'Five Eyes' nations discuss backdoor access to WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/30/five-eyes-backdoor-access-whatsapp-encryption <comment><USER4> > Dealing with the challenge faced by increasingly effective encryption

They weren't able to spy in bulk when communication was primarily offline, and they won't when it's primarily encrypted.

Don't let them frame the brief, anomalous period when they could listen in on everyone, as 'normal'.

<comment><USER5> This. That entire period should be examined as a lapse in judgement, not a time when things were better.

Because of our state-of-the-art security, we're now able to do more things online in less secure environments. A secure, distributed internet is normal. One that is insecure by design is not.

<comment><USER6> proper security has always been "state-of-the-art"

<comment><USER7> Even burner phones were a technically state-of-the-art which was a story which underpinned an entire season of a TV show's plotline (and title).

Cellphones became so cheap and widely available you could buy and throw them away efficiently to not get easily tapped and still make enough money, even as a low level drug dealer living in low income neighbourhoods. That wouldn't have been possible years prior.

<comment><USER6> Burner phones are good for anonymity (if you buy them anonymously), but I don't think that they add any security

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cirrus-clouds Some info about disgraced former International Development Secretary Priti Patel, who is the UK's new Home Secretary (a position that looks after home affairs such as crime, security, terrorism, immigration, citizenship).

\- She resigned from her previous position as International Development Secretary in 2017 when it was discovered she held secret unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials and lied about it. The meetings were not sanctioned by the Foreign Office and were a breach of ministerial code.

\- A supporter of Brexit, she suggested last year that the UK leverage the prospect of food shortages in Ireland in order to gain a better Brexit deal. Although, she quickly back-pedalled on her comments, she was rightly criticised for her remarks.

The depressing reality is that the current Conservative Party in the UK is stuffed to the rafters with nasty politicians just like her.

Priti Patel's voting record in parliament: [https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24778/priti_patel/witham/v...](https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/24778/priti_patel/witham/votes)

" _Generally voted for requiring the mass retention of information about communications_ "

" _Voted for mass surveillance of people's communications and activities_ "

<comment><USER8> Not to forget that immediately on being appointed Home Secretary she was accused of breaking the ministerial code yet again, in May! It's currently the only significant point under the Home Secretary section of her Wikipedia page:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priti_Patel#Home_Secretary:_Ju...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priti_Patel#Home_Secretary:_July_2019–present)

Most of the reasonable and moderate members of the Tory party are on the back benches, leaving or about ready to retire. The old, reasonable, one nation Tory party is dead as a dodo.

<comment><USER9> The alternative view is that this is the first reasonable and moderate cabinet since the referendum.

Consider that it's the first one which appears to be serious about actually doing what the government repeatedly said it would do, both before and after the vote. A government doing what it promised it would do is reasonable. It is led by a man who wants very much to reach an acceptable deal with the EU, but will leave without one if the EU makes it necessary. That's a reasonable and moderate position of the sort that millions of business leaders take every single day.

The previous cabinet had a position like this: we're saying we'll leave no matter what, but we're lying because we definitely won't ever leave without a "deal" of some sort, which basically means the party we're negotiating with can propose whatever terms they like and we'll always accept them regardless of how terrible. Thus an "agreement" which is universally regarded as awful is presented as the only possible path forward, other than ignoring the biggest vote in British history. That's not _at all_ a reasonable way to go about negotiations or politics. Nor is it even slightly moderate - "we must accept terrible terms or else we'll be destroyed" is an unusually extreme belief, of the sort usually held by countries which just lost a war.

Patel may have broken some ministerial code, and that's bad. But the former Prime Minister and her cabinet said 108 times the country would leave the EU on the deadline with or without a deal _and they were lying every single time_. The cabinets before that told voters they were committed to bringing down immigration, but after leaving government Osborne admitted the cabinet never believed in their stated goal, didn't want to do it and therefore just ignored it. That sort of blatant, knowing manipulation is far, far worse and completely destructive to trust in politics. Meeting Israelis without filing the right paperwork is trivial compared to it.

<comment><USER8> Whatever the former prime minister, or the current prime minister say, it only becomes so once it is voted into being. When you have a majority of 3, and a controversial policy, prior to vote it's just aspiration. If Theresa was lying, Boris is likely to be lying. Neither brought good governance.

Unless there is an election and the Tory party are returned with increased majority, it is certain that the current prime minister will have as little success in the house as his predecessor. They have a majority of 3, soon to be 2, held up by the DUP. There are enough moderates left in the Tory party to lose the government a vote on every problematic exit scenario, and on a no- deal exit, just as was the case for Theresa.

> Meeting Israelis without filing the right paperwork is trivial compared to > it

No, it was worthy of dismissal. She preempted that by resigning. She was not Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister. It was not her role to make policy on the hoof on a topic irrelevant to her office. She blew her chance to explain by continuing to leave out some of the meetings, resulting in a _second_ summons to Downing St. She does not deserve to return to senior office.

<comment><USER9> That may well be the case, but May didn't have to ask for an extension to Article 50 or have a man as her Chancellor who was totally against no deal. She chose to do those things. And it was - to nobody's surprise - <USER2> revealed that she never even brought up the possibility of no deal with her EU counterparts.

In the end, the current cabinet is much more likely to try and implement the Conservative's actual manifesto. The only reason you describe that as immoderate and extreme is you want them to fail to do so. It wouldn't be considered so if "UK" and "EU" were replaced with random tokens and presented to people who weren't invested in British/EU politics.

<comment><USER8> No one in their right mind would expect them to mention the possibility of no- deal - it's the idiotic option to be avoided. Mentioning it or threatening it in negotiations is brinkmanship of the worst kind, as a no-deal is more damaging for _us_ than the EU.

Moderate and immoderate are well known and defined political positions completely unrelated to how you are attempting to redefine them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> >The controversial so-called "ghost protocol" has been fiercely opposed by companies, civil society organizations and some security experts – but intelligence and law enforcement agencies continue to lobby for it.

Even if it it was possible I think the bigger question is do we want to live in a society where any and all conversations can be ease-dropped on? I get the point that they want it for investigations, but its been proven over and over that if there is a way it will be abused.

Would intelligence and LE also be ok with that same rules applying to them?

<comment><USER10> The answer is no of course - they have the thought terminating cliche of "national security" to protect against accountability.

Really the fact intelligence and law enforcement agencies are lobbying is actually utterly fucked up. Their purpose is to serve us not the other way around.

If people with actual sense were in charge the fuckers pushing for it would be fired and out the door so fast it breaks the sound barrier - <USER3> undermining that which the nation benefits from the most economically and making them weaker to attackers - all while not making adversaries weaker? That is inexcusable incompetence.

<comment><USER11> > Their purpose is to serve us not the other way around.

However "we" want them to be able to "stop the bad guys" and "monitor bad communication". "We" also have nothing to hide.

This yougov poll shows more Americans support backdoors in encryption than oppose it

[https://today.yougov.com/topics/technology/articles- reports/...](https://today.yougov.com/topics/technology/articles- reports/2015/10/19/americans-all-stripes-worried-about-data-privacy)

[https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inline...](https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2015-10-19/data4.png)

<comment><USER12> At first I thought that you linked to the wrong poll by mistake.

The last question does show more "favor" than "oppose" for installing back doors in encrypted systems, but the first question shows much more "oppose" than "favor" for reducing encryption to help government agencies. The second question shows that more people want tech companies to protect customer privacy than to cooperate with government agencies to fight terrorism and crime.

So people want encryption back doors that don't reduce encryption and don't require tech companies to cooperate with government agencies. Of course "we can have all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff" is a common delusion among government agencies proposing encryption back doors too.

<comment><USER13> Yes, since the operational outcomes of the first and last questions are the same, the main notion this poll really confirms is that people in general don't understand cryptography.

c.f. also the recent Australian prime minister who claimed that legislation can override mathematics.

<comment><USER11> > c.f. also the recent Australian prime minister who claimed that legislation > can override mathematics.

I believe the phrase is PI IS EXACTLY 3

<comment><USER14> According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill) the value of pi would have been defined as 3.2 in Indiana.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ever since Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013, I've had zero sympathy for or trust in any intelligence service, even in purportedly democratic countries.

Last year, my own country (Australia) passed a law which allows the government to force companies or even individuals to add backdoors to their products, and makes it a criminal offence to refuse or publicly disclose their requests. I would go to jail before I complied.

For those of you in other five eyes countries, you'll have similar laws soon too. Our intelligence agencies have clearly set themselves up against fundamental principles of human rights, and their efforts to undermine these must be fought.

<comment><USER16> > allows the government to force companies or even individuals to add > backdoors to their products

I think the tech media and community overstates the impact of this law. The law [0] makes it clear that the backdoor cannot introduce any systematic weakness of vulnerability, which explicitly includes "a new decryption capability in relation to a form of electronic protection".

What it allows is stuff that targets a specific person _and_ is incapable of affecting anybody else. The second part overrides the first part, so if it's not possible to target a specific person without weakening protection for everybody else, you're not required to do anything.

For example asking you to put code into your app that creates a copy of private keys and sends them to ASIO if the user's ID matches a hard-coded value would be legally okay per my reading of the law.

However adding ASIO's key to every single message would not be okay.

I'm not saying I'm in favour of the law (I'm not) but its actual effect isn't at all what people assume (I hear a lot of comments about "Australia banned encryption" and other such nonsense).

[0]: [http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214...](http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s317zg.html)

<comment><USER17> What stops the government from just saying I want to target every single specific person that uses your app?

<comment><USER16> Sections 317JC, 317RA and 317ZAA, which require that the decision makers consider the impact on unrelated people and section 317ZH which requires that a warrant is obtained for things that would usually require a warrant.

<comment><USER17> There are no unrelated people if that is the ask of the government. What would "usually" require a warrant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> from what ive learned about encryption and cryptography in general, it seems like you dont get to put this cat back in the bag once it gets out.

You can hold all the meetings you want. pound fists to table, elegantly restate your problem, but the mathematic fundamentals of it are your immovable object. your only option is to block it throughout your nation. this just makes room for a new, or an updated version of the fly you swat last week that gets around your flyswatter.

Sure, you can try to poison the code base, or inject some kind of malware, but this trick only works once. its not a silver bullet.

<comment><USER19> I wrote a blog post about this awhile back, when the UK government was talking about adding backdoors to encrypted messaging platforms, framed as an open letter to our PM. It's a basic introduction to cryptography (I'm no expert though).

[http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear- theresa/](http://coding2learn.org/blog/2017/06/11/dear-theresa/)

Given that the maths is "out of the bag", any motivated criminal organisation or group that is intent on not being caught can quite easily encrypt their own communications. The only people who won't are the innocent public, who can be spied on with impunity.

<comment><USER20> > _Given that the maths is "out of the bag", any motivated criminal > organisation or group that is intent on not being caught can quite easily > encrypt their own communications. The only people who won't are the innocent > public, who can be spied on with impunity._

It's always the innocent public who is the target of such moves. The goal is state omniscience, not crime fighting.

Competent criminal organisations wouldn't care about laws banning encryption, and would know to use the proper tools.

The random non-competent criminals caught this way, would be used to justify the measure...

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't be so cynical. The real goal is to catch stupid criminals. Not all criminals are stupid, but most are.

Of course governments cannot stop tech people from using e2e encryption. That's not what bothers them. What bothers them is that e2e encryption is the _default_. They want to change the default to be insecure.

The people who demand these laws are tasked with making various statistics change, such as crime rates. They are metaphorical paperclip maximisers: a surveillance state is not a goal, it is just a means to an end, a way to make their numbers look better.

<comment><USER20> > _I wouldn 't be so cynical. The real goal is to catch stupid criminals. Not > all criminals are stupid, but most are._

The real goal is to expand the state. Bureaucracies, like cancer, want to expand into any aspect of their subjects lives they can. They get job security, bigger budgets, and more power as they expand, what's not to like?

Individual opinions (of politicians, bureaucrats, etc) don't really matter, as the aggregate dynamics of a state/organization tend to expansion and self- preservation -- even if an organization has no real role or is mostly BS (eg TSA).

Besides, nothing wrong with being cynical. Remember McCarthy? The real goal of the collection of data then wasn't to "catch stupid criminals". They collected data on politicians, journalists, businessmen, etc. Same thing with now public records of 10 and 20 years later -- check the files on people like MLK, Lennon, civil rights leaders, etc.

(And of course anybody with experience from European governments like in Italy, Greece, Spain, France, and so on, knows that private info/surveillance is used against whom which the state considers an "internal enemy" all the time, and in fact collection on those was far more common up to the 90s than collection on criminals -- which merely had their criminal record, and periods when they were bugged in suspicion of a crime, whereas politicians, businessmen, activists, writers, journalists etc were tracked all the time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If this works, it won't actually stop strong e2e encryption, it'll just make people download their strong e2e encryption communication apps from non-mass- surveillance states.

This isn't p*rnhub. You can't backdoor everything.

<comment><USER23> People generally don't care about LE reading what they say, so no. People used whatsapp before e2e and will keep using it after e2e.

<comment><USER24> One might reasonably assume the "bad guys" they're trying to catch would go elsewhere though, if they have any sense. So then you're just left with innocent people to spy on.

<comment><USER23> You'd be surprised to learn how fucking stupid most bad guys are.

<comment><USER25> We catch lots of stupid bad guys.

Smart bad guys get away with it.

<comment><USER23> Cynical and correct observation, which I know will get downvoted because it goes against the mantra of this website:

Being able to read whatsapp would help us catch many more stupid bad guys.

Smart bad guys will always be able to get away with it. That doesn't mean we should stop trying to catch stupid bad guys.

<comment> dane-pgp What if catching the stupid bad guys just means the smart bad guys take their place? Like a spray that kills 99% of bacteria, all you're potentially doing is applying a selective pressure towards being more technically smart.

And in this case, being more technically smart might just mean clicking the link to the E2E encrypted web chat site rather than the server-to-client encrypted site. Perhaps, though, the government will start banning websites that offer E2E encrypted chat, and require hosting companies to not let you host such apps yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does nobody realize how _inconvenient_ it is that the relationship between the radius and circumference of a circle cannot be calculated readily by hand? Our manufacturing processes will be greatly improved by silencing those so-called 'mathematicians' and standardizing on a value of 3 for pi not that never ending mess.

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "We need to ensure that our law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies are able to gain lawful and exceptional access to the information they need"

This entitlement is obscene.

If backdoor access is granted then a new set of heads will emerge from the hydra.

</comment><comment><USER28> This just in:

Dealing with the challenges faced by having a mere 97% conviction rate, federal prosecutors and law enforcement conspire with foreign powers to remove pesky civil liberties.

</comment><comment><USER29> In addition to all the ethical and privacy concerns brought up here, another thing that always crosses my mind is do we even trust these entities to properly store this information? What happens if all data that is being collected from these backdoors is compromised? Think about every private conversation you've ever had potentially leaking to the entire world.

</comment><comment><USER30> CyberSaber..?

> By choosing a simple but strong cipher that is already widely published and > agreeing on how to use it, anyone with elementary programming skills can > write their own encryption program without relying on any products that can > be banned.

[http://ciphersaber.gurus.org/](http://ciphersaber.gurus.org/)

And Pontifex, aka the Solitaire Encryption Algorithm (SPOILER ALERT):

> In Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon, the character Enoch Root describes > a cryptosystem code-named "Pontifex" to another character named Randy > Waterhouse, and later reveals that the steps of the algorithm are intended > to be carried out using a deck of playing cards.

[https://www.schneier.com/academic/solitaire/](https://www.schneier.com/academic/solitaire/)

Laws _cannot_ stop encryption, they can stop law-abiding people from using it maybe but not criminals.

<comment><USER31> The ciphersaber idea is great, but the cipher that was chosen for the project has been subject to significant attacks (further developments of the ones mentioned on that page) and has been deprecated in TLS. (The attack setting for attacking RC4 in HTTPS is probably a lot easier than attacking short person-to-person communications, but it's still not a good sign.)

Also, when you implement the ciphersaber, you're still only about 1/4 of the way to the functionality of early-1990s PGP, notably lacking any public key functionality.

> For file encryption, a user need only memorize one key or passphrase. For > messaging, users need to exchange pairs of keys through some secure means, > most likely in person. Maintaining a list of correspondent's keys or > passphrases in a master file, preferably itself encrypted with a memorized > master key, is less convenient than public key encryption. But it may be all > that is left in a few years if PGP key servers are banned.

> It may even be possible to teach a manual version of the Diffie-Hellman key > exchange, perhaps using large number calculators (easily built in Java 1.1). > The Diffie-Hellman procedure need be carried out just once per pair of > correspondents, since CipherSaber eliminates the need to exchange keys for > every message.

Apart from the implausibility of some of this, you have a very severe issue about key synchronization if you literally only want to do a key exchange once. For example, an attacker who can intercept one party's message and then trick another party into encrypting a known plaintext with the same key material (because that party doesn't know that the keystream has advanced yet?) can then decrypt the intercepted message.

Even having the two users accidentally use the same part of the keystream to send separate unknown messages m₁ and m₂ will allow an adversary to compute m₁⊕m₂, which is very bad in many cases. One thing I remember from Dan Boneh's cryptography class is that if either message contains an ASCII space character (' ') at some position, then m₁⊕m₂ will contain the other message's plaintext with uppercase and lowercase inverted (for example,' '^'q' is 'Q').

The ciphersaber idea is conceptually really great, and I love the idea of helping teach people to create their own communications and communications security infrastructure. But I think that, apart from just how archaic the cryptographic technology it teaches is, the project really underestimates how far away this cipher implementation is from a complete system.

<comment><USER31> I should probably also acknowledge that Arnold Reinhold apparently started writing this page in _1997_ , and so the techniques presented there weren't nearly as far from the state-of-the-art then!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tony Ma's daughter better not go to any of the Five Eyes countries at this point.

</comment><comment><USER33> For those of you searching for good E2E-encrypted messaging apps, Wire is really good. It has true cross-platform support without being tied to a phone number.

<comment><USER34> I know a lot of folks who are technical (and non-technical) and it was a big enough struggle to get them using Signal. I definitely see the advantages of Wire and not being tied to a phone number but I just don't know anyone using it. It's odd because some of those folks are using Keybase chat though... they just bulk at installing yet another messaging app (regardless of features).

<comment><USER35> I tried to get people to use Wire but it was buggy enough, and still is with most ignored, the majority of converts have abandoned it. I have continual problems. If it would have been reliable it could have been a killer app as it was basically Skype but encrypted and ostensibly available on all platforms. Having a stand alone (no linked phone) browser (angostic) based option is a great feature. But, it really feels they left the free/Personal version in the dust for their Pro/Enterprise option and from reading Github complaints and seeing a former employee discuss it in another forum I'd assume that to be accurate. Signal isn't much better from reading around and also still requires a phone linked and is only Chrome if you want to use it on the desktop (unless I am behind the times). Seems the space for an all in one encrypted communication/sharing tool available and accessible to all people and platforms has sort of died. I will never trust FB so even if people way smarter than me say Whatsapp is safe it still feels so dirty...and again the phone required bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> At some point, people are going to see the problem as not of a lack of privacy technologies, but of a small group who surveils them and exploits their personal information to keep them disadvantaged, and they will decide that this is the problem they need to solve.

It is also likely that the technology they use to solve that problem will be much less sophisticated.

Ballots, surely.

<comment><USER37> > Ballots, surely.

Well, one of the four boxes, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This will just drive people to more and more distributed platforms until there is nothing they can do.

<comment><USER39> "Creation, distribution, discussion, or any thought about encryption is illegal and will be punishable by up to life in prison under new anti- terrorism laws." They will certainly try I am sure but at the end of the day encryption is just math and that is impossible to ban.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Or could it be they already have a back door and stories like this serve them by making people believe they don't.

<comment> dane-pgp By this logic, the fact that there were no stories about the government not being able to spy on messenger apps before, means that those apps were perfectly secure _until_ they added E2E crypto. That doesn't sound right to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As we worry about 'Five Eyes' spying on us, we happily give Google and Facebook all our communications for free...

<comment><USER42> that is by choice. I have no choice about goverment spying on me.

<comment><USER43> In contemporary society you are usually quite the outcast when you say you don't do social media. You have the choice between being an outcast and being spied upon. Similarly for government spying in messenger apps: if you are an outcast who doesn't buy a smartphone or computer you are not affected.

<comment> a0-prw I can't count the number of assholes I have avoided by not being on Facebook ;)

<comment><USER44> I can count the number of assholes I have met on Facebook. It's 0. I only put people I like in the first place on it, and surprise surprise, I enjoy using it.

It's not the tool people, it's how you're using it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon's Alexa Team Can Access Users' Home Addresses - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-24/amazon-s-alexa-reviewers-can-access-customers-home-addresses <comment><USER2> So in summary, people who amazon trusts to have access to sensitive private information have access to sensitive private information?

i'm not sure why location is the scary part here, i'm more concerned that real people and not just algorithms have access to my audio recordings or transcripts from alexa.

<comment><USER3> No, people who Amazon trust to have access to _voice information_ also have access to other information by default and automatically with no extra work.

<comment><USER4> You have to have an amazon account to use Alexa, so you've already established a relationship with Amazon that would include your name, email address, IP address(location).

<comment><USER5> That doesn't matter, restricting information that employees can access is Security 101. I can't view restricted company information that I don't need for my job, likewise people transcribing Alexa voice commands don't need the home address of the voices they are transcribing. Just because you give Amazon your address for shipping and billing information doesn't mean you want to give John and Jane on the Alexa QA team your home address.

<comment><USER6> It is security 101, the sad part is how bad companies fail at this.

I worked a company with over a trillion dollars in assets that had hundreds of "highly confidential" (their own words for classification) that were available to anyone on the network.

I took all the appropriate courses of action to report, no action on their end. Reported it to the teams responsible and offered a solution, no action. I debated blowing a whistle and making an example, but I didn't feel like I'd be safe.

This post even makes me paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Anytime someone is collecting where you are, that means it could go to > someone else who could find you when you don't want to be found,"

How is this different than Amazon literally shipping packages to someone's home address and having their billing information?

<comment><USER8> The people who are packing the boxes and knocking on your door don't have access to the microphones inside your house. Hearing conversations and search requests from customers is quite different from knocking on their door or packing a box.

Combining the knowledge of what you say inside with knowing where you live is different than the knowledge of a purchase you made and where you live.

Also, I would certainly assume Amazon to know my home address if I bought Alexa and shipped it there. But most people wouldn't assume that Amazon actual employees are listening to their conversations who also know where you live. HN might expect that, but Amazon makes a privacy promise that is violated here, as described in the article:

> In an April 10 statement acknowledging the Alexa auditing program, Amazon > said "employees do not have direct access to information that can identify > the person or account as part of this workflow."

 _Bloomberg is saying that this statement by Amazon was false_ , because the location information from the Alexa devices can, in some cases, identify the individual or account "as part of this workflow".

<comment><USER9> To be clear: there's no assertion of real-time access to microphones anywhere. This is a quality team that has access to some presumptive subset of recorded data.

The headline and your interpretation are leaning very heavily on the "ZOMG SPYING!" angle, where... I honestly don't see it. This seems like pretty heavy spinning.

Yes, they should probably have a policy of scrubbing data better before voices get presented to human ears.

> Combining the knowledge of what you say inside with knowing where you live > is different than the knowledge of a purchase you made and where you live.

Technically true, but... is it actually worse? I can see convincing arguments made either way, frankly.

<comment><USER8> > To be clear: there's no assertion of real-time access to microphones > anywhere.

Well yes I know, I figure this data is likely years-old or whatever, I don't see how that matters? I didn't bring up real-time access and I'm well aware that Amazon doesn't (likely) even have that capability. _Nobody here is asserting real-time access to microphones!_

> Technically true, but... is it actually worse? I can see convincing > arguments made either way, frankly.

Yes, it is much _much worse_ , because it is a direct violation of their own statements about privacy. Amazon makes no statement about their box packers or labellers not knowing your address, because they obviously have to know that in order to put the label on or knock on your door.

But Amazon _does_ make a privacy promise to not do what they are doing here. So they are totally different things and it matters due to customer expectation and their own written words.

Edit: I'm "posting too fast" and am not allowed to reply to the user below. I will state that I _do care about privacy_ , I was simply taking the simplest debate stance to demonstrate that the two concepts are quite different (package delivery knowing your address and human reviewers of your voice commands knowing your address).

 _If you look at my comments on this article you will surely see that I care about privacy._

<comment><USER9> So... you're not actually concerned about "privacy" as such, just with Amazon's fidelity to their written policy?

Yeah, you're spinning here. The headline and your hyperbole above quite clearly want to frame this as a "Amazon is spying on your family" thing. And when challenged, you're retreating to a bland critique of their process adherence.

<comment><USER10> 'Just' fidelity to a written policy _about how they handle data from microphones in your house._

<comment><USER9> The point was: that worry (which, fine, you care a lot about) wasn't the one espoused upthread or in the linked clickbait. It was the _fallback_ position for the poster when challenged on the "spying" angle that everyone originally started with.

So fine, Amazon didn't honor their agreement and they should fix it. They didn't spy on your kids.

<comment><USER10> You think it's 'Fine' that amazon didn't honor their agreement _about how they handle data relating to the always on microphones in people's homes_?

If the don't honor agreements about handling data it means means they can't be trusted with that data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > If a user has chosen to share their contacts with Alexa, their names, > numbers and email addresses also appear in the dashboard.

So my data is popping up on a dashboard even though I've never once used an Alexa? Gee thanks.

A privacy-respecting design would have been:

1\. Contacts never leave the device.

2\. Location data is sent anonymously, in subsequent requests not associated with the initial query.

<comment><USER12> > _A privacy-respecting design would have been..._

Not really disagreeing with you, but every smartphone app that has access to your contacts also violates your contacts' privacy. WhatsApp, FB, Google Auto, etc, etc. More than anything, I hate the way this has been allowed as an acceptable practice.

<comment><USER13> > We should not be sharing their contact information online. So, keep your > contacts in a different database. This app saves contacts in its own > database seperate from android contacts. This way no other app would be able > to access contacts.

[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/opencontacts.open.com.openco...](https://f-droid.org/en/packages/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts/)

<comment><USER14> Any suggestions for what to do on iOS?

Unfortunately, it's not always so easy to not share contacts with certain services. For instance, WhatsApp works just fine with a telephone number but it actively encourages users to upload their contacts - assumably consumed by (the) Facebook (group of businesses) as part of its social graph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like there's a legitimate use case for this data: troubleshooting/quality scoring the results for inherently local searches.

"Alexa, what's the nearest pizza place?" "Alexa, is the corner coffee shop open now?"

(Disclaimer: not an Amazon employee, but [generally] happy Alexa user.)

<comment><USER8> > It seems like there's a legitimate use case for this data

Maybe, but you haven't found it. To resolve your query, simply fudge the locations by 50-200m in random directions. You'll still get good local results and won't pin the exact room or house down with needlessly accurate location data. Amazon can keep that data of course, it just need not be shown to human reviewers.

Edit: I'm "posting too fast" and so cannot reply to the Uber comment below. I'll say, I still don't understand how human reviewers would need your address or GPS coords to improve their service after you get an Uber. How would they even verify the Uber came to the right place, they don't have the verification info there.

I just don't see this as a valid use case at all.

<comment><USER16> The reason a human reviewer needs that information is to troubleshoot the response.

1\. Customer makes a request that requires location — "Alexa, what's the weather?"

2\. Alexa gets the response wrong — "A turkey is a flightless bird."

3\. You flag that as incorrect in the application.

4\. An Amazon employee reviews that flagged response, and needs to figure out how Alexa misinterpreted — did she mishear you? ...is your location data malformed, so that interpretation was discarded? etc.

I don't see how Amazon employees can troubleshoot the Alexa application without both reviewing the audio files and the contextual information provided.

Disclaimer: at one point, I reviewed security for Alexa teams. I no longer work there, my opinions are my own, etc.

<comment><USER17> > I don't see how Amazon employees can troubleshoot the Alexa application > without both reviewing the audio files and the contextual information > provided.

From my point of view, the issue isn't really that Amazon does this. The issue is that Alexa users are surprised that Amazon does this. Their surprise indicates that no real consent was obtained.

If Amazon had done something like, when a user flags an incorrect response, asking the user for permission to use that data, I would not have any issue with it.

<comment><USER16> I completely agree that surprising users is always a problem, precisely for the reasons you state.

I just hoped to give a better idea of how it came to be people who (in my biased experience) are thoughtful about user privacy, ended up bringing together a data set users were uncomfortable with:

Of course the team reviewing responses needs to see the user context!

Whoops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How are these gaps not captured early on in Amazon and similarly on Facebook. It's like people creating these systems have no clue about the wider world.

<comment><USER19> They probably have a better clue then most of us. But they also have opportunism

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And any 3rd party seller on Amazon also has access to customers' home addresses.

Having my address isn't the scary part. It's having access to the content of all of my conversations inside the address that's worrying.

A voice assistant is just something I'll never allow in my house. The risk/benefit ratio just isn't there. It would have to be at least an order of magnitude more useful before even considering it.

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be an interesting project to produce a documentary of what goes on inside a tech company in this regard. The very fact that this stuff is so mundane to us _should_ be alarming to everybody else. Maybe actually seeing it would generate enough controversy that segregating data according to "need-to- know" would get higher priority compared to a new feature. Or maybe they would just stop buying these awful products.

</comment><comment><USER22> If a feat is simultaneously profitable and technically possible it is being performed, full stop. The government refuses to punish breaches of privacy with fines heavy enough that spying on users is no longer profitable, therefore the spying will continue.

</comment><comment><USER23> I may be a bit paranoid but I don't think I'd ever buy something like Echo... Every single command,ask nad sneeze can be sent back to the mothership to analyse...I,'ve already got google for that,no need one more...

</comment><comment><USER24> This really shouldn't be news to anyone.

Alexa Team also know when you are home, your work hours and when you are on vacation just by the time stamps of you using Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is there a place that Amazon states exactly what (only trigger word, plus 5 seconds) they gather and how it is used?

<comment><USER26> Maybe in their privacy policy

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> People should reconsider keeping an always-on microphone operated by strangers in their home.

<comment><USER28> I do that every time I see a story like this. So far the cost has never exceeded the utility.

<comment><USER27> A lot of that cost, unfortunately, is a collective harm. Your decision means I have to live in a surveillance economy.

<comment><USER29> It's like littering. No direct cost to the person doing it but if everyone did it it would have a large cost to society.

<comment><USER28> It's not really like littering. I don't think there are very many people that think littering isn't a problem if everybody does it.

Smart phones, on the other hand, are used by billions of people everyday to do all kinds of legitimately useful things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm so so so tired of these articles. So a dev can listen to conversations because they write software to transcribe voice to text? Sigghhhhh....

<comment><USER8> > I'm so so so tired of these articles.

What do you mean, isn't this the first article on this topic?

> So a dev can listen to conversations because they write software to > transcribe voice to text?

That has nothing to do with this article. This article is about exact GPS/location coordinates, has nothing to do with "a dev can listen to conversations".

> Sigghhhhh....

I think you have misread the article, this is new information about a new topic. There's nothing repetitive about this news item and there's no need to sigh so heavily about people who care about privacy and the _honesty_ of corporate statements.

<comment><USER29> >That has nothing to do with this article. This article is about exact GPS/location coordinates, has nothing to do with "a dev can listen to conversations".

User: "Alexa how long does it take to drive to Walmart"

Alexa: _proceeds to give totally nonsensical directions to a Walmart that isn 't even the nearest one_

<comment><USER31> Tell me what part of that process requires a human knowing my address?

<comment><USER29> Troubleshooting what caused it to get F'd up.

<comment><USER31> Yes, when the user reports it as f'd up. Until then theres no reason for your address to be sent to some dude</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Delicious Revamps User Interface, Improves Discovery with Stacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/delicious-revamps-user-interface-improves-discovery-with-sta.html

<comment><USER2> Informative one!</comment>


Plastic straw ban? Cigarette butts are the single greatest source of ocean trash - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plastic-straw-ban-cigarette-butts-are-single-greatest-source-ocean-n903661?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma <comment><USER2> It always amazes me how otherwise environmentally friendly people are so willing to discard butts on the ground.</comment>


Google celebrates Turing's 100th Birthday with a doodle - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/?turing-doodle

<comment><USER2> Try <http://google.co.nz>

</comment><comment><USER3> I dont see anything</comment>


Students give up social networks for Lent - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/03/29/no.facebook.lent/index.html <comment><USER2> The title of the article is interesting, because it's a phenomenon I hadn't even considered, but:

"""STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Students abstaining from sites like Facebook for Lent

Graduate student Kerry Graham is finding the sacrifice difficult

Emory University student Jocelyn Chiu giving up the Internet Clinical psychologist: Limiting time spent can be beneficial"""

Hmm... I think I'll pass. Sounds like all the useful info is in the title.

</comment><comment><USER3> They see keeping in touch with friends as a vice? This perspective will reverse after they get older and have kids. Then they'll feel guilty for not keeping in touch.

<comment><USER2> I don't think it's the keeping in touch that is bad. I think it's the extreme situation (which I have personally seen) where people spend hours per day going around Facebook to look at people's pictures and profiles. Usually this is some method of procrastination employed when a major paper is due or there is an exam the next day.</comment></comment>


Coconut Headphones: Why Agile Has Failed (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2014/03/coconut-headphones-why-agile-has-failed.html <comment><USER2> The best example of this I have seen lately:

Big Software Company officially changed over to Agile this year. Now has two- week development sprints. Any customer who calls in with huge, flaming, earth- shattering issues with the software is now told that the earliest their issue can be brought up is whenever the current sprint is over. There's absolutely no leeway whatsoever to do any ad-hoc development for customers (frequently Fortune 500 or 100 who are paying millions for their software support.)

<comment><USER3> _Big Software Company officially changed over to Agile this year._

If they phrased it that way, they probably didn't. There is no such thing as "Agile". That is, "Agile" is _not_ a methodology that you can adopt. It simply does not exist. There are a number of processes out there (Scrum, XP, Crystal, etc.) that can be _described_ as "agile" because they conform to the tenets of the Agile Manifesto to varying degrees. But anytime you hear a company say "we adopted Agile" you already know that they don't know WTF they are talking about, and can stop listening right there.

Sadly, misunderstandings of "agile" are so pervasive that the term basically has no meaning anymore. Most - if not all - of what the author of TFA is ranting against, is very explicitly _not_ "agile" in any sense.

I wouldn't say "agile" (that is, "a set of principles and ideas as articulated in the Agile Manifesto) has failed at all. I'd say a lot of people who don't understand what "agile" means have overloaded the term with another meaning, which is being the word to describe their fucked-up hybrid of waterfall and cowboy coding.

<comment><USER4> > If they phrased it that way, they probably didn't.

A central point of TFA -- which the grandparent post offers an example of -- is that "Agile" has "failed" because rather than adopting the values of the Agile Manifesto, organizations adopted cargo-cult "Agile" rituals without understanding the principles and purposes of Agile (TFA goes on to claim the "core" point is that non-technical managers of technical projects will always fail, but while I think the cargo cult observation is valid, I think this conclusion is a leap that is unjustified from that observation -- the principles of the Agile Manifesto are non-technical principles and agility and adaptability aren't things that take particular domain-specific skills to understand. Strong top-down directive management that isn't respecting and leveraging subordinates expertise within their respective domains in terms of choices of _how_ to achieve goals -- including technical experts on projects which have a technical component, which may or may not be purely or even principally technical projects -- is going to fail, but that doesn't mean that managers need to be technical if the project is technical, or even that a binary technical/non-technical distinction is appropriate for projects.)

<comment><USER3> _A central point of TFA -- which the grandparent post offers an example of -- is that "Agile" has "failed" because rather than adopting the values of the Agile Manifesto, organizations adopted cargo-cult "Agile" rituals without understanding the principles and purposes of Agile_

Right, and I agree 110% with that. I'm just not sure I'd agree that that means "agile has failed". There are companies out there using agile oriented processes and having quite a lot of success with them. When done well, Scrum really is a very effective process. I remember when I worked for Lulu.com, we had a great scrum-master, a company culture where everybody, _including the business people_ , "bought in" to the approach, and a group of really talented developers, and it all worked great for us. So had "agile failed" there? I'd say not.

What I will definitely agree with, and what I've said myself, is that the term "agile" has been overloaded to the point of being essentially meaningless now, except in a very constrained context.

<comment><USER5> > I'm just not sure I'd agree that that means "agile has failed".

I think that's because you're disagreeing with _what_ Agile has failed _at_. You're interpreting it as "Agile has failed to be an effective process", while GP and the article are interpreting it as "Agile has failed to achieve widespread adoption".

Agile can certainly be an effective process, but that doesn't matter if 90% of the companies that claim they use Agile are actually using something very un- Agile that they happen to call Agile. This actually _raises_ the barrier to Agile being adopted by more companies, because now everyone hears "Agile" and automatically thinks of it as this... thing that's adopted by MBAs instead of what it actually is, so they reject it.

<comment><USER6> I think there's a third interpretation: "Agile has failed to spread the spirit of its message to its followers without being corrupted in the process."

'Agile' has achieved widespread adoption. Agile techniques have not. Thus, if 'Agile' were a person—the founder and namesake of a religion, say—they would be ashamed at what their followers were doing in their name.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. I think we're basically in agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In short: _«The core problem is that non-technical managers of software projects will always fail, or at best be counter productive, whatever the methodology. Developing software is a deeply technical endeavour.»_ Technical excellence or at least competence is key and can't be replaced with any process. Estimates are not very useful; technical debt is dangerous toxic waste, and any process that does not treat it well is bound to fail.

A discussion 2 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7389940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7389940)

<comment><USER8> If that's the core message, why is the article titled 'Why Agile has failed'. Non-technical managers would ruin any engineering project whether it's agile or waterfall.

<comment><USER9> Because "Agile" (or at least some forms of it) claim to have solved this problem? Something I'm not aware of any other methodology (family) doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article hurts. I'm currently contracting with a large company and they said they were agile. The only agile thing about them is their cultic insistence on two week sprints and retros, other than that, the project rots from within. Case in point: team I work in takes care of all the web front end. One team needed some web work but then management came thundering down to us demanding that we finish another module because someone opened their mouth and over delivered, now it's time to save someone's hide.

Imagine having one team yell at you while management yells at you. Oh, and did I mention that management wanted 100% feature complete on a module that was 30% done? Genius.

After reading this, my liver was like "oh sh __that hurts. "

<comment><USER11> > _demanding that we finish another module because someone opened their mouth > and over delivered, now it 's time to save someone's hide._

Question: Did you mean over-promised (vice over-delivered)? If the latter, could you please explain what you meant? Sorry if I'm missing the obvious; I'm not a dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver."

^ This. This. This. I can't say this enough. I understand business is business, but that side of a company needs to be more flexible for development. Hard deadlines only lead to cutting corners and poor, quick design decisions that make everything there after much worse.

<comment><USER3> _Hard deadlines, especially micro-deadlines will result in poor quality software that will take longer to deliver._

I used to think this way. But the longer I've been doing this, the more I realize that _some_ (but definitely not all) hard deadlines exist for good reasons. There are external realities that a business has to deal with, like tax laws and accounting guidelines, that change, and go into effect on set dates. And there are times when you have a very specific reason for wanting at least a demo of $NEW_FEATURE before, say, a major marketing event like a trade-show or conference. These things aren't arbitrary and made up just to piss off the developers, even when it seems that way.

However... and here's the part that nearly everybody seems to miss: If you're using a good agile based process (say, Scrum, done well) "hard deadlines" are a little bit less of an issue, exactly because you're always working on "the most important thing you could possibly be working on" at any given time, and at the end of a given iteration (when you _do_ ship functioning code), you at least have "the most complete possible version" available, even if it's not 100% complete. This is why prioritizing requirements is so crucial, but sadly, a lot of the business users who nominally should be doing the prioritizing, don't understand how this concept works.

<comment><USER13> Yes, bad things aren't always possible to avoid. That's just the nature of human existence. But you shouldn't go out of your way to create problems for yourself.

Some deadlines are unavoidable, but you shouldn't create artificial deadlines and you definitely shouldn't create an artificial deadline for every single micro-task that someone is working on.

<comment><USER3> _Some deadlines are unavoidable, but you shouldn 't create artificial deadlines and you definitely shouldn't create an artificial deadline for every single micro-task that someone is working on._

Totally. I agree with that 100%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the area of software development I actively dislike. I've had interview questions about whether at work we practiced agile, or SCRUM or some other crap. I'd much rather work than relegate time to learning about the trendiest way to ship.

When I was in charge of development, it was simple. Ship as soon as it's ready as long as it's not a Friday, bugfixes go all the way to the top of the pile. I don't even know what scrum means. If it's dead, I'm glad I've heard the last of it.

<comment><USER15> What size teams have you worked on? What has the experience level been across the team (was it all experienced, a variety of senior/mid/junior)? My experience is it starts to get more important when the team gets bigger than say 6-7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Agile methodologies can work, but it often requires a feature-centric deployment model, not deadline-centric. Having a fixed N-week deployment cycle can't simply be applied to all products and expect it to work.

I've found that an "Agile" approach can work quite well as long as you apply a healthy does of common sense to it.

I think to often people forget that product management frameworks are there to create a common language and set exceptions, not blindly dictate exactly how one should operate.

</comment><comment><USER17> My experience with agile development in companies: It is largely used to delegate the responsibility for a project and the results away from the management to the developers.

They just throw the objectives (made by the management) over the wall to the developers, those have to give an estimation and the managements is free of any further responsibility.

So the developers will in practice exploit themselves. This already was profitable in the automotive industry, where instead of the management, the fellow workers pressured the coworkers. The peer-pressure can be even more pressing than any management mechanics.

This finally of course is the opposite of agile development as it meant to be -- but that is nothing, that anybody in management would care about. The label "agile" is good enough and even most employees don't see how they where betrayed. They think (at least for some time), they where "empowered", but the real empowerment is, that they are now free to enslave themselves for the boss.

</comment><comment><USER18> Although I agree that putting non-technical managers in charge of a technical team can be a problem in some cases - I think the article focuses a little too much on that aspect vs what I think may be more problematic -- that, in my experience, focus falls on process dogma (even agile's) when there isn't enough interaction with the user.

From the start of the article:

> They identified that the programmer is the central actor in the creation of > software, and that the best software grows and evolves organically in > contact with its users.

I find myself echoing this a lot lately - that contact with users is the key to success in software development.

Note that this has to be told to both management _AND_ engineers. I've met lots of engineers in my time that don't want contact with users ...that is a problem.

<comment><USER3> _Note that this has to be told to both management AND engineers. I 've met lots of engineers in my time that don't want contact with users ...that is a problem._

That's a fair point, and it also comes out when you see hackers denigrate the role of "product manager". I mean, yeah, I get it... there are bad product managers who are completely non-technical, and clueless. You don't have to tell me. BUT... a _real_ product manager is technical enough to have an intelligent conversation with the developers AND enjoys talking to customers and can "dumb things down" enough to talk to non-technical people and serves as that "bridge" between the users and the developers (go ahead, insert "Office Space" reference here).

The problem is, people who actually have the required combinations of talents to be good product managers are very rare, meaning that most product managers suck. But when done right, it is a valuable role.

<comment><USER18> totally agree that a real project manager will be technical to some degree -- even if just an aficionado / technologist type.

I do like to balance the scales a little and defend less technical leaders -- I've had a few really good non-technical leaders/bosses in the past 20 years. They were so good because they a) respected and trusted their technical teams immensely and b) made a really hard effort to learn from them such they could do the bridging you describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the overarching aspect of agile has failed, in part because it requires more implementation than most companies are willing to put up with.

I see, in general (and I am a certified scrummaster, FWIW), that companies tend to embrace sprints - usually going for two weeks - and daily standups (which they might do poorly, but at least they try). Everything else - estimation sessions, lessons learned, burndown charts - are up for grabs. Maybe that's a failure of the company. Maybe that's a failure or Agile, for failing to take into account the normal inertia of companies - I don't konw. It is better than waterfall, but it's not fully embraced.

</comment><comment><USER20> > _The original agile manifesto was very much about self organizing teams, it > would be great if we could get back to that._

Sorry, not going to catch on. Corporations make money. Where there's money, there are power struggles. Where there are power struggles, nobody is going to relinquish power and let people "self-organize". Sure, there might be exceptions, but the vast masses out there will never follow.

<comment><USER9> The trick here would be convincing the right people that letting "us" have more power and self-organize would provide them with more money and power.

In my experience, a lot of it comes down to the issue of control (which I'll admit I'm predisposed to see). I've seen more than a few people who'd rather have their projects fail, lose their jobs, or even kill their company than lose their perception of control over "us".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've found that organizations who strongly embrace agile or other management fads/tenets are often recovering from one or more projects that took too long or went over budget... someone got blamed, someone hired a consultant or read an agile book, and the next thing you know the rules of agile are used as weapons in whatever internal political battles predated the change.

Or, non-technical management is being criticized for too-slow development and an exasperated engineering/product team resorts to agile as a method of radical transparency (you were on board with the sprint plan, we delivered, so stfu, etc.)

I'd say any of these are pretty big warning signs about an organization's culture... in particular they likely reveal that the culture doesn't appreciate good engineering practice or good product practice.

</comment><comment><USER22> Good,a while ago it was the contrarian, underground cult, then it was all the rage, then you were not a professional if you didn't worship it, then the cracks started to show, now it's failed and passé.

When should we expect the revival?

<comment><USER23> Like all other trends it has a lot of good aspects to it and will come back in some form.

Right now functional programming is the rage. Just wait until some functional programming projects fail. Then people will say "functional programming has failed". Happened with object oriented programming.

There is no methodology that can be subverted by people who don't understand it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is exactly why John Boyd never wrote any books explaining his thought process - his entire point is to drop fixed and inflexible doctrine in favor of striking at the heart of what makes military operations work, and explicitly serializing your mental models is a quick way to convince people to interpret them as a fixed doctrine.

<comment><USER9> Example of "cult doctrine" he would be very aware of: in Vietnam, the Air Force was using WWII fighter formations, which granted them 1/4th the power the Navy's modern, jet adapted ones had.

In part, this wasn't seen as a problem by the flight leaders, who would tended to be senior officers, since they got all the action while the other 3 had to mostly concentrate on staying in formation....

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The problem is that management has to do "something". When the developers are off designing and coding, what are the managers supposed to do? They have no clue, so they adopt "agile" so that they can appear to be busy collecting data on how well the team is doing.</comment>


The Adventures of Hackerdom, an Epic Saga in 5 Routines - <AUTHOR> http://towersofzeyron.com/the-adventures-of-hackerdom/ <comment><USER2> _is this the real life_

 _is it just PHP_

 _caught in the UNIX_

 _no escape from the grasp of C_

 _Open your eyes: Rust 's how to avoid UB_

 _I 'm just a programmer_

 _I need no sympathy_

 _Because I write in Lisp, write in Scheme, write in Haskell and in C_

 _Any way you choose a lang, doesn 't really matter to me, to me_

 _Init_

 _just killed a proc_

 _put my keyboard in my hand, kill -9, now it 's dead_

 _Init, bootup had just begun, but now I 've gone and thrown it all away_

 _Init... Ooh oohooh ooh_

 _Didn 't mean to make you segfault_

 _if the system 's not back again this time tomorrow_.

 _fresh install, fresh install_

 _as if nothing really matters_

...And this is the point where I run out of ideas. Go read GLS (aka The Great Quux), he's better at this than me.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is pretty neat, I like the kill -9 line, highly original

GLS is a genius, check out his version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven haha

[http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audienc...](http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/personal/humour/Computer_Audience/The%20Great%20Quux%20Poem%20Collection.html)

Once before a console dreary, while I programmed, weak and weary, Over many a curious program which did TECO's buffer fill, -- While I pondered, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a feeping, As of something gently beeping, beeping with my console's bell. "'Tis my DDT," I muttered, "feeping on my console's bell: Once it feeped, and now is still."

<comment><USER2> Ah, yes. "The HACTRN" has long outlasted the piece of software it was actually about. The line about RMS is about as funny now as it was then, and the basic themes have aged pretty well, even if the literal lines haven't.</comment></comment></comment>