Jewelbots – A Friendship Bracelet You Can Code - le-mark https://jewelbots.com/ <comment><USER2> As a proud dad of 3 incredible girls, I am very glad this product exists. I understand the argument that it would be great to not have gendered products at all meaning kids could choose what they want without any outside influence.

Unfortunately, we don't live in that world yet (and it could be a while off) In the meantime, I can now buy a product that:

1\. Encourages my girls to get into STEM. 2\. Is not a hard sell.

My girls are socialized to like girly stuff. I am only partly responsible for this - the outside pressures and influences on my children are huge and very hard to resist.

So you could argue that this product is a compromise, but it's one I'll gladly make.

<comment><USER3> Even without socialization, I'd bet some girls will still like girly stuff.

<comment><USER4> The problem isn't that girls like "girly" stuff. The problem is that stuff is defined as "girly".

<comment><USER5> That's because boys usually don't like it...? Or do you mean that "girly" is seen as something negative?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I want to be cynical because I hate the idea that a gadget has to have "jewel" in the name and be a fancy "friendship bracelet" to appeal to girls. But it's a neat little trinket that somebody worked hard on, and if it really was a young woman who designed it to enjoy with their friends, I can't really hold that against them. I don't think scaring away guys from it by saying it's "for girls" is doing them any favors though.

Thinking back though, one gadget I remember being very appealing to kids of both sexes was Tamagotchi. It would be cool if someone made a more customizeable/programmable/less annoying version those in a wearable format.

<comment><USER7> Hi! We talked to over 200 girls when making this product, rest assured that every design decision was made with their feedback in mind.

Boys also love playing with Jewelbots, but there are already a lot of coding toys aimed at boys!!! Our market primarily identifies as female, but we'll broaden down the road.

<comment><USER6> I think this is where we disagree a little. I don't think most coding toys actually are mostly aimed at boys. How would that even work? Do they require a Y chromosome to operate or something? They're just marketed to boys (and parents of boys), and parents and children alike buy in. The toy market today is highly segregated in marketing to boys vs girls, and toys that were not specifically "gendered" in the past are in the "Boys" section today (or sometimes vice versa).

For example, I know that when I was a kid I _hated_ that any trip to McD's included me awkwardly going up to the front counter to exchange for the "boy" toys because I thought windup toys were more fun than dolls or pink bracelets or whatever. My favorite toys were things like beyblades, zoids, k'nex you know, things that I could build with and would move.

I was never not a girl for finding toys marketed to boys as more fun. I just knew that the toys that were in the "boys" section were more stimulating to me (and my sister felt the same too). I was lucky enough to have parents who didn't care, but some do and it just creates a cycle where girls say they prefer things that are targeted to girls (as opposed to the large number of toys that are only marketed to boys), and market researchers see that success and double-down, just making more stereotypically "girly" toys that sell to that defined market segment instead of making more gender-neutral toys with more inclusive ads (because they're afraid that advertising to girls will scare off boys).

So that's my concern here. I'm glad that girls and boys alike love jewelbots already, but do fear that explicitly saying that they are "for girls" will implicitly give credence to the idea that other toys are "for boys". As engineers we should not promote the idea that science toys without sparkles or pink on them are for boys, it should just be for kids. It limits the range of creative exploration available to girls who are trying to learn both science, and who they are and what conforming to social pressure allows if you tell them that they need to like girl oriented toys b/c everything else is for boys.

<comment><USER7> Far be it for me to be prescriptive about what girls and boys should like. Truly, we think of ourselves as more "feminine" in design. Some boys like things that are feminine, there are many people that identify as feminine.

We are here to change the number of coders that identify as female. In order to do that, we talked to a lot (over 200!) of kids that identify as female and built what they asked us to build.

You can read more about our reasoning here: [https://medium.com/jewelbots- weblog/what-if-we-could-build-m...](https://medium.com/jewelbots-weblog/what- if-we-could-build-movements-like-myspace-and-minecraft-but-on- purpose-65cc8d9afeb3)

and my view on femininity here: [https://medium.com/thelist/papas-please-let- your-babies-grow...](https://medium.com/thelist/papas-please-let-your-babies- grow-up-to-be-princesses-7dc7c2ec7cd2)

Thank you for your feedback and thoughts, these conversations are super important if we are going to change the number of women in computer science.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing your reasoning. I can't say I'm on the same page when it comes to femininity, though there's no reason to get into that here. I do see where you're coming from and appreciate the time and effort you're putting towards making it a reality. It is a pretty cool product to boot. If you ever do a programmable digital pet, I'll be all over that.

<comment><USER7> Thank you! I respect your opinion as well, it's great to hear it. We all have our own version of feminism, and everyone is working towards similar goals. Man, making the next Tamagotchi would be amazing, I wonder if anyone has started?

<comment><USER6> Doooo iiitttt!!! :D

Imagine if it evolved differently based on how you programmed it and other virtual pets you encountered.

Could be really fun, but I understand if you have too much on your plate as is!

<comment><USER8> FWIW a number of years ago I created a concept for a virtual pet toy that was aimed at exploring alternate approaches which might encourage girls--who may not have been previously interested--to learn to code and other computer science related concepts (such as state machines).

One interesting aspect that GoldieBlox's research mentioned was that they found girls became more engaged when there was a story with a purpose (e.g. help this puppy) or opportunity for story-telling.

This made me wonder if there would be potential for combining an already popular electronic toy concept (virtual pets) with a programming environment that was also a story-telling environment. The behavior of the pet would be determined by a state machine generated from the story.

For example:

        Hello my name is [Oinky].
        When I am [tired] I [sometimes] want to [play].
        When I am [hungry] I [always] want to [eat].

Then the state machine for the virtual pet could be generated from that. (And associated graphical appearance, sounds etc.) Another appealing aspect of the virtual pet form factor was that low-resolution pixel art was accessible (in terms of skill required) and wouldn't look out of place. (I also believe there's a lot of value in a tangible physical "thing" that people can carry & show-off.)

I ended up getting a bit distracted by the more generic question of how to produce a platform of enclosures & electronics that would enable people to prototype hand-held Arduino-based devices. (And then other things.) But I still think the idea is worth exploring.

Some online notes on these two projects:

* [http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower/p/project-pet-designer-to...](http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower/p/project-pet-designer-toy)

* [http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower/p/project-arduino-enclosu...](http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower/p/project-arduino-enclosure)

Offers of investment and/or consulting welcomed. :D

(With regard to a non-gendered Computer Science curriculum "Computer Science Unplugged" might be of interest: [http://csunplugged.org/](http://csunplugged.org/) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone who is active in the NYC JS scene knows Sara Chipps, the CEO of Jewelbots. She has given a couple talks about what it takes to run a hardware startup, and has been a wonderful member of the community. I only wish her and co. the best of success with everything they have put together, the new version looks great!

<comment><USER10> She also started GirlDevelopIt and has been a staple in the NYC community for a while. Happy to see her on here!

<comment><USER7> <3!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations on launch and I really, really want you guys to succeed.

However, the copy below is a little off-putting.

>Jewelbots patent pending bluetooth connection takes friendship to the next level by responding to your besties whenever you are together.

a) What's the patentable invention here? If it's a programmable watch or something like that, I'd be very scared. b) Your target audience should be encouraged to share and experiment, which is the opposite of what the currently broken patent system does.

I'm not complaining about the fact that you have patents as much as the advertising that you hold them.

<comment><USER7> Hi! Our patent covers the ability to communicate from wearable to wearable using BLE. I hope that he fact that we're completely open source, from hardware to firmware to software, encourages others to share.

As far as advertising, I get that. Feedback received. Thanks.

<comment><USER12> That shouldn't be patentable. Bluetooth's entire purpose is to serve as a means for devices to communicate.

<comment><USER13> It's like patenting idea of using TCP/IP to send packets of data over a computer network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was able to get in on the kickstarter and while I'm far from the target market I've found this a lot fun to play with. It's like an arduino with decent bluetooth and a tiny form factor.

I know some people on the team, they're great. But I also have a long history of working with microcontrollers in a semi educational setting ([http://nodebots.io](http://nodebots.io)) and these are by far the least frustrating way to use wireless anything I've come across.

</comment><comment><USER15> The idea by itself is pretty great, however I think the site could do better at conveying what a Jewelbot can do. Apparently it has lights and vibration and it can communicate wirelessly- what else? Would it be possible to use it as a smart token / have it interact with other gadgets? Also, would you consider designing a version with a little embedded LCD screen to go with the programmable LEDs?

</comment><comment><USER16> Holy moly that website does a bad job of describing what they actually do. Apparently you can program the lights and vibrations? I looked up a YouTube video, apparently they can be programmed for notifications from your phone?

Marketing team really dropped the ball on this one.

<comment><USER7> Thanks so much for your feedback! Sounds like we have some things to add to the FAQ!

Jewelbots can be programmed just like an Arduino using C++. Real code! Because we believe that kids are super smart (Also, I starting writing C++ at 11).

<comment><USER17> My knee jerk reaction was pretty negative, but on only a few seconds' reflection I think this is great. Absolutely no reason why kids can't start with C++; it doesn't have to be template meta programming insanity from the get-go. Motivated kids have infinite capacity for learning and a lot of time for exploration.

Kudos for not patronizing them with some awful imitation of flow programming or some neutered scripting language.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, right? I don't think the drag -> drop coding does a lot of help when it comes to learning.

Talking to my male peers, I learned that most of them started coding when they were Tweens, largely because they wanted to make games or found an open source project they loved. Jewelbots are designed to be the same for girls. So far so good!

<comment><USER17> Yup. There's a lot of stuff that tries to teach that 'programmer mindset'; flow programming is one end of it. My eldest daughter is 5 and is at the other end: the 'Robot Turtles' board game. She likes it. I really don't know that it will make the slightest difference in her future programming ability, which will range anywhere from epsilon to a lot (and will have nothing to do with me beyond me providing food, a roof, and moral support.)

Were she older, I would absolutely be making sure these got on her radar so I could gauge her interest. Nothing so crass as _showing her_ of course.

I love the risk you're taking here: not only a hardware startup, but also one where success is predicated on passing the cool filter of tween girls. There is something delightfully subversive in marketing C++ programmable jewelry to young girls; it's like a 'fuck you' to Lego Friends. I really want this to succeed. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On a related note, can anyone suggest sites with great educational/fun gifts like this for girls?

<comment><USER19> I'd recommend the Adabox from Adafruit, it's a subscription service ... [https://www.adafruit.com/adabox](https://www.adafruit.com/adabox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of the badges at Queercon that are specifically made to interact with each other via radios or physical connection. [https://hackaday.com/2017/08/07/inside-this-years- queercon-b...](https://hackaday.com/2017/08/07/inside-this-years-queercon- badge/)

</comment><comment><USER21> There was a great episode on on Jewelbots on the Embedded.fm podcast which is worth a listen. In fact the podcast is worth a listen in general

[http://embedded.fm/episodes/173](http://embedded.fm/episodes/173)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think it's: a. a very cool product b. a good strategy to get more girls interested in CS

If my "girl" was still 13 she and her friends would want to have these.

</comment><comment><USER23> This would be a lot better if it was priced closer to cost. $70 is excessive for an a few RGB LEDs, microcontroller and a buzz motor. These things can't cost more than $10 to manufacture even at low scale. _You have to buy at least 2 for it to be interesting_ they should sell them for $20-$40 each. Maybe the pricing will come down as they get orders.

Very cool concept though.

I hope they have some patents on it or they will be seriously undercut.

<comment><USER7> We do have patents, thank goodness! Our manufacturing costs are no where near $10, that would be amazing. We have a more advanced chipset than a Fitbit and all the capabilities of an Apple Watch (without the screen). Jewelbots can have 8 simultaneous central and peripheral relationships via bluetooth. We are the only wearable device that talks to other wearable devices! (we are also completely open source!)

<comment><USER24> >all the capabilities of an Apple Watch

The site makes it appear as if your device is running a microcontroller, AVR or similar. The Apple watch is a full on ARM processor running an operating system.

But perhaps you meant something else by the statement? I'd be curious to know what all is inside.

Edit: Poking around your github repos, it appears the device has a Nordic nRF51822, basically an SoC with an Arm Cortex M0 microcontroller plus a Bluetooth module.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The biggest issues that would prevent me from getting something like this for those in my family who wear bracelets is the lack of color customizing and bulkiness of the bot. But I like the idea and I'm guessing both of these issues will be worked on in the future.

</comment><comment><USER26> My niece could really like this. She's really into "girly" stuff like princesses and flouncy dresses. Something where she programs her jewelry will be far more interesting to her than something where she programs a race car.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, I thought this would be the perfect Christmas gift for my 10 year old daughter, but $99 is just too much (at least for my budget). This does seem to be a great idea. Maybe they'll come out with a cheaper version at some point.

<comment><USER7> Hi! If you want, you could use the code FACEBOOK for 25% off. I don't know if that gets closer to your budget. If not, email me at sara[at]jewelbots.com. Our goal is to get as many of these into little hands as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Funny how the conversation seems to hover around gender. Who cares? I have children of both genders (2 boys, 1 girl) and they really like the same things. The girl is a little more outdoorsy and the boys like screens more, it seems, but I don't esp. attribute that to gender, more to their personal inclination. All three love roller skating, and cooking, and yelling, and also, making houses with blankets and pillows.

Anyway, one point the FAQ doesn't seem to cover is how is this thing powered and how long does a charge last? Can it beep and hum and do the things it does, for at least a full day?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for your feedback! Adding today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> my company shared an office with the Jewelbots team and I was very impressed at the user testing they did. The bracelet is a great user-programmable product for 8-14 year olds, which is really a difficult age group to design for.

</comment><comment><USER30> CppCast episode:

[http://cppcast.com/2017/04/sara-chipps/](http://cppcast.com/2017/04/sara- chipps/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, this is awesome! I wish I had these when I was a kid.

</comment><comment><USER32> This sound like the idea laid out in the book _PopCo_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PopCo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PopCo)). It is a good read.

</comment><comment><USER33> Cool site and congrats to this team! Love the idea and the execution.

</comment><comment><USER34> Super admirable goal and super tough task. Kudos on the progress!

</comment><comment><USER35> You have got to get that price down. $69. You can get a 3G android smartwatch phone for $65 [1].

[1] [https://www.gearbest.com/smart-watch- phone/pp_507114.html](https://www.gearbest.com/smart-watch- phone/pp_507114.html)

</comment><comment><USER36> this is great

</comment><comment><USER37> friendship bracelets are made, and the raw materials are strips of flexible plastic

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm all for making it more appealing for everyone to learn to code, but I was torn over this product by a comment made by Sara Chipps on the Giant Robots podcast ([http://giantrobots.fm/246](http://giantrobots.fm/246)).

One of the use cases she mentions is "...4 buzzes means the guy you like is nearby...".

<comment><USER39> > Learn to code->it will help you get a guy.

I don't think I reasonable person would get this from the quote you posted. Does it even appear in any of the material on the site? Or was it an off the cuff example in an interview? Regardless, I'm unclear on why this is offensive, can you elaborate?

<comment><USER38> I guess the simplification I drew may not apply to everyone (edited). The off the cuff example given in the interview seemed to reinforce the idea that middleschool girls should be worried about guys and that didn't seem very empowering to me.

<comment><USER40> I understand where you are coming from and I appreciate the thought, but - <AUTHOR> you think about it from a teenager's perspective - it's a very relatable example. Teens will be teens, and they _will_ communicate about that kind of stuff no matter what. If I had daughters, I'd be really proud if they programmed their own little protocol rather than just sending paper notes back and forth :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Things Most Americans Don't Know About America - <AUTHOR> http://postmasculine.com/america <comment><USER2> > We did not invent democracy. We didn't even invent modern democracy. There > were parliamentary systems in England and other parts of Europe over a > hundred years before we created government.

This is a pretty foolish statement from an otherwise reasonable article. Parliament in England was not remotely representative until 1867 by the most generous measure, and more reasonably not until the early 20th century. So far as I know, the only modern government of consequence which could lay claim to being a "democracy" prior to the US is probably San Marino, and its representation is, shall we say, odd.

I think that the US can indeed lay claim to being the first modern democracy: its government was absolutely radical at the time, and more importantly it stood as an example to other later movements (starting with the French).

<comment><USER3> Let's be real, America is a Republic, and Republics came from Rome.

Things America doesn't know about america: We are NOT a democracy, we are a REPUBLIC.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy>

<comment><USER4> Let's be real, the word democracy doesn't just mean direct democracy. Our "republic" is and always has been a representative democracy, and it's perfectly appropriate to classify the U.S. as a democracy. Republic and democracy are orthogonal concepts, we are both. The word republic just means our leaders aren't chosen by blood or inheritance. Since we elect our leaders, we _are_ a democracy.

<comment><USER5> It'd be interesting to track down the origins of that misconception, that "Republic" and "Democracy" are two different kinds of government. Is it possible that so many people believe this because of the government types in the original Sid Meier "Civilization" game?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > most people in the world don't really think about us or care about us

French newspaper has a front page article about Obamacare <http://www.lemonde.fr/>

German newspaper has a front page article about the US election <http://www.spiegel.de/>

UK paper has videolink of Romney on front page <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/>

Italian newspaper has Romney and Obama on front page <http://www.repubblica.it/>

For better or worse, the US has a commanding place in the politics, technology, and economics of the planet.

<comment><USER7> Your post just proves that Americans cannot take any criticism of their country without fighting against it somehow. It's built into your nature, like an automatic response.

Great, a few European newspapers did stories on US politics. They also did stories on the rest of the world too which is something you don't see much in US newspapers.

Don't get me wrong, I love America (and live here, originally from UK) but the country has some serious issues.

<comment><USER8> Yeah...that doesn't really "prove" anything. I'll thank you to have some better evidence before claiming things about my true "nature".

I remember traveling in France the summer before the 2008 presidential election. Every newspaper and tabloid on the stands had Obama's face on it.

I'm not saying that a mild preoccupation with American politics is a good thing for the world to have, but to say that it doesn't exist doesn't seem...accurate.

<comment><USER9> When a US president can cause significant economic problems because you refuse to join in war with them, it tends to make them a bit more important. All the rhetoric spewed by the US executive about 'with us or against us' created the 'freedom fries' debacle and lots of open hostility of anything French by many Americans.

The US is an important country and always will be, but the article is saying that there's weird things about the country that he recognises, not that it's a banana republic that doesn't know it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "If you're extremely talented or intelligent, the US is probably the best place in the world to live."

This is one of the most important points.

For the average American HackerNews reader, life is radically different from the rest of America. I am given opportunities, networks, connections and chances that I wouldn't be able to get this easily anywhere else in the World.

The genius of America seems to come from a few very key categories that exist to this day. Silicon Valley is one of them; Hollywood or Wall Street might be others.

But outside that, our average is a rather poor showing compared to a lot of other countries around the world that more collectively seem to take care of their people.

The problem, in my humble opinion, always stems from ignorance. As a culture, we're just not as aware or respectful as we should be. Other countries know more about the World than we do. That leads to more open-ness and respect.

<comment><USER11> I 100% agree with your quote from the article as well. The US is an absolutely amazing place when you are "the best". You get to live the hyperbole and talk about it too. What better place to do so? For example, the US healthcare doesn't suck, it's actually really good. But it's only good for those who can afford it. I've had to go to the doctor three times now in the UK (eye infection, sports injury and regular checkup) and every time I've had to wait 3+ hours to get diagnosed/treated. In the US, my healthcare meant I was in and out in 30 minutes. The US is a great place when you can afford it. That being said, I happily waited in line for the 3+ hours because I knew that other people are being treated for things they normally can't afford in the US. The problem in America, is that no one can even fathom a system like this. It's so foreign to the way we operate our lives (i.e. our culture) because everything we do is deeply rooted in transferences of goods and services in the form of money.

ps- I'm also an American who has lived in the UK, Germany, and been to 30+ countries. I share a lot of the same views as the author.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, in visiting other countries, my impression is that the average person is way happier with life, regardless of their financial standing. This in turn makes me happier. I'd be happy to pay way more in taxes in the US to support that kind of living environment.

It's hard to realize the difference it makes without traveling and meeting lots of people when you do so, though, and the tragedy is that the current system in the US doesn't allow most people the resources to travel and educate themselves, which seems to negatively effect the chances of having a well educated voting populace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As an immigrant, I definitely agree with the "[Americans] Are Poor At Expressing Gratitude And Affection".

Every single ex-girlfriend has pointed out to me that I am very affectionate, whereas all I was doing was being myself. I guess this is because where I come from (Turkey), people are expected to show their affection and appreciation with lots of touching and hugging. For example, when you run into a friend, you usually kiss each other on both cheeks as a greeting. In the US though, this would be considered aberrant behavior - might even be perceived as "gay" if it's two guy friends. Instead it's either handshake or fist-bump.

Suppressing affection is pretty hard. Often times I find myself with an urge to give people hugs, but refrain from doing so.

<comment><USER14> For an enraged camel, you seem rather affectionate.

Also, not all Americans are like that.

<comment><USER13> I've lived in four different states over the past ten years, and found that most people I have met are indeed like that. The difference becomes especially obvious when I hang out with visitors or other immigrants. European women for example are much more comfortable with holding hands or throwing their arms around my waist when walking down the street, and they do it even when we are just friends. Americans are the opposite: they seem to have "touch-phobia".

<comment><USER14> It's a barrier thing.

Our public life is less touchy, but when I'm dating someone I am very affectionate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > We are poor at expressing gratitude and affection

This is not exclusively (or even originally) an American thing. The author makes the same mistake he complains about: it's not all about America! (Corollary: do not blame the Americans for what the British are actually responsible!) Apparently we inherited "phatic" conversation from the same people we took our language from. For example, in German, unlike in English, there is no word for "small talk": <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- europe-13545386>

<comment><USER16> ...he wrote an article exclusively about America... why exactly would he discuss the failings of other countries?

<comment><USER15> Because it may help to understand where one comes from to understand where one is going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From my experience (German, studied and worked in the states, traveler) the list is pretty spot on. BUT I think it applies mostly to Joe Sixpack. Most of my friends and people I met are not really like that. Maybe just enough so that you can tell them apart from Canadians ;) Don't beat yourself up about it, it is what it is and you are who you are. And I personally like the American mentality, mostly because I can't take most of it seriously. And Joe Sixpack isn't any better in other countries. So keep on shouting U - S - A, U - S - A, I'll even join in :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is the first time in my life I laughed out loud at "Error establishing a database connection".

<comment><USER19> I thought among the first things the titled referred to was "how to do HA dbs;" "how to shard in wp-config"; "how not to get hackernewsed"

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cached:

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER9> One I'd like to add from my travels across the US. 'Freedom' is not just freedom. Less so in the north-east, but in the south and southwest in particular, you can hear the capital F when people say it. It's a political entity that you can either love (with us) or hate (against us). You can't be pro-Freedom if you're not pro-American sort of stuff.

Elsewhere 'freedom' is definitely a desirable quality, but it's not a concept that has a life of its own and must be tended to like a pet. 'freedom' isn't something that will stir in your breast and make you fight harder. 'Freedom' seems to be a word that has been incorporated into the US religion of state, and seems to have a tangibly different meaning there.

</comment><comment><USER21> > 6\. The Rest Of The World Is Not A Slum-Ridden Shithole Compared To Us

The author never watched this video...

[http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice- guide-...](http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-vice-guide-to- liberia-full-length)

</comment><comment><USER22> _8\. We're Status-Obsessed And Seek Attention_

I thought status obsession is a human universal and the cultural variation is in how it's expressed. Am I wrong?

(I'm one of those little-traveled Americans.)

</comment><comment><USER23> As an American who has spend over a decade (most my adult life!) abroad, I really can't agree with most of this list.

Living in China (and being able to speak and read Chinese) made it abundantly obvious to me that #1 and #2 are completely wrong. I often encountered either nationalist jabs royal treatment from strangers simply due to what was on TV at the time. In quite a few people I encountered both views. Some told me point blank that they thought that the US was the best place in the world and that they didn't understand why I left... only to change gears minutes later and tell me what a dangerous, terrible country America is. A love-hate relationship with America and Americans is very common in China. In Taiwan, where I lived for 7 years, I pretty much only encountered love. In Guatemala, I saw both, but very muted compared to China. I did encounter some serious hate from some Canadians there, though... I spent hours helping them translate and apartment hunt, after which they realized I was American, not Canadian. Amazingly, this was such a big deal to them that they pretty much forgot my kind deed and blew me off!

As for affection, I think pretty much everywhere I lived in Asia saw Americans as outgoing and affectionate. In Guatemala, we were seen as reserved. I'd put us at the middle of the continuum, not at the extreme non-affectionate end.

Americans aren't that status obsessed. Just look at sales of luxury cars and handbags. Chinese people tend to be status-obsessed. Rich people in the US are surprisingly restrained by comparison.

Ditto on unhealthiness. After moving to the US 2 months ago I find there's very little drinking, people never smoke in offices, not many people smoke at all, and I haven't seen a single scuffle outside a restaurant yet. It's certainly not as health-focused as someplace like Japan, and food portions are too big, but there is a culture of exercise. On the whole I'd say Boulder, Colorado is the healthiest place I've ever lived. SF isn't bad.

I agree that the health care system leaves a lot to be desired. I do miss Taiwan's quite a bit. It amazed me how it was cheap, high quality and somehow supported by a very low tax rate. I prefer the US system to China's or Guatemala's though.

One constant I've found over the past 10 years is that no matter where I live, I encounter American movies at the theaters, news about the US on TV, American restaurants and businesses in the streets, and a lot of people who very much want to understand my home country better. Sometimes it was frustrating when I was looking for total immersion and an experience living someplace completely different from home. My Swedish and Argentinian classmates in Taiwan could go weeks without hearing their mother tongues or seeing anything about their countries in any media, but I could not. Even a single day would be almost impossible because in truth the US _is_ exceptional among countries.

In short, I think this list is closer to a European caricature of the US than it is to reality.

<comment><USER24> >In short, I think this list is closer to a European caricature of the US than it is to reality.

I think this is a pretty good assessment. It's not as if any of what he says is untrue, in some place, at some time, but they do not hold as generalizations. As generalizations, they are way off. It's like stepping into a country for a couple of weeks and trying to write a definitive review of a country --and writing that which was most impressive (glaring differences, for example) in an exaggerated way.

>I do miss Taiwan's quite a bit. It amazed me how it was cheap, high quality and somehow supported by a very low tax rate.

This impressed me too. Altho I understand that one way they were able to afford it was by capturing medical students for like 7 years (or something, like that. i.e. pay for schooling, but then have them under contract for 7 years at below market wages) In addition, salaries were cut several times and now the system is looking to be reformed because its becoming indebted.

One other thing I never quite understood was the big packets of 20 pills for a cold you'd take several times a day for several days. I can't imagine what was in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mv1XfrS...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mv1XfrS9_lMJ:postmasculine.com/america+%3F+http://postmasculine.com/america&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari)

</comment><comment><USER26> > In America, women usually get incredibly nervous and confused when I do > this. They'll make jokes to defuse the situation or sometimes ask me if I'm > part of a TV show or something playing a prank.

Hm, I see this as largely part of the way the media in the U.S. portrays random communication between strangers: it must be malicious behaviour. When I'm in the U.S. striking up conversations with strangers and my friends there think I'm crazy. I'm just not american, which maybe gives me a buffer (and something to talk about).

</comment><comment><USER27> My guess is that the people who were insanely friendly lived in areas where they didn't get to meet too many foreigners. Familiarity breeds contempt as they say.

</comment><comment><USER28> Haha, a page of comments (well, 3/4, i stopped scrolling, seen enough!) on HN from Americans living up to their stereotypes.

Top work guys :-P

</comment><comment><USER29> _> The point is we don't really get perspective on what's close to us until we spend time away from it._

This is so true for so many aspects of our lives, particularly with respect to culture -- whether it be the "America, Fuck Yeah!" attitude or the "Silicon Valley coolaid".

</comment><comment><USER30> Could say most of these things about any first-world country's people, IMO. Australian's probably inflate our country's world value, can be fairly unhealthy, strive for status, etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> > most people in the world don't really think about us or care about us

The only times I've glanced an eye across the pond is when something incredible stupid happens. Examples: George bush gets elected, George bush gets elected again, Vote against free health care, Illegal wars for resource grabbing.

Gonna be down voted massively for this but its important to understand we don't always pay attention because your doing something right, quite often its the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER32> Thanks Reddit, now go fuck yourself.

Hint: I don't mean I like you.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great article!</comment>


Negative latency - ah- https://meanderful.blogspot.com/2018/06/negative-latency.html <comment><AUTHOR> Out of order network speculation, packet slicing, and wire tapping that makes you money ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you feel lonely at work because of having different political views? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm a non-climate-denying, social-liberal in a hardcore pipeline and gas company.

So, yes. Frequently.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work for a facebooked conservative. I like him a lot though. His son is one of my best friends all the way back to jr high school.

Edit: forgot to mention I consider myself a political nihilist because I find popularity contests in national office at the expense of life itself to be disgusting.

Furthermore politics seems to forget that we are all brothers and sisters that share the same fate.

</comment><comment><USER4> No. I tend to keep those kind of opinions to myself at work.

<comment><USER4> Because, in general (and specific), when dealing with humans in a forum where emotions and feelings are paramount (which are most contexts) and a forum where we will need to interact with these people again (which is most places) it is far better to be nice (and taking into account the emotional state of the participants) than it is to be right (or at least to think that we're right).

This is so important it forms one of the five main human personality components, that is Agreeableness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a conservative in SV. I don't feel lonely, necessarily, but I do believe that my political views may not be favorable. And, honestly, I don't really see a point in arguing over politics with my co-workers, so it doesn't really bother me or make me lonely.</comment>


Question: Any tips for using iCloud on work Mac? - <AUTHOR> Part of the appeal of the Mac ecosystem as most of us are aware, is the interconnectivity of all services and devices. However, I've began to get self conscious about leaving my iCloud logged into my work Mac, with all my personal emails, photos, keychain and text messages synced.<p>How are others handling this? Not using personal services on a work computer? Is anyone logging these services out at the end of each day? I'm afraid in the UK my employer would have the right to all of my data if I left it logged in, or if they demanded the password. <comment><USER2> I would not recommend logging into my personal Apple account on any devices owned by my employer.

You very likely signed an inventions assignment at the beginning of your employment, where everything happening on work time _or on work equipment_ is assigned to your employer. (This may not be as ubiquitous outside the US, though). For example, my last _three_ employers had PhotoStructure on file as a "prior invention" that I owned and declared.

Depending on how litigious your employer is, your photos, videos, and documents on their devices could certainly be retained and ownership rights granted to them.

Keep work docs and source off of your hardware, too.</comment>


Why Instagram is so fast at uploading photos - <AUTHOR> http://speakerdeck.com/u/mikeyk/p/secrets-to-lightning-fast-mobile-design?slide=82 <comment><USER2> Their motivation for speed is very well put:

"mobile experiences fill gaps while we wait. no one wants to wait while they wait"

Awesome quote

<comment><USER3> I absolutely agree. I now have an instinctive reaction to reach for my pocket whenever I'm feeling the slightest bit impatient, and I have caught myself on a couple of occasions reaching for my pocket when I already have my phone out, because I'm waiting for a page to load in the mobile browser.

<comment><USER4> When I reboot my computer, I very often find myself trying to cmd-tab over into Safari to browse the web while I wait for my computer to boot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A little devil's avocate: Isn't Instagram primarily a photo sharing app? I'm not sure why people are complaining that it starts the upload on filter completion.

My only question is how long are photos not marked as user initiated uploads kept?

<comment><USER6> To me this seems way offside.

What if I, a regular user, uses instagram for taking all my photos.

What if I take nude photos of my wife. Should I really expect instagram to upload them without my permission?

I'm guessing 99% of people would not only be surprised by this behavior, but also outraged.

<comment><USER7> If you're taking nude photos of your wife with an app that is specifically known for sharing photos, you're doing it wrong.

99% of people are probably very happy that their uploads don't take 5 minutes once they hit save. To them, it's worth the privacy "risk".

<comment><USER8> Is it a privacy risk at all, though? Instagram starts uploading after you click the green check mark, which presumably says, "Hey, upload this for me," and continues uploading while you dilly-dally over the photo metadata sheet.

I'm a complete paranoid when it comes to privacy issues, and I don't see any issue with an upload that starts after I click a green check mark that, to me, means, "Hey, upload my photo, please!" There's the question of what happens to the uploaded photo on their servers when you cancel at the metadata stage, for sure, but that's a data retention question, not acquisition.

<comment><USER9> From what I've used of the Android app, there are enough warnings that notify you that the photo is being uploaded.

After taking a photo with your camera (or selecting one that you have stored locally), you get to a details page with a big button that says "UPLOAD" at the top right. So assuming that one does take naked photos of oneself or someone else, you'd have to confirm the upload. I only bring this up because FTA, the iOS screenshots just say "Done".

Now, if Instagram does indeed upload before you press the big green "UPLOAD" button, I'd say that's a breach in trust with the app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So Instagram has photos I don't click "upload" on. Well that's nice to know.

Edit: So I tried to use a proxy on my phone but it looks like Instragram on Android doesn't honour the wireless proxy server. Anyone else want to do some digging?

<comment><USER11> On slide 89 it mentions that they delete the data if the user cancels it.

<comment><USER12> And of course they do. They respect user choice and privacy. Whilst you can be all tin-foil hat and think they are going to keep these "cancelled" photos, I would seriously doubt it.

<comment><USER10> People also doubted that Facebook retained deleted profiles a number of years ago. Is this an unhealthy opinion to form in an age of growing "cloud" data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think that's playing dirty at all. I think it's quite clever.

</comment><comment><USER14> Gmail used to do that with their attachment. You choose the attachment, and it silently starts to upload. Most applications wait for you to hit "Send" to start uploading.

<comment><USER15> It used to. It still does, but it used to, too.

<comment><USER16> Thank you, Mitch Hedberg. Also, and strangely appropriate for an Instagram thread:

 _One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said,"Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture is of you when you were younger. "Here's a picture of me when I'm older." "You son-of-a-bitch! How'd you pull that off? Lemme see that camera... what's it look like?"_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Chrome does the same, when you right-clic on a file and select "Save as…", the download begin in a temporary file, and then when you select the emplacement where you want to put the new file, it moves the temporary file in it.

<comment><USER18> Firefox does that too.

<comment><USER19> Firefox.. since nightly 15 i think also does stuff like, when you go to the search box, it open the connection to the http server before sending the search request i believe chrome does it too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not an Instagram user, so I may be off base... but why not start uploading the photo right when the user snapped it, i.e. before selecting a filter. Then apply the selected filter server-side on the original photo. That way you save a few more seconds while the user is selecting the filter.

<comment><USER21> Image manipulation on a large scale is expensive. Leaving it up to the user's device to run the image through filters eliminates server strain.

<comment><USER22> Definitely the case especially since they were on Amazon, and thus had to pay for EC2 minutes.

Now that they're at Facebook, server load shouldn't be a problem anymore though. So they could implement that.

<comment><USER23> What about sending a video stream to the server and then when you hit the button it just sends a timestamp that determines which frame to extract on the server and delete the unneeded ones?

The future is going to be sweeeeeet.

<comment><USER22> Problem there is quality of the image.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does anyone know what the sign up slide is about ([http://speakerdeck.com/u/mikeyk/p/secrets-to-lightning- fast-...](http://speakerdeck.com/u/mikeyk/p/secrets-to-lightning-fast-mobile- design?slide=82))? Do they create a user account when you hit the form, then fill it in with your details asynchronously later?

<comment><USER25> I think they're preloading the 'suggested' photos and data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I assumed this was the case because the "time since" label on a freshly posted photo is usually between 10-20 seconds, indicating they had my photo well before I tapped "Done." I think it's a pretty genius little UX hack to make the process feel quick.

</comment><comment><USER27> The Google+ Android app does basically the same thing. It syncs everything from your camera to the cloud (configurable, but I believe the default is to sync always when on wifi), where you can choose to share them at your leisure. It's actually really handy. My wife is routinely _not_ uploading cute kid photos to Facebook from her iPhone because it's too much of an annoyance (or because she doesn't want to compose the text to go with it). I can do it at my desktop whenever the mood hits me.

<comment><USER28> It's important to mention that when you install the Google+ app one of the configuration steps asks if you want to auto-upload your photos. You have three options: "Upload over wifi only", "Upload over wifi and mobile", and "Don't automatically upload". I believe the default is wifi-only.

You can turn it off later in the settings quite easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Everything he says is completely applicable to online games. Online games need to be designed around responsiveness. Another way to put it: the online game design should be pervasively focused on creating the illusion of low/no latency.

An example in an online game I'm designing: damage and deaths are finalized with a one second delay. This way, the clients can optimistically render ships and combat effects, but everything is still verified/finalized on the server.

</comment><comment><USER30> I found it brilliant first time I founded that out myself. It's more like improving user's experience from their end.

</comment><comment><USER31> Where in the TOS does it allow them to upload photos that the users don't explicitly select?

<comment><USER32> The user does explicitly either take the photo inside the Instagram app or select it. Note that the final button that published the photo to the user's stream is labeled Done, not Upload. They don't just arbitrarily upload photos from the camera roll or from the camera before the user has tapped the camera shutter button.

EDIT: And as others have pointed out, photos are only uploaded after the user has selected a filter and tapped the green check mark, not as soon as they are taken.

<comment><USER33> On the Android version it says Upload instead of Done. I can't tell what point it starts uploading but it seems to appear pretty quick on my page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've always wondered why client side resizing isn't more popular, it would give a major edge over any web upload.

<comment><USER35> I'm pretty sure they do client side resizing as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is such a great deck. Unless you're working on a photo sharing app, this slide might offer more generally useful advice:

[http://speakerdeck.com/u/mikeyk/p/secrets-to-lightning- fast-...](http://speakerdeck.com/u/mikeyk/p/secrets-to-lightning-fast-mobile- design?slide=25)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm really surprised by the number of commenters who didn't figure this out already?

<comment><USER38> Yes. Any other questions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> FYI Google instant (which is integrated, at least in AOSP) or smth does the same, by default. That is it uploads your pictures instantly to Google picture thingy. You can turn it off thanksfully.

</comment><comment><USER39> Doesn't that mean they actually start grabbing the photos before really getting permission from the user?

Surely they probably got it covered in the Terms, but it still strikes me as playing slightly dirty..

<comment><USER40> Playing the Devil's advocate (IANOCoder), but perhaps the bulk of the 1s&0s are being uploaded and then decrypted by sending a small string when the user selects "publish"?

Probably not.

<comment><USER13> That's a little silly. How is trusting them to correctly implement an encryption scheme terribly different from trusting them to responsibly delete aborted photos in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Did Instagram v1 had this feature?

They added high-res photos in v2 and the early upload seems like maybe an attempt not to have the app start feeling much much slower.

</comment><comment><USER41> Surprised most are concerned on privacy grounds. My first thought was, wow this could chew up many users monthly bandwidth quotas.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have just realised that Intagram have an abundance of phallus photos that were never intended for upload!

</comment><comment> joe-mccann The iOS SDK I'm building at work ultimately does the same thing. Much better UX.

</comment><comment><USER43> We used the same idea with video uploads.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's the little things...

</comment><comment><USER45> I always suspected that.

</comment><comment><USER46> I though it was slow

</comment><comment><USER47> Why is Speakerdeck polluting my back history? :(

</comment><comment><USER48> I trust Instagram to not engage in monkey business with my data. Having said that, this is flirting with the path-address-book kind of privacy-related scrutiny. There has to be a way of telling the user at WHAT POINT the data has started uploading. The progress bar of photo uploads has to mean what it shows or else it is a plain and simple deception (even if it's in the name of performance and user experience). I can't tell if this will erode trust though but don't be surprised if a few make a loud noise about it.

Privacy concern and trust form a chicken-egg problem. I wish the Stanford- esque brains behind these tech companies had a better grasp on it.

<comment><USER49> > I trust Instagram to not engage in monkey business with my data.

Do you trust Facebook to the same extent?

<comment><USER48> Actually yes I do trust them to the same extent. But that's a choice I have made based on my perceived trust level. I am even OK with advertisers harvesting my photos (not sure if that is possible yet). My main desired privacy control is whether people that are not supposed to see my photos or browse through my galleries, actually get to do that. That's not necessarily a monkey business but an outcome of a privacy implementation flaw (assuming it is unintentional). That will certainly have an impact on my trust level for Facebook. The difference with instagram is that you go into instagram knowing that everything is public and so is the general sharing norm on that platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Seriously, why is this on hacker news? This is ridiculous. I'd downvote this if we were on reddit. :)</comment>


Crunchgear - The undoing of Web 2.0 is lazy people? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/27/crunchgears-futurist-predicts-the-undoing-of-web-20/

<comment><USER2> This article is _stunningly_ stupid.

The thesis seems to be that (a) people don't actually enjoy creating movies, taking pictures, writing blog posts, or flirting, so they will soon revert to their default set of behaviors: working and playing Minesweeper. Therefore (b) Web 2.0 is doomed.

It's not merely that point (a) is inane. It's that this person doesn't seem to realize that both work and Minesweeper are now done on... the Web. It's like he's never even _heard_ of Desktop Tower Defense.</comment>


Who's happy with their task management tools? - <AUTHOR> http://shanelabs.com/blog/2011/11/07/i-need-an-easier-project-management-tool/

<comment><AUTHOR> If you guys know of other good solutions out there, please let me know!</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to design a multi page website in Photoshop? - <AUTHOR>

I've built the homepage for a website but now I want to create the secondary page design in the same PSD. What's the best way to handle this? <comment><USER2> From the slicer point of view, I find it useful if the layer tree contains a part for the general look of the website (header and such) and then per page a layer tree. That way it's pretty clear which parts you intend to be consistent across the website, and which things are page-unique.

Since not all pages are equally long, the footer doesn't work that way, but if you want the footer to be the same across the website, it could be enough to just put it on the front page and name it as such. That'd be clear enough for me, but I suppose it depends on who's taking the PSD to build the HTML out of it and how much you get to instruct them.</comment>


Engineers create 'lifelike' material with artificial metabolism - <AUTHOR> https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/04/engineers-create-lifelike-material-artificial-metabolism <comment><USER2> My current presumption is that if we encounter alien "life" it will actually be some self-replicating system that just spread itself everywhere, the original creators long forgotten.

<comment><USER3> Your comment totally reminds me of an article Tim Urban wrote in 2015 about the dangers of AI (Mr. Urban, if you are around these parts I absolutely love your writing!!).

Within that article he describes "a 15-person startup company called Robotica has the stated mission of "Developing innovative Artificial Intelligence tools that allow humans to live more and work less." It does not end well.

[https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revol...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence- revolution-2.html)

<comment><USER4> Do you remember the actual article? I can't find it and I love a good short story.

<comment><USER3> It's actually towards the middle of the article I linked (in italics). Search for "So what ARE they worried about? I wrote a little story to show you"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo)

</comment><comment><USER6> This article had me thinking about self-repairing clothing or ships with living hulls.

<comment><USER7> I thought of synthetic fur that looks like real fur and is just as soft and warm, but doesn't involve killing animals. That and T800 skin.

<comment><USER8> Rather than just synthetic fur - imagine a coat (furry or not) that is "alive" and generates it's own heat to keep you warm. Maybe it "feeds" on your sweat and dead skin cells? Or you feed it at night in some manner?

Every time I see one of these articles on "bio-robotics" or whatever you want to call them, I always think back to sci-fi like Dune (Axlotl "technology") and/or Blade Runner (replicants, artificial eyes, etc); a future where the line between the artificial and the natural is very, very blurry.

<comment><USER9> Sweat happens when your body needs to _remove_ excess heat, so using it to heat your body back (even if thermodynamics allowed for it) would be... kind of counterproductive. But being able to feed it with something overnight and have it slowly radiate out the heat would be a nice thing for winter months. Beats electric heating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why does nobody fear grey goo? Runaway highly efficient self-repairing materials are the stuff of nightmares?

<comment><USER11> Because self-organization/self-reproduction is a hard problem that living things have been imperfectly trying to solve for millions of years without the creation "grey goo"?

I mean, for a self-reproducing entity, energy is still going to be a limit on motion and energy isn't easily available in the natural environment. All the potential sources of energy require a particular chemical path to be transformed into usable energy and just constructing an entity capable of reproducing itself given specific materials and energy doesn't give you this.

<comment><USER12> Flight is a hard problem that living organisms have been working on for millions of years, yet human engineered systems fly higher, faster, and further. How do you know that human engineered systems can't also be much better at self replication and hence create grey goo?

<comment><USER13> Flight by itself isn't something that nature has developed. It has developed self-replicating beings that can fly. Humans are still a long way off self- replicating aircraft.

<comment><USER10> Imagine a airborne spirondella version, designed to float by self-produced methan. The sky would turn dark-green with there clouds, and ocassionally burn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oh maybe that's how we started.

</comment><comment><USER15> "That's the first lesson in basic nanotechnology. First, program the off switch. Everybody knows that."

[https://qntm.org/gorge](https://qntm.org/gorge)

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess if the robots don't overthrow us, maybe the life-like bio-bots, might?

<comment><USER17> Why worry about that when actually living bio-bots haven't?

<comment><USER18> Oh but they largely did throughout history. It's only in recent times we have been able to (barely) counter that with democracy.

<comment><USER19> Democracy slowed bacterial growth? Sounds cool.

<comment><USER18> I took the biobots to refer to us humans...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Super cool!

</comment><comment><USER21> How is this not scary?</comment>


Google listening in to your room shows importance of privacy defense in depth - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-chrome-listening-in-to-your-room-shows-the-importance-of-privacy-defense-in-depth/ <comment><USER2> Has anyone actually confirmed that Chrome is continuously sending audio back to Google? I _highly_ doubt that this is the case. Instead, the plug in knows how to recognize "OK Google" all by itself. Once activated, then it starts sending audio data.

 _IF_ it where really listening even when inactive, then people would be complaining about it sucking up bandwidth and data allotments.

<comment><USER3> It's not about consistently being bugged though--I see two troubling implications to this;

a) Government A decides target B has valuable communications, and uses this audio capture functionality as an attack vector (ie, a MiTM server modifies the chrome binary blob request slightly to a version where chunked audio is sent back to a control server).

b) (more likely) This binary blob contains a voice recognition algorithm, which can of course detect the phrase "ok, google." Imagine they wanted to detect other phrases, like "drugs" or "travel." Small modifications could easily allow an arbitrary list of "hot" terms to be targeted. Then no audio is even sent back from the user's computer--a small flag in your google account is simply set attaching your profile to "high risk" terms overheard, and databased, where it could later be queried by law enforcement.

It's troubling because there's no transparency, and if you spend a little time brainstorming about the ways this could be used maliciously (most likely by a nation-state) there are many possibilities...

<comment><USER4> This is true of any auto-updating software, including your operating system and all evergreen browsers.

The problem with this blog post is that the author gets in a tizzy about what _could_ happen, not what is _actually_ happening. What _could_ happen has not been affected by the recent Chromium screw-up, nor is it specific to Chromium.

<comment><USER3> Except Chromium as a framework is in an interesting position... and I think the threat is not even in how this could be used with malicious intent, but rather how easy it allows for indiscriminate passive logging on a grand scale.

Chrome is a very widely-distributed piece of trusted, self-updating software. It's also (for most users) directly connected to your google account--which is in many ways an intimate mirror to your identity.

You're absolutely right that this issue is not unique to Chrome, and can (and does) arise in any piece of software from native OSes & apps to 3rd party binaries.

I also think Chrome specifically warrants added concern for its ubiquity and de-facto link to your identity.

Anyone can use these techniques to target an individual, network, or system, but Chrome is one of the most widely distributed pieces of software designed with analytics in mind, from a company known for designing algorithms to improve contextual awareness.

What that means is, it's uniquely trivial to add in a few vectors of phonemes to recognize certain words/phrases, flip on an analytics pixel, and instantly have 100's of millions of devices running chrome associate their linked google accounts with this word/phrase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty funny. He complains that Chromium managed to "bypass this audit-then-build process", by downloading stuff afterwards, while ignoring that this happening already shows that the audit process is completely useless since it failed to recognize and reject the code that would do this.

There's a TSA joke somewhere in this.

<comment><USER6> The audit process assumes the upstream maintainers aren't malicious actors attempting to actively bypass the process:

> After upgrading chromium to 43, I noticed that when it is running and > immediately after the machine is on-line it silently starts downloading > "Chrome Hotword Shared Module" extension, which contains a binary without > source code. There seems no opt-out config.

They don't have the resources to do a full audit on all the packages:

[https://www.debian.org/security/audit/](https://www.debian.org/security/audit/)

> Due to the sheer size of the current Debian release it is infeasible for a > small team to be able to audit all the packages, so there is a system of > prioritizing packages which are more security sensitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is the last straw for me : enough is enough.

I need to sit and reflect a bit on this, but I'm contemplating abandoning every bit of non free software I currently use (and there's a lot of it since I'm using Windows and Android).

<comment><USER8> It appears that we're stuck in a tradeoff regarding software:

Libre, high quality, and user friendly. Pick two.

<comment><USER9> Firefox is open, high quality and user friendly.

<comment><USER10> Firefox's success often seems to be the exception that proves the rule.

<comment><USER11> postgres, python, inkscape, XFCE, various shells, GTK, Qt, even libreoffice (which has gone through astounding refactoring), vim, emacs, apache, nginx.

I don't think there is a rule.

<comment><USER10> That's a good point. Maybe it is a matter of perspective: none of those are consumer programs, they are developer tools. (Except libreoffice, but that has had its problems.)

So you could argue that they are not all that user friendly.

<comment><USER11> > Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be > very selective about who it decides to make friends with.

They are _user_ friendly they just represent the usages of the type of user using them.

This is something I see said a lot, constraining an interface to your average completely new user who knows nothing makes it _very_ difficult to have that interface adequately serve people with more experience, you load up the benefit on the front side and trash the backside in response - that said some powerful interfaces are just objectively bad but the tools utility overrides that.

<comment><USER10> At this point, I don't even know what "user friendly" means.

<comment><USER11> user friendly - designed to aid the user in doing whatever task they are doing.

The software for making a photo collage for Grandma and the software for controlling replication across a hundred database nodes can be radically different and still be user friendly.

Lots of software tends to assume that the user is a new user but the problem then is that a new user rapidly becomes a not-new user and those things that helped initially now hamper productivity ( _cough_ Clippy _cough_ ).

I'm not saying everyone should have a Symbolics terminal and that requiring lisp knowledge should be mandatory so much as lots of people say open source isn't "user friendly" when what they mean is it's not particularly friendly to new/inexperience users coming from outside.

[http://rippedwire.sourceforge.net/images/hbgtk- video.jpg](http://rippedwire.sourceforge.net/images/hbgtk-video.jpg) for example, to a new user that is very unfriendly but if you use it frequently and or understand what you are trying to do that kind of no-nonsense interface _is user friendly_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I want my desktop operating system to offer fairly fine-grained control of permissions I selectively grant to processes/applications. I would like the ability to easily revoke Chrome's ability to use my audio inputs, and then—if the use case comes up, such as a WebRTC conference—I can grant permission either on a one-time basis or until I revoke. This would be the operating system controlling the application's capability.

I'm guessing a rough approximation is possible on some operating systems. Given the sprawling management infrastructure in Windows, I wouldn't be surprised if it has some "policy" framework in place that allows devices to be declared off-limits at a process granularity. The missing piece, then, is a viable user interface on top of that.

I'm not asking for something akin to the simplified permissions model of mainstream sandboxed mobile operating systems. Not set-and-forget; and certainly not all-or-nothing ("accept these required permissions or don't install the app.") Rather, something quite a bit finer grained and with the necessary infrastructure to have the OS prompt for privileged access if the application wants something I've disallowed, in a manner akin to Windows UAC prompts for admin credentials.

Imagine starting Chrome one day to have your operating system prompt you, "Chrome would like access to audio input 1 (microphone). Allow for now, permanently, or deny?"

<comment><USER13> An HIPS can do much of this on Windows. It takes some training though.

I use the free one that comes with Comodo Firewall, but I am unaware of any free, quality, stand alone alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment> turk- How does he know Chrome is transmitting ALL conversations that it hears? His arguments aren't valid:

"(Ok, so how does it know to start listening just before I'm about to say 'Ok, Google?')"

This could easily be achieved offline.

The same argument could be made for Siri, a wiretapping device which you carry with you all the time. In fact wiretapping your phone would be much more effective then wiretapping a computer browser application.

Before making such accusations he should present some solid data, like network traffic from an idle chrome application during conversations (with and without saying "Okay Google"). If an idle chrome application was always transmitting data to google, he would have a solid argument.

<comment><USER14> Agreed - there is a lot of speculation here.

In the U.S., implementation of a wiretapping scheme like this would be a significant civil and criminal violation. Google is already under a FTC consent degree for privacy violations, which would make it doubly egregious. So I'll give Google the benefit of the doubt - and assume there are privacy- protective mechanisms designed in to the system.

In the age of ambient technology, where anything _can_ be recorded, the onus is now on developers to create systems that internally suppress mass privacy violation. The "Privacy by Design" approach (disclosure, I have an evangelist of PbD) can provide solid guidance as to how to build privacy-protective mechanisms (e.g. data minimization, data scrubbing) into ambient technologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > When you're installing a version of GNU/Linux like Debian or Ubuntu onto a > fresh computer, thousands of really smart people have analyzed every line of > human-readable source code

If this was true, Debian would have not build/release this version of Chromium. The author is living in the past or in another dimension. Some projects are complex, and it's hard/impossible to read/understand everything for a single human being.

</comment><comment><USER16> Type this into your Chrome address bar to see the extension status: chrome://voicesearch/

<comment><USER17> NaCl Enabled Yes Microphone Yes Audio Capture Allowed Yes Current Language en- US Hotword Previous Language en-US Hotword Search Enabled No Always-on Hotword Search Enabled No Hotword Audio Logging Enabled No

What now?

<comment><USER18> Go to chrome://settings/

Uncheck: Enable "Ok Google" to start a voice search.

<comment><USER19> So I have Chrome installed (although I don't use it as my primary) and I checked...

NaCl Enabled Yes Microphone Yes Audio Capture Allowed Yes

In Settings my 'Ok Google' is (and was) unchecked. What gives?

<comment><USER20> "Hotword Search Enabled" is the one you are interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is why there needs to be a switch on all computers to _physically_ turn the microphone off.

How is that hard?

<comment><USER22> Physical switches are the most common point of mechanical failure. It translates to real-world lost revenue in terms of returns and repairs to include them at all.

... but yes, they should still be included. ;)

<comment><USER23> There's a light for the camera, they should just add one for the microphone.

<comment> bob-2 While acceptable for most paranoid users, the indicator light isn't as secure as a physical switch. For some devices (most notably 2007/2008 era MacBooks) the controller can be manipulated to enable the camera without giving any visual indication via the light.

<comment><USER23> Yeah but what if the physical switch gets manipulated? I think if you're that paranoid you need to keep your macbook in a vacuum so it can't pick up any sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I always assumed the purpose of Chrome was to spy on us. So I don't use it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if European Commission would be interested in adding this to their investigation, couple of hundred million dollars should be enough penalty for violating users privacy.

<comment><USER26> I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think a competition investigation is the appropriate forum to deal with this. There should be a fine, perhaps through a class action or criminal conviction.

I certainly hope the penalty for illegally wiretapping hundreds of millions of people is more than $1 per head. I value the privacy of my conversations (and life) _way_ more than that.

Besides, if I opt-in to this service, why should everyone who ever walks into my home or office be presumed to have made the same choice? What if I am a doctor or lawyer who is not legally allowed to make that choice?

<comment><USER26> Why the down vote?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not surprised. I was a die-hard android user, but I kept having stuff like this happen to me, over and over again: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2kwbl2/im_convin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2kwbl2/im_convinced_my_android_phone_listens_to_me_and/)

It also happens to my android-using friends. I've become convinced that Android phones are listening all the time so that they can figure out what we're about to search for and what to advertise to us.

Given that this has been my (admittedly anecdotal) experience with Android, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Google was trying to take this type of thing to the desktop with Chrome.

I love Google and have historically just not cared about my privacy as far as they're concerned, but I'm getting more creeped out as this kind of stuff becomes more pervasive.

<comment><USER28> Can you provide any proof of that?

No, Android phones are not listening all the time

<comment><USER27> Nope, I have no proof, and of course I'd be happy to learn that they aren't listening. I just hypothesize that they are based on my experience, but I've not tried to test it in any systematic way.

<comment><USER28> Listening all the time and sending the audio to Google would kill an smartphone in a moment. Apaty of the bandwith used

<comment><USER29> <tinfoil>

That's presuming it just doesn't cue up a text or audio[1] log on the device and upload it to Google the next time it's on wi-fi and plugged into a charger.

</tinfoil>

1\. 4khz mono audio is sufficient for human voice recognition and tiny in terms of storage.

<comment><USER30> Pretty sure someone would detect that with packet inspection, even if compressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> has the author really tested if Chromium is listening?

Downloading a binary blob is very bad, but the accusations that author makes wihouth a single proof is more FUD than anything

<comment><USER22> It's irrelevant to the argument. The author is making an appeal to the slippery slope (even if it's not happening right now, and even if Google is not doing it.... It could easily happen tomorrow and anyone _could_ do it. Shutter your cameras and make sure your microphones can be physically deactivated).

<comment><USER30> Isn't an argument based solely on FUD essentially a slippery slope?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There is also a bug report from a year ago. [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=381747](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=381747)

</comment><comment><USER32> Is there a GPO to control this setting in Windows?

edit:

This might work

[http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy- list-3#AudioCa...](http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy- list-3#AudioCaptureAllowed)

</comment><comment><USER33> My only audio recording device is my webcam and it is incapable of being in use without the light being on as far as I am aware. So how would it send them audio data without the audio device realize it is being used?

<comment><USER11> > My only audio recording device is my webcam and it is incapable of being in > use without the light being on as far as I am aware.

You assume that the light isn't controlled by the same software, that's not always the case, the FBI has admitted this.

[https://grahamcluley.com/2013/12/webcam-spying-without- turni...](https://grahamcluley.com/2013/12/webcam-spying-without-turning-led- researchers-prove-possible/)

I take the view that anything under software control or the control of a chip I can't open is suspect, I've taped the webcam on laptops and _physically_ disconnected built in microphones (I use a headset, built in ones suck).

I'm not really happy about my Nexus 4 at all either, I think my next phone will be a dumb mobile.

The sad thing is that I try to avoid paranoia with this stuff but the threat landscape is so large it's practically a full time job staying up to date with whats going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> One thing to keep in mind. If your friend has a Google device using Chrome, and you are close to them (in the same room) it hears your voice as well.

<comment><USER28> Any source for this?

<comment><USER35> Physics

<comment><USER28> What has to do physics with the claim that Android Chrome is always listening?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Note that all android phones have that issue. Also all windows phones and soon windows 10.

Oh and smart tvs. it is a real problem though

<comment><USER37> > all android phones have that issue

Citation needed.

"Ok Google" functionality is an expressly required opt-in. I had to go out of my way to turn it on.

<comment><USER36> google phones (nexuses) pretty much turn it on as u hit next next next on install thats actually pretty similar the chrome tvs also warn you usually - but nontech ppl dont notice. next next.

<comment><USER28> No, search recognition is not in the initial setup

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> if you goto chrome://settings/content it appears you can disable mic + camera access for all pages

<comment><USER25> I bet this is for something else, probably html5, just like Flash has mic/camera access permissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Okay, I'm going to put on my tin foil hat for a bit here.

Think of the corporate boardrooms with Chromebox for meetings, listening in even when not actively used for meetings. An exec at the Better Business Bureau [0] who chose Chromebox because they were excited to, "[reduce] the time [they spend] ... worrying about security concerns," is discussing the growing complaints the BBB has received about a competitor to a company owned by Google. He says, "Ok, Google owns their primary competitor, and they may have insight to offer us."

Wait, that's just my tin foil beanie. Let me put on the tin foil balaclava.

The U.S. Department of State [1] is in an all-hands-on-deck crisis meeting over a deeply divisive political situation involving a first-world ally. Chrome is updated with the eavesdropping feature (remember, it's just my tin foil that's making me choose that word, I know it's hyperbole), and it's already been "deployed to production immediately, bypassing cumbersome testing." Someone in the meeting says, "OK, Google News has been trending a lot of stories about this issue." Sensitive things are then said about this ally, things that are now being heard by an enemy of the state, because they were able to use their previously embedded network sniffers to capture and forward interesting network traffic.

It's frightening that a feature is enabled by default, and difficult to disable, that could capture sensitive conversations without the knowledge of the parties speaking because they innocently started a sentence with, "OK, Google." Certainly this violates wiretapping laws?

Let's pile on. Hospitals and medical centers are using this too, according to the Chrome for Work pages. A doctor says, "Ok, Google had a lot of results about new HLA-B27 research," when discussing a patient's arthritic concerns, while proceeding to outline the patient's symptoms and how treatment should proceed and now we're looking at a potential HIPAA Privacy Rule violation.

As I type this, I look over at my Amazon Echo, and I'm reminded of something I heard once. If you're not paying, you're not the customer, you're the product. Is that hypocritical of me to accept my Amazon Echo but not the behavior of Google Chrome?

[0]: [https://www.google.com/work/chrome/resources/customer- storie...](https://www.google.com/work/chrome/resources/customer- stories/better-business-bureau/index.html)

[1]: [https://www.google.com/work/chrome/resources/customer- storie...](https://www.google.com/work/chrome/resources/customer-stories/us- state-department/index.html)

<comment><USER22> Yes it is. ;) The author wants us to remember that we live in a world that has these technological possibilities.

That doctor's phone should have had a mechanical switch to disable the microphone, is the author's point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What happen if you play an audio file saying "Ok Google" ?

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow, is there really no way to disable this? I guess I'm going back to Firefox.

<comment><USER42> Of course there is a way to disable this, it's in the settings with all the other settings.

<comment><USER43> Where? You can turn off voice-activated search, but that doesn't actually disable the extension.

<comment><USER37> The extension is only used by voice search. If voice search is disabled, the extension isn't used by anything.

A mountain is being made out of this molehill. If the extension was only downloaded at the time that the option was enabled by the user, nobody would care. Instead, they chose to have the extension always available and as a result people are having paranoid over-reactions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A critical look at the birdbrain and the evidence that birds can 'read' minds - <AUTHOR> http://theneurosphere.com/2016/02/28/intelligent-birds-what-does-their-behaviour-mean-and-are-we-just-anthropomorphising/ <comment><USER2> Of course they can. Didn't you see The Beastmaster? [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083630/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083630/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > the male consistently tried to feed his female with foods that differed from > what he had recently seen her eating.

Calling this mind-reading is blatant click-bait. He watched them feed her.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not necessarily the case. Most animals would disregard whatever feeding they saw, and select the 'old' or 'new' food for their partner at chance level, indicating no awareness of satiation on one food</comment></comment>


Thumbnail extraction on App Engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/superfeedr/image-extrator

<comment><USER2> Why not return a 301 so this service could be used directly by web browsers?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that could be an option. On our context, we would love to avoid that all browsers ask for the image url.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, it's not worthwhile to engage costly App Engine frontends for a memcache lookup.

You could add (e.g.) varnish to cache the redirects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why use BeautifulSoup when LXML is available on Google App Engine?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's what's used in the Reddit library which we took as a starting point... so we kept it :)</comment></comment>


To model the choices of a poor black kid, you need to sketch out a decision tree - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Can I take good grades is school? If yes hold on and try to go to college If no try to learn to do something(learn a computer language , fix cars , sell ) Do I live in a bad neighborhood? No . Make friends with the guys that you can learn from Yes. Stay away from gangs, bad guys.</comment>


(UK) Commissioner issues first Data Protection Act fines - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11821203

<comment><USER2> I think the interesting part of this is how to prevent the sending of data whether by email/fax or however which is the result of a simple number transcription error or fat-fingering. My first thought is white-listing but it's going to be a PITA to set up and get every one to use.

Where does the fine on the council go? It should be used by an gov run department to alter the councils processes or equipment to prevent the error reoccurring the measures being applied across all gov depts carrying such sensitive info; I'm going to guess it won't be.

<comment><USER3> And can you guess where that £100,000 will come from? That's right, an increase in council tax.

<comment><USER4> I would hope it would come out of the bonuses for the senior managers responsible for the relevant department.

<comment><USER2> I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I would hope that too if only experience didn't lead so strongly away from such a conclusion. At best the person responsible will get a golden handshake [huge pay off to leave].

<comment><USER4> What I would expect to happen is this would result in the need for further executive level training for the relevant managers, which probably happens at some nice country house hotel for a week or so.

Once they have passed this course they will probably get a bonus for completing extra training.

<comment><USER3> The carrot and stick are in the wrong place. It's the individual that needs to be fined (obviously not £100,000 though, just an amount that will make them cry and inconvenience them somewhat). You can bet they won't make that mistake twice.

Companies just factor in fines as the cost of doing business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A fine on this sort of thing seems like the wrong message. The breaches will happen whether there are fines or not, the fines just make people less likely to report it which makes it harder to do things like obtain "a court injunction prohibiting any disclosure of the facts of the court case."

This law looks good in the media but doesn't help people's information stay safe.

</comment><comment><USER6> The scary part here is that the childcare litigation unit is staffed with people who can't properly operate a fax.

<comment><USER7> Sorry but this does not follow from the article. It's really easy to mistype a phone number.

<comment><USER6> They faxed out sensitive data, twice. Two different employees.

They should really check the numbers before sending out confidential information. Which boils down to my earlier statement.</comment></comment></comment>


Is getting a CS degree only way to get Software engineering job? - <AUTHOR> i guess i would like to meet these mythical self taught software engineers. <comment><USER2> I just commented this on another thread, but it's also relevant here:

As someone who entered the field with a non-CS degree, I can tell you about my own experience. I graduated with a degree in physics without any programming experience and now work at one of the big tech companies. If I had to do it again with programming in mind, I would absolutely take computer science in school and do as many internships as I could to gain work experience.

With a STEM non-CS degree it was an uphill battle for years, and it would have been even more so without a degree at all. There's a huge amount of luck involved, and I spent a _lot_ of time working outside of my day job to build skills and a portfolio to get my first real programming job at a startup.

I also never want any additional reason for a potential employer to pass on my resume, and not having a CS degree is potentially one of them. I have been able to offset this with the classes I've since taken and fortunately the name recognition of my current company, but it would have been nice to have had it from the start.

</comment><comment><USER3> There isn't even a ton of Computer Science in most low-mid level programming jobs. Having the luxury of getting a CS degree is an amazing thing, but I've always had trouble with hiring fresh CS grads. The facts on the ground are that you need to write code, every day.

While this job does provide a lot of upward mobility in our current culture, I will also say that it's not a job for everyone like some recent loud groups will say. It sucks and is really hard and to be really good you have to be able to not care about that enough for the days when you really really do something great.

If you can get a CS degree without going into unreasonable debt, do it. Especially if your real goal is something like becoming the next Robert Moog. Weather you do or don't though, you should probably be writing code today and tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a non-CS grad, but have been programming almost daily since I was 11 (so about 20 years). I'm more or less self taught and I now run a tech company, with around 50 tech staff, most of them coders.

When I hire someone, I pretty much ignore their degree. Why? Because I've seen CS grads who don't know how to program very well at all, and I've seen English grads that are programming gods.

I think it comes down to passion. If you see programming as just a job, you'll have a hard time self teaching it to yourself. If you see it as a pleasure, an art form, the learning will happen without you even realising it!

Words of wisdom from someone in my team: programming is infinitely more fun when the pressure is off.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nope, although I'd say that a STEM degree does help.

My observation is that around half the people I've worked with in this industry have a CS degree, and most of the rest have an engineering/maths/physics degree. There are a few people who don't have typical qualifications (myself included) or no degree at all, but as a general rule I would say it's less common.

If you don't have a degree, it doesn't matter - but you will still need to demonstrate that you can do the work. Having 1-2 substantial Github projects in your portfolio is a good way of achieving this, along with studying online courses such as CS50 so that you know basic data structures/algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not necessary but you'll have to bust your ass to get the equivalent experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> No, and it isn't a binary choice of self-taught vs 4 year CS degree. Check out [https://lambdaschool.com/](https://lambdaschool.com/)

<comment><USER8> I cannot thank you enough for introducing Lambda School to me.

Nevermind; International students can't get the same offer to pay off the tuition after getting a job.

<comment><USER9> Co-founder of Lambda School here. We're opening up new countries/regions very rapidly. EU launches in Jan, a new area every 3-6 months after that, so hold tight.

<comment><USER8> Hello, I'm from India and I am really looking forward to this opportunity. I wish I could explain how excited I was to find out about your program. As someone from a low-income family who decided to teach himself because college was too expensive, you must realize what an amazing chance your school is to better our lives. Keep up the good work.

Meanwhile, I'll just continue learning on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not since the "great H1-B famine of 2018". I work for one of the larger accounting / consulting firms. We are rolling a program out next year to hire directly out of high school (!). They are going to take care of the whole training pipeline themselves. Apparently they modeled it after what Nucor Steel does: [http://www.nucor.com/careers/training/technical- academy/](http://www.nucor.com/careers/training/technical-academy/)

<comment><USER11> oh wow this is going to create a whole lot of "people who can't do anything else& think in very particular ways"

<comment><USER12> What makes you think that? I don't think a college degree is strictly necessary to be an intelligent person.

<comment><USER11> your education influences how you think. universities and colleges invariably have political stances and the provision to learn the good/bad of the same. i shudder to think what a company will do to kids straight out of highschool with the same amount of time

unions bad! does work life balance really matter? are conservative ideologies really better fundamentally? these are viewpoints you can EASILY inculcate in a teenager given the right amount of motivation(responsibilities,perks,money,being treated as an adult etc etc)

i can't see how a company would NOT abuse this. it's a golden opportunity to create drones that work perfectly ONLY in your culture

<comment><USER13> This. Thank you for putting my vague thoughts into words.

Teenagers deserve time to think about stuff and to adults.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No, but many hundreds/thousands of hours programming are necessary. School is a great way to get that, but certainly not the only way. If you're willing/able to get started (by completing a Python for Beginners course or equivalent), then learn a stack and keep making things that challenge you, and are disciplined about filling in the knowledge gaps (algorithms are a gatekeeper skill), it's very doable. It just takes patience, discipline, and legitimate interest over a long period of time.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't argue that school gives you programming experience. I've had maybe 5 programming-heavy courses where I learned a lot. That's what, 1 semester? Personally, all the actual programming skill I have is from weekends and summers, and sometimes from skipping lectures to work on side projects.

All the material I've been through has been shallower and less useful than what I could have found online or in a book.

<comment><USER16> Well yes, the degree is purposely inefficient (to extract money) but it is the only game in town due to accreditation that is controlled by the self- interested schools that are already accredited. Basically, you're dealing with a cartel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> No it's not! But it's a way to get a well paid job right out of university.

If you don't have a degree, you'll struggle for sometime while you build enough contacts in the industry where the degree stop mattering and references get you through the door without even an interview.

You simply have to lot better to get any recognization in the industy but in networking skills and technical experience.

I am a self taught drop out who never sat through an interview, worked in 5 companies. Now i am a CTO of one startup.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't have a CS or engineering degree but I've been working as a developer for over a year. My advice is to have a good portfolio of projects that you can use to showcase what you can do.

I had major imposter syndrome in the beginning but now I'm a key contributor to the product. You learn a ton on the job so it's important to apply for one before you feel completely 'ready'

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a Comp sci. degree which opened doors to big firms, specifically it meant my CV didn't automatically get binned by recruitment agencies.

But if you have the experience and some kind of portfolio to show it off, especially in web and mobile development, you can get jobs without a degree. These technologies are still changing faster than colleges can track.

</comment><comment><USER20> You would like to meet them? Go to a university, stand in front of them and ask to business student "who of you creates websites and programs in JavaScript?" if one or more hand(s) goes up, boom, found them.

</comment><comment><USER21> No, but I would recommend it. I am a business major and cs minor. Probably should have double majored, I would have gotten to where I am now much more quickly. We have college drop outs and maybe even a high school drop out at work. They fight an uphill battle, but it can be done for sure.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have no CS degree. I've been developing professionally since 1999. (I had no degree of any kind at the time - I've since picked up a couple of non- technical associate degrees that really have no bearing on my career)

</comment><comment><USER23> No. There is plenty of remote contract work available for people with much experience (esp. with legacy or open source software.) It really also depends heavily about what sector you want to go in.

</comment><comment><USER24> As a contractor and consultant I have worked with hundreds of programmers. Very few have CS degrees. The self-taught ones tend to specialise in specific tools and areas. It is very hard to maintain the discipline to be a self taught SE with equivalent knowledge to those doing a SE degree.

A formal course in software engineering is not CS. SE courses focus on theory, principles, design, rather like other fields of engineering, e.g. mechanical or civil. A lot of programming is required for exercises and projects but the courses only cover languages and tools in passing. Of course, there are huge differences in how SE is taught in different universities.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's not the only way, but considering the current trends, it gets harder and harder with time to get a good job without a CS degree.

</comment><comment><USER26> I generally get substantially better results from engineers than from CS graduates.

If you are serious about programming as a profession, study engineering. The job has changed enormously over decades, but engineers train for adaptability.

</comment><comment><USER27> No, we hire EE majors and Computer engineering majors.

</comment><comment><USER28> No.</comment>