San Francisco: Where a six-figure salary is 'low income' - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44725026 <comment><USER3> The data all these articles are based on simply defining 'low income' as the bottom 20% of income earners. It has no ties to cost of living.

Unless you're the sole earner for a big family with bad benefits, it is not hard at all to live anywhere in the Bay Area at $117K a year. Yes, it might be prudent to make some basic sanity checks on your spending, especially when it comes to housing (IE don't rent a 1BR in the _most_ desirable part of one of the most competitive cities in the world unless you're making bank).

I would argue that the data in this article should actually be used to realize what a good financial decision the Bay Area is for many people. 80% of people are making more than $117K. As someone in tech you should not have a problem climbing well above that.

<comment><USER4> >Unless you're the sole earner for a big family with bad benefits, it is not hard at all to live anywhere in the Bay Area at $117K a year.

It isn't _hard_ per se, but it isn't _good_ either, compared to what the same salary would buy in terms of quality of life nearly anywhere else in the country. And let's get real: "Bay Area" is overbroad. You can't compare life in SF proper to living somewhere like Redwood City or Milpitas. They are completely different experiences with shamefully small variations in cost.

<comment><USER3> It's not hard to live well on $117K in SF either. That's over $6K a month after tax. There are so many people living perfectly good lives on so much less. If you can't make $6k a month last easily without dependents you have really poor money management skills.

<comment><USER5> Two assumptions about "live well": we want to be on track for homeownership, and we'll go for median rent rather than scraping the bottom of the market.

$6000 income

($731) 401k contribution of 15% discounted by 50% total marginal tax rate

($2083) savings towards a goal of $150,000 in six years for a down-payment

($3200) rent on a median 1-bedroom apartment

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>

-$14

How'd I do?

<comment><USER3> You're expecting to have a 47% savings rate, and at the same time refuse to make any concession in how you're living (get a studio, pick a lower cost area, get roommates). I think that's a very high bar for defining "live well".

<comment><USER5> The goal was to achieve baseline middle-class financial health norms (homeownership, retirement). The savings rate that requires turned out to be astronomical. That's my point.

Try another scenario: Madison, WI, where entry-level pay is $80k and the median home is $250k.

4702 income

(717) 15% 401k contribution discounted by marginal tax rate

(700) savings goal of $50k in six years for a down payment

(1017) 1-bedroom rent

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>-

2268 left to spend

SF is a very significant lifestyle sacrifice. In a more reasonable market, you could afford baseline middle-class financial health, median-quality living arrangements, and some luxury spending all at the same time. In SF it's "pick at most two." Obviously that's still enough for a lot of people (myself included) or we wouldn't be doing it. But in normal places, those are not tradeoffs that people making even _half_ our incomes need to face.

And sure, SF has urban amenities that Madison doesn't, but if you live in a premium location with lots of shops in walking distance, you can't afford to shop at them. At least not on $6,000/mo.

<comment><USER3> This is only true because you've defined homeownership in your current job market as a necessity. If you either forgo it, or choose to save for a mortgage in another area suddenly SF comes out way on top.

<comment><USER5> You could have even more to spend by foregoing retirement savings, but would you? If you did, how would it feel?

Living _large_ on an irresponsible budget is not the same as living _well_.

Or are you saying renting as a long-term plan actually is healthy/responsible? Maybe I have just internalized too much American Dream propaganda. But with SF's rate of rent and price growth, the calculators say "buy even if renting is free."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To an outsider that has spent nearly 80% of his time in SF on business travel for the last couple years: the cost of living in SF is unjustifiable. I was offered a position with one of my clients in SF for roughly double my current income in Houston, TX. After running the numbers with an attempt to maintain similar standards of living and leisure, it was simply impossible to make the math work out in my favor without significant sacrifices on either count. In Houston, I live quite comfortably in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods with money to blow on a luxury car, 2+ extravagant international vacations a year, and decent amount of savings and investments. But in SF, I'd be uncomfortably close (relative to my Texan standards, anyway) to the 'low income' line. So I might as well keep on racking up the frequent flier miles, eh?

Something's gotta give. NIMBYism when it comes to affordable housing, the income disparity between 'techies' and everyone else in SF, and lack of sufficient investment in effective mass transit are all clearly driving the city into the ground. My teams in SF are constantly bleeding our best talent to places like Denver, Austin, Seattle, etc. because the youngest and brightest employees are realizing that SF is an unsustainable drain on their finances. It's not going to stop me from doing business there, but it's certainly going to mean that my firm just continues to feed the vicious cycle of wage inflation by attracting talent with higher and higher base salaries.

<comment><USER6> You are far from the only person who's saying this, but I don't understand how you can reach the conclusion that you would enjoy a lower standard of living in SF than Houston on a salary that is twice as high. The three things you say that you like to blow money on -- luxury cars, international vacations, and making investments -- are similarly expensive in both places. Care to share some of your math?

To elaborate, I looked through this guide: [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=Houston%2C+TX&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA) and while a one-bedroom apartment in the centre of SF would cost around $41,000 a year in SF compared to $17,000 in Houston, that means that if your salary is Houston is around $100,000, you would still have around $70,000 more dollars a year in SF after rent has been taken care of, not accounting for taxes. How does the higher cost of living in SF manage to eat up all that money in just a year?

<comment><USER7> My math says $100,000 - $41,000 = $59,000. Not $70,000.

> not accounting for taxes

That would be a large mistake. California has huge income taxes, Texas none. It's not just state taxes, a doubling of your income puts _all_ that additional income in a much higher federal tax bracket.

I would expect renting a parking spot in SF to cost a pretty penny, too.

<comment><USER8> Whereas, Seattle has zero income taxes, cheaper housing, and equivalent salary

<comment><USER9> Yeah, but you have to live someplace that's so depressing that 90% of the population is overweight and self-medicates with some combination of coffee, alcohol, marijuana, and adderall.

<comment><USER10> I know it's hard to believe, but some people actually find the weather great in the Pacific Northwest.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I lived there during the "worst" season - Sept to Dec - and I loved it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just came back from Las Vegas this weekend and chatted with my Uber driver on the way to dinner. She was a cook at the Bellagio buffet, union member (most service workers on the strip are unionized), and could very easily afford a nice home with a pool.

I actually had no idea Vegas workers were mostly unionized but apparently you can make $25-$30/hr + tips and live a pretty good life as a service worker.

<comment><USER12> And yet there she was making piece-meal as an uber driver for some reason.

<comment><USER11> Googlers have side hustles too.

Anecdotally the per mile rates were much higher in Vegas than SF. Likely Uber algos know people are less price sensitive if they're in Vegas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > For example, a fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the San > Francisco area is considered to be $3,121

I think they're off by a couple thousand dollars...

<comment><USER14> Kind of off topic, but does anyone know why the real estate around Twin Peaks is so much cheaper than surrounding areas? I know there's a bit of break-in crime at Twin Peaks, but the surrounding areas should be better, yeah?

Is there that much of a weather penalty?

<comment><USER15> My Midtown Terrace house is over 750' above sea level; though only a 15 min walk to Cole and a 20 min walk to Castro or Upper Haight.

Still yet, prospective renters _shudder_ when I say the words "easiest transit is the 36 Bus from Forest Hill Station."

Property Crime is only a problem on Christmas Tree Point and down on the East side terraced streets - Burnett/Corbett. The worst thing I've encountered personally in MT would be the coyotes that roam the night in the woods that appear occasionally on Marview or Farview.

One wouldn't think ~$4K a month for a 4 Bed 3 Bath fully detached single family house, split up amongst roommates, would have any hangups for people looking to rent in SF - though it's been tough finding people who're "ok" with the location.

It's for sure high up - I'll give in to that.

I indeed use the excess garage space to charge and house my Bolt EV for most trips outside of SF; though most of SF is ~$12 for uberX.

I say, people can enjoy their overpriced $4000 (barely) one bedroom apartment in a "walkable" hood, next to a Philz and their favorite brunch place. I'll join on foot after hiking on Mount Sutro. I'll even pick up the tab - <USER2> indeed I work part time as a QA Engineer making a bit less than six figures annually.

(Midtown Terrace is a illogical land use nightmare... a subdivision of fully detached single family homes on Twin Peaks.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Risks to the Bay Area's continuation as an engine of growth are risks to the entire country's economy. Local parochial interests ought not to be allowed to do that.

If we can stretch the Commerce Clause to banning growing and consuming corn or pot that never leaves one person's plot of land, much less a state, I don't see why it can't cover abrogating NIMBY regulations.

<comment><USER4> The Commerce Clause is traditionally a cudgel for activist judges, and the current court is activist in a way that doesn't really jive with what you're suggesting, nor any sort of collectivist-oriented jurisprudence. You're not wrong (in spirit at least), but it's just not going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If it only took 1/2-hour to travel from Stockton; Fairfield; Davis; or Santa Rosa, CA; San Francisco would not have a housing crisis for people would have more housing options.

<comment><USER4> Stockton and Santa Rosa could be doable in ~30mins given _significant_ investment in rail services, but Fairfield or Davis are really pushing the boundary of what seems reasonable. You're talking about covering 70-85 miles to Civic Center for these latter two cities, which would require high speed rail in an environment that probably couldn't sustain it profitably for a decade or more.

<comment><USER8> What about high speed bus rapid transit? The cost of new lanes/separate lanes can't be more than the equivalent high speed rail, right?

<comment><USER4> Sure. If you can set aside lanes for busses to do ~120+ MPH from Davis to SF, then by all means, go for it.

<comment><USER17> The Bay Area and the surrounding tech hubs are very important to California as is So Cal with it's entertainment and media delivery. If California wants to grow the state and the country as well with good ideas and affordable housing, A new type of transportation infrastructure has to be thought out or invented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I had a related but tangential problem: I think the company was willing to offer the bucks to make it economically worthwhile: I had major performance anxiety about the value proposition to deliver to meet that scale of pay.

Maybe its just me, but I had a hard time even imagining selling my work for the kinds of sums necessary to maintain an inner-city lifestyle in S.F.

</comment><comment><USER19> The title is misleading. The "six figure salary" actually refers to FAMILIES OF FOUR where their household income is ~100k.

<comment><USER4> So what? It's still outrageous.

<comment><USER20> It is, but it's funny how quickly you get desensitized to it. A house in the most affordable cities in the US is the 150k range, in the Bay it's in the 1.5M range. Maybe 1.2M? 10x the difference for the same thing. Pretty mind- boggling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're single, have no kids, and "ok" with roommates and you're part of the 70% of renters who live in a rent-controlled unit the combination of making a Bay Area tech salary + having rent control is hard to beat.

I have a friend at Google who pays $900/mo for a large room in a very central spot in Lower Haight.

<comment><USER21> And once you're married, have kids, and need more space, the math gets harder to make work.

<comment><USER22> Isn't that what suburbs are for?

<comment><USER23> Traffic and long commute times are another big problem with SF after housing prices.

<comment><USER8> Google, Amazon, and Facebook all have offices in New York, where an entire state of suburbs is a PATH train or Suburban shuttle away.

If not, they also all have offices in Seattle, where the suburbs are even closer and all have access via company buses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Prior discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17405375)

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand how business owners are able to find employees in SF for actual low-income jobs like retail and fast food. How are these employees paying rent, and how far are they commuting every day?

<comment><USER26> I also wonder this ... is McDonalds in SV a 6 figure job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The title is misleading. The figure refers to:

\- household income (i.e. the sum of income of all members of the household, not just that of a single individual, which is implied by the singular term 'salary')

\- a family of four (two adults and two children)

So if you're a single, twenty-something software engineer earning six figures, and have no kids, you're probably not eligible for this.

<comment><USER28> If you're making 110k anywhere else in the US while single and without kids, you're buying houses and cars when you're not traveling.

Not renting a one bedroom and eating $14 avocado toast with your roommates.

<comment><USER27> "Not renting a one bedroom and eating $14 avocado toast with your roommates."

$110k before tax is $77k after tax. That's enough to cover:

Avocado toast for every meal: 365 _3_ $14 = $15k/year

Rent without roommates: 12*$3.5k = $42k/year

Misc other expenses: $20k/year

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think SF is perfect for a techie work-n-travel. Go work at a googloapplebook, live in a trailer, save 90% salary. Move to a cheap place, buy a house with cash (in your twenties), the rest spend on a year-long journey around the world. Sell it to the masses, and the housing problem is solved :-)

</comment><comment><USER30> San Diego has more space than the bay area however good RE is super expensive here too.. One way to avert high cost is to live on a boat. Moorage fees are fairly low (relative to rent) and a boat beats most vans, cars or even RVs.. I've heard co's like Netflix pay 250k or higher, and even at that rate you'd need a spouse/2nd income to be able to afford a home + family.

<comment><USER31> Depends what you'd classify as good real estate. Sure La Jolla and Coronado are pricey and if you want acrerage you have to move way inland (and deal with the heat), but a half hour commute and $250k a year salary will get you a beautiful home in a great neighborhood.

There is no way you would need a second income for you and your family to live very well on $250k in San Diego.

That said a boat does get you pretty great sea views! I have a friend who slept on his boat near work in Irvine to avoid having to brave the commute back to San Diego during the week. Was cheaper (and nicer) than buying a place up in Orange County.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The Bay Area roughly divides into two populations. One understands rental economics, is technologically literate, and refuses to vote. The other either doesn't understand rental economics (or understands it in a cynical, self- serving way), couldn't give two shits about technological literacy, and religiously attends community events.

The cost the latter extract from the former expresses itself in inflated rents. In the long run, it's probably self-defeating. But in the long run we're all dead.

The lack of any semblance of civic culture amongst technologists is starting to show its wounds, and I suspect this will have to get worse before it gets better.

<comment><USER33> Can you clarify what you mean by "lack of civic culture?" I don't mean to argue, I just don't follow what you mean to say here. Do you just mean that they don't vote, or something more?

<comment><USER32> > _Can you clarify what you mean by "lack of civic culture?"_

In New York City, there is a general expectation that once you make money or ensconce yourself in the community, you start giving a shit about it. You volunteer. You donate to local charities. You stay informed about community issues, voice up for yourself and those around you, and vote. That sense of civic culture and underlying duty is far more suppressed in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER34> This x 1000. As someone who grew up on the East Coast, I'm always amazed at the relative lack of interest in politics and culture in Silicon Valley. The San Jose metro area probably has more wealth than almost any city in history, but can't sustain a decent symphony, ballet, or opera. Yes, I know SF has those things, but it's 90 minutes away by car, factoring in traffic and parking.

<comment><USER32> > _relative lack of interest in politics and culture...symphony, ballet, or > opera_

And before someone decries these art forms as inapplicable to modern life, remember that most ballet and opera contains political and social commentary. I can't count the number of times I've left the Metropolitan Opera to get embroiled in a debate about the nature of democracy or relation of Verdi's _Don Carlo_ to the White House, at a nearby restaurant with a table of newly- found acquaintances.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Red Hat Replaces Oracle as OpenJDK 8, OpenJDK 11 Steward - <AUTHOR> https://www.theserverside.com/news/252461945/Red-Hat-replaces-Oracle-as-OpenJDK-8-OpenJDK-11-steward <comment><USER2> "While still important and definitely not legacy, Java is not one of today's growth technologies," said Torsten Volk, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo. "All of these traditional Java vendors should be focusing on pivoting toward today's fast-growing stuff, such as Python, JavaScript and Node.js."

That strikes me as a profoundly ignorant statement. Most of the value in the Java ecosystem lies in the JVM. There are many languages running on it, Java is only one. Java has improved a lot, but Scala and Kotlin both provide alternatives with their own strengths. Clojure also has a vibrant community.

As more focus centers on datacenter efficiency, I suspect there will be a move away from JS and Python as they both have performance limitations based on design.

Java is much stronger in that regard, but it'll be interesting to see how the newer AOT compiled languages do - Julia, Rust and Swift.

<comment><USER3> Java is a fine language, and the JVM is a powerful environment that enables some really cool things - Kotlin and Scala prime among them. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we are past peak Java/JVM in terms of new projects and developer mindshare. Java was an excellent tool for a world where ecosystems were rather self-contained, lots of code had to be written in- house, and source code distribution platforms and good tooling for cross- language development weren't nearly as prevalent. A developer could basically do everything they needed in Java, unless they needed super-performant code, in which case they'd drop to C/C++.

The proliferation of great new languages, stellar package managers, and comprehensive tooling have reduced the need for a single, do-it-all language. Now, there are a wide variety of languages that are better fit for specific domains (I.e. Go is very good for small services, python is good for data science and prototyping, rust is good for system programming, typescript is good for Frontend, etc), and the barrier to entry for all of those languages in a professional environment is lowering (if not already low). To me, this means that the next generation of developers will be versed in several of these more domain-specific languages, rather than spend their career working with a single language. Java may well be one of these languages, but I see a possibility that it will gradually fade out of mainstream greenfield development. Of course, the world is now built on the JVM so it will stay for a very long time, but maybe not for new projects.

<comment><USER4> Our agency does mainly Java, .NET, C++, JavaScript.

Any candidate needs to be very strong to warrant the respective department to replace one of those pillars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's great news. I'm personally more a Python fan, but I see all around me how good, stable enterprise problems are solved by Java coders. Last Java version I used was still pre-Oracle, so I can't say if they did a good job or not. But I can say when it comes to open source I have much more trust in Red Hat as a company.

</comment><comment><USER6> At my work place, I have recently switched to java 8. As I do not like Oracle, I really welcome the replacement of Oracle by Red Hat. Good ridance. I wish java had nothing to do with Oracle.

<comment><USER7> Why Java 8 and now directly 11 or 12? 8 is already at the end

<comment><USER8> We are at JDK 8 now too and will move towards the next LTS (JDK 11) near the end of the year. The transition from Java 8 to Java 11 feels more involved than the transition from Java 7 to Java 8 was. Everything seems to work, but a lot of major libraries are still throwing lots of warnings, and to really get the most out of the transition developers and existing codebases should get comfortable with the new module system as well.

Moving to a non-LTS release (12) is a non starter of course.

<comment><USER9> >The transition from Java 8 to Java 11 feels more involved than the transition from Java 7 to Java 8 was

I don't know a whole lot about Java 7 vs 8 vs 11, but wouldn't that make the most sense? 7->8 is one version upgrade, 7->11 is 4.

<comment><USER10> 9, 10 and 11 are following a new release schedule of timed releases (every 6 months), whereas 8 was still a traditional feature release.

I would say that aside of the module system that came with a huge list of now inaccessible internal methods that a lot of dependencies relied on even though they shouldn't have, there was even more change between 7 and 8 than there was between 8 and 11

<comment><USER8> Yeah, Oracle changed what one major version upgrade meant from JDK 8 onwards. For production purposes JDK 9 and 10 effectively don't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to hear from Cameron Purdy and TheServerSide. Two important sources of Dev Info from many years back. (Circa 2000 or so for TSS?)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is probably hinting at a similar announcment Red Hat will do on 1st January 2019.

<comment><USER12> 2020 of course

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While Java certainly has a value for a maintenance, because of the troves of legacy projects, I am not sure why anyone would want to start a new project with it. From Scala Native, Kotlin Native (closer to Java world) to Elixir (Beam VM), from Rust to OCaml, from Go to F#, etc. I wish all these money and efforts were directed to development of newer, better languages, rather than reinforcing Java. I was pleasantly surprised to see that recently linked Mercury startup uses Haskell.

<comment><USER14> I learned to code in Python, I loved Erlang, I dabble in Elixir when I can, and I loved F#, and I code in Scala, Kotlin,Java, JS and Python in my day to day work, depending on where in the codebase I am.

The things that are hard to beat about the Java world is the ecosystem, the tooling and the package management. Stuff more or less works without too much hassle, there's often a good library for what you want to do, and you're building on decades of previous industry work.

In terms of package management, the most unreliable parts of our project are Node and Python.

<comment><USER15> in what way are they unreliable?

both can be proxy-cached on your local network to remove external dependencies.

both have ... uuuh... okay package managers (poetry/pipenv for python, npm/yarn for node) with *.lock files to properly define their dependencies. How does this differ from maven/gradle?

honestly, i prefer the node/python package management. Maven/Gradle is just so incredibly extensible making it insanely powerful.. But it comes at the cost of complexity and developers being unable to actually understand whats happening.

<comment><USER16> Because some guy in some library used by a library in an SDK I use didn't set a fixed version for his dependency which has been updated and has a serious bug in it... My app isn't working. Now I have to go through my requirements and set the exact versions that worked last time we released, have an enormous requirements file, and I'll probably never touch it again and have stale dependencies. Yeah... I don't like pip</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The End of In-Flight Wi-Fi? - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/the_end_of_in-f.html

<comment><USER2> Please let someone discover a plot where they use screaming babies to set off the bomb.

</comment><comment><USER3> Asking everyone to shut off their wifi hardly seems like a security measure. I've often wondered, if cell signal and wifi really put the flight in danger, then why is anyone allowed to bring a device with this capability on board? Wouldn't a would be terrorist just ignore the order to shut devices off? It doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER4> Presumably Bruce is envisioning a world where airlines refrain from providing internet service on a plane to prevent a device from being triggered remotely, not one where they provide wireless service but instruct you not to connect to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Has this actually happened anywhere or are we just trying the experiment of getting the ridicule out there ahead of the policy?

(Which may be a sensible experiment, since after-the-fact ridicule has proven to have little effect.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Un-fucking-likely, Bruce. You mean after JetBlue, Virgin and all the rest tens spent millions of dollars putting WiFi on their airplanes, TSA is just going to undo that with a security directive?

Naah. It may or may not make sense from a sense from a security standpoint, but I can _promise_ you that it will not happen. Not as long as big business is still running the American government.

<comment> wh-uws I have to disagree with you from "big business is still running the American government" on this one. If this were so true in this case why bog down the Airline Industry with the draconian TSA in the first place?

<comment><USER6> Did you see what happened to the airline industry after 9/11?! (hint: bankruptcy). It wasn't exactly good for business...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Little does Schneier know about the TSA's plan to outlaw clocks on all flights.

<comment><USER8> Shhh! The TSA thinks the terrorists don't know that a clock at altitude appears to run faster than a clock on the ground thanks to gravitational time dilation. So clocks are safe until the terrorists figure out how to adjust. Then we'll get all excited and lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gravitational...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation)

Remember: If we outlaw clocks, only outlaws will have clocks!

<comment><USER9> Great idea - if you arrive at your job on thyme, you must be a terrorists.

Be late, its the american way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sounds) like the plot of this book

</comment><comment><USER11> Bad news for this guy: <http://haswifi.com/>

<comment><USER12> Hah. Thanks Jacques. I've got the update ready, though:

UPDATE flights SET flight_haswifi=0 where id>0

<comment><USER11> Heh, that's a pretty laid back response. Bummer though if it turns out to be true, I really hope they'll not be stupid enough to do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If thats really an issue, why don't they setup a system that makes you go through a CAPTCHA before it will allow any internet access?

<comment><USER14> Why use the plane's internet when successful authentication to the (non- advertising) wifi router embedded in the bomb is the trigger? Which is probably less reliable than a timer or altimeter trigger, anyway, as I gather from other comments. If you don't keep explosives off the plane, you've already lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Please, let's not ever tell the TSA about timers. Or altimeters.

I think this sums it all up.

</comment><comment><USER16> Given that this story is also on the current HN front page, I doubt the TSA is going to try and enforce a WiFi ban anytime soon:

[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/08/google-gifts-free- air...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/08/google-gifts-free-airline-wifi- for-the-holidays/)</comment>


When everybody's reading, but nobody's smarter, what value has the word? - <AUTHOR> http://www.themorningnews.org/article/binge-reading-disorder <comment><USER2> I think it would be cool if, when scrolling through an article, the word size changes based on how far along the article you are.

For instance, at the top of the article the words towards the top of your screen are bigger and easier to read, and at the bottom of the article the words towards the bottom of your screen are bigger and easier to read. This has the effect that your eyes start at the top of the article and slowly go towards the bottom as you read through the article.

This should help combat the "F" shaped reading problem the article was talking about.

<comment><USER3> ... What?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have people not heard of the flynn effect?

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

Basically, IQ has been continually increasing since it was first measured, by about 3 IQ points per decade in the US. IQ tests are readjusted based on this.

<comment><USER5> The article is about how the disproportionate state of our knowledge and time spent reading when using a naive assumption that more reading leads to more "smart." Nothing about measurable differences in performance...

<comment><USER6> I'd love an IQ test that allows, and makes the assumption, that the person taking the test has a smartphone.

<comment><USER7> Good luck:

www.iq-tests-for-the-high-range.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So far, there are three comments, each with links to further reading. C'mon, guys.

TL;DR: TL;DR

</comment><comment><USER9> Schopenhauer's "On Reading and Books":

[https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/...](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter3.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> _" The typical American consumes more than 100,000 words a day, and remembers none of them."_

Well, this is obviously not true. Also, we are seeing the largest explosion in literacy in history.

</comment><comment><USER11> But before you stop to consider that, please finish reading my contribution to the supposed problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> I call it the Jon Stewart\Glenn Beck model of selling ads.

Reactions vs Solutions.

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html)

<comment><USER14> "Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why."

Love that paragraph. Thanks for the link. Unlike other fillers I've read all day, this one will stick with me.</comment></comment>


Simulation of Object-oriented Concepts and Mechanisms in Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.aau.dk/~normark/oo-scheme.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because it's a fun paper, and implementing object-systems is a fun project for the millions of newbie Lispers and on-the-fence programming language nerds out there.

The unique feature of this paper is that it uses _simulation_ , as opposed to compilation or interpretation, in order to extend a language. I have been saying this for years, language implementation techniques as presented in undergrad studies are actually HARD; the fun, easy techniques are buried in "research" papers like this one.

<comment><USER2> Looks like they're using a message-passing dispatcher similar to SICP 2.1.3 [1]; it's only a shame that the article predates the formalization of eval [2], though, which leads to anachronisms such as: "In Scheme, [calculating the method given its selector] is not possible. What is missing is the possibility to evaluate a symbol in the environment of self."

[1] [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-14.html...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book- Z-H-14.html#%_sec_2.1.3)

[2] [http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs-Z...](http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs- Z-H-9.html#%_idx_578)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did something similar to this, though much smaller, a while back, using (parts of) JavaScript as the host "functional" language, just as a thought experiment.

<http://roboprogs.com/devel/2010.06.html#2010_06_02>

It's interesting how much easier it is to assemble functionality with closures in many cases, when all you want is to initialize ("construct") something that you are going to make one (1) call to, or at least one kind of call, repeatedly. Interesting? Maybe obvious.

For a class with many methods, I think OOP does have value, but one does get tired of it being presented as the One Way.</comment>


"We have no time to go below surfaces" (1891) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.arc90.com/2010/02/15/news-cycle/

<comment><USER2> _"a new communications technology was developed that allowed people to communicate almost instantly across great distances, in effect shrinking the world faster and further than ever before. A world-wide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionised business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates, and dismissed by the sceptics. Governments and regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes to everything from newsgathering to diplomacy had to be completely rethought. Meanwhile, out on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself.

Does all this sound familiar?_

From a precis of a whole book full of info about how the telegraph parallels the internet:

[http://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian- interne...](http://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-internet/)

<comment><USER3> I really liked the second comment.

 _This reminds me of the article decrying the horrible state of the country's youth and how they heralded the end of the world. The article was written in ancient Greece._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everything changes; everything remains the same.

</comment><comment><USER5> Plus ça change...</comment>


Hewlett-Packard to Acquire 3Com for $2.7 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/technology/companies/12hewlett.html

<comment><USER2> That news was soooo leaked before hand.

Here's the stats on the option board today:

\- 8085 calls traded, 6 puts traded

\- 95% of those calls were bought on the ask

\- Open interest for the entire board was 13k, so very unusual.

\- Around noon, we had buys go at the offer (to open) for 3k Nov 5 calls and ~3k Dec 5 calls.

Nice chunk of change for an overnight trade.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but i don't understand what it all means, would you care to explain?

<comment><USER2> Sure.

Say there's a stock, and on average it trades 100,000 shares per day. And then one day, we see large orders, someone actively buying shares on the offer, about 450,000. And then the day after the stock jumps up on being acquired. The odds are very high that someone new ahead of time.

The same thing happens in the options market. The COMS options market is relatively dull. It doesn't trade much, and there are not that many contracts open. Then all of a sudden a player goes out and buys 6,000 calls, half of which expire in 10 days. These contracts give them the right to buy COMS at $5 a share.

The volume traded today was about 17x normal, and these contracts were bought to open.

So at 12PM a trade came out and bought 3800 Nov 5 Calls for 0.65. They also bought 3100 Dec Calls for .80. I'm sure this wasn't a calendar spread as the November calls were bought not sold.

So someone put about 500k down on a very speculative bet. And now the name is up 35% aftermarket.

Not including any premium, the contracts are now worth about 2.70. So they made about 1.5M, or a 300% return overnight.

Anyways, I just laid out the premise for an SEC investigation (and hopefully) prosecution. If they don't they're either cowards or stupid.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for explaining. Where did you get the information/data about this?

<comment><USER2> livevol.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like Cisco basically forced HP to compete with its high-margin network gear business, since Cisco moved into HP's server territory earlier this year ([http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/technology/companies/20cis...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/technology/companies/20cisco.html)).

It looks like attacking a competitor's cash cow often results in the competitor attacking _your_ cash cow?

<comment><USER6> I'll be curious to see how it shakes out for each of them. It seems to me, from my admittedly ignorant view, like opening the Russian front was to Germany for _both_ HP and Cisco. I suspect it's going to hurt both of them in the end, maybe to a significant degree. HP isn't really the clear leader in their space, though, but Cisco has so little history and mindshare in the server space that it seems like a pretty evenly bad idea on both sides.

I don't know who will eat into Cisco market share when they make mistakes or spread themselves too thin, but I'm sure that Dell is ready to step in whenever HP makes mistakes or loses focus (as has been happening for years).

Anyway, I believe saying Cisco forced HP to do this isn't quite accurate. The other option for HP might have been to double down on their own strengths, and just kick ass while Cisco tries to figure out how to crack a market where they have no brand awareness (a Cisco is a router...everybody knows that...would you buy a roll of Kleenex paper towels?). Cisco could very easily spend themselves out of the running, since they'll have to spend a lot more on sales and brand awareness for their server line than HP will for the same impact. Even if Cisco is a better run company, which I do believe is true, they're signing on for an uphill battle.

<comment><USER7> HP can now sue practically everybody else in the market sector for infringing on what must be the mother lode of networking patents.

<comment><USER6> You don't think it would be a MAD situation to sue Cisco over networking patents?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> hdmoore: HP plans to buy 3Com ($2.7b), which owns TippingPoint, which runs ZDI [Zero Day Initiative, a market for zero-day vulnerabilities], which has a 1128-day [vulnerability] in HP products.

"Maybe it was cheaper to buy them than fix all the bugs". (rim shot!)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what will happen with the 3Com brand, because IMHO 3Com > HP when it comes to networking. I suppose that it will disappear, but after how long? For example the Thinkpad brand still exists even if it was bought by Lenovo some years ago, while the Compaq brand wasn't used too much.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if the 3Com brand is worth anything these days. I haven't heard anything interesting from 3Com in years; the switching market is dominated by Cisco/Juniper/ProCurve/Brocade/Extreme and even smaller newcomers like Force10 seem to get more attention than 3Com.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it's not like any 49ers fans are worried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I held 3Com through a couple of years of steady decline back in the late '90s waiting for it to make a dent in Cisco. It never did, and I lost more on it that I've ever lost on any other stock. I don't have much confidence that HP management can alter that situation in any significant way. But then, I don't have much confidence in HP management since the Compaq merger, or even a few years before.

</comment><comment><USER12> The price seems rather "cheap", I didn't realize 3COM had fallen down so low.</comment>


COINHOARDER: Tracking a Ukrainian Bitcoin Phishing Ring DNS Style - <AUTHOR> http://blog.talosintelligence.com/2018/02/coinhoarder.html <comment><USER2> I am always buffled by the advances in AI and how Google is still not able to detect malicious Adwords ads.

<comment><USER3> Why would they do that? These phishers alone got $10 million in stolen Bitcoin. They must have paid a significant amount to Google.</comment></comment>


Swift: Google's Bet on Differentiable Programming - <AUTHOR> https://tryolabs.com/blog/2020/04/02/swift-googles-bet-on-differentiable-programming/ <comment><USER2> I'm really excited about the prospects of this project. I particularly like the ideas differentiability unlocks once it's a language feature.

For instance, it's possible to write a differentiable rigid body simulator like MuJoCo or Bullet. This has a potential to unlock a new class of reinforcement learning algorithms that can take advantage of the gradients passing directly through in place of very inefficient sampling.

Differentiable simulations in general are the holy grail of optimization and system identification. These ideas have been around since the 70s or so. The bottle neck up until now has been the implementation.</comment>


Get list of email addresses used by airlines to send you booking confirmation? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Put content decscribing why desirable!</comment>


Bash Initialisation Files – which one will get executed? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/BashInitialisationFiles.html?HN_20170510a <comment><USER2> Direct link to the image (which is pretty much the actual content of the entry) since you can't just click on it to make it bigger:

[http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/BashStartupFiles1.png](http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/BashStartupFiles1.png)

(note the author does warn "it's incomplete, but probably a reasonable place to start".)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here is another one that is useful, but it's always good when someone does the digging and figuring out for themselves.

[http://blog.flowblok.id.au/static/images/shell-startup- actua...](http://blog.flowblok.id.au/static/images/shell-startup-actual.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool.

What are the colours?

<comment><USER2> "To read it, pick your shell, whether it's a login shell, whether it's interactive, and follow the same colour through the diagram. When the arrows split out to multiple files, it means that the shell will try to read each one in turn (working left to right), and will use the first one it can read."

Original article here: [http://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup- scripts.htm...](http://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup-scripts.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4369934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4369934)

</comment><comment><USER5> It took me too long to see the image as an image, and not as the blank space of an ignored ad.

But..probably my problem. :-)

<comment><USER6> Not really, the layout of that page is tragically poor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - works fine for me on all the platforms I've used.

Can you send me a screen shot? Thanks. I'd like to know why you call the layout "tragically poor".

FWIW, I'm often running over very slow links, so the load time really matters for me. That's why the page is utterly minimal, and I'm really surprised that people are finding that it takes a long time to load.

 _Really_ surprised. That's why I'd like to know more.

<comment><USER6> It's small, scaled, and off to the right of the introductory text. It's the primary content of the page, and yet exactly not where anyone would expect to see primary content.

My issue isn't load time, it's that the image, which is most important, is divorced from the text, while the comment field, which is not important, appears as the primary content below the introduction.

It does occupy space that would often be occupied by an ad, but in another context it occupies space that would be a sidebar or peripheral illustration to the primary text in a textbook. Informative but not the key item.

[http://i.imgur.com/EFlBPVc.png](http://i.imgur.com/EFlBPVc.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always surprised when people choose to read text in very, very long lines. I've found that 10 to 15 words per line speeds my reading a lot. But equally, I don't want to force that on other people, and I find it really annoying when people have web sites that are effectively narrow columns in a wide, blank (or filled with ads) screen.

Do you always only read websites in a maximised window?

Anyway, I'm moving the image to the other side. I can easily squash the text into a fixed width column - do you think that would be better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In OSX terminal, .bash_profile send to be called on every opened window or tab. On my Debian server, .bashrc seems to be called, as well as inside every screen window</comment>


Ask HN: Do you ever feel disillusioned with tech industry as a whole? - <AUTHOR> I find more and more that I don't really care about a lot of startups or what the Big Four/Five are doing. I care about how technology is shaping society and how design can improve my quality of life but beyond that, who really cares? <comment><USER2> We seem to be an industry with a severe lack of professionalism.

We fail to manage risk, we neglect security, we rarely know we are regulated and we hold an air of contempt about the idea of being asked to pay for our failings like any other industry (car manufacturer, drugs, etc). It's too hard to make perfect software, but really easy to make everything else? The list goes on... We have made huge innovations and made real impacts, but we largely aren't doing it safely or respectfully and our attitude to privacy is horrifying. You might think you are okay, but look around you: look at the security of how you deploy, the missing tests, the broken accessibility, the trove of user data in your company, the code maintainability strategy, the lip service paid to copyright, the sheer number of hacks, etc. There are many who would like things to improve and many who challenge the norm, but that challenge will never be formalised until we lead from professional bodies spearheading how we should do things, rather than corporate bodies and celebrities pushing their agenda.

<comment><USER3> You could also say that the observations that you point out is simply the outcome of economic forces at play.

That degree of professionalism is not rewarded enough. Or the lack of it is not punished.

So from the perspective of a business person, why go chase more burdens when you can hack together some polished turd on top of mostly free tools and sell it for millions?

I guess this is embedded in the last part of the parent comment.

<comment><USER4> What makes it worse is that programmers don't have an ethical code, akin to what engineers and doctors have. CEO says we need to track every user? Sure, boss! Show invasive ads up every user's orifice? Can do! Ship it, who cares if we wipe out some poor bloke's photos.

And as long as programmers have very big salaries (compared to the rest) and are in demand - they have no incentive to organize and fight for their rights and rights to not do unethical things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All the time. Take a look at the frontpage how many "DevOps" related conversations:

        - what is
        - what is not
        - whois doing it (is it a verb?!)

I mean it's hilarious and I define myself as a DevOps engineer because if I say sysadmin, for some reason ppl will ask me about AWS, Python/Ruby, Bash, Ansible, etc.

Anyway, serves as a reminder that my time is better spent reading technical books, watching keynotes (BCantrill's are nice) and not reading nonsense. It's the internet, you need to protect yourself from topics that have a high noise to substance ratio and these discussions are all noise.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yeah totally, 95% percent of what we do as humans is superficial garbage. Just a bunch of apes thumping their chests. "Look I made a thing!" But does it really matter? Probably not. I think having your mindset, you can make a bigger and more important impact on the world. I wish more people would think about real improvements to society, quality of life, our future as a species, etc. As opposed to random stupid gadgets... We have soooo many engineers in world, and a majority of them are working on mind sucking social media and advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement. I've was rejected from YC and have been staving off burn out. I just moved back home to 'start over' and try one more time. Learning Adobe XD to design it myself and just whatever coding knowledge I have to make it minimally functional. I'm not ready to quit just yet. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We are not making the difference among cultural and technical determinism. Hence, we are buying mere narcissistic inventions as progress. It could be simply that Humanity needs a bit more experience handling IT. If I could change something, I would turn every Snapchat addict into a Wikipedia editor and would put Twitter to work like Reddit.

This is also a sign for a tech bubble; as long as startups keep creating no value beyond aesthetics.

I recommend you read "You Are Not A Gadget" by Jaron Lanier ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. A lot of me-too companies made by me-too entrepreneurs. If this was rock n roll, a lot of these people would never sell more than a few records. People respond extremely well to authenticity and originality, not so much pretense (which can work for only so long).

Got a copy from my library, thanks for the tip. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's like any other industry. You need to build a good brand in order to sell your products. What you mentioned are just brands... it's marketing. They all aim at the same things anyway so it doesn't matter who does what.

</comment><comment><USER9> What ever made you feel like you should have any illusions to start with?

</comment><comment><USER10> Are we supposed to care about a lot of startups or whatever the big companies are doing?</comment>


Byju's Raises $50m from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/byjus-series-d <comment><USER2> This is some really uplifting news. Always glad to see money being tossed at education like this. ( Not being sarcastic. )</comment>


Ask HN: Best Tool for Creating Binary Running in Windows Enterprise Environment? - <AUTHOR> I'm helping a friend with an enormous Excel+VBA solution that reads an input excel sheet and outputs numerous sheets with calculated values (think like a time report or something).
I've been thinking about some way to do this in a more sane programming language. The logic itself is simple, and I could probably write 100 lines of Python to replace the whole thing, with openpyxl for creating new sheets.
There's no need to use Excel+VBA except that anyone can run it, i.e no one except my friend need to inspect/modify the code.
However, the end users are in a (I'm guessing) pretty locked down Windows environment and my Windows skills are severely lacking.
Can I use something like py2exe and have end users running the binaries in a normal Windows enterprise settings, include reading and modifying files in the folder where the exe is running? If not, is there something else, besides the current solution that is resonable? <comment><USER2> Whatever you do, don't specialize the tool too much, even at the cost of the users having to do more work. The more assumptions you build in, the sooner it's going to stop working for them and they all go back to Excel. Furthermore, I'd swallow my pride and write something in VB.NET. Under the circumstances, it sounds like that's the only thing the users have a ghost of a chance of maintaining.

</comment><comment><USER3> C# is your friend here. Most Windows deployments even come with the compiler. It's more likely they'll have csc.exe on their machine than a python interpreter.</comment>


Show HN: CloudRail – API Integration Solution - <AUTHOR> https://cloudrail.com/cloudrail-api-integration-solution/ <comment><USER2> Wow, thanks for the post @gro_us. CloudRail team here... happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> So on the surface, this is essentially just a library that implements an abstract interface to a bunch of "cloud services", and then provides implementations of those abstractions for some of the actual cloud services.

It adds API tracking, so presumably there is some connection back to CloudRail. What happens if CloudRail goes down or is responding slowly or the connection is blocked? Does the library still work?

Seeing as it's also only a library, if someone stops paying, does it continue to function? Obviously if the upstream provider(s) change their APIs in a backwards-incompatible way, it would break, which is no different than if you use the provider directly. It seems like what you're really paying for here is the work done to build the library, the updates (and monitoring for need to update), API tracking service, and support. You're not actually using CloudRail's systems for the connection, so is there a license check that disables the library if the CloudRail account goes dead?

The nature of this abstraction also means lowest common denominator. The use of "interfaces" over top is a good way to handle this, but could also get messy. When you have a certain function that is only available on one provider, or is not available on only one of several providers, how do you decide when to create a new interface vs not support that function vs implement it as a "throw not implemented error" (or do you have any never do that)?

<comment><USER2> The library sends statistical data back to CloudRail to provide statistics and notifications for required library updates. We handle this in a way that the library still works even if the CloudRail server is down or slow. The data itself flows directly between library and cloud provider. Currently we don't disable libraries because they die anyway without updates eventually.

Yes, our unified interfaces are the lowest common denominator. We provide functionality which is not available among all providers in a separate interface. The only exception are functions where the developer needs to be prepared to get an empty result. E.g. some users just don't set a profile picture on social, so you have to handle it anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of Kloudless: [https://kloudless.com/](https://kloudless.com/)

It's interesting though that CloudRail is library-only; I like that you don't need to worry about CloudRail uptime. However, doesn't this mean I need to upgrade my dependency when a downstream API changes? With Kloudless or other gateways, the gateway can update independently of my application, so the strategy is a trade off

<comment><USER2> You are right, in the end it is a trade off. CloudRail has no down times, can't touch your data and is as performant as a native implementation. But yes, in case of an API change you have to update the SDK. We have a notification system though. You will get an email if you are affected by a change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this break anyone else's two-finder navigate back gesture on Mac w/ Chrome after scrolling down in the page?

<comment><USER2> Just tested it and you are right. Don't ask me why, works with Safari. We'll fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> You'll get a way better overview on the landing page [https://cloudrail.com](https://cloudrail.com). The page which was linked here provides actually more details.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FAQ via email: Yes we are working on a .NET SDK and will release it in the next months. If you sign up for a free account, we'll keep you in the loop.

<comment><USER6> I did signed up for a free account, do I need to do anything else to be notified when .NET SDK is ready?

<comment><USER2> Nope, we will reach out to you when it's ready

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Discovered it couple of weeks ago myself too. Anyone does have any experience with it?

<comment><USER2> Tons of experience (CloudRail team here) :-) Happy to answer any questions you might have.

<comment><USER7> Any plans to add reddit's API under the social category?

<comment><USER2> Also a good suggestion. We'll check if thats possible. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Former Equifax employee indicted for insider trading - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/former-equifax-employee-indicted-insider-trading <comment><USER2> While I'm quick to render my own verdict, especially in the tech realm where I live, work, and play, I was glad the article included this:

"Members of the public are reminded that the indictment only contains charges. The defendant is presumed innocent of the charges and it will be the government's burden to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial."

Trial by Internet and Guilty-by-default isn't a good world to live in.

<comment><USER3> Either the CEO is incompetent and didn't know about a huge failure of his organization or he's a criminal, either way the verdict of public opinion is not going to be kind.

<comment><USER4> It's very unlikely that he didn't know about the security problems, that hadn't be released. I'd say about 99.9% chance that he knew. We know that it's very tempting for otherwise intelligent people to fall victim to this, like our favorite domestic lifestyle wallstreet-er CEO, Martha Stewart.

<comment><USER5> Can you share the dataset you used to calculate the 99.9% probability? Do you have experience with other CEOs in this kind of situation? Do you have inside knowledge of Equifax? I'm not sure how anyone can be so certain in the absence of evidence. Indeed this is the reason we put the burden of proof on the accuser and assume innocence.

<comment><USER3> Did you not read the press release? They have texts showing he was aware and knew it was bad.

> On Friday, August 25, 2017, Ying texted a co-worker that the breach they > were working on "Sounds bad. We may be the one breached." The following > Monday, Ying conducted web searches on the impact of Experian's 2015 data > breach on its stock price. Later that morning, Ying exercised all of his > available stock options held at UBS Financial Services, resulting in him > receiving 6,815 shares of Equifax stock, which he then sold.

<comment><USER6> That does look bad. However, it describes the CIO. You're responding to a conversation about the CEO.

And again, innocent until proven guilty is a good principle, and we need to let the justice system do its work.

<comment><USER3> Typo on my part, the discussion is about the CIO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _On Friday, August 25, 2017, Ying texted a co-worker that the breach they were working on "Sounds bad. We may be the one breached." The following Monday, Ying conducted web searches on the impact of Experian's 2015 data breach on its stock price. Later that morning, Ying exercised all of his available stock options..._

Always nice when criminals express their intent to perform an illegal act on 3rd party services ahead of time.

I do always wonder where is the record of searches being held? A corporate MITM saving all queries? Or are criminals logging into their Google accounts before running queries on how to commit their crime?

<comment><USER8> I would be kind of shocked if Equifax wasn't MITM'ing their internal web traffic. Doing so is somewhat par for the course if you want to be able to monitor and filter employee Internet activity, which most traditional corporations with significant security expectations do.

That being said, browser history and Google Account history are both reasonable places to look as well.

I am always a little amazed at the paper trail white collar criminals that get caught leave. If you think you might insider trade on some information, maybe you should talk to coworkers instead of texting them, and do your research on a personal PC[1] in private browsing on a coffee shop Wi-Fi network somewhere.

(None of this should constitute endorsing the crime, it's just like... from a privacy-minded standpoint... there's so much they could've done "better".)

[1]Honestly, if it's a six figure crime, why not a "burner PC". Buy a Chromebook with cash, and leave it at Goodwill when you're done. The last bit may even help soothe the guilty conscience a bit.

<comment><USER9> I'm guessing the paper trail is because it is not always obvious that it IS a crime. Nobody tells you on your first day at work what constitutes insider trading. At my first company, you got an email saying "you are now an 'insider' for SEC purposes" if you got important enough (so I heard, anyway). Is it insider trading if you sell your stock because the new manager over the division is terrible? Is it insider trading if you're working on a product that you think is awesome, so you buy some stock? I'm guessing both of those are not insider trading, despite that you are acting on information not available to the public. From there it doesn't seem like too great of a leap to not consider that news of the hacking you are working on is also not insider trading.

If you asked me, "is it insider trading to sell stock because you know the company has been seriously hacked and the price will drop once news gets out?" I'd probably say "yes." But if I were in the situation myself, I'm not sure if that question would occur to me.

<comment><USER10> Insider trading is normal, routine, and rampant, across corporate America. When people get caught, it's usually because another insider snitched; and it's a standard part of dirty corporate politics.

At a company I used to work for, our CIO was found out to have lied about his educational background on his resume; after working there 15 years. Another board member had been sitting on this dirt for at least 5 years. He had hired a PI to dig up things about the executive staff. It was his opening move on pushing out the old execs, and replacing them with a more acquisition-friendly line up. Then said board member cashed out.

We would frequently also see large blocks of stock traded the day before a big earnings announcement. Only the executive staff would have had that information. Us line employees all had stock options, but were never able to take optimal advantage of price swings, because someone else was beating us to it. We only had the public information. It is routine and the SEC does not give a fuck, unless the case becomes high profile enough that the press will write about it and make a stink.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the turn of a new era.

Someone who actually commits a securities crime goes to jail!

I hope this sends a message to Wall Street and CEO's that they are jail-able.

Cannot wait to see what happens when the SEC starts to look at people pumping and dumping cryptocurrencies if the decide to regulate it besides ICO's. ([https://www.sec.gov/fast- answers/answerspumpdumphtm.html](https://www.sec.gov/fast- answers/answerspumpdumphtm.html))

<comment><USER12> I work in a Hedge Fund: my first reaction reading this article was to wonder how someone can be so stupid to even try something like that. Then I read your comment and realize that in fact, the rest of the world (people not in Finance) actually think that you can get away with this. He probably thought that everybody is doing it, so why not? Well, turns out that no, you can't do that, and yes, you can and will get prosecuted for it.

So no message sent to Wall Street, we got that memo a long long time ago. Geeks thinking they know everything and disregarding all regulations, however, should take a long, hard look at it. Finance and anything touching it (like securities, which most crypto-currencies are) is very very very heavily regulated.

<comment><USER13> I mean, at this point three of the four DID get away with it. Not to mention we haven't heard a peep about the Intel CEO also selling stock prior to the meltdown/spectre public announcements. So...

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/03/equifax-special-committee- sa...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/03/equifax-special-committee-says- executive-stock-sales-were-in-the-clear.html)

<comment><USER12> I'm going to take the cynical approach: assuming that all politicians are corrupt anyway, a newly elected senator might accept a huge amount of cash in an envelope in exchange of legislation/contracts/whatever. That will make any other senator laugh: you have to be way way way more sophisticated about it. Be paid to do a talk at some random conference (after your term), get a nice cozy seat at the board of said company you helped (after your term), etc.

If the article is correct, what this guy did is just plain stupid. But I'm not claiming you can't get away with doing something similar with good enough legal advice. This I do not know (IANAL).

<comment><USER14> >: assuming that all politicians are corrupt anyway,

Why would the politician need money. After the change insider trading where congress cannot be investigated, all you need to do it tip them off before major news and they can make their own 'cash envelope'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Okay, now what about the actual breach? No one gets in trouble for that and nothing changes. If I missed something that did change, or where someone actually did get in trouble, please enlighten me.

A suggestion to companies: stop using SSN's as usernames/passwords! Get rid of the static numbers and give out encryption certificates or something!

<comment><USER16> Encryption certificates for grandma and grandpa? We need a solution that works for everyone and until technology supports the mass it won't work.

I agree we need a new solution but we need one that works for everyone.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't have to be a literal alphanumeric cert in a text file. There could be smart cards distributed, or an app people install on their phones for identity verification. Or even just T/OTP from a phone app to allow credit requests.

Whatever happened to one-time Credit Card numbers for use on a per-transaction basis?

<comment><USER17> > an app people install on their phones for identity verification

I believe the consensus in the US that we _don 't_ want a form of national ID. Hence the use of Social Security numbers as a proxy for identification.

<comment><USER18> So your SSN is your national id card

<comment><USER15> It is if you want to open a bank account or confirm identity to the IRS or any other of the myriad services that seem dependent on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I didn't remember the CIO being implicated in dumping stocks. Sure enough, a bit of Googling reveals that he wasn't among the original three that were so widely reported.

Will be interesting to see if anything comes from the other executives who dumped their stock:

* John Gamble, Jr. - Chief Financial Officer

* Rodolpho Ploder - Workforce Solutions President

* Joseph Loughran - Chief Marketing Officer

The series of events mentioned in the article say that he texted someone about it before it happened, and that he was searching Google for stock price information.

Maybe the other three didn't leave a clear enough trail or they just haven't been charged, yet? I would hate to think that just dumping all of the charges on the "tech guy" for everything would be what happens here.

<comment><USER20> _I would hate to think that just dumping all of the charges on the "tech guy" for everything would be what happens here._

Remember when the entire worldwide VW cheating & coverup scandal was uncovered, and it was blamed on a single engineer? Thank god there was a preponderance of evidence that was bullshit- but it illustrated that exact knee-jerk reaction nicely.

One can only imagine it works most of the time, otherwise they wouldn't try to pull it every time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The real test will be if the CEO of Intel faces this same punishment[1]. Seems like this mostly gets enforced at lower rungs.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/01/intel...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2018/01/intel-ceos-sale-of-stock-just-before-security-bug-reveal- raises-questions/)

</comment><comment><USER22> What's unfortunate is that the government has largely been silent on the culpability of Equifax executives, and the company as a whole.

<comment><USER23> "Equifax may actually make money off this breach": [https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/28/tech/sen-elizabeth- wa...](https://www.marketplace.org/2018/02/28/tech/sen-elizabeth-warren- equifax-may-actually-make-money-breach)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >Chief Information Office

I;m assuming these trades needed to be registered in advance with the SEC and he failed to do so?

Poor criminality from a C level employee

Ironically Equifax is only down around $15 a share from its close on the day he sold. That's just over a $100k personal loss in unrealized gains, not a huge amount for someone in his position.

Instead, if found guilty his career is over prematurely.

</comment><comment><USER25> Not one of the original 3 execs reported, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're getting away with it. The SEC may well still be investigating the original 3. In my observation, law enforcement tends to keep quiet about ongoing investigations until they're ready to press charges.

We shall have to see if the original 3 execs get charged as well, or if there's a reason why their sales weren't insider trading per the law.

</comment><comment><USER26> Interesting I wonder why there hasn't been any action taken against the the three senior executive that were previously reported to have done similar:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/three- equ...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/three-equifax- executives-sold-stock-before-revealing-cyber-hack)

<comment><USER18> The biz guys are smart enough not to write down evidence of their crimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It would be interesting, after this is off the table to see if there will be any other implications for Equifax, because I'm worried personal data of millions of Americanns floating around in public and noone is held accountable. Has anyone an update on the latest status - is that case rested and we all just live with it?</comment>