The cypherpunk revolution - <AUTHOR> http://passcode.csmonitor.com/cypherpunk <comment><USER3> Wired Issue 1.02 | May/Jun 1993 | Crypto Rebels | John Gilmore Challenges the NSA [1]

What if Gilmore wins, and the NSA is forced to reveal all but the most secret information about cryptography? Would national security be compromised, as the NSA claims? "I don't think so," says Gilmore. "We are not asking to threaten the national security. We're asking to discard a Cold War bureaucratic idea of national security which is obsolete. My response to the NSA is: Show us. Show the public how your ability to violate the privacy of any citizen has prevented a major disaster. They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens -- to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency."

[1] [https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_p...](https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.html)

<comment><USER4> I think I read this when it first came out. I loved Wired back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good read but I'm struck by how politically naive so many of the crypto crowd seems to be. The idea of escaping the government by going into cyberspace is nonsenical on it's head. You are a body. You buy things for your body. You go do body things all the time. Besides buying software, ebooks, and movies everything else you buy with something like bitcoin is physical and cannot be encrypted. Even with Lackey living on Sealand on San Fransico time had to be buying canned food, diesel, etc. If any government had been interested in what he was doing it would have been trivially easy to keep tabs on him.

ETA: This quote from May especially struck me "Would Hitler and Himmler have used 'key recovery' to determine who the Jews were communicating with so they could all be rounded up and killed?" The Nazi's wouldn't have really cared what Jewish people were saying because they just wanted to kill them. Similarly if we think of something like the Soviet Union while cryptography would have undeniably been helpful for dissidents for coordination and getting ideas out ultimately you still need to have people on the streets or in office to get anything changed.

<comment><USER6> Here is a more recent example from history: the use of encrypted communications by the ANC in organising against the South African government.

[https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv0...](https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03996/05lv04001.htm)

You're right that you need to have people on the streets or in office to get anything changed. I think too many people forget this and forgo the slow hard work of street-by-street politics and downticket races.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I want to be clear that I do think that encryption has an important role in organization and social change. I'm just struck by claims from some of the self-identified cypher-punks that encryption could mean taxation would be impossible or the idea of escaping into this "Other Plane" as a way to secure freedom.

<comment><USER7> Why couldn't it make taxation impossible?

Sure, you still need to buy things in person, which can be done with cash. But drug dealers seem to be able to do a pretty good job of evading taxes.

Imagine if everything that you bought in person was done with cash, or a bitcoin payment. That money would be untaxable.

If you buy a house, for sure, the government can track that, and you need to make sure the money used to buy that is "clean", but a surprising large percentage of a person expenses could be done in a safe way.

<comment><USER8> It's not sufficient to just lean heavily on cash. You also need to have a legitimate-looking explanation for where the cash came from if the tax authorities check up on you. Even if you can work anonymously and get paid via anonymously mailed envelopes of cash or Bitcoin, good luck living a normal middle class lifestyle while avoiding income taxes.

Buying a house or renting housing leaves a paper trail. So does renting or buying a car from most places that sell or rent cars. So does paying utility bills. So does paying for prescription drugs, medical services, car insurance, life insurance... So does paying for higher education.

I guess if you had some cash-only tax evading side business you could use cash to buy things like food, clothing, gasoline, and miscellaneous household goods. But you're not going to be able to dodge the taxes on middle class life's major expenses -- at least not without tripping the same mechanisms that catch drug dealers buying cars etc. with cash. I suppose you could live like an off-the-grid survivalist who never interacts with ordinary businesses. That looks like a lot more work than living an ordinary life where you work at jobs that don't involve trusting other criminals, buy things and pay taxes like usual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very lengthy, well written article about the history, political implications and principles of public key encryption.

I am a big fan of this technology [1], and still hope that it will be more wide spread among citizens in a secure form. Like freedom of speech, information security is definitely an important pillar of the modern state and empowers citizens. Unfortunately, all attempts to introduce it to the masses and get it right from the security point of view have failed so far.

It is a tough balancing act to get right [2]: freedom, convenience, safety - you seemingly can only have two of them.

[1] e.g. in the form of [https://www.gnupg.org/](https://www.gnupg.org/)

[2] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/dan_geer_on_c...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/dan_geer_on_cyb.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Tim May wrote a (very long) "FAQ" for the Cypherpunks that may be of interest to folks who are interested in this sort of thing:

[http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.h...](http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html)

The Cypherpunks list was remarkable for a time. Very high-volume, fractious, competitive, vicious, with at least one participant going to jail for a long time due to acting on some of the ideas. And very, very full of ideas ranging from mind-candy to very dangerous.

May's Cyphernomicon[1] is really his interpretation of what was going on, colored heavily by his politics. Paraphrasing the joke, ask three cypherpunks what the word meant and you'd get four answers. But the document is an in- depth look at some of the implications of cryptography, a look at some deeply non-mainstream politics, and a contemporaneous recounting of the politics and technology development of a really interesting period of time and a really interesting mailing list that had, I think, a surprisingly outsized (if hard to pin down) role in shaping security policy[2].

[1] Stephenson's Cryptonomicon came out at roughly the same time as May's work, and it was one of those funny little accidents that the name collided.

[2] I do think the Clipper chip fiasco and the ITAR changes wouldn't have played out the same way without the collaboration that happened on the list, and it was fertile ground that lead to several companies and weirder entities being formed.

<comment><USER3> Graffiti found at 16th/Harrison (just outside Wired office), San Francisco, Mar/Apr 94. Photo by Tom Jennings: email@example.com [1]

        STOP CLIPPER
        Fuck the NSA.

[1] [http://imgur.com/a/npfL7](http://imgur.com/a/npfL7)

<comment><USER10> WiReD was located just off of South Park back then.

<comment><USER3> You're right -- for some reason I'm sure I saw it somewhere around here:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.3941129,3a,75y,...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.3941129,3a,75y,325.22h,68.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sHgiX6NLnTKgWYsGIHdd09w!2e0!7i3328!8i1664)

Maybe he was trying to throw off the NSA, and protect the not-so-innocent... ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Back in October 1944, Koenig had suggested a theoretical way of securing a telephone call by having the recipient of a call add noise to the signal and then subtract it afterward. Only Bob could subtract the noise, because only he knew what he had added in the first place. An eavesdropper, Eve, simply would not know how to modify the noise, because she wouldn't have access to the noise that had been added to the phone conversation in the first place._

Since that's not terribly clear, here's the explanation: [https://techpinions.com/an-old-mystery-solved- project-c-43-a...](https://techpinions.com/an-old-mystery-solved- project-c-43-and-public-key-encryption/18205)

</comment><comment><USER12> Ah yes, Cryptowars I :-) As part of my involvement in the Java project I was building crypto classes that you could call from other objects. The NSA^h^h^hDepartment of Commerce was concerned. A couple of the things that were patented out of that project had to be cleared by them. Very odd experience.

The idea that a piece of software could not be legally exported from the US but could be fetched via FTP from Italy was pretty amazing in its dissonance. All of the representatives of the federal government I ended up interacting with all understood that the battle was "lost" but they were doing their part to slow or chill research or distribution.

<comment><USER13> I know this is a content-free comment, but I've been following your comments here for years now, and you always have interesting stories. Thank you for contributing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> These days, it's challenging to minimize the amount of information given to commercial communication vendors. At present, [https://Wire.com](https://Wire.com) (from Skype's founder) is the only cross- platform and easily usable messaging service that:

      - has E2E encryption [0] of text, image, audio, video
      - does not require phone # [1]
      - does not require address book upload
      - is not ad-supported
      - has open-sourced code for their desktop and mobile clients
      - has single msg editing & deletion

[0] derived from the Signal protocol, implemented in Rust, needs more external review/audit, [https://wire.com/privacy/](https://wire.com/privacy/)

[1] using a desktop browser, register at [http://app.wire.com](http://app.wire.com) with email, then login to mobile app

<comment><USER15> Are there any that do metadata obscurity?

<comment><USER16> You would need to use a messaging app that routes your traffic over Tor, or some other anonymizing network. Some options like Ricochet or Tor Messenger are being developed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Amusing to note that a site hosting a detailed article on the "cypherpunk revolution" doesn't support https.

</comment><comment><USER18> Talking about cyberphunk / cyberpunk culture, why does it feel that the popular definition and approach nowadays is a defeatist (or sometimes even glorifying) attitude to an unavoidable future of megacorporations and post- industrial dystopia, instead of celebrating the punk side of it? Or am I just checking out the wrong corners like /r/cyberpunk?

<comment><USER14> Because paid speech is now pervasive on social networks, especially on topics with commercial consequences, from a variety of competing actors with deep pockets and diverse agendas. Punk stakeholders likely cannot compete in either paid speech or mass audience reach for subversive lyrics.

Readers will gradually learn how to select writers with independent perspectives, filtering out groupspeak, as they have learned to do with advertising.

Edit: manually curated Twitter whitelists, connected to Flipboard, can provide an efficient view of reader-prioritized, coherent perspectives. We need better whitelist support on discussion services.

<comment><USER19> Can you quantify what "pervasive" means in this sense?

<comment><USER14> "Pervasive" is within the context of high-profile topics. One academic study was "Grassroots for Hire", [https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire- Consultants-American-...](https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants- American-Democracy/dp/1107619017)

For DIY quantification, create a spreadsheet of userids, threads and manually tagged perspectives from your favorite social network or discussion forum. Then apply open-source tools for social network graph analysis of node interactions. With this data, apply exclusion filters to targeted clusters of userids, then re-read the "mass opinion". Palantir has proprietary software for network influence analysis, but many algorithms and OSS tools are available from academia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Steven Levy's "Crypto" [[http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto](http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto)] is a good read on this topic if you're looking for something more in-depth.

<comment><USER21> $23 for a book from 2001 on an evolving topic? Surprised there's not a 2nd edition. Anything that includes the 2000-2010 decade as well?

<comment><USER22> It's extremely well researched and well written, with fantastic insight - <USER2> worth 23 USD - highly recommend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Back in October 1944, Koenig had suggested a theoretical way of securing a > telephone call by having the recipient of a call add noise to the signal and > then subtract it afterward. Only Bob could subtract the noise, because only > he knew what he had added in the first place. An eavesdropper, Eve, simply > would not know how to modify the noise, because she wouldn't have access to > the noise that had been added to the phone conversation in the first place.

The scheme is called a one-time pad, and while it might be considered impractical, it was definitely used successfully. In fact Alan Turing apparently contributed to one such device: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY)

<comment><USER23> Interestingly, according to Wikipedia the SIGSALY was in production before Koenig "invented" the technique. And according to the one-time pad page, one- time pad was first theoretically invented in 1882 by Frank Miller [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- time_pad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad)

<comment><USER11> You should read the article and my comment above. This was not a one time pad as they was no distribution of a pad. Only one side added and removed the noise.

<comment><USER23> The article you posted does not seem to contradict what I said, but rather support it.

> The Project X method required courier distribution of noise tracks on > phonograph records. Because the noise had to be as long as the speech it > masked and each track could only be used once–it was the audio equivalent of > a Vernam cipher or a one-time pad–the system was exceedingly cumbersome.

<comment><USER11> You don't appear to have read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Must see "OpenDime: Real Life Cyberpunk Cred Sticks" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQHc3EQVfE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQHc3EQVfE)

<comment><USER25> That's a interesting idea but damned if I'm going to stick a random USB device into my computer.

<comment><USER26> Maybe that's how you demonstrate your "creds"? "You want me to do _what_ with that USB? In my port? Go away."

<comment><USER17> Maybe an NFC implementation would be more acceptable.

<comment><USER26> I don't know, I kind of like the notion of offering someone an USB killer and if they put in into their machine, you never trust them again (cryptographically or otherwise). Jokes aside though, yes, I think NFC would be less likely to be dangerous to your computer, but maybe easier to eavesdrop on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Revolution amoung subsets of a population is no revolution.

What is need is a mainstream movement to embrace crypto as a fundamental human right.

____________

Sidebar: The article is part of "Passcode" \- a field guide to security and privacy from The Christian Science Monitor: [http://passcode.csmonitor.com](http://passcode.csmonitor.com)

<comment><USER28> It always starts underground. When it breaks out into the mainstream, it won't even be a movement anymore, it will just be life as usual. That green lock will be gone from the browser, along with any protocols that do not end in "s". The dozen or so communications apps on your phone will be encrypting everything, but not exposing any configuration.

And, only one company will sign everyone's public key, because regular users just want to delegate everything to a familiar name. Then we will need another revolution, an underground network of public key signers. With names like 51GNpnk and TheRealBob. One of TheRealBobs will come smoke a joint with you in your parent's basement, and sign your key for $5, so that you can get into the Minecraft party on the weekend.

<comment><USER29> This is the world I want to live in.

<comment><USER16> If you join your local Cryptoparty, you will likely find someone who will sign your public key for free. Check out cryptoparty.in to find the closest one, or some great resources for starting your own.

<comment><USER30> There are a few parties running in the Boston area now. The cryptoparty.in/boston page hasn't been updated in a bit, but there is almost always an cryptoparty on the last Wednesday of the month at Parts and Crafts in Somerville.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Public-key encryption was revolutionary for a simple reason. It solved the age-old security problem of key distribution."

Not by itself. That's what protocols are used for. A weak protocol would allow for an attacker to intercept public keys, allowing the attacker to mitm communications.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been developing software professionally since the 1980s, when I had to build a computer from scratch. I've seen these three waves first hand- personal computers, now in your palm, the internet, now ubiquitous with cell networks, and finally crypto. The third has not yet become mainstream.

I will say this- we are on the verge of the crypto revolution. I have never before seen so much energy and effort, and finally, money in the crypto sphere. In large part because now there is cryptographic money (eg: bitcoin et al.)

For those of you who think that the startup scene has become lame where you're just building apps to sell advertising, you're missing out.

The thing about the crypto revolution is that it is not nearly as obvious. Internet and PCs were obviously great in the early days- great for everyone. Crypto is harder, has a learning curve for consumers and until that's eliminated it's easy to think that it will go nowhere in the same way that pgp has effectively gone nowhere for 20 years.

Much in the way that we've given up on "artificial intelligence" and made great strides in machine learning.. crypto is on the edge.

It's the place you want to be.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here's a short interview by Simon Singh with Clifford Cocks about the bits he did: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4)

Here's a longer clip of the same interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR0_LPbWxe4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR0_LPbWxe4)

Sidenote: that Banksy street art (photo in article) has already been destroyed.</comment>


Docker is pivoting... again - <AUTHOR> http://blog.docker.io/2014/04/announcing-the-docker-pivot/

<comment><USER2> It's true that Docker has an awesome logo. I didn't know it was the main asset of the company. This is why you open sourced the code still keeping the logo trademarked and copyrighted? Nice move.

<comment><USER3> This is obviously an April 1st prank</comment></comment>


What is error correction? Hamming codes in hardware by Ben Eater [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0jloehRKas <comment><USER2> Nice! pairs well with the 3Blue1Br video on the subject: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jsijhllIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8jsijhllIA)

Hamming's book The Art of doing Science and Engineer's a solid read. Mixed topics, centered around problem solving techniques, and pitfalls.</comment>


Why I'm Leaving Medium - <AUTHOR> https://praxis.fortelabs.co/why-im-leaving-medium/ <comment><USER3> Can someone explain what this article was about? I've read it several times and I still have no idea what the main point was, or how it connects to leaving Medium. It feels like it was machine-generated - all of the sentences don't relate to each other or say anything on their own, from my reading.

<comment><USER4> I think it's confusing because he's talking about a feature for Medium publications that most people don't even know ever existed. For a small handful of publications, Medium had allowed them to offer their own "pay to subscribe" program where your subscription fee went directly to the publication. I think of this as a failed product experiment that Medium's been slow to kill (Medium is very slow to kill failed experiments in general).

<comment><USER4> Also, I think he's probably doing the right thing for himself. Tiago is on the path to getting a mainstream book deal. In self-improvement, he's on the Ben Hardy or James Clear path. A huge part of that book deal is based on the number of subscribers to his mailing list.

A book deal is decent money, seemingly everyone gets an advance in the $200k range. But more importantly, it's a huge career level up for someone like Tiago. Every activity that doesn't build up your mailing list ends up being kind of a waste of time.

I suspect that Tiago could actually make more money on Medium publishing behind their paywall than he's going to make in his personal subscription program. But it's not enough that it should be his focus.

Also, I assume incentives will change again at Medium down the road as they keep trying to make the deal work for more and more authors. So maybe he'll come back, if just to cross post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been looking for Medium alternatives, but my audience wants me to continue on it.

123 votes to where should I publish my posts:

\- 34% Medium

\- 9% Dev.to

\- 45% My company's official blog

\- 12% LinkedIn, my domain, ???

This tells me that - even if Medium continues to annoy their fans with their new model, I should still consider it as a great platform for quick publishing.

Survey via Twitter to my 10k followers ([https://twitter.com/felipehoffa/status/1148334055689031681](https://twitter.com/felipehoffa/status/1148334055689031681)).

Disclosure: I'm Felipe Hoffa and I work for Google Cloud - and I frequently post on Medium and elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> Why not cross-post your free content to Medium, LinkedIn, etc? Then you can take advantage of their distribution while pointing people back to your own site.

I'm wary of companies/products built entirely on top of other products - <USER2> much risk (see Zynga). Same concept with Medium.

<comment><USER7> Your company blog first, Medium 2 weeks later and always mentioned that 'my posts are posted [insert url here] 2 weeks earlier'

<comment><USER5> My company blog first - yes! Except that I can go from idea to post in 12 hours with Medium, and that's not at all the experience for the official posts when multiple teams want to chime in...

<comment><USER8> These sound like two different kind of posts. Either way, make sure the canonical location is some place that you or your employer (whoever owns the content) have control over. I'd suggest:

\- Post your personal stuff on your own domain.

\- Post your Google Cloud stuff on the company blog.

\- Syndicate / cross post to Medium, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever etc. if one or both make sense for the topic.

\- You don't need to cross post the whole post if the platform doesn't warrant it (lots of eyeballs, but hostile to the content-publisher, i.e. Facebook). You can put 2 paragraphs and a link to "read more on xyzblog". You're mostly using these services for discovery. In general, treat platforms you don't control as discovery-only.

\- Encourage and enable readers to subscribe and engage directly at the canonical location (if practical), and not on the edges, as long as that doesn't create a poor experience for them.

\- If you find that more people want to engage / or the conversation is higher-quality at one of the distribution points (say HackerNews, vs the comments section of your blog), then provide a link to there from the canonical location and encourage conversation there.

(edit: Formatting)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Flutter community relies heavily on Medium. I try to avoid Medium whenever I can, but somehow a lot of Googlers think it's the best platform for technical articles or something.

Some of the writers insist on using screenshots (!) of pieces of code, so I guess that user experience is not very high on their list of considerations.

<comment><USER10> Do you mind giving examples with links?

<comment><USER9> Not a Googler, but a literal quote from this article: "As always, I prefer using screenshots over gists in my articles to show code. I find them easier to work with, and easier to read."

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/a-design-pattern-for- flutter-...](https://email@example.com/a-design-pattern-for-flutter- db6ccaea2413)

<comment><USER11> As a Googler who has a lot of technical content on Medium, I have to agree that screenshots are much more flexible than Medium's gist support, but I always add a link to the actual code right under.

For example: [https://medium.com/google-cloud/kubernetes-configmaps-and- se...](https://medium.com/google-cloud/kubernetes-configmaps-and- secrets-68d061f7ab5b)

In this example, I have a single gist with multiple files, but Medium can't display just a single file from that gist at a time (maybe things have changed, but I don't think so).

Medium's gist and code support in general is sub-par compared to other platforms IMO, but as a platform it does make it easy to create and share content that is also easily discoverable.

I'm probably going to start hosting the canonical post on my own domain and just use Medium to syndicate it.

<comment><USER9> I noticed that in a lot of articles example code is just missing, like this one, on mobile:

[https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-redux-toast- not...](https://medium.com/flutter-community/flutter-redux-toast-notification- fcd0971eaf0f)

I don't know who's to blame here but I already hate Medium with a passion and this is not helping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why do people use medium? Does it help with seo or discoverability?

<comment><USER13> The only reason I can think of for posting to Medium is revenue sharing, and I am not interested in pursuing a career as a creator at this time. Putting up content people MIGHT find via SEO tactics, only to have people driven away via a pay wall, seems self defeating.

I suppose you can always post to Medium you and somewhere else, unless that is a violation of Medium's terms of service. Then your basically turning yourself into someone who spams everywhere, not just Medium.

So I guess Medium is for creators and spammers. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> I post to Medium for the same reason I post videos to Youtube: Platform + audience.

Turns out my audience would rather have me post on Medium than on my personal blog:

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20444875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20444875)

<comment><USER14> What audience would prefer a paywall site to an open one? Is your content free?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is always about how to drive traffic and that will always be part of the game, whatever you are writing for. Good long form ideas might have a place, but most people are not interested in that type of information let alone that type of format. You can have something interesting to say that may benefit many people, but without marketing to get your ideas out, it becomes a rather "personal" endeavor. You can try different form of marketing (like click-bait titles and other gimmicks) to get your ideas out there, but ultimately if you don't have the cash to fund the campaign to promote your own site, you will be relying on sites like medium.com or whatever blogs of your choice to have a hand in spreading your message.

If you truly believed you were writing things that people will want to read, long form or not, you SHOULD be willing to invest in marketing yourself to promote your own site. At least enough to justify your "risk vs reward" balance.

Taking out a Facebook ad for your local area is not as expensive as you might think and I honestly believe the whole Google Ads and Facebook Ads have allowed the little guys to buy ads and distribute them to the specific target they want. The tools are there, what is lacking is the will and confidence to follow through.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ahh is Tuesday time for a "I'm leaving medium post"

</comment><comment><USER17> I was going to do some technical posts for medium, but i found as a user they were not surfacing good technical content. They were surfacing bubble gum articles better placed in cosmopolitan, even after i set my preferences and explicitly searched multiple times. My click history did have me clicking on articles like that, but only on moments of weakness, i didn't intend to not did i want an infinite list of vacuous content.

There is a classic problem in content recommendations, what someone says they want vs what they actually click, good systems ( from 2008 ) do a blend, then start balancing.

I cancelled my 'open paywall' and will probably start a WordPress.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, Medium switched editorial and curation strategies for technical content and all the technical content leveled up. My standard for technical content is O'Reilly circa 2003, and Medium's not there yet. But I'm hopeful that Medium's recent changes are a precursor to leveling up again down the road.

The change is to add a lot more human curation mixed in with the algorithmic promotion. They have deals now with at least three publications where that publication's editor's taste is factored into the promotion. Those pubs are Toward Data Science, Better Programming (which I help with), and one other that's not announced. As I look at Medium's featured articles in their Programming topic, 2/3 of the articles were curated by one of those pubs.

For the Better Programming deal, we also got budget for copy editors and in the last 2+ months have copy edited about 700 articles. I find that the copy editors are doing a lot to make an article read better--it's subtle, but definitely way more than just fixing a few spelling mistakes.

I worked at O'Reilly circa 2003, which is how it came to be my gold standard. A great technical document needs a smart author who has the time to write something complete and then that author needs to be paired with good quality control. It's like how the software you write is better if someone else tests it. O'Reilly literally had code testers for their book and a very robust errata program for folding in fixes to bugs after publication.

The people who've done that in article length writing are RailsCast and more recently Swift by Sundell. That would be the obvious next level for Medium to support, and I think they will, but probably not for another year or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmm let's ignore the Medium thing.

He's basically going from freemium to a closed group of hardcore readers. I see two problems with that:

1\. He obtained those hardcore readers via the freemium approach. What will he do about subscriber churn, rely on just word of mouth, or go back to freemium once in a while?

2\. How long does the think the 10/month will last? It's fine now as few writers are doing it. But does he think he'll be able to charge 10/month when _everyone else_ charges that much? No matter how rich you are, as a reader, there's a limit to how many subscriptions you're willing to pay.

</comment><comment><USER19> One thing that seems to me like an impediment is the lack of a trusted counterparty to handle contract & billing mechanics. For example: subscribing to a channel on amazon prime video means that I know I can cancel effective towards the end of each monthly anniversary by simply hitting a button that I know how to find. I've done it numerous times, and as a result of the fact that I know how frictionless it is, I go around shopping for interesting channels quite freely.

Entering your credit card details into a generic payment system requires a significant level of trust which I may not be willing to extend to some blogger I hardly know.

Some people have very weird contractual structures in mind when they advertise "$10/month". They might mean: Yearly contractual term paid for on a monthly basis, but with a 3-month notice period, and contract renewing for another full year term if it doesn't get cancelled on time.

Sometimes it can be difficult to contact customer service (or anyone else willing to listen to you) when there's a problem with billing. Sometimes, cancellation can involve having to send a fax.

Sometimes they might sell your data to people who will spam you. etc. etc. etc.

For all of these reasons, the friction I experience when contemplating what is prima facie $10/month is significantly more than just that monetary value.

Here it seems to me that medium could play the role of that trusted counterparty (like amazon prime video) to make subscriptions frictionless. Or maybe someone should just do that as a generic paywall service for subscriptions. Or maybe that already exists, and I just don't know of it's existence yet (with the caveat, that, in this case, it doesn't really enjoy my trust at this point making it a bit pointless).

</comment><comment><USER20> Any recommendations on the easiest way to set up a blog? Is relative anonymity possible?

<comment><USER21> I just tried StackBit this weekend. It's still in beta, but it's pretty slick

[https://www.stackbit.com/](https://www.stackbit.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If I use Medium does that mean I can't also publish the same articles on dev.to and elsewhere?

</comment><comment><USER23> This post is from 4/2018, why sharing it now?

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone know of any good code blogging platforms?

<comment><USER25> Not sure how in depth you need code support, but I'm going to peddle my new blogging host, [https://personaljournal.ca/](https://personaljournal.ca/)

It's based off of WriteFreely, the same blog platform that people.kernel.org just switched to. It's totally free to use, and I'll never put ads on it. It supports markdown and html posts, so code syntax highlighting and all that fun stuff is well supported. Give it a shot if that sounds good for you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good. I noticed I'm closing Medium articles more often these days, as articles have annoying paywalls, and I consider skipping more Medium articles in the first place.

The website feels so much more bloated than a few years back . It is full of advertisements to other articles, weird share buttons and inconsistent layouting.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have no interest in subscribing to a publisher and letting them choose what I read. Give me a way to tell an author I'd like to see more by deciding how much I want to donate _to that author_ after reading a piece ... an instant, secure, online donation. They can put my on their mail-list.

If the author chooses to congregate with other authors on a publisher's site, and pay them rent, their choice. So long as there's no paywall.

</comment><comment><USER28> TL;DR: Guy is selling subscriptions to his blog for 10$ a month.

</comment><comment><USER29> TL;DR: the same reason everyone else is.</comment>


Colon and rectal cancer cases are going up among people younger than age 50 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/29/health/colon-cancer-cases-growing-younger-people/index.html <comment><USER2> Yesterday Chadwick Bozeman, the actor who played Black Panther in the Marvel movies among other notable movies, died of colon cancer at age 43. He was diagnosed in 2016 and it progressed from stage 3 to stage 4 in that time. Obviously anecdata but perhaps his death will call some attention to this because of his relative youth and fame and not be in vain.

[https://ew.com/movies/chadwick-boseman-dead-black- panther-42...](https://ew.com/movies/chadwick-boseman-dead-black- panther-42-actor-dies-colon-cancer-43/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In Ontario (Canada) the government automatically contacts you to obtain a free FIT kit when you turn 50.

I just did mine, and it came back "abnormal" (which is a descriptor I've lived with all my life). Needless to say I'm hoping it's nothing, but it is wise to get tested for such things as soon as you reach each risk milestone in life.

<comment><USER4> Hoping it's nothing buddy! Best wishes

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I know other people have gone through exactly this and came out alright, so I'm keeping my mind in that direction. There are a number of things that can trigger abnormal FIT results, but of course the value is in subsequently discovering what is causing that to occur, even if it ends up a non-emergency, and then dealing with it before it can become one.

<comment><USER5> best of luck

hope it's nothing

my grandfather had something bad around 70, so i'm hoping it's not genetic. anyways, a long time until i have to worry about it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you are feeling apprehensive and delaying it, you should know that getting a colonoscopy is a painless experience. In and out in a few hours.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely painless. The "worst" part is having to drink enough water (with laxative and electrolytes) to clean your system for a clear view. I just had mine done and I was way more more anxious then I needed to be. Now I feel silly for being so worried about it.

<comment><USER3> This is good news. I'm going for one in a couple weeks, so of course I'm a tad nervous about it all. I don't normally get poked around like that. It's not the greatest rite of passage.

My mother had one done when I was a kid. I only remember her being absolutely humiliated by the "air" on the trip home - as children we couldn't not giggle about that particular after-effect. Even back then it was an out-patient ordeal. She did say it was like going to the dentist - scary but otherwise a breeze! (her pun, not mine...)

<comment><USER8> To be more accurate though - it used to be a lot worse than it is now. Even as recently as a decade ago the stuff they gave you to drink to clear you out was much more ... what's the word... let's say unpleasant. They now have stuff that is just as effective clearing everything out but without such unpleasant sensations...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >ACS researchers found that the rate at which people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the United States is dropping among those 65 and older but rising in younger adults.

Could it be that more young people are taking screenings, while those already taking them have decreased risk of cancer?

<comment><USER10> No, according to the scientists I've heard. The increase in testing does not explain the dramatic increase in cases. There are a few hypotheses, but so far nothing concrete.

<comment><USER11> Is a 2.2% increase "dramatic"? Is it even statistically significant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an easy to get medical test for all different kinds of cancers etc.? Maybe an MRI?

<comment><USER8> It's not recommended to get what are called full body scans - one of the main reasons is all the false positives and unnecessary alarms it causes. Most of us have some artifacts that will show up on various scans and will look exactly the same next year and next decade.

On the other hand, many tumors are now discovered incidentally when getting a scan for something else. That tends to also cause higher anxiety levels, but at the same time allows addressing a real issue at a much earlier stage.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Wireless Plan are you on? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently grandfathered on a Verizon Unlimited Data Plan. Finally thinking about switching to T-Mobile since I'm tired of having to play games to get new devices.<p>What is everyone using? Are you happy with it? <comment><USER2> Virgin Mobile (Sprint). $30/month. Stinks though because it's Sprint and there is no 4G in my area. Signal is okay, customer service has been fine. No billing issues, generally. Good company, just not good in my area from a service standpoint.

Planning on moving to Cricket or AT&T (their coverage is pretty good here). Probably Cricket because I am okay with the 4G speed limitations (still way better than 3G) and can get a plan on autopay for $35 that includes enough data for me.

I don't understand paying $60+ for phone service, unless it's your main computing device. I've been cutting down my bills lately and was paying $70 for Sprint and realized I was just throwing money away.</comment>


Getting CPUID info in pure Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://cstrahan.com/2013/07/14/pure-ruby-cpuid-via-ffi.html

<comment><USER2> Theres nothing pure about this. You are calling external functions that make none of the guarantees of Ruby.

You might also want to fill the newly allocated memory with int3 (0xcc) instead of nops, that way you will notice if things are wrong and not slide into whereever.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a good demonstration of FFI, but sadly not at all what the title implies! Good job though.

</comment><comment><USER4> They really mean "pure Ruby except for the hand-written machine code that does the real work".

A better title for this article would be: "An exploit for executing arbitrary machine instructions from Ruby".</comment>


Why everyone loves coming up with ideas in the shower - <AUTHOR> http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2010/08/why-everyone-loves-coming-up-with-ideas-in-the-shower.html <comment><USER2> This is going to sound extremely cynical, but I believe that there's another reason why people enjoy coming up with ideas while in the shower or driving or taking a walk or...etc.

When you're doing one of those things, you can't actually do any work towards implementing the idea--but you can imagine all of the things that you're going to do as soon as you're able to (which, of course, you won't do).

In the shower there is no pressure to actually do something. You don't come up with ideas at your computer because you'd be confronted with the fact that if you really wanted to, you could begin implementing one of those ideas immediately.

</comment><comment><USER3> Same reason toilets are great for thinking. It gets you away from staring at the problem and lets your mind free associate a bit.

<comment><USER4> Another glorious institution ruined by the iPad/iPhone/etc

<comment><USER5> Jeez, the Apple haters around here. When I was 12 I used to poop and play my gameboy color.</comment></comment></comment>


A record year for the gaming industry ... led by the PS2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/10/ps2-leads-way-record-50-billion-year-gaming-industry

<comment><USER2> PS2's numbers shouldn't be that much of a surprise. The PS2 had years to build up its user base, so seeing it "win" the software sales wars makes perfect sense. The Wii has sold the most consoles this past year, sure, but the software selection is sad to say the least. The new consoles need more time to build decent libraries.

Plus, let's face it, the PS2 consolde's hardware was excellent, and even rivals what the Wii can do today (not including the Wii's industry-changing Wiimote).

I would predict that by this time next year, as the Xbox360 continues to fall behind in Japan, we'll see the Wii in 1st, PS3 in a solid second, and XBox 360 in 3rd. By year three, as prices drop further, the PS3 will move to 1st, followed by the Wii.

It's a fluid marketplace. By the time a PS4 comes out, the Wii or PS3 software sales will likely still out-sell any PS4 games after the first year.

It's called market saturation.

<comment><USER3> actually the gamecube is more powerful than the PS2, something exacerbated by the ps2's lack of anti-aliasing. so i dunno about the PS2 rivaling the Wii

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, the PS2 is cheap and approachable. The games are generally no longer $40 and $50 and good games can be had for under $20. The PS3 and 360 are still very expensive machines. Not just in initial outlay, but in keeping up with the Joneses. At $50 or $60 for every new game, that sure adds up fast. Let's not forget, that $400 is a lot of money to a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER5> You're welcome, gaming industry. I think I'm responsible in large part for that good year. I haven't played games since I had a Commodore 64, and I haven't bought a console since the Atari 2600 (I guess technically my parents bought that). But last year I bought a Wii and a Nintendo DS and have been buying tons of games since then. Just in the last month I bought the Wii Fit (awesome, but pricey), Mario Kart (awesome), and I'm waiting with cash in hand for the Rock Band release for Wii (whenever that actually comes out...). Every Christmas and birthday gift my girlfriend gets is something for the Wii or DS (man, it's been an easy couple of years for gift selection...though it seems to be wearing out...I've been explicitly forbidden from giving anymore "gadget" gifts...maybe getting a new girlfriend would be easier).

</comment><comment><USER6> The article (and the DFC Article it links to) only mentions "install base", not software sales (which I think would be the most informative metric if we wanted to see whether the industry was being "led" by the PS2).

In fact, the only mention of software sales was this: "From a pure revenue perspective, the biggest system for software sales in 2007 was the PC, if you include revenue generated from online services."

Of course the PS2 is going to have the largest install base of any system still on the market, since it's been out far longer than the others.</comment>


Can a game startup be lean? - <AUTHOR> http://airik.blogspot.com/2011/03/gameday-tycoon-lean-startup-challenge.html

<comment><USER2> Looking at the successful indie games, Minecraft first and foremost, the key simply seems to be to make something people have never seen before, and do it well. Notch made Minecraft as leanly as possible - by himself. He didn't hire anyone until he already had significant revenue. Now, before it's even out of beta, he's made 30MM in revenue.

Gaming is not a new field, and I think that it's a mistake to apply web startup ideals to an industry with many well-established success stories over 3 decades. All successful development houses got their start the same way - they made a great game that people loved, then another. When Gabe Newell started Valve, he looked at the Quake II's of the world, and said, "this is stupid. The last game had a double-barrel shotgun, so you put 4 barrels on this one and call it an improvement?" They made a great game by focussing on gameplay and the players' experience.

The key seems to be that while the major publishers focus on graphics and production value, the upstarts focus on gameplay. EA could have never published Minecraft; the graphics alone would have sent them running. Look at QWOP and GIRP and Too Many Ninjas: the graphics are terrible even by Flash standards, but they're addicting as hell.

As a gamer, all I can say is this: I don't care what your game looks like, I care how it plays. If you can make something that stands out in this tired market, I'll buy it. The major production houses aren't your enemies, they're your friends: they're the ones putting out the endless stream of repetitive crap that will make your game seem great by comparison. Just don't try to copy them.

<comment><USER3> I was going to disagree with you but I think you nailed it. Make something that people (i.e. most people) have never seen before. But that's not saying make something that _nobody_ has seen before, just something that _the people you're marketing to_ have never seen before.

That is, I think the key technique for success in any game market (indie or mass market) is to take a gaming experience that's proven to be fun and make it way more polished and accessible (I left out the Zynga games to save space):

Infiniminer => Minecraft

Tower Defense => Plants vs. Zombies

Guitar Freaks => Guitar Hero

The Game Maker => Game Dev Story

Boom Blox/Crush the Castle => Angry Birds

Rogue => EverQuest => World of Warcraft

DECWar => Galcon

Narbacular Drop => Portal

Herzog Zwei => Dune II => Warcraft

Dwarf Fortress => ???

Someone fill in that last one. It'll be tough, but you'll be a multi- millionaire. If you have this many people obsessed with a text mode game in 2011, there's something amazing waiting to happen.

<comment><USER4> I agree that Minecraft isn't a wholly original concept, but the other examples you cited aren't from "lean" game studios. Your advice to incrementally improve upon previous successes (your own or others') is a good strategy across the game industry, but probably less so in indie / agile studios, where having less to lose allows designers to take more risks with their work.

<comment><USER3> I think championing the gameplay of an obscure (maybe even non-electronic) but fun game is a pretty significant risk itself.

I've been an IGF judge and I love original gameplay, but I also know that almost everything really is a remix when it comes to game design and that there is more fun gameplay that has yet to find its audience than is generally acknowledged.

If you're trying to fulfill your artistic goals, I understand that originality is its own goal. If you're creating a game because you want people to enjoy playing it, maybe you should start from fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the moral of the story is that talking to your users is one of the most important things you can do during -- or even before -- development. User testing is cheap, easy and shouldn't cost you that much time -- 50 people is way more than necessary if your test is designed well. The experience is pretty magical.

For lean startup user/usability testing tips, check out Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. There's a chapter called "Usability Testing on a Shoestring Budget".

</comment><comment><USER6> It's an interesting question. One piece I recently read comes down clearly on the other side from the author of this post. The fact that it was written by a successful insider makes it more compelling: [http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders- product...](http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders- production.html)

I think the key element that makes it tough for games to be lean is that in many cases, the only real fanfare a game will get is on its release day. If your game sucks on day 1, odds aren't very good that you'll be getting people to try it out after you've ironed out the bugs. Obviously this is more true of console games and PC games than it is of mini-games on FB or flash sites.

<comment><USER7> I'm the author of the article of this post.

I disagree with the idea that a game is all about the pop on the first day of release. Probably for console games, but definitely not for web games. Web games are services and can improve dramatically over time.

You don't HAVE TO get the same users to try it again. There are always tonnes of new users on the internet :)

<comment><USER6> Would you mind sharing a few pointers? I have very limited experience with flash games. In a few small projects, I've gone with Kongregate and Mochi, either of which will send some traffic just for a game being new. Unfortunately, if the initial rating is poor, the game just disappears. In the case of my most recent game, I improved it dramatically over half a dozen patches, but over 95% of all the traffic it ever saw was in the first couple of days (version 1.00)

What's your general workflow for releasing games? What sites to you start with and where do you put them after making improvements?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Notch (the guy who made Minecraft) recently did an AMA on reddit. To quote something simple yet valuable from one of his comments, which is relevant here:

 _"Developing in the dark is scary and probably wrong."_</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I get dev jobs anymore? - <AUTHOR> I'm 31 and have been in software since I was 18. After leaving my last job, I feel like I have woken up and suddenly everyone wants to be a "coder" and consequently I have to do a bunch of social engineering to prove that I am not an imposter just to get a job. Ironically, this new social proof that is now required to get a job as a developer proves absolutely nothing about development knowledge or ability, but in fact makes it easier for complete beginners to fool their way into a paycheck.
I look around and see complete newcomers to the industry walk out of dev bootcamps and straight into decently paid jobs because they know how to "code" and have a github profile, a twitter account, and stickers on their laptop.
The best of these people speak loud and speak often out of their vast 2 years of experience coding React apps, and have contributed nothing but unpolished junk code that barely works and is riddled with unresolved issues.
Is this really what things have come to? I have to be a "code rockstar" to get a job? Competence be damned? <comment><USER2> I must admit I had similar if not the same feelings about the trends in tech these days. Everyone is a geek who can write a piece of code and write a patch. I see entitlement attitude in most young software engineers and utter disrepect for people who took time to refine their craft. But this is something we cannot do anything about so why worry ? If its bothering you, you should try to explain it to them.

And let's be honest here, regarding your "code rockstar" comment - it's getting harder to demonstrate ability in the age of over sharing and over communication. Internet can be a place with too much noise.

But Internet has also enabled us and empowered us so much. Instead of fighting the culture of show-offs, why not contribute your experiences on a blog ? The positive ones ? Build an online reputation and take advantage of the same infrastructure that many abuse ?

If you are really good at what you do, people will notice you. You don't have to show off and make loud noises. Just showcase your sincere works and get on the flow. You may never know what wonders could touch your life.

</comment><comment><USER3> OP, this is where everything is headed.

Gone are the days of handing over a solid resume and quietly clocking out at 5pm. All that extra stuff like github and personal branding is the new language of the age. Without participating you look like a cave man to employers.

A fresh out of boot camp novice coder that is at least putting himself out there on social media has a huge advantage over an invisible genius because he is with the times. He's speaking modern english.

A terrible singer on youtube will get hired before the person with a golden voice that is still making 8tracks. Because people don't buy 8track cassettes anymore (quiet, hipsters. I realize my analogy sucks). They watch youtube.

Why are you so resistant to just doing what it takes to communicate in a way that is understood in this internet age?

</comment><comment><USER4> How do you suppose people should respond to your rant? There is a lot of resentment and entitlement in your voice. That will not get you far in life.

<comment><USER5> Yeah a bit bitter for sure. Just do what everyone else does: contribute to open source, create a blog, have a portfolio of stuff worth showing on GitHub, get a decent resume. Etc. And social engineering? You mean networking or the most effective way to get a job?

<comment><USER4> I honestly don't think you have to do any of those things. You don't need to blog or contribute to OSS or write code on the weekends. I've never had a hiring manager care about any of it. Most just care that you can get along with other people and solve problems relevant to the job. Which is really another way of saying they want well adjusted people.

You can do all those things as well but most people won't care. Blogging and pushing code to GitHub has helped me become a better programmer but it has not directly helped me get jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an implicit question that begs answers. Are the people making the hiring decisions so incompetent that a person with minimal knowledge and experience is able to bamboozle them into getting a job whilst a more competent person with a good track record gets overlooked? I often wonder whether it is a pay peanuts ... situation.

</comment><comment><USER7> The stuff you refer to is what employers use as a proxy for showing that you do more than go to work and switch off.

<comment><USER2> This is a problem mate. People would like to have life outside of work too. Why should one always work beyond work time ? Sure, updating your skills is important and there are other ways to improve than committing 1-2 hours everyday to some side project. The balance is tipped towards younger engineers cos they have more time than someone who is in a relationship or married or having kids.

EDIT : It is rather appalling sometimes when you think about the unreasonable expectations the companies have on developers / professionals. To be available at all times to resolve any issues. 24x7 culture. We have to be sure what we are being sold about.</comment></comment>


She Gets Calls and Texts Meant for Elon Musk. Some Are Pretty Weird - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/05/21/858155045/she-gets-calls-and-texts-meant-for-elon-musk-some-are-pretty-weird <comment><USER2> I get emails for a celebrity. So far I've received: receipts for things like a boat, invitations to perform at large events, 'just catching up' notes from old friends, and confirmations of event planning among others. Recently I got an order confirmation for a large purchase, along with a shipping address and mobile number. I used the mobile number to text the celebrity, explain the situation, and offer my apologies for the mixup (I took a screenshot to prove I wasn't some psycho and sent it along)...they responded 'thanks' and I've not received any other messages from them since, though I have gotten some other emails.

<comment><USER3> It seems they're not very interested in resolving the problem?

Too busy, or just don't care?

<comment><USER4> I get occasional emails meant for my mom as we have similar email addresses. It's a common mistake made by many of her contacts, what is she supposed to do about it?

<comment><USER5> Use an email account attached to her own domain so any address at that domain goes to her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Full disclosure: I reached out to Musk during one of those controversies, > when he threatened to sue the California county that is home to Tesla's > manufacturing plant over its coronavirus-related restrictions. Instead, I > got Tucker.

It's not explicitly said, but I'd bet that's how this story came to be ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> However she got the number, she's got no intention of getting rid of it. Note that she has already provided it to many talent contacts.

Plus, it's probably something that she's actually treasuring, at this point. I'll bet that she's quite warm and friendly to anyone that calls, no matter how bizarre.

She's trying to break into a very competitive field, and every edge counts.

This is a big one. If she has the talent to follow through, this may be good for her.

I sincerely wish her the best.

<comment><USER4> skin care consulting at Sephora is competitive?

<comment><USER8> Later in the article it states aspiring actress. Ironic that you've been condescending and yet lack basic reading skills. I certainly wouldn't want a skin care consultant that couldn't read the bottle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is everybody taking at face value the claim that "we met up and Elon gave me this number"?

It's the first trick in the book to get your foot in the door, pretend you already have your foot in the door.

<comment><USER10> Indeed, why give someone an old number. If you are concerned about meeting them again and want plausible deniability, transpose a couple of digits and swap a 1 for a 7.

<comment><USER11> Or if you're musk, pay a personal assistant to field calls from people you don't want to talk to

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> completely off topic: why do so many folks on HN refer to Elon Musk as "Elon"? Rarely are peopling talking about Bill or Steve; you always add the surname or use just the surname.

<comment><USER13> Something to do with his image? Here in the UK people complain about exactly the same thing when people reference "Boris".

<comment><USER14> I guess I'm showing my age, but "Boris" without any qualifiers defaults to Badenov.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm reminded of an old Wired article about Steve Wozniak 'collecting' phone numbers. Pan Am (by mistake) and 888-8888. It's pretty far into the article, but the outcome was pretty funny: the number was unusable because...

[https://www.wired.com/1998/09/woz/](https://www.wired.com/1998/09/woz/)

[spoiler alert: toddlers picked up the phone and randomly pressed buttons, often enough hitting the 8 key repeatedly. He got too many calls to be able to use the number.]

</comment><comment><USER16> I Find it so disingenuous when the journalist describes Elon musk like this one did. Here's a guy who's started multiple successful companies in the hardest industries, and he describes him as the guy who smoked pot and defied stay at home orders.

<comment><USER17> His recent behavior and original status as a member of the PayPal mafia does make you question how much is his doing versus his connections and placement in spacetime. I do think he is rather intelligent as evident from the Joe Rogan podcast, that is -- long form conversation on topics. But he has shown an affinity for stupidity as well. He's an interesting man but remember that Tesla and the other companies he has been part of have been partnerships and have stellar engineers at the helm. Musk is a Muskateer, not a solo bolo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Some of those who texted Tucker said Musk himself provided the number to them. When NPR asked Musk whether he gave out that number to people he was trying to dodge, he did not respond."

<comment><USER19> Better he just respond with the same number: "call me: .."

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I receive emails intended for a person who shares my name. This gentleman happens to be an accountant, so I get lots of W2s from wealthy people -- I don't look on them, but the sender like to provide executive summaries in the body. I usually just tell them, this is not the mywittyname you're looking for. But he has also signed up for other services using my email, which is concerning.

I actually moved away from $email@example.com to $email@example.com due to fears that I may lose the former somehow. Nobody seems to think twice when I tell them my email is (like) email@example.com, so I guess it's either common, or people get why I do it.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have the rarer luxury of an early gmail address with a first initial last name prefix.

Lately I've been getting emails for things like trip confirmations, flight confirmations, appliance repair receipts, medication ready for pickup emails. The person is clearly on the side of the country and shares a common last name for where they live.

Anyway, turns out it's an older gentleman who shares my same first initial and same last name. For whatever reason he signs up with my email address. Not sure what to do because I don't have a way to reach him.

</comment><comment><USER22> Weird that Elon did not just pay to keep the number and blackhole it.

<comment><USER23> But now he can always shrug off unwanted new contacts to his current number by pretending to be that woman who accidentally got Musk's old one. They ask Google and the story checks out, he will never hear from them again. Best possible outcome.

<comment><USER22> What exactly are you suggesting?

The woman that's photograph appears in the article, "Lyndsay Tucker, a 25-year-old skin care consultant, who works at a Sephora beauty store in San Jose, Calif." — is obviously a real person.

<comment><USER24> i think the suggestion is that musk is picking up the phone in his mrs. doubtfire voice and saying "hello, this is tucker, i'm a real person, who is this mr. musk you speak of?"

... or more likely just for text messages.

<comment><USER23> Roughly like that, yes. And it really would only work for text messages, not only because of the voice issue but also because a phone call rarely contains actionable information before both sides have informally confirmed identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've gotten the occasional email for someone, possibly multiple someones, with the same name as me.

Nothing terribly exciting though - an order confirmation for a Casper mattress, a hotel receipt from a Las Vegas hotel, and a bunch of stuff related to a high school reunion.

I was able to contact the organizer of the high school reunion, hopefully she got in touch with the right person. I didn't have enough to go on with the other emails though, so I just deleted them.

</comment><comment><USER26> Some are pretty weird, and all messages are pretty private, therefore, not to be dissected publicly in npr.

The other option is that this piece of new is pretty fake and made for the love of clicks, something that I wouldn't discard. Ethic's level seem pretty low in this case.

</comment><comment><USER27> It is a bit funny that Elon Musk makes cars, and this girl getting errant texts is named Tucker (her last name). By Tucker I mean Preston Tucker the American automobile entrepreneur who made the famed Tucker sedan. [1][2]

Note, Tucker also had some run-ins with the SEC. [3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker#Tucker_Corporat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker#Tucker_Corporation_and_the_1948_Tucker_Sedan_\(1944%E2%80%931947\))

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker#/media/File:194...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker#/media/File:1948_Tucker_Sedan_at_the_Blackhawk_Museum.jpg)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker#Turmoil_surroun...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker#Turmoil_surrounding_Tucker_Corporation_\(1946%E2%80%931948\))

</comment><comment><USER10> So the IRS start going on about complex tax things before confirming who they are talking to?

<comment><USER28> U R NOT COMPLIANT ON UR TAXES. REPLY 1 TO PAY, REPLY 2 TO GO TO JAIL

<comment><USER29> 2

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have the same name as an entrepreneur who had a fairly successful exit and is now an early stage investor. As a result, I get a slow trickle of cold intro emails with hot* start-up funding opportunities.

*definitely not hot

</comment><comment><USER31> I have a similar situation but much more mundane. Someone listed my number as theirs on a county clerk of courts website and now I get all of their phone calls regarding their delinquent properties.

</comment><comment><USER32> How often do people ask her where their bitcoins are?

</comment><comment><USER33> tldr: His number was leaked, he got rid of it, the person who just got the number is dealing with bunch of random people who think they found elon's # online.

<comment><USER34> AT&T should just retire the number at that point right

<comment><USER35> There aren't that many phone numbers where it's reasonable to retire them willy-nilly (given the desire to have consistent "area codes").

<comment><USER36> You don't have to retire them for all eternity, just long enough that it stops getting a lot of contact.

<comment><USER37> Judging by Elon's reaction, it's been out of his hands for many years.

<comment><USER36> Well, longer then. And I imagine it's been active that many years, not getting "this subscriber is no longer available" or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Great way to have Musk buy her (his old) number. Its not like he hasn't the money.

</comment><comment><USER39> Elon has really kicked the hornets nest. This is the level of petty BS they will publish about somebody they don't like. Imagine what they turn a blind eye to if they like you.

<comment><USER40> If this is some sort of hit piece it's not a good one. It doesn't color my opinion of him at all. It's more of a human interest story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why does she keep using that sim/number..

</comment><comment><USER42> perfect phishing opportunity, if not worse

</comment><comment><USER43> 2FA

</comment><comment><USER44> I heard someone found shoes that Bill Gates once wore and a gum chewed by Steve Jobs. Both became relics and worshippers write articles about this in the internet.

Seriously though - would someone think it was ok if I got a number after a local bakery owner and started sharing messages that were sent to me by mistake? Is this ok because EM is a more known person? I think it still falls under privacy standards.

<comment><USER45> The messages were sent to _her_ number. I don't think there is any privacy violation if you drop mail addressed to 'person residing at this address' at the wrong house.

<comment><USER44> I agree that there is no privacy law violation, but it is a bit distasteful. We have some implicit standards in the society and it seems those are conveniently ignored at this point. There is some excuse given in the article in the form of "he probably gives out this number to people he does not wish to talk to", which I find a bit suspicious.

When I got letters to previous tenants at my current address I did not open them and share with everyone I met. I sent them to their new address.

<comment><USER46> My guess is that the real problem that was touched on is Mr. Musk gives the number out to get rid of unwanted contacts.

I had a number like this, except it was for a drug dealer with a similar area code, and most of the crazy texts and calls slowed down after a few months. I have a common name and get similar wacky emails. It's an impossible problem to solve when it is a problem.

Every couple of years stories like this come out. It's pretty common for celebrities to give out old numbers to undesirable contacts. There was a story in the NY papers a few years ago about a guy getting calls from one-night stand hookups of a musician. The musician gave out his number from 20 years ago because it sounded real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Seems like a good idea to change your number... after 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER48> A friend of mine got the old number of a prostitute. He received tons of funny text messages of thirsty dudes.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can imagine Elon reading this and thinking, why tf would you even report on such nonsense? I mean really, why is this a story? And these pictures of the woman receiving the texts, they position her like she is a victim somehow, I mean look at these facial expressions LMAO.</comment>