Main Core: Is NSA making a list of "unfriendly" Americans? - <AUTHOR>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Core<p>http://www.christopherketcham.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/The%20Last%20Roundup,%20Radar%20Magazine.pdf <comment><USER2> This is precisely the kind of thing that terrifies me.</comment>


Homomorphic encryption - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption <comment><USER2> There is a decent size effort to build a system that runs (a restricted, but hopefully useful subset of) Julia programs fully homomorphically (as well as supporting various sort of secure multiparty computation protocols). At JuliaCon two years ago, the Galois folks talked about their initial prototype of this work: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KLlMg6jKQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KLlMg6jKQg) (fun to watch even if you don't care about julia to see FHE "in action"). This effort was recently funded with the goal of extending the prototype into a full robust system, so I'm hoping for some good news here over the next couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone is interested in playing with Fully Homomorphic Encryption, we (NuCypher YC S16) built NuFHE ([https://github.com/nucypher/nufhe/](https://github.com/nucypher/nufhe/)). It's written in Python and has excellent documentation, so you can try building some circuits and playing around with it. It requires a GPU to run, but it's also the fastest implementation of FHE in the world (that I know of).

Let me know what you think! :)

<comment><USER4> Is there some kind of interoperability with other libraries? Or does it support CPU encryption / decryption ? For example, one can expect clouds to have GPUs to perform computations but encryption and decryption are typically done by clients on various devices where portable code is expected.

<comment><USER3> This is mostly a research library, so we haven't put our limited effort into CPU operations yet, but it's definitely possible if someone wanted to take the time to expose it in the library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seriously one of the most important area of mathematics for democracies in an online world.

Homomorphic encryption promises a hidden and verifiable online voting system that does not rely on trusting third party.

<comment><USER6> Any political voting system will need a trusted third party to run the voter registration/identity system, so I doubt the lack of practical homomorphic encryption is blocking this. There are other voter-verifiable systems that don't rely on HE for trustworthy counting:

[https://www.chaum.com/publications/AccessibleVoterVerifiabil...](https://www.chaum.com/publications/AccessibleVoterVerifiability.pdf)

The major problem with online voting is that people can be coerced into voting against their wishes outside the watchful eye of election authorities. This may be worth the increase in voting ease, but it's where the real debate is.

<comment><USER7> How does online voting differ from mail voting?

The only difference I see, is, the mail is sent via the postal service and the online vote is sent via my personal computer and internet connection.

To get around this, the government could issue verified voting tablets that are locked down and use secured connections.

Otherwise, people can force me to vote different without the authorities noticing already.

<comment><USER8> I don't know that there is a difference, and I'm finding the fact that it's becoming more widespread a problem. There could already be a nontrivial number of coerced or paid voters. Voting by mail should be a tiny percentage of the vote, largely consisting of people who are overseas. Instead, we're starting to see a lot of elections decided by mail-ins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this interests you, a related concept with similar applications as HE is functional encryption: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_encryption](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_encryption)

<comment><USER10> Here is a descent looking Haskell library that implements functional encryption concepts [https://github.com/cpeikert/Lol](https://github.com/cpeikert/Lol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The technology for all this progress was a huge discovery in 2009. But what if it is a dead end, that nothing originating from that discovery will ever be practical?

Like wouldn't it be preposterous if someone said, "Here Craig Gentry, take $1 billion to run enough computers for the current FHE schemes. What is the snazziest demo you can run?"

<comment><USER12> Some of the newer schemes are much faster. The recent progress feels like deep learning in 2010, right before everyone realized it worked

<comment><USER13> > The recent progress feels like deep learning in 2010, right before everyone > realized it worked

Does it work, though?

<comment><USER14> [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/crypton...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/cryptonets-applying-neural-networks-to-encrypted-data- with-high-throughput-and-accuracy/) (2016)

> We demonstrate CryptoNets on the MNIST optical character recognition tasks. > CryptoNets achieve 99% accuracy and can make more than 51000 predictions per > hour on a single PC. Therefore, they allow high throughput, accurate, and > private predictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A very casual (layman's?) introduction intro to Homomorphic Encryption - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13450015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13450015)

</comment><comment><USER16> Why do people always talk about arbitrary computation in relation to homomorphic encryption? What I really want is a homomorphic encryption system which allows me to arbitrarily slice and concatenate strings without knowing their contents. This would be immensely useful for implementing end-to-end encrypted collaborative editing of documents. Is homomorphic encryption there yet?

<comment><USER17> I'm dying for this. My team builds ML models on text corpora. Most of this data is sensitive. My company has very strict data privacy policies and it's a pain to even share the data with other teams in the department. I've made it part of my long-term goals to facilitate secure sharing of sensitive data across the organization. Numerical data seems to be the easiest to anonymize (randomized response, etc), but I have yet to find any techniques for text other than generating synthetic data.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I've been replying to other people in this thread. I work at NuCypher doing some research and cryptography engineering. I work on Proxy Re- Encryption and Fully Homomorphic Encryption.

Do you mind sending me an email with your use case and needs? I'd love to have a chat with you.

email@example.com

<comment><USER18> This guy right here, this guy knows whats up. gl john.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For a layman like me it sounds really cool, almost like magic. Consider a trivial operation like finding a maximum value in a list. How is that supposed to work on encrypted values while simultaneously providing strong encryption? So something like adding N to everything in the list is not an acceptable encryption.

<comment><USER20> Today is the first time I heard of Homomorphic Encryption so I have 0 knowledge about this. But just to show this is not magic, you can provide N*N number of lists where each list has totally different results and then get the max index for each list as a return. Since you know what original list was the right one, you can keep that result and discard rest

<comment><USER19> Not sure I'm following you. Would you transmit in plain text N-1 random lists along with the real one? I would not consider that encryption.

I guess one brute force way to do it is making encryption unnecessary. For an input of N bits, have the results calculated/returned for all 2^N possibilities. Does not sound very practical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've run into a few people working on this over the last five years or so, but they've been a bit cagey about discussing their use cases and customers.

Any public applications outside of blockchain?

<comment><USER22> When I encountered FHE as a potential solution, it was in designing authentication and payment tokens.

Use case was you need to be able to verify that the output of a program was also a proof of the integrity of that program.

E.g. I receive a payment token from you, and I can verify that this token was produced by a program I could verify as being the "real," program, personalized to your identity, on a device also personalized to your identity, that you physically hold and verify yourself to.

Pretty good* with a chip/pin combination, but on a mobile general purpose computer with lots of other code on it, Hard problem. With some handwaving, FHE would ostensibly have enabled the secure personalization of the program and the signing of those token outputs. It was a variation on: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Anonymous_Attestation) as well.

FHE was the DRM holy grail where suddenly you can "tokenize," information. Other applications are in selling and metering software use.

In the case of health information, the ability to open up data sets to researchers to query and analyze without the risk of losing control of the data is huge. We know that de-identification of data is (information theoretically) impossible, but an ideal FHE scheme would facilitate queries against data that would mitigate much of the risk associated with it.

The other use case is in highly regulated environments where there are legal firewalls between lines of business. Basically wherever there is a use case for de-identification, FHE is a potential solution in that domain. In that regulatory case, it's sort of ironic that it's a solution for, "ok, we won't commit a crime, but we need the hypothetical output of that crime, so let's use cryptography to facilitate that outcome without explicitly breaking the law whose effect is to prevent this outcome."

Perhaps that's why people working in it seem so cagey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> To address the inevitable "what is this useful for" questions, my go-to example is cryptographic voting mechanisms.

The idea is that you segment a large integer into a couple of different bins by its bitwise representation. So you have a 60-bit integer and you segment it into four 15-bit bins. You use one of those to randomize what the encrypted versions are going to be, and you use the other three for different vote tallies of three candidates for some office.

You can then hand people three numbers each corresponding to a different candidate, and ask them to commit to one as their vote. Public authorities can then aggregate votes which they cannot actually see, and we don't decrypt until we get to some large enough context where your vote has been anonymized among ten thousand others, and you can check that the random seeds have been properly added, or other such things.

This also allows you to create a big online database where anybody can see their vote was counted, but nobody can figure out who someone else voted for.

There is a slight difficulty in that you cannot see directly what your numbers are actually voting for, so that the machines you are using to vote with need to be able to decrypt a ballot for you and then immediately destroy it, to verify that it was what you thought it was, so that you can trust that your three numbers do not all happen to vote for the same person because if someone tried that on any scale that could affect an election, even if they only poison 1% of ballots in a 500 person district, if everyone burns one to test the system then the fraud gets discovered at least once with 99.3% certainty. But the point is that all of these other issues can be handled "out-of-band" once you protect the important stuff.

<comment><USER24> I'd think there's a simpler way to accomplish what you said above (though in both cases, any voting mechanism that lets the voter verify their vote after the fact also runs into the problem of people complaining about encouraging vote buying).

i.e.

imagine every polling place would output to you (after you voted) a random number in the 128 bit space.

the votes are recorded with this random number. we can verify after polls closed that the voting machine has an appropriate number of votes (i.e. not more or less than people who came through the booths)

all these vote data is aggregated into public record. you can look up after the fact your random number and see that it matched who you voted for. No encryption needed (beyond the technology that goes into making a secure rng)

<comment><USER23> Well, no, if you do it cryptographically, at least with the proper mechanism, you can prevent votes from being buyable. In your case, if someone wants to buy your vote, they can ask you to text the number to them before it has appeared as a matter of public record—and if you voted for the Right Person they will pay you. The 128-bit number makes this very hard to forge, whereas to destroy vote-buying you want to make something very easy to forge.

Suppose that you receive a ballot from a machine which tears it down the middle: on the right hand side are bar codes containing the voting numbers; on the left-hand-side are candidates' metadata—names, parties, etc. So from the very moment I hand you the ballot, _you_ can see that there is a connection between these numbers and those names, but as long as I provide a supply of other left-hand-sides in other orders, it becomes very easy for you to fake it when displaying it to someone else. That ease-of-forgery is the key to making it impossible to buy votes.

<comment><USER24> maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see any system that allows me to verify my vote after the fact not enabling a vote buying mechanism.

As I understand it (perhaps incorrectly), the primary thing that makes vote buying financially difficult is the fact that a person's vote can't be verified. how does homomorphic encryption enable me to verify my own vote but prevent anyone else from using the info I'd give them that I'd use myself to verify my vote.

<comment><USER23> Just the way I said in the comment you are replying to. Well, actually, I know two ways, that is just one of them.

Let me put it a different way. Let us suppose that you are in New York State in 2016, voting for the US president, and let's ignore the strange things that can happen with write-ins. After a random shuffle your ballot might look like this:

                             | BALLOT #5846
                             |
        1. Hillary Clinton   |  [  ]  [barcode]
           Democratic Party  |
        2. Jill Stein        |  [  ]  [barcode]
           Green Party       |
        3. Gary Johnson      |  [  ]  [barcode]
           Libertarian Party |
        4. Donald Trump      |  [  ]  [barcode]
           Republican Party  |

As this ballot is being presented to you, it is being cut by a sharp blade along that line through the center. So you have these two halves, and you know that they once belonged to the same piece of paper.

The right hand side is scanned and it is what we make public. Everyone can confirm that you voted in this past election, and you punched the third (say) square in your ballot. But we also make it really easy for you to take, outside of the voting booth, any of a number of other left-hand sides in other random permutations. So if you wanted a left-hand side that said "Trump, Johnson, Stein, Clinton" that is easily available for you to take out of the booth.

Now after the election you can keep either or both papers and go to a government-run website and confirm that that right-hand side corresponds to who you voted for, and you can start a political watchdog group to make sure that the homomorphic operations were properly done on all of these peoples' right-hand-sides-of-ballots. But that web site is not saying "Oh hi it's you, you voted for Gary Johnson," it's saying "Oh hi it's you, you voted for the third person on your ballot." You know that the left-hand side you have says that candidate #3 was Gary Johnson, you saw the paper cut with your own eyes. But to everyone else, that left-hand-side is just a piece of paper.

So: we have made it very easy for you to forge any other vote, as far as any other party would be able to verify. Nobody else can confirm the connection between the piece of paper you hold in your hand and the piece of paper that has been scanned and appears in the public database. And since this is very easy to forge it is very valueless as a piece of information for vote-buying purposes.

So that stuff is all really straightforward. The only dodgy thing is, what if I were to hand you a ballot like this where every vote on the right hand side happened to be a bar code for Jill Stein? Since the number is encrypted, that is not something you would otherwise have access to.

And the solution there is burning ballots on-demand. You can make requests to the election authority asking to decrypt a ballot during the election; indeed we print a lot of extra ballots expecting folks to do this and we declare it their civic duty. When you do so, you get to reveal the "true" left-hand-side for a given right-hand-side and confirm that they are the same—but that ballot is thereafter invalidated and cannot participate in the election. As more and more people do this, it becomes more and more costly to do less and less vote- rigging in this way. So you get an implicit assurance that no tampering has happened in the process of getting this ballot to you, if you can trust that your communication pipeline to the decryption authority is secure and they are not compromised. (And if they _are_ compromised there is very little you can do in any case.)

(The other mechanism just has a ballot which is two pieces of paper attached above each other with labels on the one piece of paper and holes that let you punch out the other piece of paper -- you can go online after the election and verify that the hole which was punched was the one you punched, but your ability to get other front-sheets at the voting booth makes it very easy for you to forge a ballot for say your employer where you appear to have publicly voted for their preferred candidate but secretly you voted for another one.)

<comment><USER24> re burning ballots.

If it's possible to burn a ballot (i.e. associate the set of bar codes to actual candidates), shouldn't it be possible to "burn" a ballot after the fact as well?

i.e. we have 4 barcodes, I need a way to associate each barcode with a candidate to burn it, so why couldn't this happen after the fact as well?

I assume homomorphic encryption might help here, I just am missing it.

<comment><USER23> Homomorphic encryption does not affect that problem... It's just down to policy. If the decryption authority "stays open" after the election and no longer insists on checking ballots to see if they have already been cast, then yeah, you can abuse the system to decrypt placed ballots.

If the keys are destroyed after a valid election, as one would expect, then there is no possibility for that.

One way to better ensure the keys are destroyed is to use secret-sharing schemes so that multiple parties that are adversaries would have to lie similarly about destroying the keys, then conspire to work together to decrypt ballots after the fact. But I hope you see that this is all chasing social problems that must be solved as a precondition to have fair elections in the first place.

<comment><USER24> well, you would have to someone "close" the ability to "decrypt" the used ballot instantly, otherwise while the election is ongoing someone could "decrypt" it.

Though I tend to agree, its more of a social issue that technology can't really solve and hence why I'm more concerned about a user (and hence others) being able to verify that their vote was recorded correctly than doing out utmost to discourage "vote buying" schemes as at the end of the day, I don't think technology can really solve that problem but having more faith in the electoral system as a whole by being individually verifiable has more value (even if it can make vote buying more common). but I understand I might be in the minority on that.

<comment><USER23> Right, the protocol is essentially that you have a central server which supports in essence two SQL queries,

        UPDATE ballots
        SET status = "burned"
        WHERE contents = :ballot AND status = "unused"

which, if it succeeds, then sends the ballot to the decryption oracle with the private key, to be decrypted and sent back to the user; and

        UPDATE ballots
        SET status = "used"
          , voter_id = :voter
          , choice = :choice
        WHERE contents = :ballot
          AND status = "unused"
          AND region = :region

which, if it succeeds, then sends back a confirmation that this user has been logged with that ballot and made that choice for that ballot.

If you allow people to access the decryption oracle without going through that first pathway, which simultaneously checks if the ballot was not spent and immediately spends it into the "burning" pathway, then either of those opens up the space to attacks which decrypt individual ballots. With that said, just about any auditing mechanism applied to the decryption oracle would be revealing the existence of those attacks anyway so you can still get a measure of security without this.

You can potentially even distribute the database (e.g. over a blockchain among several political parties), but as far as I can tell the decryption authority would still need to be centralized and could be a single-point of failure. (In this case it would be a program which is watching that blockchain and interacting with it via some "I publish a burned ballot onto the ledger after I think the blockchain has passed N blocks ahead of the ledger request to burn that ballot" algorithm, and nodes in the network need to reject requests to cast ballots that they think have been requested to be burnt.)

<comment><USER24> at the end of the day, this still relies on a heavy level of trust (i.e. on the infrastructure itself to do the right thing and that no one has a copy of the db).

As discussed, I'd prefer a system that increases trust without relying on trusted components (by making the vote verifiable after the fact) even if that can incentivize vote buying (but that's mostly because I view trusting the infrastructure as a bigger threat than being worried about vote buying, but I might be wrong about that)

<comment><USER23> I don't understand why you think these things are necessary or opposite.

You can have a system where everyone has a copy of the database. That is not hard, it just requires the separation of what a ballot means, from what is stored in the database. That is just these two-sided ballots with encrypted values on the right-hand-sides: so that the fact that I voted for #1 on my ballot does not tell those who hold the database who I voted for.

You can have a system where encrypted ballots are known by the people to have the values that they say they have. That is not hard, it just requires a challenge-response scheme. If I give you a box and claim there is a pony figurine inside, you can be suspicious: if I give you twenty thousand boxes and claim that they all have pony figurines inside of them, and you ask me to open ten thousand of them which you choose randomly, then for me to omit one pony I am facing a 50% detection rate, for two I am facing a 25% detection rate; to disenfranchise even 10 people from their ponies I will be caught in the act 99.9% of the time, and even then I can only disenfranchise 0.1% of the boxes.

So I can have great confidence that my vote was recorded for the first person on my ballot (I can see the database), and I can have great confidence that the first person on my ballot was Alice and not Bob or Carol (because they passed my challenge/response test).

You can also have a system where nobody can pay substantial sums of money for votes. That is also not hard, it just requires the things that users take home with them out of the voting booth to be easily forged, so that they cannot prove that they did not forge the thing.

Absolutely none of this requires homomorphic encryption; homomorphic encryption just streamlines some of the process around the decryption oracle: with HE tallying and anonymization happen outside of it, so that its internal structure simplifies drastically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could a fully homomorphic cpu architecture with fully encrypted cache be immune to Spectre and similar side channel attacks? Could this be tested on an FPGA?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, FHE doesn't work this way. You're operating on encrypted data, so performing some branched operations doesn't work due to the security (IND- CPA) security.

IE: You have a value that you need to do `if <condition> then <statement> else <other statement>`

Problematically, if that condition could work, then it would violate the confidentiality of the encrypted value, thus breaking the CPA security. Now there are some workarounds and methods to getting around this problem sometimes, but in many cases it's not possible.

<comment><USER26> So any unit of work in the FHE scenario is necessarily a basic block with no branching ?

<comment><USER3> In most situations, yes. Like I said there are methods and exceptions, but it's complex to get into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My school is working on this right now. Seriously awesome.

</comment><comment><USER28> Are these schemes theoretically resistant against quantum computing?

<comment><USER12> Yes, all the fully homomorphic schemes are lattice based and thus thought to be quantum resistant</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What will be the tipping point for Facebook? - <AUTHOR> I think it's clear now that Facebook is a horrible company that operates with machiavellian efficiency, lacks any human empathy, and has applied deplorable methods to deflect fundamental problems of the platform instead of actually fixing them. Still, they keep on going just fine with a slightly dented image, while ads dollars keep pouring in. So, what needs to change for Facebook to pass a point of unsustainability? It looks just like another "kill someone on 5th avenue" scenario to me. <comment><USER2> Facebook will continue to harvest and sell people's data for as long as people are willing to give it to them. The conditions for Facebook's ultimate demise are:

1\. Non-technical people are educated about their data being sold to advertisers who are in turn selling them stuff that is destructive/unhealthy. e.g: getting them into debt to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like!

2\. Willingness of these people to _pay_ for storing their data in order to _control_ their personal details and who can see them.

3\. Availability and awareness of a low-friction-to-adoption _alternative_ platform where people control their own data which has _similar_ features to Fb's "core" products and biggest "child" products (Insta, WhatsApp). The "alternative" needs to be: distributed/decentralised, encrypted and mobile- first.

I am _bullish_ on all 3 of these things and feel that it's only a matter of time before the alternative is available.

As others have said, Fb has a _massive_ cash reserve and they won't go down without a fight. My only _hope_ is that the EU will take Fb to the _cleaners_ under GDPR and that will keep the Fb execs busy for long enough for the alternative social network to win!

<comment><USER3> This is hilarious, no non-technical person gives a shit where their data lives. We can't even get people to understand the cloud. The QA department at my work doesn't even understand where my app ends and our vendor's app begins, and that's their job! My mother thinks any text box with a search button beside it is Google.

Nobody outside of the tech ecosystem gives a crap about tracking (they already see ads all around them anyways). Nobody would even been aware of an alternative to Facebook, the same way people are barely aware Bing exists. Hell, people can barely get off their asses to vote and you think they're going to care what the EU parliament does?

The only way Facebook will go down is by a major outage. Grandma logs on one day and can't chat to her grandson so she calls him up instead. Boyfriend opens messenger to chat to his girlfriend about their date tonight, but can't because it's down, so he texts her instead. Friends can't upload pictures of their trip so they use email or google photos.

It would take a sustained outage of a few days to break the habits Facebook has created in us. I don't see any way for a competitor get past their moat, they have too many features and too many people on board.

<comment><USER2> @jbob2000 agreed, the _current_ reality is that 95-99% of people don't _know_ or don't _care_ where their personal data is stored, who has access to it and how it's being used to _manipulate_ them.

Just because something is the "status quo" doesn't mean that it won't be _possible_ to change. History is full of examples of where once popular ideas/systems/regimes have _crumbled_ in the face of something new.

Again, I remain _optimistic_ that the (unhealthy) "habits Facebook has created in us" can/will be broken. (and not replaced by something worse!)

Just as Rome was not built in a day, it also did not "fall" in day either. i.e. I don't think a _single_ outage will have much effect on Facebook's dominance.

The _first_ step in helping people "detox" from Facebook is creating an _objectively_ healthier way to spend those "bored" or "lonely" minutes Zuckerberg is _obsessed_ with owning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Facebook the product is dying a slow death, Facebook the company has loads of money and with that is able to buy its way out of whatever hole it has been digging for itself. For now they can rely on their ownership of Instagram and (to a lesser extent) Whatsapp to keep them at the forefront of the data mining industry. It remains to be seen how the Instagram and Whatsapp crowd will react to Facebook's increasing pressure to 'monetise' them. Whatsapp has plenty of competitors which puts limits on how far Facebook can go in their attempts to squeeze its users, Instagram is probably more stable in this respect but also more susceptible to being overtaken by 'the new cool' which might be just around the corner. Were they to lose traction in these two markets at the same time they might be in trouble but for now this seems unlikely. Facebook-the-product will probably hang around way past its best before date just like AOL did, a grey haunt of mediocrity visited only by those who lost track with current trends and as such comparable to the dusty echoing corridors of dying malls where half the windows are boarded up.

<comment><USER5> I've been reading these kinds of comments for several years now. Don't get me wrong- I despise Facebook and these other exhibitionist platforms in general. I think there's some truth and less teenagers using Facebook, but this notion that it's a dying platform is wishful thinking at worst or speculation at best.

<comment><USER6> Network effects drove FB growth.

My friends were posting interesting stuff on FB, so I needed to join FB. Then my friends started posting stuff twice an hour from their phone, so I needed to check FB twice an hour from my phone.

Reverse network effects undo that growth.

First slowly, then seemingly all at once.

My most influential and interesting friends rarely post on FB anymore. Most of my ordinary friends are still there, but they only post once a week or once a month.

So I've deleted the FB app from my phone and now I check it a couple times a week from my laptop instead of a couple times an hour from my phone.

It's like Gresham's Law for social networks. Bad actors drive out good actors.

A falling signal-to-noise ratio is a vicious cycle that drives out signal and attracts more noise.

FB overreached in driving engagement, and it's backfired spectacularly. The FB brand is damaged and young people are embarrassed to use it.

Reverse network effects will remorselessly undo what network effects originally built.

<comment><USER5> Fair points, but these are all anecdotes. They don't speak to macro trends. I certainly wouldn't use these to state that FB is dying. The FB platforms demographics may be shifting, and the company itself has several offerings in its product line. The doom and gloom is purely speculative though. On paper, FB is a very solid company despite the recent stock sell offs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I think it's clear now that ..." \--- I worked there for a while. FB has a lot of empathy, and it's the most (internally) honest company, and the most efficient at fixing them [of all companies I've ever worked at]. You're a victim of highly biased reporting/information.

Having said that, FB lives and dies by 2 metrics: MAU and Timespent/DAU. An outcome of those is Ad revenue. If you want to understand how Facebook is doing, watch those metrics. MAU is still growing globally, but it has peaked in the US. Lately a big driver of growth is Instagram. Workplace is an awesome product, if it takes off, a lot of people will be using "Facebook" in the workplace, too. If VR ends up being a generally useful thing (eg. we have our meetings in VR), Facebook will dominate due to their lead with Oculus.

<comment><USER8> As somebody doing his own startup, that is absolutely mindblowing. At the size Facebook is currently, I envy their ability to keep things so focused on well- defined KPIs and still make the whole thing feel like a startup.

<comment><USER7> When you join, they tell you "FB is the world's biggest startup". It actually felt like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My theory is that Facebooks users will quietly stop visiting the site, as user generated content is replaced by ads, post from various companies and political nonsense. It depends on your circle of friends of cause, but I think a large number of Facebooks users have seen a trend towards decreased engagement with friend on the site. In the end friends are the reason for going to Facebook, when friends don't post anything, you just start visiting the site less and less, until one day you've logged in for the last time.

Facebook will however be able to survive for a VERY long time, due to groups and Messenger. They have effectively kill the forum business for a large number of communities. Those communities will have to be rebuilt.

In the end people don't remember or even care about Facebooks missteps. If they did most politicians won't be elected for more than one term. A small number of us care and we don't have Facebook accounts anymore, the rest are outraged for a week or two and then it's business a usual.

<comment><USER10> >> Facebook will however be able to survive for a VERY long time, due to groups and Messenger. They have effectively kill the forum business for a large number of communities. Those communities will have to be rebuilt.

Agree. I have moved most of my newspaper listings towards feedly. Friends I care about are on Whatsapp. Groups, on the other hand - for example: there's a group that regularly shares shit art sold in charity shops in the UK; it's content is brilliant and incredibly funny - way beyond anything you could find on the likes of Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They supposedly have 2.2B MAU[0]. This is a _huge_ number and it represents momentum, even if teens/younger people are abandoning it left and right these days. The thing is, as much as younger people have caught on to why not to use Facebook, there are literal generations of greater fools out there who are lining up to get on it and figure it out. Let's say they figure it out twice as fast as the younger people did, that still gives a _lot_ of time to FB to recover/pivot/do whatever.

Also as a side note, bigger worse companies than Facebook have existed and done more obviously terrible things and still exist. Good PR, skilled marketers/advertisers, and money can go a _long_ way.

I think the tipping point for something like Facebook is if it gets broken up by a government force, I don't think it's possible for Facebook to reach it's tipping point solely by users leaving -- that's like saying junk food companies are likely to reach their tipping point once everyone realizes how bad junk food is for them.

[EDIT] - I completely forgot -- they also bought Instagram, which is just about the only place everyone is jumping off Facebook _to_. Snapchat fumbled their core value proposition, Tumblr is niche, Twitter is for flamewars and not as personal, Reddit is still relatively niche/nerdy. I don't know where people go when they quit FB if not Instagram.

This brings another point into view -- FB probably wouldn't even die from a max exodus of it's users, as long as it buys whatever competition is next up to take it's place.

[0]: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of- monthly...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly- active-facebook-users-worldwide/)

<comment><USER9> How are those 2.2B monthly active users counted though? Does a Messenger login count, does a Facebook login button on a third party site? If you counted users as someone who spend at least 30 minutes on Facebook.com (or their app) during a week, or said that an active user is someone who posted at least twice in four week, I doubt they'd have even close to that number of active users.

<comment><USER11> I feel like if you apply the same stringent measurement you'd apply there to any other social apps, you'd still find that facebook is still leading the pack...

The definition of an "active user" can get pretty contentious, but let's just say it's someone opening the application at least once in a month (which is a pretty ridiculous metric but works as a baseline) -- FB is in uncharted territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They'll die when they become boring. I know we'd all like them to stop harvesting data from everyone, stop tracking where people are over the internet with their like buttons, etc but honestly Facebook's fall will be becoming boring.

I skew more towards the techie and older (relatively, in my 30s) side of the Facebook world so I'll probably be in the second, third, fourth wave of people to leave forever but I'm starting to notice the younger people in my family have moved on to other apps and services already. If you try to get in touch they'll refer to whatsapp (I know.) for messaging and other apps that fill in the social side of things.

Personally I've started to notice my feed ending if I go past the second "page" \- it just says there's no more posts to display.. Out of the 11 years or whatever I've been on Facebook there's.. nothing.. more to display, Facebook? Boring!

Ever since that's started I've noticed I only really use their messenger service to keep in touch with people who have no replacement IM app yet, and even that's starting to shift more towards Discord in my nerdy gaming circles

Unfortunately I have to veer away from the other comments that suggest the mainstream will learn how much data is being harvested. The mainstream doesn't care. We've already had Cambridge Analytica and still I see people cramming data into apps like "OMG" that are blatantly hoovering up personal information. Facebook will die when enough people find it boring enough that a snowball effect starts

</comment><comment><USER13> Facebook is, as I see it, in a constant struggle to "own" the social graph of humanity. Be it trying to make your friends coerce you into using it, be it buying other social networks (e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp).

As long as they are successful in doing this and there is no other way to be "properly social" on the internet without them or their child companies, they win.

</comment><comment><USER14> How does Oculus play in?

If we view FB core platform as strictly a distribution platform for FB to push new product out, it is a stronghold/moat.

Single auth and FB login's ubiquity may continue to allow FB to safeguard their position as a distribution platform. Not to mention the current success of WhatsApp and Instagram, as many others pointed out on the thread.

From Elad Gil's interview with Marc Andreessen [1]:

> "In fact, the general model for successful tech companies, contrary to myth > and legend, is that they become distribution-centric rather than product- > centric."

> "They become a distribution channel, so they can get to the world. And then > they put many new products through that distribution channel."

[1] [http://growth.eladgil.com/book/introduction/where-to-go- afte...](http://growth.eladgil.com/book/introduction/where-to-go-after- product-market-fit-an-interview-with-marc-andreessen/)

 _Edit_ : elaborated on why I asked about up and coming products like Oculus

</comment><comment><USER15> There likely won't be a tipping point, exactly. When a company pulls in billions every quarter, you can shutter the service tomorrow, and still have enough capital and enough user data to enter a completely different business, like surveillance, facial recognition and security. Don't be surprised if Zuck starts to openly court the Chinese government to build surveillance tech. The current state of affairs in the US is such that leaders are openly saying "my values are for sale as long as you have money".

FB is a data behemoth, with both profile and shadow-profile info of billions of people. They will continue to make money by exploiting that data. People will eventually stop using FB, but many will move their activity to Instagram. Plenty of people don't use FB or IG, but do use Whatsapp, another FB company.

without GDPR-style regulation, FB's influence will continue to loom large unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think they're past the point of sustainability for their core product. They'll be around for a long time to come, but I think a reckoning is on the horizon.

I think this'll have both user engagement and regulatory aspects to it, and it'll decimate FB's market cap, leaving them open to meaningful change inside the company.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think by definition there will be either one global social network or open standard that allows people to find each other regardless of which social network they're on.

Facebook took it's sweet time to deeply integrate in the web like a cancer spread in the body and this is largely due to the failure of creating/adopting a standardized social networking protocol. Thus, in my opinion FB should have be replaced by an open identity, content protocols otherwise it's here to stay on the web filling this need.

Also FB the company is here to stay since they bought all the major social networks while everyone is watching.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking at their growth, it seems they have enveloped the Social Graph and have the most users, incentivizing more users to join and be social with their friends. As long as Facebook's algorithm spews out some posts from friends and a lot of recommended/ads, users I believe will still stay on the platform.

Overtime, people (including myself) have the FOMO and are in a way forced to be addicted to FB.

So as long as FB triggers the small dopamine rush people have when they see they have 10 notifications everytime they're on the site, a majority of people will stay on, regardless of the news.

<comment><USER19> I hold the opposite view, Facebook itself has lost social momemtum to Instagram, Twitter and others, and this is eroding their grip on the high value parts of the social graph.

<comment><USER20> You know Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp, right?

<comment><USER19> I know, but the point is social networking sites are ephemeral, owning the social graph of older social groups does not ensure dominance of younger social groups.

<comment><USER20> It does if they they have the same backend. For example, Facebook and Instagram each use your network from the other to for friend suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What will be the tipping point for GE?

Facebook (the product) != Facebook (the company) and the company is diversified enough at this point to remain one of the top ad networks for a long long time.

<comment><USER22> Agreed 100%. All these giants only die when someone with a revolutionary idea comes along. IBM was about do die when other with a new way of making PC came along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While they could get pushed out by some "cooler" app on the market, I think their downfall may ultimately be pissing off _just_ enough people with the right power in government to significantly impact their ability to continue bringing in massive piles of cash. Maybe it's a data breach that results in some kind of legislation or a privacy law that limits their ability to use the information they have to make money.

<comment><USER4> Well, yes, maybe. Or maybe not, Facebook _does_ have access to an enormous amount of information on a very large group of people after all. That includes a lot of people in government who might be less than thrilled for some of that information to be made public by someone - not by Facebook of course, never that. With their hoard of money and information Facebook can wield both a carrot as well as a stick, both of which have been shown to be effective means to direct politicians' aim.</comment></comment>


Backpack: Earn money delivering things while you travel - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/13/backpack-connects-you-with-travelers-so-you-can-purchase-items-in-other-countries

<comment><USER2> How long will it take for someone to become a drug mule using this service?

"I want these porcelain dolls from this one store in columbia."

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some logistical problems to be worked out. I think they try to the drug thing by having a person buy stuff from Amazon.</comment></comment>


Indian Women Seeking Jobs Confront Taboos and Threats - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/world/asia/indian-women-labor-work-force.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I wish that NYTimes would differentiate between Individual indian States. Individual states have significant autonomy and depending upon the government elected can range from moderate to leftist. Largest indian states have populations similar to large nations such as Mexico ~ Maharashtra. And have huge variation in metrics like literacy rates ranging from 93% (Kerala ~ Canada ) to 63% (Bihar ~ Philippines).

~ is used to show country with similar population.

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

[http://www.economist.com/content/indian- summary](http://www.economist.com/content/indian-summary)

<comment><USER3> > the government elected can range from moderate to leftist

Isn't the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party that now runs the country, right- wing? I know they are openly anti-Muslim in some times and places.

<comment><USER4> > I know they are openly anti-Muslim in some times and places.

What makes 'anti-Muslim' inherently right-wing? Certainly in the US and Western Europe, there's no shortage of Islamophobia to go around in the left- wing parties.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm ... could you give examples? In my experience nationalism, xenophobia, and religious prejudice overwhelmingly are only on the agendas of right wing parties.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Us...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_politics#Usage_in_Western_Europe)

"right wing" in the US has a very different meaning than the rest of the world. At its core, left/right is a statement about social (in)equality and the government's involvement in the same. It often is tied with conservative or nonsecular politics (inextricably so in the US, less so elsewhere), but that does not define it.

India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social inequality. Whilst people disagree about the intentions and/or impact; we have plenty of policies trying to break down this inequality. We're also more on the socialist side of the capitalist-socialist spectrum (the constitution, for example, explicitly calls India socialist).

As far as cross-party agreement on government "interference" in equality is concerned, India has it much more than the US AFAICT. Whether this makes the main parties left-wing; I don't know, but it's not clearly right-wing. Then again, Wikipedia seems to call the BJP right-wing.

.... terminology sucks.

(IMO this dichotomy isn't particularly useful in India.)

<comment><USER3> > India's government is pretty heavily involved in trying to break down social > inequality.

Is the current BJP administration trying to do that, or is that the long-term trend? Also, is the BJP trying to help the Muslim minority or only Hindus?

<comment><USER5> It's a long term trend.

As far as the Muslim minority is concerned, there haven't been any changes in law that I am aware of regarding them (besides, India has a bunch of laws that make it hard to remove laws pertaining to minorities without involvement from minority leaders. Or something like that).

There probably have been internal policy changes. I don't know. One would expect them to focus on fixing "Hindu rights" issues over Muslim rights, sadly. I'm not sure what they have done so far in that direction (and there's a lot of debate over this right now; whether or not the atmosphere in the country has changed due to them). I'd rather not get into that debate here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am an Indian. I don't care about the portrayal of India in a story such as this - I care that these things still happen.

I am also tremendously proud that I am born in the same country as these badass women.

</comment><comment><USER7> The problem with India is that no stereotype really exists. For every truth, the opposite is also true. I wonder why the NY Times, the BBC etc.. focus so much on the negative. Does the idea of India go synonymously with poverty for them?

Yes. India has enormous challenges. But the fact remains that hundreds of millions of people have come out of poverty in just 25 years.

It's time the narrative changes.

<comment><USER8> It's true of any country. Positive news doesn't get too many people's attention. If you listened to Democracy Now! every single day, you'd think the USA was a fascist state. This is not to disparage either Democracy Now! or say that the US doesn't have problems. The point is to look at a broad variety of sources and try to eliminate selection bias from your own news consumption.

<comment><USER9> Democracy Now! has a mission of focusing on issues that should be fixed. There are plenty of outlets to get feel-good journalism and I must say that I get a powerful sense that many people are working hard to fix the issues that face the United States, rather than just an enumeration of its faults and deficiencies. It's nice to listen to educated and knowledgeable people make forceful arguments about problems and solutions, and it lends a sense of forward progress, even if that progress is minimized or difficult in the face of the status quo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The statistic that stood out for me was the drop in the fraction of labor that are women. This is also true for China in the last couple of decades, admittedly from a much higher level.

Anecdotally, I hear from business people in India that hiring is very tough at all levels and there are simply not enough qualified people available. How does that square with declining participation of women? Perhaps the increased wealth is making all of the labor in the lower rung drop out of bad jobs? Is this statistic reliable to begin with?

This wasn't really a focus of this article but I wish it was.

<comment><USER11> Is it supposed to be the percentage of women in the workforce or the percentage of the workforce that are women?

<comment><USER10> Good point. It's the fraction of women that are in the labor force - [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please realize that this article is not fundamentally about India, nor just about the plight of rural women there. It is about injustice, and the aspiration to improve yourself, and the obstacles that prevent that. The kind of taboos that were enforced against these women can be found in all traditional cultures, from the rural South in the US today to many Catholic developing world countries.

All of us should be grateful that we were not raised in an environment where we were told not to do untraditional things, with the warning backed up by the threat of violence.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article is intellectually dishonest. It tries to subtly weave this narrative as causal to the declining participation of women in the workforce.

This is data fudging of massive proportions. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the participation of women is decreasing because of worsening social conditions for women. The social conditions for women have definitely become better over the last decades. The declining percentage of women in the workforce could be a result of a hundred other factors even if we assume that data is correct which I would be rather skeptical of.

<comment><USER14> Maybe it's just that the life has been so terrible in India a while ago that women were just forced to work regardless of the cultural norms, and now when it got better, these norms kicked in?

<comment><USER13> Life is still terrible for a lot of people - it is terrible for all poor people - it is terrible for all poor men and women - and it is terrible for all kinds of poor people.

But that still doesn't take away the fact that India is changing dramatically for the better for everyone including men and women and lower castes and what not, and the pace of change is accelerating. But no matter how much it changes, some of these stories will be there even decades from now.

The only reason reporting such a story makes sense is when it is indicative of a larger trend and when the writer chose to link it to the dubious statistic, she gave her intent away.

What the author needs to do is to dig deeper into the statistic, how is that collected, what is the segmentation and then align that research with broader economic and social trends to get a true picture. Only after all of this is done that she can take pick an anecdotal case and use that to better articulate her findings.

That research which changes everything wasn't done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am not sure what's going on at NY Times. They seem to write a lot of articles focusing on negative things about India. In a country as large as India, you can always find something exceptional. This article about Indian women is as much a news to me as it is to anyone else. From the place where I come from, I don't know of any woman who doesn't work because of some family/societal pressure. That doesn't mean that there are no other issues, but a balanced narrative would have been nice.

Examples:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/the-right-wing- att...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/the-right-wing-attack-on- indias-universities.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/suicide-on-an- indi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/opinion/suicide-on-an-indian- campus.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/insider/we-will-not- apolog...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/insider/we-will-not-apologize- encountering-the-defiant-women-of-india.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/opinion/indias-move- agains...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/opinion/indias-move-against-the- poor.html)

<comment><USER16> Actually, the real question should be what's going on in India. Your personal anecdote about not knowing women who don't work due to family pressures is ridiculously easily contradicted by the actual statistics.

But here's a personal anecdote as well. My father's company had a female worker quit after she was promoted to basically being 2nd in charge from a fairly low position in HR (she's really brilliant) because her family insisted she had to have a child, and once she did they insisted she quit the job (she was offered 6 months maternity leave, as well as the ability to work from home. Her family was against it). He's also seen 2 other women have to quit their jobs because of family pressures in the past 2 years. So he's seen more women quit work in the past 2 years because of family pressures than the entire 2 decades he was running the company prior to these 2 years. And this is in Mumbai, not a distant rural village.

Everytime someone writes/says something negative about India the first (and often, the only) response is to whine about the messenger instead of actually doing something about the issue at hand. After we do nothing to actually fix the issues, we wonder why people keep writing about all the issues India has.

<comment><USER17> I had a look through New York Times on India (note: I have no connections with India, it was in response to a poster's comment about prejudice toward India and its subsequent brash dismissal that caught my attention).

Many of the articles on India are negative. However, bad news sells. So, I wouldn't have expected anything different. There were some general non- negative articles (Whales dying on shores, LGBT laws gaining momentum). There was an absence of positive articles about India from a quick search.

By contrast, I looked at Australia in the New York Times. Most of the articles were on sport and bushfires, so, there's definitely a different focus and attitude. Australia seems to be social events, India social unrest and injustices.

I consider the New York Times to be prejudiced at times though. However, the article in question was well written, despite a lack of explanation of why there are less women in the Indian workforce than there were in the past. One example of NYT prejudice I remember was about Australia's first female PM, Julia Gillard. The NYT described Australians (collectively) as misogynistic because we dared to criticise a female Prime Minister about her looks. I searched at the time and found ONE media reference to a criticism from Germaine Greer - a prominent feminist - about Gillard's fat ass (I saw 'ditch the witch' after this article). I contrasted this to other PMs: John Howard in a bondage pose with his nose up George Bush's ass among many personal attacks on him (conveniently ignored), tony Abbott in his budgie smugglers and exaggerated lips, etc. The NYT must have had very big blinkers (or my prejudice comment holds).

The reality is that India does bad things AND the media is very prejudiced. I think the dismissal of prejudice in the media is dangerous.

Maybe, a letter to NYT suggesting some positive things in India may help raise awareness.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious what positive articles do people think the NYTimes could carry about India? Keep in mind that being a US based newspaper, human interest stories about positive contributions by individuals outside the US are very unlikely to make it into a US based paper. What usually works is a wide systematic positive story, often through the lens of a few individuals.

When India was growing rapidly, and basically created a massive new middle class in the 90s on opening its borders, the NYTimes had a lot of positive stuff to say (Friedman, of The World is Flat fame, was one of the biggest promoters of India). This was a massive positive systematic change, that was covered widely.

But since then what positive systematic changes does India present that would be useful for an audience halfway across the world to know? There are a ton of individuals doing amazing work in India (and note, even this article focuses on the strength and bravery of individuals who fought the system) Indian institutions are famously terrible, and are getting worse. Frankly, the only possible positive stories that you could do about India that come to mind are the rapid rise of solar energy (however, all of that is in the planning stage at the moment...we need to see how it materializes). That's pretty much all I can think of.

Frankly, India doesn't help itself by screwing up situations we could have used to build a better image. You bring up Australia and sports. China did the Olympics, and it was an amazing spectacle. It truly changed people's perspectives of what China was capable. India had an opportunity to do something similar with the Commonwealth games (although that would understandably be ignored by the US media anyways)and that was a massive disaster which only served to emphasize how terrible and corrupt our institutions are.

Edit: I think the NYTimes could do a really great positive (and relevant to the US) article on the Indian Electoral Commission. They basically moderate the elections, and have done a really great job in ensuring largely free and fair elections in a chaotic country which is otherwise awash with corrupt institutions. It's actually pretty amazing that India has maintained and strengthened democracy in the past ~70 years, and the EC has a huge role to play in that.

<comment><USER18> India has 7-8 major languages (and many minor ones), a couple major religions, culture variations, and lots of people.

Has a lot of problems no doubt, but it is amazing they can keep the country together and make it work. Plenty of countries with only two languages that have internal strife.

<comment><USER19> I have no intention of defending the NY Times or the person you are replying to. I have a general question. Why is it necessarily good that the country is kept together? Would India be better off if, e.g., partition had not happened?

<comment><USER18> I guess it depends if you think the country is more powerful together and in the end the avg Indian is better off.

Yes, some might argue that separate states would be better.Of course some might argue "true India" is India+Pakistan & Bangladesh.

I would like to hear some Indians say what they think in response to your question.

<comment><USER20> India and world would've been better off without partition. It has only created regional instability. The government could do a lot better, I mean there are still many archaic laws, from before India got freedom, in the constitution. Overall India seems to be on better track even though the progress is slow. Amount of educated youth is also rising. Corruption is declining as a result of media coverage. There is a lot of room to improve, but the fundamentals look good.

Because of partition part of british india was turned into Pakistan. Pakistani civilians do not hold any grudge against Indians is my general opinion. Its their Army and ISI that does not like peace for very silly reasons. I do not get what they are trying to achieve. I hope they'll clean up the mess they have created and finally become a good, democratic and progressive country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article is written to be a fantastic Bollywood movie. One that could potentially have a huge impact. Indian pop culture wields tremendous power, how about they use it more often?! Hollywood does this on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This story is heartbreaking. Who is looking out for these downtrodden women? Who is looking out for their rights? It is admirable how these women continue to fight and have hope despite their problems.

</comment><comment><USER22> A nation of 1.3 billion psychopaths [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating- map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Title stereotypes Indian women. Title should have been more specific like the story and mentioned Geeta or her village.

<comment><USER24> It's just a title.. and most titles on HN are taken verbatim from the source's title. Its rare for it to be edited and I see no reason here for it to be changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Usual NYT hitjob painting Indian pagan/heathens as horrible people. Somehow NYT links this to BJP which is barely in power for last 2 years.

<comment><USER26> Usual Sanghi response of denial, deflection, and ad hom. The BJP isn't even mentioned; In fact, the most senior governmental figure mentioned is a former village chief and a Muslim.</comment></comment>


How Religion Destroys Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/07/08/how-religion-destroys-programmers

<comment><USER2> One of the advantages of being a cynic and a pessimist is that I don't go in for these religious attachments to technology, since I know (think) that it's _all_ crap. Just some is more crap than others.

<comment><USER3> A great way to become a cynic and pessimist about programming is to get a computer engineering degree. Once you understand computers at the gate & flip- flop level, you realize that most of what people argue about on the Internet is window dressing.

<comment><USER4> Clearly, then, you're not a true cynic until you understand how transistors work at the quantum level...

<comment><USER5> Weird, I got an engineering degree, learnt about gates and flip-flops and transistors at the quantum level and still think discussions about tools have merit. Just because there are levels below the one you're using doesn't mean you shouldn't use it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I may float the counter argument:

Sometimes the only way to beat analysis paralysis is to pick something, anything, and then pursue it with religious zeal. (Sometimes even to the point of excluding something you find out later would have been a much better choice)

I can definitely get behind the idea that you shouldn't be an unpleasant bigot about it, but a little dedication doesn't hurt. Its better than "Gandalfing" the merits of this or that technology for longer than it takes to just pick something and get it done.

<comment><USER5> > Sometimes the only way to beat analysis paralysis is to pick something, > anything

Sure.

> and then pursue it with religious zeal.

This does not follow. You can pick something while still being fully aware that you just picked it "because you had to", rather than delude yourself into thinking you picked it because it was the absolute best.

<comment><USER6> I'd rather use the perl project of the guy who _loves_ perl than the project of the guy who chose it "because he had to". Not sure if I'd want him as a coworker though...

<comment><USER7> Why? It is quite possible that "because he had to" guy will produce more readable code. There is no reason to care about developers personal relationship with whatever technology.

Important question is whether he is able to produce functional, readable, well-designed code in acceptable speed. In case of projects under time pressure, the important question is whether the developer can do reasonable trade-offs between those expectations (eg. sacrifice the right one).

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I want the person who hates the language; they're not going to write their code with all the 'neat' things Perl has, so it comes out looking like someone banged their head against the keyboard a few times, or as poetry (Black Perl). They may not write idiomatic Perl (if such a thing exists), but I bet I can follow it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like to look at technology stacks by thinking about what problems I'd like to deal with on a daily basis. You'll encounter different issues in a Java/Hibernate/Oracle environment compared to a Perl/Postgres environment or a pure C# environment. They all have their share of problems (though some more than others, like PHP), and it is possible to write great software with all of them.

<comment><USER10> Hear hear!

Let me take the example PHP, since you mentioned it and I don't know enough to have an opinion.

PHP is generally claimed to suck badly. But even I can see that the "haters" on HN generally don't know/discuss the existing PHP frameworks and methods.

If I would look at PHP to evaluate it for a project, I'd look at if it seems fun to use (really important!) -- and if it would be usable with good coding standards and modern frameworks.

The bad things people talk about PHP (bad cruft in naming of methods, kludgy parts) are not relevant _if_ it takes a few hours/days to learn that -- and _if_ a good coding standard can limit yourself to a subset of the language. You need to do that for all languages anyway. (See JavaScript.)

But: One big red flag would be if the language proponents are language war fanatics that vote down criticism of their language/framework while attacking all competition. You probably know which ones I talk about.

<comment><USER11> > The bad things people talk about PHP (bad cruft in naming of methods, kludgy > parts) are not relevant if it takes a few hours/days to learn that -- and if > a good coding standard can limit yourself to a subset of the language. You > need to do that for all languages anyway. (See JavaScript.)

Javascript is by no means a good language. I think "needs a coding standard and a few hours/days to learn which parts to avoid" is a point against a language - not necessarily reason to rule it out entirely, but a mark in the negative column. There are plenty of languages where this need for a standard doesn't seem to arise, because the obvious way to do things is good enough (e.g. Python).

> But: One big red flag would be if the language proponents are language war > fanatics that vote down criticism of their language/framework while > attacking all competition. You probably know which ones I talk about.

That's a terrible reason to make any decision. It reminds me of the guy who wouldn't listen to U2 because he didn't like their fans. If you avoid languages that're used by idiots you'll find yourself on a treadmill where you're constantly moving from incomplete language to incomplete language, because as soon as a language gets good enough, idiots will find it and use it.

<comment><USER10> >>Javascript is by no means a good language

My point was that you have to compare the practical _use cases_ , that is "the good parts" of a language/framework -- not the bad cruft you can avoid. A few hours investment is nothing. (JS still has problems, many are being solved.)

This is trivial of course, but strangely ignored by many on HN with an IQ that probably is the sum of our two's...

>>If you avoid languages that're used by idiots

I wrote that I am suspicious of environments used by language war _cultists_ , intelligence is orthogonal.

(A typical example is someone that starts recommending his favorite environment even when it isn't discussed, as suitable for everything just by its std use cases... Like you :-) )

Edit: Absolutely agree, mercurial.

<comment><USER9> I think there is a point to be made for avoiding an ecosystem (without necessarily using a loaded word) due to a perception of low quality of available libraries. This has certainly happened to me in the past.

On the other hand, some stacks, I feel, do help with writing better code. But don't fool yourself that there is a silver bullet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Programming religion is a reflection of the relative inexperience and youth of the average programmer. (At least the average programmer posting on message boards, blogs and mailing lists)

I've been doing IT professionally for 15 years now (how did that happen, I'm old!), and I've been an computer nut for about 25. I think as you grow professionally, you start to recognize that tools are tools, and the best tools depend on the environment, team and task at hand.

I used a handsaw and miter box to cut some moulding this weekend to finish up a home project. I like using hand tools for small projects, but that doesn't mean that my brother-in-law's professional power miter saw is "bad', or that using a hand-saw at a construction site where time=money to "good".

</comment><comment><USER13> Too be honest, after coding for 20+ years, I'm don't have a particular 'religion', but that probably has more to do with my main bread and butter coming from Coldfusion development.

What I try and be is acutely aware of trends and then try and use them in my spare time or introduce them into my day to day development. So at the moment there is a lot of love out there for Javascript frameworks (AngularJS in particular). I like how it allows your front end to become middleware agnostic.

It's one sexy trend I think is also a lot of fun and gives great results and I'm jumping on board for the next couple of years.

Just remember to try and learn something new everyday :)

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, has ColdFusion turned into what Cobol kind of is, that niche where no one is starting new projects, but a lot of legacy systems still need support, and the price for that support is beaucoup money?

I ask because I actually learned ColdFusion back in the mid to late 90s, but never really did much with it; Perl largely supplanted it in the stuff I was doing, and by the time I entered college, Java supplanted that for web (and actually in industry I'm using a lot of others).

(Not that I want to do that, by any means; I don't have the experience or desire. But curious)

<comment><USER13> Not so much Cobol, but basically the only places that still use it are profitable companies set up in the early 2000's.

There's nothing wrong with it (although a lot of the time I end up writing Java as CF now compiles to it).

It just doesn't have the user base out there and most companies did the right thing and bit the bullet and migrated to "a nother" technology. In the UK this usually meant .Net

Currently I'm of the impression that we'll end shifting to Python or Java however there is a _huge_ legacy set of code to overcome first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To me as a language pluralist, none of this particularly sounds like anything new.

My initial programming training was FORTRAN (in 2006!) and I then "taught myself" C++ (I didn't know _anything_ about C++ by the end of it), wrote a ruby-on-rails "site" for a friend, and then got a job writing C# and MS SQL, where I wound up actually writing a lot of Actionscript 2.

This was all while I was still learning about new programming concepts, e.g. I was using lambdas/anonymous functions in Actionscript before I knew that there was anything special or difficult about having inline functions as objects. When I finally tried to write a non-trivial program in C, I started to understand the difficulties and trade offs of all the complex, mutable collection types I had been using in higher level languages. and so on.

I say all this, because when you come into programming on that journey (now rounded off with 3 years of Python-and-C/C++-extensions) you don't have time to develop a religion (that lasts any length of time). It becomes apparent that lots of different technologies work in different circumstances, and that each of them shares a lot of ideas, and have some unique features (good or bad).

That said I do have a preference, indeed I posted a language rant last year[1]. I still think homoiconicity is wicked, even if not always useful - and I've not yet ever written something that anyone uses in lisp.

[1] [http://joe-jordan.co.uk/blog/2012/10/one-syntax-to-rule- them...](http://joe-jordan.co.uk/blog/2012/10/one-syntax-to-rule-them-all/)

<comment><USER15> to be honest with you i always find it suspicious when someone can only program one or two languages. either he doesn't want to or he's not capable of.

there used to be a time where all our scientists used to be philosophs with a lot of proficiency in a lot of different domains. that's not even too far back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> See: maximizing vs satisficing

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2006/02/18/maximizers- satisficers...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2006/02/18/maximizers-satisficers- and-programming-languages/)

</comment><comment><USER17> TempleOS would beg to differ.

<comment><USER18> One of my fun daydreams is that TempleOS begins to attract followers and becomes a new religious movement of hard core assembly language programmers seeking the SOURCE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> SimpleProgrammer, another site that brings up a box blocking all content ,SUBSCRIBE NOW = Instant Close site

</comment><comment><USER20> Fully agree. At the end of the day, what matters is delivering a product that works to satisfy a purpose.

The customer couldn't care less what gets used to develop the product.

Technology religion only serves to sell training stuff, fill conferences and entertain ourselves in flame wars.

</comment><comment><USER21> "The problem with this self-imposed religion is that our technological religion blinds us from the truth."

No. The problem is that this self-imposed religion blinds us from the fact that there is no "truth".

</comment><comment><USER22> Religious wars are also counterproductive, because they tend to give too much power to the MBA-culture conquistadores who really don't belong in technology, but end up ruling it because engineers are so fractious.

When we have the Scala and Python and Lisp crowds all slugging each other over minor differences in the languages, it generates background FUD in the same way that mechanical collisions create waste heat. Then the MBA-culture colonizers get overloaded thanks to all these disparate overblown accounts of each language's deficiencies, but since they construe their job as Making Decisions, they feel a need to Say Something and make everyone use Java, because it's "the standard". Now there's no Scala and no Python and no Lisp for anyone (at least, at that company).

Religious wars actually lead us to mediocrity, because business people get to make the decisions when we become so fractious.

</comment><comment><USER23> Slightly off-topic, but would anyone recommend Sonmez's Pluralsight videos - Java Fundamentals in particular?

</comment><comment><USER24> There is no best, only design decisions.

<comment><USER25> Relative to a specific purpose, one design decision is often better than another. But something doesn't need to be best to be good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How not following certain direction "destroys" programmer? It is like saying muslims should try to be christians for a year or two.

For example I am Java guy (or more precisely JVM guy), it satisfy all my needs. There are new innovative languages, IDEs, databases, concurrency libraries here... It would take multiple lifetimes just to explore small fractions of that.

It takes years to get efficient at some platform. Other technology also means changing working habits, libraries, IDE, debugging style...

I know C++, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Erlang etc are not for me. Not based on some 'religious' arguments, but because I actually investigated it or worked with it at some point.

\- C++ language is horrible, there is small island around QT, but most code out there is mess. Not much has changed since my school

\- PHP has reasonable runtime, but code culture is atrocious.

\- Ruby has horrible runtime, horrible community and code culture even worse than PHP

\- JavaScript has not changed much since 1999. Sure there is JQuery and HTML5, but it still sucks.

\- Erlang is interesting, but too alien. Plus it is not usable outside of very narrow specialization.

<comment><USER27> I too cannot tell if this is serious -- but the idea that members of religion X enlighten themselves by learning about religion Y is a very interesting one. Perhaps that would go a long way towards solving the massive amounts of religious intolerance and misunderstanding (as well as FUD, which empowers leaders at the expense of followers) that we have to deal with today.

<comment><USER8> Depends what is meant.

In terms of try, as in, convert, no, for obvious reasons.

If you mean observe, learn from, and attempt to find common ground, obviously. Attend services of religions you don't agree with, in a spirit of curiosity, see what practices you can borrow. I mean, the Catholic Thomas Merton found inspiration in Zen Buddhism, and he found the Zen practices, detached from the Buddhist beliefs, worthwhile.

<comment><USER27> Yes, obviously.

However, just to avoid any ambiguity, I've edited to try and clarify what I meant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>