Online hate speech could be contained like a computer virus, say researchers - <AUTHOR> https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/online-hate-speech-could-be-contained-like-a-computer-virus-say-researchers <comment><USER2> As long as the user has complete control over the agent, I am all in favor of screening inbound messages and dropping anything I don't like (hate speech, but also paid speech). This is consistent with my view on "consensual communication" \- it is startling that we allow ourselves to force information into each others minds, but we don't allow ourselves to shove food into each others mouths, without permission!

And yes, if this function came under central control, you might have yourself a very merry dystopia. You might have a dystopia anyway if people can set their filter not just on hate speech and paid speech, but on any predicate they define, including anything that disagrees with them. It's the ultimate information silo, and would no doubt be deadly to any democracy. It might even be deadly to any form of government, since it would tend to seriously weaken the intellect of the population.

<comment><USER3> > it is startling that we allow ourselves to force information into each > others minds, but we don't allow ourselves to shove food into each others > mouths, without permission!

I'm sorry, this whole concept irks me in a "not even wrong" way. It's difficult to even begin to explain how wrong I feel this sentiment is. Let me try.

First, it makes no sense to draw an equivalence between taking in information and physically assaulting someone with food. Eating is an active thing. It's something you do. You can be in the same room as a piece of cake and not eat it. You can't choose not to sense something. There is not even an option to consent to communication with someone. If you're near someone and they talk, they've communicated with you, whether you wanted them to or not. (Assuming you speak the same language).

It's the natural state of a person (all living organisms, actually) to be passively receiving as much information as possible all the time. This is because survival is dependent on being as aware as possible of your surroundings so you can detect both threats and opportunities.

Deliberately choosing to limit the type of information you're able to perceive makes as little sense to me as deliberately trying to reduce the number of colors you can see. Or making it so you can feel only pleasure but not pain. There are people who can't feel pain, it's a debilitating disorder that makes it very difficult to navigate the world.

We need to be exposed to uncomfortable ideas just as much as we need to be able to feel pain. Removing any information you "don't like" from your awareness would be about as healthy for your mind as eating only cake and potato chips would be for your body.

<comment><USER4> So you don't have a spam filter on your email?

<comment><USER3> What's being proposed is more like that episode of Black Mirror where the mother gets her daughter a brain implant that makes her unable to perceive anything "objectionable" (anything that raises heart rate or upsets her in any way).

Spam/Not Spam is a very limited category to filter. "Things I Like / Things I Don't Like" is very different. Sometimes you need to know about things you don't like.

Suppose everyone who doesn't want to act on climate change just filters out any information related to climate change. Do you think that is helpful for the world?

<comment><USER5> > Suppose everyone who doesn't want to act on climate change just filters out > any information related to climate change. Do you think that is helpful for > the world?

If they've already made the conscious decision to filter out that information, forcefully shoving it down their throat isn't going to change their mind, and may even reinforce their beliefs.

<comment><USER3> But existing in a bubble where the only information they get is "Everything is fine, climate change is a hoax" ... _is_ going to change their beliefs? How?

The mere existence of information within your realm of perception doesn't mean it's "shoved down your throat". That is an unnecessarily hostile view to have towards information. I assume you're in a room somewhere with some objects around you. Maybe there's a painting on the wall. Is the painting being shoved down your throat or is it just a thing that you might notice that happens to exist?

Yes, there are definitely ways of presenting information that are counter- productive to changing people's minds, but quarantining them off from information doesn't seem likely to do any better. People can learn and grow and change their views, but they need access to information to do it.

<comment><USER5> To use your analogy, if I chose to remove all paintings from my wall, you would break into my house to install a painting on my wall to force it into my peripheral vision.

Why should someone be obliged to consume information that they've deliberately and consciously chosen to ignore? Do climate-change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and flat earth supporters also have the same right to present their side of the story too? And if not, who decides what information people are being forced to consume?

Why can't the user decide for himself?

<comment><USER3> But you're not consciously choosing to ignore it. You're handing your conscious choice over to an opaque algorithm and telling it to ignore anything it deems "similar" to some content, via however the person who programmed the algorithm decided to define "similar". That is the opposite of a conscious choice to examine and reject information.

> Do climate-change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and flat earth supporters also have > the same right to present their side of the story too?

Yes! They do! You don't have to read it or agree with it, but of course they have the right to express it. Freedom includes the freedom to be wrong.

The Internet is not your home. Walking around the Internet with filters hiding information from you is like walking around in public with blinders on and headphones in. Sure, maybe it prevents you from feeling uncomfortable sometimes, but sooner or later you're going to get blindsided by a speeding car you didn't see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it intersting that people do not understand intuitively that this can only lead to 1984 sonner or later.

They will understand it only when it's too late.

<comment><USER7> The only people who do understand have already been labeled "hateful".

<comment><USER8> That's a pretty absurd thing to say.

I don't have to post thinly veiled pepe "memes" in order to see how real this slippery slope is.

The fact is that there is is a lot of hate speech online, and it mostly fosters in unmoderated forums and channels. Finding an extremist group (of any kind, really) is as easy as a handful of clicks.

Fringe ideas become normalized and accelerate the extremism due to the ability of these long tail groups to find each other. Flat Earthers have reinforced each other this way, and they continue to attracts new people due to YouTube rabbit holes.

Not sure there is a good solution to it, though. You can rely on private companies to moderate and choose what they allow on their platform, but that's proven to be highly ineffective. Then you face the problem where a platform opens up in order to foster these specific communities (8chan/8kun being the primary example right now), which then forces the companies they pay for their services to react to market pressure to either support or deny them.

They'll always exist, somewhere.

<comment><USER9> >Fringe ideas become normalized and accelerate the extremism due to the ability of these long tail groups to find each other.

The same is true for _good_ ideas. For instance, suggesting that doctors should wash their hands was originally considered an offensive fringe idea which could get you locked up in an insane asylum.

>Not sure there is a good solution to it, though.

The only solution to bad ideas is to allow them to be freely expressed so that they can be delt with publicly and transparently. Hiding bad ideas through censorship is like keeping a boil covered with a bandaid -- it's only going to fester.

"Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured."

<comment><USER8> > The same is true for good ideas.

Absolutely. This is precisely why I don't think there is any form of feasible solution out there. Things get weird when forum moderation is used to snuff out dissenting opinions. You see this a lot on certain forums on Reddit in the last few years. r/Conspiracy, for example, was initially overtaken with right wing conspiracies peddled by Alex Jones (Pizzagate being the most obvious), with certain mods banning anyone critical of it and the Trump administration.

Not entirely sure why my post above is receiving down votes, though, as there really isn't a realistic approach to suppressing hate speech outside of the free market that doesn't teeter on opening the door to totalitarianism.

The spread and incubation of hate speech, debunked conspiracies and just general misinformation is, unfortunately, just a byproduct of the existence of the internet. Not much room for inoculation outside of education.

<comment><USER9> >general misinformation is, unfortunately, just a byproduct of the existence of the internet. Not much room for inoculation outside of education.

The scale of it is greatly enhanced by the internet, but such problems have existed since language itself was invented

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And who gets to decide what's 'hate speech'? Censorship is basically the same as propaganda - changing the narrative to influence opinions. One day obvious hate speech is banned, the next day any dissenting opinions are 'hate speech'.

<comment><USER11> Ideally, _I do_.

The tools that are needed here would provide the ability for each of us to screen out whatever we don't care to see, whether it be racist speech or just people that won't shut up about crossfit.

And since it's just me controlling my filter, I could easily adjust the level of filtering. Sometimes it's _useful_ to know what people outside my Overton Window are talking about.

<comment><USER12> That doesn't help the situation: people who already have extremist opinions would then simply filter-out the mainstream and/or opposition content and be content with their own echo-chamber, which would only further their extremism and end with nasty results.

> Sometimes it's useful to know what people outside my Overton Window are > talking about.

People don't have a personal Overton window: The Overton window describe's society's range of acceptable opinions.

And I guarantee that the vast majority of extremists - or even people already on the fringes - are not interested in reading or hearing about the opposition.

<comment><USER13> >... extremist opinions ...

Who determines what is an "extremist opinion"?

<comment><USER12> That's (tautologically, I admit) defined implicitly by my answer.

I define it (for the purposes of this conversation) as an opinion that its holders buy into so much that they outright refuse to acknowledge anything in opposition. After-all, if you believe you've bought-in to " _the truth_ " (and lack critical-thinking skills, and/or have been propagandized to this point anyway) then it has to be an extreme position (by whatever the standards of the contemporary Overton window apply) because otherwise it wouldn't be necessary to propagandize or rile similarly-minded people against your opposition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Hate speech" seems to be imbued with somewhat religious meaning, since most conversations about it make huge assumptions about its impact, frequency, and scope.

<comment><USER15> I noticed several years ago that you can mentally replace terms like "problematic" with "sinful" and "hate speech" with "blasphemy" without losing any meaning in most instances. They basically convey nothing more than a subjective moral judgment informed by group affiliation and puritan ideology.

"Racist/sexist/homophobic" still convey a little bit of information since they hint at a way in which something might be genuinely bad. But their definitions have been so irresponsibly broadened that you have to take it on a case-by- case basis whether the label even means anything let alone whether it's accurate.

This is a bad problem and everyone should worry about it, because a meaning vacuum is like a power vacuum. Even people who don't care about cis white men getting verbally abused need to realize that when you publish insane histrionics about OK signs and cartoon frogs, you generate confusion and doubt that actual white supremacists can use for cover. Extremism begets extremism.

<comment><USER16> Problem is a tribe and all its associated organizations become dependent on a fresh supply of racists, sexists in order to justify its own continued existence. Evolutionarily, it must continue to find more and more of them to survive, even if they are mostly imaginary

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Communication should be consensual. If I want to pre-emptively block some kind of content, or delegate such authority to some trusted third party, that's great. It's what we do with ad blockers all the time, which are less controversial here for some reason than self-defined "safe spaces."

If anything, the ability to block content as opposed to individual users would lead to more exposure to new viewpoints. For instance, I think Rod Dreher has lots of interesting things to say. But it seems like a quarter of his posts are rants about trans people using bathrooms, which I just don't have time for. And as a result I mostly skip everything he writes, including the good stuff. But if we built tools that emphasized filtering on content instead of people, it would simultaneously let us get presented with arguments we're actually interested in having and also not prejudge content by association with other content that shares the same author.

<comment><USER18> We accept ad blockers more readily because it's commonly accepted that ads are a different sort of speech, in an ethical way. It's not somebody telling you something; it's a machine trying to sell you something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is already done on some sites through shadow-banning.

On big social media sites, people will likely work around the restrictions. I can think of hundreds of ways to bypass such bans. GIFs, different languages and character sets, slang, linking blogs rotating domain names, rot13, base64, Morse code browser plugin, to name a few. Those that bother don't may find themselves in echo chambers.

Do people still create new slang or code speak these days?

One of my favorites, but probably not useful on facebook:

        perl -le '$_="6110>374086;2064208213:90<307;55";tr[0->][ LEOR!AUBGNSTY];print'

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm glad they are suggesting something short of censorship.

I've always supported the idea of letting people choose what they want to see. If moderators could tag posts with tags like 'spam', 'nsfw', 'graphicviolence', 'racistagainstraceX', etc... and if people could then choose what kinds of posts they want to see... and if anyone could be a moderator... and if people could then subscribe to only the moderators they trust... problem solved.

I just can't figure out how to make such a system scale. I've tried a few architectures but I'm still looking for the breakthrough to make it scale.

The problem today is if you don't like Twitter moderators you go to Mastodon or to Gab, and the community fractures into bubbles, and that drives people further apart. I think fixing moderation is going to be the next big thing.

</comment><comment><USER21> A lot of the comments here seem to be missing the point of the article. Hate speech wouldn't be removed, it would just require an additional click or two to take a look at it. I like this because it gives the user a choice.

Lets say you are a black man who just wants to scroll through Facebook at the end of the day to see what your friends are up to, without having to see racist comments that friends of friends have left. You would see the warnings that hate speech might exist behind the filter, and, since you are trying to relax at the end of the day, you could make the conscious decision that looking at that stuff wouldn't be good for you.

But then, some other time, like maybe early the next day, you could make the conscious decision to click through to see what the person said, and tell them off, or, if the content was misflagged, let the algorithm know.

The current state is that we remove the content completely and pretend like people aren't racist/sexist/phobic, or we leave the content up and allow people to get dragged into flamewars at all hours of the day. This new proposed tech would be akin to HN's option to "showdead," except with more context about what you're opting into potentially seeing.

</comment><comment><USER22> > This approach is akin to spam and malware filters

I think "spam" is a better analogy than a computer virus.

</comment><comment><USER23> >Definitions of hate speech vary depending on nation, law and platform

according to the Russian laws and their application the speech critical toward the government falls under "extremist speech spreading/inciting hate toward a specific social group" (in this case the social group is the government).

</comment><comment><USER24> That's weird...I thought would be a link to the Chinese military. Oh just the UK...close enough.

</comment><comment><USER25> So contained like a computer virus, sounds good, I suppose whatever these computer virus things are they're not a big problem for people or anything.

anyway one obvious way this is different - when the popup says this might be a dangerous file continue users click yes without thinking about it because they want to see the funny thing that Bob sent them. When the popup says this might be homophobic hate speech they will click no if they don't want homophobic hate speech and yes if they do - because some people do want it, which is part of the problem.

The problem is only partially that gay people have to read homophobic hate speech, the other insoluble part of the problem is that there are non gay people who are interested in reading it, and reading more of it, and more virulent hate speech, and then going out and beating up a gay person.

Anyway researches say that two totally unlike each other things can be handled in the same way because they're here to help [https://xkcd.com/1831/](https://xkcd.com/1831/)

</comment><comment><USER26> If "hate speech" has a computable signature, then _not_ -"hate speech" also has a computable signature.

Therefore, we can expect all kinds of bad actors to take advantage of that.

Sooner or later, Internet outrage mobs will form around vulnerable people whose speech wasn't _not_ -"hate speech" _enough_.

I'm sure that plenty of people, around here, can dream up some more nightmare scenarios.</comment>


Ask HN: How should I disclose a vulnerability in a site I worked on? - <AUTHOR>

I worked on a website just under 2 years ago. I recently discovered an SQL injection vulnerability which could easily allow any semi competent attacker full access to the database which contains personal details. It's an easy fix, I must have forgotten to escape some inputs. The problem is, I no longer have access to the server and the organisation has heavily restructured with my primary contact having left.
My questions are:
-Under UK law, can I be prosecuted if the site is compromised?
-Are the organisation likely to take action against me if I report the vulnerability?
-Would it be a good idea to disclose the vulnerability anonymously?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'm not too familiar with UK law, however, the ethical thing to do would be to reveal the vulnerability.

It would be helpful to know how you managed to come across the vulnerability. Did you scan your own code and see the oversight? If so, then you don't (hopefully) have anything to worry about in reporting. However if you probed the website, then that's a different matter entirely.

It may just come down to how you word the disclosure. If you can somehow go back to your original work and submit the code directly, then you've independently verified the vulnerability without having to display it on the site itself. Something along the lines of "I was going over some of my old code and came across this. If the same code is active on the site, I believe this could be a live vulnerability." Or something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually awoke one night about a week ago, fretting about SQL injections in the site. Upon checking my code my fears were confirmed. I did test the exploit on the live site but didn't actually access the database, just confirmed that it worked.

Have you ever heard of an organisation taking action against a former developer for reporting something like that? If I had a builder build me a house, and he came round a year later to tell me that my walls weren't strong and anyone could just break them down I would be pretty upset.

<comment><USER2> Not directly, no. But anecdotally, and on rare occasion, I've heard of legal teams jumping to conclusions etc... and really coming down hard on people who disclose to former employers.

At this point, the option with the fewest risks to your name, if you chose to use it in the disclosure, would be to exclude any mention of the live site completely. Make it appear so that this is only something that you came across on the code and, with your best linguistic poker-face, strictly keep to the code alone without even marginally grazing the live site.

Besides that, you should try and relax a bit. I know, it's easy for me to say, but that will help you come up with the right words. You also have to keep in mind that even though it's a pretty serious bug, it's still _A_ bug. This will far from destroy the company if fixed immediately, as you say, it's a pretty simple fix. You shouldn't imagine the worst case scenario.</comment></comment></comment>


China's Tianhe-1A outdoes Jaguar as world's fastest supercompute - <AUTHOR> http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20101115/china039s-tianhe1a-outdoes-jaguar-world039s-fastest-supercomputer-id-10141694.html

<comment><USER2> And if you like that, you might like these:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829405> <\- lots of comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1841807>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843248>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1843819>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1844202> <\- more comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1844338>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1846681>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1846717>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1846831>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904021>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904793></comment>


Why Twitter is not interesting to me anymore? - <AUTHOR> http://veerasundar.com/blog/2010/04/why-twitter-is-not-interesting-to-me-anymore/

<comment><USER2> Oh come on.

I have your answer: because this is a nice controversial title to post a blog under.

Answering your specific points:

1) Timezones: there's people posting on Twitter 24/7, yet this is perhaps your only half-valid point... Yes, if you're in a different part of the world twitter might be hard. But there are plenty of people in your part of the world on Twitter - try following more of them, or accept that people in a different part of the world will be less likely to post in your timezone.

2) Tweetie and the Twitter website both support this. Click on "in reply to" in your Twitter feed.

3) That's what ReTweets are for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Twitter is a bad place for conversations, that's kind of the point/charm of it. You fire and forget. You don't expect (or want) a response. It took off because it played to the ego of popular bloggers, then to the ego of corporations and celebrities.

If you prefer conversations to context-free statements, Twitter has never been interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> So what you want is Twitter to do exactly the same as the news feed of Facebook (which while it isn't perfect, it's the best social interaction framework I ever used).

<comment><USER5> Except that Facebook requires symmetry and Twitter doesn't. (Assuming that most people are not going to set up a fan page for themselves.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used Twitter quite a bit about a year ago, but stopped using it for the last several months. I went back recently to see what had changed and was really underwhelmed with what they've done.

Spam is what really stood out to me. The trending topics were littered with spam and I had bogus followers as well. I had hoped they would have cleaned things up a bit and added more than lists to the service.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. The live stream is the point of Twitter. Notice how the major search engines made agreements with Twitter to get up-to-the-second results.

2\. "in reply to"...right there on twitter.com, and any halfway decent client.

3\. Retweets and favorites allow you to recommend/rate individual tweets.

EDIT: swombat already posted these points before me :/

</comment><comment><USER8> With twitter annotations around the corner these (valid) concerns should be addressed</comment>


Any other students get crap pay? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, I'm a CS student and wanted to see if anyone else has ran into this problem pursuing jobs/freelance work. I often find that companies will only pay 7-10 dollars an hour because you are a "student". One company wanted me to debug their primary software product and fix it for them for 8.00 an hour. Anyone else find this issue in college? <comment><USER2> The companies will pay your hourly rate or you won't work for them. That's how freelancing works. This is especially important for freelancing considering that you have to pay self employment taxes, you have zero benefits with the company and there is no long term commitment.

You don't even need for your client to know that you are a student unless you are handing them a resume / coverletter. My clients almost never require these things though.

As a student, likely the worst thing you have working against you is a lack of experience. Still, your rates shouldn't be that low though. I would rather work for free in a really good environment, but if you really need the money then you may not have that luxury.

Ultimately, you may have to take what you can get. But there are other options. I don't know anything about the desktop software market but web development gigs are pretty easy to get and they are everywhere.

One place to start is sites like Elance and Odesk. Sure there are a lot of silly jobs posted there and equally silly developers responding, but if you take the time to look you will find good opportunities. Once you start building some experience and a client base, you can start raising your rates.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> as much as it sucks, take the jobs. the experiences you get now will more than make up for the pay differential if it means your career as a whole has a better trajectory as a result.

<comment><USER2> Building experience with a company is good, but the marketing and business management side of your own freelance business is good as well. Finding gigs for $50 / hr when you are currently being offered $8 / hr is also important experience. That's being able to sell!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: (how) do you early reject candidates during onsite interviews? - <AUTHOR> I've known two people who were told "we can't find your final interviewer" while doing on-site interviews at Twitter.  They were then escorted out and told they'll be in contact soon to follow up.  At which point they were rejected.   The first time, I thought.. "that's kinda strange", but the second time I heard about it I said to myself - "oh, is that their early reject policy??"   I was wondering if anyone have a similar experience?
I know how difficult it is to walk a candidate out early; I've had to do it myself before.  I'm curious to know from the rest of HN:
Does your company have an official process for ending onsite interviews early, and under what circumstances (if any) is that okay? <comment><USER2> I'd be strongly inclined, especially in the current hiring environment, to do whatever else was on the schedule anyway -- finish the interviews, take the candidate to lunch, _sell them on the desirability of working at your company_ , whatever, _even if I received obvious signals that it was not a mutual fit_.

The rationale is partially "Even if this particular candidate does not end up working for our organization, our treatment of them _will_ be repeated to their friends, who -- since birds of a feather flock together -- likely include other people who we may be interested in hiring."

(And partially it is just that I cannot contort my mind into believing that any serious professional could think that "Our multinational telecommunications company lost your interviwer. _Whoops!_ Happens all the time -- door's on the left, security will see you out" is acceptable outside a Dilbert strip.)

<comment><USER3> _any serious professional_

Have you met these bay area social media people?

I applied at twitter a few years ago (a direct referral from ev). The first technical phone interviewer tweeted part of my resume along with a sarcastic comment before the call. He then proceeded to not be very friendly on the phone screen (and called 15 minutes late). A few days later, the second phone interviewer asked half the same questions as the first interviewer.

The recruiting staff was excellent, and the people I met on-site for interviews were great.

"Professional" to the engineering staff seems to mean "I'll do whatever makes me feel good as quickly as possible."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"we can't find your final interviewer"_

This is clearly disingenuous, and accomplishes nothing other than to to convey a palpable sense of contempt and disregard for the candidate. It's an insult to their intelligence, basically.

<comment><USER5> This is not an unusual practice. For example, Microsoft has been known for sending people home early for quite some time. In some cases they'll tell you the next guy is out of work today (which is disingenuous), in other cases they'll tell you that you're done and send you home.

Not giving candidates a set schedule of interviews beforehand prevents these awkward lies and interactions. This may be an acceptable level of honesty because rejecting someone on the spot can be very difficult, both for the interviewer and the candidate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been a long time (late '90s) since I've seen a formalized (documented) interview process. It helped immensely. We basically treated recruiting like a sales funnel, had a ranking/scoring system, had self-selecting teams, etc.

Since then, seems like everyone's just making it up as they go. Hiring, evals, reqs, QA/test, whatever. The pinnacle of methodology may have sucked, but at least we all pretended to try.

When I interview candidates now, when it's a "no", I chop it off asap. I give precise reasons why, as nicely as possible. It's fair, honest, constructive, and is how I would want to be treat. I also believe in the Roman Evaluation Method, where anything less than a yes by everyone is a no.

Alas, I'm a solo act in a large organization. eg, Another interviewer, even after it's a clear "No" (we compare notes via IM), let's things drag on, always doing the "do you have any questions for us?" bit, and then wraps up with a "our people will contact you..."

<comment><USER7> if i were the candidate, i think i'd prefer this. it saves my time and it sounds like you are reasonably courteous and give some kind of feedback, which is more than i would get otherwise.

in the past, when i've been the interviewer, i've "kept going to the end". i've not interviewed people recently, but if that changes in the future i will try this approach.

(vaguely related - thinking back, at least twice, as the candidate, i've volunteered myself as not suitable for the job. one resulted in an early exit; the other limped awkwardly on.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whenever we participate in on-site interviews, candidates have been vetted enough through phone interviews that you should hardly have to face a very bad candidate that you want to reject right away on-site. However, even if that is the case, the perception of a bad candidate could vary from interviewer to interviewer. If I was personally called for an on-site interview and rejected _early_ just on the basis of couple of interviewers, I would be upset at that moment but probably be glad later. Interviewing should be collaborative and if you have scheduled a candidate to come on-site, the least you can do is to give him/her the chance to speak to _everyone_ who is supposed to interview and _then_ decide. Otherwise, it reflects bad on your culture. Just my personal opinion.

<comment><USER9> This. A few times at Apple a real disaster would make it through the phone screen, and there would be a panic about what to do. Usually we just went through with it, but it always seemed to me to be _more_ respectful to the candidate and the interviewing team to just pull the chute as soon as it was obvious.

The real answer of course was to fix the phone screens, but that requires actual energy be put into thinking hard about the hiring process, and the hiring process is deeply, fundamentally unsexy.

<comment><USER4> Also, many of these "disaster" cases may simply be suffering from an unfortunate, but all too human cases of stage fright, especially if it's their first F2F at a big company like Apple. Some people just freeze up involuntarily, and trip all over their tongues when being grilled by people they look up to and respect. They're human beings, not quiz-answering machines, after all.

Not that we need to slow down and make some kind of special accommodation when this happens -- because indeed, such episodes may fairly be viewed as signs of a lack of experience and confidence.

But it still surprises me how often people fail to see the basic humanity at play in these situations: instead of thinking "poor guy, he seemed really nervous", all that comes to mind is "What a _loser_! He couldn't solve that Euler problem with me staring and grinning impatiently at him the whole time. How did he ever make it through the phone screen?"

<comment><USER9> "Also, many of these "disaster" cases may simply be suffering from an unfortunate, but all too human cases of stage fright, especially if it's their first F2F at a big company like Apple."

This is absolutely correct, and there's no hard and fast set of rules to determine if performance in a staged, artificial environment like an interview correlates in any significant way with performance at the job intended. There're a whole host of issues around hiring in particular and coping with humans in general that the tech industry does an astonishingly bad job with.

To me, the goal of interviewing is not to find someone who is a clone of someone who already is on the team, but rather to find someone who brings different and useful perspectives to the job. If they can work on existing problems day one, so much the better, but if they can never get beyond working on existing problems, then they were a mis-hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember interviewing at a start up where I was repeatedly clearly told through the interview process that if at any point they found me lacking, they would cut short the process. Although, I enjoyed their process (purely from a technical perspective), I definitely had the impression that they were a bunch of dicks and would definitely not recommend them to friends. Having said that, I think theirs was a much more rational policy than telling the candidate they can't find the interviewer which borders on the incredulous.

</comment><comment><USER11> Who's the most important person in your software development shop on any given day? The one you're interviewing. This person is, hopefully, your future.

What's the most important part of your job if you're a software developer in a pre-revenue startup? Hiring people who are smarter than you.

If you don't believe that, do your colleagues and investors a favor and quit.

I'm serious.

</comment><comment><USER12> As I learned to do phone screens, some people made it past me into an onsite interview that really wouldn't have come close to getting a job. After meeting two or three of us, we just told our internal recruiters that they weren't suitable and would just be a waste of everyone's time to hold their interview schedule. The recruiters just come in and end the interview, being relatively noncommittal. It's still after at least three interviews, so it's not like they're being chucked out on their ear after a few minutes.

I felt pretty terrible about it since it was 100% my fault that they wasted their time by coming in, but time is too valuable to throw good after bad...

</comment><comment><USER13> I never had much problem ending an interview early. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen that after about 10 minutes I know this person had 0% chance of getting hired. They just don't have the technical skills I am looking for, let alone the other skills my bosses would need. I usually talk with them til the 20/25 minute mark and thank them for coming and show them to the door.

They don't need to know that there were other interviewers lined up after. And the others are thankful the "guaranteed no's" don't get to them.</comment>


A Few Things You Didn't Know about Signals in Linux Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://timetobleed.com/a-few-things-you-didnt-know-about-signals-in-linux-part-1/

<comment><USER2> Wow, very informative - even if I struggled along at some points and had to look up definitions :D

For someone who last dabbled in assembly just a bit on a Tandy 8086 eight or nine years ago, what's the best way to start clean and get a fresh understanding of x86_64 architecture? What are good beginner projects? I assume no one's building a blog application out of assembly, so what's the equivalent?

Looking forward to struggling through part two!

<comment><USER3> I think the way most people get started is to build simple C programs, and then use objdump to try and understand the output of the compiler (use -O0, of course =)

The intel CPU manuals have a lot of the low-level systems information about the CPU (like virtual memory, interrupts/exceptions, etc). If you enjoy/don't mind reading that type of technical documentation, you should start there.

Good luck, and thanks for reading.</comment></comment>


What is the difference between String and string in C#? - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/learning/what-is-the-difference-between-string-and-string-in-c <comment><USER2> Spoiler:

There's no difference</comment>


Snowden's Dead Man's Switch - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/snowdens_dead_m.html <comment><USER3> From the Wired article:

"But Snowden's case is actually a kind of reverse dead man's switch, says John Prados, senior research fellow for the National Security Archive and author of several books on secret wars of the CIA. [...] "In the dead man switch, my positive control is necessary in order to prevent the eventuality [of an explosion]," Prados said. "In Snowden's information strategy, he distributed sets of the information in such a fashion that if he is taken, then other people will move to release information. In other words, his positive control of the system is not required to make the eventuality happen. In fact, it's his negative control that applies."

I'm really surprised it was implemented like that, I think using an actual, digital "dead man's switch" would have made more sense. Why not have 100 servers around the world running jobs to email out documents to 100 journalists at all times if an env variable isn't reset every few weeks? Then if he disappears or is killed, a few weeks later the jobs complete and email out the information?

<comment><USER4> The automated version results in strong incentives for enemies of the USA to kill Snowden.

Therefore the version that he did is safer for him.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand why those same enemies are now disincentivized from killing him.

<comment><USER6> As someone commented on Schneier's site, US would have an incentive to keep Snowden protected because if any enemy of US would kill Snowden, then the information would become public, and I guess US wouldn't want that. Personally, I haven't invested a lot of thought into this, just wanted to point out an interesting angle. :)

<comment><USER7> Except that Snowden is not in the States, which presumably makes it harder to protect him on every step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Schneier's last paragraph sums it up for me:

"I'm not sure he's thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. Any real-world situation involves multiple adversaries, and it's important to keep all of them in mind when designing a security system."

Schneier's topic sentence for that paragraph could serve as my one-sentence evaluation of Snowden's deeds so far--he hasn't thought things through sufficiently. A longer commentary on Snowden

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/some- secrets-b...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/some-secrets-best- remain/story-e6frg6z6-1226680991786)

is an Australian's words voicing some of my misgivings about Snowden's plan for revealing secrets and his aims and his methods.

I wish Snowden a long and healthy life (but I would like him back here in the United States to stand trial). I hope that the most sensitive secrets that he is in a position to disclose stay undisclosed, but I wouldn't bet that that will happen, whether Snowden is alive or dead. There are "multiple adversaries," for sure, and it's not clear that they all have the same incentives in this situation.

<comment><USER9> I don't quite understand why you would want him back in the states for trial. It has been said that these matters are above the DOJ and therefore held in a secret court. Is that really fair? Do you honestly believe that the US would allow for a fair and open trial?(lets say something as televised as Trayvon Martin case)

<comment><USER8> To answer the several questions in this thread by answering this particular question of yours, yes, I think Edward Snowden will receive a fair trial according to the law if he stands trial in the United States, which I hope he does. (Federal trials and the trials in many states are NOT televised, as a default, but they are public except in very extraordinary circumstances. I have walked into trials in various places just because I can, as a member of the general public.)

In general, as I have said in other recent comments here on Hacker News, I can be appalled by several of the recent allegations about NSA activity without applauding Snowden's actions. I took my wife and my two younger children along with a home-made protest sign ("We support the Bill of Rights") to the lightly attended Restore the Fourth protest in Minneapolis. I did that openly and in full view of law enforcement authorities and news cameras because freedom is precious to me, and I don't think my freedom should be abused on any rationale, even the rationale of fighting terrorist networks. That said, I find that whenever I get out of the Hacker News hivemind, and deal with any of my friends from around the world who have actually lived and worked in multiple countries, and especially those friends who have children of their whose futures the friends are working for, there is remarkably little regard of Snowden as a hero or a freedom-fighter. It's not clear that he really has the technical chops to make a "dead man's switch" work as he intends against all possible attack surfaces, and it's not clear that all of his allegations about United States government activities are factually true, and it's especially clear already that Snowden's recent statements, with the ghost- writing help of Wikileaks, represent a badly unbalanced view of which countries in the world are the greatest enemies of human freedom, which is a cause I cherish all over the world.

<comment><USER10> > In general, as I have said in other recent comments here on Hacker News, I > can be appalled by several of the recent allegations about NSA activity > without applauding Snowden's actions.

I think this needs some further explanation. Without explanation it seems hypocritical to me, since you would not know about those NSA activites without Snowden.

> That said, I find that whenever I get out of the Hacker News hivemind, and > deal with any of my friends from around the world who have actually lived > and worked in multiple countries, and especially those friends who have > children of their whose futures the friends are working for, there is > remarkably little regard of Snowden as a hero or a freedom-fighter.

It's obvious that you do not have friends from Germany. Having suffered through multiple surveillance states in the past, Germans are very much aware of the dangers that are caused by massive surveillance. New technologies enable surveillance in an amount that has never been seen in history before. If your friends do not seem to care, they just haven't realised that there is a sword dangling right above their heads. Why do you think that __every __single constitution of "free countries" (and also the human rights) have passages about the confidelity of spoken words, the confidelity of messages and so on. This is no coincidence. So many people paid with their lives for it. It is the only way of making sure that a democracy stays a democracy. You cannot organize an opposition, if the current rulers know all your moves, all your communications and all your contacts. This has been proven in history again and again, yet this is vital for a healthy democracy. Yet people seem to forget, because they "have nothing to hide" or their "life is not affected". But guess what, once you are affected, it is already too late and nothing can be done anymore. I would not want my children to live in a fascist surveillance state and I am very grateful for Snowden actions. Please talk to your friends and try to raise awareness. It's their children or their children's children who will have to pay the price. I know it's a little abstract, that's exactly why people fall for it again and again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the > documents released

The unstated assumption is that these documents would be particularly interesting to foreign governments. That's probably wrong.

What we've seen so far is merely evidence of actions that were long assumed to be taking place anyway. Other governments likely have their own evidence already.

These documents are important to the public, but they're of minimal value to an enemy. His intent was never malicious, so it's extremely unlikely that he's carrying the names of agents or other sensitive information of that sort.

<comment><USER12>
        >These documents are important to the public, but they're of minimal value to an enemy.

I think at least some other nations would like to know what the documents contain, not because of the data itself, but because it could clue them into what kind of capabilities our intelligence departments have. It's one thing to know that the NSA is spying on its own citizens, but it's an entirely different thing to know that they can intercept and decipher X and Y forms of communications but may not yet be able or feel the need to monitor form Z.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Imagine if Snowden had deployed a bunch of redundant crawlers of various news sites likely to cover him and quote him directly when he speaks. Their activity would be nearly undetectable in the traffic of the NYTimes, CNN, etc. He could come up with a bunch of seemingly innocent control phrases which he would use in soundbite quotes during press conferences, etc. He would say a phrase, the media would quote him, and the crawlers would identify this "control transmission" from Snowden and take action. Some phrases would be dead man's switches in that one of them would have to be observed every couple of weeks or documents would be released via mechanisms difficult to trace back to the server (Tor?). Other phrases would trigger incremental leaks to allow proof that he is still powerful and in control. "Tomorrow, I'm going to release a _mightily spectacular revelation_!"

Maybe there should be two levels of dead man's switching -- incremental leaks if a phrase isn't reported in, say, two weeks and a major release if no phrase reported in three months. This way, he figuratively would have multiple units of currency with which to bargain. Let's say he was thrown in jail. If he only could threaten to release a single, big bundle of secrets via a dead man's switch, all his bargaining power would disappear should a government call his bluff and keep in jail until after the switch fired. However, if he could threaten incremental releases and show that, when given full freedom, the releases stop, he would have power for quite some time.

How would one acquire the use of, say, 50 servers in various datacenters owned by various providers without leaving traces or implicit fingerprints (multi- year prepayment being the big one I am thinking of)?

<comment><USER14> The Daniel Suarez book "Daemon" and it's sequel use this idea as a fundamental part of the plot. Intelligent distributed systems reacting to public news. It's a neat book.

Also, getting servers isn't very difficult. Buy prepaid credit cards or Bitcoin via cash, leave cards/BTC on account for various VM providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Schneier has an excellent point there. Right now Snowden is in the eyes and minds of a lot of somewhat concerned and maybe even angry people. If he'd encounter and unexpected sudden end to his life, he'd become the modern equivalent to a martyr. From the standpoint of his adversaries this would probably be much less than desirable as it would turn up the heat even more than it is already, documents or no documents. In fact, he'd probably have much less facetime on the news if they'd just let him be in the first place. Almost makes me wonder what else is going on that's not in the news so much right now?

<comment><USER16> > _" Almost makes me wonder what else is going on that's not in the news so > much right now?"_

Given that the other big story in the media is somehow a slightly-more-than- pedestrian summer heatwave in the US and UK, it seems rather unlikely anyone needs a story as big as Snowden to bury something else.

<comment><USER4> Actually before Snowden, the other big government story was the fact that the IRS was specifically targeting tea party groups, and there was circumstantial evidence leading to the possibility that Obama was involved. If true, that could be big. Impeach the president big. This country doesn't have tolerance for abuse of executive power to advantage your party in elections.

If anyone needs it, I'll be off in the corner selling tin foil hats. ;-)

<comment><USER17> Of course, the actual findings of the investigation into that targeting showed that other watchwords like "progressive" meant that "liberal" groups were as or more likely to get targeted for extra scrutiny.

<comment><USER4> Are you trying to ruin my tinfoil hat business?

I'm sure there is a conspiracy theory that explains both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would the US want to kill Snowden?

I think this dead man's switch is deterrent against being taken into custody. If the US tries to incarcerate him, then the switch will trip and more secret documents will be leaked. Though maybe the US doesn't care.

I wonder how badly the US wants him at this point?

<comment><USER19> One reason could be to scare future whistleblowers "Leak government information - you're dead to us. Literally."

Of course doing it _now_ would be incredibly stupid of the US government, as everyone will point to them, but then again they've already done some incredibly stupid things, so who knows.

<comment><USER20> If the USA really wanted to go down this scary path, then wouldn't Bradley Manning have been executed by now? His leak most likely was much more damaging to the US than Snowden, and he is on trial via a military tribunal which has a much greater conviction rate than a civilian court. Manning isn't even on trial for any charges that carry the death penalty.

<comment><USER21> Bradley Manning's treatment to date is essentially torture. The message that the US is trying to send is 'If you cross us, we'll torture you until the end of your days.'

Death is an easy out. Become a martyr? Not so bad. Live for the rest of your life, naked, in solitary confinement? I'd rather be dead than lose my grip on sanity in those kinds of conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I fully agree with the 1st comment on the post itself:

 _vladimir • July 18, 2013 8:57 AM If he has a switch like this. That is not only protect him from being killed by US authorities but motivate the same authorities to protect him from all other threats._

This should provide enough incentive for the same spy agencies to make sure nothing happens to him.

<comment><USER23> Eh, scandals come and go on a weekly basis. People are inured to it at this point, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle. Personally, I think the circus is about making other Snowdens scared of following suit, rather than chasing Snowden himself. Regardless of whether he gets a fair trial and judgement, he is already being punished - kept on the run and looking over his shoulder. He's not imprisoned, but he's also free like we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm very curious as to how this works at a basic level. Perhaps a 'positive- control' system in which he has to send a signal to some clandestine web service every 24 hours to prevent the keys from being released? Does he have an Arduino board strapped to his chest detecting his pulse? Or has he simply entrusted some mechanism to somebody else, who can determine whether the keys should be released depending on the nuances of the situation in which he is harmed/killed?

<comment><USER25> Why not a Google alert on "snowden arrested", "snowden killed", etc etc?

<comment><USER26> A link-bait post with the headline "snowden arrested" and "...in my dreams" as a subheading would cause a misfire, wouldn't it?

<comment><USER27> You could check Wikipedia instead. If it says he's dead on Wikipedia for longer than a few hours/days, then he's probably dead.

<comment><USER24> The poor man's Vital Signs API.

<comment><USER28> The _famous_ man's Vital Signs API. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This play is straight out of the wikileaks playbook that they used almost verbatim when the us was making a lot of noise about assange. It appeared to be effective, in that US intelligence took the threat seriously and were concerned about the ramifications of what might be included. One element of that was the belief that those docs included some kind of "kill shot" class leak that would pretty much sink Bank of America.

There were certainly elements of truth to all of these things - there was a document cache, it was encrypted, people did have split keys, it probably did include elements of what was revealed as the robosigning scandal.

But from hearing discussion about it the subject, I think that US Intelligence now more or less holds the opinion that it was a bluff. Nothing of significant harm was included in the unreleased documents, though I think that's informed speculation and not some kind of confirmed fact.

All of a sudden after Snowden was getting helped by wikileaks and he was under a lot of pressure, the revelation of a similar encrypted cache of documents distributed widely was given to a lot of news agencies, and has regularly come up at opportune times in friendly media outlets.

I haven't been told this by anyone, but I'm pretty sure the intelligence community isn't buying it. Reports by greenwald were somewhat inconsistent with idea that there is a large cache of even more damning documents left. He's been travelling internationally, was staying in hong kong where many services operate openly, and presumably under pressure from a variety of security services and states as he tries to escape moscow and secure a safe place to live. It is hard to keep secret keys and documents secure under the best of conditions, and those are about the worst conditions possible.

The only reasonable thing to assume here is that it's all burned - <USER2> snowden walked away with is or will be in the hands of foreign states and anything particularly damning will likely end up in the press sooner or later.

So if you believe that, that there is no way to unring this bell, the last thing you're going to do is spend any time being concerned about a dead man's crypto cache.

If you're willing to do enough horse trading to close the entire european airspace to a single individual, you're pissed and you're gonna do whatever it is you want to do. That's not going to include killing him, simply because the cost is high and the benefit is low. But they are clearly going to exert an inhuman amount of resources into making him regret being born.

And that's absolutely unrelated to Mr. Snowden. That's all for the effect it will have on anyone having similar thoughts. I think he's awesome and did Americans and the world a great favor, and that's he's really brave. And yet after seeing this go down if I was ever in a position to consider doing something like this there is no fucking way I'd ever think I could handle this kind of heat. Not a chance, no question.

Problem solved.

<comment><USER30> The fact of the matter is that both Wikileaks and Snowden overestimate just how much damage their documents can do.

Look at the facts on the ground. The United States government is well- documented for atrocities ranging from torture to extrajudicial killing to political assassinations to mass surveillance, not to mention providing support to private American corporations involved in similarly disgusting behavior.

Has this impacted the power of the United States? Not really. France, Portugal, Spain, and Italy -- countries with tremendous "pride of place" and a sometimes sneering disdain for the US -- denied airspace to a foreign head of state on the mere suspicion that Edward Snowden was on board. The US is still, by at least an order of magnitude, the most powerful country in the world.

The only challenge to US hegemony is the declining relevance of the US economy relative to other world economies like China, India, Russia, Brazil, and others. In the end, only money and guns talk. There is no "kill shot" leak as long as Bank of America has the right friends in Washington.

<comment><USER29> I completely agree with you. I am very appreciative of being able to read these documents, but it clearly will cause little or no harm to the us or the intelligence community.

About the only thing that was in the manning cache that probably significantly bruised US operating power was the diplomatic cables. And that was just because the publicity and bluntness undoubtedly lead to some personal grudges that closed some doors for entirely human and entirely undiplomatic reasons.

The only people that didn't know everyone was listening to everyone were members of the public who didn't want to know. Now that they know they just don't care.

Economic power surely is the only killer. Mass espionage programs are probably quite beneficial economically, or at least if you're willing to share state and private intelligence like a large number of countries are. I would be very surprised if the US doesn't adopt that practice more and more over time. It's essentially already begun - if you run large networks data sharing is quid pro quo for heads up on state intrusion activity and reports of data exfiltration. We just don't steal secrets and give them out for favors yet.

Countries do occasionally commit suicide though. While a popular revolution in the US feels inconceivable at any point within our lives, the primary factor behind them is usually way too many pissed off poor people and radical imbalance in wealth and little room for economic advancement. As US economics begin to resemble japan's more and more you might have the potential for a forceful rejection of policy being so captured by wealth and neo-liberal philosophy. Hard to imagine though. Globalization seems to have ended that whole concern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My guess is that Snowden has quite an elaborate contingency system in place and has not actually revealed how it all works. Schneier seems to be speculating based on a Wired article, based on nontechnical explanations by Greenwald, based on (probably limited) information provided by Snowden.

Snowden noted Russia and China have an "open door" policy. Although they might like the raw data, I don't think that either would want to Snowden expire under their protection. That would make them look quite unappealing to anyone considering being a "walk in" informant in the future.

So for the time being, Snowden is the proverbial goose that laid the golden eggs and for everyone involved is worth much more alive. But once he's in a small South American country, things might change.

</comment><comment><USER32> This also assumes that this is information that Snowden wouldn't release anyway and that someone cares about. True or not, the perception by those who believe that he jeopardized national security is almost certainly that he's likely to leak whatever he can.

If he really things this is what's going to keep him safe, he's over playing his hand.

Furthermore, I think he's deluding himself if he thinks he's actually going to be targeted for assassination by the US. I'm no Obama fan, but it's a little far fetched. Shoved in jail, maybe. Killed to silence him? Nah.. that's a strategy ironically more likely to be employed by the countries he's seeking asylum status from.

<comment><USER33> The US has a substantially worse history of assassinations over the last century than any of the countries he's seeking asylum from except Russia (assuming you count the Soviet period). Even more so if considering assassinations on foreign soil.

<comment><USER32> Of domestic politically driven assassinations???

Must have been on the moon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> From the comments (yeah, I know, WTF and I doing reading comments on the internet???):

Also, considering the fact that the NSA appears to broadcast such critical data to just about anyone with a clearance, it can be assured that they don't care at all about foreign governments learning about them. They are primarily concerned about their real enemy, US citizens, and tangentially concerned about the non-US public (Manning's revelation that the US would no longer be able to support its oppressive allies lead to the Arab spring).

</comment><comment><USER35> "I'm not sure he's thought this through, though. I would be more worried that someone would kill me in order to get the documents released than I would be that someone would kill me to prevent the documents from being released. "

Not that Schneier's _advocating_ anything....

</comment><comment><USER36> This may not be automated -- he may have simply given copies/keys & instructions to several trusted friends, who will watch the news for info about his death.

They would then make the decision to release or not release, either independently or in concert, depending on how he set it up.

</comment><comment><USER37> Maybe his 'dead man's switch' is just his lawyers. Doesn't solve the problems, but it sounds a lot more likely than some of the ideas being discussed here.

</comment><comment><USER38> _" The thought of paying someone I was forced to fire because he (or she) is incompetent burns me up inside."_

It was your decision to hire him, and it was your mistake that you are remedying by firing him. Incompetence is subjective. If your interview process makes it clear that your employees must live in constant fear of termination if they aren't ramping up fast enough _for you_ , on _your product_ with _your technical debt_ and _your team 's shitty architecture choices_ ("fire fast" and "with little notice", you wrote), you'll find that your candidate pool vanishes.

<comment><USER39> heh -- thats exactly the model used at facebook - yet their talent pool keeps growing. They have the toys R us business model: Indoctrinate interns!

<comment><USER38> but everyone knows that facebook "counsels out" for "poor cultural fit" if you don't meet expectations after six months, which is a far cry from "fire fast" with "little notice". They also pay well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Snowden is risking his life no matter what he does.

</comment><comment><USER41> This goofy comment made me lol:

> I want a dead man's switch that deletes all my porn.

</comment><comment><USER42> Man, that link really has a misleading URL.</comment>


MobileCoin is now Open-Source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mobilecoinofficial/mobilecoin <comment><AUTHOR> It's been two+ long years of work to get to this point. There's a lot of cool stuff in here related to SGX attestation and no_std rust tooling.

If anyone has any technical questions, please do let me know.</comment>


Live Free or Die: The Origins of the Geek License Plate - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2012/10/origins-of-geek-plates/ <comment><USER2> _> Connecticut introduced [vanity license plates] in 1937 as a perk for drivers with five years of accident free driving_

1937 gamification, nice.

I always wondered why more countries didn't offer vanity license plates. It's a trivial service to offer in the internet age, and has the potential to bring in a nice additional lump of money every year for the government. Plus, it's just fun.

<comment><USER3> > _has the potential to bring in a nice additional lump of money every year > for the government_

If there is a fee for these plates, it makes people more unequal than they already are in their relation to the state for no other reason than allowing the rich to show they are rich.

Many places take the approach that the state should never provide different classes of services depending on who can afford them or not.

<comment><USER4> Well, rich and (perhaps) vain: they are called vanity tags. I don't think that I could infer the relative wealth of the people I see by the tags on their cars.

In your view are turnpikes and toll bridges OK?

<comment><USER3> > _In your view are turnpikes and toll bridges OK?_

For private owned roads (or conceded to a private company for maintenance) they are OK of course, but not for state-maintained roads. Bridges are a bit different as they usually are much more expensive to build, but once the initial investment is recovered they should become toll-free IMO (once again, unless privately maintained).

However, I think your question has little to do with what I was talking about: a better comparison would be having a second set of publicly-built parallel roads with higher tolls for those who can afford them, or offering higher toll fees allowing a higher speed limit. I personally wouldn't be OK with this.

<comment><USER4> The situation exists throughout the US. One can, as far as I know, get anywhere in Pennsylvania that the turnpike will take you without using the turnpike. It will just take a fair bit longer to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Live free or die is also the motto of the U.S. state of New Hampshire, who ironically mandated that it be placed on all licence plates and attempted to sue people who refused.

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

<comment><USER6> Although it's not clear from the title, the article is about the origins of fake license plates that were a copy of a NH license plate from the 1980's with the number "UNIX".

<comment><USER7> Compaq later created similar promotional license plates with the number "LINUX," and yes, they still said "Live Free or Die" on them. I managed to wheedle one out of a trade show representative, knowing the history of the original "UNIX" promotional plates.

Besides the motto and the big number, the plates carry the Compaq logo, "1999" (the year they were made), and the statement "LINUX is a Registered Trademark of Linus Torvalds."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my favorite geek license plates is '4BSD755' on a California car, which happens to perfectly match the format for a generic license plate in that state. It __could __be a coincidence, but I suspect not.

<comment><USER9> California currently prohibits vanity plates which match the sequential plate patterns, although it's possible that was ordered before it was assigned and before they prohibited it. If it's a vehicle you see often, you can estimate the date of the plate based on its style and see if it was made earlier than it would have been if sequential.

Edit: It looks like if it's sequential, it would be a white plate, with California in cursive at the current (large) size, where the descender on the f almost touches the plate number, and it might have no subtitle or the sesquicentennial subtitle.

<comment><USER10> I assumed that too, but it doesn't appear to be prohibited.[1] Indeed, I tried 8BSD755 and 9BSD755 which were accepted. (The current sequential plates start with 7.)

[1] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/wasapp/ipp2/initPers.do](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/wasapp/ipp2/initPers.do)

<comment><USER9> On the (paper) order form[1] it says:

> DMV has the right to refuse any combination of letters and/or letters and > numbers for any of the following reason(s): [...] it conficts with any > regular license plate series issued.

My understanding is that all vanity plates are reviewed by at least one human, so it's possible they handle denying vanity plates that fit the sequential series that probably should have been denied in the online form.

[1] [https://dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/6d97bdef-c5b1-46ee-a55...](https://dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/6d97bdef-c5b1-46ee-a558-28ab938e4ec3/reg17.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Outside a Micro Center in central Ohio, on a nice lookin' Tesla, I saw the plate FSM 1337. I was convinced this was the geekiest geek around these parts, and when the guy walked up to the car to get in, I said "nice plate!". He had no idea what I was talking about. Zero. I had to explain the whole thing, and though I initially thought he was just pulling my leg, I then thought about it and realized that Ohio plates as given are three letters followed by four numbers. What are the chances???

<comment><USER12> Uh, to what does "FSM 1337" refer?

<comment><USER13> "Flying Spaghetti Monster", and '1337' is leet-speak for, well, 'leet'. Aka 'elite'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite vanity licence plate is NULL.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11361757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11361757)

</comment><comment><USER15> Driving up 280 one day I was overtaken by a hexadecimal-loving Shakespeare nerd with the license plate:

        2B OR D4

</comment><comment><USER16> Knuth once wrote an article on mathematical vanity plates: [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00283-010-9170-7](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00283-010-9170-7)

</comment><comment><USER17> A new plate: [https://twitter.com/barakkassar/status/788434103171284994](https://twitter.com/barakkassar/status/788434103171284994)

</comment><comment><USER18> I had at various points in my life, "DAEMON" and "DEV NULL" (in FL).

I go with a standard issue plate now on a totally generic car.

</comment><comment><USER19> Article is from 2012.</comment>