enko

To the person who replied quoting the Economist about democracy in Japan, then deleted their comment - thanks for the link. Well yes, on a superficial level, I suppose democracy is kind of healthy in Japan. It sort of misses the point though.

Japanese Govt, like that in Singapore and South Korea, is characterised by the extreme strengths of their bureaucracies. It would be fair to say that the Japanese Diet, their government, is basically a peer to the JR railway company or MOFA. Imagine if in the USG, all the departments basically operated at the level of the DoD or Dept of State - frankly at the same level as congress. Congress can declare war on the DoD, sure, but would only do so under the most dire circumstances. In practise they cooperate.

Well, in Japan, that's how it is. Basically, the government could probably, if it came down to it, fire the heads of the bureaucracies, but it won't come to that and never has. They are peers for all practical purposes. They are like competing departments in a large corporation. You might think that is a recipe for wastefulness and corruption, and you would be absolutely right, but in a crazy sort of way they keep each other honest, somewhat, and it's better than Fox News making all your decisions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some fanatical Japanophile - I don't even live there anymore. But man, at least they can get at least some stuff done. In the west we could not even dream of having a 50-year high speed rail plan. Just think about that. What does that say about us? Look, we're not a dystopia, but we're still basically coasting on past success. The car is still moving, but it's slowing down. Maybe we ran out of gas, or maybe we're so caught up in fight about which way to drive we can't even put our foot on the accelerator.

Corporations that lose the ability to invest in or even think about the long term go out of business. I don't believe countries are any different. We are going to have to change, radically, or we'll simply be taken over - it's only a matter of time.

If you look around a bit you'll find a lot of people who are rather bearish on democracy as practised in the first world west - professional politicians with no real world experience, being voted in by the cynical, uninformed masses, propagandised by bought and paid for mass media. Democracy has collided with the middle class and a free press concerned only with their own interests and come off second best - bitter, entrenched political paralysis at best. Like unions, it was a wonderful idea at the time, but now the cure is basically worse than the disease.

Frankly, the age of democracy is over, and we now have the age of the permanent civil service. The good news is, it is almost certainly an improvement. China, Japan and Singapore are run exclusively by their civil services (democracy in the latter two is an irrelevant sideshow), and they are run much better than most western countries, or at least with more long term strategy. In fact, pretty much everything wrong with Japan can be blamed on the idiot government trying to save face by not admitting reality. The USA would be pretty well served, IMO, by taking control of budget away from congress and giving it to - well, almost anyone. The GAO, maybe. The Fed, the SEC, the commerce dept, anyone, so long as they're not elected. Being accountable to the electorate turns out to be the worst idea ever for people who are actually trying to do their jobs. It means never being able to admit you're wrong.

I don't mind if they keep parliament/congress around for show but they're going to go the way of the Queen of England - a figurehead, kind of a sounding board for the people, a super-ombudsman. A hundred years from now we're going to look back and wonder how we ever could have been so mad to think that giving politicians the reigns of power could ever have been a good idea.

> why do they always happen to always be inaccurate on the bad side these days?

Well, an obvious factor is that there is a huge incentive to under-estimate for anyone with an interest in the project's green light. The cheaper a project looks on that initial paper, the more likely it will be approved, and if/when it goes over budget, what are they going to do? Cancel it with the tunnel half dug?

It's a political/societal problem of poor economic ideologies, lowest-bidder pricing and misaligned incentives, coupled with a low aversion to - or even understanding of - economic crime.

And it's by no means limited to these mega-projects. I know a certain software company who specialises in winning contracts by low-balling the price, expecting to argue it up later when all sorts of "unexpected" issues arise - those same issues the losing bids allowed for. Pretty much the same game.

Ironic that I couldn't quite get my point across, after complaining about misuse of language!

This point has been belaboured far more than it deserves, but for the record I had in mind both the cynical management with their ludicrous, condescending job titles, and any employee naive enough to believe it.

The blogger in question didn't make up the phrase, it's been handed down to him, but he's taken it up with gusto. He's sort of an enthusiastic consumer of the management BS. I hadn't thought of the angle of criticising the poor hard-working minimum wage Subway employees; wasn't my intention. Think Gareth/Dwight from The Office though, wearing his Sandwich Artist badge with obnoxious pride, and that's sort of close.

Anyway, more words have been wasted on this matter than ever it deserved...

It seems pretty obvious to me that some variant on the vacuum maglev train is the long-term solution to travel on Earth. It's the only way, really, to get past the air problem. I doubt we'll ever see mass supersonic transport - a far riskier and more inefficient game of fluid dynamics russian roulette.

It's not going to happen overnight, though. We're waiting on a few technological breakthroughs before it becomes viable. Fully automated robotic tunnelling and construction, for one. Automated manufacturing of those robots. Much improved materials science, probably nanotech-enabled. But when these technologies come, it's inevitable that we build such a network.

The time isn't right for vactrains but it will be eventually. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed - and this particular future has been creeping forward for literally centuries. Give it a few more decades and we'll see the real hyperloop!

Good research, thanks. Had no idea it was that old!

I am actually heartened to see it appears to be a politician's fad. Hopefully in 20 years time it will be about as potent as "radical".

Nonetheless, that doesn't put a damper on my nerdy inclination to point out, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Don't understand what point you're trying to make.

This is an informal comment forum, so I prefer to structure my sentences as I would informal speech. That means comma splicing and lots of it. What would you have written?

I wasn't shitting on people who work at Subway, I was shitting on their awful, condescending job titles.

And I really just have to ask you to think about what you said.

> Languages change, bud. No amount of bitter internet comments will stop that.

Yes they do. Society changes, too. Companies change. People change. Countries change, laws change. (Oops, another comma splice).

I could re-use your comment to put down any criticism of any change of any kind. Just play around with some issues you care about, replacing the word "Languages" to suit. Feel any different?

Yeah well until it's in Oxford it doesn't exist.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/yolo

Yeah, brought to you by the same type of people responsible for http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally

Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration”

I know the language is being debased. Doesn't mean I like it.

> It’s the optics that matter.

Oh really? Refraction and reflection of light, the study of same - that's what matters is it?

Of course not. You mean appearances matter. Name-dropping some physics-sounding word does not make you sound smart, it makes you sound confused and wrong. Optics means optics. It doesn't mean whatever you choose it to mean.

Deliberately misusing words doesn't make you sound cool, it makes you sound like a "Sandwich Artist".

It's not a very good phrase, since "greatest" means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. You could plausibly say that about almost any country - everyone has something they're "the greatest" at.

To be fair, though, I reckon that there was a period in time in which the USA did seem to be holding the generally accepted global flag for "the country that's doing things right". Not perfect, but the USA had a much better reputation than it does now for generally having its shit together and moving in the right direction.

Cracks started to appear in the 1970s, I'd say, and the edifice had completely crumbled by the mid 90s.

It's just all so bloody transparent.

Russia gave Snowden asylum so we hate them now. Obama will still come to the party but he's not going to talk to the birthday boy. You suck Russia! Nerrr!

We're best friends with Sweden now! They raided the pirate bay and ginned up some charges against Assange that almost worked! Sweden's our friend! We're going to Sweden's house!

It's just incredible to me that with all their trillions of dollars, awesome militaries, mighty departments of state and the best advisors money can buy - the actions of these superpowers are basically indistinguishable from the machinations of a high school "popular kids" group.

And I wonder what countries like Sweden actually get, or don't get, from bending over for the USA like this. There has to be something. What's the carrot and/or the stick?

Putin is by all accounts an awful man, a cynical, manipulative politician, a misogynistic, bullying, egotistical prat, but geeze, it's good to see someone, just one head of state, tell the USA where to go. Masterfully played, too, politically. Just when Russia should by all rights be an absolute pariah with its disgusting attacks on homosexuals - they've finessed themselves into the role of protectors of free speech and whistleblowers, darlings of the techno-elite set everywhere. Masterful.

I think you'll find that the presence of effective, competent governance is pretty strongly correlated with the availability of both food and jobs.

You missed my point, anyway, which is that your comfortable notions of a safe, orderly society will go right out the window once the economy breaks down, which it would if you removed the framework in which it operates, which is basically indistinguishable from government.

"Any society is only three square meals away from revolution"

I agree. Russia's perhaps the only country the USA would have serious reservations about going into. Maybe if it was some unknown defector or something .. but Snowden? My god, I can't even imagine what would happen.

China would probably be the only credible alternative, but the govt there doesn't really have the right attitude to give someone like Snowden asylum.

Let's toss in "no jobs" and "no food" to add a little pizzazz to your thought experiment.

I was astonished to see a graphic in the youtube buffering article indicating that dropbox handles over 1% of the internet's upload traffic:

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sandvi...

That is an astonishing amount. Almost 1/3 of Youtube! I knew they were popular but I had no idea it was that much.

As opposed to building this thing, filling it (perfectly) with ultra-high-power resonant soundwaves of the precise characteristics, and flinging in shuttles and hoping nothing goes wrong? I don't know, the evacuated maglev is sort of sounding like the safe, easy option?

The reason evacuated tubes are expensive and difficult is because of the tube, not because of the evacuation. Once you have a great big tube, reducing the air inside isn't going to be that big a deal. You don't even need to get rid of all the air, just maintaining 90% vacuum would be fine, you could whiz down there at 1000kph as easy as kiss my hand.

Anyway, I'm not a physicist, I am just wondering if people have a full understanding of the forces involved flinging stuff around at 1000kph+ in an enclosed space at full air density. It is some serious shit. People are comparing it to aeroplanes, but at sea level it would be 3x the shockwave a plane has to deal with. High speed trains in Europe and Japan already match or exceed the air-displacement issues faced by airlines - and that's one third the proposed speed of this device. I don't know, man. Sure, in ideal circumstances you might be able to engineer some low drag trick. Still sounds like unicycling along the edge of a cliff to me. Near mach 1 in a fully pressurised tunnel? Dear christ.

Ah, I see. That's an interesting idea. Sounds impractical - if you're going to do all that engineering work, might as well just get rid of the air in the first place - but cool concept.

It does on HN : P

Well, the acoustic idea wouldn't solve drag at all. The craft would still have to move through air.

Like most titles that end with a question mark - "no". Why would you use some kind of acoustic wave system over tried and true maglev?

A CEO is carrying 5 phones on his belt so he can save a few pennies using same-carrier free calling? What, does he have those 5 numbers also printed on his business card?

Some very doubtful assertions here.

> FBI cracked 512-bit disk encryption in a recent case

Very hard to believe that they brute-forced 512-bit AES. More likely they guessed, or otherwise located, the key, or found some implementation flaw in the software/device.

> don't even need to work that hard. They can just grab the keys in transit.

If and only if they have the private key. Which, I concede, they may well be able to get.

> Third, with a MITM attack, you can just drop in a box that makes SSL connections on both ends transparently

No you can not, not without installing a cert on every single user's machine. This would have been noticed if it was going on.

I admit that now I think about it, putting taps on DC data connections and simply requiring sites or the DC to provide any and all private keys would be substantially less invasive/visible than actually putting taps into the building, and with basically the same effectiveness (except for the PFS thing).

Looks pretty good to me!

http://www.aircanada.com/en/travelinfo/onboard/comfort_intex...

> I scored a non-stop Air Canada flight in Executive First, from Sydney to Vancouver for only $1,200

Excuse the french, but how the fuck did you do that?

If I could travel SYD-YVR first class for $1200 I'd probably go every couple of months if not more.

s_q_b, you are hellbanned. I can't reply directly.

I don't really believe the NSA can effortlessly break TLS at will. That just seems too far fetched. What kind of alien supertechnology do people suppose they have?

I prefer Occam's razor. If the NSA are interested in XYZ.com, they'll just go to XYZ.com's DC and put a damn traffic splitter on their network. There wouldn't be too many XYZ.coms before they covered a huge majority of the kind of traffic they're interested in.

Sure, they'll do the backbone listening as well, just because they can, but most of the time I don't see why they'd bother. Sure they could lose the authorisation. An asteroid could hit the earth. In the meantime...

edit: s_q_b's hellban seems even less justified than usual.

edit 2: nice work removing the hellban, mysterious admin person. Was not justified.

> needs to have a travel document in order to claim asylum

> they simply have to arrive and claim asylum

In order to arrive, he needs the travel document.

Sorry. I am evidently not explaining myself well.

I am saying that people seem to be putting a lot of trust into HTTPS to shield them from NSA monitoring. If I was the NSA, and could just tap whatever I wanted, I'd obviously set up my tap on the other side of the encrypted tunnel.

And let's not exaggerate. Only a very few organisations would have any ability to read your data even if sent unencrypted, barring of course wifi. It's simply not true that "any/everyone" can see your data if you're on a private LAN at home.

That being said, of course I prefer HTTPS. I just have no illusions that it's going to stop someone who can just waltz into the DC holding an NSL. There's no security from someone with physical access to the network.

> you're in the company's network

Yes, of course. What's incorrect?

I'm just saying that if you have unlimited ability to make secret tapping demands from whoever you want, you might as well make it easy for yourself and just go straight to the source.

Hm, I think the HTTPS thing is overblown for sites that are hosted in the US. Almost no large sites do HTTPS termination on the actual app servers; it would be the simplest thing in the world to put the collection device behind the HTTPS endpoint.

Why bother trying to piece together data flows over a bunch of disparate backbone networks when you can just hook up a collector at the wellspring? I'd sure they'd be delighted to be able to tick off that whole company as "done", and set the verizon taps etc to ignore anything to them, secure in the knowledge they were getting it all elsewhere.