[1] https://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html

This has got to be the most surprising encryption-related comment I've ever read from you. Please tell us what you're thinking about VeraCrypt. What would you say about TrueCrypt v7.1a, the last known good release?

Quite the opposite in the case of TD Bank. They sued Plaid in 2020. “The bank said in the court filings that the Plaid interface dupes consumers into believing they are entering personal information into TD Bank’s trusted platform.” (They settled in 2021 without explaining the terms of settlement.)

https://financialpost.com/news/fp-street/td-bank-files-lawsu...

I don’t understand how anyone is OK with this. It goes against every security principle and it’s against the terms and conditions of every bank.

I realize that almost no bank provides a secure and proper API to get info and/or to transfer funds, but Plaid’s solution is a disaster waiting to happen.

The only significant barrier is that it's not condoned by the medical establishment and by law (which I imagine will indeed take a few years to work around).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46980841

Points: 52

# Comments: 3

I'm going to nominate this as a candidate for the Mandela Effect (or at least that things can truly disappear from the web without a trace). I'm curious if anyone else here on HN actually remembers seeing this site at one time?

The word "revenue" above doesn't sound right. Did you mean "ad impressions", "clicks", "visits", or something else?

If the bot traffic is giving you 40% more revenue, well that's excellent news, right? If it's revenue, then keep doing it.

Can you imagine the chaos of completely turning off GPS or Gmail today? Now imagine pulling the plug on something in the near future that controls all electric power distribution, banking communications, and Internet routing.

McKittrick: General, the machine has locked us out. It's sending random numbers to the silos.

Pat Healy: Codes. To launch the missiles.

General Beringer: Just unplug the goddamn thing! Jesus Christ!

McKittrick: That won't work, General. It would interpret a shutdown as the destruction of NORAD. The computers in the silos would carry out their last instructions. They'd launch.

But I find it funny that we can prevent expensive highly-targeted individual bugging by using a ubiquitous worldwide realtime tracking and surveillance system (a smartphone!).

- Induce your target to apply for a certain credit/debit card, gym/movie/gallery/store membership, airline pass, then mail them a bugged card

- Blindly mail a $100 gift card to your target along with a plausible sounding cover letter about why they are receiving it

- Give your target a badge to wear when they are visiting your office so you can hear and see what they do when they're not in your presence

- Leave your bugged card on the table while having dinner with your targets at a restaurant to hear the conversation while you go to the restroom

- Substitute one of the targets legitimate cards with a bugged card via covert entry at the target's home or office

- Obtain the cooperation of the target's employer or health club to swap their usual ID card for a bugged ID card

- With the cooperation of the target's bank or credit card issuer or insurance provider, send the target a replacement card or "upgrade" card which is now bugged

- Issue a bugged driver's license whenever the target goes to renew their license. Or send them a fine by mail to force them to visit the driver licensing office and then invent a reason to reissue the target's driver's license when they visit

- Whenever someone applies for or renews a Global Entry, Sentri, or Nexus card, issue a bugged card if they are on the target list

(West Germany was the Federal Republic of Germany.)

  Afghanistan
  Belarus
  Central African Republic
  China
  Congo, Democratic Republic of 
  Cuba
  Eritrea
  Ethiopia
  Iran
  Libya
  Mali
  Myanmar
  Nicaragua
  North Korea
  Russia
  Somalia
  Sudan
  Syria
  Venezuela
  Yemen

They don't accept the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the Republic of Congo is OK. There are indeed two Congos with ridiculously similar names, and apparently the one that calls itself democratic is the bad one.

Anthropic is fine with Taiwan.

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/supported-countries (They give two lists, one for API and another for Claude.ai, but the lists are identical.)

I bet some readers are thinking that the developer that caused this tragedy retired with the millions he earned, maybe sailed his yacht to his Caribbean mansion. But the $300K FAANG salaries and multi-million stock options for senior developers represents the last decade or two. In the 1980's, developers were paid poorly and commanded little respect. The heroes in tech companies that sold expensive devices were the salesmen back then. The commission on the sale of a single Therac-25 probably exceeded the developer's salary.

All of the following would indicate that this developer, no matter how senior or capable, was still a low-paid schlub:

- It's Canada, so automatically 20% lower salaries than in the U.S. (AECL is in Canada, so it's a good bet that the developer was Canadian.)

- It's the 1980s, so pre-web, pre-smartphones, pre-Google/Amazon, and developers had little recognition and low demand.

- It's government, known to pay poorly for developers. (AECL is a government-owned corporation.)

- It's mostly embedded software. Even though embedded software can be incredibly complex and life-critical, it's the least visible, so it's among the lower paid areas of software engineering (even today).

For 1986, I would put his salary at $30-50K Canadian, or converted to U.S. dollars at that time would be $26-43K U.S., and inflation adjusted would be $78-129K U.S. today. And no stock options.

Of course, any AV company could add a rule to their signature checking to undo the XOR if they were targeting the romhack.ing site, but it sounds like they aren't being targeted but just getting caught up in the dragnet.

If we project long term, could this mean that countries with the most capital to invest in AI and robotics (like the U.S.) could take back manufacturing dominance from countries with low wages (like China)?

The article left me with a nagging question: Doesn’t the designer of the codes deserve a share of the proceeds of the auction? He’s still alive according to Wikipedia. It sounds like the unsolved code is what makes the art especially valuable. Was the cryptographer’s effort a “work for hire”, so he doesn’t get anything from the sale?

But the articles don't say that. They say that a lot of plastic is unsuitable for recycling and is therefore incinerated or dumped, like into a landfill or a big dirty pile of trash on the ground. Not one of the articles said that the plastic was being dumped into the ocean.

One of the articles makes an observation about beaches and ocean around one Cambodian recycling town covered with plastic trash. Certainly a careless and dirty operation there. But even that article doesn't claim that their modus operandi is to dump it into the ocean.

If those journalists had any evidence that ocean dumping was the goal, or even if they suspected it, then that would have been the highlight of the article and they would have said so explicitly. It would be a newsworthy scoop even.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champernowne_constant