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Comment by clamprecht | Hacker News Reader

In prison, only non-programmable calculators were allowed. A friend somehow had gotten a TI-85 in. I programmed it to say "NON-PROGRAMMABLE CALCULATOR" as its startup message, so they wouldn't take it during a random search.

I also wrote a basic stock portfolio manager - this was the only chance I had to program during my 5 years there.

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I fascinated by the hinted-at backstory here. Would you mind sharing how you came to program in prison? Was it before, or during your time that you learned?

He has a Wikipedia page [1] if you want a bit more background information.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht

I learned before I went to prison.

Why would they care about a calculator?

Rules in prisons and other high-security places are often extreme. They start with a simple kernel, which may or may not make sense: No personal computing devices (under the assumption that computing devices can be used for un-controlled communication, this may not have been articulated). Someone asks about people using calculators for their GED or whatever, so they permit them. Someone else realizes calculators can be computers (not in just the basic sense of performing computation, but general computers). They extend the rules but keep the carved out exception for non-programmable calculators.

They presumably didn't want people using a TI-83/85 effectively as a gameboy.

http://tiwizard.com/downloads/

Right: I meant the prison presumably doesn't want prisoners playing games (as is easy to do on these calculators). I'm actually a little confused that was a controversial thought.

Non-programmable calculators were fine - computers were not. A programmable calculator is basically a computer. In a computer you could store data that they couldn't access (encryption, even if it's very basic). Could be a list of gambling debts, escape plans, or other horrors. Most prison rules are "written in blood", so to speak.

I mean you could store some dumbly ciphered information on a sheet too, but I guess it's not as convenient

A microcontroller with a decent CPU (a Zilog Z80 in this case) could, given enough time, run some serious AES-256 encryption. The storage is minimal but it could be good enough.

Of course, you could always use a paper one-time pad, and if you can get the pad distributed without interception, there's no way they can ever break that.

once you've gotten to this level, you're pretty much guaranteed an A regardless

Not sure if you caught the convo swapped to prison lol

Some prison rules are written in blood. Most prison rules are written in bureaucracy and profit motive. No prison escape movie ever ended with the guard preventing future escapes by instituting a new "no sleeveless shirts when visiting an inmate" rule.

Forgive my ignorance, but how do sleeveless shirts help facilitate an escape?

Perhaps a reference to Prison Break, where a character had a map of the prison tattood to his body? Just a guess.

They are talking about visitors to prisoners. See my post above, but these dress codes are what dress codes are always for - control and/or shame.

I could be wrong, but I think they're saying they do not, but many prisons have a rule against that anyway.

I'd argue it's something to do with decency, appearance, atmosphere, given that (at least in my culture) while T-shirts are fine, sleeveless shirts are seen as rather trashy.

I agree with you. I do find your choice of word "decency" troubling to me. Dress codes are often about control and shame of the poor and in a prison visitors lobby that seems about right. This seems less about decency and more about telling poor people their clothes are not nice enough for a prison which is kind of funny considering prisons are purpose built to be among the worst places in existence in our society.

Trashy is sort of a slur on the poor. Not trying to call you out or anything, maybe there's a better word that trashy aka saying a person is like trash.

Lots of prisons have dress codes for visitors of prisoners banning visitors from certain kinds of clothing. On the banned list of items, you will never see Burberry tweed or men's sport coats, but rather t-shirts, types of shorts or other clothes poor people wear (often called "trashy" clothing). It's about shame and control.

The link below shows a cross section of expensive designer fashion, exclusively for rich people. Almost all of it would be banned by prison dress codes.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=expensive+designer+fashion+runway&...

Now I'm just picturing catwalk models marching into a prison dressed like that. Like a scene from Zoolander. :-)

Too bad you can do encryption using pen and paper (even RSA).

Or playing cards! https://www.schneier.com/academic/solitaire/

Its easy for a guard to find pages of paper with uuencoded RSA keys handwritten on them during a random search, and then the investigation really gets started. However its hard to train every guard on every piece of digital technology that can theoretically contain data.

Found the guy who doesn't keep good accounting of his drug dealings while in prison.

I remember watching the Troy Kell documentary and how they mentioned him OD'ing while in solitary. His only contact was with the guards. That must be the problem with how he got the drugs while in solitary -- the guards are allowed to have graphing calculators.

This doesn't seem to be an entirely American phenomenon. Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the founders of PirateBay, had significant issues getting a graphing calculator for self-study in Swedish prison. Graphing calculators were apparently deemed a security risk.

https://file.wikileaks.org/file/anakata/13.1_GSW_09042013_AP...

We had one also in a low security facility. Random things always end up floating in when people transfer from camps to lows. For some reason at the camp we weren't allowed to have beard trimmers or fans. We didn't have AC so people would run out and smuggle in fans.. $250 just to have some minor comfort in the 95F heat :(

What'd they get you for?

Illegal operations.

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