How I Ended Up Sleeping on Mike Arrington's Couch - <AUTHOR> http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/sleeping-on-mike-arringtons-couch

<comment><USER2> _"was finally able to secure a spot and in fact still remember Nivi not making it onto the list in time and plaintively writing on the page, "Can't Nivi come?"._

I remember this first party, pretty sure Nivi was living at the house at the time.

And I ended up "crashing" at the house for 4 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it was you! I couldn't remember your full name or Omnidrive for some reason, but I remember you were sleeping in one of the bedrooms at the time. Cool, I'll update the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So what happened to preezo? I noticed you weren't linking to the homepage preezo.net but to [http://www.techmixer.com/online-powerpoint-presentation- crea...](http://www.techmixer.com/online-powerpoint-presentation-creator- preezo/) and that links to preezo.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> The full story is told in my next post, which should be done tomorrow and will be entitled "How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> '"So, when Arrington started hosting BBQs for anyone working on a startup who might want to stop buy and do a little show and tell, I thought, "man, I got to go to one of those."'

s/stop buy/stop by/

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! It's amazing that no matter how carefully I check for mistakes like that I never seem to be able to catch them all.

<comment><USER5> Had an english teacher explain a technique for slowing down enough so that you can catch those mistakes. Read the piece, word by word, in reverse (last word first). Then re-read sentence by sentence in reverse. Paragraphs, etc.

<comment><USER6> hard really is backwards reading</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Blackpage – A Social Network for the Command Line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/commandquarterly/blackpage <comment><USER2> If this is "by geeks for geeks" and distributed on GitHub, where is the source?

The GitHub page links to a Kickstarter which says "Become a contributor for Command Quarterly" which links to [http://commandquarterly.com/](http://commandquarterly.com/) which is currently down/dead/non-existent?

Also, why does a social network need a crypto currency?

<comment><AUTHOR> The platform supports any variation of cryptocurrency, there is no native coin and anyone who wants to partner with me just needs to ask. It supports crypto at all because I simply wondered if it could and now it can.

I hosted the files on Discord because it seems to be a standard form of distribution although I don't have much experience with it yet and still learning the ropes. I do also intend to roll out components of the source, more info on that can be found here: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmdq/blackpage-a- social...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmdq/blackpage-a-social- network-for-the-command-line/posts/2721296)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The idea sounds cool but it is perhaps too early for public launch. The github is just hosting a zip that contains executables, no source. (Do many projects (ab)use github this way??). I'm not going to run a random binary from an "anonymous" "darkweb" entity.

I miss the Free software movement. :(

<comment><USER4> It seems to be a common pattern in the cryptocurrency world.

Which is mind-bogglingly stupid considering how devastating it can be to run untrusted, unreproducible binaries on machines hosting things like crypto clients/wallets.

<comment><USER5> Fairly certain that's a feature, not a bug. (Obviously to hide other features which the end users would take offense to)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original UNIX came with social networking tools: "mail" for sending messages to people, and "finger" for status updates. Later systems added "talk" and "ytalk" for live chat.

<comment> VvR-Ox And this is THE WAY to go I think.

We need something like social networking, payment and communication as layers of our networks with open protocols to just use this service without bothering creating an account on FB and other malicious services.

Sometimes I'd wish our internet would be more like the network the computers in Star Trek use.

<comment><USER6> Of course, back then everyone using a computer was doing so in the course of their employment and abuse of the system could result in being fired. Systems have become more closed partly because the anti-abuse function benefits strongly from centralisation so you don't have to duplicate effort whacking the same abusers.

> Sometimes I'd wish our internet would be more like the network the computers > in Star Trek use.

I'm not ready for that many holodeck accidents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related commandquarterly.com website currently presents namecheap's default site homepage... That said project seems cool but there should be more informations about it

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't gotten around to sorting out the SSL so figured doing anything there is pointless right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there protocol documentations?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm fairly confused as to how this is a "Show HN" to begin with — essentially this is just a README file which links to Kickstarter. No one in their sane mind will download and run a random closed-source binary that's supposedly "anonymous social network crypto hacker board thing totally safe".

<comment><USER10> After seeing that link yesterday where you could buy Hackernews upvotes, posts like this one upvoted to the front page makes more sense.

<comment><USER11> Using that service has gotten many posts killed, many accounts banned, and many sites blacklisted. Just because people are selling upvotes doesn't mean the buyers are actually getting onto the front page with them.

The votes on the OP look legit to me. Perhaps people were reacting just to the title and perhaps skimming the readme. That's a different kind of problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's super cool. I feel like the terminal is the window to the soul of the machine and a gateway for exploration. This breathes life into that idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


How efficiently does Morse code encode letters? - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2017/02/08/how-efficient-is-morse-code/ <comment><USER2> I never got around to actually learning Morse Code, but I think the English language corpus is probably dramatically different from the messages that are actually sent via Morse Code. My understanding is that abbreviations are commonly used, greatly skewing the letter frequencies: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations)

<comment><USER3> There are also a large number of Q codes that cover practically everything related to communication and also naval, aeronautic and rescue concerns. Today much of this isn't in use, but amateur radio operators use a subset of these routinely; a typical fast Morse code exchange is often composed almost entirely of Q codes and call signs.

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

<comment><USER4> I became aware of Q codes through their use in the book Seveneves. It provided a brief glimpse into a subculture that I've never had much contact with, and I ended up in a bit of a Wikipedia crawl.

<comment><USER5> I was lucky enough as a kid to inherit my grandfather's collection of old sci- fi books. I first became aware of Q codes through the short story "QRM Interplanetary" from 1942 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral)).

I find it interesting that Q codes have changed so little over the last century. I have some ham radio friends who will use Q codes when talking face- to-face with each other, and the codes they use are basically the same ones from the original list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have patents 6418323, 7831208, 6850782 which cover using Morse code on a phone to send and receive text messages.

The advantage is you don't have to look at the phone's display when composing or 'reading' text messages. The phone can be in your pocket and you can send/receive messages without bothering others.

Obviously, it never caught on, but I thought it was a fun idea.

<comment><USER7> This is actually something I would use -- say, while driving. Emoji would probably throw me off, though.

I learnt Morse at age 12 or so, actually used it regularly on amateur radio for quite a while, but haven't used it for probably about 20 years. I can still "read" it when I hear it, without even thinking about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article is looking at efficiency in terms of time to transmit a given message. For that you want to assign the shorter codes to the symbols with the highest frequency. Morse did a decent job of that, except that assigning '\---' to 'O' seems way off, since '\---' is in the top 5 for longest code length, whereas 'O' is one of the 5 more frequent symbols.

I wonder what would change, if anything, if instead we considered things from the receiving side, and put a bound on the acceptable error rate? That '\---' for 'O' really stands out when listening to code. The only other letter that was a '\---' in it is J ('.---'), which only occurs about 2% as often as 'O'. Maybe 'O' being so distinct and easy to hear, and frequent enough that you will have an 'O' every 10 or so characters, helps keep the listener synchronized?

Early Morse code was sent fully by hand, and so the timing would not be precise. The timing is supposed to be, in units of the length of a dot: 1 for a dot, 3 for a dash, 1 for the space between adjacent dots and dashes within a character, 3 for the space between characters in a word, and 7 for the space between words. A good, experienced operator would hit that timing very accurately, but less experienced operators could be quite a bit off.

Someone whose timing is off might shorten the gap between characters enough that it might run dashes from the end of one character and the start of the next together. For example, in the word 'awkward', the 'wk' sequence becomes '.-- -.-' and if the person did not give as big a gap as they should between the words, you could run the trailing '\--' from the 'w' and the leading '-' from the 'k' together giving a '\---', but even in that situation I don't think it would sound like an 'O', because with an 'O' you go into it trying make 3 evenly spaced things, and we are good at that. We might get the spacing off, but we'll get it off the same way uniformly throughout the 'O'. An accidental 'O' from running two things together won't have that uniformity, and so I think it would stand out.

In other words, I'm guessing that the apparently anomalous assignment of a seemly too long code to 'O' actually servers to make communication more accurate in the presence of inexperienced senders and receivers.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, the letter O in the older American Morse was relatively short because it contained an "long" internal gap: "dit-dit" (as opposed to I being "didit" and the "word" EE being "dit, dit"). If the regular gap is the length of a dot, and the inter letter gap is the length of three dots, the length of the gap in O was two dots.

International Morse eliminated the "long" internal gap (according to Wikipedia [1], this had an advantage on the first long undersea cables), so O had to be re-encoded. '\---' ("dahdahdah") was the only three-element code not already being used for a letter. (It happens to be the number 5 in American Morse.)

When I was a Novice-class ham many years ago, I found that older hams would sometimes send the pro sign C (in the sense of "confirm" or "yes") as didit- dit instead of dahdidahdit. I never really understood why; I just went along with it. Turns out didit-dit is C in American Morse.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not just frequency/density but also the value for forward error correction: codes (code points) that can more easily be mistaken for others should have such different semantics that an error is obvious. For example though e and a are the two most common letters in the English language, perhaps use the shortese code for e and the next shortest for q, so that a misunderstanding causes "went" to become "wqnt" rather than "want. And indeed perhaps e does not deserve the shortest code because of its importance.

<comment><USER11> English is already pretty redundant, you only need about one bit per character for most text. You can see this if you compress a block of English text; you'll probably get 12.5% of the original size which is one bit per eight-byte character.

<comment><USER10> Yes, but morse is being decoded in realtime by a piece of meat (a trained NN admittedly, but different senders have different "fists" so there's a lot of variation). The problem is that some character errors are ambiguous.

<comment><USER12> Hwoever thows errs pars fiarle easly

People on both ends tend to adapt quickly. A few brief, known exchanges will typically result in longer ones going fairly well.

And "the meat" does all sorts of stuff. Names get shortened or changed for brevity or style. Gark might be gary, for example.

One group I observed used a lot of first letter strings:

BBQSTSP?

Y

K

Barbecue, same time same place?

Yes

OK

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you liked this article, you should check out a blog post giving a visual introduction to information theory[1] by Chris Olah

[1]: [https://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-Visual- Information/](https://colah.github.io/posts/2015-09-Visual-Information/)

</comment><comment><USER14> SOS was meant to be easily recognizable and trivial to generate:

        ... --- ... --- ... --- ... (and so on)

<comment><USER15> Actually, it is sent sequentially as a single nine-digit signal, then repeated. Graphically this looks like ...---... ...---... ...---... and so on.

Incidentally, graphical representations of Morse code are weak tea. It has to be heard to be understood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Note that in addition to the Morse Code that roughly equates to "printable" ASCII, there are prosigns [procedural signals] which are control characters that affect things like transmissions and message formatting.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> They also had specialized code books for different industries so that increased compression quite a bit.</comment>


Show HN: Explore music through adjectives - <AUTHOR> http://www.akin.to/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote Akin To to scratch a personal itch - I find music recommendation systems really boring. I search for John Coltrane, they all recommend Miles Davis. That's obvious and uninteresting.

I wanted to make a system that could suggest Squarepusher and Steve Reich by using the underlying themes and qualities of the music to make relevant and novel recommendations.

This thematic information already exists in music reviews, I've extracted adjectives from them and used them as a way to search, explore and compare album reviews. It kind-of works. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

<comment><USER2> I searched for "epic", and one of the suggestions was "epic-as-fuck". I'm curious about how this phrase was selected as an adjective. What sort of rules do you use to find adjective phrases?

On a side note: is "fuck" very epic, or not very epic? I have no idea...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the part of speech tagger from Python's NLTK to find the adjectives (<http://nltk.org/>). Sometimes it selects phrases instead of individual words, I'm not using any extra rules to do this.

I've left the phrases in because I think they're interesting and informative. Do you agree, or do you find them distracting?

Not sure about your side note!

<comment><USER2> Given that there are individual ideas that require more than one word to express, including adjective phrases makes sense. I was actually impressed by their inclusion. I did notice a false positive though: "integrity.While"

I hadn't heard of the NLTK before. Thanks for pointing me to it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is really neat! I think it would be interesting to see how the graphs of different reviewing websites compare. did you test it with any other sites and compare recommendations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Not yet, I'd love to try it with other sites and types of reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a really nice idea. Thought about making it into a Spotify app or making an API?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've not. A Spotify would be a nice feature.

Would you use an API?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there not a way to show more than 10 results? Or am I just dumb? (super awesome idea btw)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're not being dumb, it's currently limited to the top 10 results.</comment></comment>


A fictional conversation with the CEO of Coin - <AUTHOR> http://sefsar.com/post/67014124592/a-fictional-conversation-with-the-ceo-of-coin

<comment><USER2> I find this style really passive aggressive.</comment>


Ask HN: Side project which can earn $400-500 - <AUTHOR> I want to build a usefull small web app on my free time. Last couple of year I got few ideas and found that either they are build by someone already or they are too big to execute for a person on week-ends in couple of months.
Now I am thinking to make someting for which market are huge on the same time there are small to big players already exists like invoicing app. I am assuming as most of the player already making money, I will also make some money.
Now sure if that is the right path <comment><USER2> Also interested in the doing the same thing if anyone else wants to collaborate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, drop me an email on firstname.lastname@example.com

Have an idea which we can collaborate on.

</comment><comment><USER3> @improvemewrong drop me an email</comment>


When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144 <comment><USER2> I do agree with his point that the internet _should_ be regulated, but it should be regulated to be _fair_. My current internet is 10 meg download and 1 meg upload... however I only get 60% of this. No matter what speed we have, we never get 100% of it and the only reason companies get away with it is that they're allowed to hide this BS in the small print with an "*up to" so it's up to 10 meg.

I wish for once I could actually get what I paid for when I use a phone company. I mean it'd be nice that when I'm contracted to pay them, they should be contracted to actually do what they advertise. This is where I'd like regulation and serious fines if they don't meet their advertisements 95% of the time.

<comment><USER3> This has absolutely nothing to do with the point he is trying to make. He's concerned over traffic shaping and giving preferential treatment to various sites/traffic.

What you are concerned with is false advertising.

<comment><USER4> false advertising is the oldest trick in the book for telecomms. <http://www.newnetworks.com/tellthetruthverizon.htm>

network neutrality is a lot more serious than any type of false advertising a telecomm can put out. as consumers, if we're smart enough to see that our service plans aren't 100mbps, ok no big deal. yes, they're both evil, but false advertising isn't really even part of network neutrality as a debate.

now if we have no say in how fast certain websites respond, depending on how much we're paying (or they're paying), that's an entirely different topic. i can walk away from a provider if they're lying through advertising. but who's going to stop them from throttling your connection based on which website you're visiting?

legislation is the only thing that can stop the big 3 from this type of thing. you'll notice that in the past, the FCC has actually punished traffic discrimination (like when comcast was shutting off bit torrent, a complete violation of neutrality rules). if there's no legislation, the duopolies can do whatever they want and all have a big orgy price gauging at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One-para summary: Tim Berners-Lee, in mid-2006, arguing for network neutrality, pointing out that it isn't the same thing as "you shouldn't be able to pay more for better internet service" and that regulation is not always a bad thing (e.g., a market economy wouldn't work so well if there weren't laws against forging currency).

(His one-sentence summary of the network neutrality principle: if A and B both pay for access to the net with at least a certain quality of service, then they should be able to communicate with at least that quality of service.)

<comment><USER6> I know it's vogue to summarize articles in comments, though I'm not sure why, but this is ridiculous. His article is 11 short paragraphs - each one shorter than one of your two paragraphs. It fits on a single page even if you have a small screen and a narrow web browser. Why is a summary at all necessary?

<comment><USER7> Most people read the comments first.

<comment><USER8> I tend to do the opposite since I figured the comments would affect my reaction to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> if you want to get caught up and get all of the background on network neutrality, feel free to read a paper i wrote last november on it: [http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/network- neutrality-w...](http://jtame05.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/network-neutrality- word97/)

it covers as much as i could think of in <20 pages: history, the problems, the facts, the evidence, the technology, the culture. the takeaway: it really is a serious problem.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is from 2006....

<comment><USER10> It's still very much relevant, considering the recent news that content distributors want to force ISPs to violate net-neutrality.

<comment><USER11> Links?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First of all, Vice-President Gore invented the Web, not this doofus. (OK, just kidding there!)

Secondly though net neutrality is immoral by Objectivist standards because it regulates free enterprise and crushes healthy competition. If my DSL from ISP 1 doesn't give me the bandwidth that a DSL from ISP 2 could give me, I have the consumer choice to switch to ISP 2. Ayn Rand would roll over in her grave at this notion of net neutrality which is pretty much close to socialism, because it ruins consumer choice and competition. If ISP 1 and 2 are forced to provide the same bandwidth then my consumer choice goes out the window, and if I am a shareholder for ISP 1 or 2 then my opportunity as a shareholder to profit from different DSL packages gets reduced to. This hurts the consumer by destroying competition and thus choice, and this hurts the shareholder by hurting profit potential by undue regulation.

Think about it this way, as Sen. Stevens of Alaska mentioned, the internet is like a series of tubes, with finite carrying capacity. I don't want to have to wait until Monday to get a video emailed to me on Friday because the government has forced my ISP to adhere to some arbitrary standard of how my ISP can utilize the tubes of the internet. No, I want my video on Friday, the same day it was emailed. I want the choice, the freedom, to choose an Internet Service Provider who can pick the biggest tube out there to use to send me my video. I do not want my ISP to be forced by the government to send me my video via a smaller tube, where it has to wait in line behind a bunch of other videos in that same tube. (Note: I am using the loose terminology here for clarity, but I actually work in tech as a software qa engineer with a background in unit testing and gui automation, I am A+ and Network+ certified, so I do understand what I am talking about, just to be clear.) I want the consumer freedom to have an ISP that chooses the biggest tube out there to send me my video and I don't want the government telling my ISP what tube to use. Period. Net neutrality hurts me as the consumer, and it hurts the shareholder. An ISP should be allowed to operate however it likes to provide value and choice to the consumer and profit for its shareholders, and big brother should not get in the way. Ayn Rand would be ashamed of this conversation. I hope for the sake of Western civilization that net neutrality is rejected, or else we will all be singing the Internationale before long.

I realize this might not be a popular sentiment, and I also realize my "karma" may be affected by it, but Ms. Rand would not let fear of karma reductions keep her from speaking out on behalf of truth, justice, and the American Way, and neither should I. :-)

<comment><USER13> I hate the Al Gore snide remarks, because we owe him for what we have. He did not invent the internet in the sense of the technology, but he did help create it by sponsoring the legislation that funded the Internet, separating it from DARPAnet.

timbl DID invent the web.

<comment><USER14> Can we define Goredwin's Law as: 'As a technology forum discussion continues the probability of someone joking about Al Gore creating the internet approaches 1' and as a corollary stipulate that the participant who jokes immediately loses any credibility, and perhaps karma?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I believe folks in Obama's administration tend to be pro-neutrality:

[http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2233906/obama-appoints- net...](http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2233906/obama-appoints-net- neutrality)</comment>


Don't Drop Out to Do a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.christianyang.com/2013/01/02/dont-drop-out-to-do-a-startup/

<comment><USER2> Anecdotal evidence + overgeneralization + bad usage of statistics. For example:

 _"If we use wealth as a measure of success, Forbes' January 2012 edition reveals that about 85% of America's 400 Richest People (shown left) do, in fact, have a college degree."_

So there is a correlation between extreme wealth and college education. What does that show? Do you account for the fact that rich families have a much easier time sending their kids to college? If you flip it and say "15% of America's 400 richest people don't even have a college degree" that sounds impressive as well. What did you expect? What does that have to do with startups?

I abhor these empty advice posts based on a single data point. I wouldn't give out generic advice about whether to stay in school or not, that's a personal decision that completely depends on the circumstances.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point about a single number not painting the whole picture. Any thoughts on what stats might show a better correlation?

Another datapoint was an informal one-year follow-up to the first wave of Thiel's 20 under 20 (<http://qr.ae/14o5S>). Of the select few that were chosen based on their skills/ideas/potential and given access to Thiel's network, quite a few ended up actually going back to school.

<comment><USER3> I'd love to see socioeconomic status pulled out of the equation.

i.e. Take 1000 offspring of middle/upper class folks. Measure the difference between those who chose to go to college and those who did not.

Measuring the economic success of people who don't go to college is (most of the time) measuring the success of people who can't afford to go to college.

<comment><USER4> Ok, so lets say you did that. Do you have a hypothesis about what might be different?

College is actually reasonably affordable, there are accredited four year university degrees that cost about $25K over four years. Generally those are 'state' schools but still $25K it what it costs to buy a car, so if one can choose between buying a car and going to school we could do some interesting comparisons there.

In every survey I've ever seen, whether it was done by the Census bureau or the chamber of commerce, people with college degrees were more likely to have better economic success than someone who had not completed college. The numbers are quite skewed toward college graduates with STEM [1] degrees.

By and large, today, for the general case, if you want to increase your chances for economic success, getting a STEM degree from an accredited college is your most highly leveraged investment.

[1] STEM - Science Technology Engineering Mathematics

<comment><USER3> Coming at this 7 days late, but...

The median household income in the US is $49k, I believe. 40% of households spend more than they bring in and have considerable consumer debt. Of course, 50% of households make LESS than $49k income and 2+ kids.

Here's a list of state schools with instate and out of state tuition: <http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/>

This is their "best values" list. Nowhere is a $25k over 4 year school that I can see.

You'll need to account for living expense, textbooks, etc., for those 4 years as well (or maybe you're assuming that our hypothetical student can find a supporting job while going to school-- note that youth unemployment is approx. 2X the national average, and that the cheaper schools here are in states with generally higher unemployment).

Saying that college is reasonably affordable for most americans is just crazy.

All that aside, my hypothesis is that college impacts success (STEM-degrees having a higher impact), but that socioeconomic starting point has more of an impact. When you have three things that are highly correlated (success, starting point, and education) it's really hard to argue for causation with controlling for the third variable. When I look at all of my high-school peers who didn't finish college, they're all employed and making great money (I went to a mediocre private school in Maryland), but half of contemporary college grads (presumably most near the median background) can't find jobs ([http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57434159/half-of- colle...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57434159/half-of-college- grads-cant-find-full-time-jobs/) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have absolutely no evidence to back this up, but: I feel as if the "shallowness" of recent SV-culture startups can partly be attributed to the glorification of what I'll call "dropout culture," that being a subtle anti- intellectualism and an acceptance of the idea that only technical knowledge is valuable.

University forces you to be exposed to a lot of different fields (that you would never see otherwise).

<comment><USER6> One of the top three classes I took at my university (next to "Algorithms" and "Data Structures") was "Introduction to Drawing." It's changed the way I look at aesthetic beauty. I would have had a hard time motivating myself to have that experience otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more. Steve Jobs is an interesting example in this case - although he dropped out, he credited a random calligraphy class as the inspiration for some of the Mac's beautiful typography:

"Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

"None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography."

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs- designer...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-designer- first-c-e-o-second/)

<comment><USER7> My sister is currently in college. The other day she was complaining about having to take classes outside her major to graduate. I made her watch the video of that speech and her opinion changed completely.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Steve Jobs is definitely an outlier on this, but worth pointing out that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't drop out of "a college", they dropped out of Harvard, an institution with some of the toughest entrance requirements.

I'm far from being a fanboy (and went to a no-name state school), but admittance to Harvard is a high signal of intellect and self-discipline. Paired with lax return policy (you can extend a personal leave pretty much indefinitely) it makes sense when highly disciplined and hyper-productive young students decide to pursue a project they consider a chance of a lifetime.

Moreover, both billg and zuck used their Harvard connections to their advantage, by bringing in Steve Ballmer and Dustin Moskovitz respectively. Dropping out of Podunk State College and HVAC Repair Clinic just doesn't bring those advantages.

<comment><USER9> It's also important to note that Bill Gates' high-school was private and very rigorous. In fact, it was one of the first high-schools in the US to make computers available to its students.

Excellent point about connections... Also note that Paul Allen was BG's high- school friend.

<comment><USER8> Same for Mark Zuckerberg's school <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Exeter_Academy>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I personally think the biggest reason to go to college is that it's just plain fun. A rare chance in your life to have very few responsibilities and explore being yourself.

Unfortunately, add mounting costs, difficulties of finding jobs, and debt, and I'm not sure college is the perfect answer for long term success.

I wonder if many hot startups would rather hire someone that dropped out to do their own thing vs. someone who finished their degree? There is no replacement for real-world experience.

<comment><USER11> >I personally think the biggest reason to go to college is that it's just plain fun. A rare chance in your life to have very few responsibilities and explore being yourself.

Doing a CS major (or probably any other science) barely leaves you with any free time, and let's face it, it's not exactly the pinnacle of fun.

<comment><USER12> As a CS major, I agree with your first statement, but wholly disagree with the latter. I thoroughly enjoyed my studies, even though they were rigorous. I majored in CS because I enjoyed it. It was plenty worth it at graduation when I could look back and say I actually accomplished something as well.

<comment><USER11> I'm currently in my 2nd year, and from what I gather most of the people aren't enjoying it so far. The first year was mostly pure math (Mathematical Analysis I & II, Linear Algebra I & II, Discrete Math, Intro to Probability) + a few comp sci courses (Scheme, Java and a very abstract Data Structures course).

I came to computer science from a software engineering perspective and less from a theoretical one, so that is probably why I'm not having a ball ;-) Hopefully in the 3rd year, once I get to pick electives I will enjoy it much more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> About the numerical argument, that's not a good argument. The fact that 92,5% of the people on the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Tech list did not drop out is meaningless by itself. Why?

Imagine that 92,5% of all population had degrees. Or even better: that 99% of all population had degrees.

It'd be more meaningful if you added the percentage of the population with degrees, the % of people without degrees who created failed startups...

But, anyways, I don't think that having/not having a degree is a fundamental factor in the success of your startup. Maybe you're already good enough to go forward. Maybe your idea is so great it compensates your lack of technical knowledge. Frankly, I think that dropping college to do a startup is neither a good or bad idea. It depends on you, your circumstances and the startup itself.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all. What sparked this post was the release of this year's Forbes 30 Under 30 for Tech. Turns out almost everyone on the list (92.5%, check article for more stats) did NOT drop out, so thought the numbers + anecdotal + personal experience would make a good case for sticking to school.

<comment><USER14> want to guesstimate how many people on the Forbes 30 for 30 list had private college paid for by their upper middle class (if not better parents)?

I think it makes sense to think seriously about the restrictions taking on education debt will place on your life in the future, and to think seriously about if that's the best use for the resources it takes to go to college

different viewpoint on ROI calculations:

The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don't graduate, or take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let's look at it completely from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn't go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who doesn't? If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had interest income of 5% per year I'd end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it's the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread. There are other factors as well. I won't be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of. So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more. <http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-...>. <http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par...>. <http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle...>.

<comment><USER15> > want to guesstimate how many people on the Forbes 30 for 30 list had private > college paid for by their upper middle class (if not better parents)?

But the origin of the college funds is irrelevant to the authors point. And say in Gates case, he wasn't really born on a farm either, would that mean that dropping out is only an option for wealthy kids, or..?

<comment><USER14> as best I can tell, the orginal point is, go to college, its great, you'll learn alot of stuff, and you'll get marketable credentials

which is all obviously true, and not neccesarily determinate to the decision as to whether or not to drop out of college

those same points could be made about alot of activities you could engage in between the ages of 18-22

cost and roi are relevent to how you spend that time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone who dropped out of college to start a company and successfully exited, I wanted to give my personal perspective on this.

Dropping out of college made me more successful than I would have been in the short/medium term, but closed a lot of doors for in the long term which I spend a lot of time often thinking about. Although it's quite possible I could go back to college and finish my degree, the opportunity costs for me now are a lot higher; I will most likely never go to grad school. I was quite fortunate to create a business with a great idea and an easy execution; however, looking back, I could of easily chosen something that wouldn't of worked. It's only with my greater maturity now that I can see how lucky I was.

On the flip side of the token, if I hadn't dropped out of college, I probably would be slaving away in a consulting/investment banking role and never would of gone down the startup route. I would not be as happy/wealthy as I am today and I probably wouldn't be as mature as I am now. I understand my limitations/vulnerabilities and strengths better as a result today.

Although I'm happy with my decision, I have been having a sort of a midlife crisis at this point.

All through life, there's always something ahead. In middle school, you have high school. In high school you have college; and theoretically in college, you have some kind of first job. After your first job, you get promoted/transfer to higher paying jobs etc….

For someone who drops out of college, the path can be a bit ambiguous. I've sold my first company and I'll most likely start another company soon, but what happens after that? Do i continue starting/selling companies for the rest of my life? Do I end up just becoming an angel investor/partner at a vc firm? Or do i just retire now and do all the fun/creative projects that I wanted to do as a kid? I guess I'm still searching…

I'm still searching because the toughest problem of my life wasn't to drop out or stay; that decision was easy. The toughest problem of my life is something I've been delaying solving and which I should of tried to solve sooner and which I may never solve.

The toughest problem of my life will be to learn and choose what makes me happy.

<comment><USER17> You have the toughest problem in life - which is choice. You have an advantage - you have time (in money). Surround yourself with a diverse group of people from different age groups (people in their twentys, in their thirtys, in their fourtys) and use them as mentors and peers. it will be extremely useful. If you live in Silicon Valley, it should be pretty easy to find a diverse group of good people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The advice someone should consider when trying to determine if they should go to college or start a company is this.... take advantage of opportunities!

Do you have an idea? Have you validated this idea in some form? Do you have access to funds? Do you have the skills necessary to execute the idea? If not, do you have access to people who can make up for your shortcomings? In other words, do you actually have an alternative opportunity to college.

Life is long for most of us, be optimistic and bet on it being long for you too. Don't be in a rush. While the college degree itself does not hold the value that it once did, the experience of college for those who truly take advantage of it will find it to be an amazing period of self growth. College has true value for some, even if society does not know how validate its value on an individual basis.

I went to college, I dropped out senior year, 8 years later I am working on my startup full time. My conditional blanket advice would be this, if you don't have a clear opportunity then go to school. It is that simple. If you spend half the time your friends' spend partying on your idea, you will have more than enough time to vet your dream as a true opportunity. After which you can justifiably quit college and start your company. Just because you start your undergrad does not mean you have to finish it.

Like I mentioned, I don't have my degree because I personally don't value a degree. But I highly value my college experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't it sad, that there is still no giant database filled with numbers to solve all arguments?

One column would be university. Another column would be course. Third column would be price. Fourth column would be field of working. Fifth column would be median salary (monthly earnings for entrepreneurs). Ideally that would be lifetime earnings instead, but it's really hard to do.

There probably should be a column for employment ratio or one extra entry per (university, course).

Then we can easily query such database to measure impact university has on financial success. And stop muttering. There still would be people who don't act rational, but at least we can mark it as such — _irrational_ , instead of _wrong_. What I'm afraid of is that people will still act irrationally while thinking they are acting rationally (e.g. "of course they never succeeded, they were not as talented as me!")

I think someone would even pay to have access to such database, so there is probably a business opportunity here. Although, even more probably most university will disagree to disclose/outright falsify income numbers, because they are not interested to tell the truth.

<comment><AUTHOR> YES! This was exactly what I was looking for while writing the post. A decent portion of this information is even available publicly for certain demographic slices (like the education for the 30 Under 30s).

Startup idea? One that you could drop out of school for? _wink_ _wink_

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's always presented as one or the other: Either do a startup or stay in college. Why not both?

I've managed to continue my undergrad education while co-founding an angel back startup. Although I didn't intentionally plan it, doing both at the same time as really helped me learn. What you learn in school can instantly be translated back to your startup, instead of waiting several years after school when you have forgotten much of it. It goes the other way too, lessons I've learned in my startup help me focus on what matters in school and "project manage" my course-load and homework.

It's not for everyone, and I am not saying that you have to start a company while in school. But at the very least, consider joining a startup while in school. Most startups are very flexible to where you work and what hours you work. It's usually a great fit while in school.

<comment><USER21> Amen!

If we can bootstrap on 10 hours a week with a day job we can do same from college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I planned on dropping out and found myself back at school - we had on path to profitability and California costs a lot more than Illinois. When my parents started getting collection letters from my university and we were running out of money (strange how $20,000 doesn't get you that far), I knew it was time to go back. Of course, my family couldn't afford to send me to school without loans, so ymmv.

I found that the time I spent in the trenches actually made me appreciate school MORE. When I got back, my desire to learn was back. I don't think I would have appreciated school as much if I hadn't just gotten out there.

I've decided to count my time in the valley as "studying abroad" ;)

</comment><comment><USER22> Don't let somebody else tell you that your square peg needs to fit in that round hole over there.

I have a B.S. and a M.S. in computer science and I am 100% confident that it was the right choice /for me/. I also work at DISQUS with some of the smartest best systems engineers I have ever known, none of them took computer science, only some graduated college, and some never even finished high school. Education is a very personal thing and America's system works for most people, but when it feels wrong go find something else that feels right.

<comment> jmcdonald-ut I couldn't agree more. As a current student, dropping out doesn't appeal to me. I enjoy the structure presented by my classes and the college social life outside of classes. This has been the right choice for me, but for others it most certainly would not be.

Do what you feel is right. When it comes to a big choice like this I feel like subconsciously you just know what is right for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Solid advice. If it doesn't work out and you quit your job to pursue the startup you might have a smaller bank account but you will have another solid item for your resume and it shouldn't be too hard to find a new job. If on the other hand it doesn't work out and you dropped out of college, you are in a much worse spot. Failed startup wont do much for getting back into school and now you still have to fund the schooling. You could get a job but it wont pay much without a college degree.

<comment><USER24> This doesn't necessarily hold true for technology.

In fact, the longer in the field the the more dated the education becomes. Our field is changing and knowledge is turning over so fast that a ten year old degree is borderline irrelevant vs someone who has experience in "today's technologies, methodologies, etc".

There are fundamentals which hold true from college, but a large majority of the technologies, techniques, etc are no longer relevant.

<comment><USER25> This would be true if you got a degree in FORTRAN or Java 1.5 (and if you did, then that's a bummer!) instead of Computer Science. The vast majority of things I learned with a computer science degree are language-agnostic, and the only reason we used any language at all was because pseudocode is hard to compile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. For me, it was a big shift at first transitioning from a more vocational mindset (learning the language/framework of the day) to the theoretical (design patterns, paradigms, architecture).

As an aside, just got through Martin Fowler's musing on architecture (<http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/>). Highly recommended!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As a med student, never in my life have I had the slightest provocation to consider dropping out of school to pursue a startup. I know that I am extremely unfamiliar with the complexity of the choices involved, but having read this piece I'd be shocked if any prospective entrepreneurs were not strongly persuaded to take this man's advice. This is wisdom without the ostentatiousness of a NYT opinion.

<comment><USER27> There are different risk dynamics between someone that is studying medicine and someone studying computer science. The major one being that if you drop out while studying CS you could still likely get a job as developer if you are able to prove you are capable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "college also teaches the life skills needed to succeed"

Whoa. Is this subtle irony? I can't believe anyone who isn't actually a college admissions person wrote this.

College can teach you some practical techniques, it can be broadening, and it can be a place to build relationships. But life skills? If that's what you want, you really would be better off dropping out.

<comment><USER29> College gives you the opportunity to live in an apartment with real people and real bills while still under the protective umbrella of being a student. In the US, going to college means you have health care (you are paying for it, but you don't have a choice), you have access to fairly inexpensive food, and a lot of advisors who can help you and WANT to help you while you fuck up. That really does help in the transition from living with parents or in a dorm to having a place of your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was a math major in college. I also spent 25+ hours per week on creative writing, although I took few classes in it and was mediocre in all the English courses I took. I'm very glad I got the mathematical background, and the creative writing experience (mostly frustration) made me a better software architect. It's harder to get that sort of out-of-band stuff once you're out of school.

Using Coursera and various textbooks to take some of the CS courses I missed in school, and doing this as an "adult student" (29) I've had a couple of insights...

* Autodidacticism (reading the texts and papers without a structured online course) is hard. How do you know if you're learning the right stuff, or how deep to go? Which exercises in your ML textbook do you do? (You won't have time to do all of them, unless you want to spend 2 years.) It is worth doing, but it's not easy. There's a reason why autodidacticism is rare and impressive.

* College wasn't _that_ hard. It's a combination of (a) trying to do a zillion things at once, (b) having mediocre study skills on account of having not needed them before, (c) all the hormonal volatility, and (d) damaged long-term-planning facilities until age 25, that make it hard. After a few years of cubicle hell, college coursework is relatively easy for most people, _if_ you have discipline (which very few 18-year-olds do; cube hell will help you get it). Of course, most people don't have time for more than 1-2 courses once they start working.

The problem with the "dropping out is awesome" mentality is that it's unclear what people are to be dropping into. I had that fantasy of dropping out to become a novelist-- who doesn't?-- but enough realism to know it wasn't a credible plan.

I think that most people (Zuck and Gates excluded) who drop out for a startup are actually running from something, and the thing they're running from isn't college, but the fact that 18-24 is a difficult age, especially in the neurotic U.S.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great insight about autodidacticism - sometimes it's just really hard to (1) even know what to do in the first place and (2) do it without structure or extrinsic motivation.

I think in an ideal world, self-study and maintaining an ongoing education while out in the field are great. Unfortunately in a practical world, finding that motivation intrinsically is pretty difficult. There's actually a great video by Dan Pink delving into the specific components of motivation: <http://reelsurfer.com/watch/share/22832>

(credit a forum post on improving at StarCraft for this actually, haha: [http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=374...](http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=374400))

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't drop out just to drop out. There's no statement to be made.

Sometimes dropping out makes sense; other times it doesn't. It's based on that unique situation. Dropping out isn't a matter you can over generalize with blanket statement advice.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't see the harm in dropping out.

If your startup is gaining traction, take a semester off and try and make it work. You can always go back to school if the business doesn't work out.

</comment><comment><USER33> Until you find a substantial group of talented students whom you randomize to college vs non-college, the question of whether or not to complete college will remain open.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish I'd done a startup before going to college. I would've had a better sense of what to focus on.

</comment><comment><USER35> if you drop out to start a startup just be sure its really what you want as you will most probably fail!</comment>


Jony Ive Put Apple's Marketing Team in Charge of iOS 7 Icon Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/12/jony-ive-put-apples-marketing-team-in-charge-of-ios-7-icon-design/ <comment><USER2> I've worked as a graphic designer in a rather large company (500+) who handled several shopping websites. There was no design team, just a marketing team of which I was a part. It seemed logical considering my work was meant to _sell_ things, not to _just_ make the website look good. But I was frustrated because most design decisions require some indepedence and instinct, and it's difficult to argue with marketing-focused people who solely rely on figures, charts and basic strategies. The real problem was that graphic designers were only subordinates, meant to execute the design decisions the marketing team made.

Each team in a large company has a different goal. Marketing needs to sell, developers need to make it work, designers to make it beautiful and usable. When 2 of these goals are assigned to the same team, there is a purpose conflict. You can not refine one aspect of your work without the fear of damaging the other. So you end up in a gray area where none of your 2 goals is completely fulfilled.

The Apple design team probably worked on the new iOS 7 interactions which turned out to be great. But seeing how the icons turned out, you understand how frustrated designers across the web have become because they _know_ designers wouldn't have let that happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe they will change some of the icon designs so we can re-hash the ugly icon debate for months to come!</comment>


The Bloom Tree - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.03057 <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm wrong, but the second point in the conclusion seems a bit overstated:

 _When we want to prove the presence, or absence of single elements to another party in a secure and bandwidth efficient way, instead of sending whole bloom filters_

As stated in the paper several times, bloom filters do not prove presence of an element in a set, only absence. Which is fine when used in a caching setting or where false positives are acceptable, but it seems like if you are relying on this exchange for "proving presence or absence...in a secure way..." false positives are a deal breaker especially seeing as how they are doing "the block chains"

But there are supposedly more papers in the pipeline that might explain this. Either way, it was good advertisement, I went to their site, and looked for the project on github (did not find them though) maybe they could link it from their site?

<comment><AUTHOR> The "github" word in the paper is clickable and redirects to the github repo. It appears to become highlighted only when it is in PDF format, thanks for indirectly pointing that out. The presence proofs are as you said probabilistic, whereas the absence proofs are non-probabilistic. In our specific use case (which we'll explain in a future paper) the false positive nature of the bloom tree becomes actually handy to the problem we try to solve. But you are correct, we should probably rephrase the sentence to make it clear that the presence proofs are probabilistic and can be false positives, thank you for your feedback. We wrongfully assumed that this would be clear after explaining the probabilistic nature of bloom filters.</comment></comment>


ProtonMail Voluntarily Offers Assistance for Real-Time Surveillance? - <AUTHOR> https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail-real-time-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> ProtonMail team here.

These allegations are false. Hidden at the bottom of the article, is this: "Public prosecutor Walder of the Competence Center Cybercrime contacted me, saying he had been misquoted". In other words, the alleged source (a public prosecutor) has also supported our denial of these false allegations.

ProtonMail does not voluntarily offer assistance. We only do so when ordered by a Swiss court or prosecutor, as we are obligated to follow the law in criminal cases.

Furthermore, end-to-end encryption means we cannot be forced by a court to provide message contents.

<comment><USER3> Okay now explain why I can't make a protonmail account without:

\- disabling javascript

\- verifying with a phone number that is pretty picky

\- getting stuck in captcha hell if I'm on TOR

and if I want to pay with Bitcoin, it already needs to be an existing account

<comment><USER4> > Okay now explain why I can't make a protonmail account without:

> \- disabling javascript

ProtonMail encrypts/decrypts messages in the JavaScript client, which is how messages are encrypted without the server ever having access to the plaintext. If you must disable JavaScript, then ProtonMail isn't the mail service for you(unless you use their mobile app).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While ProtonMail's marketing has always stood out as over the top self- congratulatory, the reaction of people saying "oh no, I need to find an alternative now" represents a fairly naive understanding of the very nature of communication platforms on the internet, especially email.

There is no alternative here. There is no company that will ever solve the problem, within the existing email protocol, where one unencrypted sender (say, marketing emails) can send to a so-called "encrypted receiver" and not have an intermediary able to temporarily read the emails. This is inherent in the design of the system. ProtonMail is not end-to-end encrypted in this case, and no email provider can be on the traditional web.

There are no alternatives. There is no hard, scientific, mathematical solution to this. The best you'll get is "soft encryption"—the equivalent of encryption where the third party offering the service chooses the encryption key.

<comment><USER6> > There is no alternative here.

Technically, there is: Encrypting our own mail with our own keys.

<comment><USER7> See [https://thehelm.com/](https://thehelm.com/)

<comment><USER8> What are the marginal benefits (and costs) of running a Helm over ProtonMail service? I can see none.

The justified concerns the security community has with ProtonMail is: Crypto in the browser is bad (mitigable with Qubes), and How do I know PM isn't serving me a backdoored JS.

IIRC, Helm has auto updated binaries so backdoor-free code isn't a delta. The best I can come up with is: server+CPU observation/isolation is stronger on local hardware relative to PM at the cost of network observation. Hypothetical: "Ok a Spectre-style attack is out, spam emails and let's do some timing-correlation traffic analysis"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it is worth reiterating that regardless of (insert application) provider used, one should assume lawful intercept and low friction compliance, not to mention eventual data leakage from hacks, bugs and competence issues.

If PGP is difficult, people can use a simpler route of 7-zip encrypting text files with a pre-shared passphrase. Share your passphrase out-of-band when feasible. i.e. physical notes, sftp, voice chat, private chat server (mumble / murmur super easy to set up), etc... Use different passphrases for different circles of friends. Example: [1]

[1] - [https://tinyvpn.org/e/c/6/ec6ef8690422c94f17da3b2caa60a5c1.7...](https://tinyvpn.org/e/c/6/ec6ef8690422c94f17da3b2caa60a5c1.7z)

Created using:

        7za a -mhe=on -p ./SECRET.7z ./SECRET.txt

pw

        akduygajygrvads____________lgidufh^-_adliuanj^^^42^^^^^^^onijhoijg__1__

</comment><comment><USER10> One problem with ProtonMail that is also relevant here is that ProtonMail does not allow to pay anonymously for the service (so that investigators are able to follow the money trail).

On the other hand (this is not supposed to be an advertisement or testimonial; I just state the fact), the German email provider Posteo that has some popularity among people who are concerned about privacy also allows anonymous payments via banknotes (cash) that is sent via mail (just put the letter into a postbox in a completely different city).

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, germany is a bad place to have your servers.

<comment><USER12> Out of interest where would you suggest?

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure, but I guess a relatively developed country without a big nosy state would do (or one that doesn't care about the Internet/speech censorship/spying on people). Other obvious places where you don't want to have your servers: Australia, USA, UK, Russia(duh), Turkey.

Case study: Vincent Canfield, of the half-joke email provider cock.li, moved his servers to Romania after them getting seized by German prosecutors.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/cock-li- server-s...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/cock-li-server- seized-again-by-german-prosecutor-service-moves-to-iceland/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of paranoia in this thread. The whole point of end to end encryption is that it protects against court-mandated searches. (among other things) It doesn't prevent the search, it renders the search less useful.

End to end encryption in email is somewhat silly, because the vast majority of the time you will be sending email to a private company, or to a gmail address, or generally just to another party that will not respect your privacy at all.

The real benefit to something like ProtonMail is that they're not Gmail. They're not scanning every message you send you send and using it to build an advertising profile on you. If you're really worried about government warrants, email is not the tool for you.

<comment><USER14> End-to-end encryption protects against the service provider (employees) from easily reading your data. This is the biggest benefit.

Of course the service provider can be compelled by law enforcement to hand over encrypted data. Law enforcement may then either attempt to brute force the encryption key password, or compel the user to provide the encryption key password (typically the account password with end-to-end encrypted services): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law)

Does ordering you to hand over your password entail a form of self- incrimination or a violation of the right to silence? Would granting police the power to compel passwords cross a line centuries old against forcing a person to speak to build the case against them? [https://globalnews.ca/news/5310901/canada-privacy- passwords-...](https://globalnews.ca/news/5310901/canada-privacy-passwords- law/)

<comment><USER9> End-to-end using server provided javascript code means that the code can be changed on the fly per user to enable lawful intercept. Plausible deniability only works if the client is encrypting the payload entirely independent of the provider. That would require the end user to be compelled directly and javascript would not be required.

<comment><USER14> So you're running a local encryption library or app (not relying on server side JS code).

Do you disable auto-update, and risk running a broken version of the encryption library or software, or do you enable auto-update and risk a remote backdoor injection via the auto update?

<comment><USER9> I disable auto-update and get my software from a computer not associated with me. I compare checksums to copies that friends have and checksums on virustotal.

For linux software, I validate GPG checks of individual packages and of the rpm repo. Both packages and metadata are signed. I get the public key from a non mirror site and compare to keys listed by others.

This does not preclude back-doors, but it means that everyone has the same backdoor as me. I then mitigate dial-home of said programs with firewall rules and selinux. If there is a hard-coded key, it will also affect all the companies and governments using the same software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A bunch of folks have been warning that ProtonMail is essentially well- polished marketing, smoke and mirrors. It isn't just their position on law enforcement or data collection; they've made a series of very awkward cryptographic mistakes that sort of give the game away. For example, using problematic crypto libraries, omitting salient facts from their marketing copy, and repeatedly failing to deliver on promises to correct the above issues.

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying you're wrong at all, but I'd love to see some source material for these claims - specifically the "repeatedly failing to deliver on promises to correct the above issues" in regards to their crypto.

<comment><USER15> Not even 2 months ago they misrepresented crypto capabilities and we're forced to agree they'd fix it. Still waiting on further action.

There are others, you can just search for them. This is one I just happened to have on hand, on this very website.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19748370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19748370)

<comment><USER16> I will read into it, thanks for providing additional info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yep, Similar issues with Threema. They are currently under the number of requests [1] but will eventually reach it and then what?

[1] [https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport](https://threema.ch/en/transparencyreport)

</comment><comment><USER18> If you want to communicate securely, don't use email. Every email provider in the world is subject to _some_ government authority, and there is not a government on the planet that will allow a service to operate without some provision for surveillance (nor should it!).

But before you move everything to the secret decoder ring, think about what you are actually trying to achieve. Don't want your email to be read by the FBI? Move it to a server in Switzerland and it will be read by the NSA.

I like ProtonMail and I hope they succeed. I find their marketing (explicit or implied) that suggest it protects you against _targeted government surveillance_ annoying and disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do Swiss court orders go by another name?

I mean, they specifically use the word 'request'. Request by the definition, as opposed to an order, is voluntary.

I will add that I find it funny, whenever such topics come up, that people who love authority and agree with surveillance will literally change the wording to fit their desired narrative. I see a lot of people in this thread talking about 'orders' when that word was never used originally and would remove the ambiguity that allows the argument that proton does real time voluntary surveillance.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hmm I was just the other day contemplating moving my domain and email off of Google/Gsuite nd ProtonMail was one alternative I was considering. Now I'm hesitant - what other options are there?

<comment><USER21> I have almost completely moved my email from Google to ProtonMail. Now this. It makes me sad. I'm using ProtonVPN as well.

So, what are the alternatives?

<comment><USER22> In the same boat and now actively considering just self-hosting as these threads will so often advocate for. What a pain.

<comment><USER21> I've heard lots of horror stories about self-hosted mail bouncing as spam. I'd only consider that a last resort, personally.

<comment><USER23> I have been self-hosting for over 20 years using self-signed certificates, now widely described by current browsers as "unsafe and suspicious." My clients receive my emails without issue, whether they have Microsoft-hosted, Google- hosted, email servers, etc. or their own private self-hosted servers. As do any other service I interact with via email.

Being bounced as spam not an issue for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a happy Protonmail user and I think this (even if it were true) is only an issue if you are being unrealistic. All companies can be legally compelled to take action regardless of their jurisdiction. If you have some gratuitously paranoid threat model, you should be using Tor anyway.

I like their service much more than GMail and I feel much more comfortable with regard to data privacy when using it.

<comment><USER25> Happy users of any service aren't nearly as vocal as the unhappy ones.

@protonmail; I'm happy too. Thanks for doing the do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> While the messages themselves might not be able to be read due to end-to-end encryption, the metadata -- IP addresses, time of access, to/from whom messages are being routed, possibly more from a mobile app -- would provide a LOT of information. And unless I'm mistaken, Swiss banks are a members of the SWIFT agreement... possible connection?

<comment><USER27> Switzerland is a member of SWIFT. There is also a data center in Switzerland according to Wikipedia:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > at the request of the Swiss judiciary

The reason I use Protonmail is that Swizerland can't be easily bullied by the US or similar countries into abusing their court system to illegally spy on people (unlike my own country).

If a Swiss judge decides that a specific individual should be surveilled, I am more inclined to trust that it is for good and _legal_ reasons.

<comment><USER27> I have bad news for you:

Switzerland is a close US ally. It is even a second-tier partner to the NSA as we know from the Snowden leaks:

[https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2013/10/30/5270985d63fd3d7d778...](https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2013/10/30/5270985d63fd3d7d778b4576.html)

Geneva, the home of ProtonMail, is a major international spy hub thanks to the UN. Snowden was even working in Geneva for some time.

<comment><USER29> Everyone has to agree with the bully in the play ground. The bully is not around forever though. A new one comes along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> We have written up a longer article on the false allegations here: [https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false- statements/](https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false-statements/)

The claims made here are categorically false, and have already been refuted.

</comment><comment><USER30> Today, mobile phones are super powerful, always-on and almost always connected. We should be able to run mail completely on the mobile device? There could be blind relay mailboxes in between to help store/forward the mails until they are retrieved by mobile phone app.. and of course there's end to end encryption with no metadata leakage in the relay.

Possible? Already exists - app? relay?

<comment><USER31> This is how email was intended to work, but anti spam measures now prevent "any normal user's device" from originating a message. To deliver a message you would need to find a trusted relay to add legitimacy flags to the message, or you need a trusting recipient with a friendly network path between you so a plain message would not be blocked.

<comment><USER30> I know how email works. Have run very large deployments. I'm asking if such a 1-person completely decentralized convenient deployment solution exists? If not, why not?

<comment><USER31> Barrier to entry was raised significantly. You have to partner with someone to make it work, as an individual. Helm looks expensive but interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I recall e-mailing ProtonMail years ago and asking why they chose GoDaddy as a registrar considering their entire existence is based on enhancing security/best practices.

The response I received back was very disappointing and even concerning. I don't think they understand the concept of threat modeling.

</comment><comment><USER33> ProtonMail's response to the allegations [https://protonmail.com/blog/martin- steiger-false-statements/](https://protonmail.com/blog/martin-steiger-false- statements/)

</comment><comment><USER34> archive link for anyone else who is unable to access the page: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190529151510/https://steigerle...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190529151510/https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/05/23/protonmail- real-time-surveillance/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Advertisement [1]:

> _Unlike competing services, we do not save any tracking information. By > default, we do not record metadata such as the IP addresses used to log into > accounts._

Notice the sneaky "by default" :)

Reality [2]:

> _In April 2019, at the request of the Swiss judiciary in a case of clear > criminal conduct, we enabled IP logging against a specific user account > which is engaged in illegal activities which contravene Swiss law._

Can the Swiss judiciary ask ProtonMail to serve a different version of the website to a specific user account, which sends the cleartext to a remote server?

[1] [https://protonmail.com/security-details](https://protonmail.com/security- details)

[2] [https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency- report/](https://protonmail.com/blog/transparency-report/)

<comment><USER36> What exactly should ProtonMail have done in this case? Refuse to comply with the court order?

Not defending ProtonMail's actions mentioned in the topic, only puzzled why you seem so surprised in your comment.

<comment><USER35> When you sell such a sensitive product, which could be used for example by swiss account tax evasion whistle blowers, maybe you should disclose on the front page that you can be compelled to log IP addresses and advice users to plan around that.

<comment><USER16> From Protonmails website:

> In addition to the items listed in our privacy policy, in extreme criminal > cases, ProtonMail may also be obligated to monitor the IP addresses which > are being used to access the ProtonMail accounts which are engaged in > criminal activities. Under no circumstances will ProtonMail be able to > provide the contents of end-to-end encrypted messages sent on ProtonMail.

To be fair, I don't know if this provision was added after they had reported the instance in their transparency report.

However, I think at some point the customer should use a bit of common sense. Anyone who believes that a government may compel a company to start IP-logging their mail should be considering that in their threat model when they are looking for an e-mail provider. I don't think it needs to be plastered on the front page - especially not with advice on how to circumvent government authorities lawful requests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does ProtonMail perform real-time surveillance of users? Yes or No?

<comment><USER38> What does real-time surveillance mean in your question?

<comment><USER27> My own definition does not matter. Swiss law matters:

'The order may require real-time surveillance to be carried out and the handover of the retained secondary data of telecommunications from past communications (retroactive surveillance).'

[https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified- compilation/20122728/...](https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified- compilation/20122728/index.html#a26)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> You guys should try migadu.com

<comment><USER20> Can you share why?

</comment></comment><comment> java-man The question is: is ProtonMail run by a bunch of naive physicists or a carefully created honeytrap?

<comment><USER35> There is precedent for that, a Swiss crypto company which sold NSA backdoored crypto systems to the Iranians:

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

<comment><USER4> There's precedent because they are Swiss?</comment></comment></comment>


'Tired teenagers' at a UK school to start lessons later - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-27357031

<comment><USER2> 9am isn't actually that early. I started school at 7am every day.

Most people I know..who aren't teenagers..hate getting up early...but they do it anyway. College students also hate getting up early (my 7am classes were always empty..compared to my 1pm)...should we mandate that all classes start in the afternoon?

Coddling our kids will only create a generation that is unprepared for the real world.

<comment><USER3> There's no moral imperative in 7am classes.</comment></comment>


Get ready to write – Workers KV is now in GA - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/workers-kv-is-ga/ <comment><USER2> "$0.50 / GB of data stored, 1 GB included"

is that per month? or is that the upload cost?

<comment><USER3> Looks like $0.50 / GB / month for storage. See at the bottom of the page at [https://www.cloudflare.com/products/workers- kv/](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/workers-kv/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, you pay per month. One gigabyte is included with the charge for Workers, then $0.50/GB additionally for each one after the first.

(I'm the PM on KV)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> awesome, more serverless :)</comment>


Software Patents are Self-Defeating - <AUTHOR> http://blog.datamules.com/blog/2012/02/13/software-patents-are-self-defeating/

<comment><USER2> Interesting read. I also believe that software patents reduce your own flexibility in work. If you spend the time and money to patent your software, you won't be changing it any time soon, even if you eventually discover that there is a better way to design your product.

<comment><USER3> > If you spend the time and money to patent your software, you won't be > changing it any time soon, even if you eventually discover that there is a > better way to design your product.

How does that follow?

It certainly isn't true with physical device patents, like automatic transmission mechanisms, so why would software be any different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I stopped reading here:

> I doubt whether our software could be patented anyway, but if you can patent > a [linked list](<http://www.google.com/patents/US7028023>), perhaps it could > be after all

If this guy knows so little about patents that he thinks the title of that patent defines what it protects, and apparently has not even looked at the claims, then why should I listen to his opinion about them?

<comment><USER5> The claims are very closely aligned with the title.

Claim 1 - Linked list with two traversal orders Claim 2 - Linked list with three traversal orders Claim 3 - Method of traversing the lists in claim 1 and 2 Claim 4 - A device (computer) to traverse the lists in claim 1 and 2

<comment><USER4> What is claimed is _very clearly_ not just a standard linked list. We can argue about whether this patent should have been granted, and whether its claims are invalid... but there can be no dispute about whether this person has "patented a [scratch that, _the_ ] linked list."

<comment><USER6> _Very clearly_ my ass. From the patent:

> The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and limitations of the > prior art by providing a system and method for traversing a list using > auxiliary pointers that indicate the next item in a sequence.

The "invention" here is called a sentinel, and have been used in conjunction with linked lists since time immemorial. For "prior art" I would refer you to CLRS.

Go ahead and downvote me. Please.

<comment><USER7> No, the invention here is not a sentinel. It's having a bunch of things each of which has two or more next-item pointers so that you can traverse the list in two or more different orders. For instance, this would cover any doubly- linked list.

... Which is pretty strange, actually, since the patent itself references prior art involving doubly-linked lists. Maybe that's why they had a separate claim for a list with _three_ "next" pointers in each node. I have no idea why claims 1, 3 add 4 weren't thrown out by the examiner given that everything they describe is done by every doubly-linked list implementation anywhere ever. (Claim 2 looks obviously not novel to me, but it's not quite such a slam-dunk as the others.)

So, anyway. The patent is preposterous. It isn't a patent on The Linked List. It doesn't involve sentinels. It doesn't cover any singly-linked list. It does cover any doubly-linked list (which is one reason why it's preposterous). The author of the OP is right about the patent's preposterousness but wrong to describe it as "patent[ing] a linked list". monochromatic is right that the patent isn't a patent on the linked list, but arguably wrong to think this proves the original author is a twit (perhaps s/he knows perfectly well what the patent purports to cover, but preferred terseness to precision). rtperson is wrong to say that the patent is about "a standard linked list with sentinels", wrong to be obnoxious about it, but probably right that there's prior art in CLRS at least for claims 1,3,4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In the end, I doubt owning a patent on something will have any impact on our > ultimate success or failure.

How I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of patent trolls out there that would love to use their patents to extract value from your company. When the trolls come knocking (and they will), having a patent of your own may literally be the only defense.

Everyone who wants to understand just how incredibly corrupt the US patent system is needs to do themselves a favor and listen to the "When Patents Attack" episode of NPR's This American Life. Then you'll understand why neatly-reasoned arguments are, in this instance, entirely besides the point.

<comment><USER4> Patent trolls are by definition non-practicing entities. How does having your own patent defend against them, if they're not actually producing anything that would infringe it?

<comment><USER6> Again, the error you're making is mistaking patent law with the insane way patent law is actually enforced. Listen to "When Patents Attack," and you'll understand that non-practicing entities have been very successful lately in filling their pockets at the expense of the genuinely productive.

Patents are also not supposed to overlap each other. However -- and again this was made startlingly clear by NPR -- they do, and by the tens of thousands.

You're making the mistake of believing yourself to be in a world where reasonableness prevails.

<comment><USER4> I think you missed my point.

<comment><USER6> I apologize for doing so. I think my idea of holding your own patent was not for the ability to counter-sue, but (and I am quite obviously not a lawyer) so you have a legal basis to petition for dismissal of the patent troll's suit. If there were any effective way to savage non-practicing entities, I'm sure we'd have fewer trolls out there.

It would be a weak form of defensive patent aggregation (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll#Defenses>), but it would still be better than nothing.

My larger point is that, by vocally opting out of the patent game, the author of the original article has practically painted a bullseye on himself. Averring yourself to be above the fray seems to me to be a sure-fire way to be victimized yourself.

<comment><USER4> Defensive patent aggregation is about the ability to cross-license. If a troll isn't making anything, they don't need to license your patents.

Now, your own patent could _in some circumstances_ be used as prior art against the patent troll... but if that's all you're using it for, why not just publish everything you're doing? Publications are prior art just as much as patents are.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Leah Culver Speaks About Pownce's Future And Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/pownce-leah-culver-interview <comment><USER2> speak? more like, says two sentences.... thanks for the link though</comment>


Ask HN: Setting up a dual server solution - <AUTHOR>

We are setting up dual Linode servers, one for Europe and one for North America. Can someone please point me to articles on how to route users to the appropriate server. This is a first for us. We will also want to back up both servers. Thanks. <comment><USER2> A starting point, maybe: <http://serverfault.com/questions/30567/geo-dns- providers>

Otherwise: [http://www.google.ca/search?aq=2&oq=geo+dns&gcx=c...](http://www.google.ca/search?aq=2&oq=geo+dns&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=geo+dns+service)

</comment><comment><USER3> this isn't really the right place for that. Try superuser or serverfault.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask on their forums?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your help</comment></comment>