declan

> The user reset questions were socially engineered

Yep, you're right. My point, perhaps poorly stated, is that if Random Hacker X can figure out the answers to the iCloud reset questions, so can a law enforcement agency. Then they can log into that account. Impersonating someone this way is legal -- or at least has not been ruled to be illegal -- as long as it's done under court supervision under the Wiretap Act or similar legal authority authorizing prospective surveillance.

Possibly related: I disclosed last year that the Feds have demanded that major Internet companies divulge targeted users' stored passwords, and in some cases the algorithm used and the salt: http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-tell-web-firms-to-turn-over-us...

But "iCloud does not encrypt data stored on IMAP mail servers" or Notes

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865

If you're an iOS user who becomes the target of an investigation by a law enforcement or intelligence agency, remember your data is likely unencrypted in the cloud. So if your device is inaccessible, your email, your location history, your text messages, your phone call history will probably remain accessible. Apple acknowledges, for example, that "iCloud does not encrypt data stored on IMAP mail servers": http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865

[Edited because it now seems unclear which Apple policies have changed.]

Discussion thread for the actual Apple policy is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8333595

I'd be more concerned about something like this robotic machine gun, which is designed to do nothing but kill humans efficiently:

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/09/samsung-sgr-a1-robot-sentry... "$200,000, all weather, 5.56 mm robotic machine gun also sports an optional grenade launcher... identify and shoot a target automatically from over two miles away... robot will not distinguish between friend or foe..."

I've spent a few hours talking with Peter, and he talks in well-formed thoughts in well-structured sentences. A lot of other people, probably me included, wander a bit verbally. Peter doesn't.

You can see a transcript of a conversation I had with him here: http://www.cnet.com/news/talking-tech-with-peter-thiel-inves...

> This is where a purely libertarian position tends to run into trouble

You're right that outlawing free markets -- such as banning Politically Unpopular Drugs -- can cause problems for free markets. :)

Similarly, if selling books becomes a crime, and you buy books on the black market, it may become more difficult to verify claims about the paper used in the printing process coming from renewable resources. The problem lies not in the claim about renewability, but in the underlying book ban.

Perhaps we can conclude from this that processes relying on free markets may not work as well if markets aren't free? Remember that libertarians != anarchists; I've never seen a libertarian marching in the streets against laws in their state or province designed to prevent fraudulent claims about fair trade coffee or renewable forests.

Ah, that makes a bit more sense. But I've never heard of anyone calling AT&T or Verizon or Comcast a "platform" that a developer might choose to build a business on.

BTW even if you like the ideas of Net neutrality, it makes sense to look very carefully at the methods of bringing it about that are being proposed at the FCC.

Daniel Berninger at VCXC.org earlier this week put it better than I could:

"The communicating public needs a 'voice' in the future of communication, but expanding FCC authority over IP networks via Title II does not achieve this goal.

"First - Internet access is not 'slow' - we near a one million fold expansion of bandwidth from the days of 300 baud modems.

"Second - The advocacy for FCC regulation reflects a theory of regulatory virtue not achieved in practice.

"Third - New regulation of IP networks threatens the Moore Law driven forces responsible for progress to date."

>That the government should regulate those peoples' platforms?

I take it you're joking: https://www.google.com/search?q="regulate+twitter"+site%3Ane... No results found for "regulate twitter" site:news.ycombinator.com.

The conventional wisdom around HN nowadays, as I understand it, is to be wary of building your business on someone else's platform. Lots of companies in the Twitter (and to some extent FB and Craigslist) ecosystem have found this out the hard way. The Apple ecosystem too, if you include app store shenanigans, as some wallet makers learned during the bitcoin interregnum.

I don't recall a lot of people here demanding a Federal Bureau of App Store and API Software Licensing and Regulation. Besides, if it existed, the FBASASLR would ban bitcoin wallets even more aggressively than Apple did. :)

I think the article's author is right and that there could easily be high-end market shift from Android at the margin. On the other hand, Android Wear watches are already shipping, Google voice search is better than Siri, Google Now is kinda magic, Material Design is a very nice unified design language that is arguably better than iOS, and Android Auto could take off.

(By way of background, I'm working on developing http://recent.io for both iOS and Android. Currently I switch between an iPhone 5 and a Nexus 5 and expect to buy both the iPhone 6 and the Nexus 6/X rumored to be coming out this fall.)

>with the iPhone 6 Plus (a very Microsofty name, it must be said)...

Except for the Apple II Plus, the Mac Plus, the LaserWriter Plus, the Apple IIc Plus, the Apple III Plus[1]... In reality I'd say it's a very Appley name! :)

[1] Yes, there actually was such a critter: http://support.apple.com/kb/TA31434

Even after spending far too much of my life covering the Microsoft antitrust trial for Wired, I don't actually know whether that's the case or not. I don't think anyone does.

The original order, if I recall properly, would have created Microsoft Hardware with Windows/phones/TV boxes/handhelds/etc., and Microsoft Software with Office, IE, BackOffice, Outlook, etc. Note this predated the Xbox, Bing, etc.

Maybe it's true that Microsoft Software in this alternate universe would have turned to the cloud earlier than our MS did, but remember Microsoft Software was still pretty much desktop software with the exception of MSN (remember that?). Maybe Microsoft Hardware would have done a better job with mobile devices. Or maybe we wouldn't have seen devices like the Xbox or Kinect without those cross-business subsidies, and the Playstation wouldn't have any real competition today, and there would be less search competition without Bing and the MS money flowing into Yahoo, etc.

Really too many variables.

>Microsoft antitrust trial was Gates' deposition testimony, which, when presented in court, made the judge laugh out loud

I was in the courtroom when that happened, and you're right. My Wired article at the time said that "Gates gave narrow, evasive, and definition-twisting responses..." http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1998/12/16589

What follows is a side note to Mark Cuban's point, but it's about Bill Gates and this is HN, so indulge me for a moment...

What we should also remember is that Thomas Penfield Jackson, who heard the case, was a preternaturally biased judge, very anti-Microsoft and pro-DOJ, who brought sympathetic journalists into his chambers during the trial for private chats likening Bill Gates and other MS execs to "drug traffickers" and "gangland killers."

The appeals court properly slapped Jackson down and handed the case to a different (and unbiased, as far as I could tell) judge: http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/02/42071?cur... http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/06/44886 "rampant disregard for the judiciary's ethical obligations... comments were not only improper, but also would lead a reasonable, informed observer to question the district judge's impartiality..."

If you're a smart, biased judge you'd presumably forego the cheap shots of laughing aloud in court and taking potshots at Bill Gates in chambers -- then go as far as you can in your final opinion. But Jackson proved to be a dumb, biased judge, which actually worked in Gates' favor when the appeals court reversed the order that would have carved up Microsoft into multiple pieces.

I was at the original iPhone launch for CNET, and there was a lot of stress, as you say. But watching Steve Jobs unveil it was a magical experience, and it also was very much a perk of the job.

My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving to create http://recent.io/) is increased competition for readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct, especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually paying for a print subscription to MacWorld?

Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the 1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.)

I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures that make it less competitive against these upstarts.

Some of the ex-MacWorld journalists who are freshly unemployed are looking for jobs, so if you know of anyone who's hiring in this area, I'm sure they'd appreciate the pointer: https://twitter.com/PhilipMichaels/status/509752573763407873 https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/509749300683735041 https://twitter.com/danfrakes/status/509756139831975936

Three thoughts:

* Asset forfeiture abuses by police have been going on for at least a generation. Here's an excerpt from House Judiciary testimony by an African American gardener who dared to carry $9K in cash in 1991 to buy plants at a nursery. He had it all (surprise!) confiscated by cops. The fact that it's been 23 years and the abuses are worse, not better, is telling. https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/statement-rep-he... And here's a note I sent to Politech on the topic back in 1998: http://www.politechbot.com/p-00023.html

* Contrary to some claims in this thread, there are reasons to transport significant sums of $10K+ in cash. Contractors, tree removal companies, landscape installers, grading/excavation firms, etc. can charge that much for work and, I'm told by my SF peninsula neighbors who have had work done, often offer cash discounts. (Which means, of course, both the homeowner and the contractor would be transporting large cash amounts sequentially.)

* I suspect that governments would, to a first approximation, prefer that their own citizens engage only in traceable, trackable, non-anonymous electronic transactions with closely regulated financial firms. This is already happening: cash now represents only 14% of dollar payments by value. Though my favorite example in this area is this proposal that bubbled up inside the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; I wrote about it for Wired in 1999:

http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121 "The magnetic strip could visibly record when a bill was last withdrawn from the banking system. A carry tax could be deducted from each bill upon deposit according to how long the bill was in circulation... Systems would have to be put in place at banks and automatic teller machines to read bills, assess the carry tax, and stamp the bills 'current...'"

Without taking a position on whether I think <MCRed> is right as a policy matter, you're responding to a different point.

<MCRed> is arguing (admittedly in a rant-y kind of way) that the U.S. Constitution is a document that grants limited and specific powers to the federal government and reserves the rest for the states and the people. That argument says those powers do not include the ability to regulate money exchange. An implication of that argument is that nearly all law enforcement would be left to the states -- so your hypothetical sex slave ring would be prosecuted by the states, and in fact every state currently has a law on its books making such a conspiracy illegal. And in fact most criminal prosecutions are already done by state governments.

Again, I'm not saying what I would prefer as a normative matter, just that it looks like you're talking past each other to some extent.

I have no affiliation with Engadget (in fact, I've spent over a decade working at competitors to Engadget). But I've found that it makes sense to evaluate news organizations' output on an article-by-article basis. Even the best news organizations can screw things up on occasion, and even excellent reporters can be assigned derivative stories by their editors.

The article-by-article approach is what http://recent.io/ uses in its pipeline, which is working very well in testing so far.

More to the point, this looks like a perfectly decent story and an engaging read. The writer even managed to avoid being snarky about Samsung trying (sigh) to second-guess John Carmack!

> they dish out the tax breaks equitably

A tax break by definition is something that's not dished out equitably. :) ("Favorable tax treatment of any class of persons" is how Wikipedia describes a tax break, which sounds about right.)

What you're describing is the opposite of a tax break. One example would be across-the-board tax relief such as lowering income taxes or property taxes for everyone, whether they're in an industry favored by the current politicians in office or not.

>Wouldn't be the first time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Thanks for reminding folks about the Bonus Army. This was a sad day in U.S. history.

But remember the Bonus Army did not revolt. It was, I believe, a peaceful protest. The firepower came from the other side, when Hoover and MacArthur decided to send in the regular army (so much for the First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances). I wonder how U.S. history would have turned out differently if the Bonus Army veterans actually had been armed and defended themselves against troops that were attacking them and their families with bayonets...

Nowadays, especially after the Gun Control Act of 1968 and additional restrictions under Bush 1.0, the the disparity in armament between civilian vs. military is a bit greater.

>what with government penniless and gridlocked

Um, the U.S. federal government will be spending something like $3.4 trillion in the fiscal year beginning at the end of this month.

That's pretty much the exact opposite of truly "penniless."

As for gridlocked, sure, it's going to be difficult for the Dems to expand Obamacare, and it's going to be difficult for the GOP to repeal Obamacare, so by that crabbed version of "gridlocked" the author has a point.

But in reality, you'll see 99% of appropriations bills (measured by pages of text) over the next few months become law with enthusiastic bipartisan votes. You'll see the NSA's budget increased for next year by an enthusiastic bipartisan vote. You'll see the number of new federal regulations expand every year with no outcry from any U.S. senator of either major party. Etc.

That's pretty much the exact opposite of truly "gridlocked."

On a more HN-relevant point, the author's suggestion of fixing the VA is something that needs to be done by the Feds, not an app. They created these serious, systemic problems for veterans and they're the only ones that have the legal authority (and responsibility) to implement a fix. The WSJ has been writing for years about sensible plans for VA reform but nobody in D.C. seems to be listening.

I spent some time (>18 months ago) testing PhoneGap for potential use with what would become http://recent.io/, but PhoneGap was too slow on actual devices to be usable. Launching a "Hello, world" app took something like 30 seconds on an iPhone 3GS. Maybe hardware speed increases have helped to fix that problem.

I haven't tested Ionic, though the Creator utility looks promising. Do you have any experience in how well Ionic interfaces with native APIs, like Twitter/Facebook on iOS and sharing on Android? And how do Ionic-built HTML apps perform in terms of speed?

Here's an excerpt from the Mastercard press release with a few more details:

"MasterCard has pioneered large scale card schemes that combine biometric functionality with electronic payments and we want to capitalize on their experience... enrollment process involves the recording of an individual’s demographic data and biometric data (capture of 10 fingerprints, facial picture and digital signature)..." http://newsroom.mastercard.com/press-releases/mastercard-to-...

I wonder how Americans would feel if the U.S. government teamed up with Mastercard, devised a similar biometric ID card -- and required all U.S. citizens to obtain one to drive, pay taxes, get government benefits, vote, etc.? (I also wonder what "demographic data" referred to above means, and whether it means everyone's religion will be encoded on the ID...)

I've spent 10+ years paying close attention to lawyer nastygrams to security researchers and academics, and that's exactly the type of language they would use. But as you say, perhaps I'm being too cynical in this case.

The article says only "Hearthstone team" and "they," which is ambiguous, especially given Blizzard's history in this area.

The interesting thing to me is what exactly Blizzard Entertainment said that prompted the author of this blog post (a Google research lead) to decide not to release the utility that at Defcon he said he would.

Excerpt: "Following Defcon we had a series of conversations with the Hearthstone team about our research... they were very concerned that our real time dashboard that can predict your opponent’s deck will break the game balance by giving that person (that is, whoever has the tool) an unfair advantage. They also expressed concern that such a tool..."

There's no evidence his utility was derived from reverse engineering or a TOS violation. It appears to be based on evaluating a large number of Hearthstone matches and using those results to create a mathematical model that lets you find "undervalued" cards. One application of the model is a utility that can help to predict "what your opponent is going to play based on previous turns." https://www.elie.net/blog/hearthstone/how-to-appraise-hearth...

Blizzard has taken aggressive legal action before. As EFF tells it, Blizzard filed "a DMCA lawsuit against a group of volunteer game enthusiasts who created software that allowed owners of Blizzard games to play their games over the Internet. The software, called "bnetd," allowed gamers to set up their own alternative to Blizzard's own Battle.net service." https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca

This time, I wonder if the decision not to release the utility was prompted by a friendly query from a Blizzard developer or a C&D nastygram by a Blizzard attorney -- with a lawsuit threatened if he didn't comply.

I know other folks active on HN actually work in the insurance industry, and hopefully they'll jump in. But there are different types of life insurance. For most HN readers term life insurance (pay $100 a year for 10 years for $150K in death benefits, and then the policy ends) makes the most sense. There's no "cash out" at the end...

There are other types tied to investment vehicles that go by names like universal and variable life insurance. Those can have certain tax advantages and can let you build that "cash value" you mentioned.

>if you can afford it, the upside is potentially far more beneficial than the downside

I looked into this in some detail a while ago, and I recall Alcor indicated that many of its members opt for life insurance (with Alcor as a beneficiary) to cover the cost of cryopreservation. That's something like $75K to cryopreserve your head, and $150K for whole-body cryospreservation.

I suspect the mean age of HN readers skews toward late 20s or early 30s, meaning that they'd likely pay something like <$100 every year for $150K of life insurance. Also many of us have some form of life insurance paid for by our employers.

I updated my will last year with the help of a SF bay area attorney who told me she's done cryopreservation wills/trusts for a bunch of high-profile tech execs (she did not, of course, name names). Email me if you want her info.

This is sad news, but less sad than a funeral and cremation would have been. I met Hal in the 1990s via the cypherpunks list, where a young Julian Assange was also hanging out. Hal went on to work for PGP Corp. in its glory days, and was involved in the early stages of Bitcoin as well. He is (not was!) the consummate cypherpunk and extropian.

A lot of those discussions have been lost to time, but here's a note from Hal that I posted to Politech in 1999 where he warned against building surveillance backdoors in Internet standards:

http://seclists.org/politech/1999/Oct/24 "If the IETF sets the precedent of acceding to the wishes of countries like the US and Europe, it may find itself forced to similarly honor the desires of less open societies."

And here's Hal responding to one of my Wired articles by pointing out the absurdity of the MPAA's claims against Napster:

http://extropians.weidai.com/extropians.1Q01/3833.html "Looking at it over the history of Napster the amount would have to run well into the quadrillions. Surely this would be the largest legal claim in history! I wonder if the record companies can present this figure with a straight face."

I'll miss Hal. At least there's a very slim, but non-zero, chance he'll log back on again.

I'd point you in the direction of Carl Malamud, Jim Harper at the Cato Institute, and EFF, probably in that order. Jim's made it a project to liberate government data; Carl's gone further and made it his life's work.

Inside Congress itself? Hmm. I'm spending my time working on http://recent.io/ and now paying close attention nowadays. But if you're local to the SF south bay try Rep. Lofgren? I've done some Q&As with her and found she's one of the smarter and well-informed members of Congress on tech policy issues.

Nobody doubts there's a serious drought here in California, but those "before and after" photos (2011 vs. 2014) are misleading and likely show seasonal variance.

I can find photos predating the "before" images that make Lake Oroville look like a parched wasteland: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518597 http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518170 http://www.panoramio.com/photo/17518629

Those were uploaded in 2009 (the camera used was announced in 2006, so that's a three-year window).

Yes, there's a drought. Yes, 80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. But not accounting for seasonal variation in a state with a dry vs. rainy season doesn't do the argument justice.