Why are Chromebooks still a thing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/gabeknuth/archive/2013/10/15/why-are-chromebooks-still-a-thing-seriously-who-uses-these-things.aspx <comment><USER2> Before I graduated I worked in the electronics dept of a supermarket chain and we had Samsung series 3 chromebooks -flying- off the shelf at £229, and for good reason. Their target market is non-tech-savvy teenagers and university students who only ever use/need to use SaaS (but don't know it). They want something stylish but functional. If somebody in that market asks you to demonstrate it, they will buy it over 90% of the time in my experience (granted, not a particularly scientific trial, but there you have it.)

Why? Three main reasons.

(i) Price - the next cheapest laptop will tend to start at 279, 299, and it will have some crappy Celeron chip in it. You can start looking at paying 120 more for something with even slightly comparable speed. Then MS office costs at least 79 quid, and that's only for a year's subscription. 120 quid if you want a permanent activation. Then you will probably be pushed to sell them Norton AV for 25 quid also (due to my strong moral principles(!) I never actually pushed this sale - the store I worked at were probably quite happy to see the back of me)

(ii) Ease of use - Google docs + Drive offline is an excellent product, you can do just about anything that the casual education or light productivity user will really easy. No confusing ribbon interface or being overloaded with options.

(iii) Quality - supported by a known brand (Samsung), with fast flash memory, a fast ARM processor and a nice anti-glare IPS display. You will get none of those things in any of the Windows models we sold (all under £500, granted)

The author of the article, Gabe Knuth, is a full-time tech pro with 12 years experience in application virtualisation on MS and Citrix platforms, according to his profile on the site. So he will find absolutely nothing for him on a Chromebook unless he is a heavy tablet user who desperately misses the keyboard. He is -obviously- not in the target market. But not being able to even -imagine- the target market is just silliness, because the Chromebook is a good product.

<comment><AUTHOR> _" The author of the article, Gabe Knuth, is a full-time tech pro with 12 years experience in application virtualisation on MS and Citrix platforms, according to his profile on the site. So he will find absolutely nothing for him on a Chromebook..."_

Just the opposite! The application virtualization market includes thin clients and the chromebook can run an RDP for Chrome.

<comment><USER2> Hah, technically speaking, they are ALL virtualization with a pure SaaS solution and the chrome RDP plugin. But what I mean is he will probably not use one for work! (It actually also has an SSH client so if you use vi or emacs, it's not even a bad shout for developers).

<comment><USER3> can you run virtual images on Chromebooks or not ? that's the quesiton. If i can run a linux image ,fine, if not ,this is not for development purpose. Nobody (serious) directly commits code on the server through a ssh session. But if i coudl run something like virtual box on a Cbook , i would by one.

<comment><USER2> there is a developer mode that you can use to run custom firmware so you could really put any linux distro you care to cross compile on the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Argh. I have no idea how stuff like this makes it up on Hacker News.

> The Chromebook Pixel came out earlier this year, and while it certainly > addressed the subpar hardware, it came with a price tag that was more than > the cost of my MacBook Air despite having much less of just about everything > but screen resolution.

First, the screen resolution is _exceptionally_ better. More than that though the Pixel beats or matches a MacBook Air in all but two categories: battery life & local storage space. You'll note that Apple sells MBP's, which currently are actually sub-par to the Air in several ways, but are better in terms of display and CPU and they charge... way more than the Pixel. On top of that, the Pixel has a touch screen. Check out pricing on touchscreen laptops that even remotely match the Pixel...

Honestly, anyone I know who got a Pixel loves it, including Linus Torvalds.

On the larger matter of Chromebooks in general, it's all about the user experience (which is ironic given his criticism). I think obviously in his case, he doesn't get it, but having such a nice integrated set of web services is a huge win for a lot of people.

Chromebooks aren't as well suited for general purpose use as traditional laptops and they certainly aren't for everyone, but they actually are quite nice for a lot of people.

<comment><USER5> Incidentally, I do have a fresh Chromebook Pixel with its box to give away. You're right that they're certainly not for everyone. Especially, not for people who photoshop a lot and have large media files to move around. It's great from touch experience point of view though. To watch videos online, touch-n-play etc. Super awesome for those who use a lot of web apps, Google docs and things like that.

<comment><USER6> If you're looking to give it away, or sell it, I'm interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We live in a bubble. Among my friends Mac has 90% computer marketshare and the iPhone has probably 75%. But we know empirically that outside of the high-tech fat-wallet echo chamber these numbers are completely different.

I imagine that is where the Chromebooks are going as well: outside of the bubble. We know people are buying them since they are always in the top- selling laptops category on Amazon.

<comment><USER8> I'm a student in the UK, a friend of mine told me that she switched to using a Chromebook recently and hardly ever uses her laptop anymore. Shes not a "computer person" by any means so they are obviously having an effect.

She also loves it.

<comment><USER9> And having had to sort out student laptops so as to be able to recover College work (backups?), it isn't a bad platform for many people. Local Tesco extra sells quite a few of the cheaper Sanyo and Acer ones apparently. (UK based)

<comment><USER2> Samsung - see my comment :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Chromebooks are _brilliant_ , they're just not for you.

An awful lot of people just need a browser. They don't want a computer, they just want an internet appliance. If you're one of those people, a Chromebook is so obviously, self-evidently the best device that any debate over the matter seems ludicrous. No viruses, no mysterious slowdowns, no annoying things that pop-up in the bottom right corner, no inexplicable pauses when the damned thing refuses to shut down (Windows updates). The Damned Thing Just Works.

For my grandmother, a popup window from her antivirus asking to install an update is a complete showstopper, because the dialog is written in jargon she doesn't understand and because she doesn't have the confidence to take a guess at the right action. For her, a Chromebook is a wonder machine.

OP's argument appears to be a variant of the old "Macs are overpriced, I could build a computer with similar specs for far less" trope. Macs and Chromebooks have virtues that are non-obvious to people within the tech community, who have taken for granted the vices of Windows or Linux running on typical commodity hardware.

</comment><comment><USER11> > I'd like to meet the end user that is 100% happy with their Chromebook and > uses it for everything they do without having access to a more traditional > computer.

I don't think that is the only reason people are [apparently] buying Chromebooks. My brother just got one for his birthday as a secondary laptop for school. He has a laptop already, but it is a beefy gaming one that isn't really conducive to carrying to and from campus. So for $200 (much easier to stomach than $500 for a Windows tablet) he's got a super lightweight machine that he can use to browse the web (wifi is everywhere on campus), listen to spotify/watch netflix between classes, and look up his assignments. Can it run Office or SolidWorks? No, but that is not the point - it has great battery life and is a snappy internet terminal that you can throw in your backpack.

Why are Kindles still a thing? Why not just get an iPad mini to read on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kindles are in another league: extra long battery, lightweight, practical for reading.

<comment><USER2> Think the parent of your comment was making that point.

Also good to note that the E-ink screen is a million times better for your eyes though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty typical arrogance you see from some tech people.

They can't comprehend that something they don't use can be useful to other people.

Is it quite possible that the author is not the target market for Chromebooks?

<comment><USER4> > Is it quite possible that the author is not the target market for > Chromebooks?

No, that is not possible. Just like cars, nobody uses computers in any way other than the way I do, and they all have the same preferences. That's why everyone drives the same make and model and colour as I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a couple of friends who own them and are very happy. For older people who really just need an 'internet machine', they are ideal.

I am tempted to buy one for myself, I am tempted by a laptop which is cheap, light, and has amazing battery life. My standard laptop is the T420s, which is a great machine but is very heavy and only gets about 90 minutes battery life. I get tired of carrying it around.

On the other hand, I wouldn't want to type more than a sentence or so on a tablet or phone.

</comment><comment><USER14> An HP Chromebook 14" is more powerful than, say, a 2008 Macbook Pro.

Its possible (soon) to flush the bios of this thing and thus turn it into a commodity PC and install a lightweight Linux or whatever you want. So it will boot in 5 seconds into X and have almost 10 hours of battery life.

4GB is plenty for your browser, Vim, VLC, and irssi. The keyboard is decent. It doesn't feel as nice as a Macbook Air but it is literally 1/4th the price and IT WILL TAKE A SIM CARD.

Frankly, I'm considering using it as my sole device. Think about it;

Using an iPad as a thin client was a Moby Dick type dream in some nerd circles for a while - but now finally inexpensive hardware has reached double digit battery life and cellular connectivity.

<comment><USER15> "Its possible (soon) to flush the bios of this thing and thus turn it into a commodity PC"

What do you mean by the "soon"?

<comment><USER16> See [http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for- chromebo...](http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for- chromebooks/).

<comment><USER15> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I loved my CR-48 so much I'm thinking of getting another (it got lost in an accident). It was light and pleasant to type on for long periods. Tablets are superior in many respects but if you do a lot of typing then you probably don't want all the weight in the screen, and you'd like a decent keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER18>
       both speak about it in what is best described as a "not negative" way

As opposed to Win8, which was quite sincerely negative, and costs you the consumer money.

The OS can die and disappear. And ChromeOS is a waypoint along that road, helping the desktop vanish out from under us. Most consumers are happy running web browsers 80% of the time and nothing else. The remaining 20% is stretching itself harder and harder to justify it's existence apart from the common platforms every-day.

iOS and Android are a little different a scenario, and I don't begrudge that. But the desktop platform's relevance has vanished. ChromeOS heralds that in.

The author clearly has not made any attempt to live with a Chromebook. Certainly not all apps are offline capable, but increasingly so they are, and particularly the vital ones that you'd need to do normal desktop type work.

Certainly some people DO need real applications and do need the OS they've always known so they can run the enterprise apps they need to run. But this is old guard, legacy stuff, and the new world is happy emerging without that baggage. Good riddance, I'm glad we get to dumb this guys old guard view at the door and start fresh without.

</comment><comment><USER19> Every time I read that some well-meaning company has pushed Windows machines into a school or village in a developing country, I recoil, knowing that each machine is a liability as well as an asset. I know how much effort goes into supporting friends and family. Computers are too complex.

Chromebook represents a "good enough" solution for places that don't need desktop apps but would like connectivity. But that's not the feature. The feature is all the other stuff you don't have to do anymore. No more virus trouble. No more registry.

They're not cheap enough yet, but they represent a better solution than the next 5 generations of ever-increasing complexity that is Windows. And no, common-or-garden Linux isn't the solution here either.

</comment><comment><USER20> My mom (a teacher) LOVES her Chromebook. It's easy to use, difficult to "break", and great for the times when she needs to type a lot.

</comment><comment><USER21> I know a few schools in my area are buying these for internet research and word processing. They are cheap and do the job.

I've considered buying one as a secondary device. For instance, I stayed a week on a beach last summer and didn't feel comfortable bringing my $1,800 primary laptop to a cabin 50 ft. from the ocean which I would use (and keep an eye on) only a few times. I ended up bringing my tablet though, and that seemed to suffice that need - but if I was a writer or something like that I would have preferred a larger screen and keyboard and a Chromebook would be perfect for that.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have loved and used my purchased pixel since it came out. It has only gotten better since the first day I got it. I also recall that Linus and is/was a fan. From a dev perspective i can only fault it for not allowing me a vms hn crouton mode. My co workers also enjoy the less expensive versions and use them as on the go dev boxes.

Basically i've come to understand chromebooks as another linux distro; maintained by google, updated very frequently and focussed on browsing.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is font-size: 90%; still a thing?

<comment><USER24> Worse - it's actually 75-76%. You can tell a lot about somebody from their web design, and it's blindingly obvious that this is written by the sort of person who will never really 'get' the Chromebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Because simplicity counts for something. If a family member wants a new laptop for under $300, I'm not going to subject them to Windows 8. Neither of us care that the Windows machine ticks more boxes. Many people will enjoy a Chromebook far more. I know I do. The minute a family member gets a Chromebook is the minute I stop getting support requests.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just bought one and use it quite a bit. Of course I immediately installed crouton so really it's a $200 linux laptop.

</comment><comment><USER27> A lot of people I know are buying Chromebooks, and are pretty happy with them. In the comments section of the article, several readers state that schools are buying these up by the boatload. Not every product on the market is aimed at the web professional, who is going to reach for an Apple by default.

</comment><comment><USER28> I use the Samsung chromebook for writing / browsing / mail / fb / movies; I find it so much more pleasant than a tablet. And I switch on crouton if I want to do development or run emulators (my favorite ones run fine on it which allows me to play games). Besides actually building / publishing apps, I hardly touch my MBP anymore. I don't see why the plastic etc is a problem; it's nice and light, cheap (almost impulse) and it can run almost everything I want/need.

Even if crouton did not exist, I would use it for browsing/writing over a tablet or a heavier, more expensive computer.

</comment><comment><USER29> my brother got a chromebook pixel at Google IO this year and i have to say it's a beautiful piece of tech...if the OS was a bit more mature (more apps and functionality), i could easily replace my laptop with a chromebook.

<comment><USER30> Or google could do the far more logical thing and start making AndroidBooks. I use Android for my home entertainment system, and it works great with mouse and keyboard, attached to my TV which has resolution and aspect ratio similar to a laptop. Of course, that wouldn't encourage people nearly as much as ChromeBooks to be hooked into the google ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I only know one guy in my personal bubble using one. He's a front end web developer and does much of his coding with ShiftEdit and is able to consume stuff, code on sites and exchange email with it. He loves it.

Personally I wouldn't be able to use such a device for everything, and I don't think most people could either. The traditional "media consumers" could use it, but I think they're just as content doing it with a phone or ipad.

<comment><USER32> > Personally I wouldn't be able to use such a device for everything, and I > don't think most people could either.

HN seems to have a really distorted view of what real people are.

Chromebooks are great for things like Imgur or Reddit or all that other stuff, especially if people want to leave comments where a real keyboard is handy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For me personally, the appeal of Chromebooks is that web apps are put on a level playing field as all other apps. This means that I have _complete_ control over the apps I use. I can run all of them on my own server, I can outsource to a provider I pay money to (like email), or I can use a free- option with a catch. I have that choice. Which is something that's not true of other desktop operating systems.

</comment><comment><USER33> They're catching on a fair bit in education -- they're fairly cheap and they do what students need for a lot less than stock standard Windows PCs that got ordered for years. For any more intensive computer user they could never be your "main machine" but I can imagine them having a use.

But others have said, they're hardly for the Hacker News crowd.

</comment><comment><USER34> I love my chromebook. Sure, I can't do any serious development or anything on it unless I'm using something like PythonAnywhere, but if I want to hop around Google Analytics, Hacker News or Youtube, the chromebook is awesome.

<comment><USER35> Install Crouton and you can do serious development on your Chromebook. I do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> My wife has been using the one that I received as a gift on Google I/O 2011 and she is very happy with it, she doesn't need any more

</comment><comment><USER37> well i am using my arm chromebook recently its perfect to me

first , its cheap, only 245USD, or about 2k chinese yuan secondary, its battary life time is longer than my roommate's mba(used for 1 year) third, with the help of crouton, i can now developing on this machine even without network.

you need to know there're many people live in low profit environment

</comment><comment><USER38> Can I load local pdf files onto the Chromebook and read them?

<comment><USER15> Yes. When I had a Chromebook, I would download PDFs and read them in the browser. Of course, you can only store so much on a Chromebook, but it worked fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > Seriously…who uses these things?

Google employees, sometimes. Think that's about it.

<comment><USER40> Well, it's fairly highly rated on Amazon and out of the top 5, 3 of the best sellers are Chromebooks [http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics- Laptop-Comput...](http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop- Computers/zgbs/electronics/565108/ref=zg_bs_nav_e_2_541966).</comment></comment>


AI Scientists, Dr. Sebastian Seung and Dr. Daniel Lee Join Samsung Research - <AUTHOR> https://news.samsung.com/global/world-renowned-ai-scientists-dr-sebastian-seung-and-dr-daniel-lee-join-samsung-research <comment><USER2> Maybe samsung is starting connectomics research.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless I am married to Dr. Seung or Dr. Lee, I'm not sure why this should matter to me?</comment>


Ask HN: How close are we to a wearable that can track calorie intake? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Relevant article on the difficulties of calories tracking. [https://www.economist.com/1843/2019/02/28/death-of-the- calor...](https://www.economist.com/1843/2019/02/28/death-of-the-calorie)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tracking calories is a pretty annoying task but the good thing is you only have to do it for like a week, then you have a good understanding of what your calorie intake is.

<comment><USER4> Yeah you dont need a watch for this task

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't see a practical, easy to use and accurate solution to that (using 2020 technology at least)</comment>


The future of airline seating - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/travel/the-future-of-airline-seating-20091106-i1mn.html

<comment><AUTHOR> See also [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-473568/Welcome- sardi...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-473568/Welcome-sardine-air- Airline-introduces-triple-bunk-beds-economy.html) and [http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/runway-girl/2008/12/can- we...](http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/runway-girl/2008/12/can-we-sleep- together.html) for economy bunk beds and <http://www.airlinetrends.com/2010/01/26/anz-skycouch/> for economy three seat beds</comment>


The Curse of Friendly Fire - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/2854306/the-curse-of-friendly-fire/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the bit that blew my mind:

The GPS-guided weapon struck the Americans because the controller on the ground who called in the airstrike changed the battery on his GPS device in the middle of the bombing run. But he didn't realize that once the unit rebooted, the aim point it began transmitting to the B-52 bomber far above wasn't the enemy's location. It was his.

This sounds like the most horrifically awful bug imaginable. Can anyone confirm that this is true, and explain how it might have come to be?</comment>


Python Release 3.8.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-380/ <comment><USER2> reposted later, currently in the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21252784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21252784) ,</comment>


Ask HN: Entrepreneurs who do their own bookkeeping and accounting - <AUTHOR> Would love to hear from entrepreneurs who do their own business accounting and bookkeeping: - How did you learn accounting and bookkeeping, what resources did you use? - How did you simplify the financial process of your business? - What simplification did you make? - Do you get our financial statements audited? - How do you use your company's financial data for decision making? - And what financial data do you use for decision making purpose?<p>Thank you! <comment><USER2> There are two types of bookkeeping: External and internal. External bookkeeping is what you do for the government / IRS to determine how much taxes you pay. Depending on your company type and country this can be quite complex and personally I would never attempt to do it myself as you can get a tax accountant / lawyer to do it for you for a reasonable price and learning to do it yourself will take many months or even years. Also, if you go through a tax accountant you can transfer a part of the legal risk of bookkeeping to them, which is one thing less you'll have to worry about (there are enough other things to keep you awake at night as an entrepreneur so you really don't want to also worry about your tax declarations; I've been there myself). If you are a one-person business it might still be manageable but even then I'd say your time is better spent thinking about your core business instead of worrying about bookkeeping.

For internal bookkeeping you can do whatever you want and you don't have any legal restrictions, you would typically make use of this to measure the performance of your company and make sure you don't run out of money. If you're a small company I would use the data your tax accountant provides to you and simply put it in a finance plan in Excel to see how you're doing. The core metrics you're interested in are probably revenue, cash flow, cost and profit I'd say (current, past and projected future values ideally). There are many guides available on the Internet for this, look e.g. for business planning as a keyword.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a tax adviser but I do most of the things myself and let her look over it. 4 Years ago I had no clue what had to be done but I didn't want to give it away because it's an important topic and I want to know what has to be done. So I let her show and explain me basically everything (of course I paid them for it).

If you give it away completely, at least here in Germany they are paid based on revenue (%) so they get their money anyways and as it usually is they want to have the easiest path so they cut corners and not always have your best in mind. They are paid the same, if they save you money or not.

This was honestly the best decision I made because I learned a lot about taxes, businesses in general and ways to optimise my company. That would've never happened if I would've chosen the easier path back then. Of course it takes some time, and might distract you from your day-to-day business, but it's knowledge you will benefit from your whole life.

</comment><comment><USER4> At one point we got ourselves a QuickBooks Online account and found a bookkeeper to help us enter and reconcile all data into QB monthly. Works great and having such a bookkeeper is pretty cheap. For taxes we use an accounting firm but having the up-to-date QB account helps alot. -A</comment>


Reactive Streams - <AUTHOR> http://www.reactive-streams.org/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting the manifesto. Can anyone who is a guru in distributed computing explain to me how Reactive Streams is different from regular message queue architecture such as RPC or pub-sub with message header filtering (e.g., RabbitMQ, zmq)? Much appreciated.

<comment><USER3> Not really a guru, but RPC is traditionally not thought of a message queue architecture -- it's almost always built around a request-reply cycle with no queueing.

Reactive Streams seems to really boil down to a push-based (Functional?) Reactive Programming (with some queueing added in in the distributed case). As Erik Meijer explains[1], it's mostly about a small extension to the "Observer" pattern which comes about if you dualize the "Iterator" pattern _properly_.

EDIT: In short, there's very little really new under the sun here in CS terms, but this approach seems to be going through a hype cycle at the moment.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=looJcaeboBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=looJcaeboBY) (I'm sure you can find other explanations, but I like Erik's.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for clarifying RPC's specific socket-level implementation details and how Reactive Stream relates to the Observer/Iterator pattern.

Tbh, I tried to use Akka and RxJava for a bit but found it to be a bit cumbersome and ended up implementing pub-sub by way of ZeroMQ and Google Protobuf. I suppose I won't be able to leverage features such as composability and filtering on the message stream though. But I didn't like how the Reactor pattern implementation was a black box where I didn't know what was going on under the hood. Wish the best of luck to both teams however.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice for an 18-year old programmer who failed high school - <AUTHOR> My introduction to programming was through a computer science course I took during sophomore year at my high school. Soon enough I was spending all my time, both in and out of school, programming. I'm sure some people here can relate.
Perhaps I liked it a little too much, or maybe high school just wasn't right for me - probably both. I imprudently worked on anything that interested me. I learned about cellular automata and wrote a simulator to create and explore these things. I made a 2D game to play with friends over the school's network. I became interested in genetic algorithms and started messing around with them (making brainfuck to do stupid things, evolving my own programming languages, even incorporating my knowledge of CA's to produce some neat simulations). I wrote a barebones HTTP server. I spent a week making a working 8-bit computer in minecraft. Common lisp, why not? It's fun. ASM, bash, whatever. I'll learn a bit of everything. I eventually ended up as an unpaid intern at a local uni's lab (thanks to my CS teacher).
I like to think that I've done some interesting things. I like to think that these two and a half years weren't wasted, but I'm extremely troubled right now. I've been told that what I've done is mostly academically oriented, which is quite ironic considering I've ruined most of my chances of studying computer science at college any time soon. Perhaps I could get a job as I've gained a fair level of competency Java, but I would have been much better off with this as a goal from the start rather than stuffing my brain with a bunch of niche knowledge.
I've lurked this site for awhile, this is my first post. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> I dropped out of HS to pursue full-time development as I was already coding all day and failing classes by not doing any homework. Not the most traditional route...

But it worked out. I am now lightyears ahead of my colleagues in my career, with 5+ years experience over anyone else my age. I make mid-six figures doing contract development work for startups - no college or HS degree. I tried going back to community college to brush up on my theory, but didn't enjoy it and ended up learning a lot more from interviewing at 5 or 6 big-name companies and taking home the interview questions I didn't know and studying them. There are skills and experience you pick up from independent hacking that you just don't get from a traditional educational environment. Being innovative and scrappy with your solutions is something that can provide tremendous value in a very short period of time. Of all the engineers I've met, the most innovative ones were always self-taught hackers working on many things at once, with a passion and curiosity for learning new things.

The niche knowledge is what's going to get you a job. Development is just a bunch of niche problems waiting to be solved. Different engineers understand things in different ways and end up being better suited for different niches. I never set out to be an "e-commerce guy", but here I am, because it's what I realized I'm good at and what companies hire me for. Your niches are a stepping stone to specialization. Pick one that interests you and start marketing yourself in that niche.

School is great. If you're in the US, it's also expensive. School is not necessary to be successful in the software world - especially the startup world. Results are what matters. Results and hard work.

Good luck mate!

</comment><comment><USER3> Community college is your way to success now. There you'll find the structure to get the education you need. Self-teaching works but you have to laser focus on a goal. Seems to me like you are just picking up what you think is cool and dropping it as soon as you find something else that's "cool". That will get you nowhere fast.

Your goal should be to go to a community college follow the curriculum for whatever you want to major in and do your best. This will at least assure you an education. In the meantime try to plan out the next 5 years of your life. Write it down, research it and execute. Treated as if it's the most important work ever for you, which it is.

All the billionaires that made it big without a college degree have "all" continued to educate themselves by reading. Example, Bill Gates, reads books constantly and finished his education by reading textbooks. He had a project, microsoft, and that was his one and only focus plus he had the self-discipline to focus and finish what he planned. Start by deciding who you admire and go to the library and read his/her biography. They are great role models for someone that doesn't have a structured path. Reading may be hard when you start but do it slowly and soon it becomes second hand. Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Its certainly not late for you to get either your GED or simply go back to high school, and either of those options are the safest options. The amount of posts saying otherwise are somewhat disturbing. Its super great that you're pursuing your passion in CS (I wish I discovered the subject back when I was your age)!That said, getting that diploma or GED will save you a lot of hassle with employers in the long run (unless you end up developing something that can make an impact and would impress companies). Operate on a worst-case scenario.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't agree more and this is coming from someone with a similar background to the original poster.

If you plan on working for a company it is almost a requirement to have some form of four year degree these days, so lacking your GED or high school diploma will be a major blocker. There are always exceptions to the rule, but the truth is that you are going to be working and grinding harder to prove your value than any of the other candidates with a degree no matter what your skill level is.

With that being said, I've been lucky enough to interview with many managers who didn't care about a degree and who gave me wonderful opportunities. I always have a nagging feeling though that my luck is eventually going to run out and not having a degree is really going to hurt me, especially as I move higher up the ladder.

I know many disagree with Malcom Gladwell, but he made a great point in his book "Outliers" on how many of the successful people we see today who didn't go to school or whatever benefited from other things around them. These are situations that not everyone has, so to look at a Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg and use them as a model of what can be done is somewhat risky. I'm not trying to be a downer or anything as I'm all about the underdog winning, but as I've become older I've realized that when you are the underdog the odds are stacked against you. You'll end up working 100x harder just to get to the same level as the others.

If you plan on working for yourself then disregard everything up above :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You are only 18. You have two options, go finish school and get a degree so you have proof of being able to finish things people ask you to do (thats what employers want), or think of a real world project. One that solves a problem, or is marketable, and complete that and use it as proof that you can execute a project. Working on random personal projects is great, and it shows that you are driven by your own interests, but will you be as driven working on someone else's idea? There are some people out there that have a really hard time taking direction, and it comes down to proving that you would fit in a work environment.

My advice is to get a degree, there is much less risk involved, and you will have a base to fall back on. If you don't, you always risk the personal project not working out, and you will have a much more difficult time climbing in the work force, unless you really get lucky with a personal project that gets exposure and has an impact (seems like its happening to people left and right, but don't let the interconnection of the internet fool you. Those are 1 out 100's of millions of people).

</comment><comment><USER7> You're doing great!

Being a self-starter and educating yourself works just fine in the new world, especially for programmers. School can be useful but is by no means required for many people.

Now go read some job descriptions, build up your list of skills to include most of the required ones, and start applying for real world jobs!

Or, if you like to invent new products, you could start a startup. YC applications just opened!

</comment><comment><USER8> More than your resume what a diploma or a certificate signals, consiously or unconsciously to an Employer is Discipline.

The ability to get things done on time, on cost, on spec whether the work is boring or not.

You might have "cool" stuff on your resume, but how do I tell if I give you a task you can get it done in a disciplined manner. If you have faith in your abilities, you need to prove to people that you are disciplined. Most people don't get this.

So when you walk into your next interview, remember the onus is on you to prove it and to convey to them that you want to prove it. Spend some time thinking about the different ways you can do it.

As an 18 year old I couldn't afford college, but I walked into the office of every CS prof in the neighborhood asking for work. Noone would give me a programming job (even though I thought I had done 'cool' stuff), but one guy hired me for the weekend to move lab equipment around. That turned into part time grunt work which allowed me to hang around labs, and grad and PhD students. Which turned into sysadmin work that none of them wanted to do. Which turned into writing boring code for them. And after 6 months I was indispensable to them and got a full time position. But those 6 months weren't easy. I would have made more probably at the local McDonalds for far less work! But I knew coding was what I wanted to do and hanging out with all these cool people reinforced it. I would have hung around there for free if they let me. Much later on when talking to the prof about why he kept me around he said one word - discipline. When he gave me a job however dumb it might have been it got done.

So remember the onus is on you, to prove to them what you know about yourself - that you have what it takes. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> Is your goal to go to college to study CS? Though admissions officers may care whether you have a piece of paper saying you graduated from HS, most professors don't, and they have the ultimate power (at least in good universities). So I recommend finding a professor who can help you. It's fortunate that you have a connection to a university research lab. Professors and grad students there may be able to give you advice about what to do.

Don't think of yourself as damaged goods because you're missing the bit of paper. From the professors' point of view, students genuinely interested in learning are the rarest and most desirable type. Most students go to college because it's the route to a better paying job, or to party, or just because it's the default plan. If you're genuinely interested in learning, many people will want to help you.

</comment><comment><USER10> As someone who was in a similar situation, my advice to you is simple: if you plan on going to college, take some community college coursework and just apply after a couple of years. No transfer track none of that bs. Take courses _you_ find worthy. Think a prereq is just gonna get in your way? Write to the chair, setup an interview and bring proof that it's not gonna be a problem for you. Community college prerequisite course waivers are, IMO, really simple to get. Get outstanding marks in your coursework, hang around the community, build a portfolio and apply to the school.

Else, dump all time and effort into passion projects, maintaining a day job and networking the crap outta your local hacker scene. B-Sides, OWASP, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, most of the people who I've talked to have recommended the community college route.

<comment><USER10> No problem. I sincerely hope you're able to make your talent into a profession.

Final words; don't fall into the comfortable trap of believing that you can make it all work as a one man island. You need community. You need similar minded folks to work with you, around you and over you. Talent is worthless unless someone can vouch for it. A lot of people will go to college and graduate solely believing that their degree will get them the job they need. A lot of those same people find out that it's not necessarily the case. Network, network, ...network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. You're young enough where any missteps aren't (yet) in a position to possibly hold you back. 2\. You have acquired a useful and employable skill, which is often not the case for those who graduate HS. 3\. This skill is primarily self-motivated and results oriented, meaning that you're likely to be able to get into a startup/smaller company demonstrating proficiency. 4\. You're in a good spot, if not ahead of the game. If you can write code, you can get paid writing code. Never forget that.

My advice is:

Get your diploma/GED. This prevents further education(college, etc.) from being closed off, as well as allows you to demonstrate that you are disciplined: "Yea, I got really into programming, but I realized this education was important and I completed it"

Start networking via meetups, hackathons, etc. It never hurts to know people in the industry, and in your situation the advice and mentorship will be invaluable.

Never stop learning and growing. This is especially important in your situation because you're unencumbered by technical/business decisions made by others. When employed your growth/learning often takes a backset to the company/team, so take full advantage of your free time now. I used to think time spent just playing around with frameworks/libraries and not even building apps from it was wasted, but it was incredibly valuable for learning as I got to dig in as far as I wanted, not just "add feature X and move on."

</comment><comment><USER12> My advice: Look for roll models who dropped out of high school but are successful. I could name some, but the last time I did that, it got downvoted, which I don't get.

I know it looks bad now and I know dropping out genuinely creates barriers. But I can also tell you that accepting that this is a rut you cannot get out of will be self fulfilling prophecy and it doesn't have to end that way. Finding roll models can not only provide hope, it can provide clues as to how to proceed.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if you are in the US but if you are my understanding is that if you are under 21 you can always go back to high school. I think the amount of red tape you will avoid by going back and finishing will far outweigh the costs. Having a High School diploma is tremendously more valuable then a GED. I think 20 years from now you will be glad that you did it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Go back and finish high school or get your GED.

After that, go to community college for a couple years and then transfer to a university.

It's not even remotely too late for you. You have so much more time than you can even comprehend at your age.

</comment><comment><USER15> You have a gift, value this gift by continuing your education. Get a degree and many more doors will open for you.

Don't treat your life or your career like it's a race. It's a marathon, and most of it is still ahead of you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Even if you are 100% self-employed, your professional life is going to be about adapting yourself to other people's systems. Whether it's through a GED and then community college or whatever, now is the time to develop that skill.

If you write it off as, "maybe high school just wasn't right for me" you're going to find yourself 10 years from now saying, "that job just wasn't right for me... along with the 5 others before it."

Start learning how to fit in inside a system you don't enjoy. It's as important a skill as actually being good at your job.

</comment><comment><USER17> Others have talked about the discipline to do things, even things you don't like or want to do. And they're right.

Here's the other side, though: The single thing from high school that had the most impact on my life was none of the classes. It was the hour that, instead of paying attention in calculus class, I instead read the TRS-80 Basic manual.

You've learned that you can do this stuff. You aren't scared of anything, from assembly to Lisp. You've learned that you _belong_ in this world. That's huge.</comment>


Tim Cook on iMessage Security: It's Encrypted, and We Don't Have a Key - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/15/tim-cook-holds-firm-on-imessage-security-its-encrypted-we-dont-have-a-key/ <comment><USER2> There is zero control over what public keys get handed over to your phone to encrypt an iMessage with. For all we know, whenever you want to send a message to $USER, your phone gets a public key for $USERs iPhone, her iPad and the NSA master key.

Tim Cook can state that they can't decrypt the message all he wants, but as long as there's no control over what public keys we encrypt the message with, the statement that Apple or the NSA can't read the messages is a half-truth at best.

Don't use iMessage for anything you wouldn't be using email for. Assume every message you send over iMessage to be public.

 _> If the government laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can't provide it. It's encrypted and we don't have a key. And so it's sort of — the door is closed._

But the government can (and probably has) force you to have the phones send a copy of every message to some government server encrypted with the government's public key. They don't need to subpoena messages - they already got them all.

<comment><USER3> He didn't make a statement that Apple or the NSA can't read your messages. He said that Apple can't read your messages. However since you are so concerned about half truths, if you're going to criticise someone's statements, it would be nice if you'd address what they actually are saying.

It's entirely possible that the NSA has hacked Apple, or that an Apple employee has been subverted by the NSA and inserted a back door into the encryption system. Tim Cook wouldn't know about that and can't give assurances of that kind, and isn't trying to. All he can do is state what Apple as a company intends and can do acting according to it's policies.

So yes it's entirely possible Apple or the NSA has back door keys to iMessage. Tim Cook is now publicly on record saying that Apple don't. That's not a 'half truth at best'. It's either true or it's a lie. I'm not telling you to believe him or not, but historically these things have a way of coming to light eventually, one way or another.

<comment><USER4> The half-truth is here:

 _If the government laid a subpoena to get iMessages, we can't provide it. It's encrypted and we don't have a key._

It's encrypted and they don't have the key, but since the user does not have any control over the public keys being added, they could add a trusted public key and get it anyway. So they can actually provide messages if they really wanted to.

I don't believe they really want to. But the thing we should've learnt from last year's revelations is (1) that companies can be forced to do so anyway via secret courts; and (2) the NSA is willing to make a 'technical solution' otherwise.

So, Tim Cook is not being completely honest here. Apart from what hardware can do, the only way to trust such an application is if you had the source code, the source code of the operating system and the source code to firmware blobs, and some way to prove that everything was compiled from public source code without modifications. Since that is not going to happen, iMessage should be considered as secure as unencrypted e-mail when it comes to governments. Of course, it does provide more protection than e-mail against less equipped actors.

<comment><USER3> They can't create trusted public keys after the fact, they'd have to already have them. So there's no half truth. Either they currently create and store such public keys or they don't. Tim Cooke is saying they don't. That statement can't be half true. It's either true or false.

<comment><USER4> _They can 't create trusted public keys after the fact,_

Of course they can. They own the directory server that hands out keys.

[http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/06/can-apple- re...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/06/can-apple-read-your- imessages.html)

tl;dr: Apple can send you a public key of Bob's new device. Apple can pretend to send you a public key of Bob's new device. And since it's proprietary software, they can trigger a resend of your recent messages to Bob.

Moreover, if you use iCloud backups, they have the keys to your kingdom, since it fails the 'mud puddle test':

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/can-apple-read- your-...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/can-apple-read-your- imessages-ars-deciphers-end-to-end-crypto-claims/)

<comment><USER5> So this ends up being as "simple" as answering the question: Do you trust Apple? Given they control the operating system and all around it, having the directory server controlled by someone else (or distributed) doesn't solve the problem as they have access to anything they want in your device, meaning they don't need any keys to begin with.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't trust any company that blatantly dodges the question of security with a half truth. It's clear he's playing word games for PR points.

You can reset your password and redownload all of your messages to a new device _if you use iCloud backup_. Cook is full of shit when he says that Apple doesn't have the capability. They own the system.

Even a dedicated civilian could reset your password, associate a device with your account and receive all messages going forward. To state that Apple cannot is such a laughable claim that it becomes clear that it's just a PR game. Which calls into question how sincere he is in his feelings about privacy.

<comment><USER7> For the record, you cannot redownload old messages in iMessage; if you use iCloud Backup, a civilian could fetch messages from there, but if not, they're out of luck.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough, I was mistaken. Security is hard, but no one should get a pass playing games like this when it comes to security.

A civilian could still associate another key (device) to the account if they're dedicated with the password or a password reset (not as stealthy) assuming 2FA is disabled. And Apple could surely do it stealthily since they own the system.

They have the capability, and it's too kind to his statement by calling it a half-truth in that respect because it's really a lie when he says "[Apple doesn't] have the capability."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Our business is not based on having information about you. You're not our product. Our product are these, and this watch, and Macs and so forth. And so we run a very different company. I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. And you should really understand what's happening to that data. And companies I think should be very transparent about it."

Honestly, I am starting to see the wisdom behind consumers choosing the companies with these kinds of business models. Its not that I dont trust the companies -- I guess its that I accept that governments and laws transcend companies and their explicit arrangements with their consumers.

<comment><USER9> Of course, there's nothing stopping Apple from selling both the product and the user...

<comment><USER4> But that reduces the value of the product. I also don't think it is in Apple's DNA to do that.

My concern is more that, given how bad they generally are at providing robust cloud applications [1], that their security is equally bad.

[1] iTunes Match would always refuse to play some songs from my collection. Even when a stopped using an iPhone last december, iMessages would often come in in non-chronological order and sometimes not at all, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These statements again... Time to get some downvotes, I guess.

How do I know? How _can_ I even know that YOUR own device for which YOU wrote software and YOU designed hardware (although it may be based on some _standards_ , no one can guarantee it's unmodified) won't share my private information with YOU?

How can I know that you're not sending my private key encrypted with your server's public key (one simple example of many) to your side?

Am I supposed to take your word on it? No thanks.

As much as I'm against Apple and their policy, these statements make no sense from anyone (Google, Apple, whatever). Unless you design your own phone from scratch, you can not be sure that it is _secure_ (however, when you do that, all medium your phone may use is still not secure). It is simply not worth it. Anything in digital world is not secure (only a matter of attacker's determination and resources available to them) and there is no point in saying otherwise.

<comment><USER11> I tend to agree, it's much easier to just assume all online commutations are monitored than to try to escape the gaze of the five eyes (of Sauron).

Maybe this attitude means they have already won?

<comment><USER10> For some reason I think only diversity may help.

1000s different systems built differently are harder to milk for useful information if user is smart.. Centralization is the enemy of privacy (centralized = compromised).

Unless they have an AI which can analyze such systems' patterns at the speed of light and present solutions (which is not as unbelievable as self-conscious AI) but it's still more of a fiction.

Really, the problem is not in tech, it's in people. We're not fixing this one anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple is a PRISM participant, as of Oct 2012 (one year after Steve Jobs died). I highly doubt any iMessage is more secure than a plain text SMS sent via any cell carrier's network. Apple probably offers a sexy interface for the Feds to read everything.

Reference: [http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism- sl...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-slide-51.jpg)

<comment><USER12> Do any down-voters care to offer a comment? Is it that one contests that Apple is a PRISM participant?

<comment><USER13> I think you're being downvoted because you got a little too excited while bashing Apple. iMessage is most certainly more secure than plain text in most cases, save for the VERY exceptional case where the NSA might be watching IF they do have a key on your phone. Plus, anyone who's used Apple's partner portals knows they're just as capable of shitty design as everyone else.

<comment><USER14> "In most cases" isn't enough any more these days. People are targeted alone by metadata - and killed too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's Encrypted, and We Don't Have a Key. But it's not open source so you don't get to check. ... and we control the key distribution. We also do control your device, so _technically_ , we don't need the key.

Fixed that for him.

<comment><USER14> And we put music on your device without asking you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is actually possible to not have the ability to decrypt messages remotely?

At first I thought that if just an iphone held the encryption keys and these were not on apple servers this statement could be true ...

however considering that imessage can be setup on a Mac and an iPhone via your Apple ID ... its more likely that this statement is just hyperbole for the Apple's approach to privacy

<comment><USER17> "When a user turns on iMessage, the device generates two pairs of keys for use with the service: an RSA 1280-bit key for encryption and an ECDSA 256-bit key for signing. For each key pair, the private keys are saved in the device's keychain and the public keys are sent to Apple's directory service"

"The user's outgoing message is individually encrypted using AES-128 in CTR mode for each of the recipient's devices, signed using the sender's private key, and then dis- patched to the APNs for delivery."

Source: [http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.p...](http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_Feb14.pdf)

When you send an iMessage, you actually send a separate encrypted and signed copy for each recipient device. So, it is possible, but these are the lengths you have to go to.

<comment><USER18> But they could just inject a "fake" recipient device with their own public/private key and decrypt messages as they transit the system. They might not be able to decrypt messages you've sent in the past, but I can see no reason why they couldn't read messages as you send them if they wanted to (or were required by a wiretapping agency, for example).

I also recall a while ago a researcher who showed that if you forgot your iCloud password, there was a way to get Apple to reset the password and give you access to all your previously-stored data. If they had no way to decrypt your data remotely, that should be impossible.

<comment><USER17> On the first point, you're coreect. That's also why you get those extremely annoying modal dialogs each time a device/key pair is added to your iMessage account, because a device added without your knowledge could be used to eavesdrop on you.

<comment><USER2> You only get that dialog for the devices _you_ add. The public key added by the NSA or Apple themselves does not trigger the dialog.

(explanatory note as the sarcasm in the comment might not have been obvious: I do not know whether such a facility exists in the services or not, so this might or might not be true.

But: The fact that it's possible that this "feature" already exists or can easily be added in the future, potentially even without an update of the client leads me to my current opinion which is that iMessage is not secure and all traffic is open to Apple, rogue employees at Apple and whatever government Apple is cooperating with).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That isn't really definitive, because the NSA has required companies to change software to capture keys before. There was an encrypted email company who was told they have to start recording private keys used in their web client.

</comment><comment><USER20> > we finally got an agreement from the administration to release how many > times we had national security orders on Apple. And in a six month period, > and we had to release a range, because they won't let us say the exact > number, it's between zero and 250. That's the lowest number you can quote. > Zero to 250.

So does anyone else think this might be a bad number (being so low)? If the NSA had access to everything, wouldn't you expect the official requests for data to be low and not because Apple doesn't store data or it's all encrypted anyway as Cook implies.

</comment><comment><USER21> This statement is not enough... there could still be a third party (e.g. law enforcement) with a key or for more plausible deniability, a portion of a key (n bits out of N), and the statement would still be true. If they can do so truthfully, they should also state that nobody else other than the user has a key or any portion of a key, and that there are no keys or portions of keys in escrow where anybody else can conceivably get at them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, I really don't care if they have the key or not. My concern is if they can read my messages. I am more worried about backdoors added to iMessage by Apple. This is known to happen often in Apple products, maybe for the purpose of Development or Support, but it is still there. That is exactly what I want to know. Because if Apple can use that backdoor, a patient hacker can too.

<comment><USER23> > This is known to happen often in Apple products, maybe for the purpose of > Development or Support, but it is still there.

Could you elaborate on this? Are you talking about the development tools that require your phone to be cabled to a laptop?

<comment><USER22> This is just one example: [http://www.networkworld.com/article/2456967/security0/apple-...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2456967/security0/apple- inadvertently-admitted-to-ios-backdoor-forensics-expert.html)

But if you google it, you'll find more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Apparently skype uses encryption, according to:

[https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use- encrypt...](https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encryption)

</comment><comment><USER25> He should instead just have said "Have you _tried_ iMessage?? Its a disaster, we couldn't pull messages out of there even if we wanted to. Be thankful anything shows up on the screen at all!"

</comment><comment><USER26> It's nice to see that he thinks user privacy is something valuable, and that this is an issue worth talking about. However, I think he's really only addressing one of the three ways that user data can be compromised when it's held by a company:

1\. Selling or using it internally (e.g. Google's ad targeting)

2\. Stolen by criminals (e.g. Apple's recent snafu)

3\. Requisitioned by the government (e.g. Yahoo's daily fines for refusing to join PRISM)

Data that isn't collected in the first place can't be lost, but that isn't always possible (and it often defeats the entire purpose of the service).

I think he's mostly talking about the first one, that Apple hasn't built their business around harvesting user data to feed advertising or other systems. I think that's laudable. I would rather a company focus their energies on one product, rather than selling a byproduct of their real money maker. I also don't really like being the fuel for a free service -- I'd rather pay for what I use and have everything above board.

Security is where I think Apple has its biggest problem with user privacy. Relative to companies like Google, they just aren't very good at running Internet services. Despite operating several huge services (iTunes, a CDN that handles iOS updates, iCloud, etc.), they aren't an Internet company at heart. Google and others are leaps and bounds above them in this regard.

They can improve this with hiring and changing the culture in those groups, and I think they started this process a year or two ago. It will take some time, and they're never going to be the world's best at this stuff.

Tim Cook touches on the third point a little, and some people think he is being disingenuous in his description of how iMessage works. I think that it doesn't really matter. It's great that Apple has designed a system that places an emphasis on keeping user conversations private, but there is literally nothing that they can do about government interference if they want to continue operating as a legal entity.

I hope that they do everything in their power to curb government overreach. Ultimately the government will get what they want. Simply building a system designed to keep you from accessing the data that flows through it is not sufficient: you will be forced to subvert that system or face serious consequences.

I strongly believe that the only way people will ever have privacy from the government again is to decentralize the Internet and the services that run on it. I doubt that a political solution is possible now that pandora's box has been opened, and it seems like it will only become more widespread as companies have to answer to more governments around the world and the technology to broadly intercept traffic becomes more commonplace.

</comment><comment><USER27> erm. "with every mention of 'encryption' comes the issue of 'key management'? " ?

and possibly a subset of 'key management', 'key exchange'..?

</comment><comment><USER28> all these claims are worthless when you are not even administrator on the device you use... (they have access to your messages before they get encrypted...)

</comment><comment><USER29> Wasn't there a leaked FBI PowerPoint that very explicitly stated that they can't intercept iMessages? (and it was a point of frustration)

</comment><comment><USER30> Jobs is rolling over in his graves, Cook is a shill. Jobs kept the five-eyes out of Apple's shit until he croaked.

</comment><comment><USER31> But the NSA do have the keys :p just kidding

</comment><comment><USER32> The tech heroes of our age are becoming some kind of politicians, this is very sad.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does that mean its just a ROT13 cipher? I mean its _technically_ encrypted, but also doesn't need a key...

</comment><comment><USER34> Let's take this to the extreme: If you are _threat_ to the NSA, you'd use an iPhone to send a message because Tim Cook said it's _encrypted_?

YES - NO - I DON'T KNOW

ps. Let's wait for Apple to do a better job at keeping private naked pictures people make for fun using an iPhone and we'll talk iMessage encryption later.

</comment><comment><USER35> "we don't have a key, at this moment". Come on, Apple is still able to get your messages. Next time when you set up your iPhone, and if the messages are downloaded to your new device, you know they have access as well.

</comment><comment><USER36> 3 words - National Security Letter.

Take what Timmy says with a grain of salt, until they should you the source code. Oh wait...

Apple fan boys: bring on the downvotes, but enjoy your surveilling

<comment><USER37> I didn't downvote you, but I imagine it has less to do with what you said and more with how you said it. NSLs as a "boogeyman" is a poor substitute for lacking evidence. So far, we know that these things are sent to US companies which are in the business of collecting and bartering data. While Apple has a corner of that market, it isn't its entirety.

So here they have snippets of our information Ex: email, credit card, home address for app purchases. However, it's just as possible to use the phone normally without downloading a single app. That leaves the SIM provider holding the bag for your information ready to be collected by the authorities. Effectively, Apple washes its hands of your data on phone calls, but there is no reason to presume lies regarding backdoors on iMessage.

Also, I'm not an "Apple fan boy". I'm just unconvinced of widespread eavesdropping at Apple and that they're willing to risk destroying such a massive advantage over Google's Hangouts platform.

<comment><USER38> In a post-Snowden world, when it comes to leaking your data, companies are guilty until proven innocent. That is the only sensible stance to take given what we have learned in the last year.

<comment><USER36> This.

The Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells Congress that the NSA doesn't conduct intelligence on American citizens, and then later gets caught out. He committed Perjury without any ramifications.

Why do people think that CEOs are telling the truth when they are all in the same boat paddling up shit river?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Artificial arms get closer to the real thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/artificial-arms-get-closer-to-the-real-thing-1.16111?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews <comment><USER2> You know, I've seen all these neural interfaces that connect electrical impulses to nerve cells, and I wonder: why aren't we using optogenetics to connect them instead? it would seem to me that using light to penetrate the skin rather than metal would make for a much longer lived interface, since you wouldn't have to worry about the body rejecting the metal. Is there some reason that's not used?

<comment><USER3> I work in the field, so I thought I'd chime in here. Our lab (and others) have published a few papers on using optogenetics to control peripheral nervous system targets, but as some of the other commenters have mentioned, it's very much in the early stages right now, and is likely to be a long way away from human trials.

A few points:

1\. There are two relevant ways to make motor neurons light sensitive. As another commenter mentioned, you can create a transgenic line of animals (this is necessarily restricted to mice/rats). That's been done, and it's been shown that you can control muscle movement in such mice [1]. In that work, a rather interesting, and now replicated [2] observation was made, which is that if you use optogenetics to do this (muscle control) you actually induce less fatigue than if you use electrical stimulation to do this. Why this is the case is not yet understood.

2\. The other (more relevant) way to do this would be to use viral vectors to transduce the motor neurons you want to control with the light-sensitive ion channels. We published a paper last year showing this was possible in rats [3]. The advantage here is that you can get control over individual muscles without any effect on unwanted muscles, through a subtlety of the injection method used. There are naturally many caveats here, the most important being that human gene therapy is still in its infancy, and is typically used only for very life-threatening disorders. It's also important to note that in both these cases, you still needed a way to deliver light to the relevant nerve. While there's lots of work going on to make light-sensitive ion channels even more light-sensitive, it's likely that preliminary optogenetic control of muscle will still require implants.

3\. One of the applications talked about in the link here goes the other way - it's focused on delivering touch information back to the brain. There's less published here with optogenetics than there is in motor control. We've published a paper using viral methods to control sensation earlier this year (in mice) [4], but the type of sensation we were trying to control was pain, not simple touch.

That said, I know that many groups are trying to develop ways to specifically make touch-transducing neurons light sensitive - I'd be surprised if we didn't see quite a few papers on this over the next year or two.

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v16/n10/abs/nm.2228.html](http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v16/n10/abs/nm.2228.html) [2] [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6179/94.short](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6179/94.short) [3] [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0072691) [4] [http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n3/full/nbt.2834.html](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v32/n3/full/nbt.2834.html)

<comment><USER2> That's incredibly interesting! If you can treat cells to receive signals on one end, and transmit them on the other, then can you then use some sort of optical fiber to possibly branch around damage along a nerve path? As they say, the internet routes around damage. Can we do the same with our nervous system?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks more functional than my real hand. I had an arm reattached which I believe was the wrong choice. (Doctors argued against, parents argued for) Now I'm stuck with a useless hand that no doctor will remove. I'd rather just have a stump and optionally a prosthetic. But I don't understand why so many prosthetics try and appear real and end up in the uncanny valley. They are robot arms, make them look like robots.

</comment><comment><USER5> Within the past two decades we have gone from prostheses that do nothing to simple mechanical arms with _very_ limited functionality to artificial arms that now provide much of the basic functionality as the organic ones with which we are born.

Given the accelerating pace of innovation in this field, before long artificial arms are bound to become better -- faster, stronger, more precise, etc. -- than the real thing!

<comment><USER6> I'm also watching the 3d printer > sugar printing > test tube blood vessel creation / organ structure creation > implantation. That research, blended with adult stem cell biology shows amazing progress in recreating organs at will.

<comment><USER7> It is funny, with all this new technology I fear grow older less and less.

I wonder when we will replace "healthy" organs because the natural organs are inferier.

<comment><USER8> We remove them already - tonsils, appendix, wisdom teeth, cataracts, vestigial tails

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The tech is amazing, can't believe how fast it's progressing but as someone that is missing a hand I'd never use one I don't think. I can see how they are incredibly useful for people that have more difficulties.</comment>


Spuud - Pass the Potato - <AUTHOR> http://www.spuud.com

<comment><USER2> Awesome, I love to see developers using some of their time for the small stuff like this. Let's just be glad it doesn't distribute independent music. Nice work, it looks really clean.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a great way to fine tune ip-gloc data :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Cute for about 10 seconds. Then what?

<comment><AUTHOR> Then you send it to someone else! It isn't supposed to be deep or anything...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's one thing when miniapps actually do something clever or useful, but...

<comment><USER2> There's Hollywood films and then there's 60-second Youtube spots. Both formats can reach a million people, easy.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you understand what I was implying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well then why don't you spill it already, what are you trying to imply Mr. Mysterious?

<comment><USER5> I'm implying that this is a pointless app. I wasn't making a judgment about the scale of delivery, I'm just saying it's completely useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it most definitely is pointless. But it was fun for a few days, and was an interesting experiment.

The point of the comment in reply to yours was that not everything NEEDS to be useful. Somethings are just FUN.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nginx module by Google for rewriting web pages to reduce latency and bandwidth - <AUTHOR> http://ngxpagespeed.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also available for Apache [0] and Apache Traffic Server [1]!

[0]: [http://modpagespeed.com/](http://modpagespeed.com/)

[1]: [https://www.iispeed.com/pagespeed/products/ats- pagespeed](https://www.iispeed.com/pagespeed/products/ats-pagespeed)</comment>


HN: Brokerage for options trading? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have ideas about a good online brokerage for options trading?<p>I am looking for a fast, low transaction fee brokerage (maybe even provide api?) for tradings options in high volume. <comment><USER2> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!! <http://www.thinkorswim.com/> !!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> I have heard good things about optionsXpress.com from a software developer turned quant.

But this is probably not Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use etrade and have been very happy with them.</comment>


The Prophet of Cyberspace - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2016/11/the-prophet-of-cyberspace/ <comment><USER2> My icon since I read the neuromancer as a kid and changed my world view</comment>


Measuring Radiation With Dots And Sound (xkcd on NPR) - <AUTHOR> http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2011/03/23/radiation-health

<comment><USER2> Great to see Randall getting this kind of exposure for doing such a great thing. Anything that pushes more of a better quality of information into peoples' heads in the most effective way the better we will all be.</comment>