16 ms·

To the Pirate Bay: a modest proposal

228 points by cstross 15y ago

stephengillie 15y ago
Are you proposing TPB creates an Android app to host their magnet links, from a phone attached to a Romotive, broadcasting wifi, powered by several means (induction, solar, etc)?
- bigiain 15y ago
  I don't see why not - seems much better designed than some "enterprise" systems I've had to deal with…
  - omh 15y ago
    But Pirate Bay don't have a support contract that they're trying to sell us
- mindslight 15y ago
  Skip the Romotive and utilize a human going about their daily commute. They even come preprogrammed with the desire to locate and utilize power sources!
rheide 15y ago
Given that the wi-fi range would be a lot less than an airborne solution I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for the police to pinpoint their location. It would also limit the practicality as you'd need a lot more of them to get the same coverage. As for fuel, perhaps human waste can serve as a viable source of power?
nkoren 15y ago
In the biomimicry department, I'd look to the birds. Imagine an ornithopter mimic that seeks out power lines, clamps onto them, and powers itself via inductive pickups in its feet. Its battery gives it a 10-minute flying range; this gets recharged first. Then it goes into broadcast mode. Sure, its signals could be triangulated, but if the mimicry is clever enough then it might be difficult to distinguish from a real bird. And it could be equipped with various means of monitoring its environment (such as an RF receiver which monitors the strength of nearby police-frequency broadcasts), which would allow it to rapidly bug out at the first sign of trouble. It takes to the air, circles for a few minutes, then finds another power line and starts over again.
- sneak 15y ago
  We get it; you're a Charlie Stross fan.
  - nkoren 15y ago
    Actually I haven't read him, but I'm told I should.
    - jacquesm 15y ago
      You should!
- weavejester 15y ago
  Not that's an ingenious idea. It wouldn't necessarily need to fly; an operator could catapult it up and let it hook onto a line, and a lead weight in the tail would orientate it like a real bird. You could either make it disposable (expect it to have a limited lifespan when removed by the authorities), or make it stop transmitting and drop to the ground when it thinks it could be in trouble. Birds tend to be coloured to merge into the undergrowth anyway, and if it drops before it's spotted, it could be very hard to find. An operator would then recover it at a later date.
  - weavejester 15y ago
    Of course I meant "Now that's an ingenious idea". :/
- wisty 15y ago
  The hight would be an advantage, and you'd get free power - the best of both worlds. You could put a transmitter (complete with inductive pickups) in place, then fly the drone back for reuse. It would also be quite hard to take down, even if they knew it was there. I wouldn't worry too much about cloaking. The police are not going to risk their necks climbing up a power line to take out a ~$30 transmitter, unless it's to get prints or the society in question is very Orwellian (in which case, you can't make the drones anyway, because Big Brother is watching). I'd just go for transmitter which are too cheap to bother fighting against.
dkhenry 15y ago
So this article is a little ill informed. If the pirate bay is working on what other people are working on It won't be a little quadrocopter. NPR recently did a story on what the future of commercial drones are shaping up to be [1]. The deal is they are working on drones with huge wingspans that require very little propulsion to stay airborne and can carry both solar panels to collect energy and batteries to store that energy. The planed flight time for one of these aircraft would be on the order of years. As of today they have successfully tested drones of this kind that can stay aloft for weeks. If thats the kind of technology the LOSS will leverage then it will fit the role nicely. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143144146/drone-technology-finding-its-way-to-american-skies http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143144146/drone-technology-fin...
jgrahamc 15y ago
The Pirate Bay's LOSS proposal is so far from reality that it's close to a joke. It's not 'low orbit' and just because Raspberry Pi is small it doesn't help you with keeping the UAV up there for a length of time. And such a device would be easy to find via RDF and would be jammable and incredibly vulnerable to attack. It would be easy for a government to cause a UAV to crash. If they really want to do something I'd suggest that they build a screen saver that allows them to distribute their database across machines all over the world.
- patrickk 15y ago
  Spot on. It always struck me as an elaborate joke just to spook the authorities and see what kind of a reaction they would get.
  - cstross 15y ago
    Ahem. "I am ruling out nuclear propulsion because I assume The Pirate Bay do not have access to a supply of fissionable materials. Otherwise, it's Game Over for the MPAA." No smileys here: No sir.
    - patrickk 15y ago
      I was referring to the original Pirate Bay post describing their plan for the LOSS proposal, not this particular article. Plenty of people here seem to be treating it as a serious project, judging by the comments here at least....
      - narag 15y ago
        Building underground pizza-eating rat robots (with or without smilies) sound as serious as the original proposal, that didn't include smilies either.
        cstross 15y ago
        I am shocked, SHOCKED sir, that you could possibly suspect anyone would write a humorous piece without smilies! I am sure Jonathan Swift is spinning in his grave.
nutjob123 15y ago
Robots which go through the sewers broadcasting to the internet. Reminds me of the matrix.
seclorum 15y ago
I think the big point is being missed: whatever technology our military masters decide to use, we can use it too. Spy bots patrolling our streets to see who is downloading illegal content or doing something illegal? We have that. So, we can use the same tech to keep doing what we want.
ma2rten 15y ago
I am ruling out nuclear propulsion because I assume The Pirate Bay do not have access to a supply of fissionable materials. Otherwise, it's Game Over for the MPAA. Maybe The Pirate Bay should get in contact with North Korea, they'd be more than happy to help undermine the capitalist system from the inside. Seriously, though, I think this entire thing is merely a PR stunt by the The Pirate Bay. They were never even thinking about doing that. Just like a company they need PR to continue to exist and get donations. Remember, TPB also "tried to buy" Sea Land at some point in time, an oil platform that some people claim is a country? Anyway, it is a good PR stunt, many startups can learn from that.
- tobiasu 15y ago
  Sealand was a WW2 anti-aircraft platform. It's too close to shore for doing anything really criminal (like, copyright infringement - murder would probably be fine). The problem these days is that organisations who don't want to be under US rule have to possess a reasonable number of operational nuclear warheads... It's not enough to set sail and stay in international waters.
jhnewhall 15y ago
This problem will solve by itself. How ? when teens have no favorite series to download via TPB, they will have to distract with other things such as politics. And when they get into politics, guess what they will want: to outlaw the opression of the people by the few, and their TPB back.
- humblest_ever 15y ago
  You are very cute like a small child.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
sdfjkl 15y ago
Sewers are often below several meters of concrete/rock/earth, interwoven with steel reinforcements, metal tubing, wires, power conduits and other stuff that would make for very poor wireless reception even when directly above the ratbot. The airborne approach on the other hand guarantees maximum range. Perhaps a small, solar-powered dirigible would be a better approach? They don't require massive amounts of power just to stay airborne and solar cells (battery buffered) could arguably provide enough power to stay stationary in most wind situations. A miniaturized version of this perhaps: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/4324155 http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/4324155
femto 15y ago
No need to hide them. All you need is a "data limpet", sort of like a limpet mine, but it serves data instead of explosions. Take a small single board computer, with meshing WiFi, data store and solar power. Put it in a tiny flat cylindrical case with a solar panel on one circular face and a nice strong rare earth magnet on the other. Make them cheap, so they can be mass produced. The challenge is to then place as many as possible in the most inaccessible spots possible. Attachment methods might include: * Throw them * Dangle them from an RC helicopter flying close enough to the target for the magnet to attach. * Launch them from a trebuchet * Air canon or rail gun * Use your imagination. Coolest and most spectacular idea wins. Locations can be anywhere there is ferrous material, the higher and more inaccessible the better: * Tops of tall bridges * Radio masts * Transmission towers * Buildings * ... Even if the data limpet is in full view, if it is on a sheer face hundreds of metres off the ground, it'll probably take ages to sort out the access difficulties, both physical and legal, to remove it. It would also be an unequal contest, in that removal is a major deal, but placement isn't. The tech could be applied in any situation where a powerful entity is trying to silence a powerless entity. Edit: formatting
- francoisdevlin 15y ago
  Wouldn't a sniper rifle "remove the mine" from the MPAA's perspective?
  - krakensden 15y ago
    Doing that in an urban area will get you in a lot of trouble, even if you're police.
  - unreal37 15y ago
    If these things are cheap ($<20), and there are hundreds of them scattered in various not-so-easy-to-find places around the city, good luck trying to snipe them all. Or even find them. (Imagine hiding one inside a vent shaft inside a building. Or in the sewer.) This idea is brilliant. True decentralized piracy without a a network to connect them all. Impossible to stop!
  - deleted 15y ago
majmun 15y ago
for a moment i thought he will propose implating chips on live rats.
- aurelianito 15y ago
  Actually, this would be a better idea than the one in the article! If we can use the rat as an energy source it would beg almost unstoppable.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - majmun 15y ago
    i wonder if there are already been research of rechargin bateries from bodiliy fluids or something
timdiggerm 15y ago
Balloons don't require anchor cables if you give them some rotors. Use the propellers to keep within a certain area, but you don't need to expend so much energy on lift. On the one hand, helium is running out. On the other hand, hydrogen explodes.
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  Hydrogen exploding may not be such a bad quality in this use case. It would be difficult for an aggressor party to get the drone back in one piece; snipers would be ineffective. A sniper could still take out the floating server, but (properly designed) the resulting explosion would wipe away any useful evidence of the server's purpose. One would likely need another drone built to separate the server from the balloon without aggravating the hydrogen.
  - kmm 15y ago
    Sadly (or happily), hydrogen doesn't explode that easily. The hydrogen autoignition temperature is 500 degrees Celsius. Even if a bullet were to effectively transfer heat, it's still 100 of degrees to cold. Hydrogen got a bad reputation from Hindenburg. It's irresponsible to use only because so many lives depend on it but still relatively safe. The first airship to circumnavigate the globe was a hydrogen zeppelin! And it never spontaneously combusted during its 12 year life apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin
rthomas6 15y ago
This sounds like something out of a Neil Stephenson novel.
lukejduncan 15y ago
Will the first replicators be born from piracy?
stfu 15y ago
Somewhat odd to see that people around here are trying to shoot down a bold idea like that. I would argue that the idea is not at all that "crazy" as some here try to make it sound. The great thing is, that there is a very active RC plane community with many brilliant minds around. For example the arguments, that planes have to land every so often are highly questionable, when there are already long-range planes in reasonable size and weight such as the Tam-26. With relatively unsophisticated components they were able to make the flight across the Atlantic (1888 miles) in about 40 hours ( http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=941744 http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=941744) Countless other efforts are at the moment working on how to solve the problems using solar power for RC planes. And the problems seem to be at least in theory not that unrealistic.
derrida 15y ago
I'll take the bait. Replace 'robot-rat' with 'rat'.
- gee_totes 15y ago
  I'm more thinking along the line of replace 'rat' with 'human'. We could all form a living peer-to-peer (in every sense of the phrase) network.
  - majmun 15y ago
    or vehicles. like car parasites . so this thing like attaches to a car and transmitts pirate software over wi-fi or hosts other free software. it can change host cars by itself if needed.
- vibrunazo 15y ago
  It would need be a robot that can attach itself to a rat, then de-attach and hunt for a new rat when that one is dead. Because rats have very short life spans. So what we're really looking for is a rat parasite robot.
  - raphman 15y ago
    A rat's life span of about three years seem adequate to me. I guess the electronics won't even last that long in such an environment.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
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hipsterelitist 15y ago
I think most of you are missing the point of the title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal). His suggestions are not meant to be taken seriously, and as others have pointed out, it is quite likely that TPB's suggestion may not be entirely serious either. It might be worth considering that the whole reason they put forth the idea of drones or LOSS or however you want to define them was to a) inspire technologists to consider creative ways of dealing with draconian policy/enforcement, b) draw parallels between the projection of power manifested by drones operating in US interests overseas under questionable/controversial legal circumstances and their own situation.
Too 15y ago
Who said a UAV has to be an airplane? Why not a balloon/blimp? They should be able to stay airborne passively. Then powering the server is another problem but with a blimp weight isn't really that big of an issue.
- dkokelley 15y ago
  It has more to do with control in high winds, but you're right in that LTA craft are probably better suited for the task.
nextparadigms 15y ago
It's good that this idea is getting the attention it deserves, but I saw this idea on Reddit yesterday, among other alternatives (could've been the same author, though).
blhack 15y ago
Have we all already forgotten how the internet works? Flying raspberry pis, or birds on power lines, or pirates in space are all cool... but how do you get those bits from up there in the sky to me, down here, in Phoenix, AZ? Is TPB planning to also buy up fiber? And then copper to my house? TPB is now getting into the telecoms industry! (Which would be a cool pivot, I guess) The servers might be in LEO, or floating in a blimp, but the routers are still sitting in a meet-me room somewhere on the ground, and those routers and cables are still vulnerable to "stop routing TPB or we stop peering with you". Here. "Gibson's guide to internet work": http://www.thingist.com/t/item/2926/ http://www.thingist.com/t/item/2926/
- dsl 15y ago
  I came to post this exact same thing. The whole project is a joke.
Ryanmf 15y ago
I really enjoy reading Charlie's thoughts on just about anything, I loved Accelerando, and definitely don't mean to take a shot at him here. When I encounter a title which includes the phrase "A Modest Proposal" I assume the words that follow are generally facetious. Swift wasn't actually advocating for the devouring of delicious Irish adolescents; I'm certain Charlie is well aware of that fact (in the case of other writers who invoke the title, I am sometimes less confident). TPB's LOSS initiative is probably absurd enough to meet the requirements, as is Charlie's ratbot counter proposal. Except it seems he's sort of serious? Then he concludes by posing to his readers what appears to be a completely honest request for their dream implementations of Raspberry Pi. Many commenters both on his blog and in this HN thread have apparently taken the post at face value. It could be that this was just a slam dunk bit of satire, achieving exactly the desired result. If that's the case, to me this post doesn't exactly live up to its namesake. Charlie's identified a ridiculous plan, and suggested an equally ridiculous alternate plan, without so much as a wink or a nod. Now what?
- rictic 15y ago
  I read it as an exercise in science fiction, and imagining what will be possible with stuff that's not far beyond the current state of the art. Yes all of these ideas are unworkable right now. The shocking thing, when I stopped to think about it, is how much closer they are to being realistic than my gut instinct felt like they were. Sufficiently powerful computation, storage, and solar power are cheap and miniaturized. Hobbyists have used cameras tied to balloons to take video of the edge of space. Research projects have produced robots that can power themselves from biomass and sugars. All science fact. Ten years ago these ideas would have been obvious science fiction. Now it takes a bit longer to establish what parts are outlandish because so much of it is so much more plausible. It makes me think about how things will look in 2022. I don't have a strong expectation that any of these ideas in particular will come true. The future will likely be stranger still.
jonshea 15y ago
In 1729 Jonathan Swift anonymously published “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick” [1], which suggested that poverty and overpopulation in Ireland could be alleviated if the poor would either eat their children, or sell their children as food to the rich. In allusion to the original, the phrase “A Modest Proposal” is used to introduce suggestions that are satirical, hyperbolic, and sarcastic. Not knowing the origin of the phrase, some authors use it to introduce proposals that are genuinely modest, much to the disappointment of this reader. fn. 1: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080
- heliostatic 15y ago
  To be clear, the title of the post, "Pirate LOSS? An alternative ...", makes no allusion to Swift.
  - xnxn 15y ago
    While true, the submission title does, and the submitter is the author.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- brian_cloutier 15y ago
  While this proposal isn't quite as "modest" as Swift's, I would argue he's using the phrase correctly. You think he's actually suggesting making ratbots that survive off pizza crust and ferretbots to find them? This sounds like a mockery of the pirate bay's proposal, just as Swift mocked how the people of his time thought about the poor.
stcredzero 15y ago
Tether the drones across the countryside. Supply power through the tether. Make them a Redundant Array, so that loss of a single drone doesn't lose any data. Rig them, so that if the tether is cut, they erase their copy of the hard drive encryption key, then fly to a "safe house."
wazoox 15y ago
I think that a swarm of cubesats[1] would be a very possible solution. Much more practical than small drones and probably not that expensive. [1]: http://www.cubesat.org/ http://www.cubesat.org/
bascule 15y ago
Here's an idea, instead of building anything that moves, how about building a cheap, disposable server you can install covertly anywhere you want that automatically dials home after installed and can use WiFi or Ethernet? http://pwnieexpress.com/ http://pwnieexpress.com/ You can make it look like an air freshener! No one will be the wiser. The ethernet cable is there so you can remotely check the levels of air freshener in its cartridge, of course: http://www.ien.com/uploadedImages/ien/IENblog/PwnPlug.jpg http://www.ien.com/uploadedImages/ien/IENblog/PwnPlug.jpg Stolen power + Stolen network = Practical Path to Piracy!
- mellifluousmind 15y ago
  I am almost sold, until I read that it only does WEP cracking... For $500+, WPA2 crack at minimum...
dchichkov 15y ago
Cheap daytime solution could be a 'solar balloon'... Like these: http://www.solar-balloons.com/howto.html http://www.solar-balloons.com/howto.html

228 points by cstross 15y ago

Are you proposing TPB creates an Android app to host their magnet links, from a phone attached to a Romotive, broadcasting wifi, powered by several means (induction, solar, etc)?

bigiain 15y ago
I don't see why not - seems much better designed than some "enterprise" systems I've had to deal with…
- omh 15y ago
  But Pirate Bay don't have a support contract that they're trying to sell us
mindslight 15y ago
Skip the Romotive and utilize a human going about their daily commute. They even come preprogrammed with the desire to locate and utilize power sources!

rheide 15y ago

Given that the wi-fi range would be a lot less than an airborne solution I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for the police to pinpoint their location. It would also limit the practicality as you'd need a lot more of them to get the same coverage. As for fuel, perhaps human waste can serve as a viable source of power?

nkoren 15y ago

In the biomimicry department, I'd look to the birds. Imagine an ornithopter mimic that seeks out power lines, clamps onto them, and powers itself via inductive pickups in its feet. Its battery gives it a 10-minute flying range; this gets recharged first. Then it goes into broadcast mode. Sure, its signals could be triangulated, but if the mimicry is clever enough then it might be difficult to distinguish from a real bird. And it could be equipped with various means of monitoring its environment (such as an RF receiver which monitors the strength of nearby police-frequency broadcasts), which would allow it to rapidly bug out at the first sign of trouble. It takes to the air, circles for a few minutes, then finds another power line and starts over again.

sneak 15y ago
We get it; you're a Charlie Stross fan.
- nkoren 15y ago
  Actually I haven't read him, but I'm told I should.
  - jacquesm 15y ago
    You should!
weavejester 15y ago
Not that's an ingenious idea. It wouldn't necessarily need to fly; an operator could catapult it up and let it hook onto a line, and a lead weight in the tail would orientate it like a real bird. You could either make it disposable (expect it to have a limited lifespan when removed by the authorities), or make it stop transmitting and drop to the ground when it thinks it could be in trouble. Birds tend to be coloured to merge into the undergrowth anyway, and if it drops before it's spotted, it could be very hard to find. An operator would then recover it at a later date.
- weavejester 15y ago
  Of course I meant "Now that's an ingenious idea". :/
wisty 15y ago
The hight would be an advantage, and you'd get free power - the best of both worlds. You could put a transmitter (complete with inductive pickups) in place, then fly the drone back for reuse. It would also be quite hard to take down, even if they knew it was there. I wouldn't worry too much about cloaking. The police are not going to risk their necks climbing up a power line to take out a ~$30 transmitter, unless it's to get prints or the society in question is very Orwellian (in which case, you can't make the drones anyway, because Big Brother is watching). I'd just go for transmitter which are too cheap to bother fighting against.

dkhenry 15y ago

So this article is a little ill informed. If the pirate bay is working on what other people are working on It won't be a little quadrocopter. NPR recently did a story on what the future of commercial drones are shaping up to be [1]. The deal is they are working on drones with huge wingspans that require very little propulsion to stay airborne and can carry both solar panels to collect energy and batteries to store that energy. The planed flight time for one of these aircraft would be on the order of years. As of today they have successfully tested drones of this kind that can stay aloft for weeks. If thats the kind of technology the LOSS will leverage then it will fit the role nicely. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143144146/drone-technology-finding-its-way-to-american-skies http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143144146/drone-technology-fin...

jgrahamc 15y ago

The Pirate Bay's LOSS proposal is so far from reality that it's close to a joke. It's not 'low orbit' and just because Raspberry Pi is small it doesn't help you with keeping the UAV up there for a length of time. And such a device would be easy to find via RDF and would be jammable and incredibly vulnerable to attack. It would be easy for a government to cause a UAV to crash. If they really want to do something I'd suggest that they build a screen saver that allows them to distribute their database across machines all over the world.

patrickk 15y ago
Spot on. It always struck me as an elaborate joke just to spook the authorities and see what kind of a reaction they would get.
- cstross 15y ago
  Ahem. "I am ruling out nuclear propulsion because I assume The Pirate Bay do not have access to a supply of fissionable materials. Otherwise, it's Game Over for the MPAA." No smileys here: No sir.
  - patrickk 15y ago
    I was referring to the original Pirate Bay post describing their plan for the LOSS proposal, not this particular article. Plenty of people here seem to be treating it as a serious project, judging by the comments here at least....
    - narag 15y ago
      Building underground pizza-eating rat robots (with or without smilies) sound as serious as the original proposal, that didn't include smilies either.
      - cstross 15y ago
        I am shocked, SHOCKED sir, that you could possibly suspect anyone would write a humorous piece without smilies! I am sure Jonathan Swift is spinning in his grave.

nutjob123 15y ago

Robots which go through the sewers broadcasting to the internet. Reminds me of the matrix.

seclorum 15y ago

I think the big point is being missed: whatever technology our military masters decide to use, we can use it too. Spy bots patrolling our streets to see who is downloading illegal content or doing something illegal? We have that. So, we can use the same tech to keep doing what we want.

ma2rten 15y ago

I am ruling out nuclear propulsion because I assume The Pirate Bay do not have access to a supply of fissionable materials. Otherwise, it's Game Over for the MPAA. Maybe The Pirate Bay should get in contact with North Korea, they'd be more than happy to help undermine the capitalist system from the inside. Seriously, though, I think this entire thing is merely a PR stunt by the The Pirate Bay. They were never even thinking about doing that. Just like a company they need PR to continue to exist and get donations. Remember, TPB also "tried to buy" Sea Land at some point in time, an oil platform that some people claim is a country? Anyway, it is a good PR stunt, many startups can learn from that.

tobiasu 15y ago
Sealand was a WW2 anti-aircraft platform. It's too close to shore for doing anything really criminal (like, copyright infringement - murder would probably be fine). The problem these days is that organisations who don't want to be under US rule have to possess a reasonable number of operational nuclear warheads... It's not enough to set sail and stay in international waters.

jhnewhall 15y ago

This problem will solve by itself. How ? when teens have no favorite series to download via TPB, they will have to distract with other things such as politics. And when they get into politics, guess what they will want: to outlaw the opression of the people by the few, and their TPB back.

humblest_ever 15y ago
You are very cute like a small child.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

sdfjkl 15y ago

Sewers are often below several meters of concrete/rock/earth, interwoven with steel reinforcements, metal tubing, wires, power conduits and other stuff that would make for very poor wireless reception even when directly above the ratbot. The airborne approach on the other hand guarantees maximum range. Perhaps a small, solar-powered dirigible would be a better approach? They don't require massive amounts of power just to stay airborne and solar cells (battery buffered) could arguably provide enough power to stay stationary in most wind situations. A miniaturized version of this perhaps: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/4324155 http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/4324155

femto 15y ago

No need to hide them. All you need is a "data limpet", sort of like a limpet mine, but it serves data instead of explosions. Take a small single board computer, with meshing WiFi, data store and solar power. Put it in a tiny flat cylindrical case with a solar panel on one circular face and a nice strong rare earth magnet on the other. Make them cheap, so they can be mass produced. The challenge is to then place as many as possible in the most inaccessible spots possible. Attachment methods might include: * Throw them * Dangle them from an RC helicopter flying close enough to the target for the magnet to attach. * Launch them from a trebuchet * Air canon or rail gun * Use your imagination. Coolest and most spectacular idea wins. Locations can be anywhere there is ferrous material, the higher and more inaccessible the better: * Tops of tall bridges * Radio masts * Transmission towers * Buildings * ... Even if the data limpet is in full view, if it is on a sheer face hundreds of metres off the ground, it'll probably take ages to sort out the access difficulties, both physical and legal, to remove it. It would also be an unequal contest, in that removal is a major deal, but placement isn't. The tech could be applied in any situation where a powerful entity is trying to silence a powerless entity. Edit: formatting

francoisdevlin 15y ago
Wouldn't a sniper rifle "remove the mine" from the MPAA's perspective?
- krakensden 15y ago
  Doing that in an urban area will get you in a lot of trouble, even if you're police.
- unreal37 15y ago
  If these things are cheap ($<20), and there are hundreds of them scattered in various not-so-easy-to-find places around the city, good luck trying to snipe them all. Or even find them. (Imagine hiding one inside a vent shaft inside a building. Or in the sewer.) This idea is brilliant. True decentralized piracy without a a network to connect them all. Impossible to stop!
- deleted 15y ago

majmun 15y ago

for a moment i thought he will propose implating chips on live rats.

aurelianito 15y ago
Actually, this would be a better idea than the one in the article! If we can use the rat as an energy source it would beg almost unstoppable.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- majmun 15y ago
  i wonder if there are already been research of rechargin bateries from bodiliy fluids or something

timdiggerm 15y ago

Balloons don't require anchor cables if you give them some rotors. Use the propellers to keep within a certain area, but you don't need to expend so much energy on lift. On the one hand, helium is running out. On the other hand, hydrogen explodes.

ConstantineXVI 15y ago
Hydrogen exploding may not be such a bad quality in this use case. It would be difficult for an aggressor party to get the drone back in one piece; snipers would be ineffective. A sniper could still take out the floating server, but (properly designed) the resulting explosion would wipe away any useful evidence of the server's purpose. One would likely need another drone built to separate the server from the balloon without aggravating the hydrogen.
- kmm 15y ago
  Sadly (or happily), hydrogen doesn't explode that easily. The hydrogen autoignition temperature is 500 degrees Celsius. Even if a bullet were to effectively transfer heat, it's still 100 of degrees to cold. Hydrogen got a bad reputation from Hindenburg. It's irresponsible to use only because so many lives depend on it but still relatively safe. The first airship to circumnavigate the globe was a hydrogen zeppelin! And it never spontaneously combusted during its 12 year life apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin

rthomas6 15y ago

This sounds like something out of a Neil Stephenson novel.

lukejduncan 15y ago

Will the first replicators be born from piracy?

stfu 15y ago

Somewhat odd to see that people around here are trying to shoot down a bold idea like that. I would argue that the idea is not at all that "crazy" as some here try to make it sound. The great thing is, that there is a very active RC plane community with many brilliant minds around. For example the arguments, that planes have to land every so often are highly questionable, when there are already long-range planes in reasonable size and weight such as the Tam-26. With relatively unsophisticated components they were able to make the flight across the Atlantic (1888 miles) in about 40 hours ( http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=941744 http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=941744) Countless other efforts are at the moment working on how to solve the problems using solar power for RC planes. And the problems seem to be at least in theory not that unrealistic.

derrida 15y ago

I'll take the bait. Replace 'robot-rat' with 'rat'.

gee_totes 15y ago
I'm more thinking along the line of replace 'rat' with 'human'. We could all form a living peer-to-peer (in every sense of the phrase) network.
- majmun 15y ago
  or vehicles. like car parasites . so this thing like attaches to a car and transmitts pirate software over wi-fi or hosts other free software. it can change host cars by itself if needed.
vibrunazo 15y ago
It would need be a robot that can attach itself to a rat, then de-attach and hunt for a new rat when that one is dead. Because rats have very short life spans. So what we're really looking for is a rat parasite robot.
- raphman 15y ago
  A rat's life span of about three years seem adequate to me. I guess the electronics won't even last that long in such an environment.
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hipsterelitist 15y ago

I think most of you are missing the point of the title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal). His suggestions are not meant to be taken seriously, and as others have pointed out, it is quite likely that TPB's suggestion may not be entirely serious either. It might be worth considering that the whole reason they put forth the idea of drones or LOSS or however you want to define them was to a) inspire technologists to consider creative ways of dealing with draconian policy/enforcement, b) draw parallels between the projection of power manifested by drones operating in US interests overseas under questionable/controversial legal circumstances and their own situation.

Too 15y ago

Who said a UAV has to be an airplane? Why not a balloon/blimp? They should be able to stay airborne passively. Then powering the server is another problem but with a blimp weight isn't really that big of an issue.

dkokelley 15y ago
It has more to do with control in high winds, but you're right in that LTA craft are probably better suited for the task.

nextparadigms 15y ago

It's good that this idea is getting the attention it deserves, but I saw this idea on Reddit yesterday, among other alternatives (could've been the same author, though).

blhack 15y ago

Have we all already forgotten how the internet works? Flying raspberry pis, or birds on power lines, or pirates in space are all cool... but how do you get those bits from up there in the sky to me, down here, in Phoenix, AZ? Is TPB planning to also buy up fiber? And then copper to my house? TPB is now getting into the telecoms industry! (Which would be a cool pivot, I guess) The servers might be in LEO, or floating in a blimp, but the routers are still sitting in a meet-me room somewhere on the ground, and those routers and cables are still vulnerable to "stop routing TPB or we stop peering with you". Here. "Gibson's guide to internet work": http://www.thingist.com/t/item/2926/ http://www.thingist.com/t/item/2926/

dsl 15y ago
I came to post this exact same thing. The whole project is a joke.

Ryanmf 15y ago

I really enjoy reading Charlie's thoughts on just about anything, I loved Accelerando, and definitely don't mean to take a shot at him here. When I encounter a title which includes the phrase "A Modest Proposal" I assume the words that follow are generally facetious. Swift wasn't actually advocating for the devouring of delicious Irish adolescents; I'm certain Charlie is well aware of that fact (in the case of other writers who invoke the title, I am sometimes less confident). TPB's LOSS initiative is probably absurd enough to meet the requirements, as is Charlie's ratbot counter proposal. Except it seems he's sort of serious? Then he concludes by posing to his readers what appears to be a completely honest request for their dream implementations of Raspberry Pi. Many commenters both on his blog and in this HN thread have apparently taken the post at face value. It could be that this was just a slam dunk bit of satire, achieving exactly the desired result. If that's the case, to me this post doesn't exactly live up to its namesake. Charlie's identified a ridiculous plan, and suggested an equally ridiculous alternate plan, without so much as a wink or a nod. Now what?

rictic 15y ago
I read it as an exercise in science fiction, and imagining what will be possible with stuff that's not far beyond the current state of the art. Yes all of these ideas are unworkable right now. The shocking thing, when I stopped to think about it, is how much closer they are to being realistic than my gut instinct felt like they were. Sufficiently powerful computation, storage, and solar power are cheap and miniaturized. Hobbyists have used cameras tied to balloons to take video of the edge of space. Research projects have produced robots that can power themselves from biomass and sugars. All science fact. Ten years ago these ideas would have been obvious science fiction. Now it takes a bit longer to establish what parts are outlandish because so much of it is so much more plausible. It makes me think about how things will look in 2022. I don't have a strong expectation that any of these ideas in particular will come true. The future will likely be stranger still.

jonshea 15y ago

In 1729 Jonathan Swift anonymously published “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick” [1], which suggested that poverty and overpopulation in Ireland could be alleviated if the poor would either eat their children, or sell their children as food to the rich. In allusion to the original, the phrase “A Modest Proposal” is used to introduce suggestions that are satirical, hyperbolic, and sarcastic. Not knowing the origin of the phrase, some authors use it to introduce proposals that are genuinely modest, much to the disappointment of this reader. fn. 1: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080

heliostatic 15y ago
To be clear, the title of the post, "Pirate LOSS? An alternative ...", makes no allusion to Swift.
- xnxn 15y ago
  While true, the submission title does, and the submitter is the author.
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brian_cloutier 15y ago
While this proposal isn't quite as "modest" as Swift's, I would argue he's using the phrase correctly. You think he's actually suggesting making ratbots that survive off pizza crust and ferretbots to find them? This sounds like a mockery of the pirate bay's proposal, just as Swift mocked how the people of his time thought about the poor.

stcredzero 15y ago

Tether the drones across the countryside. Supply power through the tether. Make them a Redundant Array, so that loss of a single drone doesn't lose any data. Rig them, so that if the tether is cut, they erase their copy of the hard drive encryption key, then fly to a "safe house."

wazoox 15y ago

I think that a swarm of cubesats[1] would be a very possible solution. Much more practical than small drones and probably not that expensive. [1]: http://www.cubesat.org/ http://www.cubesat.org/

bascule 15y ago

Here's an idea, instead of building anything that moves, how about building a cheap, disposable server you can install covertly anywhere you want that automatically dials home after installed and can use WiFi or Ethernet? http://pwnieexpress.com/ http://pwnieexpress.com/ You can make it look like an air freshener! No one will be the wiser. The ethernet cable is there so you can remotely check the levels of air freshener in its cartridge, of course: http://www.ien.com/uploadedImages/ien/IENblog/PwnPlug.jpg http://www.ien.com/uploadedImages/ien/IENblog/PwnPlug.jpg Stolen power + Stolen network = Practical Path to Piracy!

mellifluousmind 15y ago
I am almost sold, until I read that it only does WEP cracking... For $500+, WPA2 crack at minimum...

dchichkov 15y ago

Cheap daytime solution could be a 'solar balloon'... Like these: http://www.solar-balloons.com/howto.html http://www.solar-balloons.com/howto.html