9 ms·
The Thing
- amelius 7y agoIf you are a high ranking government official and receive a gift that you want to keep in your office, then make a replica, and put that on your wall instead.
- taneq 7y agoIt's like the old "never click on a link in an unsolicited email" rule.
- unnouinceput 7y agoAnd lose the opportunity to do a counter-intelligence move on your part? No way. Better analyze the shit of those "gifts", hope they are bugged and then use them to feed false information while you keep your real intelligence room free of anything.
- dclowd9901 7y agoYep. Intelligence is all about keeping the other side in the dark while looking like you’re in the dark.
- geekamongus 7y agoYou can always re-gift.
- twervle 7y agoAlso one of the top 3 Sci Fi movies of all time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film)
- appleflaxen 7y agorelated prior discussion/submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15498685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15498685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19854787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11771587
- deanclatworthy 7y agoThree of the four links here, have no discussion. One has hardly any. Posting interesting topics which have not received much prior discussion is encouraged here.
- piyush_soni 7y agoI didn't know it too. How do we define interesting though, given three of the four times it garnered no interest (do we keep on posting until it does)? I'm not sure if GP deserves downvotes for pointing them out at the least.
- piyush_soni 7y agoSo a genuine question downvoted too? People are so reasonable here :).
- tim333 7y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884393 is a better past discussion with 29 comments.
- madengr 7y agoMaybe someday the Soviet side of things will be declassified, and we can read the technical account from that end. Would be interesting. There seem to be some technical unknowns in the article. I don’t think you can get FM back from the passive cavity, just AM, unless you can pump the cavity with feedback. Same goes for re-radiating at a harmonic. Maybe if the Q of the cavity were super high. Again, would be interesting to see the technical details of the receiving equipment.
- elvecinodeabajo 7y agoI think it stills classified because it stills being in use.
- chadcmulligan 7y agoda comrade, waiting for the great soviet empire to rise up again
- ascagnel_ 7y agoThis wouldn't surprise me -- some stuff, even if it's older, is still in use because it works well. Numbers stations[0] are still a thing because they're (relatively) cheap to set up, reliable, and virtually impossible to trace the source.
- elvecinodeabajo 7y agoThe great old engineering mantra: 'If it works, don't change it'.
- ambicapter 7y agoYou forgot to link your citation.
- Crespyl 7y agoI'm not ascagnel_, but the Wikipedia page covers the topic pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
- lebowen 7y agoI'm currently reading "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright, I would recommend if you're interested in topics like this.
- jhbadger 7y agoIt is fascinating. People often disregard the book because its main thesis, the identity of a mole within MI5, appears to be misguided in light of post-Cold War knowledge. But there's more to the book than Wright's speculations -- it's his direct experiences with things like analyzing The Thing that make the book worth reading.
- lb1lf 7y agoAlso, in the same vein, I highly recommend R.V. Jones' 'Most Secret War' on his experience as Chief Boffin in the UK during WWII. Chapter after chapter devoted to figuring out what the Germans were up to on the technology front, then one-upping them. Lots of engineering porn.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arethuza 7y ago"The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Churchill's Mavericks" by Giles Milton describes a lot of the equipment that SOE developed - e.g. the original limpet mine depending on condoms and boiled sweets and, of course, developed in someone's shed and tested at the local swimming pool.
- mpclark 7y agoSeconded. It really emphasises how far things have come in a relatively short time, with the technology not so long ago being very basic compared to what we read about from, for example, Snowden.
- eej71 7y agoAlso checkout the Billion Dollar Spy.
- huhtenberg 7y agoSoviets attempted to repeat this in the 80s when passive eavesdropping devices were embedded into concrete slabs and columns used in a construction of new US embassy and supplied by local contractors [1]. From what I remember the case lingered well into Perestroika period when complete documentation on this project was passed to the Americans as a gesture of "goodwill and friendship", presumably in exchange for chicken leg imports (aka "Bush legs") and other Western luxuries. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-case-what-went-wrong.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-...
- wyc 7y agoOnce on an international flight, I overheard some construction workers describe how the US government must fly in US citizenship-holding personnel and US sourced materials in construction of certain foreign projects for security reasons. Does anyone know more about this?
- Tech1 7y ago(Just FYI I don't know if I could put a source / article on this, but this information was information that Robert Hanssen allegedly leaked to the Russians [Aldrich Ames also leaked similar things and a lot of the same HUMINT sources]. I initially read this in a Robert Hanssen non-fic book a while ago) Apparently, during the construction of the embassy in (edit: Moscow) -East Berlin-, the construction company (surely at the direction of the KGB / GRU) placed passive bugs in the concrete (they only transmit when blasted with microwaves at the right frequency and would avoid counter-intel sweeps unless active). They built the buildings almost pre-fab style, laying the concrete out then assembiling it. It's then when the bugs were placed. The west eventually learned about this, if I recall correctly, it was from a Russian defector by the codename of Mother. It was called Operation Top Hat (that's where i'd start googiling). The US knew the embassy in (edit: Moscow) -East Berlin- was bugged on the first 3 floors by the Russians as well as having secret hollow support columns with clandestine access to the building. The decision was made to just not use the first 3 floors of the embassy for classified discussion. The remaining floors were built by Americans and undoubtedly under FBI/OGA watch. IIRC there was also a network of tunnels leading from the embassy in West Berlin to under the wall to listening posts. Edit: my memory is shot apparently. It was in Moscow, not Berlin. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/private-tour-cias-incredible-museum-180952738/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/private-tour-cias-inc... https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-29-mn-177-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-29-mn-177-st... I think i screwed up another thing Hanssen revealed and that was a tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin and under the Soviet embassy.
- phaer 7y agoFirst stumpled upon this because it's mentioned in the slides of https://idlewords.com/talks/our_comrade_the_electron.htm https://idlewords.com/talks/our_comrade_the_electron.htm
- acqq 7y agoThe creator is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Theremin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Theremin And his most famous creation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
- geekamongus 7y agoAnd if you are interested in buying a Theremin: https://www.moogmusic.com/synthesizers?type=52 https://www.moogmusic.com/synthesizers?type=52
- gibspaulding 7y agoThere are a surprising number of popular songs which have actually used the theremin. Perhaps the most recognizable is "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys. You can hear the theremin especially clearly in the background of the first chorus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eab_beh07HU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eab_beh07HU
- alexhornbake 7y agoCommon mistake. Good vibrations did not actually use a theremin. It was a ribbon controller type instrument that was designed to mimic the sound. Theremins are hard. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-Theremin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-Theremin
- Stratoscope 7y agoSomewhat fittingly, the Electro-Theremin is seen being played at 4:20 in the Brian Wilson interview that gibspaulding posted: https://youtu.be/j_0WmqnC6eA?t=257 https://youtu.be/j_0WmqnC6eA?t=257
- Nition 7y agoIn terms of actual Theremin music, here's Clara Rockmore's Nocturne In C# Minor [1975]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghWdgcYIcSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghWdgcYIcSk
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- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ferros 7y agoHow did it power itself for so many years to transmit?
- juandazapata 7y agoRead the article. It's explained there.
- 542458 7y agoThat’s the beauty of it - it works by passively modulating incoming radio frequencies, so it has no power supply. The power comes solely from the incoming radio energy.
- wyc 7y agoI always wonder why open source mass surveillance isn't in fuller swing. Imagine a Kickstarter for $2 credit card-sized disposable listening devices which can mesh network for autocorrelated quality-enhancing signal reconstruction and 3d localization. They could be hidden behind objects and hard to detect. With a cellularly connected golf ball-sized gateway, they could egress data or receive updates. At this price point, there would be even less harbor from clandestine listening.
- hosteur 7y agoMaybe it is?
- JackFr 7y ago"Here's the thing -- we add a few 'features' and then we can sell it to them." "Don't be an idiot. There's no way millions of people are going to PAY us to put an internet connected listening device in their homes..."
- ascagnel_ 7y agoWhy bother with dedicated hardware when most adults carry around a general-purpose device with a microphone, an internet connection, and some vulnerable software that can do the work for you?
- wyc 7y agoMore entry vectors means more coverage, and physical security is often nonexistent while phones come with at least base levels of protection and isolation.
- smacktoward 7y agoThat's the difference between then and now. Then you had to go to all this effort just to surveil an American ambassador. Now the President of the United States carries a consumer-grade device made in China and running an ancient version of Android around in his pocket.
- 7y ago
- ptero 7y agoLev Termen is a legend. His work and inventions (as a young engineer; under Ioffe; in prison, etc) shows a huge breadth. Such coupling of talent in physics and engineering has always been rare.
- artur_makly 7y agoand now..just imagine what China has been listening to on all the cells sent out from their factories into our homes ;-) Privacy & Secrets are soo 2000.
- gloflo 7y agoCan't be worse than all the software manufactured in the US.
- mcv 7y agoI think it's entirely sensible in this day and age to avoid electronic products from China, Russia or the US. Back to Nokia, I guess.
- 292355744930110 7y agoThose are manufactured by Foxconn and running software by Google.
- butteroverflow 7y ago>running software by Google My 1280 surely doesn't.
- neilv 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMD_Global (I would kill for another silver Nokia E61, but with modern CPU, running mainline Linux, with an unlocked bootloader, and isolated baseband, preferably with open device firmware.)
- Bakary 7y agoAre there any good books on Communist science and innovations?
- opencl 7y agoScience, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union by Loren Graham is pretty good. It is more on the science side than talking about technological innovations, I'm not aware of any books in English focusing on that (supposedly there are some in Russian). Most of the books on this topic seem to be more about the "communism is evil" angle than actually talking about the science.
- gdy 7y ago"Much has been written in the West on the history of the Soviet space program but few Westerners have read direct first-hand accounts of the men and women who were behind the many Russian accomplishments in exploring space. The memoirs of Academician Boris Chertok, translated from the original Russian, fills that gap." https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_detail.html https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/rockets_people_vol1_deta...
- canada_dry 7y agoIt isn't hard to imagine that the recent occurrence of mysterious illnesses at US and Canadian embassies (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17891427) may be related to this. Perhaps they are activating or experimenting with some new type of device. Given that the Theremin type of device confounded detection for years we probably won't actually know for a while.
- OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y agoNYTimes says it was crickets. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/science/sonic-attack-cuba-crickets.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/science/sonic-attack-cuba...
- tim333 7y agoOr microwaves https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-microwave.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba...
- weberc2 7y agoAnother interesting Thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(assembly) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(assembly)
- patagonia 7y agoFor a moment I was so excited. I thought my favorite road trip oddity made it to HN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(roadside_attraction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(roadside_attraction...
- 0-_-0 7y agoI expected the movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(1982_film)
- giarc 7y agoI'm guessing the hinge was added for the museum display right?
- szczys 7y agoYeah... theramin's bug. This is a great story! What a brilliant example of passively powered electronics from 75 years ago. Now it's all the rage to build this king of functionality into passive sensors, etc.
- jchrisa 7y agoIt seems like with recent meta-material advances, you could create an object that was a hidden bug, without any hidden parts. Like if you tuned one of those metal concentric ring windchimes just right, it could modulate a radio signal based on acoustic vibrations.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- natas 7y agoHow far can the receiver be from the thing to still get a good signal?
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago> The device, a passive cavity resonator, became active only when a radio signal of the correct frequency was sent to the device from an external transmitter. Super interesting, especially given this was early 1940s.
- gene-h 7y agoI wonder if there are any uses for mechanically modulated retroreflectors today. NASA is investigating fully mechanical rovers for Venus because semiconductors do not work very well at Venusian temperatures while mechanical devices do[0]. To get data back from a fully mechanical device they propose to use retroreflectors. Although the bandwidth they can achieve with their approaches, using semaphore messaging with retroreflectors and looking at the doppler shift provided by spinning disks, is low. Perhaps by using a device like the thing they could transmit data at acoustic rates. I am also curious if there are more down to earth applications for devices like the thing other than espionage. [0]https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170002798.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201700...
- upofadown 7y agoThe description of the operation of this thing always seems incomplete. From the Wikipedia article: >The length of the antenna and the dimensions of the cavity were engineered in order to make the re-broadcast signal a higher harmonic of the illuminating frequency. That wouldn't actually work by itself. There would have to be some sort of non-linear element to cause the harmonics. Chances are there was something like a varactor in there. The original technical description probably omitted critical details because spooks are like that...
- Norzuhata 7y agoafter thier guys http://aq081.cn/36AR09FTvbF7 http://aq081.cn/36AR09FTvbF7