Ask HN: Amazon software engineers, how is the work culture now? - <AUTHOR> Was there any change from the time New York Times article was published? And does the pay + stock compensate for the bad work culture (if there is?) <comment><USER3> No change since the NYT article.

Amazon only changes things when it has to, and only in a lip-service kind of way. There was a flurry of discussion and proposals when the article was published, but it's all died down and we're back to where we were beforehand.

Compensation, culture, and perks are infinitely better at Google, Facebook, Lyft, Uber, etc. All of them start vesting your stock monthly after 1 year, whereas Amazon has a ridiculous vesting schedule (5% after year 1, 15% after year 2, 20% every 6 months thereafter). Not to mention the awful 401k matching, no free food/drinks, terrible drab offices, etc. All in the name of "frugality." Leadership claims that our competitors waste their money on these things, despite all of them being insanely profitable with higher employee happiness and retention.

I'm working on moving to one of the above competitors now. I recommend avoiding Amazon, even if the role you've been offered sounds cool.

<comment><USER4> >no free food/drinks

It's sooooo important.

<comment><USER5> To each their own. I struggle with compulsive eating and free food at a workplace correlates with weight gain for me.

Of course, that's just me. I'm not saying you should be deprived. I like getting a free beer or two on Thirsty Thursdays but if I were a recovering alcoholic I would hate it.

<comment><USER6> I believe GP was being sarcastic... That said, while I don't mind free food and drinks, I also don't mind taking care of it on my own. The only difference is if there is a weekly event for all company with food + drink, sort of a gathering. That does wonders for morale.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, where I am now has after-work drinks on Thursdays and I really like it. We chat, play some video games (we make them so it makes sense), have a beer or two - it's good.

But I would not be shocked if at least some of the people who I know never come do so because there's a not small percentage of the population for whom being around alcohol is incredibly challenging. I'm like that with food - <USER2> truth be told, on those Thursdays I tend to eat too much. But eating too much doesn't have the same impact professionally as getting drunk (it's still not great, though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moved to Google and TBH have cried once or twice because I didn't realize an employer could be so humane. Amazon was terrifying, but the academic culture I came from normalized self brutalization to succeed,so I didn't realize how much they were relying on my lack of a sense of boundaries and personal priorities to extract excess labor.

<comment><USER8> Mind if I ask what team(s) you were on at Amazon? Looking to avoid the worst.

I'm starting to get the impression, though, that if I want to be happiest as a Big Tech Co. engineer, I really just need to work at Google.

<comment><USER9> I heard FB is good as well, though I still don't get why they need so many people to do what they do. Heck, even MS is probably better than Amazon. I delete all Amazon recruiter emails (of which I receive about 2 per week) as soon as they arrive.

<comment><USER10> You can tell them to stop contacting you and it works.

<comment><USER9> Not in my case. I've asked them numerous times to remove my email, it subsides for a while and then comes back at the same rate.

<comment><USER10> OK, it happened to me just now, two years after telling them to not contact me. But it was a different group, was gaming, now is AWS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work under 40 hours a week with no pressure to work more, I get along with my coworkers and look forward to going to work in the morning. I have worked a crunch time that was pretty terrible, but that was a once off. It's been almost 2 years since my last crunch time.

The comp is decent. It doesn't match google/fb but it's better than a non tech company. I have a target of ~170 total comp as an SDE II with just under 4 years of experience out of college. This is my last year of my initial stock grant so my take home is quite a bit over 170.

I've never seen anyone cry at work. Closest was a guy that got pip'd, but he was genuinely struggling. I can/could see glimmers of truth in the NYT article but I've never seen it that bad. That said, I am aware that tech (SDEs in particular) tend to be treated a bit better than everyone else.

<comment><USER12> What does "pip'd" mean?

<comment><USER13> Performance improvement plan. Basically a chance to get your act together before they fire you.

<comment><USER14> Some would argue it's more of a "start looking for a new job, we're about to fire you" warning.

<comment><USER15> I don't know whether you're making this statement about Amazon, in which case I have no insight and you can stop reading now, or whether that's intended as a more general statement.

If it's the latter, I'd like to challenge the assertion that a PIP is necessarily the company trying to get rid of someone. In my experience as a manager, I've always made sure that PIPs are as honestly designed to get people back on track as could be. In, say, the last five years as a manager, and in my organisation of a couple hundred engineers, there were exactly two cases (and the key point is that I recall both specifically) where a PIP was primarily motivated to document the already extremely obvious (to anyone far and wide) underperformance and attitude problem. And even then, the managers in question had the professionalism to design the PIP to be eminently achievable.

Generally speaking, I find the likelihood of a PIP to be adversarial and/or a tool to be able to fire somebody to be much more strongly connected to whether there has been an adversarial relationship between the employee and their manager. For that reason, I found that it paid off hugely to make sure people move to different teams & managers and get a reset there before taking any drastic action. In the same way as people are said to leave due to their managers, not jobs, it's key to take that personal component out of a bad situation.

<comment><USER16> > In, say, the last five years as a manager, and in my organisation of a > couple hundred engineers, there were exactly two cases....where a PIP was > primarily motivated

In my workplaces I would consider 2 PIPs over 5 years among 200 (highly filtered) engineers to be a normal rate, yet you are implying this is a small fraction of the total PIPs.

I'm not a manager so it is definitely possible that I'm unaware of many instances, but to have a pip for more than low single digit percentages of your workforce seems like a big red flag. Whether the motivation is cya or honest encouragement, a pip still means their current performance is unacceptable, so you seem to be describing a harsh environment (or a large collection of unmotivated employees, but the former seems more likely in this industry).

Can you clarify?

<comment><USER15> I can try. :)

The industry this was in was moderately high pressure, but by no means a grind like you might see in games, etc. We painstakingly avoided bs deadlines, for example.

To a first order approximation, five years by 200 engineers is a thousand engineer years. So naively, that'd be two PIPs per thousand engineers per year. Of course, you can argue that this isn't true since the performance of an individual from one year to the next is correlated. But this was a very rapidly changing organisation where people move between departments regularly and there's a lot of growth. The latter means that you get a lot of new people that might turn out to be a poor fit. So I actually think the original approximation of quite conservative: 2 out of 1000 engineers being disagreeable about their performance assessment sounds like a total luxury for managers!

But you're right to point out that that's only the bad cases. Our company had a(n HR imposed) rule that anyone receiving sub par ratings (needs improvement) for two consecutive quarters had to go on a PIP.

In a growing organisation, complexity keeps increasing: more coordination overhead. More things all going on at the same time, more scaling challenges, etc. So naturally, performance that was just about alright last year just about DOESN'T cut it this year. This means that in my experience, it would be a sign of rating inflation or managers that avoid difficult conversations if the fraction of "needs improvement" in any given quarter was less than ~5 percent. That's a number I just pulled out of thin air, but in the right ballpark in my experience. And there you go: you get several times as many PIPs as the "bad" ones discussed above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Amazon has taken steps to prevent abusive behavior from occurring, such as creating a process for engineers to challenge managerial pips and allowing engineers to transfer while on development plans. In my opinion, these steps seem more like treating the symptom than the cause. The overall culture remains the same. Engineers are still treated by management as resources to be allocated, and for me, this is the hardest pill to swallow. Even though my manager, my skip, and my peers tell me I do good work, at the end of the day, I feel that all I am is X capacity points per sprint. The feeling of being disposable in the huge machine that is Amazon is quite depressing.

<comment><USER18> What gave it away? The fact that there's a department called Human Resources? The only way to not feel like a cog in a wheel is to be your own boss.

<comment><USER19> > a department called Human Resources

And in that phrase, "Human" is the _adjective_...

<comment><USER20> The alternative seems to be something like "people operations". I don't find that any more encouraging, really...

<comment><USER21> Back in the Dark Ages when people still had pensions and unions, this department was called "Personnel," which was perfectly descriptive and non- humiliating. This is obviously the reason it had to change to something orwellian that lumps in a company's employees with its inventory of pig iron and staple removers.

<comment><USER20> Yikes, I had totally forgotten that term (which perhaps reinforces your point..)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was at Amazon for 8 years, left in January of this year. VP I worked for routinely belittled very senior engineers, made some of them cry/move teams/quit. The VP was never disciplined or had his scope reduced.

Had projects cancelled on a whim without an actual replacement/reason.

At Amazon, I wasn't a person, but some resource.

Some orgs were fine, most are not.

A manager from a "no jerk policy" org told me there is a culture of cruelty in Amazon management, and if he played the game he would have been at a higher level.

ymmv.

</comment><comment><USER23> Worked in an AWS team, and the biggest issue was constant fire-fighting and oncall/operational load. Code quality is really bad across all teams in AWS due to constant prioritization of features over stability. We use to get 20 pages a day, and it was very common to get 2-3 pages in the middle of night. It was horrible and yet management didn't pay much attention on fixing it. At the end devs starting leaving the team one by one. Recently I heard that the team hired twice the number of devs to reduce frequency of oncall rotation.

<comment><USER24> Fulfillment was like that 5 years ago. Just widely reputed to be the worst place. New upper management came in and started rating the L6/L7 management on their highsev counts. Things got a lot better very quickly.

<comment><USER25> What's highsev?

<comment><USER24> Every software team is their own operational team as well. A highsev is a high severity ticket/incident, leading to someone being paged in for immediate assistance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Out of the 6 coworkers I'm close with, I've seen every single one of them cry for work related reasons at least once over the past year. Peak is hell.

<comment><USER27> I'm a software consultant so I've had the opportunity to work at nearly a hundred different offices.

I've seen employees driven to tears at two companies, and both of them were wretched to work for.

It became my barometer of whether the company was a good place to work for.

I really like working for companies in finance. They're generally laid back and the pay is decent, not great.

<comment><USER28> I find that interesting b/c I have a few friends who work at large banks in the finance side of things.

They would not describe their work culture as laid back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> We lost "anytime feedback" and end of year reviews changed dramatically. This is a horrible loss.

Previously, the anytime feedback tool had you, at any time, give anyone else in the company feedback (positive and negative) in the form of "Situation, Behavior, Impact". What happened, how did the person react, how did it impact me. It went to the person's manager and into a record somewhere. At the end of every year, you were asked to give additional anytime feedback to you entire team and anyone who asked for it. Managers read through all that feedback, summarized and gave you a full year end review that was the source of a lot of my personal growth.

The NYT referred to this as "ratting out your coworkers", so now that's gone.

Instead, there's a short, stupid and less-than-anonymous version that takes about 5 minutes and is done just once per year. Your manager doesn't read any of that feedback before they give you your year end review and pay changes, but they do give you a verbatim copy of what was said- you can figure out who said what pretty easily.

The problem was that 1% of the managers were sociopaths who abused their power. The response was to increase their power.

But I'm still here, for some reason.

Edit: no, let's be fair here. I'm still here because I like what I do. I like the problem space, and I like the people I work with.

</comment><comment><USER30> The talk here about sticking at a job that makes you cry, when you have in demand skills and can work anywhere, is nuts to me.

<comment><USER31> This is incorrect because i cant pass a Google or FB loop and im convinced its eventually going to lead to my suicide.

<comment><USER32> Mate get a grip. I see you posting everywhere — Blind, Reddit, here. And different aliases everywhere. Seriously, stop defining your self worth by where you work. It's sad. If you're so dissatisfied with Amazon's "prestige" just quit.

<comment><USER33> Telling someone who expresses suicidal feelings to "get a grip", and using the J-word ("just") to tell them a supposedly easy way out of it, is cruelty. I'm sure that you don't mean to be cruel, so please don't do this.

If there were an easy way out, the commenter would have found it. What he or she needs is respect, empathy, and support for finding a not-so-easy way out of it. If you can't do that, please don't reply, regardless of how annoying you find the comments.

<comment><USER32> You're right. I didn't mean to be cruel... sorry about that, but I can't seem to edit/remove my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and have been at Amazon for almost 2 years. I work in the Retail org in the NYC office.

Overall, I've been happy with my choice to work at Amazon. Compared to most other tech companies I've worked for, the hours are predictable and not that intense. Of course, a lot is asked of engineers during crunch time, but that's the same way everywhere in the industry. I like what I do. I like the projects I work on. I like my coworkers. I'm happy with my compensation.

In terms of perks, there aren't free lunches every day, but most orgs that I know of have some budget for a snack shelf. There are also other perks though - there are are opportunities to learn from other software engineers in the form of tech talks, internal conferences and the like. There are also opportunities to learn about the business side as an engineer.

I've generally found other people at Amazon very willing to help. I've had people outside of my team review designs and give feedback (and I've done likewise for other teams). I'm currently working on a project that's required me to reach out to a bunch of different teams to get input on how to approach a problem, and all of them have either accepted a meeting invite or responded to my email with the info I was looking for in a reasonable amount of time (a couple days).

Amazon has 14 Leadership Principles, and I've found that people mostly take them to heart. For example, it doesn't mean that you can use "Insisting on the Highest Standards" as a blank check to refactor your code to the point that it's immaculate, but it does mean that most of the product people I work with get that tech debt is a real thing and slows down product development at some point, and they will budget time to address tech debt when given suggestions by engineers.

Most of the people who have left our team in the past 12 months have left to go work on other teams. Some of them left to work for a different org, some because they wanted to work in a different office.

Amazon's not perfect, but it's pretty good, and most of the things that are frequently raised as issues on HackerNews are, in my experience and the experience of everyone I've talked to at Amazon, generally not issues.

<comment><USER35> You seem to be a well conditioned Amazonian because you possess the same nature of dismissing concerns instantly rather than accepting that something is probably wrong and needs to be fixed.

If people have complained on similar lines throughout on Hacker news or NYC article or other sources, that means there is a pattern. Maybe you have been fortunate enough to not have experienced some of the misery faced by others, but please follow amazon's most important principle of being data driven and think about it.

<comment><USER36> One sometimes-unfortunate thing about the Internet and global accessibility to other peoples' opinions is that it's easy to find other people "just like you". This leads to a signal amplification that doesn't necessarily mean the problem is as bad or as far-reaching as the group would have you think. It certainly can be, but concluding that from a limited news sources with unspoken agendas isn't accurate. We can all get in a huddle and complain about things, but there is a non-small number of people who just ignore it--even though they would have a positive counter-argument to offer--and instead go on about their business because they don't want to get involved.

Remember that when you're reading the news (here or elsewhere, since rarely is news generated on HN) you and your outrage are being used for marketing (and possibly furthering some other agenda).

I agree with your closing sentence about being data driven and thinking about it--getting out of the news bubble and using your own brain to analyze something is good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I interned at Amazon a 11 months ago at Hyderabad, India. I used to go to the office at 1PM and return home at 2AM. So much work pressure. They literally treated as a robots. Yes, we did work as a robot because they lure us by offering PPO( Pre- placement offer).

They used to give us a weekly task which was never supposed to complete if you work even for 60 hours/week. Thus our whole weekend was ruined in completing this task.

I have got a mentor who himself can't able to complete the given task so he gives his some of his work to interns.

Amazon is a great place to learn but not for the work.

</comment><comment><USER38> New entries are still being added, so probably great [https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home](https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home)

</comment><comment><USER35> Nothing has changed.

I have worked in Amazon for many years now in India. Jeff himself doesn't seem interested in taking work culture seriously. I have never seen any interviews of him after NYC article where he accepted that something was going wrong and needs to be fixed. Instead he turned the whole debate into work-life harmony rhetoric.

In India, the situation is far worse than US. There is less transparency and more opportunities by senior leadership to rule with an iron fist without any accountability. Concerns are suppressed instantly. One might have been an excellent employee for couple of years but for some reason if you are not on top of your game for even a quarter, you will start hearing complains from everyone and the situation can go upto PIP (Performance Improvement). The culture completely lacks the emotion of "Let me help you". It is heavily influenced by politics and survival of the fittest which might be fine for a small period but takes a toll on you in long term. Probably this explains why attrition is so high in Amazon.

<comment><USER36> Working for Amazon in India is almost like working for an entirely different company and is not a great comparison to working for Amazon in the US.

Cultural norms in the US apply in the US; cultural norms in India apply in India. I've generally found Indian managers and developers to approach the work entirely differently than their US counterparts. Not a negative--just an observation.

There does seem to be a pervasive undercurrent of "if I do good work on my team here in India, I can get out of here and go to the US as soon as my promo goes through". This sentiment naturally comes out in behaviour on teams and around coworkers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1\. It depends on the company (Amazon vs AWS) and it varies from org to org, and team to team. Just like in every place there's going to be great and crapy people. In 3 years at Amazon I had the opportunity to work next to great people, but also with people at the complete opposite side.

2\. In my case, it did not. I decided my happiness/wellness and health (physical and mental) were more important.

</comment><comment><USER40> Ex-Amazonian here (for real). Put up with almost 4 years of what I would now consider some serious sweatshop practices from my managers (had a few in that time lapse), for not much at the end but it felt good to leave the place. After that, I took two months off to recover from stress and work exhaustion. Work only, no life. Crunch mode was a daily pill. The mission sounded cool and staying that long because it felt that we were helping each other in a prison camp with my team. Frugality is a joke, because top execs will get rewarded. I would never consider this company again and never will recommend anyone to work there.

</comment><comment><USER41> Joined Amazon Dublin in the Summer of last year as SDE2 (that's the category where most engineers will fall into), so way after the NYT article. Pay is very good for Europe - AFAIK one of the best for the position and above G/F/MS in Dublin (according to Glassdoor), though I think that at the end of the day you might take more home if you're working for G/F and living in London/Switzerland (due to lower taxes).

As for the work environment, like in all big companies, it really depends in which team and project you land. My team and adjacent teams are full of respectful people and work is pretty good. We're building some "large scale" systems, and technology wise it's pretty cool. But I've heard stories from people in other teams where they were relegated to doing oncall and fixing bugs. I also know 1 person that didn't make it through the probation period (he was in one of those oncall teams). The company is big and has a lot of different projects, so YM(will definitely)V. I've had to interact with a lot of different people across the company and my impression is overall positive.

In terms of work load, it's not light. At the same time, right now, it's not that high, but that will probably change once we're closer to the deadlines. I enjoy it, it keeps me active and not bored at work. I know people who do 8-17 (1 lunch hour) EVERY DAY. Pretty much everyone around me works 8-9 hours. The teams around me are also very flexible with remote work (a lot of us work remotely 1-2 days a week). In term of the actual work, me and my team have had to design systems, write documents (the 6 pagers, design reviews, etc), and we're implementing them. A lot of technical freedom. I also hear manager refer to people as resources and I dislike it - not sure why/where that terminology comes from, but I think it's something common inside and outside the company.

Yes, perks are pretty much non-existent. No snacks, no free lunch/dinner, no gym, just water, fruit, and coffee. Heck, not even free tshirts and the employee discount is ridiculous. But if that's what you're looking for in a company, then I'm sorry, you won't find it here. Yes, you'll also get stack ranked at the beginning of the year, and getting promoted to SDE3 is not easy.

One interesting thing, at least around me, the vast majority of people seems to be 30+ old. From the teams around me, I think no one (apart from me) reads HN. People come from all around Europe (and some from Asia).

</comment><comment><USER42> I've been with Amazon for coming up on 5 years.

I love it here, and have for the entirety of the time I've been here. There are some minor changes I would make if I could wave a magic wand, but I can't imagine any workplace is perfect, and when I say minor, I really mean it.

I don't really have a lot to say about things as they relate to the New York Times article, because the workplace described in said article was never even remotely close to the experiences I've had.

I work on a fantastic team, and I work with some amazing teams. Some of the smartest people I've ever met. I don't see myself leaving the company any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER43> Twelve managers in three years. Quality of life changes dramatically depending on who you get. Left after being put on a PIP - stack ranking in action. Not worth trying to fight it with that particular manager.

</comment><comment><USER44> I joined in mid-2016, My team is in a pretty good spot now.

</comment><comment><USER45> In my team and all the orgs under my manager's manager is pretty chill. We are a team out of India. In India the comp is really high compared to other Indian companies. The vesting cycle is same as US though. I have heard about the bad culture in US. I have never seen anyone cry or even stressed. We don't have many crunch days.

<comment><AUTHOR> TBH Amazon Indian org is known (from the Seattle folks I spoke to) for being sub-par filled with employees from service companies, so no surprises there.

<comment><USER45> On the contrary I think the frugality strategy has lead to hiring the top talent in India and not in the US. Therefore the pay here is higher compared to the bigger companies (not MNCs but product as well), I am from an Indian unicorn startup and the pay was very competitive. The US opinion of any Indians IT worker seems to be the same, that is that we are service oriented workers who don't code, therefore I'd take it with a grain of salt on what they say.

But yeah, the talent here is good since hiring talent is cheaper here compared to US. If you have to pay 170k$ to hire the best in US then in India you'll be able to hire the best at 50 LPA which is about 70k$.

I have been part of many interview panels and they haven't been any easy interviews as such.

<comment><USER46> I'm curious as how are the salaries in top start ups in India compared to the likes of Amazon/Google? Like for a mid-senior engineer. Appreciate any numbers you know off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am curious outside of the other companies of FANG, does Amazon represent median representation of workplace culture or are they an outlier?

I have not worked at Amazon, but I have seen worse types of workplace culture in some cases over my career.

</comment><comment><USER48> I joined fresh out of college about a year back, no one respects your gender identity and everyone almost always purposefully refuses to use the correct pronouns

</comment><comment><USER49> Could anyone here comment on Amazon Robotics? What would I expect as a SWE working there? Is it different (better/worse) than Amazon as a whole?

</comment><comment><USER50> Anyone who's worked at both Amazon and Apple want to compare the two?

</comment><comment><USER51> depends on team

<comment><USER52> It does entirely.

In an org consisting of hundreds of thousands of people, "culture" is a pretty local phenomenon.

The Amazon experience is entirely dictated by the team on which you land.

<comment><USER39> I agree. But in my experience, even when VPs expose a vision of their culture, directors/GMs are the ones who end up exercising their vision/culture to their teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Check this out [https://www.teamblind.com/article/Amazon---is-it-really- that...](https://www.teamblind.com/article/Amazon---is-it-really-that-bad-to- work-for-OApSnQ7V)

and more topics on the same site

</comment><comment><USER54> Can someone share the mentioned NYT Article mentioned?

<comment> et-al [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside- amazon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon- wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html)

(And an ad-infested blurb on Bezos's follow-up: [http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt- repor...](http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-responds-nyt-report- amazon-working-conditions-2015-8))

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I interned at Amazon last year in the Alexa org (non-frontline team in ML).

My team was rarely in the office before 10:30 or after 6, even during crunch time (we launched our feature during my internship) but i did see code review responses at odd hours sometimes.

I enjoyed the project a bunch, and while my coworkers werent the most social bunch they were pretty smart and effective. I did pretty well and exceeded managers expectations for my project to get a return offer.

I shopped around a bunch after and interviewed at all the companies I could but got rejected by all of the top ones (FB after phone, Google after onsite, Airbnb and Cruise after coding challenge..) so I ultimately picked the return offer despite getting a 3 other offers in the fintech space because I liked the project and location at Amazon.

Does that mean I'm a happy camper? Fuck no. My total comp for the first year is only $145k out of undergrad with a base of $106k. My friends at places like Google, FB and Cruise are making more like $180k-$230k by comparison. Perks are also nonexistent.

The worst part, though, is knowing that i have become stuck in a company with a significantly lower hiring bar. Im honestly terrified that the value on the resume will decline over time and i will never be able to get into a more prestigious company. The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove me to suicide before.

<comment><USER55> Sorry, but is this a serious post? Honest question.

> My total comp for the first year is only $145k out of undergrad with a base > of $106k. My friends at places like Google, FB and Cruise are making more > like $180k-$230k by comparison.

Heaven forbid someone is making more money than they know what to do with than you are.

> Im honestly terrified that the value on the resume will decline over time > and i will never be able to get into a more prestigious company.

Is this a real concern? Surely you can be hired on technical merit. Google hires new grads! And people who only worked at "top-tier" companies still have to pass an interview everywhere.

> The idea of being relegated to a 2nd or third tier company has been eating > at me, and comments on places like CSCQ, Blind and this AskHN nearly drove > me to suicide before.

That's sick. Not to be insensitive for you, but our priorities in this industry are whack. Surely you can find a meaningful job outside of a megacorp that's bleeding the world dry. Or do you just care about money and status?

<comment><USER33> You have some fair points but your comment crosses into personal attack, and that does more harm than the fair points do good. Could you please (re-)read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and not post like that here?

<comment><USER56> What's the protocal for a commenter with suicidal ideation? I feel like many of the replies here are unhelpful, and you should do something about it.

<comment><USER33> It seems to me that the only human response is to express respect and offer what support we can.

I agree with you about the unhelpful replies and am attempting to respond to them all. If you notice one I missed, it would be helpful to send a link to firstname.lastname@example.com.

People don't do this kind of this kind of thing intentionally, but because their interpretation of others' comments are distorted by cognitive biases that unfortunately nearly everyone is aware of. It leads to inappropriate responses, and occasionally cruel and even dangerous ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I couldnt get into any of the companies you mentioned and picked Amazon as a last resort. What should I do now? Ive contemplated suicide but i dont know if thats a wise choice.

<comment><USER57> > Ive contemplated suicide but i dont know if thats a wise choice.

I don't think it's wise but you can't take it from a rando. So I'd seek objectivity from sources you trust. Many get this from friends. Sometimes friends can't provide everything you need.

If you've never tried therapy or are skeptical about it, I've found that the healthy way to think about it is as an objectivity machine. It's a black box for you to pay money (a.k.a use your nice tech healthcare plan) and get a person who isn't incentivized to lie to you or hurt you / is sworn to your best interest. The value they provide is objective feedback about how you're thinking about the world. Your mind's way of viewing things has blind spots; you're limited by what input data you got as you moved through the world. When you're making decisions / synthesizing your experiences it's incredibly useful to get validation data so that you can measure the performance of your brain- model.

^ Also since every black box isn't equal, if you find that a therapist isn't providing the kind of throughput or trustworthiness that you need, you can shop around.

If you think life isn't worth living, please seek some objectivity because it's a rather drastic decision you have to make that can't be made again.

<comment><USER31> People have tried to talk sense into me in the past but I've been somewhat distrustful. The black box analogy is a good way to reframe my thinking. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Thanks to linked in, I saw who was on a 1st level connection with the ex- director there who was arrested for running ads for prostitutes in Bellevue. Those 1st level contacts are still there and in higher positions now. Being 1st level on linkedin doesn't mean they are the same character or were part of the crime, but they are all in management positions. I emailed some women that still worked there and told them they should leave.

<comment><USER59> That's a really bizarre way of thinking. 1st level connection doesn't mean personally close. Are _you_ willing to be held responsible for the misdeeds your own 1st level connections might get up to?

<comment><USER58> 1st level and in the same small org. People that would have known, interviewed, and hired the person. Companies don't just hire rando's of the street they know nothing about into high management positions.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cool tech short stories? - <AUTHOR> I'm talking "The Last Question" level good <comment><USER2> The Guy Who Worked For Money By Benjamin Rosenbaum</comment>


'If the Police Had Done Something, She Would Be Alive Today' - <AUTHOR> http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/after-rape-victim-commits-suicide-in-punjab-family-blames-polic/?ref=asia

<comment><USER2> There was another article that I saw on MSN this morning about rape in India: [http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/03/16321396-india...](http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/03/16321396-india- gang-rape-victims-father-hang-the-monsters-responsible?lite)

It is sad that women have to live with it and that the perpetrators rarely seem to see justice.</comment>


Is There Any Way for Schools to Prevent Shootings? - happy-go-lucky https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/15/586022815/is-there-any-way-for-schools-to-prevent-shootings <comment><AUTHOR> The US is an outlier both in terms of gun ownership and in terms of these regular massacres. It's pretty obvious that as long as there is no willingness to curtail the former, the latter will continue to be a risk. And quite obviously the concept of performing these atrocities is spreading a bit like a 'fashion' amongst those susceptible.

It'll make the libertarians bristle but more guns obviously does not make the environment safer.

</comment><comment><USER2> Switzerland has long outlawed gun ownership, and has zero school shootings.

</comment><comment><USER3> yeah. make it illegal to own a gun...pretty simple solution and already proved to work in other countries....it's a no brainer</comment>


Amazon's Cloud Is One of the Fastest-Growing Software Businesses in History - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-15/amazons-cloud-is-one-of-the-fastest-growing-software-businesses-in-history

<comment><USER2> As someone who has heavily used AWS products in the recent past, I can totally see why companies are switching to AWS for their hosting and other services.

Question though: does anyone know what sort of profit margins AWS generates for Amazon? Last I heard it was 20%-25%, but I was wondering whether Google's cloud cost cuts were having any impact on AWS' bottom line.</comment>


Google Santa Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://santatracker.google.com <comment><USER2> If anyone ever says we still need flash - I'll link them to this page. These "kiddy"-like interfaces are so common in flash but I haven't seen a good one done in HTML5 until just now.

<comment><USER3> What kind of tools are used to make something like this? Just browser/editor, or something more for timelines like flash?

<comment><USER4> It looks like they're using Polymer.js (aka web components), but I've never seen it used for a video game before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They already know when you're sleeping or awake, if you've been good or bad, and what you may buy. For goodness' sake!

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm eagerly awaiting the HN comments telling us why we shouldn't be coddling our kids with the illusion of Santa Claus.

<comment><USER7> (Since you're stirring up the pot) Is it really rare and absurd to tell kids about Santa without trying to make them believe he's real?

I'm not a parent so please do enlighten me as to why kids _should_ believe in a made-up entity, up until some arbitrary age at which point they _should_ be told the truth. Is this some perverse initiation to getting your heart broken or something?

I was raised with the whole santa bells & whistles without ever being told "by the way, he's _real_ ". As far as childhoods go it was pretty uneventful and christmas was always fun. Did I miss some crucial childhood enlightenment?

<comment><USER8> > getting your heart broken

I did the whole Santa Clause bit with my two daughters. Part of it was reliving my own childhood and wanting them to have the same fond memories I did. I don't recall a heart break moment for myself when I realized it was all a ruse. My parents never formally told me. It came on as a sneaking suspicion that eventually became obvious as I grew more aware of how the world really works. And I don't ever recall being pissed off at my folks for leading me on like that. There were still presents under the tree, so what did it really matter?

I'll ask my younger daughter in a few years how she sees it. It's especially interesting in her case, because she cracked the code on Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny all at the same moment, when she recognized that the notes she'd been receiving from them were all in the same handwriting, and that didn't add up for her.

<comment><USER9> Same here, my parents never told me, it was just a growing suspicion that slowly came together. At the same time, I never recall being angry with them, it was just a fact of life that parents pretend Santa exists.

It is strange that we lie to children, but at the same time, kids have interesting minds, and they seem to really appreciate fantasies, creativity and adventures. This is the one time in their life when they can honestly believe a magic fairy leaves money for their teeth, or that the treasure map they discovered for lost candy in their backyard is real, and left by a pirate 500 years ago. As adults, we lose that magic as we get a better understanding of the world, and we try to relive some of it through movies or games, but for kids, it can exist in reality.

So, yes, we lie to them, but in return they live years in what feels like a more fantastical world, and I think they appreciate those memories when they grow up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the North Pole airport minigame supposed to do? You just flip the switch to make it go faster and that's it?

</comment><comment><USER11> I was a big fan of the old Norad Santa Tracker from when I was a kid (~10-12 years ago?).

It didn't have any fancy animations or games, just a map on Christmas eve showing where Santa had been, and some cool videos about the cities (and an aircraft carrier!) he visited that were narrated by various military (Air Force?) officers.

<comment><USER12> There's an app for Norad Santa Tracker now as well, we used it last year and discussed the different places he had been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sorry, but how is it possible to finish this level in 5 blocks?

[http://i.imgur.com/76qMY6c.png](http://i.imgur.com/76qMY6c.png)

We began 2 blocks left from the bottom right block

<comment><USER14> You know that the "repeat" block can have multiple steps inside of it, right? i.e. 4x(North,West) should have done it.

EDIT: [http://imgur.com/jOHpJqn](http://imgur.com/jOHpJqn)

<comment><USER13> Didn't know you can do that :( Thanks.

<comment><USER14> No problem. The affordance for that particular UI element is not the most obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this fail for anyone else if you are bloocking Google Analytics? (I am using NoScript, I allowed the JS for the site)

<comment><USER16> I'm blocking Google tracking with uBlock which blocks GA domains as well and it seems to work, NoScript is a bitch to work with there might be some cross domain scripts that are not white listed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Last year my kids sang that gibberish elf cover of "Jingle Bells" for an entire month after Christmas was over.</comment>


A Plan to Redesign the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/01/1004725/redesign-internet-apps-no-one-controls-data-privacy-innovation-cloud/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to know about ICP. Are there any apps being run on Dfinity?</comment>


Get the new LinkedIn Layout Link. - <AUTHOR>

Goto this link and click view profile and yours will convert. What do u you think of the new layout? http://www.linkedin.com/profile/sample <comment><USER2> It looks better I guess, I deleted my linkedin account 6 months ago after the way they handled the password leak.

</comment><comment><USER3> Better than what they had before, no amazing. Way to much black.

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually really like it.

</comment><comment><USER5> thanks! was just looking for this.</comment>


Beware of copying mutexes in Go - <AUTHOR> https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2018/beware-of-copying-mutexes-in-go/ <comment><USER2> govet catches (all?) mutex copies, by the way. Static analysis is cool.</comment>


Facial recognition overkill: How deputies cracked a $12 shoplifting case - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/facial-recognition-overkill-how-deputies-solved-a-12-shoplifting-case/ <comment><USER2> Why is catching criminals a bad thing?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you password protect your SSH keys? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yup. You can add a key to your agent using `ssh-add` to enter it once until reboot or force a password reentry say every N hours.

[https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-appleosx-bsd-ssh- ad...](https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/unix-linux-appleosx-bsd-ssh-add-agent- command-set-lifetime/)</comment>


Google and Pearson Announce Free LMS Service to Compete with Blackboard/Moodle  - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/pearson-and-google-jump-into-learning-management-systems/33636?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+chronicle%2Fwiredcampus+%28The+Chronicle%3A+Wired+Campus%29 <comment><USER2> A free service from Google? Is the source code available or are institutions going to be screwed if/when it gets canned?

For those who have forgotten: Code Search, Google Video, Wave, Buzz, Google Labs, Google Desktop, Google Notebook, Google Sets, Google Squared, Google Catalogs, Google Answers, Audio Ads, Google Base, Browser Sync, City Tours, Click-to-Call, Google Dashboard Widgets, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Google Mashup Editor, Google Directory, GOOG-411, Joga Bonito, Aardvark, Lively, Music Trends, Ride Finder, Google Shared Stuff, Sidewiki, FastFlip, Google Translate API, Writely, Google Health, PowerMeter, Google University Search, U.S. Government Search, Slide products (Disco, Pool Party, Video Inbox, Photovine, Slideshow, SuperPoke! Pets), Google Pack, Image Labeller and Google Dictionary. I'm sure I have missed a few things, but you get the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> The code appears to be open source. You can checkout the code using git as described here:

<http://code.google.com/p/openclass/source/checkout>

<comment><USER2> >warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.

There doesn't seem to be anything in that project.

<comment><USER3> You are right, it is empty: <http://code.google.com/p/openclass/source/browse/#git>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Blackboard everyday. Blackboard is a scam.

It has an interface from 2002. To many users this might not be a problem. To the hundreds of students I work with, this is.

It is counter intuitive to use, has poorly designed features and has terrible email, calendar and document integration with any other client. Professor complain, students complain and universities shell out millions.

With the advent of Google/Pearson - This could solve alot of these problems and reduce barriers to adoption. However it will not be revolutionary in terms of enabling education. Such software has been around for a while and better execution will not enable better education.

However if google can integrate the following two factors, we have an education game changer, not just a free substitute

\- Live work collaboration with Teachers/Teaching Assistants/Students on google docs.

This will allow students to work on documents and have teachers etc check-in and help them out.

\- Google Hangout : A feature that is often left out of Google apps suite. But the potential to video conference with students across the city country and the world is a real game changer (As YCombinator knows)

<comment><USER5> I am currently building a social eLearning site and I will proactively never call what I'm building as an LMS. LMS' key words are "management" where I'm building a site that will facilitate learning not just manage it.

I agree that the big game changers are live work collaboration and video chat and the standard Google has set is absolutely great. As a recent grad (may, 2011), working on group projects was absolutely essential to successful learning and by being able to allow similar interaction online is a win-win.

We have both those features in the site we're building...and the reason we're not too terrified of others using Google's APIs is that the user will ultimately still need a Google account to use them even on a different site.

If OpenClass is truly open, why make everyone sign up and then also sign up to Google? Not everyone has a Google acct. What about all the countries around the world that would benefit from a true "OpenClass"?

Check us out at www.cloudeas.com...our landing page is still not up yet as we recently started this project but with the amount of traction this article is getting, it's needless to say our landing page will be up today (tonight at the very latest).

We are 5 recent grads that feel the exact same way you have about blackboard ---absolutely sick of it and it actually distracted us from learning rather than enhancing it...we decided to build our own: built by students but designed for professors

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just want to point out that Canvas is doing a rather good job of modernizing LMS software: <http://www.instructure.com> ...It took me a long time to find that tool when I needed to spin up an LMS, so I wanted to make sure folks were aware of it.

p.s. Canvas is foss <https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms/wiki>

<comment><USER7> Mhm... the demo asks for too much information:

Name, email, organization, title, and _phone number_.

This immediately they'll get random gibberish from me. The majority of LMS provide a default demo login/password and do not require personal information.

About 3 years ago I researched broadly about LMS. I tested several (including Moodle, Dokeos, Claroline, Blackboard, etc) and selected Dokeos due to its simplicity and interface ease. Moodle was a second but the interface just did not make sense to me (too cluttered, no evident task flow for teachers and students). Right now Chamilo seems to follow Dokeos original goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> From Blackboard's patent pledge:

"Blackboard hereby commits not to assert any of the U.S. patents listed below, as well as all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries, against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software or Home- Grown Systems to the extent that such Open Source Software and Home-Grown Systems are not Bundled with proprietary software.

<snip>

"The commitment not to assert any of these named U.S. patents and all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries is irrevocable except that Blackboard reserves the right to terminate this patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against Blackboard or its parent or subsidiaries. This pledge is binding on Blackboard's successors and assigns."

I really wonder if Blackboard will try anything shady a la its dance with Desire2Learn a few years ago. Limiting this commitment to open source/home grown systems _not_ bundled with propriety software provides Blackboard an opportunity to launch an infringement action against Google, which in a certain light would be hilarious to watch.

[1] [http://www.blackboard.com/about-bb/patents/patent- pledge.asp...](http://www.blackboard.com/about-bb/patents/patent-pledge.aspx)

<comment><USER9> They lost to D2L if I remember correctly. Not sure how it was resolved exactly. Anyone has more details?

<comment><USER8> They "lost" to D2L, but Blackboard appealed, both parties settled, and part of the settlement included vacating the district court's judgment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the title of this submission and that of the article overstates the degree to which Google and Pearson are working together. Pearson are merely using Google's API for Docs and App integration. This integration is open to anyone, as far as I know. Google are not co-sponsoring this as their own product.

<comment><USER10> If anyone is interested, I wrote an article about the platform and why it's perhaps not the best idea: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3121232>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "People will sign on to their Google Mail accounts and see OpenClass as one of their available products at the top of their Web browser. They will also be able to use Gmail and Google Docs from within the program."

Is it just me, or is this a bit of a Trojan horse to get students signed up for the Google ecosystem in bunches of 25 at a time?

As both a teacher and a student, I've never been happy with any LMS I've used. I try to avoid them whenever possible.

<comment><USER12> I just quit my job to build tools in the Edu space - I am wondering if you'd be willing to reconsider using lightweight LMS tools that are feature specific and do not require participation in bigger ecosystems?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'd consider it. Feel free to shoot an email to my username at gmail if you have any questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >"Anytime Pearson and Google are used in the same sentence, it's going to get people's attention,"

Yeah, even when apparently this isn't a collaboration between the two, but just launching through Google Apps. It certainly doesn't sound that exciting either, sounds like a press release for a costly new service. Moodle is open- source already and is running many good services on campuses.

<comment><USER9> I'm wasn't too impress by Moodle for having used it. I also used Blackboard at my first Uni and while moodle is a step up, there definitely is some work to do. On the admin side I don't think it's any easier to manage than Blackboard. Also Blackboard integration was much better with other campus services. Single sign on and things like that.

But just to be clear Blackboard is a horrible app. UI wise it's like 1999 all over again and it's dog slow (and not for lack of hardware, I knew some of the sys admins at my Uni personally, I worked in the same place as them, it's a bitch to manage). Anything including pen and paper is better than that thing. Teachers making their own HTML file has higher usability than blackboards interface. And rare are the teachers that use it for more than posting pdfs of slides and announcements. I bet their interface is worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always thought that the major issue with getting into the LMS space came from Blackboard's portfolio of software patents surrounding such a service.

Blackboard has pledged that they would not enforce those patents against Open Source projects [1][2], but pay services might have trouble coming their way...which would explain the lack of innovation/modernization in the area.

[1] [http://www.blackboard.com/about-bb/patents/patent- pledge.asp...](http://www.blackboard.com/about-bb/patents/patent-pledge.aspx)

[2] [http://www.blackboard.com/about-bb/patents/frequently- asked-...](http://www.blackboard.com/about-bb/patents/frequently-asked- questions.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER15> I knew something like this would eventually surface, but didn't realize it'd come from Pearson. We actually launched a very similar business model/site a year ago. I've been waiting to post anything on HN, b/c we are in the process of releasing a few changes (payments, channel updates) that I think would be helpful; but can save that for another time. We are really intrigued by this announcement b/c it is pretty much a direct competitor to what we are doing at NIXTY (www.nixty.com). I posted some thoughts on our blog and will highlight them here. I'd love to hear any thoughts/criticisms on this analysis.

There is ONE big difference between Pearson and NIXTY. Pearson's main focus is on Pearson's content. They are trying to make the LMS a commodity, so they can sell more of their content. NIXTY is focused on open education content.

Pearson's OpenClass = Selling more of Pearson's Closed Content/Courses

NIXTY = Supporting/Promoting Open Content/Courses

Pearson has the name 'open' in the title, but the real goal is to sell more closed content. Will it work? We don't think so. Why?

1\. Open Content is transforming education. It is free. Pearson will marginalize open content and focus on their own content. This will ultimately prove to be the undoing of OpenClass.

2\. As the Inside Higher Ed article discussed, other publishing companies will not put their content in Pearson's OpenClass ecosystem. We are hoping that they'll look for a neutral alternative like NIXTY.

3\. Pearson hasn't exactly been awesome in the LMS space. eCollege is not what we'd call a market leader. I'm not sure, but it seems like eCollege folks might be in charge of the OpenClass product. Do they have the chutzpah to blow up eCollege to help OpenClass. Will the revenue streams from eCollege (tho likely decreasing) be sacrificed to help them grow OpenClass? Doubtful. They'll likely try to keep both systems working and consequently end up doing a half-way job with OpenClass.

4\. The comments around this from most folks in the articles and on Downes' Google + post have been less than positive, suggesting that folks don't necessarily have a lot of trust in Pearson.

Now, to at least try to be fair, let's consider what Pearson has going for it.

1\. They've got one BILLION dollars (said in my best Dr. Evil voice). Seriously, they've got A LOT of money.

2\. They've got a lot of strategic relationships with other organizations and institutions. They seem to have done a nice job of rolling this out with their 9 design schools. Nicely done!

3\. They've got great content!

4\. They are good at marketing! You'd think Google co-designed this thing from the get-go; really, however, OpenClass is just another app just like learnboost or any other number of education apps in the Google ecosystem. In sum, Pearson's OpenClass is an innovative approach to help Pearson sell more of their closed content. We believe that they'll be forced to marginalize open content and competing closed content. Consequently, they'll end up doing students, educators, and colleges a disservice. NIXTY offers the same functionality, same price (free!), has been around for over a year, and doesn't have any content to hawk. Consequently, we can provide a better service to students, educators, and schools.

<comment><USER16> Dude. Ping me: email@example.com

We're spinning up Hackers & Founders University. I have a hair on fire need, and I suspect you might be able to help. :)

aka iamelgringo@ googles email service

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The LMS Service market for higher education is surely right for disruption. Personally, I would have been more excited if there was a startup, instead of Google had taken this initiative.

<comment><USER18> If it was a startup, they couldn't have done it for free.

Google seems to like rolling into an industry and laying waste to it. As a consumer, I'm happy about that. As a CS student, it makes me nervous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Marketplace reported on this Thursday: [http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/13/pm...](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/13/pm- pearson-enters-college-software-market/)

</comment><comment><USER20> While my company focuses more on the events aspect of a university, I can say that time and time again, our partner schools go with us because our platform requires no training. We designed it to be easy to use, while still being a helpful product. I'm convinced that if a startup set out to build an LMS that is extremely usable, yet meets most requirements, it'd disrupt the heck out of the space.

</comment><comment><USER21> So you need a Google account to login? That's going to be a problem.

At my college Blackboard isn't tied in to the administrative processes (there's another system for that), so hopefully they will consider this. "Free" is a word that they like to hear. I don't know too much about the guts of Blackboard but it doesn't seem to be as customizable as a Google system will be.

<comment><USER22> Don't forget that the Google ecosystem is not just the "@gmail.com" or "@googlemail.com" domains. There are tons of deployments of Google Apps for Domains, wherein one authenticates using the DNS domain[1] of the hosted system, not via the "traditional" Google credentials.

I could be misunderstanding your concern, however, since the vanilla Apps for Domains does store the credentials in a Google controlled machine, AFAIK. I cannot speak to whether there are any customizable authentication options available with Apps for Domains.

1 = and thus creates a new namespace for usernames

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is interesting. At Virginia Tech, we switched from Blackboard to an in- house system built on Sakai about 2 years ago. It's much better than Blackboard, but even as a student, it's dreadful. Our professors apparently have it much worse though.

It would be nice to see a system that uses Google Apps. This would be a big step up versus the systems in place now.

</comment><comment><USER24> First question that comes to mind is: Will Google collect data from students to enhance their other products (i.e. Adsense, G+)?

<comment><USER25> Our school is actually one of the beta testers, and I think it is important to point out that it is not actually a Google product, but a Pearson product. So although it is available through the Marketplace and plays nicely with Apps, it is not provided by Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anything that makes it easier for faculty to communicate with students is a win-win. Bb is a difficult system to use on multiple fronts - for the student, instructor and administrators. It's also a very compelling add-on to schools that were on the fence regarding Google Apps for Education. This should provide a nice boost for Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> My question: Is OpenClass going to be hosted by Pearson or are they going to leave that up to the schools like Moodle does?

Just reminds me that "there's no such thing as a free lunch"...

<comment><USER25> It is hosted by Pearson. It is a cloud based service just like Google Apps. They do have a revenue model, although I am not sure it has been completely released yet.</comment></comment>


Tau Ceti's planets nearest around single, Sun-like star - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20770103

<comment><USER2> Just looked on Wikipedia, it is 12 light years away. So how long to get there with conventional technology? I suspect speed isn't even the worst problem, harder to deal will radiation?

Also I suppose any such mission would have to be fully automated, remote debugging would be too frustrating with a 24 year round trip for information.

Have there been any spacecraft besides Voyager even launched beyond the boundaries of our solar system?

<comment><USER3> Using 1960s engineering (and many, many nuclear bombs), an Orion-powered starship could make it there in less than 150 years, one-way. And no slowing down; it would be a flyby.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_\(nuclear_propulsion\)#Interstellar_missions)

<comment><USER4> Can't you just turn around midway and start throwing bombs out in front of your path of travel to slow down?

<comment><USER5> One of the interesting things in that Wikipedia link is that you only need to run your Orion for 36 days to get it up to speed. Beyond that, detonating more bombs won't accelerate you any further.

So yes, you could turn it around. But surprisingly it seems you can wait until a month before arrival to do so. The downside, however, is that your max velocity gets cut in half if you bring enough bombs to slow down.

With better explosives, you could get a higher max velocity and therefore closer to the "accelerate halfway, decelerate halfway" ideal case, but at the moment such explosives don't exist.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how that works out.

Do 36 days of acceleration at the beginning (or spread it over a year to reduce peak acceleration) -- go from 0 to 0.1c or whatever the cruise speed is.

Coast for ~100 years.

Spend the last year going from 0.1c to 0.

It does mean you have to carry twice as many bombs, and carry half of the bombs for 149 years, but bombs are really lightweight relative to the ship. It also means you can't just jettison the pusher plate, which is probably a bigger deal.

<comment><USER3> In this case, the weight of the bombs is larger than the rest of the ship: 50K tons for the ship structure, 300K for the weight of the bombs [1]. Twice as many bombs essentially doubles launch mass.

Orion is a great concept for tooling around the solar system easily, but what it buys us over interstellar distances is that it makes macroscopic payloads and reasonable travel times _possible_ ; they're still not easy.

[1] Table 2 in [http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109.jvn.spring00/nu...](http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109.jvn.spring00/nuc_rocket/Dyson.pdf)

<comment><USER6> What if instead of braking Orion itself, it just drops off a lighter satellite that is able brake without expending so much energy?

<comment><USER2> I'd think it would still have to brake using Orion technology, so it is doubtful if it could be built smaller than Orian itself.

<comment><USER7> It could use solar wind, or gravity-slingshot (which can slow as well as accelerate a satellite). So yes it could be much smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps Tau Ceti is even close enough to not be trapped to the paradox of interstellar travel: "No matter when you launch a voyage somewhere, some one else will build a better spaceship and get there before you."

Is there a sci-fi novel about this? (an interstellar space voyage for a remote planet discovers humans launching after them already have colonized it when they get there)

<comment><USER9> "The forever war" uses the time dilation of relativistic travel, which is a related concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember playing Outpost as a kid. Tau Ceti was definitely the best bet. I loved/hated the fact that you could send your colonists to a solar system that wasn't habitable and then the game would just be over in 5mins; your creepy AI giving you the bad news.

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_(video_game)></comment>


Hacking Oklahoma State University's Student ID - <AUTHOR> http://snelling.io/hacking-oklahoma-state-university-student-id

<comment><USER2> Universities which use the popular and inexpensive Onity (nee TESA) lock systems, despite their overall problems, gain a bit of security from this problem in that the track used by the locks is written at a nonstandard high bitrate that throws off inexpensive reader/writers. This actually helps prevent duplication, although it's only a measure against people without the resources to obtain the Onity equipment.

Outside of physical tricks like this (and various physical anti-deduplication tricks that are surprisingly limited), duplication is really not something you can ever control. So you need to train people to maintain physical custody of the credential and make it as difficult as possible to guess at a valid credential.

When cards are used for security identification purposes, the easiest thing to do (and this goes for NFC, RFID, etc) is to generate a long, non-sequential, random card value that is related to the identity of the person only by some database you control. That is, write your 9-digit student ID number to the card for convenience, but when checking identity read out a 16-byte random value that you put on the card just for this purpose. This at least requires that an imposter gain access to the card at some point (to skim it).

Ultimately, the best thing you can do in the context of identification cards is to verify the user photograph online. This is done actively by some police departments and guards in high-security installations by looking up the ID in an online system to retrieve the details and photograph of the cardholder for verification. This is also done passively in some high-security installations, for example by placing a monitor above an entry door that displays the photograph of each person unlocking the door, for casual verification by anyone nearby (particularly any guard nearby).

Physical access control is my favorite research area.

<comment><USER3> > Outside of physical tricks like this (and various physical anti- > deduplication tricks that are surprisingly limited), duplication is really > not something you can ever control.

This type of control is the point of smart cards. The card contains a private key which can't be extracted (or at least is difficult to extract and may involve destroying the card) and a processor that can do signing operations which prove to the kiosk/register/whatever that the card is physically present.

<comment><USER2> Smart cards are super cool! The number of real applications is pretty limited, though, with computer authentication being almost all of them (payment cards, yes, but the fallback to 'conventional' processing negates a lot of the advantage). I think that challenge-response NFC authentication will make this kind of technique more practical for physical access control applications.

<comment><USER3> My view is that the scenarios described in the paper basically amount to "computer authentication", and smartcards would be completely warranted (and not at all unreasonable to implement) here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went to a University in Virginia and ours, and other surrounding VA universities were equally insecure.

We each had a 9 digit code that looked like 10XXXXXXX. These numbers were incremented from one student or faculty to the next.

The only track that mattered was track 2. It had your 9 digit code, followed by a the school code (3 digits), followed by a "lost card digit" that was incremented each time a card was lost (obviously mod 10 here).

So if my ID was 100000001, I went to school 002, had lost my card two times, my current card's Track 2 would say: 1000000010022

Needless to say there are tons of things that can be done here. From getting access to rooms does not, to getting free lunches.

Pretty interesting things. I told my school and they didn't really care at all (as expected). The potential loss from this is so low that it they didn't bother since abusing these issues would get you arrested and expelled pretty quick.

In reality, it is probably pretty serious. This student id is used somewhat as a School social security number. You can take tests as other students or impersonate other students in a lot of different situations.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by "school code"? Wouldn't they all be the same for everyone at your university?

<comment><USER6> There are many schools in a university. School of Engineering, School of Music, etc.

In most U.S. universities there is a hierarchy: university contains colleges which contain schools.

<comment><USER7> And for comparison, my experience of Scottish (and possibly other UK country) universities has been:

University -> Faculty (e.g. Faculty of Technology) -> School (e.g. School of Engineering) -> Department.

But this does vary from institution to institution.

<comment><USER8> Not sure about the rest of the unis down south, but I definitely remember Cambridge and Oxford have some sort of "college" system which had no real relation to your subject (i.e. you could read Philosophy at _Foo_ College, Oxford, or _Bar_ College, Oxford). Maybe someone oxbridge-y can clarify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice writeup. I did something much like this in 2002 or 2003. The main difference was that I was malicious, trying to steal money from other students.

I went to Rochester Institute of Tech. The number shown on your card and encoded on the mag stripe were your ID number.

I had plastic card printers and an encoder so making a fake was no problem. The design was simple so it didn't take me long to make one that looked exactly like the real thing.

How did I get numbers to encode? At that time they distributed grades to students in folders outside each department's office. These grade sheets had your full ID number on them. All I had to do was dig through the folders and take grade sheets from people who hadn't bothered picking theirs up.

I think I only used one or two numbers to buy some stuff from The Corner Store. I was mainly doing it to see if I could, credit card fraud was far more profitable.

One of the worst parts about it was that the student IDs were your social security number. Had I wanted to I could have easily used the data and fake IDs for identity theft.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well I'll be honest, didn't expect this post to make it up HN. Happy to answer questions or field comments.

<comment><USER10> I'm kind of curious - since this was for a class it was kind of allowed but was there any fine lines that you weren't allowed to cross when doing research for the exploit? I assume as long as you didn't hurt the university's reputation (such as getting bad press) or caused massive amounts of monetary damage you would probably not get into trouble.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had pretty strict guidelines to follow to be apart of the InfoSec class. We basically signed a waiver at the beginning saying that if we did exploit something, we would be subject to expulsion. It was a "theory" based class and all actual research had to be done within a certain IP range in a particular computer lab.

With that said, this was the final report that I made in the Winter of 2013. I presented it Spring 2014 to the University staff. And now, graduated, with over a full 12 months behind it, I felt comfortable to post it.

<comment><USER11> They were not upset you made a "blank" ID card and tried to borrow a Surface Pro with it then use it at a cafe?

I personally think you might have crossed the line on actually using it.

<comment><USER12> These folks found a gaping security hole that can be exploited to gain physical access to secured areas as well as charge fraudulent financial transactions. I can't imagine the university getting upset with checking out a library book.

<comment><USER13> You would be astonished at how crazy people can get. Honestly, the author of this study took a huge risk and got lucky. If you're thinking of doing anything like this in similar circumstances, DON'T carry out similar actions without first obtaining written permission for _each specific_ action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like [https://app.it.okstate.edu/idcard/](https://app.it.okstate.edu/idcard/) is down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if that wasn't clear in the post, I'll revisit it. The university took down that URL when I presented the vulnerability to them. So that site has been down for roughly a year.

<comment><USER14> That's great. A "one year later" update would be fun to read. I'm curious what changes(if any) came about from this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did the same thing at my university years ago. I was able to duplicate and switch IDs on the fly with just one device (part of a senior electrical engineering project that is way too public). Things like COIN are appearing on the market, making duplication far too easy. Having physical access to student ID cards means you can clone them, you need something that does bidirectional authorization if you want to be secure but that costs too much and takes time to upgrade. Easier to lock down the important stuff with ID + something (fingerprint or PIN) if you really want to solve this problem.

</comment><comment><USER16> This isn't just a problem with just universities. I have a card reader as well, and any site that issues swipe-able ID cards is more than likely susceptible. You would be surprised how many use an incrementing ID that you can easily impersonate another user.

The equipment needed to create fake cards (not just blanks) that look good is trivial to purchase.

I would be curious if OSU built or bought this system to issue cards. If they built it, shame of them. If they bought it, shame on them as well. Any security audit would have caught this clearly. Cards like any interface require good design for use and security.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you hit the nail on the head here - this isn't a super sophisticated reverse engineer. Total equipment cost is $300 (for one that prints a full color front!) and you could theoretically impersonate anyone on a wide array of systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In your node.js script, once you find the first ID number couldn't you just starting testing ID's less than and greater than the found ID since it's more than likely an incremented ID?

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey fellow poke! I'm an MSIS undergrad. I actually had this exact idea over coffee, great work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Go pokes :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice write up. Just curious, how many of us are still in or near Stillwater (even in OK)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm currently in OKC.

<comment><USER20> I ended up in Iowa.... After a 6 year run on the East Coast straight out of college. Good article. Go Pokes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am going to take a guess that you failed to publish the contents of encrypted track 3 due to INTEGRAl security concerns from your university?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oklahoma State Student ID's did not use Track 3. We only encoded track 1 & 2 on the blank card.</comment></comment>


DeepFaceLab: A tool that utilizes ML to replace faces in videos - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iperov/DeepFaceLab <comment><USER2> I wonder what this implies for the future of media (audio, photos, video) in general? Do we only consume media that has been signed by the creator and verified by an authority that we trust, e.g., a "blue checkmark" for media? Do we know how effective the SSL certificate verification has been in browsers at influencing consumer behavior?

<comment><USER3> In Neal Stephenson's latest book, that seems to be how he gets around the fake news problem.

The near future world signs everything with a personal identifier so they can prove they what people are seeing is genuine.

I imagine these identifiers could be extended to things like security cameras and things too so that there could be some verification that the video footage hasn't been doctored.

All of this of course relies on the general public getting the knowledge and tools to seamlessly do this verification on a daily basis. In the book it's mostly taken care of using google glass style wearables.

<comment><USER4> The primary problem with fake news is not that people are fabricating evidence. Sure, that does happen on occasion but it is relatively rare and is usually debunked pretty quickly. The biggest issue is that there are sources that can't be trusted and consumers don't have the skills or tools to identify those untrustworthy sources or simply don't care that their sources might be biased. Fixing the first problem (which is all some type of signing certificate could hope to do) doesn't accomplish much if we can't also addresses the second problem.

<comment><USER5> Imo the problem with fake news is that by the time it's debunked (if), its effect has already happened and can't be undone.

<comment><USER4> That is really just a symptom of the second problem. Fake news can spread pretty far before it is debunked, but the fake news has to start somewhere. Maybe people get it from some untrustworthy news site, social media, or directly from the mouth of a habitually lying politician, but it almost never originates from a legitimate news source that has the skills, tools, and motivation to better assess the authenticity of the news. If people put less faith in those untrustworthy sources and waited for actual journalism to be done before reacting, fake news would be less of a problem.

<comment><USER6> I can honestly say I do not know a legitimate news site. For every topic that I have more than surface knowledge on the articles are always, almost with no exception, biased and limited to a single perspective which aligns with cultural expectations.

The exceptions are local news about local events that has no political angle, and occasionally investigative journalism.

The most common method that legitimate news sources use to bias news is by omission, and second by using a misleading context. Neither is strictly a lie, but the result is as much fake news as something fabricated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Video evidence is going to be inadmissible very soon.

It's ironic that we're essentially being pushed back to a pre-technology, pre- media time. "If you didn't see it with your own two eyes, you can't believe it"

<comment><USER8> videos can be altered in this way for a long long time now. just not by neural networks. so in reality, it changes nothing.

<comment><USER9> It does change a whole lot. Up until a few years ago you'd only have to be suspicious of very important videos coming from people who have access to convincing video editing. Some video coming from the USA, Chinese or Russian government trying to disprove war crimes? Yeah, better be careful. Some guy using damcash footage to prove the other driver was in the wrong? Not so much.

As the technology improves and becomes accessible soon anybody will be able to edit videos convincingly without having to invest a massive amount of time or money. That's going to have a large impact I think.

<comment><USER10> Look at the old video's of Bigfoots and UFO's. A lot of them have been questioned for years if they were fake or not.

So in that sense it could have still be done pretty cheap.

<comment><USER9> Nobody knows exactly what a UFO and Bigfoot really look like so that helps. The debate is not so much about whether the footage has been doctored but rather about what it depicts.

A better example would probably be the moon landing footage or 9/11\. And then it's really only questioned by conspiracy theorists and specifically _because_ a state actor might have wanted to hide the evidence of a conspiracy.

Tomorrow with this new technology I might not convince you that Bigfoot exists but I might be able to show you extremely convincing footage of Margaret Thatcher and Mao Zedong frolicking in the Swiss Alps while Tupac is watching.

<comment><USER10> It's true that things can be more subtle now, like a politician giving a racist remark or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the cons are going to heavily outweigh the pros with this tech.

Fake news on high octane race gas.

<comment><USER12> Beyond trivial amusement what are the Pros?

<comment><USER13> I don't know that it makes sense to isolate just the narrow concept of deep fake creation. It seems like fundamentally a lot (most?) of the breakthroughs that make creation of deep fakes possible are the same ideas that make possible the current state of the art for classification, decision problems, advanced NLP, and other things we call ML or AI.

So to do this pro/con analysis you probably need to include the pros of these related technologies as well, which are certainly more than trivial amusement.

<comment><USER14> > So to do this pro/con analysis you probably need to include the pros of > these related technologies as well, which are certainly more than trivial > amusement.

Like the time my uncle (by marriage) sent a JibJab to the whole family featuring 4 recently-dead family members... real big pro, I'm sure... /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is also:

[https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap](https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap)

With a big development community and interesting results.

</comment><comment><USER16> What are the non-malicious uses for something like this? Haven't actually got around to pondering that yet.

<comment><USER17> An interesting use could be to anonymise people in public videos. You could use randomly generated faces (which other emerging tech can produce) and effectively remove peoples recognizable features by "replacing" them.

<comment><USER18> Reminds me of the anonymizing suits in "A Scanner Darkly".

<comment><USER19> Actually, you could probably get exactly that effect if you modify the script to pull from a pool of source faces per frame instead of a single face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it the same technology used by Zao? The example in the gallery does not look as good as the video here [https://twitter.com/AllanXia/status/1168049059413643265](https://twitter.com/AllanXia/status/1168049059413643265)

<comment><USER21> I think this tech is too complex to run on mobile devices in 8 seconds for video transfer from 1 selfie.

What I think Zao does is preprocess the videos (manually or highly accurate facepoint detection). They pre-calculate the transforms (standard facemorphing algorithms with opacity/alpha tweaks), and shading depending on the scene lighting. Then they just need a good frontal selfie, or do some frontalization, and keypoint detection, and the rest can be rendered/computed without much resources, following a pre-defined script.

If more advanced than facemorphing, then perhaps something more like: [https://github.com/facebookresearch/supervision-by- registrat...](https://github.com/facebookresearch/supervision-by- registration/raw/master/cache_data/cache/demo.gif) (pre-fitting a 3D face mask, then texturing it with your selfie)

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I think the big question is if Zao only allows pre-selected "scenes" that they have already done the processing on or if they allow you to upload _any_ video.

From the results, I think you are exactly right in how they are accomplishing those videos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hollywood has been doing this for a while, for stunt performers. Sometimes well, sometimes badly. We'll be seeing more of that as it works better.

As for the political implications, go watch "Wag the Dog" again.

</comment><comment><USER24> This technology has been posted on HN before and the comments were all too similar to this one. I understand why a lot of people are falling into the FUD-hole, but we can pretty easily solve the issues mentioned in the comments by inserting a digital key - similar to a SSL certificate, into an image/video upon initial upload. Or even upon creation, maybe using some sort of ledger to verify integrity. I'm not too worried.

<comment><USER25> What does that verify? Assuming they key hasn't be compromised, it does verify that the holder of the key uploaded a file at a particular time. It still doesn't show that the video itself is genuine. Although it does seem to allow us to fall back on the trustworthiness of the source which is better than nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Am I the only one that cries when seeing non PEP8 compliant Python code? Why do data scientists mistreat Python that way?

<comment><USER27> You are the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> On a (somewhat) related note, I'm working on face recognition with homomorphic encryption, therefore without compromising the user privacy. The bold goal is the first privacy preserving videocamera. If you find this interesting, I would love to chat about it.

<comment><USER29> I'd love to hear more about it & see the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised no one's bringing up the precedent of photoshop. For years we've culturally realized that pictures may not tell the whole story, and this is the exact same, down to results that can't quite escape the uncanny valley.

</comment><comment><USER31> On a scale of 1 to 10, how much easier does this make Deepfakery?

</comment><comment><USER32> Deep Fake with its revenge porn wasn't enough to give this a second thought?

<comment><USER33> Researchers and prototyping engineers generally don't seem concerned with ethics or consequences these days. Hard to be sure whether it's due to a pressure to publish or interest in chasing fame/revenue but there's lots of stuff like this being published lately. Even if some researchers opted not to chase this down there are always more people looking to push the boundaries.

The natural conclusion goes past revenge porn to revenge videos of beheadings, murders, etc that can be sent to friends or family members who aren't technically savvy enough to recognize fakes for what they are. Not to mention the existing phenomenon of blaming random civilians for murders and terror attacks - this will be far more convincing when it's paired with convincing fakes. It'll probably claim some lives.

<comment><USER34> Is innovation supposed to pause for society to catch up every time something drastic is created or discovered?

<comment><USER32> Nuclear tech required a rethink. So maybe yes?

<comment><USER34> Fair!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Momentary stall in Overland Park puts Google Fiber on long hold - <AUTHOR> http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/25/4575335/momentary-stall-in-overland-park.html Seems like Google is playing hardball with local municipalities throwing up roadblocks to Google Fiber. <comment><USER2> It's funny how often people are happy to pay for something, but when you offer them something for free suddenly they want more. Overland Park should have taken a good deal when it was offered, but they got greedy, they wanted protection for some potential future costs, although the benefits of Google Fiber to the community probably greatly outweigh these potential future costs. Can't blame Google for moving on - they're sending a strong signal to future Fiber communities.</comment>