He did. He said the children in Newtown's kindergarden and Columbine School were not killed with encryption. It is a pretty big difference. For a non-American this is a pretty good argument, IMO.
What nonsense. It's obvious what the parent comment meant. Law abiding gun owners by definition do not kill innocent children, just like law abiding people do not use encryption nefariously. Encryption and guns are both tools, with nothing intrinsically good or evil about them.
Yet law abiding gun owners were punished and had their rights stripped throughout most of the world on the pretense that it would somehow help stop crime, despite the quite glaringly obvious fact that criminals by definition do not care about following laws. Thus, only law abiding people are hindered. Criminals will still use encryption and guns, while law abiding citizens will be rendered unable to defend themselves, either electronically or physically.
I find it amazing that I need to spell this out for you.
Further to this, the reality is politicians who want to undermine information security don't give a damn about protecting their citizens/subjects. That's just the excuse to make the poison pill more palatable. What this is about, and what gun control is about, is right there in the name: control. It's about having a monopoly on security and force, so the populace will be less independent and easier to manage. At the very least, if you make enough things illegal you can jail whomever you like, because at some point it will become impossible to avoid breaking the law. The US is already there.
We've already seen government agencies in the US targeting specific political groups. I don't follow politics in other countries much but it would hardly surprise me if that happens elsewhere. It certainly has throughout history. How far will that go this time? No matter what side of the aisle you're on, it should frighten you, because the tool you use on your enemies when you're in power--and any tool you create to beat them up more effectively--is then available for your enemy to use on you when you inevitably lose power.
I find it shocking how many people who clamor for electronic freedom and an uninterfered-with internet are perfectly happy to cede their rights and independence in other areas to the government without so much as a grumble. Learn from history, FFS.
>I find it shocking how many people who clamor for electronic freedom and an uninterfered-with internet are perfectly happy to cede their rights and independence in other areas to the government without so much as a grumble...
This is absolutely the most shocking thing I have come to notice recently, which just shows that these people have reasons spoon fed to them from somewhere, (knowingly or unknowingly) and have not really thought it through..
What I feel is that the while modern society feels not susceptible to the evils,oppressions and exploitations that were prevalent 100 years ago, while most people were poorly educated, this seems to be just a fallacy. And educated people can be manipulated just as easily by feeding them some kind of "reason" and selective "statistics" from certain "reputable" sources or authority.
Uh huh. Have you studied the genocides of the 20th century? How does a disarmed and helpless populace look in those circumstances?
And since you think the government should be trusted to mete out all force, I'm certain you'll have no trouble handing the government all your passwords and keys, right? Maybe mail them a copy of your car keys and house keys too, since they're so trustworthy?
You trust them to protect your physical safety, to protect your life, if you're willing to hand over your right to self protection. Surely you then trust them with your data and property?
> And since you think the government should be trusted to mete out all force, I'm certain you'll have no trouble handing the government all your passwords and keys, right? Maybe mail them a copy of your car keys and house keys too, since they're so trustworthy?
> You trust them to protect your physical safety, to protect your life, if you're willing to hand over your right to self protection. Surely you then trust them with your data and property?
I don't think that's the same thing at all. I trust my parents with my life, but I wouldn't want them to read my online conversations. They don't have a key to my house, nor the passwords to my computer and various accounts, and I'd like to keep it that way. I see no contradiction here.
> Have you studied the genocides of the 20th century?
Have you?
Before Hitler came to power, the Weimar government was destabilized by - among other things - a latent civil war between armed paramilitary extreme-left and extreme-right groups. Hitler himself relied on such groups (from the right) to stage his first attemt to come to power via a coup. Even after he got elected, the groups were a cornerstone of his power.
The only purpose of a gun - a handgun in particular - is to wound and kill people, something civilians have no business doing. That's not the case with encryption.
I've used a handgun to signal for help, to find lost people in the woods in Alaska, to hunt, to scare away bears, and for fun. And on a few occasions, I've been very glad to have a handgun with me stateside, because I came quite close to needing to use it to protect myself. Fortunately I was able to negotiate those situations without using force.
Are you a pacifist, incidentally? Can you really think of no valid reason why a citizen might need to wound or kill someone?
Guns used to be tools, but they aren't in much of the US. That doesn't mean they can't be, but they aren't used as tools, so they've lost a lot of their value.
Would you please not do flamewars on HN, regardless of how wrong or irritating some other comments are? We're really trying to avoid the downward spiral here.
The analogy is flawed, and the final sentence is condescending.
All things in your list have an inherent physical danger. Neither encryption nor cryptography are themselves dangerous, they're a means of encoding some other thing which may or may not be dangerous into something whose danger cannot be determined.
Imperfect analogy, but crypto is more like a safe than anything you list. An ensuing argument is, we need to regulate (crypto) safes not because they are themselves dangerous, but because their contents might be.
The means of encryption-decryption, code, is considered free speech (Bernstein vs U.S. 9th Circuit, and Junger v Daley, 6th Circuit). Thus far crypto is itself protect, but the usage of crypto is an open question.
With a real safe, police with probable cause can get a warrant, and forcibly gain access to the safe and see the contents. This isn't possible with crypto if the key owner refuses to cooperate, and why there's the ensuing problem of sanctioning the person for contempt of court when ordering access and they don't cooperate.
The dispute has nothing to do with analogies though, it has to do with a power transfer. Crypto permits some transfer of power from the sovereign to the individual. And that has altered the social contract. It's done. And now after the fact we're trying to sort out the consequences of that power transfer, and whether or not the sovereign gets to reign it back in, and how. And that's unanswered.
> If we could restrict the use of encryption by the bad guys without compromising it's use by the good guys
oh, don't you worry, the politicians will do it anyway, with much public support, and then you will sound like the crazy, paranoid one arguing for military grade assault encryption in the hands of the dangerous, villainous public.
edit: i see you deleted the part i quoted. makes sense. cognitive dissonance is a hell of a thing. feels like razor blades in the mind!
This breaks the HN guidelines. Accounts that are uncivil and flame others eventually get banned, so would you please (re)-read the following, and abide by them? That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Another thing we're trying to avoid is the generic ideological tangent: that's when a topic with something specific in it (Australian government current encryption plans) gets diluted into topics like "pacifism" and "genocide", about which no HN thread has anything new to say, but plenty of people will get agitated and sucked into battle. This is the reason why the guidelines say: "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."
I doubt encryption does anything all by itself. And apparently, encryption-using terrorists--who would be violating the law if such laws were in place--do kill children. Manchester, you know, it just happened. Nice. Berlin. Stockholm. Pretty soon, it'll just be a "name the city" game where the only question is how bad the most recent terrorist attack they suffered was compared to the rest.
And just as gun control laws do precisely dick to stop criminals from committing their crimes--because laws aren't magic, and they don't bend reality to make guns disappear as soon as the law is signed--encryption laws will be just as efficacious at stopping terrorists from using encryption. Like some wannabe martyr gives a shit about a fine he'll never pay and time he'll probably never serve in some resort prison?
Why do you assume people embrace "personal car culture" just because there's a lack of public transportation? People like having their own vehicles. It's freedom and independence.
Even if I lived right on a bus line, and my workplace was on that same line, I would still drive or ride a motorcycle to work (or bike, if it was close enough I suppose). I got well over being on the bus's schedule by my senior year of high school and I have no interest in going back to that.
I do absolutely agree we need more remote work options but that's up to employers, and they don't seem to like the idea much in general, so... not holding my breath.
This is why I assume people embrace it. Is it really freedom and independence when 90% of your time spent in the car is in traffic to get to work and home?
Freedom to me is not wasting 5-10 hours a week on getting to work, unpaid. Even if that means sacrificing my 'freedom' to drive around the countryside on weekends.
I don't see how having a long commute somehow diminishes the benefits of having a personal vehicle. For most people, having a personal vehicle means, partly, being able to live where they want instead of having to choose a home based on accessibility to public transportation, or alternately, to be able to take a job that may be lucrative but totally inaccessible by public transportation. A personal vehicle offers a good deal of flexibility and antifragility that I think you're ignoring here, given the way the real world is set up.
And perhaps all you do is drive around the countryside on the weekend, but that is hardly the only use for a personal vehicle. At least half the really interesting things I've done in my life would not have been possible without my own vehicle.
Make a facebook group for your neighborhood if you want, I suppose.
There's no way I'm loaning out my tools, equipment, or anything else I own except to people I trust very highly. I like my possessions to A) be readily available and B) in good working condition when I need them.
A reputation system might help alleviate those concerns; it might even result in your tools being better maintained. I've never tried a car-share, but the general idea seems legit.
The primary motive for you to join, would be the opportunity to use the best specialized tool for every job, every time. If not even that would convince you, then you must have a truly awesome lab/workshop, and therefore you are out of our league, so to speak. Congratulations on your success, I hope to see your work on Youtube.
There's a difference between belonging to a sort of tool club, and paying with both time and money to keep things going well, and loaning out my personal possessions. I've been thinking about joining a local makerspace specifically to get access to large tools I don't have space for right now, and I have no problem with that idea. That's no different from joining a gym, in principle. (That doesn't mean I prefer using communal tools. I means right now, that's what's best for my situation. Once I have space, I absolutely will be buying a lathe, mill, etc.)
However, there's a clear difference between that and loaning out my personal equipment. I would never belong to a car share because my car is an intensely personal possession. It doesn't sit bare and empty when I'm not driving it--I keep things in my car--and I never want it to be unavailable to me. And the same goes for my tools. Even something as simple as a ladder or a socket set is personal, when it's something you selected and bought yourself.
I wonder how many mechanics you know? Machinists? Other skilled tool-using professionals? Ask some of them how they feel about loaning tools sometime.
Yes, I wouldn't be loaning out my Bergeon lathe, but maybe the 99% of people who aren't machinists might be willing to contemplate loaning out their $30 aluminum step ladder to their neighbor for an afternoon? Or maybe not, but I'd be interested in trying it out.
I'm not speaking hypothetically. I have loaned many tools, and many other possessions, to people in the past. Other people rarely treat my possessions with care, and sometimes they can't be bothered to return them unless I badger them. If I loan you a tool, and you not only don't return it in good shape and in a timely manner but make me come get it from you, I'm certainly not loaning you anything else.
There are certain things I just won't loan. Books? Hell no, unless they're textbooks. If I think someone would enjoy/benefit from reading a book, I'll buy them a copy. Tools? Probably not, unless it's about my third spare and I don't care if I lose it--and I'd probably just give it to them then. Vehicle? Maybe, depending who they are, but I'm more likely to just give them a ride. And of course, that's the thing, isn't it... I'd rather help someone myself than just hand them my gear and wish them luck. And I have done so many times in the past, though I am becoming more selective about who gets my time.
Liability is not to be ignored either. Loan someone a ladder they're too clueless to use properly and you might find yourself getting sued. Besides the fact that I don't want someone else wandering off with my $300 Werner multiposition ladder--sorry, I don't have a crappy ladder I keep around just to loan out--the thing is not exactly foolproof to use. 16 feet off the ground is not the best time to realize you didn't lock the pivot correctly. I wouldn't let someone whose competence I was not sure of just borrow a chainsaw, motorcycle, or firearm either.
FWIW I don't like borrowing things myself either. I've broken friends' possessions before and even though I fixed/replaced them, it's still an awful feeling breaking someone else's stuff.
Here are some opinions and experiences related to loaning tools, if you're interested:
It's interesting that the 2009 thread had a lot more people who were happy to loan tools, and who had good experiences doing so, than the 2017 thread. That mirrors my experience with loaning things to and generally helping people over the last decade.
Yeah, this is all academic. What I am thinking of is basically a clean-room redesign of human civilization with little or no large vehicles, permanent structures or large population centers.
But, our bikes will need parts, and I am not willing to give up my laptop...
I don't think anyone really knows. The vehicles haven't been around long enough to understand what long term maintenance looks like regarding any aspect of the vehicle.
People throw numbers around regarding cost for things like replacement motors and battery packs but as far as I can tell nobody knows how much that stuff actually costs either except the manufacturers, because the replacements so far have been done under warranty. That may not be true for all current-gen EVs though; I've mostly been paying attention to the Tesla stuff.
Yes, but the number of species extinctions skyrocketed due to human behavior. Natural habitats are being chopped down, nature is being forcefully controlled and developed in certain ways and global problems like man-made climate change are threatening a vast amount of species on this planet.
Humans aren't the only species destroying other animals' habitats for their own goals, but they're the most destructive one by a great margin. To make matters worse, humans possess the means and should have the common intelligence to find a better way. But instead of working together and saving the planet with all living creatures on it, humans are too busy fighting wars in an attempt at imposing domination on others.
Being poor is expensive, indeed. Most people don't realize that until they experience it. If they ever do.
If you never have much surplus money, you can rarely if ever do the things that save money in the long term. You can't invest in good clothes or household goods that might cost twice as much, but last more than five times as long as what you can afford, for example. You can't buy a freezer and stock up on food when it's on sale, or cook large cheap meals and freeze them to free up time later. Often, things like good benefits from banks and credit card companies are simply not available to you. Et cetera.
Obviously things like being unable to afford preventative health care and sort of health maintenance stuff like checkups and new glasses and so on can lead to much more expensive problems down the road. "Noncritical" health services like dental and vision are big things there. It's not like you can get a root canal or new glasses at the ER.
And it's very difficult to fight back against mistakes other people make that screw you over when you have few resources on hand. Problems with your bank? In my experience, if you have money a bank is a lot more likely to help you than if you're poor. I was treated a lot better when I had thousands of dollars in the bank than I am now, when I'm scraping by. And that's if you can even open a bank account at a reputable establishment at all. That is not a given.
Then there's renting vs owning property. Owning property isn't for everyone perhaps, but if you're handy and don't need to pay a professional to do everything the house needs, it's a lot cheaper to own than rent. Plus there's the general freedom you have on your own property vs rented property which opens all kinds of doors for saving money or just better quality of life in general.
Having money means you have the freedom to live very frugally by making smart choices and thinking long term. Not having money in the bank, free to spend on the right investments and opportunities, makes that enormously more difficult. And it's only getting worse with time.
We should do nothing, because while interesting, this is a nonevent. Parts of that article are wildly exaggerated or outright incorrect, trying to make this sound like some big deal. It's really not.
Sometimes in nature, things happen quickly. Look up glacial surge, for example. Just because a river dried up basically overnight because it got beheaded, it doesn't mean there's some global catastrophe playing out. It just means the glacier receded to a point where the terrain favored the other branch.
The irreplaceability of the ice cores is why in my opinion, an independent backup refrigeration system (without common points of failure) is a necessity, along with an independent system that can isolate the primary chillers and activate the backup system should the primary chillers misbehave.
An emergency refrigeration system that works with consumable cryogenic material (say, dry ice or liquid nitrogen https://hackertimes.com/item?id=14127835) would be totally feasible and utterly inexpensive compared to the tragic costs of these cores melting.
I don't know the state of readiness of phase-change materials with appropriate transition temperatures (would need to be lower than -40 C) but if such a material exists, it'd work as well.
So I just learned my suggestion of using LN2/CO2 in an emergency refrigeration system isn't something I came up with -- LN2/CO2-powered backup refrigeration is in fact a standard option on ultra-low temperature freezers (the kind that get used to store biological samples and stuff):
Given that it's commercially-available on freezers that get used to store critical biological material, there is no reason that a sample vault that stores irreplaceable ice cores can't have a similar, scaled-up version of this as well.
Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm grinding through stuff I know exactly how to do, but can't automate away, I find having something like people talking or an audiobook I know well running in the background actually helps me focus. It occupies just enough of my mind that I don't feel tempted to get distracted by the internet.
I have a whole range of preferred noise depending on the task, from dead silence for hard, tricky problems up to what I just described for easy but important detail work. I even know exactly what kind of music I want to listen to for different tasks, and whether or not I want vocals in it.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to what works for people.
