declan

Let's not forget about Microsoft's Techpolicy.com, which it describes as "a forum for academics." Note this is not funding, say, basic research in computer science; it's a pure policy focus.

I'm not sure if this would also count as "bankrolling friendly academics?"

I don't mean to single out Microsoft; I suspect many large companies do the same. And maybe the practice is defensible in principle--if academics get grants from Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur and other organizations with a pro-regulation focus, maybe companies should give grants to fund work skeptical of regulation?

The FBI's apparent courthouse or near-courthouse tapping took place in California. If you placed microphones in random public places in CA, the question would be whether there's an expectation of privacy in a conversation that took place in or near those places.

If someone does have an expectation of privacy in public (which does not necessarily seem clear to me), you would be engaging in unlawful surveillance. Whispered conversations in public may be protected. The language used by CA law is: "circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded." See: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&gr...

In CA, video recording laws are more liberal. That's why you see surveillance cameras all over the place in cities (and increasingly in residential suburban or rural neighborhoods as well).

It's true that the NYT pulled (or dramatically rewrote, close enough) an article claiming: "The attackers are believed to have communicated using encryption technology..." You can see the original version here thanks to Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20151115191248/http:/www.nytimes...

But then the NYT doubled down on the terrorists-and-encryption angle in a separate story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/europe/encrypted-mes...

Which says in the second sentence: "Obama administration officials say the Islamic State has used a range of encryption technologies over the past year and a half, many of which defy cracking by the National Security Agency..."

HN discussion of that second story is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10579201

Thanks! That MV police blog post says the traffic officer stopped the car to "educate the operators about impeding traffic per 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code."

That section of the vehicle code says, emphasis added: "No person shall drive upon a highway at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, unless the reduced speed is necessary for safe operation, because of a grade, or in compliance with law." https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c...

If Google's self-driving cars are limited by law to 25mph, and the car was not exceeding 25mph, then it was "in compliance with the law" and 22400(a) doesn't apply. It would be allowed to impede or block traffic, even if we human drivers would really prefer it to be going 45mph.

Thanks! Good luck with Svven. It's an interesting approach and different than the path we've taken with Recent News.

I just went to the site and was about to try it but saw Svven wanted permission to: "Post Tweets for you."

Is it possible to use Svven without granting you permission to post on my Twitter timeline? I have a policy of not granting apps or services such permission, so I stopped without testing it. :(

If there's a way to tweak the permissions I'll give it a shot!

Wait, you're calling a DeCSS gallery that has been cited (favorably) in multiple legal briefs and sworn testimony in federal district court "irrelevant technical wanking?"

Just wanted to make sure we're talking about the same thing, counselor. :)

This reminds me a little of [edge|base|corner] cases in programming. It's easy to handle normal parameters. But if you're at or beyond the limits of expected parameters, then what? If you ignore [edge|base|corner] cases, you run the risk of enacting a bad law.

So if a government wishes to restrict encryption, does that mean criminalizing only the distribution of commercial products with strong crypto? Or knowing possession of them? How about if you distribute free software? Possess free software? How about distributing an algorithm that's printed out? On a t-shirt? Set to music? In a sonnet? On a blackboard in a math lecture?

A crypto-ban proposal discussed in the U.S. Congress stopped short at targeting possession, but did target "import[ing]," which presumably would include downloading from an offshore site:

"It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for distribution, distribute, or import encryption products intended for sale or use in the United States..." http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr108p4&dbna...

>Sort of like making a fire is trivial

Yes, but demonstrating the practical difficulty in trying to regulate 102-byte sequences that can fit on a T-shirt (or in a tweet) has a utility of its own.

It's what Prof. Dave Touretzky did in the case of DeCSS, which got shrunk down to 434 bytes when implemented in C: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/

Thanks for your interest! Prismatic made a beautiful app but took a very different approach toward recommendation. They tried to build, as I understand it, their own social commenting layer on top of news--an effective competitor to Twitter and Facebook--and encouraged linking with social networks. We experimented with the latter in an early version of Recent News but discarded it in favor of a user-focused approach that doesn't require social linking (and isn't as prone to bad recommendations if your friends' interests are different from yours).

In any case Prismatic is no longer updating or supporting its iOS and Android apps. Techcrunch reported in July that Prismatic pivoted to B2B and is trying to make money like Dataminr by selling access to its APIs.

>I wonder if anyone is building an app that recommends articles that provide a variety of perspectives different from your own.

When building Recent News (https://recent.io/) we considered adding the options of seeing news from perspectives both similar to and different from your own, at least as we understand them based on your usage.

We didn't do that. It turns out in early testing that users liked seeing a broad range of articles. For instance, a pro-2A voter might want to read a Salon.com article talking about how firearms should be banned--just to share it to argue how wrong it is! Or an anti-2A voter might be interested in a Fox News article talking about repealing anti-gun laws, if only because it reinforces how nutty those conservatives can be. (It also added more complexity when our goal was an MVP.)

The current version of our iOS+Android app includes a personal tab that is unique to you based on what we believe your interests to be, and a Hot News tab that is not unique to you. Neither filters by perspective, and not one person has requested that feature in the weeks since we launched--the feature requests have included things like dark theme, offline mode, text resizing, etc. instead.

Well, yes, but HN often links to blog posts and news articles about a court opinion rather than the opinion itself.

A summary (that links to the opinion) tends to be more useful to non-specialists than a document beginning with: "United States of America v. In the Matter of the Application of the United States, No. 3:2015mc00021 - Document 1 (N.D. Ill. 2015)"

Silver and gold and other coins, without serial numbers, have existed as a store of value for far longer than pieces of paper or linen with serial numbers.

People have used anonymous money in the form of coins for millennia. It wasn't until the 1860s that the first one-dollar bill in the U.S. was printed with serial numbers. For ~95% of the time that money has existed, it has been what you would call "truly anonymous."

If you go back to pre-coin history and use weights of silver as opposed to minted or hammered coins, you're looking at maybe 153 years of serial numbers vs. about 5,000 years of non-serial numbers. "Truly anonymous money" is the historic norm; the current situation with numbers printed on paper/linen/plastic is something of a historical aberration.

Not only are you right, but Google realized you're right. They've removed some of the overdone animations--tap on some of the buttons on iOS Hangouts and you'll see. And the color blocks aren't quite as searing anymore (didn't the original version of the spec call for FABs in a contrasting accent color, like bright yellow?).

I view the YouTube iOS app as a good example of the direction Material Design is headed; it's even dropped the hamburger menu, which was a big part of the original spec.

>Admittedly it might look a bit out of place on iOS

Since last year, Google's iOS apps have gradually adopted more and more elements of Material Design, including the color palette, the app bar menu, the MD iconset, the floating action button. And they typically remain best in class; it turns out that Material Design works well on iOS too.

(Note Google's implementation is not necessarily consistent--just look at the different button tap effects for Calendar vs. YouTube on iOS. Sigh.)

We've also borrowed MD concepts for the iOS version of our new app (https://recent.io/) without user complaints.

What struck me from the FAQ is this:

"Flutter is optimized for 2D mobile apps that want to run in both Android and iOS. Apps that use Material Design are particularly well suited for Flutter."

Which means that, if Flutter succeeds, iOS users should expect to see more and more apps built using Google's Material Design language. It's already happening for some of Google's iOS apps--the floating action button in Calendar, Hangouts, Photos, Docs, the iconset in most of their iOS apps (Gmail and Chrome are partial exceptions), etc.

In other words, Material Design is making significant inroads into iOS. But Apple's design language isn't doing the same in Android world.

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder of Recent News (https://recent.io/), and we borrowed some Material Design concepts for the iOS version of our app.

You might like a pair of CNET columns I wrote 13 years ago calling for a PAC for tech issues:

http://www.cnet.com/news/is-it-time-for-a-geekpac/

http://www.cnet.com/news/perspective-dont-get-mad-get-even/

I interviewed Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, for one of the columns; whether you agree or disagree with him, he's an able advocate for his issues. Here's what he said:

"One of the most important things the tech industry can do is a rating," Norquist says. "Every politician in this country wants to tell you that he's tech friendly...Pick 10 or 20 issues and give ratings. Then people who say they're tech friendly but they're not--there's a cost to that. You as a tech group don't have to advertise that. The candidate running against that person will promote it. It certainly puts the lie to some people running around who say they're tech friendly and don't have the records to back it up."

I also wrote some Perl code to scrape Thomas and create tech voting guides for Wired and CNET with an interactive Javascript map. Unfortunately I think the Wired one has died in a redesign, and the CNET one no longer works either. :( http://www.cnet.com/news/technology-voter-guide-2006-grading...

I'm not sure why you were downvoted for a reasonable post citing original sources (I upvoted you to try to correct that).

I expect I will disagree with you about the desirability of CISA, just as we disagreed years ago about CISPA, but enjoy your posts on the topic nevertheless. They make thoughtful and reasonable points. Even if you end up on the wrong side. :)

I never used Google Maps Engine myself, so I'm not really familiar with it. But it looks like Google was trying to consolidate and improve its paid maps offerings, not discontinue them:

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2015/01/google-maps-... The move should be seen as Google transitioning customers to already existing alternative products, especially Google My Maps (formerly Maps Engine Lite) which has come of age and now has most of the important features of Google Maps Engine

A better example would be if Google were to discontinue its paid Google Maps API?

It would not be a surprise if this is true and Facebook was lobbying for CISA. Facebook supported an earlier version of the bill called CISPA; here's a letter on Facebook letterhead saying we "commend you on your legislation": http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/f...

And here's an article I wrote for CNET in 2013 about Facebook's earlier position(s): http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-unfriends-cispa-cybersecur...

But before condemning Facebook, let's at least confirm that the allegations are true. As evidence, BoingBoing gives us a Fight for the Future webpage, which says: "We've gotten information that Facebook is secretly lobbying..." (https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/) There are no details in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3q1kgl/facebook...

On one hand, Facebook is one of dozens of tech companies that are members of CCIA, which has criticized CISA in its current form. (https://www.ccianet.org/2015/10/ccia-urges-senate-to-improve...) On the other hand, CCIA's positions do not necessarily reflect the views of every member company on every issue, and Facebook has endorsed an earlier version.

Unless there's more evidence than an advocacy group's "we've gotten information" claim, let's give Facebook a chance to reply before assuming the worst.

Well, it's testimony to a lawmaking body. Congress drafts laws, not technical standards; the FBI is there to talk about laws. :)

If you keep reading, you'll see the FBI is not demanding new encryption-related laws "at this time."

What popular paid service has Google terminated? Any?

We built our recommendation engine for Recent News (https://recent.io/) on Google App Engine in Python. There was some tricky engineering involved in making sure that it would work inside that particular environment, but it's paid off in terms of scalability. We're not worried about Google shutting down App Engine; in fact it's being continuously improved.

It's at the bottom of PDF page 3--search for "encryption."

Excerpt:

Unfortunately, changing forms of Internet communication and the use of encryption are posing real challenges to the FBI’s ability to fulfill its public safety and national security missions. This real and growing gap, which the FBI refers to as “Going Dark,” is an area of continuing focus for the FBI; we believe it must be addressed, since the resulting risks are grave both in both traditional criminal matters as well as in national security matters.

Well put. We tried to take a very privacy-protective stand when building Recent News (https://recent.io) because of the amount of personalization we do. This warrant canary is part of our privacy policy:

As of [date], we have not received any legal process or demand from any federal, state, or local government that includes a gag order. We have received no National Security Letters, civil subpoenas, search warrants, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders, grand jury subpoenas, or any other form of compulsory process accompanied by a gag order.

As of [date], we have received no legal orders requiring us to monitor users' future activities or to modify our service.

If we do receive any form of compulsory process from any government entity, we will do our best to ensure that our users' legal rights and privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are protected. That includes challenging overly broad orders in court.

It is still valid, I'm happy to say, for [date] values of today.

This is mostly good news. A few thoughts:

* The FBI-NSA-etc. axis already tried to ban nonescrowed crypto. This was in 1997, when far fewer products relied on it, far fewer people used the Internet, and far fewer groups mobilized to oppose it. If even that effort failed, this one was likely to fail as well.

* Excerpt from that 1997 proposal, which was actually approved(!) by a House of Representatives committee: "It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for distribution, distribute, or import encryption products intended for sale or use in the United States, unless that product..." http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=hr108p4&dbna...

* I disclosed in 2012 that the FBI had drafted a proposed law to require backdoors; that legislation was never introduced, even as a placeholder. My 2012 article: http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites... Of course the FBI's bill could be kept in reserve to become Patriot Act 2.0, just like the FBI-NSA-etc. axis had EPPSCA in reserve, which morphed into Patriot Act 1.0 a month after the 9/11 attacks, as I wrote about here: http://www.cnet.com/news/how-bin-laden-and-911-attacks-shape...

* If the legislative approach is now off the table, as the WashPost piece indicates, look for the FBI-NSA-etc. axis to try more creative approaches. "Oh, you want that $2 billion government contract? You want your new device to be FIPS 140-2 certified? How about that merger or FTC antitrust review? Environmental reviews? Trade? Taxes? It sure would be a shame if things didn't go your way. Maybe you can help us and we'll help you..."

This is why it's worth supporting groups like EFF (I donated last year and need to again before the end of this year). They provide a moral argument that counters that of the Washington establishment--and also provides guidance for tech firms when they're faced with challenges like those above.

The NeXT cube was often faster in perceived UI speed than my 2.3GHz MacBook Pro (this was after the 68040 upgrade). And the dock was more intuitive because it could be dragged into your desired position. And application menus were more useful because they could be detached.

27 years after its original introduction--color came maybe 25 years ago--and NeXTstep is still looking pretty good.

Ah, nostalgia! I still have a NeXT cube and monitor in my home office.

[a] Journalists using Zillow's site would likely be viewed as personal or editorial use, not commercial use.

[b] Bloomberg probably worked with Zillow.

[c] I'm not sure EFF would be interested in this. It's pretty standard TOS language, and when EFF did get involved in the Craigslist/Padmapper case, it was (correctly) interested in stomping on idiotic CFAA theories of liability and the exclusive license point. If Zillow tried to strongarm journalists, that would be a different story, but they have not done so as far as I know.

Background: I was a journalist before founding https://recent.io/ and would often get approached by companies like Zillow to write about what their data showed.

I suspect these kind of articles would be more useful if they were written by or summarizing advice by former CEOs who were in a similar position (multiple companies, lots of stress, regulatory uncertainty).

I just wrote this about how we're handling ad blocking with our news recommendation engine startup and the iOS version of our news app: https://medium.com/@declanm/the-right-way-to-block-ads-on-ne...

TLDR: We're enabling reader view, but not by default.

In terms of the linked article's prediction--"disable/enforce the removal of ad blockers is...futile"--I don't think that's the case. There already are ad-blocker-blockers and probably ad-blocker-blockers soon too, if they don't already exist. This arms race is only now starting in earnest.

One possibility is you'll see news organizations rely more on sponsored content for revenue, with disclaimers about sponsorship only in the fine print. Offhand I believe Wired, Buzzfeed, VentureBeat, TechRadar, ReadWriteWeb, and Android Authority run sponsored content already; even The Atlantic did, though there was a fuss about it.

More broadly, think of it as a piracy problem: You probably don't care if <=5% of your potential customers pirate your product--they're probably the folks with the least disposable income anyway. Some people are probably still using lynx to read news articles (not that there's anything wrong with that). But you do care very, very much if ad blocking becomes sufficiently mainstream that 50% of your users are "pirates."

Yep. I love the performance of Tesla's cars, but a humble minivan already has (far less attractive) sliding doors with very large openings.

To be fair to Tesla, Elon Musk did address this around two-thirds of the way through his presentation yesterday, saying "when the minivan door is open I can't even get through that space." I suspect he'd also say the Model X's doors provide a vertical opening in addition to a side opening, which can be useful for adults in the second or third row.

On the other hand, I've driven a Honda minivan quite a bit and I can't think of any times when I couldn't squeeze through the available space when the minivan door was open in a parking lot. So there is a bit of solving a problem that may not be very much of one.

Let's say that political polarization is in fact increasing since 1996. But there's this little thing called the Internet that went mainstream that year -- and had a far bigger impact on yet another cable TV station (that was not even available in major markets in 1996).

Also I can think of plenty of other causes that are equally or more plausible than the ones cited by the authors:

* MSNBC launched in 1996.

* 1996 presidential election, hotly contested because Democrats wanted to take back the House from the GOP (did not succeed) and Second Amendment advocates were alarmed because of 1993 and 1995 anti-gun legislation. There was the 1996 FBI white house files controversy, Clinton signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, etc.

* Drudge Report launched in 1996 (followed by Lewinsky scandal in 1998).

Though I think greater access to alternative media via the Internet, no matter what your political persuasion, is the most likely cause of greater polarization. You no longer had only ABC|NBC|CBS and your local newspaper and radio station. Republicans now had Drudge, Democrats had MSNBC.com, socialists had wsws.org, libertarians had Cato.org or Reason.com, etc.