Is My MacBook Pro Always Listening? - <AUTHOR> http://brianpress.heroku.com/blog/2012/01/23/is-my-macbook-pro-always-listening/ <comment><USER2> Every microphone in every powered device must be considered as listening if you are serious about security at all.

So what if the panel actually even disabled the mic preamp on the board? You could have a program/virus/trojan that silently re-enabled it behind your back, without you knowing. So I'd say this is nothing to be concerned about, because every device you own potentially "listens" with its microphones all the time.

The advice with plugging a jack into the line-in port is good -- if you're sure your hardware hasn't been tampered with, this should physically disconnect the microphone.

Obviously if you're _really_ worried about your computer listening, you should rip it open and physically cut the microphone connection.

<comment><USER3> > "if you're sure your hardware hasn't been tampered with, this should > physically disconnect the microphone."

Why so? Most soundcards merely detect an impedance change and flick a bit to switch from internal microphone to line-in but you can have full control of that bit by software. That's actually what the prefpane does: even with something plugged in the line in, one can switch back to the internal microphone as a source. (EDIT: apparently it goes hidden on new hardware revisions but the functionality is there, just boot into Linux and do some poking on the soundcard to see what's really available)

<comment><USER4> You can still insert a barrel jack, this time with 4 rings instead of 3 at which point the microphone is disabled.

For example, Apple headphones for your iPhone can be plugged in and used for that purpose...

<comment><USER5> Only if you cut the microphone off, of course. :)

<comment><USER6> You can buy a 4 ring 1/8" plug adaptor for headphones. Some of these adaptors come with no mic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually I don't think it is listening at all when not in use. In fact the sound card even powers itself down when not in use, which can actually be heard in some cases (with some badly shielded/grounded HP for example). It's on when the prefpane is shown for the purpose of displaying that VU meter but as soon as you quit the prefpane, the _hardware_ turns off. And as soon as an app opens it, it turns back on.

Even then, let's assume the sound card is always on (like my old SB16):

\- what would listen to it if it was on? necessarily some code, or else it just goes straight to /dev/null.

\- so if it's external code injected by a malicious guy, what prevents him from setting it back to internal (and setting it back to line-in when you're looking)? Or craft all sorts of drivers hooking into or replacing AppleHDA.kext or whatever?

\- but if it's not external code it has to be internal (i.e Apple provided), so what would prevent Apple to simply tell you it's off when it would not actually be?

\- and since line-in disappeared but the (HDA or whatever) sound chip certainly still has this functionality, what would prevent Apple from having a second microphone plugged into that line-in, completely hidden and uncontrollable?

Now Poe's Law kicks in and I can hear headlines already "Apple removed the line-in on purpose to spy on us!"

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is without merit. The author's logic train derails shortly after leaving the station.

Without removing the hardware there is no way to prevent someone with remote root access from recording audio from any input regardless of settings. This is true of any machine that has audio inputs and drivers loaded for those devices.

<comment><USER8> He even gets basic facts incorrect. The author assumes his Macbook Pro doesn't have a dedicated audio input. It does. Every Macbook Pro does. (The Macbook Air is the only Mac shipping without a built-in audio input).

Really, what I see is a software update that fixes a user interface bug. System Preferences no longer offers disconnected audio inputs as a selectable option, because it's just plain smarter that way. Could there any possible confusion for an average user between "Internal Microphone - Built In" and "Line In - Audio Line In" when looking at their sound input options? Seems like a design decision made in the interest of removing irrelevant choices.

<comment><USER9> The 13 inch Macbook Pro, just like the Air, does not have a dedicated audio input. It's one of those mobile phone headphone/microphone combo jacks.

<comment><USER10> Hold down option and click the volume icon in the menu bar, select "Use Audio Port for: Input"

<comment><USER11> The ability to switch between input and output suggests it's not a dedicated input port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even if the default input device is set to "Line-In" software would be able to get the audio data from any device on the system. The NSA precautions mentioned in the article are superstitious and would likely do nothing to deter anyone who had compromised your system that badly.

<comment><USER13> Is "superstitious" a euphemism for misinformation?

<comment><USER12> > Web definitions: showing ignorance of the laws of nature and faith in magic > or chance.

It always means misinformation, not just today.

<comment><USER13> Correct you are. Let's try this again: Is it a euphemism for disinformation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you are really worried about this, I recommend surgery. I used to have this Windows box at work that would always make sounds for no reason, even though the sound was muted. The solution was to open it up and physically disconnect the speaker. Never made a sound again.

If you don't want your computer to be used as a listening device, first try adjusting your tinfoil hat. If you're still worried, open it up and remove the speakers and microphones. Make sure you get them all! Though I'm sure someone can figure out how to make a hard drive into a microphone, so you'd better replace that with an SSD. Also get the camera while you're in there.

There. Now you just have to worry about the bugs the Agents put all over your house.

<comment><USER15> > _There. Now you just have to worry about the bugs the Agents put all over > your house._

Physical bugs are expensive. Malware is cheap.

<comment><USER16> If you're after a specific individual, a far better target than their computer would be their cell phone. Computers are complex and stationary. Cell phones are eminently more susceptible to this type of attack because the government can compel carriers to use technology that is already in place. No malware package required.

Working in telecom was enlightening for me. There's a _feature_ called "executive barge in" that pops up from time to time when shopping for PBX systems. Executive barge in allows a user with the appropriate rights to open an audio channel to any phone connected to the switch, bypassing the alerting phase. That is to say, the phone never rings; the audio channel just opens. Most systems provide some sort of brief alert tone, but this is entirely implementation based. There's nothing implicit about opening a channel that would require a tone.

All digital phone systems have the ability to implement a feature like this. Cell phones are digital phones. With old analog (POTS) phones, when the phone was "on hook", there was a physical change in the connection of the copper pairs. In modern phone systems on-hook/off-hook is just a software state. There is no physical difference. Opening an audio channel is a distinct event, completely separate from the alerting signal [1] in common cell phone protocols.

The bottom line is that if you're _really_ concerned that someone is listening in, you should watch the horrible movie "RED" and imitate John Malkovich's character the best you can.

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/54495209/UMTS-3G-WCDMA-Call-Flows>

<comment><USER17> It is possible to use a phone as an eavesdropping device even when it is on- hook:

[http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/muren/index.html#floo...](http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/muren/index.html#flooding) (dutch)

<comment><USER16> I don't think frequency flooding works with the newer types of microphones used in modern analog phones (electret/dynamic). The article specificly mentions carbon mics, and that frequency flooding can be defeated with a capacitor.

<comment><USER17> Yes, those are 'POTS' phones, the old style variety as mentioned in the great grand parent.

Newer phones, basically anything with a bunch of electronics are not susceptible to this kind of trick.

When it was first revealed by the dutch hacker group 'hack-tic' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack-Tic>) the phone company denied it could be done until there was a public demonstration.

<comment><USER16> Not to be argumentative, because I really appreciated that link :) but POTS stands for "plain old telephone service". It's still in use all over the place today.

The distinction is in the type of phone attached to the POTS line. It looks like it requires a combination of a carbon mic and an old, non-integrated- circuit switchhook. Something like you'd find in an old Western Electric 2500 [1].

A carbon mic has some pretty unique properties. Base output is very high, such that output is easily detected at a distance without amplification, and they're very low impedance. Even slightly newer telephone designs would use an electret style microphone. The most basic electret circuits require a capacitor, which is noted to defeat the frequency flooding attack.

1 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone#Model_2500>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Even with a "mute" checkbox, it stands to reason that a hack that grants access to the mic will also at least attempt to bypass the "mute" setting. So, without a hardware solution, there's no real way to secure the mics on these macbooks.

Personally I'm not that worried, but I can see why this could be a problem for some.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. I was going to suggest using something like Soundflower to create a fake sound input device, but at the end of the day it's still a software thing that can be overridden.

If you're really paranoid, you could always remove the mic with a soldering iron... =)

<comment><USER20> That's exactly what's done with cameras and microphones in high-security environments.

<comment><USER21> Yep, my father used to work in high-security (think live nuclear sites)... the standard answer was to use a drill press to ream out any camera lenses on cell phones that needed to be on-site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Changing your sound configuration is useless against anyone who has obtained admin rights on your operating system. Windows, Linux, Mac, or otherwise. If they have root/admin, they can override any setting you change at the most basic levels.

If you're still OCD and concerned about it, install Soundflower [1] and you can easily configure Soundflower as your default input, but not feed anything on to the Soundflower bus, thus making the default input silence. This is, in effect, the same as the author's suggestion of setting the default input to line-in and plugging in a stub; also pointless, as a line-in jack has no ability to convert acoustic wave forms to electrical signals.

I feel less-smart for even addressing this question.

<http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/>

<comment><USER22> I understood is as the stub was plugged into the input to avoid having the input automatically ignored due to not having a device connected.

I don't know (no experience) if Macs' analog ports were this clever, but considering the hardware to detect presence in the port is trivial, it wouldn't surprise me so that's how I interpreted it.

<comment><USER16> I've seen a lot of Windows hardware drivers that do this. They detect when you've plugged a device in to an audio port and change the config to accommodate. OS X doesn't do this. If you configure Line In as the default input, the OS will monitor that port, regardless of its state. The only adjustment OS X makes is to remember input volumes based on plug state. So for example, if you plug in a set of headphones, the volume will be adjusted to the level that was set when headphones were last plugged in. When you unplug, the volume level is reverted to the state it was in prior to plugging in headphones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reducing the volume in the control panel doesn't add security. Microphone input volume is settable from user level without special permissions, so any software that was going to listen can control the volume.

</comment><comment><USER24> When you plug a microphone device (e.g. a headphones/mic combo that comes with the iPhone) into the single audio port on a recent Macbook, it will be detected and the control panel will switch to giving you settings for "External microphone".

The internal microphone no longer shows up, suggesting it is disabled as before.

Thus, the simple plug hack should still work.

(I'm running Lion on a MBP8,1.)

<comment><USER25> Suggesting it is disabled isn't the same as it being disabled.

Reducing the input level to zero suggests it's disabled but evidently this isn't the case.

<comment><USER24> That's why I phrased it exactly like that. :)

I would imagine (yes, I'm speculating) that the control panel uses a standard OS interface to enumerate audio devices, and when the internal microphone drops off the list in the dialog, that reflects the fact the OS isn't offering it anymore. So an app asking the OS to enumerate audio devices would not find the internal microphone.

It's always possible that there's a lower-level hack to get around that, but then that's always been a concern.

By the way, I forgot to mention that when I turn my input level down to zero, the little blue bars stop showing any signal. The blog post is about 10.6 (Snow Leopard), as mentioned below the Control Panel snapshot. Maybe this is all fixed in 10.7 (Lion)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cell phones are badly-secured always-on tracking devices with built-in microphones designed to communicate potentially sensitive data over known- insecure networks. (Start at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_hacking.>) Why are we worrying about MacBooks again?

<comment><USER27> Just because there is something worse to worry about, doesn't mean you should forget about everything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Like always, if you can't trust your machine, you should stop using it and reformat it. The only security comes with a controlled behavior in which software is installed in your computer, which websites you visit, etc.

Any software switch can be overriden by a silent hack. Besides, overhearing conversations is the least of your problems if your computer is compromised. I would worry more about documents and web browser data.

</comment><comment><USER29> Without further investigation, I pose a potentially naive question:

What evidence is there that this behaviour of the internal mic is the same when the Audio preferences pane is not open?

Could it be that the mic is automatically made 'live' when system preferences or that particular pref pane is opened?

<comment><USER16> Even if that's the case, it's not really relevant. If the concern is that an attacker will listen your mic, the only 100% solution is to physically extricate the mic from your laptop. If an attacker is able to install software (with administrative privilege) on your computer, they can do anything you can do, including re-configure your audio devices and mic volume levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This behavior is not present in OS X 10.7. However, as many people have pointed out, it is foolish to trust the display shown in System Preferences if you are really paranoid about security.

</comment><comment><USER31> Finding a single regression in a defense in depth strategy does not an exploit make. Software can select whichever input it wants, regardless of whatever settings you may have set. This is one of many things that are simply a best effort to protect the computer. Root access or even access as an Administrative user could bypass this setting easily.

</comment><comment><USER6> Apple should put an activation indicator LED shining through micro-holes like the power light is, next to the microphone which is hardwired to a tiny relay, such that the microphone is physically disconnected unless the LED is on.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yeah .. umm .. and there is _no_ guarantee that your CPU isn't broadcasting every single operation to a top-secret government satellite, either. The technology is there: have _you_ audited your CPU today?

<comment><USER33> Use the same laptop RMS is using and read the source. <http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/>

<comment><USER34> How would I verify that this source was actually used?

<comment><USER35> Build it yourself and verify via hash that what is on the firmware is what would get written.

However, if you're so paranoid that you think this could be a problem, you're already outside the realm of buying preassembled computers anyways. Who knows who could have tampered with it en route?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'll tell you what else seems to always be listening - the camera on the MacBook Pro, even when the little green light is off.

Cover the camera with your finger or shine a flashlight/mobile phone screen into it, watch the keyboard lights react. It's obviously listening for light level changes.

I just wonder how much data you could collect from the sensor without the green light turning on?

edit: I'm wrong, see my reply to jcromartie

<comment><USER37> If you look closely, there's actually another dot next to the camera. That's the ambient light sensor.

<comment><USER36> You're right. I thought that was the LED but it's not.

Well now, what am I going to do with this tin foil hat I just made?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you hook something like this to the macbook, do you get the option of selecting an external mic?

[http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-3-5mm-Jack-Audio- Adapter/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-3-5mm-Jack-Audio- Adapter/dp/B0058P0I2C/ref=sr_1_14?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1327459565&sr=1-14)

</comment><comment><USER39> Paranoia much? Surely a much better approach to security would be network monitoring, anti-virus and vigilance. This sounds like blacking out the windows because you can't be bothered to close the curtains.

If your tin-hat doesn't feel like enough protection, try downloading and installing Sound Flower (Generally cool app). Basically it lets you 'patch' one audio output on the computer to an audio input, so you could record the output of your computers speakers at near full resolution (Useful for screen- casts/video game play through and probably lots of other things). Activate Sound Flower Bed and select the option along the lines of 'no input'/'no device'. Go into system preferences and select the Sound Flower device as the default input device.

All of that is, however, completely irrelevant since applications can select audio inputs external to system preferences and record the input at whatever volume they like. (E.G. Skype can use a different input to the sys default, Logic Pro can record from all you system inputs at once etc.)

</comment><comment><USER40> > especially the average Mac user to secure their machine's audio input in the > first place.

The average user of any machine doesn't need to worry about this. Much ado about nothing.

</comment><comment><USER41> Though this is a bit foil-hat for most people it can be a real privacy concern. Can your mac be used to secretly spy on you? Absolutely. Has apple done this before to their customers? 100% (and so have others) see carrier IQ: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarrierIQ>

If something like this bothers you theres no reason you should be using any closed source software at all.

It's that easy. If you're concerned about your privacy and system integrity don't use any software from a source you don't personally trust and that can't be reviewed by a third party.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've deleted kernel extensions to deal with related issues before. They often get reinstalled after updates though, so it can be quite a hassle.

</comment><comment><USER43> This does not happen with my early 2011 13" mbp.

</comment><comment><USER44> Isn't there a non-destructive low-tech solution, like placing a piece of foam tape over the microphone to block audio?

</comment><comment><USER45> He should throw out his keyboard too: <http://vimeo.com/2007855>

</comment><comment><USER46> currently down.. > read it here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:brianpr...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:brianpress.heroku.com/blog/2012/01/23/is- my-macbook-pro-always-listening/)

ever thought about the camera or your mobile phone? ;)

</comment><comment><USER47> Does the same apply to a webcam on a laptop without an indicator light?

</comment><comment><USER48> What about putting a wee piece of tape over the mic hole?

<comment><USER49> Newer MacBooks don't have a separate microphone hole anymore; the mic is now located under the left speaker grille. You'd either have to tape over the whole thing (it's a pretty big grille), or open up the machine to cover/detach the mic specifically.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, a lot of pretty serious comments for what I consider to be a completely tongue-in-cheek post that is essentially asking a simple question.

Some of you people need to lighten up.

Besides, my favorite hat is made of copper! ;P

</comment><comment><USER50> I tested mine and turning it down seems to work.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is not a real approach at security.

</comment><comment><USER52> Are you suggesting that my mac book pro is sending this data to some apple server somewhere?

Can you imagine A the traffic that would take and B the amount of useless information that would be recorded. They have millions of computers!

If its not being recorded locally or sent to an external source from a privacy point of view there is no problem. Both of these would be easy to detect by looking for sound files somewhere on the device or monitoring outbound internet traffic.

So is it battery life that you have the problem with?

<comment><USER35> No, rather that "Hmm, this is odd, it seems _there is no way to disable the mic_ "

I didn't read any allegations of remote recording here. Perhaps you clicked on another article by mistake?

<comment><USER53> still drinking my coffee, but the one odd part was that, on theprefs screen, with mic input all theway down, it was still regisrering audio. something is wrong there....all other arguments about security aside,

i tried this on my mid 2009 mbp, and dont get the same results... turing volume input all the way down should result in muted audio input. nevermind havkers... what if i just want it off for a sec while i say something i dont want someone to hear (mute buttons aside.... and are they working filly if rekying on the same api)

suggest trying on multiple units... and as others have said, those guidelines are just best practices, not guarantees. if you want guarantees, you dont have conversations near microphones... and sweep theroom for transmitters, assuming thats still possible. one would assume some agency with an unfathomable budget could probable fevelop some kind of ultra liw power ulta wideband bug we are nor goingto detect. or it will just record and theywill tell it to transmit later. or just pick it up... thelist goes on,

theoriginal question is valid though, i would like to know that, absentmalicious intent, when my mic is muted its muted, and inthe samevein, that the camera light is an absolute indicator of activity.

when i get around to buying a new mac (or something) which shoukd besoon, ill be doing someexploratory surgery n this one i think.</comment></comment></comment>


Learn Enough CSS & Layout to Be Dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://www.learnenough.com/css-and-layout-tutorial <comment><AUTHOR> _Learn Enough CSS & Layout to Be Dangerous_ is a new 500+ page tutorial on front-end development by me (Michael Hartl) and Learn Enough cofounder Lee Donahoe. Link is to the free online version; launch announcement is here:

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Ebook launch discount expires in a week.

Enjoy!</comment>


The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1994] - <AUTHOR> http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiidx.html <comment><USER2> This story has been the source of many discussions between my girlfriend and I, and I heartily recommend it. While it can be a bit disturbing, I think that helps drive home the point (it is kuro5hin, after all.)

It also led to a number of very amusing jokes targeted at the author (localroger). My favorite being here:

<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/8/20/84039/4943>

 _This [alarm clock] will be useful to me. I sometimes forget to feed the small girl chained in my basement. Serious writers need muses._

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite singularity treatment. It explores some original, and very scary implications of such a world...

</comment><comment><USER4> I strongly recommend Roger's _Passages_ series to those who enjoy his style and work here.

<http://localroger.nfshost.com/revelation-passage/>

</comment><comment><USER5> If you like this, you would like Three Worlds Collide.

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember the plot striking me as a bit cheesy and having some holes, but it's all well compensated for the awesome view of how a virtual world can turn out.

If you haven't yet, read it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I loved this back in 1994. Definitely worth a read, although I think the whole S&M thing comes through a little strongly.

</comment><comment><USER8> The first chapter of this really reminds me of Alejandro Jodorowsky's and Mobius's The Incal graphic novels.

</comment><comment><USER9> hate stories like these.

 _SPOILERS!!!!_ (ROT13)

Nz V fhccbfrq gb flzcnguvmr jvgu n znfbpuvfg jub qrcevirf jung V nffhzr gb or OVYYVBAF bs crbcyr bs jbegujuvyr yvirf orpnhfr furf OBERQ? shpx ure va gur snpr. "cnenqvfr vf fb obevat" vf n ynzr traer gung eribyirf nebhaq n anvir ivrj bs vqrny frafbel rkcrevraprf.

<comment><USER8> Gur fgbel jnf ragregnvavat, ohg abg qrrcyl. Naq dhvgr naablvat va cnegf, rfcrpvnyyl va gur gerngzrag bs gur fgbel'f zbfg vagrerfgvat punenpgre. Cevzr Vagryyrpg.

Naq nz V pbeerpg va nffhzvat "Cevzr Vagryyrpg" vf n cynl ba "Cevzr Zbire"? Ynjerapr'f pbasbhaqrq crefban qbrf abg nyvta jvgu uvf anzvat fpurzn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It had been in the back of my mind to reread this, thanks for bringing it up.</comment>


Innovation Next Awards - <AUTHOR> Got ideas about giving sex ed a tech makeover? The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has funding.  Apply by 1/31/16 at http://innovationnext.org. <comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever thought you could improve sexual education? Does teen pregnancy prevention matter to you? Interested in developing technology that could change public health as we know it?

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The submission period is from December 15, 2015 through January 31, 2016. Entries may be submitted at www.InnovationNext.org. Professionals from all backgrounds with a wide variety of experience and expertise are welcome.</comment>


Show HN: Quantblocks - Backtest your trading strategies - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantblocks.com We think backtesting is too difficult, this is our attempt to make it much easier and more fun - let us know what you think! <comment><USER3> It is really too bad folks keep pushing technical trading platforms to the public. The promise of quick money to be made in a sea of billions of dollars might seem innocuous, but it's (a) bad for the market and (b) bad for society.

It's bad for the market because collectively, the buying and selling of shares based on anything other than company fundamentals (earnings, cash flow, projected growth, etc) distorts the price of the company. Unfortunately, because of our hunger to make money fast, there are too many of us (including large hedge-funds) playing this game, and the effects on price movement are very real. And when prices no longer reflect the company fundamentals, all sorts of bad things happen: Management is pressured to take extraordinary actions just to mitigate the market situation (stock splits/reverse-splits, stock buy-backs, accounting tricks, etc), employees freak out and quit, long- term investors get nervous, potentially fruitful M&As fail to happen, etc.

(The argument that technical/high-frequency trading improves the liquidity of the market is the biggest bullshit, cop-out answer ever: The only people that benefit from this type of instant liquidity are short-term, short-sighted traders ... such as the very people who advocate this type of trading, and not long-term _investors_!).

As for the societal cost, technical trading educates and perpetuates the myth that the stock market is a big gambling house, and not a means to become an _owner_ of a company. To paraphrase Warren Buffett, every time you think about buying stock you should think of it the same way as if you were buying a mom- and-pop shop, like a pizza place. Is the price you're paying roughly equivalent to - or better than - how much you'd expect to make by pocketing the profits of the shop over the lifetime of the business?

I hate to leave completely negative feedback, so at least I'll give that this tool looks spiffy.

UPDATE: It seems like I'm getting a lot of responses from traders here. Already answered some, can't answer them all. Please sleep over these comments and think about what you could be doing with your time. Life's short.

<comment><USER4> Liquidity is the reason you can click a button on E-Trade and get your trades almost instantly, for between zero and a few more pennies than what traders would pay, plus a $9.99 commission. This was absolutely not the case before computer trading and electronic markets.

The "good old days" of human traders where when you'd pay fifty bucks plus one percent to a broker who would almost certainly front-run your trades, and the best spreads were at least 1/8. Nowdays the worst that could happen is an HFT might, perfectly legally, place an order a split second faster and extract fractions of a penny as they narrow the spread for everyone. Please forgive me if I don't consider this a disaster for investors, hedgers, mutual funds, and other consumers of markets that they can quickly execute orders close to the market price.

<comment><USER3> > _Liquidity is the reason you can click a button on E-Trade and get your > trades almost instantly_

I personally don't care that my trade happens in a second or a minute because I'm a long-term investor - someone who wants to become a company owner, as I explained above, and not yet another hacker who couldn't care less about the long-term health of the company I'm buying.

My point is that if folks care about liquidity on the order of seconds/sub- seconds, they are themselves falling into the short-term trading BS (and consequently continuously distorting company prices).

Please stop perpetuating this insanity. Here's a timely article by Mark Cuban fresh out of the oven to help clarify my point:

[http://blogmaverick.com/2012/09/21/what-business-is-wall- str...](http://blogmaverick.com/2012/09/21/what-business-is-wall-street-in-3/)

<comment><USER5> Mark Cuban bemoans the good old days like any technical trader before they were beaten out by computers. He doesn't advocate trading on fundamentals. The battle cry against high frequency tradings seems to come primarily from individuals who were previously successful in specialist trading.

Here he talks about how he bought a stock, watched it climb then shorted it and celebrated its bankruptcy: <http://blogmaverick.com/2008/09/08/talking- stocks-and-money/>

But yes, speak to us from the moral high ground. Cuban simply rode what essentially amounted to a pump-n-dump. He wasn't doing the promotion, but he sure as hell wasn't in it for the long term growth of the underlying company.

Here's a fantastic quote from Mr. Cuban: "What about fundamentals? Fundamentals is a word invented by sellers to find buyers.

Price-earnings ratios, price-sales, the present value of future cash flows, pick one. Fundamentals are merely metrics created to help stockbrokers sell stocks, and to give buyers reassurance when buying stocks. Even how profits are calculated is manipulated to give confidence to buyers."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you find Quantblocks interesting, you should also look at Quantopian. (www.quantopian.com)

We're geared a bit more towards programmers. Rather than use blocks, our members develop their algorithms in Python. We have an in-browser IDE with a lot of smart auto-completion.

A few of our nifty features: * free access to 10 years of by-minute historical data for all US stocks * the writer of the algorithm owns the algorithm * batteries included - all of your favorite Python math and science packages including Pandas and NumPy * a robust backtester that models slippage, commissions, risk metrics, and more

We also have a community of quants and programmers who like talking about this kind of stuff. People share code, give advice, ask questions, etc.

Full disclosure: I work for Quantopian!

Happy hacking,

Dan Dunn

<comment><USER7> Great work Dan, it is totally what I would be looking for when backtesting and strategy development. Do you mind sharing what js framework you used on the client side?

<comment><USER6> We wrote a bunch, and used a bunch, so there is no straight answer. A short list: highcharts for charting, jquery and underscore for the glue, crossfilter for data filtering, bootstrap for components, codemirror for the IDE, handlebars for templates, markdown for markdown, prettifier for code highlighting, and the list goes on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The signup/confirm/login metaphor is really tired and annoying. Don't give me two screens of meaningless text, show me what your product does and let me interact with it before making me sign up. For example, open the strategy builder window up to anyone, but make me sign up before I can save my strategies.

On the product itself - security specific rules are fine but you're missing the point of backtesting and automated trading. The ability to spot patterns across any security (or perhaps in an industry) is the key here. I wish there were some way to specify this. I realize it's v1, but your rules are too simple for most traders.

Finally - you should call out that your market data is EOD. You should also offer VWAP (I know Xignite offers it) as a reasonable alternative for prices you "could have gotten" as a retail investor.

Also, the IP thing scares me, and I wouldn't use the service until you change it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looking at the terms & conditions, any algorithms that the users create become the intellectual property of Quantblocks. Is this just a tool to help users or is it a tool for the company to source the best algorithms?

<comment><USER10> Upvoted for importance, but I note that you are actually only granting them a perpetual worldwide fully paid-up irrevocable license to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A cautionary note on backtesting (ie, assessing how trading strategies would have performed over a historical period in time).

If an a posteriori probability distribution is a good fit for historical events, it doesn't mean in any way it is going to fit future data points. It may or may not.

Hence, use backtesting with care while trading.

<comment><USER12> Past performance may not be a guarantee of future performance, but it's all we've got to work with.

<comment><USER11> Actually, this is not accurate. Before relying on our models, we get also the opportunity to validate them by checking at what extent they successfully predicts future data points.

Simply for the next t-time periods let the model give the user an estimate of the future prices/rates, together with an estimate of how accurate the model expects these predictions to be. This would allow the user to build confidence in the algorithm strategy she/he came up with, before employing it on the open market.

<comment><USER12> I mean it in the naive sense - we can observe the past but not the future. It definitely makes sense to paper trade a strategy and see its predictiveness in real time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey! This is very cool, very fast. One thing I would suggest is the ability to specify a list of securities rather than a single security. In my experience, if you're going to test a general heuristic for trading, you're going to want to test it across as broad of a spectrum as possible to determine if it really has some predictive abilities. Obviously, this requires a lot more computational power if you're applying your rules to everything in the Russell 3000 rather than just a single security. The results would then be the composite of all trades across the securities.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is kind of neat. It would be even better if it let you work with the returns of each stock, rather than just with the price. In my experience most technical strategies work better, and are more stable, when they work with data in return space rather than price space.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the feedback, that's definitely something we've been looking at. This is our initial feature-set that we're using to collect usage-statistics. If you have any other feedback, please feel free to let us know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is fantastic. Love the clean, straightforward interface. However I have a feeling that anyone knowledgeable enough to profit from this is probably already heavily invested in another system for doing these calculations and/or feel the rules system isn't flexible enough. One thing you could do is to implement sharing. ie, have a list of "top performing strategies measured from date of creation". Then let users subscribe to other users' "proven" strategies for a fee - you take half and the author takes half - this could be an alternative way to monetize the site as well attract the kind of people who make a living doing this - ie the kind of people you want talking about your product.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the great feedback. Do you think people would be too protective of their strategies to participate though?

<comment><USER16> Possibly. If you integrate with a trading platform you could always let other users subscribe to a strategy without knowing what the strategy is (eg they only know it's gained X% vs the S&P 500 in the last few months, the author's profile and that 5000 other users have 5MM invested in this strategy). However I have a feeling that a) the money from commissions and b) the feeling of being at the top of a list will compel a lot of people to share their strategies - people blog about their stock picks constantly. Also I'd love to see some left-field data about these companies eg: Google search volume, Wikipedia edits/day, mentions on Twitter, press releases, sentiment analysis of news articles etc...

<comment><USER17> It's funny that you mention it because, as Rob said, we've been playing with the idea of adding a competitive edge, but the commissions is a cool idea. We were also considering a kind of achievements approach as well as a leaderboard but want to try and keep the idea of it as a tool as opposed to a toy.

Love the data idea, in fact surplus of data is already a bit of an issue; we're running out of screen real-estate.

<comment><USER16> of course - the alternative is to not share anything. With the data you have on your users, once you can isolate users who consistently come up with strategies that consistently make money after their creation date - well, you might as well set up a hedge fund on the side and give the product away for free.

<comment><USER17> Hah, yeah, unfortunately the legal team at the incubator we're in suggests we might not survive too long as a company if we go down that route :)

<comment><USER16> haha fair enough - thinking about it there's all kinds of nefarious ways you could use the data. Looking at your product a bit more, this might be complicating things a little and it's going to hammer your database but I'd love the ability to fit variables to a strategy - eg I want a strategy like "IF X day moving sample average for GOOG is better than Y day moving sample average for GOOG buy ELSE sell" But I don't really know the best X and Y, so I'd like to leave those as variables and have the software find the optimum values based on historical data.

<comment><AUTHOR> we've all been salivating about the potential for an 'Optimise' button. It would be really cool, it has a few wrinkles though, e.g. there might not be a unique maximum solution, so how do you choose the best one? Once there are a few variable involved it may be a job for a genetic algo, but it would have to be in the background. All food for thought ;-)

<comment><USER16> Here's how I'd do it: Don't let the variable be the stock itself because otherwise your search space will be too big... limit the number of stocks you can optimise on and constrict it to variables like "moving average duration". That way you can load the stock data onto the client side and do the processing there (presumably you're already doing this for your graphs anyway) - kick it off with a few generations of pretty loose genetic algorithm then when you get near your time limit switch to simulated annealing with the best handful of results to narrow down the answer as fast as possible. Keep it quick, say 2 seconds tops. Then what you can do is give the client a confidence rating so you can say something like "Found the following result with 89% confidence. Click here to perform a longer search for higher accuracy". Work out your confidence rating based on how bumpy the ride was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very neat.

Do you guys have plans to add support for Forex trading too?

And, even if one of the strong points is "no coding required". Do you foresee at some point to let advanced users write trading strategies in some type of programming language?

</comment><comment><USER19> How granular is the data that you backtest against? Daily, Hourly, Minute or tick data?

I subscribed to another similar service for several years but one thing I always wished they would add was more granular data than daily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently it's daily. One of the possible future extensions is into intra-day but it brings a whole load of extra technical problems. Honestly the problems look really fun, things like keeping the backtest running relatively fast, caching the large amounts of extra data and the added complexity of intra-day strategies. However at the moment we need more data on how people want to use it as that's a pretty big outlay on development time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Couple of observations:

1) The leading x days from the moving averages on the default strategy are charted at 0 when they should be null and not visible on the chart.

2) If I mouse over the 20 day moving average block and change it to a sell block, then click run, my charts disappear into loading bars and I get a warning message up. However, there is no indication to an uninformed user what they've done wrong, why it's wrong, or how to fix it. This could use a bit of work.

This is very similar to an iPad app I've been developing - I like it a lot, you've done a good job!

<comment><USER17> 1) Just pushed an update to fix that, thanks for pointing it out.

2) Syntax checking has been a big discussion point for us, we would love to be able to limit people to only valid blocks but also didn't want to have a giant block of validation javascript to deal with the drag and drop on the blocks. As for error messages, you're totally right; they're massively lacking. Difficulty is that we keep changing the way we're storing rules as we learn more about what users want to do, given that we didn't want to have to build a proper syntax parser until we had a more stable concept of how they'd be structured.

Out of interest, what sort of error message would be useful? As in, how technical e.g. "I don't understand how to if moving_avg > buy" or "There is an error at 'if moving_avg > buy' returns: Nil expected: boolean"

<comment><USER20> My app is slightly different and uses a patch panel style of interface rather than linear blocks. Every time the system is changed, the layout is parsed into code and any invalid paths are coloured red to show

a) where the problem originates b) which blocks are affected by the problem

Additionally there is a crude type system that prevents the wrong type of signal being passed to a block - e.g. a buy/sell datatype cannot be passed into a block which expects numerical time series data. I would say that you should _prevent_ users from entering rules which make no sense as far as is possible..

I guess it depends how technical your users are. I'm attempting to stay away from terms such as nil or boolean, so I would go for something like your first example, but with more information, perhaps like:

"I don't know how to follow the rule "if moving_avg > buy" _because_ xyz" which sounds friendly and non-technical but hopefully xyz will help them understand why it doesn't work and learn from their mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I built something similar for my own personal use, so it's very interesting to see something similar polished for mass consumption.

The only thing I'm confused about is what you get in the Pro version..

"3 Months of Unlimited Access to Every Area of QuantBlocks"

How is the user supposed to know what "every area" is? How could anyone expect to know what they get with a subscription? Most importantly, how could they know if a particular symbol would be available in the pro version, what about futures, forex, etc?

<comment><USER15> So what if we said "3 Months of Unlimited Access to Every Daily Upgrade" ??

We're doing daily agile upgrades so we're trying to communicate that they'll get access not only to ALL of the global equities data, but also all of the updates that we make in terms of ability to save strategies, indicators, etc.

<comment><USER20> It might just be me, but I find it confusing that the upgrade statement says "a one-time payment of $39" and then the first checkbox says "3 months of access".

Does this mean I pay $39 every quarter to continue access? In which case why is it a one-time payment?

<comment><USER17> Hacker news has throttled Rob's replying (too fast), he says:

Thanks for the great feedback. We've just pushed an update that tries to clarify by removing "One time payment" and removing the "every area of Quantblocks" language.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER20> That seems much clearer to me now! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice polished UI. Good to see some integration in the finance space. A couple of years ago I was working on something similar idea.

One of the things we did was backtest a couple of strategies for hold with entry points of "Jim Cramer" recommended this stock on this day.

What are your backgrounds.

Ping me if you want to talk more.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you really want quant stuff, then use R, Octave||Matlab or even Excel. MA, RSI test are available on Internet and works with all browser. By the way - <USER2> does work well with my Chrome and you should move a message about supported browsers on the first page or before I fill registration form, not after.

</comment><comment><USER24> I like the idea of the site, but only having 5 stocks available to test against doesn't allow me to get comfortable enough with the platform to pony up for a paid account.

Additionally, the choices you've made for inclusion could be more diverse. Where is SPY, SQQQ, GLD, etc?

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd really like to be able to model the effects of rebalancing to a static or tactical asset allocation, but it seems that the only strategies that matter to the technical camp is thresholds based on trailing n days moving average.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great job! Everything is really smooth. As a fellow developer who's interested in finance, I would love to discuss (if you don't mind) about your approach and effort.

</comment><comment><USER26> Never received a confirmation email. No delivery attempt in the mail server log.

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks cool, can I ask where you sourced the historical data from?

<comment><USER15> We're using Xignite's API right now. It's super-simple to integrate with.

<comment><USER20> Why did you choose that over something like Yahoo! Finance or Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah that caught us out - we found that even though the data is freely available from those sources, you're not allowed to include that data in a commercial app :-(

<comment><USER20> Oh really? That's interesting - does that apply even if it's not distributed _with_ the commercial app? I'm sure I've used trading platforms before which use Yahoo...

<comment><AUTHOR> Our understanding of the Yahoo/google T&Cs was that we couldn't aim to profit from their data (<http://finance.yahoo.com/badges/tos>). We may be being overcautious but we didn't want to risk getting into trouble ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Volume data would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER29> So judging from the the screenshots... Buy Apple? Yea that would of totally worked. Now for any other stocks, probably not. Also you can see it's less than the simple buy and hold.

Seriously I don't know why people even try trading in their free time.

Now, that being said, I'll take a bet against anyone who thinks they can find a profitable trading strategy using this product :D

<comment><USER30> Relax. The tool lets you create a strategy and back-test it. It is selling the fact that you can do this without coding, it is not trying to sell you 'Long - AAPL' strategy.</comment></comment>


About that time Google spied on my Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2014/03/21/google-spied-gmail/ <comment><USER2> Google also had a class-action suit by AdWords advertisers many years ago. They settled. This required messaging all members of the class. Typically this is handled by postal mail. Google also delivered messages over email and, in the bargain, decided if your email address ended in gmail.com they'd take a peak at certain information in your Gmail account to make sure you had gotten it. We know they did this because Google's lawyers bragged about it to the court in a legal filing.

I was not thrilled about this, more of the principle of the thing than for any major harm caused by that particular disclosure. [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/07/28/googles-lawyers-admit- to...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/07/28/googles-lawyers-admit-to-gmail- privacy-leak/)

<comment><USER3> > they'd take a peak (sic) at certain information in your Gmail account to > make sure you had gotten it

If Google checks its spam logs to ensure a mass mailing wasn't classified as spam, is that really equivalent to Microsoft's action?

Checking spam logs is a lot more benign than rummaging around through a specific user's email.

<comment><USER4> Its a line they crossed. You dont have the right to decide where that line is for other people. You can reason it into the benign all you like the fact is they were snooping in a targeted way.

If the NSA only checks the logs of people to see if they received an email is it ok because they were just looking for "terrorists"?

<comment><USER5> They have the right because it's their service. No one is forcing you or anyone else to use their email service. If you don't like it, you're free to move to another email service. Or better yet, do what I did and just have it go straight to your own domains email.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry but I still have a right to privacy no matter whom the service belongs to. Companies cannot overturn my rights simply because they own the service. They are a carrier whether they like it or not and have to adhere to certain standards at the very least on social responsibility grounds.

I find the old companies can do what they want just use someone else fallacy very tired.

I can't simply change my email address that is something easier said than done. This isn't myspace were talking about or some dating service. This is my online identity and more and more my real life one at that.

<comment><USER6> "have to adhere to certain standards"

Google already deliberately violates[0] the RFPs defining the expected behavior of their SMTP server by rewriting your headers when they want to. If they feel entitled to change your outgoing email messages, the other stuff shouldn't be too surprising.

[0][http://lee-phillips.org/gmailRewriting/](http://lee- phillips.org/gmailRewriting/)

<comment><USER4> Honestly I dont trust google in the slightest. They probably have more I formation on me and my peers than any other entity in the world. I'm not saying they are utterly untrustworthy or inherently evil, I simply dont just don't trust anyone _that_ much.

Regarding being surprised, I'm not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uh uh. So we have something being stated as plain fact which, if true, would have been a major, major story by a journalist not exactly known for holding back in his reporting - yet the particular story was never reported as such (the bit about scaring sources is BS, he could just switch channels which he did anyway).

The only corroborating evidence is drunk hearsay. The supposed fallout is implied. I mean, he just knows that Google read his mail - but he doesn't have any solid ideas if his source who he has a direct relationship was fired?

No matter what one wants to think of Google, there is not a single ounce of meat on this story.

<comment><USER8> He risks legal action for libel, given the definitive title of his post "ABOUT THAT TIME GOOGLE SPIED ON MY GMAIL" compared to the indecisive evidence presented.

<comment><USER9> His "evidence" could just as easily be explained by the fairly common practice of fingerprinting inside information to catch leakers.

<comment><USER10> And also, I suppose, the fairly common practice of faking an email from an employee to a journalist to show to the employee before he's fired?

<comment><USER11> "Fantastic job on integrating the psychiatric profile and semantic analysis, everyone. It looks like we were so accurate that we independently faked the exact same email he actually wrote!"

Arrington's exact quote, "shown an email that proved that they were the source" actually doesn't say it was an email between Arrington and the source, although I'm fairly sure that's what was meant.

Edit: To be fair, I suppose we should consider that the average guilty person isn't going to do well when confronted with specific, correct accusations, even if the evidence was faked or incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1 - And this is the most important: Assume your e-mails are being read. I have taken this many, many, many years ago before there were even leaks about NSA or Google/Microsoft collaborating or something from Fravia+. He wasn't wrong. If you don't know who that is, you're missing out.

2 - The fact the source communicated with you using a non Gmail account is of minor importance, because _you_ were communicating with a Gmail account with a source working at Google breaking a story about Google. It is not very smart. Really.

2 - Did the source get fired ? If not, there is a good chance "they" were lying: It's not like a company will keep an employee leaking stuff (if the story was "that" major).

3 - Did you address the source by their name in your correspondance, or talked about any identifying details ? Meeting place ? Phone numbers..

Most people don't just realize how much info they're giving away because they're accustomed to talking in a certain way.

<comment><USER13> > The fact the source communicated with you using a non Gmail account is of > minor importance

This is important to the story. If the source had communicated using their work (Google) email, then you could argue that Google hadn't accessed the reporter's Gmail account, but had instead invoked their (possible) employment agreement terms and read the Google employee's email. Without insider knowledge, no one could know for sure.

On the other hand, since the source used a non-Google email account, the only two possible ways that Google could know are: 1) if they read the reporter's emails or 2) if they have access to non-Google email services to read emails of arbitrary accounts.

<comment><USER3> Those aren't the only two possible ways Google could see non-Google email.

Was the source using a Google laptop? Was he or she using a Google network? Was the non-Google email service using SSL "several years ago" when this happened?

If the source used Google equipment and unencrypted email service, then the message is in plaintext on Google's network. No need to open Arrington's Gmail to read it.

<comment><USER14> The message _passed_ in plaintext on the network. Were they sniffing and logging all traffic _before_ the whistleblowing happened? Unlikely.

It's much more likely that they either 1) read Arrington's mailbox or 2) keylogged the crap out of the Google laptop the guy likely used. The latter method is not foolproof, whereas it's known that Google does have the capability to use the former. Occam would see 1 as the most realistic explanation.

<comment><USER3> Occam isn't strong enough evidence to assert "near certainty" as Arrington did, with a title that definitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The facts as Arrington presents them don't justify being "nearly certain that Google accessed my Gmail account".

Even assuming his drunken source was accurate and truthful, there are other explanations for how Google could access the source's email.

This event happened "a few years ago", when Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL weren't protecting their email with SSL. Google could easily watch unencrypted traffic crossing its internal network and flag sensitive communications.

If they're not doing this, they should be. They don't have to read Arrington's Gmail to get his source's unencrypted communications with a non-Gmail provider, as long as his source was using a Google computer or a Google network.

<comment><USER15> So, let's pull out Occam's Razor:

\- choice A: Google is logging all unencrypted communications from their staff (a rather vast amount of information altogether, I suspect, given how Google employees throw data around), in order to be able to go back retrospectively and wade through it to find leakers

\- choice B: Google grepped through Gmail to find the leaker, which they have a complete legal right to do and has a marginal cost of zero.

<comment><USER16> Do you really think the communications of googlers is "vast" by google standards? Do you think their internal websites are as big as the internet?

<comment><USER17> Indeed. If the razor has to be applied I'd go with A because it's simple and feasible enough solution for a company like Google and because B would imply virtually zero levels of corporate worries about the eventual PR downfall. The fact that It's Arrington we're talking about here and not your next-door blogger, reinforces the probability of A being the simpler choice.

<comment><USER18> No way. It would require poring through so much more raw data to take raw tcp traffic, structure it somehow and pull out email messages (option a). Compare that against going through structured data in the gmail storage system (option b). Option B is much, much simpler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Before more people come in to defend Google, ive known for quite awhile that theyve been snooping their own employees emails. Before gmail went live nearly 10 years ago, there were beta accounts one could get. The only way you could get one was via invitation, and people were willing to pay money for those invites. This one girl i knew who worked at google decided to sell her invites to people. She was selling them to friends. Some how google found out about this. It was against company policy for people to be selling these invites. But, they found out she was and fired her. Thr rumor was they somehow pieced the info back to her. But unless the forced a confession out of these people, we surmised it was because she was sending all of these invitees paypal links for payment. She even told us later thats the only way they could have k own she was selling invites to gmail. So, yeah, not surprised by this at all.

Personally, i use my own smtp server to do all of my mail. It is not completely secure since the nsa can see everything, but its better than trusting google or hotmail.

<comment><USER20> What the Google employee did was just plain dumb and reckless and pointless to the point where I could totally believe that she bragged about it to a coworker, or otherwise failed to be totally discreet about it and got caught. No email snooping required. Seriously, the degree of stupidity that you just described is utterly mind-boggling on so many different levels. Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "I certainly freaked out when this happened, but I never said anything about it because I didn't want people to be afraid to share information with TechCrunch."

So basically he's ok with screwing over potential sources because he didn't want to be assed to change his email provider? Classy.

<comment><USER22> > So basically he's ok with screwing over potential sources because he didn't > want to be assed to change his email provider? Classy.

What? It is pretty clear from the article that his response was to change his e-mail provider.

<comment><USER21> A fair point. I guess I feel as if he had some sort of responsibility to let his potential sources know about these risks, but didn't because it wasn't in his self-interest. That's actually exactly what he says, come to think of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 An alternate, but maybe not more plausible explanation, is that the employee sent the email on the Google office network and the traffic was being logged anyway.

<comment><USER23> The employee used a non-google account according to the article.

Are you saying that it's 'normal' that companies log everything going out over smtp/submission and log it?

Even if that is

\- legal (really?)

\- part of the contract (no idea why that'd be okay)

that sounds like something you shouldn't do, period. I'm reasonably sure that this would never work in Europe, for example.

<comment><USER24> In the US you should assume a company examines/logs everything over their network, not just email. There's a whole "data loss prevention" industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is beyond me why people with a high technological competence use Gmail. I know it is convenient, but then please stop bitching that Google or the NSA will read your mails.

<comment><USER26> I'm going to stick with the landlord analogy. It needs to be possible to use a 3rd party service without them being allowed to spy on you, the same way it's possible to rent an apartment without the landlord being allowed to spy on you.

They're certainly able to, and have the keys, but they're not allowed.

Privacy laws should be created (or interpreted) to provide similar protection for the privacy of our data stored by a service.

<comment><USER25> If you rent an apartment, you pay for it. If you use Gmail, you don't. Google somehow has to make money from something, so there is a incentive to mine your data.

But the main point is: an apartment is not an information system. Throughout history, governments have spied on information systems and systems providers will too. Hell, spouses spy on each other, given the chance.

It is simply common sense to limit the attack surface you present by hosting your own mail server - or not to care.

<comment><USER27> I certainly pay google a fee for my Gmail account, as do most people I know who use Gmail, so don't be so certain of the "If you use gmail you don't pay for it."

<comment><USER28> most Gmail users dont.

<comment><USER27> I'm pretty sure that everyone who uses Google as the email manager for their domain now have to pay google - that includes business, universities, individuals, etc...

The only people who get "free" gmail, are people with an @gmail.com account, which in these days seems to be an awfully bad approach - makes it hard to switch your email to another provider if you run into issues with the old one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As an exercise, I'm trying to think through what UK law would say about doing similar with hosted email within the UK for EU residents[1].

I am not a lawyer, and I'm not the one making _the call_ for my clients on any potentially legal matters. Would appreciate to hear the thoughts of those with experience in this area.

My gut feeling is that, although users may have signed T&Cs allowing this, UK/EU courts would hold that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy around the mailbox, and so the Regulation Of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) would apply [2]. This means that such a host couldn't go digging themselves into the email.

However, a potential route in could be via getting the source to make a subject access request under the Data Protection Act 2000 (DPA) into the organisation, supplying their external email address, in response to which there would be a very tenuous grounds to release the mail. However: 1\. I'm fairly sure that this would be considered a misreading of the DPA, and hosted mail would be considered information held by the client, rather than the host 2\. There's such an obvious claim here that all of this would have happened under duress, and that's a huge can of worms....

So in conclusion, I suspect the only way to legally get at such an email within the UK/EU would be via working with law enforcement, or via one of the two parties to the discussion providing it.

[1] Most of the relevant acts of UK law are descended from common EU legislation, and apply broadly across the EU, hence the repeated use of UK/EU here

[2] Unless you're working in certain very strict offices with clear Security Operating Procedures (SyOPS) and regular training, UK/EU courts are likely rule that even corporate email systems can be considered to hold personal communications protected under RIPA

</comment><comment><USER30> I knew a person in Facebook who actually looks into other people's private photos. When one of my friend was supposed to chat with this guy and send her photos for traditional 'arranged' Indian marriage, this Stanford educated guy told my friend that he had already seen her profile and other pictures in Facebook. The surprise was all her pictures were private at that point!

<comment><USER31> That is not possible, even to get to a photo id you have to fill in a form with the bug ID you're investigating, which is then audited by internal security team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Or, you know, his source lied?

<comment><USER33> Alternately, he is lying. It sounds crass to outright say such a thing, but it is suspiciously convenient that Arrington draws attention to himself under the pretext of having explosive information relating to a current hot story, all with mysterious unnamed sources.

<comment><USER34> It's especially amusing given how he ends the article. "I'd have said this before, but it would have hurt my bottom line, because it would have more fully informed sources of the risks they were taking."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> True story ahead, and I can't figure out how Google did this to me. About a year ago, I noticed a picture of myself on my Google profile. I never gave them a picture. I don't even have my real mug on Facebook, but somehow Google got into my pictures on my Ipad and took a jpeg? I immediately deleted it. I still can't figure out how they got into the ipad file?

<comment><USER36> Google Mail/Google+/etc. will upload your contact info (All your contacts stored on your device), therefore if you've had your own photo added to your own offline contact, you can be quite sure it was taken from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I knew a person in Facebook who actually looked into other people's private photos. When one of my friend was supposed to chat with this guy and send her photos for traditional 'arranged' Indian marriage, this Stanford educated guy told my friend that he had already seen her pictures in Facebook. The surprise was all her pictures were private at that point!

</comment><comment><USER37> Or maybe Google accessed his (the leaker's) account? Both actions would be equally offensive but there's no smoking gun here. Maybe this guy left his email logged in when he took a bathroom break... maybe he "lost" his phone which had the email account in question setup.

<comment><USER38> > Or maybe Google accessed his (the leaker's) account?

from the article: "The source had corresponded with me from a non Google email account, so the only way Google saw it was by accessing my Gmail account."

Which leads me to believe "they" didn't do it from work.

<comment><USER37> A non Google email account can be accessed from anywhere. Maybe Gooogle installed a keylogger on his work computer? Maybe they broke into his house and accessed it what way? Nothing about that statement, or the article proves that Google read the reporter's email and not the leakers.

<comment><USER38> I'm thinking that if Google was recording logins at work that info would probably be a story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Once again: if a decent looking/working e-mail client with end to end encryption appears this year, I'll move to it almost immediately. So if Google wants to keep me as a Gmail users, they'd better enable the DarkMail protocol [1] or something similar in their e-mail client.

[1] - [http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/announcing- the-...](http://silentcircle.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/announcing-the-dark- mail-alliance-founded-by-silent-circle-lavabit/)

Same goes for Hangouts for that matter. As soon as TextSecure is fully cross- platform, I'm switching completely to it.

<comment><USER40>
      > if a decent looking/working e-mail client with end
      > to end encryption appears this year, I'll move to it
      > almost immediately.

Thunderbird and GPG work with Gmail today.

      > So if Google wants to keep me as a Gmail users,
      > they'd better enable the DarkMail protocol [1]
      > or something similar in their e-mail client.

Gmail doesn't have a desktop email client. If encryption were added to the Android clients, then the web interface would become useless and the whole point of Gmail (being a web-based email system) would be moot.

      > As soon as TextSecure is fully cross-platform,
      > I'm switching completely to it.

The TextSecure wiki[1][2] describes a fairly wonky encryption protocol involving two shared symmetric keys instead of using public key encryption, so I have little confidence in their system's ability to withstand analysis by state-level actors. You're better off using GPG and email.

[1] [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Protocol) [2] [https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Using- Text...](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/wiki/Using-TextSecure)

<comment><USER41> The also talk about asymetric keys in [1]. And moxie from text secure is highly regarded in crypto circles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd really like to see a public statement (hopefully a denial) by Google about this. As a matter of policy large tech companies often don't discuss how they track down leakers, or even permit speculation about it.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you are not causing embarrassment or other harm (in Google's view) you are probably pretty safe unless you are entering or likely to enter a major business deal with Google. In those circumstances I wouldn't want to risk Google reading internal communications.

This means any startup even open to acquisition should probably avoid hosting private communications with likely buyers including Microsoft, Google and Facebook. When millions of pounds may be on the table it just isn't worth the risk that somebody in the big company decides they want an advantage in the negotiation.

</comment><comment><USER44> Isn't this the sort of thing PGP/GPG was designed for?

<comment><USER45> It would be great if everyone used PGP/GPG, but there's something missing for it to get widespread adoption. It probably needs to be easier and more user friendly somehow. Perhaps there's an opportunity for someone to do something here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can't believe Arrington would not have posted a techcrunch article when and if this had happened. This seems just another attention grabbing article.

</comment><comment><USER47> Blatant hearsay

</comment><comment><USER48> I'd use, and pay for, cloud services such as storage if they offered end-to- end encryption. I do a lot of work for clients under NDA, and there's no way I can use any of the current crop of cloud drives.

</comment><comment><USER49> I would actually _like_ Google to read my mail on my request so that I can prove that my brother's gmail address is really his. (he had it hijacked)

There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to have them do so :-(

</comment><comment><USER50> Out them. You're not helping anybody by not naming names.

<comment><USER51> Not quite. He is helping himself by raising his profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Same story if I use Google Apps for my company?

</comment><comment><USER53> Is this about a googler's wife?

</comment><comment><USER54> do no evil

</comment><comment><USER55> > a Google employee, approached me at a party in person

Personally, I would have said "fuck you" and walked away. They are _never_ available to speak to when you need them. Even when being helpful and reporting bugs, they don't even acknowledge having read it. They always need to come to you. No, fuck that, help your customers for a change.

I know this is semi off-topic, but it so bugs me about Google (and basically most other major tech firms) that this is the knee-jerk reaction to reading the story, instead of the actual point.

<comment><USER56> You missed the words just before: "my source, a Google employee, approached me at a party". You don't say "fuck you" to a source.

<comment><USER55> Oh, yeah oops, I was trying to read too fast. You're totally right of course.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Health insurance options for founders while bootstrapping - <AUTHOR> Does anyone have any recommendations on health insurance for founding team of two? We're based in California and currently bootstrapping the company.<p>We looked at Covered California and heard we might also qualify for medicare. Any links or resources for us to get started? <comment><USER2> Go to CA Marketplace and get the highest-deductible plan you can find (it will be the cheapest plan as well). You'll be paying out-of-pocket for your doctor visits, but that's what you want to be doing: the plans that meaningfully offset routine medical costs _cost more_ than you'd pay just doing it out of pocket.

If you're both male and you have no prior health history of any sort, you can also go direct to Kaiser, Anthem, Blue Cross, &c and buy private insurance. There will be a medical questionnaire to fill out, and it'll take a little while to be approved, but it will ultimately be cheaper than the marketplace plan.

However you do it, do it carefully and follow up with your provider to make sure you're enrolled properly. Ours screwed up a bunch of stuff (both enrollment and billing) and we have some horror stories about the results.

<comment><USER3> Even if you have prior health issues, they can't reject you from a private medical plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Head to the CA healthcare marketplace site, go through the enrollment form. List your income as what it is ($0?) right now. It will tell you what you qualify for. In NY, I got a better plan than when I was employed and it's free, with no copays or deductibles either.

Everything goes through the healthcare exchanges now. Just go through that process.

If you're both young and healthy, don't have spouses and/or children, I would recommend just getting a catastrophic plan for now.

<comment><USER5> Which plan is that? I'm in NY and looking for a plan

<comment><USER6> It will typically be the cheapest plan. If you are younger than 26 yrs, then you can stay in your parents employer health plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > We looked at Covered California and heard we might also qualify for > medicare.

Unless you are a senior, you probably don't qualify for Medicare. You may qualify for Medi-Cal (California's Medicaid plan), which is a _very_ different thing.

Covered California should identify any eligibility for either Medi-Cal or Covered CA exchange-plan subsidies.

</comment><comment><USER8> What fails about the information that is provided by [http://www.coveredca.com/](http://www.coveredca.com/)</comment>


Bizarre gas pipeline explosion in Taiwan leaves long trench - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28594693

<comment><USER2> Actual title: "Taiwan gas blasts in Kaohsiung kill at least 24" Oh yeah, and I guess it made a trench too...</comment>


Ask YC: Running a WebServer on EC2 - <AUTHOR>

Been looking into this for our startup.  Who here has been running a webserver on Ec2? the static/elastic ip addresses make this much more feasible.  Anyone using scalr? What issues have you run into? <comment><USER2> From the other thread talking about their outage earlier this morning; remember that EC2 is currently in beta, and as such there are no SLAs or guarantees. While I'm sure pretty much everyone believes that EC2 will become a full-fledged live service (with SLA), that may not occur before your app is ready to go live.</comment>


Show HN: Create documentation websites from Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jacted/docsgen/blob/master/README.md <comment><USER2> But there's hotdoc: [https://github.com/hotdoc/hotdoc](https://github.com/hotdoc/hotdoc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Took a quick look at hotdoc.

Seems like it has a lot of dependencies. (docsgen is just one file)

I didn't look into it too much, but it has a very large code base for something that seems fairly simple (from my point of view...)

Could you explain why you would choose hotdoc over my tool, does it have some extra features?

<comment><USER2> Does anyone care about dependencies as long as they're packaged or can be installed automatically?

It's a real documentation system rather than just an HTML generator, which is what docsgen seems to be. It supports syntax highlighting, search and DevHelp generation. It maintains a database of symbols and lets you refer to them instead of having to manually look up the link.

And there's also an optional component, hotdoc-server, to allow previewing and editing documentation on-line.

Well, and it ships with lots of documentation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe people dont care about dependencies, i do so i decided to use Go to make a single file.

Because of the dependencies it seems like HotDoc only works on a server? Docsgen has versions for Windows, Mac and Linux without the need to have a server, virtual machine or stuff like that.

This is just the start of docsgen. I have planned code comment parsing, versioning, multi language support and more stuff. Syntax highlighting is almost finished for docsgen as well.

What i'm trying to build is a really lightweight solution that everyone can use without having to setup a lot of things. Docsgen will have a focus on API documentation rather then library documentation which HotDoc seems to focus.

<comment><USER2> Also, why are you saying hotdoc works "on a server" only? What's "a server" in your understanding?

By the way, hotdoc works on any platform where Python runs. In particular, once you've got Python running, pip install hotdoc installs it for you even if you don't have packages for your distribution.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was simply asking if it only works on a server. I was reading the installation guide and it has command line installs for Fedora and Ubuntu so i thought it was only for servers. Will pip also install the system-wide dependencies?

As for API documentation vs Library documentation it just seems like HotDoc is for Library documentation. (Even though it's the tastiest API documentation system) From their examples they are just showing Library documentation sites?

Docsgen is inspired by API docs like DO and PayPal where you have text on left and example request and response on the right. Example: [https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/](https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/)

I have trouble finding examples of API documentation sites that uses HotDoc, feel free to link some and i will check them.

<comment><USER2> Sure, pip installs either system-wide dependencies or, if you as it, installs them into your home.

As for API, I now see what you mean, you use the term API is a different meaning than I do (remote API vs local API), hence the misunderstaning. No, I don't think hotdoc supports side-by-side documentation and examples at the moment. I think it can be extended to do so, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


First 1e6 integers represented as binary vectors indicating their prime factors - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/jhnhw/status/1031829726757900288 <comment><AUTHOR> There's a longer explanation of how the images were produced:

[https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/index.md.html](https://johnhw.github.io/umap_primes/index.md.html)

I had not heard of UMAP before, but it seems to be a tool to visualise correlation in high dimensional datasets:

[https://github.com/lmcinnes/umap](https://github.com/lmcinnes/umap)

</comment><comment><USER2> Prime factors of a number is the ultimate high-dimensional space.

Damn. The more I see UMAP, the more I think it is going to be a central and generic tool for high-dimensional analysis. I haven't taken the time to go in depth into it yet, though :/

So far, my understanding of it is: t-SNE on steroids

* t-SNE is great for local proximity, but it 'rips' high dimensional global structures too early. UMAP solves both scales by using transformations to map overlapping points of the different lower dimensional spaces that are locally relevant.

* It is faster than t-SNE, and has a better scale factor.

* t-SNE is about moving the points when UMAP is about finding the transformations that move the points.. which means:

a) it yields a model that you can use to create embeddings for unseen data. This means sharing your work by contributing to the public model zoos.

b) And you can also do supervised dimension reduction as you create your embedding. Ie You can judge if the shape looks good for unseen data (aka it generalizes well), and then correct the embedding by choosing which unseen instances to add to the training set. This means you control the cost of labeling data. You can see where your errors are, and back-propagate them to the collection process in a cost effective manner. For high dimensional data.

* You can choose your metric! Specific a distance function and you're good to go. Haversine for a great orange peeling, Levenshtein for visualizing word spelling (and maybe provide an embedding for ML-based spell checking?)

* You can choose the output space to be greater than 2 or 3, in order to stop the compression at a specified level.

I believe it will replace t-SNE in the long term.

Here is a great video of the author presenting his work:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq6iPZVUxZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq6iPZVUxZU)

</comment><comment><USER2> It'd be very interesting to have an interactive visualization, to see what the clusters are made of.

</comment><comment><USER3> Insane - I first thought this might be an april fool type thing and he posted one of his kids paintings.

Is this structure really from the numbers or an artifact of the representation?</comment>


Hacker News Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombniator.com/index.html? <comment><USER2> What is the story here? Are the comments generated by some clever Markov chain based on real HN comments? This looks like it might be an interesting weekend project; tell me more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! I made this a year ago and submitted it then[1], but I recently updated the database and 'recreated' the site, and figured I would re-submit it.

It's a big markov chain built with all the HN submitted data that I made over a weekend. I think some of the stories/comments are strangely pretty realistic!

Edit: Maybe the title wasn't clear, I've re-submitted it with a changed title.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10248773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10248773)</comment></comment>


Give Me a MySQL and Make It Snappy - <AUTHOR> http://mysqlrelease.com/2017/01/give-me-a-mysql-and-make-it-snappy/ <comment><USER2> Looks like the edge channel has 8.0.x and the beta channel has 5.7</comment>


Privacy Tool UBlock (Not UBlock Origin) Adds User Tracking Feature - <AUTHOR> https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/17/028245 <comment><USER2> A quick run down of some simple browser based extensions to give you back some semblance of privacy:

        1. uBlock Origin - best open source ad blocker
        2. Ghostery - stops you from being tracked as much as possible
        3. Chrome UA Spoofer - Use chrome but set the user agent to firefox, this way custom exploits target the wrong browser saving you from being pwned
        4. HTTPS Everywhere - Defualts sites to https if possible

I'd also recommend everyone pick up a copy of The Transparent Society ([https://amzn.to/2Lapjw7](https://amzn.to/2Lapjw7)) as it goes into depth on individual privacy and the right to access information about those in control of society.</comment>


Mark Shuttleworth Considering Canonical IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/mark-shuttleworth-considering-canonical-ipo/

<comment><USER2> It's somewhat amusing to see this right underneath the Dell headline on the HN frontpage about running Linux on your Dell. Dell recently went private again in an LBO after being public for 25 years, and now they're easily the most Linux-friendly large manufacturer of computers in the US.

IBM may have held that title for the Thinkpad at one point, but that's definitely becoming less and less true as Lenovo runs the Thinkpad line into the ground[0]

[0] Source: Typing this from my Thinkpad running Debian.

<comment><USER3> I observed that as a private company Dell was much more willing to embrace alternate architectures from AMD and Linux as an OS. Which really makes you wonder doesn't it? How does being publicly traded make you so coercible? I get the executive team has compensation tied to share price kind of arguments but Dell seems have done much better post LBO. What can they do now that they couldn't do then? And why? Looking forward to that HBR article if it ever gets written.

<comment><USER4> Public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to show their shareholders growth every 4 months. Private companies can do absolutely anything as long as they're paying their bills and not breaking any laws.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure you meant "every quarter" or "every 3 months".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He expect Ubuntu phone to be profitable...I don't know how he expects it to have a place between android, Windows phone and iOs. Even blackberry, with far more experience in the field, is struggling.

<comment><USER7> If phone can run full ubuntu stack, it will find couple of million users for sure.

<comment><USER8> A couple of million users doesn't mean it's profitable by any means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if this is the type of IPO where the employees get nothing since it was always pitched as a company with no 'exit plan'.

<comment><USER10> Why would employees get anything? They should be getting their salaries both before and after.

<comment><USER11> I've heard that Mark has money put away in the event of an IPO to reward employees for their loyalty (based on seniority), but I have no way of verifying that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This story is from last week and Mark subsequently clarified to say that he's not taking the company public.

<comment><USER11> Source?

<comment><USER12> hmm, apparently I can't find the thing I thought I'd read about that, so I retract. I guess the IPO is on!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If only XFCE wasn't so bloody ugly on Debian ...

<comment><USER14> LXDE is very beautiful on Debian, though, and also reasonably fast and light.

<comment><USER13> YMMV. I tried LXDE on Debian a few years ago and found it was simplified just that bit too far. I did appreciate that when I tried to set the clock to show seconds, it (literally) told me to look up "man 3 strftime". It's sorta heartwarming to know that level of curmudgeonly user-hostility can still be found in the wild.

<comment><USER14> It is user friendly to users who like the desktop environment to stay out of the way, and to stay the same year after year so that we can just bring our ~/.config/lx* over to a new system and have things set up the way we're used to.

LXDE may not be for everyone, but the desktop environments that try to appeal to the broadest audience can seem pretty user-hostile to me.

<comment><USER13> Can't wait till I have a phone that friendly.

[http://newstechnica.com/2008/09/22/free-software- foundation-...](http://newstechnica.com/2008/09/22/free-software-foundation- announces-gnuphone/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trader Joe Has a Brother. He's Even Better. (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/12/02/aldi_grocery_store_best_in_america_related_to_trader_joe_s.html <comment><USER2> This is an ad for Aldi's.

1\. Why is it published in Slate 2\. Why is it on HN? How is this related to tech or... anything?

</comment><comment><USER3> I mean I don't know. Does Aldi have the completely sick proprietary snack selection?</comment>


HTML to PDF Converter Online - Now Even Faster - <AUTHOR> http://html-pdf-converter.com/pdf_convert.html

<comment><USER2> where are files saved to?</comment>


Not just a matter of degrees: Other pathways to STEM careers - <AUTHOR> http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2015/02/13-degrees-pathways-stem-careers-lee

<comment><USER2> Those women who are capable of STEM degrees, don't wanna work in the field of software and IT. They have moved to law, consulting, leadership programs, etc.

I see two kinds of people in the field of software and IT.

1\. In many parts of the world, esp India, getting a job in software and IT is a way to make a living; otherwise, these guys would up unemployed or end up doing odd jobs. In other words, Software and IT is the only place to get out of the rut. Many of these guys end up moving to USA on H1B.

Just because someone choose some field to make a living, it does not mean that that someone is imcompetent. On the contrary, if you apply the same rule to those who go to HYP, then HYS law or HSW MBA are there to just make MORE money. Most of the latter set of guys are no different from a typical average Indian in India tries to get a software/IT job.

2\. The career in software/IT in the states suck. That's the same in other tech fields like pharmaceutical, etc. There are NO defined pension plans. And these jobs are not stable like the middle class jobs of 1970's. So, many STEM students and students that are smart enough to study STEM, but don't want to, are not entering STEM at all.

STEM is good if you don't wanna work in the service sector (McJobs). But the capable folks don't wanna stay in the STEM. They would rather go for more lucrative ways of making money, as defined pension plans don't exist. And the stock options in the valley don't help the average engineer.

3\. The real problem for USA lies elsewhere: lack of decent jobs. Instead of fixing the lack of jobs, politicians and policy makers want to drum up for more education, more degrees, etc.</comment>


Ask PG: Will Y Combinator extend the app deadline b/c of Hurricane Sandy? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> We weren't planning to. Do we need to?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just want to be cautious. My cofounder and I are working on the video and application in time for the deadline but since we're in New Jersey there's a high probability of power and internet loss in our area... which would really suck.</comment></comment>