How do you have deep, written discussions with your teams? - <AUTHOR> What is the best way to have careful, deep, written discussions among distributed teams? Are there tools meant for this? Would something like a BBS work. If so, are there good modern options?
We use distributed teams. We communicate using a mix of email, Slack, and Zoom. Our work involves lengthy discussions and deep dives into complex issues. This type of 'deep discussion' benefits from carefully written arguments and counterarguments.
Emails often start fine. Someone sends a well structured, well written argument. The first few replies will be strong. But then it diverges into a mess of threads that are hard to follow. People resort to color-coding their responses in-line, etc.
Slack is too chatty. Other chat-based solutions are the same. I've never seen it work for this type of 'deep discussion.' Conversations get scattered across channels and threads within channels. Maybe we're using it wrong. To me it's the worst way to encourage deep discussion.
Zoom, calls, and in-person meetings are hit or miss. The advantage is they seem to cut to the chase on simple issues. But for deep discussion, they often go nowhere. They favor speaking ability. No one prepares enough. Instead of careful thought and discussion, you get hot takes. A lot of our discussion benefits from going away to gather evidence or think more. Rarely is there a need for synced discussion. And there's never enough time.
I've tried to find off-the-shelf solutions. A simple, old-fashioned BBS seems best. It breaks things into the right unit of discussion. It works for short- or long-form discussion. It creates a coherent timeline of discussion, etc.
I worry that without the bells and whistles of a modern app, getting the team to use it will be a challenge. It'll be viewed as a stale company discussion board. A lot of options I've looked at have clunky interfaces and tough learning curves for what should be super simple and intuitive. <comment><USER2> The real problem here is that you have things you want to capture from ephemeral conversations, and you have structured information you want to build up over time.

Technology can't solve this for you, but using the wrong one will make things worse.

You need to

a) pick a medium for the longer lived stuff

b) come up with some rules for how it will be used and, probably more important, maintained, and

c) put the time in, ongoing.

Lot's of people spend time on (a), don't spend time on (b) and try and avoid thinking about (c). This means for example if a later conversation shifts the table a bit, some one needs to go over earlier material and adjust or annotate it.

I think a lot of approaches can work, but they have to be flexible - you need to be able to structure things, and also add different media (links, embedded images/scribbles, whatever). By nature any system that allows this will let you make a terrible mess of things.

Consider for example Wiki's. I'm sure most of us have seen useful wiki based documents, and completely useless messes where you can't find anything. The difference isn't the technology.

Trying to be practical, I would start with either a file system structure on a shared platform (google docs, dropbox, whatever) with some simple structure and rules. Or a wiki or wiki like system with good attachment support and hopefully search.

</comment><comment><USER3> (Obviously biased.)

So, instead of using tools primarily designed for chatting and commenting, you could use a tool specifically designed for the facilitation, capturing and representation of complex arguments.

We have spent the past 8 years building just such a tool, it's called Kialo ([https://kialo.com](https://kialo.com)). It's nowhere near as perfect as we would want it to be, but it gets the job done nicely.

In a nutshell, Kialo is an argument tree on steroids, with claim/comment separation, voting, claim multi-linking and switching of user perspectives, for single and multi thesis arguments.

Discussions can be real-time or async, private or public and worked on via desktop or mobile browser.

Here is a discussion Ethereum did whether they should use Kialo: [https://kialo.com/28996](https://kialo.com/28996) (103 claims)

And as an example of a multi thesis debate, have a look at this US politics one: [https://www.kialo.com/24431](https://www.kialo.com/24431) (>1k claims)

Two months ago we launched Kialo Edu ([https://kialo-edu.com](https://kialo- edu.com)), our dedicated site for educators, as we wanted to build some extra functionality for them, additionally to giving them a more controlled environment without the public discussions.

We plan on releasing a custom site with additional decision-making features for teams and organizations soon (drop us a mail if you want to be notified support@kialoXXcom), until then, feel free to experiment/use kialo.com.

All feedback is welcome.

<comment><USER4> Just wanted to say thanks for mentioning this website. Really interesting concept. Registered!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would try Zulip: [https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

Where Slack encourages line-level chats in mostly static channels, Zulip encourages paragraph-level chats in lightweight and findable threads.

</comment><comment><USER6> At LightStep, we use "lab notebooks", which are essentially living documents for ongoing engineering projects. They are pretty nice for having deeper technical discussions in a distributed-friendly manner. [https://go.lightstep.com/rs/260-KGM-472/images/lab- notebook-...](https://go.lightstep.com/rs/260-KGM-472/images/lab-notebook- template.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> We have just started trying to answer this question on my team, and our first take at it is pulling out specific questions from various emails and conversation, and documenting them (in our wiki) as a decision to be made. We write up the question, various answers on the table, pros/cons for each, and then have a call to talk through them and decide. That decision is recorded on the wiki page, and we have a running log of the team's discussions and decisions.

There may be better ways, but it has done a number of things for us:

1) Improved our documentation of decisions.

2) Helped us pull focused, answerable questions our of free-ranging discussions.

3) Allowed everyone to have a voice, not just the people with vocal, strong personalities, as any one of us call just write up a page to discuss, and then set up a call to do so.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google Docs with a structured approach and handle it async.

</comment><comment><USER9> As an R&D focused company operating across a wide range of areas we have tried a few things. We are not explicitly focused on written discussions but do want results to be documented. We have tried many things from wikis to clipboards, Github issues to formal verbose documents, and settled on markdown files on Github. Usually we have a group meeting, discuss things, take notes either directly to a markdown file or transfer them quickly to a markdown file, then expand thinking there including approaches tested, findings, test results, conclusions. We like the format because it allows linking to other internal systems (accounting, other repos, etc.) plus integrating media. Edit history and access control comes free.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't think it's a tool problem. It's a communication skills problem.

Everyone has different communication skills. If you chat with me on Skype, I'll be mostly passive saying "yes" "uh huh".

I've had the deepest discussions through Slack, but you have to embrace it as a chat medium - late night Slack, first thing in the morning, ignore your kids at dinner kind of discussions.

BBS/forums are the same. We've had great discussions, but only with the people with the skills for it. On an actual board, everyone chatting there does havw the skills, whereas there are 80% of 'lurkers' who are not very comfortable yet.

So it depends a lot on your team itself. Agree on something and give them 6 months to learn it.

</comment><comment><USER11> > I worry that without the bells and whistles of a modern app, getting the > team to use it will be a challenge

You need to tell them that this what we are using. Period.

If you feel the need to elaborate on why you decided to use that medium then do so... but somebody has to be in charge. No?

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://twist.com/](https://twist.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Disclaimer: I work here.

Discourse [http://discourse.org/](http://discourse.org/) really is fantastic for this. We do all our internal communication and longform discussions using the software as a form of dogfooding. We have lots of plugins that make working together as a team easier, and it's so wonderful to be able to write a longform discussion that everyone reads and contributes to! We have more team tools on the way as well.

I worked on a remote team before primarily using slack and zoom and that was awful and full of distraction. Discourse is a breath of fresh air here.

</comment><comment><USER14> We use an old-school BBS-style bug tracker. Each project has its own page on the tracker, in which longer-form discussion can be had. Slack replies are not ideal, they get swamped easily.

</comment><comment><USER15> Do you use GitHub? If so, Discussions are useful for this. Closest in proximity to your codebase, simple markdown formatting, trusted platform. I've had some success lately using it as a remote member of my team, primarily to document my thoughts and request feedback, which is to say it hasn't been very successful with most of the rest of the team together in an office. However, I would recommend it as a simple platform for discussion.

</comment><comment><USER16> Our team recently started using Notion for similar reasons. We all heavily use Google Doc's but sending a link to a read-only or comment enabled doc gets messy for discussion very quickly.

Notion enables you to embed any number of Google docs along with other media: screen captures, screenshots, etc.

The trick is creating a documented process to moderate the discussion.

Jury is still out on long term viability as a tool, but we're super happy with it so far.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Emails often start fine. Someone sends a well structured, well written > argument. The first few replies will be strong. But then it diverges into a > mess of threads that are hard to follow. People resort to color-coding their > responses in-line, etc.

This is the worst. "Answers in bold" \-- then they forget to bold one. Or "Answers in ALL CAPS." Too easy to leave people off or some jackass gets added.

</comment><comment><USER18> I use [https://simpleboard.io](https://simpleboard.io) to keep everyone on the team updates on projects we're working on, you can submit mini reports on a realtime dashboard that everyone get updated at the same time, it helps a lot especially on remote teams and also you can manage project linked to any platform like jira, asana ...

</comment><comment><USER19> We use Discourse for all complex conversations that can happen asynchronously (meaning not urgent) and we want to capture/document decisions for. Discourse is also great as internal knowledge base. Moving this sort of comms out of Slack has also made Slack better for us, as there is less FOMO and thus more deep work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Agree with all your points here. I find the old-fashioned BBS-style system at my company extremely useful. Needs email notifications (we have the option for immediate or batched). Being able to reply by email is a plus (ours does not have this)--helpful with getting people to use the forum instead of just email.

</comment><comment><USER21> Slack threads seem to work just fine in my experience. Not uncommon for a meaty subject to reach 80+ replies from 10 different people. Usually finish it off with a Zoom call once everything has been laid out and it's time to decide on actions items, if they haven't been decided already.

</comment><comment><USER22> Basecamp. Their product is designed to make long-form written communications enjoyable/easy. I even wrote a blog post about what they have to say: [https://blog.pixelic.io/jason-fried/](https://blog.pixelic.io/jason-fried/)

<comment><USER22> But I hear you - I founded a remote startup as well and at times we have lengthy discussions and it's difficult to do them remotely. BTW, are you building a digital product? If so, I'd love to talk to you, we're building a tool for software development teams. Let me know if you're interested in doing a 10-15 min call to exchange notes. chris at pixelic.io. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm working on this. Remote-first, writing/async/decisions culture, deep work, and moving towards a post-chat, modern forum solution. Email is in profile if interested.

</comment><comment><USER24> collanon.app Feel free to try it out as much as you want, it's a communication tool based on timely anonymous topics with limited deep dives(3 levels deep), a star system on solutions and only after the time ends you'll be able to see who was behind the messages and who had the most liked solutions.

</comment><comment><USER25> Confluence? wiki? Google docs? Github Markdown files? - all of these can work.

</comment><comment><USER26> would a subreddit work?</comment>


Bobby Fischer dead at 64 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/18/fischer.dies.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories <comment><USER2> Sacrifices are great. Its visually appealing and I loved it too when I first started.

But on looking back I think what makes the greatest chess players is their intelligence and ability to calculate quickly and accurately.

Here is an example of one of Fischers greatest games. It really shows his great insight.

It is a game from 1971 against Petrosian. Here is the link <http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1044351>

After the 21st move Fischer has a great knight and there is no way an amateur would give it for the useless bishop. But that's exactly what he did.

Fischer's insight was that in this particular position getting rid of the bishop allows his rooks to invade into the enemy's position quickly (which is exactly how the game ended).

At that time this move was criticized by top gradmasters as a blunder.

I just brought this up to show that chess is really a game of intelligence.

Regards.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dude died at a power of 2 which is also the number of squares on a chess board. Poetic.

<comment><USER4> The number of 1x1 squares on a chessboard. The number of squares on a chessboard is 204

1, 8x8 square 4, 7x7 squares 9, 6x6 squares 16, 5x5 squares 25, 4x4 squares 36, 3x3 squares 49, 2x2 squares 64, 1x1 squares

<comment><USER3> Yes, and of course you should really generalize that so that the number of squares on a board with nxn single squares is sum(i=1..n) i*i

<comment><USER5> This thread is pedantic.

By thy way:

      sum(i=1..n) i*i = n/6 + n^2/2 + n^3/3

<comment><USER3> Proof?

<comment><USER6> This proof helps: [http://pirate.shu.edu/~wachsmut/ira/infinity/answers/sm_sq_c...](http://pirate.shu.edu/~wachsmut/ira/infinity/answers/sm_sq_cb.html)

From that: sum bla= n(n+1)(2n+1)/6, then you go distribute

<comment><USER5> Nice. How did I get the result in the first place?

I know that this sum can be expressed as a cubic polynomial. So I just evaluated the sum at four data-points (n=0,1,2,3) and used those to determine the four coefficents by solving a linear equation system.

<comment><USER3> Turns out that drawing a picture really helps: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=101532>

<comment><USER5> You can usually come up with a clever picture only after you understood the problem - not before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> :-(

Fischer is my hero. If you are even mildly interested in chess, you should analyze his games. His games can only be called 'outrageous'. He would sacrifice a queen and couple of steps later he would win when no one else see it coming!

I usually sit with an open mouth for a five minutes when I analyze his games. They are masterpieces.

</comment><comment><USER2> you must be referring to the game of the century against Bryne. Fischer played that game when he was 13 years old.

In later years he rarely sacrificed much.

Fischer's style of chess is considered the most universal in that he has no preferences he just plays the best moves for the position.

Kasparov considered Fischer to be 10 years ahead of the top grandmasters. In 1972 he had scores over the grandmasters (candidates matches) of 6-0.

Yes. He was incredible.

<comment><USER7> "In later years he rarely sacrificed much."

IIRC, he did that against Tal too.

Either way, his games are a thing of beauty to see and wonder "how did he think of _that_?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's somewhat funny that all the great hackers I know in person tend to suck at chess. Did you noticed the same?

<comment><USER9> My high point at chess was when I was 8 and beat some newb with the four move checkmate. My chess career quickly went downhill from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> He's been an embarrassment to the game for the last 30 years. With respect to that, good riddance.

<comment><USER11> he hasn't been playing for the last 30 years- he has only embarassed himself.

<comment><USER7> He stood up to the government coz of what he believed in. Thats a big deal, irrespective of what he believed in seems nice or embarassing in your eyes.

<comment><USER12> > He stood up to the government coz of what he believed in.

Yeah, what he believed was that the Holocaust didn't happen, and that Jews are filthy and evil and controlling the government and everything else. Glad he stood up for what he believed in.

<comment><USER13> In the interest of full disclosure, one could reference

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer>

All I kept thinking as I read through this was, "How could someone so brilliant say things so hateful and illogical?"

I don't know. There are probably many theories (mental illness jumps out as one possibility).

As far as Bobby Fischer is concerned, his downfall and later public pronouncements were tragic, but not as tragic as the loss of a human life. May he rest in peace.

<comment><USER14> Brilliant people seem to go crazy kinda often.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reg Braithwaite does Daily WTF - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/02/mouse-trap.html

<comment><USER2> A disturbing number of startups have code like this too. They start out on a new project all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thinking they'll change the world. They write lots of code, it may even work, but nobody wants it. That's the most likely outcome for a startup...

Then, being determined sons-of-bitches, they cast around for a new idea that'll build on what they've already built and prevent their old code base from going to waste. They find a potential market that's somewhat related, repurpose the code, add some new third-party libraries to deal with the specifics of the new market, and launch again.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

The solution's really to throw out all your code and start over when you go into a new market, keeping the _knowledge_ you've gained. But since code is visible and knowledge isn't, I've never worked at a startup that encouraged this...

</comment><comment><USER3> The real WTF was letting a Business Analyst do anything that could directly affect the code without it going through a programmer first.

Would you let some guy build you a car if he had changed his oil once, years ago?

A+ story. Can't believe how much this stuff happens.

<comment><USER4> I recall reading something (sorry no link at the moment) which exhorted people to remember that _anything_ which affected the software's ability to meet requirements is code and is to be treated as such.

Which means... some kind of revision control and the full scrutiny of your QA process before deployment.

So if a customer says, "and I want to be able to change the workflow rules without programming," you can say "Sure we can do that!" But you have to educate them to the fact that just because you give them a way to do that with a GUI or a DSL or whatever, the heavy part of the process--specification, testing, whatever--does not magically go away.

I'm rambling a bit, but I guess I am saying that had this project succeeded exactly as they envisioned it, an incredible WTF would have hit them when the customer started changing the rules and breaking everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man, did this actually happen? I take it Reg is the "New Guy"?

<comment><USER4> This actually happened. But, unh, I was like, unh, there but not there, ifyaknowwhatimean, kinda-sorta.</comment></comment>


Airbnb's War on Porn Stars - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/airbnbs-war-on-porn-stars-they-locked-me-out <comment><USER2> Most of the big web companies are A North American and have the prudishness that goes with that. For all the talk of inclusion this sort of thing shows how it's hollow.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing this has nothing to do with prudishness and everything to do with people putting their places and Airbnb and finding out porn was shot at their place and it's now a hazmat site.

<comment><USER4> I'm super curious how shooting porn would make a place any more unsanitary than a normal couple staying somewhere and having sex. If anything, porn stars ought to be safer and cleaner - they are regularly tested and porn shoots won't be anywhere near as messy as regular sex between two normal people.

The only angle I can understand is having your apartment in a porn movie, which is unacceptable because you rent it out for people to stay in, not draw commercial profit from it through film production. But calling a porn shoot a "hazmat site"? Nope, don't agree here at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "never ... in my name" just means aliases were involved and she was involved in shooting porn in an Airbnb rental. That still leaves open the very serious question of how Airbnb was able to make the connection. Possibilities range from investigating a legitimate host complaint to questionable use of user data to outright stalking by an employee. Anybody who uses Airbnb should probably consider which is more likely, and what that means for their own privacy/safety.

<comment><USER6> They mention that they kept asking her for different forms of ID and then a clearer picture. Here's a scenario that's consistent with what they've said:

She shoots a porn in an AirBnB rented by someone else. At some point the host pulls up some porn and recognizes his house. He reports this to AirBnB. AirBnB looks at the porn, suspends the account of the person who rented it, and then tries to figure out who the performers are.

They get the real names of the performers, and then search their system for people with that name. "Jay" matches the search, but they want to make sure it's the same person as in the porn, so they ask for a clearer picture. After they're confident that she is the person who filmed a porn in an AirBnB without the permission of the host, and they discover that she's also listed on an escort site, they suspend her account. If this is what happened, and I think it's pretty likely, AirBnB did exactly the right thing.

<comment><USER7> In your scenario, how is air bnb doing the right thing? She doesn't have a contract(nor a terms and condition) with airbnb. But you think it is OK to suspends here account because someone else broke the rules?

<comment><USER6> Suppose Led Zeppelin rolls into a hotel room and trashes it, as they frequently did. Will the hotel chain just ban the band's manager because he was the one who booked the room? Presumably they don't want any of 'em back.

What Jay is saying is: "I promise that whenever I go to someone's home who thinks we're a quiet couple on a weekend getaway, but really we're bringing a camera crew, and your house is now going to be on PornHub, I will do it under a different account. Please let me use this account normally." AirBnB is saying that if you lie to your hosts and shoot a porno at their house, you're banned. Simple, obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know this is old news on this thread, but I created [https://www.kinkbnb.com](https://www.kinkbnb.com) after AirBNB kicked one of my dominatrix friends off their site three years ago. Making a profit off AirBNB's posturing - they just posted a "dominatrix experience" too, making themselves look especially hypocritical.

</comment><comment><USER9> >I've never shot porn in any Airbnbs in my name

Why the qualification about "in my name"? Does this mean that she shot porn at an AirBnb but it was under someone else's name? If that is the case, then AirnBnb would have a good argument that she was violating the terms of service.

<comment><USER10> Or maybe she's done tons of shoots at tons of different cool/expensive houses and has no idea how they were booked so thought she'd cover herself just in case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's both typical and despicable.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did this site redirect me to a shady add-site on the scrolldown-event?</comment>


Buoys: Implicitly Anchored Sketches in Flowing Text - <AUTHOR> http://research.kumpf.cc/2015-Buoys/?recent

<comment><USER2> As a hardware ignoramus, I actually found the demo text pretty interesting:

[http://research.kumpf.cc/2015-Buoys/archive.html](http://research.kumpf.cc/2015-Buoys/archive.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

While analogies can't map across everything, thinking about circuits as water was one of the things that really got me interested in them early on; it seemed like a natural starting place after building Sketchwrite :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Link to the PDF of the paper:

[http://research.kumpf.cc/2015-Buoys/2015-Buoys.pdf](http://research.kumpf.cc/2015-Buoys/2015-Buoys.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> And a link to the live demo:

[https://sketchwrite.com/n/wCGHSHrMmp5](https://sketchwrite.com/n/wCGHSHrMmp5)</comment></comment>


Show HN: How fast can you read code? (infinite Python practice programs) - <AUTHOR> https://trprt.io/python-practice-problems-ifs-loops-control-flow <comment><AUTHOR> After tutoring beginners for over 6 years, I realized that a major weakness in the way programming is taught is that beginners don't get to practice reading code enough. I made this site to randomly generate python programs for the user to read and figure out the output. It can be configured based on the student's level of ability, e.g. you can include or exclude different variable types, and the difficulty levels gradually introduce more complex statements, like if/elif/else, loops, and nested loops. There are three different exercises currently: control flow (this submission's link), boolean expressions, and functions.

I've been using this with one of my students during development and it seems to have helped. He certainly got faster at reading code, and I think the skill has transferred over to writing code as well.

<comment><USER2> It probably works well to learn Python as well, although the learning curve would be pretty steep. Cool idea, I tried it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really depends how well it was written and how complex what it does is. Hard to give a number. Spaghetti code is slow to read. Well written code with well named functions is faster. Reading the code from the mood landings would be slow.</comment>


What I learned from losing my Facebook internship - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-learned-from-losing-my-facebook-internship-2015-8?IR=T <comment><USER2> Facebook made a grievous PR error taking back the internship. Regardless of who he is, my peers are thinking twice about joining Facebook now due to what looks like a petty and vindictive administration.

Those who made this decision probably won't see the bad fruits of it directly, but I know of two people who are very talented who turned down offers they were about to accept due to the news.

Those of us who have worked at Google or apple or other top firms know what vindictive and short sighted administration looks like and what a bad sign it is for the environment.

And that's aside from the fact that what the kid did embodies the "hacker way" held up by Mark. Signs of a backwards company having an identity crisis.

<comment><USER3> This individual bypassed the whitehat policies that Facebook have. He publicly announced an exploit to the world.

If you're going to mention a company as a reference to another and you happen to work at that company please disclaimer it...

<comment><USER4> It was hardly an exploit when the data was publicly available... It was a lack of privacy control by Facebook which the public recognition forced them to fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FB is a shitty company on certain levels... I was let go for being "too social" (Really? WTF!?)

I also inadvertently caught a VP lying about the status of a project. I was doing weekly status reports on certain projects, and one project VP wanted me to get my status from him only... as opposed to me going to the other contributors like I was on all other projects.

After he was not responding to my questions, I went to the direct contributors for status and found out the schedule was behind and things that were said were done were not.

I reported this, true status, along with my others.

Within hours of doing so, my manager and the rest of my team (we sat in one row) got up and left... then I got a call telling me I had to leave the building immediately.

This was just hours after having a meeting with several people telling me how happy they were I had joined and what a great job I was doing.

FUCK FB.

The internal culture is a set of ambiguous bullshit rules enforced ruthlessly. It seems that there are a lot of people jockeying to be the bid swinging dick in each area.

There are thousands of cool employees, and a ton of assholes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Facebook's response seems predictable if the intern had just thought about it a bit. I'm not arguing that FB did the right thing, only that they took a predictable action.

<comment><USER7> Predictable for a typical large corp. Not particularly predictable for companies projecting a cool hacker company persona.

<comment><USER8> Everybody loves a cool hacker persona. Except when it's directed against you :) And, facebook, imo, is more of "get shit done", rather than "break shit". This was more of the latter.

But really, if you work for a company, even if just as an intern, you really should be looking out for their interests. If you aren't, then why would they keep you?

<comment><USER9> > _" And, facebook, imo, is more of "get shit done", rather than "break shit". > This was more of the latter."_

He didn't 'break' anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "As a rising [University student / whatever]," \- have people really started saying this? "Rising" as a self-descriptor sounds ridiculous. I feel like this is at least the second time I've seen that opener.

<comment><USER11> A student is considered a "rising senior" during the summer between junior and senior year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about: I learned that responsible disclosure can both improve user privacy and prevent bad publicity for _my company_?

<comment><USER13> Yup. He seems too young and idealistic. Of course you don't publicly release anything that is damaging to your employer. That should never even have occurred to him. Companies have these kinds of training all the time. Maybe if he'd lasted long enough to actually get to the internship he would've learned it.

I'm glad that he noticed the privacy flaw, but someone who is about to become an employee of Facebook is the worst person to publicly release it. Maybe the notoriety he's gained from this will be worth it in the end, but I know a lot of companies probably won't want anything to do with him given the (lack of) judgment he's demonstrated from this.

<comment><USER14> > Of course you don't publicly release anything that is damaging to your > employer.

I think that is a really, really dangerous line of thinking. Sometimes, employers do bad things. Sometimes (perhaps often), there is not a satisfactory way to rectify those bad things within the company. Sometimes, what's good for the public outweighs what's good for your employer. It is absolutely reasonable to have a conscience and say "wait, this isn't something I can let slide."

Now, did that happen here? I'm not sure. This individual made a judgment call, as you said. I don't know if I would have made the same call. But I simply don't feel that loyalty to one's employer is as important a value as privacy or safety. If that makes me unhireable in Silicon Valley, I guess I don't want to work in Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is how i imagine his meeting went with the HR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bahX2rrT1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bahX2rrT1I)

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone give me an idea of how difficult it would be to change the default on the software from sharing location to not sharing location? Is it more complicated that simply changing a variable value somewhere in the code?

<comment><USER17> It's always difficult to answer questions like this, because code can be structured in so many different ways, good and bad, to do the same things. It's probably safe to say in this case that for a well-written body of code this would be a simple change: likely changing the default value of a flag, or the boolean expression in a branch. However the code could be written to make it much more difficult, and there is just no way to get a sense of that without understanding how it is put together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember the post that demonstrated the privacy issue. Back then I thought it was really weird he wrote that without being scared of losing his internship. If it were my company I would do the same.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is why I'm always wary on commenting on any potential companies I would work at on social media unless it's positive.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are articles on BI not proof-read before publishing?

</comment><comment><USER21> I would be a lot less sympathetic to the intern if Facebook itself was not infamous for having first been built on scraped content. I am not sure I would want an internship with them anyway, they seem to have lost freshness and with it a lot of their young user base.</comment>


Lcc, a Retargetable Compiler for ANSI C - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/lccretargetablecompiler/ <comment><USER2> A nice book, clearly written with code available using literate coding techniques. Fairly easy to port to a new machine. Were I teaching compiler techniques, it would be on my short list for a textbook.</comment>


Ask HN: How to start a career as a generalist? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
Once I'm in a company I can make myself very useful by analysing, abstracting problems and telling people what they want from each other when they are having discussions and filling any gaps in front-end development. But because I'm no specialist in anything I find it hard to get my foot in the door. I could specialize or qualify in programing more, but I prefer the management and product owner work.
I'm 28, close to finishing my studies in "media and fine art" where I focused on experimental informatics, more precisely news distribution in the internet, interfaces and haptic feedback.
Wherever I worked I joined for some rather low-skill work and quickly become the one to organize at least the conceptual or technical aspects of the project.¹
I freelance doing some custom wordpress sites (those where you do need to write a bit of php) or small web implementations and work in a 3-4 person startup (unfunded, but self-sustaining by side-gigs). At the startup there is not much pay and I do some communications with customers and concept, design and frontend of a cordova/angular app. If this startup succeeds, I will most likely float on top and have a nice job, but not much equity.
Now the question: Where to go from here? The launch date for the first project of the startup is immanent, so I'll see how that performs soon. There is of course a lot of reason for doubt as with any startup, so I plan to look for a better payed job.
Thanks so much for the help!
¹ This way I went from flash animations (a few years back) for our client BMW to writing the specifications for a new outsourced MVP in one company (they offered me to become CTO on paper for the new child-startup, but for laughable pay). In another gig I moved from assistance to technical supervision of a short-film festival sponsored by the german state television. <comment><USER2> A few thoughts:

1) You've already started your career.

2) Companies (generally) don't hire "generalists". They hire people to solve their particular problems. You need to show why you're the right person to solve company X's problems.

3) Sounds like you're headed toward a product manager or program manager role, but need some more credentials to command that at legit companies. Starting in technical management is a good place. Learn an industry really, really well and then look into product manager roles.

<comment><USER3> Pay really close attention to #2. Especially with large companies, if they post a job opening it's because they've identified a specific job that needs to be done. I've had trouble job hunting in the past because I've been working for 6 straight years, but never doing one thing for more than about 6 months. If the job posting says "5 years of experience doing X", I have 5 years of experience and I've done X, but I haven't done X for 5 years.

Start-ups, on the other hand, seem to be a place where they like people who know how to wear multiple hats. It seems like you've got your foot in the door. If the start-up you're at seems like a dead end, start meeting people at other start-ups in the area and grow your network.

<comment><USER4> Wearing multiple hats is for the partners/owners. Startups don't hire generalist to do anything. I worked at Zomato's NEXTABLE (reservation software on the iPad) as the iOS dev along with two interns. I used to do some Nodejs and messed around in Java in addition to having done marketing and financial modeling as a real estate developer. Still - I was hired to work on the app, not server-side, not marketing nor making phone calls.

Pick something you like and get awesome at it and iterate from there.

<comment><USER5> Having had a bit of startup mileage, I second this. I don't know why the above post downvoted.

<comment><USER6> Because it's generally not the case for early stage employees. The first couple hires, especially on engineering, definitely need to wear a variety of hats. In my first startup engineering gig, I did everything from front-end design and development to backend API work to helping people tech support their Macs and upgrading hardware in team computers, talking with potential investors, etc. Without a doubt, wearing multiple hats is the norm when joining a startup that's pre-seed up to Series A or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a bit older than you, but I would say most of my life I and my peers have considered myself/me a generalist. I have subject areas where I am much stronger than others, but like you, I excel at "in-the-middle" jobs. I am good at seeing the big picture and connecting the dots among people and teams.

That said, its been a constant struggle for recognition and position in companies. When people realize what we can do, they tend to either promote and support, or jail and exploit.

I find myself taking specific roles with a hope towards moving up in the organization. Often the role isn't what I really want to do but there isn't another way into the organization without that strategy. It takes time and doesn't always work out.

I've tried the consulting role, and very nearly kicked off a serious consulting company with multiple subject areas of focus. It is fun but in the end, you still get hired to do a specific consulting job most of the time, not just to be a generalist and give advice. One exception to that rule in my experience was consulting with startups.

You seem to have realized the startup path. I have worked for startups and that was pretty successful for the kind of person we are, but usually higher stress. Also, the startup hopefully pays well enough and is successful, otherwise you find yourself with some pay and some experience but no job when the startup deflates and back to "ok, what to do next"?

Others have mentioned product/project management. I've done that too. Product management has been a good match for generalists but without previous PM titles on your resume it can be hard to get the first role. Technical product management is a good way in, but make sure you know the difference between what a product manager vs a technical product manager does. I suggest Pragmatic Marketing training to get a leg up for this. Certifications can help for product or project management in terms of recognition.

Long story short, I love being a generalist and I feel we often don't get the respect we deserve. But it can be a hard slog getting through and we are a unique and valuable resource, just like specialists. We're just specialists in being general. :) So best of luck with your pursuits!

<comment><USER8> Thank you very much. What you write confirms what I expect. I'll see if I can find something equivalent to Pragmatic Marketing in Germany to get that leg up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When you're trying to get hired, talk the talk you know about the problems the company has, not about all of the skills you have. If you're able to focus the discussions on how a subset of your skills provide lots of value to the company, that's what's going to get you hired. Show that you know the domain that the employer wants to see. Definitely mention your other skills, but don't make them the focus of your interactions in the hiring process.

Then, once you've been hired and start working, you will naturally use your other skills to add value to the company. After you've been with the company for a little bit and have shown your other skills to also be valuable, that's a good time to discuss getting more formal authority in other areas and/or a raise to compensate you for the duties you've taken on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Get into Project/Program Management. Do it as a discipline rather than as a "I just ended up doing it because nobody else will" Look for certifications in Management that your company or field cares about (PMP/PMI etc.). Very quickly you'll find that you can end up working on an infinite variety of projects and can dip into countless fields (just remember to let your actual SMEs do the work).

After a few years you'll find a groove in PMing that you may like and you can try to scope your world to that (certain project types or sizes, etc.).

My background is CS, but I've ended up in this kind of role and have worked in everything from helping out with Sales and Marketing to Designing Genomics algorithms...just dipping in to fill gaps where needed and dipping out again when there's somebody else who can fill it.

Generally the smaller the company, the more hats you'll end up filling and you'll learn more skills that way, enabling you to generalize better.

I personally tend to bounce between very small and very large companies and the ability to transition between skill sets has definitely been valuable in the larger corporations...I usually find myself starting in a discrete role and rapidly end up running a group or a department. When that gets boring I go do something very hands-on in a small company. When I want more focus, I'll go work in a large company.

The tradeoff is that I'm not highly skilled in any one field, but I can usually fill in for lots of foundational stuff to get something off the ground. I've worked in tons of fields, but would never really call myself a specialist in any of those fields, the people who are dedicated to those fields are far more skilled than I.

One bonus is I can usually take an idea and get some legs under a project very quickly, then flesh out real needs and start to fill those with specialists as needed. I've found that to be a very productive way to do business.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a software generalist. Fortune did a study once that where the discovered the average person has three different careers. My first was in sales, before the age of 28. Second was in manufacturing logistics working in a warehouse and MRP. Third is software. Someone else suggested blogging. My sales experience has been a great leg up over the typical programmer in human relations. 1\. Figure out how to sell yourself because your competition doesn't. 2\. Consult. I've owned my consulting company since I graduated from college. Having a different "job" every year actually is a good thing when one is project consulting. 3\. Be prepared to interview. I interview like crazy. 4\. Network with agents and agencies. Find the agency that knows how to place.

When I first started consulting I relied heavily on agents and agencies. Agencies are a challenge and it takes time to find the a relationship that knows how to put you in front of clients.

<comment><USER6> Running a consulting company and interviewing like crazy sound kind of contradictory. Is your consulting part-time?

<comment><USER12> As an individual consultant, it's not terribly uncommon for the contracting company to interview you and get a feel for how working with you will be beforehand. At least that's been my experience.

<comment><USER6> I work as an independent contractor developer (not as a consultant). I would say that I get pitched on projects and to respond, I relate my background and experience to the problems conversationally, but I wouldn't call it an "interview" or at least it's a radically different style of interview than a dev candidate, for example, I typically do not get asked tech screen questions like algorithms problems, whiteboard coding, etc. Perhaps my experience is different than the norm because I work with a small number of clients very closely. OTOH, maybe it's just a matter of perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Consulting. If you like solving different problems for different people, nothing will get you more variety of problems and people who have them than consulting. If you want to focus on the development and client relations bits, join a consulting firm with a solid sales team and smart devs to help you learn areas you're weak in.

Source: I've been a consultant for 3 years out of the 5 that I've been a developer. I always grow and learn the most and get the most customer contact in these roles.

<comment><USER8> "join a consulting firm" That is good advice, sounds like a good fit. I don't feel expert enough to consult freelancing, but with the backing of a firm it should be more easy to figure out where my weaknesses are.

<comment><USER3> I've had a similar problem and the advice that's always given to me is "The term 'expert' is mostly about perception." Credentials help when you're trying to sell your services because they're used as a proxy for competence. Having a track record of success can also work. Start small.

<comment><USER14> >>I've had a similar problem and the advice that's always given to me is "The term 'expert' is mostly about perception."

Not sure I agree. I work for a consulting firm. One of our main revenue sources is clients who hire us to fix the mess created by "experts". The difference is that we actually _are_ experts in our problem space - as in, we have lots of experience and technical knowledge - so we can actually add value to our clients' operations.

Don't get me wrong: perception is definitely important. But the worst thing one can do is sell oneself as an expert when they actually aren't. If one is a generalist, they should figure out ways to package that in ways that will resonate with the clients they are going after.

Starting small is good advice, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of me when I finished the MBA, thought I was trained in "business", and tried to find a job as a "businessman". Oh, the folly of youth! It doesn't actually work that way in life. All businesses do specific things. All technology projects use specific technologies. If you want to make yourself a "generalist" that either means _specializing_ in something that's used in a lot of different jobs (like PHP or Python), or _specializing_ in more than one thing.

The key paradigm shift you need to make is this. You are probably viewing any kind of _specific_ knowledge as a hindrance, a chain that will limit your freedom to do other things. In fact, though, it is the collection of such knowledge (as much as you can get) that eventually makes you multi-skilled hence _free_.

<comment><USER16> I really like this advice...I don't think I've ever seen the benefit of specialization to the generalist worded so succinctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd recommend reading Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love" for some great insights on how to build your skills whilst changing jobs/careers. His approach in 3 steps:

 _1\. Develop skills that are rare and valuable

2\. Do something useful and good for the world

3\. Work with people you like_

</comment><comment><USER18> Embrace being a generalist.

I myself have gone through a similar dilemma, being a generalist allows you to make informed decisions that sit between two disciplines. When the problem concerns both sides you ARE the expert. This is a specialist skill in itself.

If you are looking for something specific I'd highly recommend working in R&D this will give you the opportunity to work in a role where being a generalist really helps.

</comment><comment><USER19> You can program and you have a degree in fine art. Why aren't you looking for data visualization gigs? It's a lucrative specialty that few people are well suited for.

</comment><comment><USER20> You could do what I do and find a startup that is just at the stage that they need an in-house tech person. There's tons of problem solving at that stage usually across many different areas! I'm programming, meeting with key stakeholders, sending RFPs and meeting with software vendors, etc. I didn't get this job by applying for it though, rather by contacting the company at just the right time.

</comment><comment><USER21> It sounds like you're talking about being a project manager.

PMs don't code though. Not if they want to survive.

Not sure why you're talking about being a generalist but that word will kill any chance you have of getting a job unless it's help desk.

<comment><USER22> I'd add that the best PMs I've had _can_ code and occasionally did (writing things like QoL scripts or database/ORM stuff for metrics gathering), but it's definitely not part of the day-to-day job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1\. Apply for better paying startup jobs. Startups are always changing, and there's more scope for fluid job roles.

2\. Apply for jobs as product manager, or (a bit trickier) if you have the resume for it as technical manager.

<comment><USER8> The 2nd option sounds good. In both cases I guess I have to apply a lot and see what I can get. Thanks for the advice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As a generalist myself, I would say try and find a way to land yourself a customer success gig. On any given day, I'm managing my team, our clients or our products in a non-trivial way.

Granted, having any say about the product took time and the final decision rest with our CPO, but with your design skills you could make the segue over to product teams much faster, if you wanted to.

<comment><USER8> By "land yourself a customer success gig" you mean getting a finished project to show off?

Thanks for the advice.

<comment><USER25> I think the parent used "customer success" as a reference to the job function of interacting directly with clients and serving as a channel for feedback. This type of work often affords one the opportunity to develop product improvement proposals directly informed by real customer use cases, so it requires a broad understanding of the industry, the user, and the technical implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Specialize in an industry instead of a technology.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you keep changing areas you will eventually be a generalist by default. If you gravitate to one sort of work (architecture, project management, etc.) then you will use generalist skills but perhaps develop less breath. Don't worry, just enjoy what you do.

</comment><comment><USER23> Thinking about this some more, I think being a specialist is really about how you market yourself. Your skill set may be that of a generalist, but there's nothing stopping you from pitching yourself as a specialist in whatever the company cares about, so long as you know you'll be able to do it.

More detailed write-up: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/01/19/specialist- vs-genera...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/01/19/specialist-vs- generalist/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a generalist. I've done things ranging from work with thermoelectric elements to creating battery systems to making UAVs to full-stack development. Sometimes it's really easy to find work. Sometimes it's really hard.

I recommend expanding to as large of an area as you can. I started as a full- stack developer, which is kind of a generalist role. Then I expanded to thermoelectric stuff, and then UAVs and batteries. Each of these things started as a personal interest.

If I were you, I'd find things you are interested in, and specialize in several of them as quickly as you can. Have you always been interested in hydrogen fuel cells? Spend a bit of time to learn as much as you possibly can about fuel cells. Know the cheap end of the market, know the expensive end, know the experimental research, know the size of the market.

The easiest way to get a job as a generalist is to get a "normal" job and convince the company that you can solve their problems in other ways. Going up to a company and saying "Hi, I'd like to be a generalist at your company" won't usually work, but "I'd like to be a full-stack developer with freedom to collaborate with teams throughout the company" will. Eventually, you'll grow into the "generalist" role and the company will recognize you as such.

The other, ideal option is to work for other generalists. For example, I was recently looking for someone who knows how to make CFD models, someone who can write assembly, and someone who knows about control surfaces. I would have hired a generalist who knows one or two of those three and could learn the rest quickly. I wanted to hire a generalist because I know that several months down the line, when I need something else, I can tell them "hey, I need you to do x now" and they can figure out how to do it themselves.

Here's an example of how I provide value as a generalist. A company hired me a while ago to improve the efficiency of their UAV system. Because I know about battery technology, I was able to build them a battery pack that brought the flight time from 9 minutes to 28 minutes, and cut costs by over 90%. Because I'm a full-stack web developer, I was able to build a web interface to control the system. Because I've worked on UAVs, I knew when to replace parts with low-cost alternatives and when to spend several hundred dollars on one motor. Because I've done UI/UX work, the system was usable without any training for everyone involved. And since I knew how to make these things "from scratch" there was no need to send things out to external agencies, and I was able to develop the system very quickly.

The hard part is convincing random people and companies that you're valuable to them. Unless you get lucky and find another generalist at the company that understands your value, you'll have to demonstrate it. But be careful. Only go to companies that have a semi-flexible structure already (e.x. don't try this at Microsoft or Apple.) Demonstrate your value with concrete things that can be done immediately with clear benefit. For example, at a lot of places I'm hired as a programmer, and I see a battery system that could be improved. I can go to them and say "by the way, you could switch out your current batteries for a custom pack and save $9000 per system, and I could build you that pack in less than an hour." If they like that, then the next suggestion I have will probably be an easier sell, and so on and so on until you've built up a role - official or unofficial - as a generalist.

</comment><comment><USER29> Scrum is still in fashion, perhaps you could add Scrum Master to your CV maybe even get a certificate to go with it. Then it depends on your office politics.

</comment><comment><USER30> As long as your pay is low it is hard to tell whether you are valued by your company. It sounds a little like you are afraid of asking for money or taking on responsibilities and instead just go along with others. I don't think you can build up a reputation that way.

<comment><USER8> I am valued, but the startup is really low on money (because we try to get our project done, not do much client work). As some compromise I now do it just 3 days a week and partly remote.

<comment><USER30> Do you have serious equity if things work out?

<comment><USER8> Nope, nothing serious. Hence I'll see what happens now after the launch and then probably move on.

<comment><USER30> I don't want to be too negative but I have been in a similar situation. Once money starts flowing it's very unlikely that you will get more. If you being underpaid and have no serious equity you are being disrespected and that won't change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like you might be a natural for project management - might look into that role as well.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I thought so too, but I'm not sure how to get in to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are you blogging about news distribution in the internet, interfaces or haptic feedback?

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the advise and: no.

I really have to get over the reverse Dunning–Kruger Effect (I know enough to know how much I don't know). In practice this is not an issue: if a problem is solved is farely easy to verify, but making statements is something else.

I will work on this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It sounds like you live in Germany? I have heard freelance project manager is a thing. Did you try to apply for those jobs?

<comment><USER8> I will try :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> move to austria / graz, become my employee, then my partner, then my competition (I'm ok with it)

</comment><comment><USER35> The advice I give developers at the beginning of their career is that its really difficult to be a generalist when you don't have much experience to lean on. You end up knowing just a little bit about a lot of things, but you don't plug any holes for the team, so everyone there is deeper than you are on any question that matters. This was how my career started, and though its worked out really well for me as a consultant, there were several years where I questioned my fitness for this career path and even went down a road towards medical school before returning to the field, incurring a not-insubstantial student loan debt along the way.

First, focus on getting depth of experience in one area. This could be front- end or back-end. These days you'll want to pick a framework and get really, really good at it—could be react, ember, angular, vue, whatever. But be really solid in that framework and the language it uses (modern javascript, for example.) Learn all the tools you use in that capacity (e.g. Chrome's web developer console, webpack, etc). Then branch out—for our hypothetical front- end developer, pick up another framework and learn it about 70-80% as well as you know your first. Or learn how to pull off an isomorphic React application and start learning about the back end.

This is the "right"[1] way to become a T-shaped developer. Once you start branching out into other languages or platforms or whatever strikes your fancy, and you develop some experience with those things, you get to be more of a "paint-drip" developer. [2] Eventually you've been a generalist so long that the area of your experience puts you on par with a mid-level developer in any of several areas, and you're well-suited to a career phase as a consultant, manager, etc. Then you become fairly expert in all of these areas and you can start gap-filling (e.g. learn devops much more deeply, learn design, whatever you didn't pick up the first time.) As a _seasoned_ generalist, you'll be pretty valuable in startup settings, but fair warning, they rarely pay enough to warrant the time you've put into becoming a broad expert. Unless you've got founder-level quantities of equity take those jobs because you really like it, not for the illusion of an exit. It sounds like you're already coming to this realization, so that's one less thing to learn the hard way.

A word of advice in your current capacity—if you're not getting much pay, and you don't have much equity, is this really the startup you want to trade those things for experience with? Is it giving you a quality of experience that will open doors or increase your depth in a single area? If not, you're better off coming up with your own project and working on it to learn than giving your time away to someone else's exit. With your degree concentration in informatics and interfaces, you should probably look for a project that will focus heavily on those skills.

Best of luck to you in finding the path you want to be on!

[1] There's rarely a single "right" way to do anything, but what I'm describing is the way I wish I'd done it.

[2] [https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip- people/1...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/paint-drip- people/1226700000696195)

<comment><USER7> Working in a startup can be a great way to get a variety of experience. Too much variety can be a trap that furthers appearing as too much of a generalist for later positions. If the startup succeeds and you with it, even better.

But, for getting "established" financially as a human, startups with lower pay that may not succeed can make it more challenging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> immanent doesn't mean what you think it means :) even though it still makes sense in that sentence.

</comment><comment><USER37> Mandatory XKCD: [http://www.xkcd.com/863/](http://www.xkcd.com/863/)</comment>


CIA Targeting Linux Users With OutlawCountry Network Traffic Re-Routing Tool - <AUTHOR> https://hothardware.com/news/wikileaks-exposes-cia-targeting-linux-users-with-outlawcountry-network-traffic-re-routing-tool <comment><USER2> This is not surprising or even interesting. The headline in particular is overblown. It's the equivalent of "CIA Targeting French Speakers with Audio Listening Devices". Not only is that painfully obvious and well-known, but it's also far too weirdly specific. Yes, the CIA has tools for spying. That's their job. The tools vary in sophistication. They are used in targeted ways. This tool, like most listening devices, requires some form of breaking and entering to install, and would be easily detected by mid-level security efforts. It's cool to get the details, but the headline (and the general tone of the Wikileaks releases) is scaremongering FUD. The NSA is doing far far more pervasive and dangerous stuff.

<comment><USER3> Bad People can do Bad Things with root. News at 11.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have never seen a command to retrieve _all_ iptables tables or _all_ iptables rules over all tables. What you usually find in documentation is the following:

        iptables contains five tables:
        raw is used only for configuring packets so that they are exempt from connection tracking.
        filter is the default table, and is where all the actions typically associated with a firewall take place.
        nat is used for network address translation (e.g. port forwarding).
        mangle is used for specialized packet alterations.
        security is used for Mandatory Access Control networking rules (e.g. SELinux -- see this article for more details).

My opinion: this is simple but pretty smart at the same time, therefore the perfect hacker tool. I can't even imagine a single sysadmin who searched for _additional_ iptables tables before this leak.

To the dismissive people here: as a hacker you don't want complex attacking tools, they can be found much easier, because all the tools look for complex attacks (e.g. modified system files).

Hiding this well in plain sight in a place where no one and no tool ever looks is genius.

<comment><USER5> ip(6)tables-save

<comment><USER4> I looked into the source code, it uses /proc/net/ip_tables_names to find the tables

And that tbh doesn't seem very reliable, see what happened on a laptop which does not use iptables:

      $ cat /proc/net/ip_tables_names
      cat: /proc/net/ip_tables_names: No such file or directory
      $ iptables -L
      [...]
      $ cat /proc/net/ip_tables_names
      filter
      $ iptables -t nat -L
      [...]
      $ cat /proc/net/ip_tables_names
      nat
      filter

This seems to only show loaded/active iptables tables. Which means that a table may exist but unless it is loaded you will not see it. But of course in our scenario the CIA would have activated some rules, so this table should appear there. Unless the CIA was also able to hide the table from that file, which may well be possible, since the table was added via a root kernel module...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This particular tool is somewhat unimpressive.

From what's shown in the article it's likely only usable on RedHat-derivatives (because of the binary-only kernel module). There are already "amateur" rootkits out there, with what's almost certainly a better feature set.

I am particularly unimpressed with the documentation's suggestion to __rm __the module afterwards, as the systems in question are extremely likely to have the _shred_ command installed (which first overwrites the file contents in-place) which would make it impossible for a quick examiner to simply undelete the module for analysis.

I think this was some agent's idea of a PoC more than something they expected to use.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it's part of a "list of things to do first" when a target has been breached by gaining access. There are mass email-based phishing attacks, there are spear-phishing attackes, and there are likely procedures to follow when a specific group's target has given up physical access via root.

As for RH-only, what makes us think that there aren't also Debian and other similar attacks?

MS-Word is also "somewhat unimpressive," as it's only usable on Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just like that the tool's name is a reference to Archer

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#OutlawCountry](https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#OutlawCountry)

</comment><comment><USER10> Given that this requires root already, what's the benefit from it being a kernel module, vs. just running a few iptables commands to add a new rule?

<comment><USER11> It won't show up with a normal `iptables -L`

<comment><USER12> yeah, but would light up like a xmas tree on any IDS or packet sniffer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article claims that the attack is particularly effective on (web) servers. Wouldn't this type of attack only affect connections that originate _from_ the affected host though (and not the incoming ones)?

<comment><USER14> the nat table affects packets originating from the host and ones that are forwarded

<comment><USER15> You can absolutely NAT incoming packets using the NAT table. Put the rule into the PREROUTING chain and only change the port, not the dst IP. This trick is super useful for docker containers, and to allow unprivileged processes to listen on privileged ports.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't really make sense to talk about "incoming" packets at that point, as it is _PRE_ ROUTING, so whether the destination address is local or not, and thus whether it's an incoming or a forwarded packet, has not been determined yet, and you can NAT however you like, local address to local address, local address to remote address, remote address to remote address, or remote address to local address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is the best approach to guarding against crap like this on Linux, Ubuntu specifically?

<comment><USER12> Don't run random scripts basically, always check their content. Specially if they require root.

<comment><USER18> Welp, there goes Rubygems and NPM global modules.

<comment><USER19> Neither requires root:

* [https://github.com/creationix/nvm](https://github.com/creationix/nvm)

* [http://kazhack.org/?post/2014/12/11/npm-install-g-without-su...](http://kazhack.org/?post/2014/12/11/npm-install-g-without-sudo)

* [http://kazhack.org/?post/2014/12/12/pip-gem-install-without-...](http://kazhack.org/?post/2014/12/12/pip-gem-install-without-sudo)

<comment><USER18> You can do it without root if you take precautions, but the default is to use root.

<comment><USER19> Depends on the system. The default on Arch Linux is local gem installs:

        $ cat /etc/gemrc
        # --user-install is used to install to $HOME/.gem/ by default since we want to separate
        #                pacman installed gems and gem installed gems
        gem: --user-install

<comment><USER18> That's a nice touch and some good work on the part of the package maintainer. Most (Ubuntu, RedHat, etc.) do not, they just expect you to sudo everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Never a single leak about Russian spying or intelligence gathering techniques / apparatus. Those Russians must be so proper in granting privacy to their "citizens".

<comment><USER21> While the anti-USA slant from WikiLeaks is very overt, I think it has already been established that Vault 7 is the result of leaked CIA files which continue to trickle out (More should be expected). There is not likely to be a non- Vault7 surprise out of the blue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Another "timely" delayed FUD release from WikiLeaks.

</comment><comment><USER23> Physical access to the machine is still needed. For 99.99999999 pct of us this does not matter.

<comment><USER24> Why is physical access needed? Any exploit that gives root to the machine could also be used to install the kernel module.

<comment><USER21> You are correct. It is strange to see multiple claims of physical access being needed.

<comment><USER25> I think people are assuming that most sysadmins won't enter their sudo passwords into random prompts (not necessarily a sound assumption). From there, one easy way to get root that most people understand/know is to have physical access to the machine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Want a Loan? Act Responsibly - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2008/tc20081023_815373.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech <comment><USER2> The article cites ebay's reputation system, but ebay doesn't allow sellers to give buyers negative feedback anymore.</comment>


Charlie Munger: The Psychology of Human Misjudgment - <AUTHOR> http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html

<comment><USER2> Poor Charlie's Almanack (<http://tinyurl.com/poorcharliesalmanack>) is worth every penny.

Everyone should read that book.

<comment><USER3> The notes from this speech don't do Charlie Munger justice. Read the book: its like the speech but coherent and comprehensive.</comment></comment>


Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7128 <comment><USER2> This is interesting, but these methods don't strike me as really viable. The Twitter outreach was specifically targeted at the cooperation of Twitter-using time travelers, and while Pope Francis might or might not be historically significant enough to warrant prescient mentioning, I'm _sure_ comet ISON is not. The assumption is also (and maybe it has to be) that time travelers would blurp out important prescient information - however, I don't think that holds true if they were either well disciplined or engaged in historical research - which would mean they know little more (if anything) about our immediate future than we do.

I'm obviously not advocating time travelers are present (I would think with the certain prospect of leaving your time line in order to create another one, the proposition of time travel seems akin to a one-way change in universes that doesn't sound very inviting), but it's definitely fun to speculate about. Realistically, one would also have to take into account the fact that, by mere virtue of being present, a time traveler _will_ change the course of history in the long run.

A more thorough effort could center on large-scale automated data mining for prescient terms on the internet. Of course, there would be many false positives, but as a side effect we could learn more about the epidemiology of ideas even if we don't discover time travelers. It seems to me that a disciplined time traveler would not purposefully drop historically significant hints - however, if they are from a future and culture close enough to our own, they might still reveal themselves inadvertently through idiosyncratic phrases and reference to concepts that are from the future. Hand-picked phrases are not enough to discover this, it would have to be large-scale AI- supported text mining.

<comment><USER3> > Twitter-using time travelers

If I were a time traveller I probably wouldn't use any of the social networks that are popular for non-time-travellers. Firstly managing so many social network accounts to keep up with the latest fashions would be a right pain (imagine having to change your profile picture on all of them...), but also their 'timeline' view would be completely different to my relative timeline.

I'd assume the network format would be distributed, running on something akin to a phone that you keep on you at all times. Whenever you make a post it records your relative 'life time', or just increments an id, so posts are always ordered in your relative timeframe. When you meet someone it would sync up with their account - I'm not quite sure how that would work though. The issue is you could post something about them publicly that hasn't happened yet in their timeframe (that could be embarrassing). Private messages are even worse...

(N.b. I should probably patent this idea for when time travel is invented)

<comment><USER4> Nice idea. Although the user-base of time travellers might be a bit limited. I would suggest broadening your product to include the soon-to-be emerging high relativistic speed and FTL travel sectors. Part of the process of friending someone could be to indicate how your respective light-cones intersect, for example.

If your network is ad-supported then there might be extra complications in temporally localising the ad content so that it doesn't induce the wrong kind of causality violations. You might want to give that some thought, now or in the future.

Disclosure: I'm not a VC in this timeline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't the issue here that they are describing the methods through which they are trying to determine time travel. In effect, telling anyone in the future exactly what not to do.

Let's also assume that somebody had a reason to travel into the past, say to kill Hitler. Our timeline would record that an Austrian artist was murdered in the 1920s. We would not consider this historically significant.

I think time travel is inherently very difficult to detect. Even if a time traveller 'dropped' tech. This tech would be recoverable by popping back in time and recovering it.

<comment><USER6> And have you thought about how many potential hitlers were pruned in the WW2 ... every one that died in the conflict could be much worse than him. So maybe Hitler was a historical fuse. A maniac just 20 years later could have destroyed humanity. Dead serious here, assume that nuclear weapons were available from day1.

So maybe there was time travel manipulation to ensure WWII so that humanity could survive.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps the WW2 in our timeline is the least worst outcome.... :-|

e.g. What if the Normandy landings had failed? The Nazis would still have been defeated by the Soviets but the whole of Europe north of the Alps could have been occupied by the Soviets, perhaps making a far worse later nuclear conflict much more likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This makes no sense... here is why:

"Hey Bob, you idiot! Someone found you by a stupid tweet you made. Then they posted a research paper online and now everyone knows about time travelers. Go back and fix it."

"Done"

The very act of publishing the results of this study could have caused the results to be changed, thus showing a non-positive match...

<comment><USER9> That would be a great (yet unsatisfying) twist for the end of a low budget sci-fi movie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure why time travellers from the future would bother to leave prescient messages on the net. What's the motivation? Something like graffiti artists tagging difficult locations?

What I _can_ see them (hypothetically) doing is manipulating present-day financial markets by exploiting their knowledge of future events (e.g. sudden commodity shortages or unexpected mineral discoveries) to increase their wealth. Even small manipulations would produce large downstream gains due to compound interest.

So perhaps market data is a place to look for abnormalities - particularly in existing systems that look for signs of insider trading, or investment accounts/trusts that are untouched over very long periods of time. Of course, such data is usually protected and inaccessible anyway.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I would probably go back to 2009 and mine bitcoins (or fill captchas for 5 BTC a piece..) with a CPU..

<comment><USER4> Good point. All the early bitcoin miners are clearly suspect. And Satoshi Nakamoto's sudden appearance and then disappearance now makes total sense.

<comment><USER7> Combining time travel and computation has _interesting_ results:

[http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.artic...](http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1991/TempComp.html)

<comment><USER11> Totally serious question: If I go back to 1990, can I distribute a current version of emacs? The toolchain to build the current source tree won't exist for a while.

<comment><USER4> Why not? Any computer program is just a very large number. Even thought the emacs build process that calculates the large number corresponding to the current version of emacs hadn't been performed in 1990, the number itself "existed" back then as the outcome of any number of other possible computations.

On the other hand, you might have problems with dll dependencies.

<comment><USER12> Or maybe Emacs can't run in a home machine of 1990

Remember? Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping

<comment><USER4> I assume @danielweber was asking whether it was possible _in principle_ \- as in, can information exist before it is created.

My remark about dlls was an attempt at humour, not a comment on practicalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a tangentially related note, the tabletop roleplaying game Continuum has, IMO, the most interesting description of time travel and a time travellers community.

The premise is simple. What is the most logical thing for the first time traveller to do? He would travel to the future to get his hands on the most advanced time machine possible. In the end, the best is the human mind. They time (and space) travel with a simple thought.

It has a single "timeline", i.e. changing something in the past doesn't "split the timeline" but creates a paradox, that translates to "frag" on all people related to the changed action. This makes people want to correct these paradoxes.

Example, I go back in time and kill Hitler. It frags a LOT of people. The good guys want to correct the frag. They could go back in my timeline and prevent me from doing it, fragging me. If they don't want to frag me, they could switch Hitler with a Robot or something. I don't get fragged because still I shot something I though was Hitler, yet Hitler remains alive.

<comment><USER14> Wouldn't we as well need a counterpart to "frag" such as "pop" for all the people saved/born due to the change? Then if the "good guys" corrected the original "frags" those "popped" people would be re-"fragged" which would cause a split group of "good guys" to attempt to "correct" the previously "corrected" history?

<comment><USER13> Not really. It's cosmology is weird.

The universe is kind of a mutable thing full of "sentient force" (it's time travellers). When a paradox is formed, it's defense mechanism kicks in to eliminate the paradox. That defense mechanism is the good guys (the continuum).

Frag is associated with what you KNOW. Information is usefull but very dangerous. Imagine this, I go to Auschwitz and see all that horror. I decide to kill Hitler and succeed. I just fragged myself, because I know I killed Hitler (therefore, the Holocaust never happened) yet I saw/know what happened if he were alive. Frag is like being "out of sync" with the universe. If I don't feel frag, it means the good guys intervened, and nullified my action. Of course, as punishment they would probably frag me in another way.

Why do they prevent the killing of Hitler? Because they and their frieds may have/will have seen the consequences of Hitler's actions so it's in their interest to prevent the paradox.

Practically, it doesn't matter what really happened, just that it happened as remembered by the coninuum, and that the consequences remain the same. Another example, by some means, JFK's father is sterile. He can't concieve JFK This is a problem as JFK is known to exist. The continuum may stealthily inseminate JFK's mother for him to be born. In the grand scheme, it may be even impossible to know if JFK's was always sterile or if some outside force made him sterile. The universe must BE as it is remembered.

Higher level continuum members start realizing that, in fact, free will does not exist. You just have to do what you have to do, and have fu doing it. (This is also the main focus of disagreement with the bad guys.)

<comment><USER15> I like the book's example of simple frag with the beer.

So the setup is that you and your time travelling buddy are watching the big Sportsball match on TV in both of your relative presents.

You want a beer so you go to the fridge and there isn't any. So you jump Downstream a couple of minutes, grab a brew and jumps up. Uh oh, don't drink and Span because you just fragged your friend as you are both drinking the same beer.

Your friend is naturally peeved and tells you to fix it. So, what you do is:

* Buy a pack of the same brand of beer and put it in the fridge

* Put a note on one of the bottles telling yourself and your friend not to touch it

* Span (Jump) Upstream a few hours so it's cold then jump back to just after you took the beer from the fridge yourself and put the new beer (the one that was cooling in the present -> future) in so your friend can grab it when he wants a beer.

* You also have to not run into yourself so you jump back up to after the point where you left for the future so as punisment you miss the big sportspile. However all is well because you friend just fills you in regularly and you both enjoy your tasty beverages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Heh, reminds me of John Titor, the time traveler from the future who was working on the Year 2038 problem: [http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread61544/pg1](http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread61544/pg1)

<comment><USER17> I never thought I'd see ATS referenced on HN...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm about to go back in time. If I succeed, the silicon transistor gets invented in 1954 and Christmas goes to happen in the winter (northern hemisphere).

<comment><USER19> Wait ... how did you do that?!

<comment><USER18> How could I know? It was the me from the other timeline.

I don't know why HN shows comments from the alternate timelines, I'd file a bug for that if they had a bugtracker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's a relevant Mitchell and Web scetch. Someone travels back in time and meets Faraday. Faraday asks a bunch of questions, none of which can be answered because the traveller is just an everyday person who has little clue about how things work.

<comment><USER21> There's a slightly silly-but-entertaining film in which an aircraft carrier goes back in time. The spoiler of the film is that one man who is left behind in time becomes absurdly rich by becoming a pioneering "inventor".

So we should look for absurdly rich people who have made dozens of inventions.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/)

<comment><USER22> This is a great lazy Friday night film.

<comment><USER21> Right. Just make sure you _don 't_ read my spoiler comment first :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Looks like an Ig Nobel prize winner to me.

> Although these negative results do not disprove time travel, given the great > reach of the Internet, this search is perhaps the most comprehensive to > date.

</comment><comment><USER24> PDF of paper in case it wasn't obvious:

[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.7128v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.7128v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER6> There is no such thing as time travel. There is only teleportation. Because you have to have 4(or 10) fixed coordinates to move. Just time travel means you will be in vacuum, rock or middle of a star the moment you arrive.

Since we already found the higgs I think the next line of research should be what exactly gives a particle "the where".

<comment><USER25> That point is often brought up. But we don't really know how a time-machine could potentially work, so why is teleportation a necessity? If you want to travel to the future you would abuse time delation. While all means to do so pose certain problems none of them involve teleportation. If traveling to the past would work in a similar way the time-machine would move trough every moment until it reaches its destination. If it never has to leave earth or its orbit to do so it would always be affected by gravity and as such end up where you want it to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ever so slightly disappointed at the complete lack of mention of Steins;Gate ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate)) in the paper. Interesting read all the same :)

<comment><USER27> And no John Titor!

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> With a cursory look, I couldn't figure out if this was serious. Assuming it is, I'm convinced that Time Travel doesn't exist because casinos and sports betting exist, and casinos would go broke if time travel existed. (Unless you altered time so much travelling in time that you altered everything in the future)

<comment><USER29> If we consider that multiple "time lines" can exist in parallel (multiverses perhaps?), and if we consider that changing an event is the equivalent of making a new decision and branching into a new multiverse, then it stands to reason that at least one universe still exists where casinos and sports betting have not gone broke. And it must be this one.

<comment><USER28> This seems less likely than time travel is impossible, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If time travel is possible at all, we'd eventually discover and use it. I wonder if this means that we'll destroy our civilization before becoming able to use time travel (seems more likely than time travel being impossible to achieve within thousands of years from now).

<comment><USER31> One could also posit an Anthropic Principle of time travel: the fact that we still exist means that our universe is among the tiny subset of potential multiverses in which time travel is not discovered, or whose use is sufficiently constrained so as to not result in destruction or paradox.

<comment><USER32> Larry Niven phrased it thusly:

> _If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of > changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven's_laws](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niven's_laws)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you are interested in time travel: I saw the movie "About Time" last night and it was both awesome _and_ romantic. Perfect date movie for the geek/non- geek couple.

And now at least this discussion thread is not completely useless :-)

<comment><USER34> Well if you're _really_ interested in time travel fiction, nothing beats Doctor Who.

<comment><USER33> True, very true. But my girlfriend has a negative interest in watching Doctor Who but loved About Time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The only famous person that I can suspect of being a time traveler is Warren Buffet. It would make so much sense.

</comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps Twitter is run by a cabal of evil time travellers who have created technology to check whether tweets reveal temporal anomalies and delete them automatically to cover their tracks and protect the status of an elite class in the distant future. What if all communications technology has been built around this capability; everything routed through a network of 'security agencies' that ostensibly protect the function of the current government but really work to design a future that benefits a rarified few.

That'd be cool.

<comment><USER37> I work for Twitter and can confirm that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> They were of course found the first time the study ran but the time travelers just kept going back in time and cleaning up traces of themselves until the tests stopped finding the evidence.

</comment><comment><USER39> We could try to analyze the tremendous amount of visual data collected - photographs, video, CCTV footage. Discern abnormalities in appearance, clothes, possible gadgets used, movement, behavior. Given the abundance of recording devices today, chances are they got caught on tape or had their picture taken somewhere.

Of course there's always a possibility of false positives (e.g. Lady Gaga), but I think it may worth a shot :)

</comment><comment><USER40> Well great. Now time travelers _can 't_ make prescient tweets because if they do it will reveal them.

<comment><USER41> I expect time travelers will agree on a responsible prescience disclosure system which uses something like [http://www.proofofexistence.com/about](http://www.proofofexistence.com/about).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've never understood this logic. If say time travel is invented in year 3000. Then surely by 3050 it would be affordable for a certain segment of society. And be 3070 available for a mass market. And by 3100 available in watch form.

So shouldn't we expect there to be millions/billions of people interfering with the past. A significant percentage of which would be deliberately aiming to manipulate, destroy, communicate, affect and do all the things we expect people wouldn't.

Clearly it means either two things. 1: time travel is not possible. 2: going back in time forks the universe/space-time (About Time is a recent movie that proposes this).

<comment><USER43> It's been 60 years since nuclear power was invented, so in 10 years it'll be available for mass market? I'd also like my watch form plane.

What if it's so energy intensive that a future dyson sphere can only power it once a year. It doesn't matter how cheap the machine is, if the resources are expensive.

<comment><USER25> That poses the question whether a civilization that is advanced enough to build a dyson sphere would be able to build a second one somewhere else. The species would have enough time to collect energy and improve the machine until no reachable sun would be usable. And though we don't carry nuclear reactors in our watches (I guess smartphone would be more reasonable these days) we might carry fusion reactors in the year 38000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wouldn't it be more useful to examine the stock and options markets for evidence of time travel? If I had a time machine, I would almost certainly try to use it for personal profit with maximum secrecy, rather than giving myself away by blathering about the future over Twitter.

Also, the study does not rule out Back to the Future style time travel, Terminator style travel, or Primer style traveler isolation protocols. Nor does it rule out multiple universe theories, such that future events become unpredictable to a past-traveler within a very short period of time due to the butterfly effect.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think it's rather unlikely that we will find time travellers among us, for two reasons:

We don't seem to be anywhere close to inventing time travel. If time travel is invented, say, 10000 years from now, our moment in time might not be interesting enough to travel to.

All the funny paradoxes caused by time travel suggest that time travellers could fork a new branch in the multiverse, but that would not change the future they were coming from and they would never be able to return to that future. Hence, the interest in travelling back in time might not be that great, even if it were possible.

</comment><comment><USER46> This only covers time travelers from the future. If one were to use similar methods to find time travelers from the past, we'd probably find millions of candidates :)

<comment><USER12> I believe finding time travellers from the past is trivial, especially those who travelled at a speed of 1s/s (or adimensional 1)

<comment><USER47> How does the measurement even work? 1s/s in what frame of reference?

<comment><USER48> It probably doesn't really work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I've always wondered about this. Now, what if, in "reality" after every unit planck-time the universe forks itself N times based on all the things that could have happened but didn't? And if you went back in time, you go back to that particular fork and so that there is no way to ever detect your time travel? I realize this a fairly naive idea..

</comment><comment><USER50> Quite interesting with the methods used, alas the conclusion:

> Unfortunately, as of this writing, no prescient tweets or emails were > received. Given the additional exposure that the public listing of this > manuscript gains, we will continue to search, on occasion, for active tweets > and emails involving potential time travel.

</comment><comment><USER51> I thought this kind of stuff goes to [http://vixra.org/](http://vixra.org/)

</comment><comment><USER52> The core assumption here is that there is only one physical reality "spread" along the timeline.

Another representation of universe is that there are infinite number of parallel, simultaneous parallel realities all simultaneously existing in the present moment. There is no past and future.

Dodge that!

</comment><comment><USER53> Of course the search didn't find anything. They already know what will be (was?) looked for...

</comment><comment><USER54> The Doctor already made sure that efforts such as these would be doomed to failure: [http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Bad_Wolf_virus](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Bad_Wolf_virus)

</comment><comment><USER55> This paper was fascinating when I read it tomorrow. Unfortunately, I had to warn my former future self about their compelling results and prevent myself from posting all those really fun tweets.

</comment><comment><USER56> The NSA probably has enough data at hand for answering this question.

<comment><USER57> This is actually something that's more reasonable. Presumably time travellers wouldn't advertise their presence heavily (can you say immediate and massive possible security hazard?) but one way to track them would be to look for net- traffic patterns which matched a person who was trying to localize the day and time, or who searched for things well in advance of them becoming known, general trends, or even being put up on the internet at all.

<comment><USER58> Like this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit_double- murder_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit_double- murder_and_suicide#Wikipedia_controversy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm sorry the Rothschild's have the monopoly on time travel for the next few millennium.

</comment><comment><USER60> Citation bait == link bait

</comment><comment><USER61> When I go back in time I'll be sure to setup a Myspace page.

</comment><comment><USER62> Temporal Prime Directive

</comment><comment><USER63> If we had time travelers, they would have been already comeback in the past and meet us from the future. It is useless to look for them. Wait for them and do something else.

</comment><comment><USER64> What if there is no internet in the future?

</comment><comment><USER65> Well, Guido van Rossum has a time machine.

</comment><comment><USER66> this is HN not reddit/r/wtf !

</comment><comment><USER67> Sorry, I use a VPN to the future ;-)

</comment><comment><USER67> Satoshi is a time traveller...

</comment><comment><USER68> ah this idea... Stein's gate anyone?

</comment><comment><USER69> whats up with cornell's favicon?</comment>