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Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

nytimes.com

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Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#131

Post by aspenmayer »

tptacek wrote: post #130
aspenmayer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should say so in their bio, and they should not speak for each other, and so on. It’s messy and unprofessional as it is, and big if true. I don’t appreciate you jumping into the thread to dogpile either, but you do you.

I'm not a moderator.

I appreciate you saying so; dang also replied to my email to that effect. Hopefully the other folks get the memo, though I understand that you can’t reply to them directly, as their comment is [flagged] and [dead].

For my own sake, I apologize to everyone, and to you directly, tptacek, for the way this thread took a weird turn; it was illuminating in its own way.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#132

Post by dyauspitr »

lostlogin wrote: post #116
dyauspitr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that much money considering the crazy amount of hospital time and advanced treatments administered. That’s 25% of the average annual salary in the United States and you should be able to pay that for once in a lifetime treatments.

I’m surprised how high the average wage is, but despite that, many have little in savings. Around a third of Americans have less than $1000. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-ameri...

Still, it’s good to keep in perspective during these discussions where it’s made to seem like people are being asked to pay millions for healthcare that were not really talking about bills that high.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#133

Post by riffraff »

carlob wrote: post #90
riffraff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, a lot of European healthcare has both a public and private option. You may pick the private options because they are "better" in some ways (e.g. more modern clinics, shorter waiting times, or sometimes just better care) which still leaves some wealth gap, but usually means no one goes bankrupt to cure cancer.

Usually the medical part of it all is strictly worse in the private sector (at least in my country) because the public system has a pretty strict competitive exam to get in, whereas profit driven private companies hire the cheapest doctor they can get. Not everybody realizes that and they often fall for the single room in the hospital. Shorter waiting times is definitely a thing though, especially for non life threat…

It's quite country dependent. For example in Hungary my understanding is that many doctors have both private and public practices, but private clinics often don't have expensive machines. Doctors in public hospitals are severely underpaid so they have strong incentives to move you to private practice.

In Italy doctors also have public and private roles but can practice privately in public hospitals, which is weird but was an attempt to avoid losing them to private clinics, for the same reason. You also have private clinics administering public healthcare with a minor markup paid by the patient, and the base rate paid by the state, which isn't a thing in Hungary for example.

It is in general for non-life threatening conditions that there's such competition tho, I agree.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#134

Post by typpilol »

alwahi wrote: post #89
typpilol wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad has medigap that covered all that He pays like 140 a month extra for it though. But he had all his cancer treatments covered

guessing your father doesn't have cancer?

He had tonsil cancer but it's gone now.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#135

Post by maratc »

Retric wrote: post #120
maratc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NAL but in copyright it’s not making a copy that’s problematic, it’s making that copy available to others . Anyone can take a picture of Mickey Mouse; one only has a problem when they start to sell it. This cryptography solution is more akin to mathematics. And mathematics isn’t covered by the copyright law.

Civil penalties can be imposed when make a single copy without a fair use exception, this is why pre BitTorrent people got into trouble for downloading music for themselves. The government doesn’t care unless you get sued but they will enforce the lawsuit if you lose. Criminal investigation and penalties occur with wide scale commercial distribution of copyrighted works. They copped the actual message in its entirety…

Would "personal research" qualify for a fair use exception?

In any case it would not seem reasonable for Sanborn to sue these two guys for "copyright infringement" when all they did was study his own works that he donated to the library for the others to study. This would probably tarnish his reputation forever.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#136

Post by Retric »

maratc wrote: post #135
Retric wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil penalties can be imposed when make a single copy without a fair use exception, this is why pre BitTorrent people got into trouble for downloading music for themselves. The government doesn’t care unless you get sued but they will enforce the lawsuit if you lose. Criminal investigation and penalties occur with wide scale commercial distribution of copyrighted works. They copped the actual message in its entirety…

Would "personal research" qualify for a fair use exception? In any case it would not seem reasonable for Sanborn to sue these two guys for "copyright infringement" when all they did was study his own works that he donated to the library for the others to study. This would probably tarnish his reputation forever.

Fair use isn’t so easily to determine based on individual criteria, you’re not allowed to copy a full book for personal research but to copy a paragraph is likely fine. Where exactly the line is drawn is what the courts decide after the fact, but let’s photograph everything and send them to someone else to read isn’t likely to qualify for fair use.

Also, he doesn’t need to be the person suing here. The auction house can sue based in part on a copyright breach because that’s not something they had permission to do even without owning the copyright. The idea is to separate fair from unfair competition, if your competitor is using slave labor that’s not something you’re allowed to do. It’s not directly impacting you but the indirect effects from such actions also matter.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#137

Post by collingreen »

dingnuts wrote: post #69
meowface wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. The central problem described in the article is that he has cancer and doesn't want to go bankrupt from the medical bills. I'm not a socialist and am broadly pro-capitalism, but for decades I've held a firm belief that healthcare should have a public option and people should have the ability to get high-quality medical care for $0, no matter how realistic that would be.

there wouldn't be any way to compete with tax pre-paid $0 point of sale health care, so there would be no option. the term "public option" is a weasel word. there would be no private option because nobody is going to choose to pay out of pocket in addition to their taxes that already pay for care. advocate for whatever but use honest terms. you're advocating for a single payer system and there's no evading that.

It's silly to say "having options but you probably won't choose them" is the same as "no option".

There's probably a decent point nearby about subsidized (or tarriffed) work messing with the benefits of free market pressure but it isn't this silly overstatement.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#138

Post by ricksunny »

ricksunny wrote: post #8

I like this comment: Victor Wong writes, “If they don’t have the method,” she said, “it’s not solved,” she said. That does raise a philosophical point to the craft of intelligence gathering. Speaking as a professional librarian, I do applaud the use of ATI (access to information) to find the appropriate data -- it's akin to a WW2 unit capturing an Enigma codebook.

(for posterity: my use of quotemarks left something to be desired here - the quote 'that does..codebook' is Mr. Wong's quote, not my own. I got an uncharacteristically large number of upvotes from the comment above. I suspect had less to do with HNers' appreciation of library science, and more to their expressing appreciation of one's display of their professional bonafides, which I regret, in this case, are not my own to profess.) Although I wonder if HN's commenting system removed any addititional quotemarks I may have placed at the time.

Re: Solution to CIA’s Kryptos sculpture is found in Smithsonian vault

#139

Post by lostlogin »

dyauspitr wrote: post #132
lostlogin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised how high the average wage is, but despite that, many have little in savings. Around a third of Americans have less than $1000. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-ameri...

Still, it’s good to keep in perspective during these discussions where it’s made to seem like people are being asked to pay millions for healthcare that were not really talking about bills that high.

I don’t think that matters - if you can’t afford $15k, the bill might as well be $10 million, as you still can’t pay.
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