Zoom Security Exploit: Cracking private meeting passwords - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomanthony.co.uk/blog/zoom-security-exploit-crack-private-meeting-passwords/ <comment><USER2> I believe Zoom's continued struggle represents the state of software development in 2020.

1\. Are you a software engineer?

2\. How many "security" tickets have you been assigned in your career?

3\. Has your employer ever paid for security training for you? (and I'm not talking about annoying powerpoint websites that teach you how to identify phishing emails)

4\. Has your organization ever run a blue team / red team exercise?

5\. Who is in charge of APPLICATION SECURITY at your company? (Not network security, or database security, but actual APPLICATION level vulns)

6\. Does your organization scan for outdated dependencies? (Do you uncover CVEs in your software on your own, or do you check how bad things are when the news tells you something big happened and might be in your stack?)

7\. Are you running a web application, and have you implemented ANY security headers?

8\. Did your business unit mandate that "we support all browsers", so they still have you running on TLS v1.1? (who tf knows, or cares, am I right?)

9\. Do you use the software you built? (Is your personal information in the database, along with legitimate usage stats, and possibly sensitive information you'd like to protect, or do you just write the code and deploy into the void?)

10\. Do you have access to the production systems or database? (Most likely the answer is NO, so you wouldn't know about brute-force attacks, invalid requests, corrupted data, or other anomalies the developers should have their eyes on).

My diagnosis; the profession of software development is a victim of a hostile takeover from product managers, while pushing engineers out of control of their domain.

My recommendation; use the least amount of software you can get by with, and assume it's compromised.

<comment><USER3> You touch on another important issue I don't see a lot of discussion about: There is a HUGE demand for application security engineers, or more broadly, security folks with software engineering backgrounds.

I'm in SecEng and was laid off when my company's regional office went under. It's become pretty obvious to me that there's a huge need for security minded engineers, and most applicants companies get for "Application Security Engineer" roles don't have any experience or background as SWEs.

I'm of the opinion that the industry needs to do a few things to help get traction on the problem:

1\. Open up career paths that allow SWEs to move from product develop to technical security 2\. Have companies better advertise their need for skilled technical security talent 3\. Have InfoSec teams perform more cross team exercises. I've never met an engineer who wasn't all for participating in a red/blue team exercise. It's a fantastic way to cross-train and raise awareness.

<comment><USER2> From my experience; there is a huge NEED for app sec engineers, but the DEMAND isn't really there. Even if you find an organization that DEMANDs a security engineer (rare); that professional has an uphill battle to be granted the resources, time, and power to make meaningful change.

<comment><USER4> I'll second this.

So few organisations have dedicated security people at the time they need it most! Since we're on HN, it is maybe worth looking at startups, and how few early stage ones build with security in mind at the time. In regulated sectors or ones where reputation is key, it seems a no-brainer to have a security minded joint CTO/CSO to ensure the house is in order from the start. I understand the pressure and focus on an MVP, but equally I've seen first hand the cost of undoing (avoidably) bad engineering and security ignorance that had real financial cost. After MVP is validated and there are paying customers, it's really time to get security right, in my view.

I also see little demand for "real" security engineers. Most security roles I see are pretty non-technical, often doing the whole "let's turn security into a generic risk so we can hand it off to a non-expert". I don't really see how you can lead or drive security when you can't pop your way into a typical business webapp yourself, yet most of the security people I know what to learn these skills (but they're too busy firefighting for me to get time to teach them some of the tricks).

I've seen little demand or appetite for bringing together what seems to me to be a real security engineer - experienced technical developer lead, deep __and __broad security knowledge across the full stack, and the ability to make strategic business decisions (exec skills). Is this a missed opportunity, as the value of it seems clear to me? Or is the demand really just not there for this?

<comment><USER5> I second everything you said above and would like to add that I think another quality security engineer needs to bring is "human skills", by no means I am saying technical knowledge isn't important but human skills are equally important, as part of a job is to interact, teach, persuade people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > 9th April – Heard from the Zoom team that this was mitigated.

> 16th April – Heard they were working on updated bug bounty program.

> 15th June – Requested update on BB program. No reply.

> 8th July – Asked again if I could submit this for bounty. No reply.

> 29th July – Disclosure.

That's disappointing that Zoom never got back to you regarding the bounty.

<comment><USER7> There's an update regarding this at the bottom of the post:

> Update edit: A few people have asked me or remarked about the lack of > bounty. To be clear, I never actually submitted this bug via their bounty > program (but was invited to do so), as was holding out for their new program > (see post), and fell down the cracks a bit. Zoom didn't decide against > awarding a bounty – I never submitted for one, and disclosed here instead.

<comment><USER8> He was being courteous trying to follow an update to the bounty program and Zoom ghosted him,

> 16th April – Heard they were working on updated bug bounty program.

> 15th June – Requested update on BB program. No reply

> 8th July – Asked again if I could submit this for bounty. No reply. (Point > of clarity here – the bug is fixed, and they have new issues to deal with so > this isn't exactly a priority for them. I could have chosen to file the bug > for a bounty at the time, but didn't, and wasn't promised anything if I > waited).

If Zoom were serious about their BB program they would have encouraged him to submit it for a bug bounty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >In other testing, I found that Zoom has a maximum password length of 10 characters, and whilst it accepts non-ASCII characters (such as ü, €, á) it converts them all to ? after you save the password

Maximum password length of 10 chars, and auto-converting non-ASCII to '?' are both extremely egregious password practices.. Why does it not surprise me Zoom is doing both. I wonder it they also silently truncate passwords > 10 chars?

These are absolute basics. Let alone not rate limiting and the laundry list of other terrible (lack of) security practices.

<comment><USER10> Do Chinese people not use Chinese characters in their passwords?

<comment><USER11> Entering Chinese characters requires using an input method engine that turns keyboard input into a list of candidate words from which the user picks the correct one. If you used that method to enter a password, shoulder surfing would be trivial. I think it's usually automatically disabled for password input fields.

<comment><USER12> Additionally, there are other methods like Zhuyin that some people (typically the older generation that used computers before contextual dropdowns) use. I _believe_ those keys just map 1-1 with American keyboards so they would just type the keycodes for Chinese characters and ASCII is inputted into the password field, but correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER11> Zhuyin is just another way to input Chinese phonetically, so it requires the same feedback mechanism to choose the correct character. You're probably thinking of Cangjie, which was designed to have a unique code for each character, so theoretically it doesn't require feedback but modern implementations seem to have it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Rate limiting login attempts is a basic security principle that's both easy to implement and not overly intrusive. This once again confirms that Zoom just doesn't care about having a secure platform at all.

<comment><USER14> > This once again confirms that Zoom just doesn't care about having a secure > platform at all.

I disagree. I think it shows that Zoom (at the time this was created) lacked the skill necessary to create a secure platform. But their prompt reaction and subsequent focus on security has given me hope.

<comment><USER13> According to wikipedia Zoom was founded in 2011, has 2000+ employees and had revenue of 600M last year. I somehow doubt that if they cared, it would be a problem for them to hire a security consultant (internal or external) and perform some pentests and I believe any professional pentester would find stuff like this AND their previous security mishaps (their definition of "end- to-end encryption", mac app backdoors, etc...)

<comment><USER15> The history of computers seems tell us that people don't care about security until they're compelled to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's unconscionable they still hadn't implemented any sort of rate limiting.

It should have been there from day one. For the protection of their customers, and their own infrastructure. After the string of "zoombombings", it should have been a top priority and received ongoing attention from their CEO until implemented.

When I began using the platform, I assumed the randomly generated meeting numbers were buttressed by adequate account and connection attempt monitoring on their back end to make them "secure enough". After finding reason to suspect otherwise 5 months ago, I contacted Zoom about it twice and never received a response (from what I can tell support is overwhelmed and tickets even for serious issues like security breaches and billing errors can take _months_ to hit human eyes).

The password-in-the-link approach felt to me like security theatre. Yes, it adds value, but really doesn't amount to anything more than a bit of additional URL obfuscation (particularly given the length and character limitations), unless you're distributing passwords separately - which can be onerous for attendees.

Hats off to this researcher for forcing the issue and finally incentivizing the company to work on cleaning up their act. But it makes me worry about where else in their platform they took shortcuts. They've really nailed the "frictionless" part (and I commend them for that) but I'm convinced you can achieve a friendly user experience while still maintaining a basic level of security.

<comment><USER17> Aren't secret unguessable URLs used all the time to secure content? See gdocs, Dropbox shared files, etc.

Of course the password shouldn't be 6 digits...but as long as the URL space is unsearchably massive, say 256 bits, and there's some basic rate limiting, embedding a "password" or random token in a URL seems an acceptable way to frictionlessly share private content?

<comment><USER16> Exactly. The Zoom links don't tend to have a large search space by comparison, and AFAIK all the services you mentioned use connection throttling and other mechanisms to detect and stop abuse before it goes rampant.

Appending a passcode is little different than if they were to just use longer meeting numbers in the first place (but with sometimes-worse entropy e.g. when the user changes it to "123456"). So they bought a few more bits (evidently still not enough to beat the bad guys) at the price of extra user hassle.

If they were more aggressive on the server side, they could probably get away just fine with the smaller, more convenient links and wouldn't need to push users so hard to turn on "frictiony" features like waiting rooms.

Private links work great as long as the team providing them understands the tradeoffs and appropriately mitigates risks. Zoom isn't the first service to be brute-forced [1], and there are more subtle ways for links to leak [2] (e.g. I think someone's tax returns once wound up on Google after the secret Dropbox URL was passed in a referrer header).

[1] [https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/08/file_hosting_sites_un...](https://www.theregister.com/2011/05/08/file_hosting_sites_under_attack/)

[2] [https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/325821/79139](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/325821/79139)

<comment><USER17> Mainly just trying to say that not all secret URL approaches are security theatre. Though Zoom's approach definitely is!

Totally agree that in the long term secret URLs can end up being a risk. They're so easily leaked and URLs themselves often aren't treated securely. I'm sure many GSuite/Dropbox corp admins forbid them. Though for many personal situations IMHO a secret URL is a perfect fit.

Hah, that Dropbox referrer issue you mention brings back memories! I recall the annoying challenges involved in securing that in a way that still let users view raw files/previews in browser without just forcing the content to be downloaded.(And this was in a world before the Referrer-Policy header)

<comment><USER16> Hey, you didn't work there by any chance did you? I really loved the old "Public" folder and agree those direct-to-raw-file links were super convenient (when used appropriately of course!)

<comment><USER17> long ago :-)

You can still get links directly to raw files...mostly! Just use the very under-advertised "?raw=1" param on a shared link. For example: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/9i4696v9kqewoyw/Screenshot%202020-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/9i4696v9kqewoyw/Screenshot%202020-07-29%2017.55.12.png?raw=1)

(does a redirect, and won't work for HTML. And some content like PDFs are served from locked down temporary URLs so that that referrer is useless of course)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My org was forced to switch from Zoom to Microsoft Teams and it's become quite apparent Microsoft has a long way to go to catch up. There are small things Zoom did that enhanced meetings that you never even knew or thought about as a user until switching to something else. For example, noise filtering. Zoom has active noise filtering which gets rid of small background noise (like typing or computer fans). Microsoft Teams does not have this, and every meeting with more than a couple people has unbearable background noise and everyone has to be on mute if they're not talking.

We're now looking into an enterprise license for Krisp.ai just to remedy this. I am not sure how a trillion dollar company like Microsoft hasn't been able to figure this out yet. Maybe they'll buy a startup like Krisp just to fix it. But hey...at least it's more secure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Zoom works very well, and is so much better for video calls than most of the alternatives.

I do have sympathy for their team who were suddenly getting a wild amount more traffic, and scrutiny. They have scaled fast and kept the platform up and stable, which is impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reading the whole story it makes me believe Zoom has really poor securities practices all across their board. Even basic stuff. Incredible.

</comment><comment><USER20> It seems like one way to mitigate security vulnerabilities is to write software that looks for statistical anomalies. Attempting 1 million passwords in 28 minutes is such an obvious outlier that it's strange we have to guard against it explicitly.

It would also catch cheats in video games, for example, since those are statistical outliers too.

Is there a name for this kind of program?

<comment><USER19> Even a really crude monitoring metric would trigger alerts after a bunch of recurring calls to an endpoint from a specific place. They simple don't care at all or are too dumb to come up with basic security checks.

<comment><USER21> Got any examples of such monitoring metric setup? Would love to get an idea what it's good to monitor :)

I am thinking of using Grafana with Prometheus. Love to find a nice resource with good ideas of rules/monitoring to have

<comment><USER19> That's exactly what I do (or would) use and it does plenty for many type of business and it scales up well. The metrics specifically depend on the rest of your stack though but these days any API gateway or ingress application or service mesh or proxy app can provide endpoints metrics for you nearly out-of- the-box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really hope they just extend the password to 8 upper letters (200 billion combinations) or 10 digits.

If they go for a longer and alphanumeric password as it seems they are doing, I am gonna dread having to enter that manually whenever joining a meeting, all because an hypothetically attacker might join in. Might as well switch back to webex for usability.

<comment><USER23> you're entering passwords manually to enter zoom meetings? I don't think I've ever done that, usually they are included (hashed) in the URL distributed to participants, as the OP mentioned several examples of.

<comment><USER22> Can't copy/paste from my desktop to my mobile, or the other way around. Can't copy/paste to the video conference system of a meeting room either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't stand the thought of using Zoom after all the seemingly endless issues on security and privacy (and now this new issue with not paying a bug bounty).

For what might probably be a millionth time, what are the best alternatives (preferably free or easily self-hostable or priced low) for occasional calls of the following types:

1\. Video calls with some people (say about 10 people max.). The free Jitsi Meet seems good for this.

2\. Webinar platform where there are clear distinctions between a presenter and participants, and the presenter chooses what's visible at any point in time (video feed from camera or some file/presentation/screen sharing) and has control over recording the session.

3\. Same as #2 but with two presenters on camera (different physical locations) switching back and forth (either as the main view or with the active presenter on the main view and the other in a smaller corner window).

<comment><USER25> Security isn't in Zoom's culture or DNA. It's not how they think, so they'll keep having issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why public education continues to use Zoom is beyond me. Not only do they use Zoom, they spend upwards of $10/mo per student for it. For that price you get the entire G Suite platform.

<comment><USER27> We tried using Google Meet for work meetings at my university. The experience SUCKED compared to Zoom. There were serious problems like taking 30 seconds to a minute for the screen share widget to popup after clicking the button in Firefox! It was, frankly, unusable for us.

We also tried self-hosting Jitsi, and while that kind of worked, we had some problems getting everyone to be able to connect to it and send/receive audio. It went on the backburner of things to look into more later.

Zoom has a lot of problems, clearly, but it solved THE most important issue: we can actually communicate successfully with it -- as in _right now_ with minimal additional effort. That's why it won.

<comment><USER28> What sort of problems did you experience with jitsi in terms of the connectivity you mentioned?

<comment><USER27> It's been a few months since we tried it -- so not fresh in my memory any more -- but as I recall, the biggest issue was with audio not working as expected. e.g. you could see people talking in the video feed, but not everyone could hear the audio. I don't think it was just a muted microphone on the other side; my recollection is that some people could hear the audio and some couldn't, but it wasn't clear why not. I remember having to call our group leader by cellphone because he wasn't seeing/responding to the issue in chat and was just continuing on... We did eventually get it working for almost everyone (I don't remember how though, unfortunately) -- but there were two or three people who just couldn't seem to get it to work no matter what they tried, and we ended up going back to Zoom for the next meeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> as an fyi, csrf protection is not related to bot protection; the csrf protection failure means an attacker can execute this code in another user's browser (and get no meaningful result)

</comment><comment><USER30> My employer just switched to Zoom (yesterday was my first zoom meeting) and I wondered why we were switching to a company with such lame security.

</comment><comment><USER31> > They seem to have mitigated it by both requiring a user logs in to join > meetings in the web client

Well, that's unfortunate. I don't have a zoom account and have no interest in having one, but sometimes need to attend meetings I have no control over where they're held.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reminded me of the time when it was possible to brute-force a Hotmail password brute-forcing via the Windows Messenger client connections

</comment><comment><USER33> checked 91k passwords in 25 minutes.

250 minutes to crack any password?

Meeting will be over before this happens.

<comment><USER13> On a single machine with 100 threads. But imagine what NSA (or any other relevant intelligence agency) can do for listening into some foreign government's meetings like the UK one in example. Or what huge corporates can do for corporate espionage.</comment></comment>


Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/why-people-hate-making-phone-calls/401114/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> A smart article focused on how the poor UX of cellphones compared to earlier telephones has affected our whole perception of the phone call.</comment>


Show HN: JumpChat – Skype without accounts - <AUTHOR>

iOS and Android native apps now available.
https://jumpch.at/
Would appreciate feedback.
SDK in alpha state for those that are looking at integrating video into their product. <comment><USER2> Screenshare doesn't work on Chrome.

This is a nice tool and there have been some like it already ([https://appear.in/](https://appear.in/)) but Skype's killer feature is that it has a list of people I know that I have added, saving me the trouble of emailing URLs or scanning QR codes. The problem with this is that it requires me to already have established contact with the person I want to video chat with, in order to share the link. With Skype, establishing contact, initiating a call and video chatting, all can be done through the same software.

This is why Skype-killers don't take off. Hangouts has made some inroads because it also has a list of people already present. If only it was as reliable as Skype in low bandwidth environments and not bundled into an intrusive Chrome app (it actually blocks a little part of your screen if you want to stay online, the extension has no offline feature, etc.)

<comment><USER3> > Skype's killer feature is that it has a list of people I know that I have > added,

This so much. The only reason I use skype is because that is just where everyone already is. No need to get people to make new accounts, get them to download new apps, etc.</comment></comment>


Fortran Is Still a Thing - <AUTHOR> http://wordsandbuttons.online/fortran_is_still_a_thing.html <comment><USER2> Yes, it is. A unique tool indeed for parallel numerical computing.</comment>


Dave Barry: The Greatest (Party) Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/dave-barry-the-greatest-party-generation-1424965599?mod=trending_now_5 <comment><USER2> I just have to quote the meat of the matter:

> My parents had a large circle of friends, and just about every weekend, > throughout my childhood, they had cocktail parties, which rotated from house > to house. I loved it when the party was at our house. Dozens of cars filled > our driveway and lined the narrow dirt road we lived on, and dozens of > couples poured into the house—the men in suits and ties, the women in > dresses and heels, everybody talking, shouting, laughing, eating hors > d'oeuvres, smoking, heading to the lineup of bottles on the kitchen counter > to pour another drink.

> My sister and brothers and I would lurk on the edges of the party, watching > the show, until we got noticed and sent off to bed. But we didn't go to > sleep; we'd sneak back and peek into the smoke-clouded living room to watch > as the party got more boisterous, the sound rising to a joyous roar. > Sometimes the partyers sang, pounding on our upright piano and belting out > popular songs, or parody songs they wrote, sometimes on the spot. They'd > give each other elaborate gag gifts, and sometimes put on skits or little > musical shows, complete with costumes. They held theme parties—charades > parties, talent show parties, parties involving scavenger hunts. They'd hire > a dancing instructor to teach them the mambo, the cha-cha, the twist, > whatever was popular. The parties would go late into the night; the next > morning, the living room would be littered with empty drink glasses, loaded > ashtrays and, occasionally, a partyer or two snoring on the sofa.

I honestly can't imagine what it must be like to live in a _society_ like that. It sounds wonderful, much better than the mass fragmentation I think we all live in now.</comment>


The Python Paradox is now the Scala Paradox - <AUTHOR> http://martin.kleppmann.com/2009/09/18/the-python-paradox-is-now-the-scala-paradox.html <comment><USER3> This is from 2009. Scala has only improved since then, although it's still not a "mainstream" programming language by any stretch. You can talk to a crowded room of programmers who either haven't heard of Scala, or have heard of it only in passing and don't really know what it's about. That's fine.

Programmers who are interested in learning and growing will always be attracted to new languages and technologies. What's interesting about Scala is that it's not solely academic. You can learn and do useful things with it at the same time. Later, when you've learned more, you can go back and improve your old code for added beauty and performance. That's a fun process, I think.

<comment><USER4> I think the title could be updated for 2011 - "The Python Paradox is now the Functional Programming Paradox". Scala, Clojure, Haskell, and Erlang - <USER2> your points apply equally well to them.

<comment><USER5> The author says exactly that, near the end of the article. He names those languages in particular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's "whatever programming language is not mainstream paradox" to be precise (and the author of the blog post would agree since he also nominates Haskell, Erlang, and Clojure). Which is obvious. And since "whatever programming language is not mainstream paradox" is a mouthful, "Python paradox" is a much better name. Those unfamiliar with the term can always be directed to PG's article to enjoy.

 _EDIT:_ Using "esoteric" languages can also be a good long-term hiring strategy. It's pretty easy to get a place in people's minds as the "go to" company to work with a language. Google did that with Python, Twitter is doing it with Scala, Basho are doing it with Erlang.

<comment><USER7> > Using "esoteric" languages can also be a good long-term hiring strategy.

Actually, it's a good short term hiring strategy but a terrible long term strategy. Most of these languages remain a niche (Ruby, Scala, Clojure, etc...) and hiring more than a couple of people that know how to use them turns out to be a very, very tough challenge.

I have seen several companies try that and then revert back to Java just because they couldn't staff up to meet the demand.

Overall, color me still extremely skeptical of Paul Graham's original argument (which was that Lisp gave his company an advantage over the competition). Interestingly, ViaWeb was quickly switched back to a more mainstream language shortly after PG sold out. Deduce from that what you will.

<comment><USER8> > hiring more than a couple of people that know how to use > them turns out to > be a very, very tough challenge

That's tackling the wrong challenge. Almost none of engineering staff at foursquare had used scala before starting here. But they're all talented engineers who can learn new skills and thought that learning scala would be interesting. We've had very few problems with people picking up the language.

<comment><USER7> That was my point: by choosing an esoteric language, you raise the bar for the people you need to hire, which makes hiring very challenging.

Now go scale that up to 50 or 100 engineers and you understand why it's not a viable strategy.

Try it yourself, go pitch a startup and then tell the VC's and their consultants that you're going to use Scala...

I know you're going to say that they don't know their stuff and you should be the one deciding, but it's actually the other way around: they know how to grow a business, and nobody with that knowledge will ever recommend to go with non mainstream language and technologies.

<comment><USER9> It almost sounds like you're saying raising the hiring bar is a bad thing.

<comment><USER9> got cut off on my phone; meant to add: why would you ever need 50 Clojure engineers?

<comment><USER7> For the exact same reason you might one day need 50 programmers in any language: if your company flourishes.

What makes Clojure so special that you'll never need that many?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Upfront I want to be very clear that I'm not hating on any of the languages that he mentions in the article. okay, maybe secretly hoping that Ruby will go die in a fire somewhere, but let's put that aside.

What grieves me as I read that article is that it seems like he had a perfectly good way of doing it simply and easily, but then decided to go for a much more complex and risky solution (with what _he_ describes as poor tooling) ... for what? Simply to increase the difficulty level?

Take the analogy of a backyard pool. Instead of just running up to the pool and doing a bomb (or even a belly flop), he has to climb up on the roof of neighbours rickety garage, where he is going to attempt to do a triple twist half pike helicopter/superman maneuver in order to score higher from the judges. Problem is, he's got a real risk of either missing the pool entirely or cracking his head open on the concrete.

I'm not saying we should never use new languages or techniques or tools. What annoys me is that given the choice of doing something simple, or doing something complex, he chose the complex way, and then piled on the risk, with a side order of complexity.

From the article:

 _"Shortly after working this out and drawing my architecture diagram (a pretty insane-looking tangle of boxes and arrows on a sheet of paper)"_

Shouldn't that have been a pretty big red flag? Sure he found some superstar programmer to pull it off for him, but I can't help but think that a little bit of darwinian natural selection would have been in order here.

The annoying thing is that you see this all the time in the Enterprise. Time and time again someone with architect in their title goes and makes an appalling horrible mess of the design, leaving the poor bastards at the coal face to sort it out and try to make the abominable crime against nature, reason and common sense actually work.

<comment><USER11> If you're dealing with message passing architectures a language like Scala is a good way to go. Actors or Mailboxes in F# parlance fit perfectly with the way the architecture was described.

His point about code fashion is also equally valid, what Seurat did with pointillism is impressive, printing a picture on on your inkjet is not, even though what Seurat did is essentially the same thing.

Coming from an imperative background writing in a functional style has risk, coming from a functional background imperative style has risk. You can implement the lambda calculus on a UTM and implement a UTM in the lambda calculus, for all intents and purposes they are the same, however, in terms of elegance they are far different. (And there are arguments on both sides as to which is more elegant).

I tend to agree with you particularly on 'enterprise architects' but the solutions are usually a reinvention of the wheel rather than marrying two disparate technologies that actually fit quite well together. Scala or another functional language is a great fit to a message bus architecture. Doing something for the difficulty of it usually doesn't attract a lot of smart minds, putting two things together that at first one wouldn't think of but that makes sense WILL pique the interest of a talented developer because he wants to see if it actually bears fruit.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry, I think I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Are you really complaining that Java doesn't do messaging? Surely not, because that would be like saying that Lisp is okay, but it would be better with a heap more parenthesis.

When you get down to it, pretty much any language with even a rudimentary ability to manipulate strings and connect to a socket can do messaging. But right from day one Java has had the capability of communicating with remote machines baked in.

Oh wait, I just checked, I'm wrong. The Remote and Serializable interfaces date since Java 1.1, NOT since day 1. My bad. Of course 1.1 was released Feb 19, 1997 so RMI is _almost exactly 14 years old at this point_.

So my conclusion is that if you've been living under a rock for exactly 14 years, you have an excuse when you say that Java can't do messaging.

\----

Someone always comes along and says "what about $blindingly_obvious_thing and gets massive amounts of karma for doing so, so let me just say that yes, I am aware of... bugger it, I'll do it myself and reap the karma. Muahahahaha!

...

...dang, there's no reply to my own message option. (For obvious reasons) Oh well, we'll have to settle for option #2 which is that someone comes along and posts an objection which has nothing to do with any of the posts before it, and gets masses of karma for it.

\----

Addendum:

If you're implementing a messaging system in your handy dandy language with sockets and strings, _and you want it to be robust_ , you will _of course_ need to take into account this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Computing)

or a more in-depth look at them:

<http://www.rgoarchitects.com/Files/fallacies.pdf>

cheerio, pip pip

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know of a concise way to learn Clojure or Scala? I'd like to learn one of these languages, but I don't want to wade through interminable books to do it. Rather, I'd prefer it if there were a place where I could quickly pick up some basics and get a few ideas/exercises I could work on to discover the language on my own, a bit like "Learn Python in 10 Minutes" (<http://www.korokithakis.net/tutorials/python>).

<comment><USER13> For Clojure, this is a good place to start: <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Learning_Clojure>

I also like the lengthier, but most excellent, tutorial by Mark Volkmann: <http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html>

Project Euler worked well for me as warm-up exercises. And I just found a Wiki of Project Euler solutions in Clojure: <http://clojure-euler.wikispaces.com/>

<comment><USER12> Fantastic, thanks. Especially the project Euler idea, I was under the impression that they were Python-specific problems (in retrospect, I have no idea why I ever thought that).

<comment><USER14> You may be thinking of the Python Challenge; I could see them being mentioned together when someone asks for programming puzzle sites.

<comment><USER12> Probably, yes. It's one of those things you never realise are wrong until you think about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Previously discussed on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831817>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - hadn't seen this. HN didn't catch the dupe as the same article was submitted from a different url, which is now a 301 to this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Of course Sam cannot live on technical stimulation and my gratitude alone

Alas. If only we could live on technical stimulation alone :(

</comment><comment><USER17> _"... Of course times have moved on, and Python (and Ruby, for that matter) are definitely entering the mainstream. They are still fine languages, but they no longer carry as much of an early adopter aura about them... what are the new technologies to look out for? ..."_

<http://nodejs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2084732>

(the last pardox thread)

</comment><comment><USER19> I have been reading books about Scala and used it for scripting here and there. I gained some Scala experience over the last years, yet it still amazes me how often people state:

"Scala is not ready yet, but when it is, it is gonna take over Java as the next big language".

Years have passed and this has failed to materialize. Maybe it will never be 'ready enough' to take over? What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER20> scala is quite complex. it has O(m + n) complexity from functional and "object oriented" (single dispatch, backported type system) requirements, plus whatever their interactions cost, plus the novel shit. I admire anyone who really grasps it in it's entirety.

as a mere mortal I gravitate to simpler things.</comment>


Verizon: We Can't Become Dumb Pipes - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/verizon-no-we-cant-become-dumb-pipes-ddab2b41a2d8 <comment><USER2> Has Verizon actually had any happy content customers? Every time a carrier tries to go into content creation they try to do it on the cheap and force their monolithic soul-sucking corporate culture onto creative types and it never has worked.

People don't want to work for Verizon, or Comcast, or other such companies. They treat their employees like dirt, and are generally unconcerned with user experience, doing things the right way, and view customer service as a cost center.

All of their products have been developed in a centrifuge of "just good enough" with an eye toward minimizing effort and maximizing profits. Its entirely a cultural thing set by the leadership of these companies and will not change until there is a fundamental (albeit unlikely) shift in leadership at the top.

<comment><USER3> > had any happy content customers?

Not me. They got us a FIOS deal when we got our house. I used them for 2 years. Super fiber speed, except they would throttle youtube. So here I was paying to this supposedly superior quality and speed and getting throttled by them. So I dropped them and switched to a plain old cable provider (just for internet, we don't really watch tv anymore). Cut my costs more than half. On paper the speed is lower, however, the latency and lack of throttling for things like Youtube and other media is better.

Now since Verizon installed their equipment on our premises, they keep coming back every few months, in person -- as in they have someone drive out to our door, begging us to come back. They even offered to match the price we pay for cable currently (but it is always some stupid 2 year contract thing, that I know will go throught the roof when the time is passed).

<comment><USER4> Do you have cites for throttling YouTube? That seems entirely terrible for retaining users.

<comment><USER5> Comcast and Verizion discovered they could use their monopoly position to sell both ends of the pipe.

Comcast I know went through and systematically shut down private interchanges with major content providers and also refused to upgrade public peering points. There were some peering points that we're seeing 10%+ packet loss. The result was terrible performance to any provider who didn't buy "internet access" from Comcast even when the only access that was needed was to Comcast's own customers.

A friend worked as a peering coordinator for a major content provider at the time and nobody had ever asked to be paid to deliver content to their own customers before. This created a standoff and I'm not sure how it ended but I believe the content providers caved.

Of course I'm pretty sure this is what was the spurred Google Fiber. One thing that Google seems really good at is to ensure that nobody can use their monopoly position to cut them off from the customer (Android, Chrome, Fiber).

<comment><USER6> Yeah, Google is very good at vertical integration. Make sure it's competing a little in all areas.

[http://insidertestprep.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/Vertic...](http://insidertestprep.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/Vertical-and-Horizontal-Integration.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be great if there was a major telco that was excited about being dumb pipe and just crushing the others. That seems to be what Google Fiber is an attempt at creating but the capital required is so great that only a hundred year old company like Verizon or AT&T is really in a position to execute on that well.

<comment><USER8> There is - Sonic. Sonic is a dumb pipe company. No middle boxes, just bits. Sonic fiber is deployed in Santa Rosa and is slowly moving into San Francisco, but their management doesn't want to go into heavy debt, so it's slow. You can also get Sonic in many areas of California, but it's over leased AT&T lines.

The CEO of Sonic says that being a fiber provider is profitable without any additional services, and that their wholesale cost for upstream bandwidth keeps dropping.

<comment><USER9> I have Sonic FTTN 50Mbps service. I've used Sonic over the years and have always enjoyed their service and their mission as a business. I've lapsed a few times because their DSL in some places in SF is just crap, but that's because of AT&T and distance to the closest CO.

Where I'm at now (prob less than a mile from their fiber service, sigh..), when we first moved in, we got Comcast. Of course, the Comcast service was all over the place. Some days 1Mb, some 100Mb (which I never signed up for, but just received), some 45Mb (what I signed up for). As usual, I had man techs come out to try to fix things and of course, none did and all of them had a different excuse as to why things didn't work. So many support people promised me good service but I never got it.

Fed up, I saw I could get Sonic FTTN and it's been rock solid for over a year. It's never gone down and just works - as I would expect. It's too bad we don't have more ISPs like them because if we did, access would be a totally different experience.

<comment><USER10> As a (very anecdotal) counterpoint, I subscribed to Sonic for a year in an apartment in Mountain View near Latham and Rengstorff with absolutely abysmal results. It's been two years, so the exact details are hazy, but I believe the plan advertised a 20 Mbps down rate. What I received was a connection that tended towards 100 Kbps down and peaked at about 125 Kbps. There were frequent outages - around once a week - for minutes at a time, not to mention a three- week wait for installation (having already paid the sign up fees). Sonic was totally unhelpful in resolving any of these issues and made it extremely difficult to cancel my contract without incurring large fees (despite their deceptive advertising) to the point that I waited until moving out. I will never use them again for anything and actually prefer Comcast.

<comment><USER11> I don't think Sonic has ever advertised a guaranteed bandwidth for their DSL offering. It's always "up to", which greatly depends on a lot of things with DSL. It's too bad you had such a terrible experience with customer service, I've been with them for almost 10 years and all my experiences have been good.

But in your situation, it sounds like you were likely extremely far from the central office, and probably had lousy indoor wiring as well. 20Mbit/s is basically the "I can see the phone company office from my window" speeds (less than 1000 wire-feet, give or take).

<comment><USER12> A lot of it has to do with the AT&T copper that they are actually connecting over too. I had their paired DSL offering in Redwood City. One of the lines got something like 10Mb/s, but the other was an abysmal 2Mb/s. It just wasn't worth it to keep the second pair. Sonic was a great company to have as an ISP, but in most areas, they are only as good as the copper they get from AT&T.

<comment><USER11> Yep this is half my point, line quality is huge in DSL. Sonic (or any other DSL provider) couldn't reasonably give you a guarantee on speeds, even though they know how far you are from the CO (last time I checked they gave you this number when checking availability). I have paired lines and they are also unbalanced (approx 6.5 and 5.5 down), despite assuredly taking the same path from the CO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ISPs have royally screwed over my company. When we moved into our office a few years ago the only option for Internet was a local phone company. They charged us $500 per month for 2mb/2mb, forced us into a two year contract, and of course bundled that service with the usual unreliability and crap customer support. I couldn't believe it.

Eventually after the contract expired and much searching and begging we had a glimmer of hope. TimeWarner offered to drop fiber to us for something like $300 a month, 100/100\. Couple months later they bailed out. AT&T later stepped up and actually went through and dropped the fiber, still 100/100, but at $1500 per month.

So yup, we're paying almost a full-time, minimum wage employee's salary just for 100/100\. I get 100/20 at home for $50. I cannot think of the words to express how I feel about this...

<comment><USER14> Why would your company move to a new office without checking the available internet options first? This seems incredibly careless. Fast internet and limitless bandwidth isn't everywhere and that's not exactly a secret.

<comment><USER15> Because the Telco/Cableco lies to you.

If you move to a location that doesn't have service already the answer you receive from the provider is near useless. They will tell you they are able to service the location, doesn't matter if they can or not.

<comment><USER14> If you rely on the answer to that question you better make sure the provider can be held accountable to that. Particularly as a business you'd probably want that in writing instead of talking to a random customer support person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _We don't need your Internet. There is no way we can make money on it. We > don't want to be just dumb pipes!_

Is the whole argument (from the telecoms) here that they can't differentiate the service as dumb pipes? Like offering decent speeds (1 Gbps … please? Heck, even 100 Mbps for not an insane price), decent service (customer support that knows what "ping" or "latency" means? Not requiring weeks of back-and-forth with customer support to debug issues?), IPv6 support[1], a router that routes corner cases[2], optionally paying for a static IPv4 address[3], being able to reverse DNS my IP to a name of my choosing, no "no servers" BS in the agreement, not MitM'ing data[4], not selling my data[5]?

Some of this is perhaps them not being dumb pipes: I could purchase my own modem; the "no servers" and MitM'ing are directly _not_ being a dumb pipe.

[1]: I finally have this as a Comcast customer. My parents (also Comcast) are still waiting.

[2]: My router fails at correctly routing packets bound for its public IP if they originate inside the private LAN and are bound for a destination under port forwarding. Comcast considers a router not exhibiting this bug a "feature" called "NAT loopback" … which they don't support.)

[3]: my understanding is that Comcast does not offer this to residential; they do to business class, but this hampers people like me that love experimenting, but aren't businesses.

[4]: Most ISPs intercept at least DNS queries and respond with forged results (to serve ads); this can cause software to fail with error codes different from the actual problem (because the ads mask the underlying issue).

[5]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/att-selling- data_n_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/att-selling- data_n_3561263.html)

<comment><USER17> Intercepting DNS queries would be news. Generally they just push their own DNS servers via DHCP, and it's up to you to override them with ones that don't serve as portals in place of NXDOMAIN.

<comment><USER16> Ah, okay; I suppose that's a fair characterization of it. (I do now override their DNS settings, and I don't think I've seen one since I've done so.)

I still find the ISP one questionable, though I suppose there is a difference between running your own (as the default that most people will not know how to opt out of) and outright intercepting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Carriers' fear of commoditization is alive and bad; how else to explain > Verizon's necrophiliac acquisitions of AOL and now Yahoo?

Sentence of the week.

</comment><comment><USER19> Tech trivia: This was written by the inimitable industry veteran Jean-Louis Gassée, former top exec at Apple, founder of BeOS, chairman of PalmSource.

Some of his attributed quotes are real gems: [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean- Louis_Gass%C3%A9e](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e)

I would love to have some wine with this guy and talk tech!

</comment><comment><USER20> The future of Telco is not in the ground, but through the air. This is the entire reason Google Fiber acquired WebPass.

It is relatively simple to transmit extremely high connection speeds through radio waves. I have a receiver on the top of my house that is a point to point signal, pumping 1 gig +, and soon to be much higher, speeds.

Google's strategy to expand GF will not longer include a massive ground infrastructure move, but use point to point to get to the neighborhoods. An entire zip code can be offered GF services at a fraction of the cost and a few months of labor. Google, along with many other broadband startups will hit the big telco's very hard. I'm not even sure if they see it coming yet. I'd imagine they would, but after dealing with AT&T for the last two months on something, I'm not very confident in there being any single person in the entire organization who has a clue about what they are doing.

<comment><USER11> You aren't getting gigabit class service to "an entire zip code" using only wireless. There are hard physical limits to how radio waves propagate and how many bits you can squeeze into a given amount of spectrum [0]. Radio links can provide high bandwidth or long-distance and reasonable obstruction penetration but the former doesn't really come with the latter. Range and obstacle penetration come in the sub-GHz class radios, but there isn't much bandwidth available.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem)

<comment><USER21> Microwave seems promising.

<comment><USER11> Microwave, as a radio term, isn't very useful. It covers 300 MHz to 30 GHz [0], which is nearly the entire usable radio spectrum. In industry terminology, microwave generally refers to >GHz radios, which have real problems in terms of obstacle penetration and range. In the >GHz range, you more or less require line of sight for transmissions over a kilometer or so, which often isnt practical. Free space path loss [1] is also an issue on long links, as signal loss is proportional to the square of frequency.

A good practical example is to compare 2.4GHz WiFi to 5GHz WiFi. At the same power level (both are restricted to 1W in the US for unlicensed operation), 2.4GHz will cover approximately four times the distance ~(5/2.4)^2. However, much more spectrum is available in the 5GHz range, and signals cant travel as far which leads to less interference given an equal number of transmitters. Those factors give higher throughput, but free space path loss constrains coverage on 5 vs 2.4 GHz WiFi.

Another example would be cellular: low frequency towers are used to expand coverage and improve building penetration, high density high frequency towers are used to improve speeds.

Feel free to email me at my profile address -- I work in the sub-GHz narrowband radio industry.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free- space_path_loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss)

<comment><USER21> I'm talking about site to site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Meanwhile in the poorest country of Europe I have 100/100 mbps speed for 8$, and not a much worse 4G connection with a 5 gb limit for anothef 8$. America...

</comment><comment><USER23> Telecom companies should be regulated like electric and gas utilities

<comment><USER24> If we did that then we'd all still be stuck with DSL. Electric and gas utilities aren't expected to drastically improve performance year over year, but we want that from our telecom providers.

<comment><USER25> How about municipal fiber runs? Stuff it into the ground, and then offer any service provider access.

<comment><USER24> Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in infrastructure!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis)

<comment><USER26> > Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in > infrastructure!

> > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis)

This sketch of a sketch of an argument that you have laid out it a total non sequitur. It seems to me that you're pointing to the Flint water crisis as proof either that all municipal infrastructure efforts are disastrous, or that enough of them are that the public utility alternative is essentially dead. If that is the "argument," then the easiest way to defeat this is just to say, "Flint was _news_ because it represented a rare and egregious failure."

That's it. That's all we need to say to rebut that in its entirety.

If we stop there, however, we miss the opportunity to point out the converse: It's _not news_ when customers get gouged for sub-par service, because corrupt and monopolistic practices are rampant within capitalist institutions, especially around lock-in. Cable companies. Phone companies. Privatized utilities. Airlines after deregulation. Military suppliers. It's just not news.

We'd also miss the opportunity to point out that the tactic of pointing to one criminal failure of a civic organization as _proof positive_ that private industry is _universally_ better is a favorite tactic of a certain obnoxious kind of 20-something free-market fanboy set.

HN is better off when that set either stays home or ups its game.

<comment><USER27> Our public infrastructure spending is trillions of dollars behind: [https://next.ft.com/content/6aa759f8-16c0-11e6-b197-a4af20d5...](https://next.ft.com/content/6aa759f8-16c0-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e).

Flint is an extreme example, but almost all municipal water systems are a disaster. In Atlanta, the sewer system dumps raw sewage in the Chattahoochee when it rains. In Chicago, old lead pipes are poisoning kids. It happens because rates are set by elected boards, not by markets, and because municipalities are not forced to bear the external costs of poor infrastructure.

<comment><USER28> U.S. broadband speed and cost lag other industrialized nations too. The only general lesson here is that the U.S. is big and infrastructure is expensive.

<comment><USER27> Does speed lag? Akamai says otherwise.

<comment><USER28> Your comment made me go look it up. Q1 2016 Akamai report ranks the U.S. 16th for average download speed. ZDnet currently ranks the U.S. 41st for average speed on their broadband speed test though. Both are obviously non-random samples, but Akamai probably has a less skewed distribution.

I thought it was interesting that for the % of homes with at least 4mbps service, Akamai ranked the U.S. 44th globally at 88%. That's another way to look at infrastructure: how many folks have broadband at all?

Whether these numbers count as "lagging" is in the eye of the beholder, obviously. We're not top ten in any category.

<comment><USER27> See my post to the other reply. We're ahead of Canada, Australia, and the other big, economically diverse European countries. I don't think that counts as lagging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Dear Verizon -

Yes, yes you can.

Love, The Internet

P.S. It would be cool if you stopped tracking us, while you're at it.

</comment><comment><USER30> As someone who works for a company that is (partially) an ISP: we want _nothing more_ than to be a dumb pipe. Traffic shaping and dynamic content acceleration are hard as hell, they barely work, and 90% of us engineers would rather not do them if we didn't have to. But the edict from on high says "optimize bandwidth for content!" and "Buzzword buzzword buzzword profits!" and the technical staff suffers.

<comment><USER31> ...tell me more.

<comment><USER30> Truthfully there's not much more I can tell you without getting into proprietary infos, but here's what I can say: because of "value-added content delivery" or something, we have to work harder. And it's kind of a giant clusterfuck most of the time.

<comment><USER32> "Value-added", modifier noun, meaning "something utterly useless and often harmful to the customer that adds value for company by fucking said customer over".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I never hear anyone from the ISP side explain why being a "dumb pipe" would be such a bad thing, other than "they wouldn't be making enough money". For the outside it would seem that the ISP are wasting money coming in from the "pipe" business on the media side of things.

It seems like it would be a simpler business to be in, rather than trying to be a media company.

<comment><USER34> Probably it's because internet service is a commodity, and commodities tend to compete primarily on price. Also, consider the context: these are companies that are accustomed to not having a lot of direction competition.

<comment><USER35> commodities can be graded. See, for example, crude. Brent black sweet is considered the black gold standard, but you can get other kinds of crude, and you adjust from there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As my dad would always say: "Can't, or won't?"

</comment><comment><USER37> This is more or less what the CEO of the mobile operator I was working for told me, circa 2002. Obviously they are almost only a dump pipe now because it's very difficult to compete alone against all the world of content providers.

By the way somebody made it, starting from the device and not from the network. Look at this:

> You, the entrepreneur, provide a Minitel service: e-commerce, banking, > entertainment. The French phone monopoly does the billing and collecting for > you by adding a few items to the end of François Dupont's monthly phone > bill. For this service, France Telecom takes a 25% vig.

s/Minitel service/app/

s/French phone monopoly/Apple and others/

s/25%/30%/

Best bets about who's going to snatch those money from them in the same way they eventually snatched them from France Telecom?

</comment><comment><USER38> "...The Minitel business model was a thing of beauty, a well-tended garden that didn't admit outsiders. In this world, the Internet was the unwashed enemy... To paraphrase one of my past collaborators, the Minitel did less, but it cost more"

Replace Minitel with iPhone and call me in 10 years.

<comment><USER39> I don't think this is a fair comparison. From the perspective of most consumers, the iPhone does just as much as its competitors. (This is even true for me, an engineer: I neither need nor want my smartphone to be a generic computing device.)

The iPhone certainly costs more than its competitors (even, perhaps, its technically superior competitors), but it's a mistake to think that this cost isn't purchasing value. An iPhone customer is buying the ease of use and universal compatibility of the iPhone -- and I invite anyone who thinks that this is overvalued to contemplate the phrase "Linux on the desktop." (Thinking about Linux also highlights a basic principle of the technical market that techie types often miss: "power" tends to inversely correlate with ease of use, and the majority of people would much rather have their device work than have their device be receptive to hacking that they'll never even contemplate.)

The purchase of an iPhone is also a very explicit investment in social capital. Sneer all you want at status symbols -- they're an effective form of social currency, and dismissing them is highly irrational.

<comment><USER25> Here we go again, claiming that the reason Linux is not on the consumer desktop is technical. Nope, it is squarely economical (and quite a bit political). when the OEM contract with Microsoft makes it expensive to do non- Windows PCs, the OEM opts not to.

Ever since KDE 2.x Linux has been just as good as Windows from a technical standpoint (and likely easier to fix once the inevitable error comes up, as there are few to none opaque binaries involved).

Ease of use is a smokescreen, as there is no "tabula rasa" users running around any longer.

<comment><USER39> I used Linux on the desktop for years. I ultimately switched to Macintosh because I was sick of battling my operating system to fulfill basic consumer needs. To be fair, this was five years ago, and I'm sure that Linux has made usability strides since then. But it's hard for me to believe that the ethos of Linux -- a platform by developers, for developers, that is additionally hindered by the FOSS orthodoxy of certain camps -- has been fundamentally altered in that time.

<comment><USER40> This - I loved it, but I couldn't afford the random time sinks doing things like making my notebook talk to a projector or give me a keyboard mapping that worked for every key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am on fiber, my ISP is actually the dumb pipe and they love being it. I chose them for this very reason - a business ISP turning B2C as soon as fiber got rolled out where I live. Unfiltered, unmetered symmetric 1 Gbps.

I need an ISP who does not touch the dumb pipe.

</comment><comment><USER42> The end of the article goes into a discussion about acquisitions but misses an important point. The reason Warren Buffett makes good acquisitions is because he owns the company so he only benefits if the acquisition works whereas CEOs and the board of directors make money either way. Execs are motivated to make the largest value acquisitions because they personally make money on them not because it's good for the company. This situation has been gutting our largest corporations for decades.

</comment><comment><USER43> Nobody wants to be a dumb pipe, yet most of the value creation in the world is based on utter commodities. Dumb businesses are the very norm.

<comment><USER44> Data / examples?

<comment><USER45> Infrastructure, particularly transportation and communications.

Ports, navigational aids (from lighthouses and buoys to GPS), railroads, telegraph, transoceanic cables, rural electric and telephone service, highways and interstates, airports, air traffic systems, standardisation of parts, measurements, communications, frequencies, procedures, accident and incident investigation.

We devalue commodities because their _price_ is low, but the _value_ if often quite high. I'd knocked an argument against supplying California agriculture with water in favour of municipal use, in part on the basis that ag prices are depressed in a highly distortionary fashion.

But if you want the real winners, look at coal, oil, and gas, which are underpriced by factors of hundreds, thousands, or millions, and which make the modern world possible. The end of that gravy train will be painful.

<comment><USER32> > _standardisation of parts, measurements_

This is what probably single-handedly enabled technological civilization. The original walled gardens, craftsmen making each according to their ideas and workshop setup, were putting a cap on complexity and reliability of things. Without standardization and commoditizing, there's no way for one to specialize on providing _parts_ for the solution.

<comment><USER45> Necessary but not sufficient

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "This cannot end well."

The death of Verizon would be a good thing though, no?

<comment><USER47> This is actually a tough question to answer. In the long run, the death of carriers/MSO's in their current structure would likely be a good thing to the end consumer. In the near-term, it would be a very bad thing. Verizon has the best geographic coverage in the US and a more performant network infrastructure (on the whole) than its competitors. The thing that's easy to forget about carriers is how amazingly capital-intense it is to build a new one.

<comment><USER46> It's not like the infrastructure would physically cease to exist if they went bankrupt.

<comment><USER47> No, but it would likely be purchased by a competing carrier or MSO that functions in an identical fashion.

<comment><USER48> More likely a private equity firm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Well, they are halfway there.

Jokes aside, in this day and age it's not hard to consider "bandwidth" as a commodity similar to water or electricity, why a company supplying it should be different from an utility company ?

Provide a "dumb pipe" service that is convenient and reliable, and customers maybe will consider adding "smart" services on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER50> I read the title and couldn't help but think about pipes.yahoo.com after VZW's recent acquisition.

<comment><USER51> Those were smart pipes though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Speaking of minitel and walled gardens isn't that what Apple is doing with their app store.

</comment><comment><USER53> Okay, so let other people be dumb pipes by not lobbying against municipal broadband everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's not so much that they can't, it's that they don't want to and it would be unwise from a strategic standpoint.

Being an ISP is a commodity business and has really low profit margins. Ironically though, people still have so few choices.

</comment><comment><USER55> In all fairness, you can't blame a company for not wanting to become a commodity producer. Being a dumb pipe is a race to the bottom, no matter how well you perform. I'd say we have to blame the system instead.

<comment><USER56> Sure, but "become"?

I already see all internet providers exactly as this.

Sure, they try to sell me "more than just internet" and I get calls regularly, but the only good stuff they offer are their "pipes".

<comment><USER55> So you agree that we can't blame them, and need to address the "system" instead?

Perhaps these pipes should move to the public sector?

<comment><USER56> I don't know.

I fear the public sector a bit, because it's so slow...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> >Does he really believe he can sell formerly unsuccessful Yahoo services to Verizon subscribers?<

This article misses the point: This is about selling Verizon subscribers through Yahoo/AOL services.

</comment><comment><USER58> Too bad, because I just want a dump pipes service. I'll pay a premium for well maintained and up to date pipes. But I don't want anything else.

</comment><comment><USER59> So, how to sell to Verizon better software and better services to help them build nice services and not enterprisish crap?

</comment><comment><USER60> Article ends with "This can not end well". I'll do one better: It will not end well.

</comment><comment><USER61> Does anybody remember the fabulous disaster which was the excite@home merger?

Same thing, different decade.

</comment><comment><USER62> Two words: rent extraction

</comment><comment><USER63> I would pay a hefty premium for a well-done dumb pipe.

</comment><comment><USER64> Verizon: We can't provide what customers want.

</comment><comment><USER65> Copy/Compete; Otherwise you can't survive :)</comment>


Freedom House Ambulance Service - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/freedom-house-ambulance-service/ <comment><AUTHOR> So this is how paramedics started. Very interesting as ever.</comment>


The Shortest-Splitline Algorithm: a Way to Solve Gerrymandering - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A

<comment><USER2> The algorithmic determination of districts is attractive, but there can still be the problem of accidental "gerrymandering"---that the voters are so thoroughly mixed that the 40% party loses to the 60% party almost everywhere.

There is another interesting way to solve this. Divide the land into even- population districts in any way. Then, let the population vote on the candidates. Finally, in each district, choose one vote at random to determine the winner. The distribution of the representatives' party allegiations will be statistically very close to the actual distribution in the population. (This is not my idea; I read it somewhere some time ago.)</comment>


Super-rich jet off to disaster bunkers amid coronavirus outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/disease-dodging-worried-wealthy-jet-off-to-disaster-bunkers <comment><USER2> Who would have expected them to help the world in any way? First they profit from it, then run away and will be back to reap benefits...</comment>


Airports put pictures of flies on urinals to lessen "spillage."  Really. - <AUTHOR> http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=2889002ad89d45ca21f50ba46&id=1a552f2f53&e=df8918339e

<comment><USER2> There are pubs in Scotland that, instead of flies on the urinals, feature names of landlords guilty of forcing tenants from their land in the Clearances of the 18th and 19th Centuries.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cooler: [http://adweek.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/soccerurinal_2....](http://adweek.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/soccerurinal_2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Target practice?

<comment><AUTHOR> Basically.</comment></comment>


Harvard, Princeton Targeted in Asian Discrimination Probe - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/harvard-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe.html <comment><USER3> SAT scores are not a sufficient indicator for bias in college admissions. There are two factors at work here:

1\. For elite colleges, specific SAT scores are irrelevant. Essentially, once a certain cut-off is reached, say 2250, it doesn't matter how high you go. In fact, I'm sure admissions officers get a kick out of rejecting the 2400 - I'd rather have a 2380 than a 2400 any day. The variance in SAT scores over a certain cutoff is simply not a good enough indicator for what the colleges are looking for.

2\. In my experience, Asian families tend to place a disproportionate emphasis on test scores and grades. This leads to higher than average SAT scores for Asian students, sometimes at the cost of other parts of the application package.

Taken together, I believe these two ideas contribute to a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon discussed in the article.

This is not to say that admissions are not racially biased - I would not be at all surprised if they are.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly right. I completely detest knee-jerk reactions and blanket statements that crop up instead of some good old fashioned critical thinking.

I went to a school, a good school, that was predominantly asian in my department. If admissions are racial for no other reason than to diversify the student body, this is a reasonable approach on its own - though I'm sure there are plenty of other more old-fashioned legitimately fashioned arguments.

So you had good grades but didn't get in because you are asian? Tough shit - <USER2> lot goes into creating a desirable incoming class than grades and standardized test scores.

<comment><USER5> Love the "a lot [more] goes into creating a desirable incoming class than grades and standardized test scores"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We will now see the same racial discrimination departments which filed court briefs saying that race-neutral admissions policies would make them into Asian enclaves suddenly pretend to be shocked, shocked that anyone would suggest they were anything but valiant upholders of equal opportunity.

I'll refrain from opining on what the government will do, solely out of respects for the HN politics rule.

[Edit: One may think I am being unfair. Here, try reading Harvard's amici brief. [http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus- ussc...](http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/legal/gra_amicus- ussc/um/Harvard-both.pdf) ]

<comment><USER7> One of my favorite education quotes, supposedly from Larry Summers, comes from when he was asked about why it was that 60% of white students were jewish. Supposedly he responded that while there was no surefire way of getting into Harvard, it certainly helps to have every advantage one can get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have we considered, that maybe the reason Asians need higher entrance scores, is because they end to have the same qualifications?

I'm going to be a little racist towards my own race here, and tell you what I've observed recently.

Most Chinese Females... 1\. Play piano and/or violin 2\. Take pictures of food 3\. Probably applying to sciences

Most Chinese Males... 1\. Plays a racket sport - probably badminton (myself included) 2\. Only works out upper body 3\. Probably applying to engineering

I never scored perfect SAT marks, and yet I still got my acceptances just fine, because I did so many things most Asians don't do. If the people doing these assessments actually spent time at elite campuses, they would understand better.

Filing a complaint for not being admitted with a 2400 SAT score is ridiculous. I wouldn't want that kind of person in my class, that's for sure.

<comment><USER9> SAT scores above a certain threshold can become a negative signal, if they aren't paralleled by equally exceptional performance elsewhere. It suggests a certain misallocation of effort. "Why did this person spend all his time on the tests?"

<comment><USER10> It is really ridiculous that in the US you think it is a fault if someone works pretty hard in study.

<comment><USER11> I did pretty well on the SAT and as far as I'm concerned studying for it is a giant waste of time. Go out and learn something. Don't prep for a single test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing is, admissions to elite universities is almost never about test scores. Immigrant parents from countries like China and India are used to test scores mattering a lot. In those countries, your absolute score on the National Exam determines not only your placement into a university, but also what fields are available to you for study.

The SAT is nothing like that. If you walk into Harvard or Princeton, you'll find that most of the kids got above 2300 on the SAT, and a ton had perfect scores. If you tried using the SAT to distinguish between members of the student body at either place, you would have little success. The admissions committee has the same problem, so, kids are not selected based on SATs. You get in because you're good, or at least, you show a lot of promise, not because you can study for a test.

So yeah, maybe asians have higher test scores as a cohort, but maybe they also have less other things that are equally important -- sports, focus, passion, alumni connections, etc. These things count just as much in admissions decisions.

It's possibly to argue that selecting for these things is inherently racist, but I mean, what isn't? The SAT itself privileges a white collar suburban education. Who's to say it's more valuable to be able to memorize vocab, or do arithmetic than to run or paint?

<comment><USER13> I would say just because one culture is more inclined to sports and social activities doesn't mean it is racist to use these things as a discriminating factors. I don't think it's possible to argue that a selection criteria is racist unless the color of your skin is the sole discriminator.

<comment><USER14> On the other hand, it bears mentioning that you can be racist _in your choice of selection criteria_ , if you choose criteria based on their ability to produce a certain racial outcome.

The use of a poll tax people have to pay in order to vote isn't racist _per se_ , but in the segregationist south, poll taxes were used as a mechanism to suppress black votes because they knew (disproportionately poor) black people would have a harder time paying it, and this use _was_ racist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow... I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit.

No legacies. I think there would be FAR fewer trust-funders.

And MIT's 'Chocolate City'...pretty much gone.

I suspect they would be very Asian places with a smattering of Jewish students. I think I can see why they would give ... say ... a Colorado snow boarder a few extra points. I think there is something that he brings to an Ivy campus...though I can't quantify it.

<comment><USER16> >I wonder what the Ivies would look like if admissions were 100% merit.

The issue is "how do you determine merit".

<comment><USER17> Right on. Merit is much more than SAT scores and GPA. It is, in fact, whatever the school wants it to be.

<comment><USER18> Surely merit does not include race?

<comment><USER19> Merit can include a consideration of race. One factor of merit is being an outlier of your group. There are many ways to analyze a given population that reveals different clusters. Being an outlier of this cluster is a factor in merit. The question is, is race a relevant dimension to consider? At face value, the answer is no. But in the US at least, race is a proxy to many other factors that are extremely hard to quantify. These hard to quantify factors are relevant in determining who "deserves" a spot at your prestigious school. Thus a consideration of race within specific contexts can be relevant, college admissions being one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here are my problems with Affirmative Action.

1\. Academic Mismatch - Those who benefited from AA often can't keep up. They often fall behind or transfer to an easier major.

2\. Cascading Academic Mismatch - This mismatch is replicated everywhere because the top academic tier recruits the top 'racial balancing' students from the tier below it.

3\. Academic Mismatch Semiotics - This mismatch encourages judging people by their race on campus. It breeds racial conflict(no matter how low level it may be) and reduces solidarity between peoples on campus.

Racial balancing and academic standards are at odds with each other. Schools that value racial diversity should set their academic standards appropriately.

<comment><USER21> Respectfully, do you have any references regarding your first point?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A very comprehensive FAQ on "race" and "ethnicity" as those categories apply to college admission in the United States can be found at

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/12282...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college- admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html)

The FAQ links to the relevant federal regulations defining the categories, and to guides to admission professionals on how to apply the categories, and to admissions statistics from a variety of colleges. Some colleges admit a substantial percentage of students who decline to self-report race or ethnicity, as is the right of every United States college applicant. Harvard, for example, has 12 percent of its currently enrolled undergraduates reported to the federal government as "race/ethnicity unknown"

<http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard>

(even though Harvard personally interviews essentially all of its undergraduate applicants) and another 10 percent of its enrolled undergraduates are international students, for whom race and ethnicity are not reported as a matter of federal regulation.

It will be interesting to see how this latest case turns out. As the submitted article notes, "While the Office for Civil Rights has the power to terminate federal financial aid to colleges, it almost always negotiates agreements with schools on steps required for compliance, rather than taking enforcement action, the Education Department spokesman said."

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't it pretty easy to determine if there is racial bias in admissions?

Isn't the fact that Asians need to score a couple hundred points higher on SAT score just to get admitted enough evidence that there is bias?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but at Berkeley where Race is not considered in admissions, Asians comprise like 50% of the student body. I'm pretty sure you'd see similar numbers at all the elite universities if race wasn't an issue.

<comment><USER24> No, because SAT scores don't determine admissions. A schoolmate of mine with straight A's who scored a perfect 1600 SAT was rejected from Harvard, because he had essentially zero extracurriculars.

Schools like Harvard and Princeton look both for well-rounded students ("future leaders" they call them), as well as diversity in their student body. This means they won't accept, for example, 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced orchestra, for example.

So if, hypothetically, Asians tended to disproportionately cluster in the same extracurricular activities, or have less extracurricular activities, then there would be a very valid non-race-based explanation for the SAT gap.

<comment><USER13> > 100 top violin players in the same class, no matter how impressive their > individual applications are. Instead, they want a complete and balanced > orchestra, for example.

I agree that SAT scores shouldn't be the only factor, I disagree though if you are saying race can and should be factor. Where it's legal and appropriate to discriminate on say what instrument you play it is illegal (and most would agree immoral) to discriminate on race. Proving racial discrimination may be tricky in this case though.

<comment><USER25> _it is illegal (and most would agree immoral) to discriminate on race_

It is actually not illegal to discriminate based on race in educational admissions -- you just need to meet certain criteria (serve a "compelling interest" and not use quotas) to be able to do so.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grutter_v._Bollinger>

<http://www.npr.org/news/specials/michigan/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are the essays that some universities require there to offer a layer of plausible deniability ("sure your marks were excellent but your essay somehow didn't get us very excited").

<comment><USER27> That's exactly what Malcolm Gladwell suggests in this article: [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge?currentPage=all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article fails to mention that college admission is not based solely on test scores. Many Asians are almost solely test-driven and tend to ignore the other aspects of a "well-rounded" eduction.

I am sure if you looked at race-based stats on who played sports in high school (as opposed to test scores like in the article), you would see that Asians are way behind in that particular metric.

And while some may not think sports matter, colleges do. And it appears that there is good reason for this, as sports teach leadership, teamwork, how to perform under pressure, etc.

I would hope this lawsuit is thrown out, as this country really should not be encouraging "tiger mom" behavior as the right thing to do. Instead, if you want your son to get into Harvard, stop making him study 15 hours a day and get him into extracurricular activities.

<comment><USER29> Nope, the article mentions that.

" _If all other credentials are equal_ , Asian-Americans need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points above African-Americans out of a maximum 1600 on the math and reading SAT to have the same chance of admission to a private college, according to "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal," a 2009 book co-written by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade."

<comment><USER28> I would be interested to see their definition of "all other credentials equal". My assumption is that it is some very simplistic compilation of grades and test scores, because the article barely mentions any factors other than these. Also, many of the things that drive college admission are not easy to objectively compare - is a great cellist equal to an 3 sport letterman who was also on student council? How does a rich kid whose parents send him to math camp compare to a kid who had to work full time during the summer? And so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Long ago, the valedictorian of my high school class (white, female), did not get into Brown, Harvard, MIT or Cornell, despite a stellar academic record and near-perfect SAT scores. She wound up going to a state school. Another white female in my class got into three of those places, despite being below the top 10%. Ivy admissions are entirely mysterious to me.

<comment><USER31> The number of people with good academic records and top SAT scores outnumber the total seats available at top schools. They also take into account extra- circulars, leadership experience, and other activities. This prevents people from just studying for tests and thinking they have an automatic admission. Personally, I'm glad they do or I imagine it would be a very dull environment if there was nothing but people with their head in the books all the time.

<comment><USER32> This pre-supposes that a lack of ("stellar") high school extracurriculars translates to a future lack of college extra-curriculars.

<comment><USER9> It's not that, it's that those with perfect scores appear to be wasting their talent on test taking. They'd prefer students who studied hard enough to get into the 95% percentile, and then devoted the remainder of their efforts elsewhere. If you can do both, fine, but don't sacrifice everything for a few more points on the SAT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Whenever I read articles about the American university admission system, and the ensuing discussions about them, I feel like Gulliver visiting a weird country.

It is so arcane and bizarre. If you want to major in CS or mathematics or engineering, who cares if you do ice skating or can play the tuba? And if you're a tuba player who wants to major in music, what can be possibly be more important than your musical skills?

Entrance examinations are like the democracy. They suck but they suck far less than the existing alternatives.

Of course, a lot of the top universities in the world are American; but I think that's despite the admission system, not thanks to it.

<comment><USER34> Because there is much more demand than supply in the US for a college education. Going merit based is not that simple. If you have 1000 open seats at your school, 50,000 students apply and 1500 of them all have perfect SAT scores, how do you choose who gets in if it's entirely merit based. What makes this perfect SAT score different from that equally perfect SAT score? If everyone looks the same on paper, you need something extra to stand out. That's where extra-curricular activities come in.

The other issue is programs. If you're a school with 1000 open seats and 100 of that is music, you're going to have to drop some very science-smart students to make room for music-smart students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seems to be a case of helicopter parents freaking out because their beloved didn't get offers from the same universities as their neighbours.

Good colleges look at how rounded a person is, standardised tests don't always capture the high achievers.

<comment><USER36> Keep in mind that truly sophisticated and informed "helicopter" parents know that tests are not enough - they've done their research, they themselves have been through the system. As a matter of fact, the truly informed helicopter parents are engineering failure into their child as well in order make him stronger. Many are reading how Native Americans create emotional strength in their children; others research and study the biographies of great leaders, investigating what separates these leaders from those that failed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> """" "If all other credentials are equal, Asian-Americans need to score 140 points more than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and 450 points above African-Americans out of a maximum 1600 on the math and reading SAT to have the same chance of admission to a private college, according to "No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal," a 2009 book co-written by Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade. """"

The gap is nowhere near that large for Wisconsin-Madison or Duke which are rather selective institutions. I bet you're only going to get those kind of gaps at the Ivies and even then I'm very skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER36> We should explore why some people deserve to enter Harvard/Stanford/etc. and why some don't? Part of the reason Harvard graduates are successful have little to do with merit and everything to do with being a "Harvard Grad", so it is a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways. In other words, if we pulled 3 super-hard working freshman from random state schools, and put them through Harvard, and follow them 10 years later, would it surprise anybody that they would end up being successful? If so, what does it matter that their SATs sucked in the first place? Do they not deserve a shot at success as the next person? So they scored "only" in the top 20%, because they were hard working dual athletes with a part time job helping out their single parent and no AP classes, so what? Why should they not have the same shot at the Harvard lottery ticket as the kid who's fortunate enough to be born to a "tiger" Asian mother or well connected blue blood parents?

It's clearly a racket, this whole Ivy/Stanford system where grads from such schools receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to employment.

By the way, I am such a tiger parent, and it's almost ridiculously pathetic to game this system to a certain degree. Let's see, he is currently enjoying: 1\. Summer computer camps 2\. Singing/piano lessons + rock band camp in the summer 3\. Leadership/Scout programs 4\. Private school education with very small teacher/student ratios 5\. Competing on the swim team 6\. Starting a recycling program at his school as his "entrepreneurial project" and writing a journal about his experiences

Most importantly, the above is very fun for him because he's allowed to enjoy the moment after periods of incredibly hard work. And he just turned 8. The only time he watches "TV" is Netflix on the iPad in the car while we shuttle him between activities. This is the new normal, and what I'm doing is what all the other Tiger parents are doing to create the "balanced" individual.

Yes, he goes to birthday parties, yes he has sleepovers, and yes he has lots of friends. But because he's having "fun", we are not pushing him 24/7 to be the "best" in all these activities, but to simply do his best, as best as an 8 year old is expected to do. Nevertheless, I feel bad for the kids that do not have such supportive parents with the resources to help their children in this way. My son does not deserve success any more than the next child, he's simply blessed that he was not born in the 'hood.

</comment><comment><USER37> This has been happening for at least 15 years. When I was in high school mid 1990's we had several Asian students with over a 4.2 GPA that were not accepted to local universities such as UCLA. There was not a specific rejection reason related to race, however several students with a GPA around 3.6 who were not Asian were accepted to UCLA.

<comment><USER38> One thing to keep in mind is that large schools like UCLA tend to have different admissions policies for different colleges. So somebody interested in engineering would have a harder time getting into UCLA than somebody interested in anything else.

I don't know exactly how it works for UCLA, but for Berkeley the admissions percentage for the EECS program is much smaller than the general admissions percentage. So, even ignoring differences in the application pools, getting into the EECS program is going to be much more difficult than getting into most other programs. And if you don't get into the program you applied to, you don't get in at all.

So perhaps the different students applied to different colleges at UCLA? I know that from my high school, some fairly smart people didn't get in to Berkeley Engineering while some who weren't particularly gifted got into, say, the College of Natural Resources. This was just a reflection of the different admissions policies than any discrimination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't get it. Family income is a very strong (if not the best) predictor of SAT score. In this case, if you order each race by median income you get the exact same order as mean SAT score, Asian-American families with the highest median income and SAT, African-American families with the lowest.

<comment><USER40> Correlation does not imply causation.

You have, in fact, provided no proof that family income isn't ordered that way as a result of SAT scores.

<comment><USER41> Causation is irrelevant. The question is the extent to which SAT score and family income contain the same information.

<comment><USER42> Causation is measure of the extent to which they contain _different_ information.

Assuming a college wants to admit a student with high "intelligence" or intellectual potential, which cannot be measured directly.

If high income causes high SAT, and high intelligence also causes high SAT, then (low income, high SAT) may well indicate much higher intellectual potential than (high income, high SAT)

If high income and SAT are both caused by high intelligence, then there is less (intelligence-related) reason to prefer (high income, low SAT) or (low income, high SAT).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> People are pointing out the fact that Asians may not be getting in because they are focused too much on their studies and do not spend enough time in extra-circulars. If that's the issue, why not remove the race category on the form? That way, it is completely merit-based. I don't the admissions officer needs to see the race of the applicant to determine if he/she is interesting and has diverse extracurricular activities. The name could still hint at the race, but it should be much fairer than currently.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'd like to see some numbers related more to where people applying/going to prestigious schools are actually from, and application density for a given area.

</comment><comment><USER45> _The issue remains unresolved, said Stephen Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon who blogs about the admissions process.

"The only way to answer these questions is to force these schools to open their data sets," he said. "College admissions should be transparent." _

If this every happens, heads will roll. Alas, Hell will freeze over first.

</comment><comment><USER46> Guess they should use "Asian Problems"?

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793>

</comment><comment><USER47> Controversial topics like these usually have a core "assumption" that the discussions and arguments always circle around.

The un-stated assumption in this case is that Asians, are for the most part, not well-rounded (and only focus on test scores), and hence, any reasonable admissions process that favors well-roundedness will result in an understandable (obviously!) bias against Asians.</comment>


PICJUG: A FOSS Replacement for the FT232 USB Chip - <AUTHOR> https://www.mixdown.ca/redmine/projects/picjug/wiki/Home

<comment><USER2> "The PIC works from 5V down to 1.8V..."

You might want to double-check the datasheet (and double-check with Microchip support as I've found bugs in their datasheets).

I looked closely at the PIC16(L)F1455 and PIC16(L)F1459 from the same family, and those chips have separate SKUs for 3.3V-ish and 5V-ish. For example, the PIC16LF1455 can operate at 3.3V, but you need the PIC16F1455 to operate at 5V; i.e. the "L" in the part name is significant, signifying lower voltage.

Even if the L part works at 5V, you may be running it out of spec.</comment>


TopHN – When you have time for only one Hacker News story - <AUTHOR> https://tophn.org/ <comment><USER2> How does it exactly work?

The article displayed in [https://tophn.org/](https://tophn.org/) is "Power Prices Go Negative in Germany, a Positive for Energy Users".

But the current trending story on [https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/) is "NIST Post- Quantum Cryptography Round 1 Submissions".

<comment><USER3> From their about page:

The top story on Hacker News is sampled every minute. The story that occurred most frequently in these samples in the last 24 hours is recommended to you.</comment></comment>