Up to 14% of community college students are homeless, new study says - <AUTHOR> http://college.usatoday.com/2017/06/30/up-to-14-of-community-college-students-are-homeless-new-study-says/ <comment><USER2> This doesn't surprise me at all. We're now in a place where a non-skilled career doesn't get you much more than minimum wage, and if you absolutely _have_ to have a college degree to get a job, you're willing to make sacrifices to do it. So what is someone to do?

The answer traditionally has been "take out $40-200k in student loans," but does anyone realize how terrifying that can be for someone making minimum wage? Imagine having to risk 4x your current salary based on the _promise_ you'll get a job, except you're learning that for a lot of people it isn't working as advertised. It's an insane risk and/or sacrifice we require _to just survive_.

I run a computer science academy that's free until you get a job ([https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)), and I can't believe how many people we talk to that just $1,000 of tuition would be a deal-breaker for. I was talking to one of our best students last week and learned that she was living on the floor of a relative and trying to use a touchscreen and some half-working cloud editor to code because she couldn't afford any type of computer, even the cheapest $50 version. It was really slowing her down, but she had no other option, and didn't know what to do. (Don't worry, we shipped her a computer.) I hadn't even thought to ask.

The crazy thing is the value of taking someone from unskilled to skilled is enormous; we see $50,000/yr swings in annual salary _all the time_ , and they get that for the rest of their lives. So say they work for 40 years, that's a $2m increase in lifetime salary pre-tax. The cost of us training them to get there is <$10k. But we frequently ask people to either go into an amount of debt or to try to cashflow on minimum wage. It just doesn't work.

<comment> aaron-lebo It is a broken system but community colleges are made for people like this. It doesn't take 40k in student loans, it takes 2.5k in funds over 2 years which you can piece together at a minimum wage job or if you really need to take out as a loan. Then you've got an associate degree and half of a bachelor.

How expensive is community in Cali?

It does seem the system isn't made to inform people of their options.

<comment><USER3> People know their options.

Let's be real... outside of trade professions like programming/carpentry/plumbing/etc. an associates degree is barely a step up from a GED (and sometimes worse: "Why didn't you just take the extra two years and get your bachelors???"). It also doesn't really matter how cheap it is, the main cost for the community college demographic is the opportunity cost. Most don't have support structures to give them the basics while they are at school, so they have to support themselves PLUS earn an extra 2.5k in disposable income, and then keep up with their studies on top of all of that. And since an associates gives you extremely limited social mobility in comparison to a bachelors most just forgo it, often replacing school with an extra job.

In terms of social mobility a college degree is the new high school degree, anything less is exactly that and will not give you sufficient social mobility especially when you're on the lower end of the spectrum to begin with. We need to accept this and begin treating college like we did high school, making it free and standardized for everyone. The only other option I can see is trying to radically change social norms that have developed over the past 30-40 years and I just don't think that's feasible outside of select industries like ours.

<comment><USER4> That would just make a masters the new collage degree.

The real problem is a huge swath of the US economy is based on reputation not ability. Exclusivity _is the goal,_ so the more people reach benchmark X, the further companies will move the benchmark.

<comment><USER3> That's an impossible problem though, isn't it? Reputation was used as a proxy for ability until it became an end itself, but until we can correctly attribute some metric of ability (which sounds slightly dystopian) before hiring people we will continue to rely upon proxies to inform our decisions.

Of course, you really don't have this problem in economies where middle class jobs aren't scarce...

<comment><USER4> IMO, it has to do with how zero sum much of the economy is.

A factory cares about it's absolute production vs cost. However, a lawsuit is based in part on relative skill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I share something in common with the subjects of this article. Came from a good, though not wealthy, home. Parents wanted me to get an education like they didn't get, so I went to community college majoring in information systems and programming.

Worked a part-time (20-30 hours) job, had an apt, but was evicted because people I lived with partied all the time and didn't obey the rules. I didn't have enough to get a place on my own, so I slept in my car or at the homes of friends for almost a year, keeping the tech support call center job and going to school.

Though I didn't get a degree, it was a good lesson of personal responsibility, lifelong learning, and not relying on others. Ended up in software development by starting at the bottom at a tech company (customer service) and learning on my own time at night, clawing my way up. If my parents would have taken me back in (if they even would have), I'm not sure I'd be where I'm at today. I do wish I would have been able to graduate though.

This experience is sort of what leads me to view with derision tech interviews that only focus on CS/algorithms, and ignore the more common day-to-day challenges of software engineering, most of which I learned on the job.

</comment><comment><USER6> "How can you feed yourself on $8 an hour with a kid and pay rent?" Welfare. When I worked for $8 an hour, my coworkers who were single parents had Medicaid, subsidized child care, and could get basically whatever they wanted in terms of groceries (plus they were still spending money on booze, weed, and cigarettes), whereas I had no health insurance and less than $100 a month after fixed expenses, not including food. I was eligible for a tiny amount of food stamps and Medicaid after the expansion, but I opted to get a second job instead.

<comment><USER7> Why on earth should I be subsidizing that company, though?

I agree that making sure that person, and people like them, should have the support needed to make sure that both them and their child are fed and housed and generally taken care of. Why that means I should be implicitly subsidizing the business, instead of them being obligated to pay a living wage, is beyond me.

<comment><USER8> It's easy to flip this argument.

You're not subsidizing that company. The company is subsidizing welfare. A person making at least some money requires less money in form of social transfers.

In the end, is it better to subsidize that person's wages or have them become completely unemployable? This is not a leading question. Perhaps it would be better to just pay them to be a parent but it's not obvious to me.

<comment><USER7> No, I disagree. The company is getting away with paying less because of welfare. And I reject the false choice you presented. The company should be paying a living wage, plain and simple. If they can't, then they go out of business. One which is better run will take it's place.

<comment><USER8> And the government is getting away with providing less welfare because the company is paying. The company probably can pay more, the large ones always can, but then they would hire someone else. At a higher price point, a better employee will take their place.

<comment><USER7> No. The government is still having to provide welfare because the company is shirking it's responsibilities.

I'm sorry, but I will not accept the argument that it is ok for a company to have their employees on welfare. They are a for-profit entity. I should not be subsidizing them because they choose not to pay their employees enough.

<comment><USER9> You're taking a very narrow view of the issue. There's no arbitrary obligation for a company to pay a "liveable wage", whatever that is.

The whole minimum wage debate in the US is a shitshow. Both sides of the debate are equally idiotic. What matters is minimising the amount of welfare the government has to pay to keep people out of poverty. If the minimum wage is too low, then like you say, the government has to subsidise some companies that can afford to pay more but aren't, because there's a surplus of labor. If the minimum wage is too high, then people that would otherwise be employed become unemployed, and stop generating any wealth, which results in the government having to pay more welfare overall.

This is a complex problem that needs to be solved using large amounts of data. Arguments like yours barely scratch the surface.

<comment><USER7> "There's no arbitrary obligation for a company to pay a "liveable wage", whatever that is."

And I disagree. I believe there is. At the very least, I believe that a company should not be relying on labor subsidized by welfare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rising costs of living are pricing people out of the system.

You can't have children, a home, a vehicle, access to education, health care, recreation, and artistic pursuits. Pick two or three, and maybe in the future you might be able to acquire others.

Oh and don't pick children, since you'll have to provide those to your child as well, some of them immediately.

<comment><USER11> > Rising costs of living are pricing people out of the system.

Officially, inflation is only 2% a year

[https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0L1E?output_view=p...](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0L1E?output_view=pct_12mths)

I find CPI to be genuinely curious basket. Where are they finding housing, college, and health care that's only going up 2% a year? Certainly not the west coast where 10-20% annual increases are routine.

<comment><USER12> If you're living in a hot metro area, your CoL will rise much faster then 2% a year. Your wages will not.

However, there are a lot more people living in Nowhereville, Middle America, where rents are not going through the roof. There aren't any jobs there, but that's not reflected in the CoL index.

<comment><USER10> This is actually very false...

[https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press- releases/2015/cb15-33....](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press- releases/2015/cb15-33.html)

<comment><USER12> I said hot metro area. I'm talking about NYC and San Francisco, not Fresno.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Firstly, now I feel like crap for using "living in a van down by the river" as my opening joke for teaching Microsoft Office (When I taught Word our first lecture was writing a letter of resignation, and then each lesson built on doing 'freelance work' like using Excel to calculate the necessary number of bootleg DVDs I needed to sell to not have to live in a van).

The number does not surprise me, considering there is a 1 in 7 chance a community college student will finish [1]. This stat was one of the reasons I altered my class to allow 3 hours of open lab time to work on homework with me available. I had a number of non-traditional students (former military, GEDs, single mothers). When they were not in school, they were working (or dealing with kids). We can joke about how computer science students are night owls working on their assignments for long hours, but that seems like an arbitrary ceiling when you have someone that doesn't fit the "young adult that has free time" mold. Hell, its the motivator for my PhD research, making CS work easier to understand/complete.

Now, I will also say, this study is glossing over "Pell chasers", who only sign up for community college to get the Pell grant and then never show up again. My initial thick skin came from building a rapport with students only to see them vanish as soon as that check came. It doesn't help they can do this for 9 semesters before getting in "trouble" (no legal trouble, just no more free money). At my school, you had to show up to class once (first day when no one lectures) to get your money.

I will say that teaching CC was very interesting and rewarding. I've met deadbeats, Pell chasers, former prisoners, former crack heads, and geniuses that dropped out of HS. Just showing them you actually cared about their learning could be the world to them - some are scamming the system, but some truly don't want to drive a forklift for the rest of their lives.

[1] [https://www.texastribune.org/2010/02/02/most-community- colle...](https://www.texastribune.org/2010/02/02/most-community-college- students-never-graduate/)

Edit - Fixed some numbers I had wrong.

</comment><comment><USER14> > It found that 13-14% of students were homeless ...

Incorrect.

The study actually found that, "63 percent of parenting community college students surveyed were food insecure and almost 14 percent were homeless..."

That 14% is therefore a percentage of a percentage of a subset of those surveyed.

Meaning it only makes up 8.82% of "parenting" students, alone, and we are never given what percentage that the "parenting" subset comprises of the whole.

So the headline should really read, "Less than 8% of community college students surveyed are homeless."

Where homeless can mean thrown out or evicted from a previous residence, stayed in a shelter or abandon building, car, etc., or actually had no home or idea where to stay.

While the study is worthwhile, the USA TODAY article is worthless.

<comment><USER15> The article and headline are correct. You can see for yourself in Table 3 of the linked study.

For your interpretation to be right the wording would have to be, "63% of students are food-insecure and, of those students, 14% are homeless". As written, there is no indication that those two percentages are related.

<comment><USER14> > For your interpretation to be right the wording would have to be, "63% of > students are food-insecure and, of those students, 14% are homeless".

Actually, no. For my interpretation to be absolutely correct it would need to be:

"63 percent of parenting community college students surveyed were food insecure and of those students almost 14 percent were homeless..."

So I see your point and I stand corrected, but I contest that the sentence in question was written very poorly--easily leading to this misinterpretation.

The subject of it is "parenting community college students", yet the context shifts regarding the 14% according to the table you mentioned.

There the 14% is representative of "Prevalence of Housing Insecurity, Homelessness, and Food Security Among Survey Respondents."

Therefore, the 14% is of the whole but that sentence alludes, incorrectly, to only the "parenting" subset.

<comment><USER16> Is this correct or not?

> Of children who have parents that are in community college, 14% are > homeless?

<comment><USER14> The data does not support that conclusion as the 14% represents the whole of those surveyed, which includes both parenting and non-parenting students.

There is no breakdown of such characters on a parenting vs. non-parenting basis.

So it could be 13% of "homeless" students are parenting vs. 1% who are non- parenting, the complete reversal, or anything in between.

As in_cahoots noted above, check out Table 3 of the data. It alone is much more clear on what's what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I tach at a community college and this topic comes up periodically. The definition used for being homeless is not what people generally think of when they hear this term.

What is surprising to me is that I'm expected to teach a homeless person in such a way that they pass the class and know the material. When a homeless person fails my stats suffer. It is not reasonable that a person whose life is in chaos be able to pass their classes and understand what has been taught.

<comment><USER18> I wish I could find this again, but I saw a similar thought somewhere out there about teaching elementary school kids with terrible home lives in rough areas. The sentiment was something along the lines of, "How am I supposed to teach them fractions when they're getting raped at home."

<comment><USER19> Some people are homeless in order to get away from the people beating or raping them at home. For such individuals, couch surfing or whatever can be a step up over what they have been dealing with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sorta funny you go through upwards of 12 years of schooling and come out the other end with zero skills to speak of... but wait, just put in another 5-6 years and maybe you'll have something to show for it ;)

<comment><USER21> Reading and writing are skills. They might not get you a good job but that's the purpose of training and further/higher education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are 9.8 million students enrolled in 2-year colleges in the US as of 2015.

So there are 1.4 million homeless students?

<comment><USER23> I think you set this up to be knocked out of the park, so I'll oblige:

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says 564,708 people in the U.S. are homeless (2015)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness- idUSKCN0...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness- idUSKCN0T908720151120)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm skeptical. What definition of homeless are they using?

I doubt it's mostly people actually roughing it on the streets, the colloquially understood definition of "homeless". If it's not, it's mighty dishonest of them to use a picture of tents for the article (fake news?).

<comment><USER25> According to the source study these are the things they count as "homeless", 14% have at least one of the items below...

        Any of the below items:
        – Thrown out of home: 6%
        – Evicted from home: 3%
        – Stayed in a shelter: 2%
        – Stayed in an abandoned building, auto, or other place not meant as housing: 4%
        – Did not know where you were going to sleep, even for one night: 8%
        – Didn't have a home: 2%

I think any of those are VERY BAD as far as impact on academics is concerned. Whether these actually constitute "homeless" is perhaps not the most important issue.

<comment><USER24> Seems like a pretty broad definition. So if your parents throw you out and you go live with your friend or grandparents, you're homeless? I have the same general question for all of those points.

<comment><USER25> Well, if the issue is the exact definition of "homeless" you're perhaps right.

But the real problem here is that a significant number of CC students don't have a stable home life and this WILL cause serious obstacles for the completion of any academic program.

Very few people are actually "live-on-the-street" homeless, but housing insecurity starts having negative impact long before they're literally on the street.

<comment><USER25> We're talking about USA Today here.

The actual report is this.. .[http://wihopelab.com/publications/Hungry-and- Homeless-in-Col...](http://wihopelab.com/publications/Hungry-and-Homeless-in- College-Report.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Depending on the study, wouldn't it make sense that there are people, already homeless, who begin attending as students in order to gain new technical skills that will hopefully assist them in finding a new career/job?

Rather than students attending community college and becoming homeless either from those costs, or from having gone to a "four year" university that forced them into debt.

<comment><USER13> Not many CC students finish in two years, in another comment I made, Texas found only 1 in 7 complete within 2 years. Given that span of time and the other factors happening in their lives, they could be homeless beforehand, or become 'homeless" (plenty of discussion here on what that qualifies as) during the course of their time as a student.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Related: garbage collectors making $100k+:

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash- workers-h...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-high- pay/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> How hard is it to build some but ugly Quonset huts for these people - and put a security guard at the front of it.

People who tell others to pull themselves up by the bootstraps should try to make sure these people at least have boots.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hmm. Wonder if some of them use it as somewhere to take a shower, etc. If they have a way to document their low income for grants, it could be a free, albeit high effort home base of sorts.

</comment><comment><USER30> I am so glad not to live in the USA

</comment><comment><USER31> find the root cause by looking at rising college tuition, and by transfer rates. The root cause is not the community college. The community college is the destination.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a friend who is homeless and in community college.

If your GPA drops below a certain point, they withdraw aid and you become homeless. Simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article is so right! I went to Borough of Manhattan Community College, but I'm lucky to be 28 now and be able to live at my parents, I'd be homeless otherwise. : )

(P.S. i then got a Bachelor of Engineering from a 4 year college, interned at Stanford University, was a GSoC fellow, got a lead iOS developer job at a startup in NYC making ALMOST 6 figures, got kicked out of the country for not getting selected at the H1B, worked at a startup in Paris, quit the startup in Paris because it was boring, and spent the last 6 months burning through my saving while living in Paris to build a startup without business model. I am now nearly homeless, but working freelance while nearly ready to launch my startup. Almost homeless, though!)

Did you know lipstick causes breast cancer, given that nearly 80% of people who get breast cancer wear lipstick?

I might be crazy, my mum didn't get me tested.</comment>


9 Year Old Girl Becomes Microsoft Certified "Professional" - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5116747/9-year-old-girl-becomes-the-youngest-microsoft-certified-professional <comment><USER4> Jeeblus, what's wrong with you people? If she'd gotten a high score on the SAT, would you be telling her how boring and useless the SAT is? High scores on adult tests at a young age, _almost no matter the test_ , are something to congratulate her for.

But instead you're dumping on her because of "Microsoft" in the title? If you're going to dump on someone, dump on Microsoft! And even that is a backhanded insult to her. There are just some very bright 9-year-olds out there.

<comment><USER5> I'm from the same part of India that this girl is. This kind of crap is very common there. The kids who do this are not necessarily intelligent, they usually just crammed for years. Nor do they have a say in the matter. Everything is orchestrated by the parents. It's like a dog show -- the parents compete using their kids. Needless to say, the kid's childhood and normal development are completely derailed (I've seen it in person). The parents aren't evil; it's just a facet of the hyper-competitive society. The best way to describe it is that it's India's version of the contest in Little Miss Sunshine.

The negative comments here don't come close to capturing how messed up this is.

<comment><USER6> I've seen this kind of thing a lot - it's not limited to India - <USER2> completely agree with you that it's almost always the parent(s) pushing the kid, and very sad. Every now and then you see some 11-year-old or 13-year-old finishing an undergraduate degree, paraded in front of foolish journalists who dutifully put out the next "genius" story. Same thing with most musical prodigies - the 9-year old performing with the local philharmonic or what have you.

Kids don't care about super-achievement of credentials. Mostly they just want to know their parents love them and to be like other kids. It's parents who perversely put their children through this, to fill their own ego needs. Your dog show analogy is unfortunately apt.

<comment><USER7> Actually, kids can be hyper-focused on credentials. That's why they're so susceptible. The very same behavioral triggers can create obsessions in videogames, especially RPG's. The nice thing about 'real-world' credentials is that they have a path leading out of that mess, whereas videogames often don't.

<comment><USER6> I'm unconvinced. Sure, children can internalize anything very quickly - <USER3> question is why this rather than that? I'm sure that little girl was very focused on achieving her Microsoft certification. But I'll bet you the task itself was originally handed to her by a parent, and that her motivation had everything to do with pleasing that parent.

As for "a path leading out of that mess", the only path I know is growing as a person. What's sad about these manufactured prodigies is that they end up having to do a lot of that the hard way, if they do it at all.

<comment><USER7> I think you underestimate the agency that a nine year old can have, and the influence of the extended family, friends, and role models. It's probable that the specific task was handed to her, yes. And it's often true that parents push their children too far. But I think it's also possible she decided to do it on her own after reading or hearing some inspirational story.

I am _projecting_ my own experience as a child onto her, but when I was her age I heard about Microsoft credentials. I considered trying for them, but my mother's friend told me they were a distraction, and gave me a copy of Turbo C++ instead. I can't remember ever thinking about pleasing my parents. It never entered my conscious thought. I just knew I wanted to learn to program computers, and I couldn't, in that time, be interested in computers as a kid and envision Microsoft's credentials with the disdain that I do now. I suspect it's the same now, in India.

It's true that the only way out of credentialism is growing oneself as a person, and finding a way to develop a self-referent identity. The _advantage_ is that one grows while striving, and one can often find oneself in much better place, with better social support, and deeper values. It's a lot more difficult to see this in the construct of an RPG, or in most public high- schools.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I acknowledge what you're talking about is real (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=400286>), and the two phenomena are quite different, though they may be difficult to distinguish from the outside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> During the .COM 1.0 recession, back in the stone age, one of my fellow fresh faced and unemployed CS grads was considering getting MCTS certified in order to improve his job prospects.

I used the then popular story about a 12 year old Pakistani girl who got the same certificate, to dissuade my friend.

And so I encourage all of today's fresh faced and unemployed hackers to think of that 9 year old when the current recession is wearing them down. Do you really think that MCTS will help?

<comment><USER9> I thought about getting a MCP when I was 15. Then everyone I knew in the computer field told me it was a waste of time.

So I learned Perl instead, which honestly helped my career a whole lot more.

<comment><USER10> How old are you now? When I was 14 there were no certs -- I got a job in a local PC shop as a stock boy. I am convinced I worked for Korean gangsters now; However back then I thought it was a kick ass job (Since nobody I knew was working.) I still own one fried 8088 mobo (black to black wha?) and the three surfboards I managed to buy whilst working. In reality it was one of the worst jobs I have ever had, as I had to work in an attic sorting PC parts and fetching orders in 100+ attic heat with a 4ft ceiling (I kid not) and had to get to work Sundays @ 5am to unload "orders" from Mexico from the meanest people I have ever met. I learned more about life in that year then I have in the last 20.

<comment><USER9> 27\. This was about 1997.

I was in kindergarten when people were still using 8088s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shouldn't the practical test consist of misconfigured ActiveDirectory permissions to fix,spyware uninstallation, and a registry to clean? The general tip to choose whichever option requires buying more Microsoft licenses worked when I took the test 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always thought that these certification programs were more of a game of trivial pursuit then a good gage of abilities.

</comment><comment><USER13> maybe this says more about the certification than the girl.

<comment><USER14> For any Microsoft certification, there are dumps everywhere on the internet. I'd rather be happy if the girl became a SJCP.

<comment><USER15> Meh, dumps exist for SJCP too... just not the whole test. Years ago when I took it for an employer about 1/3 of the questions were in dumps at the time. A co-worker said almost all his questions were from dumps when he took the SJCP exam. Sun does a better job than Microsoft but not much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scarred for life. Someone should call child protective services.

<comment><USER7> You know this how? Being threatened with being taken away from her family would be any better?

<comment><USER17> I think it was a joke...

<comment><USER7> _nods_

Point taken. Some people actually do stuff like this, though, and I don't think jokes like this should be propagated (or at least unopposed) on HN.

<comment><USER16> Noted. I do try to hold back my silly humor somewhat on HN. Thanks for the nudge back on course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> With all the exam dumps available it is no longer difficult to clear any certification exam. However still, if this 9 year old sits in front of a PC, I will be sure she knows what she is doing. That in itself is an achievement for her age.

</comment><comment><USER19> this proves that MCTS certifications are bullshit (btw - I have an exam scheduled for January)

<comment><USER20> She might be unusually gifted. The article states that she has a fairly excellent memory. And it is conceivable that she has a fairly high IQ.

We wouldn't have scoffed as much if she mastered a branch of Mathematics instead.

<comment><USER21> We also wouldn't have scoffed as much if she were merely three years older, and a boy, and working in PHP and Javascript instead of Microsoft technologies:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156863>

Can't we just congratulate the kid and move on? I mean, vital as it is to teach her that credentials are bullshit, can't we let her turn _ten_ before breaking the bad news? She's already much closer to figuring it out for herself than I was at that age.

<comment><USER22> He did something creative, she just passed a helpdesk test.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps when she is _thirty-three percent older_ she'll be more creative, too!

Or, instead of showing off her chops, perhaps she'll prefer to quietly rake in the cash as a Windows programmer. It's not like she'd be the only one to make that choice.

<comment><USER23> So your first argument is that he's "merely three years older", and then your response to a rebuttal is that he's as much as "thirty-three percent older".

<comment><USER21> The sad thing is, I actually noticed this inconsistency. But I decided to leave it in just to see who noticed. ;)

But if you want to be more serious about it: Sure, I concede the rebuttal. Gaskin's a very creative programmer. He also works on stuff that I actually care about. I agree that passing a Microsoft certification is not in the same league as the _least_ thing that the guy has done. And I agree that cramming for Microsoft tests is not an especially great activity to encourage a nine- year-old to do.

None of which alters my initial reaction: Congratulate the girl and move on. Just because she's no Gaskin doesn't mean she deserves to be the scapegoat for things that are not her fault (the purported meaninglessness of her prized credential; the bureaucratic, credentialist nature of the Microsoft IT consulting ecosystem; the existence of cram schools and dominating parents; the insecurity of Western IT folks about the rise of the Indian software industry; and the fact that she is _nine years old_ and can't necessarily be expected to understand any of this). She's a living, breathing kid who may be reading this thread _right now_ \-- a kid with the potential to become creative and talented, who may _already be_ creative and talented when she's not being paraded in front of news cameras. She's not a hypothetical pawn in our intellectual game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And 11-Year-Old Becomes Network Admin for Alabama School

<http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1443202>

</comment><comment><USER25> I always wondered why MS chose a title that abbreviates to MCP, which means Male Chauvinist Pig in the non-tech world. I once created an infamous 'Production Metrics Spreadsheet' which the female members of my team were justifiably referring to as PMS. Operation Iraqi Liberation comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER26> Gee, it must be extraordinarily difficult to become a Mouse Certified Professional.

</comment><comment><USER27> What's remarkable is that grown adults become MCPs.

<comment><USER28> 2 out of 4 previous employers (I'm a freelancer now) gave me a raise whenever I passed an MCP exam. That's enough motivation for me, since it's not very hard to pass MCP exams (at least MSCD related ones) when you have decent practical experience.

<comment><USER29> Do you think the certifications have an impact on your freelancer rates?

<comment><USER30> Well... I can tell I wouldn't pay more for one.

Even if I used something Microsoft ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think I smell "bias" against Microsoft in the headline.</comment>


Amazon.com is down? - <AUTHOR> http://amazon.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Checked it here too --> <http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/amazon.com>

</comment><comment><USER2> Up here (Portugal). Possibly a DNS problem?</comment>


White House Looks at Replacing Social Security Numbers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/white-house-looking-at-replacing-social-security-numbers <comment><USER2> Generally I am for a smaller government rather than larger. But in this case, the private sector has demonstrated that without regulation specifying otherwise, they will do nothing to protect our identities.

The Social Security Administration's official policy on SSNs is that consumers don't have to give their SSN to businesses with the exception of tax-related things like employment and banks. But, they also say that businesses can choose to not do business with you if you are unwilling to give out your SSN.

And businesses have done nothing to help people secure their identities. In fact, they've done the opposite.

Starting around 20 years ago, I refused to give my SSN out except where it was specifically required by the govt. The insurance companies seemed to be the ones who had the hardest time of it, it required hours of effort with my insurance company to let me not have my SSN as my identifier. They ended up putting all zeroes in. But then every time I used my insurance I had to work with them ("What is your SSN?" "The insurance company doesn't use my SSN, they use all 0s." Blank stare).

Around 10 years ago it got to the point where there was even more push back and the effort was more than it was worth.

It really wasn't helping, being "the one guy who wouldn't give out his SSN". Pretty much every time I explained it to a doctors office they would say "I've never heard of that before, but it makes sense." That sort of pushback only really works if, you know, at least a few people do it. :-)

<comment><USER3> I've always left it blank on doctor forms, and no one's ever said a word to me...

<comment><USER4> Just say you were born abroad, are not a US citizen etc and therefore don't have an SSN, you just happen to speak good English because you went to American school.

But you're happy to give them your national ID number from your home country. Bonus points if you actually have another passport to waive around while claiming this.

This doesn't work all the time, but it's surprisingly effective in like 90% of cases.

<comment><USER5> That would be fraud. Don't do this.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't a party have to claim damages for there to be fraud? How could your doctor possibly do so in this case?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's be careful not to underestimate the value of deniability. Any change in policy needs to maintain the ability of the citizen to challenge actions taken with a private key (opening an account or borrowing money) and the burden should not shift to the consumer.

I fear that financial institutions will use the change as an opportunity to offload their due diligence onto consumers.

Someone having my private key should not have any greater ability to implicate or permanently damage me than someone having my SSN.

<comment><USER8> Because private keys are a far greater tool of proving identity than a SSN, I would argue one should have much greater culpability in an "unauthorized" action.

SSNs are lost for good on breaches of companies' infrastructures, but nothing should be lost in a Pub/Priv key scheme. What we'll need is a good key revocation process. So when my identity is compromised (say, malware on a device) then I can be me again.

<comment><USER9> > Because private keys are a far greater tool of proving identity than a SSN, > I would argue one should have much greater culpability in an "unauthorized" > action.

If you have the technical know-how to protect your private key, and you're immune from rubber hose attacks, and there's no mechanism for key recovery outside your control, I'd agree.

However, people.

<comment><USER10> You wouldn't depend on technical know-how, you'd roll it into a card or something like that. Chip & pin cards already do all of this.

And I'm not aware of any system suitable to replace SSN that can withstand rubber hose attacks. That's where law enforcement & the justice department will have to step in, as always.

<comment><USER9> > You wouldn't depend on technical know-how, you'd roll it into a card or > something like that. Chip & pin cards already do all of this.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/how-a- criminal-r...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/how-a-criminal- ring-defeated-the-secure-chip-and-pin-credit-cards/)

<comment><USER11> This attack doesn't work with smart cards that basically do nothing but act as a HSM. The MITM attack works with a loophole in some EMV cards because the card isn't signing a transaction request but just saying "PIN is good!"

If your card holds a private key and won't sign anything without also being fed a correct PIN you'd need a proper exploit of the application on the card to defeat it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is long overdue.

In France, the privacy watchog CNIL was founded in _1978_ when the idea of using the social security number for all sorts of other purposes got proposed (and rejected), prompting for some safeguards.

In the US, we've been so allergic to a "national ID card" that we just re- purposed the SSN into the very same thing. But then we decided to make it both a unique ID and a password, despite it being a terrible way to perform authentication (and an even worse way to do authorization).

<comment><USER13> It's a rare circumstance where there's an allergy to national ID cards on both sides of the political aisle. On the Republican side they (supposedly) fear greater Federal Government power, tracking, etc. On the Democrat side, they're afraid of national ID cards being required at voting locations.

<comment><USER14> Why would Democrats be afraid of IDs being required for voting if everyone got one? I thought the whole Republican opposition to voting rights stuff from the Democrats was because they know there's a bunch of poor would-be-Democrats who don't currently have the required IDs.

<comment><USER15> We're not. The problem is with the "everyone got one" part. Every time I've discussed this issue personally with a republican they act indignant when I assert that the ids need to be free and trivially obtainable. Usually grousing about the cost and "laziness".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> #1 -

Privacy minded and anti-government types opposed RealID.

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

Ironically, globally unique identifiers are required to protect our demographic data. Otherwise all records must be stored as plaintext (unencrypted). I was very chagrined when I finally figured this out, causing me to support RealID.

[https://www.amazon.com/Translucent-Databases-2Nd- Authenticat...](https://www.amazon.com/Translucent-Databases-2Nd- Authentication-Steganography/dp/1441421343)

Source: Me. I worked on both voter privacy and electronic medical records.

#2 -

The government, thru contracts with services like Lexis/Nexus (nee Seisent) have already created globally unique identifiers for pretty much every person, living or dead. Replacing SSN would just formalize, simplify, daylight such matters.

Alas, wedge issues like voter registration databases (assessing eligibility to vote) and immigration status, in near real-time, would become trivial and nearly error free, so I doubt this commonsense, practical effort will happen any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER17> Eh, I still think the best thing for the gov't to do in regards to SS numbers is just publish them all in an open database accessible to anyone. That would put an end to banks and such trying to use them as a way to verify identity.

SS are useful as a unique identifier for Americans. But the weird process by which they've become some sort of "password" for accessing credit and such in someones name is crazy, and pretty obviously not working.

<comment><USER18> > Eh, I still think the best thing for the gov't to do in regards to SS > numbers is just publish them all in an open database accessible to anyone.

They basically are available to any business that needs them. Just takes a few months to go through the compliance process for an identity verification company. See [https://cognitohq.com/docs](https://cognitohq.com/docs)

Regarding it being a password, yeah that is pretty bad. Some friends of mine are working on Bloom ([https://hellobloom.io/](https://hellobloom.io/)) which is trying interesting things that hook into the real world (necessary) while also trying to create a better system eventually. Basically, an ID you control with a private key is approved by identity verification services. Your friends basically vouch for the ID being correct. Your identity is tied to that ID. If you lose the private key then you have your friends invalidate the old ID and transfer their vouch to your new ID. Way better than just a secret number.

<comment><USER17> I suspect just requiring people seeking credit to just have to come personally to a bank with a photo-ID, a pay-stub and have to confirm they have access to the postal address they have on their ID would solve it. This wouldn't by any means be foolproof (after all, half the highschool students in the US manage to get passable fake IDs), but the fact that it would increase the effort to open lines of credit, slow down the rate at which you could open new lines and increase the risk of getting arrested when you tried would, I think, shift the risk and reward balance on most scams to the extent that it wouldn't be worth it to the scammers anymore

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The cards used to have "Not For Identification" printed right on them. This has been a known bad idea for decades but we just decided to do it anyway.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/weekinreview/the-nation- no...](http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/weekinreview/the-nation-not-for- identification-purposes-just-kidding.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> So little faith in the US government to do this with the least bit of efficacy. It will be contracted out to a big firm, for a ton of money, with project overruns, budget overruns, and in 20 years will probably still be using SSNs while they continue to fix this new system.

<comment><USER21> The US Digital Service is supposed to be pretty good these days. It might turn out better than expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is simple, I just need a government issued public/private key, a government username/password, a government OAuth servuce and a government mobile authentication app.

Most people won't even need to know the public/private key exists, but techies can leverage it to automate their lives some day.

Let's say I want to open a bank account with bank X. So I go to bank X's website and click open an account. Select my country and it redirects me to an oauth login page for my government. I log in and authorize the bank to view my basic identity info. Now the bank knows who I am and I can finish opening the account.

For in-person interactions, I could have my phone scan some person/company's public key in the form of a QR code and generate a qr code of my own that will let that company instantly authenticate me (airline, cruise line, police officer, etc.) with the government, but that same qr code will not do anything with any other person who sees my code because it is encrypted with the company's public key.

My government password can be reset if compromised and I never have to give out to anybody which puts it miles ahead of social security numbers from day 1. My phone is secure if lost, because it requires my government password to unlock the app as well as some biometric information.

<comment><USER23> What about those who do not own a mobile device, or those not comfortable with technology. We live in a large country, and we must have support for ALL of our citizens, not just our younger tech-savy ones. Go to a community of 65+ year olds and explain this to them. You'll get back blank stares. its a non starter.

<comment><USER24> Make it opt-in. Anyone who isn't comfortable with the change can continue to use their SSN.

<comment><USER25> Every business will then continue to just use social security numbers since everyone is guaranteed to have one. Half measures won't work, that's how we got here in the first place.

<comment><USER24> Opt-in for the customer not the business.

<comment><USER25> I got that. So everyone will have a SSN and only some people will have the new thing. My point stands. We have lots of evidence in security that this type of suggestion leads to problems, see for example export-grade crypto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> OT but can be filed under "Falsehoods programmers believe about Social Security Numbers": SSN's are unique per person.

A friend of mine worked on a shareholder database for AT&T back in 70/80's and discovered this when they tried to make their SSN column unique.

<comment><USER27> Why does AT&T need to store SSN's at BT improper use of NI numbers was a gross misconduct case.

<comment><USER28> AT&T issues dividends to shareholders. Dividends are taxable, and must be reported to the IRS with the shareholders' tax ID.

Now, AT&T also asks for account holders' tax ids, which the use to pull credit reports, and to report on credit activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> SSN's were never meant to be used for identification purposes like they are used today. They were designed only to be able to make a SS benefit claim when you came of age to help prove you are entitled to the benefit. That's why they gave you a physical card. Combined with your other, regular identification (if requested), you can prove that you are the person you say you are and the benefits available to you have already been recorded. The SSN itself should never have been used in lieu of proper identification.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does everyone really need an unique digital identifier?

My feeling is, "this is probably you" is good enough for nearly every transaction people will perform. And we've long had a system in place to deal with the special cases in which this is not good enough: notaries.

Financial companies need to come to terms with this fact and accept insurance against its exploitation as a cost of doing business.

For taxes and other government documents, we should all move to a tax id system, like businesses use.

<comment><USER31> Absolutely not _for each and every transaction_. There are a certain set of activities for which a 1:1 association is highly preferable, though voting is about the most extreme case. For various reasons, there are both problems with trying to create a voter-ID system, political resistance to this, and relatively limited call to do so in the first place (in-person fraud is expensive, risks elsehere are far greater).

Much of the remaining argument revolves around credit and risk, and around advertising and tracking. I'd argue that the first does not _require_ single- ID tracking, and the second should _under no circumstances_ be allowed to institute it.

Much of the remaining space is national accounts types stuff: tax, pension, and medical authorities, passport/border control, some licensing (much of that at the state/local level).

But yes, at the national level, there _is_ a call for 1:1 account assignments, though those need not be unified across all services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This would be amazing if done correctly. With modern crypto there's a world of options to enable things like identity validation, attestation, and delegation without giving the keys to your entire identity. It'd also be a perfect candidate for an RFC style process.

Unfortunately this is the Federal government we're talking about so the chance of it being completed in any timely fashion are slim.

<comment><USER33> Has the UX been worked out so that disinterested people can successfully and reliably do all that stuff without leaking their private keys?

There will be roughly 300 million disinterested users, making it work reliably in that scenario is important.

<comment><USER34> The key will obviously need to be stored in a physical token of some kind that's designed to prevent the key from being extracted. Kinda like how U2F and Smart Cards work.

<comment><USER35> And somehow you're going to have to accept that fact that people are going to lose their keys. You're going to want to make sure you can properly reissue one to the correct person.

<comment><USER21> This is already a completely solved problem in Scandinavia. You get a key card in the mail full of single use codes. If you lose the card, you call a number and they void the old card and send a new one. If you use all your codes, they send you a new one. It works fine.

<comment><USER36> The mailed code list is being phased out since there's no guarantee somebody hasn't opened your mail, taken a picture of it, and put it back.

<comment><USER31> Being replaced by what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So what _should_ we replace SSNs with? Obviously some kind of system based on asymmetric cryptography would be ideal, but what system, specifically?

There are a lot of competing concerns here, not the least among them being privacy. For example, if a system based on public key cryptography becomes commonplace in the US, will websites start using that same system for authentication? There are some rather significant privacy issues associated with having a government issued, globally unique ID associated with your account on random websites.

Maybe this is something the tech industry in the US should be involved in? I imagine lots of companies would jump at the chance to be involved in a standards group designing a unified method for citizen authentication in the US.

<comment><USER37> Maybe we don't need a unique id at the federal level after all. Financial institutions are already required to follow KYC (Know Your Customer) laws. For this they need a way to validate the identity of the customers they do business with. I guess they already have enough ways to do this without relying on SSN or a potential national id card.

BTW, after the Equifax hack, financial institutions should be mandated to stop trusting SSN as proof of identity.

<comment><USER31> I'm thinking of the number of government-level identifiers which might be needed / used:

* Tax authority (TIN).

* Pensions system (e.g., SSN)

* Possibly a voting ID, though that's fraught.

* Military or national service ID.

* State tax ID.

* Drivers registration.

* Real estate / property ID.

* Medical records ID.

* Social benefits ID.

* Other registrations, e.g., weapons, broadcast licenses, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I see talk in this thread that uses the term 'private key'. Which makes me think about using a literal cryptographic private / public key combo for this sort of thing.

Say I have a private key, and I want a business to have a way to ID me. They give me a key associated with me in their database, and I encrypt it with my private key, and give the results back. Now when someone wants to do business with them in my name they must turn those results back into what the business has in their database. So long as I keep my key safe the business can leak data all they want.

This would shift all the work for security over to the citizens though, which could have mixed results...

<comment><USER39> And what happens when someone's private key leaks? Do they have to get issued a new one somehow? If someone has gone through 7 private keys, how do you know that the one person-claiming-to-be-someone is giving you the most up to date one vs an older one, etc.

There would be a lot of non-trivial considerations by pushing all this on average joes (both as individuals and as people attempting to verify individuals).

A system that appears secure but isn't is more dangerous. I can hear a 60 year old now: "Aunt Claire is stuck in london and needs money! We know its her, here's her [expired key] encrypted message!"

<comment><USER31> To prevent re-use of old keys, a key-revocation protocol should exist. There's an existing (though pretty crufty) version of this in PGP, though it relies on keeping your _revocation_ key safe, which is a bit of a stretch as that's something you need ... _once_.

A "bad keys" registry might be a useful / necessary thing.

Enforcing a regular expiry might also be an option, though ... you'd have to think through that. Keep in mind that technology is continuously improving (or at least has been to date), and there might be a circumstance in which All Keys Suddenly Go Bad, which would have to be dealt with.

(Figuring out ways in which to make such situations Less Obviously a Shitfest could be ... useful.)

When I've _very_ roughly scoped things out at Google Scale (> 3 billion registered Android profiles), and made modest assumptions such as 1% of users lose their token annually, you're looking at ~10,000 resets _per day_. So you'll _have_ to have provisions for doing this in any system that's intended to be in the least part useful.

As for attacks, I'd strongly suggest finding a good reference of 19th century financial frauds and reading through it. The fundamentals _do not_ (generally) change.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history- dept/2015/02/12/3853...](http://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history- dept/2015/02/12/385310877/how-scams-worked-in-the-1800s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> replace it? SSN has one purpose, and that is to identify our national social benefits account. that's it, and it works for that.

but we don't need a national ID. at all. the tracking that will most certainly accompany that is diametrically opposed to the concept of a free people.

banks take a risk with every account and every transaction. it's up to those institutions to figure out how to manage that risk, without obligating all americans to give up their hard fought and valuable constitutional right to privacy to make it easy for them.

<comment><USER31> SSN in fact does _not_ work well for that.

There are fewer than 1 billion unique SSNs. Yes, there are 8 digits, but there are significant ranges of invalid values. _The Social Security Administration will run out of numbers within a few decades, at most._

It's one thing to have enough values to assign everybody. It's another for the namespace to be so densely populated that any randomly-chosen value is likely to be valid. This ... creates problems.

There are no check or validity values within SSNs. There's a _structure_ to the digits (Area, Group, and Serial numbers), but even those are at best vague, there've been three regimes of assignment (< 1972, 1972-2011, and 2011+), and other than "this value isn't within a validly assigned range", there are, again, no validity checks.

Provisions for being issued a new SSN are at best cumbersome.

That's just off the top of my head. I've worked in large-scale data analysis and processing, though years ago, and there are long and detailed discussions of the limitations and failures of SSNs _even just as account identifiers_.

Using them _outside_ the SSA only compounds those issues.

<comment><USER40> you make good points. in my head, i had simply equated "works for that" with "good enough for now".

it seems even for just social security, the SSN numbering system could use an update, integrating everything we've learned about identity schemes in the last 100 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I crazy, or is this backwards? Keep SSN for retirement benefits, and _only_ retirement benefits.

Ban SSNs as identifiers with private companies not affiliated with providing retirement benefits.

Problem solved.

<comment><USER31> There's still the question of a standard for financial identifiers.

And as I've commented elsewhere on this thread, SSNs themselves actually _do_ have numerous problems and deficiencies, even if confined to the SSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is anyone else suspicious that this could be a backdoor into identifying undocumented workers in the country? Could this be used as another way to purge certain classes of voters from the roles? Social security numbers are fairly easy to "borrow" but if they are no longer accepted for employment documentation or voter registration, it leaves the door open to a much stricter set of rules to obtain whatever new ID is created.

<comment><USER16> Everyone, including undocumented workers, are already thoroughly, completely, exhaustively tracked.

Replacing SSN would daylight this fact, exposing an inconvenient truth.

<comment><USER24> Can you explain this? If I apply for a lease how does the Fedral government know or block me?

If I need to authenticate through their system the Federal government will definitely know.

<comment><USER16> I didn't follow the leap from undocumented workers reusing SSNs to applying for a lease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The Keybase folks should seriously consider getting in on this. There are not many groups I'd trust to design something cryptographically sound and friendly enough to be useable (both for citizens and the government - you need at least two tiers so WHEN the inevitable private key leak happens on the government's part, it isn't the master key kept in cold storage).

</comment><comment><USER44> Now all they need to do is replace birthdays and past addresses.

<comment><USER45> You gotta love the idea of personally identifying information, known only to you and three large corporations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Core issue is not that solutions do not exist, but that the average person simply does not care about security.

<comment><USER47> the average corporation does not care about security as long as someone else is paying the price. moreover they actively drag on security best-practices if they increase costs or introduce any friction whatsoever into consumer purchases. one of the reasons why we don't have CHIP+PIN in the US

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have plenty of reservations about Big Tech, but why can't Google bid on this? Sure we'd get ads on the ID card but at least they'd get the math right.

<comment><USER49> You've just rediscovered the premise of David Eggers's _The Circle_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_\(Eggers_novel\))

<comment><USER50> We're already a lot closer to George Saunders' My Flamboyant Grandson[0] than that.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/01/28/my- flamboyant-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/01/28/my-flamboyant- grandson)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The timing of login.gov (www.login.gov; [https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/19/login-dot-gov- mazmanian....](https://fcw.com/articles/2017/01/19/login-dot-gov- mazmanian.aspx)) going online is convenient...

</comment><comment><USER52> The world's moving towards a biometrically backed public-private key pair. Hope this is considered

<comment><USER47> you can't rotate biometry if its compromised

<comment><USER53> May be worth it for in-person reclamation of identity. Use biometrics only when acquired in person.

Beats having to dreg up my high school year book, social security card, birth certificate, and high school transcript (None of which are actually inspected of course).

<comment><USER31> How do you defend against / defeat replay attacks?

<comment><USER53> In person? When you're actually seeing that it's their thumb and eyes that are being scanned?

<comment><USER31> How do you, as a third party, know that the validation occurred _in person_?

How do you defend against replay attacks?

<comment><USER53> So you agree that if it is done in person, it'd be difficult to fake?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Techmeme summary: _Rob Joyce, the White House cybersecurity czar, says it wants to end use of Social Security numbers for identification and is examining modern alternatives_

</comment><comment><USER55> Federal government buys Twitter and makes your twitter handle your national identifier. I'm sure Trump is fine with that.

</comment><comment><USER56> In practice, doing public/private key instead of SSN would likely work like the EMV cards, right?

<comment><USER57> It would require having a central authority that holds, or at least authenticates, all the keys, which many might not like.

<comment><USER31> That's actually a really good, and complex, question.

It might be sufficient to have an authority which ensures there are no _duplicate_ numbers issued, though that doesn't get around the problem of a single individual with multiple assigned numbers.

In practice, there are methods of determining with a fairly high degree of accuracy whether or not two or more identifiers might indicate the same individual (or at least two very closely related individuals). But if you're looking for a 1:1 signifier-subject relation, you'd want that system to be quite good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Hmm. Almost makes you wonder if maybe the people who hacked Equifax work for some secret branch of the US govt, just so that they could force some sort of change like this down our throats.

You know, the situation is really bad when the people you used to think were conspiracy nuts now seem to be people who weren't thinking in big enough terms.

</comment><comment><USER59> Replacing it with something more closely approximating a national ID number will run up against religious beliefs that such IDs are Satanic and portend the End Times.

Just because you do not share such beliefs does not mean they do not exist, or can be dismissed.

</comment><comment><USER60> "Great anger" -The damned President, encouraging his people into further divisiveness.

Yea no fucking way I'm supporting this admin in cataloging anyone.

</comment><comment><USER61> No mention of blockchain anywhere in the comments. Color me surprised.

<comment> rkuykendall-com "Make the stupid comment you expect to see in the world" \- Mahatma Gandhi</comment></comment>


Opaque Types in Flow and TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://codemix.com/opaque-types-in-javascript <comment><USER2> In TypeScript, you can also use an empty const enum to simulate nominal typing for opaque types. It gets inlined/removed during compilation:

      const enum _A = {};
      type A = number & _A;

This comes in handy for IDs and other primitives shared by multiple complex types.

<comment><USER3> I would love to see an extended example. When I tried this in typescript 2.6 it still made PaymentAmount and AccountNumber equivalent types.

<comment><USER4> You can certainly do this - you just need something to contain the enum since an enum is a nominal subtype of `number` already, so TypeScript unifies `number & anyEnum` to `number`.

The best tagging mechanism these days is `Nominal<T>` (which has no emit) or `As<T>` (which has a minimal amount of emit):

        interface Nominal<T> {
          'nominal type tag': T
        }

        class As<T> {
          private tag: T
        }

Both are used in the same manner:

        const enum SomeTag { }
        type Something = number & As<SomeTag>
        // or
        type Something = number & Nominal<SomeTag>

You can even avoid the boilerplate of `const enum` if you make the `T` of `As` or `Nominal` `T extends string`:

        type Something = number & As<'some:unique:string:tag'>

In both cases, the values are not unified, so:

        type Something = number & As<'kind1'>
        type SomethingElse = number & As<'kind2'>
        var x: Something = 123 as Something;
        var y: SomethingElse = 456 as SomethingElse;
        x = y;  // Type 'SomethingElse' is not assignable to type 'Something'.

<comment><USER5> BTW the minimal emit of the class-based example will be removed by Webpack since the runtime representation is never used. Best option if you use a bundler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see a ton of value in this. The main use case mentioned (preventing use of functions with wrong parameter order) can be worked around using the common 'options' object pattern that everyone uses for functions with a lot of parameters already

Still a neat feature I guess, but IMO it's not worth the additional mental overhead of implementing it.

A lot of problems in JS and it's typed derivatives go back to it's 'structural' type system where every object is a key-value collection and objects with the same keys and values are interchangeble.

I really wish the ES standard would just introduce a new variable type that has nominal typing and ditches the prototypical inheritence chain. You could only use it with new code but since transpilation is the norm these days that doesn't matter much

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps I should have chosen a better example, argument order is just an illustration.

In 1998 the Mars Climate Orbiter[0] failed because of a fairly simple software error - an imperial value was treated as metric causing the spacecraft to calculate an invalid trajectory and burn up on entry to Mars orbit. This bug was not detected in testing.

With opaque types this could never have happened, it would have produced a compiler error long before the bug ever made it into production. They eliminate an entire category of bugs.

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

<comment><USER7> I have come across a need for this in typescript and have used similar approaches as the author. Maybe this is a bad outlook of mine, but I am tending more and more to trusting my tooling over some of my fellow developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So basically the same as type safety through constructor constraints and instanceof... Just a bit cleaner (maybe)

If you could extend primitives in Typescript, you'd have "amount extends Number" and put the necessary constraints in the constructor and your operator overloads. Maybe some or all of it could be translated to runtime checks in javascript.</comment>


Kochen–Specker theorem - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochen%E2%80%93Specker_theorem <comment><USER2> _" no non-contextual hidden variable model can reproduce the predictions of quantum theory when the dimension of the Hilbert space is three or more"_

My view on this topic is that the importance of this theorem and similar "no- go" theorems is often overrated by the opponents of non-quantum theories.

The assumptions behind these theorems are unfairly restrictive. There may very well be non-quantum theories achieving the classical standard of logic, where matter is described by physical quantities that have definite values all the time, not just when measured. All that is needed to invalidate the Kochen- Specker theorem is that the quantities measured on the system are not its intrinsic properties but are result of interaction of the system with the measurement device - a very natural assumption.</comment>


Poll for you startup guys (for a class at Stanford) - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys, I'm doing a project for my class on the phenomenon of tech blogging. Me and my partner really wanted to hear the opinions of some real world startup founders on how tech blogs effect them in terms of their perception of entrepreneurship in the Silicon Valley as well as how such blogs inspire/inform business and strategy decisions on both a long and short term basis. If you guys could help us out with an opinion that would be great. I'd be happy to help you guys anyway I can in return. Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Hi yeah I do -- ssyed "AT" stanford.edu

</comment><comment><USER2> do you have an email to contact you? Would be more than happy to help.</comment>


Why you can't get strippers' names with public records requests - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/exotic_dancer_names_and_public_records_requests.php?page=all <comment><USER2> The real first amendment problem is that you have to have a license to express yourself in this manner, to strip.

<comment><USER3> I always thought it was weird barbers and hair salons need licenses. I get the historical context but still?

<comment><USER4> barbers at least operate sharp tools in dangerous vicinity of your ears and they required to have at least some training as a condition of the license. What could go wrong what is supposedly stripper's license saving us from, and what kind of training government requires here?

<comment><USER5> I would guess that it's to keep underage girls out of the stripping business.

Probably previously the onus was on the owner to avoid hiring underage girls. But a couple scandals later, the government responded by requiring licensing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And who doesn't love browsing property tax records to see how rich people are?</comment>


Pentagon Reportedly Buried Study Exposing $125B in Waste - <AUTHOR> http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/12/06/pentagon-reportedly-buried-study-exposing-125-billion-in-waste.html <comment><USER2>
      Among its other findings, the report showed that the Defense
      Department was paying just over 1 million contractors,
      civilian employees and uniformed personnel to fill back
      office jobs. That number nearly matches the amount of
      active-duty troops -- 1.3 million, the lowest since 1940.

Relying on contract workers (effectively, out-sourcing) is how Congress and the President have been able to grow discretionary spending for 50 years while being able to claim that they aren't growing the size of the federal government. The number of government employees literally hasn't changed since the 1960s.

Here's the data:

      https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/

The game of hiding the size of government by out-sourcing has been going on for decades. That's nothing new, and it's as close to a long-term government conspiracy as you could possibly get at that scale. (Not that it is a "conspiracy". It's just obviously intentional, systematic, and incredibly long-lived; and one of its functions is to deceive, or at least provide plausible deniability during election cycles.)

In fact, it's such an old game it makes me question whether any report was actually wrongly suppressed. Congressional politicians, not the military, are the ones mandating the out-sourcing. And the Congressional budget committees would be well aware of how much money was being spent on contract work.</comment>