Secret compartments | Hacker News Reader

Secret compartments

boston.com

83 pointstimf17 comments

Content aside, surely I'm not the only one annoyed by having to click 7 times to see the whole "article"?

You mean the 'business model' of "annoy the piss out of site visitors for sake of more ad views"?

Well, it's one approach to trying to rescue the Boston Globe from death.

...one destined to lead to online (as well as on-paper) death - in my humble hope.

For those genuinely engaged in something covert, texts like this (or like this: http://www.loompanics.com/Underground_Economy/underground_bo...) are for learning what not to do. Your enemy (whoever it may be) also knows how to read.

So once all subterfuges have been published, no subterfuges will work any more?

In a world with a finite number of spies, most spies are not being watched by other spies at most times. And spies assigned to watch a particular target spy are generally less highly trained than the target. Simple tricks to avoid attracting attention from casual observers are still useful.

> Simple tricks to avoid attracting attention from casual observers are still useful.

Correct.

And methods such as molding cocaine into faux PVC pipes are not, precisely because they are interesting/memorable and end up documented in customs agents' handbooks.

I'd be curious to hear any real-life stories behind slide #3 ("Patterns in shoelaces can carry messages").

Do they mean can as in theoretically? Because I could also theoretically carry a message based on myriad other things as well.

Seems like you'd have to get really, really close to a person to be able to read their shoelaces for the patterns in the second and third images.

They might just be patterns for predetermined messages. So they are probably very distinct patterns.

My shoelaces cross over each other four times in each shoe. Using the different directions of crossing, that's eight undetectable bits. You can do a lot with eight bits.

But read subltle differences in shoe-lace patterns after a glance and cross-reference with the list of meanings? Hard. They'd just look like a mess to me. I suspect that the most you can get out of it reliably is about 2 bits, so four signals, including one zero state meaning "no message".

That's what training is for. To the untrained eye it may seem hard to distinguish.

Anyone have any other cool James Bond tricks?

Spy on BBC was addicting to watch. Among other things you learn is that if someone is tailing you, there are two others tailing you (for redundancy).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_(TV_series)

Folding paper to make it smaller: is this really a magic trick? I mean I know it gets harder with every fold, but it's not really that cool.

I think the trick was folding it with one hand

Yea I noticed that, but still kind of trivial.

True, but it'd be a neat party trick, along similar lines to shuffling a deck of cards in one hand.

I suppose, but only if one does it really, really fast.

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