firehose

Lorenzo Amisano

Using online anonymity services such as Tor or sending encrypted e-mail and instant messages are grounds for US-based communications to be retained by the National Security Agency even when they're collected inadvertently, according to a secret government document published Thursday.

The document, titled Minimization Procedures Used by the National Security Agency in Connection with Acquisitions of Foreign Intelligence, is the latest bombshell leak to be dropped by UK-based newspaper The Guardian. It and a second, top-secret document detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed or can be retained. The memos outline procedures NSA analysts must follow to ensure they stay within the mandate of minimizing data collected on US citizens and residents.

While the documents make clear that data collection and interception must cease immediately once it's determined a target is within the US, they still provide analysts with a fair amount of leeway. And that leeway seems to work to the disadvantage of people who take steps to protect their Internet communications from prying eyes. For instance, a person whose physical location is unknown—which more often than not is the case when someone uses anonymity software from the Tor Project—"will not be treated as a United States person, unless such person can be positively identified as such, or the nature or circumstances of the person's communications give rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person," the secret document stated.

I drew this to illustrate the first Stratechery post

The FiftyThree Timeline. Months mark the founding, Paper releases and updates, and fundraising.

The revenue FiftyThree has made from me (after Apple’s 30%) versus the value they have created.

The 2013 MacBook Air seems to have trouble playing well with others.

Jacqui Cheng

The latest MacBook Airs may be having some issues with their Wi-Fi connections, per Gizmodo’s reading of the Apple discussion forums. Many people who picked up one of the updated MacBook Airs within the last few days claim that the computers will drop their connection after a minute or two and are unable to reconnect until the computer is restarted.

At this month's WWDC, Apple announced the refreshed MacBook Airs, which now sport Haswell processors and 802.11ac-capable Wi-Fi adapters. Gizmodo speculates that the antenna for this adapter is buried inside the plastic strip in the MacBook Air’s hinge, where it apparently might not be getting enough breathing room.

At least one user attests that his connection drops every 15 to 30 minutes, but it can be fixed by turning the Wi-Fi off and on again. Another says his drops when he tries to download particularly big files. A number of the commenters in the thread are struggling with the on/off Wi-Fi toggle. Gizmodo suggests that the problem is worse when the computer is sitting on a desk.

In the wake of 9/11, the US government was forced to turn to independent contractors as it scrambled to beef up defense and intelligence. That influx of private sector employees was never meant to be a long-term solution, but over a decade later, those contracting companies have gained an increasingly prominent position, reports Bloomberg Businessweek. Now Congress is paying attention. Following the leaks that occurred through NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, questions have been raised about how security access should be granted and who it should be granted to.

But changing the status quo may not be easy: Booz Allen has friends in high places, and hiring outside of the public sector is often the only way to get something done. Businessweek has more on the debate around private contractors, including a brief history of Booz Allen and details on just how the company manages to land so many lucrative contracts.

Mt. Gox, which processes around 70 percent of all Bitcoin transactions in the world, just announced it is suspending wire transfer withdrawals denominated in US dollars for the next two weeks. The company claims it has been experiencing unusually high volumes of deposits and withdrawals recently, which "made it difficult for our bank to process the transactions smoothly and within a timely manner" and caused delays for customers.

The suspension will give Mt. Gox time to make changes in the way transactions are processed, the company said. Mt. God also promised to debut a "dramatically improved trading engine" very soon.

Mt. Gox, which is based in Japan, has not suspended trading activity in any other currencies. It also has not suspended deposits in USD — meaning customers can put cash in, but not take it out. That's likely to arouse suspicion from customers, especially since Mt. Gox is being sued by another Bitcoin company for $75 million and has come under scrutiny from the US government. It also suffered a major DDOS attack in April and temporarily halted trading. The company was absent from the Bitcoin 2013 convention, where almost every major Bitcoin companies had a presence.

There is already speculation that Mt. Gox is suspending withdrawals because it is out of cash. Mt. Gox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Posted by Sam Thonis on June 20, 2013 01:13 pm

SPOILER ALERT!

No, seriously, big spoiler alert. Though you've probably already heard this one. It's on that Threadless tee with all the spoilers. Also, it's 40 years old. Soylent Green, that government-rationed food substitute that everyone loves so much, is made out of people. Surprise!

Soylent Green. I'd heard of the 1973 Charlton Heston classic, and I knew the big twist. I'd read the IMDb entry, seen the poster, watched the trailer. I knew the facts, but I hadn't seen the film. And, for the moment, it was filed away somewhere down my "maybe I'll watch that someday" list.

But then something strange happened. Something that moved the film right to the top of my "drop everything and watch this right away" list. My co-workers were drinking Soylent.

At first I thought they were in on the joke. They were just trolling me, as tends to happen at The Verge office. Good joke guys. You put some protein powder in plastic bags and Instagrammed yourselves hashtag "Soylent". Haha, you're eating people. Haha good joke, right? Right??

Then a quick Google search brought me to this:

Soylent frees you from the time and money spent shopping, cooking and cleaning, puts you in excellent health, and vastly reduces your environmental impact by eliminating much of the waste and harm coming from agriculture, livestock, and food-related trash.

Apparently, 24-year-old Georgia Tech student and Y Combinator alumnus Rob Rhinehart has gathered an engineering and sales team to create "the easy, healthy future of nutrition", a powdered food substitute made from a formula of other, already-available powdered supplements. To raise funds for the project, the team launched a Crowdhoster campaign. (Crowdhoster is similar to Kickstarter, but it allows users to create their own fundraising website. No, I hadn't heard of it before, either.) With a goal of $100,000, the project was fully funded in under three hours, and with one day left in the campaign, the team has raised over $700,000 from almost 6,000 backers. So far, Soylent, still in its testing phase, has shipped only to the press. The Soylent team claims their product will save the world in many of the same ways typically promised by recent food movements. It will protect the environment, keep you healthy, help feed the poor, etc. But Soylent also promises something the local and slow food movements do not: efficiency of consumption. One of the company's biggest talking points is that Soylent is quick and easy, and doesn't require eaters to waste time shopping, cleaning, cooking, heating, reheating, etc. Just add water and stir.

Could it be really real? Could this startup kid be stupid enough to name his powdered food substitute after a fictional product famously made from ground-up humans? If so, who was the target audience? Doesn't everyone know that SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE OUT OF PEOPLE? Besides, do people even want to eat faster? Call me old-fashioned, but I thought people enjoyed eating. To me, the prospect of consuming powdered food 21 times a week seems about as appealing as being fed intravenously, which is to say not appealing at all.

After hours of trying to understand why so many people I know and respect were buying into this, I decided I should probably see the film.

Set in the year 2022, Soylent Green follows NYPD detective Robert Thorn (Heston) as he investigates the assassination of William R. Simonson, a director of the Soylent Corporation. Due to overpopulation, pollution, and global warming, real food is scarce. The Soylent Corporation has been producing wafers of different colors to provide as rations to the people. The latest variety, Soylent Green, is the most nutritious and best tasting, but it is also in the shortest supply. New York's citizens are willing to risk their lives to get some, and the few men who know the formula will kill to keep it a secret. Simonson became a risk, and he was silenced. Detective Thorn's investigation eventually leads him to the Soylent factory, where he sees bodybags being dumped into giant meat grinders. Burdened by the truth, he risks his life in order to expose the atrocities of the Soylent Corporation.

So now I'd seen the movie. It was no longer just a jumble of quotes and tidbits in the back of my mind. Now I had the whole story. About the real Soylent Corporation, however, I still felt deeply confused. The question kept repeating in my mind: can this be real?

It was then that I had an epiphany. It was so obvious. This wasn't a real attempt to sell a powdered food substitute; this was Hollywood magic. This was the viral marketing campaign to end all viral marketing campaigns. Sure, The Dark Knight Rises destroyed billboards. Lost set up an alternate reality game that let viewers play along. But this was on another level. This was brilliant. Start a crowdfunding campaign, send out press samples, receive upwards of half a million dollars in pledges from backers, and cancel the project before anyone's credit card gets charged. Among the ensuing uproar, link out to the trailer for the new Soylent Green remake.

But wait a minute. What remake? For years now, there's been rumblings about a new film, but the same is true about nearly every science fiction film from the 70s and 80s. I remember hearing about the Robocop remake six years ago, and we're still waiting on that. There's an IMDb page for a new Soylent Green movie, but it provides no information. Warner Brothers owns the rights to the story, but they haven't announced any plans for a remake or sequel.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's not a film. But still, it can't be real, can it? As I dug deeper, I quickly found myself in full-on conspiracy theory territory.

• Is Rob Rhinehart a real person? He's got a blog, a Twitter account, and a Youtube channel, but none of these stretch back further than March of 2012. Shouldn't a tech-student/entrepreneur have a wider web presence before a year ago? Also, why is his Youtube user name robertrose07? Is Rose his middle name, or is it an alias? (On the other hand, he does have a Facebook profile using the last name Rhinehart that dates back to 2005.)

• Why not use Kickstarter like everybody else? Could it be that the Soylent Corporation doesn't have any intention of fulfilling the promises made to backers? If they know they're going to cancel their campaign at the zero hour, they'd be in violation of Kickstarter's Terms of Use ("Project Creators agree to make a good faith attempt to fulfill each reward by its Estimated Delivery Date"), as well as its Guidelines ("Everything on Kickstarter must be a project. A project is something with a clear end, like making an album, a film, or a new game. A project will eventually be completed, and something will be produced as a result").

• Why are certain elements of Soylent's campaign so professional while others are so amateur? The video, for instance, feels like it was intentionally crafted to look amateur. The green-screen key is nearly perfect, but the sound recording is terrible. The background graphics are slick, but the people are poorly lit. What crowdfunding filmmaker does some things so well while making a few key amateur mistakes? And why does this video feel so damn sinister?

• Why has the Soylent Corporation been so vague about the final ingredient list? Is it really that they haven't finalized it yet, or is it because they want to reveal some really nasty ingredient right before they suspiciously cancel the fundraising campaign? They claim it's not made out of people, but if it were, would they tell us?

The list goes on, and the more I dug, the less I really understood. Navigating the internet isn't like watching a movie. You don't get concrete answers, you don't know who to trust, and there's no ending. I'd never be able to simply finish this investigation the way I was able to watch the film and connect all the bits of information I had known about it previously.

There's a scene in the film where Detective Thorn tries to convince his boss that Simonson's death was an assassination, and not a burglary-gone-wrong. A major piece of his evidence is that the killer used a meat hook as a weapon. "The punk was no punk. He used a meat hook instead of a gun to make it look like a punk." Thorn's proof that the killing was an assassination is the fact that it specifically didn't look like an assassination. I feel like Thorn. Some of my colleagues think I'm onto something. Others think I'm acting crazy. So far, I haven't proven anything one way or another.

If we find out on Friday that this is a viral marketing campaign for a Soylent Green remake, I'll feel vindicated, I'll win a $20 bet, and I'll wonder how so many smart people fell for such an obvious hoax. If I'm wrong, and this is a real product that does everything it claims, I have to wonder what it says about our society. In his most recent blog post, Rhinehart addresses some of the criticisms he's received regarding Soylent. To those who claim they actually like eating food, Rhinehart responds:

I like beer, but I usually drink water. I love walking through the city, but I usually take the bus. I love conversation, but I still send a lot of emails. I find separating utility from leisure increases my enjoyment of both. Personally, I enjoy food, there are just many things I enjoy more.

I can understand the argument, at least in theory. Drinking Soylent certainly does seem easier than cooking, just as email is often an easier way of dealing with potentially awkward human interaction. He goes on to say, "Now I have the freedom to spend more time on the things I want to do." What happens when those things become easier? Eventually, we'll find ways to more easily consume music, movies, art, words, concepts, knowledge. And then we'll have all that free time to just sit around and enjoy... what exactly?

Just because we can eat something, doesn't mean we should. Just because Soylent Green solves world hunger, doesn't mean we should become cannibals. Another scene in the film comes to mind. While searching Simonson's incredibly lavish home for clues, Thorn is able to steal a bundle of real food, including apples, lettuce, even raw beef. He brings it home to his colleague and roommate, and they enjoy a meal together. Thorn, being relatively young, has never tasted real food before, and the experience for him is overwhelming. It's as if he's seeing snow for the first time, or hearing the most beautiful music in the world. Food is not something to be taken for granted; it's not something purely utilitarian that we need to make more efficient. It is not just a means to an end, but rather an end in itself.

Whatever the case may be, there are some facts I know for sure. There is a fundraising campaign for a company, real or imaginary, called the Soylent Corporation. This campaign has raised over $700,000 in pledges. In the process, somebody has sent plastic bags of white powder to beta testers and members of the press, who have quite literally eaten it up. Twitter is buzzing with positive reviews of the product, and backers eagerly await their first shipments. All of these things are true. These things are really happening.

If Rhinehart turns out to be a real man, making a really incredible product, it doesn't change the fact that so many people gleefully consumed something they knew nothing about. If it really does make everyone healthier, and if it really does solve world hunger, and if it really does save the environment, maybe it doesn't matter what's in it. Maybe even if it's made out of people. Maybe it's just that good. I guess we'll find out in the sequel.