Or maybe that'd have been the sort of project and standard CISA would have formerly done before the Republicans gutted it last year I guess, and this is just another symptom of rot? But yeah to your point technology certainly can absolutely help with this sort of thing. It's not some inevitable act of nature.

If this was written 20-25 years ago sure, but in 2026? Wild.

...what?? Are you ok with murder and theft as well and whine about how laws against that limit your freedom and are "tyranny"? It's a pretty basic tenet of any groups of humans that's it's fully compatible with freedom to have limits on the extent to which people can cause harm to others. As with all complex dynamic things there are very debatable shades of gray at the edges, but total anarchy objectively does not work.

And it's a fundamental to a functional Free Market that costs be internalized, not externalized. Producers and consumers determine value and generate wealth by comparing the total price of production to the utility offered, but that only works if (amongst other things) the sticker price really is the total price (or at least quite close). If a producer is able to stick their costs onto others then their product will be artificially cheap even if they are less efficient, which will warp the market. That's what we are seeing in energy: fossil fuel producers are dumping cost (in terms of, global warming, ocean acidification, and other forms of pollution) onto the present and future world that they don't have to pay, artificially depressing the cost and alternative solutions that would be net more productive. We could for example be far along on the path of wind and solar power, with enough excess to generate net neutral synthetic hydrocarbons using atmospheric CO2 and water that could then be used in applications like jet engines where they might remain superior.

But the whole point is the market would then be able to determine that naturally, the cost would be built into the price so where and when syngas vs electric vs whatever else provided the best value could emerge. That's not "tyranny", to the extent there is tyranny in the market it's in allowing selfish actors to ruin other people's lives with pollution and preventing those harmed from retaliating.

I'd be unironically delighted if you could point me at some site helping me find what I've been missing like a goof, because it feels more like the question is "what isn't missing from the PoE sensor market?" It's pretty niche isn't it, with what little there is available also being at enormously increased prices? Take something as simple as "is there water where it shouldn't be", isn't there basically just the Aquo Proteus XE at $350 and, I think maybe one other I can't remember? Surely there are some "call us for a quote" industrial gear too but it's not exactly the common case vs z-wave/zigbee/wifi. Same with pretty much whatever else one might name. Like, what if you want a semi-permanent motion sensor (not a camera), are there any PoE options at all? I think I remember reading someone working on an mmWave one to get it work with HA but that's it. And yes 100% you can say that it's "overkill" or the like but looking at DigiKey's PoE controller pricing doesn't seem like it inherently has to be a huge premium, just isn't anything mass produced.

I mean, it is certainly very arguable that the entire IOT market is and always has been sort of a total mess more than not, and that PoE switches weren't the $50/8-port affairs you can get now either until pretty recently. I totally understand why it's not a thing, I want to be clear this is more of an idle wistful "that'd be a nicer world" along with all sorts of other areas of tech. And I know there are PoE splitters so sometimes you can get roughly the same effect if something has ethernet+power separately. Wireless is also certainly sometimes simply the most sensible option. Just would be nice to have more options when it counted is all. I've dealt with enough odd spaces where it's a pain to get any signal in and even if it's only once every few years it still sucks to have to have somebody work their way in there to replace a battery and sometimes things randomly fritz out, makes one long for good ol' hard wire with super easy ways to just power cycle the switch and eliminate lots of complicated stacks of networking. Ah well.

Out of genuine curiosity, could you elaborate on this further, or share some sources I could read more on? I knew that was once the case, but my understanding was that significant improvements were made for the Maintain Power Signature (MPS) requirements with dual signature and PD standards in the 802.3bt update. According to [0], in the section on 145.3.9 PD MPS:

>"To further reduce minimum standby power consumption for PoE systems, Type 3 and Type 4 dual-signature PDs can make use of optimized MPS timings when connected to a Type 3 or Type 4 PSE, as shown in Figure 19. PDs assigned to Class 1 through 5 must draw a current of 10 mA for at least 7 ms with no more than 310 ms between pulses. This translates to an average power consumption of 12 mW per pairset, or about 1/10th (12 mW/ 124.6 mW ) of the Type 1 / Type 2 minimum pulse average power consumption."

So my assumption was that the spec had significantly improved on this front starting around 7 years ago? I mean, I'm aware that there can be a very, very great deal of lag time between specs and sufficiently cheap and developed new chipsets taking advantage, but I don't think that's the spec's fault either. In principle if the market was there (and yes, it isn't) the tech could meet it right? My extremely limited experience too is that typical wireless battery powered setups can be sensitive to heat as well in the few applications I've dealt with where it's significant, which makes me wonder if in practice in some cases it might be better to use an IR sensor aimed at a semi-closed or closed but air separated material with known (presumably as close to 1.00 as feasible?) thermal emissivity.

Still, there's lots of sensor use cases where it just doesn't matter, but it'd be nice to be able to hard wire+network on the cheap stuff that's very isolated from wireless signal and physically awkward to get at. I'm fully cognizant though that it's a dream unlikely to be realized, just a personal wish there was more PoE IOT stuff (and while we're at it with magical dream lands that it all had open fully local APIs and everyone worked on first class Home Assistant support and...).

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0: https://ethernetalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/EA_P...

My biggest immediately question though and one I'm a little surprised not see addressed, even at the research stage, is any mention of other animals. There is a bunch there about the ultrasonic frequency being well above the human limit of ~20 kHz. But IIRC for example dogs can hear up to like 45-60 kHz, and cats all the way to 65-85 kHz. I assume lots and lots of other animals also can perceive sounds well beyond human senses. Noise pollution is already a somewhat unrecognized but big problem for all sorts of life around us (not that it's irrelevant to human health either), so if more use of ultrasonics made that worse that's a concern. And as a practical matter the product market is probably going to shrink pretty dramatically if it drives pets mad, a lot of people have pets nowadays they care about a great deal. For that matter even in public environments if it messed with service dogs that might have ADA or equivalent implications.

Still, good reminder of various side channels one doesn't always think about.

It'll vary by state, in general I don't think so? Or at least not if (as apparently was the case here) they don't have anything preventing it in some contractual agreement. In some states a party can appeal to a superior court, but that's not a new trial redo, the judge simply reviews what happened and see if it looks reasonably kosher. If it was they still lose.

The big check on small claims cases is, well, that they're small claims. Nobody could go after a full refund for the cost of a vehicle there for example. If you look at the maximum amounts by state [0], in lots of them even the $10k here would be above the limit (Kentucky is still at $2500 max). My state also was quite low until fairly recently, just because there's no automatic adjustment for inflation and $2500 in 1980 went a lot further than now and state legislature hadn't gotten around to adjusting it up for decades.

And in small claims the winner can generally recover reasonable costs and fees on top of damages (as happened here). And it's 50 different states a company with a national problem would have to get separate attorneys for to deal with. It's one of the few places where the asymmetry is somewhat more towards companies, without any need for the plaintiff to get a lawyer themselves and given that they're almost always going to be physically much closer, it's just a lot more costly for a company to drag it out. They're not going to be setting any useful precedent vs any other small claims, and the max amount is small enough that it's rarely going to be worth it if their claims are weak. Someone angry enough to go to small claims is much more likely to stick to it through sheer bloody mindedness, which is basically all they actually need.

I think normally companies simply just don't create enough of a small claims problem for themselves for any of this to be more than a rounding error. Elon Musk may have somehow managed it though?

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0: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-h...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976969

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Yes, but also no? Because I think a reasonable argument can be made that ARM Macs are like game consoles with a more rapid generation: yes there are changes between each generation, but then you've got millions of units which are good for a very long time that are all near identical. Apple definitely is not changing everything between gens at all, work they've done for M1 has been plenty useful since. And support stretches awhile. The final M3 generation chip only came out about a year ago (the M3 Ultra for the Mac Studio was March 2025).

So sure there's ongoing effort needed for newer systems, and that may require ongoing RE more then typical. I don't want to brush aside the effort there at all. But at the same time there doesn't seem to be the same long tail of hardware variations and dozens to hundreds of players doing their own little tweaks either. Aside from memory and storage, every single Mac of a given SoC is the same so each time one gets covered they all get covered and are a stable experience. It's definitely a different thing then developing for PCs, and I definitely wish there was and support serious legal backing for no rug pulls being allowed, ever. Hardware owners should always have access to the root of trust if they want it. But that aside, I don't think their efforts are wrong or somehow wasted just because each new generation might need some new work. That doesn't appear from the outside to be intractable, and fact is the pace of hardware change for computers has slowed and continues to slow. A system from many years ago can still be very good for most tasks... so long as the OS can still be updated and work. Apple themselves seem more then limiting factor there, whereas Linux shines in long term support.

It's become a family favorite film we tend to watch each winter now. All ages can take something from it.

I mean, if "charges" is "full charge" and the battery pack does even 200 miles of range then that'd be 200,000 miles right? And more like 250-300+ miles seems like a spreading target as energy density ticks upwards.

Honestly that's more than I've ever put on any single individual car or truck I've owned, and well into the point where I'd be expecting to put real money into engine and other work for an ICE. Sure more is better but if a battery pack can go 200k-300k miles keeping 90% range that doesn't feel unreasonable at all for non-commercial usage. Taxis and so on with much higher utilization may find value in alternative options of course.

Assuming "you" here refers to US citizens, there are actually no such cases, because it is not true that we don't have any legal protection at the border. Quite the contrary! There are certainly cases covering how certain protections are reduced, but that's a long way from nothing. Most importantly and foundational, all US citizens have an absolute right to return at a land border crossing, even without any form of ID or the like. You cannot be kept out. Without appropriate ID it may take longer to verify you and they can check. If there's probable cause for a crime, or an active warrant, then of course they can arrest you, but that process then plays out domestically same as if you'd been arrested at home. They can examine and seize physical goods with cause, but you can then challenge that and ultimately get it back. But they can't keep you out, whether you voluntarily cooperate or not, and they can't arrest you without all the same domestic legal justification and process.

I don't want to understate that the amount of trouble and financial challenge that in principle border patrol can impose/get away with can be substantial for a lot of people. Someone might be in a rush to catch some connecting leg of their journey, or have responsibilities at home/work that are time sensitive. Not everyone by a long shot can afford to be without their phone/notebook/equipment for days/weeks/months. Not everyone can afford serious legal representation and the resulting time sink. Etc etc. But even so ultimately we do have legal protections that we can all make use of and can stand upon.

This is not true outside of a narrow exception. Indeed this is the core point of the 5th Amendment, to protect you from having to be witness against yourself. It's just as binding on the judicial branch as it is on the executive. Ordinarily, a court may not compel a defendant to testify or say something that could incriminate them.

The narrow exception is the "foregone conclusion doctrine", which allows compelling testimony about specific evidence the government legally knows exists, knows the defendant controls access to, and knows is authentic. All of which has a bunch of caselaw around it. The textbook example is somebody has a device open, and an officer directly witnesses illegal material on it, but before they can seize it the person manages to turn it off and now it cannot be accessed without a password. So the government can say "we witnessed this specific illegal material, and this device is owned by the defendant and we can prove from video that they have accessed the device, and we want access to that specific material". But if you're just crossing the border with a locked device, they cannot compel the password just to search through it, or even if they're suspicious of something specific. They need actual knowledge, either through their own evidence or because the person foolishly talks and confesses something.

Otherwise they can definitely physically seize the device for a time (which could be very inconvenient/expensive depending) but that's it.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787091

Points: 12

# Comments: 2

I don't think that's actually true, or at least is certainly cannot be taken for granted. Instead, it appears ransom has followed more of the path of Silicon Valley VCs:

.It sounds perverse but the incentives require it: if payment didn't bring resolution, no one would pay. As a result, all of the big gangs avoid scamming.

What you're describing is the expected Game Theory outcome over long periods in an iterated game. This works as long as the payment amount is towards the side of the potential payment spectrum, where each payment may well be decent money for the work the ransomers put in but not so much that they don't need new ransoms. The problem comes if/when the absolute amount of payment moves from "salary" to the "Exit"/"Retirement" side of the spectrum, ie, heads into what VC would call "Unicorn" status. At some level of money it reaches the point where the ransomers need never work again in their lives, it's enough money to get out of the risky business and live off of it indefinitely. It's now no longer an iterated game but a single game, and in single games defection can be rewarded. It no longer matters if reputation is burned, on the contrary it might be the moment to cash all accumulated rep in.

I think in general, both on the bright and dark sides, this sort of "phase change" in a given market space is worth trying to keep an eye out for because it can result in significantly changed behavior "out of nowhere" that can head in ugly directions very fast.

But the whole discussion here is whether or not it'd be theft at all. There is no breaking into computers or laundering involved here. And you're also now admitting that we're discussing US law as I was from the beginning, after trying to deflect to whatever rando country you're from as if it matters.

Well good then, I guess you don't have to worry about any of this so long as no American ever gets a quantum computer! Not like any research on it happens here or anything so you shouldn't need to be concerned.

Uh, in the United States? Yeah, you absolutely do [0, 1]:

>"If you make a profit through these activities, it’s considered taxable income. You can use the Form 1099-K, along with other records, to determine how much tax you owe."

>"Remember that all income, no matter the amount, is taxable unless the law says otherwise – even if you don’t get a Form 1099-K."

>"If you made a profit or gain on the sale of a personal item, your profit is taxable. The profit is the difference between the amount you received for selling the item and the amount you originally paid for the item."

You may wish to review your understanding and confidence in your understanding of tax law.

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0: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/are-you-making-extra-cash-selli...

1: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/what-to-do-with-form-1099-k

So?

>Clearly the governments see cryptocurrency as something more than just random numbers without meaning.

Not really? It's the realized gains that get taxed. That's a completely generic feature of the tax system, the government doesn't give a shit (and shouldn't) what people decide has value in any given transaction. The only thing they care about is whether or not there was actual cash equivalent value exchange happening. Barter is always a potentially taxable event. The government makes no judgement on whether you do it with pretty river rocks or random numbers, they can assess the value of the exchange as if it was done with cash and tax that result.

Re: Seizure of everything related to an illegal operation: sure, they will take everything they can find regardless. They'd take a computer with a ~/.ssh full of random keys too. The data they seize might also have pirated movies/games/music. Some of the things might have "value" but that doesn't make them currency.

None of this implies the result you clearly wish it did.

>Is the government agency just going to throw its hands in the air and say “oh well, he guessed the random number, nothing more we can do!” No, I think not.

You "think not"? Why not? What laws do you think are being violated? There are lots of cases where the government will seize something that might at the time of the seizure be worth $X, and then legitimate activity happens elsewhere such that now it's worth $0.5X or whatever, and that's perfectly fine. The question hinges on whether the activities of other independent people/entities unrelated to the criminal entity that got seized are legitimate or not. It's not a matter of vibes. Like, imagine the government seizes a winning lotto ticket. And then before they can do anything with it somebody unconnected else goes into a convenience store and legitimately buys a ticket, guessing the number too. The value of what the government seized has just dropped. Would I expect the government to throw its hands in the air and say “oh well, he guessed the random number, nothing more we can do!”

Well, yes? That is indeed my expectation, within the rules of the game in question. If the lotto says "if you fail to claim your winning ticket within 1 week before someone else guesses it as well then too bad" or "well then you both split it 50/50" or whatever, yeah I'd expect the government to be held to the exact same standard as anyone else.

Absolutely not, but also "yes, which means no". In the first case, a bank balance isn't "just" a number, it's a massively regulated and legally backed number with many layers of interlocking entities, both private and multiple layers of government, in charge of maintenance, auditing, insuring, and enforcing. There is no equivalency to cryptocurrency there, as has been regularly touted.

To the second, it could certainly be argued that a bank balance is indeed "just a number" and that's the point, what gives the number its value is all the infrastructure around it not anything intrinsic to the number itself. If someone finds out my bank balance in Account ABC is $42076 that might have privacy implications sure, but knowing that number gives you access to absolutely nothing of meaning. That's a completely different situation to one where independently finding a given number, which note you need not even have any idea who it belongs to, suddenly equates to ability to make use of that number in real world relevant ways by social consensus.

We're talking more the equivalent of Adam guessing a winning lottery ticket, and then hanging onto it hoping the value will go up and he can trade on the ticket or do other things with it while not actually cashing it in because it's so unlikely somebody else will guess the ticket. Maybe because the lotto ticket winners are published on a public ledger, and Adam doesn't want the notoriety, or at least not just yet. Then Bob does independently guess it, immediately turns it in, and now Adam's lotto ticket is worthless. Bob didn't steal anything from Adam. Whether what Bob did is ok or not depends on the rules of the game.

>I understand that the bank's ownership of its computer means that hacking into it could be seen as (for example) a trespass

Holy shit are you for real? COULD be seen? Yes hacking into a bank would absolutely mean felony prosecution on multiple counts if you were caught.

>However, what if you somehow persuaded a bank employee to change someone's balance?

They would be committing multiple felonies and you would be committing criminal conspiracy, inducement and so on depending on jurisdiction, and probably wire fraud and a bunch of other stuff if you do it remotely that are sorta gimmes for prosecutors.

>The bank employee has some kind of authority to do this and the result is once again "just a number".

The bank employee does not have legal authority to do this. Any technical authority they have is only within the auspices of the law, internal compliance controls and practices and on and on.

Anyway without going through your whole post you're doing a whole lot of false equivalency. Breaking into and modifying somebody else's systems is no small point, it's explicitly illegal under the CFA in the US and similar in the rest of the developed world. There's no such thing as legally "copying" money from an end owner perspective, even if internally to the global financial systems when it comes to fiat currencies from the Treasury & Fed or other national equivalents to banks and other governments and so on it gets more complicated. It's all meant to effectively be a digital version of actual old fashioned hard currency. Hence the entire core concept of theft: it applies to zero sum games, where one person getting more cash means another person now has less.

I'd welcome any actual specific laws on the books about cryptocurrency that contemplates what would happen if someone simply guesses a private key with no interaction with anyone else and then uses it on the network. But without that it's hard to see any existing precedent. On the contrary, cryptocurrency people have repeatedly pushed, and built into the core foundations, the notion of code being law, that possession of a private key is all that's needed and the rest is up to the network and you're supposed to be in charge of that (or someone else is on your behalf and that relationship can be subject to contracts).