This is why people fear the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/02/this-is-why-people-fear-the-internet-of-things/ <comment><USER2> What concerns me, as somebody who has absolutely zero interest in internet connected thermostats or fridges or whatever, is that as IoT devices become more and more ubiquitous, I'll probably still end up with some kind of quasi- surveillance garbage in my house. Either because I didn't mean to purchase it, or because there was no alternative because in the future every under-sink garbage disposal requires a wi-fi connection or some nonsense.

Due to smart phones, computers and tablets, I already have all my internet habits being recorded, and half a dozen cameras and microphones all over the house.

Whats just as concerning is how many quasi-legitimate service providers, for reasons of people desperately trying to secure themselves from bad actors, end up finding technical solutions that are indistinguishable from malware and other kinds of network attacks/exfil techniques.

Argh, this is a stupid future, I want to go back and try again.

<comment><USER3> I look forward to the future where I can come home and my space will welcome me individually, turning on lights, media, and climate to my personal preferences, and respond to "tea, earl gray, hot" at any time. My groceries and other expendables will replenish as they run low; menu planning will stock more. I'll get a chime when my kids arrive home, and another if their love interest show up after hours. Etc etc. All this information will be held strictly per my privacy settings and is fully encrypted when offsite.

Now, the real question is, how do we get there, integrated and private, without selling out the whole stack to 100 different vendors with different API's, without one of them hacking the rest of your network, and without your government either hacking you, hacking one of those vendors, or just pressuring them for your data?

I don't have an answer.

<comment><USER4> I honestly don't think that future is worth the cost. Some of those things would be great, but controlling lights with Iot? Why? Aren't we solving a problem that doesn't need to be solved? I currently spend roughly 0% of my time thinking about and managing light switches, the system works great as is. Same goes for turning on media and setting the temperature. These things just work and they are bug free. I can only see them getting worse by adding networking and software.

Of course, it's a different argument when your house starts making food for you, but but I think I'll still lean towards maintaining my current system.

<comment><USER5> Media devices don't really work that well.

For example, my cable box comes with a remote that has a 'turn everything on' macro button. Except there's no integration, it just blasts the power toggle IR for the TV. Does it work? Yeah. Does it work well? No.

Buying a single brand and carefully selecting devices can help with that sort of thing, but it's BS you have to be careful to get any integration, it should just work.

<comment><USER6> A good number of newer devices ship with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#CEC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#CEC) which is meant to help with this type of thing.

I'd agree that a lot of the time it still doesn't work 'well' though.

<comment><USER5> I vaguely remembered that HDMI had something and had looked it up and checked if the cable box supported it before I posted; it doesn't (unsurprisingly).

The sad thing is that it is so easy to imagine so much more. If the cable box provided the available programming as data, I could use whatever interface I wanted to access it. Instead, I'm stuck with their customer hostile crap (no way to hide channels, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Between IoT and the deployment of IPv6 (meaning no more automatic NAT firewalling), I feel like we need to take a fresh look at how home routers are designed.

I'd love to see products that provide a user-friendly way to help me audit what my network is doing, and create firewall rules for different classes of devices. For example, if you're running a DVR server, the camera mentioned in this article probably shouldn't have been granted Internet access.

While some routers have basic firewall support, it's really rudimentary and nowhere near sufficient when you have several dozen (or more) relatively unknown devices on your network. And definitely not user-friendly enough for most home users.

<comment><USER8> > no more automatic NAT firewalling

NAT != firewall

IPv6 doesn't take away your stateful firewall, and NAT isn't providing _ANY_ security. Your private IP addresses are betrayed all the time by your browser (and TCP option headers). NAT has done an incredible amount of damage to the internet; it prevented the development of true peer-to-peer software and forced everything to centralize.

The solution - even for IoT in the few places IoT isn't a surveillance scam - is to _remove NAT_ by using IPv6.

<comment><USER9> > IPv6 doesn't take away your stateful firewall, and NAT isn't providing ANY > security.

That's not really true. By its nature, stateful/dynamic NAT, which is what the majority of the consumer world is using, means internal services aren't exposed to the Internet. Short of layer 7 stateful packet inspection, or some other IDSy type thing, a consumer-focused 'firewall' isn't going to do any better... they have to be generic and fuss-free. Just go back to the early 00s or mid-90s to see the ramifications that exposing ports from Windows machines to the Internet had, then tell me NAT hasn't had a positive security impact.

<comment><USER10> > Just go back to the early 00s or mid-90s to see the ramifications that > exposing ports from Windows machines to the Internet had, then tell me NAT > hasn't had a positive security impact.

NAT has had the same _security_ impact that a default REJECT ingress firewall policy would have. (Coincidentally, this is the default firewall policy for non-Enterprise Windows Firewall configurations.)

If you combine default REJECT with a port opening protocol like uPnP, you have a really nice, reasonably secure, self-maintaining border firewall. (Hyperventilation about security issues with particular implementations of uPnP notwithstanding.)

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying we need NAT, just that without prior _need for NAT_ , perpetuated by ISPs only giving us one IP, I doubt anybody would have _any_ ingress filtering at the border. It's a lot easier just to block ingress to the whole house than it is to ensure a dozen devices are secure against unwanted incoming connections... this problem will present itself with the IoT sooner or later.

<comment><USER10> > ...just that without the _need for NAT_ , perpetuated by ISPs only giving us > one IP, I doubt anybody would have any ingress filtering at the border.

I disagree. Defaults are a powerful thing. If one's router ships with a default REJECT ingress firewall, a non-technical user is not likely to change it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I worked in a company that provided remote power monitoring. We put a box in your circut breaker panel and monitor your power use. Its kinda neat, but way more intrusive than I imagined.

It didn't occur to me how much you can learn until looking at power consumption home page of our demo house when the owner was on vacation (owner = boss). All the circuits are flat. A manager at the company who installed it too, came hold and told his wife "I see you came home at 3". He knew because he could watch the power come on. We could count loads of laundry done and watch the sun rise from solar panel output. Then there is the awkward conversations when you know the dog walker didn't walk as long as they said they did.

I was glad the company transitioned to monitoring businesses, but I left after a few years for unrelated reasons.

<comment><USER12> Trust, but verify. I like the idea of knowing when the teenager actually got home, or how much the dog walker is stiffing me.

<comment><USER13> Do you like the idea of service providers being able to monitor those things about you? How about the fact that by providing the data to a third party you've abandoned your expectation of privacy re: when and what you do within your own home?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the bigger problem is that not _enough_ people fear the Internet of Things.

</comment><comment><USER15> The zen of the Internet is this: it minimizes the significance of physical location from the interaction equation. This seems small, but is in fact huge: as any high school social studies student can tell you, most of human history is a story of "Location, location, location."

This is the huge feature that the Internet of Things is built upon, but sadly, far too few players in this market have yet accepted the full ramifications of the feature---while all the devices you own are now functionally within speaking distance of each other, every criminal on the planet is _also_ now within speaking distance of them.

Hopefully, more manufacturers will wise up to this concern. Until then, I'm rolling my own IoT solutions.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe there should be some kind of IoT security standards or maybe some Security Company testing and handling "Secure IoT device" rubber stamps to every tested and compliant device?

This is because every company that has been making "Things" for the last 5-100 years are now thinking about making IoT devices without understanding anything about Internet or Security. The Nissan Leaf or that toy maker Vtech cases are good examples of this.

A Quick starter for the rubber stamp list: 1\. Authenticate every request 2\. Use encryption in every phase (transport, passwords etc) 3\. Really, handle basic Web security 4\. Be really, really protective about your customers data in every way 5\. Don't sell the data without consent from the customer

<comment><USER17> Although I agree with your premise, I don't know if it would work out. Look at PCI compliance nowadays: it's all bullshit. PCI is really there for the bank to pass the buck when something goes wrong. It pretends that it's making things more secure, but IME, it does not.

I don't know the answer to this problem though

<comment><USER16> Don't have any experience with PCI compliance but I assume this kind of stuff _should_ remove the most idiotic security holes.

<comment><USER17> You'd think so, and it's supposed to. IME: As long as your not audited, nobody cares. I know of a place that was PCI approved for over 3 years that was doing _every single_ item on the "do not do list". Since they weren't audited, nobody cared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The IoT startups are trying to get market share right now so they don't care at all about security. About a year ago I went to an IoT startup interview and asked if they used ssl when transferring data to and from the devices. Answer: at this stage it doesn't justify the investment, we're on vc money now and we need to get clients first.. It's going to get crazy when this becomes a real fad..

</comment><comment><USER19> My coffee pot and your water heater are touching each other via strips of metal.

<comment><USER20> Why was this down voted? Yes he could have made a far better post, but it is an interesting point.

<comment><USER21> It's about as interesting as noticing that my house and your house are on the same street, if you think about it.

<comment><USER22> Whenever people ask me if I'm lost I just remind them that all streets are connected and if we just keep trying novel turns we're bound to reach our destination at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Related: "I bought some awful light bulbs so you don't have to" \- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11171839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11171839)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm surprised he's surprised about this. What they claim to be doing is totally reasonable, and pretty much every IoT device works like this. There's simply no good way to get out-of-the-home communication to work reliably without having the device connect to the cloud. At least they (claim to) use NAT punching when possible.

I guarantee Nest, Canary, Ring, etc. all do the same thing. HomeKit and Weave do to (although they use Apple/Google's servers which you probably trust more).

<comment><USER25> >> What they claim to be doing is totally reasonable, and pretty much every IoT device works like this. There's simply no good way to get out-of-the-home communication to work reliably without having the device connect to the cloud.

None of these devices need out-of-the-home communication for the users benefit. Not even Nest.

<comment><USER26> To change the temp on my Nest when I'm away from home there are 4 options I can see;

\- central control via the manufacturer (thermostat talks to nest server, my app talks to nest server)

\- dyndns with NAT hole punching or upnp (a way for my app to know what IP the nest is listening on and connect directly to it

\- a vpn from my phone to my home and the app discovers the nest as a local network device. You still need a way to make the VPN connection to your router, bringing us back to dyndns or some way to discover your IP or hope it is static

\- a P2P overlay network, such as what Krebs is complaining about, or more securely, a Tor hidden service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As we increase the mass surveillance of our citizens, consider what a certain U.S. Presidential candidate - who advocates religious and ethnic discrimination, torture, reduction of press freedoms etc. - would do with that power. Consider what it would be like to be Muslim, constantly under threat of official and unofficial discrimination in many Western countries, and have this surveillance everywhere around you, in your home, on your phone, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a perfect use case for Tor hidden services. They punch the NAT, they encrypt, there's a robust discovery network, and the entire setup could be either scanning a QR code from the app on the phone or delivered over Bluetooth or local LAN or hypersonically or even clicking a link in an email the device sends you directly via SMTP (prepare to check your Spam folder).

I believe the latest gen hidden service descriptors also effectively _authenticate_ as well because the unique domain is kept secret and has enough entropy. I'm not sure if it's quite as simple as hash(domain) is public and the preimage is used as a key, but something like that.

I thought this article was going to be about the camera emailing snapshots back to China we talked about a few weeks back. A bit disappointed that it's mostly FUD over simple IP discovery with perhaps some STUN/TURN added in. So, in that regard using Tor instead may not help.

However IMO anything that makes .onion become mainstream is a very good thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)

</comment><comment><USER27> The typical end user has no hope of sniffing their network traffic, analyzing it, and configuring their firewall to block undesired transmissions. I don't have the time to do it myself.

We need a hosted VPN service that provides a user-friendly firewall that defaults to deny all and offers a whitelist. Does that exist?

</comment><comment><USER29> I am losing my enthusiasm for IoT because of concerns over how strong the security and privacy will be. It is not just concern over governments' desire to backdoor and monitor: I think there are valid concerns that organized crime will also exploit weak security in IoT devices.

</comment><comment><USER30> People don't 'fear' IOT, they just don't care about it.

I am yet to see a single IOT device with would compel a non-techy-nerd to buy it.

IOT is stupid as it stands now.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not an expert but I like my IP cameras.

Most people won't want to setup DDNS through their router with a service such as DynDNS (expensive at $40 per year). So the IP camera manufacturers offer DDNS as part of the product. Register the device, and you're up and running with the live camera feed appearing on your phone.

Increasingly the cameras have 2-way mic capability, so it's actually very cool to access it from your phone.

It's possible some of the fear is coming from not understanding the connections taking place as part of the DDNS. The actual video stream does not need to be uploaded to the manufacturer, unless they offer media management, backup etc and you've opted in. I prefer saving the video triggered from motion sensors etc to a local NAS.

</comment><comment><USER32> There are many features that a P2P network would enable for this sort of hardware that would require large central infrastructure if done any other way.

Probably, it's either something like this or paying a subscription fee for these devices, as having them use other local hardware infrastructure is a non-starter.

I'd love a device like this that does P2P and lets me build meeting rooms across the different P2P devices. Just something that looks like a webcam, or like this, plug into the TV, and maybe have a button to start a meeting. That it gives access to my home network, oh well. I let anyone who visits more than once on my home network anyway, and also devices by a dozen manufacturers that I know aren't secure.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone know how the cameras specifically punch through firewall? I have a number of Apexis cameras which I believe are essentially rebranded Foscams. I set them up with static DHCP leases, placed them in a DMZ, and specifically blocked all outbound communication from those cameras to the outside world. Now I'm curious whether this would be enough if they had this p2p feature. In my case, all they seem to do is register with a Chinese based dynamic DNS service. Still, I don't need them to communicate with the outside world and would prefer to prevent it.

<comment><USER34> Hole punching is nothing spectacular, let me explain simply:

You're on your computer connected to a regular home router. You hit google.com in your browser. What happens is that you create an outgoing request towards google.com port 443 (TLS/HTTPS). The router opens up a temporary firewall rule allowing responses from google.com port 443. (Without it you wouldn't get any response)

Holepunching is simply using that fact, your device A and B shares their external IP:port with eachother (outside of STUN/TURN scope) and then does a simple connect() to eachothers external ip:port. When A does connect(B_IP:B_port) it opens up for B to respond to that channel, and since B is doing connect(A_IP:A_PORT) his request will be let through and they can connect to eachother. A direct connection, a P2P (peer to peer) connection between those two clients, no one else.

Imagine it as a temporary port forwarding that's most importantly limited to one specific IP and PORT that can use it: the other device.

(There's some technical limitations to this like the type of NAT/firewall you have, but for the simple home router the above usually works.)

<comment><USER33> I'm still not sure I follow you regarding how the above applies to my situation. I believe in your case, you mean to say that A is a local machine and B is a remote machine, and if they're complicit together, allowing A to connect outbound to B then allows B to communicate back to A, which could allow the two of them to do things you really don't want.

However, if I have the cameras on a completely separate subnet and network interface on the firewall and block communication from this subnet to my regular lan _and_ to the outside world, I should be immune to this, correct? A is in my DMZ, and can't communicate with the outside world based on my firewall rules, so A would never reach B.

<comment><USER34> If the device can't communicate outbound then no you're completely safe. There's no magic into this, hole punching is just a silly name for a simple technique.

Hole punching works when both A and B are behind NAT. It also allows B to contact A if A is behind a NAT (no matter if B is behind one or not). If both A and B have public IP's then the hole punching is "already done", they can already connect to eachother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Network webcams aren't even close to what iot will be. They are 1990s gopher servers compared to today's WWW.

And the fear mongering(ooh Chinese, be scared! Must be worse than all American company/gov soon same.) Scenario presented is by far not one of the scary scenarios that ubiqitous, constant, and networked sensors of all types make possible.

</comment><comment><USER36> I know this is in the context of "consumers", but is that how most people see Internet of Things? I thought IoT was more of a name for business applications, or the trend in general, rather than the category of device. I thought that "smart (appliance)" was how the devices are sold to "consumers", and that Internet of Things referred to a trend that mostly means businesses using internet-connected devices to simplify IT and get information about assets. In that context, it doesn't seem like people are afraid as they are just skeptical and curious about what value it could provide. It is a strange future indeed if fridges that enforce thought crime fall into the same category of technology as a plant floor weight sensor. At that point, they just become "things" again.

</comment><comment><USER37> For those trying to build privacy and security into their products is there some resources for what should be done before putting a product out?

I have seen a list from Brian Knopf for some preliminary criteria in an article.(1) I am always looking for more standards or advice on how to create a useful product that doesn't expose the user especially marginal gain products. I mean why give up all the privacy and security just to control our lights? The gain is small but the harm is very large.

1\. [http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/how-to-search-the- in...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/how-to-search-the-internet-of- things-for-photos-of-sleeping-babies/2/)

EDIT: Grammar

</comment><comment><USER38> There was a talk at an event I work for (that's the full disclosure done) on building security into the IoT. It was made by a Hardware Manager of the original iPhone, a patent holder for NEST and is now CEO at Electric Imp. In short, he argued that security has to be layered into every stage of the design process. The current paradigm is to make something and try to retrofit security features into it.

[http://iot.thebln.com/2016/02/building-security-into-iot- int...](http://iot.thebln.com/2016/02/building-security-into-iot-internet-of- things-forum-electric-imp/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Question borne of ignorance: Have any of these vendors opened themselves up for any legal liability for these shenanigans?

Also, if some small developer wrote a mobile app to control such devices, would they also see themselves liable?

</comment><comment><USER40> Meanwhile, if the same camera would only phone home to <manufacturer>.com and all the peer-to-peer stuff would be handled at the manufacturer's servers, there were probably no outrage at all...

<comment><USER41> By definition, if it phones home, it defeats the purpose of a P2P network.

<comment><USER40> Well, that was kinda the point.

I agree with the stance of this post that this demonstrates the dangers of the internet of things. But I think it's misleading (and a little funny) that it's the p2p aspect that causes all the outrage.

You could move all the p2p stuff from the device to a central, manufacturer- controlled proxy, relabel the p2p connections "3rd party APIs" and suddenly your former security nightmare has transformed into an ordinary, industry- standard IoT product, even though the data that gets transmitted is exactly the same...

Instead the focus should be on what data is transmitted at all, but that is an old, well-known problem of course...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's only when companies take security in IoT devices seriously are we likely to see any meaningful progress in the sector. Security is an afterthought right now for companies who design products, but don't necessarily have the expertise in security to counter those who wish to hack their products. The reality is security today is as important part of the initial design in IoT products, as look and functions of the product is.

</comment><comment><USER42> This would be a good place to mention Silk Labs' Sense. They're an ex-Mozilla team designing an IoT platform with privacy baked in from the ground up. They recently launched a successful Kickstarter, [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gal/sense- personalized-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gal/sense-personalized- intelligence-for-your-connected)

</comment><comment><USER43> Every time I read a headline like this, I can just picture a raving Alex Jones "They want to spy on you through your dishwasher! They want to look at your naked daughter! Ahhhhhhh it makes me so sick!".

Unfortunately this is one of those issues that he is right about.[0]

[0]: [http://www.wired.com/2012/03/petraeus-tv- remote/](http://www.wired.com/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Open source software like [https://kerberos.io/](https://kerberos.io/) enables many standard USB cameras to become wifi cameras. It'd be great to see things like this become a consumer product, there's no reason surveillance software should be propriety.

</comment><comment><USER34> This sounds basically like a STUN/TURN + P2P solution which in itself _does not_ mean it's unsafe! It can be unsafe just as anything else out there if it's made unsafe.

As explained by the company representative (including my own added explanations) the devices, when behind NAT, can not receive any incoming requests without setting up port forwarding in the router (this is done automatically and temporarily for outgoing requests to allow incoming respones, but thats another story). Setting up port forwarding is not a good solution so what I pressume they are doing is that they are connecting to a TURN/STUN server from the camera outwards to be able to communicate. When the application wants to connect that one also connects to this server to have the camera create a p2p link (that means direct connection between camera and the device the app is running on). If that one fails then they are relaying the data through their servers.

Now there's some ceveats for the above solution. If one relies solely on encrypted channels and certificate security it should be as safe as the encryption is strong or the strength of the certificates. If not done properly, say client/peer verification is missing or the encryption chain isn't complete, then it's most likely bad. However:

The single most important thing is that the _functionality itself_ and the technique used is not unsafe per se.

The author makes it sound like it's a giant P2P-pool of camera devices, however this does not seem to be the case. Rather it seems to be a big network of relay servers to reduce latency for the connected devices. Big big difference there.

(Then one may question the inability to turn it off or that its enabled by default, but thats another question)

<comment><USER45> Maybe you should read the story again. The core focus of the criticism is directed at punching holes through firewalls by default, and in this case you cannot even disable it.

"This is a concern because the P2P function built into Foscam P2P cameras is designed to punch through firewalls and can't be switched off without applying a firmware update plus an additional patch that the company only released after repeated pleas from users on its support forum."

Later he quotes Nicholas Weaver from ICSI:

"Given the seemingly cavalier attitude and the almost certain lack of automatic updates, it is almost certain that these devices are remotely exploitable."

<comment><USER34> I do fully understand how the technology works. Let me explain:

"punching holes through firewalls" <\-- This _simply_ means that the device does a connect() call towards the clients IP:port while the client does a connect() towards the device:port at roughly the same time. You simply use the fact that a simple home router opens up a temporary rule allowing the destination:port to respond to your outgoing request. This won't work on symmetric NAT's for instance.

It's basically a completely safe method and does not open up for anyone else to connect ...

(The enabled by default is as I wrote in my original post is another question. The way I read the article it seems like the core focus of the post is to say that the solution used is bad or unsafe, which with given information cannot be said).

<comment><USER45> There you go again, misunderstanding what was actually said. I never questioned your understanding of the technology, but your understanding of what Krebs says.

Krebs also understands the technology, and quotes David Qu from Foscam about how their P2P technically works.

<comment><USER34> Yeah I noticed that it sounded like I misunderstood you, however I did not. Lets just get it straight:

I agree with you and him that it would be a lot nicer to let the user choose to enable this, and definitly not make it impossible to disable.

With that said, I'm still not sure that the author actually understand the technology behind or how it works.

Reading David Qu's answers they just align with what I'm saying about the technical part though. No matter what the author says, I think it's easy to misunderstand the text and make it sound like the manufacturer are doing something unsafe...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> _> Now imagine that the geek gear you bought doesn't actually let you block this P2P communication without some serious networking expertise or hardware surgery that few users would attempt._

They forgot the part where my government keeps trying to make it illegal to fix it even if I know how.

</comment><comment><USER47> With all the talk of phoning home to particular manufacturer networks in this thread, does anyone know what happens when an IoT manufacturer goes bankrupt? Are their devices left as useless bricks?

</comment><comment><USER48> I know IoT sounds scary and privacy invasive (it is), but in reality, most of the IoT devices are not dependent on the internet. For example, my toaster, refrigerator, washing machine, dish washer, coffee machine, TV would never benefit at all from using the internet, so I would never connect them.

The only device that actually benefits from the internet is a computer, and maybe a mobile phone (because there is this app craze). The rest I predict will fade when consumers discover the devices were fine the way they were.

<comment><USER49> You're right but you won't have a choice. Many devices will require connection to the internet to be configured, and you won't always know ahead of time what they are because most people won't care enough to put it in a review. For example it drives me crazy that my washing machine beeps for over an hour when it's done... I don't care - just stop making that noise... However, it's impossible to search for "doesn't beep like crazy" when buying a new product on amazon.

<comment><USER48> I can't see how any appliance would be required to be online for use or configuration. Even every laptop off the shelf doesn't have such a requirement. The only device I know that does is a smart phone (maybe?).

<comment><USER50> Just as an example: the Logitech Harmony range of remotes. The only way to program those remotes is to go through Logitech's application portal.

I'm not saying it has to be done that way; I'm just saying that it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> On the other hand DIY IoT doesn't sound as scary so long as your Raspberry Pi or Arduino board don't phone home.

</comment><comment><USER52> So apparently everyone on HN agrees IoT is bad. Who can make/ or has made a reasonable argument defending this progress? Why is this progress happening?

</comment><comment><USER53> What we really need is a universal IoT OS. Something like Android for devices. Then we can enforce the same set of safety rules that apply for smartphones and have some relative ease of mind. Otherwise it's gonna be hell because on top of everything we'd have to deal with manufacturer's incompetence to build decent software.

<comment><USER54> The IoT encompasses a huge number of heterogeneous devices - for consumer electronics you have webcams, smart TVs, wearables, smart white goods, thermostats, etc. - all with vastly different hardware that requires varying levels of complexity at the OS level.

On top of that, the space is very immature and a huge nascent market, so you have all the big players trying to beat each other out for a large slice of the pie - Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Intel+Qualcomm+Microsoft+Samsung (OCF Alliance), etc.

What you really need is a strong vendor with a compelling security story who you can credibly trust to create good devices with a lot of thought on end-to- end security...any guesses who that might be?</comment></comment>


In job interviews, 100% of respondents willing to stretch the truth, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/job-interviews-honesty-1.5034623 <comment><USER2> What percentage of employers are willing to stretch the truth?

<comment><USER3> "We're a great place to work with lots of flexibility and ways to support creative problem solving."

"We expect the team you'd lead to grow substantially within the next two years."

"Without research and design, we'd miss so many opportunities...we've built it into our budget and timelines."

"Trust is only gained by practicing transparency and candor. It's one of our core values."

Later on:

"I know this is a large undertaking with a short timeframe, but we'll only need to impose upon the team just this once..."

<comment><USER4> "We expect the team you'd lead to grow substantially within the next two years."

Wait - do I know you from somewhere?

<comment><USER3> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tell the truth but it is a sure fire way to lose a job offer, and am trying to kick the habit. Remember modern companies refuse to invest even the thirty minutes in study needed to get you up to speed on tool X with extensive experience in tool Y.</comment>


Deep-seated bias, not lack of confidence, knocks women off the path to success - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/04/28/deep-seated-bias-not-lack-of-confidence-knocks-women-off-the-path-to-success/

<comment><USER2> The research and article only state it knocks them off the path to professorship - not success or positions at fortune 500 companies.

> It also questions whether it's women's general lack of self-confidence that > explains why just 23 of the chief executive officers of the Fortune 500 > companies are women or why only about one of every six of executives in > these companies is a woman, as reported by the non-profit group Catalyst.

The research and article as written do not support the assertion of the title, unless you define 'success' only as 'getting into a PhD program'.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting, though I've always felt that the 'fortune 500 ceo' gap isn't nearly as illustrative of current rates of discrimination as other metrics, for the simple reason that most fortune 500 ceo's are 45-60 years old and so started their careers from 1975-1991.

Academic discrimination makes sense to me as a source of major issues, though, and in the startup world there're definitely issues with VCs and Angels. You've got a situation where individuals have immense control with little oversight. We've put in place a lot of checks and balances in the corporate world (though that's not done), but I don't believe it's there for advanced academics as yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes discrimination is rational. That doesn't "excuse it", nor is it necessarily so in this case, but I rarely see anyone go through the trouble of ruling it out. Which is a pity, because greater cognizance of that fact might provide a stronger impetus for more robust interventions than a mere (nowadays de facto) quota. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/books/25book.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/books/25book.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> This shouldn't be surprising to anyone who pays attention to the struggle of women and minorities.

</comment><comment><USER6> A dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649815).</comment>


So That's What the Feds Are Doing with Seized Bitcoins – ReadWrite - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2014/11/18/feds-auction-silk-road-bitcoins <comment><USER2> It's rather idiotic to put money up on auction.

There's a little exchange risk, since I assume there'll be a delay between the bids and the payment, but if everybody bids at the same time, they will bid the same amount, unless they're willing to accept some loss, which of course, since payment has to be made in US dollar, is perfectly understandable.</comment>


How many software developers would it take to change a lightbulb? - <AUTHOR> http://tommorris.org/posts/8786/ <comment><USER2> Light bulb changers, light bulb changers, light bulb changers!!!

</comment><comment><USER2> 10</comment>


Mozilla Boot to Gecko Demo and Mockups - <AUTHOR> http://browserfame.com/354/mozilla-boot-to-gecko-demo <comment><USER2> Looking at the git repository at <https://github.com/andreasgal/B2G/> it looks like one can install it on a Samsung Galaxy SII or Nexus 4G.

Does anyone know if this works already?</comment>


Flaw in iPhone, iPads may have allowed hackers to steal data for years - <AUTHOR> https://reuters.com/article/idUSKCN2242IK <comment> et-al The existing thread's title isn't close to this, but this is a dupe of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690)

</comment><comment><USER2> The flaw in question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22944690)

</comment><comment><USER4> Apple after this exploit will have raise the ante and offer larger rewards to the bug bounty programs and white hat groups.</comment>


The Joke of U.S. Justice and "Accountability" When They Bomb a Hospital - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/04/29/the-joke-of-u-s-justice-and-accountability-when-they-bomb-a-hospital/ <comment><USER2> Whether deliberately done or accidental, the US should be MORE outraged when they do it vs the stated outrage of Russia (or anyone else) doing so. If they're supposed to set a global example (which clearly they feel they are doing by starting wars all over the world) there should be an incredibly harsh punishment for this type of "mistake" to ensure it doesn't happen, ever. Whether for world democracy or domination, this violates every possible moral and legal precedent regarding war.

</comment><comment><USER3> Generic outrage story, flagged.</comment>


Ask HN: What service should startups use for recurring billing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm putting the finishing touches to a hosted application which will have either a monthly, quarterly or annual subscription price.
For a business idea that is not proven (but I currently believe in), I really don't want to spend a lot of time or money in setting up transaction services.
Here is my very small shortlist of options I identified as suitable candidates:
1. Amazon's FPS - looks very capable but seems way too complex for me to set up. I'm only a part time developer and tend to code through a combination of lynda.com training and pasting error codes into google / stackoverflow.
2. Paypal - trusted brand with consumers, but I know they have had some negative publicity over account freezes. Also their recurring billing service attracts a $19 per month account keeping fee which is not really ideal to me. I'd rather sink this money into adwords!
3. Stripe - looks perfect but they are only in private beta in Australia, so not sure if I'll be able to get an invite.
What are HN readers using, to help with my/others evaluations?
EDIT: formatting & added stripe as I completely overlooked them <comment><USER2> Have you looked at Braintree: [https://www.braintreepayments.com](https://www.braintreepayments.com)

For quicker invite to Stripe Australia beta, drop them a message on Twitter. By the way, at the moment Stripe Australia only supports charging in AUD, with USD support to come later.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd look into LitleOnline. They have a nice api but you need to setup a merchant account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I've not heard of them and I couldn't find them via a google search.

Do you mind sharing their URL?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you looked at Stripe?

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry I should have added - I'm in Australia, I don't believe they support AU companies yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> amended - they are in private beta. I've filled out their form, fingers crossed they come back to me!

<comment><USER5> I work at Stripe and just sent you an invite. Let us know how it goes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Signs of Russian Meddling in Brexit Referendum - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/world/europe/russia-brexit-twitter-facebook.html <comment><USER2> signs of american meddling in opinions on russia</comment>


Ask HN: Undersea Data Cables (documentaries, resources) - <AUTHOR>

Looking at the world's growing submarine cable infrastructure:
http://eu-ix.equinix.com/joomladev/images/repository/Equinix_TGMap_MTS_15.pdf
I can't help but wonder if there have been any documentaries or pop-sci articles about this.
Some places like the Mediterranean or South China sea must be crawling with data cables of all sorts. What's it like to operate a cable laying/repair fleet? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable map link: [http://eu- ix.equinix.com/joomladev/images/repository/Equinix...](http://eu- ix.equinix.com/joomladev/images/repository/Equinix_TGMap_MTS_15.pdf)</comment>


African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/~zwicky/aave-is-not-se-with-mistakes.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm kind of casually fascinated with language, so when I came across a few papers on AAVE, I dug in and read both viewpoints.

It's a long debate, but the most interesting thing that this particular Standford piece didn't mention - this style of English evolved from poor, white Southern farmers in the U.S. You wonder how different the debate would be if it was about Southern/poorer English instead of Northern/wealthier. There'd be different allies and opponents on both sides, different arguments, and so on.

It's not hard to imagine some of the people most fiercely mocking AAVE would be its biggest champions, and some of its supports would be its largest detractors. Presenting the argument as a black/white thing makes it very different than presenting it as a geographical thing, or a rich/poor thing, or a formally educated/not thing, or an industrial/agricultural thing.

<comment><USER3> One really odd observation that struck me when spending some time in southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana) a couple years back: "AAVE" has had a significant influence on the English of southern Africans and other elements of black American culture are prevalent as well: hip-hop, basketball and, even, somewhat comically, fried chicken.

It really got my attention just after arriving when the brother of the bride to be, whose wedding I was there for, said while getting in his car, "Let's bounce."

Were I a sociologist I think studying the flow of culture from black Americans to southern Africans and trying to separate out the distinctively African elements of black American culture vs. the distinctive black American elements of southern African culture would be fascinating.

<comment><USER4> African American culture is decimating African culture, IMO. I am from East Africa and these days it's rare to find any of our old art forms. As far back as the 70s, we had Reggae replace most of the indigenous pop music, and these days the reggae is giving way to hiphop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The argument here is in effect that no vernacular variant of any language could possibly embody a mistake. Which is true for some definitions of mistake, and false for others.

The problem with the definitions that make it true is that there's a slippery slope from dialects to idiolects. How many people have to speak a dialect for it to count as a dialect? You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in hypothetical cases, like all the speakers of a dialect dying off except one. So if you decide that no vernacular can embody mistakes, you're bound to conclude that nothing any individual does can be a mistake, so long as they do it consistently.

<comment><USER6> _You can't have any threshold, or you get weird consequences in hypothetical cases, like all the speakers of a dialect dying off except one. So if you decide that no vernacular can embody mistakes, you're bound to conclude that nothing any individual does can be a mistake, so long as they do it consistently._

But lots of disciplines involving living things have problems like this. You can't "define" species. A species is a historical happenstance, which can only be precisely defined in retrospect with minute information we usually never have access to. You can spend all day coming up with corner cases and boundary conditions where any such attempt breaks down. But that's like deciding if a particular boulder in Panama is a North American one or a South American one. Just because those terms break down in boundary cases and are not like mathematics doesn't mean those terms aren't useful.

Things pertaining to human beings and culture are even more prone to this.

In the case of African American vernacular, there are sizable populations with high degrees of consistency in their patterns of speech. Quite far away from boundary conditions.

Another thing I've noted, since dating an African American woman and attending family gatherings with her, is that the manners and rules of social conduct of rural African Americans are more complex than I am accustomed to. When I am with her family, I have to _think_ about how I'm going to excuse myself and navigate leaving a room. Otherwise, I never think about this. I reflected on this, and realized that it reminded me of watching Masterpiece Theater as a child. I'm probably witnessing throwbacks to French and English culture from centuries ago, still rippling though rural Louisiana.

Homo Sapiens are complex -- period. Even many so-called "country bumpkins."

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with anything that you say here, and yet you seem to be disagreeing with me, which is odd.

You seem to think I'm naively making some argument that depends on the words breaking down at boundary conditions. Actually I'm not. I believe a language spoken by just two people (or even one) is just as real a language as one spoken by millions-- that the difference in the way they're treated is a matter of politics, not the intrinsic qualities of the language.

<comment><USER6> _I believe a language spoken by just two people (or even one) is just as real a language as one spoken by millions-- that the difference in the way they're treated is a matter of politics, not the intrinsic qualities of the language._

I was also trying to provide support to the notion that, "the difference in the way they're treated is a matter of politics." Often, I'm replying to 3rd parties or countering common misconceptions in my "replies," which is probably trying to say too much in one post as well as leaving too much implicit.

In other words, I am grinding an axe here, but it's not directed at you.

A language spoken by exactly two would be very difficult to study. There are problems analogous to studying a species with only the last two individuals from which to draw data. I think there is some mechanism here that links the softer fields inextricably with politics. There is less academic "territory" to occupy, and so there is a handicap to the political power of academics who study that particular data, while at the same time, there's also often increased power that stems from scarcity. (Dead sea scrolls.)

EDIT: All human endeavors are linked with politics. "Softer" fields tend to be more encumbered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, and General American standard English is not the Queen's English with mistakes either. This information should be well known to anyone who has taken even one linguistics course, but it does still come up as a misconception to be argued against, as the interesting submitted article does. Similarly, English as spoken in India is not a variety of British English with mistakes, nor is standard Australian English any better or worse than standard English in Britain or in the United States.

<comment><USER3> The gramatical differences between "high" forms of British and American English are comparatively small. Certainly the dialectal variations within each country are further departures than standard American English is from standard British English. In each the differences are more of preference and still usually considered correct in the other.

A more apt example would be Swiss and high German, which are (aside from the fact that Swiss Germans are also fluent in high German) mutually incomprehensible. To a high German speaker, Swiss German sounds decidedly silly and has moderately different grammar. However since there's no conflation of social class with the Swiss German dialect, the comparison of Swiss and high German is much less politicized than AAVE and standard American English.

Austrian German, on the other hand, is virtually identical to standard high German grammatically – it just sounds funny and has a few regionalisms in its vocabulary: kind of like the difference between American and British English.

<comment><USER8> Linguistically, there's no agreed-upon rule for what makes a "dialect"[1]. What I heard from Linguistics people is that they're all just separate languages, some with and some without a written form.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#.22Dialect.22_or_.22lan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect#.22Dialect.22_or_.22language.22)

<comment><USER9> My usual half-serious stance on this is that a language is just a dialect with an army. But this does of course break down in the case of Icelandic, which is definitely a language, but has neither, but clearly captures tha fact that answers to these questions are to a large part political. When I was younger, there was a language called serbocroatian, spoken in one country and written with two different scripts...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the important point is the utility of language, not its "correctness". Regardless of the political issues involved, speaking the "standard" language or the prestige language is an asset in most circumstances.

Speaking Ebonics would make it harder for a doctor to win patient trust, harder for an interviewee to get a job, harder for a politician to win in most districts and even harder for a defendant to get a favorable judgment. Any teacher who ignores this fact does a disservice to the students.

<comment><USER11> Probably true, but irrelevant to the article, which is about how more effectively to teach Standard English by recognizing that some students start from a different dialect.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that's what the article was about at all. The article was essentially an attack on press coverage the author wasn't happy with. Its focus was more political than pedagogical.

From the article: _"Yet opinion writers proceeded to fall upon the topic like starving dogs attacking a bone. They ridiculed, they sneered, they frothed, they flamed, they raged, they lived off the story for weeks._ "

This kind of language just doesn't show up in secondary education guides. It's clearly about demonizing the opposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Listened to a great series of lectures on the story of human language a while back: <http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/CourseDescLong2.aspx?cid=1600>

I learned two things that are equally true and somewhat self-contradictory. 1) Language is a continuum, not a rigid thing. There is no right or wrong language. If you are communicating you're doing it right. 2) Most all societies have a "high" language and a "low" language. Sometimes there are multiple layers. People who want to move in better circles learn to conform and work fluently in the "high" language.

The continuum question was especially interesting. Is Old French just bad Latin? Or is it a different language? What about those languages that have one spoken form and two written forms? The same language with different names because of political considerations? Lots of neat history and trivia here. I really enjoyed the series.

</comment><comment><USER13> Regardless of the school board debating the potential validity of AAVE, I think it's misguided to experiment with asserting such "correctness" to teach kids that will grow up in a world that doesn't regard it as such. Save such philosophy for later academics, where the author/speaker can make a conscious choice of use - similar to the stylistic, but "incorrect", use of 'But' or 'And' to begin a sentence.

<comment> loup-vaillant This is not philosophy at all. This is purely technical. The differences between AAVE and standard English (or should I say American?) are _consistent_. They are spoken by a lot of people. They follow precise rules (a grammar, actually). They're not erratic. So you can't call them "errors". The only other choice is to conclude that AAVE is a language —or a dialect.

Telling that to kids can only have good effects. First, it is telling them that they're not retarded —and neither are their parents. Second, it makes a clear separation between AAVE an standard English. They are two separate dialects, so, students should learn both. Third, if speaking standard English is "correcting errors", it may be percieved as a loss of Identity, "acting white" or whatever. If it is "speaking another language", this can't really be seen as such. For instance, I don't lose my French identity by writing English.

If the entire world sees AAVE as incorrectly spoken English without investigating furter, the entire world is simply mistaken. Kids should learn to _correct_ the entire world's mistakes, not to _do_ them.

<comment><USER13> > _Telling that to kids can only have good effects._

I disagree. I think the mistake you are making is the focus around what is or is not "error". It's not about that. My friend from Argentina constantly strives to improve his _American English_ , rather than his AAVE, regardless of your insistence of the validity of AAVE. He now works in an office on the 17th floor where he hires people, and I knew him when he knew no English. Like it or not it _does_ makes a difference.

<comment><USER11> I'm guessing your friend learned American English in an environment that recognized that his native language was something else (presumably a dialect of Spanish) and took that into account. Should native AAVE speakers not receive the same treatment?

<comment><USER13> I don't know what you mean by same treatment, as I'm sure any English course instructors told him it was _incorrect_ to pronounce the "i" with an "e" sound.

<comment><USER11> Now I'm guessing you haven't RTFA. The point of the exercise is to teach Standard English more effectively to people whose native language is AAVE, not to teach people AAVE.

<comment><USER13> My mom has a master's degree in Child Development, has been teaching for the past 15 years, and currently teaches a kindergarten class in Southern California consisting of inner-city kids of black, white, hispanic, Indian, and Asian descent. I know a fair amount about this topic, and her views are in line with mine.

EDIT: I wanted to be sure I had my mom's views correct, so I asked her. To clarify, she says if a child is speaking ebonics she will explain there are different styles of speaking, and it depends on your audience. Speaking in that way is okay at home, for example, but in an academic setting the "correct" way is to go by the book.

<comment><USER13> I need to reply to my own post above. I just had a long discussion with my mom, and at first found that we did _not_ have the exact same views. However, she now agrees with me that when telling a child speaking ebonics at home is acceptable, even that is damaging, because it sends mixed signals, and should not be encouraged. There simply is no benefit to hanging on to usage of ebonics.

<comment> loup-vaillant (Warning: I use possibly incorrect stereotypes for the sake of the argument. Please correct me on them).

I feel we don't understand each other. I'll try to restate what I said in more details.

What if the kid speaks French? Most likely, he will speak French at home, and American English at school. Sometimes, he will employ the wrong word or make a grammatical mistake while trying to exploit similarities between the two languages. Any professor hearing this will call this an error.

 _But but but, at home we say…_ say the poor boy. If the professor know French, he may answer _What you say is more like French. In English, we say this…_. Note this is not an encouragement to abandon French. Merely an encouragement to learn proper English.

Now, replace French by AAVE (or Ebonics). What has changed? I agree that the two languages are highly similar. This may be confusing to the kid. There is two ways to handle this:

(1) Saying to the kid that his last sentence wasn't proper English. This is very close to saying that he doesn't speak correctly, period. Knowing the way we speak at home, the kid can easily extend that statement to his parents or neighbours, and try to correct them, proud of the knowledge he just learned at school. I think this is dangerous, because this may be perceived a direct attack on their identity. This can lead the kid's family or friends to pressure him into _not_ learning proper English, for instance by dismissing it as "speaking white" or something.

(2) Saying to the kid that his last sentence was AAVE, not English. Making a sharp distinction between the two. Insisting that at school, you are to speak English, not Ebonics. So, when the kid get home, he won't try and correct his parents. He may point out the _differences_ between English and AAVE, but won't speak of them as _errors_. This is hardly an attack on the identity of Ebonics speakers. Plus, it makes sense: "black speak" in the "black world" (home), "white speak" in the "white world" (school and work). As a consequence, there is less reason for his family or friends to insist that he doesn't speak proper English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Genuine question here; does AAVE have an accepted grammar? I don't mean necessarily a written canon, but anything that's not "make it up as you go" ad-hoc style. (And yes, I realize all language has some evolutionary context to it.)

Without rules, there's no way to break them, and thus no meaning for "mistake".

<comment><USER15> Yes, and that's the subject of TFA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems to make the ludicrous argument that because the mistakes are consistent they are not mistakes.

<comment><USER17> What is any dialect or derived language but a set of consistent mistakes with respect to the ancestor language?

A dialect that lacks prestige is no less a dialect for it — that was one of the points of the article.

<comment><USER16> I was trying to point out that that is a bad way of framing it. To call it a dialect may be technically correct, if you're merely arguing semantics.

However to accept it as a legitimate dialect is another thing. If your child spoke that way you would constantly correct them, for their own good. It'd be much better for all involved to redefine "dialect" to not include something that devolved from another language via mistakes made by dumb rednecks who can't understand the concept of a double negative.

If we call that a dialect, then the very word "dialect" is broken.

<comment><USER17> _If we call that a dialect, then the very word "dialect" is broken._

Then, I suppose, the word dialect is broken. :)

There's a long history of vernacular dialects lacking prestige and casting aspersions on their speakers. Shakespeare, notably, wrote his plays in the vernacular to connect with his audiences. [1] Chaucer did the same with Canterbury Tales. [2] Of course we forget that now because we revere those authors as purveyors of great literature.

 _To call it a dialect may be technically correct, if you're merely arguing semantics. However to accept it as a legitimate dialect is another thing. If your child spoke that way you would constantly correct them, for their own good._

Matt, I'm a young, intelligent, black male in America: I would never let my kids grow up speaking AAVE exclusively. Trust me. But neither I nor the author are arguing the prestige of the dialect.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence#The_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence#The_changing_status_of_the_English_language)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_literature>

<comment><USER16> Another thing just occurred to me. Her article is titled "African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes". She seems to spend the whole article making the semantic argument that it is instead a dialect.

Are the two mutually exclusive? Can one dialect not be simply another with mistakes?

<comment><USER17> _Her article is titled "African American Vernacular English is not Standard English with Mistakes". She seems to spend the whole article making the semantic argument that it is instead a dialect._

I don't think this is a meaningless distinction. If you believe the author, speakers of AAVE are speaking a dialect of English that has lower prestige than Standard American English. If you don't, you think that on a daily basis they simply screw up the task of speaking Standard American English. This is a subtle but non-trivial difference: one point of view is about culture while the other is fundamentally about intelligence.

Because many people hold the latter view, I was taught by my parents to avoid speaking AAVE. For similar reasons, I was taught to avoid Pittsburghese[1] even though I grew up with it in school.

 _Are the two mutually exclusive? Can one dialect not be simply another with mistakes?_

I think it comes down to my earlier question: What is any dialect or derived language but a set of consistent mistakes with respect to the ancestor language? More to the point, either all dialects have mistakes or none do. The only difference I can see is the prestige involved.

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

<comment><USER16> Well, I wouldn't say the current speakers of AAVE are literally trying to speak English properly and making a mistake. I would say that the people who created it were. And I would say that the people who speak it now suffer for it just as if they were. Thus for all intents and purposes, it is English with mistakes, even if technically it is a dialect.

So I guess her argument that mistakes + tradition = dialect seems silly to me. Even if its true by the dictionary definition of "dialect" it's a harmful viewpoint to take.

<comment><USER18>
      I would say that the people who created it were.

Languages aren't really "created." Nobody sat down and formulated the rules that describe AAVE any more than someone took Middle English and decided modern English would really be better, so let's use that instead.

It's a process that's evolved over a few centuries and has its roots in the slave trade. There are people who think AAVE owes a lot to the creoles that formed on Caribbean slave islands like Jamaica.

      And I would say that the people who
      speak it now suffer for it just as if they were.

They suffer because people with your attitude make them suffer, e.g., calling them dumb, or saying AAVE is illegitimate or devolved. This is basically the definition of a low-prestige dialect.

A similar example is the relationship between people who speak French and people who speak Quebecois.

But be honest: do you really think Quebecois are dumb? Do you think the language is an illegitimate or devolved version of French? Is it just "French with mistakes?"

Quebecois' prestige in the French-speaking world has to do with the historical relationship between French Canadians and France, not the differences in the language.

As I said in another comment, if the South had won the Civil War, you might not object to things like double negatives, double modals, etc.

      Thus for all intents and purposes, it is English with
      mistakes, even if technically it is a dialect.

No. As _pius said, one point of view is about culture while the other is fundamentally about intelligence.

In an educational context the latter is absolutely destructive. If you're teaching an AAVE speaker SAE and think they're just "making mistakes," you won't get to the root of the issue, which is that _their internal model of the language is very different from yours_.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jeff Jarvis on How Facebook Could Solve Its Privacy Problem - <AUTHOR> http://thefastertimes.com/mediaandtech/2010/05/13/how-facebook-could-solve-its-privacy-problem/

<comment><USER2> "Apple elegant"?

Why does Facebook need to be like another company to see success?</comment>


Do all video apps use WebRTC now? Then why does call quality vary so much? - <AUTHOR> Signal's blog post about video calling caught my attention today. Moxie says they switched to webRTC for the actual streaming part of the call. That's what Hangouts, Mozilla Hello, Whatsapp, and Skype use, too.<p>So why does it seem like call quality varies so much between services? Is it just different logic for codec/size negotiation? If that's the case, why is (non-webRTC, closed source) Facetime so much more reliable than the rest? <comment><USER2> All the players are doing their own thing, this includes the browsers. Getting everything to play-nice isn't as simple as it was suggested and you're seeing the results of this. Ideally it will settle, but its gonna be a rough year or so. All my opinion of course, but I've been in the WebRTC trenches for over 2 years now.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe Facetime uses proprietary video compression</comment>


The 'Mad Genius' Mystery - never-the-bride https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201707/the-mad-genius-mystery <comment><AUTHOR> I think it's just entropy in action. Structures invariably show their cracks, whether it's a marriage or a society or any other institution. Age beats idealism into place. The world is more and more tiring the more time we partake in it. We grow weary of our jobs, our politicians let us down, and our religious leaders let the hypocrisy slip. Sometimes it leads to defeatist thinking, and sometimes it leads to drastic changes, like the proverbial midlife crises.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia)

<comment><USER2> >> Age beats idealism into place.

This is true. Also, it's practically impossible for idealistic people to make an impact in this world. Nobody who has power trusts idealists because they are difficult to predict and impossible to control. You can't just throw money at an idealist to keep them in line with your financial interests; they are unreliable cogs in the engines of capitalism.

Those who succeed in this society are opportunists who pose as idealists. They are people who can selectively signal idealism when engaging with the masses but who can also clearly signal opportunism when engaging with the powerful few.

That's why hypocrites rule the world.

<comment><USER3> Don't you think that we got things like women's suffrage, paid vacations, democracy, public healthcare, free public education, modern medicine, engineering, etc precisely because idealists can have an impact?

<comment><USER4> Much of what you said doesn't have idealistic roots. Democracy is by nature pragmatic, for instance. Engineers and physicians will generally employ whatever tool works best as well.

<comment><USER3> _> Engineers and physicians will generally employ whatever tool works best as well._

That's a common myth amongst people who fetishize "science". Boltzmann committed suicide over the pushback on how outlandish his theory of the atom was. Ignaz Semmelweis was ignored and ridiculed when he pushed for surgeons to wash their hands before operations and finished his life in an asylum.

Engineers and physicians will only employ whatever tool works best as long as it fits their conception of the world and what is socially acceptable at the time.

As far as claiming that democracy is by nature pragmatic, that's a statement that's going to need a lot of arguments to support it, in a time where many support eg China's communist party as an example of "pragmatic" government.

<comment><USER2> It's refreshing to hear this point of view with some notable cases to back it up.

I'm tired of hearing people saying how efficient the markets are and how great the system is at rewarding talent and hard work and all that "you make your own luck" bullshit. History books are littered with examples of mathematicians, scientists and engineers who were being ignored or ridiculed for purely social reasons.

In fact, it almost seems to be the norm. It shows just how stupid we all are and that we all ought to eat humble pie.

When we come up with new laws and regulations, we should always factor in our collective stupidity.

I don't think we can say that markets are objectively efficient when a bunch of monkeys operating under shared social delusions get to set the price of all things based on those delusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's often a forgone conclusion that mathematical brilliance not born of a just hard work and normal ability often comes as a specialisation rather than as a superhuman power. I.e. genius to normal intellect is what a GPU is to a CPU.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isaac Newton was doing chemistry with a range of nasty heavy metals for _years_. A sample of his hair was analysed some time ago and found to contain significant levels of lead [1].

Boyle, Cavendish and their cohorts investigated a variety of sources and were not empiricists in the modern sense. Remember that they had e.g. no concept of yeast, bacteria, and yet saw the daily baking of bread and brewing of beer. Not surprising perhaps that they saw similar processes in the chemical realm? A flavour of the times slightly earlier can be seen in the use of astrology for medical purposes [2]

[1] [https://web.pa.msu.edu/courses/2008spring/ISP213H/welcome/we...](https://web.pa.msu.edu/courses/2008spring/ISP213H/welcome/welcome_assets/newtonHair.pdf)

[2] [http://theshakespeareblog.com/2014/06/shakespeare-and-the- al...](http://theshakespeareblog.com/2014/06/shakespeare-and-the-alchemists/)

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing that fascinates me how their 'mechanistic' viewpoints reflects into their morals and ethics.

People like Grothendieck and Grigori Perelman, and others often stand alone against customs and norms and they get really disappointed at some time when they realize that other people don't just act morally against all odds if they know it's right thing to do. People with mentalistic viewpoint have inclination to follow the opinions, lifestyles and prejudices of their time and place even if they have the clarity to see the wrongs.

You can see the same in more functional form in people like Einstein or Bernard Russel. Bernard Russel spend a year in China because his clarity of perception was hurting all causes and alienated him from everyone.

</comment><comment><USER8> The parts about Grothendieck are interesting.</comment>


Beyond the Task List - <AUTHOR> http://sam-koblenski.blogspot.com/2013/05/beyond-task-list.html

<comment><USER2> If we use multiple tools to finish things then it will decrease your productivity. I basically use Asana for my project where the need is detailed task management. and Any.Do for small things which will slip from my mind, which works cross platform.

Basically the problem we are facing is a need of an intelligent list, which will understand our needs. Instead of a dumb one, something which reminds me of my tasks will work based on context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's true. Multiple tools does pose that problem. It's a tough choice between separate tools that are just good enough and one tool that tries to do everything. Everyone probably has a slightly different way of attacking this eternal problem. It seems that we all need a personal assistant as a second brain with a perfect memory and can anticipate our needs. Wouldn't that be nice if task management software could eventually do that?

<comment><USER2> Exactly, few people are trying to solve these problem, It is interesting to see the progress.</comment></comment></comment>


A spectacular result for Marine Le Pen and France's far right - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21679606-first-round-migrant-crisis-helps-national-front-its-best-results-history <comment><USER2> Well, it's a well known scarecrow tactics from the rest of the parties. They'll all wear horrified looks for a week, tell the voters that Democracy's Future is a stake and so on and so forth, and the sheep^H^H^H^Hvoters will vote for anyone else next week. That was the case in pretty all the other elections were the far right lead at the first round.

It works really well as a tactic too; if there is a risk of the far right (or the UKIP, or whatever is the pet 'extremist' party in your country) making serious advance, you first /encourage/ the electorate to go for a 'rejection vote' \-- and when it works, everyone will look at each others saying 'OMG, what have we done!' and vote the usual complete incompetent at the second round. Pfew, we're all safe again.

The last excellent example of this tactic's implementation was the UKIP rise and fall in the UK; that was textbook.

I'm writing this as a French national living in the UK, but also as a completely apolitical observer BTW.

<comment><USER2> Ok so can I wear my "I told you so" t-shirt tomorrow ? ;-)

Results are in, no far right landslide as announced, in fact, no region won so far.

And everyone else is busy dislocating their own shoulder slapping themselves on the back.

See? Works everytime...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the map: [http://www.france24.com/en/20151206-france-far-right- nationa...](http://www.france24.com/en/20151206-france-far-right-national- front-le-pen-tops-first-round-regional-elections)

Although this is only the first round and each region's score is independent, in a national average the far right party get 28%, the traditional right gets 27%, and the currently elected leftish party of Francois Hollande gets 23%.

The last paragraph of the OP is the most interesting: It is as much a reaction to the current economic dismay and the current politics of the reigning government as a reaction to the immigration wave and to the management of the terrorist attacks.

As for my opinion: Don't run an election during a state of emergency where demonstrators are arrested. Also, it is important that moderate people have no-one to vote for, because the leftish party focusses on war instead of economy.

For example entrepreneur's tax office RSI was measured [1] to request wrong tax amount to 40% of its 3 million members among other failures, and was denied a reform in Spetember by the Socialist party. President Francois Hollande from the same Socialist party has now decided to add even more debt than allowed by the cap of European treaties in order to lead the war in Syria. Many things require social measures in France, but the reigning party is focussed on terrorism.

[1] RSI was inspected by Cour des Comptes: [http://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2015/09/21/pourq...](http://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2015/09/21/pourquoi-la-grogne-ne-retombe-pas-contre-le- rsi_4765720_4355770.html)</comment>


Resources for Amateur Compiler Writers - <AUTHOR> http://c9x.me/comp-bib/ <comment><USER2> Also worth studying some actual tiny compilers, just to get an idea that not _all_ compilers have to be extremely complex:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9125912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9125912)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8576068)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8558822)

[http://bellard.org/otcc/](http://bellard.org/otcc/)

<comment><USER3> Tiny does not mean "simple", and this is very true in compilers. There are ways of making a compiler trivial and extremely comprehensible, but it involves somewhat lengthy code. A tiny compiler which fuses multiple transforms into one may be much harder to comprehend than a larger compiler made of a long sequence of much simpler passes.

So your suggestion may be quite intimidating to the beginners. I'd rather recommend to start with the Racket-style language extensions and DSLs first.

<comment> nils-m-holm [http://t3x.org/subc/](http://t3x.org/subc/) is tiny and simple. But I'm supposed to say that!

<comment><USER3> It is nice and simple indeed but does not really show anything instructive in terms of backend, which is the focus of this thread.

And once you go into SSA and proper isel, there is no way to do it both easily and compactly at the same time, passes must be split for simplicity or fused into a mess for a compactness.

Of course, I am only talking about a number of lines of code, besides this you can keep your compiler totally trivial for any degree of optimisations complexity.

<comment> nils-m-holm It does show you how to approach building a back-end in the first place, which I would consider to be quite instructive for someone who has never done it before. And it does separate the phases and still remains compact.

Of course, once you have progressed to things like SSA, you might want to study something more complex.

BTW, the current version of SubC has a much more interesting back-end and even uses AST-level optimization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An old tutorial: [http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/](http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/)

If you want to think about memory models, then I recently wrote an introduction: [http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/memory_models.html](http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/memory_models.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A good start. But a lot of really important and approachable stuff is missing from the list.

On SSA, for example, the best introduction is S. Pop thesis: [http://www.cri.ensmp.fr/people/pop/papers/2006-12-thesis.pdf](http://www.cri.ensmp.fr/people/pop/papers/2006-12-thesis.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Please post as many good resources as you can, i'm sure they can be added.

<comment><USER3> Far from a comprehensive list, just the stuff I could remember straight away:

Nanopass: [http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/pubs/nano- jfp.pdf](http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/pubs/nano-jfp.pdf) [http://andykeep.com/pubs/np-preprint.pdf](http://andykeep.com/pubs/np- preprint.pdf)

An extremely useful technique, somewhat related to what Sebastian Pop was doing with Prolog in his thesis: [http://people.csail.mit.edu/mcarbin/papers/aplas05.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mcarbin/papers/aplas05.pdf)

also [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/courses/654/tools/bierhoff- bd...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/courses/654/tools/bierhoff- bddbddb-05.pdf)

All such things may be inappropriate for the top notch commercial compilers due to a limited performance, but are great for DSLs and for an amateur work, because they're so much easier than an ad hoc hand-coded approach.

On LLVM specifically, can be used as a nice introduction into how backend works: [http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2012/11/24/life-of-an- instructi...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2012/11/24/life-of-an-instruction- in-llvm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've got a small collection of links on compilers:

[https://github.com/melling/ComputerLanguages/blob/master/com...](https://github.com/melling/ComputerLanguages/blob/master/compilers.org)

</comment><comment><USER6> Also worth looking int pl/0 and the p-code machine.

Edit: Also, Thomas W Christopher used to have some pdfs on the tools of computing web page that dealt with compilers. Had an interesting one about using matrices to computer first and follow sets. I wish I could find those again.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know of a good starting point for someone who wants to build a language targeting the JVM? (The JVM spec isn't an easy read)

<comment><USER8> Try ASM:

[http://asm.ow2.org/](http://asm.ow2.org/)

It is lightweight, well-documented and easy to use. It has an IntelliJ plugin that wills how you the sequence of API calls you'd need to make to create a given compiled Java class.

I still recommend reading the spec. You'll need to understand the JVM execution model and the meaning of the byte codes to successfully target it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a great list, all in one place! Thanks to the author of that web page.

<comment><AUTHOR> check out some of the other pages under [http://c9x.me/](http://c9x.me/). He has some cool tutorials and other things.</comment></comment>


Bullshit Interviewers - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/yn9g2a <comment><USER2> Just as with all the other such articles, there are probably going to be comments on this one talking about how interviews like this are the exception. That you just got crappy interviewers and as the article itself notes, you probably didn't want to work there anywhere.

If you are the kind of person who would write this comment, stop now. The truth is the _vast_ majority of technical interviews for developer positions are conducted in this bullshit manner _today_. The only way to solve this is to do what this article is doing and continue to draw attention to the fact that the way people are hired for software developer positions is completely and utterly broken. We need to make shitty technical interviews the exception, not the norm.

I've been in interviews in the past where I've just wanted to scream at the interviewer - Why, why aren't you asking about my portfolio? Look I've built amazing things that people love. With my own hands. To a high quality. On time. You can see and touch them. And it's exactly what you want me to do here in this role. JUST LOOK.

 _Nope. Hey it would be great if you could please while standing on your head, design a spice rack for a blind person (I 've seriously been asked this), with one hand touching your nose. Oh and can you wear this red clown nose. This shit's important._

<comment><USER3> Would you say all data structures and complexity questions are bullshit? Mrainteaser / estimation questions? Is all coding bullshit, or only on whiteboards? Only coding algorithms from college? Is asking someone to code 'fizz buzz' bullshit? I'm interested to hear where you consider the boundaries to lie.

Or have I misread your post, and you mean something else?

<comment><USER4> It depends on who you want to hire.

1\. Do you want a team member who can plan, investigate and research unforeseen problems, brainstorm and contribute to the code? Then the one on whiteboards is bullshit UNLESS it is a brainstorming question - with a laptop next to it - and you are both working on the problem together - and ideally neither of you know the answer.

2\. Or does you company have a clear knowledge of what lines of code are needed to be written for the next 5 years. Then sure, go ahead and do the whiteboard interview. Or just train a monkey, at least they are cute and cheap.

A whiteboard interview typically just tests memory recall under a stressed situation. It might be what you need if you require a hacker for a Die Hard sequel where there is only 90seconds to figure out how to line up the encrypted polycube nano-algorithm before nuclear meltdown is initiated. Or if you require a monkey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I was giving that interview, I wouldn't give a shit if you found the optimal solution or not. But if you could spend a high-energy hour with me iterating over possible solutions, then that signals to me that you're smart, have fortitude, and think outside the box. All qualities I would never hire a candidate without.

At the end of the day, companies aren't looking for just PHP programmers or UI designers. They're looking for problem solvers first. I've said this before in other threads, but the fact that you cannot solve a given "puzzle" does not mean that you're definitely a bad candidate, but the fact that you can sure as hell signals that you might be a good one. And any company that's in-demand can afford a few false negatives here and there.

A PHP programmer's ability to handle saving a company after being hit with a SQL injection attack is surely going to be correlated with PHP coding tenure and expertise. But that being held constant, it's absolutely going to be much more heavily correlated with general problem solving ability, which - as much as it sucks - tends to be correlated with ability to solve "bullshit interview questions"...

<comment><USER6> _But if you could spend a high-energy hour with me iterating over possible solutions, then that signals to me that you 're smart, have fortitude, and think outside the box. All qualities I would never hire a candidate without._

Maybe that's the problem? If I'm in that situation, I get more annoyed than excited about playing find-50-ways-to-solve-pedantic-imaginary-crap-from- memory.

For me, it's instant deer in headlights because I'm uncomfortable making a lot of dumb false starts that don't go anywhere then being judged negatively based on the false starts you wouldn't see in a real world scenario anyway. (Some interviewers understand draft-then-improve processes, others expect perfection (and _fast_ perfection) out the gate.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The big problem with this approach (focusing on what a candidate's done before) is that there's a surprising number of people out there with great CVs who can't actually code. I've interviewed a number of people who looked amazing on paper, and passed a phone screen¹. 7-10 years of experience. Positions of responsibility. They knew how the internet works. They knew their OOP. They could talk about how to troubleshoot performance problems. They could explain MVC to a non-technical colleague.

But when it came to an in-person interview, they struggled with FizzBuzz. They couldn't write the add() method for a linked list. Please understand: I want a candidate to thrive in an interview. I don't say "Please write the add() method for a linked list on the whiteboard," then sit back in silence with a stony look. No: I ask them if they've heard of a linked list, then (regardless of the answer) give them a refresher. I talk about what it is, and draw diagrams of the data structure, and code an example of how it's used & a Node struct they can use, and write a class skeleton for it. If they jump in then, great. If not, I'll suggest they start with the empty list case, and keep trying to be a friendly guide through the exercise. Even then, some candidates can't do it. At all.

This isn't quite a bullshit brainteaser, but it's definitely not a real-world problem. Nobody who got hired would be implementing their own collections. But that's not what the question's about: it's about understanding how two simple pieces of data interrelate, and being able to manipulate them. If a candidate can't grasp that, then I'm not going to hire them no matter what their CV says.

I don't think this is the best way of hiring people. I like the short term contractor approach – candidates get a real-world project to complete that should take 2-3 evenings, and their solutions are code reviewed & discussed. But that's not always feasible for the business or the candidate. So I don't think we'll see the death of this kind of interviewing for a while.

(¹ As a result of these experiences, my standard phone screen now contains some basic programming.)

</comment><comment><USER8> My experience at DeveloperAuction shows that _some_ companies actually view it as a point of pride that they reject 19 out of 20 Engineers they interview and that it's near-impossible to pass their rigours technical screening. It seems almost seems like they are trying to "trick" people into failing by asking obscure questions that have little relevance to the job at hand.

Of course, what they fail to account for, is the incredibly cost of hundreds of hours spent talking to candidates & administering these silly challenges or the fact that Google's interview data proves that such such logic questions have little predictive value on future on-the-job performance.

I was actually really impressed recently by Stripe's technical interview process - outlined on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/What-is-the- engineering-...](http://www.quora.com/Stripe-company/What-is-the-engineering- interview-process-like-at-Stripe)

</comment><comment><USER9> The worst bullshit interview I experienced was one where I was asked all sorts of questions about OO- design principles and concepts. I got the job, and was very surprised that the system, written in an OO language, was in fact, almost entirely procedural with large amounts of code duplication. I wrote a few code generation templates to speed things up for myself, updated my résumé and left after a few months.

Ironically, someone else who I knew, happened to interview for the same job, and didn't know OO jargon as well as me, but was vastly more experienced and very intelligent (he had math, not CS background). He would also have been a great fit culturally and technically for the team, but was rejected.

I still haven't figured out if it was vanity, self-delusion or plain dishonesty that led to those interview questions. But whatever led to that interview format, it failed to choose the right candidate for the job.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article author comes across as bitter. He's clearly talented and productive, but likely is not strong at the kind of skills you need to solve puzzles in an interview setting.

A good interviewer will be able to spot that and evaluate his skills based on his real experiences and previous successes.

That said, I don't think these kind of puzzles are that bad at evaluating what it will be like to work with someone. If a problem comes up will they throw up their hands and say I never thought I'd have to solve a problem like this?

</comment><comment><USER11> Because "Email us your answer to ZW5naW5lZXJpbmdAcm9ja3RoZXBvc3QuY29t" with no context as to what that means - on a SQL problem - isn't bullshit?

<comment><USER12> And "all horses run at constant pace"? People are reading too far along skipping this thing - I mean, what's the point in finding the fastest one when they all run at the same pace?

For context, here's the actual wording from the article:

      There are 25 horses and a single race track. The
       track has 5 lanes. Your job is to find the fastest 3
       horses assuming you don't have a stopwatch and all
       horses always run at a constant pace. What's the
       way to find the fastest 3 in the fewest uses of the
       track.

<comment><USER13> That doesn't mean that all the horses run at the same speed - it just means that an individual horse doesn't speed up or slow down while running - if its average speed is 17.2 MPH, it runs at 17.2 MPH for the whole course.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I thought of that - but do people look at average speed when timing a race? I was reading the whole sentence in "... you don't have a stopwatch and all horses run at a constant pace." :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's always a choice. Give feedback that you feel this is not the right way to start off and that you hoped to work on solving a real problem. If this is not going to happen, you feel it is a waste of both of your times to blindly follow business theatrics that have been repeatedly proven to hold no value.

The other point is group dynamics do need some outlet for hazing to keep things fun.

</comment><comment><USER15> >There are 25 horses and a single race track. The track has 5 lanes. Your job is to find the fastest 3 horses assuming you don't have a stopwatch and all horses always run at a constant pace. What's the way to find the fastest 3 in the fewest uses of the track.

It's not specified that one lane = one horse, so... release all horses at once, pick the top 3 :)

<comment><USER16> Wait to see which 3 finish the race first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty easy puzzle, if they were looking to hire a puzzle solver instead of say a PHP programmer. Some people hang their intellectual self esteem hat on simple trick logic puzzles, a skill which doesn't require a great deal of intelligence, so much as time and willingness to practice puzzles.

<comment><USER18> That question is equivalent to "describe an optimum ordering algorithm". What's so wrong with it?

<comment><USER17> It's not an optimum ordering algorithm, it's a top-k problem. The overall order is not requisite, nor is the order of the top-k elements. The problem is that it provides no useful insight into whether the candidate will be a capable PHP programmer. The most productive, capable PHP developers I've worked with would not likely fair well on this kind of question, while some of the most useless, hapless programmers I've known live for this kind of question. I agree with the sentiment that these kinds of questions are largely asked to make the interviewer feel smart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Heh, I was asked the same horse question for a linux driver development position.</comment>


FCC will also order states to scrap plans for their own net neutrality laws - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/fcc-will-also-order-states-to-scrap-plans-for-their-own-net-neutrality-laws/ <comment><USER2> > Senior FCC officials also provided some more details on the rollback of > federal net neutrality rules. For the most part, all consumer protections in > the 2015 net neutrality order are being eliminated. That goes beyond the > core net neutrality rules that outlaw blocking, throttling, and paid > prioritization.

> For example, _rules requiring disclosure of hidden fees and data caps will > be overturned_. The FCC will relinquish its role in evaluating whether ISPs > can charge competitors for data cap exemptions and will no longer oversee > interconnection disputes that harm Internet service quality. For a longer > list of what's being eliminated, check out this previous article from July. > As we wrote then, numerous consumer protections rely on the FCC's Title II > common carrier authority to regulate broadband providers, and those rules > will go away as a consequence of Pai's plan to eliminate the Title II > classification.

I'd really love to know how US citizens benefit from not knowing about hidden fees or data caps.

This is straight up tyrrany. The people voiced their opinions overwhelmingly in favor of net neutrality but those comments seem to be ignored and entirely not even asked in other cases.

Someone needs to stop Pai.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just so we're clear next time some emotionally distraught person raises the issue, this is why we have a 2nd amendment.

<comment><USER4> Why, are you gonna lead an armed march on the FCC office?</comment></comment>