Inflation on the price of knowledge: French universities boycott journals - <AUTHOR> http://euroscientist.com/2014/03/inflation-on-the-price-of-knowledge-french-universities-boycott-journals/

<comment><USER2> This is so true. I'm preparing my thesis, and my days consist of reading many, many articles.

Since it's about ECG and I'm in Electronics Engineering, the readings spread across multiple journals and publishers(cardiology, signal processing, etc)...Most articles are in the 25 to 35 dollars range. I read a _lot_ of them(I have to). It would be in the thousands of dollars.

The good news is, I have free access through research centre. The bad news: The average quality of articles _sucks_. As in _really_ sucks.

I just start reading and it's clear the authors just want to increase their index of published articles (there's also the h-index which pissed a _lot_ of academics.).

A lot of my work consists of throwing articles in the bin. It makes me laugh when "researchers" publish an article in a renowned medium where the benefit is incremental. I love it when they do "synthetic"(computer generated) ECG with a nice, big, fat QRS complex with no noise.. Oh wait, no.. They add a "Gaussian" noise and then apply their algorithm and get "100%" detection.

It is just so stupid. I'm working with ECG that's been acquired on real people, in real conditions. The noise is just incredible (power line, breathing, contact, etc). I look at their ECG and I want to burn the digital version of that article.

No content, or worse, poor content. Really light articles. You read them and you feel sick.

Quick, quick, publish ! Anything. Just ship it.

Although there are some articles which you read and you're like "Wow".

Rant over.

<comment><USER3> It gets worse once you no longer have institutional access. I developed an algorithm a couple of years ago, which I believe is novel in the literature. But in order to write a paper, I needed to do the literature study.

Turns out, back in the 1970s there were a few people who were in the same neighborhood as my work, though not the same. Then in the 1980s/1990s, the field moved towards one of two other approaches.

The only way to find this is to look at dozens of old paper. At, as you say, about $25 a pop. Ain't going to spend rent money on that.

Thankfully, those papers are old enough that the local university chemistry library still has them in the stacks.</comment></comment>


Anonymous publishes 3800 user names from #opPedoChat - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.ca/2177612 <comment><USER2> This can only go wrong, and it has in the past. Do you guys know about Operation Ore? It is a case study of how things can get out of hand and go wrong with the hysteria around child pornography. 4,283 homes were searched, 3,744 arrests were made and some 33 suspects committed suicide because of the investigation.

Operation Ore was a British investigation that stemmed from a US investigation called Operation Avalanche. Remember AVS sites? Back in the late 90s a lot of porn sites required adult verification by way of credit card in order to access the site. One of those sites was keyz.com.

keyz.com was the AVN provider for tens of thousands of porn sites. keyz would handle the AVN procedure and then forward the user onto the porn host with a secure token. keyz would take a 30% cut of the small fee and the porn provider would get the rest.

The US Postal Inspector received a complaint about a website on the Internet that was hosting child porn. The postal inspector engaged Microsoft to help them in tracking down the site, and the company allocated engineers who were volunteering on their own time as part of a charity contribution effort. The Microsoft engineers found that the child porn site in question was hosted in Indonesia, and there was nothing they could do about taking it down, but they noticed that it was using the keyz.com AVN service to verify users and to charge them for access.

keyz.com were based in Fort Worth, Texas, so they were within a jurisdiction that the US Postal Inspector could investigate. The Postal Inspectors office thus teamed up with the local Dallas Police Department and together with Microsoft they investigated keyz.com.

keyz.com was a product from a company called Landslide Inc. which was run by a husband and wife team based in the local area. The servers were collocated in a local facility. The postal inspectors office, Dallas PD and Microsoft presented everything they knew about keyz.com to the local DoD office and received search warrants for all the servers and the offices and homes of everybody associated with keyz.com/Landslide Inc.

The raids turned up internal evidence that the team at Landslide knew that some of their affiliates were dealing with child pornography, but the husband and wife refused to plead guilty (in exchange for 5 years in prison) on the basis that they were in ready contact with the local FBI office reporting affiliate sites they found that breached US laws. After a long and drawn out court case, the husband received life in prison (100+ years on appeal, IIRC) and the wife a similar long sentence, all for dealing in child pornography.

The authorities wrapped up all the server evidence they could find, customer data, access logs, etc. and prepared more indicments for the users of the service. It was ruled in an early court case that a name in a database alone was not enough to convict a user in the USA on child pornography charges. The Dallas PD then setup entrapment schemes using the old keyz.com database, where with the servers under their control they would live monitor users based in the USA accessing child pornography and only then arrest them. Around 100 people were arrested and sent to trial based on that investigation.

When all was done in the USA the investigators took all the data they had and sent it to their colleagues in the UK. This is where things went really wrong.

Apparently the UK did not have the same stringent evidence requirements as the USA for child pornography charges. What the UK operation did (this is Operation Ore) was to take the entire database - customers and IP addresses, and pull out anybody who was in the UK into a list. This included IP addresses from access logs that simply viewed advertisements for the keyz.com AVS system. It also included IP addresses in the logs for non-child porn sites. This is how the UK police found themselves in possession of over 7,000 names of 'suspected' child pornographers.

Since understand the technical details of how this system was setup we can see where it went wrong. Instead of targeting the individual site that was serving child porn, they instead gathered every single IP address and customer record that had accessed any of the AVS ads or any of the AVS affiliates.

In early 2002 over 4000 homes were raided in the UK as part of Operation Ore, all based on this flimsy US evidence. It destroyed lives all around the country. In only a very very few cases were the arrests and charges backed up with actual child pornography evidence. Celebrities were caught up, teachers, scientists, doctors, you name it.

33 people who had been charged or arrested committed suicide in the time after the raids. It was only found out a few years later, after a lawsuit was filed by victims, that the data obtained from the USA was not only too broad, but also contained a large number of stolen credit cards (there have been a handful of verified cases now of suicides where the accused had his credit card stolen). A lot of the cases were only settled in late 2008. Many of them are still ongoing, as thousands of falsely accused have had to live their lives under the shadow of being an accused or charged child pornographer.

In the civil trial on of the experts from the USA ended up testifying that the UK police mishandled the data. The worse cases were those where an IP address that had visited nothing more than a banner ad advertising the keyz.com site on another website were raided, arrested and accused.

We shouldn't forget what happen in this case. There is an important lesson in it for everybody. Child pornography is such a sensitive and provocative issue that at times even the highest civil offices set aside their legal obligations in order to pursuit accused child pornographers. If some of the most sophisticated law enforcement in the world can get it wrong with all the resources, subpoenas, warrants and wiretapping equipment they have on hand then it isn't hard to imagine that a vigilante group of hackers on the Internet could also get it wrong.

More info:

\+ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore>

\+ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Avalanche_(child_porn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Avalanche_\(child_pornography_investigation\))

\+ "Operation Ore Exposed" - PCPRO - [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/74690/operation-ore- exposed/...](http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/74690/operation-ore- exposed/print)

\+ "Sex, Lies and No Videotape" (Part 2 of above, PC PRO) - [http://ore- exposed.obu-investigators.com/PC%20Pro%20article%...](http://ore-exposed.obu- investigators.com/PC%20Pro%20article%20June%202007%20.pdf) (1MB PDF)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why vigilante justice is perceived as necessary against those who exchange child pornography. While it's something that most of society finds disgusting, it seems like something that the proper law- enforcement authorities are already very much interested in.

It feels as if it's the activity of a bunch of keyboard jockeys who want to feel like "heros", but who don't want the more dangerous opponent of say, organized crime or corrupt governments.

<comment><USER4> > I don't understand why vigilante justice is perceived as necessary against > those who exchange child pornography.

What else do we have when it comes against Tor? Nothing, pretty much.

> It feels as if it's the activity of a bunch of keyboard jockeys who want to > feel like "heros", but who don't want the more dangerous opponent of say, > organized crime or corrupt governments.

It's far harder to actually expose corruption within a government in a way it would produce any kind of results. I'd argue that in many cases even if you would _know_ that something is corrupt, it's very hard to make it lead to consequences. Look at corrupt countries and how much people can do about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why were they posting 3,800 names of people with a foot fetish?

<comment><USER6> Pediatricians treat children. Podiatrists treat feet. Notice the first vowel in each.

<comment><USER7> Yet a pedometer counts foot steps, not children. It's a weird language!

<comment><USER8> This is what happens when we try to simplify the language. It should be paedophile not pedophile and thus #opPaedoChat :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I am on the fence about Anonymous going after darknet paedophiles, I doubt this particular leak will come as any use. It's just a list of arbitrary usernames which I highly doubt will be used in any other service by the same person, making tying accounts to real identities difficult if not impossible.

<comment><USER10> If you look through, there are some moderately unique ones that are non- perverse and so likely to be reused. As an experiment, I googled one of those, and it looks like it was used in multiple services. There are always some people who are lazy or careless. There are, unfortunately, also probably some accidental name collisions, which will be unfortunate as vigilante justice is fairly indiscriminate.

<comment><USER11> Intentional name collisions ("mromney") and impossible-to-google names ("N", "hat", "john") are fairly common on IRC for just this reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess it's time to take a random nick list from freenode and paste them somewhere online with allusions to a nefarious channel.

I don't mean that's what has happened here, but that this event should be as trustworthy as my proposition above.

</comment><comment><USER12> i don't know if this list is real or not but that's remind me there is some total sick people in this world...

</comment><comment><USER13> This information is useless.

edit: Googling at least one of these brought up a Facebook account with the exact same non-coincidental username. :/</comment>


The Bus Factor - <AUTHOR> https://adnanahmed.info/blog/2018/05/03/the-bus-factor/ <comment><USER2> [1] Also the same reason as to why companies limit the number of executives traveling in the same plane to a destination

[1] - [http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...](http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19911217&slug=1323517)</comment>


Show HN: Get daily Japanese (or English) study reminders by email - <AUTHOR> http://macaronics.com/articles/showhn

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a site for improving your ability to read an write Japanese (or English, if you're a native Japanese speaker).

It started as a hobby, to automatically send myself short study emails once a day, but then I thought to open it up to anyone, as a crowd-sourced (i.e., human) translation project for learning foreign languages.</comment>


Ask HN: What resources do you provide to someone who wants to learn to code? - <AUTHOR>

A friend is looking for a new line of work and we're going to discuss software development as a possibility.
Personally, I learned from "C for Dummies" (Dan Gookin) some years ago. My first inclination is to recommend this book: It was very fun, a great way to dip my toe in the water, and helped me begin exploring the world of computers from the inside out.
Still, I realize that today there are lot of resources available that I just don't know about or haven't paid much attention to. I code a lot in Ruby and it strikes me that it or Python might be a better place for a beginner to start these days. Perhaps something web oriented (HTML/CSS/JS, on its own, even) would be a good place also. I just don't know.
I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions or thoughts, especially if they have either learned from scratch in the last few years or have helped another to do so.
Also, I'm planning on starting him off with two of my favorite quotes:
"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures....
"Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. [...] The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be." - Fred Brooks
"If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on and the dedication to go through with it." - John Carmack <comment><USER2> I learned Python first a couple years ago through Udacity (the search engine 101 not the Java 101), and it was awesome. It's a great way to dive in and see how to solve problems with code, not just learn the syntax. That said, I think I have officially defected to the Ruby camp as far as the language I would bring to a desert island inexplicably equipped with computers and electricity. There are a lot of really good intro to programming resources for Ruby as well, just none that are as interactive and broad as Udacity's. One Month Rails is good if you can already program, but it seems like it's really for after you know Ruby.

Overall I would say definitely go for Ruby or Python or Javascript as opposed to C for your friend's first language. The less syntactic pain and more friendly the language is the more the beginner can focus on the concepts.</comment>


Free Online SmallTalk Books - <AUTHOR> http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/

<comment><USER2> Ah, its all there, including the red, blue, and green books!

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) "Smalltalk".

2) My partner brought home from a charity shop a VGC edition of Goldberg (Purple Edn.) after overhearing me talk about Smalltalk. It changed my opinion of charity shops for ever.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a purple-covered version of the blue book, which is a subsequent edition with all the implementation details (part IV) removed, so this site is a fabulous resource.

</comment><comment><USER5> Digitalk Smalltalk/V User Manual is missing... :-) It had a nice cover...</comment>


Show HN: Swish – A window manager for trackpad power users - <AUTHOR> https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I finally launched a proper website for Swish. This app has been my solo venture for close to a year now. I've been doing everything myself, from coding and designing to filming and even producing the basketball inspired beat for the trailer. Making this has been has been fun, but also a constant struggle with weird macOS bugs and undocumented APIs.

Window managers are always a hot topic on HN, so I'm looking forward to any feedback and discussion!</comment>


Seeking a lawyer well versed with food laws in US - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for some advice from a lawyer well versed with food laws in the US. I do not have much funds to go to a big firm. The questions which I'm  seeking answers to are going to help us decide whether I should even open a start up or not.<p>Any pointers will be appreciated. <comment><USER2> I doubt you'd find such a specialist here. I'd suggest exploring forums related to the restaurant trade, where you're likely to find some overlap between producers, business buyers, entrepreneurs and service providers. Avoid consumer sites, where conspiracy theorists abound.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Will search.</comment></comment>


Show HN: StarHub – Fast access to your GitHub favorites - <AUTHOR> http://stuff.hanula.com/starhub/

<comment><USER2> Looks pretty nice, I think you should also get the project language and add links for each of the languages I've starred, so that I can quickly find javascript etc projects I've starred.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll add language filter, although the basic info that GitHub provides isn't very accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is good. Alway been wondering, isn't there a built-in way to do this in GitHub? I mainly star projects because they might get useful in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly my case. I needed a way to (really) quickly browse my stars. Instant filter can save a lot of time. I hope GitHub will add something like that in the future.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has art positively impacted your scientific profession? - <AUTHOR> I have read some discussions that seem like scientific people, or those whose professions are more inclined towards logical skills, may not appreciate art as much as other. Some are to the level of dismissing art as useless to human civilization altogether. Is art really that dismissal?<p>Has art impacted your scientific side of your profession in a positive way? <comment><USER2> There are certianly many technical people who are very appreciative of the arts.

Carl Djerassi was a novelist and playwright as well as a very distinguished chemist [1], Stuart Firestein was a theatre director before beginning his career in science [2], and Pietr Hein [3] is famous for his short poems as well as his mathematical pursuits. There are also a large number of medical doctors who are also authors.

There's also a short science fiction story at the end of each issue of Nature [4].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Djerassi#Career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Djerassi#Career)

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

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Hein_(scientist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Hein_\(scientist\))

[4]: [http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/futures/index.html](http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/futures/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure I agree with you. In fact, a scientist's analytical thinking may be of great help in understanding the more complex art forms and thus engender a deeper appreciation of said art. Also, scientists are highly educated people and as such often have a strong background in the arts and humanities too. Specifically the "classical arts" tend to be the purview of the upper middle class that most scientists belong to.

(At least that is the situation here in Germany, where our Humboldtian tradition of education places a premium on a well-rounded schooling. Amongst my fellow students - biologists, physicists and such - it is not abnormal to discuss literature or music or philosophy. It is almost expected of an educated person that he or she be able to talk about such topics.)

Speaking personally, I have to say that I find it refreshing and indeed almost necessary to engage in "right-brain activities" every now and then. Few people are entirely logical in their thinking - and art is a wonderful outlet for the emotional side of our being.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think of art like Kafka thought about literature:

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."

It doesn't seem likely that art is useful in my profession, but is that what it's for?

<comment><USER3> An impressive quote, but I cannot agree with it fully. Of course it is a very important function of art to shake us up and get us to see the world in a different light. No doubt about that.

But to reduce it to merely this is to ignore what makes art what it is. It ignores the aesthetics, the concept of beauty. The idea that something can have value without having explicit content.

Aesthetics make art a potent tool for transmitting ideas. We are more likely to be influenced by something we sensually enjoy. But it is the aesthetics that make something art, and not the idea. Art can exist without the latter, but not without the former. And that is valid too. Because sometimes, what we really need in this world is just a little bit of beauty.

<comment><USER4> Aesthetics is an interesting concept. Romantics thought the sublime was the highest aesthetic and the sublime is terrifying. Bach is kind of terrifying too. Even the works that aren't praising Jesus, the God who bled to death from being murdered by humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See this fantastic recent YC podcast with former Artforum EIC Michelle Kuo. Where she talks at length about E.A.T. And collabs between Billy Klüver, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Feynman, and Bell Labs engineers curious about experimenting with LSD!

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and- technolog...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/experiments-in-art-and-technology- with-artforum-editor-michelle-kuo/)

And for inspiration:

Billy Klüver: Motion of the Electron

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3wnOGPnGs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK3wnOGPnGs)

</comment><comment><USER6> I transitioned from filmmaking to software engineering (long story) and now paint very seriously in my free time. I think of myself as an artist with a day job. When I come home, I crave the release of my easel. My partner has noticed that when I'm engaged with my art, I'm more relaxed and just "more of a person."

My background in art and storytelling, and particularly in film editing, informs my day job in so many weird ways. Although I feel like an outsider and a total weirdo sometimes in the tech world, I have an intuition and attention to people that many of my colleagues don't have or don't have as keenly. I can tell the story of a project in a really compelling way. I can fit the pieces of a project together in the same way that I can fit the individual shots of a scene together.

On the flip side, computer science has helped me approach my art in a more disciplined manner. It's also opened up a world of digital art to me in a way that would have been unapproachable before I really knew stuff about computers.

I firmly believe that deep study in one concentrated area absolutely informs other areas. Mine happen to be art and computer science, but this could be language and chemistry or philosophy and physics or any number of combinations. I think there's something to the Socratic notion of true forms, and I think immersion in any particular discipline gives you different directions of insight to these forms. Or to God, if you want to give a theological twist to it.

Science and (good) art are both getting at the same thing: truth. They are two different sides of the human experience, pointing at the same thing. I would dare to say that one cannot be a well-rounded person without at least some appreciation or mild interest in the other.

T.S. Elliot was a banker when he started publishing poetry. His wealthy society friends offered to pay him the same salary to write full time, and he turned them down. There have been many other writers and artists who found the discipline, financial security, and routine of their day job necessary to foster their artistic output. I do dream about being able to paint full time, but I wonder if I would be as productive in my art without the daily exercise of, for lack of a better term, my left brain.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hacker&Painter (Paul Graham) might interest you, he draws a large parallel between art and computer science (along many others topics).

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't appreciate or value art at all.</comment>


Monetize your Gmail inbox with 21.co - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@21/monetize-your-gmail-inbox-with-21-co-ec1f9687956d <comment><USER2> This is the individual equivalent of a website paywall. We all know how much happiness paywalls engender.

I know what my response will be when I get my first 21.co bounce message: "Congratulations. You have declared yourself irrelevant."</comment>


Help Egypt. Join the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://www.accessnow.org/proxy-cloud/page/join-the-cloud

<comment><USER2> Tunisian here: What made the revolution are poor people. Period. Internet may help to spread the word, mostly to the outside world and media. But I don't think that will have much pressure on a mad government and dictator. Poor people don't have Internet.

How the Tunisian Revolution succeed: It's war (and not civilized protests) that made the revolution succeed. Police clash with angry civilians. Police cars and stations gets burned and destroyed. Hotels and resorts are key point, too. Properties that belong to the dictator are also a key point.

One Police man reported that he sleeps only 1 hour during the protests days. Protests are 24/24, non stop. Some go for it in the day and some in 3 A.M. Everything that belongs to the president is under-fire.

Big damages in Police will get it tired and exhausted. So it should last 3 or 4 weeks. The economy will stop and the police lose its' prestige. (After the clashes, the police men are afraid from citizen).

Unless this happens, there will be no change. It needs time and patience. Even if the dictator escapes, there will be a need for protests against the remaining of the system and the population should work forward clearing what has remained.

I hope all the best for the Egyptian and the rest of the Arabic World.

<comment><USER3> What do you think will come out of all this?

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure about the Arabic world. However, Tunisia may see a strategic and amazing change.

Today I went to the café and all people are talking about politics. They talk about the new government, the elections, the prime minister, the old dictator...

How can you stop these people, in 6 months. You absolutely can't. Then, we'll meet again in the election. It's another turning point. Because, we need someone reliable.

If you have read wiki-leaks, there were many opportunities for investment in Tunisia. Ben Ali mafia were asking 50% stake, they were charging investors for nothing and implying that they take the constructions themselves. Lot of opportunities lost.

We have a strategic position, a young generation, a good educated portion. We can attract much more tourism and investment. Certainly that will need time, but I think becoming a developed country in the next 15 years is now possible!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not 100% sure of that, but if the internet in Egypt is actually blocked by not advertising BGP routes at the ISP level, my guess is TOR will not even work at all. Can anyone confirm?

</comment><comment><USER5> A suggestion for Anonymous: prepare WiFi and dial-up equipment packaged as one-step setup appliances and packaged for outdoor installation. These could be used to establish some sort of information infrastructure, then abandoned in hidden locations on rooftops. Having such equipment prepared and ready to ship out would make it much harder for regimes to cut their people off from the rest of the world.

Equipment could be shipped DHL to nearby countries and smuggled in. DIY cellular and satellite uplink are also possibilities.

Packet Radio is another good possibility.

DIY cell tower:

[http://kb9mwr.blogspot.com/2010/09/diy-emergency-cell- tower....](http://kb9mwr.blogspot.com/2010/09/diy-emergency-cell-tower.html)

If this could be used to just support SMS over packet radio, that would still be useful.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is circulating on twitter right now:

 _#egypt Anonymous dialup service provided by www.fdn.fr on +33172890150 login toto password toto MASS RT PLZ_

There are a number of other numbers being posted.

EDIT: apparently Noor Dialup is still working too: 0777 7770

EDIT2: much more info on getting online in egypt: [http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/howto- stay...](http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/howto-stay-online- egypt-protests-egypt-bloggers-jan25/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The best way to help Egypt is not to let the mainstream news change the subject in 48 hours after their predetermined news-cycle (or average American attention span) ends.

BBC/PBS might be the only news outlets to cover this in two weeks, everyone else will be doing pieces on Valentines Day.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand why you think that keeping the attention of random Americans helps Egypt at all. They are building this revolution themselves without any of our involvement, and they'll keep going and succeed without caring that we're watching them on TV.

I think it matters a lot more how their neighboring countries act, not how frequently people in New York or Oklahoma think about them.

<comment><USER7> I'm implying that international news coverage inhibits the powers-that-be from doing super horrible things like keeping thousands of protesters in prison, or even killing thousands.

It would be nice if their neighboring countries helped them directly, but that doesn't seem to happen in the middle-east?

However if the news stops reporting, just like all the multi-national conglomerates have obediently pulled the plug on their cellphones and sms so they can make money after this is over, the people are kinda doomed as there will be no outside pressure.

I cannot remember the last time I heard Iraq mentioned on the mainstream news since we still have 50k troops there, there is zero followup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How much bandwidth would be required to let this run for a week? Mine's capped at about 50GB.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't all the internet in Egypt blocked? Like you can't connect to the outside. How would a TOR network help? You still need to have IP connectivity to reach TOR nodes outside of your country.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why you Americans are getting an erection for all these "revolutions" in the Arab world. These are not revolutions, this is rioting by ignorant mobs. There are no institutions for democracy in these places, and democracy will not come out of it. The best case scenario is that the current socialist/paternalistic dictatorships will be replaced by enlightened, modernizing dictatorships like they had in Chile, Taiwan or South Korea. But let's face it, if this hasn't happened up till now, it ain't gonna happen.

<comment><USER6> _> if this hasn't happened up till now, it ain't gonna happen._

Flawless logic.

<comment><USER11> Sorry to be raining on your parade here. The first wave of "democracy" the Arabs had is when the colonial rulers left and they ethnically cleansed their countries from Jews and established Soviet-style "people's democracies". Then we have Gaza, which also had a people's revolution and is now even more of an impoverished and belligerent dictatorship. Now we are getting a similar "revolution" in Lebanon.

But don't let facts interfere with your worldview.

<comment><USER6> There are no facts here yet. Egypt is still as we speak literally in the midst of chaos. You cannot yet know what will be built from the rubble and neither can anyone else, except those who will be doing the building.

<comment><USER11> The only political force that is sufficiently organized to take power in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, so it's pretty obvious what is going to come out of this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon mirrors wikipedia as a "Shopping enabled wiki" - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)

<comment><USER2> Do you know if this is an experiment or a real product Amazon has developed. I can't tell which, because I couldn't find an 'about' page or similar.

As developed now, I find it difficult to navigate around the site as easily as the original wikipedia because the search and navigation headers have been removed.</comment>


Client v. Server Templating Shootout - <AUTHOR> http://ryanflorence.com/2012/client-v-server-templating/ <comment><USER2> to put it simply, browsers are really good (these days) at executing javascript, thus the biggest factor in this test seems to be the large(r) HTML payload.

though to make this a better test, I think you should serve both the JSON and HTML as static assets. after all, we're not interested in benchmarking ERB/to_json/ActiveRecord here, we care about the client side. server-side templating and JSON generation could both be quicker with optimizations and/or different backends.</comment>


Show HN: Sync.js – Upload changed local files to remote server - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/serkanyersen/sync

<comment><USER2> At some point in their career every programmer tries to write their own rsync. I must have written at least three — none of which are anywhere near as clever and reliable as rsync.

Why do we do this?

<comment><USER3> I will often 'reinvent the wheel' on my own time just to gather some more detailed understanding of what's happening behind the scenes. I never really use the stuff in production code, though.

I used to code PHP and made a transition to Ruby at some point. After programming Ruby/Rails for a bit I decided to create a rails-like MVC framework for PHP. There are plenty of those in existence. I could have just read the ruby code, which I did a bit, but I wanted to understand a bit better why certain decisions were made.

Doing that little exercise helped out a good bit with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A simpler (and more efficient) equivalent to this script would be this one- liner:

        while true; do rsync -azP $PWD/ <remote>:$PWD/; sleep 2; done

Or even better: [https://code.google.com/p/lsyncd/](https://code.google.com/p/lsyncd/)

lsyncd uses inotify/fsevents, meaning you don't have to traverse the filesystem to poll for changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice suggestion. I didn't use inotify because macosx doesn't have it and nodejs equivalents eats too much CPU for some reason. I tried to make it as simple as possible.

<comment><USER5> There are some hoops to jump through but I've got lsyncd working on my Mac. I think you have to compile it with fsevents. I think the README actually details what you need to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I can see how this can be useful, that means you'll constantly breaking things on the development server while you're writing code/testing. When working on projects alone I prefer to have a simple script that runs rsync with some predefined settings whenever I want to upload changes for someone to see (I also have an option to upload database). For multi developers environments I guess git would be the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER7> For development, I run my VMs with Samba so that I can use whatever local tools to edit files remotely.

Edit: I like the idea - make something you need, not struggle with overly complicated sync algorithms/apps to achieve the simple result.

</comment><comment><USER8> Because we have git, and with hooks also automatic deployment. Seriously, this is a really bad idea, and the only reason I can find to why we don't see many tools like this is because they break stuff. All the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually not changing the files on production but for using a development server. In my case, we don't have local servers. We have development servers that are identical to production servers.

I manage my changes from my local so I can use any editor I want in the mean time this script uploads all my changes to development server.

I think this is the general use case.

<comment><USER8> This is what vagrant was built for, so that you can run a full development environment locally and then push changes to staging/production server using git (and hooks, if you want to automate the process), when you have something working and want to show it off.

Using this technique you're stuck, because only one person can develop on the same project without interfering with each other. Also, git-hooks are not /that/ hard to use, you should really look into it, as it solves two problems: You have version control and you have easy deployment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh no, you misunderstood. On our project we use git, and git hooks. however we use githooks only for linting and such. We deploy using a different system.

We have development servers for each developer like 'username.dev.myapp.com' so you don't have to install the application on your machine. Most people work on the server using 'ssh: screen/tmux - vi/emacs', but I want to work on my local because it's faster. So I needed a system to upload my changes to my remote box. and commit my changes from local.

Most companies use this technique so that you know how your code will behave on production while developing it, because it has the same exact architecture.

I hope it's more clear now. It's funny that you would think I don't use a version control system :) what year is this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a course in operating systems changed me - <AUTHOR> http://www.shubhro.com/2014/11/21/operating-systems/ <comment><USER2> What are the best learning resources for learning about operating systems concepts?

<comment><USER3> there are books on the topic. libraries, bookstores, Google and Wikipedia are useful</comment></comment>


Adult piano lessons: Never too late to learn? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20140709-never-too-late-to-learn <comment><USER2> As a 30+ year old software engineer, I can confidently tell that the older you get, the later you are to learn piano.

Musical instruments are best learnt as a kid. I have seen kids effortlessly picking up chords, even whole new songs, within weeks. They can even break down a whole song into individual notes in a matter of an hour. Such a feat for me would take many hours and sometimes days. I do believe that I would have been much more effective at learning piano if I was introduced to it in my early childhood.</comment>


Instagram announces IGTV - <AUTHOR> https://instagram-press.com/blog/2018/06/20/welcome-to-igtv/ <comment><USER2> I've recently read a report about how media optimized for addictiveness impacts children's development [0] and found this sentence from the IGTV announcement particularly jarring: "Just like turning on the TV, IGTV starts playing as soon as you open the app".

[0] [https://5rightsframework.com/static/5Rights-Disrupted- Childh...](https://5rightsframework.com/static/5Rights-Disrupted- Childhood.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reference! Already shared with my parents who are quite worried about my phone-obsessed teenage sibling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the backend of IGTV is the same as the one that powers Facebook inline video content? Either the same technology, or the same infrastructure...

I also can't shift the feeling that IGTV is designed to pull 'influencers' away from YouTube.

<comment><USER5> At this point Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are just different front-ends to the same services behind it. They all use Facebook servers and technology.

<comment><USER6> Do you work at Facebook?

<comment><USER5> No, you can tell by the design and the servers they use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> yes i read 20th june an amazing feature introduce by instagram. IGtv Views , Will give tough time to YouTube . [https://smmpoint.com/buy-instagram-tv- views/](https://smmpoint.com/buy-instagram-tv-views/) look like many website now helping to increasing views

</comment><comment><USER8> It's nice-looking but feels more like an extended Instagram Stories than an actual YouTube competitor.

<comment><USER9> Yep - discovery still looks to be hit and miss, that's the key for a YT competitor, not just the length of video.

<comment><USER5> Discovery on YouTube sucks so much they might as well not have it.

<comment><USER10> Why do you say that. I've found it to have great recommendations.

<comment><USER5> I'm mainly interested in computer science, engineering and professional race driving. What I get recommended are videos about the second world war and car crash compilations. Every three to four months a video that is actually interesting shows up.

And the recommendations when watching a video is even worse. I'm watching video about voting systems and all the recommendations are car crash compilations.

I must have been sorted into a very stupid pool of viewers.

<comment><USER11> If you tie it to a Google account you can tune them by watching videos on topics you are interested in, as well as flagging videos & channels with "Not Interested". Their algorithms are definitely eager to find you a flood of content you'll enjoy. The hard part is seeding it with high quality channels.

<comment><USER12> IMO it's too eager. I watch 1 video of dashcam crashes, and my recommendations get polluted with them. Same with 1 video of tennis. The algorithm seems designed to keep eyeballs in the app. This lead me to switch to NewPipe on Android, where the "front page" of the app is customizable, so I just leave it to "most popular videos in $country", they all happen to be music videos and not have click-baity titles.

<comment><USER13> I think this is a recent change (over the past couple of years?) in their algorithm.

Every now and then I will watch a video which will cause my recommendations to be flooded with nothing but stuff like that video, and videos from series that I have been watching regularly for years get buried.

<comment><USER14> Might not provide enough revenue (or not be monetized at all) so they don't prioritize the other videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, the race to squeeze out "influencers" for all their ad worth has started?

First Youtube rolls out a Sponsor button to try and stop people from those going to Patreon. Then it tries to force people to monetize their videos even if the creator doesn't want to.

Now Instagram wants people to stay on their platform and not re-direct people to other video sites.

</comment><comment><USER16> Will i ever understand the logic behind giving user one minute videos first, and then building IGTV years later?

<comment><USER17> Chicken and egg: short videos can still be kind of bearable when amateurishly produced, the length limitation serves as guiderails. Now that much of the content consumed on Instagram is thoroughly professional, they can open the limit. Did anyone else notice how the announcement doesn't include a single line about how users would create those longer videos?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm excited because I follow a lot of video content creators on instagram, having to switch to youtube or twitch.tv to actually watch their content. If I can get all of their pictures/text announcements and video content in one place I will be very happy. Though as a separate app, it doesn't sound like it'll be integrated as nicely with instagram as I'd hope for.

EDIT: I missed that it can be watched from within the instagram app too, this is almost perfect! I just need landscape video support so I'm not watching streamers play in vertical mode and I can finally stop using youtube.

<comment><USER5> Why would you want to give even more power to Facebook? It's bad enough that they were allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. At least online video should belong to a different company.

<comment><USER18> It's not that I want to give more power to Facebook, it's that it's more convenient for my use case. Sure Facebook has too much power, but so does Google and I'd rather my video watching data was all aggregated in a much smaller ecosystem that only encompasses my social life and not my entire web browsing habits, email, phone use, etc.

So yeah, I want to transfer the power from Google to Facebook for now until a better option comes along.

<comment><USER5> If you think that Facebook doesn't already know your web browsing habits and phone use. I have bad news for you. They don't have email that is true, but they have WhatsApp and FB Messenger which might be worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can't imagine this will be very well used. It's obviously a reaction to influencers and monetizing on ad revenue from them but I have to wonder how many will install two different Instagram apps...

(The influencer will also be on the main one.)

And I am surprised this couldn't be efficiently integrated to the main app. Is it about branding? I mean... They just increased the clip length. Couldn't those clips be shown prominently for/on the user in the main app?

I'm getting stuck on the issue of two different apps because I think that's where the most friction will be.

<comment><USER20> Wait, didn't the article explicitly mention that it's also in the main app, or did I misread?

"While there's a stand-alone IGTV app, you'll also be able to watch from within the Instagram app so the entire community of one billion can use it from the very start."

<comment><USER19> Ooh I must have missed that when I saw this yesterday. I directly went to the App Store and saw the new IGTV app and just assumed it was a new separate product although with their existing user base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is it? Intended to compete with YouTube?

<comment><USER22> I think it sounds more like IRL on Twitch TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow those app icons are terrible.

</comment><comment><USER24> > "...it's built for how you actually use your phone, so videos are full > screen and vertical."

Oh dear.

<comment><USER25> I don't understand why vertical video always gets this response, mostly from people who do anything with film.

I get it, it's not the most cinematic experience but who actually wants to hold their phone sideways while scrolling through a feed, or switch apps etc? It just doesn't make sense to do it any other way. Also as most video is even filmed in portrait mode.

<comment><USER26> Vertical video is awful because it doesn't capture any of the surroundings of the subject, and instead wastes those pixels it on filming what's above & below the subject (which 99% of the time is irrelevant).

<comment><USER27> For traditional media yes, but for influencers it fits their face and the product just fine and landscape is actually a waste.

A sad reality.

<comment><USER26> Depends what those "influencers" are about. A lot of successful Youtube influencers actually show off something else besides their face and for those the mandatory vertical video wouldn't cut it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Email Canary - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2011/06/my-email-canary.html <comment><USER2> I built 1pix.me about six months ago and it would be perfect for this. You get a link to a 1 p pixel transparent PNG, and phone or desktop notifications (via notifo) every time it is served. Its totally free, enjoy.

<comment><USER3> Seems like a neat service, but I never got a request via notifo to approve the subscription. I'm guessing the service is overloaded at the moment?

<comment><USER2> I'll check into it - it could be overloaded right now. Best bet is to just try again in a bit.

<comment><USER3> Actually, I fixed it. I was trying to put my API key instead of my username. It works now, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it doesn't matter (bc as I understand it, the image is really what notifies you - but this might tip off a hacker if they're perceptive), but would it be better for the zip file to be .zip instead of .gz? I would think that most banks, when interacting with "regular customers" would send zip files instead of gzip files ... maybe I'm wrong?

<comment><USER5> It's probably a bit late by the time they've got to looking at the extension of the attachment - the image will have already loaded and they'll be "busted".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not just a canary that a (unknown) IP has logged into the account? Gmail displays the logged in IPs. How hard would it be to grab that info into similar notifications? Add to that reverse look ups and you could get a IP and location. Train the system through use and you'll quickly get a white list.

I'd pay for that service.

<comment><USER7> What about the attacker who compromises your home computer and then is using it remotely while you are not home?

An IP based check won't help you there. This canary would.

<comment><USER8> If he's cautious enough to do two-factor auth, he probably doesn't leave his accounts logged in. Plus you have a whole lot of other problems if someone owns your personal machine.

<comment><USER7> _If he's cautious enough to do two-factor auth, he probably doesn't leave his accounts logged in._

Suppose he uses [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in- secu...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-security-for- your.html) and has it remember the second authentication for 30 days (available from a checkbox). Then someone who has compromised his machine and has installed a keylogger can find it password, and log back in as him from that machine when he is not there. Two-factor has not saved you. Nor has the IP check.

And yes, you're right. If someone owns your personal machine you have a whole lot of other problems. This fact makes discovering that someone owns your machine more important, not less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gmail already has something similar built in with the Last Account Activity Alerts:

[http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&a...](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&answer=45938)

<comment><USER10> facebook can alert your by email when you log in from a new computer. <http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+computer+email+login>

<comment><USER11> This is actually a fantastic feature. I was recently traveling in Europe, and without thinking logged into Facebook without HTTPS (using a third-party iframe app that couldn't use HTTPS). Within a few hours, I had a notification from FB letting me know that there was a new login from the same city I was in and a different OS/web browser combo.

<comment><USER12> I've experienced this too. Apparently, Google Chrome on OS X gets labeled Opera/Win XP by Facebook. I was paranoid for a little while, wondering how these hackers kept tracking me around the world with that browser/os combo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Clever, but works only against targeted attacks - an attack on many accounts would presumably rifle through your mailbox automatically, which would defeat this.

<comment><USER14> That would have to be targeted attacks by foolish intruders, because a manual attack would presumably start with changing your password, after which this notification would be nearly useless.

<comment><USER15> Why would they change your password? That just lets you know they are in. In Gmail, they simply search your email for other accounts and change the passwords on those accounts. They can see when you are logged in and simply send password reset requests for other services when you are not logged into gmail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Two big points here, any hacker with a brain wouldn't

1) Rummage through your emails with image loading turned on 2) At least at a minimum be behind a service such as tor..

so uhhh, i guess this is a good idea for alerting you, if that is you are un/lucky enough to get 'hacked' by those that ignore the previous two points.

<comment><USER17> Do you have data to support that?

It sounds too much like the No True Scotsman Fallacy for me to take it too seriously.

<comment><USER16> Why do i need to provide you data? If i were to hack your email account there is no way i'd use the web interface to trawl through them one-by-one.

Initial hack->Gains credentials->Pull down everything imap/pop->Load that shit into thunderbird on a dedicated vm->And we're away

<comment><USER18> _Why do i need to provide you data?_

You pulled a statement about behaviour out of thin air, and it wont hold up to scrutiny. Now its being scrutinised, you are dodging it.

1) What percentage of all hackers count as "hackers with a brain"?

2) How do you know most or all "hackers with a brain" would not be caught by this, without generalising from your example of one (you)?

3) Since both of the above are unknown, how can you use those as arguments to justify this being an ineffective precaution?

<comment><USER19> >You pulled a statement about behaviour out of thin air, and it wont hold up to scrutiny. Now its being scrutinised, you are dodging it.

Why does the most obvious and logical course of events require justification? "Most hackers breathe constantly." "Do you have data to support that?"

Maybe you're right. Maybe this "canary" is extremely effective. Maybe everyone who makes a living by breaking security also happens to be dumb enough that they fail to take the most basic precautions to protect themselves.

Even if that's true, there are still more effective solutions that should be used instead of this "canary".

<comment><USER20> _Why does the most obvious and logical course of events require justification?_

Obviously because what you've written is non-obvious ;)

Enough people "hack" by using simple password-reset forms[1]. Whilst I have no doubt that there are plenty of worringly-competent hackers out there, I'd bet that there are also lots of less competent hackers. Taking this through to its logical conclusion: I'd rather know about some of them than give up and know about none of them.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_email_hack>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Neat idea. One thing I'd probably do if I wanted to use this technique would be to develop a browser extension to go along with it to either hide the row when accessed from "trusted" IP addresses, or injects the row via the extension when accessed from an unknown IP. That way I wouldn't be forced to have that row on my screen from home or work where it might accidentally be clicked on and triggered.

<comment><USER22> > injects the row via the extension when accessed from an unknown IP

Not so sure that would work. You'd have to first get the guy who stole your email account to install a custom browser extension.

<comment><USER21> You're right. I was thinking of this in the scenario where somebody stole the whole laptop, and not just gained access to your email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> To the OP: Do you use Google's two-factor authentication with that account? If so, where do you see potential attack vectors?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I do. And when I think of Google Authenticator and its security I think of RSA SecurID and its security. Nothing is secure in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This assumes that the attacker is using a web browser.

Many toolkits exist (no, I'm not going to link to them) where you just feed in a list of usernames and passwords for popular email systems and they go harvesting, usually via IMAP.

<comment><USER25> Dont forget, many email clients also consume Web content.

<comment><USER24> Right, so this will catch jealous girlfriends, snooping coworkers, and malicious kids. People that would try to grab your credentials and set it up in Outlook Express...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Check out www.inboxalarm.com which is something I built for fun a couple years ago. It's a free service and uses SMS to alert you the moment the image is triggered.

<comment><USER27> any way to sign up without facebook? I don't have an account.

<comment><USER26> decided to use facebook authentication since it can also push an alert to your friends' newsfeeds not to click links until the hack has been mitigated.

It also decreased friction in the sign up process - no need to enter a name, email adddress, etc. Was built before Facebook allowed application to access a phone number, or I would have added that too.

<comment><USER28> The FB connect thing didn't work for me. The page gave an error when I click Allow: "Virhe myönnettäessä lupaa sovelluksen käyttöön" (in Finnish).

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the heads up; taking a look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> and so when an attacker configures thunderbird to slurp all the email out of your inbox this does .. what? why not just poll the list of most recently logged in IP addresses and track the number of currently logged in sessions/authentications, and when that number approaches a certain hair trigger, sound the alarm? oh right, google already does that for you...

</comment><comment><USER30> If an attacker is going to attack your gmail, they already know that their IP is logged on the "Last account activity". If they are really going in, they'll be behind at least 7 proxies. Then again, there is next to nothing you can do with an IP address, if this make you feel safer then w/e.

<comment><USER31> it still gives you time to "sign out all other sessions" in your browser and change password immediately. granted, you may be afk etc but still better than nothing at all...

<comment><USER32> You should really automate that... at least then you'll be faster than the intruder (at least if he/she hasn't already changed the password :p)

<comment><USER33> Is it possible to automate sign out and password change?

<comment><USER32> Yes. Easiest way would be to just have a script (for example, Firefox addon or greasemonkey script) that drives a browser.

Or if you don't want the overhead of a browser, a somewhat more tricky way is to do it once yourself and record the traffic using a plugin, and repeat that in a script... (but this might require some reverse engineering work on the clientside JS if there are fields like one-time tokens)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is very cool ... but what would you actually do (to prevent disaster) from your phone?

Let's say I get an alert on my iPhone but I'm 30 mins from getting to my laptop.

How would you stop them from recovering your DropBox or VPS console password?

</comment><comment><USER35> I like the idea - but please do not confuse this with security. While the canary might be activated, all of your genuine information has also been compromised.

I have thought about the security issues with gmail, especially for mobile devices (they can be easily stolen).

It would be really REALLY great if Google offered several account access levels - I could use a 'read only' account for my mobile device, which could also only give me access to the last 1 hour of emails for example. and seperate account access for use with 3rd party services (facebook, gtalk apps etc)

<comment><USER35> Following on from the idea of Google offering account access for different security levels, would also be great if you could label an email as 'bank', 'money' or 'personal' and these emails, photos and calendar items would only be visible with full account access - so effectively you could associate a particular email label to a 'security' or 'access' level.

I would DEFINATELY use a feature like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The catch is that images are not displayed by default. Why would an attacker click on show images? Only if the text of the email asked them to...

EDIT: I'm wrong as pointed out by others in the replies below.

<comment><USER37> An IMAP client somewhere could poll the 'read' state of message 0x12345678 instead, alerting the owner when the message turns 'read'. However, that client would have to have access to the Gmail box...

<comment><USER32> But would an attacker read a message marked as unread? A careful attacker would know that this alerts the owner of the mailbox, as he can't remember opening the message.

His canary is a mail that has already been opened, so the attacker assumes he can look at it harmlessly.

<comment><USER38> You can mark messages un-read again in the gmail UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm thinking of a secondary alarm anytime you get an email that may be a password recovery.

Something like SpamBayes put trained for account related emails from the popular services and banks.

</comment><comment><USER40> Cool idea! But I think that if would get widely adopted, hackers would see it coming from miles away.

</comment><comment><USER41> Awesome idea, even though it means you can never use stars again.

<comment><USER42> You can just change Priority Inbox to display some label, e.g. "Confidential" above the usual tabs.

<comment><USER41> Oh I didn't know about that, I can totally use that for server notifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't see the point. The guy says he owns a private server. Why doesn't he just move his email there, and monitor activity in all sort of imaginable ways?

</comment><comment><USER44> May be I am missing something here... what if the Display Images is turned off? How will that activate the alert system?

<comment><USER45> This is for his own account; presumably, he's turned that option on.

<comment><USER44> I would think that the hacker might try to turn that off before he starts looking into emails? If doing that can avoid detection, then, its difficult to have faith in this system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think that it's a bit over the top. The "canary" gets in the way of what you are doing.

I operate on the opposite principle: there is nothing sensitive in my email account. When it arrives, it is actioned and disposed of (properly) immediately.

I am not sentimental and do not keep every email "just in case" as I do not remember 99.9% of telephone conversations I've had.

<comment> brown9-2 _When it arrives, it is actioned and disposed of (properly) immediately_

What about "important" emails in your inbox that you have not yet had a chance to take action on? Can you be taking action on your email 24 hours a day?

<comment><USER46> Gets summarised and copied straight onto my task list which is a text file with relevant information within an hour usually (unless I'm out cold). If it takes less than 5 mins it's done there and then.

I use Vim Outliner for task management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why not build an app that keeps a log of every time you log into your email, stores it to x specified # of logins and sends you an sms showing your email activity including # of logins, what time and IP address.</comment>


The need for speed: Making Basecamp faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1185-the-need-for-speed-making-basecamp-faster

<comment><USER2> My immediate question is how much of this is due to the analysis, caching, mysql optimization and how much due to the beefing up of their database servers (50% faster CPUs, 4x RAM).

My impulse would be to think that the hardware is responsible for most of it, which makes the article somewhat less interesting.

<comment><USER3> That occurred to me as well. A more rigorous analysis would have performance numbers with only different combinations of optimizations turned on, including the new hardware. If you have a single experiment but change multiple variables, you have no way of knowing which variable or combination of variables is what makes the difference.

<comment><USER4> The point of the post wasn't to provide a rigorous performance analysis, it was to highlight the overall improvement. We prefer to attack the problem of performance from as many avenues as possible so that we can get the most

That said, the vast majority of the improvement was from the application changes, and not the hardware upgrades. Between server-side caching via memcached and conditional GET using if-modified-since headers and ETags, we were able to see dramatic improvements. We've also spent a lot of time analyzing the behavior of the Ruby garbage collector in our applications and making changes where appropriate to improve performance.

Did the database server upgrades make a difference? Of course they did, but it was an incremental improvement -- think along the lines of 10%. The point was to give us a longer scalability runway before we have to do things like sharding the database, not to provide an instant performance increase.

<comment><USER2> This comment is actually better than the original posting. I could get all friend-feed, Dave Winer-ish and start talking about "conversations." :-)

In general, in my opinion, profiling languages in web applications is a minor win because generally they're just glue. The real payoffs are on the client side (which you've just brought up) and the database side (which I wanted to make more prominent).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is anyone here using New Relic RPM? The demo looks slick. We're currently doing things a little more adhoc for Kongregate. Just using pl_analyze - <http://rails-analyzer.rubyforge.org/pl_analyze/>

<comment><USER6> New Relic is pretty sick. Definitely recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "2 x Quad Core 3GHz processors, 128GB of RAM, and 8×73GB 15,000 RPM SAS" Holy cow, I didn't realize you could stuff 128GB into a server.</comment>


Why Starbucks Actually Helps Mom and Pop Coffeehouses - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2007/12/dont_fear_starbucks.html

<comment><USER2> This is a great lesson for many start-ups that worry when a competitor comes along, or somebody 'copies' their idea. Your competitors also end up spending money educating your potentil customers.

I wouldn't be a coffee drinker today if it weren't for Starbucks, and will still go to one of their stores, if their is nothing else around. However, I'll seek out unique coffee houses when I travel to get more of an authentic local flare, rather than the now ho-hum Starbucks experience.

I also think local coffee houses can continue to learn from their competitor/Starbucks, and start-ups can do the same. Your product has to be at least as good as Starbucks in order to get my repeat business. Often, the local mom and pop shops just don't reach that fairly mediocre bar.</comment>


When a Stranger Decides to Destroy Your Life - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-life-1827546385 <comment><USER2> The British libel laws leave some to be desired but they would have solved a situation like this. Publications would not have been able to rebroadcast the accusation with proof.

<comment><USER3> I think there are mechanisms in most civilized countries that allow you to somehow stop this kind of malice. Therefore maybe it is more useful to ask ourselves the question "Why doesn't the US?".

<comment><USER2> Almost every country has libel laws. But I think there's legitimate debate whether retelling someone's story is considered libel if you are clear its not a first hand account. Also in the US the website is not considered the publisher despite their branding being everywhere and getting all the ad revenue.</comment></comment></comment>


Proxi3 – Ease way to proxy from local to external server - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/proxi3 <comment><AUTHOR> v0.1.1 - Now with option to set config file path</comment>


Dropbox Buys Cove To Bring Former Facebookers To The Team - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/27/dropbox-buys-cove-to-bring-former-facebookers-ruchi-sanghvi-and-aditya-agarwal-to-the-team/ <comment><AUTHOR> Congratulations to the Cove team!

\--

I wonder if talented, experienced, and coveted engineers and designers in the Valley right now (read: talent frenzy) can start their own stealth companies and reasonably plan towards a relatively early stage acquisition, be it for talent, technology integration, or both. But it seems to be a growing trend that wouldn't be as possible in a downturn or when talent isn't so scarce.

If they work on a technology and business they want to be working on anyways that will integrate with several potential buyers, it seems like it hedges start up risk and offers more upside (impact, financial, and otherwise) than merely jumping from one company to a more senior role at some other company where you have a little more say in what you work on and can negotiate 10-20% more compensation, excluding equity, when you jump jobs. These sort of jumps have a completely different cost-benefit profile than starting your own company. It seems like potential benefit is uniquely outsized nowadays.

Choosing to not raise seed capital seems like an option if you plan to exit in less than a year and have the savings to do so. And by not raising capital, an acquisition this quickly seems far more aligned with everyone's interests and cannot be slowed or prevented by any investors holding out for a larger exit.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hate it when I read articles like this and they tell me nothing of what the acquired company did.

What was Cove? Why was it in such good alignment with Dropbox's vision?

<comment><USER3> If only it was easy to find out.

Googling "Cove" doesn't return their site on the first page of results, but it's www.cove.com

I found this article that... kinda... says what they did: [http://allthingsd.com/20120227/qa-dropbox-nabs-early- faceboo...](http://allthingsd.com/20120227/qa-dropbox-nabs-early-facebook- engineers-with-cove-acquisition/)

What's with this company? What did they provide exactly?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that article.

I find it interesting that Dustin Moskovitz was an investor in Cove, if only because I know that Aditya is an investor in Asana.

I don't know how common it is to cross-invest in eachothers companies, but I am sure it is fairly common.

From the language used in that article - it sounds like Cove was an attempt to make "Asana for group management" -- I also find it odd for a product to do an alpha launch, gain "thousands" of alpha users then tell them they have 6-9 months to find another platform :)

Sure, it's understandable - but that has to be a weird conversation to have with your users "Check out our new app! It's just what you need to do X! Yay - thanks for being in our alpha launch, now you have 6-9 months to find a different platform! WOOT"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Was really hoping they had bought a literal cove in order to lure quality engineers to a vacation-quality work environment: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackscottimages/4461780264/>

Now that would be an idea!

</comment><comment><USER5> Congrats to the folks from Cove! I am guessing their are lots of Facebook companies yet to come.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised this was (according to the TC article, so grain of sand) Dropbox's first acquisition — for their valuation and size it seems like they'd have started that ball rolling a year ago or so.

<comment><USER7> Why? Having money doesn't mean you should buy other companies, especially if you're DropBox and are kicking ass in your niche and not trying to branch out in a million directions.

I've seen SO many acquisitions go wrong for both parties.</comment></comment>


How I built an augmented reality app with the Mapbox Unity SDK and ARKit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mapbox.com/how-i-built-an-augmented-reality-app-with-the-mapbox-unity-sdk-and-arkit-187d925b827 <comment><USER2> I don't really care about the AR part, but the Mapbox SDK for Unity looks very cool.

[https://www.mapbox.com/help/unity-mesh- pt-1/](https://www.mapbox.com/help/unity-mesh-pt-1/)

I can't help but imagine playing a game like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in environments generated from actual map data.</comment>


Will the Push for Coding Lead to 'Technical Ghettos'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/will-the-push-for-coding-lead-to-technical-ghettos/471300/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> I know the reasons for teaching Java...but I really wish that when a coding curriculum is decided upon, we go to something as close to the *nix-like shell as possible. I'm teaching Python to non-CS college students right now, and it never fails to amaze me how many times I have to remind them that we're dealing with text and textfiles, whether it's web scraping or counting words in Shakespeare or accessing an API. If they have any doubt what they just opened and read into memory, or wrote to disk, just switch over to the GUI (i.e. Finder on OS X) and inspect the file the "old fashioned way". The students that get it are the ones who can use programming on a casual basis...I don't attempt to teach the basics of comsci theory, but if someone can see that a task is repeatable and abstractable into a for-loop, and then apply that to something "real-world", even if it's just something like sending or collecting tweets, or managing photos...that to me is what students in a general curriculum should be learning: that the power of programming is the ability to control a computer at the granular level that you need to do exactly what you plan for. Not just learning how to push buttons on an interface designed for general consumption.

The other stuff...algorithmic efficiency, recursion, design...can come later, and are much easier to teach after you've appreciated the potential of computing and computational thinking.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe we shouldn't teach people how to write, as they may grow up to write trite race baiting articles.

I was fortunate to have an uncle in IT who gifted me hand me down IBM PC hardware that my parents could not afford in the 80s. I was making more money in high school with stuff I was able to self teach than many of my "privleged" relatives in real adult jobs.

These coding initiatives are great, as they introduce kids to a whole new world of inspiration and discovery.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me, or was the entire "question" in the article irrelevant? Like, yes just "learning to code" doesn't make you a good programmer. But just "learning to write" doesn't make you a good author either. You have to get an introduction and basic skills somewhere, even if most people will never go on to develop or profit from those skills.

<comment><USER6> This also assumes that __everyone __can become a good programmer, which is IMO far from being the case.

Programming is an ART, not everyone can be Bach or Picasso even though most can slap paint on canvas or hit keys on a piano. It's actually a lot worse with software engineering because the end result doesn't __only __have aesthetic value but is an interconnected system that in many cases subsumes many facets of our everyday lives.

Software engineering is __hard __and requires intelligence, creativity and experience. Pretending that everyone can be a good /effective software engineer through training alone is supremely naive, actively __encouraging __this sort of society is extremely dangerous.

TL;DR There is no room for egalitarianism in software, it should be a meritocracy first and foremost, where the best are encouraged and those not cut out for it swiftly dropped from further participation. We have experienced what bad software engineers can do and the cost to society at large that they are directly responsible for. Let's not pretend that this new populist push will improve matters.

<comment><USER7> Because if you can't be the best, don't even try. Right?

Btw, ponus points for (in the context of this article) implying that Black and Hispanic children aren't smart enough to be software engineers.

<comment><USER6> You can try all you want, and in fact I encourage everyone to do so.

Let's not have populists plant the seeds that all it takes is government handouts (and also wave the carrot of future career ROI in front of people who don't know better) though.

This is at best misdirection and manipulation by corrupt demagogues who know nothing about software or engineering. Unless of course there are others, besides hack job politicians, who are putting forth the same views?

<comment><USER7> All this program is doing is attempting to give exposure to programming to young students who may not otherwise have an opportunity to do so. No matter how naturally gifted a student may be, the tools to learn and grow have to be put within their reach in the first place.

The criticism this article is levying is how it is threatening to produce code monkeys instead of well-rounded software engineers. But that is because (I believe) that they are suggesting "programming" credits could be used in lieu of math/science credits to graduate. Which would create high school graduate who can program tolerably but have little to no skill doing anything else... aka a vocational training.

The criticisms aren't "Well they won't be any good at it anyways."

You're also making a very strong elitist stance on the matter. The tone of your comments strongly imply "software engineers are better than other people, only the chosen few may join our illustrious ranks!"

<comment><USER6> Disregarding your elitist stance comment (and your other race assertions -- SERIOUSLY?), which I thought were poor and totally mischaracterized what I wrote, I think that you are choosing to discard a lot of what past years have taught us about the American education system.

Where you see "attempting to give exposure to programming" I see students being PUSHED by the environment (parents, teachers, peers) into doing something that they may very well not enjoy or be good at, simply because it's been reduced to a good CAREER. Is that something that we need to further encourage?

Moreover, re: exposure to programming, I dare say that we don't need it _at all_ these days since it's everywhere.

Knowing what we know about the American education system (ranked as among one of the worst in the world, every year) I think my interpretation is a lot more realistic than yours.

<comment><USER7> School is generally about pushing students to learn more about things they may or may not be good at or interested in. Surely you've heard people complain about math / chem / bio / physics and how it's hard and they don't care. Programming will just join that list of "things you should generally be aware of and have the opportunity to learn more about in high school".

As for exposure to programming: You say it's everywhere and we don't need it in school at all? Would you say that to some poor kid who doesn't have the environment at home that fosters self-teaching, or maybe even a computer at all? You do realize that some of these kids literally struggle to have breakfast each morning and here you are hand waving access to computing resources and educational material as trivial...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get the complaint that teaching Java and JavaScript puts them on the bottom rung. You have to learn on some programming language and those are as good as any, though starting on Java sounds painful.

<comment><USER7> I think he's implying that teaching them how to code and not how to design programs will be the new "vocational" equivalent. Although this issue seems like it just generally applies to the education system as a whole, not specific at all to coding... unless I'm missing some key point.

Also, I think perhaps the issue is with allowing "coding" classes to qualify as math/science credits may encourage some students to essentially come out of highschool with a working knowledge of how to write java / javascript to accomplish certain tasks but have little analytical training (ie the scientific method, math beyond the basics, etc)

<comment><USER9> Math as taught in US high schools has very little to do with anything of real value. It's basically an SAT prep program, to push people through to calculus.

I could very nearly count on a railway brakeman's fingers the number of times that high school math has been an asset in my software career. The three years of computer programming electives I took were wildly more useful - <USER2> actually taught me geometry...

<comment><USER7> I would argue that well-taught geometry and such will make learning programming muuuch easier. Linear algebra has a lot of concepts that translate quite neatly to programming. Set theory, functions, etc. Formal logic is also a great asset for understanding branching logic.

Then again, learning how to program probably also makes learning those concepts easier too, as it goes both ways...

<comment><USER10> Not to disagree with the idea of their importance, but linear algebra, set theory, and formal logic are things I had not even heard of in a relatively impoverished public high school, much less had courses on.

Hell, I had to take the AP Calculus AB twice -- not because I did poorly the first time, but because there was no other courses for me to take and I didn't want to go a year without any math before college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _> Offering a glimpse into the not-too-distant future, [Joseph Sweeney] describes a day when... artificial-intelligence system will build the app... Coding might then be nearly obsolete_

It's always cute to hear school administrators (or any non-technical policy types) predict the future based upon superficial understanding of the underlying science and technology.

Code synthesis for fully specified and very simple programs is still considered a hard problem. Automating the entire software and product design process is fully AI hard.

<comment><USER12> To steal something I saw over the weekend: "Your [Sweeney's] position is like a penguin, different, cute, and interesting... but it ain't gonna fly."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could this also be confused with a less condescending term - like Anil Dash's concept of "blue collar programmer"? ([http://anildash.com/2012/10/the-blue- collar-coder.html](http://anildash.com/2012/10/the-blue-collar-coder.html) )

(Or Reginald Braythewathe's term of " Clerical engineering work" )

<comment><USER14> I am very much torn between this on multiple levels. On the most superficial level, I do not want development to become "blue collar" because I am a developer and don't want to think of myself as blue collar. With my personal bias out of the way:

Do you think it's possible for development to be the new manufacturing? I have been saying that it is for years now - but I don't know if I truly believe it or not. There is a large academic distinction between coding and manufacturing. Solid middle class manufacturing jobs were mostly mindless monkey work. Screw this on, put that in the hole it fits in, etc. The more I work on this internal Java ERP/CRM sites the more I think it is monkey work too, but when I take a step back I realize that I have been programming since I was 10 (16 years), I have a bachelors degree in computer science, I have several years of working experience and after work I go home and code. The work generally seems like turn key work to me, but I'm not sure if that is true. Basically I'm saying that I don't necessarily believe the masses are smart enough to be developers even for shitty intranet applications

<comment><USER14> P.S. The articles is beyond stupid. I use to love technology because it was apolitical and was never muddled with things like "race" and "micro aggression". It seems like every tech article I read now has something to say about minorities or under represented youth or woman. Give it a rest already. Anyone can start coding. All you need is notepad.

I do appreciate how the article makes a distinction between computer science and programming. We already have a computer science education in school. Its called math.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I usually try to temper my judgments on these sorts of articles, but this is patently ridiculous.

Is it the police and prison systems that are endangering another generation of black and brown youth? Is it the lack of fresh, organic food in inner-cities? Maybe it's the fact that black and brown parents have, at a disgustingly disproportionate rate, been taken away from their families for possession of plants and chemicals that are likely to be legal soon anyway?

No, no, it's not that stuff. It's the fact that kids are learning Java and Javascript instead of Python and Go and Rust.

<comment><USER16> > _No, no, it 's not that stuff_

Maybe it's the combination of many potential social problems, and the author is writing about one specifically? I don't see anywhere it's stated that this is _the_ biggest issue facing youth of colour.

<comment><USER15> I'm disagreeing on both ends: 1) I don't think Java and Javascript are bad languages to learn (nor even that the matter of _which_ languages to learn is particularly important), and 2) I also think that systemic racism is a big enough concern as to completely obfuscate any effect that learning Java and Javascript (to the temporary exclusion of other languages) might have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Kamau Bobb, the program director in computer-science education at NSF and > Brown's colleague, notes that the dominant argument in support of youth of > color learning to code is to "get a good job"—creating a stratified system > where students from racial and ethnic groups, and lower socioeconomic > backgrounds, are prepped for work as service technicians and helpdesk agents

How does learning to code prep one for work as a service technician or helpdesk agent?

<comment><USER11> _> How does learning to code prep one for work as a service technician or helpdesk agent?_

Because it's treated as an alternative to the main-line college preparedness curriculum.

This isn't Algebra I + Programming I. It's Programming I instead of Algebra I. Because if you're not good enough at math to do well on college entrance exams, you might as well start your career readiness...

(This is _rally hard_ for us folk out in the real world to understand. We know that programming is a high-demand field precisely because it requires a level of intellectual preparedness similar to or sometimes even greater than that obtained while successfully completing a college degree. But K-12 people in the US tend to be idiotic about credentialism. So where we see "exceptional self-learner with great work ethic can make it without a college degree in software", they see "any schmuck who can't hack it at college can get a high paying computer job")

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sounds more to me like a bunch of computer science professors trying to market 4 year degrees and 10s (or 100s) of thousands of dollars in debt to lower income African Americans, with questionable benefits in terms of employment outcomes.

<comment><USER11> _> computer science professors_

generally speaking couldn't care less about the marketability of their degree programs among the general public, much less the lower income general public. Enrollment numbers just aren't important enough currency in higher ed to devote enough effort to get the president and a bunch of celebrities on board.

Deans, maybe. But not run-of-the-mill professors.

And even then, almost all CS programs have the exact opposite problem right now -- too many people and too much hype so that it's hard to predict the future and grow sustainably.

Besides, it is a very well-documented fact that the current push for STEM -- and specifically CS -- education is coming from political types and insdustry folks.

<comment><USER19> I had a CS professor that said that during the dot com heyday they were seeing hundreds of cs majors every year, and it was a mess as most of them didn't belong and were just there because it was pretty much guaranteed work for high pay and keeping up with everything was a pain in the ass.

But then the dot bust happened and enrollment went back down to much more reasonable numbers, and she was a lot happier for it.

So yeah, I doubt professors are the ones pushing too hard for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most intern resumes that I've seen recently have Java, Python, and Javascript on them. A few add C/C++ to those. I've only seen one with anything approaching a functional language (OCaml).

Personally I think Python, Java, or Javascript are good places to start coding. Python has the slight edge because there are a lot of good educational kits (Raspberry Pi as an example) that really make learning to code fun although the whole 2.x/3.x mess muddies the water a bit.

I think once the tooling gets a little bit better then Haskell could easily be added to that list. It's close but not quite there today.

<comment><USER19> I have some functional programming experience, but I've never put it on the resume because I have never seen any company request experience in it, so it seems like a waste of space to put it on there. So that could explain why you never usually see it on a resume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this push for coding thing is great.

I see being able to code as a thing like literacy, either you have it or you don't, and, if you don't have it, then you are going to be held back and not reach your own potential. In the workplace I see a lot of people using 1990's tools like Excel to create 'reports' of some sort, where the data in them is as good as dead. Meanwhile, those of us that can do a database join or two and get the results in some type of web page (or text file) don't have to keep creating the same 'reports'. The computer just does it thereafter.

Companies that used to have a web page (and not much more) are now using online tools for business, whether that is getting stuff out the door, handling customer service, doing business intelligence things, in fact almost everything gets touched on by this 'web' way of working. Doing things in legacy tools (Excel spreadsheets, Word docs) just does not cut it anymore, things now get done in a web-style way with some backend processes bespoke to the given business smoothing things along. 'Let's go back to doing everything in Excel' is the new 'let's go back to doing everything on paper'.

Even if one is not proficient at coding it is still important to be able to work with those that are, to be able to describe processes in a way that can be 'automated' to some extent, a 'systems approach' rather than hand-me-down ways of working.

This automation does not necessarily put people out of work, it empowers people to be able to do their actual work without the tedium of repetitive tasks. They can be more customer focused, do better 'business intelligence' or keep better tabs on getting stuff out the door.

There was a revolution in the 1990's when Word came along and replaced Wordperfect. Suddenly people could type their own letters and memos, they did not need to dictate to a secretary. Oddly nobody has gone back to the 'Wordperfect' ways of working. Code (particularly on the web, whether front or backend) is like that, a game changer, and I want to see people coding, not necessarily to do some SF next-unicorn thing but just to be able to be participant in regular SME businesses.

<comment><USER14> I know entire organizations that run off excel spreadsheets

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't have a CS degree, let alone a bachelor's degree (I have a couple of associates unrelated to my career). I'm principally self-taught, and while I occasionally see gaps in my knowledge, I perform at a very high level: I've been a tech editor on major publisher titles, run a user group, spoken at conferences, and my current role is essentially CTO. I presume my technical education is similar to someone learning just the job.

Counterpoints: I always excelled at math, and while I did grow up very poor, I am a white male.

</comment><comment><USER23> The article says over and over that learning to code is not CS. I fully agree but then it goes on to imply that CS is really about problem solving skills which is also inaccurate. CS is fundamentally about data structures and algorithms and it branches off from there into many subtopics. People often forget about the S in CS and mentally substitute a T for technology. Arguably most employers these days really want software engineers not computer scientists anyway.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe the student has an inspiration for a business based on observations of their friends, or to solve a business problem their parents have, and just needs to learn enough to write an app to test out their hypothesis. Needing to hire a developer to test even the simplest ideas presents a very high barrier to entry.

If someone can code even a little bit, it really opens lots of opportunities, even without data structures, algorithms, and the rest of the computer science curriculum.

</comment><comment><USER24> You dont need phd in mathematics to be a good software developer.

<comment><USER23> But it sure helps of you want to do any scientific computing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bottom rung is still 60k

Which is much higher than most Americans. You'd be in your tech ghetto making more than your friends who went to a 4 year.

</comment><comment><USER26> Make 'em learn COBOL!

</comment><comment><USER27> > Coding is one piece of computational literacy

Literacy is the wrong word to use here. It doesn't work to compare English literacy with this sort of thing.

English literacy in school is gained by a lot of practice. Writing, even if it's texting friends, is something you do daily and throughout the day. The written language is in the same language (though there is some transformation involved in turning words in the brain to symbols on paper) in which you think and speak.

Doing something like computer programming is far different. You won't get daily practice just by going through the norms of life. Even pushing yourself to getting daily practice won't happen if you don't have something on your plate which is interesting. People are lazy by default and just opening an editor can be too much effort. I procrastinate bad enough on paid projects, let alone things nobody is expecting me to do.

Just because people can read, doesn't mean they pick up books to better themselves. People would much rather be spoon-fed entertainment through TV.

I don't see the point of learning to code beyond having some familiarity with it. For this to be a useful skill you have to put a huge effort into keeping up with it. Learning a different language is a huge barrier (not difficult, but for surpasses the point of which most people are willing to go.)

Jobs aren't easy to land. There is no equivalent to manufacturing in tech which can lead to an army of workers being employed. The tech rabbit hole grows deeper each day as we add more tools and specialty areas in which we need to be familiar with. Areas such as wrangling data has a daunting list of pre-reqs and I imagine this will be a trend moving forward (programming paired with knowledge of the domain you are building software for.)o

The sad fact is that technical knowledge doesn't take down the issues which data shows to be a problem with people in ghettos.

People who live in a ghetto have a hard time moving. A life of poverty creates huge issues which people who don't live in poverty don't understand. It's called grinding poverty for a reason. The grinding is going on in your head and that will drive you mad. For a long list of reasons, jumping past the most bottom rung of the employment latter is something few people in this situation will ever be able to do. A well paid programming job isn't a bottom rung job.

Well paid development jobs are well paid because they are hard to get and hard to employ for. If it were easy, then they wouldn't be well paid. Teaching people in the ghetto how to write code isn't going to help them get these jobs and it isn't going to help employers in hiring.

Freelancing and the gig economy is even worse. You can make far more money going solo by starting your own shop than by traditional employment. But the same ratios work here as in the rest of the economy. You get 1% (or less) who can figure out the game and thrive while everyone else just scrapes by.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes.</comment>