Unsolicited messages on Keybase - <AUTHOR> https://www.whiskey-tango.org/2019/11/keybase-weve-got-privacy-problem.html <comment><USER3> I believe they're going to address this with an update?

[https://keybase.io/blog/dealing-with-spam](https://keybase.io/blog/dealing- with-spam)

<comment><USER4> It's fascinating that the two example spammers in that post have women personas, whereas a huge chunk of the problem is men (generally _actual_ men, not fake personas) trying to hit on women. It's not clear to me Keybase believes that's actually a problem or, as the original article says, working as designed.

<comment><USER5> It's fascinating that you think the problem of being uncomfortable is worse than the problem of cat phishing.

<comment><USER6> Uncomfortable?

<comment><USER4> Don't feed the trolls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Keybase seems to be enjoying an identity crisis. On one hand, it's a tool that makes a lot of sense for team collaboration, particularly with its low-effort encrypted git implementation. I even know a couple teams doing software development for the US government using Keybase for collaboration.

On the other hand, the Stellar (cryptocurrency) wallet and the "feature" referenced in this article are something... else. Granted, Keybase is $0/month per user currently, so it's no surprise it is the founders' personal sandbox for experimentation.

I thought Keybase were on the right track in the past with their feature conservatism. Now, not so much.

<comment><USER8> Feature conservatism has never been Keybase; their identity crisis has been going on for quite some time. What first started as a simple messaging app became a file-sharing service, then a Slack competitor, and now a cryptocurrency wallet.

Adding a simple toggle to block unsolicited messages doesn't sound like too much in that respect.

<comment><USER9> To me, it first started out as a key sharing and identity verification service.

That was quite useful to me.

Then they pivoted to a chat app. I had no need for yet another chat app.

Then lately this messy cryptocurrency integration which so far just seems shady.

I am not sure Keybase provides to me any value anymore.

<comment><USER10> >Then lately this messy cryptocurrency integration which so far just seems shady.

Stellar is actually pretty legit and is backed by a real organization going back to 2014: [https://www.stellar.org/foundation](https://www.stellar.org/foundation)

As far as Keybase is concerned, I can't complain when a company sends me free money every month—I'm up to about $60 USD now and there's another airdrop next week.

I think we're just at the beginning of the integration of messaging clients + digital currency—you know if Facebook's Libra gets off the ground, people will be using Facebook Messenger to send it around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't all platforms with added messaging make this mistake at a certain size? Well done to keybase I suppose. I'm sure I read about github having the same exploit years ago, anyone could add you to a repository and it would just show up on your profile.

I think it was Zed;

HN 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601342)

working link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20111202200335/http://sheddingbi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20111202200335/http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1306816425.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> It is somewhat unfortunate to watch what's happening to Keybase. I read /r/keybase over on Reddit and every single post is whining about how they didn't get enough free bullshitcoins or how some people are exploiting the system to get too many free bullshitcoins. It is the highest concentration of whining I've ever seen on the Internet... and I read my own posts ;)

I think there are some fundamental conflicts that are going to be difficult to resolve. Back in the old days of the Internet, everyone could message everyone else. This was great, except for all the spam. Ultimately, by putting our email in a central place, capturing the text of every email message, and analyzing it, we got a world where you could use email and largely be free of spam. But it did come at a great privacy cost; the same access that allows ML to categorize your email allows anyone to read your email; server administrators, hackers, law enforcement.

(This problem plagues every open network, not just email. You are not the only one that gets 6 phone calls a day about how Microsoft needs to be updated or the Internal Revenue Service will come get you, or something.)

This all blows up with end-to-end encryption. There is no centralized place for messages to be classified, so no spam filtering can be done. It is the wild wild west. The mistake I think Keybase made was not realizing that having easy discovery AND private messaging was going to result in a lot of spam. You can have easy discovery and then analyze every message to make sure it's not abuse. Or you can have great privacy, and require everyone to exchange a 1024-bit secret key in person before they can talk to each other. Keybase has a kind of middle-of-the-road approach that is the spammer's dream platform. You can find all the information you need to message me right on my HN profile, and I can't do anything to stop you.

They also made it worse by giving people free money. Now people are conditioned to think that a message announcing they just got some free money is legit. (The first I heard about the airdrop thing was when I had received my first drop.)

You hate to see it, but I think that secure messaging and showing your investors exponential growth are basically mutually exclusive. As long as Keybase pays people to have their account open, they'll have users... but I wonder what their plan is after that.

<comment><USER13> Back in the old days if the Internet, there was no cryptocurrency. I strongly believe (crypto)payments can be used as a pretty effective anti-spam measure in the future.

<comment><USER10> Agreed; the goal is to make it too costly to spam.

<comment><USER14> I think this falls under the "e-postage" variant of the Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem (FUSSP).

[https://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might- be.html](https://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a Keybase user for a number of years I'm very happy with the platform. I'm probably part of the silent majority who use Keybase and have been genuinely happy with it and don't speak up when others have complaints. I use it for personal messaging and for my business and it has been great.

I think Keybase's position on this is on point. This is spam and needs to be dealt with as such. It's no more an issue than with email. Anyone can send you a virus or harassing message in your email, but where is the angry mob of people beating down the doors of every email provider?

There is certainly a problem that needs to be addressed, but lets not blow this up into something it is not. Keybase's spam controls will continue to mature as it grows.

<comment><USER16> Is there any reason you chose Keybase over other solutions? From my perspective, it's like Wire but without the video calling or end to end encryption, or like WhatsApp but without the network effect, or like Slack but without a number of features. I don't really understand Keybase's selling point.

<comment><USER15> There is no video calling, but I already have other solutions that I use for that. Keybase is end-to-end encrypted as mentioned in the other comment, has good multi-platform support, and is free. The fact that the user can revoke a device if it is compromised is excellent. I also have intentions for using it as a secure SSO ID across company applications using the API([https://keybase.io/docs/api/1.0/intro](https://keybase.io/docs/api/1.0/intro)). (Basically replacing how some companies use Active Directory)

For me the secure identity and communication part of Keybase is a critical base layer that no one else really gets right. I can have a new hire create a Keybase account and use that to securely exchange documents (e.g. w-4 allocation, health insurance, etc.) two weeks before they are even part of the company.

The only long-term downside to Keybase for me is it is a centralized cloud service run by a single company and the application is not open source. What I really want is a decentralized open source version of Keybase that's operated as a global network that lots of companies/individuals ran nodes for and you paid for your use of the network. That way I'd be more certain that it will be around in 10 years time.

<comment><USER16> Regarding "Keybase is end to end encrypted", it's sorta true but comes with an asterisk. I answered the sibling comment who asks that question directly: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21741466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21741466)

It's a relatively minor issue though (and one they could fix at any moment, it's not a crypto flaw but a verification flaw), so it's probably fine to send sensitive data over it. Definitely better than what most people use :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Women have been complaining about this for ages. See for example:

[https://twitter.com/jennschiffer/status/1171615043387109376](https://twitter.com/jennschiffer/status/1171615043387109376)

[https://twitter.com/geekygirlsarah/status/116636030680693964...](https://twitter.com/geekygirlsarah/status/1166360306806939649)

[https://twitter.com/aredridel/status/1171824207069614081](https://twitter.com/aredridel/status/1171824207069614081)

<comment><USER4> I appreciated this later thread from the third person you linked: [https://twitter.com/aredridel/status/1201348525499523072](https://twitter.com/aredridel/status/1201348525499523072)

Quoting in part:

> _The onslaught of sexual harassment on platforms like early Twitter (and > later twitter for people of notability), @KeybaseIO, every naive social > network is an attack on the right to exist in public. It is the inverse of a > privacy problem._

> _But the conceiving of this as a privacy problem brings the wrong solutions. > It means we are offered tools to remove ourselves from public view, to > restrict our public personas, to retreat from public life. It means women > are again confined to private sphere, denied civic life._

<comment><USER5> > But the conceiving of this as a privacy problem brings the wrong solutions. > It means we are offered tools to remove ourselves from public view, to > restrict our public personas, to retreat from public life. It means women > are again confined to private sphere, denied civic life.

Yes, welcome to real life.

Where I can't say I'm an atheist back home because I will get beheaded. Or say what I think of capital accumulation in SF because I will never work again.

And if you take the cowards way out of "We should only protect people for what they are and not what they do", being a woman in this day and age is a choice on par with being blond or a socialist.

<comment><USER4> > _Where I can 't say I'm an atheist back home because I will get beheaded. Or > say what I think of capital accumulation in SF because I will never work > again._

These are bad things, right? Like you want to live in a society where this doesn't happen, I assume? Or are you saying this is all right and proper?

<comment><USER5> I want to live in a society where I can live my life as I see fit in private with as little performance art in public as possible.

The idea that your public persona should be anything like your private one is so wrong its laughable.

Right now SF is giving most of the middle east a run for it's money for the number of things no one believes but pretends to so they aren't killed - <USER2> worse become unemployable and homeless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The client is here, right? [https://github.com/keybase/client](https://github.com/keybase/client) I'd prefer to see "discuss on a GitHub issue" or "open a pull request" to "send +1s to these email addresses". (The author does discuss how annoying it is to receive unsolicited messages, after all).

I'd think "contacting is as frictionless as email or phonecalls" sounds reasonable for messaging. (EDIT:although email avoids 'unsolicited messages' with spam control, phones with "phone number is secret"; so perhaps not). Another suggestion: Maybe UI would help this; on FB messenger I can't see messages from strangers unless I go into the "messages from strangers" tab. That seems like it'd solve annoyances from unsolicited messages.

<comment><USER4> Frictionless phone calls worked for decades until automation made telemarketing possible, at which point we had laws that stemmed the tide for a bit, and then further automation made _anonymous_ telemarketing / scamming possible, and we're on the edge of a cultural shift to not picking up the phone when you don't recognize the caller. The latest version of iOS already has a checkbox to block all calls from people not in your address book (24/7, this is a separate feature from "Do not disturb").

Frictionless email had this problem since the very early days. A huge amount of algorithmic effort goes into identifying spam, and there are still large numbers of false negatives _and_ false positives.

These were architectural mistakes, and it's not a credit to a new messaging platform that it doesn't see this as a problem worth solving from day 1.

<comment><USER14> > _The latest version of iOS already has a checkbox to block all calls from > people not in your address book (24 /7, this is a separate feature from "Do > not disturb")._

Thank you! I have been wanting exactly this for a long time now -- my phone is pretty much _always_ on DnD for this reason. I guess I'll finally upgrade to 13 now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure this counts as a privacy problem. Freedom from harassment is important, but it does not fall under privacy. I'd even say that it is more important than privacy. Privacy is about what others can learn about you, not what they can do to you.

<comment><USER20> Yeah... spam sucks and Keybase should probably shunt unfollowed messages into a second screen or do something like Instagram where the first message comes with a "do you want this person to be able to message you?" prompt where you can easily block them, but there's no private information being leaked here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a bit confused, this blog post is written as if it's an exploit, but it looks like it's the intended functionality? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER16> Indeed, it's intended functionality that you can talk to anyone and spammers are apparently just discovering the platform, and Keybase is reacting to it (see the recent blog post mentioned in other comments). The article is written a bit confusingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used to love keybase and used it for a while, but somehow since the crypto coins donations I started getting followed by random people and getting some "spam". So nowadays I avoid it and stick to Signal. I really like the idea behind it though and I hope they manage to solve of these issues eventually!

<comment><USER23> The spam folder in my Fastmail account usually got only one or two spam mails in a month but recently it went up to ~10 per day. The only change that happened around the same time was that Keybase added some crypto-play money to my account which is associated to that Fastmail account.

I know that correlation does not imply causation but this stellar addition after the fact left a sour taste in my mouth. :(

<comment><USER24> Do you use Fastmail's aliases? Those are one way to pinpoint which service revealed your email address if you're diligent about creating them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the keybase update:

> As a bonus, their profile pic will get covered in Poo.

This is in reference to accounts that have been blocked.

If more people see this than the person who blocked it'll be ripe for abuse.

This seems entirely unprofessional and a bit childish. Says something about the culture at keybase.

<comment><USER3> If you've read any of their blog posts you'll see that that's their general vibe: irreverence

<comment><USER4> Is that supposed to make it better? "It's okay they don't take things seriously, they make a practice of not treating things seriously, so you should use their service?"

(And, like, I get it, I have a good knack for being a troll and annoying all my friends, but at least I'm aware that _this isn 't a good thing_ and if I were running a business, I'd find someone else who could keep my instincts in check!)

<comment><USER3> I was responding to this:

>Says something about the culture at keybase.

That is, they've been saying something about their culture with every blog post. I'm not making a judgement call on it.

<comment><USER4> Ah, that's fair!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > A solution like "you have to opt into being added to a team" is really ugly > from a UX perspective and harms the service for honest people. We have > thought tons of this.

Clearly, this person has never been involuntarily added to a chatty group MMS conversation.

</comment><comment><USER27> More in this post too:

[https://vicki.substack.com/p/keybase-and-the-chaos-of- crypto](https://vicki.substack.com/p/keybase-and-the-chaos-of-crypto)

> All of a sudden, I started receiving lots of random messages from people > without profile pictures.

> These were people I didn't know contacting me on a pretty frequent basis, > and I had no way to opt-in to their messages. Pretty ironic for a platform > built on privacy.

> I wasn't the only one. After asking around, it seems that everyone I knew on > Keybase was getting these. But of course, women with female names and > profile pictures got a lot more than most men I knew. Other women online > were experiencing it, too.

</comment><comment><USER28> One of the companies I do contract work for uses Keybase to share credentials between engineers. Like database credentials, AWS access keys, ect. Including production credentials. I felt like it was a security risk when they started sharing creds with me over Keybase but didn't know enough about Keybase at the time to feel comfortable saying something so just followed their process.

Does anyone here use Keybase for this use case? Is it secure?

<comment><USER29> I've used it for this use case. When I onboard new employees, I add them on Keybase and have them add me, and then I send them their AWS keys via Keybase chat.

I've also used it to exchange AWS keys and other credentials when consulting.

I chose keybase because it was the easiest chat to set up with end-to-end encryption that works on the desktop, where I generally needed to be to copy/paste the keys.

It's certainly not the most secure way to share keys, but it's fairly secure and a decent trade off since I consider the credentials I'm sharing on there to be medium value at most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The issue described in this post is the same issue that drove me to stop using IRC and XMPP.

I'm all for open protocols and interop, but I've had an online stalker since dialup (Winsock). Building a system where anyone can message anyone is the same problem in each system.

Anti-spam is _not_ the solution. Harassment (and spear phishing) issues will not be solved by anti-spam.

</comment><comment><USER31> Glad to see this. Recently I was debating using Keybase for chat at home over Telegram. For now I guess I'll need to use something else.

 _edit_ : oh never mind, looks like they started to address it: [https://keybase.io/blog/dealing-with-spam](https://keybase.io/blog/dealing- with-spam)

<comment><USER32> FYI, Telegram is insecure by default, run by unsavory characters, and possibly compromised.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788)

<comment><USER31> Indeed, that's why I wanted to migrate from it

<comment><USER32> Have you tried Signal? Not as majy features as Telegram, bit they have very good reasons for why the missing features are difficult to do and are working hard at solving the crypto problems necessary.

A good discussion about this today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21744274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21744274)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Discord has a similar problem where crypto scammers come on any public servers and mass message all the users. There are no controls except to block them after the fact one by one.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not related to the article, but that background is terrible and flickers everytime I scroll on Firefox.

<comment><USER16> No such issues on the latest stable Firefox on Linux here.

The background is one of those that looks like it might cause issues while scrolling with a lot of monitors though, are you sure it's the site / some software and not your hardware?

Edit: similar to these patterns: [http://www.lagom.nl/lcd- test/inversion.php#invpattern](http://www.lagom.nl/lcd- test/inversion.php#invpattern)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hmm, I just had people contact me out of the blue. I wonder if someone is taking advantage.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there a way to convert that useless crypto money they gave us into real money?

<comment><USER37> I got mine out via Coinbase.

(I had to use the pro offering, at [https://pro.coinbase.com/](https://pro.coinbase.com/), as apparently Stellar isn't available in the main app for US users yet, but it worked fine.)

<comment><USER10> I have some Stellar on my regular Coinbase account, so I imagine I could use it to get my Stellar out if I wanted to.

<comment><USER38> I think pro.coinbase still has lower fees than the regular interface.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What does HN think of certifications like TOGAF, ITIL  and CBAP? - <AUTHOR> I'm a business analyst consultant in Canada, and looking into certifications. Thanks fr your input. <comment><USER2> My boss was big on TOGAF and ITIL, at least the concepts behind them. He would always talk our ears off about Margaret Thatcher and the origin of ITIL. In 4 years of working for the company we never got farther than talk. Meanwhile we were able to get agile and scrum up and running in a few weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha I see. I'm a contrator in the Govmnt, they use scrum and togaf here. But yeah I guess it's a thing in big organisations. Thanks for your input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not that useful as there's a shift towards agile and scrum.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true there is a big shift toward srum. I'm actually consulting as a PO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Never heard of them.</comment>


Private colleges are a waste of money for white, middle class kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/18/private-colleges-are-a-waste-of-money-for-white-middle-class-kids/ <comment><USER2> Everyone talks about the great network-effect from going to a good school. As someone who went to one of these supposedly great "network-effect-ey" schools I say it's bullshit.

As a thought experiment, think of your own college experience. Do you really keep in touch with that many people? Of the people you do keep in touch with, can any of them open opportunities for you that are at all relevant to your field?

People who go to Harvard, Ivies, Stanford, Berkley, et al, have the same basic "College-Experience"(TM) as everyone else. No one wants to admit it, but it's not the network-effect that helps. It's the branding!

Harvard, the Ivies, et al, have brand recognition, and brand recognition helps...a lot!

If you're hiring someone, don't you think that the person with a brand that you recognize is going to at least get that person a phone-screen or an expedited interview? You're desperate to hire someone and they went to Stanford, so they must be good, right?

Ivy league degrees are simply the best door-openers out of all the door openers you can get. Once you're in the door they're as useless as the other degrees are.

<comment><USER3> It depends on the person. I can't comment on Ivys, however I attended a very prestigious East coast prep school. At the time I was a terrible "networker" and I left there with zero long term friends and useful connections.

A good friend of mine went to a similar prep school, but he's more a naturally social guy, and he's maintained leverage connections with probably 100 people who have gone on to positions of power and prestige. He has been able to call on those acquaintances very successfully in his career to open doors and get introductions that simply aren't available to most people.

So just because I wasn't personally able to capitalize on the networking opportunity doesn't mean that the opportunity wasn't there.

<comment><USER4> > _So just because I wasn 't personally able to capitalize on the networking > opportunity doesn't mean that the opportunity wasn't there._

It sounds to me that you reinforce the OPs argument: social people will make connections regardless.

<comment><USER5> I don't see how you got there. Being social is important yes, but you can't just meet the diverse number of people that its possible to in university: future lawyers, engineers, doctors, artists, bureaucrats etc. all in the same campus. College is the best time to make connections, and an Ivy League College is even better.

<comment><USER4> > _I don 't see how you got there._

Well, I started with the fact that he said he isn't social and made few connections, while his sociable friend made many connections. From there, it wasn't hard to conclude that "college" had little to do with generating connections.

> _but you can 't just meet the diverse number of people that its possible to > in university_

Completely untrue.

First of all, you know where you can find diversity? Almost anywhere. Join a club or a team sport and you're likely to encounter people of all shapes, colours, ages and occupations.

Second, the University isn't as diverse as you proclaim. The average person you will meet in college in America or the Commonwealth will be globally wealthy, speak English and probably be a WASP, somewhere between ages 18 and 24. You surround yourself with like-minded people in your courses, many of whom will not graduate, and even fewer who will go on to careers related to their education.

Don't get me wrong; I love the college experience, and am a firm believer in education. I've already spent more time there than is optimal for my career.

> _College is the best time to make connections_

And what do you base this argument on? I didn't have a clue who I was at 20.

<comment><USER3> it's not that "college" would make a huge difference, it's that an Ivy league (or similar school) would allow a person like my friend to make connections that are helpful. The high-end prep school he went to means he has connections at global banks and financial firms, connections to families with 100s of millions of dollars of wealth, people in national level politics, international connections, etc... that wouldn't have been possible at a normal high school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a tough time with this article. I understand what it is trying to say. The costs are ridiculous. But what I see among my friends is that those who went to large public flagship schools got lost, and had a much tougher time. However, those who went to smaller private schools on scholarships built better connections with professors, and tended to do better long run.

<comment><USER7> Interesting. That's directly opposite what I've seen. My close high school friends nearly all went to Ivy League-quality schools: Yale, Penn, MIT, Caltech, etc. Some of us are happy. Most of us are succeeding. A few of us are excelling. (Personally, I'm struggling. I have this irrepressible notion that liberal arts are a waste of my time, no matter how hard I try to subscribe to the learning-for-learning's-sake theory, which is not great for grades.) We're all stressed out of our minds.

Three of my equally, if not more, intelligent friends ended up at public institutions or "second-" or "third-tier" schools. Unequivocally, they're happier. They're _thriving_ , as the article puts it. Student council presidents, top of their class, balanced social life, good job or graduate school prospects.

Of course, this is all anecdata. Me as much as you. The article at least has some semblance of data.

In the end, it's an optimization problem. What is higher education optimizing for? Salary? That seems myopic. Happiness? That seems overly hedonistic. Maturity? Impact upon the world? Good luck measuring that.

College is only not worth it if you don't get out of it what you want. Most of us go to college because society tells us it leads to a "better life"\--which is an inherently unquantifiable notion.

<comment><USER8> You can't assess anything until college is over and you are actually in the real world. Good Grades does not mean you will succeed in real life. It mostly means you are good at following orders.

<comment><USER9> >It mostly means you are good at following orders.

Maybe if you went to a terrible school. In any decent school it means you were able to come up with a solution to a problem presented to you. This is especially true for upper-level classes where the majority of the grade is based on a personal project.

<comment><USER10> As someone who has been on and off of lecturing for the last 10 years, I think you overestimate the size of the Decent Schools Set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1) Network generation is weak, but still there. Does it justify 150k + 150k opportunity cost? The data says no.

2) Colleges are, however, great at identity generation. People who come from top tier schools feel and act like they are awesome. This dramatically helps when it comes to asking for a higher salary, better position, etc. I have met a number of people who didn't go to college, and a lot of them feel they need to prove that they are just as smart as college alums (which they are).

3) Colleges shouldn't be viewed as an economic investment. It is also an intellectual investment. It helps change your world view into something larger and more interesting. I benefited dramatically from reading Plato under the tutelage of Ancient Greek scholars.

4) Lastly, colleges are FUN. Colleges are filled with parties and friends. You have to include this in the costs.

<comment><USER12> > You have to include [FUN] in the costs.

That's part of the problem. There's no "hold the fun" option if you're price sensitive or if you want to invest your fun budget in something else.

This is a really important point because it's really an age and lifestyle discrimination. If you're in your forties and want to get a degree (or a different one), you're still funding late night movies on the quad and disc golf even if you need to be home with the kids.

That being said, I'm sure the fun line items aren't the bulk of education expenses, but other frivolous things certainly are: new rec centers, impressive fountains, micromanaging administrators, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I only skimmed the article after the first couple of paragraphs. The whole $42,000 price tag for a private college is quite a misnomer. My sister went to Michigan Tech, I went to a private liberal arts college. After four years, she has more debt then me.

Your public institution is about as stingy as it can come with it's funding. That $18,000 price tag is going to end up being your final price. If you are a good student, that private college will throw scholarships at you hand over fist. My college's price (starting at $26,000/yr) would typically get slashed by 50% at the start of each year just by the dividends off the school's endowment -- which it does not figure in to it's advertised costs since it various drastically from fiscal year to fiscal year. After that, load on a bunch of random scholarships and I would be down to around $9,000/yr. I had a couple friends whose parents took jobs at the college to get their kids a 90% discount on tuition. They actually ended up making money going to college.

<comment><USER14> My apologies in advance for being pedantic on the web but I think there is a chance a HackerNews reader would appreciate this: "Misnomer" means something is improperly named. It doesn't mean merely misleading.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the correction. I will note it for my future use.

<comment><USER14> You're welcome

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So 11% of people who attended public universities are "thriving", and 4% of people who attended private universities are thriving. That means somewhere between 89 and 96 percent of people who attended university are not thriving. This paints a pretty dismal picture of the utility of a university degree for those who want to thrive, white middle class kids or otherwise.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't tell you anything about whether people who didn't go to college are thriving, though.

<comment><USER17> It did carefully not discuss the trades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not a fan of this way of thinking about university, as though it's some power- up in the competition to make the most money. It's all very American. What about learning and being in an environment that inspires you?

<comment><USER19> Learning and being in an environment that inspires you is great, but has nothing to do with the vast majority of people's college experience. For most people, it's just a job credentialing service.

<comment><USER20> And don't forget football.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Variations between degree programs is bigger than variations between schools. It matters more what you major in vs what school you went to. For example, pretty much any CS degree from any school can get you a job. Whereas, even a degree from a selective school in say, Psychology or Business Admin will be hard for anyone.

Edit: I work in an education tech company and read a decent amount of literature on the subject of school selection and outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER22> The more elite the school, the more elite the ppl you meet. The financial outcomes can be easily explained solely on the networking effects of meeting ppl from more powerful sectors of society. No one sends their kids to an Ivy league school to get "Super smart", its to hang around the "right group" for later influence and networking with the "right people".

<comment><USER23> If you are going to send your kid to one of those, be sure to _clearly explain_ to them that is the point, lest they fall into the trap of studying and getting good grades at the expense of networking.

(I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which parts of that are sarcastic, and how much. Frankly I'm not sure myself.)

<comment><USER24> Pretty much every job I know of outside of our little SV tech bubble will reward you based on your college GPA. Unless something has changed in the last 8 years, a majority of my accounting/finance friends all were vetted on interviews and GPA when applying to E&Y, KPMG, Goldman and the like. Also, it's all about who you know. These type of people represent the majority of white-collar, white college graduate jobs out there - not tech.

Note - that being said, I've interviewed quite a few young graduates recently and for the life of me, I don't remember a single time I looked at someone's GPA. But that's because in tech I'm trying my best to hire young people based on merit. All that matters is whether you can ship code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "The biggest predictor of whether a graduate wasn't thriving was whether he or she had student loans. Fourteen percent of those without any debt said they were thriving, compared to 2 percent of those with more than $40,000 of debt. You can't draw iron-clad conclusions from that..."

Maybe "you" can't draw any iron-clad conclusions from that observation, but I can. Debt is a multiplier. It's great when there's appreciation (ex: buying a house) but a heavy burden when there's no upside (credit cards, student loans) and an impossible crushing weight if there is depreciation (ex: buying a house that drops 20% in value).

To all current and future students: good luck out there. Learning for learning's sake is fine. But don't forget to focus on outcomes, too.

<comment><USER26> Student loan debt can be a multiplier if it increases your income. I started my CS degree at 27, working at a pizza restaurant manager. 4 years later (and 2 years into my new career) I am making twice what was then. My loans will be paid off in 10 years and will still have my career and will continue to out earn what I would have in my old life.

While this clearly isn't the case for all degree earners, it certainly has upside in a lot of cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm about 20 years in on my career and can maybe provide a few observations:

\- Outside of _very_ few jobs, this article is absolutely correct. The few jobs that it really matters are ones where they won't even look at your resume unless is has "Harvard" under "Education" on the resume for no set of reasons that have anything to do with the quality of the education. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to if they really want to work in those kinds of places -- note: the burn-out rate on those places is usually around 2 years, then you're out in the market with the plebs and a pretentious work history you'll have to explain away for the rest of your life.

\- Very early in your career, maybe the first 2-3 years, if you went to a top- tier private school you might receive a slight pay or position stats buff over your state schooled peers. If you went to a private school that wasn't top- tier nobody will recognize it and it'll be a waste of your money. Rule of thumb, if the private school you fight your way to get into and pay out the nose to attend isn't immediately name recognizable, nobody will care in the slightest early in your career and it may as well have been the local commuter school later on.

\- This stats buff goes away very fast and _hard_ as your movement up the corporate ladder start to be based on factors other than the school you went to. After your initial 2-3 years, you'll be expected to have learned the job and be able to perform at the working level. I've observed that there is almost no correlation between the best performers and the school they went to. If anything there might be a slight bias towards those that went to impersonal state schools since they're used to not having their hand held. This is the hard lesson that places like Google are learning. One of the difficult things with being data driven is that when the data shows your state school grads do as well or better than your top-tier grads in the workplace, you have to pay attention. And the data has shown conclusively that it really doesn't matter.

\- By 10 years in, employers look for degree level (M.S. over B.S.) and possible field (relevant like Computer Science vs. irrelevant like Anthropology) and completely don't care what school you went to in the slightest. Those that do, 10 years in on a career, are usually places you don't want to work long-term.

\- By 20 years in, you could have gone to the worst cow-poke state school in the country and nobody will care even in the slightest and your peers at that level will have educations from an impossibly diverse collection of schools.

\- Many of my peers who graduated from a top-tier/private school realize that they'll need to return for an M.A./M.S. or an M.B.A. at some point in their career to maintain upward momentum. Since they're working at the same time this inevitably means going to the local state school. A comment I've heard over and over again is that state schools often don't do as much hand holding and advising (degree counseling) as the privates and they often feel lost in the impersonal grind. Many of them drop out a year in because of this. If you end up here, don't drop out, it's not that hard, but state schools won't treat you like a special snowflake.

\- However, you can go to the _wrong_ school. The big commercial for profit schools, like University of Phoenix or similar, _can_ be a slight drag on your early career post-school and make it harder to hit career maximums. Companies like to fill up the "Leadership" page on their web site with people who went to well credentialed schools: state and private doesn't make a difference, exploitive for-profit does.

\- All of my peers with huge student debts went to private schools. 20 years in, I have peers _still_ paying $200-500/mo to service their loans. That's a car payment. The people who are debt free, and get to take on expensive hobbies, travel a lot, etc. are the ones who went to an in-state State School.

\- People _agonize_ over what school they're going to go to for their undergraduate education, usually over _very_ minor reputation differences. By 5 years into your career it won't matter even in the slightest.

\- The only people I've ever met who introduce themselves as "I'm so and so and I went to <school>" or say "When I was at <school>" instead of "when I was in college" went to an Ivy. Most people stop saying this pretentious nonsense about 10-15 years in because they'll finally clue in on the social signal that it's not impressive to anybody.

\- If you have money to burn, and you want to carry cachet more than 10 years into your work, go to a well known overseas school like Oxford. You'll get name recognition, tales of the foreign, etc. However, if you have to explain that "I went to basically the Harvard of <insert country>" you won't get the same effect. Americans still think there's some secret sauce that well known top-European schools impart on a student.

\- If you went to school because of the great sportsball team, nobody gives two flying fannies about it when they're hiring you. On the things that are important about you as a candidate, it's at or near the absolute bottom of the list.

\- Your in-career social network will be far more meaningful for you than the one you get from school.

\- Spending the extra money to go to an out-of-state state school is almost always a complete waste of money. Just go to your local state school and use the difference to pay off your loans in a couple years or buy a car or something. It makes absolutely zero difference to your employer and slight reputation differences in programs won't make that much difference once you're out in the working world.

</comment><comment><USER28> Similarly in Australia [1]

[1][http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no- go...](http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/private-school-no-golden-key- to-employment-20140815-1032d6.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> That obviously depends heavily on where you are situated and more specifically how [in]competent your public/government system is.

</comment><comment><USER30> I tend to wish this were true, because it would be better for the world even if neutral-to-negative for me. In truth, though: pedigree shouldn't matter, but it does.

Among the top 100 offerings or so, the differences in quality of education are very small. The differences in quality of _students_ are pretty small. But connections matter, and even if Harvard student's aren't all shockingly brilliant, the dumb ones are _connected_.

If you go the #147 private college and pay $50k per year, you'd be better served by a state school. If you're talking about Harvard, though... no, it's not a waste of money.

Perhaps surprisingly, the influence of pedigree _increases_ later in one's career. These numbers are estimates, but an MIT CS grad might make $100k out of college while the state-school grad makes $85k-- not a huge difference. Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k. Why? Connections tend to get _stronger_ with time, even when not formally kept up. So much of the business world is run by nostalgia. That's why prep school connections are more powerful than college, and college connections are more powerful than grad-school connections... even though the elite high schools are less selective and meritocratic. _Old_ connections suggest predestination ("born to lead") and, because of that, have a cachet that new connections (though carrying more signal) don't. The future may be (and most hope it will be) rich and abundant but the past is a scarce and eternally limited commodity; there will never be more pedigree.

Where you went to school matters not at all, ten years out, if you're in the top or bottom 10%, relative to where you might be expected to go with your training, career-wise. If you do really well, no one cares where you went to school. Or if you make terrible choices and fail catastrophically, the Harvard degree just makes it more pathetic. For that middle 80%, those connections made early on are going to start throwing "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards and that's a major asset if you want to break the ceiling and become a player.

I'd say that it generally works like this. From 22-25, pedigree matters a lot in an evaluative sense. (Make that 22-29 if you get a PhD.) From 25-30, it doesn't matter all that much because people have more recent data, when it comes to evaluation. From 30-40, it starts to matter again, not because people judge you based on it-- your record speaks for itself-- but because you're vying for leadership or coveted creative/architectural roles and that means politics, and you need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards (which come from having connections) for when your risks blow up. After 40, it seems to stop mattering because that's an age at which you shouldn't need "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards at all.

<comment><USER4> > _Ten years out, those numbers look more like $250k and $150k._

If there are managers willing to pay an employee 40% more based on an education received a decade prior, there's a huge economic advantage to be had hiring those of "lower pedigree".

<comment><USER30> No one consciously cares, at that age, where people went to school. What happens is that the ones with pedigree are more likely to be selected for leadership positions early on, and appear "on merit" to be worth more, after several years of higher-quality work experience. In reality, they were just able to get themselves promoted faster. After ten years, though, they legitimately have a higher quality of work experience than those without the pedigree advantage.

So you wouldn't be _necessarily_ able to save $100k by hiring people without the pedigree, because even though many are just as talented, they're not going to have the highest quality of work experience. There are plenty of people who'd do just fine, even with the lack of good experience, but you have to be able to find them.

<comment><USER31> I agree that you've basically nailed the dynamic in the career-development market, but I'll point out that there are a number of career resets you can use to escape it. Grad school. Founding a startup. Independent projects. Moving into a different field entirely.

These often aren't objectively worth it under the value system of your old career, but they essentially throw a monkey wrench into your career and make anyone reading it go "Huh? Why did they do that, and what does it mean for me and my company if I hire them?" And that, in turn, gives you an ability to reframe your story on your own terms. If you're behind in somebody else's value system, it makes no sense to continue molding your career to their value system. Instead, pick _your_ value system and then seek out positions that play to your strengths.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


China won't be luring foreign tech talent any time soon - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-13/why-china-can-t-lure-tech-talent <comment><USER2> As a Chinese I would say that the points in this article, though true, are not among the driving reasons.

If you ask me, I would present this list:

1\. Practically, there are only 4-5 cities suitable for 'tech talents' in China. The properties prices in these cities are comparable to the ones in NY and SF while the salary isn't. BTW: you have very little chance to be able to get married without a property under your name in China. This isn't a 'tech talents' specific issue but 'tech talents' have more chances to emigrate.

2\. There is no union nor labour law in China (well technically they both exist but..). So labour abusing is normal. Many tech workers are 'voluntarily' working 996 (which mean 9am-9pm, 6 days a week) on a 955 pay slip.

3\. Chinese society is relation-oriented. Tech workers hate that. For example often the promotion goes to the guy who has the closest relationship to the manager.

4\. Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel. Many people don't want their children go through it if possible.

5\. Pollutions etc.

<comment><USER3> > Primary/secondary education in China is very, very cruel

Could you elaborate? Based upon what I see here in Canada, chinese immigrants maniacally push their children to all functions that can be found around. And it's considered good when there're many chinese children in your kid's class.

<comment><USER2> It would be a book. There are of course extreme workloads from both the schools and the parents. But to me there is something worse - the public shaming culture.

I live in the UK now. Something very odd to me at the beginning is that I can never know how good my kids are doing compare to their classmates. The teachers would politely refuse to answer such questions. And the 'parents meeting' is private to one pupil's parent(s) and the teacher.

In China things do not work this way. Every test - and there are a lot of them - is publicly ranked. There will be a very large poster at the back of the classroom with the ranking on it. The parents' meeting is a meeting for all parents of that class together. A teacher will read the ranking aloud on the stage to all parents. The top pupils will be invited onto the stage and receive praise, which is alright. But the bottom pupils will also be invited onto the stage and receive criticism - in front of all peers and their parents. The idea here is to motivate them work harder to avoid the shaming - or to motivate their parents to push them harder to avoid the shaming. It may work for some. But I see more harm done than good here.

<comment><USER4> > cruel

def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it.

Shaming is undesirable, but I wouldn't say publicly knowing how you rank compared to others would constitute "cruel". Its really how the world works - in sports you see exact stats of how your do, publicly traded companies/CEOs are meticulously analysed publicly on how they perform etc. etc.

There does need to be a balance btwn hypercompetiton, and "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. I feel like the US has swung far to one side and china the other. Best would be some where in the middle. Maybe have a live list of the top 10-15% of student scores.

I am a parent, and don't want to hurt my daughter, but at the same time a little pain and suffering makes you stronger.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you here. I used the word cruel since I couldn't find a better word - as a none native speaker my vocabulary is limited :( .

I have the same feelings about the UK public education. Competition is basically non-existence. I wonder why people can't settle in a middle ground.

<comment><USER5> > def: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about > it. willfully: check; suffering: check (the shaming); no concern: check. > Actor: state/school as a whole. So I think it applies.

<comment><USER4> I think this is sum of the parts different than the whole.

I was just pointing out that cruel has a very negative connotation ie - inhuman, barbaric, sadistic, evil, abominable etc. Applying it in the previous use case seemed excessive and implied a more radical tone than I believe the author (as he mentioned) wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is avoiding the elephant in the room: the lack of openness and information access is merely a consequence of having an illegitimate regime where everything is ruled by coercion, corruption, and political connections.

While you're there, if some company dumps chemicals in your backyard, somebody with a badge hounds you, or your employer refuses to pay you, good luck getting your day in court. They'd be doing this knowing they have rank and/or connections and you don't. There is no real rule of law in China. That makes it hard to be an attractive destination, regardless of how "hot" the local IT sector wants to look to the rest of the world.

Especially these days, where a quiet but massive purge is under way, and the regime's current propaganda is to push a heavily racialist/manifest-destiny style narrative, as a "welcomed immigrant" not having Youtube access would be the least of your worries.

<comment><USER7> What's striking about this description is that a number of would-be Western leaders seem to be looking at the situation and saying, "Wow, that looks great. I want my own."

<comment><USER8> But can you blame them? For years China's mantra to the West was, "Look at how great our economy's doing! Look at how divided and problematic democracies can be, they are not even that much better than China on human rights! The 21st century is not for idealistic democracies but for China."

<comment><USER9> I wonder how many have studied Herr Führer's record on German economy. The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and communism.

<comment><USER10> > The 2 major mistakes of mankind in the 20th century are fascism and > communism.

That's a bit misleading cause fascism is just inherently bad while communism has had some implementation problems.

<comment><USER11> I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states, and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is basically an unworkable system. See, for instance, Hayek's argument on information and economic decision-making.

In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the workers, but that has never happened. Instead communism has always been installed through violence on the part of a small group or imposed from without, and usually in states that were not economically advanced.

<comment><USER12> > I really disagree with you. We have had a couple of dozen communist states, > and every one of them has turned out bad. That's because communism is > basically an unworkable system.

All of those have been Leninism or its descendants, which break strongly from Marxism. Starting with the required starting conditions.

> In fact, Marx claimed that capitalism in advanced economies has > contradictions that would eventually lead to its being overthrown by the > workers, but that has never happened.

It's happened in basically all of the countries that were capitalist at the time, where capitalism (that is, the 19th century system that Marx was pointing to) has been overthrown (largely, through democratic means) due to opposition from the working class and replaced with the modern mixed economy which retains some of the basic structures of capitalism, but many features of socialism applied to directly to mitigate the effects of capitalism which can critics from the time the system was named have targeted. (Many of those sytems even call themselves socialist, and the rest of them are labelled that way by their capitalist critics.)

<comment><USER13> This is going to sound like concern-trolling, but I'd thought that Marx was afraid of the possibility of the Social Democrats winning (i.e., a modern mixed economy forming) -- since this would leave the current holders of property-qua-power still possessing it, while making the workers comfortable enough to no longer desire revolt. But my memory here's faulty, and I suspect it might have been Lenin who was hostile to the Social Democrats -- although Lenin has never struck me as a particularly subtle thinker, to say the least. Did the Social Democrats even exist as a faction in Marx's time...?

(As for the rest: let's hope that the term "modern mixed economy" continues to spread. Calling the postwar Western system "capitalism" has led to a lot of confusion.)

<comment><USER11> From what I understand, Marx was opposed to reforming capitalism, since he thought it could steer the working class, at least temporarily, from the total revolution he was pushing.

I have read that Social Democracy arose in part from the failure of the working class to revolt and overthrow capitalism. In the communist movement at the end of the 19th century there were two different responses. One, lead by Eduard Bernstein, decided instead to turn to electoral politics and try to move the economy to socialism in gradual steps, and so they joined the other groups that had formed the Socialist Democratic movement.

The other group, lead by Lenin, decided to change the party into an elite group that would lead the working classes to revolution, and this lead to the communism movement as we know it and all the totalitarian states it produced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article doesn't mention that but another possible factor is that life is not _that_ great over there either. If you are not Chinese, you'll always be a foreigner there, even if you spend ten years in the same city, so that makes it difficult to integrate. You'll also have to deal with the Chinese administration for the visa, residence permit, etc. which is quite a pain. It's definitely a great place to visit or even to spend a few years, but it's not that welcoming if you want to live there more permanently.

<comment><USER15> A minority in the US could make that same exact argument...

<comment><USER16> > you'll always be a foreigner there

This isn't true in the US, if you learn the language.

<comment><USER17> language != culture

<comment><USER18> No, but communication plays a huge deal in being able to absorb the culture, as well as share your own.

<comment><USER19> Also the american culture is very wide spread through media. Watching Hollywood, music, sitcoms, talk shows, stand ups etc. ever since I was 10 yo and able to understand english definitely helps absorbing the culture even from eastern Europe as myself. Visited the US for 2 weeks and really felt as if I was no stranger at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I believe the author should have explored another reason: English.

One of the legacies of the British Empire is that a lot of the educated people in the world use English. Even in Europe, it is the lingua franca for business and academia. (In mighty Germany, the top institutions publish in English).

I think the applications and work would have to be done in English for China to effectively attract global talent.

<comment><USER21> Correct

The problem would be much smaller if they used a non-tonal language with a manageable alphabet or abjad (like Cyrillic or Arabic)

<comment><USER22> Is learning tones much harder than learning all the weird vowel and consonant sounds that English has? I'd always though of English and China as examples of hard languages in terms of sounds and languages like Spanish and Japanese as easy in terms of sounds.

<comment><USER23> > I'd always though of English and China as examples of hard languages in > terms of sounds

Glad you mention this. I don't think most native English speakers are aware how complex English phonetics are. There are subtleties that only native speakers can distinguish. That is why many not-native speakers mispronounce some sounds. It is not that we are dummy. Our brain is just unable to hear (and produce) the exact sound.

<comment><USER24> English is a strange language, but I wouldn't say especially difficult. Chinese is much harder to learn because it's so inconsistent between what you're supposed to say and the way people actually talk. In addition to using tones that are very unfamiliar and then you also need to learn the written language which is very difficult and requires a Chinese-Chinese dictionary for strange words like manticore and sometimes you can't even find them.

I'd put English at around Russian difficulty, hard, but easy to get going. English also has the advantage of having a simple character set (less letters than Russian, French, etc) and English also has a ton of cultural artefacts (songs, movies, etc) to sink your teeth into.

My problem with Russian (unlike say, French, which I've also studied) is that I can't even find music to listen to that's anywhere close in production value to English and there are a couple of good movies (Leviathan, for example) but you can only watch them so many times. I don't know of a single Russian TV show that is anywhere close to HBO or Netflix quality. I'd love a recommendation though if someone here knows of one.

<comment><USER25> English does have a great many more sounds than Chinese, and very complicated grammar relative to any Asian language. (The tones make up, to some degree, for the paucity of sounds in Chinese.)

A native English speaker, I have always been perplexed by the tendency of foreigners to use "the" incorrectly. A space ship orbits "the Earth" but not "the Mars", for example. But then I tried to find a guide to using "the"...it is one of our most mysterious words.

<comment><USER24> It has more vowels (and more frequent consonants), but _tone_ doesn't change the word in English. It can change the meaning (denote sarcasm, sadness, or questioning) but using a higher or lower pitch doesn't change the way you'd write out the word. Remembering tones is like adding imaginary numbers to your math, it's something you never thought about that you need to now account for everywhere. Learning new individual sounds is hard (and I have to do it with Russian) but I don't think it's as hard as the tone business in Chinese.

As for filler words in English: I totally agree it's madness. The word "set" has like 20 definitions. But you can mess them up and people will still understand you. "I break into car" (the way a Russian learning English would say it) vs "I'll break into the car" are both understood the same; whereas in Chinese if I mess up a (to my ears minor) tone, the information is completely lost.

<comment><USER25> Tonality and use of filler words are not really relatable.

Mistaken tonality is more like saying "tree" instead of "three".

Tonality is another feature of a speech sound like aspiration or voicing. Although it is not easy for English speakers, there no reason in principle to single it out as especially difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is very much true.

Outside censorship, the working culture of China is also quite different. It's quite common to do overtime in China. work-life balance is less respected. People accept it as the normal and are proud of it.

My friend worked for an accounting company. In busy season, she had to work till 5a.m. in the morning of the next day and present her report to her supervisor at 8 a.m.

she took her toothbrush, pajamas, sleep bag to the company because it doesn't make sense to go home at 5 a.m. and back at 8 a.m. as commute takes long time too.

There is another friend working for Alibaba. Once they wanted to release a messenger app to catch up wechat. The entire team was shipped to a different city during Chinese new year, they are disallowed from leaving until the product is shipped.

I also went to a talk by Xiaomi at standford, they were very proud of having official 6 day work week.

<comment><USER27> Investment banking/PE, management consulting, and especially US startup culture all seem to tout similar hours during busy seasons or impending product launches (similar to programming death marches).

Although more extreme, is this really much different from Google, Facebook, Apple or other SV/NY firms offering "perks" designed to make your extended office existence more tolerable?

<comment><USER18> YES!

I've never heard of one of those shipping a whole team off, during the holidays, and telling them they can't leave until a stupid fucking app is done. Read that again. It was not a vital piece of infrastructure, or an important breakthrough for science. It was a stupid fucking chat app. For that, these people were held and denied the ability to celebrate a holiday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The bankers that I've talked won't go (back) to China because of the pollution, specifically the smog. They refuse to put their children in that environment.

Cultural, social, language, and food differences are all superficial reasons not to go to, or stay, in China. They can be dealt with an open, understanding mind. However, the salary or career benefits don't make up for it when your children and spouse are breathing that air.

<comment><USER29> Totally this. I have a friend who's running his company's Shanghai operations. They installed four air purifiers in their home just to keep the smog out - and Shanghai is a relatively clean air city! They have to check the smog report every morning to see if it's okay to take their kid outside. I would never raise a family in that environment.

<comment><USER30> Always makes me angry seeing foreigners growing up their children here in shanghai..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are some good points in that article, but the narrative doesn't include the Chinese view of this. China doesn't necessarily have to lure non-Chinese. They can do well welcoming back the Chinese who came to America to earn a Ph.D., only to find they don't get the respect or the better life they expected.

I'm not sure why the Bloomberg article started from quoting a Chinese person about immigration and then shift into talking as if China is going to recruit non-Chinese. Maybe it was taken out of context, maybe it doesn't fit the narrative the author wants to convey.

My family came from Taiwan, and my father and my mother earned their Ph.Ds in the 90s. My father was one of the top scorers on the Taiwanese National Exams. Yet here in America, the only people who respect that are other Taiwanese (and other Chinese if both groups remembered this used to all be one culture). My grandparents are proud of my father; they were farmers. Growing up, there was always an anxiety about having to leave the US because the student visa is up. You can't work in the US with a student visa. Things only got better when US- based company owned by Taiwanese offered to hire him and pay for getting him a permanent residency. That gave him the negotiating leverage to get help with that in his postdoc position. Even so, he stayed as a post-doc for a long time (which, I get that right now, that's the way it is for a lot of academics, immigrants or otherwise), before becoming a professor for a short time. He was never on the tenure track.

People came here because they didn't want to be back in their birth country. I can tell you, if he had been offered a position in Taiwan with a research budget, that would have very tempting.

So when the Bloomberg author was quoting the Chinese guy about being able to recruit more people, having this background, I know the Chinese guy is likely talking about being able to recruit Chinese ex-pats who earned advanced degrees in American universities, and not feeling welcomed here.

</comment><comment><USER32> One cultural factor is the fact that developers have a low social standing in China (sometimes referred to as 马工). This leads to low pay, reduced dating pool, lack of respect from people you meet etc.

<comment><USER33> Can you comment on why this is? Speaking broadly, software development tends to attract intelligent, hardworking, and educated people - not always obviously, but I think more so than a most other "office" jobs. What is contributing to the low social standing?

<comment><USER34> If you aren't in charge of others, you are at the bottom of a hierarchy of people.

<comment><USER35> There is an alternate measure, less commonly found but certainly existing in the mainstream: Rather than how _many_ people are _below_ you, how _few_ people are there _above_ you (in a large organization).

By that measure, the senior developer on a 'special projects' team reporting directly to a CxO could be quite high status. Similarly, the US National Security Advisor only has a small staff reporting to them, but their influence on US policy is as great or greater than the Secretary of Defense and/or Secretary of State.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> TLDR: Tech success is driven by openness of ideas and people, and China's control and oversight of the internet and other data stifles the ability of companies to execute quickly or with confidence (e.g., security, IP).

<comment><USER37> The looming cloud of deadly pollution doesn't help attract talent either.

<comment><USER38> Or the 12-hour a day, 6 days a week work schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> IP isn't enforced there, technology companies are comprimised from the start, "failure" isn't seen as a stepping stone to success, basic personal freedoms for its citizens don't exist.

Hm, wonder why smart people with plenty of options wouldn't want to live under a totalitarian government like that.

<comment><USER40> no startups have actual enforceable patents in the usa too. it's not like they have a research department or a huge legal fund. they may get the occasional design or method patent that means nothing in the real world. so i don't thin the China ip thing means anything for startups, other than know you won't be the target of a troll right off the bat.

<comment><USER39> At least there is precedent of making big companies pay a licensing fee for "borrowing" IP from a startup in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I agree with the article. I've spent a little bit of time in China, and I find it enjoyable despite its obvious detractors. In many ways, the Chinese lifestyle is refreshing to someone who has spent their life in California.

The problem is going to be with the Government being so hostile to open information. That and the salaries are not going to be as competitive. And I predict Trump will do little to shake the Californian stronghold of technology.

<comment><USER42> > In many ways, the Chinese lifestyle is refreshing to someone who has spent > their life in California.

Could you expand on that? I was born in China, but grew up in the US and currently live in California. I can't think of many ways in which China is better and plenty of ways in which it's worse. My mother (who obviously has a closer connection to the country) tells me she strongly prefers life in the US.

<comment><USER41> Californian culture can be stifling at times at how "laid back" it is. There is a culture of lethargy and apathy here that can leave people wanting more, which is why so much talent that grows up here ends up moving to far more rigid cities and cultures like in New York. The rigidity of Chinese cities coupled with their liveliness makes for a fantastic escape from California.

That and infrastructure here is absolutely frustrating. Everything in California was structured around car culture. While much of China is now the same way, there is still plenty of excellent public infrastructure as well. Some might argue it's worse than the US, and I can definitely see how the large crowds in subways, the constant construction, and the some of the cheaper buildings are ugly and poorly designed... but California's ultra- expensive, 20 year major projects consistently are less effective in sheer results than China's quick-and-dirty development.

And lastly, I think it needs to be said that China as a culture, nation, and civilization is ancient! Its deep roots and environment create such a fascinating mix of old and new. Here in California, we paved over our past forcefully, and what past there is left to observe is often depressing at the core; nothing to be proud of.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the countryside. California is beautiful, but China is so entirely different geographically that just being there feels so shockingly wonderful.

Don't get me wrong. I love California at the end of the day and would find it hard to ever leave, but I'm simply explaining my statement. :)

<comment><USER42> Makes sense, and I guess I agree with quite a few of your points. I actually moved from New York City, where I did my undergrad, so I totally feel you on the horrible public transportation infrastructure. But I don't find California to be less lively. Granted, I live in Berkeley, so it's more urban than, say South Bay or the LA suburbs. I would consider moving back to NYC if the weather wasn't much worse and if there were actually jobs in my field (Electrical Engineering).

<comment><USER41> Fair enough. Berkeley and Oakland are pretty cool communities to live in and are very active.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I just spent a month living there, and while I enjoy the country(food in particular is amazing), internet speed is terrible, and basic developer needs like being able to download a docker image, is like an overnight download ( because the internet will throttle down to low kb/s on such a download). Doing full time startup work from there would require working on something fairly lightweight I think.

<comment><USER44> I think you used the Internet provider from a different one, which is cheapist one -- whole community share one bandwidth.

My friends in China all use at least 30Mbits connection, now there is a promotion for 100MB for the same price.

<comment><USER43> It's likely that I wasn't on an optimal connection - but I also tried coffee shops, various different hotels, and several different vpn / proxy strategies and all were like this (once or twice a proxy configuration would get me about the speed you are saying for a day, but then would be not working the next day), so whatever the optimal connection is, it wasn't easy to find.

<comment><USER44> I don't know where you lived, normall, in China, you can use Interenet from Starbucks or any chain coffee stores, they are all have good Internet speed. And if you try to access Google or Youtube, FB etc, you can try ShadowSocks instead VPN.

For the slow speed between US and China, Jap (and other asian countries), I think that's the nature issue for oversea Internet connection. You can use this website ([http://ping.chinaz.com/](http://ping.chinaz.com/), you may need google translator) to test how speed looks like as you connect to other country from China.

<comment><USER43> (Shijiazhuang 3 weeks and Hainan 2 weeks) I did occasionally get good speed (I tried starbucks twice and one day it was decent, the other day was quite slow). There was a particular set of docker images that I had to repeatedly download that I found very painful to deal with, and eventually just decided to work on something else- I did in fact end up using shadowsocks, but on one day I set it up with a server in singapore it was reasonable (like 200-300 Kb/s), the next day it was 7Kb/s, so I'm not sure what happened. It might just be that I had a string of bad luck with connections. I guess if you live there it seems reasonable that you could buy a private faster internet connection / maybe find a reliable starbucks coffee shop. I am completely willing to accept that I might just have run into a set of bad connections and it was luck.

<comment><USER45> I heard rumors (just rumors) that Internet providers in China limit your connection speed to servers outside China unless you upgrade your service and pay more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> For people from Russia or other countries China could be attractive option. Take-home money can be good, especially with low taxation. US is not really a competition, it is relatively unfriendly to foreigners, very hard to move there.

But I think China wants to mainly increase talent retention. There are many Chinese who stay in US after finishing their studies there. China wants those educated people back.

<comment><USER47> I guess it depends on your idea of "unfriendly to foreigners". If you're referring to countries where the US has icy relations with, getting a visa might be problematic, otherwise, I think your experience is a bit off.

As a native born American, I see a surprising amount of small business owners who are successful are not from America. Even in the small town (Nicholasville, KY population ~20,000) I'm from, most of the convenience stores and gas stations are owned by a single middle eastern family that is super friendly to everyone. I went to school with Charlie, one of their sons, who was the first to be born and raised in the US. I see so many Americans who were raised in relative ease and comfort simply being out hustled by immigrants and "foreigners" who have more drive.

You know what, that is great! The healthy mix of diversity is what makes America (already) great. If a family legally comes from Mexico and wants to hustle their way into success, I'm all for it. Immigration is not a bad thing.

<comment><USER48> No offense but I don't think you really have a grasp of the US immigration system. It's very difficult to immigrate or even get a temporary work visa. It's easier if you are the relative of a US citizen, but even then if you are mainland Chinese born or Indian you have to wait in a long queue unless you are the spouse of a US citizen.

<comment><USER49> Very difficult is an understatement. It's basically close to impossible to work in the US for a EU or russian citizen.

Source: Friends of me who want to move to the USA. I'm talking people with rare qualifications with a company ready to take them at $200k base salary and the layers to do all the paperwork for the H1B. They just can't get a fu----- VISA.

<comment><USER48> Yes, even in a situation like that, it still comes down to, literally, a lottery (one with zero transparency). Compare with the independent skilled migration systems of Australia, Canada and NZ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This article is just typical Western nonsensical way of looking at China that let ideology fool the you and your audience.

If you look at China in a realistic way, its pro/cons are very obvious:

Pro:

1\. Chinese market is huge

Cons:

1\. This market is very competitive. Local giants are not far from their US counterparts, and they learn(copy) quickly.

2\. Pays are high comparing to other jobs in China, but not living up to US level(but on par with Europe and Japan).

3\. Long hours and no play.

4\. Air pollution.

5\. Language barrier for Westerners. You cannot go too far if you don't understand Chinese.

6\. Foreigners, even if they want to, have nearly zero chance to be a permanent resident. (Extremely anti-immigrant policy, but the reason is actually consistent. CCP think China is too crowded, so they don't need extra people, they don't even let its own citizens to have more than 2 kids! :P)

How hard is that to figure this out? However, this article is just making everything looks like it is about their cherished liberal ideology. No, if China has money to dig, people will go. But it is not for foreigners, and probably not worthy it.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think it's just information access issue that is issue. The way I see is that there are many people considering working and living in China as bit of risk considering government's decisions and policy can change fairly arbitrarily, which of course the one of prominently seen effect of that is change in government firewall blacklists.

</comment><comment><USER52> Something ironic about an "open" culture being critical of a "closed" culture.

Reality is the American's tech cultural is at its core a very closed community. Even within America, trying to create a startup outside of the Bay Area, which is insanely expensive area to do business, will require exponentially more effort, luck, etc.

<comment><USER53> I'd be interested in seeing data on successful start ups vs location.

<comment><USER54> _The Effect of Location on a Startup 's Likelihood of Success_

[https://codingvc.com/the-effect-of-location-on-a-startups- li...](https://codingvc.com/the-effect-of-location-on-a-startups-likelihood- of-success)

<comment><USER53> Neat, thank you! The graphs use this nebulous "signal" metric. It is hard to tell if that includes start up valuation and/or exits, which I posit are more important than some of the markers they mentioned like advisor or investor popularity. Neat data point though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Pay better be good to reduce your life expectancy by a few years due to pollution. Maybe 500k/year would be enough

</comment><comment><USER56> As an American-born Chinese, the main reason my wife and I chose to move to China and raise our kids there is to ensure their self-esteem.

Perhaps it's different for West Coast Asians, but when I grew up in in the States, I went through a period of self-loathing due to my race. With no AA role models, it took a really long time for me to come to terms with who I am.

Add to that the constantly accepted jokes about Asians, and it really caused an inferiority complex growing up. Something that I don't see in native Asians/Chinese.

So when a Chinese company started to recruit me, I jumped at the chance.

Perhaps because I'm Chinese, already married, and I speak Mandarin, the only issue for me in that list is the pollution factor. Everything else isn't that big of a deal.

I also disagree with the Chinese tech industry is any more relation-oriented than the US tech industry. Just like how Asians can beat the "bamboo ceiling" by using soft skills and mingling with the executives, foreigners can as well in China.

I would also add that for hardware tech talent, there really is no better place than China. People lament the IP issue, but for a hardware startup, this openness is a blessing.

[http://gizmodo.com/why-its-easier-to-innovate-in-china- than-...](http://gizmodo.com/why-its-easier-to-innovate-in-china-than-in-the- united-1709911838)

</comment><comment><USER57> Ironically I just saw this:

[https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1213277725394799](https://www.facebook.com/andrew.ng.96/posts/1213277725394799)

Also, I will state without proof that the Chinese government are more knowledgeable in stimulating technical innovations than your average Bloomberg columnist.

</comment><comment><USER58> Food? I could put up with everything in China, even the Great Firewall, but food, except xiao long bao, is really no go.

<comment><USER59> How can you even say that?

<comment><USER60> Personal issue, Gutter Oil. That is a non-starter for me.

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

<comment><USER61> This is real? Terrifying.

<comment><USER60> There's documentaries and other documentations. The one I saw showed a husband and wife fishing out of the sewer near a hotel. They take the gunk, boil it and then fry their street foods. Can't go there.

<comment><USER59> There are many other places to eat in China than a street cart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Well, the US lost the top guy in machine learning, Andrew Ng. In the US, he was a professor at Stanford, not even the head of the department, with a few grad students. Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu.

<comment><USER42> > Now he's Chief Scientist and VP at Baidu

He's Chief Scientist at Baidu Research, which is based in Sunnyvale. So he's not really "lost" to the US, just lost to Stanford (and, I guess, to Google, since he was working with them before).

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> From what I hear, working in government has relatively decent pay, very good compensation at higher levels and a lot of holidays.

Like government work in the USA, but much higher pay and prestige.

</comment><comment><USER64> Is it possible in any way to work in tech in China without speaking their language? Do any MNCs operate entirely in English there?

</comment><comment><USER65> While this article is about China, Russian universities are going all out for foreign students, mostly for the revenue.

Many of those students will likely hang around. And Russia has a green card system. Not sure how it works, but it's available.

rbth.com/business/2016/12/12/how-russian-universities-are-profiting-from- foreign-students_655731

</comment><comment><USER66> Well, the only way for China is to create tech incubators in the West with their investment arm, and build additional facility in Shanghai to interface English outcome to Chinese lore. I think they are effectively doing that. Volvo, Opera Software are recent examples.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is China really trying? I know they had some initiatives to get Americans with the Trump election. In general, I don't think it's an actual goal for them. They have a large pool of talent. They aren't needing to go outside yet.

</comment><comment><USER67> I agree with many of your points, but still China is the second largest country in information technology, better than EU and Japan. How do you explain this? Any thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER68> Question I have wondered about from time to time:

does China have it's own Github "clone"?

<comment><USER69> [https://git.oschina.net/](https://git.oschina.net/) [https://coding.net/](https://coding.net/) [http://code.csdn.net/](http://code.csdn.net/)

These are more towards team collaboration. imo China doesn't have the ecosystem for open source. Too many people just take the code, rebrand and market it as their own product...

<comment><USER70> I've seen this recently with deep-learning libraries on Github (when using the search); people (located in China, according to their profile) copying other peoples' repositories (e.g. TensorFlow), changing the title, description and readme, and then trying to pass it off as their own by rewriting the revision history.

It's actually becoming an issue when using the search functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I have to say that most problem is not true. Most Chinese don't prefer youtube and even for the university student knows how to pass the block by vpn and other softwares. Also in some university Google is not blocked.

<comment><USER38> You're thinking of it as a technical problem, but government controlled media and censorship is a social problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Thinking out of the box is prohibited in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism) regime

</comment><comment><USER73> 6\. Communist Government, a large number of US tech talent skews libertarian

<comment><USER74> Or skew away from totalitarian

<comment><USER75> Yeah you don't exactly have to be Ron Paul to have a problem with the communist party of China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> You should educate that hierarchy by trolling them with your mighty flock of rabid robots.

<comment><USER76> Hey. We have a soft spot for former geodesists and forestry specialists ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9910140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9910140)), but we need you to stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

Even if everything you say is 100% correct, posting this way sets a terrible example for lesser users, so you're pushing this site closer to the wasteland either way. And nobody bats 100.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168013) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Thank you for sharing. But tech China is not only mainland China. Taiwan is also tech.

<comment><USER76> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168197) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> > There is no union nor labour law in China (well technically they both exist > but..).

Same thing in America.

> So labour abusing is normal.

Same thing in America.

> Many tech workers are 'voluntarily' working 996 on a 955 pay slip.

Same thing in America.

<comment><USER78> Well, then, I guess we'll see an evening out of talent soon, since things are the same.

<comment><USER79> In america people love to complain publicly about the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> "Something something Trump is a nazi"

<comment><USER81> You must be lost, Reddit is over that way.

<comment><USER82> Left at the tire fire?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have you been, or personally know, a minority immigrant in the US?

<comment><USER76> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168255) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> The salaries in china are getting way higher than in silicon valley as far as I can see and that's gonna make people move. Especially with more and more layoffs in SV and the european market lacking jobs.

EDIT: Looks like I'm wrong, I did the wrong conversion while on glassdoor. Salary in china are way lower than SV

My point is that people move where the money is, when the salary are gonna be higher, people are gonna move there

<comment><USER38> I really doubt the salaries are higher than Silicon Valley. Do you have any proof?

<comment><USER49> And higher than Wall Street too, please.</comment></comment></comment>


Marissa Mayer, Fatherhood, and Having It All - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologywoman.com/2012/08/03/marissa-mayer-fatherhood-and-having-it-all/ <comment><USER2> By no means does she have it all..How can she have it all when she is going to have her child raised by someone else for a majority of the time.

There are always trade offs

my. 02</comment>


ITunes 11.0.3 is out. New MiniPlayer + Improved Search Speed + ... - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1614

<comment><USER2> Link points to the 11.0.2 download.

This got me to 11.0.3: <http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm getting tired of the compete 'redesigns' of iTunes. It used to work fine pre version 11. Now everything is that little bit more separated, more iPad- esque and slower. I don't want to say it, but, to me, this is un-Apple. The intuitive-ness of the UI is going...

</comment><comment><USER4> "Completely Redesigned"? Sounds to me that software will never really scale without starting from scratch at some point. Why always something like this would require a complete overhaul of the existing design?

<comment><USER5> The link was to the wrong version, initially. The "completely redesigned" referred to the entirety of iTunes 11, not the minor update.</comment></comment>


Why Women Are Better at Everything - <AUTHOR> http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/28/why-women-are-better-at-everything/

<comment><USER2> What does the title even mean? Doesn't seem like the article explains it either, or what the rationale for this bold statement is. It's basically "Women take less risks so they are better" all over again. Which is very debatable.

I wonder why these kinds of articles are even posted, does it help in becoming more popular with women?

</comment><comment><USER3> Except at taking risks, it would appear.

</comment><comment><USER4> The title should probably be "Why the sex that dominates university admissions dominates academic research."

</comment><comment><USER5> Please name at least two notable inventions by women in under 5 seconds.

<comment><USER6> The compiler and the windshield wiper?

What does that have to do with anything? Women throughout history have hardly been in a position to become inventors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> could you imagine a headline in Time, "why men are better at everything?"

<comment><USER8> Neither of these statements make much sense though. Except to create some drama I suppose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The study claims that women lose less money in the market because they're risk-adverse, so that means they're "better at everything?"

</comment><comment><USER10> Well then, I guess we won't be needing affirmative action or other types of "positive" discrimination...</comment>


China builds 'world's biggest air purifier', and it seems to be working - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128355/china-builds-worlds-biggest-air-purifier-and-it-seems-be-working <comment><USER2> The article insinuates that Roosegaarde's tower uses a lot of gray energy, while it uses the equivalent of one watercooker, and is powered by green energy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussed 6 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16156942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16156942)</comment>


What's TJ Holowaychuck's Stack These Days? - <AUTHOR> https://auth0.com/blog/2016/06/07/whats-tjs-stack-these-days/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=sc&utm_campaign=tjs_stack <comment><USER2> Wasn't there a blog post somewhere that TJ doesn't really exist?</comment>


How to Make Website Buttons that Initiate Phone Calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.twilio.com/docs/howto/clicktocall

<comment><USER3> Again, no support for phones outside the US. There's a bunch of companies providing great VoIP services with added value, yet most of them seem to think there are no clients outside of the US. I wonder if it's difficult or just not worth it for some reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> We (Twilio) fully intend to support phones outside the US in the future.

Some of the challenges around international telephony include pricing and government regulations, but we'll work past these and get there - <USER2> certainly will let HN know when we do. :)

<comment><USER3> I am not familiar with US telephony regulation, could you give an example about this and how it makes your services harder to export? Thanks!

BTW, Twilio looks great to me, except I can't use it! I am not too fond of the XML though.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the key things is that we need to make sure we honor tax law in various countries... drop me a line at email@example.com if you want to discuss more :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Non hacker here - I could definitely use something like this for a drupal directory site. Suggestions for implementing for people like me?

<comment><AUTHOR> You might want to check out <http://www.magic-call-button.com>

They are a Twilio customer and have created an easy was to set this up.</comment></comment>