My .in domain has been transferred to another registrant without notification - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/susam/status/1200678538254393345 <comment><USER2> Additional information and discussion: [https://gist.github.com/susam/3cb42e571c4ab12987b286791bdfe9...](https://gist.github.com/susam/3cb42e571c4ab12987b286791bdfe9d2)

Commenters have speculated that the domain was seized by law enforcement due to participation in a malware campaign. The domain in question may have been used by malware that was phoning home, perhaps because the Linode server hosting it was compromised. This stems from the fact that the domain's new nameservers are Shadowserver's sinkholes:

        Name Server: sc-c.sinkhole.shadowserver.org
        Name Server: sc-d.sinkhole.shadowserver.org
        Name Server: sc-a.sinkhole.shadowserver.org
        Name Server: sc-b.sinkhole.shadowserver.org

Edit: When querying the domain in RiskIQ, one of the Linode IP addresses formerly associated is tagged with `emerging_threats` and `kaspersky`. Other domains/subdomains associated with the same IP address have similar tags.

One such domain is MathB.in, which is a public pastebin. It's conceivable that malware was phoning home by creating pastes on that site.

Susam, I don't have much experience recovering domains in this state, but it's conceivable that Namecheap will be able to put you in contact with someone who can help resolve the matter. However, if there's something like a sealed court order involved, you may find that you're stonewalled at first. I don't know if there's any available recourse for this, especially since this appears to be an international effort.

<comment><USER3> At least as of a couple of years ago, Shadowserver could accuse you of botnet participation on such flimsy evidence that it was way too easy to frame someone else as being a botnet participant. I don't want to give ideas how, but it happened to me. Since then, I've configured my firewalls to block traffic to Shadowserver IPv4 space. I'm more worried about getting framed again than actually getting a botnet infection and not getting notified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Important to note here that the Registrar (Namecheap) is working the issue[1], and that the domain was pulled from them outside of their control[2].

[1]: [https://twitter.com/namecheap/status/1200682593500483584?s=2...](https://twitter.com/namecheap/status/1200682593500483584?s=21)

[2]: [https://twitter.com/namecheapceo/status/1200714718610153472?...](https://twitter.com/namecheapceo/status/1200714718610153472?s=21) (This is from Namecheap's CEO)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, unfortunately, domain squatters have poisoned the well for .com domains. There are many, many domains which should be available for use, but are being squatted indefinitely for speculative purposes. This has caused pretty much every new company to migrate to TLDs like .co, .ly, .me, .ai, .in, and .io. Since these are almost all ccTLDs run by countries, governance is not great. .io has been particularly bad;

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293578)

* [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/27/io_domains_uk_un/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/27/io_domains_uk_un/)

<comment><USER6> People who lawfully own a domain -- even if in a speculative fashion -- are not domain squatters.

If you had a hot new product called CyberTrk and someone ran and registered cybertrk.com, that is arguably squatting and can be legally enforced as such.

If you have what you think is a great new online notepad and notes.com is sitting registered but dormant, the inelegant but reasonable way to respond to your situation is "tough shit". Keep looking.

99% of the time that people rant about "squatting" they're talking about the latter case. Yet they are not entitled to a domain because of some imagined better use for it.

Sorry for the rant, but misclaims about "Squatting" lead to an iffy area where people have a profound misunderstanding about property rights. I have zero "parked" domains, but contemplating the issue long ago made me less outraged when I lazily searched for the most blatantly obvious domains.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the reply, but this is quite a tangent to my point. I am not arguing that it is not legal to hold a domain indefinitely for investment purposes; I'm saying that since so many domains are being held this way, startups are being forced to sketchier ccTLDs.

It also paradoxically means that .com domains are not quite what they used to be: as more cool new companies have a .ai or .co, the public has stopped thinking that "only .com matters". Like I said, the holders of the .coms are just poisoning the well for the TLD.

To address your point directly, I do personally disagree with you that "squatting for speculation" or "parking" as you prefer is harmless. Since ICANN (or Verisign, I guess) controls the TLD, I do think they should disincentivize this holding behavior with some kind of property tax. It's as if vast tracts of Manhattan were just empty fields - not really in anyone's best interest, in the long run, not even the property investors, who are at risk of property developers going to more-hospitable jurisdictions.

<comment><USER6> I referred purely to the incorrect use of the term squatting. They aren't squatting.

Further, nowhere did I say that it was "harmless", or pass any value judgment at all on it. I just said that it's not squatting (cyber, domain, or any other prefix). Those people pay the same domain fees as anyone else.

"I do think they should disincentivize this holding behavior with some kind of property tax"

They are paying the same domain fees as everyone else. However let's imagine that they change it to charging some sort of "how lucrative is the domain name" property tax, like Google hilariously tried to do with some of their failed TLDs: We're currently talking about parked domains that cost an absolutely negligible amount...I imagine a lucrative fee would be a bit more disliked by these imaginary startups ready to fill all the good domains.

Sidenote - there was a rush to .io, .ly and other TLDs -- against all reasonable caution -- because people thought they were cool and new, not because they were their last resort

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fascinating. The NameCheap CEO is in the replies, and seems to be saying that the registration was pulled at the registry level for some "perceived violation or legal request" \-- I'm kind of curious regarding what protocol is for these kinds of situations, and how much they vary from TLD to TLD. I think about the once-popular .ly TLD becoming less popular after instability hit Libya, but I'm curious about what the other case history is here.

<comment><USER8> I work at a registrar and as far I know there are no protocols. We are an intermediary between the registry and registrant (in those TLDs which have a registry/registrar/registrant model), but the business relations involved are a bit more complex. The registrar's job is mostly set to only handle the technical and billing aspect, while the legal relationship is between the registry and registrant. Who owns a domain and which registrar handled the billing and technical aspects is a legal decision which is outside the control of the registrar.

The variation between TLD and TLD is massive. Practically all ccTLDs have their own home made rules and more often than not their own technical solutions to match. A big reason why the more exotic ccTLD's can cost a lot of money is the hoops that registrars need to jump through, both legal and technical, and the "workarounds" for both.

<comment><USER9> There are even ccTLDs like .af (afghanistan) where the root zonefile is edited by hand for every new domain, in this case by some persons at the "ministry of communications" in kabul.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had this happen to a .com domain I own, also at Namecheap.

In my case it was actually a trademark infringement legal action. My domain got listed as hosting a site that sold knock-off sunglasses[1] . The plaintiff in the case got a court order to transfer all the suspected domains to them, a list of about 1,000 domains. I got no notice, my domain just suddenly disappeared.

I had my lawyer contact the plaintiff, in which we apologized, told them we had no idea this had happened, and promised to up the security (in reality I just nuked the WP site.) About a week or so later they transferred the domain back. For me this was annoying and cost a few hundred bucks in legal fees, but not that big a deal. Obviously not the case for Susam.

[1] My (largely abandoned) self-promotion Wordpress site got hacked, and was used to host an e-commerce site. Weirdly the domain was ${my_real_name}.com, hardly an obvious choice for selling knock off sunglasses.

<comment><USER11> I actually think wordpress has contributed significantly to the decline of the web. It's not secure. It proliferates so it's easy to hack. It's easy to embed untested plugins in it that are also vectors. It's plagued by all the same problems as microsoft windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If someone steals your domain registration, they can then change the MX records and start receiving your email. In some scenarios, I think that could be a more serious consequence than the website being down or replaced.

Same reason that deliberately letting domain registration lapse for a domain that was used widely for email is a scary prospect.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a malware takedown. And must definitely have happened at international law enforcement level.

NIXI is regulated by Indian law and is the cctld registrar of .in . The domain records show a registry lock and the new owner being "The Verden Public Prosecutor's Office".

This is not common in India.

</comment><comment><USER14> More or less in a lot of countries with fishy legal system you have zero protections with their .cctlds. Even then the courts might rule that the name is not property or whatever.

In a lot of countries you will lose the name if the well connected person there wants. They'll find a justification that doesn't pass any smell test but you're out of luck. Nothing, absolutely nothing can be done. So use them, but be prepared to lose your names. Everything is fine, until it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER15> The same thing happened to my .cm domain with Namecheap a few weeks ago. They were eventually able to recover it. But there was no communication from them for quite a few days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was able to recover my .in domain too. Here is the full complete story: [https://susam.in/blog/sinkholed/](https://susam.in/blog/sinkholed/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In order to reduce risk I really wouldn't recommend running any service that hosts any user content on the same domain and TLD you host your personal stuff.

<comment><USER17> I've sometimes wondered if it would be worth getting something like 4e4eee247a69fab841ec36eabc95eee9.com [1] and only using it for email hosting to host my contact emails and for my other services.

The idea is:

1\. By having no other services on it that minimizes the chances that it could get hacked and used for nefarious purposes that might get it seized by law enforcement.

2\. By using a meaningless name like 4e4eee247a69fab841ec36eabc95eee9 there is no chance someone will come along with a trademark claim or an accusation that I'm squatting on a name that they have a better claim to.

[1] dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1 count=16 | xxd -g 16

<comment><USER16> I have a domain name like that, I primarily break login forms with it but that was the initial idea, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just bought a .in domain for a side project and was a little worried about this sort of thing being possible based on my experiences with registration.

<comment><USER19> There's an update on susam.in. He got the domainname back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems like the most likely case is that law enforcement clawed the domain for suspicious activity.

Which brings up the question, is this problem limited to ccTLDs or TLDs like com, net as well?

<comment><USER21> You have much more protections on gTLDs than on ccTLDs (where you have none).

I've always wondered why so many people are using .io domains (and now .ai domains).

<comment><USER22> > You have much more protections on gTLDs than on ccTLDs (where you have > none).

Hum... No. On ccTLDs you have the protections the issuing country gives you. On gTLDs, you have the protections the US gives you.

Some countries won't protect your domains at all, others will protect it even more than the US.

<comment><USER23> What ccTLD would you describe as more protected than .com?

<comment><USER24> It depends what you're hosting. bodog.com is a legal Canadian-owned online gambling website. But since online gambling isn't legal in the United States they had their domain seized: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bodog-gambling- site-shut-down-...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/bodog-gambling-site-shut- down-canadian-owner-indicted-1.1159011)

It looks like after going through the courts they have had their domain returned.

<comment><USER21> That's a bit of a different situation though. They were illegally running a gambling operation in the United States at a time when that wasn't legal, and they lost a lengthy court case to that effect. The domain seizure was incidental.

Contrast with the situation in the linked post, in which a .in domain was randomly seized without warning, and crucially, without due process. Bodog had the benefit of due process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So. Namecoin? Onion domains? Opennic? Ipfs? How else can u opt out of icann's influence?

</comment><comment><USER26> Which TLDs are immune to this kind of takedown request?

<comment><USER27> .onion

<comment><USER28> If I could magically put this at the top, I would.

There are other options, but they require hosting on overlay networks, and running your own name servers. But then people must install suitable gateway routers to reach your sites. Those can be VMs, but it's nontrivial for most people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> malware is my guess. New registrant is The Verden Public Prosecutor's Office which shows up on:

" _Over the following years, the Luneberg police and the Verden Public Prosecutor's Office, in combination with the BSI, FKIE, BFK, and numerous other law enforcement and industry partners, continued investigating the Avalanche network, discovering a massive operation responsible for controlling a large number of compromised computers across the world_.

[https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/avalanche-malware- net...](https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/avalanche-malware-network-hit- law-enforcement-takedown)

</comment><comment><USER29> I've run a .in site through Namecheap for 6 years. Glad they are responding to the issue.

</comment><comment><USER30> > I owned this domain for 12 years ...

Rented. They _rented_ this domain for 12 years.

Not to excuse the appropriation. But no one _owns_ their domain, except possibly govs and mega-corps by virtue of mass.

<comment><USER31> Legally it's neither. It's more like paying for a listing in a phone book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's a problem with all country-specific TLD's. At any moment country 'X' can decide to take over '.xx' and nothing anyone can do.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wish we could switch to a system like Tor's onion services where each URL has an embedded key, it would solve so many problems!

</comment><comment><USER34> I think he should change his name and get a new domain. It must be hard to have a name like that and trying to live a normal life.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have purchased domain on namecheap based on yc feedback. Looks like i have to rethink.

</comment><comment><USER36> The OP here is also the author of MathB.in, a popular math pastebin. He has decided to shut down MathB.in now as a result of this incident. Quoting from [http://mathb.in/6](http://mathb.in/6) below:

> I have considered shutting down this website several times in the past. But > when another of my domain, susam.in, where I used to host my personal blog > (archive) was seized and transferred to a law enforcement organization > without any notification or authorization, it was the last straw. I do not > wish to spend my weekends worrying about spam and unlawful content. I do not > wish to maintain constant vigilance on my online servers to maintain > ownership. It consumes time, more time than I can afford.

This is sad for WWW. We need more independently run websites, not less. The web of early 2000 is rapidly disappearing.

<comment><USER11> It's time for a new search engine -- and no, ddg is not it. We need a search engine that doesn't search the new internet. The instagrams, the pinterests, the wikihows, the seemingly every single blog on the internet that is designed to take your time away from you by hydrating you in droplets between sweat lodges.

We need create a new internet on the internet that does not search the new internet. DDG brings back content from the same sites google and bing does.

I want a new search engine focused on the passionate creatives who produce for the web. The early adopters of the web who have been overshadowed by the adwords and the interstitials and lightboxes.

I want content. I want a recipe site with the ingredients at the top and a list of instructions below it. Not 6 paragraphs of why you want to eat this food because of your grandma making it and then people come NO, just tell me what to put in it and how to do it and that's it and load in .1 seconds instead of 100 seconds and then stall every time I try to scroll because you need to tell your advertisers which part of your page is looked at the most.

Your advertisers are more important than your readers and it's not cool.

<comment><USER37> Serious question: Would you be willing to pay to access/consume the content found on the search engine?

<comment><USER38> I would. I know that because I spent a lot of time on the internet in 1992 and 1993, when the vast majority of internet content was produced by people not expecting any monetary reward.

Today we have the concept of "user-contributed content", which means content produced without expectation of monetary reward, then uploaded to a site operated by an organization _with_ an expectation of monetary reward. In 1992 these for-profit organizations did not exist: the services through which people accessed the content were created and operated without expectation of monetary reward, too.

It was glorious. There are some valuable content and valuable services that weren't produced in 1992 and would not be produced in the future if it became impossible to profit from producing it, so I don't want to remove the profit motive from the internet. But search results from Google ( _and_ its competitors) are now almost completely dominated by for-profit actors, and I agree with grandparent that we need a new search engine that essentially specializes in content produced without expectation of monetary reward.

<comment><USER39> > 1992 and 1993, when the vast majority of internet content was produced by > people not expecting any monetary reward.

I don't have any figures - that would be interesting - but I guess even today the 'vast majority of internet content' is produced not expecting any monetary reward. It depends how you count the stuff what exact figure you'd arrive at. 99.9% seems closer to what it might be than 50%. Maybe I'm super-wrong about that.

<comment><USER38> Good point. The big difference between 1992 and today is the profit-seeking middlemen between the reader and most of the user-contributed content. These middlemen show ads, track people, require people to sign in and force people to shift their attention to the task of getting rid of modal dialogs (e.g., "sign up for our newsletter") before they will display the user-contributed content. They make it hard for the reader to concentrate on the current web page by showing many links to other web pages on the site or on the sites of the middleman's commercial partners. (Even Stack Exchange, named by another comment in this thread as one of the good middlemen, does that.) In contrast, navigating Usenet and the web of the 1990s was a lot more streamlined; to a greater extent than is possible today, a reader could stay focused on the user-contributed content or on his or her reading goal.

Of course there are middlemen today like Hacker News and Wikipedia that pretty much stay out of the reader's way, but they are the middlemen for closer to 0.1% of the user-generated content than 50% of it.

<comment><USER39> Very graceful disagreeing, thank you! I appreciate it. I have a book called _Talking Philosophy_ that says that when a philosopher at Oxford wishes to express disagreement they say "Quite. But at the same time...", and that one in Sydney says "Bullshit!" p.s. I'm in Sydney :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The domain susam.in has been transferred back to me. I've updated the original Gist post with recent updates on why this issue occurred and how it was resolved: [https://gist.github.com/susam/3cb42e571c4ab12987b286791bdfe9...](https://gist.github.com/susam/3cb42e571c4ab12987b286791bdfe9d2#updates) (see the "Updates" section).

Summary: The Shadowserver Foundation contacted me by email and informed me that my domain name was sinkholed accidentally as part of an operation they were performing. They have now examined my domain name and found that my domain name should be excluded from their operation. They worked with NIXI to transfer the domain name back to me.

Thank you, everyone, for your support as well as for the great quality of discussion on this thread.

</comment><comment><USER40> Capitalist interests prefer less competition, the end goal is monopoly. People are trying to raise the prices of .org domains too, so I feel like a hammer is about to fall as far as the practical level of involvement and presence on the internet goes for individuals the world over. Keep an eye on the canary in the coal mine, or even deploy several of them.

<comment><USER41> Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to generic ideological flamewars, which are all the same.

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

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21671771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21671771) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment> ur-whale One more reason why DNS must as quickly as possible be migrated to a decentralized blockchain.

I'd say DNS is the poster-child example of why - in spite of all the naysayers - blockchain is a desperately needed technology.

<comment><USER42> DNS is already a decentralized database, much more efficient than a blockchain. A blockchain only works for time series data.

<comment><USER43> I think the original (down-voted) poster meant that DNS should be decentralized to something more than 13 servers, from which any government can decide to seize a domain. A decentralized DNS system would improve free speech, and it would help with due process when it comes to the involvement of law enforcement.

<comment><USER44> There are 13 well known logical servers (~1000 physical) but they all synchronize the root zone from ICANN just as anybody can [https://www.internic.net/zones/root.zone](https://www.internic.net/zones/root.zone)

If it's authentication of authoritative response data you're looking for then that's what [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Extensions) is for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Look Inside Apple's New Campus - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple-park-new-silicon-valley-campus/ <comment><USER2> "It's an obsolete model that doesn't address the work conditions of the future," says Louise Mozingo, an urban design professor at UC Berkeley."

Everyone should note that Louise Mozingo has criticized the Apple campus from not having large open floor plans where employees can stare at each other across narrow tables and "collaborate" by yelling to one another over their co-workers heads.

She simply doesn't get how software developers work. When I made the case for individual one person offices to the CFO at a 100 person software company, we calculated the extra cost of one person offices over cubicles or a shared layout would increase our cost per engineer about 1/2 of 1%. In relation to the productivity benefits, that's immensely trivial.

We did it, and it worked great. And when engineers wanted to "collaborate", they'd go to each others offices without bothering anyone else! Amazing.

<comment><USER3> > She simply doesn't get how software developers work.

It's not just software developers.

A significant percentage of the population are or lean towards being introverted i.e. social interactions do not make them necessarily happier or more productive.

And experts have been saying that being creative requires some periods of interaction and some periods of solitude. Seems like office spaces should reflect that.

<comment><USER4> I work in a flexible seating or "activity-based" work space. I get to sit near HR from time to time. When reviewing user feedback about the work space I've heard them say, I quote, _" That guy is an introvert, of course he'd say that..."_ while shaking their heads. When reviewing training and information session feedback _" Introverts are less emotionally intelligent than we are, they're bound to react that way."_ Finally when reporting on work space feedback results they say the response is "overwhelmingly positive" but never quote figures or provide a breakdown of responses.

Extroverts control the office space and culture, as they tend to gravitate to the kinds of fields/departments that coordinate those aspects. Working from home is our only hope, as they seem to have an almost militant distaste for personalities that don't blend with their vision of how things should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do some small amount of woodworking on the side of my main job, and as a result I have a large envelope CNC router in my garage. I occasionally post ads for craigslist looking for odd jobs.

About a year ago, I was approached via craigslist by a contractor working on this campus to help make some plywood parts for concrete forms that they couldn't figure out how to mark and measure on site with a jigsaw. They were to be used to make the main curved staircases in the entryway to that campus. I ended up cutting about a hundred different stair forms, and a bunch of templates for the various treads.

I love that I ended up contributing in some small way to this building.

<comment><USER6> That is really cool! Do you have any pics or design mockups of what you sent to apple? If you can share

<comment><USER5> It was a 3rd party contractor working on the campus, and since it was subcontracted to me, I'd rather not share who I worked for. I'm not sure they'd want it advertised that they were sourcing from CL. :)

[http://imgur.com/a/222IM](http://imgur.com/a/222IM) there some some basic photos I have from my phone, though. All of these were made out of fire retardant plywood.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hardly any pictures " _inside_ Apple's new campus"

<comment><USER2> Disappointed no pictures of the pods

<comment><USER8> I think this is one of the pods. It looks... tight. [https://www.wired.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/apple-galle...](https://www.wired.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/apple-gallery4.jpg)

<comment><USER2> It looks perfectly sized to me. Where it's lacking is personal storage space, but if the back wall slides open to provide storage, that's excellent. And the desk area doesn't seem deep enough.

The problem with the big glass wall is that peoples offices tend to be messy. They want lots of desk space to toss crap on. But you want lots of glass so it feels more open (while still giving people quiet work areas). If you can give them good enclosed storage options, then their offices should remain looking relatively neat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd wish they were a bit more futuristic than having 9000 parking spaces. Why not offer buses from where their employees live or other means of transportation? It's easy to say that most people drive, but that's only because everyone always _make_ that the most convenient mode of transportation. With some effort something else could be even more convenient.

<comment><USER10> _Apple is building 11,000 parking spaces not because it wants to but because Cupertino, the suburban city where the new headquarters is located, demands it. Cupertino has a requirement for every building._

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21720269-dont-let- peo...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21720269-dont-let-people-park- free-how-not-create-traffic-jams-pollution-and-urban-sprawl)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067658)

<comment><USER11> From the linked article re Cupertino:

> For a fast-food restaurant, the city demands one space for every three > seats; for a bowling alley, seven spaces per lane plus one for every worker.

I've read a bunch of articles about the negative externalities of minimum parking requirements, but haven't really seen one explore the _why_ behind these rules. What does it matter to the city if a bowling alley doesn't have enough parking spaces? Wouldn't that just be bad for the bowling alley's business? If it's about ensuring the supply of street parking why not just install meters to make the city money when the bowling alley fails to build sufficient parking?

I'm usually the first to mock this kind of trite 'invisible hand' supply-and- demand explanation, but this really seems like something that would be very well left to the business to figure out.

<comment><USER12> So the customers of the popular bowling alley don't park in the parking lot of the neighboring businesses. It's forcing every business to play nice with their neighbors, rather than free-ride off of them.

Most mall parking lots are sized for the demand of the busiest day of the Christmas shopping season, and are consequently underused for most of the year.

<comment><USER13> Well then the next door business can either charge for parking and offer free parking validation after you buy something, or just have a tow truck waiting to tow people who park and don't enter the premises.

<comment><USER14> So, shift the burden to the business that actually paid to create enough parking for their customers?

<comment><USER15> Either that or keep building lots of parking, ensuring private cars are the only option. Choose your poison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Beautiful building.

I wonder though - for those who read the article and have worked in both suburban environments and urban ones - would you rather work in the amazing Apple spaceship in the suburbs, or a normal office building in a city-center?

For me, I think I'd still prefer a short commute and the density of stuff that comes with being downtown.

<comment><USER16> I'd rather work from home, and have done for decades.

I'm not convinced it's a beautiful building. It's a very _careful_ building, trying to be a temple and - IMO - failing.

What's missing? Randomness. Playfulness. Quirkiness. Fun. Colour. Warmth.

Individuality. Art.

At Pixar, everyone was encouraged to personalise their work space in a creative way.

I can't imagine that happening here, because it would be a mortal wound to the purity.

My guess is that it will feel very subtly oppressive rather than delightfully liberating. It'll be a quietly productive environment, in a slightly manic way, but it's hard to be creative when everything and everyone around you has the same company standard officially-approved look and feel.

<comment><USER17> yep, it looks really awful like something from 80s almost in par with commie architecture, these guys wasting money apparently never heard of Zaha Hadid and likes

common, it's just massive boring circle, even Pentagon building is more original, there are only two things making this building interesting - size, Apple HQ

make it ten times smaller and put there unknown company and nobody would bother to read about it

<comment><USER2> They spent the money and effort on making it functional so that employees can best enjoy their time there.

Zaha Hadid designs beautiful but dysfunctional buildings.

<comment><USER17> enjoy time in those prison cubicles? they would better off let them work from home than in this prison environment

nice design from outside doesn't mean it can't be practical inside

<comment><USER2> We have one picture of the pods. You prefer to believe they are in windowless prison halls, I prefer to believe that most will have adequate natural light from windows. We'll soon find out who is right about that.

If Apple was Facebook or most modern web companies, the extra expensive of pods would have been spared to cram employees to stare at each other across tables in massive noisy rooms, usually with adequate natural light.

In this case Apple clearly is putting employees and their productivity first. At least they didn't choose Bella Hadid to design it, or god knows how much more impractical the inside would have been.

[https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/27/zaha- ha...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/27/zaha-hadid- profile-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the more interesting things to watch over the years in the Bay Area was the construction of the 'signature' headquarters for tech companies. It has been interesting because there is a grand history of companies building these edifices to themselves, and then dying. Commonly cited examples are Sun (currently occupied by Facebook), SGI (currently occupied by Google), and Tandem (occupied by Ebay). A number of people also thought that of Apple at its One Infinite Loop HQ in Cupertino and subsequent fall from grace under a series of CEOs. So far Apple had dodged that bullet :-).

Driving past it over the last few years, I try to imagine 50, 100, or maybe 500 years in the future. Will it still be an amazing building or will it be Cupertino's Coliseum ?

</comment><comment><USER19> This is exactly the sort of thing I would do if money were no object, so I can't criticize them in any way. This must have been an incredibly fun project to work on.

<comment><USER20> I'm glad to see this comment, because i was feeling kind of snarky after reading the article, and it does sound like they went overboard in a lot of silly ways. But you're absolutely right: if I had a bazillion dollars in the bank i'd probably do the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "And, of course, the final version is designed to be integrated into the doorframe—heaven forbid you would bolt something on in Apple's headquarters."

Just like water/electricity hidden in concrete beams I wonder how much of a nightmare maintenance of the building is gonna become? A simple door handle breaking already means replacing the whole door.

I guess it's just in line with their usual product philosophy, just gonna be a tad bit difficult to source a completely new $5 Billion ring if some part of this one breaks.

</comment><comment><USER22> 5B for 13k employees - that's ~$384,000 in construction costs per head, operating and maintenance expenses are perhaps 5% of that annually (maybe more!) - taken together this is an office building that's costing apple ~$3500/head/mo . It's a beautiful office, but seriously?

Avg apple cash comp is what, 12500/mo? 3500 is almost 30% of that!

<comment><USER23> You are missing the point. It's only an office because apple is a company. That could have been the great pyramids, saint sophia or notre dame.

Your calculations are off because you don't realize that while a lot of servants are enjoying their life in the castle, it's been built for the royal family and its court.

<comment><USER17> it's just massive boring circle and i can show you immediately dozen more interesting buildings

now pyramids at the time of construction were massive engineering, this is just dumb boring building

<comment><USER23> "Massive" being the key word here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am wondering why I find it kind of odd that it doesn't have a childcare center.

<comment><USER25> I was talking with a friend about this, that works at a big SV company that is known for high comp. Why don't they have a child care facility? Surely they can afford it!

His response was - paraphrasing - "What happens if someone quits, or is fired? In SV/SF, waits for child care facilities can easily take 6-12 months. If someone is terminated from our company, the last thing we want for them to do is have a crisis about where their children are going to go."

I believe they have a stipend, but I'm not sure about that.

Of course, I can't say if this is Apple's rationale, but it wouldn't surprise me if that had something to do with it.

<comment><USER26> Seems like a bullshit excuse that's using the illusion of empathy (which is some extra infuriating bullshit). I'd much rather the option of on-site daycare and dealing with the fallout of leaving a job myself.

<comment><USER2> I'd rather not have my kids under the control of my company.

<comment><USER26> Then don't. Corporate childcare isn't mandatory... just because you don't like it doesn't mean it isn't incredibly valuable to other working parents.

I've considered employers I wouldn't have otherwise considered because the thought of on-site child care is incredibly appealing.

<comment><USER2> Child care is a competitive business that can almost always be provided better and cheaper elsewhere. So it's much better to use stipends to subsidize employee child care.

Having child care is also an expensive distraction and liability for management. Do you want to deal with employee complaints over childcare hours, personnel, facilities, etc, or do you want to spend your time thinking about how to better sell product and keep employee's employed? What happens when an employee accuses a child-care worker of hurting their child?

<comment><USER26> This is all a bunch of weird handwringing...

>Child care is a competitive business that can almost always be provided better and cheaper elsewhere. So it's much better to use stipends to subsidize employee child care.

Child care facilities aim for profit like any other business, and a corporate add-on doesn't need to seek profitability (and even if they did, assuming it's on-site the operational overhead is ultimately lower). So how exactly would outside facilities compete with that?

>Having child care is also an expensive distraction and liability for management

Having children is an expensive distraction whether or not your company is involved. If something happens at a remote daycare, your employee will leave the building to manage that. If there's a child-care gap that doesn't align with work schedules, your employee will take time off to deal with that.

>What happens when an employee accuses a child-care worker of hurting their child?

What happens when an employee accuses another employee of hurting them?

>or do you want to spend your time thinking about how to better sell product and keep employee's employed

I want to spend my time making a good product and making my employees lives easier so they can do their best work.

<comment><USER26> >Making something non-profit doesn't make it efficient. If your business is child-care, it's your job to know the cheapest/best way to comply with regs, build child-care locations to meet market demands, hire child-care staff, enforce appropriate rules and procedures, etc, etc, etc.

You hire someone for this

>Running a software company doesn't give you any of those skills. Someone specializing in the business of child-care should be able to wipe the floor with anything your software company puts up in it's spare time.

Same hire as above

>Children are a distraction, I know. But having the management of the company involved in making decisions about how your kids are being cared for is a distraction from their core duties. By definition they are going to be slightly worse at sales, marketing, development, etc because they have to spend time on childcare.

Seriously, hire like one person.

>Having childcare only benefits a few employees for a few years of their lives. There is nothing wrong with having company childcare, I'm playing the devils advocate a bit here, but there is also nothing wrong with saying the outside world will be better at serving this need and just offering a stipend to help parents with the cost.

I'm talking about companies with hundreds of employees in the same building... like Apple, who has built a massively enormous HQ without childcare. An issue that likely impacts dozens, if not hundreds, of their employees at this location.

<comment><USER2> I think you greatly over-estimate the ease of hiring someone to run child-care for your company.

Are they skilled at it? You don't know, their resume looked good to you, but your expertise is elsewhere.

Are their policies correct? Again, you don't know.

Are your liabilities reasonably covered? Who knows?

And you still have to manage that person on a day to day basis. You have to be able to fire them if they screw up, you have to know whats going on in their department.

You can educate yourself, but again you won't become an expert and that's time you could spend building your business.

Even for Apple, and Tim Cook, it's easier to rely on the competitive market to provide child-care. The best of all worlds would be to rent space to a child- care provider, and bid out the service to get the best child-care possible. There are still issues, such as you don't want the low bidder, and you have to do research to pick the best bidder. But at least you aren't running it day to day.

<comment><USER26> These are all problems involved with hiring anyone for any position... or even using any daycare. These aren't uniquely difficult problems for any reasonably large company, not to mention one of the most profitable companies in existence.

You're making a mountain out of a mole hill. Steve Jobs wanted to make this building "breathable" and paid to come up with a custom solution and your bemoaning the logistics of hiring competent child care providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of IBM's new building:

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3037598/khrushchev-visits- ibm-a-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3037598/khrushchev-visits-ibm-a- strange-tale-of-silicon-valley- history?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily- b-newsletter&position=featured&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=11032014)

I wonder how well the Apple building will age?

<comment><USER17> warming to others - 2 actual photos of building, you are better off with Google image search

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I read about the mothership building I imagine how nice it will be for people working there, mostly because of the large central park in the center. It is important to have areas for employees to recharge after long spells of having their heads down working. When I worked as a contractor at Google, I really enjoyed the outdoor environment at the Mountain View campus to recharge during the day. The new Apple campus looks even better.

<comment><USER29> As the subheader on article the points out, though, a literal walled garden is pretty funny in this context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you are interested in the progress of construction and lots of high definition photos (as well as drone videos) of the Campus: [http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1385324](http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1385324)

</comment><comment><USER31> The webpage is incredibly crappy. The opener image is a whopping 7.85MB in size. Even on a 60M connection, I was reminded of the image loading of yesteryears' 56k modems. The rest of the images don't seem to want to load until I scroll past them. There's a loud autoplay video that plays as soon as you scroll to it. The slideshow is nigh unusable on mobile. The text is way too big with way too much whitespace wasted on both sides.

In summary, the webpage is depressingly badly designed, in stark contrast to the awesome impressive building it describes.

</comment><comment><USER32> The glass doors are only 4 stories tall? Meh, the doors to the throne room in Dune Messiah were over 200 foot tall.

<comment><USER33> I'm sure the kids with slingshots and BB guns are _thrilled_ to have 4 story glass targets...

<comment><USER34> Thankfully Cupertino's children are only sociopathic about getting good marks to get into college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The pods seem quite nicely designed and close to ideal for team development—fully "sealable" for sound isolation while retaining some visual exposure so you can tell at a glance if someone's in a good state for interruption.

But... unless they made some poor choices in framing the shots, is there really no proximate view outside to this lovingly engineered park? Opposite the glass wall, I hope?

<comment><USER36> I assume by "pods" you refer to the small personal spaces with the two tables? I'm not quite clear on the terminology myself, but it seems to me that the pods are actually a collection of those small personal spaces plus the shared social space (basically the hallway between).

How would you accomplish giving everyone a view of the outside? The building is far too large for that, i.e. it would not be possible for everyone to get a view to the outside.

It seems to me that in general the common spaces have the views to the outside, but I also would like to know whether there are any office-like spaces with actual views to the outside.

To me that seems a pretty good approach. I need more secluded spaces to work (where a view of the nature doens't really help), but walks and nature helps me to think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Here is awesome 4k aerial drone footage of the mothership and active construction as of May - [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mFhcnzSmH-E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mFhcnzSmH-E)

</comment><comment><USER38> > For workers who want to take the café's pizza back to their pods, Apple > created (and patented) a container that lets air and moisture escape so the > crust won't get soggy.

Am I correct in saying that this is just a standard to-go box with holes in the bottom?

<comment><USER39> Seriously, why patent something like this? Why not just give an improved pizza box design to everybody?

<comment><USER40> you are talking about a company that tried to argue a "tap" is a "zero length swipe"

<comment><USER41> The _lawyers_ did.

<comment><USER40> lawyers are apple employees, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> At $5B for 12,000 employees, that works out to about $400,000 a pop. Each employee could have been given an apartment in many parts of the country... :-)

I'm not criticizing, just admiring the cost.

<comment><USER43> It's fun to think of numbers that way, but on the other hand, many of those 12k are not employees that were here when construction started, and likewise many of the employees that were around at the beginning of construction are gone.

I think it's a bit excessive for a universally known company but I get the idea of wanting a monument. Having moved from Houston to Silicon Valley, I remember being mildly disappointed by for example Google's campus. Like, it's just a regular old office campus. Nice, of course! Very nice, next to shoreline ampitheater, lots of trees, etc. But, I mean, it's _Google_. Was I expecting rocketships? Maybe! I dunno. I certainly was expecting something other than just... a campus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> _Yes, Apple insists that by working in a place where artificial hills are dotted with pines transplanted from Christmas tree farms in the Mojave Desert, its employees will make better products. But didn't Apple create its marvelous Apple II in a bedroom and its groundbreaking Macintosh in a low-slung office park building? The employees who work at the new campus are leaving behind the buildings that provided sufficient inspiration to invent the iPhone._

This is something I worry about. Some of the most groundbreaking works were created by artists being super poor and living in a hole somewhere while suffering from personal problems. Sure once they become popular and make money they can afford to refine their craft and over-produce, but the original inspiration comes from a grittier, more punk place.

</comment><comment><USER45> I like to imagine what will happen to this building after Apple eventually winds down. It's hard to imagine a second life for the building.

<comment><USER46> Just look at the IBM Somers Campus... Not trying to be cynical, but history repeats itself.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Anyone here work at one of Foster's other buildings? (Berlin Reichstag, the Hong Kong airport, and London's infamous "Gherkin" tower, etc.). How about Steve's Pixar HQ? What's the day to day experience like?

<comment><USER48> Why describe the Gherkin as infamous? My impression is it is largely admired by Londoners (myself included).

It would be interesting to hear from those working inside it.

<comment><USER47> I was quoting the article. I have no opinion on the building.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> When looking at the practicality of this thing, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But it does as a monument to Steve.

Then again, I'm not in design or architecture. If it's really significant in that context, it's a shame that it'll be inaccessible to people outside of Apple.

<comment><USER17> so he will be remembered as guy who wanted boring massive circle like designed in 80s? i am not big fan, but even he doesn't deserve something like this

<comment><USER49> The obsession to detail on things that other people were doing much less well actually sums up Steve's work to me. The Mac and iPhone weren't big releases of new tech, they were reworks of existing cutting-edge stuff into something quite usable, specifically but obsessing over the details that made the originals substantially harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> It reminds me of the GCHQ campus: [https://www.gchq.gov.uk/gchq- cheltenham](https://www.gchq.gov.uk/gchq-cheltenham)

</comment><comment><USER51> 12000 people in one building - wow!

<comment><USER52> The one giant wart that makes this whole project depressingly not futuristic: 9000+ parking spaces.

The amount of unproductive space devoted to the storage of cars is just mind boggling.

Not much has changed in how people get to work. Single occupancy cars all burning fossil fuel and expelling C02.

It may not be a fancy spaceship, but the 100 year old building I work at in downtown Chicago has indoor bike parking and allows me a nice 20 minute ride on my bike.

<comment><USER53> That's not really up to Apple unfortunately. Cupertino has all sorts of regressive laws about parking minimums and zoning.

I suppose Apple is a big enough wheel that they could have probably rewritten those laws if they wanted to, but they're an electronics company, not city planners. WTH would they know about decent zoning regs?

<comment><USER54> Well they probably don't know much about architecture either, that's why they hired Norman Foster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Are there any pictures of the workspace for the workers?

<comment><USER17> no, there are hardly any pictures of interior, just bunch of heads who are i guess important to Apple fanboys, you can open it through Google cache, i shared link here

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > As part of its ecological efforts to prevent such a crisis, Apple claims, > its buildings will run solely on sustainable energy, most of it from solar > arrays on the roofs.

Does it make economic sense to NOT build solar arrays on new buildings these days? Even for your average-sized office or apartment building. It seems the added cost would only push the budget up marginally in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER57> There's no mention of any pubs within walking distance from this thing. I wonder how these 12000 people will quench their thirst after a hard day work... Or maybe grabbing a beer after work is not a thing there and they all go to gym.

</comment><comment><USER58> This explains why apple hasn't come out with any kick ass product the past years. All their top designers have been busy designing details for this building.

</comment><comment><USER59> Individuals need their space and definitely if you want them to be productive, not everyone works well in a close group setting.

</comment><comment><USER60> To me, the most interesting question is: will Apple build a second copy of this building?

</comment><comment><USER61> Church of Apple. Scary.

</comment><comment><USER62> Nice, but a rounded pentagon building is nothing impressive these days.

<comment><USER63> It does seem like those that admire this building are reaching. It has some nice features, but taken as a whole it's not that desirable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> One last thing

</comment><comment><USER65> > "This might be a stupid question," I say. "But why do you need a four-story > glass door?"

> Ive raises an eyebrow. "Well," he says. "It depends how you define need, > doesn't it?"

The difference between the real Ive and @JonyIveParody[0] is... ?

[0] [https://twitter.com/JonyIveParody](https://twitter.com/JonyIveParody)

</comment><comment><USER66> Warning: Autoplay video on website.

<comment><USER17> well it's Wired after all, i am not opening it, better provide different source

<comment><USER67> It's an exclusive there's not another source.

<comment><USER17> oh well, i can wait until there will be other source

anyway it's here for people who don't wanna support Wired [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZoCP4j...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZoCP4jwnkQsJ:https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple- park-new-silicon-valley-campus/)

TLDR: clickbait title, there is pretty much zero photos of actual interior of building

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Guess how individual workspaces will look like. I bet it will be old good terrible gray 6x6 cubicles.

EDIT: To all downvoters: [https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_1970/wp- content/uploads/20...](https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_1970/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/apple-gallery3.jpg)

<comment><USER69> Why guess? There are pictures in the article... In fact, the whole thing was apparently designed around the workspace concept... I have to presume, but it sounds like you didn't read the article before commenting.

<comment><USER31> I really didn't find any pics of the workspace in the article. If it is not much work, can you link to the pic here?

<comment><USER68> They hid them in slideshows :-)

Behold, in new Apple office, depressive windowless cell is called "a pod": [https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_1970/wp- content/uploads/20...](https://assets.wired.com/photos/w_1970/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/apple-gallery3.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Work areas have more than one dimension. Perhaps there are windows in one of the many directions this photo is not showing?

If you see the picture in the slide show, you'll see that pods provide everyone with a private office, with a huge sliding glass door, and plentiful storage options.

The drones at Facebook would feel like they died and went to heaven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> 440,000 lb per door?! That exceeds the load rating of mainline rail (1)! Hope they have some plans for replacing the load bearings now and again.

(1) [https://www.up.com/aboutup/reference/maps/allowable_gross_we...](https://www.up.com/aboutup/reference/maps/allowable_gross_weight/index.htm)

<comment><USER71> > restriction of 268,000 lbs or further based on the length of the rail car

We don't know the length of the rail car they used, do we?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The building is quite impressive, which leads me to muse that it's probably the last, and perhaps greatest, Reality Distortion Field[1] achievement of Steve's career.

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

<comment><USER2> Greatest example, the Xerox Parc team knew bitmapped regions were impossible on that eras hardware, but somehow Jobs convinced the Macintosh team to build them in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> "Jobs was adamant that the new campus house indigenous flora, and in particular he wanted fruit trees from the orchards he remembered from growing up in Northern California."

A perfect example of a the stereotypical Californian mindset. Indigenous is what California was like when one first experienced it and everything should remain unchanged into the future.

Edit: On second thought, this is just a statement from the article's author. It's unlikely Jobs would not have confused indigenous California flora with fruit trees.

<comment><USER74> Nothing in Jobs' quote says "everything remain unchanged"</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pugmark – The online book club for developers - <AUTHOR> https://pugmark.io <comment><AUTHOR> A book club seems like something from the last century. You're meeting up with a group of people, who does that anyway nowadays? You've managed to read through the whole book in the month that you had to do that. Scribbling down some notes along the way, carefully highlighting sentences because they resonated with you. It's been a tedious and lonely process until now.

When you finally meet up, it gives you a feeling of belonging, knowing there are others who share your interests and passions. Finding out someone has also read your favorite book is a great conversation starter. Those conversations are more often than not full of new insights.

A year ago, I mentioned the idea of an online book club to my friend. We both like reading books as an educational tool. For me, starting to read books has been eye-opening. We often discussed the books we read with each other. Those were the times I discovered the point of the book, the bigger lesson it was trying to teach me.

Now, one year later, we think with pugmark we have built something that helps us in having that discussion. Having used it myself for a couple of books now, I notice how much more I remember of what I read. With pugmark, we want to give you a way to find those like-minded readers. It's the async, remote version of a book club.

We are curious to hear what you think about what we have created. Of course, we are here to answer any questions you have!

\- Maxi

<comment><USER2> Like the idea, though I think hypotes.is might be a more familiar way of social reading, albeit for academics.

Just a thought, if it's even legally possible, or people a in fact still read print, add an option to send each other your copy when done... and save the planet on the way... perhaps a book for a book.

<comment><USER3> This is a really nice idea that can be integrated in the future. Our main focus today is help developers getting more knowledge from books, if we can save some trees in the process that would be amazing.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What other low-probability high-impact events are we ignoring? - <AUTHOR>

The gulf oil spill is a canonical example of a "low-probability, high-impact event."  Everyone who cared knew that this sort of thing could happen, but the risk was widely perceived as tolerable.
What other high-impact scenarios are out there that are likely to create a meaningful "event" at least once in the next 30 years?  How are we currently mis-pricing the risk?
[Edit for clarity.  Low-probability, in this instance, means risks that are low when taken in discrete units.  Getting on an airplane is low-risk.  With 14M scheduled US flight per year, though, it is almost certain that one plane will crash once in awhile.  We're looking for events here that have a perceived low risk (correctly or not), and that are likely to surprise people when they actually happen.  In hindsight, it will be clear to us that the event was actually likely given the extended circumstances.] <comment><USER2> I'm confused by the 'likely to create an event in the next 30 years' part - either it's unlikely or it's likely. There are events that are quite likely, but with a low _perception_ of risk. Oil spills happen all the time, it's just been a while since one has happened in a rich Western country. Why? Because we've already tapped almost all of our oil - most of the worst spills happened long before we were born! Now the spills happen in places like the Middle East and Nigeria, but because only poor people live there, nobody notices or cares.

Other events that were or will be likely to occur, but have a low perception of risk, include the recent financial crisis, and, looking forward a decade or two, ocean level rise flooding major cities, and a US debt default.

Some interesting events that (seem to) have a genuinely low probability, but would really change the world if they happened:

* Asteroid hit (either a big one, or a smaller one that hits just right).

* A 'supervolcano' eruption that puts us into nuclear winter

* Solar flares fry every piece of electronics on the planet

* Sudden tipping point in the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets that raises ocean levels by a few meters over a year.

* A strong 'godlike' AI (benevolent or otherwise)

* A self-replicating nanoassembler

* Godzilla attack

<comment><USER3> I find it interesting that you would put "US debt default" in the category of things likely to happen in the next decade or two. The reason that the US is able to borrow money for practically nothing is that it has _never_ defaulted on debt. Now, clearly there is a possibility that at some point in the future the US will default, but I don't how you would determine that is likely in the next couple decades. Remember we had a significantly higher level of debt as a percentage of GDP following World War II than we do now. We didn't default then.

<comment><USER2> Treasury rates are almost absurdly low right now, so we can clearly agree that there is very little perception of risk that the US will default. That's why it makes a great example of this phenomenon; people will look back and see all the (in retrospect) obvious signs of a coming default and wonder why it wasn't obvious now.

I would hope the structural differences between the US situation in 1945 and now would be obvious - exporter vs importer, young vs old, short term debt (the war) vs long term (SS and Medicare, plus maintaining an ongoing worldwide military presence). And we don't currently have the advantage that every possible economic competitor of ours was recently carpet bombed and utterly drained by years of total war, which certainly didn't hurt our exports.

Adding for clarity: I don't currently believe either a default or major coastal flooding is inevitable or unstoppable, I just think there is substantially more risk associated with it than is generally perceived. Ironically, the perception of little risk can help make such events more likely, because after all there is little point wasting lots of effort trying to prevent something that probably won't happen, right?

<comment><USER4> I think then your claim is that the true risk and the perception of risk are very different, not that default is necessarily likely (i.e. > 50%). If you were really confident that default was likely within 20 years, you could make an awful lot of money shorting T-bonds (or something).

<comment><USER2> You can buy credit default swaps in T-bills, so if the US defaulted you could make a nice return - if you think you can find a counterparty in the form of a large insurance company or bank who would actually survive a US default, which seems unlikely. An article in the Economist (IIRC) made the comment that these CDS's had best be denominated in Kalashnikovs and cans of spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One possibility which seems very much overlooked is that of a catastrophic ecosystem crash. The recent bee die-off gives a hint of the kinds of things that are possible. Another possible catastrophe is a plague or parasite that is resistant to all of our methods of disease control. It could attack either us, or our crops. Our disrespect for complex ecosystems which we still barely understand is the most egregious example of short-term thinking, to my mind.

<comment><USER6> By "ecosystem crash", what we really mean here is "an environment in which nobody will want to live". I am not at all skeptical towards various warnings about the environment, but we do have to acknowledge that the Earth has supported life for long before we ever came around, and will continue to support life long after we're gone.

And, humans are resourceful. It's likely that, even in the worst of scenarios, at least some humans will find a way to survive -- even if it's subsistence living.

The question is, would it be an environment that we would _want_ to live in?

I think that's an important distinction that might help sort out some of the ecological "debates".

<comment><USER7> At subsistence levels, it is not unlikely that all but the most basic human learning would be lost to active memory in a generation or two. While the species will persist, the ability to live as flailing gods will not.

I wonder, how do we preserve our science across such gaps in ability to sustain it. Should we even bother?

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry but there's been several occasions in human history where civilization has fully collapsed (region specific) and lost the written word (namely proto-greece) but fully recovered with no outside influence.

If something doesn't spell our doom either in the short term or in the moderately-short term then we will quickly recover from where we left off. A generation or two of subsistence living will not entirely wipe out human civilization. No one is going to have to reinvent the wheel, because we've got so many present in our civilization that they could easily be scavenged for hundreds of years before the quantity became depleted and it would likely take a good thousand years before someone couldn't find an 'original wheel' to at least take inspiration from. Aluminium alloy wheels have such high proportions of aluminium in them that even the exceptionally slow oxidization (I work in siding and I can tell you that 20 year old aluminium siding barely has marks on it and it's paper thick, a few pounds would take millennia to degrade but would likely still be clearly recognizable).

If we're really concerned about our longevity I'd suggest manufacturing information arcs that can teach the major language of the geographical area allowing people 100 years down the road to access the knowledge stored when civilization recovers. It would have to be built for longevity and nothing else (IE it can't easily be recovered for materials by scavengers or used to draw power). Essentially you'd want a very long life RTG to power a multiple redundancy computer system and basically load encyclopaedias and patent databases and an archive of literature, magazines and journals.

<comment><USER7> To be sure, though I think that the no outside influence restriction is a bit contrary to the archeological record. Though I didn't make it clear, what concerns me are not the coarse technologies of life--wheels and pottery and what not--but more fine, non-obvious innovations. Consider concrete: with the dissolution of the Roman political structure the secrets of concrete were lost. It took 13 centuries, until the 1750s, to rediscover its formula. During that time, public works were greatly retarded. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon (whose buildings rarely had windows for stability purposes) culture produced a rather famous poem we now call The Ruins in which Roman ruins are attributed to the works of giants.

What concerns me is not the transmitting of basic machines across the simplification of a society, to use Joseph Tainter's jargon, but, rather, difficult, contextual knowledge. Our knowledge of Mathematics, for example, was preserved by luck: the Byzantine Empire harbored enough learned individuals and archivists until such a time as the Crusades swept through. All of my work simply assumes an industrial, technological civilization with advanced computational capacity. Any textbooks I might produce in the future will have the implicit assumption of contemporary operating systems, compilers and hardware. If, through sheer chance, any of my potential works survived across a collapse they would be useless without further context. I imagine that the same holds true for advanced works of physics, especially that which requires hugely complex experimental devices.

Euclid held up well enough as his works were self-contained. What modern works can say the same?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The last record-breaking _accidental_ oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the Ixtoc I, in 1979. I should also note that the Atlantic Empress spill, also in 1979, and the _Amoco Cadiz_ , the previous year, had a combined spillage equal to the Ixtoc I.

The record-breaking _deliberate_ oil spill happened during the Gulf War, in 1991.

In the past thirty-five years, there have been ten oil spills in which over a million barrels of crude were released. I don't see how you can classify this kind of thing as "low-probability", in the same category as asteroid strikes.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spills#Largest_oil_spills>

</comment><comment><USER10> > The gulf oil spill is a canonical example of a "low-probability, high-impact > event."

I think that what's going on is awareness.

There was a much larger deep-water spill in Mexico in 1979. There have been huge on-shore spills, some that ran into the sea. There have been huge tanker spills. And so on.

The difference is that this one is off the US coast, we have on-scene video, and folks who claimed to be uber-competent have, arguably, dropped the ball.

Yes, they've probably gotten more blame than they deserved, but they've also tried to exploit this incident for political gain, so ....

</comment><comment><USER11> Oil spills aren't really that low probability when you don't follow any of the safety procedures and you use broken equipment.

<comment><USER12> And rare events always seem like they could obviously happen in retrospect.

<comment><USER13> [http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day- bp...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1658137/infographic-of-the-day-bps- horrifying-safety-record)

With such a flagrant history of safety violations, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most of you aren't trying hard enough to come up with things we'll PROBABLY live to see:

1\. California earthquake

2\. global economic depression

3\. war involving developed countries(N Korea vs S Korea, India vs Pakistan, Iran vs Israel, China vs Taiwan, etc)

4\. 2 leading into 3(maybe)

5\. pandemic

6\. The Next Big Thing(biotech? nanotech?)

7\. car accident resulting in serious injuries involving yourself or a loved one

8\. serious illness involving yourself or a loved one

<comment><USER15> Let me add a scary possibility, the use of a nuclear bomb on a major city.

It is worth noting that India and Pakistan have fought several recent wars, and are now both nuclear armed. Worse yet, everyone's wargame simulations have concluded that their next war _WILL_ go nuclear. As one friend of mine (whose father is high up in India's air force) put it, "The only real question is whether the bomb that Pakistan drops on New Delhi works."

To be specific, the likely scenario is that they go to war, Pakistan, lacking reserves, knows it has to win fast. Pakistan throws everything into the battle front, India breaks through somewhere, and Pakistan, with nothing to stop India's breakthrough, drops a nuke on Indian troops in Pakistani territory. (There is a perverse logic to having all of the civilian casualties be your own.) India, having just lost major numbers of troops, has little choice but to escalate to nuclear war against Pakistani military targets. Pakistan, with a more limited supply of nukes, has only one way to escalate. And New Delhi is the easiest to reach major city.

There is speculation that the last military coup in Pakistan happened in part because the Pakistani army was scared that Pakistan was escalating into another war with India, and it was the easiest way to force the situation to de-escalate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A nuclear event would fit that and could certainly happen in the next 20 years --

\- Israel bombing all suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran retaliating with a nuke.

\- Low level or dirty bomb by any number of terrorists groups in the world. India/Pakistan is a pressure cooker right now. Could happen in Europe, the Mid-East or America.

</comment><comment><USER17> Earthquake along the New Madrid fault. Almost nothing in the midwest is built with earth quakes in mind.

<comment><USER15> New York's construction is even more vulnerable, and there are a lot of fault lines there.

Another very real possibility is that the Cascadia zone could have a megathrust earthquake. This would be a 9.0 hitting cities like Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver that are completely not prepared for it. The last one in 1700 gave Japan a really nice tsunami as well.

That could also potentially trigger the lahar that is waiting on Mt Rainier. Which brings to mind all of the volcanos listed at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade_Volcano> \- the eruption of any of which would qualify as low probability high impact event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> An airliner crashing into a building that houses a major intercontinental cable landing, an e911 datacenter, and a dns root node. Beleive it or not there are several such in the world.

<comment><USER19> I find it hard to believe this is true! Maps or GPS coordinates, or it didn't happen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A major global pandemic seems like a plausible scenario. We've had a few (semi..) close calls with SARS and swine flu but have been lucky that they haven't mutated to be airborne and infectous from human to human.

You don't have to go further back than the 1918 global flu pandemic to see an example of what a global pandemic can do. 3% of the global population died.

You may think that we have better vaccines and better systems in place now than we did 100 years ago, but you'd be largely mistaken[1]. A vaccine takes so long to develop and produce that when it's ready for the market millions of people will already have died. Pandemics spread quickly. Adding to the problem is that the world is so connected and people so mobile that once the virus is out it could easily spread across the globe in a matter of days. One infected stewardess in Heathrow airport wil lmake sure of that.

[1] I'm no expert on biotech so please correct me if I'm mistaken.

<comment><USER21> Government regulators tend to choke off vaccine development, but those policies would change in a hurry during a dangerous pandemic.

Of greater importance is a disease that there is a vaccine for but which the U.S. government is actively suppressing: smallpox. DNA synthesizers are already at the point where anybody who wants to can resurrect smallpox. It is only a matter of time before that scourge is set loose. The results will be ghastly.

<comment><USER22> Funny, last night I watched a West Wing episode where they mention the possibility of a smallpox outbreak. Is it still true that there are just a handful of smallpox vaccines on hand in the US?

<comment><USER23> Vaccines don't have a shelf life of forever, and storing components to defeat a disease that no longer exists beyond a few petri dishes in a military lab isn't really efficient.

Odds are there is barely any.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In terms of mispriced expectations, it's unprecedented for 1/3 of the world population (<2bn people - India & China) to smoothly transition from 3rd/2nd to 1st world economies without massive internal 'social unrest' (&/or war). Yet that is what we appear to expect... Hope it's the first time.

<comment><USER18> Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Most low-probability, high-impact events are un-predictable by definition. Only in hindsight do they appear obvious. This has to do with many factors such as the narrative fallacy and confirmation bias, which Taleb describes as the Black Swan.

That being said, here a few high-impact (moderately low probability) events that could be on the horizon.

* Northern California Earthquake * Israel v Iran Nuclear Conflict that triggers WW3 * Singularity

</comment><comment><USER26> At the risk of sounding crazy, I'll say fascism in a Western country.

<comment><USER27> It Can't Happen Here

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Cant_Happen_Here>

Edit: corrected link, sorry.

Edit 2: Or...not. Apparently I can't have a URL with an apostrophe.

<comment><USER28> Here you go: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here>

:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How low-probability is an event if it's _likely_ to happen in the next 30 years?

Isn't that kind of like asking "What's an unlikely event that's likely to happen"?

<comment><USER30> I suppose by "low-probability", tc means "unlikely to happen at any particular time, in any particular place".

Think serious car accidents: unlikely enough that most people never have one, yet many thousands happen each year. The effects can be devastating to the people involved, but everyone keeps telling themselves that "it won't happen to me", and many people forego actions that would decrease or mitigate their risk, or even engage in actions that increas it substantially.

<comment><USER31> This is the problem with the whole concept of risk: because your chances of suffering a car accident are actually relatively high when compared with all sorts of other risks.

On a scale of things _unlikely enough that most people never have one_ a car accident is pretty near the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There are a lot of such events looming in the improbable horizon. Each would be viewed as a total surprise when in fact it's known that there is a nonzero (but small) probability of the event occurring:

\- a moderately sized meteorite strikes a major city.

\- the capital requirements set after the recent financial crisis might turn out to be horribly inadequate if just the right series of coincidences occurs.

\- The US could have significant post-election riots, etc.

\- With a slight increase in trauma injuries, all ERs and available hospital beds and skilled professionals could be quickly used up within a 1000 mile radius of an event. Many would die in transit, etc. Think back to the superdome.

\- A significantly noteworthy event could easily overwhelm mobile phone network capacity in any major city making communication nearly impossible, this would be made worse due to the panic that it inspired.

\- An unsophisticated terrorist group could bring mass transit in the top 5 major US cities to a standstill for a budget of less than $10K. (simply by igniting backpacks full of regular gasoline in buses, subways in some sort of unison). This would probably provoke martial law.

\- The US could elect a Hitler-esque strongman. Both Bush and Obama are shades of this sort of leader in their own way. That anyone (especially the media) took McCain's candidacy seriously is evidence of this.

\- Mexico could become a failed state, putting pressure on the US, and sending the US toward a nationalistic strongman leader type.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm suprised that no-one's suggested aliens arriving, an event which can arguably be getting more and more likely as time goes on.

The trick to that statement being that we don't know where the baseline is...at .00001% likeliness this year, an exponential increase of 1.0001x every year isn't particularly likely.

<comment><USER34> There are many in the same vein that would have similar impact on society.

Aliens arriving, being discovered, or merely communicating with us, there are so many possibilities, many of them with the potential for being as disruptive to human civilization on Earth as an asteroid impact. The mind boggles at the possibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> How about a major earthquake along the San Andreas fault in southern California? We've had a couple little shakes this week. There isn't much we can do to prevent it from occurring -- we can only reduce the impact. Build strong and keep emergency supplies on hand.

<comment><USER36> I'm upvoting this because (a) I know that a huge percentage of you live directly on _top_ of the San Andreas fault; (b) I've seen the upcoming earthquake mentioned a few times on this thread, but always in a list with things like "the Singularity".

For god's sake. The difference between a major Northern California earthquake and the effing Singularity is that one of these has happened in the last century and is guaranteed to happen again.

Lay in an emergency supply of drinking water and strap your heavy shelves to the wall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Contrary to the majority of predictions here, this would be a positive change: We should all at one point or another, hopefully not too far into the future, realize we've been led tragically astray in terms of our nutritional health by well meaning but unfortunately ill informed government officials and doctors. The current common wisdom will likely reverse and take with it many of the diseases of civilization: diabetes, coronary heart disease, obesity, maybe even cancer. That out of the way, current debates about socialized medicine and escalating insurance costs would turn into bad memories and we'll think "how could we have been so ignorant?" We'll live better, healthier, cheaper and maybe even longer. Local economies will revitalize, the environment will benefit, and it'll be "easy". Of course, current dogma will fight tooth and nail, proclaiming the new path leads to disaster, but disaster is what we have now, and it'll be soundly defeated. Nostrademus has spoken… :)

</comment><comment><USER38> I've heard seismologists describe the San Andreas fault in California as "10 months pregnant".

There's a good chance there will be a massive earthquake on it in the next 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned anything to do with the structure of the internet. Suppose someone takes out all of the root DNS servers or the bgp system breaks down, or something similar. Even though there might not be any loss of life, this could cause tremendous amount of damage in other areas.

</comment><comment><USER31> _Everyone who cared knew that this sort of thing could happen, but the risk was widely perceived as tolerable._

There are billions of things that could happen, that might happen or that will eventually happen given enough time. We _should_ reasonably ignore those or it starts to get silly :)

I think what you are really talking about are "Elephant in the Room" problems. Things which shouldn't happen, or are low probability, but end up being caused by bad management or human error.

If someone had asked this question 6 months ago would anyone have brought up deepwater oil drilling? I somehow doubt it. Finding these scenarios is difficult, if not impossible, because they rely on things that don't get reported till it has happened.

</comment><comment><USER40> Large Hadron Collider having an accident or creating a black hole.

Running out of oil, which will in turn start a whole host of problems.

Some genetic disease like the plague, wiping out most of the civilization.

An experiment on next level weapons that make nukes look like firecrackers, going out of control.

Sun going nova for no apparent reason.

America becoming a "christian nation" with science/technology being outlawed.

Someone hacking the pentagon or whatever, and detonating all the nukes at the same time.

Skynet becomes self-aware(AI/robots taking over) - will probably happen like the irobot movie.

aliens

<comment><USER28> _> Running out of oil, which will in turn start a whole host of problems._

It starts getting scary when oil production vs demand becomes disproportionate. Aka, peak oil.

 _> Someone hacking the pentagon or whatever, and detonating all the nukes at the same time._

I recently watched Hackers Wanted and one of the interesting things the movie pointed out was that when terrorists start becoming hacker savvy, a new war front will be introduced into the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Solar flares. Magnetic pole reversal. The Yellowstone caldera going boom again.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think what's brewing on the Korean Peninsula is a great example of a potential low-probability, high-impact event. Things are heating up further and further, and the potential outcome could be devastating.

</comment><comment><USER43> My vote is for the Yellowstone Supervolcano. If you take a look at the image showing potential range of the ash cloud, you can see it might cause a few problems if it were to blow. Maybe not a next-thirty-years type of event, but still an interesting possibility with potential for tremendous casualties, and very little that can be done in the way of prevention.

<http://www.earthmountainview.com/yellowstone/yellowstone.htm>

<comment><USER44> _THE BIBLE CODE PREDICTS THAT YELLOWSTONE WILL BLOW MARCH 31 OR APRIL 1, 2004_

W T F?!

<comment><USER43> You mean you didn't pull the latest version of the bible code from github?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Here's a happy one, for a change: the Focus Fusion guys actually succeed, and we get radically cheaper electricity that can be mass-produced in a big way. This would change everything. Aluminum would become a lot cheaper with cheap energy for refining it. The various water shortages in coastal areas would be easier to deal with, thanks to cheaper energy for desalination. We could replace gasoline with carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. I'm probably still thinking way too small here.

</comment><comment><USER28> Evil cats: <http://www.exitmundi.nl/meow.htm> ?

I am posting this as an example of a "risk that is widely perceived as tolerable." Is it high risk? I think so, judging by all the other examples of non-native animals destroying parts of ecosystems.

It is hard to predict how things like this extrapolate. But that is how it is -- we are more likely to observe consequences and infer the origins, and extinction around the world is a pretty big one. The evil cats scenario is just one from that article.

A snippet: _In the street where I live, there are more cats than people!

And that is a problem. All those cats catch lots of birds and mice and rats and butterflies. Biologically speaking, cats are eating a huge hole in the food chain. No, seriously! According to several alarming reports, this is exactly what is happening in countries like the United Kingdom, Sweden and my own country, Holland. Bird species are vanishing, mouse subspecies are going extinct. All because of Molly, and Lizzy, and the other many billions of domestic cats that inhabit the planet today._

<comment><USER28> Okay, this an instance where I would like the downvoters to explain the downvoting.

The submitter asked for "low-probability, high-impact" events. Cats destroying local ecosystems is a low-probability, high-impact event _and perceived as tolerable_. We've seen situations where non-native animals have messed up ecosystems, and there are a lot of cats in the world hunting lower on-the- food-chain prey.

Is the word "cat" taboo on HN or something?

An article on feral cats and dogs:<http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/envstudies/research/feral.html>

 _Sigh_ Nobody will probably see this. I guess I'll just go upvote a couple of people to make up for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why do you believe this was a low-probability event? My impression is that important safety measures were neglected, and this laxity played a key role in the failure.

A better question might be "Where else has avarice gotten the better of known sensible precautions?" I hear there are clear risks in the Commercial Real Estate market, similar to the problems which led to the residential housing crisis. Then there is the fact there has been essentially no meaningful regulatory reform of the financial system as a whole (in fact, there has been encouragement of the same bad behavior.)

</comment><comment><USER47> As I understand it, they still haven't fixed the levies around New Orleans.

</comment><comment><USER48> Fault in a nuclear power plant?

<comment><USER45> A lot lower-impact than people generally think. Those things are _safe_ nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The 'Singularity' (in the sense of a super-human intelligence, for example either augmented human or purely machine) comes into being and, basically, gets to exert influence over humanity's future.

<comment><USER33> Singularity's a fun one, because its got more vectors than just Moore's law. Or, anyway, Moore's law is being played out in a lot more vectors than just IT.

Drastic life extension would count, as would 'a mature nanotech', matter edition on any scale,

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Asteroids?

</comment><comment><USER21> Washington, D.C. being taken over by a competent, efficient government.</comment>


ATDHE Seized: How Site Takedowns Are Ceremonial - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/atdhe_seized_how_site_takedowns_are_ceremonial.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d48b675bbdef1e3%2C0 <comment><USER2> This is a much bigger problem than ATDHE: [http://torrentfreak.com/us-resume- file-sharing-domain-seizur...](http://torrentfreak.com/us-resume-file-sharing- domain-seizures-110201/)

DHS seized a domain that had twice been ruled by a court of law in the corporation's home country, an EU state, to be operating completely legally. The corp. has absolutely no presence whatsoever in the US.

This one domain may be the straw that broke the camel's back — it wouldn't surprise me if the rest of the international community begins moving towards demanding that the US forfeit control over the 3 root TLDs posthaste.

<comment><USER3> In all of the cases so far (that I've checked) it seems that the registrar of the domain has been based in the US. So to seize a domain it would be sufficient to do this at the registrar level, instead of the registry level.

If the domain has been sized via the US-based registrar it's nothing to worry about.

If - on the other hand - the domain has been sized at the registry level (and the same would have happened with another foreign registrar) this would be one large reason for me to use other TLDs in the future. However, if this is really the case it makes me wonder why piratebay.org hasn't been sized yet (this domain is registered at a German registrar).

<comment><USER4> GoDaddy says they "have not touched anything". Of course, this may mean that they have built a self-serve seizure system in the past, but still...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Uh, well now this is amusing:

<http://www.atdhe.net/> shows seizure notice

<http://atdhe.net/> still works

(Site looks pretty shady, by the way. I'd suggest something like NoScript.)

<comment><USER6> They only seized the DNS. They haven't shut down the site.

Try <http://188.8.131.52/>

<comment><USER5> I'm confused. According to WHOIS, the DNS points to prq.se. And if they did seize the DNS, why wouldn't they change all the records to point to the seizure site?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how long before we start seeing articles entitled .{com,org,net} domains considered harmful?

</comment><comment><USER8> How do these seizures work? Is it only for US ISPs? I tried hitting <http://atdhe.net/> and I get the regular site, not a DHS seizure page.

They have a banner at the top saying it was shut down this afternoon but how did they get it back? Or is it still blocked in the US?

<comment><USER9> DNS Registrar gave domain name to US government, the US government simply pointed the new domain name to a new server. If you're still viewing the old site, then the DNS propagation hasn't reached your ISP's DNS yet. The server hosting the files is unaffected as it's in another country hence someone provided a direct IP address.

This has the potential for attacks on unprotected clients with malicious JS.

But most likely, they will be logging browser details and ip address as an old honeypot tactic. If I was in their position, I would attempt to cross-match the IP addresses with list of associated profiles (For the paranoid, FB/HN/etc may provide profile associations due to sealed requests). Then there's a list of suspects for questioning.</comment></comment>