Why Did Benedict Arnold Betray America? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.history.com/news/why-did-benedict-arnold-betray-america?cid=sf109346595 <comment><USER2> >"Wetherell says that the shortest explanation for his treason is that he "married the wrong person.""

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold#Plotting_to_ch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold#Plotting_to_change_sides)

The wiki article is much more informative. The history.com article, for example, doesn't mention how severely wounded he had been, with the wounded leg 2 inches shorter than the other.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the portrayal that is depicted in Turn originally on AMC. One thing that is overlooked by this article is the role of the British military culture. They were immensely corrupt and happy to sit ensconced in New York with officer's commissions while nearly bankrupting the English crown. A man like Arnold was not satisfied to simply beat them on the battlefield. And when they refused to come out to the battlefield, his contempt turned to jealousy of his British counterparts and hatred for his former revolutionary comrades. There's no question he sought company in a wife and in laws who sympathized with the British because if he were to execute a supreme betrayal he would need solace and comfort at home. Ultimately what he wanted was the spoils of war and he went to any length to get it - so much so that his behavior disgusted even the corrupt British military. Arnold was no hero. He was simply a sociopath.

<comment><USER4> I was also reading that one of the reasons might have been his war wounds that were apparently agonizing him ...

They probably reminded him constantly of the fact that he didn't get the promotions he expected.

It's definitely an interesting case and we won't really ever now for certain what actually happened.

Whether he was legitimately scoured by the congress or if he was just a sociopath expecting things he didn't deserve.

... I think the comparisons to Trump aren't valid though.

At least Arnold was accomplished and competent. Trump is neither.

<comment><USER5> It's worth remembering that the situation of the colonies was rather grim in 1780.

Washington was locked in an extended stalemate around New York, struggling to keep morale up, supplies acquired, and his army from melting away.

The British southern strategy was off to a smashing start, inflicting a series of bad defeats through the Carolinas. Then Gates, who Arnold hated and thought got the credit he deserved for Saratoga, was given command in the south, and immediately disgraced himself.

There were also a whole series of other debacles around Newport, RI, and the disastrous Penobscot campaign.

Not long after Arnold's defection, there were several major mutinies by formations of the Continental Army over extended enlistments, lack of pay and poor conditions.

The whole situation was much more touch and go than it appears in hindsight.

<comment><USER6> Reading the Hamilton biography, I was shocked to learn just how low the morale was at Washington's camp. When I learned this in AP US History, I understood it more as disgruntled soldiers grumbling about the lack of good food.

Reading the book, I realize it was more like the men were on the cusp of an all out rebellion and it was really Washington's carisma barely holding it together as the men starved and froze to death with over a year without pay. They also had to periodically execute the most vocal dissedents, which to me was very shocking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tl;Dr; We don't know and this article sheds little extra light on the subject. It asks questions and doesn't answer them.

I've left the conclusion here to save you time:

> "Spying was one thing, but his willingness to switch sides in the middle of > an armed conflict, and fight against the men who had a year earlier been > fighting by his side, was something that people of that time and maybe ours > could simply not understand."

<comment><USER8> I mean, I wasn't expecting original research in the article. So I learned a lot reading it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> America wasn't a country yet. There was no country to betray. I'm an American, but, c'mon, a lot of people living in the, now, US saw themselves as British subjects. Sure he joined the revolution, but not everyone who joined the American Revolution was aligned with its goals.

<comment><USER10> America had declared its independence years before his betrayal, and he threw his lot in with the Continental Army which he then betrayed.

<comment><USER11> > America had declared its independence years before his betrayal,

That's not enough to make it a "country" in practice any more than joining a startup makes someone a company man. America isn't some mythic entity that sprung out of the head of Zeus with devoted followers.

> Sure he joined the revolution, but not everyone who joined the American > Revolution was aligned with its goals.

Given the disparity and ignorance between the population about independence, it's very likely the philosophical derivations were innumerable but aligned somewhere along "for it", "against it", "indifferent while it still suits me". This is basically the plot for The Patriot - ie it would follow that if the Americans had won a battle and executed wounded British soldiers, then conscripted/shot his sons, the protagonist's motivations would be the same for the opposing side he ended up on.

<comment><USER12> The United States had its own government, the Continental Congress, and declared its independence in 1776. It was very much a country, albeit an embattled one.

The population wasn't ignorant about the implications of going to war with the world's largest empire. Many of them were veterans of the French-Indian war.

<comment><USER13> They did some things that countries do in 1776, but failed to do others for example a national court system. I think the usual description in such situations is to say they had a government, as it's not uncommon historically for things like governments in exile to exist.

That said as the colonies had been doing stuff like enforcing laws and collecting taxes it's more reasonable to call them a collection of governments than say the United States existed as a country in 1776.

<comment><USER14> One of the chief demands of the war was to force the Parliament and Britain to deal with the Continental Congress as a whole, instead of the several colonies individually. It was also understood throughout the war that the Continental Congress had the exclusive right to represent the Americans in foreign affairs.

It's hard to draw a firm line between polities that constitute a "country" and those that are supranational organizations. But the Articles of Confederation's version of Congress seems to clearly be classifiable as "country"\--it's further on the country side of the spectrum than, say, the EU.

<comment><USER13> The EU has Diplomats, treaties with other nations, laws and a court system, a shared and enforced border, leadership, an assembly, etc.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ambassadors_of_the_E...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ambassadors_of_the_European_Union_to_China), [https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/december/tradoc_...](https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/december/tradoc_118238.pdf)

I think it's clearly more country like than the US was in 1776, and still not a country. Though as you say, it's not exactly a clear line in the sand.

<comment><USER14> As I noted, Congress was empowered with the sole authority to handle international relations: the states (e.g., Virginia) couldn't enter into an international agreement. That's not true of the European countries vis-a-vis the EU.

<comment><USER13> The articles of confederation where still being debated through 1776 and not ratified until 1781. In 1776 the Second Continental Congress began acting as the provisional government, but it's authority was unclear and things where very add-hock.

Even in 1781 congress had zero power of taxation, regulation of foreign trade, or interstate commerce which is a rather strong limitation on being an actual country.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


People Around the World Are 3D-Printing Face Shields to Battle the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/people-around-the-world-are-3d-printing-face-shields-to-battle-the-coronavirus-6b44146ca1f3 <comment><USER2> Would also check out this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHDMdyN5Jjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHDMdyN5Jjs)

The supply chain issues alone are going to be a big hurdle for traditional PPE delivery to those that need it.

While efforts like this of course can't compete with the volume of a full on manufacturing plant, they will probably help the tail of smaller provider groups that can't tap into the supply chain.

</comment><comment><USER3> Waste of time and resources. Consumer 3d-printers, and most commercial 3d printers, do not have the tolerances to print effective face masks that keep out dust, much less smaller particles like viruses or bacteria.

<comment><USER4> You clearly haven't even opened the article, let alone read it. It's about face shields, not respirators.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that was my bad. I skimmed through and after I saw the face masks (pre shield) I assumed it was like the post from last week where they were trying to print respirators, not face shields.</comment></comment></comment>


Rethinking Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/rethinking-encryption <comment><USER2> This guy is all about how much of a threat the expansion of Chinese hardware is but doesn't say a word about the same being true for American hardware. Chinese networking hardware may contain backdoors, American hardware has been confirmed to contain backdoors over and over again.

Re: the iPhone: when any country has the golden keys, every country has the golden keys. How hard is it to. Get that through your head. The moment the US demands golden keys, China is going to demand their own set of golden keys, followed by Saudi Arabia and any other foreign adversary. These keys are going to be used the same way the US is going to use them (spy on allies and enemies) as well as for seeking out minorities and problematic citizens.

As a foreigner, if something doesn't cross the US Senate of all bodies because of ethics or surveillance problems, that's really saying something. These are the people that brought us laws like the PATRIOT ACT and the CLOUD act, systematically expanding the reach of US law enforcement across borders. The EU, supposedly an ally, had to negotiate a quick, likely invalid or quickly overturned bandage treaty to make it legal to even just store personal data on US company servers. Is this what the US wants to become? A risk to their own allies?

Forcing weak encryption is not defence, it's offence. It's hard to believe that people like these aren't jealous of the spying network China has set up.

<comment><USER3> Backdoors have been revealed a few times in US products, but US companies have learned their lesson and appear to be pushing back. 9/11 is almost a decade in the past and the Snowden revelations embarrassed several companies. Things like warrant canaries are pretty common and companies like Apple have been publicly fighting government attempts to access Apple devices in court.

One thing the US has going for it is that unlike some countries, is that companies are more scared of their customers than the government.

<comment><USER2> Every three or four months Cisco or Juniper get caught having introduced a new backdoor. Hardcoded admin passwords, full system access backdoors following a specific port knocking sequence, you name it. Sure, some companies have started pushing back but the companies that produce critical network infrastructure can't be trusted.

<comment><USER4> Backdoors or just shitty developers and security practices?

What port knocking backdoor?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is fundamentally a fight about the autonomy of the human mind, and what the government can command you to do with your own brain.

If you and a cohort were the last survivors of a dying tribe, with your own special language that no one understood, and you criminally conspired with them via written word, the government could not compel you to translate your messages just because they cannot understand them. That's the 5th Amendment in action, as you'd be creating testimony against yourself. The prosecution will have to pin you on some other charge, maybe a crime that you actually physically committed.

It's the same exact thing with encryption. It's a language that the government cannot understand, and cannot compel you to translate.

Now, to be fair, there is some wishy-washy here because the government desires not only to have compelled decryption, but to force companies to wiretap their own users. The later is not strictly a 5th Amendment violation - but it's the principle of the matter.

One day we'll have the ability to interface directly with our minds, and we need to draw the "stay the fuck out" line pretty damned clearly in the sand before that happens.

<comment><USER6> By "cannot compel you to translate," you mean "must not compel" or "should not compel," because an entity that controls 11 aircraft carriers _can_ compel you to translate whatever the hell they want you to.

<comment><USER7> What does 11 carrier strike groups have to do with the 5th amendment? The former is to project power beyond the borders of the United States. The latter is to protect you from an abusive government domestically.

Also to take it further, technically, the US Constitution does not apply beyond our borders (like any other US law, absent a bilateral treaty).

I fail to see the connection you are trying to make.

<comment><USER8> Not GP, but I think further exploration of the point being made can be found here: [https://www.xkcd.com/538/](https://www.xkcd.com/538/)

If you prefer to hear similar sentiments from one of saints of comedy: [https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261](https://youtu.be/gaa9iw85tW8?t=261)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm confused at the assumption that you can prevent serious organized criminals from having access to strong cryptography simply by backdooring common communications apps.

The genie is out of the bottle: Powerful criminal enterprises will have no difficulty hiring people to build overlay tools that they can run inside their backdoored comms that will provide adequate (at least, if not effectively unbreakable) cryptography.

Even if we ignore the considerable first amendment barriers and there were an effort to outright outlaw strong crypto, steganography has become very strong and even if not quite sufficient finding out your comms were being monitored via a use of crypto charge is way better than having the attacker learn all your info.

In light of this, I find it difficult to see the goverment's position as seeking to widen infrastructure for the wholesale surveillance of the general public with claims of terrorist groups as a dishonest cover for the demands.

The old adage "If guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns"\-- has serious limits owing to the nature of guns as physical objects. The sentiment applies a million fold for cryptography, which is fundamentally a collection of ideas with a zero marginal cost of reproduction or execution, mass-less, volume-less, capable of being distributed around the world in a fraction of a second and implausible to silence even with great leap forward mass murder.

Actions to block access to encryption would severely degrade the security and privacy of the general public, on this point I agree with the author. But would it prevent pedophiles and terrorist from having access to encryption? Not likely.

Would pedophiles and terrorists occasionally screw up and use insecure means... sure, but they already do that today.

<comment><USER10> I still want an answer from these people. How was crime solved before end-to- end encrypted mobile apps existed? Maybe it makes it easier but maybe it doesn't. These devices connect to WiFi and cell networks and have GPS. It seems like coded messages at pay phones were even more unbreakable.

<comment><USER11> > How was crime solved before end-to-end encrypted mobile apps existed?

One meaningful investigative tool was (and still is) the wiretap, where access to the physical channel gives unencrypted access to the contents. Phone encryption is possible, but was generally used rarely.

It sounds to me as if investigators want to preserve some equivalent of this tool, although its existence in the first place was more of a technical limitation than a legal one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Going dark" is a good thing... it limits the state's ability to abuse its enormous power (which is already routinely abused, as any student of FBI history or current events should know).

However, "going dark" is not what's happening. Only recently had government has this much power to examine, catalog, and track the masses. Instead of debating the ethics of encryption (and trying to outlaw math), we should be debating how best to curtail and audit government powers to prevent their abuse.

<comment><USER13> The problem was the fact that the Internet, in its romantic period, "went light" first. "Going dark" is just a return to the balance once knowledge critical mass was reached about the scale of the "went light" event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think the threats from people "going dark" justify weakening encryption. The potential for abuse is too real and there are already a lot of instances when governmental actors have acted in bad faith.

The text I would consider manipulative with its references of a terrorist bombing. State actors suppressing dissent isn't mentioned at all.

It is not a black and white issue, but in most parts of the world, people would benefit from strengthening encryption even further. And I don't see that changing anytime soon.

<comment><USER15> If you read the whole article you will find out that you are in complete agreement with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was thinking about this subject today. If the US has laws that prohibit legitimate encryption and other countries do not... Is it fair to suggest that we are making ourselves easy targets to foreign nations who wish to practice privacy violations?

I don't think about encryption as a method to protect myself from the US government (only) but from any entity that is local or foreign. I think everyone should have the right to privacy. To me this is more important than the right to guns. And no not because I want to have illegal content, I just want to keep my information secure from people who don't have a right to my privacy.

What am I missing? Should we give up our rights because there are people who break the law? Aren't they going to continue to break the law anyways? Including using encryption.

This is like CAPTCHAs. Punishing the majority for the crimes of a very tiny minority.

Is this really the only way to catch people who do illegal things or is this just the laziest way to do it?

<comment><USER17> Not only that, foreign businesses are less likely to trust anything stored with or touched by US companies. And that's not even getting into regulated industries where it might become illegal to do business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > But going dark is broader than encryption; it involves the decreasing > ability of the government to conduct effective lawful surveillance for many > technical reasons, including but not limited to the widespread adoption of > encryption technology.

The 'going dark' boogeyman - how predictable. Only in the mind of a spy agency shill does the rapidly growing number of surveillance cameras, facial recognition, flying surveillance drones with high-resolution cameras over cities, and interception of all communication metadata (if not the content), equate to _decreasing_ ability. They won't be happy until we are stripped of even the last tiny scrap of privacy.

<comment><USER19> Have you read the whole (admittedly rather long) article? He has a pretty nuanced view of it imo, especially at the end and explicitly refers to the "golden age of surveillance"

<comment><USER18> He says " _some_ argue that society is in a golden age of surveillance" exactly once, but repeatedly presents 'going dark' as fact. That the rest of his view is nuanced doesn't make that aspect any less of a _lie_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _But going dark is broader than encryption; it involves the decreasing > ability of the government to conduct effective lawful surveillance_

That wasn't an ability of government in 1900 or 1800, so why should we worry that this new-fangled ability has been decreasing lately?

Who said it should be an ability for government, and much more, an eternal one, and not a temporary accidental capability due to a few technical developments that allowed it for a short span of time?

<comment><USER21> While I agree with you, I can also appreciate that intelligence/law enforcement agencies are not keen to go back to the alternatives. HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive enterprise. Would you rather train for a few years, then live a fake life with the constant threat of gruesome death, lying to everyone you know - possibly even your fake wife and kids or rather just tap a few phones/emails?

It's no wonder that most agencies have pretty much entirely dropped their expertise on this as soon as the alternative showed up. I don't think they are geared up to get back into that game.

<comment><USER20> > _HUMINT is a nasty (in the moral sense), dangerous, and expensive > enterprise._

Which they use all the time still, so that's not a real difference. It's not xor with digital surveillance.

Besides what you describe (double life, death, etc) would be a problem for the spy, not the general population. I could not care less about the spies.

But I wasn't talking about spying as much, but for government / police / etc surveillance. Where if they have to deploy humans to spy on some drug dealers or suspected murderer or whatever, is fine. And the fact that they're humans, makes it more costly to mass deploy (and thus serves as a natural check and balance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Because this article is an explanation to the anti-encryption crowd the author takes his time to lay out their arguments as a token of understanding their position. Still, i want to bitch about some of them.

> In my work at the FBI, I encountered directly how encryption makes it harder > for law enforcement to detect, prevent and solve certain types of crime in > specific instances.

Encrypted data is a known unknown. This doesn't work as an argument without speculating on the scope of unknown unknowns.

> I'm confident that this problem can be addressed from a technical > perspective. In most cases, it's just software, and software can be > rewritten.

That works both ways. ( Source code for effective encryption is less text then this blog piece )

> the United States has not experienced a terrorist or other attack of > sufficient magnitude where encryption clearly played a key role in > preventing law enforcement from thwarting it

And i can't think of any realistic scenario in which it would. The window of cause-and-effect is extremely small. The attack needs to hinge on the tools that the US has authority over. i.e. Why would Osama use WhatsApp on an iPhone in the first place?

> inherently vulnerable network of networks

This is the wrong way around. Its a 'network of inherently vulnerable networks'. Which is the safest option. ( As the author later notes but doesn't reflect on )

</comment><comment><USER23> Despite the length of this article, I see no plan for the obvious rebuttal of terrorists: if you make whatsapp or some other app not end to end encrypted, the terrorists will make their own app. Its not difficult to generate your own symmetric key and use openssl to encrypt and decrypt information sent with that key. Sure, you can force apple to reveal the contents of the hard drive, but whats the difference if apple is the one generating the ciphertext or the terrorists own app is? The difference is consumer protection has backdoors, but the terrorist protection does not.

<comment><USER24> Apple could, for example, switch out the version of an app on my phone with a backdoored version of the same app. The backdoored version could upload a copy of every message I send to law enforcement. It wouldn't even be difficult - just a keylogger would do the trick, or the OS could periodically take screenshots of the app while it is open and send them somewhere nefarious. Those latter techniques would also work with web apps. If this sort of thing was done selectively, I doubt anyone would notice.

If the government passes laws requiring backdoors in WhatsApp, terrorists can use another app. If the government passes laws requiring Apple and google to add backdoors to their phones, it will be almost impossible to avoid government surveillance. (And if the approach of the Australian government is anything to go by, we won't even be able to tell this has happened. Instead they'll pass a law demanding backdoors on request, then legally forbid Apple et al from making any of the details public.)

This is one of the reasons I buy phones from Apple. Unlike Google, Samsung, Huawei, etc they have at least made their opposition to government meddling very clear. And as this article points out in detail, they have put their money where their mouth is. If some of the sales price of my iPhone pays for Apple lawyers to fight for my digital rights, that is a tax I pay willingly.

<comment><USER23> I dont quite buy the "switch the app" argument as code signing easily fixes that. Intercepting at a higher level such as a keylogger or screenshotter would work, but then you'd apply the same argument: the terrorists would just go one level higher. In fact they could go all the way to open source processors running their own code doing all the same things. Yes, it would delay them a few years to get there, but once there there would be little the US could do to stop it. At the network level, we simply dont sign hardware, so without some major refactoring to the core system, theres little to do there. Still though, at every level of this back and forth, consumers have to give up more and more privacy to allow the government to step in and get the same level of information they had before about terrorists until the terrorists will eventually win (or we completely lose privacy and trillions of dollars in infrastructure). So why play the game?

<comment><USER25> > In fact they could go all the way to open source processors running their > own code doing all the same things. Yes, it would delay them a few years to > get there, but once there there would be little the US could do to stop it.

well as long as you can't easily build private fab out there capable of building such processors, good luck with that. There are not that many fabs out there. Fpga's aren't any better, since most of them you can't even make work without large quantities of proprietary blobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whilst I strongly disagree with some of his viewpoints, we do agree on at least one major point.

> Many would disagree strongly with the attorney general's assessment that an > acceptable technical solution to law enforcement's problem—one that > appropriately balances all of the equities at issue—actually exists.

> But, for the reasons discussed above, public safety officials should also > become among the strongest supporters of widely available strong encryption.

Encryption _should_ be continued to be used, and used in a more effective manner across all communications. The net benefits of encryption outweigh the risks that these intelligence agencies complain about.

I may think of it as absolutely necessary, and Baker may think of it as a necessary evil, but if we two from very different worlds can both agree it is necessary, then it should be fully embraced.

</comment><comment><USER27> Unbelievable: think of the children in a grand and pseudo-legalistic way. And this guy is serious!

As of secrets were something new.

"Society has failed to protect children". No, man: they were never as protected as you purport they were. You are just rewriting history.

</comment><comment><USER28> > The problem is that there is no law that clearly empowers governmental > actors to obtain court orders to compel third parties (such as equipment > manufacturers and service providers) to configure their systems to allow the > government to obtain the plain text

That kinda sums the article, but US Gov always finds ways to compel anyone to anything. Raw power. Takeaway is to be your own equipment manufacturer and service provider, as in cheap mini x86 boxes running open source daemons, over proxychains and VPNs. Rotate equipment, hacked wifi APs and identities monthly, use Signal on iOS and hide in the crowd, because if you're on the watch list, game is over. Cyberpunk at its best.

</comment><comment><USER29> The flaw in these over zealous mind- policemens arguments is that they say will be no other way to tell what someone is doing without reading their texts and phone data live.

A beat cop knows there are many "tells" about what someone is doing. Similarly, one has to commit several crimes leading up to a terrorist act. Catching those before hand crimes is an effective way at stopping the final act.

And who is going to be investigating all the people with keywords in their texts? There are not enough cops in the US to do that.

If we use the net, there's a government file with a rating on how dangerous we are.

My blog on these issues www.cyderinc.net

<comment><USER30> The flaw in your argument is that the article actually argues _for_ strong encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting speech by William Barr:

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?464971-3/attorney-general- barr...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?464971-3/attorney-general-barr- encryption-technology-law-enforcement)

"Only two ways to protect society ... 1) Ability to detect and apprehend criminals .. 2) Regiment society as a whole"

"Our ability to protect the public from criminal threats is rapidly deteriorating"

"Status quo is exceptionally dangerous"

<comment><USER32> Wow the Trump administration really does love saying the quiet part out loud. Literally saying a free society is dangerous and must be controlled.

<comment><USER33> The depressing thing is people with his views have been active in politics for decades (and not all in the political circles that currently run the government) - they're just finally getting their time in the sun, gathering together and doing whatever they want.

Even if some of this gets unraveled and the worst actors get kicked out, people like him will still be active in local and federal government trying to roll back civil freedoms. It's rough. Hopefully the events of the past few years will act as a wake-up call for people who were previously willing to ignore what was already going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is an analysis here:

Highly-Secure Backdoors: Internet of Traitorous Things (IoTT)

            https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3425957

</comment><comment><USER35> Doesn't once mention First Amendment protections. Code is speech, and the internet is the press. This is an attempt to ban an idea.

<comment><USER36> Even worse, encryption is math. Banning encryption means banning math.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Interesting read, bookmarking it until my boss stops staring at everyone's morning monitors. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER38> If we make encryption illegal, only the criminals will have encryption. The criminals can just use real encryption inside of "backdoored" tech. USG can't change math.

</comment><comment><USER39> Based on the content and tone of this article, I have to leave this here:

[https://www.xkcd.com/538/](https://www.xkcd.com/538/)

</comment><comment><USER40> tl;dr: First 5 pages to show he understands why law enforcement wants to weaken security, last 2 disagreeing because cybersecurity and nation state threats are the bigger risk.

</comment><comment><USER41> tl;dr: we should use weak encryption because think of the children

<comment><USER42> This spook is arguing _for_ strong encryption. I think the length is just apologia to soften the inevitable shunning by fellow spooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm extremely skeptical about _ANYTHING_ put out by this group, and Jim Baker in particular.

This guy was general counsel for the FBI at the same time they were abusing FISA warrants to secretly spy on Trump admins. You think they'll stop at Trump? They're just getting started.

We need to get back to our roots of being extremely careful about our intelligence agencies.

I know you'll initially be turned off by the subject of the below article, but definitely read it. For the sake of our civil liberties, the leash of our intelligence agencies _must_ be kept short.

[https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story- behin...](https://www.theepochtimes.com/spygate-the-inside-story-behind-the- alleged-plot-to-take-down-trump_2833074.html)

<comment><USER30> Don't post conspiracy theories.

Also: the article actually comes out _in favour_ of strong encryption. How does that fit with your worldview?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is all theater to give people a warm-fuzzy about the way things are.

Other than cock-blocking ISPs, what's the value in end-to-end encryption when one of those ends is a megacorporation that is A) super-friendly with the state security apparatus, and B) ready, willing, and able to sell you out to the highest bidder? E2E works great against basement-dwelling h4x0rs, not so much against people with actual power.

I know these companies will swear up and down how secure they are--but security of what? Who audits them? Last I checked, no one.

<comment><USER42> To be clear, E2E from your-own-server to your-own-server is wonderful. E2E from your google/apple/amazon surveillance device to google/apple/amazon servers is turf guarding.

Say I want to block such-and-such domain. With unencrypted DNS, I put a record in my own resolver, and problem solved. With per-app DNS over HTTPS, my infrastructure is out of the loop, and SV has total control.</comment></comment>


Building a Home Lab Beginners Guide - <AUTHOR> https://haydenjames.io/home-lab-beginners-guide-hardware/ <comment><USER2> I had a fairly large home lab once. I had a fully topped out SPARCserver 1000E and a disk enclosure in my bedroom. I also once lived with an E450 on the kitchen table for a month. But they're noisy as hell, inconvenient, expensive to keep running and expensive to feed with power and take up a lot of room and thus are not compatible with family and general sanity over time. They become needy balls and chains.

So roll on to now I'm using a silent build Ryzen windows desktop with 64Gb of RAM and a couple of mundane SSDs that I fire up VMs in virtualbox as required. At night it gets turned off. I've got a $5 digitalocean box that runs all my persistent linux stuff. If I want to play with networks it's done with GNS3. Office 365 runs my email and all my stuff is sync'ed with onedrive and a couple of offline SSDs occasionally when I get nervous. My network is the fritzbox my ISP gave me plugged into the back of the desktop via Ethernet. That's it!

My life is better for this. I hope people grow to realise this is much less of a mental burden over time which gives you more head space and a clean context switch away if you need it.

<comment><USER3> Your conclusion is wrong, you just found out homelabs is not a hobby for you. People have way more expensive and time consuming hobbies.

<comment><USER2> My conclusion is that my home lab was a learning exercise that comes to an end and that having physical hardware was actually detrimental to it.

I still have a home lab. It's just virtualized.

<comment><USER3> Whatever works for you, just don't generalize it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the reasons I still run some servers and play with networking gear at home, even when SaaSes, Linode, and EC2 are so affordable, is as an exercise in being somewhat more self-sufficient, than depending on "other people's computers" for everything.

Especially since my entire industry seems determined to see how far it can push spying on its users, leveraging power over them, etc. (All evidence is: no real limit yet.)

Also, it's just fun to play with gear.

Currently, I want to engineer for reliability, audible noise, power consumption, and price. (Will a RasPi with its SD card and wallwart be reliable enough? What about an Atom box, with Noctua fans, and mirrored 2.5" drives? Do I really want a pfSense box and some external WiFi APs, or can I make OpenWrt on plastic home routers do everything, and isn't Ubiquiti gear pretty but closed? Remember the price doubles if I want to have cold spares. Has the novelty of the big blue Palo Alto Networks box worn off yet? Can I discreetly mount my rack console in my living room IKEA, without a deep 4-post cabinet, nor the official rails kit?)

Toys get traded on /r/homelabsales, craigslist, and eBay.

<comment><USER5> > Also, it's just fun to play with gear.

Exactly my reason as well. RaspberryPi k8s cluster of some old Pi 3's I had lying around - why not? Hardware seems to generally last longer than you expect, and can be repurposed for, at the very least, a fun Sunday morning.

> Do I really want a pfSense box and some external WiFi APs, or can I make > OpenWrt on plastic home routers do everything, and isn't Ubiquiti gear > pretty but closed?

Just went through this too. The research and rabbit-holing down different hardware paths is so much fun. I ended up with Ubiquiti over pfSense; it is pretty, hot dang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't forget the amazing content on:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeLabPorn](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeLabPorn) (SFW)

And the more fringe but OCD-pleasing [https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn](https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn) (SFW)

r/homelab has been a source of great inspiration since 2012.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/) is an adjacent interesting subreddit

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mostly skimmed over here, but a key point is that you should be trying to build a cheap version of what you'd use at work. The closer you are to your work environment, the more you can applicably "try things" at home, and bring them to work with you. And since most of us are pretty busy, it's nice to not have to learn a whole new skill set just for maintaining our home networks.

<comment><USER9> I don't get why we'd pay for and maintain the test environment the employer should have. Should I bring my own printer and laptop to the office too?

<comment><USER10> I think this misunderstands the point of the parent comment. They're not saying "replicate your work environment so that you can test your things at home", they're saying "replicate your work environment so you can learn best practices and apply your learnings at home when you're at work".

There's a stark difference in that the things you host and do with your home setup are your own, but the learnings and technologies can be applied more broadly.

<comment><USER11> Yes, you should subsidize your employer by investing in your own specialized training and your own specialized equipment. With all the cutbacks the government isn't doing that for them any more so it's up to you to deliver solid value to the shareholders and quarter-over-quarter growth.

<comment><USER10> Either you're exceptionally dense or you're purposefully ignoring the point.

If you're setting up a homelab, you might as well use industry best practices for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Think of a home lab as a place where you can fail in the privacy of your own home.

This is the exact opposite of my thinking.

I want my experiments to happen on a remote server I don't care about...not on my home network that I really don't want to compromise/open up by accidentally misconfiguring something.

VPS are cheap - I'm paying like 7 bucks for a 16 gig / 4vcore. (Admittedly a once off deal). 7 bucks to have the blast radius of my networking noobness somewhere else seems like a bargain.

<comment><USER13> There's been a lot of failure over here. I'd break my home server almost daily while tinkering. Now that it's been rock solid for about a year I kind of wish it would break and give me a problem to solve.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha I know that feeling!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any recommendations on home networking?

I couldn't figure out what the established approach would be to having access to the infrastructure over a consumer internet connection and without exposing the rest of the network. All resources I've seen so far don't give enough background to seem reliable.

<comment><USER15> Seconding that Ubiquiti Edgerouter if you want a mostly GUI guided config. They're solid enough for gigabit internet in the better models and the builtin firewall and tunneling options are good enough for most purposes -- the recent releases also let you install Wireguard, which is getting to be the preferred low-effort VPN solution for most platforms if you have a limited set of remote clients.

PFSense or OPNSense, which are based on FreeBSD, are also great if you have any remotely modern spare x64 computer lying around with two network ports.

IPv4 is purely outbound NAT, IPv6 I have several subnets carved off that will allow IPSEC traffic to certain local hosts for some of my remote office setup but I've mostly switched to using Wireguard from basically everything that hits the Edgerouter and drops me onto a private v4 and real V6 space.

Works great for my phone and laptops from basically anywhere and tunnels all my traffic back to my homelab and then out to the internet again. I have Wireguard uses UDP port 443 on v4/v6, which now that QUIC is common enough can tunnel out of every network I've tried, even normally hyper-anal corporate ones.

Locally I have a Microtik switch with 10G fiber between my work machines and gigabit ethernet to the rest of the house, then a few Ubiquiti Unifi "semi- pro" APs for the house and back yard.

Primary storage host is running FreeBSD serving iSCSI from local zfs raid with consumer NVME SSDs as cache on top of generic and easily replaceable SATA drives. I still have this IPV6 accessible with IPSEC so I can basically treat it like local storage from all over the world, but I'll probably turn that off now that I'm using wireguard nearly all the time (IPSEC is faster since the tiny EdgeRouter processor isn't having to handle it).

It's pretty neat being basically "in your home office" from almost anywhere with decent internet.

<comment><USER16> Great write up and nice setup! I've been running Unraid on a fast box for my local storage host and using NFS and SMB with dismal performance. I'm looking at 10gbe and building up my cache pool, but as it stands it takes 40+ seconds for my laptop to mount and browse even a small share. I'm intrigued by zfs + iSCSI- do you think it would give me some improvements over SMB?

<comment><USER15> Probably highly dependent on what you're doing with it and whether or not your SMB implementation supports the direct RDMA extensions.

In my case its mostly because I tend to run VMs on various older semi-retired machines with limited or slow local storage that I only turn on when I need them, and VMware's VMFS is cluster-aware, so it really doesn't matter which hypervisor is the one I end up spinning it up on.

I haven't dealt with Unraid specifically but there are a lot of caching and network parameters that can wildly affect performance -- VMware for example wants to do synchronous writes on network storage for obvious reasons, and having a safe write-cache and large transfers with enough in-flight commands can make a night and day difference.

If you're primarily just using NFS/SMB as file shares then getting iSCSI working probably isn't going to be a good use of your time versus figuring out why the existing setup behaves that way -- Samba and SMB performance tuning can be a frustrating experience but iSCSI is far more opaque and inscrutable on Windows particularly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe a bit off-topic but what do people actually use for monitoring/intrusion detection on small-scale to hobby projects that are internet-connected? I feel like the "established" monitoring frameworks require too much maintenance work and care to really be effective but the operating systems generally used for this kinda work have a way too large surface area to just leave running on their own. (Hello Unikernels?)

<comment><USER18> I am using Sonicwall NSA2600. Works well, has 300mbit SSL filtering, very robust rules and nat configuration. Most small/medium size companies can use the model I am using. Has a very nice web interface too. Comes with SSL VPN and Global VPN.

<comment><USER19> What do you pay for licensing the services?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author of the article can afford all this stuff because he keeps a 'little woman' locked in his basement ironing his shorts.

Sure, the article if full of techporn but I haven't read anything so unabashedly sexist in nature since the late 1970s. It was truly cringeworthy. Reminded me of reading Popular Mechanics from the 1950s or a pulp SciFi novel by Murray Leinster or something.

<comment><USER20> Source? The only time the author mentions his wife in the article is that she's working full-time and would dislike some server placements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> PLEASE BACKUP YOUR STUFF NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO!

I lost 50GB of options data going back 4 months yesterday + 2.5TB of currency data going back 20 years because I never checked that my backups were running.

Please don't let this happen to you.

EDIT: Literally just write a script that backs up flat files or binaries to S3 every N intervals.

<comment><USER22> _Please don 't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized._

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

(Sorry about your stuff.)

<comment><USER21> Whats the markup format? I've tried the common MD shortcuts but they never work, maybe I'm just a trog

<comment><USER22> [https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For people who are _really_ into system administration.

<comment><USER24> The work has come much down by many orders of magnitude. It's possible to have digital ocean/cloud type experiences locally.. pretty reasonably.

<comment><USER25> How can you do that? Don't you need a proper static IP from the ISP unless you have some sort of a mega business connection?

Edit: thanks for the responses, I didn't know this was even possible.

<comment><USER26> In my experience, your ISP will only give you a new IP address if your modem disconnects for a while. You can easily use the same IP address for over a year.

You can also use something like DuckDNS to have a backup in case you are away from home and your IP changes, you can still find your server. You could even theoretically write a script that then checks DuckDNS for your IP and updates the record with your Domain Registrar automatically (assuming they have an API)

<comment><USER27> There are also prebuilt Docker images that will update duckdns for you if you are using docker in your lab

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What I'm most fascinated by is that this is a solo blog that has sponsors and plenty of affiliate links, and has over 4 million readers. Very curious what kind of revenue it's pulling in. Can't seem to find a search function to see if the topic was already covered.

<comment><USER29> i'd be interested if it comes close to covering the cost of the setup. It looks beautiful but I bet it comes at a price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I currently have a home server with a bunch of USB hard drives hanging off it, which I pool using ZFS.

That was fine when I only had 2 drives, but now my "USB Octopus" is getting silly.

What's the next step in hardware if I want my server to access a bunch of disks?

<comment><USER31> Synology is really high quality stuff and will pay for itself in reduced power usage. Any ancient rackmount gear you buy will guzzle electricity

<comment><USER32> Their hardware is great, but pricey. Used server can be had for a lot cheaper and you can get the same functionality with Xpenology. Not sure the electricity savings outweighs the upfront hardware costs.

<comment><USER33> > Is Xpenology Stable?

> As a person interested using Xpenology you should keep in mind, that this is > not an official Synology release. Although it's based on the official > Synology DSM which is the same as whats found on the actual Synology > devices, it's not officially supported by Synology. You could get support > from the community for this software, but not from the company itself. > Typically once you're up and running things are very stable without any > issues but just know that calling support is not an option when you're not > running on an official Synology device.

<comment><USER32> I'm sure everyone has different experiences, but it's been super stable for me. The biggest issues come with the software upgrades and certain configurations may have issues, however the Xpenology forums have massive support and everyone lists how their upgrade experience went across multiple platforms (VM and bare metal). It was worth it for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> as a hardware engineer, I got all excited it would talk about budget friendly oscilloscopes, dmms, and power supplies. Still a fun read.

</comment><comment><USER18> Router =/= Firewall.

If you are planning to host stuff, or even just to protect your own things, you better get something like Sonicwall or similar.

At my home I have a sonicwall, synology nas, 2 dell servers, power supplies. Not in a single closet though. To me, the server security is far more important than the looks. Spend the most money on firewall, rest is just for looks. Patch panel for home setup sounds excessive because I am not going to run all my cables thru my garage. Have individual switches in every room if you want. Most living spaces need only one or two ethernet cables, rest of the devices can be wifi easily.

<comment><USER35> Maybe a noob question, but why do you need a dedicated firewall appliance? What is it doing for you that just closing all ports and then selectively reopening as needed (my current solution) won't do? What kinds of threats is it protection your network from?

<comment><USER16> Also mostly a noob, but my understanding is that most of the value comes from having a subscription to the firewall vendors threat database, and using the box's deep packet inspection to verify gnarly stuff isn't coming over port 80 or other common protocols. You want it in an appliance so that you can be assured of isolation from the rest of your network. You can run firewall software in a VM, but you would still want that VM's host physically isolated or with dedicated NICs for the VM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> i'm temped to buy the used enterprise equipment but in the end, i ended up buying small Intel NUC machines for my homelab.

power consumption of these NUCs is almost negligible while one Dell R620 with dual CPU takes 150-200W at idle.

<comment><USER37> I looked at NUCs and settled for a used ThinkPad. Integrated keyboard, monitor, mouse and battery, and potentially even more judicious with power consumption, but oomphy enough to run image recognition on my photo collection while hosting lots of dockers. Backup to a local NAS that I only switch on during the backup window, and backup remotely to backblaze B2.

<comment><USER36> i bought used NUCs too. new one cost way too much :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Kinda curious what the noise level is with those fans. I know there's no proper rack mount servers there that need the fans running full blast, but I imagine 4x120mm fans is still loud.

<comment><USER39> Any rackmount server will be a nuisance. I ran rack servers at home for years but recently replaced my servers with ATX form factor machines, which are super quiet, ventilate much better and still stack nicely. There are plenty of ATX Xeon motherboards that support ECC ram.

<comment><USER32> Depends on your storage needs. More than 6-8 hard drives and getting an ATX form factor machine is near impossible, while many brands/generations of rack mount servers fit the bill for cheap.

<comment><USER40> Now it's possible thanks to Fractal Design's Define 7 XL.

<comment><USER32> So for the just under the price of a used 4-5 year old server you can get that case...not really practical for someone on a budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Anybody knows if those kinds of power strips mentioned in the article are available for the Europian market ([https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFZ98YO/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFZ98YO/))?

I've been searching for something like that a few months ago but couldn't find anything that has schuko sockets on the other side.

<comment><USER24> You can search for PDUs (Power distribution units) in North America to get you pointed in the right direction.

[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pdu](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pdu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I was expecting how to genetically modify yeast in the kitchen or something.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm trying to remember the name of these really small, nearly portable homelab servers.

They're quite expensive but looked like a good homelab alternative for people lacking space for a proper rack.

Someone knows it?

<comment><USER44> I am very happy with my proliant microserver gen10 plus. holds 4x 3.5" drives, is absolutely tiny, good at virtualisation, quiet-ish, upgradeable

<comment><USER43> Very nice! I configured my NAS a few weeks ago, went for a fractal design core 500.

Now I'm looking for a smaller, more beefy machine with less storage capacity, for some @home experiments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> One note... the modem recommended is only DOCSIS 3.0, not 3.1, so it will not support gigabit networking.

</comment><comment><USER46> Great, now the time-honored nerd practice of running shit out of your closet/garage has been picked up by hucksters as "homelab"ing. If it's anything like the damage that YouTube did to computer building, next thing you know this practice is going to suddenly turn into aesthetics and bragging rights.

I am SOOO SICK of watching this highly technical and aesthetically inconsiderate hobby turn into an issue of neckbeard Modern Living. A new generation of boutique providers selling storage racks at silly markups.

Pretty soon you're going to have the worst kind of hipsters -- keyboard nerds -- obsessing over the material used in rack standoffs or something. Because you know that aged Persian rubber dampens vibrations +.03db better...

Yay.....</comment>


Zenefits' blog – Becoming the Compliance Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.zenefits.com/blog/new-zenefits-becoming-compliance-company <comment><AUTHOR> Feels like their old cultural values offers a glimpse into why they've had problems: \- Ready, Aim, Fire. \- Everyone's shit stinks. \- Do it yourself.

Anyone able to elaborate more on what each of these mean?

<comment><USER2> This particular portion smells of a deliberate attempt to differentiate: "we are doing it 100% right now!" It says that their culture was never considered and its more of an attack on their old way of life. I'd venture to guess that much of that section is to create confidence in the "new" cultural values through differentiation.

I highly doubt there was a meeting where the old values where decided and driven forward in the company. This is all in an effort to be transparent again, just as they originally planned.</comment></comment>


Mibbit:  One year old, and profitable - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mibbit.com/?p=184

<comment><USER2> Thanks all, it's been a fun time so far, lots and lots to do to take Mibbit mainstream, but it's really nice to know I don't have to shell out more money for bandwidth.

The bandwidth usage before I did work on optimization was around 3TB transfer a month, which can cost.

BTW Thanks everyone on HN, especially those who contributed to my first post about Mibbit. It was harsh, and afterwards I almost gave up on the idea, but sometimes you need that kick.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=83660>

It's actually quite nice being a lone founder... nothing that makes you more determined to succeed than being the underdog.

The other interesting stat I forgot to mention, is that Mibbit has about 3-4 times as many users online as Meebo Rooms at any point. I'm quite pleased about that, lots of room for growth though.

<comment><USER3> Good luck! I was in your position a couple of years ago. It eventually wore me down a bit being a lone shark, but there is definitely a high period :)

BTW, bandwidth shouldn't be expensive ($100 a terabyte is reasonable in the continental US) - it should be your time that's the biggest draw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So right now, the only revenue comes from adsense, right?

Judging by his stats, the website is still very small, hopefully for him, it will continue to grow. Congrats!

<comment><USER5> I'm curious here, too. I didn't dig in too deeply, but I see exactly 1 ad unit at the top of the home page, no premium features for sale, etc.

I'd be interested in stats on ad units and CTR (which I've always heard is really low on communication apps).

edit: Would also be interested in definition of profitability... Covering hardware/software costs? Covering costs PLUS able to eat ramen? Covering costs plus paying yourself a market salary?

<comment><USER2> Most of the advertising comes from contextual advertising once in the chat. Also with the widget that other websites use.

The advertising revenue isn't massive yet, ($4 figures/month), but it's something to build on.

There's also obviously people willing to pay for chat/communication - campfire, liveperson type services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome - congrats axod. More companies/startups should take pride in profitability [and tell HN about it dammit! :) ].

Enjoy the reverse burn rate & positive cash flow in 2009.

</comment><comment><USER7> my favourite posts are when HN startups post back saying how fantastically they're doing - well done, its a real achievement, ESPECIALLY in this climate.

</comment><comment><USER8> axod: Congrats! :)

the rest: why not use mibbit or any other IRC client for #startups on freenode?

<comment><USER9> Always have, the only easy web IRC client I could find :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats. I've enjoyed hearing about your progress over the past year.

</comment><comment><USER11> very cool, i love mibbit :) we just set up an exception on our IRC server so that it doesn't trigger the max clients limit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very nice, profitable boot strapped startup.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Congrats axod! Can't wait to see where you're going to take mibbit in 2009.

</comment><comment><USER13> So the money is from advertising? May be needless to say but it isn't clear.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, kick ass. Now I don't need to worry about downloading an IRC client when I'm programming in the library and need to troubleshoot. Kick ass.

<comment><USER15> well if you are in emacs you could just start up erc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> is this a web frontend to bitlbee? looks very similar in functionlity.</comment>


Programnming should be more than coding (Leslie Lamport at Stanford) - <AUTHOR> http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/150408.html

<comment><USER2> Video is now available at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QsTfL- uXd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QsTfL-uXd8) The link on the page is not working.

</comment><comment><USER3> minor disagreement: replace "should" with "could". In a world with languages, frameworks and libraries up the wazoo, things are rarely so absolute.

<comment><USER4> The existence of multiple languages, frameworks, and libraries does not reduce the importance of problem analysis and solution design, the terms i would use for the two pieces beyond coding in the summary of the theme of Lamport's talk. So, no, I don't think the "should" is incorrect, nor do I think the facts you point to are relevant to Lamport's thesis, except perhaps that they reinforce it as to solution design (determining how to solve the problem), since they expand the set of options that should be considered.

<comment><USER3> TBH, maybe I've read too many "you shouldn't do X" "you should use X" posts that the word ends up snagging me whenever I see it.</comment></comment></comment>


D3.js and Gridster: Drag and Drop Analytics - <AUTHOR> https://anmolkoul.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/drag-and-drop-visuals-in-your-interactive-dashboard-gridster-d3-js/

<comment><USER2> How do we save the state?</comment>


Vietnam's new cyber security law draws concern for restricting free speech - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/12/vietnams-new-cyber-security-law-draws-concern-for-restricting-free-speech/ <comment><AUTHOR> This law calls for companies like Google and Facebook to store data in Vietnam for Vietnamese people. Presumably the Vietnamese government would then have free access to it.

Would I be right in thinking that Facebook and Google wouldn't comply with this new law, and get blocked instead, like in China?

And how would it be determined who is a Vietnamese user? If I've never been to Vietnam but talk to Vietnamese people on Facebook, could the Vietnamese government get access to my data in the event that Facebook complies with these laws?</comment>


Are you capable of being ruthless to get ahead? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cubeofm.com/are-you-capable-of-being-ruthless-to-get-ahea <comment><USER2> This describes how someone got ahead within a big company. It's not surprising you have to do perverse things to win in an environment dominated by politics. But that is not the only playing field. The most successful startup founders all seem to be pretty genuine-- tough, definitely, but not jerks.

<comment><USER3> Is this guy's behavior really so perverse? Most of what he did, aside from dropping old friends once he was promoted above them, seems like good advice.

>1\. Choose your friends

Seem like a good idea to pursue friends who are similarly ambitious, smart, diligent, etc.

PG touches on this in a few of his essays, e.g. in News From the Front: "The other students are the biggest advantage of going to an elite college; you learn more from them than the professors. But you should be able to reproduce this at most colleges if you make a conscious effort to find smart friends."

> 2\. Make sure your outwards appearance is perfect

Seems prudent to dress well and it's definitely a good idea to exercise.

> 3\. Invest in your location

Nothing wrong with having a well appointed apartment.

> 4\. Approach people and tell them what to do

This is kind of over the top, and is contradicted by the paragraphs beneath it, which reveal that "Saul" approached people "either [to] build a relationship with them, or to do something for them."

This seems like excellent advice. How is it perverse to build relationship or do things for others? And how is it anything but admirable to do be the one initiating?

>5\. Keep your head when everyone else is getting caught up in the rush. Encourage others to lose their heads

First part seems like a prudent idea. Second part sounds manipulative, though. On the other hand, encouraging coworkers to drink heavily is maybe a little too widespread to qualify as Machiavellian.

Edit: typo.

<comment><USER4> No no no,

That guy looks like a textbook sociopath. You should read this to really understand on what's going on: [http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Suits-When- Psychopaths-Work/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Snakes-Suits-When-Psychopaths- Work/dp/0060837721)

People like him leave a scorched earth approach to anything, and at the end they end up being damaging to the companies where they work.

He doesn't make friends. He acts as a 'friend' to people to get ahead, while simultaneously backstabbing them.

We are not talking just simple "outdo the master" type of manoeuvrings. We are talking about lying, maliciously spreading rumors, destroying other people's careers, while keeping a "friendly and smiling face", and dropping people like a rock once done with them.

You will never understand what hit you, until it is too late.

Just beware.

<comment><USER5> > We are not talking just simple "outdo the master" type of manoeuvrings. We > are talking about lying, maliciously spreading rumors, destroying other > people's careers, while keeping a "friendly and smiling face", and dropping > people like a rock once done with them.

I try to do this as a hobby. (Diplomacy..) But it would piss me off mightily at the work place (or anywhere outside the game).

<comment><USER6> Can you elaborate on what you mean? Are you referring to "the game" as in Neil Strauss (women), or something more akin to The Wire (making money in dirty ways)

Edit: 3rd option, and almost certainly right, is that Diplomacy is a game, which a quick googling revealed. My nerd-fu is weak! Sounds like you'd be good at Mafia/Werewolf.

<comment><USER5> I know of Mafia/Werewolf, but they are too arbitrary for me. Diplomacy (the game, yes) puts some substance underneath the negotiations --- some alliances are easier to pull off and more natural than others, but they can all be made to work.

Also a honest and straightforward approach often works best. Or more accurately --- in the vein of Machiavelli --- being known for an honest and straightforward approach, which is not the same thing.

P.S. Please pardon that I only wrote "the game". I am too much involved in "the hobby".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A classic sociopath as defined by the Gervais Principle: [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-o...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

<comment><USER8> Great link - I almost passed on this - definitely worth a read.

Enjoyed how the author shows the dynamic at play between the "sociopath" (eg the business driver) and the "losers" (eg the salarymen that trade short term stability in for their pursuit of capitalism).

If you can find a field of "losers" - who are defined simply as those who produce, but are unwilling to risk failure for larger gain - you've got a sound business.

Absolutely, and 100% true in my experience.

<comment><USER9> I don't read it as "losers" being people who are risk adverse - more that they are incapable of playing the political games required to ascend to the ranks of the ruling sociopaths and are incapable of descending level of the clueless - who really don't know any better.

<comment><USER10> I don't think the "losers" are people who are risk adverse, or incapable of playing political games, but rather have compartmentalized their lives and don't live for their career. The "clueless" are people who would be better off as "losers" but think they're "sociopaths", but they really are incapable of playing the political games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The question posed in the title differs somewhat from the behavior described. I've known people like that, and they are terrible people, and when I say "people" I'm using that generously - they're much closer to automatons. This one guy, if you talked to him about anything other than the acquisition of wealth or the acquisition of womens' lady bits - would give you a blank stare, take a second to reboot and then begin talking about one of the two aforementioned topics. They differ somewhat than the prototypical "cut-throat" business people. You know, those people who justify their behavior with faulty circular logic: you have to be ruthless in business, because business is ruthless. _Rarr, I'll eat your company_!

Like orangecat(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1184986>) mentioned, they exhibit classic sociopathic behavior. To be fair, we all use people - you use friends for friendship, significant others for significant-othering. However, it is the complete lack of empathy from these sociopaths that makes their behavior abhorrent. Though we all use others, the implicit social contract that is normally entered keeps the exchange amiable.

<comment><USER12> I agree, and my opinion is that offering up Saul's behavior as a model worth following achieves some genuine progress towards making the world a crappier place.

By analogy, school bullies are very effective at teaching their fellow students the importance of resolve, self-defense, interpersonal dynamics, strength in character, etc. I don't see anyone congratulating bullies for their service to the community anytime soon, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm impressed maxklein! You set out to write articles that would get attention and you're doing it repeatedly. I'm not sure you tap into the best part of us, but you definitely have good insight into what makes people tick. Upvoted.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ruthless? Maybe the guy was ruthless, but the fine article doesn't explain why. This guy just figured out the rules of the game, and gets promotion after promotion because of it.

Is it ruthless or unethical to befriend people who affect your future? Of course not. Is it ruthless or unethical to lose touch with people? Nope, people lose touch with each other all the time; it's unavoidable. In this case, it's just that he gets promoted _faster_ and makes new friends _faster_ than what is considered appropriate.

Had he done the same thing but less efficiently it wouldn't be considered ruthless at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't get it. What was the ruthless thing he did? Making friends?

<comment><USER16> I think the ruthless part was dumping his friendships with "the little people" as soon as they were no longer aiding his advancement.

<comment><USER17> Isn't always necessarily a good way to stay ahead, either, unless you never guess wrong. If one of those little people you fake-befriended and then got rid of ends up in a position where you need something from them in the future, you're screwed. A lot of people end up in random places you might not expect, and often remember how people treated them when they were "unimportant".

<comment><USER18> "If one of those little people you fake-befriended and then got rid of ends up in a position where you need something from them in the future, you're screwed."

Or as my father put it, "The people you meet on the way up are the people you meet on the way down."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> People like that are either born with it or not. And you know if you are. I bet this guy was one of the most popular people in his high school or college. It is really a talent to be able to appear likeable to everyone and easily become "friends" with people (of course that does not really mean friends, just pretend friends).

My point is that if you do not have the talent it is absolutely pointless to try to do this and there aren't enough blogs in the world that will be able to teach you how to do it.

Of course, it is usually a good idea to try to improve one's social skills, but don't bother trying to learn to be manipulative, because if you weren't born a manipulative bastard, you will never learn.

And I have to say that even though people like him will always prosper in certain organisations, lately their fates are really declining in comparison with the truly talented. It used to be that the business word was dominated by a few fat and complacent companies where people could get ahead merely by being popular. But nowadays, business is getting ever more competitive and it is becoming ever more difficult for people to rise up merely because they are popular. It often becomes very clear who is not pulling their weight, even if they are popular.

So it is much better to spend your energy into learning to be good at what you do rather than being ruthless.

</comment><comment><USER20> So at the end of this he runs a department, so he still a middle manager, how depressing.

Did he create anything? Did he invent anything?

He doesn't seem like much of a role model to me.

If I met Saul at a party I'd find an excuse to exit the conversation.

</comment><comment><USER21> Saul "got ahead" only for an extremely limited and artificial definition of "ahead". Did he achieve anything worthwhile? Doesn't sound like it. And the way he was living is soul-destroying.

</comment><comment><USER22> Oh to be content climbing the ladders built by others.

<comment><USER13> My thoughts exactly. This guy isn't aiming high at all. My role models aren't mid-level VPs.

<comment><USER23> As my friend's grandmother said, "They think they're so great, but they're just jumping through other people's hoops." Or as my father said, "Be careful how you treat people on your way up. You'll meet them again on your way down."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reads more like a fantasy than an account of actual events

<comment><USER25> I thought that too, it doesn't have the ring of reality about it.

Even if true, as others has commented, this is far from the most ruthless behaviour in a corporate environment. Taking credit for others' work, blaming your mistakes on other people, creating an impression of doing more than you are, undermining people who are your rivals indirectly and behind the scenes, grinding down the people below you as soon as you move up (and sometimes doing so in the name of 'helping' them and showing you can make the 'tough decisions')... These are commonplace where I work among a certain cadre of people, and I work in one of the more enlightened big companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Basically, it sucks to work in an environment where impressions count more than ability and feel-good vibes are more important than thoughtful analysis.

<comment><USER27> "Basically, it sucks to work in an environment where impressions count more than ability and feel-good vibes are more important than thoughtful analysis."

Get used to it. This is just an aspect of human nature. This is why geeks are bad at marketing (including me, but I am getting better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No, would rather do things.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Whenever there was a panic or something that required swift action, Saul would always sit back and wait. He would not jump into the fray before he was sure what exactly was going on - which led to the impression that he rarely made mistakes._

Indeed, it sounds like it lead to the _reality_ that he made few mistakes. And that reality is a good reality. Being cool under pressure isn't a fake skill but a real skill. I suppose you could be so cool you don't do anything but not panicking is indeed something that honestly qualifies someone for management.

I know from hard life experience that a lot of situations that _seem_ like they need immediate action, _don't_. And moreover, someone who can look at such an attention-demanding situation calmly is immensely valuable.

</comment><comment><USER30> I read the book "Never Eat Alone", basically a how to guide written by a Saul. Much of the advice is similiar.

Many posts are rationalizing Saul away as just another douchebag who'll never rise above middle management. I think this is the wrong approach.

If we divide "ability" between technical and people skills(an oversimplification, but useful), Saul is one extreme and we, at HN, is the other. That instinctal disgust you feel at the base of your gut is self justification.

Saul's skills would be EXTREMELY useful in a startup, to promote, to sell, to evangalize, to do a hundred things. Remember that it takes 2 people to start an startup, a Saul and a Hacker.

Steve Jobs is a Saul.

<comment><USER31> I don't agree. While he shows a similar, uh, detachment from others, Steve Jobs is not a conformist. He does not attempt to project an aura of conventional success. His home famously had no furniture, and Jobs sometimes showed up for his Atari job without shoes. Furthermore Stevehas real skill at picking technology winners, and weaving them into a strategy, championing them to others.

He does take the credit for the work of the less dominant, though.

<comment><USER32> "Steve Jobs is not a conformist."

That's true, but I think it's true because that's what his fanbase wants him to be.

I always got the impression that Steve was projecting his customers' projections of what they wanted to be themselves. He's cool, he's likeable, he's barefoot on stage. He makes flashy, shiny products and lives comfortably as a result.

I wonder how much of Apple's success is due to a younger crowd saying, "hell yeah! If Steve can do it, I can do it!" and then going out to buy Apple products in the subconscious hope that some of Steve's success will rub off on them.

Steve Jobs seems to me to be constantly saying, "hey, you hep cats! I'm livin' the dream, and you can, too! Buy an iPod to remind yourself of this fact!" It's an interesting combination of Cult of Personality and Sympathetic Magic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very interesting story although I wonder how effective this would be outside of a large corporation. The author never said what Saul actually did or produced.

<comment><AUTHOR> He was business development. I really don't know what they do, talk about business stuff?

<comment><USER34> In my limited experience, in tech companies, they tend to work just above project managers and shape product development and direction, by interacting with clients and the industry at large. But this is still a rather vague idea of what they actually do all day. Isn't that like most developers' impressions of managerial jobs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Should read: "Are you capable of being a POLITICIAN to get ahead?"

Advancing the ladder not due to your abilities to be better than others but rather by your ability to _appear_ to be so.

</comment><comment><USER36> Ever since one of maxklein's posts came into Google Reader and promptly disappeared, I've been looking over his stuff with an eye of uncertainty.

This particular posting mentioned the author randomly meeting someone by a river (who's outlook changed the author's life). The post finished along the lines of "that day at the beach"...

I'm sure the sentiments are all still valid, but hard to swallow with those sorts of discrepancies.

<comment><AUTHOR> It didn't disappear - half of my posts are private and can be viewed by anyone who has the URL. I send them to people who send me emails or on twitter - sometimes they are a bit private for me to put out there and have people discussing them and so on.

There is the post you are talking about:

Compromise: <http://blog.cubeofm.com/private/HhdtfcyFis>

After rereading it, I did not want to publicize it. It's not a conspiracy, it's just my decision that every public facing article should be something consistent and relevant. Articles that I get to dislike after a while I make them private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Stalin? Ruthless.

Hitler? Ruthless.

Saul? Not so much.

</comment><comment><USER38> Saul is a classic Anti-Social Personality (sometimes referred to as socio- path). People are tools for achieving his personal goals. Anti-Social Personalities tend to have high social IQ's as evidenced by Saul's ability to pick out the "happening people" and know what makes them tick to get into their inner circle.

PG was right that this kind of personality flourishes in organizations in which social IQ, not ability to produce something, is the key to influence.

I took a General Psych. class around 2003. We covered this area. When psychologists talk about this personality type it's a broad range with the most anti-social end of the spectrum being serial killers. In one study referenced in the text, CEO's of large companies tend to be in the lower end of the spectrum. (Note: This is considered a topic in Abnormal Psych. "Normal" personality types do not fit in the spectrum at all BUT anyone can exhibit instances of anti-social behavior.)

</comment><comment><USER6> "And let's face it - have you seen many top management who look grubby? Being well-groomed seems to be an essential attribute of leadership."

As a matter of fact, I've seen multiple CEO's that looked a bit grubby. It's not unheard of, but I get what you mean.

Note: These CEO's were founders, so they didn't climb the ladder, they made it. Probably the significant difference

</comment><comment><USER39> That guy sounds like a total loser.

Sure, he's "successful," but in my book (which, admittedly, nobody reads): loser.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does Saul recognize other Sauls and does he like and promote them? It seems like he would be threatened by those that know his game. Does this only work if your boss isn't already Saul?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm also missing the ruthless part of the story. Professional relationships are temporary. People get promoted or goto another company and things change. That's just how business works. Maybe you can make some real long lasting friends in the process but it shouldn't be required or expected of your co- workers. I also don't think people should be offended or take it personally. Lots of people like to keep their professional and private lives separate.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think the title should be changed to "Are you capable of being a kiss ass to get ahead?" Or some variation of the same - douche bag/manipulative etc.

It is rather naive to think that you get ahead by just making friends with those on top. Almost certain you are giving them something in return for the favor, in most cases it is the hide (skin) of those you publicly claim as friends right now.

All said and done, why is this Hacker News worthy?

<comment><USER43> IMO, the article didn't have much substance but the debate in the comments is pretty interesting to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If you mean "Can you make hard decisions?", sure I can. Does that mean I am superficial, manipulative, and into playing people? No.

</comment><comment><USER45> Don't hate the player, hate the game.

</comment><comment><USER46> I would say be "smart" ruthless, not "dumb" ruthless. That guy would destroy a startup. A person who has more leadership skills will be able to get to the top without dumping on everyone along the way.

</comment><comment><USER47> i'd rather make something...

</comment><comment><USER48> Avoiding people like Saul is one reason to do a startup

</comment><comment><USER49> Great way to create many, many enemies.

Anyway, I suspect, sooner or later he'll show other negative traits.

</comment><comment><USER49> If we continue the analogy of "losers", I'd claim that you become loser, as soon as you are told "congratulations, you are hired". The quickest way to get on the top of business/corporate ladder is to become a business owner.</comment>


Speeding up a Rails request by 150ms by changing 1 line - <AUTHOR> http://kevin.scaldeferri.com/blog/2009/05/08/RailsRackResponse.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why individuals feel the need to write an entire page of text regarding a relatively straight-forward bug fixes. "Improved [Rails|Ruby|...] performance by [X] ms by changing [N < 20] lines of code" posts are becoming a common occurrence.

The regular occurrence of such issues in a project implies an immature, poorly profiled code base, and are the kinds of things that other projects fix without fanfare.

Our most recent database-backed dynamic web application can serve >10000 requests/sec on our mid-range hardware at <2 ms/req, which we achieved by running the most basic of profiling early on and throughout the development process, and using software that does the same. I don't expect a gold star for this.

<comment><USER3> You've missed an important but subtle point. The article points out that the reason this was overlooked is not because Rails isn't profiled but because this behaviour is happening outside the standard rails profiling scope. That is a) why it's not a "relatively-straightforward bug fix", b) why it hadn't been caught already and c) why it is interesting. Actually I take that back, it _is_ a relatively-straightforward bug fix. As with all the best bugs it's finding it that wasn't straightforward.

I think a similar thing happened about a year ago when people were profiling rails but not profiling memory usage. After they realised GC was impacting their performance they shifted their focus and improved things in that regard. The most recent "X line Y% speedup" article I read here took this even further and examined the impact of the size of stack vs. heap memory on GC times.

My particular favourite example of this is Steve Souders work showing how much your web app performance is affected by the end users browser and its wacky network and cache behaviour. He has claimed these factors can account for 80-90% of the end-users' waiting time. I know rails core have been working to fix these issues as they did a presentation about.

That sounds to me like a bunch of useful lessons to be learned from. Certainly more info than just "profiling good", more like non-holistic profiling can be misleading. Your response certainly doesn't cover this as you talk about "basic profiling", so what is outside the profiling you do? How would you know if it is affecting performance and to what degree?

<comment><USER2> _You've missed an important but subtle point. The article points out that the reason this was overlooked is not because Rails isn't profiled but because this behaviour is happening outside the standard rails profiling scope. That is a) why it's not a "relatively-straightforward bug fix", b) why it hadn't been caught already and c) why it is interesting. Actually I take that back, it is a relatively-straightforward bug fix. As with all the best bugs it's finding it that wasn't straightforward._

Properly profiling the full execution path should be an entirely obvious step to take.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Between the lot of these, the only message I'm getting is "ruby and rails authors happily dump speed in favor of not thinking terribly hard."

Seriously, is it _that_ hard to pull up dtrace and do a little analysis? They even have dtrace-ruby bindings on MacOS! <http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/10/ruby-leopard>

</comment><comment><USER5> Rails returns the body 1 line at a time? That can't seriously be true, can it?

<comment><USER6> True. Seriously. At least in 2.3. Pre-Rack, I don't imagine that code would have been present.

<comment><USER7> It's in 2.3 stable, but it appears to no longer be present in edge (in fact, ActionPack has already gone through a lot of changes):

<http://is.gd/xP8Y> (github link)

<comment><USER8> String.each is the same as String.each_line in ruby 1.8. This code rewrite seems to be the reason that code breaks on ruby 1.9 if body is a string (this is guarded against in the body setter). (ruby 1.9 removes String.each)

<http://github.com/josh/rack/tree/master> :

* NOTE: String bodies break in 1.9, use an Array consisting of a single String instead.

p.s. this is definitely worth a 2.3.3 tag and release

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We're pretty obsessed with performance at Gilt Groupe

Not wishing to troll, but I'm not sure that Ruby/Rails is you're looking for if you're obsessed with performance...

<comment><USER10> Not to put words in anyone's mouth, but perhaps he meant _"obsessed with rails performance ..."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It makes me want to cry that people are still writing things in technologies that require you to drop little timing statements into your code to profile them.

Profilers have been around for what? 30 years? I think the first time I hooked Ants Profiler up to an ASP.NET site was 2002. Are these other web technologies really that far behind the state of the art?

<comment><USER6> I didn't feel like getting into the nitty-gritty details of my analysis, but Ruby does have a profiler, and it integrates into Rails quite well, and I was using it together with timers in this investigation. However, the exact same issue applies to the profiler as to simple timers, which is that the 150ms in question happens _after_ Rails hands off the reply to the web server, so as long as you are only measuring within the Rails framework, you will not see it.

<comment><USER11> Strange. My expectation would be that you'd hook a profiler up to the web process and it would simply follow all ruby code paths, regardless of whether Rails were involved or not. Or do we have different definitions of Profiler?

You're talking about a separate application that watches executing code and keeps statistics, right? As in, not simply a set of timing functions in a wrapper somewhere in the framework? If so, how does it come off the trolley after Rails finishes its job?

<comment><USER6> ruby-prof is a module that runs inside the ruby process, and hooks into the interpreter to track what's happening. You have options for how to run it. You can run the entire program within the profiler, but if you do that, you won't get data out until the process ends (you kill the webserver, in this case). Or, you can do what's more typical for profiling Rails, which is to explicitly activate the profiler for the course of a single request, and report on that single request.</comment></comment></comment></comment>