery. Many startups and leaders in the industry are trying really hard to become the dominating leader in this space. But this space is still segmented. It seems all the current leaders in this area are facing their own challenges. It'd be interesting to find out who would come out to lead the pack in 2011

</comment><comment><USER2> This blog posts made a lot of sense. However, I am not entirely in agreement with it. LBS is already an overcrowded space. I don't see it going much further from where it is at. Maybe it will actually retreat this year.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article. More interesting is their newly released iPhone app called UrbanQ. I just tried this app. It is amazing. I think this company is onto something.</comment>


Integer overflow flaw discovered in libssh2 before 1.8.1 - <AUTHOR> https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-3855 <comment><USER2> TL/DR for anyone else looking for context.

> A malicious server could send a specially crafted packet which could result > in an unchecked integer overflow. The value would then be used to allocate > memory causing a possible memory write out of bounds error (CWE-130). [1]

Maybe now we can put a stop to all these ssh bots crawling the internet. Just setup a malicious ssh server ;). This CVE was part of a larger release of nine separate security advisories concerning libssh2 [2].

[1] [https://www.libssh2.org/CVE-2019-3855.html](https://www.libssh2.org/CVE-2019-3855.html)

[2] [https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss- security/2019/03/18/3](https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss- security/2019/03/18/3)

<comment><USER3> All of the CVEs give credit to "Chris Coulson of Canonical Ltd.". Nice job Chris. Looks like they've probably developed a fuzzer targeting client packet handling. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more bugs pop up as a result of this attention.

<comment><USER4> Bugs coming out of Canonical and Red Hat are usually the result of customer issues. When I worked for a big company we reported the things we found to Red Hat as part of our enterprise support and they investigated and disclosed to the author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> SSH Brute force bots... beware ;)</comment>


Retiring the Green Padlock - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mattholt/retiring-the-green-padlock-149010086e6d <comment><USER2> Does the author of the post have any affiliation with a browser vendor? Are chrome or Firefox planning on implementing it?

<comment><USER3> No; I'm the author of the Caddy web server. No affiliation with browsers.</comment></comment>


Show HN: An email reminder service for your GitHub starred repos - <AUTHOR> https://githubreminder.org/signin

<comment><USER2> Great, but great App.

Thank you a lot!

PS: I just starred your repository, ha!

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks really useful. Am trying it out now :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks really useful, also starred ;)</comment>


Statement on Visit to the USA by Professor Philip Alston - <AUTHOR> http://ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E <comment><USER2> The whole report is a great read, which completely lines up with my experience living in various places in the US (particularly California + Louisiana) as a European - but this example near the beginning particularly stands out to me because, living in an area in San Francisco with a very visible homeless population, I witness it on a near daily basis:

 _" I witnessed a San Francisco police officer telling a group of homeless people to move on but having no answer when asked where they could move to"_

As I said, I witness this extremely regularly just outside of my apartment. It ranges from a patrol car stopping for a few minutes to just give a talk to the homeless people that amounts to "hey, we're the police, we are letting you know we're here and we've got our eye on you... we know you can't magically stop being homeless but please stop looking so homeless", all the way to 4-5 cars + a firetruck/ambulance on standby while the officers make the homeless people take down camp, pat them down, etc. with sometimes a city sanitation pickup truck taking away all of their possessions as garbage (it seems that many homeless people are hoarders).

I'm not sure what's going on "behind the scenes" here. Is it an irate neighbor that calls the police complaining about the homeless people and asking them to do something about it, which they then do their best to? Or is interacting with the homeless population an actual, documented part of their job? If so, is it tracked? What are the outcomes they hope for?

What I observe is that when they make the homeless people leave, they'll typically be back a few days/weeks later, so clearly this is only shuffling the problem around, rather than actually solving it in any meaningful way.

My hunch is that this is all essentially theater - the police/fire department know they can't do anything, but have instructions from above to do "something" about it, so they just end up doing what they can, even if it is utterly pointless and ineffective. But at least the irate neighbor is satisfied that there are no more homeless people outside their window for now.

It's all very sad.

<comment><USER3> It was my understanding that SF in particular is an incredibly rich county and that there are adequate beds available in shelters for the homeless. Is this not the case?

<comment><USER4> There aren't enough beds, and many homeless people prefer sleeping on the street, then in a shelter, for a number of logical reasons.

1\. They are more likely to be assaulted or robbed in a shelter. Shelter staff may or may not do shit to help you.

2\. Shelter admission hours can be limited - they may be incompatible with their job.

3\. You are expected to be drug and alochol free in a shelter. For someone with an addiction, this may not be something they can accept. [1]

[1] Before anyone suggests that the solution is for those people to just quit their addiction, please keep in mind that there are many wealthy, intelligent, mentally sound people in a stable, supportive environment, with a loving family are unable to break their addictions.

<comment><USER5> > 3\. You are expected to be drug and alochol free in a shelter. For someone > with an addiction, this may not be something they can accept.

There's an addition to this: pets, especially dogs but also rats. For many homeless people their pets are their only living companion - but shelters accepting people with pets are a rarity even in Europe. Of course, because multiple dogs in the same space will lead to all night barking, territory fights etc. - this is why unconditional (!) housing first policies are the only thing that works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > 2\. My visit coincides with a dramatic change of direction in US policies > relating to inequality and extreme poverty. The proposed tax reform package > stakes out America's bid to become the most unequal society in the world, > and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income > inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans

Really hard to take this seriously. I don't think anyone in the US needs a tax cut right now, so I oppose the tax reform. But the fact is that before the Trump tax cuts, US corporate tax rates were higher both in theory and _in practice_ than in Germany, France, Australia, Canada, etc. [https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does- the...](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the-u-s-have- the-highest-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-world)

Our taxes are also far more progressive than Germany, France, and Sweden: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/ameri...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/05/americas- taxes-are-the-most-progressive-in-the-world-its-government-is-among-the- least/?utm_term=.a05b599f3342). Trump's tax plan won't change that: the cuts in the top rates are very small and even most people in the top 1% won't be able to take advantage of things like pass through treatment.

<comment><USER7> Could you explain how the statement "before the Trump tax cuts, US corporate tax rates were higher both in theory and in practice than in Germany, France, Australia, Canada, etc. [https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check- does-the...](https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the...") rebuts the professor's claim that the tax cuts will "greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality"?

<comment><USER6> It's more the "bid to become the most unequal society" framing of the point. That makes it seem like the US is doing something different than everyone else. The entire OECD has been cutting corporate tax rates massively over the past few decades: [https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/corporate-tax-cuts- and-...](https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/corporate-tax-cuts-and-tax- revenues).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Philip Alston [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston)

</comment><comment><USER9> _" The proposed tax reform package stakes out America's bid to become the most unequal society in the world, and will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest 1% and the poorest 50% of Americans....It is against this background that my report is presented."_

It's interesting that he is a law professor (not an economics professor) and yet he stated this as if it were incontrovertible fact, with no facts to back up his prediction, and then went on to base much of the rest of his report on it. That statement may turn out to be true, and it may turn out to be false, but it is certainly not settled fact.

It renders this entire report meaningless, as it is based on nothing more than speculation on the part of a clearly biased author about what the outcome of recent tax policy changes will be.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting that you're an Entrepreneur (not a Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights) and yet you've rendered this entire report meaningless, in-spite of all the additional body of evidence considered in the report.

<comment><USER9> I read it. He presents no evidence that the recent tax reform has exacerbated the wealth gap. Of course, he couldn't have, because the reforms were only recently passed, and thus it is not possible to know what the long-term outcome will be. By his own admission, he framed the entire report in light of his false statement of fact made at the beginning.

So, while there are some interesting factual tidbits sprinkled throughout the report, any conclusions that it reaches based upon those facts are meaningless, because they are colored by the false statement of fact.

<comment><USER11> "stakes out America's bid" implies that this is intention and not result yet, so he's not claiming that it's happened yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apologies for going off topic but what the hell did the developers of that do to the keys? If you scroll down and then use the down arrow you're taken to the top of the page and, paradoxically, one of the nav items opens. Can't use Command-Left Arrow to go back in the history. Just does nothing. Did they do that on purpose? Who thought that was a good idea? One I hope doesn't spread.

<comment><USER5> > If you scroll down and then use the down arrow you're taken to the top of > the page and, paradoxically, one of the nav items opens

I can't reproduce this one, but cmd+r and then using the arrows does not work - only after clicking with the mouse once in the text.

The HTML output of that page is an utter, utter mess including MS Office comments revealing part of their internal infrastructure and workflow (look for www-edit.in.ohchr.org in the source). Jeez.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't doubt the gist of most of the report. We could do much better with the money we spend on Health...

but this sounds odd: "Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA"

Given that a few years ago it was unheard of disease by most professionals.

<comment><USER14> Not sure what point he is tyring to make with that

> 424 symptomatic Zika virus disease cases reported*

> 414 cases in travelers returning from affected areas

> 4 cases acquired through presumed local mosquito-borne transmission in > Florida (N=2) and Texas (N=2)

> 6 cases acquired through sexual transmission

There were ~10 cases were people got infected by zika while in united states.

How is spending more money on public health going to prevent people getting infected while overseas.

[https://www.cdc.gov/zika/reporting/2017-case- counts.html](https://www.cdc.gov/zika/reporting/2017-case-counts.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> video talk : [https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJkLD_s9pYaYteD-3LxQd2f...](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJkLD_s9pYaYteD-3LxQd2fIGakaf3_Fq)

</comment><comment><USER16> Interesting, and sad to read. Our America has many problems, many of which shouldn't exist on a nation as rich as ours. What amazes me is, did he gather all that, first hand, within two weeks?!

</comment><comment><USER17> _US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world_

This is a common stat thrown around, but there is a non-obvious caveat. How this is counted differs between countries (even different in different EU countries). Wikipedia has a pretty good summary. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality)

<comment><USER18> It's not reporting: "the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States' relatively low international ranking. Rather, the report concluded that primary reason for the United States' higher infant mortality rate when compared with Europe was the United States' much higher percentage of preterm births.[72]" from the wikipedia article you cite.

The question is why does America have a higher "percentage" of preterm births. I'll give you one reason, lack of affordable health care.

<comment><USER19> Doesn't this explain why?

"A non-viable live birth in the US could be registered as a stillbirth in similarly developed nations like Japan, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France – thereby reducing the infant death count. Neonatal intensive care is also more likely to be applied in the US to marginally viable infants..."

<comment><USER18> "the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States' relatively low international ranking."

and

"Many countries, including the United States, Sweden and Germany, count an infant exhibiting any sign of life as alive, no matter the month of gestation or the size, but according to United States some other countries differ in these practices."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > often make their profits purely from speculation rather than contributing to > the overall wealth of the American community.

Wondering what some of these speculations are. Stock markets?

<comment><USER20> Property is a big one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That report starts out with the ridiculous statement that "40 million people continue to live in poverty" in the US.

If you spend just five or ten minutes trying to understand where that number comes from you can only include that Mr. Alston is either unimaginably incompetent in understanding poverty statistics or he is being massively disingenuous in his reporting.

A little googling will show that the 40 million number is based on cash income that doesn't excludes massive amounts of government assistance (housing assistance, food stamps, and so on). It is an absolute useless statistic to use as a primary statement about "poverty" in the US.

Here is a good take down of this misleading report: [http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/30/completely- tak...](http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018/1/30/completely-taken-in-by- the-poverty-fraud)

<comment><USER22> A little googling will show that "there is no international consensus on guidelines for measuring poverty".

I agree that "40 million people continue to live in poverty" is a claim that needs an accompanying definition of poverty and and description of the measurement methodology to really convey information. However that number is the Official US estimate of its own poverty rate. I agree that our methodology of measure poverty in the US is laughable and needs improvement, but you can't blame Mr. Alston for that.

Your assertion that this claim is "ridiculous" and that Mr. Alston is "unimaginably incompetent" or "massively disingenuous" for using the US's own measurement of poverty is thus clearly beyond hyperbole and more than a little ridiculous and quite disingenuous itself.

<comment><USER21> So you agree that the statistic is meaningless without context and yet you are OK with that being the lead in the report?

<comment><USER22> I would have preferred to see context provided with the statistic (as it should be with every statistic). I don't think that usage of that statistic without context is meaningless given that it is the official US estimate of poverty. I certainly don't think the usage of that statistic without context warrants anything close to the vitriolic language that you used.

<comment><USER21> I did use strong language. The statistic as used is extremely misleading. So far I haven't seen anyone discredit that conclusion. Pointing out that it is an official statistics isn't a rationale in favor of its use in this way. It happens to be just _one_ of the measures of poverty published by the US government. There are lots of other poverty statistics that could have been used and so I can only assume the use was intentionally misleading.

<comment><USER22> You could have come in here and made a constructive comment about the number and the associate methodology of measuring poverty. Instead you made unfounded and unwarranted attacks on the author and made zero constructive contributions to the conversation.

If you want to make people more aware of better measures of poverty, you should have come in here with a critique of the measurement without the vitriol and ideally with examples of better measures that can be used.

<comment><USER21> You are right, I could have done that and probably should have done that.

I have a certain amount of frustration that resulted in me venting rather than contributing. The misuse of the official US poverty stat is not something new. It has been floating around for a while and has been criticized quite a bit -- yet it is still used to put forth misleading arguments out of ignorance most often but not always. Here is a link on this very issue from 2011:

[https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and- inequality/report/under...](https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and- inequality/report/understanding-poverty-the-united-states-surprising-facts- about?_ga=2.139130678.443965254.1519341692-1519354153.1479182938)

It is one thing for a misleading statistic to be repeated in tweets, online discussions, comment streams and so on. It is a completely different thing for the misleading stat to be coming from an "authority". They _should_ know better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FDIC announces first bank failure of coronavirus crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fdic-announces-first-bank-failure-of-coronavirus-crisis-2020-04-03?mod=real-estate-personal-finance <comment><USER2> Note that is the easy scenario for a bank failure: they merge with a moderate sized bank and life goes on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who pays for the losses on the failed bank? The FDIC? How much were the losses in this case?

<comment><USER4> Most situations—another bank buys them. Sometimes with a deal sweetener from the FDIC (U.S. taxpayer). Extreme cases such as in 2007-2010 the Fed can offer financing deals for another bank to buy those distressed banks.</comment></comment>


A beginner's explanation for why Elixir isn't more popular - <AUTHOR> I've been tinkering around with Elixir and Phoenix Liveview for a day and a half now and I'm beginning to understand why it isn't more popular. Sure, the syntax looks as if it were developed in a vacuum, but I can get used to that eventually. The real reason is the docs suck. Not the docs for the language or the Phoenix framework, but the docs for all the little surrounding libraries you'll need for every project. The docs for Goth (GCP authentication) were very lacking and I've spent the entire day trying to make a POST request with HTTPoison and I just cannot get it to work. It seems like the correct response is being received but there seems to be the wrong number of params or something. I can literally see the response on the error page, but the program refuses to accept it. The only relevant example in the repo is a GET request and it does not appear to work for POST, and there doesn't seem to be any relevant answers on SO. I feel like if it takes a day to figure out how to make a POST request work it cancels out the supposed benefits you get down the road no matter how great they are. At this point, it seems the practical next move would be to just do it in python (or node.js). The docs for python aren't great either (a beginner would struggle to install pip), but you generally won't get stuck for days on trivial problems. Unless that becomes the case for Elixir, I can't imagine it being a mainstream language. <comment><USER2> > I can't imagine it being a mainstream language. So you are looking for next > "mainstream", like what Ruby on Rails was 10 years ago. Seems like during > this last 10 years web-service development technologies got diversified a > lot. While in 2008 web-applications written in functional programming > languages such as Haskell, Closure, Scala or lower level languages like Go > or Rust was something exotic, now it's becoming normal, not trendy, but > normal IMHO =)

</comment><comment><USER3> > It seems like the correct response is being received but there seems to be > the wrong number of params or something.

Thats because you have to pattern match based on params and arity.</comment>


O2 3G iPhone: Apple cracks down on unlocking - <AUTHOR> http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49297337,00.htm

<comment><USER2> "or you're paying O2 and Apple a massive wodge of cash for the privilege of owning a 3G iPhone."

How dare they get you to pay money for their product! Funny... Considering all the iPhone does £200 is still dirt cheap.

<comment><USER3> Its actually £100 for the 8GB from their website: <http://www.o2.co.uk/iphone></comment></comment>


Apple's Tim Cook defends encryption. When will other tech CEOs do so? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/23/apple-tim-cook-defends-encryption-when-will-other-tech-ceos-do-so <comment><USER3> You mean like how Google got ECC forward-secure TLS deployed across the whole Internet?

I have nothing but respect for Apple's stance with regard to cryptography, but Google has been more instrumental in getting strong crypto deployed on the Internet, and, just as importantly, in sweeping the minefield of crappy 90s crypto that defined most Internet crypto until recently.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, but the article is focused on why these companies that _have_ done significant things to protect users with encryption technologies haven't been a lot more vocal like Tim Cook has. This issue is so important to them and to everyone that they could spare a little time to speak their minds. Otherwise it just looks like that "kooky Apple" going against the grain. Who cares, they are going out of business soon, right?

<comment><USER3> Why are we supposed to play dumb about the subtext behind Cook's comment?

I'm sure Cook believes what he's saying, but the real marketing strategy here isn't "crypto versus plaintext"; it's "consumer product company" versus "online service provider".

Seen through this lens, there's an argument that what Cook is doing is counterproductive. He's making an argument that Google can't sign on to, and using crypto as a wedge to drive the argument home. "Be a consumer product company, because then you can protect users with crypto".

Also: the kind of encryption that Apple is really making a stand for? They do a better job of it than Android, but Android provides the same encryption: what scares the USG about Apple is that iPhones are locked by default, and when they're locked, they can't be imaged easily. That's true of Google's phones as well.

Meanwhile, Google is doing a much better job of securing browser crypto than Apple is; Apple is almost an obstacle to better browser crypto.

<comment><USER5> I disagree that what Cook is doing is counterproductive. I think Google could take a stronger line to secure user data if they wanted to. They don't have to become a consumer product company to run a messaging system which they cannot read. If Google can't sign on to that, maybe they should change something so that they can.

<comment><USER3> iMessage is better than Google's chat offerings in this regard, but not _that_ much better.

If you want secure messaging, you need to be using OTR or Signal. Apple isn't really helping you here.

<comment><USER5> I don't claim that Apple is as good as OTR or Signal, only that Google could do more, Google should do more, and Google should be out there helping Tim Cook make a case that back doors are a terrible idea.

edit: Microsoft, Apple, Google, they all need to step up their game _and_ make their case in public. Apple's not perfect but they're slightly ahead of the other two major OS vendors here.

<comment><USER3> But _everyone_ can do more, including Apple. Meanwhile, I think if you build a scoreboard for this, it's not at all clear that Apple is ahead of Google.

<comment><USER5> Google's not making a public case. And Google, as far as I know, can read messages you send on Google services. Those are both Big Deals. I don't disagree (I don't have the expertise to!) with what you said on Apple and browser security. There are many parts.

Everybody can step up their game, I absolutely agree there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bruce Schneier has one of the best posts I've ever read on why Encryption is important here: [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/why_we_encryp...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/why_we_encrypt.html) \-- great resource to share to people who don't understand it.

<comment><USER7> And Martin Fowler has one of the best posts I've ever read on why privacy is important for a democracy: [http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome- privacy.html](http://martinfowler.com/articles/bothersome-privacy.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The issue I have with Cook's proclaiming support for strong encryption is that Apple still has control over what can and can't install on the user's device. So imagine if some strong agency came and said to a company you can't allow certain apps to install and you can't tell your customers we told you this. "You can allow these apps that claim to encrypt user's messages [list here], but not these [list here]". So some state could still strong arm Apple into compromising privacy and Apple would have their hands clean.

It seems that if you really want to guarantee privacy, you have to give the individual control over what they can install. Telling people to just "trust us" is not really good enough. And Cook is saying they are giving the user ultimate control by not having keys to their encryption but in reality that's nonsense... they are still requiring people to trust them.

<comment><USER9> I use a lot of web apps on my iphone. They don't have access to all the phone's apis, but they do everything I need, without any hindrance from apple oversight.

This is probably the most native looking one of the bunch: [https://forecast.io/](https://forecast.io/)

<comment><USER10> From an encryption point of view though, they're relatively useless. Said three-letter agency now doesn't need to block the app, they can instead MITM the traffic to it or compel the organization to inject additional client-side or server-side code to complete the backdoor.

Certificate pinning helps against the MITM problem, but code integrity for downloaded client-side code is pretty tricky. Browsers could add some form of signed code pinning for power users, but it'd be tricky to be able to distinguish between legitimate updates and nefarious activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently had this conversation:

        Me, to CEO: Hey, think we should ever build a backdoor into any of our
                    products that employ encryption to help the US government
                    and law enforcement?

        CEO, to me: No, that's a terrible idea.

        Me, to CEO: Okay good, just making sure we're on the same page.

I don't think there are many _honest_ and _competent_ technology CEOs who would rally against encryption.

<comment><USER12> That scenario becomes a lot more dire when the CEO says

      CEO, to me: Yes, because we are compelled by law
                  backed by jail time or hefty fines.

<comment><USER11> I already discussed that scenario. We'd shut our doors, release all of our code as CC0+WTFPL, and start a new company fresh.

At the end of the day, we care about our integrity more than we do dollars.

<comment><USER13> Easy to say now. Much harder to follow through when you're relying on your paycheck to pay your rent or buy you food.

<comment><USER14> One should always ensure their financial situation does not preclude one from exercising their ethics.

<comment><USER13> Should, but unfortunately one can't always forsee things that come up. If your spouse comes down with cancer, for instance, and you're reliant upon company insurance to pay for treatment, one might be tempted to put their spouse's treatment ahead of those ethics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't be the only one who thinks it is pessimistic to say "if you put a back door in, that back doors for everybody, for good guys and bad guys." Very few people even seem to recognize this as a problem let alone are working to solve it. Maybe we should stop laughing at Clinton and her "Manhattan Project" comment; that might be the only way to get enough tech people on the problem to actually solve it.

<comment><USER16> What you think is a problem - is broken cryptography to experts.

There is no shortage of minds working on to create backdoors, or develop cryptographic methods that have backdoors, just look at Dual_EC_DRBG. It was a backdoor for the "good guys", but now its backdoor for everyone - <USER2> people will study the code and see the backdoor exists.

The crux of the issue is mathematics has no concept of good guys or bad guys, so as far as mathematics is concerned a back door for anyone is a backdoor for everyone.

<comment><USER15> If we can make encryption that is nearly foolproof, why can't we make a backdoor that is nearly foolproof? Why is a Manhattan Project of backdoors not a possible solution?

Also can't the role of the good guy be split up among a group? Similar to the two man rule to prevent rogue agents from launching missiles, can't we have some sort of process that requires agreement among a majority of a few parties including the end user, the company who owns the software, law enforcement, and the (public) judicial system. If all it takes to break down the door to my home are a judge and law enforcement to agree, why can't we accept similar when it comes to data?

<comment><USER17> You seem to be under the impression that if you just work hard enough you can violate the fundamental constraints of reality.

I can't comment on the mathematics involved but let us assume it's mathematically possible. You engineer this mythical nearly foolproof backdoor. You can decrypt this text with any of two keys. (It's my understanding that such algorithms actually exist already.) Congratulations you have achieved your goal. You have a working algorithm.

Now let's examine the results of actually using this algorithm:

You now have _twice_ the opsec problem you had before. You have transmit this second key to a Government agency securely. You have to trust that Government agency to securely store, use, and dispose? of this key when they obtain it.

And what is the number one threat to secure systems? Operational Security. In fact many security professionals will tell you that the hardest part of security isn't the math behind the encryption. It's the opsec. In one fell swoop you double the threat in the most fragile part of your security.

<comment><USER15> You are correct in that the more keys that exist, the harder it will be to secure all of them. However, the more keys that are required the less valuable any one key becomes. Multiple keys means there is no longer a single point a failure. If you need 3 keys to get data, you can have an entire database of keys leak and the information is still safe.

I would also love a more detailed description of just "it is impossible because math" that everyone seems to be giving.

<comment><USER18> If you want a more detailed description, go to Wikipedia and read up on the difference between public and private key cryptography. What politicians are arguing for isn't just adding another private key to private key cryptosystems; a backdoor eliminates the biggest advantage of public key systems by adding a private key that could crack any of them. Once you add that, it's just a matter of time before someone cracks it.

Really, it's inevitable. Someone doesn't even need to crack it, you just need a single careless or corrupt government employee to compromise the whole system for everyone for all time. People are proposing adding a single point of failure to systems whose usefulness is currently defined by their lack of such a single point of failure. Put that in there and we may as well all go back to using DES for everything.

<comment><USER15> But you are simply pointing out problems with our current techniques and not why we can't come up with new and better approaches. That is the problem we should be working on. Politicians don't understand it, but that is why we need people from our community to work with them. Our response shouldn't be "no, you are an idiot, that is impossible, you are a fascist for even suggesting it". It should be "I know what you are looking to do, here is why it is not currently possible, lets see if we can work together on a solution."

Nothing anyone posted here has said why there can't be a multikey solution that allows access to data in a reliable way that would not be susceptible to a single point of failure or abuse. That sounds like a very hard problem, but I'm not convinced it is an impossible problem.

<comment><USER16> Again, no one is arguing that it isn't impossible. Like I said, in my original post, look at Dual_EC_DRBG - it was a cryptographic solution used by the NSA, that purposely had a backdoor - it was discovered by an outdoor party and now its worthless. (Look at Juniper systems (used by the USG), a very recent example of how this backdoor has failed).

I'm not a cryptographer, but lets assume a multikey solution is 100% possible.

The very notion that you can trust the government with a global key to all encryption is the crux of the issue. How do you know that Donald Trump won't wake up tomorrow and sell that key China? What do you then do if Germany then demands that key? What if Congress decides that giving Israel he private key is important to stability in the middle east? Then what do you do is some nationstate sells this key to a blackhat organization? Welp, all of Google's encryption is now worthless because this "multikey" that was supposed to be for the USG ended up in the hands of a blackhat - and now we have another Fappening 3.0 on our hands.

Great now the whole world has this "multikey" making it virtually worthless because the entire world can decrypt it. If you as an end user cannot control who can and cannot decrypt your messages, then its worthless as an encryption scheme.

Its not a technical issue, and the solution isn't limited because we aren't smart enough. The fundamental problem is that you cannot trust any third party with such a multikey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You might expect Amazon to take a stance to reassure AWS customers. Their AWS sales people like to tout AWS's encryption capabilities and the fact that they weren't part of Snowdens leak

</comment><comment><USER20> It's ironic Tim Cook is defending encryption when Apple gives backdoors with iMessage - [http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/fbi-imessage- encryption/](http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/fbi-imessage-encryption/)

<comment><USER21> That's not what that document says. iMessage has a design flaw (which is pretty obvious if you think about how it works) that allows it to theoretically be backdoored. In other words, they made a trade-off between usability and security, and (in my opinion, and clearly yours) fucked up. That's very different from saying that they deliberately built a backdoor into the system, and I think that some of the things they've done (like explicitly noting when someone else has been added to your iCloud account, and will be able to decrypt upcoming iMessage messages) goes to some length to mitigate those issues, and make clear that the existing design is more incompetence than malice.

That said, all Apple would have to do to fix this is to allow advanced users to see all keys listed as authorized for their account. I'm getting increasingly annoyed Apple hasn't done that.

<comment><USER22> They voluntarily signed up for PRISM. That's all you need to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > …against the constant threat of criminal hackers and foreign governments.

Foreign govts? Rather, "against the constant threat of criminal governments and hackers."

</comment><comment><USER24> The only reason why Apple is defending encryption is because they're afraid Android (which is open source and thus can be inspected/hardened) could take away iPhone sales from security minded folks.

<comment><USER13> I doubt security minded folks would be choosing Android, because of the lack of updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apple has a very weak service portfolio (edit: for a company of their stature. When compared to e.g. Yahoo they are doing great!). Their strength is in client UX. Of course they will defend encryption, it's in their financial interest do so.

<comment><USER26> Weak Service Portfolio?

Off the top of my head:

SSO ID Service / Cloud Photo Storage / Cloud Document Sync / Cloud Backup / Email / Instant Messaging / Music Store / Music Streaming Service / Cloud Music Service / Movie/TV Store / App Store / Push Notifications / Payments / Video Conferencing / Game Centre / eBook Store / Shared Calendaring / Notes / Large File Sharing / Personal Assistant / Maps

Weak?

<comment><USER27> For many people, everything that doesn't have a flashy Javascript-frontend does not count as a service.</comment></comment></comment>


Chevy Volt was going to save Detroit. Now its workers are losing jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2018/11/27/chevy-volt-donald-trump-general-motors/2120687002/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was public since the beginning that the Chevy Volt was a bad idea. Sales were buoyed by purchases by the Federal government and the General Electric CEO's commitment to President Obama to add them to their fleet. President Obama himself said he was going to purchase a Volt when he left office. Does anyone know if he ever did?

I live in the Lansing area which is very much a GM town and I never saw more than two Volt's in the area. You have to go all the way to Cleveland to buy a Tesla and there were more of them here.

<comment><USER2> I thought the point of the Volt was to help GM transition to electric drive chain technology; that's how it was going to "save" GM, not through sales. At least, that's how I remember the then-CEO of GM describing it.

How was the Bolt developed? Was it largely an acquisition or in-house development? If in-house were the Volt teams instrumental?</comment></comment>


You Can't Be Effective When You're Too Smart For Your Own Good - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3000430/you-cant-be-effective-when-youre-too-smart-your-own-good

<comment><USER2> This article reads to me like a guide to faking it, when really you should actually be doing all the things suggested, not for the sake of not pissing people off, but because they are smart things to do!

I think if you ignore people that you view as less smart than you, don't believe that good ideas can come from anyone, don't listen to other people, are mean, speak up too often, speak too forthrightly, don't attempt to use other people's strengths, and underestimate people, then you are _not_ the smartest person in the room, you are one of the dumbest, albeit with the largest ego.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely agree. And I want to add that IQ and smartness are not the same thing (although there is a positive correlation which sometimes confuses people).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article has a lot of good points, I'll give it that. What rubs me the wrong way however, is that the smart person is lowering herself to the level of the people in the room.

For me, this is akin to in high school when the English teacher would tell you to write at an 8th grade level (the average reading level of an audience) when writing an essay for mass consumption. Completely aware of the elitism in the last statement, I have trouble with constantly dumbing down anything when what I really want to do is help to raise people to my level of thinking.

<comment><USER5> Communicating effectively is a skill that can be acquired if you are smart enough. If you feel you have to constantly dumd down stuff, then it is likely a sign that you are not as smart as you think. Think back to your best teachers: they likely knew a heck of a lot more than you did on the topic, but they likely found a way to make it clear and engaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Don't encourage others to catch up to you, slow yourself down to their pace."

Fuck that. I've been doing that all my life, and it leaves me unsatisfied.

How about, "Surround yourself with other smart people and change the world."

</comment><comment><USER7> I read this article and immediately thought: "Cue the variations of 'I know! It's so hard when I have to wait for other to catch up!' comments." I was not disappointed.

I'm reminded of the Oscar Levant quote:

 _What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left._

Probably more annoying than the "smartest person in the room" is the person who _thinks_ he is the smartest person in the room...

<comment><USER8> The most annoying IMO is the guy in the room who really is smart, but is not (yet) wise. I've run into this with young-20-something programmers who really are exceptionally bright but lack the perspective of real world experience. These people can be insufferable when they are sure they are right and think everyone who is trying to temper their cocksureness is just being negative.

<comment><USER9> Or is too old to 'get it.'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let me try and make the point that this article should have made.

Being smart and being wise are two different things.

Intelligence/smarts is like CPU speed. How quickly you can pull in new information, process it, and spit out an answer. Wisdom, however, can be much slower. It ferments, cooks, and mixes information and experience. It's a slow process and pretty much all people are capable of it (to different degrees).

Often, smart people dismiss those who take longer to process things because they think it's about processing speed. That's a big mistake to make.

<comment><USER11> Or, to take your computer analogy, having a super fast CPU is no good if you can't interface with other parts of the system.

It's very rare in any setting where people can achieve stuff on their own. You may have a brain the size of a planet, but at some stage you will need to work through other people, or get their help to realise an objective. Having social skills and good manners, as well as a big brain, will help with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This should be titled, "How To Be Effective When You Have Too Large of An Ego For Your Own Good". The biggest issue that I have noticed from people that act like this have an ego problem, not an intelligence problem. The people that I am most impressed with are the ones that have the patience to work with a team of all skill levels.

</comment><comment><USER13> I just keep my mouth shut and do everything while they all finally figure out what I knew, I have the solution done a lot faster, and I look better for it. There is no need to and try to be bossy and push someone into an answer if they aren't ready. Just have the solution done for when they realise it.

</comment><comment><USER14> When it doesn't matter, I mostly agree - keep your mouth shut and give people the benefit of the doubt.

When it does matter, try your best to be the only one in the room.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's all about emotional intelligence, the problem is that there are no really good tutorials...

</comment><comment><USER11> tl;dr version: Don't be a dick.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very very hard lesson: "You can be 100% right and 0% effective."

</comment><comment><USER16> This article is ridiculous. Damn right you should be yourself, at 100% volume, always.</comment>


Brad Feld takes on one of the biggest entrepreneur challenges: Relationships - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/08/brad-feld-takes-on-one-of-the-biggest-entrepreneur-challenges-relationships/

<comment><USER2> _It's one of the biggest reasons I've heard young entrepreneurs prefer San Francisco over LA or New York: not a lot of girls to distract them._

Did Sarah Lacy really just say that?</comment>


Learning@Home - decentralized training of huge neural networks - <AUTHOR> http://learning-at-home.github.io <comment><AUTHOR> Can you train a huge neural network without a supercomputer? Imagine you want a GPT-3-sized model, but instead of $10⁸ GPU cluster you've got support from thousands of volunteers across the world - gamers, research labs, small companies. What kind of system would you use to let them work together despite internet latency, packet loss, and hardware failures?

We at Learning@home are building just such a system. Together, we want to change large-scale deep learning from private experiments behind closed doors into a decentralized peer-to-peer activity where everyone can participate.

Let's build the BitTorrent of deep learning :)</comment>


Ask HN: The Next Theme Marketplace for Designers - <AUTHOR>

Hi Hackers,
Currently I developing a platform to sell premium bootstrap theme. Now I would like to have feedback about current theme marketplaces, what they lacking off, improvement of current marketplace, and as buyer, what would you expect for the next theme marketplace.
What I can think of is low commission rate, theme bundle with unnecessary js plugins (5++ slider plugins).
Any feedback/comment is appreciated. <comment><USER2> I had also started a marketplace [0] for bootstrap themes but it failed. (primary reason : I couldn't get enough designers to submit their theme). My plan was to create an alternative where :

\+ Designers would get 70% or more for every sale.

\+ Less/no penalty, in case they also want to sale independently.

\+ More transparent and easy for designers, e.g most of the marketplace doesn't care much for an individual designer. They reject a theme without any meaningful explanation/reason.

[0] [https://bootstrapthemes.me](https://bootstrapthemes.me) (offline, an year ago)

</comment><comment><USER3> I currently sell themes at Wrapbootstrap, as a seller if there's one feature I'd want that Wrapbootstrap doesn't have are the emails of my buyers. I'll need them in order for me to do more sales/support, but I'm pretty sure Wrapbootstrap has good reasons for them not to just give out buyer information.

Even if another theme marketplace has that feature, the only reason for me to move my bootstrap themes somewhere else is if that "somewhere" has more traffic than Wrapbootstrap.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a shameless plug, but you may be interested in getting involved with famo.us early next year when we launch. We are very interested in attracting people who will be building not just themes, but widgets and whatnot. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Email in profile.</comment>


9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/06/neverseconds-shut-down/

<comment><USER3> The wired article makes it sound like the girl was a political activist trying to force a change in the school lunch program. But if you read her blog, the photos of lunches look pretty good and her "reviews" are mostly positive. It almost struck me that people with agendas are projecting onto this girl's blog, which doesn't seem to be intended to be controversial at all, rather just a chronicle of her lunches - including how many mouthfuls of food each meal contains as well as the color of the wristband needed to get your lunch that particular day! I don't know why the school shut her down, it certainly was not a negative reflection on their lunch program at all.

This did make me remember my school lunch days - basically tv dinners served in aluminum foil tins. I would have loved to have these lunches instead of the crap we had to eat!

Here's one of her typical reviews "Today's Shepherd's Pie was really nice. The mash on top was really creamy and the mince was in lovely gravy. I wonder where their meat comes from. The salad was lovely and crunchy. The cake looked really difficult to serve because the icing was so sticky. I saved my melon until last and it was a great way to end my lunch. Food-o-meter - 9/10, Mouthfuls - 32"

<comment><USER4> > But if you read her blog, the photos of lunches look pretty good and her > "reviews" are mostly positive.

Because of her blog, look at the earliest items and things were... [http://neverseconds.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/tuesday-8th- may....](http://neverseconds.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/tuesday-8th-may.html)

<comment><USER5> The council deny that and while you could say "they would" the pressure on improving school lunches over the past few years her in the UK is such that changes for the better could well have been in the works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Argyll and Bute council have a website. It appears to be down at the moment. (<http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/>)

I wanted to know how many CCTV cameras they have. We in the UK are a heavily monitored population (here's a frustratingly thin article with a few details, hinting at a rich data set that is not made available. (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8159141.stm>) ) It's bizarre that her tax money (as a child she doesn't pay much, but she will pay VAT on a few items and her parents certainly pay taxes) is used to provide state surveillance and to prevent her photographic record of her dinners.

There are many reasons to prevent children taking phones and cameras to school. This reason is a really really stupid reason.

How wrong-headed it is to take active measures against a child who is showing an interest in writing; civics; nutrition; and so on.

EDIT: The father has appeared on BBC Radio 4's "Today" news programme. (about 7:20 for anyone 'listening again'.) He has said that the school has been very supportive, and that the decision was taken by the council. He sounds pretty balanced about it. We crush the joy of learning out of children.

<comment><USER7> >> We crush the joy of learning out of children.

Ken Robinson, who makes my favorite TED talk IMHO, talks about this and how odd our education system is when looked at objectively from the outside in.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...](http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)

His followup, as well as the RSAnimate (you can find them by clicking "Full Bio>>" on the right), are good followups to his ideas.

One of the most powerful quotes, to me, is from the RSAnimate:

        We still educate children in batches. We put them
        through the system by age group. Why do we do that?
        Why is there this assumption that the most important
        thing kids have in common is how old they are? It's
        like the most important thing about them is the date
        of manufacture.

Not only do we crush learning out of children, but creativity suffers as well.

<comment><USER8> I went to an elementary school in the U.S. where you were not grouped by age. It was a pilot program, and I can't find a reference to the program being in place almost 20 years later.

The program at the school had 1 large building, which was divided into 4 classroom with some common space in between. For each class period, you went to the class taught at your level. So you could go to the 1st grade math, or you could go to the kindergarten math.

I lived there for 2 years, and basically took 1st grade as kindergarten aged, and 2nd grade as 1st grade aged.

The worst part was moving, and having to "re-integrate" with the system. I had to take the age appropriate 2nd grade. My parents wanted me to skip directly to 3rd grade, but the school rejected that.

<comment><USER9> What's funny is that you hardly have to "pilot" this model, because it used to be the norm all across America (the one-room school house). The evidence is compelling that it works great, and it costs less too.

Which of course is why it's a political non-starter. The bureaucratic imperative is bigger budgets and centralization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Everyone seems to assume that the local council actually have the right to forbid a child taking photographs of her own property (in this case her lunch that she has just bought). Is that really so?

Even if the school should have some capability to issue its own strange rules and by-laws, contrary to the common law applying outside, should this not be up to the Governors Board?

We all far too readily acquiesce, at our own cost, to arbitrary orders by 'authorities', assuming that they have powers over our lives which often they don't have or should not have.

<comment><USER11> If the building she's in is _their_ property, then they very likely do have that right. (I'm not condoning their decision, of course.)

<comment><USER10> > If the building she's in is their property ....

You may well be right. Still, I find the concept questionable. I mean forbidding the lawful use of her property (camera, lunch), just because she is inside someone else's property? She is not photographing the school.

Besides, council property does not belong to the council officials but to the residents in the area and I suspect that, if their rights and opinions were respected, this order would not have been issued.

<comment><USER12> From wikipedia [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law>]:

"In general under the law of the United Kingdom one cannot prevent photography of private property from a public place, and in general the right to take photographs on private land upon which permission has been obtained is similarly unrestricted. However landowners are permitted to impose any conditions they wish upon entry to a property, such as forbidding or restricting photography."

I think the council would argue that they are enforcing the ban of photography to protect the children from people who might want photographs of the children. I know when I used to work with children we had to get written consents from parents before any child could apear in a photo and in some cases we were instructed to make sure some children were never photographed and step in the way if we saw anyone with a camera.

<comment><USER13> It's not really to protect the children, it's to protect the Council from being sued by over-protective parents.

That said letting the kids loose with cameras is going to be quite disruptive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe she could _draw_ lunches ... then take photos of drawings and post them. There would be a short caption under each photo, saying that the actual photos are not available due to the council policy.

Win-win: keep on doing what you love _and_ learn to draw!

<comment><USER10> Following the same legal reasoning, i.e. any rules go on a private property, this council can, and probably will, forbid her to draw at school.

<comment><USER15> That would be even more ridiculous than forbidding her to photograph things and would probably increase the public outrage by at least two orders of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unbanned?

Latest statement from the school.

[http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement- school...](http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement-school-meals- argyll-and-bute- council?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ArgyllAndButeCouncilNewsFeed+%28Argyll+and+Bute+Council+News+Feed%29)

 _Statement on school meals from Argyll and Bute Council Published Date: 15 Jun 2012 - 10:53 Updated: 14:19 - 15 June 2012

Statement from Cllr Roddy McCuish, Leader of Argyll and Bute Council

"There is no place for censorship in this Council and never will be whilst I am leader. I have advised senior officers that this Administration intends to clarify the Council's policy position in regard to taking photos in schools. I have therefore requested senior officials to consider immediately withdrawing the ban on pictures from the school dining hall until a report can be considered by Elected Members. This will allow the continuation of the "Neverseconds" blog written by an enterprising and imaginative pupil, Martha Payne which has also raised lots of money for charity.

But we all must also accept that there is absolutely no place for the type of inaccurate and abusive attack on our catering and dining hall staff, such as we saw in one newspaper yesterday which considerably inflamed the situation. That, of course, was not the fault of the blog, but of the paper.

We need to find a united way forward so I am going to bring together our catering staff, the pupils, councillors and council officials - to ensure that the council continues to provide healthy, nutrious and attractive school meals. That "School Meals Summit" will take place later this summer.

I will also meet Martha and her father as soon as I can, along with our lead councillor on Education, Michael Breslin to seek her continued engagement, along with lots of other pupils, in helping the council to get this issue right. By so doing Martha Payne and her friends will have had a strong and lasting influence not just on school meals, but on the whole of Argyll & Bute."_

<comment><USER17> Seems like the obvious PR thing for Roddy McCuish to do is go and have his meeting with Martha and her father at the school, for lunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Argyll and Bute Council have reversed their decision.

[http://audioboo.fm/boos/847428-argyll-and-bute-council- rever...](http://audioboo.fm/boos/847428-argyll-and-bute-council-reverse- neverseconds-camera-ban#TWEET160064)

(Around 1:30)

Also in good news, her charity appeal has gone from just under £3,000 this morning to over £20,000 (against a target of £7,000).

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I understand that having pictures of the food is probably going to get the point across even more, but I don't understand why she didn't just continue to blog about the horrible lunches and put a sketch or something. Imagine if she has just kept on blogging without the pictures like nothing ever happened. That would have sent a pretty powerful message to those people that _tried_ to shut her up.

<comment><USER18> Thing is, they weren't horrible. By and large, they were pretty good. That's the strange thing - the council really didn't have much to hide here.

<comment><USER6> Yes. She even says they're good.

 _I googled the Hindi for fantastic so I can say my chicken curry was शानदार (śānadāra)!_

<comment> jack-r-abbit true. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. And that was also a couple weeks after she started getting media attention. She generally was less pleased with other aspects of the lunches besides just taste. Even if the chicken curry was de-lish... it is freakin tiny. And that single broccoli stock... wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Update:

"A council has overturned a ban which prevented British schoolgirl Martha Payne from posting pictures of her school dinners on her blog Neverseconds."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9333975/V...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9333975/Victory- for-Martha-Payne-as-Argyll-and-Bute-council-backs-down-on-school-dinner-blog- ban.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Legally, isn't school property, public property? That means, that she is therefore allowed to take pictures in public places, right?

<comment><USER21> Jails are also public property. That doesn't mean the inmates have rights.

<comment><USER22> Did you just equate school children with inmates? On second thought, maybe you're not far off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Veritas Ex Gustu" ... but who knows Latin?

I love her light-heartedness and wish I still had mine. And does anyone else think of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" when reading the title of her blog ("Never Seconds")? I keep hearing "Please sir, I want some more" in my head.

I'm certainly glad to have kids like this in the world ... she's made more of a difference already than most of us will in our life-times. She's just passed the 35,000 pound mark for donations to Mary's Meals, feeding 3500 children for a year. Wow!

<comment><USER24> I'm certainly glad to have kids like this, but I'm also glad to have parents like hers. I know many parents who would, as long as it started getting some attention, told their kids to "stop looking for trouble".

There's a lot of bad parenting going on in the world, and her dad looks like a pretty balanced person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why doesn't the school just start its own meal photo blog. That would actually be a great way to publish the daily menu. Photos instead of just text.

If they think the girl is deliberately presenting unappealing selections, they should present some more appealing ones as a counterpoint.

<comment><USER25> oh wait, apparently it was more about the local government the school answers to than the school itself. Maybe that (mostly) answers my question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's an interesting analysis here of the local council and the problems they've had with social networks before:

[http://edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/school- dinners-...](http://edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/school-dinners- spygate/)

</comment><comment><USER27> This will not end well for the council.

</comment><comment><USER28> What would happen if she just carried on doing it?

</comment><comment><USER29> Honestly, that food looks quite a bit better than my school offered. There are some nutritionally-very-questionable combinations occasionally, but by and large they seem among the more reasonable options I tend to see.

Which, yes, is terrifying. More focus on the crap we feed our kids is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER23> Martha wins!

Follow the same link above and you'll see there are updates to Wired's original article. Thank you Argyll and Bute Council ... and you've shown the kids that it's okay to admit you were wrong and to take action to rectify what you've done.

</comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, this was the sort of response I was expecting the first time that this story was posted -- not the Cinderella story of a positive change within two weeks. I guess the bureaucracy over there took a while to boot..

</comment><comment><USER31> There should be some law that should state that if you can be at some place you can have a camera and take photos from that place of whatever you like and no one should be able to forbid you that or require a fee.

<comment><USER13> So you want to let people photograph in changing rooms and restrooms? I suspect you've not thought this through.

<comment><USER31> If they can see me they can take my picture. It should be legal. Impolite perhaps but legal.

If there's situation where I don't want to have my picture taken that's exactly the same situation where I don't want to be seen by anyone.

<comment><USER13> So to you theres no difference between being fleetingly seen naked whilst changing (eg at a swimming pool) and having your nude self featured in mass media?

Would you at least concede that this wouldnt be true for everyone? Or are you trying to make some sort of impractical distinction between capture and use of an image.

FWIW I'm personally happy to embrace nudism but feel forcing the possibility of widespread exposure on others is going way to far.

<comment><USER31> > So to you theres no difference between being fleetingly seen naked whilst > changing (eg at a swimming pool) and having your nude self featured in mass > media?

No difference, meaning that I don't want to be in both of this situations to pretty much same degree. That's why I choose swimming pools with private changing rooms. Also currently anyone can smuggle camera to a changing room and publish photos of the people he/she can snap on mass media called internet. And we can't pretty much do anything about this. Pretending we can and from time to time trying doesn't provide us with any additional privacy.

> Would you at least concede that this wouldnt be true for everyone?

Yes. I'm aware that some people don't mind being seen naked when not too many people watch.

> Or are you trying to make some sort of impractical distinction between > capture and use of an image.

Not really. If it's captured it can be published. At least anonymously.

I'm neither in favor or against nudism. I think that society could use more acceptance about how ordinary people look and what ordinary people do.

I think there is a great value in right to take and publish pictures. Of police officers on duty, of school cafeteria menu of what all interesting especially powerful people do and how the policies turn out in the field.

I think that no one with camera should ever feel frightened to take photo or record something.

I also don't really like fighting technology with law. Technology will always win eventually but it can do massive damage to progress of mankind delaying whole nations by centuries.

In 50 years projects like Google Glass will probably blend the boundary between seeing and recording so why struggle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _NeverSeconds blogger Martha Payne school dinner photo ban overturned_

Looks like the ban has been overturned.

A victory for free speech and common sense!

</comment><comment><USER33> Perhaps they think it will be difficult to "raise" the chocolate ration to 20 grams per week if the kids are taking pictures of it every day?

</comment><comment><USER34> And the response from Argyll and Bute

[http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement- school...](http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/news/2012/jun/statement-school-meals- argyll-and-bute-council)

 _Argyll and Bute Council wholly refutes the unwarranted attacks on its schools catering service which culminated in national press headlines which have led catering staff to fear for their jobs. The Council has directly avoided any criticism of anyone involved in the 'never seconds' blog for obvious reasons despite a strongly held view that the information presented in it misrepresented the options and choices available to pupils however this escalation means we had to act to protect staff from the distress and harm it was causing. In particular, the photographic images uploaded appear to only represent a fraction of the choices available to pupils, so a decision has been made by the council to stop photos being taken in the school canteen.

There have been discussions between senior council staff and Martha's father however, despite an acknowledgement that the media coverage has produced these unwarranted attacks, he intimated that he would continue with the blog.

The council has had no complaints for the last two years about the quality of school meals other than one from the Payne family received on 6 June and there have been no changes to the service on offer since the introduction of the blog.

Pupils have a daily choice of two meals from a menu which is designed with pupils, parents and teachers. Our summer menu is about to be launched and includes main course choices like meat or vegetarian lasagne served with carrots and garlic bread or chicken pie with puff pastry, mashed potato and mixed vegetables.

Pupils can choose from at least two meals every day. They pay £2 for two courses and this could be a starter and a main or a main and a desert. Each meal comes with milk or water. Pupils can have as much salad and bread as they want. Salad, vegetables, fruit, yoghurt and cheese options are available every day. These are standing options and are not a result of any changes in response to the blog site.

As part of the curriculum for excellence, pupils in all our schools are regularly taught about healthy eating and at lunch breaks staff encourage pupils to make good choices from what is on offer. We use a system called 'Nutmeg' to make sure everything is nutritionally balanced. Our staff also get nutrition awareness training so they know how to provide a good healthy meal. There is portion sized guidance which we adhere to and it is matched to the age of the child so they get the right amount of food. Second portions would mean too many calories for pupils.

In Lochgilphead Primary School we are piloting a new pre-ordering scheme which is designed to encourage class discussion around meal choices and also improves the accuracy of meal choices. The pupils use a touch screen to select their lunch option and the data is downloaded in the kitchen so they know how many portions of each meal are required. As they place their order, the pupils are given a coloured band which relates to their meal choice that day. They wear it during the morning, and at lunchtime they hand it to the catering assistant, who will give them the corresponding meal.

The council's focus is now on supporting the school in the education of young people in Argyll and Bute_

<comment><USER34> For me, the money shots are

"we had to act to protect staff from the distress and harm it was causing

"In particular, the photographic images uploaded appear to only represent a fraction of the choices available to pupils, so a decision has been made by the council to stop photos being taken in the school canteen."

An embarrassing own goal that could have been resolved with a simple "OK, we overreacted, Veg can carry on as before" has been turned into a quite spectacular PR catastrophe.

An Exec Director for Argyll and Bute is appearing on Radio 4 at 1pm - <USER2> be fun!

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jrqr7>

<comment><USER35> Even better is

> _"The council has had no complaints for the last two years about the quality > of school meals other than one from the Payne family..."_

I can see why nobody complained before if this circus of excuses happens.

<comment><USER36> I think Basil Fawlty used that exact excuse once....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It almost certainly wasn't 'politicians' - just overzealous local council officers.

And instead of using a poor secondary source, why not link to Veg's blog post - <http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/goodbye.html>?

<comment><USER37> The Wired article adds quite a bit of context that the post itself is missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seems that the politicians didn't want people telling them how to do their job, especially if it's a 9-year old doing it.

</comment><comment><USER39> So much for that whole "you can do anything you set your mind to" bullshit they spout in most public schools (I'm assuming Scotland is the same way as in the US).

Funny how the powerholders are all talk until somebody puts their money where their mouth is (no pun intended). Here's to you, assholes in charge.

</comment><comment><USER40> Martha Payne for Prime Minister!

</comment><comment><USER41> If I were in her shoes, they wouldn't have heard the last of me by a longshot. I'd start pulling out hidden cameras, and when they caught on to that I'd show my lunch around to everyone in the school during lunch...one of whom has a hidden camera and will photograph the lunch.

Once they start taking disciplinary action is when I get others to start blogs and post pictures. If for no other reason than because I'd have a damn good time doing it.

<comment><USER42> I think she's doing the right thing. So is her dad. In the long term, for them, a relationship with the school is important.

All they need to do is play good citizens while the Strisand effect takes care of the rest.

<comment><USER41> > So is her dad. In the long term, for them, a relationship with the school is > important.

Definitely an aspect I didn't think about.

> All they need to do is play good citizens while the Strisand effect takes > care of the rest.

Oh yes, regardless of any action on their part the council has really dug into the dung pile now.

I really like the suggestion in the comments on her blog for her to start posting pictures other kids send in. But for now it's probably best to leave the "Shut down by censorship" bulletin up, boosts the Strisand effect.

<comment><USER15> I hate to be that guy but it's Streisand, not Strisand.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect>

<comment><USER41> I thought that spelling looked weird. I honestly just copied the one from the post above.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>