Ex-Mozilla CTO: I was grilled for three hours at US airport by border cops - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/02/us_border_patrol_search_demand_mozilla_cto/ <comment><USER2> Some discussion from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558161)

See also Andreas Gal's blog post [https://medium.com/@andreasgal/no-one- should-have-to-travel-...](https://medium.com/@andreasgal/no-one-should-have- to-travel-in-fear-b2bff4c460e5) , the ACLU's press release [https://www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-files-complaint- department-...](https://www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-files-complaint-department- homeland-security-over-unwarranted-interrogation-and-attempted) , and the ACLU's formal complaint [https://www.aclunc.org/docs/ACLU- NC_2019-03-28_Letter_re._El...](https://www.aclunc.org/docs/ACLU- NC_2019-03-28_Letter_re._Electronic_Device_Search_SFO.pdf) .

</comment><comment><USER3> Quick reminder: US citizens have an absolute right to reenter the country. Customs can temporarily detain you, but they cannot refuse entry. Any threat, whether implied or stated, that they will hold you until you unlock your device is not real. They _can_ hold your stuff indefinitely, so be prepared to lose it if you go this route, but never unlock your device based on the idea that it's the only way to go free.

Non-citizens are in a totally different boat. You can be denied entry for any reason whatsoever. Tread carefully....

<comment><USER4> Quick reminder: Non US citizens only go to conferences outside the US. There is no excuse we should put up with this. Canada and EU are much better locations for this reason alone.

<comment><USER5> Not much better in Canada: [https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea- ends-case-t...](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/guilty-plea-ends-case- that-pitted-cellphone-privacy-rights-against-border-security-powers)

<comment><USER6> And also Australia and the UK:

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-08/if-a-border-agent- dem...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-08/if-a-border-agent-demands- access-to-your-digital-device/10350762)

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to- gi...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/traveler-who-refused-to-give-device- passwords-to-police-found-guilty-of-obstruction-in-uk-court/)

It seems to be mostly a Five Eyes thing.

<comment><USER7> It scares me the number of people who think that the US is in some uniquely bad place for some issue, not because of "whataboutism" but because of the blindness it can entail and skewed perceptions of all sides. No, it's not a dystopia in the US, but a wonderland paradise everywhere else. There's plenty of places that treat various people badly.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I'm European and it astonishes me how a wall at the border is so divisive, with some even calling it un-American, and in the EU there are essentially no legal ways for refugees to enter at all (we've made it practically impossible to fly) and children die by the boat loads in the Mediterranean, yet we Europeans think we are in a position to judge the US.

Astonishing is the word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _"...he clammed up, taking the Fifth, and citing constitutional rights against unwarranted searches.

...border agents told him he had no constitutional nor any legal protections, and threatened him with criminal charges should he not concede to the search.

...he was eventually allowed to leave with his belongings, the devices still locked, and no charges were pressed."_

My goodness! I guess those protections did exit after all! :)

Guidelines:

-Goons can lie to you all they want. Never budge.

-Politely refuse, and remain cordial. Stay strong mentally.

-Make sure your devices are turned off prior to even leaving for the airport.

 _This is the sick reality we live in._

<comment><USER10> Border agents may lie about your rights? Is there no Miranda equivalent for this type of detainment?

<comment><USER11> There is not.

Customs and Border Patrol operate under a special set of circumstances within ports of entry. You do not have the right to have an attorney present during the interrogation, you can have your personal belongings confiscated, you can be held without charge for up to four hours for any "reasonable" suspicion.

These same rules apply within one hundred miles of the United States border. So if you live near the any ocean, Great Lakes, the Mexican border or Canadian border, you live under a different set of rights than the rest of America.

<comment><USER12> > [100-mile] border zone is home to 65.3 percent of the entire U.S. > population, and around 75 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population

<comment><USER13> this ACLU article shows exactly this [https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border- zone](https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Traveling internationally with encrypted data you don't want to disclose to border officials is not a good plan these days. Much safer to transfer securely via network connection.

It's easy to single out the US but the reality is that most countries have pretty far reaching rules these days. E.g. the UK and Australia are hardly any safer. And forget about China, Russia, or indeed most countries with even less democratic regimes.

The bottom line is that if you are not willing to unlock your device at any of the security checkpoints you will pass on your journey, you should leave it at home or just wipe it preemptively and restore over a secure connection after you arrive. In case it does get unlocked or taken from you, consider the device burned. It may come back to you with all sorts of malware. The people doing this are not thinking you are a terrorist or a child pornographer: you are being targeted and under attack by a hostile entity. Assuming otherwise would be a mistake. Wipe it, sell it on e-bay, never use it again.

<comment><USER15> Transfering via network is only secure, if you believe that forward security exists for network traffic, which is very likely untrue.

The point being: if your encrypted network traffic is captured and retained, maybe it can still be brute forced at liesure, and deduplicated for deltas only. Thus, volume is only a temporary issue, and everyone still gets to see everything eventually, and full retrospective records are still enriched, so maybe that's fine for some things, and not for others.

<comment><USER14> This is true regardless of whether you travel internationally. The converse is true as well: traveling internationally does not make it less secure to exchange information. Either way, we are well into tin foil hat territory here but if you do believe this, stop using (networked) computers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This assumes that he was not picked by random but instead there is some sort of list of people to check at airports that you can be put on because of your work within IT-security.

That would be a big story if that is the case.

I will offer a counter-narrative which is more in line with my own experience (from other places than the US):

The people who work at border control in particular in airports are bored.

They are also overstaffed and given extreme discretion over the people they patrol; most of whom are non-citizen and thus have basically no rights at all.

This leads to them doing work for the sake of showing they work, overreacting to the least of resistance and maybe even some games of entertainment.

<comment><USER17> They're likely not stupid enough to have a "list". They have a set of factors and probably tally up some sort of score and search everyone above X. It just so happens that anyone they wanted to put on the list will score X or above. Doing IT security probably gets you a pretty high score just by itself. Add in the fact that he was originally from Eastern Europe and there you are.

I will definitely agree bored cops looking for stuff to do cause a lot of problems.

<comment><USER18> They literally have a list [0]

[0] [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/u-s- officials-m...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/u-s-officials- made-list-reporters-lawyers-activists-question-border-n980301)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was once randomly selected for screening at Chicago Midway, that quickly became shockingly specific: "Do you know that professor at DePaul that teaches Python?" "Do you mean Massimo Di Pierro?" "Yeah, I think that was his name." "I've met him a few times..." At this point it all seems very surreal. "He was through here a few weeks ago and had stickers on his laptop that were like yours." Ooooh...

<comment><USER20> Haha that is a name I have not seen in a while! I was a student of his at DePaul. Great guy! Massimo is awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm hoping that manufactures will start building a plausible deniability user profile you can log into while leaving your actual profile encrypted, appearing to be slack space.

This kind of thuggery seems to be getting more common.

<comment><USER22> Keep data off your devices during travel, and download it once you're safe. If corporate, require external activation by someone from the company before the contents of your device are restored. That way you cannot be forced to divulge any company trade secrets, because you simply don't have access to them while you're crossing the border.

<comment><USER23> So what if you are asked if your device is in its normal state or whether you deleted any data from your device before travelling?

Lying in that situation would seem like a very bad idea (I'm not a US national) - I've had a few uncomfortable experiences over the years entering the US and I certainly wouldn't want to do anything that would give cause to escalate things on their side.

<comment><USER22> You can be as honest as you like. Or just say you don't take data with you when you travel. For security reasons. If it's work related, this is trivial to justify: company policy, trade secrets shouldn't fall in the wrong hands, etc. And even if private, phone theft and identity theft are serious concerns.

<comment><USER23> OK and engaging full blown paranoia mode: What if they ask me to log into gmail and Office 365 (I use both) so they can see what I was trying to hide?

<comment><USER24> > OK and engaging full blown paranoia mode: What if they ask me to log into > gmail and Office 365 ...

Doesn't sound _that_ paranoid to me: wasn't there talk already a year ago about trying to force people to log into social media accounts when crossing the border?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Gal said the agents did take away his Global Entry pass, which allows > express entry through customs, as punishment for not complying with their > demands.

I wonder about the legality of the CBP punitively confiscating his Global Entry pass.

<comment><USER26> In addition to that, I also wonder what punishments they can mete out to people who happen to not be high-level Apple employees with a network of powerful people who can advocate on his behalf.

<comment><USER27> Or more likely, the success rate of threats. I suspect it's high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The message it sends to me is, never visit America. I appreciate horrible things likely happen in my own country, but this is just disgusting.

<comment><USER29> Or simply just leave yours at home, buy a burner phone on arrival.

<comment><USER30> There's a cost to doing that. I guess it depends just how badly you need to travel to the US, but as a Canadian citizen, I see no reason to endanger myself or my family by traveling there at the current time. Walt Disney World will still be there in 2021.

<comment><USER31> > Walt Disney World will still be there in 2021

Border policy won't change by 2021 either, at least not for the better.

<comment><USER32> Hey we could still see a sea change at the US federal level of either progressive or adherent libertarian representatives that curtail the fear / police / surveillance state in the 2020 election.

Its about as likely as bitcoin taking over the world economy, but hey we all have to cling to false hope sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The process is the punishment, and they know it. The current state is as exactly predicted by those of us who were against creating the TSA in the first place.

<comment><USER34> Seriously. When traveling with my pregnant wife we realized that we weren't sure the scanners were safe for pregnant women, so we asked for a pat down.

She was in tears by the end of the experience.

We have both received many pat downs in Chinese airports that didn't bother either of us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'll never forget how I was strip searched coming back from Costa Rica. They went through every photo in my digital camera, ripped open all of my packaged food items, made little snide remarks to me, and ultimately made me miss my connecting flight. The whole time I was fully cooperative.

Only explanation I have for the level of examination is maybe because I was a young minority returning from a random latin american country solo(?)

</comment><comment><USER36> Even as a US citizen, at this point, it is my policy to never leave the country with a device & set of data that I wouldn't mind losing at customs.

Even though I have an essentially absolute right to re-enter the country, my hardware apparently does not, at least without potentially being detained for an extended period.

So, burner phone and pre-wiped laptop if I need it, all powered down. If I need any files while away, store them in a secure Box or other account before crossing borders.

At this point, it seems like just a necessary evil extra expense in time and money, and a good idea for other countries, although it sadly seems that the US is now the fast follower of Russia, China, etc, in terms of repressive practices.

</comment><comment><USER37> If you're being investigated, and they have emails sent to a domain you own (for example), then search your device, but you've given them a burner device with no reference to that email account, would that be considered 'hiding' evidence?

</comment><comment><USER38> It was my understanding that 5-th amendment protections against unreasonable searches are suspended at the border. That would certainly include customs at the airport.

So, in a strict legal sense, demanding to unlock a device does not violate the 5th.

<comment><USER39> the ACLU complaint is based on the 4th amendment right against unreasonable search. He demanded to speak to his lawyer and was thereafter allowed to leave, so his 5th amendment rights were not actually abridged. That's how the 5th amendment works, and it worked at the border.

[https://www.aclunc.org/docs/ACLU- NC_2019-03-28_Letter_re._El...](https://www.aclunc.org/docs/ACLU- NC_2019-03-28_Letter_re._Electronic_Device_Search_SFO.pdf)

> CBP must ensure that its officers comply with the U.S. Constitution. Even at > the border, the search of an electronic device is governed by the Fourth > Amendment. To satisfy Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court law concerning > electronic searches, any such search should be based on a warrant and be > limited in scope to information relevant to the agency's legitimate purpose > in conducting the search. The attempted unconstitutional search of Dr. Gal's > devices illustrates that CBP's policies do not in fact include the > requirements necessary to safeguard the constitutional rights of people at > the border

<comment><USER40> Right, he meant to say that 4th amendment protections are suspended at the border, and, while you might quibble with that wording, it's a valid point: border searches usually don't require a warrant, owing to the border search exception, which has precedent going all the way back to the founders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Something relevant from the creator of cock.li [https://vc.gg/blog/so-its- been-a-while.html](https://vc.gg/blog/so-its-been-a-while.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> Abuse of power, indeed -- but he should have let Apple's lawyers sort out the proprietary device access issue after the fact. Pretty sure as Google employees the advice to us is to cooperate fully and then make sure lawyers know about it later. It's not worth compromising your own security and freedom on behalf of a corporation.

<comment><USER43> FWIW, that's exactly what Apple tells us:

> If a Customs agent asks you to power up the laptop and access content with > your passwords, please comply with this request. [...] Travelers should > notify their supervisor and corporate security at their first opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> speaking as an american, even on domestic flights it doesnt get any easier. I was once detained 45 minutes by the TSA for a laptop with a missing DVD drive. i bought it without the drive from a pawn shop to learn Arch linux on, and kept it because it was fast. I refused to unlock it.

since the RealID act was passed, and im too lazy to wait at the DMV for a compliant license, I just take my passport with me for ID on domestic flights. This once cost me 30 minutes with the TSA, again, explaining why I was using a passport for a domestic flight. I refused search, refused to cooperate, and was let on the plane.

security theater was fun 15 years ago but this shit show has gotten a little old. the oxycodone epidemic kills more americans than terrorism. Hell, lightning kills more americans than Al Qaeda.

shoes and belts off, shuffling through the checkpoints like juden at dachau, is degrading.

</comment><comment><USER45> Original source: [https://medium.com/@andreasgal/no-one-should-have-to- travel-...](https://medium.com/@andreasgal/no-one-should-have-to-travel-in- fear-b2bff4c460e5)

</comment><comment><USER46> If another country were plan well, they could create opportunities that would attract and welcome the smart people from the US and elsewhere. If they made it economically attractive to tech businesses, they could set themselves up as a dominant leader of the world within 20-30 years, regardless of their current size.

I don't know enough about Estonia to suggest they would try this, but they do seem progressive in this regard. I would vote for Netherlands, Belgium, or Portugal just because I like being in those countries.

<comment><USER47> That's not actually realistic, for the exact same reason why China is such a juggernaut in tech while having almost no human rights. If it worked the way you're implying, China wouldn't be able to do what it's doing in tech at all.

Things like this don't even remotely threaten US dominance in tech, because: 1) the US allows _a lot_ of legal immigration; 2) US tech wages are far beyond anything you can make in those other locations 3) the US as a singular integrated market that is the world's largest economy, makes it impossible to compete with unless you're China, due to inherent scaling benefits 4) nowhere other than China has the capital markets to support competing with the US start-up scene properly and 5) the actual context - Andreas was let go after three hours, with his devices - isn't close to being bad enough to matter, in fact it barely registers these days (increasingly the era of domestic surveillence and censorship all around the world, from the UK to South Korea) as a very mild inconvenience on human rights, and doesn't impact ~99.999% of travelers to the US.

US dominance in tech - outside of China - has only increased since 9/11, not decreased. That's despite non-stop issues of this sort, the Patriot Act, NSA spying, and so on. A rogue border search, or a hundred of them, won't dent that. That's the reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is why i'm so excited for the Librem smartphone. If i'm in complete control of the operating system, I can put measures in place to combat this. For example, a function that requires a password whenever the phone leaves a certain location (so if the police confiscate my phone, i'm sure it's locked).

Or maybe a function that you can activate that makes the phone appear bricked until the power button is pushed 20 times in a row. You could activate this before going through customs.

<comment><USER48> Lying to law enforcement is illegal, so subterfuges like that are perilous in their own way.

<comment><USER34> Would it perilous if you just plead the fifth? If you knowingly state that you don't know how to turn the phone back on, then it's a lie, but if you just plead the 5th?

Also, why is it legal for them to lie to me when I can't lie to them?

<comment><USER49> It's not that it's legal, is that you have no way to hold them to account when they do.

<comment><USER50> "It's not that it's legal" Unless this somehow escapes qualified immunity, it's legal for them to lie.

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

Also you may have no way to gather your own evidence anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Lets say he was flagged because of being vocal against the current administration; how do you think the incentive structure works for something like this to be executed? The president says I don't like my critics. The person heading the CBP thinks they can get promoted if they show results on harassing critics. So they push that down as a goal...and somewhere a few weeks later agents on the ground actually take this up as a task to execute. Is that a realistic understanding?

</comment><comment><USER52> It would be nice if phone and laptops had removable batteries, so we literally could not turn them on until we got to our destination and buy a new battery.

<comment><USER53> I would worry the resources of the US government may extend to spare batteries

<comment><USER52> Forcing you to unlock a laptop or phone that doesnt have a battery would fall under a different legal precedent.

<comment><USER53> A forensic search would require reasonable suspicion. I'm not aware of any legal weight attached to batteries - what's the legal precedent you're thinking of?

<comment><USER52> Having a third party install anything new (i.e. battery) to the device that wasn't present when it was confiscated would put into question the integrity of anything found on the device.

<comment><USER54> Maybe just plug it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If most people told their boss exactly what they thought, they'd get a much worse punishment than a few measly hours of interrogation... At least this guy can go cry in his Mercedes Benz afterwards. It may not be fair but it's not a problem that deserves news coverage IMO. I bet that much worse things have happened today which deserve more attention.

<comment><USER56> You need to change your job. There are better places to work where your boss won't "punish" you.

Also your second argument could be applied to absolutely anything. You can always find something that deserves more attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Knowing what we know it astonishes me that people take devices with anything of value over an international border.

Save everything to the cloud, or use a burner device like a It's not worth the hassle.

(And yes, I've read that this antagonizes border security to a certain extent, if they believe you've done just this.)

</comment><comment><USER58> In my country just refusing to unlock your phone instantly labels you as a terrorist (coup organiser)

We did got past all of those (!)

Ps. I live in Turkey

<comment><USER59> Thanks for the reminder that it can always be worse :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> How do multi-account devices fare under these rules? What if I only have access to account A and not account B?

What if unlocking the device requires a security key that I do not have with me?

My intuition is that they'd still treat that as though I was impeding their search, but I wonder legally if it changes anything.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is a good time to review the guide provided by the EFF:

[https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us- border-2017](https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017)

</comment><comment><USER62> They are also cancelling ESTA for security professionals without warning and the resulting visa application gets stuck in administrative processing for months due to a security flag.

</comment><comment><USER63> I think this would be a good opportunity for Apple's legal department to do something. Maybe help the ACLU with it's case against the Department of Homeland security.

</comment><comment><USER64> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19558161)

</comment><comment><USER65> Perhaps this is very cynical, but shouldn't they also be able to use airport security camera footage to figure out passwords?

</comment><comment><USER66> Honestly this is one of the best use cases for multiple profiles on a device.

They want entrance, just grant it to a sandboxed environment.

</comment><comment><USER67> Chilling, and Kafka-esque. As it happens I'm not convinced that the reason for his being detained had anything to do with him being a Trump critic and Democrat donor, contrary to his claims in the article, but more likely it's some lifeless bureaucrat/computer program or both putting a red flag on his file for some esoteric reason, very possibly connected to his work and writings on online privacy.

The lack of transparency on the reasons for detention are the real problem. Josef K never found out the charge made against him either.

(edit -spelling)

</comment><comment><USER34> Hmmm it's almost as if the land of the free has some sort of social credit score program?

</comment><comment><USER68> I prefer increased crime over dealing with shit like this.

</comment><comment><USER69> I love the creative writing and entitlement that comes through when someone has been wronged.

> Ex-Mozilla CTO

Has no more or less rights than anyone else.

> Techie says he was grilled for three hours

Clearly click bait 'grilled for three hours'. Not questioned but 'grilled'.

> "There I quickly found myself surrounded by three armed agents wearing > bullet proof vests."

So what? Of course they were armed. Of course they had bullet proof vests. The sole purpose of using words like that (by a writer) is to get the goat of anyone reading and have them all up in arms about INJUSTICE of one type or another.

> They started to question me aggressively regarding my trip, my current > employment, and my past work for Mozilla

What do you think? They should act like the concierge at the Four Seasons? Of course they are going to be aggressive. That's law enforcement attitude and there is a purpose for doing so.

> Given the devices were emblazoned with big red stickers reading "PROPERTY OF > APPLE. PROPRIETARY," and he had signed confidentially agreements with > Cupertino, Gal said he asked for permission to call his bosses and/or a > lawyer to see if he would get into trouble by handing over access.

This is total BS. You don't need your bosses agreement when a request is made from Law Enforcement at least not because you signed some NDA etc. Fine that he attempted and asked. But the reason is weak.

> and threatened him with criminal charges should he not concede to the search

Cops are allowed to lie. Not sure what the story is with border agents but possibly the same. That is how they often get info.

> "My past work on encryption and online privacy is well documented, and so is > my disapproval of the Trump administration and my history of significant > campaign contributions to Democratic candidates,"

He is living in fantasy land here if he thinks there is some list of people that are being targeted for that reason. Not that it could happen but highly unlikely. It would take an entire Nixonian operation to pull that off. I think more likely since he came from a former communist state his thinking goes to this type of paranoia.

> Now, Gal has enlisted the help of the ACLU to probe into the brouhaha, and > determine whether his civil rights were violated.

Yes everyone is looking either for more internet fame or a payout. Not sure why he needs to save the world and belabor the issue. Just move on and don't waste time.

> "Furthermore, CBP's policies lack protections for First Amendment rights by > allowing interrogation and device searches that may be based on a traveler's > political beliefs, activism, nation of origin, or identity."

Sounds like typical ACLU behavior for more publicity to aid fund raising (story on 60 Minutes):

[https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/cm_lFZDERHcELSPw2...](https://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/cm_lFZDERHcELSPw2fEioYAgqbNOHU3t/the- chairman-aclu-genetic-revolution/)

ACLU got into high gear over Trump and sends out letters literally trying to raise money (I received one) clearly mentioning in so many words to take Trump down. Not the same organization that it used to be. On the 60 Minutes story iirc a former head of ACLU was interviewed and bothered by the current behavior.

<comment><USER70> He would have been arrested in many other countries, including Canada, NZ, Australia, UK, not to mention the slew of non-democratic countries.

I don't think most of those countries need a reasonable suspicion to demand password nor to do track how often they do it. [https://www.newstatesman.com/law/2013/08/welcome-britain- bor...](https://www.newstatesman.com/law/2013/08/welcome-britain-border- control-officers-can-seize-personal-data-without-reasonable-suspi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> So really,

"Apple employee gets mildly harassed at airport because of proprietary confidentially agreements" with

"A terrible, terrible tragedy, non US-citizen travellers agree" as a byline.

The main thing of interest here would be that maybe Mozilla should employ better hiring practices.

<comment><USER72> Care to explain what you are trying to say?

As you phrased your comment, it is entirely opaque to me what you intend to convey.

<comment><USER71> There seems to be a lot of concern and disdain in this thread about the treatment of a US citizen. The truth however is that non US citizens in the same circumstances can be, for all intents and purposes, "disappeared". If something concerns you as a US citizen, it should be _that_ , not comical mishaps in the security circus happening to semi-famous people.

Also, Gal didn't make any sort of moral stand, he was simply defending his proprietary employer's interest. It's not the most sympathetic story.

So, in the end, the article only left me wondering how people who climb the ladder inside Mozilla, ostensibly an open and free environment, can easily end up at Apple, which revels in closed and proprietary environments. Maybe Mozilla should introduce some of the values they claim to hold into the hiring and promotion process.

Sorry for any confusion.</comment></comment></comment>


Learning to code as a 30-year-old kid with Apple's Swift Playgrounds - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/07/hands-on-with-swift-playgrounds-apples-attempt-to-get-kids-to-code/ <comment><USER2> We play tested this with 10 year olds at the San Francisco Public Library recently and the kids LOVED it -- keep in mind, these were not middle or upper middle class privileged kids, but lower income at risk ones.

The challenge is that after about 45 min of "play" time, they want to 'build' something and create--and Playgrounds doesn't provide the environment to do that. Then, they get bored and feel encumbered.

After working with over 1000 kids in our beta phase, we've tested almost every product on the market.

I personally like Scratch + Learntomod.com which uses Minecraft to teach Javascript and CodeCombat.com (My YC batchmates).

We're soon launching an online course (for a nominal fee) that has progression, milestones, and support for parents who want their kids to 'complete' a project. Message me or check out our beta site if you're interested to in being a beta tester for our online product--would love to hear from you.

<comment><USER3> I think you need to dig deeper into Swift Playgrounds. The iPad user can definitely start their own playground outside of the preprogrammed ones provided by Apple.

In addition, you as a developer can create additional playgrounds in Xcode and transfer them to Swift Playgrounds on the iPad. That means you can give the kids a basic template and allow them to fill in the code. For example, create a template with a couple of pages with the imports already complete and a basic template of empty procedures to get them started.

<comment><USER4> And from watching the WWDC session it seems the playgrounds can have access to the whole iOS SDK, including rather fun stuff like corebluetooth so there is a huge amount of potential in Playgrounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using it since the day the beta came out. I've been an Apple fan for a long time but I think this might be the best thing they've ever done.

It makes programming approachable to nearly anyone on a device that's approachable to anyone that can afford it.

I heard someone on one of the TWiT podcasts talking last week about teaching their 6 and 8 year old to program using it and that they were talking about creating real-life functions to do household tasks IIRC.

</comment><comment><USER6> I must admit I initially thought the idea of this app was a bit silly, but after giving it a try yesterday I believe it is some of the best software developed by Apple in recent years.

I ended up working through about half of the first Learn to Code module and had a great time even as an experienced programmer. Hopefully those new to coding will also find it to be an enjoyable experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking for something similar to this for my 12-year old son. Are there any other resources you guys can recommend to help teach coding? (that aren't Apple-product dependent?)

<comment><USER8> You've been looking for something similar, discovered that this "something similar" exists, yet the Apple logo puts you off? A used iPad that can run this is probably a couple hundred dollars.

Now, perhaps I've misinterpreted your question, and you'd just like a list of alternatives to keep your options open. I've not looked _really_ hard, not having any kids and all, but there seems to be a dearth of options that meet the (IMO) high bar Playgrounds has set. Me, I wonder if the 2nd-best alternative isn't an old machine with QBasic on it. I just don't see anything else out there that doesn't start with "Step 1: Let's learn about dependency trees!"

<comment> atom-morgan Maybe they want to use existing hardware?

<comment><USER9> Why is parent getting down voted, not wanting to spend a couple hundred bucks, specially outside of the US where a couple hundred bucks can be what you make in a month, is a perfectly valid reason.

<comment><USER8> Well, I obviously didn't down vote it. But if that were a consideration it should have been mentioned, along with what that existing hardware is. Hence my question, because as-worded the motivation comes across as just an allergy to Apple logos.

<comment><USER10> No it doesn't. It simply asks for something that will work on a platform other than those owned by Apple. It's an entirely reasonable request, and I'm baffled that people on a web site called "Hacker News" are suggesting otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Swift Playgrounds looks great but I'm surprised no one has mentioned the frustration that Apple is shipping something on iPad that other developers have been banned from making since iPad shipped

From the Swift Playground website:

> Send your code to a friend's iPad using Mail, Messages, or AirDrop

No other apps are allowed to do this because of the iOS Terms of Service restrictions

<comment><USER12> Codea has been around for a few years now. It lets you code iPad apps on the iPad using Lua. You can even export the project to Xcode so you can eventually deploy your creations to the App Store. And this is certainly not the only iOS-based coding environment. It looks like Apple has knowingly made an exception for this use case because it's not the type of thing they had set out to prevent with their rules around loadable code. Apps like Codea bring a lot of value to the platform.

[http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/](http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/)

<comment><USER11> The terms of service only disallow downloading code. As long as codea only allows copying and pasting code it's not breaking any terms

You can see this is how they handled it

[https://bitbucket.org/TwoLivesLeft/core/wiki/CopyingCode](https://bitbucket.org/TwoLivesLeft/core/wiki/CopyingCode)

Swift Playground doesn't seem to have that limit which arguably makes Swift Playground a whole lot better and arguably anti-competitive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Aww, this is basically a really slick version of Stanford's 1st CS106A (intro CS) assignment, Karel the Robot!

(After some googling, apparently it goes way back: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_\(programming_language\)) )

</comment><comment><USER14> I've been hobby-trying to learn swift on Udemy for a few months. I'm going to try this out. (I'm 35!).

</comment><comment><USER15> It seems nice and polished like most Apple products. I'll try it out more, and then with my baby girl when she's a bit older. Apple needed to start addressing the software end a bit more.

For me, I guess having started in 1979 with a Commodore PET and basic and assembly, it doesn't have the appeal. I tried Kotlin a year ago, and Swift looks identical to it to me. I believe in the gamification concept, I just think it is from an adult's view on what they think a child likes, which I guess is inescapable unless you do constant targeting studies and updates. In the end, have children design what children like with an adult's skills at hand to realize it.

I use Codea, Pythonista and now Continous (.NET/F#/C# on an iPad Pro) [1]. I can write add-ons and actions for my iPad apps in Pythonista (Editorial and others) to extend them. I am a polyglot and Scratch is not something I would use to teach my kids, not for any enumerable reasons other than I tried, and it didn't appeal to my kids after the first animation demo program. I know it has been somewhat popular. My older teenage children fared better with Processing, Racket, Minecraft, Arduino and plain Python.

One that has caught my attention, and I will show my youngest child is NetLogo [2]. It is a modeling environment for researchers, business people, and well, basically adults, but it is self-contained, comes with tons of examples, and will be valuable in the future in learning modeling. It's a lot of fun too!

NetLogo's three-tabbed unified interface has the GUI simulation up front, an Info/Documentation page second, and a Code tab. The Code is a variation of Logo. Short programs, and easy syntax with immediate gratification of watching your simulation run. Now just some more kid-friendly examples, and you're off to the races and a PhD in the Mathematical Sciences and Modeling!

[1] [http://praeclarum.org/post/147003028753/continuous-c-and- f-i...](http://praeclarum.org/post/147003028753/continuous-c-and-f-ide-for- the-ipad) [2] [https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I was really looking forward to letting my daughter (and wife, who was interested) in using this.

Then I realised it won't work on their iPad (4th Gen with Retina) - which runs everything fine, and there's no need to uprade it.

So there we go - they won't be using this.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am not (yet) familiar with this app, but I do like to suggest to any new (young or old) programmers to give Racket along with the book 'Realm of Racket' a try. It's a simple enough programming language to get a good foundation with important principles, but also can take you nearly as far as you want.

Edit: For those who downvoted my comment here, I'd really be curious to know why.

<comment><USER18> Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think starting out with parenthesis based programming language is the best starting point for new programmers. You'll probably just scare them. I'm saying this with my huge love for Scheme. Of course, if you're already programming and want to learn/try something different, Haskell or Racket, or any other functional language is a great option.

What makes Swift Playground so compelling is that it seems to be specifically tailored towards new programmers, with the way it teaches -- it provides basic information about Swift, and does not overload information at the reader at once. And even existing programmers can make use of it because it's just a Swift playground (part of Xcode) underneath.

I think Swift Playground is genuinely fun as you can manipulate an object on an iPad. It's pretty much like playing a game in that sense. That's something you just can't get out of reading a book. It makes it that much more approachable.

If you show kids or even new programmers Swift Playgrounds along with something like Learn You a Haskell or Realm of Racket, or even tell them about Scratch, which do you think they would gravitate towards more?

<comment><USER17> Hm, again I haven't tried it - I don't have an iOS device that can run it - does it actually use Swift syntax? This is only anecdotal (anecdata) but both my friend and partner (both 27) are learning to program for the first time using Racket, who both barely know what a 'web browser' is and they're both finding it really easy to pick up, and even have started 'thinking in lists'. It also was my first programming language..

But anyways, I'm excited to give this app a try - I'm always glad to see more tools to help people get started.

<comment><USER18> I wasn't really directing all of what I said to you, but just commenting about Playgrounds versus other resources in general.

And yes, it uses real Swift syntax which is its main goal, according to the "Platforms State of the Union"[1] talk at WWDC this year.

[1]: [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/102/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/102/)

<comment><USER17> Very cool, thanks for explaining :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wish it were a bit more like HyperCard in its scope.

</comment><comment><USER20> I did a quick test on my iPad after I read this. I am posting my experience on twitter.

[https://twitter.com/ontouchstart/status/753709980239466497](https://twitter.com/ontouchstart/status/753709980239466497)

<comment><USER21> Please no more vertical videos.[0]

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA)

<comment><USER20> Yes, I learned that after the first video. :-)

(The second one is a trim from the same original.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This looks cool... I wish there were a macOS/OSX version, don't have an ipad, have a couple macbooks (and hackintosh) though.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does swift work on androids, windows, chromebooks, RPi, consoles? What is the cheapest iOS device that would support swift for kids?

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks a lot like lightbot. Better, but would have been nice if they gave some credit to lightbot.

iPad swit playground preview video : [http://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/](http://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/)

Lightbot: [https://lightbot.com/](https://lightbot.com/)

<comment><USER24> Edit parent: i guess there are other older tools as well, following the reference to karel by binarysolo :

[https://codehs.com/](https://codehs.com/)

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't wait to teach my eight-year-old how to code using Swift Playgrounds...</comment>


Balloon Pirate Radio (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2007/04/balloon_pirate_radio.htm <comment><USER2> Here's the "whole other story" about superimposing text on an existing TV broadcast by emitting pulses synchronized with the scan.

* [http://idlewords.com/2007/04/tv_solidarity.htm](http://idlewords.com/2007/04/tv_solidarity.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had the great fortune of knowing Andrzej Jesmanowicz, one of the participants in this story. He did MRI research at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He was also a helicopter pilot, skydiver (how I met him), and total maniac in the best possible way. Andre died in 2016 and some of his friends got together to spread his ashes over Wisconsin: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTZhCCohSBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTZhCCohSBg)

<comment><USER4> Do you know if any of these guys were ham radio operators by chance? Sounded like ham ingenuity to me.

<comment><USER5> They were radioastronomers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the story, but am even more curious as to their legal disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

Does anyone know whats up with "Note: by California state law, Title 17 U.S. Code § 1030, Rz. Pl. u.1994 nr 24 poz. 140, and binding international covenant it is forbidden to use the word "hack" in conjunction with this blog post."

Is this supposed to be in jest? Im not aware of any copyright laws that limit the manner in which I may refer to someone else's work.

<comment><USER7> That would be a joke. And it would also be Maciej Ceglowski's style. He would probably prefer something along the lines of "clever idea" or "ingenious solution"; it conveys the message in clear, conventional English without being hip, cool, or clickbaity in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand.

They broadcasted in the UHF band, far from the FM band and VHF bands. How could the general public even are able to tune in and listen? Only people who use walkie-talkies for their jobs and amateur radio operators are known to own UHF radios. So did they manage to find a way to broadcast an audio-only signal on a TV-frequency, or what?

<comment><USER9> That's an error in translation. The original interview in Polish is dead now, but can be found here[0]. The Polish text mentions UKF, which stands for "ultra krótkie fale" (literally, "ultra-short waves"), and the correct translation to English is VHF, not UHF.

Paging 'idlewords, please fix it :).

\--

[0] - [http://archive.is/7edP8#selection-353.650-353.653](http://archive.is/7edP8#selection-353.650-353.653)

<comment><USER8> It makes sense now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A great story and one of the funniest writing style I've seen in a long time.

<comment><USER11> You may enjoy his classic: [http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_t...](http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This part at the bottom caught my eye:

>Note: by California state law, Title 17 U.S. Code § 1030, Rz. Pl. u.1994 nr 24 poz. 140, and binding international covenant it is forbidden to use the word "hack" in conjunction with this blog post.

<comment><USER13> Title 17 Chapter 10 only seems to go up to § 1010 on easily accessible public online sources. Is there a canonical way to look up what this actually means ? It seems questionable on first amendment rights anyway.

<comment><USER12> I think it was just a wry joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Remember the movie, "Pump Up The Volume?"</comment>


TechCrunch Pump n Dump - <AUTHOR> http://brianshall.com/blog/techcrunch-pump-n-dump <comment><USER2> TC has always been a big scam under the guise of journalism. And the mailbox example is not even a very good one. I still remember, when I used to frequent TC, they had glowing reviews for startups they were directly involved with. Most of the time they didn't even bother to mention the conflict of interest.

Not to mention Arrington and his monthly quota of manufactured drama.

Worst part, TC always did and still does (though not as much), quite frequently cover most of the frontpage of HN with regurgitated 1 paragraph "news" that has been already discussed to death on other frontpage submission.

How the hell and why the fuck, I have no idea...

<comment><USER3> "TC has always been a big scam under the guise of journalism."

Why is that a scam? It's only a scam to the people freshly hatched that a) don't know it's a scam or b) can't figure out because they don't read it or other things enough to discover it's a "scam" (not my word just repeating).

Sometimes the reason that "scams" get people upset is the same reason a guy will get mad when another guy gets the girl because of bullshit. And the guy who lost out either has scruples (and feels cheated) or wouldn't ever think that anyone would fall for the particular bullshit that landed the girl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have two observations -

1)Our society is structured in pyramids across multiple dimensions. On top of the these pyramids are powerful cliques. The pyramids that are predominantly influenced by the business world have even stronger cliques at the top. People at the top try to optimize for their success, and its only human. So ya, this who pump and dump is not surprising, happens everywhere.

2) Mailbox is a super-sexy acquisition for Dropbox. Because of my work, I am in this unique position to look deeply at around 70 online backup and cloud vendors, their features, their social signal, their pricing etc, their usage scenarios, their usage feedback and I think, given the uber-competitiveness of the space, most of these vendors will either a) move upstream and try to increase the real estate of their clients (Box trying to get into document editing suite is a prime example) or b) have a differentiated offering like egnyte. With this context, I think, the mailbox acquisition is an absolute bomb. I am doing further research on this topic and will hopefully publish it soon.

So yes, the hype-cycle was at work, but its normal and dropbox founders and executive team were pretty much certain they needed to this.

<comment><USER5> Spot on!

I think the acquisition of mailbox is brilliant! Dropbox, while fantastic is a one dimensional service which in its current form doesn't have much room to innovate around simply storing and synching my data.

With the addition of mailbox, they can start down the path of having the storage layer augmented by services directly on top of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hold on. MG Siegler and Arrington were investors in Mailbox? This kind of conflict is really unacceptable. Bloggers need to get real about ethics if they want to be taken seriously as journalists.

<comment><USER7> Welcome to the world of web journalism. Outfits like PandoDaily are funded by organisations that back the very startups PandoDaily writes about. Conflict? Psh!

<comment><USER8> Next you'll tell me that a startup incubator has their own news + commenting site. (Though I personally don't see the conflict.)

<comment><USER7> There is an outside possibility that pg has rigged HN to give more upvotes to YC-funded companies. It just seems a little unlikely.

<comment><USER9> You can't know until he open sources it!

<comment><USER10> It is, minus the bits used for spam and vote abuse detection.

<http://arclanguage.org>

<http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When is this cycle going to end?

It seems like every time a high profile acquisition takes place there's a vocal group of people blogging about how the company in question isn't really "world-disrupting shit Silicon Valley does".

Have you seen Silicon Valley recently? This is exactly what it does. There's still a group of companies out there who are taking big chances and trying amazing things, but by and large the ecosystem is full of stuff like Mailbox. Well-made, highly polished software that caters to a specific problem that people with money complain about. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that business model, but don't kid yourself into thinking that this is some huge affront to the innovation engine that is Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER12> It won't end, because even those who claim to dislike the practice still wish to be part of it.

"the innovation engine that is Silicon Valley"

Maybe I'm too young, but was there ever a time where Silicon Valley was innovating in the way we wish SV was innovating? It seems like the landscape was like this for a very long time

<comment><USER13> Steve Blank talks about a lot of interesting RF/defense stuff from ancient times, and of course Intel early on, so the 1970s were great. And Apple. And videogame boom/bust/boom.

I'd consider The Internet, cisco, Sun, Berkeley UNIX, etc. to have been quite innovative. (early 1980s to early 1990s recession)

Arguably the first part of the tech bubble was amazing -- 1995-1998 or so.

I think 2008-2011 was a low period, but that may just correlate with the economic downturn. 2005-2008 was interesting due to AJAX and not much else; that really was the weakest boomlet technically, but I think a lot of it was just proving we _could_ have a boom again, just like GW1 was proving US military involvement didn't automatically mean another Vietnam.

I've seen plenty of awesome stuff in 2012+, and it seems to be accelerating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yes, this is how it works in terms of startups trying to gain traction. I imagine it's not just techcrunch that works this way. The startup I worked for got immediate coverage and 60% of the article wasn't even true. Inflating traffic numbers to the nearest million seems like a common practice.

If you know someone, then there is a 100% chance of getting coverage. For everyone else its a crapshoot and certainly not in your favor.

Here is my example:

I tried to get coverage for a fantasy sports startup that solves real problems surrounding player news and getting lineup advice. It even tells you who to pick up on the waiver wire. Got no coverage. Had no exciting investors. It was boring to them.

However, once I launched a side project that enhances the readability of reddit iama's, then I got immediate coverage without even asking for it.

<comment><USER15> Their (especially true for TC) coverage seems to be focused mainly on investment rounds and exits. It is very unlikely that a random startup would get coverage, if you have no prior exit history, and you are bootstrapping.

That gives me an idea - who wants to launch an anti-TC, dark horse-type service with me? Focus on bootstrapped businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The people who propose these inane conspiracy theories always forget one critical component: why the acquirer was such a willing patsy.

<comment><USER17> I believe that by definition a patsy is always quite willing.

The OP might be a little off in this case, but I fail to see how this is inane. A publication that is run by someone who has a conflict of interest released a large media blitz that undoubtedly painted Mailbox in a very positive light, leading to an arguably overpriced acquisition.

I honestly don't know enough to make a judgment, but following the money has never lead me wrong before.

<comment><USER18> What you're saying is that you think Dropbox values acquisitions by collecting media stories and measuring their sentiments. Have you ever been involved in an acquisition? The ones I've been a party to involved proctological levels of due diligence. The idea that Techcruch coverage even occurred to anyone involved after the first or second meeting is comically naive.

<comment><USER19> Well, in all fairness (and I do think that the original conspiracy theory is inane, and reflects someone with an axe to grind rather than a rational assessment of the situation) - the actual hype cycle would look more like:

o Write up a great story that makes a product sound amazing o Get lots of people to use it, wait in line o Dropbox values the application based on user engagement stats.

I don't think there is any evidence that Ryan Lawler (the author of the TechCrunch Mailbox Stories) was incented or directed in any way to write them. Indeed, here on HN, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5389748>, he states that he and Arrington/Siegler don't even have any type of special relationship. He's not even sure that Arrington even knows who he is.

With all that said - I just checked, and I've finally (after a month?) made it to the front of the line, so I'm off to chase Inbox Zero!

<comment><USER18> And who's to say long-term user engagement predictions had anything to do with the valuation? If you were Drew Houston and had all the resources of Dropbox to leverage using what appears to be one of the most popular mobile email applications in the world, what could you come up with? How much would it be worth to have a credible vehicle with which to compete directly with Google Mail, for instance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't know the Dropbox guys but I doubt they take investment advice from Techcrunch. It also doesn't seem likely that Dropbox with its 100 million users bought Mailbox for their 750,000 users.

Why is it so hard for some people to stomach that maybe Dropbox bought Mailbox for the tech or the talent?

<comment><USER21> Both stands are not mutually exclusive.

I really like Mailbox, it really helps me manage my email better, this was no trivial technical/design execution.

On the other hand, CrunchFund being an investor, and the fantastic duo being "contributors" to TC makes the cynic in me believe that the last four articles were more than "news".

<comment><USER20> But do you think that is what made Dropbox buy them or that it substantially influenced the price?

<comment><USER21> In an indirect way, yes. Creating positive noise can attract more buyers/interest to the table, and that can put pressure on serious buyers like Dropbox to increase the price/make the offer sweeter.

I really doubt it was only Dropbox knocking on Mailbox's door. Specially given the rumoured price (I also think there is a large equity component).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sigh. Doesn't matter what the facts are, this point of view that there is a "conspiracy" always emerges. There is a strange counter phenomena on the other side too sometimes. Sometimes a person at a company and get acquired or go public who suddenly has a high net worth, can't internalize the fact that they are suddenly rich and the people perhaps sitting next to them aren't. A bit flips and they decide its because they are just that smart/good/talented. (which is, for them, easier than just being lucky). It is a weird thing to watch, I saw dozens of cases of it at Sun when Sun went public and recognized it in folks at Google as well.

The brain tries to "explain." Sometimes really implausible scenarios seem to be the best answer [1]. For this particular scenario (TechCrunch somehow "selling" Mailbox to Dropbox) some pretty savvy and experienced people would have to have been "tricked." While the probability is non-zero that that is the case, it is highly unlikely. And the much more boring answer that the Mailbox folks had created something of value to the Dropbox folks remains.

I am more curious why Brian is so invested in the lack of standards at TechCrunch. Why does he care? It's not hard to see they rate somewhere been the Enquirer and the Daily Post in terms of what they will publish to get page views.

[1] Alien abduction is one of those areas where people would rather believe they were abducted by aliens than what ever really happened.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a hard time understanding why Dropbox would pay $100M. Compared to the Instagram acquisition, this seems like a blunder.

The talent - Maybe worth $10M at the high end, probably same for Instagram

Future profit - Difficult to see how this app would be profitable, but maybe it could make a few million a year if it swept the app store. Instagram had similar long term monetization potential to facebook.

Technology - Indexing gmail and keeping metadata on each message. A difficult task to scale, but not $10M difficult. Instagram was handling significantly more data, but Facebook certainly didn't need the technology.

Users and momentum - Don't see much value for Dropbox here with 700K users. Instagram was growing rapidly and had 20M+ users.

Time - Dropbox wants to be in the email and communications space... seems like the could have developed something in 6 months for a few million. Instagram would have been difficult for Facebook to catch up with, since head starts matter in social. Email apps don't have the network lock-in, so there is much less reason to worry about time.

Competition - There was no threat to dropbox. Instagram appeared to be dominating a demographic and use case for social, and could easily be seen as a threat to Facebook.

However, Dropbox did pay that much. We have to assume there was a reason other than a Techcrunch article.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the OP is giving Tech Crunch a wee bit more credit for king making than they deserve.

Mailbox is a great case of playing the hype game to perfection. Massive hype, perfect fit for a larger "startup" playing with house monopoly money - it all adds up to a huge win.

Just be happy for the guys. They haven't even gotten started yet- let them give it a go.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am glad someone is actually writing about this. We live in an era where we've learned to accept the things around us - No matter how good or bad they are, but we've over the last few decades, started to accept the things that are going around us, and accept compromise, slowly.

News organizations like Techcrunch, Gizmodo, etc. are some of the most arrogant, unethical organizations you will ever find on this planet. I say unethical because of how they work. In the REAL WORLD, journalism works by having REAL journalists, who travel places, meet new people, explore new problems, explore un-identified areas of coverage and report them as news.

But, the internet revolutionized journalism so much that it's so screwed up right now. In the online world, all you need to call yourself a 'journalist' or a 'media organization' is just a hosted Wordrpess blog with a custom domain. And that's just it. The worst part is the content - Where journalism by itself is known for the kind of content it provides, this is totally eliminated. In many ways, an online journalist has not much work to do, when say compared to a real life journalist. The information he wants to report on is RIGHT THERE. Just go to news.google.com, news.ycombinator.com, reddit.com, find some controversial (most cases) topic to write about, add some opinions and publish it as a post. BINGO! Just watch the comments pour in and pageviews explode! And profit!!!

Do you know what is unethical about this setup?

These so called 'journalists' are basically thieves. They 'steal' from an open community like reddit or hackernews, add their own flavors and spin it off into a new article. I want you to browse through the whole list of articles on Gizmodo and Techcrunch and compare it with the sh*t these organizations write and tell me this is not true. You will easily notice that majority of the content is ripped off from the open communities.

These so called organizations and the idiots calling themselves journalists are a shame to the true essence of Journalism. Because what they are supposed to write about is the news and not what they think of it. I am sick of reading anti-Google posts and pro-Apple (or vice-versa) articles on these shitty so called 'news' sites. I want to read true, unbiased, uncolored content. I want to read the news and not what a random author thinks of the news. And I know someday someone will realize this and create a true 'Wikipedia' for news. And that will be the greatest 'FUCK YOU' sent to these unethical organizations in the history of man kind, ever.

</comment><comment><USER26> (Disclosure: I independently comment a lot on TechCrunch articles.)

While I definitely agree that the acquisition of $100 million is absurd, I don't think it can be solely attributed to TechCrunch's coverage, given that other sites like GigaOm and The Verge also gave large amounts of coverage.

The relationship between the writers/CrunchFund is overstated: <https://twitter.com/ryanlawler/status/313297205186408451> _EDIT: article updated with Tweet_

Also, large amounts of TC press does not mean success: (see <http://techcrunch.com/tag/airtime/> )

</comment><comment><USER27> Guys, this is an under-informed and reactionary post, which grossly simplifies the situation in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and the Mailbox/Orchestra team. It's also kind of upsetting that this post is at the top of HN and getting a kind of froth-at-the-mouth reaction that it is.

It's well-known and indeed massively controversial[1] that there's a CrunchFund/TechCrunch conflict. Arrington _left TechCrunch_ because of his desire to return to investing about a year ago[2], after the short stint at doing both journalism and investing in parallel. According to CrunchBase, this was coincidentally the same month that CrunchFund invested in Orchestra[3]. Both he and MG returned in October 2012[4], but both have hardly written any TC pieces since then. Why? Probably because they're quite busy with their day jobs running CrunchFund.

Additionally, on many posts with CrunchFund conflicts, they have been called out at the end of each article (see [http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/andreessen-horowitz-adds- je...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/andreessen-horowitz-adds-jeff-jordan- as-partner-leads-5m-likealittle-series-a/)). They probably have been a bit lax about that as of late since the CrunchFund guys aren't really involved in TC (compared with the often torrential output of most other staff writers).

TechCrunch coverage did probably get Mailbox some users, and CrunchFund as a VC probably did add some value to their company, but the effects and importance of TechCrunch itself are _wildly overstated_. Probably more important is that the Mailbox/Orchestra team is _top notch_ at making incredible mobile products (Orchestra won one of Apple's Top App award in 2011 [http://blog.orchestra.com/orchestra-is-productivity-app- of-2...](http://blog.orchestra.com/orchestra-is-productivity-app-of-2011-in- the)), had _hundreds of thousands_ of active users within a very short amount of time (with only a tiny insignificant fraction of those coming from TC), and Dropbox can probably provide a better home for a lot of the Really Hard problems with email at that kind of scale.

Like I get why OP seems alarmed, but it's pretty naive to think that TechCrunch matters in any important way to the success or financial outcome of a company. Just read about the "TechCrunch pop"[5]; their users rarely not stay with or give lasting value to a product. If you want to belittle the _astounding_ accomplishments of the Mailbox team, at least don't pick something like TechCrunch to do it over.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/technology/michael- arringt...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/technology/michael-arrington- techcrunch-blogger-to-invest-in-start-ups.html?_r=0)

[2]: [http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/michael-arrington- leav...](http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/michael-arrington-leaves- techcrunch-134791)

[3]: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/orchestra>

[4]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/getting-the-band-back- toget...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/getting-the-band-back-together/)

[5]: [http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/11/19/the-depressing-day- aft...](http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/11/19/the-depressing-day-after-you- get-techcrunched/)

<comment><USER28> > _" in a way that is insulting to Dropbox, TechCrunch/AOL, CrunchFund, and > the Mailbox/Orchestra team"_

Arrington is a jerk and MG is a talentless shill. They're both "right place, right time" guys who strut around with undeserved influence. I care little about insulting Techcrunch/AOL or Crunchfund.

When banks do things like this, we call for heads. When it's SV personalities, we're apologists.

> _"Arrington left TechCrunch because of his desire to return to investing > about a year ago"_

You say left, I say forced out, because there was an _obvious conflict of interest_.

> _" Probably more important is that the Mailbox/Orchestra team is top notch > at making incredible mobile products"_

That's nice. I suppose we'll agree to disagree that a company that built an app that sits on gmail is worth $100MM.

<comment><USER16> It embarrasses me to see comments like this getting upvoted on HN. There is no information in it, just inflammatory language. When this sort of comment prevails on HN, we'll have sunk to the ground state of forums.

<comment><USER18> Why aren't you quietly penalizing people who upvote them? They're damaging the site.

Here is a better question: why aren't you quietly penalizing people who submit the stories that generate these comments?

<comment><USER29> Well. while I absolutely find these comments to be unhelpful, it's definitely not a good idea to censor comments or explicitly ban them. I'd like to think that we can filter out these comments by the community downvoting them rather than PG doing it himself. It should be a democratic process.

<comment><USER18> HN is not a democracy, and it's not an open forum (whatever that means). It never was. If censoriousness drives users away... well, maybe that is itself a solution to a problem.

Features that make HN disproportionately less attractive to the kinds of users who vote up comments like the one upthread sound like a good idea.

<comment><USER30> While what you say is true, how many posts have you seen along the lines of "why was foo hellbanned" or "why was this post killed?" I think people would be upset if the response was because I think that they are detracting from the site.

<comment><USER18> I don't like the way hellbanning works here, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend that crap like the TC/Mailbox Conspiracy comes from a minority we should protect, nor do I think hellban administration is a problem that needs to be fixed first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For $100 million, Dropbox just got a glimpse at every current and future Mailbox user's inbox.

That's actionable data that's otherwise difficult to get without starting your own webmail service. This comes at a time when Dropbox seeks to expand the services and integration-points to provide other services - this might pay-off in the long run as more than just a tool to complement email.

</comment><comment><USER32> Well, that could've been written better. There's clearly a conflict of interest, but on the other hand Mailbox seems like a useful application. Even great products benefit from hype.

<comment><USER33> I looked at Mailbox about a month ago and couldn't work out what it did that Gmail for Android didn't already do.

Then I looked again a few days ago after the hype about the sale, and I still can't work out what it does that I don't already have available with Gmail for Android.

About the only email addition I'm currently excited about and finding useful is Streak.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, it seems like Mailbox is pretty much a clone of GMail for Android, only for the iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> 1) We're not in a position to value the acquisition.

2) TechCrunch is more of a PR outlet than news source. It has an occasional news story, but the vast majority are PR pieces.

Surely Mailbox met the minimum bar for some glowing PR pieces in TC, so this controversy is misplaced.

</comment><comment><USER36> This post basically says that the guys at Dropbox are idiots and can't disambiguate between PR-driven noise and a real business. News flash: the guys at Dropbox aren't idiots.

The notion that Techcrunch is fueling demand AND reaping rewards on the other side is false. Oh, they may try to prime the pump from time to time, but at most it simply gives visibility to a few startups. In the end, users will drive and dictate the value.

Give the Dropbox guys some credit. And, more to the point, _don't_ give credit to some guys with nothing more than write access to a blog.

</comment><comment><USER37> case in point: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/with-20-of-reservations- fil...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/with-20-of-reservations-filled- mailbox-goes-down-so-you-can-enjoy-your-valentines-day/)

I'm not sure if I've ever read such fawning about a service going down.

</comment><comment><USER38> I believe that this blog post is absurd, disrespectful and insults the entire Dropbox and Orchestra/Mailbox teams as well as, those at Aol/Techcrunch and Crunchfund. Dropbox did not buy Mailbox based on a couple of Techcrunch posts, and they obviously will have done their due diligence before purchasing the company.

Dropbox bought Mailbox because, it wants to be more than a storage company and they are looking at diversifying their income streams with the rise of rivals encroaching their territory as well as, ensuring that people stay with Dropbox rather than go to other rivals. Acquisitions of Audiogalaxy, Cove, Snapjoy etc highlight that this is Dropbox's plans going forward.

More often than not, Techcrunch states a disclosure of a Crunchfund investment within the posts that they are writing and although, they may have not followed through with this properly with Mailbox – you can clearly see on the Company Bio linking to Crunchbase that Crunchfund are/were an investor too[1].

Let's not forget Mailbox is from Orchestra[2], a company which already had hundreds of thousands of users and is a company which won Apple's Productivity App of 2011[3].

[1] <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/orchestra>

[2] <http://www.orchestra.com>

[3] [http://blog.orchestra.com/orchestra-is-productivity-app- of-2...](http://blog.orchestra.com/orchestra-is-productivity-app-of-2011-in- the)

<comment><USER28> > _"Dropbox did not buy Mailbox based on a couple of Techcrunch posts, and > they obviously will have done their due diligence before purchasing the > company."_

I like Dropbox. But recent history is filled with terrible acquisitions that have you wondering what the lawyers and accountants were doing:

Ebay buying Skype.

Microsoft buying Danger.

Microsoft buying aQuantive.

Anyone investing in Color.

AOL buying Time Warner.

Yahoo! buying Geocities.

and these were all huge deals I can think of off the top of my head. The number of small ones is, I'm sure, substantially larger.

<comment><USER22> The lawyers and accountants were doing overtime, those are all billable hours.

But to make the argument that something is "bad" you really have to know what management had in mind for it. If their goal was go "make it go away" then what looks like "bad" on the outside can be "good" on the inside. If their goal was to get a team to build something they didn't yet have a team that could build, it might also be "good" in a way you and I couldn't see.

<comment><USER28> > _"But to make the argument that something is "bad" you really have to know > what management had in mind for it."_

What they hand in mind is irrelevant to me. All I care about is the outcome. Saying Microsoft bought aQuantive with the hopes to cure cancer in their mind doesn't justify a $6BB write down. It would still be bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hi everyone! I'm the writer of all those effusive Mailbox articles which supposedly drove up the valuation of Mailbox and helped it to be acquired for the benefit of the folks at CrunchFund. So maybe we should clear a few things up. The Storify version is here: <http://storify.com/ryanlawler/techcrunch- pump-n-dump>

But let's make a few things clear: I don't have any special relationship with Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, or anyone else who works at CrunchFund. I may see them around socially, in the same way that I see any other investors or entrepreneurs at events where those types of people hang out. But they don't pitch me startups they've invested in, and there's certainly no expectation that I, or anyone else at TechCrunch, be friendly to companies that they've put money into.

I joined Techcrunch more than six months after Arrington was booted, and well after the exodus of employees who worked for him started 'pursuing other interests.' I never worked with him, and besides exchanging pleasantries backstage at TC Disrupt, I frankly don't think he knows who I am. He certainly doesn't whisper secrets in my ear, and I couldn't care less about whether or not his little VC fund is successful.

I first reached out to Mailbox CEO Gentry Underwood in August of last year, because I heard he was working on a cool solution to email overload. (I think I first heard about Mailbox from one of his tweets.) It wasn't until December that I'd gotten a chance to test it out. I think I had it for about a week before I wrote that first article, and I loved it, and still love it. In fact, I have been using it as my default email client ever since I got it.

At the time I worried that the story would be seen as hyperbolic, but I believed in the product and thought more people should know about it. I thought it was an actual useful piece of software that could make people's lives better, so yes, I wrote glowing reviews of it. But at no point did I do so because of any influence from Mike, or CrunchFund, or anyone who had an actual vested interest in seeing Mailbox succeed or profiting from it.

The thing that annoys me about pieces like this are that they vastly overstate the influence that CrunchFund or any other VC have in our coverage. Yes, they frequently clue us in to cool applications they're playing with, but there's no real exchanging of favors that happens. I write about products I like, usually pass on those that don't interest me, but if there's the case where I test something out and it doesn't pass muster, I usually say so.

One final note: The most recent article I wrote was about Uber, which is also a CrunchFund company. That one was not nearly as positive as the stuff I wrote about Mailbox. [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/see-uber-this-is-what- happe...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/see-uber-this-is-what-happens-when- you-cannibalize-yourself/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Someone with more experience writing browser extensions than I shouldn't have too hard a time using the CrunchBase database to automatically include a "CONFLICT OF INTEREST" warning in TechCrunch posts:

<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/orchestra>

</comment><comment><USER41> If you're in the "startup" business, where the real product is the business itself, this sort of operation is standard practice. It starts with having a PR company - a truly productive one. Add on some great media contacts made over the years and you're playing an A game.

To an extent all business runs like this. It actually is much more difficult to enforce the now, but imagine a world in which only those who can afford advertising have any public voice at all. As an added bonus, those who buy advertising are at least at the front of the line to get positive articles written about them. Those 2% of your customers you inevitably piss off can't drag your name through the mud because they have no truly public forum for their opinion. That's pretty close to how things were before the web.

</comment><comment><USER42> [http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3961544/mailbox-app-for- iph...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3961544/mailbox-app-for-iphone-inbox- unchained)

[http://www.macworld.com/article/2027388/review-mailbox- for-i...](http://www.macworld.com/article/2027388/review-mailbox-for-iphone- belongs-in-your-dock.html)

[http://allthingsd.com/20130221/mailbox-takes-swipe-at- tradit...](http://allthingsd.com/20130221/mailbox-takes-swipe-at-traditional- mobile-email-apps/)

It's just not techcruch, mailbox app got rave reviews from other sites too. This post is insulting to mailbox team giving an impression somehow they are scamming.

</comment><comment><USER43> The number of companies that TC hypes that go nowhere far outnumber those few that succeed. Those that do succeed seem like they would have done so even if TC hated them.

I strongly doubt they play much of a role in the success of a company.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm not sure that this can be reduced solely to a conflict of interest regarding Crunch Fund. Arrington left, and the piece (really more of a rant) never accounts for that or for any of the other possible motivations: it just asserts some sort of dubious manipulation of the system.

Frankly, I think the impetus is much more benign: TC wants trafic, and Mailbox is popular at the moment (primarily due to their brilliant if infuriating waiting list gimmick). Blogs write what will make them money.

</comment><comment><USER18> This blog post was so obviously pointless and toxic that I flagged it, but of course flagging doesn't work on stories like this, because they collect upvotes too fast.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Pump and Dump" claim might have some semblance of credibility if mailbox was a publicly traded stock that Arrington/siegler talked up on techcrunch, without noting they were investors, and then sold to the unwitting public who purchased said stock on the basis of a techcrunch article. Given that the sale to Dropbox was a private transaction, this is all moot.

</comment><comment><USER45> That was hard work just to read a paragraph of text. Note to website owners/designers 5-7 words per line doesn't make it easier to read on a smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER46> Granted, this type of journalism is shady, but this certainly doesn't meet the definition of a "pump and dump" scheme.

<comment><USER47> You should try using this definition:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I couldn't agree with the OP more.

</comment><comment><USER49> And only yesterday there was a post about how you couldn't make any money as a writer!

</comment><comment><USER50> Doesn't a company like Dropbox have the ability to judge for themselves whether or not a startup boosted by TC is actually worthy of buying? It's insane to think that they would drop $100M on a company based on TC promotion alone.

</comment><comment><USER51> Who's being scammed here? I don't get his point.

<comment><USER52> dropbox investors.

<comment><USER51> Dropbox is a privately held company. I'm not going to second-guess it's investors or management. Besides, tech journalism has been this way since the beginning. When I read Zeigler or Mossberg I know I'm getting. I've always used the contrarian writings of John C. Dvorak as a balance. Does anyone really think the 750,000 people are going to keep using Mailbox because Zeigler or Arrington say they should, or even know who these two are?</comment></comment></comment>