Steve Jobs at MIT Sloan School of Management (1992) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI <comment><USER2> Listening to this talk, you get a sense of how much more intelligent he was than he may have even gotten credit for. All the talk about his temper and his stealing of engineers ideas, an imperfect boss, etc, sorta gives the impression that he wasn't as smart and he was more of a salesman, but holy shit, he was incredibly intelligent, and a real thinker.

<comment><USER3> Some of the smartest people I've met work in sales. You don't have to be an engineer to be smart.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the _average_ salesperson is pretty ignorant, even about the probuct he's supposed to sell and the target audience to sell to. Encountering a _great_ salesperson is a rare occurrence in life, encountering a more or less average one is very common.

<comment><USER5> Same with programmers or anything else.

<comment><USER6> The problem is the baseline STEM disciple looks on the baseline biz/marketing graduate with disdain like they took an easy route out.

'proper' Engineering (MECH/AERO/CIVIL/EEE) is full of memes about this mindset.

CS is just as bad.

Most decent engineers loose this mindset after freshman year but many go on to see them selves as the MVP department of whatever business.

In some ways I think Startup culture fights against this because it's really obvious at small team scale how different skill sets are needed.

<comment><USER7> The absolute best in any field including fast food cook is probably as intelegent as any other field. However the average really can be meaningfully different based on self selection. HR for example really does not attract the best and brightest.

Sales is an outlier because compensation for the best can be really good. So, it's got a large group of very talented people and many far less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "When we were learning about manufacturing at Mac, we hired a Stanford Business School Professor at the time named Steven Wheelwright, and he did a neat thing. He drew on the board a little chart, first time I met him. He said, you can view all companies from a manufacturing perspective this way.

"You can say there's five stages-- one, two, three, four, five. They have all these things. And stage one is companies that view manufacturing as a necessary evil. They wish they didn't have to do it, but damn it, they do. And all the way up through stage five, which is companies that view manufacturing as a competitive opportunity for competitive advantage. We can get better time to market, and get new products out faster. We get lower costs. We get higher quality.

"And in general, you know, you can put the American flag here [puts it under 1], and put the Japanese flag here [puts it under 5] [Laughter] [Applause]. And that's changing, however.

"By the way, just going back to software for a minute, I often apply this scale to computer companies, and how they look at software. See, I think most computer companies are stage one. They wish software had never been invented. I put Compaq in that category. And IBM is maybe stage two, and things like that. And I think there's only three companies in here [pointing at 5] and that's us, Apple and Microsoft, in stage five. We start everything with the software and work back."

Wow. I think this is a great way to look at how companies look at ML/AI: You have Facebook, Google, MS, Amazon trying to use it as a competitive advantage, whereas I'm sure there are some companies (medical?) that wish these systems were never invented.

This also shows why you would want to be at companies that look at software as a competitive advantage: as an engineer you are the profit centre and not the cost centre.

<comment><USER9> Alan Kay which Steve Jobs quoted said if you're serious about Software you should build your own hardware.

I think they're both important. It's also interestng to note in this video he says that hardware has no competitive edge. But that was 1992. Now it has flipped, software has less competitive edge than hardware.

<comment><USER10> Context matters.

Jobs was repeatedly referring to _system_ software in this talk, a category distinct from _application_ software.

System software + own hardware = competitive advantage

Application software + own hardware = ?*

*Most likely a world of pain and heavy losses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "I think that without owning something over an extended period of time, like > a few years, where someone has a chance to take responsibility for one's > recommendations, where one has to see one's recommendations through all > action stages and accumulate some scar tissue for the mistakes and pick > one's self up off the ground and dust one's self off, one learns a fraction > of what one can," Jobs said. "You do get a broad cut at companies, but it's > very thin."

> "You never get three-dimensional," he said. "You might have a lot of > pictures on your wall, you can say 'Look, I've worked in bananas, I've > worked in peaches, I've worked in grapes.' But you never really taste it."

His view on Consulting is pretty interesting. Any consultants here who'd like to give the other perspective?

[http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/steve-jobs- talks-c...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/steve-jobs-talks- consultants-hiring-and-leaving-apple-in-unearthed-1992-talk/)

<comment><USER12> I agree with his view on consultants from my own experience. I've never been a consultant, but in the last 10 years, I have been a "job hopper", but only because companies refuse to give market based raises and the best way to get a "raise" is to get a new job.

<comment><USER13> I've met consultants who have described it as sort of 'addictive' for people with ADD, mainly because they get to feel like they are in the middle of some big drama, for a short time, too short usually to really own the problem, then the engagement is over and they go on to the next thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I pulled out a section of this talk the other week that I thought was especially brilliant: his description of "Technological Windows of Opportunity" — when enough trends converge onto a radically new platform/experience _and_ the economic costs of the technology align to make sense for a company to deploy and become the widely adopted platform in that window

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJX476dDFVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJX476dDFVc)

The Lisa was too early. So was the Newton. So was the Next Cube and NeXTStep... (which of course now is iOS)

<comment><USER15> A huge percentage of ideas aren't bad ideas but they're not at the right time because people aren't ready for them, complementary technologies aren't mature enough, they solve a problem that isn't a current market priority, etc.

<comment><USER14> You can find plenty of articles in magazines in the early 1990s talking about the handheld internet connected device (that nobody could succeed with until the iPhone).

The Mac itself was too early for wide adoption. The first Mac had a tiny memory footprint and no hard drive. CPU and GPU technology needed time to speed up and shrink in size and cost. Apple survived on Apple II sales for years after the Mac was introduced and iterated, and nearly suffocated from mismanagement until Jobs returned and the iMac launched — Windows 95 was right on time.

Here's an Apple video about conversational voice-based digital assistants... from 1987 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0)

The Valley is littered with husks of companies that had the right vision before the technology was ready (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Magic)). NeXT was almost one of them.

<comment><USER12> The Mac wasn't just "too early" it was overpriced.

The popular narrative that Apple struggled from 1984 until 1997 isn't true. Apple was doing fine between around 1987-1994. It was vying for the #1 computer seller in the early 90s with HP.

Two things happen in 1995. Apple made a lot of low end computers and not enough high end computers and Windows 95 was good enough.

<comment><USER14> It was overpriced _because_ it was too early. The components to deliver the GUI experience weren't sufficiently commoditized yet.

In 1995, the entire product line was confused, and the then-CEO had opened up the platform to commodity cloners, robbing Apple of its vertical market and hardware margin.

<comment><USER12> The Mac had ridiculous margins compared to PCs by 1987 - especially for color Macs.

Jean Louis Gassée (founder of Be) was the main executive of Apple who went for short term margins instead of going for market share.

I got my first Mac in 1992 after owning an Apple //e for years. For the price of my Mac LCII - 68030-16Mhz with slow built in graphics, and a 512x384 12" monitor that wasn't compatible with most Mac games, I could have gotten a much faster 386, a sound card, and better graphics, much cheaper. Then Apple even cheap out more and had a 16 bit bus instead of the 32 bit bus. The Mac used 68030 processors that were used by other workstations, SCSI chips that were widely available, etc.

<comment><USER14> Yes, they managed the company terribly in the years after Jobs left (with the exception of the alignment with IBM and Motorola for the Power architecture and chip transition). Apple had something like 5 different CEOs in 8 years before Amelio decided to buy NeXT and bring Jobs back into the fold.

<comment><USER12> Sculley wasn't a bad CEO. He was Steve Ballmer style CEO. He knew how to profitably manage a company but he had no vision. Under his leadership, he brought Apple from the brink of extinction in 86, led the transistion to the PPC, the PowerBooks defined what a modern laptop should be and between 1989 - 1992, Apple was at it height. Scully would have been a better CEO than all of the CEOs that came between 1993 and the return of Jobs.

There are very few tech companies that successfully pivot into new areas and can transistion when technology changes that are not led by their founders. Just like "only Nixon could go to China", only Jobs could make the famous deal with Microsoft in 1997.

<comment><USER14> but then there was Spindler and Amelio. Though Spindler handled the 68k->PPC transition, and Amelio did pull the trigger on Next over Be and brought back Jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I never watched a Jobs talk until now. I always thought he was an asshole based on what others had said. Shame on me. But now I've got a very different take. This guy was in a league of his own. He may not have been the best programmer, manager, salesman or other various roles he held but he was smart enough to know failure paves the way for success. I was moved by his way of conveying a complex message in a simple saying is priceless. It is a shame he is no longer with us.

<comment><USER17> You should listen to the commencement speech he made in 2005 at Stanford [https://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA](https://youtu.be/D1R-jKKp3NA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm amazed at his ability to deliver this type of presentation with such fluidity. Granted, this is most likely amalgamation of his daily talks and thinking that he internalized, but in order to formulate them, he must spend a better part of his day just thinking.

</comment><comment><USER19> One aspect which really struck me was his diametrical opposition to Amazon's famous "disagree and commit" core value. Very interesting to hear the counter argument.

</comment><comment><USER20> Job's read and perception of where things were going is very impressive, hard to think of anyone today who could be this eloquent and persuasive...

<comment><USER21> Not sure I agree here, but he was a CEO who was simultaneously in this underdog position but also playing it really well. The refreshing thing about this is that he's relatively open about talking about his thoughts for the future and the strategy of his company. Most CEOs (including Jobs at a later stage) are much more apprehensive about talking openly. He turned his futurism into a marketing move, a bit like Elon Musk uses his vision, goals and trajectory as a marketing move.

That's basically the only reason I like to listen to the big VCs, because they're actually terribly open about their thoughts unlike virtually all CEOs. Because they also use their vision of the future as a marketing move. Someone mentioned Naval for example, that's no coincidence I think, angel/venture investors cluster quite high on my list of people talking openly about their perception of where things are going (regardless of whether it's a correct perception or not).

<comment><USER20> I was probably hard on Naval just now - IMO Jobs created what is today the most successful company on the planet. VC's are great at placing other people's bets and sounding convincing about it, not in the same league...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder in what directions and how much Jobs' thinking about management developed since 1992. He had been fired from Apple, partly because of his management practices. Certainly, he learned things in the 'wilderness', and learned things after he returned.

<comment><USER14> This would have been around the time he negotiated a gigantic deal with Disney for Toy Story at Pixar, after selling them Pixar's hardware and CAPS software for digital compositing — used to great effect in the _' Disney Renaissance'_ era (it was first deployed in this opening shot for The Rescuers Down Under (1990): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkdOAjtJ1k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjkdOAjtJ1k))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "We won't see another operating environment for computers, because it's extremely hard to fund a professional sales force to educate users with an ASP of around $500"

It's amazing how well this insight/prediction holds after 26 years, the only other comparable OS/OE today is linux, which didn't rely on the funding. Makes me think if/how another leap in computing software will happen.

<comment><USER24> Well, iOS, right? or Android? or are those not "Computers" ?

If I had the money to bet, I'd be betting on AR as the next major paradigm, though. I think the idea of OS changes a lot when you get rid of the "slab of glass with a terminal" model. If computers are fundamentally ubiquitous, then what an OS does will need to be quite a bit different. I'm not sure it replaces a legacy computer, but I genuinely hope to have AR be a completely alternative option for most applications.

If I had to guess where the funding for that salesforce will come from, I'd guess: Softbank, and other mega-VC funds. if you do successfully create the next wave forward for computing, and you can provide the systems to enable it, the rewards are likely commensurate. I think this is why everyone is so interested in AR. Magic Leap is the darling, but Google, Apple, and Microsoft all agree that this is a critical turn, and are putting in the dollars to win.

<comment><USER25> > _Well, iOS, right? or Android? or are those not "Computers" ?_

iOS _is_ NextStep, and Android _is_ Linux, so in that way what Steve said holds true, given that Linux wasn't developed commercially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "The best code is the code you don't write"

This really rang true for me when I started developing with WebObjects (from Next). In the first week I was blown away how little code I had to write and how much was done for me. I knew the theory of a "Framework" and I think to this day many Libraries are called "Frameworks", but working with a real one is a game changer.

</comment><comment><USER26> So fascinating. 70 minutes, not a single slide.

<comment><USER27> Just like most University lectures in the country. I don't think that is good or bad in itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One thing that stood out to me is how much of what he talked about is still true and still playing out decades later. The fundamentals of technology businesses and the dynamics that occur really don't change all that often.

<comment><USER29> Wait until you realize that they never change, and apply to all industries in slightly different flavors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting to think about why this reality didn't come to pass. Ben was clearly right about the opportunity market being huge and i think it's timing. Without having thought too much about I think he underestimated or couldn't compete with Microsoft. Having cheap wintel PCs everywhere made next irrelevant.

<comment><USER31> The points Steve makes in the early parts of the session were quite visionary, but when he got to the hardware parts, I guess it's quite easy to say in retrospect what they got wrong.

What's interesting, however, is that he does discuss this from several angles (my interpretation / memory below), namely that a) the hardware angle was a way to get people to use the software, b) a purely software venture couldn't sustain funding for the level of marketing required to break into the market, c) software seems to be moving slower than hardware (? - I guess that's the 80s / early 90s for you) and d) there's still a juicy hardware business that would be left off the table, if it were a software-only venture. So, it was a fairly well researched and opinionated bet, that just didn't pay off. I guess by tying the success of their software to their hardware, they ended up sealing its fate.</comment></comment>


Gemalto's findings of its investigations into the alleged hacking of SIM cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.gemalto.com/press/Pages/Gemalto-presents-the-findings-of-its-investigations-into-the-alleged-hacking-of-SIM-card-encryption-keys.aspx <comment><USER2> Can anyone elaborate on why it's supposedly only a problem for 2G? "If someone intercepted the encryption keys used in 3G or 4G SIMs they would not be able to connect to the networks and consequently would be unable to spy on communications." Why not? I feel like there is a "merely" missing from this sentence -- if so, what more than keys do they need to spy?

Are they basing this on the specific type of key discussed in the documents? I don't know a lot about it, but I'm inclined to believe there are valuable keys burned-in to 3G+ cards too.

I also wonder if there is a downgrade attack to force 2G, so that those keys are not completely worthless.

<comment><USER3> I wondered about that too, not sure why this was downvoted.

Sorry for being OT, but maybe HN should recheck whether downvoting a comment just to express disagreement about a factual statement (as opposed to punishing bad or trollish ones) is conducive to a civil and constructive discourse here.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I have no idea what is happening to HN lately, a lot of posts that add information are being downvoted. I personally feel like getting rid of the downvote button altogether would be a great step forward, since we already have the flag button.

<comment><USER5> Some users, such as me, have no downvote button. Maybe it is an existing account setting that could be used more frequently.

<comment><USER4> There is a certain karma threshold before you can downvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Firstly, I'm amazed that a large global corporation has put out a press release saying it has "reasonable grounds to believe that an operation by NSA and GCHQ probably happened." Wow.

That said, I wonder if Gemalto really had any other option than to say its keys weren't stolen. What might be the cost of replacing all affected SIM cards?

<comment><USER7> > reasonable grounds to believe that an operation by NSA and GCHQ probably > happened.

No kidding, they've been bought, under more-than-suspicious circumstances, by [inQtel]([https://www.iqt.org/](https://www.iqt.org/)) and [Texas Partner Group]([https://tpg.com/](https://tpg.com/)), which officially are CIA proxies.

I don't think they had to resort to tailored access to perform their heist, I'd rather bet that they still have enough former colleagues inside Gemalto to get whatever they want by simply entering the correct password on the correct keyboard.

<comment><USER8> Are you serious?!? Is Gemalto wholly owned by the CIA (through well known proxies), and nobody is reporting on that...? No...

<comment><USER7> Ostensibly, they've sold it back years ago.

But that just means they don't need to officially own it anymore: Alex Mandl, Gemalto's current chairman, is among others a former board member of intQtel, which presents its mission on its web page as:

        We identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the Central Intelligence Agency and broader U.S. Intelligence Community.

So the news that nobody wants spread is: nobody cares about how much the NSA stole from Gemalto: whatever Gemalto has and NSA wants, the NSA is most likely to get by simply asking NSA affiliates installed at every interesting node in Gemalto's hierarchy.

Incidentally, it's rather easy to find sources about this in French (Gemplus used to be a French company, before the fusion with Axalto which was forced by intQtel and TPG), but surprisingly hard to find in English.

<comment><USER9> _> nobody cares about how much the NSA stole from Gemalto: whatever Gemalto has and NSA wants, the NSA is most likely to get by simply asking NSA affiliates_

This seems at odds with the leaked documents though. Why going to the trouble of compromising a company you've already social-engineered to the max?

<comment><USER10> Not at all. GCHQ are not usually ones to try just one approach. They often try every approach at once: partly because they can; but mostly for compartmentation; to overwhelm layered defences; and to decrease sensitive source exposure by combining the results of everything they care to try.

The doctrine has been called "penetrating targets' defences" or PTD: that's also the name of their budget/office/department/contracting scheme which is broadly equivalent to NSA's Special Source Operations/Targeted Access Operations, only more aggressive and multi-pronged. It incorporates HUMINT as well as both R&D and operational deployment of advanced technical attacks.

You may see references in the Snowden documents of this (check the bottom), or in their tenders to BAE Detica for their modular botnet software, or elsewhere. Although much of the really juicy or operational stuff is STRAP3 and thus kept off the TS//STRAP2 wiki.gchq (which the NSA have shared access to via their ic.gov portal, and which Snowden dumped - and which, yes, runs a tweaked MediaWiki on PHP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please pardon my naiveté, but is it even possible for a company that operates in 85 countries to do a thorough security audit in the six days since this news started making the rounds? The rapidity of their response makes me uneasy.

<comment><USER12> From the article, it sounds like they just looked at old incident reports and said "yup, these two are 'sophisticated,' they could be the NSA/GCHQ."

Its a little disturbing that the "sophisticated" attacks they detected don't really sound all that sophisticated. Is spoofing an email and sending a PDF/Office exploit really considered sophisticated? While its a step above the most basic script-kiddie type stuff, that isn't unreasonable for even normal pentesting to do, and I wouldn't consider it an indicator of a nation-state attacker at all. Even if the attack was using 0-day in the attachment viewer, its not unheard of for malware kits to employ similar techniques.

It definitely says something that those attacks were at least partially successful against systems Gemalto thinks could have resulted in the theft of sensitive crypto keys.

<comment><USER13> _Is spoofing an email and sending a PDF /Office exploit really considered sophisticated?_

Maybe. I'd say a targeted email, using a believable, researched sender address and relevant contents, would be fairly sophisticated. It would certainly be way more effective than the bulk 'please pay this generic invoice' exploits that I get spammed with.

<comment><USER10> Spear phishing, as its nicknamed? If something is sophisticated enough to _work_ , don't knock it!

There's no fundamental difference between the basic techniques used by malicious hackers, organised crime, pentesters or nation-state adversaries doing offensive "cyber-operations" (ugh): the only big difference is the budget (time, personnel, money), how likely they are to get away with it, and how aggressive they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FTA: > In July 2010, a second incident was identified by our Security Team. This involved fake emails sent to one of our mobile operator customers spoofing legitimate Gemalto email addresses. The fake emails contained an attachment that could download malicious code. We immediately informed the customer and also notified the relevant authorities both of the incident itself and the type of malware used.

I'm not buying this. If the fake emails were sent to the customer, wouldn't the _operator_ be the one who detects the malicious address? So how is Gemalto informing the customer that the mails are malicious?

</comment><comment><USER15> I see two totally separate threads of discussion here, so I have to ask - which way is it? Is Gemalto a poor company that got pwnd by Five Eyes, or are they just a bunch of spooks in corporate suits[0]? Because the latter paints the situation in a completely different light.

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106179)

</comment><comment><USER16> "If someone intercepted the encryption keys used in 3G or 4G SIMs they would not be able to connect to the networks and consequently would be unable to spy on communications."

I don't understand this. First, it's well known that intelligence services passively listen to and collect any and all radio traffic. The issue then is can that traffic be decrypted, not can the traffic be spied on. Related to that is of course the use of frequency hopping -- but as I understand it, if frequency hopping uses N bands, and you have N antennas/radios at your disposal, you could listen and record all of them.

Secondly, we all know that if you have a sim card, you can connect to a 3g/4g network. What they seem to be implying, is that 3g/4g uses asymmetric encryption (certificates) for authentication, and that only the sim card knows its own secret key. Does anyone know is this is true? Did 3g/4g move away from shared-secret to asymmetric keys?

I hope I'm missing something -- because if not this press release is basically full of placating lies.

</comment><comment><USER17> Whew, that was quick wasn't it!

Four to five years after the hacks happened, Gemalto says it was all not so bad, they really really checked this time and they have super duper server logs they grepped twice to be sure.

<comment><USER18> _Four to five years after the hacks happened, Gemalto says it was all not so bad, they really really checked this time and they have super duper server logs they grepped twice to be sure._

That's a bit unfair. Gemalto say:

\- "The risk of the data being intercepted as it was shared with our customers was greatly reduced with the generalization of highly secure exchange processes that we had put in place well before 2010."

\- "The report... also states that when operators used secure data exchange methods the interception technique did not work."

\- "Gemalto has never sold SIM cards to four of the twelve operators listed in the documents, in particular to the Somali carrier where a reported 300,000 keys were stolen."

\- "A list claiming to represent the locations of our personalization centers shows SIM card personalization centers in Japan, Colombia and Italy. However, we did not operate personalization centers in these countries at the time."

There's a lot of valid points in Gemalto's report, and it seems dishonest to write it off so pettily.

<comment><USER17> > There's a lot of valid points in Gemalto's report, and it seems dishonest to > write it off so pettily.

I agree they have valid points that are worth setting the record straight on. But conveniently for Gemalto they distract from the core issue, which in my opinion is that they have been owned and are in denial of it.

Hopefully it's just PR and they are scrambling internally to keep spies out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Obviously the key theft made it easier, but remember that 2G/GSM still only uses 64-bit encryption keys even in A5/3 and GEA3.

</comment><comment><USER20> This statement from Gemalto seems quite naive considering the leaked documents state that the operations to obtain the private keys were successful. They talk about the deployment of a "secure transfer system" BUT that will only help if that is the only time that data is ever transferred between two entities and assumes that the data will be kept securely.

The Ki database has to be distributed to so many places in and around the network that it isn't surprising that it is schlepped around using insecure means.

Of course in an ideal world the keys should never be accessible by a human, they should have been generated in a set of HSMs at the SIM manufacturer that are transferred physically to the network operator. In reality this doesn't happen as that takes time and money and is an overall logistical nightmare.

Mobile carriers use lots of professional services "experts" from the vendors they buy from, it is rare to have in-house engineers running and maintaining the systems as those tasks are usually outsourced.

Such engineers will have done a 4 week course with Nokia-Siemens-Networks, Huawei or Ericsson and they are sent out into the field with a crappy laptop and a few tools, they are just expensive "remote hands" without any real knowledge.

This is how it would play out from a 3rd level support/engineer back at Telco HQ -

In-house expert: Hi Mr Field Engineer, I need you to restore that HLR you are looking at, I can't reach it from here, and I need to send you a file securely to restore to that node, do you use PGP? Do you have the emergency encrypted USB stick with you?

Outsourced Engineer: PGP? I don't know how to program, isn't that for making web-sites? USB stick, yes I have a new one in my bag I bought for downloading movies.

In-house expert: No, that is PHP, don't worry about that for now, do you have any decryption software on your laptop?

Outsourced Engineer: No, but my laptop is already unlocked, I've typed in my account and password.

In-house expert: I have my boss screaming at me and the call-center is overloaded with complaints, do you know how to use SCP?

Outsourced Engineer: SCP?

In-house expert: OK, how about FTP, do you have an FTP client?

Outsourced Engineer: Yes, I've got that, I use it for sending firmware to Cisco routers.

In-house expert: No, not TFTP, FTP! Do you know what that is?

Outsourced Engineer: Huh?

In-house expert: OK, how about a corporate email account?

Outsourced Engineer: No, I'm working for "XYZ Solutions" and I'm on a probationary period, I have a hotmail account, does that help?

In-house export: OK, I suppose that will have to do, please just delete the email from hotmail and make sure you delete that file later from your PC.

Outsourced Engineer: OK, you mean just drag it to trash on this 4 year old Windows XP laptop I'm using?

 _sigh_

<comment><USER21> It does say 98% of private key transfers are not between the SIM supplier (Gemalto) and the carrier. It explicitly says those could be hacked more easily but are out of their hands. I have little doubt that many governments already monitor thier own people's phone use anyway, making the issue of surveillance irrelevant.

A bit surprising they promote security by obscurity though:

"Security is even higher for mobile operators who work with Gemalto to embed custom algorithms in their SIM cards. The variety and fragmentation of algorithmic technologies used by our customers increases the complexity and cost to deploy massive global surveillance systems."

<comment><USER20> > It does say 98% of private key transfers are not between the SIM supplier > (Gemalto) and the carrier. It explicitly says those could be hacked more > easily but are out of their hands.

But that is the problem, they shouldn't really be in a state that could ever be read by a human, they should be on individual HSMs that are distributed around the networks from the SIM manufacturer.

The problem is that there isn't a real standard on how to exchange HSMs between SIM manufacturers and the network operators that use different jury- rigged hacks for everything.

The mass deployment of HSMs would add a huge cost and involves additional hardware development and integration in mobile networks that already work perfectly.

If the SIM manufacturer insisted that the keys would never be given in a plain-text format but _only_ as individual non-dumpable HSMs then that would force the network equipment vendors and mobile operators to deploy the technology.

This isn't going to happen as the SIM company will lose business to a competitor and the mobile network operator will not spend their budget on such a project that adds zero functionality to their existing (and completely operational) network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Gemalto will continue to monitor its networks and improve its processes.

I wonder if they're going to reissue the root key. And if they do, how can I, as an AT&T Wireless customer, know that my new SIM is using it?

<comment><USER23> Are you sure there is such a thing as a root key? Root keys apply to X509 and certificate signing, which isn't applicable here. They're likely just to be generating keys randomly (in the technical sense of the word).

<comment><USER22> Looks like I misunderstood how the leak happened. I was thinking they infiltrated Gemalto's infrastructure and stole the signing key. But it looks like the keys (lots of them - one per SIM) were stolen while they were in transit, because of weak/no transmission security.

Since I have no way of knowing if my personal SIM key was stolen, I'll have to wait until AT&T works their way through their existing stock of SIMs and then request a new one. And hopefully get one that wasn't exposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "The attacks against Gemalto only breached its office networks and could not have resulted in a massive theft of SIM encryption keys"

That's what they think...

</comment><comment><USER25> Could someone explain to me the significance of having the keys as opposed to simply breaking A5/1 or A5/2 (Which is considered to be trivial)? Especially since A5/3 (which is also known to be insecure at least theoretically) can be downgraded to either of those or even A5/0?

Is the advantage solely that they don't need to intercept the traffic as a middleman to ask the target to downgrade?

<comment><USER26> The difference would be, that with the keys you could just listen in and capture all the traffic.

If you had to force cell phone connections to A5/0, you would have to:

1) Have to both receive and transmit.

2) Have a stronger connection than any other nearby cell towers.

3) Have a backbone connection back into the network so that you can actually negotiate phone calls to users connected to other cell phone towers.

4) Have to be able to handle multiple simultaneous connections. Some MITM spoof cell towers only establish a connection for the person of interest, and all other devices in the area loses connection. A pretty tell tale sign of a rogue base station operating in an area.

So in short it is much easier just to have the keys...

<comment><USER25> That's what I assumed (but I wondered if there was some other advantage I was missing).

Are not all the ciphers breakable post collection anyways? Is it fair to say that this is effectively for the purpose of blanket non-targeted surveillance? Where by having the keys in their possession it gives them a shortcut for bulk analysis and saving CPU time that would otherwise be spent breaking encryption.

And a cpu-processing-savings advantage justified cyber-attacking a foreign civilian corporation?

<comment><USER23> With the keys, you can do data collection now, and cracking later. You can do mass interceptions and then decide which calls you want to look at.

<comment><USER25> >With the keys, you can do data collection now, and cracking later.

Do the attacks on A5/1 require known plaintext? I was under the impression that they do not.

<comment><USER27> My understanding was that the A5/1 attack (and massive rainbow table) not only relies on known plaintext but also requires you to get the _start_ of the communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems to have been released with breathtaking speed. Was it canned, or did they previously know that these revelations would come to light?

<comment><USER29> I wouldn't have said it was fast to the extent I'd be suspicious. Given the nature of the business they're in and the security risks they're well aware of, I'd say they have a plan of action on what to do in the event of a confirmed or potential breach and they just put that into action immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "…customized algorithms for each operator" What are they smoking?

<comment><USER31> Using customized algorithms makes a lot of sense to evade untargeted attacks on your encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Not a big deal.

Just carry on. Please.

* But be vigilant!

</comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully this will finally shut up the people who complain that the NSA's behavior will damage the US tech industry. If they are interested in compromising a system, being non-American just means they will break in the hard way. At least American companies can theoretically be secure if they are willing to grant authorized access when requested.</comment>


How a bee sting saved my life: poison as medicine - <AUTHOR> http://mosaicscience.com/story/how-bee-sting-saved-my-life-poison-medicine <comment><USER2> For Bee Venom Therapy, Charles Mraz is considered the pioneer of this. He has a book 'Health and the honeybee', on treatments he did 60 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone affected by Rheumatoid Arthritis (symptomatically similar to Lyme), I found this very interesting, especially after learning that (controversially of course), it has been found to improve RA symptoms as well.</comment>


Why Is Uranus the Only Planet Without Interesting Features on It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/22/why-is-uranus-the-only-planet-without-interesting-features-on-it <comment><USER2> My 9th grade science teacher, Mr. Chew, told me that I would outgrow my juvenile sense of humor. I turn 40 in April. Mr. Chew, you were incorrect!

<comment><USER3> It doesn't get much better trying to be serious about it

> οὐρᾰνός • (ouranós)

> 1\. the vaulted sky 2. the region above this vault, the home of the gods 3. > (philosophy) the universe 4. anything shaped like the sky: vaulted ceiling, > tent

looks pretty good

> Etymology

> Probably from an older _ϝορσανός (_ worsanós), which may be related to οὑρέω > (houréō, "to urinate"), from Proto-Indo-European _h₁worseye-, from_ h₁wers- > ("rain") (compare Sanskrit वर्षति (varṣati, "it rains").

OK, never mind.

> A folk etymology advanced by Aristotle interpreted it as ὅρος (hóros, > "limit") and ἄνω (ánō, "up").

Oh wait a second.

German _ur-_ , English _or-_ means roughly "original", from a sense "up", found e.g. in _Urteil_ "sentence, decision, verdict", cognate to _ordeal_ ( _teil_ and _deal_ from a sense _part, to split_ ), but more significantly _Urahne " "ancestor" (see above ἄνω "above"), _Ursuppe* "primordial soup".

Latin _anus_ , cognate Ancient Greek ἀννίς (annís) means "grandmother", old high german _ano_ "grandfather", so

 _Wer-_ as in werewolf means "man", too.

Ouranus (wonder why Greek omega is written like a w) is father of the first titans. talk about ancestors. The name is potentially so old that it's constituents have been re-analized multiple times.

but yeah, really funny.

<comment><USER4> > re-analized

I see what you did there.

I tried to find something relevant to link but Language Log doesn't seem to have discussed this particular planet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anything to get clicks right?

Uranus IS interesting as it's the only planet which is turned on its side relative to the spin and orbits of its sibling planets.

Just because it doesn't have swirling clouds due to the extreme cold doesn't mean it's not interesting.

<comment><USER6> The article doesn't say it isn't interesting (nor does the title), and actually says it has nice swirling clouds now. (The comments here really are something else...)

<comment><USER7> HN users feel no requirement to read an article before commenting on it.

<comment><USER8> >2 sentences? i don't even bother finishing the entire comment either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fact that it is the only one that is relatively featureless makes it incredibly interesting. It's anything but boring.

<comment><USER10> > relatively featureless makes it incredibly interesting

OT but this reminded me of the "Interesting number paradox" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interesting_number_paradox)

<comment><USER3> That's not a paradox, it's not the number that's interesting, but a sentence about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're tired of the butt jokes or if this planet is just too mainstream for you, might I recommend another mysterious, ringed celestial body in the same general region i.e. a bajillion kilometers from nowhere?

Why not Chariklo! You almost never hear about this baby. I'd love to see a mission fly close enough to properly photograph it in my lifetime, but it's super rare to send something out that far and it would probably have to pass up on much more important science objectives in order to swing by such a tiny backwater dwarf planet. Supposedly the rings have been confirmed by stellar occultation, which is cool because it's super small for such clear rings.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10199_Chariklo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10199_Chariklo)

I want to stand on the surface and look up for a while. See also Chiron and Haumea.

<comment><USER12> Fund my team and we'll go get pictures of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Venus is also bland in visible light. However, in ultraviolet light, Venus has interesting cloud patterns. I wonder what spectrum range Uranus shows the most? The article suggests infrared.

As far as the funny name, scientists are planning on renaming Uranus to avoid all the embarrassment. The new name will be "Urectum". (Swiped from an animated Sitcom.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Today Wikipedia has 82 articles with Uranus in the title. _Something_ is interesting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=intitle%3A%22Uranus%22)

</comment><comment><USER15> The short answer is: "because clickbait titles is part of the industry, it's not really that boring."

The longer answer it is sometimes too cold to make the same cool cloud patterns in the visual spectrum Jupiter and Saturn have.

<comment><USER16> That's not what the article says. It says that, thanks to its unusual axis of rotation (it's lying on its side, with the axis more or less parallel with the ecliptic, unlike every other planet), it spends decades in solstice (sun mostly shining on a polar region) and decades in equinox (sun mostly shining on the equator). During periods of equinox, the day/night cycle rapidly rotates the surface of the planet into and out of the sun's light which causes all kinds of interesting weather phenomena.

During solstice, where the sun just steadily warms one pole, not much happens.

The article concludes by saying that it's boring, but only some of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does that make it interesting?

</comment><comment><USER18> I would have thought interesting weather depends on Coriolis which a sideways planet can't have.

<comment><USER19> Of course it can. Any rotating frame has Coriolis forces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> TL;DR: Because, methane makes it look that way in visible light.

</comment><comment><USER21> All the ads crashed my browser. How can you even read this?

<comment><USER22> Here you go, buddy:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock- origin/cjpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock- origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock- origin...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is off topic but it was so distracting I had to ask: does anyone else trying to read this on mobile have this page serving up the exact same advertisement on this page for each break in the article? I refreshed and it fixed things for the most part. Two areas still have duplicated ads.</comment>


Madoff bill would charge rich NY inmates for jail - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE56J5CN20090720 <comment><USER2> along the same lines, they should also recover _completely_ the unjustified money spent by politicians/bureaucrats - like the money that gov sanford spent on his Argentina visit. Other examples could include decorating their offices beyond reason etc.</comment>


Show HN: I made immigrationlist.co which lists the best countries to immigrate - <AUTHOR> https://immigrationlist.co/ <comment><USER2> This indiehacker scene is getting weird. People copying Pieter Levels to the pixel chasing some passive income dream.

Some of this junk leaks to HN because the style is literally targeted to the crowd. But these little projects lack depth under the emojis and the cool attitude.

Think for yourself too. You are literally copying everything Levels and the cult are doing. Sprinkling it with emojis, the ridiculous button in the footer. You don't have to do that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Being a Pakistani, it is not easy when it comes to visa-free travel to other countries. This website intends to show the best countries to immigrate from developing countries. Also serves the purposed for people in developed countries to think about other options.</comment>


Kinect Could Have Been On The Mac Instead Of The Xbox - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5683095/kinect-could-have-been-on-the-mac-instead-of-the-xbox <comment><USER2> Direct link: [http://www.cultofmac.com/how-apple-almost-got-microsofts- kin...](http://www.cultofmac.com/how-apple-almost-got-microsofts-kinect-game- controller/67951)</comment>


Ask HN: Social anxiety and going to a conference alone - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to ReactEurope at the end of the week, alone. Nothing special, except I have been suffering from social anxiety for the better part of my life.
I have been doing better the last year after seeing a psychologist and a personal coach. It was a very conscious decision to go to the conference on my own, to challenge myself. However, I am already regretting my decision and I honestly can't see myself getting through these two days at the moment.
How do I cope? What can I do to make thing easier? The things I'm dreading the most are the 'social' moments: breakfast, lunch, coffee breaks, dinner, party, ...
I don't know how to talk to strangers. I can't make small talk to save my life and I'm extremely shy.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever been to a conference on their own, nor am I the only person to struggle with anxiety. Does HN have any tips for me? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Set a goal you can reach and take a win on. e.g. talk to ONE person. You'll have two days to accomplish this. Take a win for pushing yourself and showing up. Find someone you feel you may have something in common with and that you think you might like. Introduce yourself (hi, i'm dinosaurs, what's your name?) Don't make a big deal out of it, just go for it. You're brave for pushing your limits. Let us know how it goes? (You are not alone, even though sometimes it feels like it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's exactly what I'm planning to do. I have been preparing, mentally, for this. I made a list of things that might cause me to panic, starting from the moment I walk out of my door to get on the train, until the moment I get back home. I ranked these events from 1 to 3, with 3 being the most stressful. For every 9 points I get, I'm rewarding myself with something, probably some vinyl ;) I don't expect to 'score' many points, but even one '3' would be a huge win, like you said. I'll let you know how it went afterwards. Thanks again.

<comment><USER2> Great! Good idea to reward yourself for accomplishments. Do well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you been to other conferences before? In case not, I can tell you that you are not required to talk to that much people if you don't feel like it. Just keep to yourself and you should be fine.

It would however defeat the purpose of making the effort to go to said conference. I'm simply stating this as a fallback mechanism in case you feel too shy or anxious when you do get there.

So try not to think much about it. Worst case scenario you will listen to great talks, learn a bit, and go home without talking to anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would indeed defeat the purpose of going there. I have been to conferences before, but never alone. Usually, the person I went with was pretty social and I had no problems getting in touch with other people, through my colleague.

The worst case scenario doesn't sound too bad. I just don't want to come back without having spoken to anyone.. I would see that a bit as a failure, considering I'm going there to challenge myself.

<comment><USER4> I support your plan of talking with people, and setting a goal for interaction is something others could also benefit from. Just a heads up: some people _really_ don't want to talk with anyone, some are busy, and some are just dicks. And that has nothing to do with your conversation skills or person.

I've been there, trying to hold a conversation with someone who's more interested in their iPhone. Sometimes it's OK to just cut your losses and find someone more interesting. (And no need for elaborate exits from conversations. A simple "oh look, free beer" will suffice.)

A tip I read somewhere: find two strangers talking to each other and see if you can enter their conversation. That way you'll help them out, and reduce your own workload by a third compared to talking to someone 1 on 1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There will be plenty of people at the conference worried about the same exact thing you are. So by coming and talking to them, you will likely be doing them a favor. Now they can talk to you and not have to pretend to check email.

Once at the conference, people will ask you what it is you do, where do you come from, and other ice-breaking questions. Think of a longer answer to these questions that give the other party a chance to keep the conversation going. For example, instead of saying, "I am a software developer" you may say, "I work as a software developer in this small agency in Chicago, and in my spare time I am working on a pet project that's going to help developers keep track of bugs." Now people can tell you that they've been to Chicago or how much they hate/love bug tracking tools. And you take it from there.

What I found easiest is try to be a part of group conversations. This way the weight is not entirely on you to keep the conversation going, and you may instead jump in here and there as you feel comfortable.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> You're me at JavaOne in 2006. Here's a cool fact, there's a ton of people there and so the person you're next to in line for a talk, you'll probably never see them again after you go home. I know anxiety isn't a conscious, rational thing, but you can combat the urge to flee by reminding yourself of just how low-stakes the risk of talking to someone actually is. Standing in line next to someone gives you a chance for bite-sized interaction. I still get stressed in crowds, but what I do is, I just have a short, casual conversation with the person next to me that I naturally let end after a few sentences. That way if the person really isn't interested in talking then it naturally dies off, but if they feel like talking more, they will keep the ball rolling for you.

</comment><comment><USER7> You are so not alone. I dread little interactions like lunches, dinners, open bars, networking reception (oh my!). Just gotta be yourself, and realize there is probably 20 other people there in the same boat. Try to find them!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm also going to the conference alone too. I think you made a great decision.

If it makes you feel any better I think you'll find it very different to regular social situations. I think this will be one environment where you will find people who are interested in the same things you are. Just talk about what interests you, I'm sure you will find some great people to talk with.

If you want to hang out at the conference just DM/tweet me @zenlambda or chat to me on the conference slack (my handle is 'frank').

</comment><comment><USER9> I am in-between on the extrovert-introvert scale. I have attended conferences by myself. It can be hard work for a shy or introverted person to deal with the 'social' moments. One solution is to ration your effort to be sociable...

For example, I don't feel the need to try hard to be sociable at coffee breaks. Everyone is busy getting coffee, looking at the conference schedule, checking email, etc. It is very normal to not be sociable at coffee breaks, so you can fit in without problem by getting coffee and then finding a comfortable place to sit and just study whatever you want.

I almost always skip the "party" if there is one. There's nothing wrong with that.

In my opinion, you might want to reserve your main effort for lunch. This is a time when people are resting from going to sessions but are relaxed enough to talk and may have just learned something interesting, too. The two issues here are where to sit, and what to talk about. My advice on where to sit is first of all, do NOT sit at empty table by yourself. This will feel uncomfortable, while waiting to see if anyone will sit there. I also avoid taking the last seat at an almost-full table where everybody is talking. They may be busy with their conversations. I look for a table that has a few people but is perhaps 60% empty. I don't sit on the opposite side of the table far away from the people, nor right next to them; I pick a spot that is one or two seats away. As soon as you sit down, shake hands and introduce yourself. Other people will come and fill in the empty seats. It is normal when someone sits down near to you to immediately say hello, and introduce yourself. They will do the same.

Fortunately, at a conference, everybody has in common an interest in the subject. This makes it easier converse, using standard questions to begin: "Have you been to this conference before?" "Did you travel far to get to the conference?" "Have you used React a lot?" "What did you think of the keynote speech?" "What does you company do?" If the conversion moves to a technical discussion, you may find it easier to talk.

If conversation becomes difficult, you can just listen to what the others at the table are talking about.

Also, people are always busy at conferences and running off to take care of tasks or business, so if it is too uncomfortable is OK to finish lunch and leave; you are not trapped!

If there is a dinner speaker, then dinner is easy, since most of the time everyone will be listening. After the speaker, conversation can be about what the speaker said.

Good luck! There are many people who exactly understand this anxiety and are wishing you the best.

<comment><USER10> Those are great thoughts. Another good general topic to ask people:

* Have you been to Paris before? (Are there things I should do or see while I'm here?)

A lot of people love to be helpful and give advice, so if you ask for advice or suggestions they're likely to appreciate the opportunity (including the opportunity to show that they're knowledgeable).

You can also ask people for more travel-related questions like how to get around, how to get to a specific place, etc. They'll usually be quite comfortable being asked this, regard it as a normal and appropriate thing to be asked by a stranger, and, again, want to help out by discussing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Care to post any follow-up? How did you do?</comment>


Ask HN: New Grad Software Developer at HFTs vs. Big SV Companies - <AUTHOR> I'm considering offers between those two kinds of companies HFT - (HRT, Two Sigma, Jane Street, ...) vs Big SV (Google, FB, ...) both for software engineer/developer position. From the offers I got, those trading firms pay significantly more than SV companies (base salary is nearly 1.5-1.7x and expected bonus is HUGE). Personally, I have only interned at tech companies in SV and do not have any experience working with Wall Street firms, so I'm quite scared with working there (work/life balance, culture, etc.) Anybody has any thoughts? What are the factors that I should consider when making this decision? Will the compensation in SV companies grow comparable to that HFTs as I proceed to a more senior position? I feel far more comfortable in SV companies but the money really makes me think hard.
Also, how hard is it to move around between these two different areas once I chose to join one of the companies? Any body found that transition is easy/hard? Please share.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Please read this :

Should I intern at Google or Jane Street? [https://www.quora.com/Should-I- intern-at-Google-or-Jane-Stre...](https://www.quora.com/Should-I-intern-at- Google-or-Jane-Street)

It helps me a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think the pay gap will close. While surely you'll get raises in SV, you'll also get similar ratio raises in HFT.

The best way to see fit is if you can talk to others who have worked in both areas -- take an internship if you can.

From a friend who worked in both areas, I've been told the major difference is not work hours, but work intensity. He preferred finance in the end (and is still there), and thought finance has a higher intensity/focus in pace of work.</comment>


Show HN: The Kontact Magic API – Find Almost Anyones Email - <AUTHOR> https://kontactmagic.com/display/show-hn-kontactmagic-api

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign up for the free plan and click API Access to try it out from your browser.</comment>


India triumphs in maiden Mars mission - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/24/us-india-mars-idUSKCN0HJ05J20140924

<comment><USER2> One more step closer to Mars...</comment>


Oh no DOGE gone Ponzi - <AUTHOR> http://ponzidoge.com/

<comment><USER2> I love these. Last time I but 15$ into a bitcoin ponzi and it was shut down seconds after I wonder if I will have more luck this time? This might be some interest to people also [http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoinfaucets](http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoinfaucets) .

</comment><comment><USER3> "PonziDOGE may charge a 5% fee from the general pool for server costs and miscellaneous expenses."

</comment><comment><USER4> can somebody explain what this is?

<comment><USER5> It's a Ponzi scheme! They're promising you a 20% return as long as there are greater fools around that are willing to bet they're not the greatest fools. I love it.

<comment><USER6> It's been done, though: [http://ponzicoin.co/](http://ponzicoin.co/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kind of disappointed I cannot find a relevant XKCD</comment>


Ask HN: What's your dream as a programmer? - <AUTHOR> What motivates/keeps you going? <comment><USER2> Level up my skills and creativity to create a "lifestyle" business that I can be passionate that also provides enough for me to pay my bills and more, be my own boss, own my time, etc

<comment><USER3> This exactly! I'd like to make enough money from a project of mine to comfortably support myself, while also enjoying the project itself. The first part is hard, but the second is easy, because I only start projects that I like! (Current project is [https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com), launched a month ago, so far so good!)

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, what a coincidence. I was just reading it last night (had bookmarked it earlier and decided to read it yesterday). Very cool project though, would love it if the interviews were longer / turned into podcasts

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To write code that outlasts me, so far all my projects are gone within a few years after I stopped working for the company that needed it.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how often this happens.

<comment><USER7> My entire career, as short as it still is. In the last 8 years I've worked for 3 companies. Every single new project I've worked on has suffered from continuous feature creep; irreconcilable contract disputes; or immediate obsolescence.

My wins are fixing little bugs, I have no career achievements.

<comment><USER8> Totally feeling the same frustration here. The only projects I have worked on that have stood the test of time are my own side projects.

This has led me to conclude that most forms of employment in the software industry will leave you with little to speak for. You have to create your own thing if you want to make an impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To build systems that should exist in society, reduces people's frustrations, and generates revenue/cuts costs.

But really: To raise a child and see her grow and learn about the world: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-09-08](http://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2013-09-08)

</comment><comment><USER10> The love of producing something I can interact with. And writing elegant code.

It's uncool but I'm enjoying learning more about WPF for this reason!

</comment><comment><USER11> Writing libraries/API's that when used by other devs makes them say "This is really easy to use."

</comment><comment><USER8> Early on in my career, I released a somewhat successful iOS app for skateboarders. It was really cool seeing monthly revenue come in, even if it was only a few hundred dollars.

I basically want that same feeling times 20, so I'm getting enough to live on from my own products.

I also want to work on projects where I either have full creative control or get to work with great designers who I mostly agree with.

I want the financial comfort to confidently say 'no' to every bad idea I hear.

</comment><comment><USER12> Finding a market need that everyone else seems to have missed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Money and power

</comment><comment><USER14> my side project. I want to create something the world values while at the same time keep myself learning something new

</comment><comment><USER15> To not ever use a computer again

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to create a small business then hire someone who writes the code, so I never ever have to write code again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Motivation? Developing applications and services people truly enjoy.

Dream? Writing code that is used continuously in production for centuries. ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> To start my own company and become a billionaire in ten years time so that I can fully concentrate on pursuing other life interests for the rest of my life. (I don't mind becoming politically influential as I intend to use those powers for the good (no seriously) but that is secondary.)

<comment><USER19> You can probably pursue your interests with a lot less than a billion dollars! YMMV depending on your interests, of course.

If, for example, you were able to build a business that could bring in $300k-$500k net annually without requiring you to spend all of your time on the business, what percentage of your life interests would you be able to pursue?

<comment><USER18> Not a lot of them, about a third only, and certainly not wholeheartedly with gay abandon, which would be a shame as I am really want to do things wholeheartedly with gay abandon. My milage does vary (MMDV).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> An interest in possibilities. What if I apply myself to a data set that reveals fundamental truths about the universe? Or how to communicate with extraterrestrials? Or reveals fundamental truths about Earth?

</comment><comment><USER21> To destroy and rebuild humanity.

</comment><comment><USER22> First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the wom(a/e)n

</comment><comment><USER23> To write elegant code that simplifies life and and brings me fame and fortune.

</comment><comment><USER24> Run a small VR/game studio, work on my own experimental/risky ideas with a small group of reliable, interesting people who share my vision strongly.

</comment><comment><USER25> Best case: Create a project that impacts lots of people. Worst case: be able to create enough wealth to sustain me and my family.

</comment><comment><USER26> quit programming.

</comment><comment><USER27> that I will succeed in making a spreadsheet editor that is better then excel (not hard) and will be widely use by the majority of people (hard). I want to destroy excel after the all the time I've had to endure vba or deal with its stupid intricacies . im bitter. and I hate excel

</comment><comment><USER28> Seeing my stuff running and running well.

</comment><comment><USER29> My dream would be to create something used and enjoyed by a lot of people

</comment><comment><USER30> To build an online business that can earn me a good living as a one-man-band.</comment>


A Boeing 747 costs $200k USD in material and labour costs to repaint - <AUTHOR> https://www.travelstatsman.com/06052019/the-200000-paint-job/ <comment><USER2> They forgot to include the cost of the plane's downtime.</comment>


At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html <comment><USER2> The general sentiment about the TEAL classes (the ones with the clickers) is that they are really gimmicky. Supposedly, it gives the professor some feedback on what concepts are unclear and pushes the students to be attentive.

The problem seems to be that it's just unnecessary structure for something that's typically dynamic. It at least partially devolved into an attendance system - students used to just press in for missing friends, until recently when they had each student buy their own clicker.

<comment><USER3> I remain convinced that the only reason they require those clickers is to charge $70-$100 to each student for them.

<comment><USER4> You're joking! $70-100?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a slight thread hijack, which do you prefer, blackboards or whiteboards?

The physicists and mathematicians I know seem to universally prefer blackboards, while everyone else seems to like whiteboards.

I like whiteboards for any semi-permanent or "data-rich" writing (i.e. multi- color), but probably prefer blackboards for intense computation.

<comment><USER6> While RK is asking - has anyone had contact with those glass boards that Joel wrote about recently?

<comment><USER7> Yep, they're nice.

One thing though, when there's direct light, what's written on the surface casts a shadow on the painted back-side. It looks a bit odd.

Also, the same effect results in a fuzzy picture when the glass board is used as a projector screen.

I'd love to experiment with back-lighting the glass board. If would eliminate the shadow-problem, and look pretty neat, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "the professor covered multiple blackboards with mathematical formulas and explained the principles of Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism."

Walter Lewin did a lot more than just that.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Walter Lewin did a lot more than just that._

Please tell us more. I've never had the privilege of seeing Walter Lewin in action.

<comment><USER9> Professor Lewin has several classes available online through both MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and the iTunes store.

OCW Link: [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics- IFall1999/Vide...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics- IFall1999/VideoLectures/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The large lecture hall is an example of something which was necessary due to past technology constraints but which persists even though it's no longer optimal. I've taught such classes of 75 to 80 students. Even at that modest size, there is considerable overhead just from managing that many people.

What we really need are uses of technology that maximize interaction between students and professors and amongst fellow students. The most productive time in terms of my teaching were the lab sessions of only 25 students each. That and office hours, which were attended by a shockingly small number of students. I suspect that study groups are also highly productive. Technology should be used to enable more interaction akin to study groups and office hours.

</comment><comment><USER9> "As each semester progressed, attendance in [the professor's] introductory physics courses fell to 50 percent, as it did, he said, for nearly all of his colleagues...'I had poor attendance, and was failing 10 to 15 percent'"

So, 50 percent of the students aren't coming to class, and they're only failing 10-15 percent? It sounds like the tests are too easy. If the tests were more demanding, more students would come to class--which might (paradoxically) lower the fail rate.

"Unlike in the lectures, attendance counts toward the final grade...[the professor] gauged the level of understanding in the room by throwing out a series of multiple-choice questions. The students "voted" with their wireless "personal response clickers""

I'm currently a sophomore in Computer Engineering, and I have had several 150+ student lectures that used these clickers to take attendance. It's a simple way to make sure students come to class. This is a major benefit that has nothing to do with smaller class sizes.

<comment><USER11> _It sounds like the tests are too easy._

You might be right that much or most of the higher pass rate is due to higher attendance, but it's also possible that students were learning plenty from section, the book, and working on problem sets. When I taught the analogous course (Physics 1) at Caltech, many of the students skipped lecture entirely. The failure rate was typically under 5%, and I guarantee it wasn't because the tests were easy.

One student I remember took it all the way: he skipped everything, including homework (which counted for 20% of the grade), but he got _perfect_ scores on all four quizzes and on the final exam. According to the numbers he had an A- because of the 0 on homework, but everyone in the grading room agreed that was absurd, and so we gave him a flat A instead.

<comment><USER12> 1\. - 0.2 = 0.8 is typically a B-. Is there a different grading scale there?

<comment><USER11> Basically all classes at Caltech are curved. It actually makes a lot of sense, because it means you can make the tests really hard and leave plenty of room at the top, which among other things helps reduce the variance due to careless errors. (If you make a couple minor minus sign mistakes, but nail a hard problem most people miss, you still come out ahead.) In Physics 1, typically 90%+ was A+, ~82-89% was A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And, in a virtual age, what is the point of a physical school?

Answer: there is no point.

<comment><USER14> I've been reading Stanford's Engineering Everywhere lectures, and the thing I'm most impressed about is how much support there is for students:

Course-specific computer labs with course-specific lab assistants to help you walk you through problems as you're coming up against them in learning to code!

Sections with section leaders who grade your code in front of you and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your coding style!

There is no advantage to a huge lecture hall over a podcast. But in-person mentoring, one-on-one human interaction is the best way to learn if you can afford it.

<comment><USER13> _in-person mentoring, one-on-one human interaction is the best way to learn if you can afford it._

Is it possible to tell the difference between _in-person presence_ and _immersive telepresence_?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Is it possible to tell the difference between in-person presence and immersive telepresence?_

Yes. I say this as a parent of a pioneer class student in Stanford's EPGY Online High School.

I'll acknowledge that the several examples I have seen (not just EPGY OHS) of distance learning courses have far from immersive telepresence, but I think there is evolutionary adaptation to real-world, in-person conversation that isn't taken advantage of by any distance learning communication mode I have seen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bill Clinton on Snowden: An 'imperfect messenger'  - <AUTHOR> http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/09/bill-clinton-on-snowden-an-imperfect-messenger/?hpt=hp_t2 <comment><USER2> Headline really misrepresents the substance of the article. The headline -- and the first line of the article -- refer to the "imperfect messenger" description, but the bulk of the article/speech is about the issues raised by the Snowden revelations, not about Snowden's imperfeections.</comment>


Your Superfund: the pollution nearest you - <AUTHOR> http://macwright.org/superfund/

<comment><AUTHOR> The accompanying blog post is also worth a look: <http://macwright.org/2011/10/30/voronoi-polygons.html></comment>