Don't ruin streaming by turning it into cable - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/11/dont-ruin-streaming-by-turning-it-into-cable/ <comment><USER2> It seems to me like more of this fragmentation will make streaming _less_ like cable.

I don't care much for Disney content. Now that Disney's leaving, that frees up Netflix resources to (hopefully) get more of the content that I want. Realistically I'm not fond of Netflix's offerings of late, so I don't have high hopes. It's like basic cable these days; very shallow coverage of a lot of different things, so my interest tends to evaporate quickly. But the more that more focused Netflix alternatives pop up, the more I can find things that do suit my interests.

In summary, yes, please do "ruin" streaming for the author. It'll make streaming all the better for me.

<comment><USER3> The problem is there is going to be a minimum monthly fee of around 10$ to keep the lights on. So, fragmentation just increases prices without any net benefit for the consumer.

The real killer IMO is most young adults just don't watch much TV in any form. If your watching ~10 hours a month then paying for more than one streaming service is just a waste. Don't forget it's the median viewer that's important not the average of 0, 1, 2, 3, 100.

<comment><USER4> > The real killer IMO is most young adults just don't watch much TV in any > form.

It's interesting, I'm 32 so on the upper end of millennial. We're supposed to be the multitasking, multiple screen generation.

But I'll visit older relatives, say 55+, and they'll have the TV on constantly and just talk over it. I find it so distracting and honestly stressful, like when you're on a conference call, your boss is Slacking you and your friend's texting about their fight with their SO last night.

My friends my age all say the same. For most "young adults," you're either silently watching TV, or you're doing something else.

My best guess is that TV has gotten louder and faster paced, but older viewers have hung on to their habits. I bet I could easily have a conversation during Cheers or '90s Law and Order, but not today's shows.

<comment><USER5> Humans can't multitask regardless of their generation

<comment><USER6> He/she means, rapid task switching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Stupid article.

There is the atavistic fantasy of "you can watch everything you want at one low price", except the price is not a low price, it is a high price.

The big anti-competitive problem with cable is that cable and satellite providers do not offer a choice of packages. You get basically the same thing with all providers. Hollywood loves it because they get paid no matter how good or bad the stuff they make is, but long term it is bad because there is no market discipline.

Some people with kids will love a Disney-branded streaming bundle and find a lot of value in it. Sports fans will see value in getting the games and commentary they want from ESPN.

Note Disney hasn't announced a "Marvel" or "Star Wars" bundle because in those cases they probably will need to partner with other companies. For instance, what kind of Marvel bundle doesn't have Spider-Man or the X-Men? Sony has the film rights for Spidey, Fox has the rights for the X-Men.

To make a really appealing "Superhero" bundle, Disney may need to team up with other companies...

<comment><USER8> don't forget that producing all this content costs 10's of billions per year so someone has to pay for it. both the cost of production and the amount produced keeps increasing so prices need to go up to.

<comment><USER9> I find the costs for producing films and TV shows a bit absurd. I'm sure they can optimise a lot, but they don't because they're used to paying 100 million dollars for a superhero movie. They can easily get 99% of the production value at far lower cost.

<comment><USER10> _I find the costs for producing films and TV shows a bit absurd_

I'm sure that if you, dingo_bat, were in charge of a film studio or TV company, you'd no doubt find incredible ways, overlooked by everyone else in the industry, to dramatically cut costs and increase profits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So the author instead wants everything to go through Netflix and Spotify? Why would Disney care? Their product practically prints money for them. Unlike Netflix, Disney doesn't need to constantly make fresh content for new subscribers. It makes business sense to just park it into a service and let the money roll in. That's what they do with their "vault." The real question will be how much it costs for a subscription.

People are honestly okay with fragmentation. It's the cost they mind. But even then families are 100% shelling out for that sweet sweet Disney content.

<comment><USER12> But people aren't gonna pay $10 or even $5 every month for a disney-only streaming subscription, if disney doesn't put out new content for it. It's way cheaper to just buy your favorite disney shows & movies. Disney is more established in producing fresh content for their subscribers - cause they're a studio - but that's a different question.

<comment><USER13> >But people aren't gonna pay $10 or even $5 every month for a disney-only streaming subscription, if disney doesn't put out new content for it.

Oh yes they are. Disney owns a ton of properties, and the ability to have exclusive streaming rights over timeless classics is worth a lot.

Kids love to watch the same movie over and over again. They love predictability.

<comment><USER14> This.

Over and over and over. Really enjoy seeing them gain new insights of same film every dozen viewings or so (light sarcasm, mostly truth).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a very simple solution for anyone worried about fragmentation: don't buy it.

We got into a bad situation with cable because we didn't have a choice. It was either pay $80 per month for everything, or not watch TV at all.

We have choices now, and Disney isn't going to be able to force their service on anyone. If people really like their new products and think it's worth the money, then fine. If people hate having to pay them separately and no one signs up, then they'll shut it down and go back to how it is now. Consumers have a lot of power now, and whatever happens will likely be in their interests.

I personally would be willing to pay a good bit of money to have access to the full back catalog of films from all the major studios. The streaming services' catalogs are very limited, and I'm often in the mood to watch one particular movie that isn't available. Spotify has nearly every song I ever want to listen to. Nothing exists like that for movies.

<comment><USER16> I agree on all accounts, however, movies aren't really comparable to music. An episode of a show costs a ton more than a song to make (typically vs typically, there are cheap shows and expensive songs, sure). A movie costs a lot more than an album to produce. [http://mentalfloss.com/article/57656/15-albums-cost- fortune-...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/57656/15-albums-cost-fortune-make) has an album costing $15m to produce which was a huge outlier. Most expensive albums are in the $1-$2mm range. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films) has the most expensive films above $300mm a pop. That's two orders of magnitude, and granted there are way fewer movies than albums (I think), a Spotify for movies with tons of back catalogue coverage would probably need to cost $100-$1000/month to make it worth it to the studios.

Actually, $150 a month to legally watch almost anything ever made would be a fairly appealing option. Good luck getting even a few studios on board, though. Pricing in future expected rev into it, it'd probably need to be closer to the $1k/month mark to make it worth it. It'll never happen.

<comment><USER15> I agree. Additionally, I'm not going to watch the same movie everyday for weeks or months at a time like I do with an album. Renting movies from Amazon/iTunes/Vudu is probably the optimal solution in my case. It's strange how this was the norm in the pre-Netflix days, and now, the idea of paying a la carte makes us feel like we're wasting money. Maybe we need an Audible model where we get ~6 movies a month for a flat fee and discounts after that. I don't know what to do with television content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These "bloated" packages exist specifically to force you into buying more than you need. It's a standard monopoly pricing technique, and the presence of bundled packages indicates monopoly power in the market.

<comment><USER8> i am not sure that it is directly tied to monopoly. paying for a subscription reduces friction for watching individual shows/channels so it increased total viewership and total consumption. every pay point you add adds more friction so will reduce consumption. that is true whether you have monopolies or not. you could have 5 competitors and they would all maximize profit by selling bundles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this segmentation continues, it'll be interesting to see how streaming devices adapt. Requiring a separate app for each content provider is a pain and makes browsing for content much less pleasant, especially when interfaces differ amongst apps.

I think it'd be ideal to have a single app to access content. Users would purchase their desired networks from within this app and would have a unified viewing experience.

<comment><USER19> This exists. On the Apple TV it's called the "TV" app. I'm sure other devices have something similar. On my Apple TV I see all the shows and movies I'm watching on HBO Now, Showtime, iTunes, and most other services in one spot. Netflix is the only holdout I've run into, and it pisses me off, but that's their prerogative I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a question to US people, when you say "cord cutter" \- what exactly do you mean? Because you still need to pay for internet to the same cable company, and the price is only 5-10% cheaper compared to the same plan with cable box? Am I not understanding it correctly?

<comment><USER21> The cable company here in Minneapolis is Comcast (the number 1 hated company in America year after year), which I can avoid by going through CenturyLink (the phone company). Thus I deprive Comcast of their revenues and don't pay ESPN a nickel. All I watch is Amazon Prime.

My Internet is $30 / mo. Comcast Internet & TV is $49 per month for 12 mo (a teaser rate), their real rates seem to be $120 or $150, plus they steal your time by signing you up for stuff you don't want. Search for "comcast signed me up for didn't order"

Minor update: I'm looking forward to Elon's satellite based Internet system. So I might go with that in the future.

<comment><USER22> If you're just doing it for web/streaming video, it'll be fine. If you do any gaming or videoconferencing, the latency on satellite puts a real damper on the "feel" of the connection.

<comment><USER21> Musk claims to have improved satellite latency by a factor of 52, from 1300 ms to 25 ms. So maybe the issues will be resolved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The solution is, of course, for Netflix to open up to pricing differentiation. There is no reason for HBO Now to be offered outside of Netflix other than haggling over pricing.

What's wrong with Netflix rising above the rabble and focusing instead on providing excellent user experiences and rock-solid world-class reliability?

Just put in a checkbox somewhere that, when checked, added HBO for $X/month. Boom, it's opt-in and a-la-carte, the holy grail desired by cord-cutters everywhere.

At this point it's only Netflix's fault that the content owners are running away and it's within their capability to remedy the situation while keeping everybody happy. Let the children have their candy!

<comment><USER24> Amazon is already doing this; if you have Prime, you can add on subscriptions to HBO, Starz, Cinemax, and a bunch of other channels for a monthly fee.

<comment><USER25> Amazon would crush Netflix if they would just build a good UX for their streaming. We have both Prime and Netflix and literally the only reason we don't cancel Netflix is because browsing the available content on Amazon is just painful in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To be honest, I think catchall solutions work best. I'm more likely to pay for content, if I can just pay 1 or 2 places.

When I heard that Disney was leaving Netflix, I'm not inclined to sign up to Disney as well. To be honest, unless they give me a unique value proposition (like having their feature films available on site weeks after theatrical release) I'm unlikely to want to fork out extra bucks for the one studio.

If they give me something that is a better experience than the competition, I'll throw my money at them. Other than that, meh

<comment><USER2> Disney's deal with Netflix was estimated to have netted them $300M (per year, I'm guessing, but I'm not sure), and Netflix is estimated to have 100M users. Assume that Disney would only take home half their revenues from running their own streaming service. That puts their financial break-even point at 300M / (5*12) = 5 million people signing up.

5 million US families attracted to this as an easy way to keep their kids entertained? Doesn't seem a huge stretch to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's possibly some opportunity that, if you really don't want _any_ real- time sports, you could possibly save some money by stripping that from subscription offerings. But fantasies that removing the Home and Garden Channel from bundles reduces the monthly bill are just fantasies.

In some respects, fragmentation is a mental overhead. But that's going to be the reality and the end result isn't going to be any cheaper for anyone who really cares about getting access to anything they want to watch.

<comment><USER28> ESPN accounts for a huge percentage of most monthly cable bill cost. I never watch live sports, nor do a pretty good percentage of cable subscribers. Just cutting ESPN could reduce cable bills by a third to a half in a lot of markets. This is why ESPN is suffering financially as cord cutting increases.

<comment><USER27> The cost for ESPN is something like $8-$9 per month so a lot but not the overwhelming cost of a cable TV bill. I also think you overestimate the number of people willing to totally give up being able to watch sports. I know I watch very little but I hesitate to totally cut the cord.

<comment><USER28> In some markets, ESPN and other sports channels accounts for as much as $20 per month of the standard cable bill, and those costs are rising. [1]

And I don't think I'm overestimating the number of people willing to give up paying for sports on cable. It's somewhere between 57% and 80% of cable subscribers. [2]

That's a giant subsidy for an entertainment industry based on watching adults play children's games. Of course, if you're a sportsman, you won't see it that way, but if you're not, it may create a different reaction.

[1] [http://time.com/money/4590614/cable-bill-sports-cord- cutting...](http://time.com/money/4590614/cable-bill-sports-cord-cutting- streaming/)

[2] "This is the heart of the Sports Cable Bubble: Tens of millions of pay television viewers spending what Thompson estimates is at least $100 a year on sports programming they have no intention of ever watching, pumping billions into games enjoyed by others, enriching networks, leagues, teams and athletes all the while. (The exact number of non-sports fans is difficult to peg: A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 43 percent of Americans won't cancel cable and satellite television simply because of live sports, which also suggests that the majority of the country could be perfectly happy not paying for ESPN; industry analyst David Bank told Bloomberg Businessweek that 80 percent of basic-cable customers would decline to pay for sports if given a choice; Forbes writer Alan McGlade figures that no more than 10 million homes are regular ESPN viewers, about 10 percent of the total pay TV market.)" \--from [http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/53498716/](http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/53498716/)

<comment><USER27> Note though that ESPN != watching live sports. A lot of, especially local team, games are on regular network channels. And it's their local team games that most relatively casual sports watchers really care about.

I actually don't watch much sports at all. But I hesitate to give up all access to real-time television. (I can't get anything OTA.)

<comment><USER28> Right, and regular network channels don't cost as much as ESPN and Fox Sports (for example), and also offer a variety of programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just moved to a place where I can get gigabit fiber and spent a lot of time looking into how I want to get TV. So far the cord-cutting options that look most compelling to me are Hulu Live TV (Beta) and YouTube TV (sadly not available in my area yet).

Things I care about are: ability to watch live TV, access to the major TV networks, ability to DVR, ability to watch things from other devices (like "I'm traveling but want to watch my DVR'd program).

Sling was looking good but doesn't include the major networks and only some of its channels can be DVR'd.

I thought about using an HD antenna and getting a hardware DVR like a Tivo or Channel Master DVR+, but then you can only DVR the major networks. If you try to supplement that with Sling, you're back to the same problem that only some things can be DVR'd. Also the hardware DVRs don't generally let you watch remotely, and the ones that do aren't as good at live TV.

Hulu Live TV seems good so far. You get access to live TV and DVR and you can watch from anywhere. But it also gives you access to its existing streaming library, so you have access to a lot of shows even if you didn't think to DVR them before they happened. At $40/month it seems like a pretty good deal (that gives you 50 hours of DVR). It's $44 to have "No Commercials" (this removes commercials from the streaming content I believe). If you want to skip past commercials in content you have DVR'd, you need to pay an extra $15/month, which seems kind of lame.

I wish I could try YouTube TV but it's not available in Seattle yet!

<comment><USER30> Checkout Playstaion Vue

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just signed up for HBO Now. The streaming does not work as good as Netflix. Neither do the browse/search features. It would be nice to have a streaming platform that just worked, and was a marketplace for all the content providers. I couldn't even sign up for HBO now via webpage, I had to download their app, just to sign up. Terrible UI. Terrible platform, but its the only option to watch their content [legally].

</comment><comment><USER32> Having multiple streaming providers will lead to more original content since streaming infrastructure alone is not defensibility.

Hopefully each streaming provider will share older seasons similar to how Netflix has acquired content currently.

I have Amazon, HBO, Netflix, and YouTube Red. I am happier than when I had a cable package - there is much more content I want to watch.

</comment><comment><USER33> This isn't a very good article. The analysis of the issue is very shallow and the author is stating the obvious: 'It would be easier for users if everything can be found on one service that costs $10/month' and 'more publishers are getting into their own streaming business and that is the opposite'. Yes, thank you, we are all quite aware of that.

That being said I am surprised by the comments here. Quite a few people seem to be arguing FOR a situation where lots of content leaves bigger providers so that it can be hosted in separate streaming services like Disney is now doing. Why? Are you all just being recalcitrant or am I to believe that you'd prefer paying (3 * $10)/month for a decent content coverage (assuming 3 different providers) instead of just $10/month? .

Another strange 'opinion' that is being shared here is that it would be better to pay only for the things you want to watch. a. This has been around for quite a while already, so it is unclear to me why this is being brought up as something that Netflix should do suddenly and b. I don't see how this would be an alternative to someone who is happily paying Netflix's ~$10/month. I myself find that a big value that Netflix has for me is the complete library of movies, series and stand-up they have and that I can freely watch anything they offer without having to pay for individual viewing sessions. I, for example, often put on something I have already seen or some stand-up while doing chores around the house. I would never do this if I had to pay for this content on top of what I would already be paying for the things that I actively watch.

Apart from the practical implications of pay-per-view in my example I also think that the quality of the content would suffer. Right now it is very easy for me to watch some experimental content on Netflix. Some Netflix originals are not your typical series or film and I quite enjoy the more different content as an addition to the more popular series. If people will have to start picking the things they want to watch and pay for every view these series will not get watched at all and therefore not be made at all. The advantage that Netflix has is that they try to persuade people to come to them for a variety of content that is interesting and unique to Netflix. This is how they grow and retain their user base. If you get rid of this model and start asking people to pay-per-view there would be no reason for them to keep making their own unique content anymore as you'd choose your provider on a view per view basis.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is a nice French service that is trying to regroup most french channels : molotov.tv But for me the nicest is the concept of their application that I use on Apple TV, the way they do replay, link to other shows on replay on the same channel... record your shows on the cloud...That's a nice evolution of streaming... Now, if something like that would exist in the US that would be a killer app!

</comment><comment><USER35> Studios used to run their own theaters and that vertical integration was found to be uncompetitive. What is the rationale that doesn't apply here?

</comment><comment><USER36> It's going to be more expensive than cable since you have to Internet(many of which providers are monopolies in the us) and pay 10 usd a month per various premium channel access.

Unless people just stop consuming media, and regain financial leverage.

</comment><comment><USER37> The bundling model whether streaming or cable is obsolete. The iTunes model of pay per episode makes much more sense - although it was much preferable when you could rent an episode for .99 rather than buy it for 2.99.

</comment><comment><USER38> Netflix at 10$ is severely underpriced relative to any competition. I've been curious just what their next move is.

<comment><USER22> Slowly bump prices. It's going up by $1 ($2 for the high tier) in Canada this month, I hear.

<comment><USER39> Though whether that's an active bump depends on whether the price hikes beat out inflation over the long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Don't ruin streaming by turning it into cable

You're about a few years too late on this. Snowballs don't roll uphill.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's capitalism. If you have a valid complaint, it can be rephrased as a business plan.

<comment><USER42> You're assuming an efficient market, when many deficits of market economics are already well-known. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure)

The information economy has fixed some of those, but it would be more surprising if there weren't new types of deficits to take their place.

<comment><USER41> This alleged assumption that in fact I did not make would contradict the principle above. If the market were always and everywhere at every instant of time efficiently allocated, there would be no valid complaints.

<comment><USER42> My point here is that, even if a business plan could be written for every complaint, the business plan produced isn't necessarily viable or actionable, e.g. if there's a monopoly in that particular industry. Usually the word 'plan' implies that there's a reasonable chance of success, hence my disagreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Don't ruin the Internet by turning it into streaming.

</comment><comment><USER44> I remember how people on the internet used to complain about how they didn't want all of the garbage channels that were bundled with cable. Now they are complaining about being able to pick and choose what they pay for. (Yes you don't need to have access to every subscription service)

Two things to note, pirates will always find some way to rationalize their theft and the consumer is a child that wants to have their cake and eat it too.

<comment><USER45> Copyright infringement isn't theft.

<comment><USER44> Thank you for proving my point

<comment><USER46> How can you know that hyperdunc is a "pirate"? How can you know that hyperdunc advocates for further "piracy"? His argument is that there is a word for copyright infringement and the word clearly isn't theft or piracy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Geosciences Australia to stop printing and selling topographic maps - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-03/geosciences-australia-stop-printing-and-selling-topographic-maps/11566698 <comment><AUTHOR> "All Geosciences Australia maps that are currently printed will be available for free download, ... those who still wanted to print maps on paper could do so of their own accord."</comment>


Ask HN: Who is going to Startup lessons learned? - <AUTHOR>

I am going to start up lessons learned on Monday May 23rd.  I was wondering if other HNers are going, and anything else that will be going on. http://www.sllconf.com/<p>There is also an ignite event the preceding saturday.  http://igniteleanstartup.eventbrite.com/ <comment><USER2> I will be there!</comment>


Show HN: Find the monitor you need on Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://monitorarms.co?monitors=true <comment><USER2> Just a wrapper adding affiliate codes (jstmntrs-20) to Amazon links... and most options not even populated ( _no_ flat screens?!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you share the filters you picked? Monitors section is definitely not as polished, however there must be couple flat screens.

Edit: you can disable the affiliate tags, link is on the header.</comment></comment>


Amazon Customer Reviews|Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel Creme 200 ml - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B000KKNQBK

<comment><USER2> Please don't.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic</comment>


Show HN: Wu – a tiny utility written in Go for running command on file changes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shanzi/wu <comment><AUTHOR> I write it because many of Go's web server are very lightweight so that they do not have the auto reloading function. It will be more convenient that we have a tool to stop the old process and start a new one after we saved some source code.

After searched and reviewed some similar solutions like that of Gulp and Grunt (many solutions are from NodeJS community), I think writing a universal command line tool with Go might be cool.

The advantages of this command is that it does not need any external dependencies and the precompiled binary can run directly on linux and macOS. It is useful not only for running dev server with `go run server.go` or `python server.py` but also when you want to rebuild your go project after any changes of source code. It is designed to be extremely simple and I have already been enjoying it during the development of itself!

Although it is lack of unit tests yet, I think it might be good for you to try it out now :)

<comment><USER2> Wu looks nice and simple. Did you know [https://github.com/cortesi/modd](https://github.com/cortesi/modd) when you started work on Wu?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aha, seems I reinvented a wheel again. But I think the simplicity might be an advantage of wu. modd seems to be too complex for someone to getting started at the first glance.

<comment><USER3> I've been using [http://entrproject.org](http://entrproject.org) for awhile, which accomplishes a similar task. I do love your -save flag though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you also taken a look at fresh [https://github.com/pilu/fresh](https://github.com/pilu/fresh) ?</comment>


Ask HN: framework for webapps in Scala - <AUTHOR>

So I now know Scala and want to make webapps.<p>Which framework do I go for and why? <comment><USER2> Depends on how deep you want to go.

Lift is very "Scala-ey" and has some great features for building full applications - FourSquare is lift powered, by way of example. www.liftweb.net

Play has Scala integration, but I don't know much about it to comment either way.

If you want to get more 'lightweight' or bare bones, Scalatra is a port of Ruby's Sinatra framework. Its what I tend to think of as a microframework, it's quite cool: <https://github.com/scalatra/scalatra>

Annotation based configuration of controllers, etc

</comment><comment><USER3> Lift is probably the most mature as well as the most documented Web Framework there is for Scala.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try the Play Framework

www.playframework.org</comment>


Stardog 4: Polyglot Graph Database - <AUTHOR> http://stardog.com/ <comment><USER2> I use Neo4j for two projects at the moment, though I make pretty heavy use of the REST api as I'm not working on the JVM. What advantages does Stardog have over Neo4j?

<comment><AUTHOR> It supports both property graphs and semantic graphs seamlessly, plus a bunch of other powerful features Neo4j can't touch like virtual graphs ([http://docs.stardog.com/#_virtual_graphs](http://docs.stardog.com/#_virtual_graphs)), integrity constraints ([http://docs.stardog.com/#_validating_constraints](http://docs.stardog.com/#_validating_constraints)), explanations ([http://docs.stardog.com/#_explaining_reasoning_results](http://docs.stardog.com/#_explaining_reasoning_results)), versioning graphs with a Git-like model ([http://docs.stardog.com/#_versioning](http://docs.stardog.com/#_versioning)), user-defined rules ([http://docs.stardog.com/#_user_defined_rule_reasoning](http://docs.stardog.com/#_user_defined_rule_reasoning)). And it supports all of TinkerPop3 including Gremlin.

It also has full REST support for non-JVM apps.

Stardog is a better graph database, but especially when integrating heterogenous data in the graph is key to success.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I'll have to play with it this weekend. Thanks for the information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Combines property graph (Apache TinkerPop 3 and Gremlin) with RDF, SPARQL, OWL, and rules... Graph all teh things!</comment>


Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Dossier - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier <comment> J-dawg > one of his two phones rang

> he kept his phones in a Faraday bag—a pouch, of military-tested double-grade > fabric, designed to block signal detection.

I guess he doesn't keep them in the bag all the time.

<comment><USER2> But it was _double-grade_ fabric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love how the dossier is so accurate that people have to do ad hominem attacks on Steele as a person instead of attacking the dossier.

Literally no one in Congress or anywhere else has been able to find a single thing wrong with it.

There's some terrifying stuff in there including a mysterious 20 percent share in a Russian oil company. The pee tapes. Etc etc.

Really hoping Mueller brings alot of this to light.

<comment><USER4> No one can prove a negative.

<comment><USER3> No one can even cast doubt on it...its like no one can disprove the theory of gravity because the evidence is too strong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> one of the issues with the info about Steele that has come out is if he had been'employed'or rendered services to the FBI while also doing the same with MI5 then some rather serious laws were broken.

I'm sure with today's state of the rule of law it'll easily be swept aside.

</comment><comment><USER6> >Several months after Steele signed the deal, he learned that, through this chain, his research was being jointly subsidized by the Clinton campaign and the D.N.C. In all, Steele was paid a hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars for his work.

>nonpartisan Fact Checker blog at the Washington Post, awarded Nunes's statement four Pinocchios—his rating for an outright lie. "There is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele's reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele," Kessler wrote.

2 + 2 = 5, apparently.

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you mean. Those statements aren't contradictory.

Clinton campaign paid for the report but wasn't involved in it's production. Pretty standard for opposition research.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: any designers available for work? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a single founder working on a startup. A classifieds site for residents of Edinburgh. Initially, it'll be for local people to buy and sell their second hand items.
I have a budget of around $1000 which I know isn't a lot.  I'm also willing to do some programming work in exchange. I'm experienced in django/python, php and java.
I'm doing the development myself, but I need some help with the design. I'm looking for something clean and tidy. Light on graphics, images, gradients and shadows. High on white space, good typography and consistency. I like the idea of text-as-interface. The design I envisage is what ebay might look like if it was designed today (without any web 2.0 nonsense!). Just a clean and simple interface.
If you're interested, please send me an email on the address in my profile. <comment><USER2> Try <http://www.programmermeetdesigner.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I sent you an email. Also, if anyone else is interested, my portfolio is at www.madebyargon.com</comment>


Jailbreaking the Kindle - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sgayou/kindle-5.6.5-jailbreak/blob/master/doc/README.md <comment><USER2> I wouldn't use my Kindle half as much if it weren't for KOReader [0]. Ironically enough for a dedicated reading device, Amazon's built-in reader app pales in comparison to this third-party tool. The killer feature for me is on- the-fly column splitting and text reflow, with the ability to flip to the original page view by tapping a corner -- this is critical for reading academic papers, which tend to be two-column PDFs. It also features contrast adjustment, more fonts, stylesheets, wireless syncing with Calibre, and support for many more file formats including ePub.

There's also a Gargoyle [1] port for interactive fiction on the go. It's less practical due to the input lag on the Kindle keyboard, but I still pull it out every now and again.

[0] [https://github.com/koreader/koreader](https://github.com/koreader/koreader)

[1] [http://www.fabiszewski.net/kindle- gargoyle/](http://www.fabiszewski.net/kindle-gargoyle/)

<comment><USER3> > \- this is critical for reading academic papers, which tend to be two-column > PDFs

Kindle's and PDFs goes together badly. This is common knowledge.

My solution is only using web-pages based formats like mobi or epub based books.

The rest... Let's say they don't get in my reading list.

Just like the web is nicer without flash, ebooks are just nicer without publishing formats like PDFs which natively can't support reflow or anything super basic required for easy reading.

<comment><USER4> > Just like the web is nicer without flash, ebooks are just nicer without > publishing formats like PDFs.

Web is nice _because_ of flash. The video tag in HTML5 happened only after successes of services like Youtube and Vimeo and hundreds of others after they set off on their paths with Macromedia flash. Stop fooling yourself with that kool-aid against flash in recent years.

It's dated for sure, but credit be given where credit is due.

<comment><USER5> People tend to forget what a blessing Flash was when it first arrived on the web, how horrible other plugins were, like the awful Java mess. Everytime a Java-applet tried to run, you could only pray it wouldn't crash your browser and take your whole system down. Or the terrible experience called RealPlayer! Sure, Flash has a bad security reputation, for good reason, but it made the web more beautiful, interactive,fun and usable at the beginning of the new century. All you had to do was click on "Skip website intro".

<comment><USER6> I haven't forgotten. Even today, creating dynamic apps in flex using xml and actionscript is easier, more performant and saner than using HTML5. If only the flash player wasn't a minefield of bugs and security vulnerabilities. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> david-given I did some playing with a Kindle 3 a few years back --- I was writing programs that integrated into the native UI. I built an app which was a Javascript interpreter bolted onto a VT52 terminal emulator. You could type in programs and run them! Using the K3's fiddly little keyboard! Um, awesome. [http://cowlark.com/kindle/javascript.html](http://cowlark.com/kindle/javascript.html)

This was on the 3.1 firmware, so it's likely all completely obsolete on modern devices.

...the 3.1 firmware was terrible. It was all Java based, but Java 1.4. No generics! No autoboxing! No foreach! People forget just how _awful_ early versions of Java were in comparison to what we have today. I ended up building a toolchain using RetroWeaver to convert modern Java bytecode into something that would run on the Kindle.

Also, the firmware was based on the Personal Basis Profile 1.1. Think back, way into the past, before there were smartphones and Android and iOS... back to the heyday of the downloadable Java applet for your T9-based phone. Yup, that. Kindle apps were midlets, and anyone who remembers writing programs for midlets will be shuddering by now.

And it gets worse! The Kindle ran the entire UI, third-party applications included, in a single Java VM. It was as fragile as hell, and it tended to silt up with un-garbagecollectable data until it crashed and rebooted. If you left a thread running on application exit, it would crash and reboot. If your app hung you had to power cycle the device. I believe that the reason why Amazon never really opened up the Kindle to large-scale third party apps was mainly embarrassment.

Good times. Good times...

<comment><USER7> I was an intern on a team that did some Kindle work in 2010 and the Java limitations at that time were definitely a very real annoyance for internal code: they didn't do anything like you are describing for Java bytecode conversion for 1p development to make it less annoying. The issue was maybe even deeper than you noticed, core parts of the API like String.substring() weren't implemented and would just throw a runtime exception.

<comment> david-given You mean... you wrote Java 1.4 _by hand_?

I'm so, so sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could anyone knowledgeable about this explain what you can do with a jailbroken kindle that you cannot do with a locked one?

<comment> semi-extrinsic I've jailbroken mine to have custom covers. Instead of famous dead American authors I've never read, I have famous dead physicists whom I've actually read and whom I admire.

<comment><USER9> I'd love to do this using "pulp" science fiction book covers. I assumed that there was already a tutorial for this, but my Google-fu is weak. Did you use a guide or just DIY? What size/resolution image does the Kindle expect? Is there a filename format or a directory structure to use?

<comment><USER10> I think you want screensaver hacks. Here's one example, but there are others.

[http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Screen_Saver_Hack_for...](http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Screen_Saver_Hack_for_all_2.x,_3.x_%26_4.x_Kindles)

Some people add their contact details to the screensaver images, so if you lose your kindle your contact details are the first thing someone who finds it will see.

<comment><USER11> Maybe a better hack would be to disable screensavers since they serve no purpose on an e-paper display and actually _cost battery_ to switch from text -> screensaver -> text.

The better behavior would be to not flip the screen at all and keep it static, using no battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not sure if you are the author or just sharing. If you authored this I would highly recommend mentioning which "kindle" this is applicable to as the first topic. There are multiple generations of kindle e-readers and kindle tablets. It's not readily apparent up front as to which this is applicable to.

<comment> david-given Just to clarify: this is referring to the e-ink Kindles, not the Kindle Fire Android tablets. The post could definitely be clearer.

All the e-ink Kindles have basically the same architecture and run basically the same firmware, so the exploit should run on any device with that model of firmware.

<comment><USER13> So even the older kindles like the DX?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All I want is an e-ink device that I can use with books purchased from Amazon, Apple, Google, B&N, and other vendors.

Why is that so hard?

<comment><USER15> Check out the Kobo.

<comment><USER14> I have. Last time I checked, the Kobo couldn't open DRM protected books from Amazon.

<comment><USER16> It can if you remove the DRM from them. Amazon is selling you a broken product, so I don't recommend buying books from them anyway.

<comment><USER14> True, but I wouldn't care about DRM if I could still buy books at any bookstore.

DVD's and Blueray disks have DRM, but I can buy one from any store and it will work with my player and my TV. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The more I see writeups like this, the more I wonder if the effort being laid out by the people doing the work is compensated appropriately.

I'm not sure what Amazon pays for identifying a security flaw, but I imagine it's somewhere between $5 and $15k.

Having success monthly might yield reasonable compensation, but companies only pay when a flaw is identified, which means you don't get paid for your work, you get paid for your successful work. And you don't get to define what is successful, nor is there usually a clear definition of what successful actually means.

I understand that many people do this to get a job in security / security research, but it just seems like the effort-to-payoff ratio still favors people using their found exploits for evil dramatically.

There really should be a different pricing model around security exploits - one that encourages responsible disclosure more heavily.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't believe Amazon officially pays for security flaws. They ended up sending me a free Kindle (pretty funny) and got an interview out of it. That didn't end up going anywhere, but I got a heck of a lot further than the black hole that is most job application processes these days. Seemed like a fair trade considering the market for Kindle 0days is somewhere near $0.

It's a neat project to talk about during interviews. Nothing more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How do you get the background to pursue this sort of thing?

I've programmed and used Linux for a little while and I've done some simple things in assembly language (although not in much depth), but all the technical things past the __CVE-2013-2842 __section are impenetrable to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Started out cracking software on embedded systems a long time ago. That led to an understanding of ASM and reverse engineering. Going from there to exploitation isn't a giant leap.

There's quite a few books on the subject. Hacking: The Art of Exploitation is a decent hello world introduction to the subject. Reading CTF practice problem writeups and then trying easier ones yourself are also good experiences.

For REing, [http://crackmes.de](http://crackmes.de) is a blast. The entry level challenges should be easy to grasp after reading a few tutorials. Would recommend running everything in a Windows VM. ;)

Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was recently researching ebook readers and found Kobo devices way better than Kindle (and cheaper too). Especially for somebody who is a power user of devices. Without getting into specifities, I found that in general Kobo is more open.

</comment><comment><USER20> Btw here is a webservice that converts and sends ePub's to your kindle, without having to use Calibre yourself [http://www.sendepubtokindle.com](http://www.sendepubtokindle.com)

</comment><comment><USER21> All I want is to invert colors on my Paperwhite for easier reading with the lights off. Why is that so hard?

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe that'll make Amazon update their Kindle's experimental browser. It has an underestimated potential.

Will keep an eye on this, even if am now using a Kobo H20.

<comment><USER22> Update: the conclusion of the article mentioned :

"For the fix, Amazon did quite a few things. They sandboxed the browser, fixed the permissions issue, removed fc-cache.sh, and most likely patched Webkit. Webkit still crashes when executing the PoC. Unsure if that's because of the process running out of memory or some other issue."</comment></comment>


The security hole in sudo - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/05/21/anatomy-of-a-security-hole-the-break-that-broke-sudo/

<comment><USER2> I've always felt like the switch statement's "break" behavior should have been the implicit case, with a statement to trigger fallthrough if you really wanted it. I wonder what percentage of the time fallthrough is actually desired in switch statements. I would assume it's wildly in the minority.

<comment><USER3> C# doesn't have fallthrough at all, but it won't compile without "break;". I'm really not sure what they were going for there.

<comment><USER4> You can "goto" any case label in C#, which works like fallthrough but is more flexible (since you can jump anywhere). At the same time, it avoids the refactoring hazard associated with fallthrough, in which changing the order of the switch labels can change the behavior of the code. Of the languages that have "switch" (not counting ML/Haskell-style pattern matching here), C#'s approach seems ideal.

<comment><USER5> The C# approach sounds like a recipe for abuse:

        switch(something)
        {
            case 1:
                // Do stuff
                goto case 4;
            case 2:
                // Do stuff
                goto case 1;
            case 3:
                // Do stuff
                goto case 5;
            case 4:
                // Do stuff
                goto case 3;
            case 5:
                // Do stuff
                break;
        }

<comment><USER6> That's quite horrible! Fortunately, it's _obviously_ horrible, and since "goto" has such a stigma attached to it, programmers will only use it when it's necessary. (Cross your fingers.)

<comment> mkr-hn register_globals would like to have a word with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The missing break has been the sort of bug that haunts me at least twice a month at my current job.

We do car diagnostics and we code in C. Endless time I would not understand why a particular path was not taken, and a missing break was the answer.

Now, I can see the utility of fall-thru switch construct, but this is a kind of bug that could be avoided at the syntax level. Just don't require a break and develop another syntax for fall-thru cases.

<comment><USER8> Or just don't use switch. If it's a small expression, an if/else chain takes no more lines of code and is not less efficient. If it's a large expression, it might be better expressed with a function pointer table.

I'm not a zealot on this stuff, and write switch statements regularly (though I do strongly prefer if chains for most stuff) but if you're really hitting this regularly I think a change in process might be in order.

<comment><USER9> It can be slightly less efficient when (on supporting architectures) the compiler could automatically generate a jump table in place of stacked conditionals, which it cannot do for a chain of ifs.

<comment><USER8> This is a myth that won't die. Jump tables can't be branch predicted, so they're generally significantly slower unless the number of cases is very high. And it's not true that the compiler "cannot" emit a jump table for an if chain anyway. A bunch of if/else-if expressions of the form "some_var == constant" can certainly be detected (though again, it probably isn't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yet another avoidable bug.

Over time, I've come to believe C is deadly flawed, and greenfield projects should seriously investigate languages that are better designed.

Trivial errors in C like dangling elses, fallthroughs in switches, and easy buffer-overruns by default say to me that C's broken, has been broken, and will continue being broken.

For non-realtime apps, I would recommend pretty much _anything_ but C; for realtime apps, I would be looking into things like SystemC or D and choose appropriately.

This class of avoidable bug should not be happening in 2012.

<comment><USER11> C _does_ have issues, but lots of people are complaining about things that are easily solved by using the proper tools. Turn on compiler warnings and/or use a lint tool.

(For reference, a project I have at hand is compiled with -std=c99 -pedantic -W -Wall -Wno-sign-compare -Wno-unused-parameter -Wbad-function-cast -Wcast- align -Wchar-subscripts -Wfloat-equal -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-format- attribute -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnested-externs -Wpointer- arith -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wwrite-strings -Wundef -Werror and uses lint to check for improper conversion between types.)

<comment><USER12> So it's not broken, only broken by default. Because having to add three lines of command line flags to get sane behavior doesn't seem like a good default to me.

<comment><USER13> Truthfully, C does what you tell it to do. As it turns out, most people don't want it to do what they tell it to do, they want it to do what is in their head. Those warnings are "did you really mean what you just told me to do?". For some people, the answer is "no, what, wait!" -- those are what they are for. Not that the behavior is insane, just "less common". I don't think people fully grasp the idea that C does what you tell it to do when they first start using it.

If you told C "make me a sandwich", it'd give a warning about not having enough mustard to cover your entire body and an error about not have a large enough bun type to fit you in.

<comment><USER11> This is facile; there is no good reason why C couldn't have a less-dangerous switch statement, or why compilers don't have nicer defaults. (If you run gcc without -W -Wall -O2, you either really know what you're doing or you're doing it wrong; in either case, having those options as defaults makes sense.)

<comment><USER14> There are many cases where fall through switch statements are preferable, but that's almost beside the point. C is basically just portable assembler with syntactic sugar sprinkled on top. Assembler doesn't have less dangerous switch statements and switch statments. Assembler has branching and jumping. That break statement in c is almost literally telling the assembler to jump out of a chain of branch statements after probably returning from a jal of the function within the same case block. Adding an extra switch statement just takes the language farther away from assembler and makes compiling more complicated, which is silly since the unsafe switch statement with break statements will/should produce the exact same assembler (this is different from the difference between using if{}else{ if...} chains and using switch, which will produce different assembler code).

To make it even more fun, there are many use cases for fall through switch statements. My personal favorite is duff's device, which is an unwrapped version of a serial copy that will run faster on certain architectures than a more typical serial copy will run: send(to, from, count) register short _to,_ from; register count; { register n = (count + 7) / 8; switch(count % 8) { case 0: do { _to =_ from++; //this is for a memory mapped register. case 7: _to =_ from++; // use _to++ for non memory mapped registers case 6:_ to = _from++; case 5:_ to = _from++; case 4:_ to = _from++; case 3:_ to = _from++; case 2:_ to = _from++; case 1:_ to = *from++; } while(--n > 0); } }

<comment><USER15> I thought duff's device was one of the few examples that use fall through switch statements. I was taught to use switches with blocks, because otherwise unexpected things happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sudo has always felt like a bit of a blunt instrument to me.

For example having to type the root password every time I want to run a vaguely administrative program or install something etc gets old fast.

Not to mention the number of times I've made a bunch of edits to something like a conf file in nano and then gone to save and got "permission denied" where the only solution seems to be to exit nano and run it again (and do the edits again) with sudo. Surely it should be able to prompt me for the password at save time?

<comment><USER17> Sudo has authentication timeouts built in, so you don't have to type in your password ( _your_ password, not root's) every time you want to run an administrative program. Also, the fact that you have to sudo is one of the reasons why Unix is more secure than the Windows "administrator by default" approach.

As for your last point, you're complaining about nano. It would be perfectly possible for an editor to sudo when writing to disk.

<comment><USER16> This is something that seems to be the case on vi and emacs too, I have never seen a unix program which prompts me for sudo password at the moment that it needs to do a privileged operation rather than requiring running via sudo.

<comment><USER18> When I vi a read-only file:

         "/etc/mail/aliases" [Read only] 36 lines, 1023 characters

Its simply a matter of remaining keen when doing admin tasks. Sure I have to close/re-open with sudo but its prompting me up front that I won't be able to save it.

<comment><USER19> > Sure I have to close/re-open with sudo but its prompting me up front that I > won't be able to save it.

No, you don't, and yes, you will:

      :w !sudo tee %

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be nice if compilers offered a warning for missing breaks in a switch statement, and a pragma to mark fallthrough:

        switch(something)
        {
            case 1:
                // Do stuff
                break;
            case 2:
                #pragma switch_fallthrough
            case 3:
                // Do stuff
                break;
            #pragma switch_nodefault
        }

<comment><USER20> lint will warn about those cases unless they are marked in the code with /* FALLTHROUGH */. I think even if you're not using lint, such comments are good practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This snippet is ugly anyway. The case-bodies are not indented, the one-liner if-bodies are missing their brackets, asking for more trouble.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why I always put a "fall through" comment in place of break if I intend to omit it, and always put a blank line after each case. Once I got in the habit of this, it makes spotting this bug pretty easy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why was the incredibly important caveat -- this vulnerability only affects configurations which are using netmask-based permissions -- left to the last paragraph?

</comment><comment><USER24> I still wonder why they don't do ATDD. Even when you use a statically typed language there is plenty of room for failure.

I recommend using:

\- vagrant <http://vagrantup.com/>

\- toft <https://github.com/exceedhl/toft/>

\- cucumber <http://cukes.info/>

\- aruba <https://github.com/cucumber/aruba>

to write/reverse engineer examples/user stories.

<comment><USER25> No

Enough with the nonsense. TDD is great for some tools, in some situations. It's not a "solve all". And now comes "ATDD", people should start working instead on inventing acronyms.

vagrant? really, REALLY?

Try QEMU. Try chroot

News flash, sudo is not a RoR application. Especially sudo with all the magic that goes behind executing a process as another user.

<comment><USER24> "Especially sudo with all the magic that goes behind executing a process as another user."

Your last sentence kills your standpoint totally.

Please check out the mentioned "toft". It's lxc inside vagrant and designed to test complex infrastructure code from the outside in. Nothing web related.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> C is fine. C is C. If you want a better C, create one. You could name it something clever like C+=1, or C++.</comment>


Pirate Party Australia - <AUTHOR> http://pirateparty.org.au/ <comment><USER2> Honestly both the major parties here are such dud choices (so bad that a third party won a seat in the lower house last election), and with PRISM hopefully becoming a voting issue the pirate party are surely going to get some notice this election. Thank the FSM for preferential voting

<comment><USER3> We regularly have minor parties and independents in the lower house, this is just the first time that they have held the balance of power. The ironic thing is that despite being a minority government, the 'hung' or 'hamstrung' government, there has been more legislation passed this term than any previously.

But you wouldn't read it in the papers, which have performed the most amazing political smiling assassination.

<comment><USER4> Our media does an amazing job at presenting labor and liberal as the only two options. Especially by suggesting that voting third party is throwing your vote away (which it isn't because of our preference system).

I have no faith in Australian politics anymore, every campaign seems to be entirely focused around mud slinging and fear mongering.

<comment><USER5> I ran as a small party candidate.

Based on coverage, there are _three_ major parties. The only microparty that gets any coverage is the Australian Sex Party and that's only because of the undergraduate boorishness of their name.

Katter and Palmer will get coverage this time in the "lighter side" columns and then we'll go back to having the majors take turns at the Treasury benches while the Greens get to pretend they are a genuine alternative because nobody actually reads their policies.

I miss the Democrats. They were boring centrists and it was wonderful.

<comment><USER3> The DLP had more success than the Sex Party at the last election, and there's no boorishness in their name... only their policies :)

In terms of coverage, Family First gets more than the Sex party, as does One Nation.

<comment><USER5> The DLP had the benefit of a number of favourable preference deals, but nobody noticed or cared until a DLP Senator was elected. But the ASP got widespread coverage.

Family First gets coverage because they are very good at faking noise and movement. They learnt well from previous generations of protest movement. The body of media hadn't yet innoculated themselves against it in the way they have against weekly the National Days of Action and Marches Against Whatever that take place in Sydney and Melbourne CBDs every 20 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in Germany where we have one of the most successful pirate parties with several seats in state parliaments. I had a alot of hope in them but they just fight with each other and are in no way ready and way to chaotic for national parliament. It's kinda sad.

<comment><USER5> Australia's political structure is actually subtly and importantly different from a lot of others. From the British we have a fused legislative/executive Westminster system. From the Americans we borrowed various features of our constitution.

But what is particularly unique in the Australian context is our party discipline. It is probably the most rigid in the world. There's a lot less horse-trading. Our current Parliament is only the second in history where it has been at all necessary for the major parties to negotiate with independents to obtain "confidence and supply" \-- ie to form a government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shout-out to my activist colleagues down under. Good to see y'all.

</comment><comment><USER8> My plan for the future is to attempt to ressurect the Australian Democrats. They're centre-left, and align with my views nearly perfectly (except for their opinions on nuclear power).

The Pirate Party are interesting, but I don't see them having enough of an impact here, what with the Greens and Independents usually taking the "third way" spot.

Still great to see, though :)

<comment><USER5> The Democrats died when they became centre-left.

They thrived when they were genuinely centrist: neither left nor right.

The Democrats used to win Senate votes approximately equally from both Labor and Liberal supporters. When Meg Lees negotiated to introduce the GST, Stott- Despoja deposed her and yanked the party towards the left.

In doing so she alienated all of the Liberal voters who'd previously given about half of the party's vote. The Democrats kept trying to lurch further left to shore up the votes that were left, but ran smack into the Greens, who had already hoovered all those votes up. Then they died.

The Liberal centrist vote, incidentally, has nowhere left to go. So the coalition has outperformed all the others in the Senate -- that's how Howard wound up with a Senate majority in the first place.

If Stott-Despoja had stuck to the Democrat formula, there's a reasonable chance they'd still be around.

<comment><USER8> Just wanted to say, that's a really nice analysis of what happened :)

Ahhh, Ms Star-Destroyer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are the Pirate Party running candidates for the senate in this coming election? I think they have a good chance of getting a few seats is so... the youth vote is big and I foresee a lot of GenYers putting 1 above the line for the Pirate Party.

</comment><comment><USER10> We have a pirate party in Belgium and I have to say it's interesting but I honestly don't see how people are going to vote for them.

<comment><USER11> The EU election is where the swedish pirate party has managed to get seats. It's also nice to have a party for "protest voters" that isn't far-right or far-left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So how does this work .. can the Pirate Party of Australia send preferences to Wikileaks?

<comment><USER5> In the Senate, voters may vote "above the line" or "below the line".

If you vote "below the line", you must number every candidate in order of your preference.

Every. Single. Box.

In some states there are hundreds of candidates. One NSW ballot paper was nicknamed "the tablecloth".

If you vote "above the line", you are required only to tick or mark _one_ box. That box delegates your voting preference to a party, who have registered a preset order of preference with the Australian Electoral Commission. Your vote will be counted according to that party's scheme.

Almost everyone votes above the line in the Senate, so the arrangement of preferences by different parties can have surprising effects on the final composition of the Senate. As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of horse- trading, known as "preference deals".

I vote below the line because I like to work backwards in order of craziness.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the explanation.

On the face of it, it would then seem that the system is rigged to reduce the honest preferences of the more informed or politically engaged portion of the population through technicalia (forgot a box, wrote same number twice, etc.).

<comment><USER5> No, the system is basically honest and above board. It just has quirks that would be made worse if they were "fixed". Our electoral system has evolved over the past century to be, quite honestly, one of the most open, progressive and balanced electoral systems in the world.

What we in Australia call "exhaustive preferential voting" is sometimes called "instant runoff voting" elsewhere. Having to number every box is a _feature_ , not a bug. If you don't have an exhaustive ballot, then in practice political parties will encourage voters to "just vote 1" \-- to mark only one box.

And then you've arrived at a first-past-the-post system, which is what IRV is trying to get away from in the first place.

In the House of Reps, few candidates turn out because it's very difficult for a non-major party candidate to win. It happens, but only rarely. So in any given seat it would be unusual to find more than 5 or 6 candidates -- 2 majors, a green, whatever microparty is currently making a push and perhaps the local village idiot or somebody who doesn't realise that running as an independent is a mug's game.

But the Senate is different. The Senate is based on proportional representation. Each State elects 6 senators, and the Senate seats are effectively allocated to parties according to the final distribution of votes. In a recursive process, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes redistributed according to the voter preferences, up and up until there are 6 people with a full "quota" of votes.

The thing about the Senate is that the _final Senate seat in any given state is usually in play_. The top 4 seats are almost always won equally by the majors; the 5th usually won by a major or the Greens. But the 6th seats can and frequently do wind up in the hands of the most unlikely people because of the complicated preference deals I described above.

Because there is a _chance_ for a microparty candidate to wind up in the Senate, lots of people run. Being a Senator is a pretty sweet deal. Good pay, your own offices and staff, travel entitlements and the like. And if you luck into holding the balance of power in the Senate, you've just become a very powerful individual.

<comment><USER12> Thanks. I'm Australian, I just left very young and never really went back, and hold multiple other citizenships as well. Definitely going to hassle my local consulate about voting this election though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The NSA's Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/ <comment><USER2> Wow, just made a crazy realization. A while back I was downtown with my 5yo kid, and we were by the bus stop right next to this building (You can actually see the bus stop in the picture). The bus was late, and my kid was hyper, and he tried going through the revolving doors. They were locked, no big deal. After a while, he tried going through the doors again. At this point, _three security guards with ballistic vests_ come busting out of the door _with their hands on their holsters_ , and chewed me out for letting him play near the door.

I know my way around the security industry. These weren't normal security guards that get paid to watch cctv and call the real cops. They don't give those guys guns or ballistic vests. To me it was completely bizarre that a telecom building would have that sort of security. Now it all makes sense. I actually wouldn't be surprised if they were actually military in disguise.

<comment><USER3> The one in the picture? Is that NY? I don't recognize the skyline.

<comment><USER4> Ctrl-F Jovelle Tamayo

It's on the corner of third and lenora.

<comment><USER3> Crazy. I used to work on 2nd and Lenora and I still can't say for sure I've noticed this building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Seattle location - 1122 3rd Ave - is an interesting spot. According to Google Maps[0], next door is the FBI Seattle Division office. On street view, the building itself has a street-level office with signs for both AT&T and CenturyLink.

3rd Ave itself is slightly notorious - hosting the surface entrances for the Seattle bus tunnel, and a large number of inter-city routes, the area has a reputation for crime and the occasional death by shooting. It was a bit worrying to commute through, as a bus rider, and seems like an odd location for an ISP street-level office.

[0] [https://goo.gl/maps/8oxjkCL8JFm](https://goo.gl/maps/8oxjkCL8JFm)

<comment><USER6> It seems odd to have an ISP office in the middle of downtown?

<comment><USER7> Every major north american city has a legacy telco central office in downtown, in a very central location, from the days of pulse-dial and then DTMF dial analog phones. Always owned by whatever corporate entity the Bell System and then ILEC eventually became.

Seattle, for example, also has the Elliot CO in Belltown: [http://www.co- buildings.com/wa/206/](http://www.co-buildings.com/wa/206/)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, you have to remember that in pulse dial days a central office station had a reach of roughly 3 miles. The longer you go, the more you're paying for cable, repeaters, or just losing quality. 90 volt AC for ringing has a limited range!

<comment><USER7> People who've never seen it in person find it amazing that things like 1200 pair phone cables exist... Here's a photo of just a 100-pair:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/f1EGp](https://imgur.com/gallery/f1EGp)

on this page is a photo of a 1200-pair: [http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant...](http://cityinfrastructure.com/single.php?d=RuralOutsidePlant&t=Rural%20Outside%20Plant)

<comment><USER9> How do they colour-code the wires to identify them?

"Ah there's your problem: you've patched the Fire Engine Red pair, it's meant to be the Ferrari Red. Rookie error."

<comment><USER10> > _How do they colour-code the wires to identify them?_

It's actually pretty simple. There are only 10 colors: blue, orange, green, brown, slate, white, red, black, yellow, and violet. They're grouped in "binders" (using colored strings). You're likely familiar with the first four pairs from network cables (which omit the white/slate pair). After cylcling through blue through slate paired with white through violet (25 pairs), the wires are bundled with binders starting with blue/white string. That gets you to 625 pairs (the first picture posted above is 600 or 625 pairs). After that, the binder groups are bound in a similar fashion (typically if you're going beyond 625, the slate/violet binder is omitted to get a nice round 600 in the first group).

Wikipedia has a good article: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/25-pair_color_code](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/25-pair_color_code)

100-pair cable is only about 3/4" diameter. I have a 24-line 1A2 telephone that uses 75 pairs just to connect to the phone switch and two 100-pair cables feeding a telephone display case in my living room.

It takes me about a half hour to punch down 100 pairs on a 66-block. Old school telecom guys could probably do it in under 10 minutes.

<comment><USER11> What about if you are color blind? Change professions?

<comment><USER7> Yes. Same problem for fiber fusion splicers. Worked for an ISP that hired a color blind person as a field tech, he didn't last long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One wonders if a CDN might advertise, "we promise once your data enters our network at our edge locations outside of the US, it does not traverse any AT&T networks while reaching your server inside the US". Same with cloud companies' private networks across regions.

<comment><USER13> If your communication is encrypted it shouldn't matter if it passes AT&T networks.

Either

A. Popular and well known encryption algorithms are not broken by the NSA, and your communication is private.

B. Popular and well known encryption algorithms are broken by the NSA, but the fact that it's broken is top secret and the state will not do any actions that revel the secret. Your communications are not safe, and while what you communicate might make you the target of an investigation (if you're an appealing enough target), the communications will not be directly used against you in court.

EDIT: There is a third option, that your communication is being stored until the encryption algorithm is broken or computation reaches a point where brute force is possible (quantum computers). Long term storage of encrypted communication is only economically feasible for a small subset of all encrypted communication, so it's only a concern for targeted individuals where the communication will be relevant to the state decades from now.

<comment><USER12> > If your communication is encrypted it shouldn't matter if it passes AT&T > networks.

That assumes metadata is irrelevant. The destination, time of day, and volume of the traffic all have value separately and especially so when together. The destination can be masked if you control both sides and AT&T is a go between, but timing issues are subject to analysis unless you are a large enough player to give safety in numbers or you push noise across your pipes.

<comment><USER14> It's not that hard to anonymize metadata.

Just decide how thoroughly it must be done, and do what it takes. Plus a safety factor.

<comment><USER15> It is extremely hard to anonymize metadata, thats part of what makes its capture and analysis so insidious.

Please tell me how i anonymize the metadata of where my cellphone is located, which the telco harvests from towers its connected to.

<comment><USER16> Put it in a bag, and don't use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is 811 10th (NYCMNY54) even interesting from an Internet perspective any longer? Yes, the building is part of AT&T's network (AS7018), but as far as I'm aware, no peering occurs here at all. I'd look for equivalent shady racks or rooms at 60 Hudson, 111 8th and 25 Broadway.

Maybe the comfortable relationship between NSA and at&t are more the driver for the location, and the fiber taps are all backhauled here.

From a voice perspective, though, I'd think this was still a useful surveillance point, given AT&T likely still tandems traffic here.

<comment><USER7> Things are slowly moving out of 111 8th as Google bought the whole building and is not renewing leases for certain tenants. Most traffic exchange happens at places like 60 Hudson for Manhattan and then a whole bunch of newer, modern, low and wide purpose built datacenters (mostly 1998 and later dotcom 1.0 boom and onwards era) in NJ across the river.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is focused on AT&T, but there are other major datacenters in the US that are also major transit peers for foreign nations, with entire floors dedicated to government equipment. AT&T is a convenient one-stop shop, but they will probably need to use other service providers as well.

<comment><USER19> Prior leaks showed they were paying multiple telecoms huge amounts of money to do exactly that.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attver...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attverizonsprint- are-paid-cash-by-nsa-for-your-private-communications/#19e05c4743cb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those who can't access theintercept for a variety of reasons: [https://archive.fo/c0vWe](https://archive.fo/c0vWe)

</comment><comment><USER21> Not the first time:

Room 641A: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

<comment><USER22> 12 years later and nothing changed. The SCOTUS killed the lawsuit and Congress let everyone involved off the hook.

Since there are rarely, if ever, any consequences for breaking the law or the Constitution, why would they stop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://www.calyxinstitute.org/projects/encrypted- internet-p...](https://www.calyxinstitute.org/projects/encrypted-internet- peering-project)

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what sort of performance impact this has on American internet speeds.

At the very least, AT&T might be limited from upgrading their equipment until the NSA can revise their monitoring systems to keep up.

<comment><USER25> They're using optical splitters, so the original signal passes though untouched. Because there's no man in the middle, bandwidth shouldn't be affected.

<comment><USER24> That makes sense, but at the same time, I wonder if ISPs are hesitant or inhibited from upgrading key pieces of infrastructure equipment out of obligation to maintain these copying capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This building in downtown Ottawa looks similarly imposing: [https://goo.gl/maps/6xEgv4KwJ4v](https://goo.gl/maps/6xEgv4KwJ4v)

<comment><USER7> 99% odds that is either a ILEC telco central office or a large electrical transformer substation. If electrical grid, similar to the big part with no windows at 970 Burrard in Vancouver. BC Hydro headquarters site with giant substation that later became office and residential condos.

edit: I just moved down the street a bit and it says Bell Canada on the building. It's a CO.

Another way you can tell for sure with a building like that, is that there will be a locked panel or set of highly protected hose ports for generator diesel fuel refill, from alley or street side tanker truck delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting to see this, and the reference to "one million emails", considering the prevalence of opportunistic TLS on MTA connections. Gmail reports 89% of their inbound and outbound flow is protected by TLS [1]. Wouldn't that eliminate the ability of the NSA to intercept those messages?

[1] [https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer- email/overview](https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview)

<comment><USER28> They might still collect them, on the chance that they'll be able to break the encryption later

<comment><USER29> or, on the chance that they were able to undermine the establishment of the protocol to make it more amenable being broken using their methods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article describes a lot of the buildings a fortress-like. I actually don't have a problem with that - in the event of a catastrophe, I want my telecommunications to keep working.

The rest of it - splitting data traffic and sending a copy to the NSA - I'd like to see how any international traffic is being sent through a land-locked city like Dallas, which should only have domestic traffic in it. Which the NSA shouldn't be looking at.

<comment><USER31> > I'd like to see how any international traffic is being sent through a land- > locked city like Dallas...

Well, Texas borders Mexico, and although DFW is on the other side of the state, it is a very large metro area. If it's a hub for domestic traffic, it seems logical for it to also act as an interchange for international traffic with Central and South America. The hostnames I see in a traceroute to telmex.com (a big telco headquartered in Mexico City) from my office in New England on Verizon FiOS appears to support the idea that at least some traffic routes through Dallas before it crosses the border.

EDIT: clarification

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It could just be part of regular routing, but I noticed for example that all my facebook traffic is routed to an address with an LA prefix in LA. That doesn't seem strange except that Facebook doesn't have an LA datacenter (at least not that I could find any public record of, and they seem to publish the location of other data centers).

<comment><USER33> There's a difference between a data center and a POP. The former is very large. The latter is usually a rack or more in someone else's facilities. When you try to reach Google or Facebook, you rarely hit their data centers directly. They're out in the boonies, where land and power are cheap. Rather, you talk to their proxies at the edge (POPs, often in large cities). From there, your data is either returned immediately (e.g. cached objects such as popular videos or the company logo...) or forwarded over their fiber to the core clusters in the data centers.

<comment><USER34> Just curious, is there a good site/book/etc to learn how the modern internet actually works? As a lowly programmer, I have a good understanding of network communications, and some knowledge of things like routing protocols, but I'm completely lost when it comes to understanding how the modern internet actually functions. Thanks!

<comment><USER33> I'd normally recommend books like Google's SRE one, but at least in this case it glosses over the detail of where GFEs tend to live:

[https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/production- envi...](https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/production- environment.html#fig_production-environment_life-of-a-request)

It used to be the case that they were mostly in POPs, but I think that with Maglev ([https://research.google.com/pubs/pub44824.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub44824.html)) they can live in core clusters, too. Other Google sources go into more detail, e.g.

[https://medium.com/@duhroach/profiling-gcps-load- balancers-9...](https://medium.com/@duhroach/profiling-gcps-load- balancers-94c552f06736)

[https://www.slideshare.net/MichelleHolley1/google-cloud- netw...](https://www.slideshare.net/MichelleHolley1/google-cloud-networking- deep-dive)

Back to your question, I'm not sure there is one good place to look up these things, but presentations/papers by companies like Google and Facebook are probably still your best bet. Stuff coming straight out of GCP teams will be a little more enthusiastic in tone, but that's easy to tune out. :-)

Another good example is Facebook's Ben Maurer and his Fail at Scale talk, which discusses a lot of details that are necessary for modern internet services, such as queuing, session/application-layer congestion control, canarying, advanced monitoring, etc. [https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2839461](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2839461)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There's an interesting 1960's era art installation by Anthony Heinsbergen on a side wall of the LA facility that seems oddly related to this... [https://i1.wp.com/upinthevalley.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/...](https://i1.wp.com/upinthevalley.org/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_2471.jpg?w=1024)

<comment><USER36> I don't understand "oddly" here. The art piece seems rather literal rather than some odd coincidental association.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Lol, I walk past the one on Folsom all the time. The most obvious spy building ever.

<comment><USER38> Well, yea. I'd be surprised[1] if it wasn't on the list.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

<comment><USER37> Heh, see I had no idea what Room 641 was.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone remember this from 2006? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

I guess they just expanded, but the basic facts here are not new.

"the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic."

AND

Klein claims he was told that _similar black rooms are operated at other facilities around the country._

</comment><comment><USER39> The scrolljacking on this article is absolutely insufferable.

<comment><USER40> It happens a lot on The Intercept. It's really super annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> My personal favorite is how the current debt based economy allow almost infinite amounts of government debt to be created. In fact, one of the reasons why we got off the gold standard decades ago is military spending.

<comment><USER42> No its not. And I fail to understand why this keeps coming up. The gold standard tied fiscal and monetary policy to an arbitrary commodity: gold. Whereas value exists beyond the commodity itself. The gold standard had all sorts of unintended consequences and is not fit for a modern economy.

What is perhaps more worrying is common currency. The Euro has lead to a lot more trouble than it was worth, Frankly speaking.

<comment><USER41> I am talking about why we got off the gold standard though.

<comment><USER22> Yup, at least in part to fund our military operations in S.E. Asia (Viet Nam, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I feel so safe and protected. NSA should give out branded teddy bears to kids. (edit: added>> Oh, wait, the apparently already have them!! [http://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto- kolumne/files/2016/06/...](http://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto- kolumne/files/2016/06/NSA-Gift-Teddy-bar-590x404.png))

Awwww....ain't that sweet??

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm struggling to find the new information here.

We've known for years through the New York Times and others that AT&T helps the NSA.

We've known for close to a hundred years about AT&T Long Lines networks and hubs for that network.

It's only basic logic to put the two together and know that the NSA uses AT&T's hubs.

What's new here?

<comment><USER44> Did you even read the article? The new information is that these _specific_ 8 buildings are specifically noted within NSA documents as the 8 locations within AT&T's network that the NSA utilizes.

I don't know what The Intercept expects anyone to do with that information, but that is new information.

<comment><USER43> I admit, I didn't read the full article because it's only barely readable on my device, but if my scroll bar is accurate, I did read about 70% of it.

But my point stands.

We've known that these specific buildings are the key hubs in the network for close to a century. And that they're hardened against nuclear attack, etc...

Maybe I was too deep into the phreaking scene in the early days, but I thought this was common knowledge in technology circles.

<comment><USER44> You're still missing the point.

> We've known that these specific buildings are the key hubs in the network > for close to a century. And that they're hardened against nuclear attack, > etc...

Yes, it's been known that these specific buildings were key to AT&T's infrastructure. But any speculation that these specific buildings (as opposed to other specific buildings) were also key to NSA projects was just an assumption. The new information, which comes from released NSA memos and documents, shows that these specific 8 buildings are key to the NSA, meaning it's not just based on assumption anymore.

There's some other new information in there from the memos/documents, too. You really should actually read the article before mounting your high horse and spouting off nonsense criticism about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'd love to see the intercept publish the equivalent for China, Russia, etc. It feels the press has very overindexed into the NSA.

<comment><USER46> It's not a secret in the West, or even in China, that there's a "Great Firewall" which surveils and regulates all internet access.

It's just America that pretends it doesn't have a secret police.

<comment><USER47> > _a secret police_

The term "secret police refers to intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political opponents" [1]. We have no evidence the NSA is "used to protect the political power of an individual" or even political party. They're an intelligence agency, purely and simply.

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

<comment><USER48> That spies on members of Congress on the orders of the President... [https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30/spying-on-congress- and-i...](https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30/spying-on-congress-and-israel- nsa-cheerleaders-discover-value-of-privacy-only-when-their-own-is-violated/)

<comment><USER49> One of the few groups that _should_ be spied on

<comment><USER48> No, their activities should largely be public. The NSA having privlaged information on their actions is dangerous, they have no incentive to share them with the public unless it benefits the NSA.

<comment><USER49> > No, their activities should largely be public.

I can agree on that

<comment><USER48> As important as that is, even if they're completely corrupt you still don't want a secret police watching them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> First, I must immediately question the informativeness of anyone who thinks Washington DC is located in Maryland. Second, pointing out addresses of major AT&T PoPs is useless. Do carriers (still) mirror traffic to intelligence agencies? Most likely. However, this makes it sound like AT&T and the NSA have dedicated entire buildings for this purpose, which is ridiculous. Complete sensationalism.

<comment><USER51> This first thing you said isn't in the article at all, you just misread it.

The second thing also indicates a lack of reading comprehension, thus downvoted.

<comment><USER50> Please, explain to me how I misread the map. It clearly labels Washington DC as a city in the state of Maryland.

<comment><USER52> You've misread the map by assuming "Maryland" was a state label, when evidence within the same map clearly indicates it is not. "Northern California" and "Southern California" are not states. Instead, they are areas, and Washington D.C. is in the area of Maryland.

<comment><USER50> This is ridiculous, but I'll play along. California absolutely is a state. Further defining the location of a city in a state does not really explain how Washington DC ends up being classified as part of Maryland. Washington DC is not part of the state Maryland. There is also no area (I assume by "area" you mean metro area or region) that is commonly defined as Maryland. Washington DC is part of the DC metropolitan area or "DMV," however it is in no way part of Maryland anymore than New York city is part of New Jersey.

I was simply pointing out a minor (albeit, comical) factual error that immediately made me question the legitimacy of the rest of the article.

<comment><USER53> Perhaps you shouldn't discount the entire content of the article based on what could be perceived as a minor mistake. There's quite a bit of corroborating material in regards to the core theme of the Intercept piece (AT&T/NSA collaboration); for example, the engineer who's quoted in the Intercept article has been speaking out about NSA surveillance for several years. He's been referenced in similar articles in various publications going back to at leat 2007. The San Francisco address in the article was Mark Klein's former workplace and he ostensibly witnessed fiber splitting equipment being installed for use by government agencies. So if we are to take him at his word, then his account certainly lends credence to the Intercept article.

<comment><USER50> Absolutely. I actually feel like pointing out the minor mistake distracted from my actual point. As others have pointed out in the past few hours, this article seems to do little more than point out where the NSA is fiber tapping on AT&T's network. This hardly seems like breaking news to me. The exposure of PRISM many years ago put the activity in the public eye.

To me, it seems like this article is sensationalizing a practice most were aware of already. I suppose it is mildly interesting to highlight a bunch of locations where it may be happening, but certainly not breaking news.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google celebrates the UK's Bletchley Park and ground-breaking Colossus computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.wirefresh.com/google-celebrates-the-uks-bletchley-park-and-the-ground-breaking-colossus-computer/

<comment><USER2> I'm really happy that Google is doing so much to support Bletchley Park, but I'm equally sad that no British firm is taking Google's place in this.

Where's ARM?

<comment><USER3> Supporting the Computing History Museum: <http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/>

<comment><USER4> Never knew this existed. Thanks for the link. I live pretty close as well...

[http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/12058/School- Visits...](http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/12058/School-Visits/)

Looks like they do some really good stuff with schools etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Valve can no longer stop French users from reselling games - <AUTHOR> https://www.windowscentral.com/what-does-french-ruling-against-valve-even-mean <comment><USER2> Is there even a key or something unique that users could exchange for most games on steam that would make a resale possible?

<comment><USER3> At the moment I don't think there is a way to do that. But it's probably in Steam's interests to make it happen, from their own platform. Otherwise I could write a tool to do that, start my own website "occasions-vapeur.fr" and charge 1 EUR for each sale and it would presumably not be illegal to operate such a brokerage website in France (keeping in mind that reverse engineering for such purposes is explicitly legal in Europe).</comment></comment>