Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/facebook-tools-are-used-to-screen-out-older-job-seekers-lawsuit-claims <comment><USER3> Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager.

I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working- experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last startup.

The typical solid dev can only put in 4, maybe 5-6 hours of actual good coding a day. If you know how to run a tight org - and not a sweatshop of 20-year olds pulling 16 hour days where only maybe 2-3 hours are actual programming time - then older devs are a fantastic bargain. Plus, when it comes time to architect something complex, I have found older devs typically create more simple and elegant solutions just because they have been exposed to more.

Of course, I do run into the occasional stuck-in-the-mud older dev who is very slow to adapt to current trends and wants everyone else to get off their lawn. That has been a rare exception to my overall experience and I don't think it should be used to stereotype the older devs as a group.

<comment><USER4> > I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area > startups

Going "out of [your] way" to hire older devs sounds like age discrimination. AFAIK, age discrimination in this direction isn't illegal in America, but it seems odd that you would respond to an article decrying age-discrimination by proudly declaring that you discriminate too, in the opposite direction. Maybe you just meant that you almost always find the qualities/compensation-demands you're looking for in older applicants rather than younger ones, but your phrasing doesn't seem to indicate that.

<comment><USER5> It's not age discrimination if you accept and do not otherwise discriminate against young/younger candidates. There's a lot that goes into recruiting. Optimizing your job descriptions, creating multiple job descriptions, and targeting your ad spend are all things that can affect the age, race, gender, education level, etc of the people you reach without being discriminatory.

In fact, you should do this to be inclusive. There are a lot of unconscious things hiring managers do that remove themselves from the running of highly qualified candidates.

Want to remove yourself from consideration from young talented female developers? Create a laundry list of "requirements" even though you consider them "nice to haves." Also add plenty of trigger words to make your business seem unattractive.

[https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs- unless...](https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless- theyre-100-qualified) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2016/12/14/...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2016/12/14/how- to-take-gender-bias-out-of-your-job-ads/#21863e951024)

Avoiding hurting yourself in the eyes of candidates you'd like to include is far from being discriminatory to other groups.

<comment><USER6> _> There's a lot that goes into recruiting. Optimizing your job descriptions, creating multiple job descriptions, and targeting your ad spend are all things that can affect the age, race, gender, education level, etc of the people you reach without being discriminatory._

Wait...isn't this exactly what the article is talking about?

<comment><USER7> 'Targeting your ad spend' is the thing under fire here, and under a very specific attack.

Before online advertising you kind of had an idea of what the target audience of TV channels, news, and radio was like, but it was very fuzzy and you certainly weren't _excluding_ people not in your target demographic that happened to utilize those media platforms. Women reading male fitness magazines or men reading female lifestyle magazines weren't the primary target of ads in those platforms, but they could certainly utilize what was being advertised if they so desired. The same is not true of online advertising today.

Facebook is more in the position of a newsstand than anything else, and it would be blatant discrimination if a newsstand wasn't allowing older people to buy technology magazines, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always wonder where the myth that older developers are "slower" comes from.

Dunno about you folks, but I get better and faster every year. And, for me, that productivity metric is probably approaching parabolic.

You learn enough languages, frameworks, tools - all the fundamentals start to merge together. You can pick the next one up faster than you did the one you just put down. You understand how to design software; how to organize code. Exactly when to reuse, refactor, or copy/paste.

You have a better understanding of how the market works and the competitive strategies around product development will manifest - not only within your own product and industry, but when analyzing and choosing vendors as well (you really want to leave it up to a 25 year-old to choose AWS vs GCP?).

Sure, I've got a ton of better things to spend my nights and weekends on than writing code for free. I can also spot a doomed project from a mile a way and have no qualms about delivering a very curt "yeah no thanks" to that project manager who waddles over with some deluded hero fantasy where they carry the flag on my back for something that's probably never going to see the light of day anyway.

Maybe that's it? That's probably it...

<comment> white-flame As your ending suggests, older developers tend to rock the boat more. As their bosses tell them to do something, the old timers see failures of history repeating themselves and try to steer the direction elsewhere. Younger devs fall in line much easier.

It can sometimes be a double-edged sword. Some older devs get hung up on bikeshedding and tunnel visioning about old specifics instead of just getting work done with whatever the new environment is. However, this problem is far more represented in the big slow-moving corporate world, and go-getter active old timers looking at startups wouldn't generally fit that stereotype.

But if 2 devs are agreeably working on a complex project, the old timer will probably be faster to finish than the younger one. For non-complex projects, it's a crap shoot.

<comment><USER9> > As your ending suggests, older developers tend to rock the boat more. As > their bosses tell them to do something, the old timers see failures of > history repeating themselves and try to steer the direction elsewhere. > Younger devs fall in line much easier.

I've seen this in spades. One of my greatest frustrations as an older developer is seeing history about to repeat itself, yet being unable to convince management of that fact.

Because I need the paycheck I can't walk away from some work. But it makes me die a little every time I work on such projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a 53-year-old Facebook employee, I find the part about Facebook doing this for their own hiring a bit odd. To the extent that anyone has ever reacted to my age with anything other than mild surprise, people generally seem quite glad to see something besides another fresh 20-something face and to hear the voice of long experience.

Then again, I didn't come in via a Facebook ad. Maybe companies use different methods to search for candidates of different ages or experience levels because _our own_ job-seeking habits are different. I was already a principal before the web even existed, let alone Facebook or LinkedIn. Even then I didn't look at generic ads anywhere to find a new job. I used headhunters, and then purely personal contacts. I'm sure many of my contemporaries are the same. If such broadcast ads are basically a waste of money seeking that kind of employee, and other methods are being tried, is that really "disparate treatment" in any meaningful sense?

<comment><USER11> I don't know. I was recommended to a specific domain-specialized role in Facebook by someone with a long tenure inside the company, and after the recommendation, I was just auto-routed into the standard, crappy candidate pipeline like everyone else, told I'd have to do whatever 6-month rotation bootcamp, asked why I didn't have a bunch of Javascript experience.

It certainly _felt_ like they make an effort to pedantically screen everyone through such a process exactly to enforce various uniformity and policy standards.

I am not claiming that I specifically experienced ageism, although it is possible. But I definitely experienced some type of "junior dev, infinitely flexible, doesn't know his own market compensation worth, etc." filters, which in many cases are going to systematically filter out experienced professionals.

<comment><USER12> So everyone in the same role goes through the same interview, and everyone in the same role goes through the same 6 week bootcamp. The aim, as I understand it, is to avoid talk like 'that person was hired into team X, they must suck at Y' or 'org X is easy to get in to, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was hired into it', and to allow more internal mobility without the need to reinterview. I can join any team for my role without needing to interview again, which reduces the friction a lot.

With that said, sorry you had a bad experience :/ The Javascript question does sound misplaced.

<comment><USER13> > ... to avoid talk like 'that person was hired into team X, they must suck at > Y' or 'org X is easy to get in to, I wouldn't want to work with someone who > was hired into it',

This is why you do your best to hire mature employees no matter their age and fire immature employees, no matter their age.

<comment><USER11> I assume you mean that employees who think their colleagues must suck at Y because they are on team X, or who worry themselves about whether some other team's chosen hiring standards are "too easy," are the immature ones?

(And presumably it's immature to even care about 'sucking at Y' at all, unless a specific task requires skill at Y and is not being solved, in which case it sounds like a problem of assigning it to the wrong person, not a problem of general hiring for Y in all cases.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The joke is really on the employer using Facebook ads to target a younger candidate pool.

Youngsters don't use Facebook. And if a young dev is using Facebook - they're certainly using an ad-blocker. If they're not using an ad blocker on Facebook, do you even want to hire them?

Seems like if you wanted to attract a pool of young candidates now days, you'd target the parents of the said youngsters. The ones with no applicable experience, and who are still living at home "looking for a job."

The ad should be to the effect of "tired of your good for nothing millennial taking up your third bedroom? Want them to move out? We're hiring good for nothing straight out of college devs so as to lock them into a low tier pay bracket."

<comment><USER15> As someone who runs ads on Facebook and other platforms and has a lot of devs who respond, this isn't true. Not only do devs not all block ads (and it's kind of offensive to imply that only the _good ones_ do), they even click on ads!

<comment><USER15> Yeah, just looked it up. There are over 50 million active users on Facebook between the ages of 25 and 34. In the US alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Data-driven algorithms are discriminating based upon undesirable/illegal vectors; they are utterly amoral in optimizing their solutions. Even if the algorithm does not have access to the "Age" field, then there are plenty of proxies, like what reunion tour you liked. And the same goes for race, gender, sexual identification, religion, etc.

To solve this we either need the training data to have no illegal/undesired discrimination, or we make the system moral. I think the first is impossible, and the second is what we will do sooner or later.

<comment><USER17> How would you make the system moral?

Let's say "moral" means "won't discriminate based on X" and the same "system" is used by everyone, which of course it wouldn't be.

So do you make up a bunch of fake "people" who are equal in everything except X, and test that it doesn't advantage/disadvantage the X's? Would that even be possible if the "system" is getting its inputs from social media?

Do you do mandate some kind of audit of the system's decisions, and require it to choose on average the same percentage of Xs as... what? As there are Xs in the general population? In the candidate pool?

I'd love for this kind of thing to work but even in an idealized hypothetical version it's hard to see how it could.

I think in tech we've already shown that shame is no barrier to hiring discrimination, and as HR+AI type filtering systems preselect candidates for you it'll be harder and harder for you or the government or the disadvantaged candidates to even know if you're discriminating.

You'll judge the "system" based solely on whether the set of candidates you got achieved the outcome you needed.

<comment><USER16> train it.

Give it examples that we consider moral and examples of what we consider immoral and have it figure it out. The solutions that the algorithms create are less complex than the data that they base the solutions on; so it should be relatively easy for it to model these solutions as data. We would have to train it on what we consider moral and immoral; that would require us to visualize the solutions in a way that a human can make the determination and provide the feedback.

As far as how we get to the solution, that will probably come when there is a liability for discrimination. So lawsuits like the one mentioned. I think that mandating does not work well, it would be more appropriate to make people liable for the decisions made by amoral systems. This liability would create a demand for moral systems.

<comment><USER18> "Give it examples that we consider moral"

That's a tall order, honestly. There's a lot of things in the current dominant SV philosophy that are fine and dandy and everybody thinks they agree with everybody else about them as long as everyone carefully agrees to not sit down and actually put numbers on the terms in question ("discrimination is bad!" "I agree!"), but when it comes time to write down concrete rules and provide concrete examples ("hiring a woman is 43.2% preferable to hiring a man; hiring an African American is 23.1% preferable to hiring a Chinese person") are going to make people _squirm_ , and everyone involved in such a project is going to do everything in their power to avoid having to deal with the result.

I bet there's a number of people reading this post _right now_ squirming and deeply, deeply tempted to hit that reply button and start haranguing me about those numbers and how dare I even think such things, as you've been trained to find someone to blame for any occurrence of such words and I'm the only apparent candidate. But I have no attachment to the numbers themselves and I pre-emptively acquiesce to any corrections you'd care to make to them, for the sake of argument. I expect a real model would use more complicated functions of more parameters, I just used simple percentages because they fit into text easily. But any algorithm _must_ produce some sort of result that looks like that, and once you get ten people at a table looking at any given concrete instantiation of this "morality", 9.8 of them are not going to agree it's moral.

I cite the handful of articles we've even seen in peer-reviewed science journals, sometimes linked here on HN, which discuss the discriminatory aspects of this or that current ML system, while _scrupulously_ avoiding answering the question of what exactly a "non-discriminatory" system actually is. It's one of those things that once you see it you can't unsee it. (And given that these papers are nominally mathematical papers by nominally "real scientists", if I were a reviewer I'd "no publish" these papers until they fix that oversight, because it isn't actually that useful to point out that an existing mathematical system fails to conform to a currently- _not_ -existing mathematical standard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Excellent news! Up until age 39, I was never _not_ given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. So much for the claims that there is a shortage in tech. So crazy.

<comment><USER20> Readers: what's your exit strategy? You probably need one.

<comment><USER21> Age discrimination in tech is dumb. I've got a dev 30 years my senior sitting across from me and I guarantee he will code circles around 90% of the devs on HN, and 100% of the new grads getting jobs at big tech (and will until he dies). He's got a huge amount of knowledge in programming, our domain (NLP), he's fast, thorough, and thoughtful.

Honestly I don't get the obsession with recent grads. They are basically useless for years.

<comment><USER22> Some of reasons I've seen for ageism in startups are cost and "not a culture fit". Cost I understand, but I believe more experienced people end up being cheaper in the long run when you account for speed, correctness, and long term maintainability. The culture piece stems from the "would I get a beer with this person" and will he/she work as "hard" as a younger candidate with less responsibilities.

Startups need to start realizing that it's okay to have diversity and different cultural groups. By putting yourself in the stereotypical startup culture box you greatly limit your ability to hire and create diversity. If everyone thinks and acts the same you miss out on valuable perspectives and ideas.

<comment><USER23> Startups aren't going to change. The goal should be to marginalize their influence and effects on tech hiring. They are simply not important enough (by hiring volume) to carry the weight they currently do.

<comment><USER24> >They are simply not important enough (by hiring volume) to carry the weight they currently do.

Unforunately, they are. A large proportion of the tech industry is startups / small businesses. I'd be surprised if Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/Microsoft make up even 10% of tech workers.

<comment><USER23> Citation please. Startups are minuscule compared to total tech jobs.

My current employer employees more tech workers than all YC startups combined, for example.

<comment><USER24> Google - 85,050 employees ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google))

Facebook - 25,105 employees ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook))

Amazon has 566,000 employees ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_\(company\))), but it's unclear how many of those are actually tech workers. Amazon has a lot of retail and warehouse workers, many of who with wages so low they qualify for food stamps.

Apple - 123,000 employees ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.)) Apple's 2014 SEC filing said that half of their employees are retail workers, so let's give Apple 62,000 tech workers.

Microsoft - 124,000 employees ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft))

There are around 7 million tech workers in the USA ([https://www.comptia.org/about-us/newsroom/press- releases/201...](https://www.comptia.org/about-us/newsroom/press- releases/2017/04/03/us-tech-sector-employment-approaches-seven-million))

Even if we pretended that all 566,000 Amazon employees were actually tech workers (they're not) and the above numbers were US-only employees (they're not), that would total to about 860,000 tech workers.

860,000 / 7 million = 12.3%

That means that at least 87.7% of American tech workers do not work at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, or Microsoft, despite these companies being five of the richest tech companies in the world.

<comment><USER23> None of this validates your thesis that startups and small businesses are the majority tech employers. If anything, it reinforces mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I sometimes wonder how much the fear of something is actually an additional problem to the thing itself.

NOTE: I am not denying agism exists, I'm wondering about the additional problem of fear of agism.

The fear that someone might be agist, might make you look at them judgmentally/suspiciously. If you look at your interviewer judgmentally/suspiciously they likely won't hire you, and they probably feel pretty suspicious about you.

If you walk into an interview and say, "I know I'm old, and you probably won't hire me because you want a young person", well, obviously they won't hire you because you sound depressed.

Again, this is not to say that some people aren't agist, even if the candidate shows none of these signs.

I'm just wondering how much of factor the fear of agism is, compared to agism itself, on a regional level. Are there any people who do clinical studies here?

<comment><USER11> While this might be interesting academically, I think if ageism is a problem that might generically scare candidates, then that too is _the ageists fault_ for creating that culture of policy, and not a candidate's fault for sincerely being worried about something that is actually worth worrying about.

We could say something similar about racism. "How much of a factor the fear of racism is, compared to racism itself..."

It seems silly to really spend any time on this type of second-order extra effect when there are real, harmful, huge first-order effects (namely, _actual racism_ and _actual ageism_ ) demonstrably happening.

We should focus on the big, up-front, obvious monster standing right in front of us, instead of asking, how much of our problem is caused by the monster in front of us as opposed to a hypothetical monster in the closet, and letting it distract us (or worse, trying to flip things around and blame candidates for being too sensitive or try to sympathetically justify what ageist businesses are doing to their long-time employees or to older job candidates).

<comment><USER25> The racist wins if he can spoil your other interviews. Let's say you have 4 interviews, the first one has a racist, and it's obvious. Now let's say you get bitter and resentful, and you blow your other 3 interviews, even though those 3 people aren't racist. The racist is happy(if he finds out) because not only did he prevent you from getting his job, he messed with your head and prevented you from getting the attainable 3 jobs.

So, within the scenario above, racism can take one toll or many tolls. And this is on the individual level, wherein people operate from day to day. They need a job. It would seem that being able to reset expectations, forgive, forbear, and go into the subsequent 3 interviews would be the ideal strategy to achieve success in job hunting, and prevent the racist from doing the most damage.

Since you mentioned 2nd order effects: how much do the 2nd order effects recreate/reinforce the first order effects? This would be another psychological survey I would be interested in.

If someone is fearful of racists, how many people are likely to become more racist as a result of this fear ( either themselves or people they come in contact with )? Isn't racism based on fear in the first place? Fear of other races? ( and therefore a reaction to fight or flight arbitrarily based on race? )

Batman: "Gee Robbin, I notice you are afraid when you are around people of other races" Robbin: "Well it's because I think they're racist against me" _slap_ Batman: "Robbin you are becoming the thing you fear the most!"

<comment><USER11> This sounds alarmingly similar to something like, _the terrorists win if we don 't watch the NFL on Sunday while drinking mainstream American beers._

The racist or ageist "win" if they are not held accountable, with visible punishment, for their racist or ageist actions. They don't "win" through bespoke second order effects of their first order actions.

In terms of what a candidate should do, it's a heuristic. I choose to apply the heuristic of, "be really wary and cautious that self-interested commercial entities have incentives to generally be ageist or racist."

I pay a cost sometimes when that heuristic was suboptimal. But it's worth it to avoid super widespread predatory practices in a bunch of other cases. Worrying about the hyper-optimized policy that accounts for secondary perceptions of my fear of ageism seems like a huge waste, huge premature optimization effort that could be better spent choosing a simple heuristic and focusing on the up-front, obvious, primary ageism or racism issues.

To boot, honestly, if an employer gets some kind of "weird vibe" from me because I ask questions or discuss policies from an anti-ageism point of view, and this leads them to reject me, then probably my heuristic was right, and really there are internal dysfunctions in that company that I am better off avoiding.

Corporations can harm applicants and employees in so many ways that it often really is better to have a default belief that this is what they are trying to do, and take a very risk-averse heuristic to just avoid places that give off even slight signals, like if they treat you like you're weird for taking a proactive, positive stance on it.

If they reject you, you're probably dodging a nasty bullet anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Many of the posts here focus on ageism but this is just one example of discriminatory algorithms/ML in action. Don't be surprised if the same headline reappears soon with gender or race substituted. There is currently an academic movement often called "fairness in machine learning" aiming to correct these kinds of behaviors in automated systems.

<comment><USER27> As the former-kids say, "Simpsons did it". We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination in ads.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook- housing...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing-ads- discrimination-lawsuit.html)

<comment> Jeff-Stryker >We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination

We will have it again. News is manufactured.

Discrimination in the news is meant to splinter the populace. You Old people need to fear and hate the young (millennials vs. Boomers) You Black people need to fear and hate the whites You White people need to fear and hate the latinos You Gay people need to fear and hate the transsexuals

It is a constant barrage if you are paying attention. Divide and Conguer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I currently work (as of 6 months ago) at a company where the software engineering staff is made up almost exclusively of two types of people:

1.) young 20-somethings who were hired right out of college. They do all of the coding and grunt work (for cheap).

2.) A smaller set of 55+ engineers who are coasting into retirement. They do all of the architecture and design work.

I was recruited rather aggressively and eventually accepted an offer (I'm definitely being paid on the high side for this area). As a 38 year old, this place is incredibely lonely (I have no "peers"). I have absolutely no idea why they hired me. The "elders", who have been at the company for 20+ years, are hostile, backstabbing and hoard all of the interesting work (and credit) for themselves. My "lead" (not the manager who made the decision to hire me - <USER2> never see that person now) seems to be actively sidelining me - I've been assigned nothing but grunt work.

</comment><comment><USER29> I mean, are we going to start suing companies who go to career fairs at colleges too?

<comment><USER30> There are plenty of older college students. There were lots of grey hairs in my night classes.

<comment><USER31> Not in the places where top tech companies are willing to go to.

<comment><USER32> I don't think this is true -- most of the Ivys have entire schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students (see, for example, the Columbia University School of General Studies), and Google/Facebook/etc recruit quite heavily from the Ivys.

<comment><USER31> > Google/Facebook/etc recruit quite heavily from the Ivys.

Yes but do they recruit older non traditional students. Schools catering to them doesn't automatically imply that they are being hired by google.

<comment><USER33> You just moved the goalposts from "don't recruit where there are older students" to "yes, they recruit there, but do they recruit the older students".

<comment><USER31> ok. I see what you mean.

> don't recruit where there are older students

But they don't recuit from 'schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students '

My original comment is still true > Not in the places where top tech companies are willing to go to.

"places" here can be 'schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students' within Ivies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not sure I agree that it's Facebook's fault that people use its platform to target ads illegally, but clearly you shouldn't be targeting job ads to people by age.

<comment><USER35> > I'm not sure I agree that it's Facebook's fault that people use its platform > to target ads illegally, but clearly you shouldn't be targeting job ads to > people by age.

It seems reasonable to me that an automated ad platform should take steps to prevent users from running illegal ads. It seems like it would be fairly easy, at least for discriminatory ad types: just look at the law and gray out selectors for protected classes when an ad for employment, housing, etc. For instance, if you run an employment ad, age, race, and gender demographic selectors should be disabled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Older devs don't buy the CEO's BS that easy and don't care about table tennis, you need to pay them in real money - which obviously makes them a completely wrong fit for so many players in the industry...

</comment><comment><USER37> Facebook themselves are a big age discriminator in recruiting. Most of the company in the silicon valley do age discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER38> It doesn't seem like the blame should fall on Facebook here, but rather the companies using Facebook's tools to age discriminate (assuming there is even blame to place at all).

Age-based targeting can be applied across their entire platform, not just for job postings, and it can be applied in either direction (i.e. companies can also create ads targeting only people over the age of 40).

> In the amended complaint, CWA alleged that Facebook encourages advertisers > to exclude some job-seekers by providing both age filters and regularly > updated data on how ads perform among different age groups.

IMO, this complaint achieves the opposite of what they want it to achieve. It suggests that the age-related metrics that Facebook offers are a) explicitly defined by the individual advertiser and b) are used to objectively determine the ad's effectiveness rather than to unjustly discriminate.

</comment><comment><USER39> So, where do the veterans go? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179054)

<comment><USER40> Get a reverse mortgage, work for Home Depot, the government, or lobby for UBI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is really dumb if you understand how Facebook's advertising algorithm works.

It's going to optimize job ads towards people who click job ads.

Young people are more likely to be looking for jobs than older people, and thus click job ads more. [1]

So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's more cost effective, because they want to see these type of ads more by far. By the data, older people do not want to see these type of ads and thus are not shown them. If you did show it to them, they would complain about bad ads (anyone who does FB advertising gets a report from FB on how many people Xed out an ad, and too many is really bad for your account)

Nothing to do with worker effectiveness or how HR treats older applicants, which is what 95% of the comments in this thread are taking the opportunity to talk about.

[1] " About 60% of Millennials are currently open to a new job opportunity and are by far the most likely generation to switch jobs. To support that, 21% of Millennials in 2016 reported switching jobs within the past year, compared to roughly 7% of gen Xers and other non-Millennials. " [https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2018/01/22/millennia...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2018/01/22/millennials- arent-job-hopping-young-people-are-5-things-to-keep-in-mind/#26d1e0ab10d8)

<comment><USER42> > So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's > more cost effective

Because there is a technical explanation doesn't means that it is not discrimination. Actually discrimination had a lot to do about getting an individual differently because he/she is part of a group. We didn't baked a law, the machine did. It is not a good defense in a trial, or at least I hope it is not.

A good read on this topic [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/qa-should- artificial-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/qa-should-artificial- intelligence-be-legally-required-explain-itself)

<comment><USER41> Discriminating based on _interest_ in job postings is very different than discriminating based on _type of applicant_.

If you post a job ad in a job center, it's going to be seen by way more young people and older people won't get as much of a chance to see it. Same if you post job ads in colleges. Both of those common practices are more discriminatory than what FB's algorithm is doing here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Take this from a former tech lawyer: The startups that only want kids and new grads are hiding skeletons. They know they are doing something incorrectly/illegally and don't want anyone in the building who is likely to recognize such mistakes, let alone object to them. They fear industry knowledge and experience.

Typical example: I had a couple clients who sent new staff on unpaid "training" courses, in violation of labour laws. They only hired kids and so by the time I showed up this had been going on for ten years. The founders knew, but all under them didn't know a thing about labour laws, including the extensive HR department. Then one day a former employee sent an email ... and I handed the client to a litigator to prepare the response to the class action by former employees.

</comment><comment><USER44> As someone approaching that 40yo cutoff soon enough, does that same apparent bias in hiring show up for managers and executives as well, or only hands-on individual contributors? Maybe there's a general perception that if you're in your 40s and you've worked hard enough, by then you should be a director or VP of some kind, and if you're not you must have messed up? I understand not everybody is meant for managerial ladder climbing, but is that perhaps the stereotype that everybody expects?

</comment><comment><USER45> It'd be nice if these same protected class laws applied to the rampant and increasing age discrimination against 18 to 21 year old adults. Discrimination of them is not just common but baked into the culture and acknowledged as a good thing (ie, car rentals, firearm purchases, etc).

They get all the downsides and responsibilities of being a full citizen but are treated as second class citizens.

Sure, discrimination against the old happens. But it's not nearly as common or widespread as discrimination against the young.

</comment><comment><USER46> While I understand Ageism exists, I do see a trend change though. Take for example all these technical tracks in many companies now. All of these engineers are very tenured and usually very experienced(40+). In-fact they are considered irreplaceable by management since they set the vision of the company. Especially in the valley, the trend I notice is that you don't want to lose these "senior staff, staff engineers etc."

</comment><comment><USER47> Discrimination is essentially THE business for FB advertisements in areas such as housing and job openings. It is just a fancy way to circumvent legal requirements that jobs must be posted independent of sex, racial, or religious affiliation. Similarly for housing offerings.

</comment><comment><USER48> What statutes would FB be violating, assuming their tools are being used in this way?

I wish articles like this would provide a link to the complaint, which is presumably a matter of public record.

</comment><comment><USER49> Maybe this company needs regulation. I think the benefit of the doubt can be used to hide reason.

</comment><comment><USER50> Would radio ads be discrimination because they generally target and older audience? Or TV adds on shows that are generally viewed by older audiences or younger audiences? If it is discrimination to only show Facebook job ads to certain demographics, it should also be descrimination to show ads on platforms only viewed by certain demographics.

<comment><USER51> lol this is a pretty lame argument. radio stations would love more young listeners. it's a little differnt than intentionally filtering out some of your audience

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> devils advocate reasons to avoid older tech job seekers:

1\. they are less pliable. they have experience st other companies and typically want to keep doing stuff the way they did at their previous company. it's a lot more work to make someone unlearn bad habits than teach them good ones

2\. If you have 20+ years of experience you should really be at the management or architect level. if you're still a typical engineer (even senior) it may indicate a defect.

3\. Our company wants people to work insane hours and maybe your family prevents that

<comment><USER52> The devil has plenty of advocates already.

"2\. If you have 20+ years of experience you should really be at the management or architect level. if you're still a typical engineer (even senior) it may indicate a defect."

This is absolute crap; not wanting to be in management because you don't have the skillset for it is not a defect. This idea needs to die a painful death.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> In the sense that if you are "on Fb" you're old by definition I guess.

</comment><comment><USER54> If I advertise a job in a church newsletter am I screening out Jews, Muslims, and atheists?

How about a job in a predominantly black newspaper, am I screening out Latino candidates?

How about a job ad in a predominantly lesbian one, is that screening straight men?

What about one in a youth newsletter or Facebook demographically targeted ad, is that screening out old people?

I'd argue intent is what matters. If the goal is to reach a demographic you think will have fine candidates then proceed. If it's purely exclusionary to circumvent labor laws because you're avoiding someone else then it's a problem.

The analysis for this should not be at the inbound funnel, but instead at the net result based on the received candidate pool. That's where you can see whether an actual bias exists.

</comment><comment><USER55> I know almost nothing about the law here, but I imagine intent could be a big part of it. I'm surprised the Bloomberg article seems to make no mention of it.

I was also surprised to see this:

> Goldman wrote that, "Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment > purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps > employers recruit and people of all ages find work."

Why would it ever be acceptable to deliberately filter on the grounds of age?

<comment><USER56> What if they were targeting older workers as part of a diversity program?

<comment><USER57> That is discrimination against younger workers.

Diversity programs are a double edged sword, there are groups that are under represented. However every time you target them you lose the larger group that you didn't target, and that group has great people.

<comment><USER58> Not making a judgement either way, but just a heads-up— there's actually no federal prohibition against discriminating on the basis of youth. Age discrimination laws only work in one direction.

<comment><USER55> Interesting. Here in the UK, the law can work both ways, with exceptions where there is good reason.

[https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and- courts/discriminat...](https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and- courts/discrimination/protected-characteristics/age-discrimination/) , [https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work- learning/di...](https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work- learning/discrimination-rights/the-equality-act/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Ventures: Year one - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-ventures-year-one.html

<comment><USER2> _We recently revamped our website, where you can find out more about the people that make up the growing Google Ventures team_

Just for fun, I counted...

Their site lists 11 partners: 11 of them are male, 0 are female. They list 4 associates: 1 is male, 3 are female. They list one assistant: 1 is female.

If it weren't for that oddity (a male associate), I could predict gender based on job title. And this is coming from one of the most progressive companies. What does that say about the rest of us?

</comment><comment><USER3> Does the look and feel of the site remind anyone else of a Microsoft site?</comment>


Does anyone else get tired of signing up for betas that never come to fruition? - <AUTHOR>

I must sign up for 10 new accounts online each day... 8 of those 10 are likely some sort of email list for an upcoming beta.  I find them on http://betali.st or on HN or just through various tweets.  The thing that pisses me off, is I usually look at them and say, "oh cool, someone's finally making an app that does X" or "sweet, I've been wanting to make this app, but I'm glad someone else is"
And then I wait for the beta invite and it never comes.  Then I stumble upon the url for the site a bit later and realize they shut it down and it never actually was developed.
Now, I can completely understand how developers can get wide-eyed and excited about an idea and immediately start marketing it as the next big thing, but then that excitement wears off and they drop it.
I guess my biggest question I'd like to pose to the developer community is:
Is it worth the having a notification sign-up for an app you have no intention of having running within the next 6-12 months, or should we focus on having these sign-ups when the finished product is weeks away? <comment><USER2> It may be that you're suffering from a (some would say, unfortunate) technique that has been promoted for assessing interest in an idea: Quickly throw up a sign-up page with a brief description of the idea, announce and/or advertise, and then use received responses to gauge whether the idea is worth pursuing.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, I'm not sure that's a good way to feel out whether there's a market for a product or app. There are plenty of dev communities like forrst or dribbble where people can show off their ideas and try to gauge interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> kjhughes is correct. A lot of these pages are meant to gauge interest. If the market doesn't seem to be there the founders won't launch the product and you'll never hear about the product again.

At Beta List we try to be selective and only publish startups that have a custom designed landing page. This weeds out a lot of startups that aren't really dedicated to launching something. This tactic is obviously not fool proof so I welcome any feedback you might have: marc -at- betali.st</comment>


Hacker Publishes Personal Info of 20,000 FBI Agents - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-publishes-personal-info-of-20000-fbi-agents <comment><USER2> In a perfect display of schadenfreude, the FBI might now be getting an idea of why people are reluctant to allow them unfettered access to their private information :)

Not really a useful comment, I know, but I had to show my appreciation for this guy for pulling down the FBI's pants!

<comment><USER3> I, for one, think privacy concerns over this release are overblown. After all, the news reports I've read only contain _metadata_ about the individuals in question.

That the data is out there isn't important. It's not being looked at by me or other humans reading these news articles.

Furthermore, collection and access to this information is critical to the fight against terrorism. If professionals aren't able to identify individuals who may be endangering this country, that puts all of America at risk.

/congressional hearing

<comment><USER4> The "metadata doesn't matter" argument is a fallacy that has been used to push horrible legislation in many countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is this??? In the first
 of the article:

 20,000 FBI EMPLOYEES NAMES, TITLES, PHONE NUMBERS, EMAILS, COUNTRY <a href="
penis  Feb...](https://twitter.com/DotGovs/statuses/696796442850156545">February) 8, 2016

Notice the weird  tag in the middle.

<comment><USER6> Looks like the embedded tweet has the twitter handle's 'name', which is penis.

<comment><USER7> My old Chrome version actually renders the penis (the text, I mean) for a split second and then it disappears.

<comment><USER8> Thank god it's only the text

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _After tricking a department representative into giving him a token code to > access the portal, the hacker claimed he used the compromised credentials to > log into the portal, where he gained access to an online virtual machine. > From here, the cybercriminal was presented with three different computers to > access, he said, one of which belonged to the person behind the compromised > email account. The databases of DHS and FBI details were on the DOJ > intranet, the hacker said._

With public facing sites like Amazon -- who have necessarily engineered and refined security solutions to manage a wide surface area of attack from its customer base -- getting successfully social engineered on occasion, I shudder to think what the situation is at a large, multidecade bureaucracy where internal-only legacy technology stacks and access control procedures have probably resulted in a mindset of "oh just put that on a sticky note" workarounds just to get work done.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, regarding amazon: [http://imgur.com/a/yaI4B](http://imgur.com/a/yaI4B)

That took 2 calls.

<comment><USER11> What am I looking at here?

<comment><USER10> Internal Amazon stuff, including the customer service tools that can be used to access anyones account, change their passwords etc...

<comment><USER11> Some top-notch social engineering there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear"

<comment><USER13> Because generally the 'powers that be' don't go publishing all of your data so anyone can see. You choose what gets publicly published and they keep what they have on you largely to themselves.

<comment><USER14> Thank Goodness! Since they're competent enough to keep personal info on their federal agents safe from hackers, I feel safe trusting them to keep all my sensitive information secure too!

Doesn't matter if you trust or mistrust the government - everyone leaves a digital back-gate unlocked without realizing it once in a while.

Unfortunately no matter how noble the institution, mistake-prone carelessness humans are behind them all.

<comment><USER15> that reduces down to humans are responsible for human behaviour

<comment><USER16> That means that you shouldn't trust them with access to your sensitive data, which they've been demanding recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > A spokesperson for the DOJ told Motherboard on Monday that the department > "is looking into the unauthorized access of a system operated by one of its > components...

Please don't give us the "we weren't hacked. It was a company we used that was!" Nonsense. I'm tired of hearing this. It's the same thing blue shield said when its/my/your data was pilfered. YOU are responsible for it! If you pass it off to some incompetent third party, then that reflects even more poorly on you!

<comment><USER10> There's literally no sign of a hack here (I mean, besides the statement that they're investigating), this is OSINT stuff.

Trust me, you could hack any recruiting company and they'd be sitting on much more data than this.

<comment><USER18> Yep. Even the spooky Stratfor[1] would have more information than this. This is nothing like what Snowden or literally hundreds of thousands of people who hold TS/SCI have access to (identities of NCOs or other espionage operatives, access to recruiting databases for foreign nationals who went abroad to the US for graduate studies and are being assessed as potential intelligence assets by their professors, etc). A pissed off 4channer with good Google-fu could get more information than this.

[1] Which I'm sure intelligence agencies are thankful for, because all the tin-foil hatters are misplacing their resources in designing conspiracy theories about an incompetent "private intelligence organization" which amounts to a bunch of people who could easily be outsmarted by a 4chan-er with good Google-fu. You know all those stories you heard about the KGB being incompetent, or now hear about how the Party is in modern China w/r/t information control? Yeah.. the FIVEEYES are about on par when it comes to incompetence.

<comment><USER19> > recruiting databases for foreign nationals who went abroad to the US for > graduate studies and are being assessed as potential intelligence assets by > their professors

Is this for real?

<comment><USER20> Yes, it also happens in the reverse direction. Foreign nationals going abroad with the goal of gaining intelligence from professors.

<comment><USER21> When I was a research assistant in college in the US, we had an Iranian student apply to work with us several times, even after we told him no the first time. We were researching the properties of yellow cake uranium for the Department of Energy! Obviously there are strict rules on that kind of work, hiring him would have been VERY illegal, but he still kept bugging us even after telling him that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The meaning of "personal info" sure has been diluted, this is zoominfo level data (in fact, based on a quick look it could very well be scraped from there).

<comment><USER22> Yea, I've worked for a few gov't agencies over the years, and most of them have had basically the same info on a public facing "who's who" webpage. The identities and job titles of public employees is public information.

Internal email addresses and phone numbers might be a little more problematic, since they could be spam targets. But it'd be a pretty brave/dumb spammer or prank caller who targets the FBI.

<comment><USER23> Yes, the problem according to the FBI indeed seems to be more about the unauthorized breach than the information actually contained:

> "This unauthorized access is still under investigation; however, there is no > indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive personally > identifiable information," DOJ spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see the problem. I thought privacy was dead.

<comment><USER25> Same here. I wonder how long it will take before people get used to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Every time I check HN, there's a new crypto tool, encrypted databases, and tips on hardening your servers. No matter how secure your system is technically, there is always the requirement to make parts of it "insecure" (in the sense that people buy enterprise encryption, but expect the company that sells it to keep a spare copy of the keys to recover lost data just in case)

The reality in cyber security is that people provide the weakest and easiest point of entry to compromise any computer system. Until the business side and process side of things improve, shit like this will remain common.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is just a dump of their "phonebook". Not even close to OPM hack... Sensationalist article.

<comment><USER16> The article doesn't say it was like OPM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > In any case, a DHS spokesperson said the agency is looking into the reports, > though "there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of > sensitive or personally identifiable information."

Except, you know, names. Merely being identified as a person moves you from not existing in the criminal universe to target. From name and other information comes yet other information, comes economic damage, or in this case, possibly life threatening damage.

<comment><USER29> Names aren't secret or private information. The agents give you their names if you talk with them. A significant portion of them are on linked in. During criminal trials their names are public record. Only four FBI agents died at an "adversaries" hand in the past 20 years, one botched undercover drug bust, an agent who ran into the twin towers on 911 to help people, and two who died in raids.

These guys are cops and detectives, not secret agents and spies.

<comment><USER10> > The agents give you their names if you talk with them.

At least in my case the agents refused to give me their full names, citing personal safety concerns.

<comment><USER28> I called the police for something a couple years ago, and when I asked for a card after it was over she gave me a card where one of her names was pre- scratched out, I forget if it was her first or last.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Everytime I see something like this I ask "why was this system connected to the internet in the first place".

Sure an intranet only computer can be compromised as well, usb drive, social engineering, etc. but it is exponentially harder.

Really hoping ICBM systems are not on the internet because some general wanted to monitor them from his smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anyone else notice that Crytobin appears to be down? Wonder if they took it offline because of this or are they simply blocking traffic in the US to it?

<comment><USER32> Looks like it's been dropped from DNS servers.

      $ nslookup cryptobin.org
      Server:	18.104.22.168
      Address:	22.214.171.124#53

      ** server can't find cryptobin.org: NXDOMAIN

It can still be accessed directly via [https://126.96.36.199](https://126.96.36.199)

<comment><USER10>
      Domain Status: serverHold https://www.icann.org/epp#serverHold

Yes, the domain has been suspended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder when the moment comes where really secret personal/information is going to appear only on paper again.

I wouldn't want this happening to me.

</comment><comment><USER34> Guys like this give hackers a bad name.

</comment><comment><USER35> Isn't that public data? name, country, phone number, email...

</comment><comment><USER36> anyone have attempted to publish these on [http://icwatch.wikileaks.org](http://icwatch.wikileaks.org) ?

</comment><comment><USER37> I find it somewhat interesting that this hacker didn't use this information for leverage, if he's indeed some strong supporter of the free Palestine cause. Instead, he just let it loose and raised the middle finger.

It makes me think either the supposed motivation for this hack isn't what it seems, or it was perpetuated by someone who's incredibly naive. It just doesn't seem to add up.

<comment><USER10> What leverage could he possibly gain by not releasing this data?

<comment><USER37> Well, you don't get leverage by not releasing data for no reason...

However, if you're in possession of 20k FBI agents' private information, you could probably contact Palestinian politicians, and they could use it in negotiations. It's valuable information to governments at war.

<comment><USER38> And then your crime goes from (mere) 'computer misuse' to 'espionage' or even 'treason', with the exciting penalties they draw. I don't think anyone with half a brain wants to go down that road, particularly since the info isn't even that valuable, but the penalties would be the same as TS/SCI information release to an 'enemy government' or similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's not what "hacker" means. An Hacker is some person who enjoys tinkering with systems. You mean "cracker".

<comment><USER18> Weev went to jail for literally HTTP GET'ing an AT&T server with a URL that was readily available on any Ipad device. In the RFC there's literally a return code for "Not Authorized", he got a good ol' 200 saying 'come on in' and got convicted of "conspiracy to access a computer without authorization".

Federal prison for what was effectively WGET'ing something that was, again, readily available. Still, in the eyes of the public and the law, hacker and cracker are the same thing. The guy is a racist liar but he didn't deserve federal prison. His conviction was later vacated on a venue technicality, which sucks, because had it been overturned in a higher circuit with the judge offering an Opinion, case law would have been set and Aaron Schwarz would have at least some vindication[1].

[1] In no way am I comparing the character of these two men, just the injustice they both suffered at the arms of the technically illiterate law enforcement/legal system. If I were a medical doctor who was before the board being judged for malpractice, I wouldn't want a jury of 12 of my 'peers' deciding my fate - I'd want other doctors.

<comment><USER40> > Weev went to jail for literally HTTP GET'ing an AT&T server with a URL that > was readily available on any Ipad device. In the RFC there's literally a > return code for "Not Authorized", he got a good ol' 200 saying 'come on in' > and got convicted of "conspiracy to access a computer without > authorization".

Everybody repeatedly says this while ignoring his behavior during and after obtaining the information, which is what he was _really_ convicted on. He said so himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting that the dataset only goes from A-Je. I wonder what happened to the rest of the data.

Also, I didn't realize the surname Acevedo was so popular...

</comment><comment><USER42> Tangentially related, but have the people affected by the OPM hack last year been notified?

<comment><USER43> Yes. I got a letter from OPM detailing what may have been compromised an offering me some identity theft protection/monitoring service. They got my SF-86 ([https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf](https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf)) and my fingerprints, so pretty much everything.

<comment><USER38> I do love the SF-86 form. "Please list all acts of terrorism you have participated in, in an attempt to overthrow the Government of the United States: Nature of act, Dates from and to" and that sort of thing. I wonder if anyone who answered 'YES' to that section ever got a clearance?

<comment><USER44> I'd answer yes, the nature being voting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The thing in encrypted... i don't thinks is harmful to the US gov.

</comment><comment><USER46> This guy should be captured and killed. Most FBI agents are very dedicated to trying to protect people and doing something like this should be an act of espionage and dealt with accordingly.

<comment><USER47> > _This guy should be captured and killed_

This breaks the HN guidelines. On this site, please comment civilly and substantively, or not at all. Your comment would be fine without that sentence.

Your other comments in this thread make it sound like you're knowledgeable about this space in a way that most of us aren't. The way to communicate here is to share that knowledge in a civil way, so we all learn something.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064557) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is a bummer. Most FBI agents are good people trying to help keep a lid on crime in their country. They don't deserve personal exposure or embarrassment for providing what is obviously a necessary, thankless, and underappreciated service.

I'm waiting for the day that script kiddies do something useful, like emptying out everyone's credit file or deleting all the pending bills in a major hospital system's computer. Embarrassing and/or exposing normal individuals doesn't provide any real macro-level help to anybody.

<comment><USER49> How are any of the things you mentioned useful? I think I can quite confidently say that the things you mention will probably cause more rather than less suffering in the long term. And it's exactly this type of naive disregard for the complexity of actions and their consequences that makes 'script kiddies' so harmful.

<comment><USER50> > naive disregard for the complexity of actions and their consequences that > makes 'script kiddies' so harmful.

If I worked at FBI I'd be angry and _motivated._ The retaliation won't come in the form of a zip file, either. It completely boggles the mind that someone thought that this was a smart step toward their own goals.

"Let's shut down Mastercard!" I guarantee that someone somewhere in the world was attempting to pay for an urgent medical bill during that time-period. What did the hack _actually_ change? Nothing. It merely proved the hack was possible.

You don't just hack someone and automatically change the world for the better, for the worse most likely.

<comment><USER48> I just want to make it clear that I didn't suggest there would be positive effects from shutting down payment systems.

<comment><USER50> Right, it was just an adhoc example. The sentiment of what you said is true - these are just people doing their job. I don't know why you are getting downvoted so much. Thinking that there exists a hack which won't result in harm is an easy mistake to make.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lispy in Scheme | An incremental approach to interpreter construction - <AUTHOR> http://pointlessprogramming.wordpress.com/lispy-in-scheme/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this in the off chance that I can get some criticisms/suggestions about the series, design or implementation of the interpreter. This is not meant as an instruction on the right way to do it. I'd appreciate any comments if you have the time to look through this.</comment>


Google I/O Developer Keynote [video] - <AUTHOR> https://events.google.com/io/ <comment><USER2> Some of my highlights:

\- The big move to on-device ML for things like speech recognition. This was especially demonstrated with an accessibility angle, showing global subtitles available for any application. And an assistant that allowed you to answer and reply to phone calls using TTS and back.

\- Android Q big focus on privacy, promoting privacy to a top level menu item in settings, as well as adjustments in apps to provide ready-access to privacy features.

\- Large focus on security, including calling out Gartner reports many times, having the most secure operating system in a number of tests, and most secure device (Pixel).

\- Google Home products rebranded as Google Nest. Launch of Google Nest Hub Max ($229), with Camera allowing for Duo calling, and a nice hand gesture to silence the device when loud/noisy (no more shouting)

\- Pixel 3a (XL) devices launched, at a lower price point of $399 ($479) with a decent set of features. No longer Verizon exclusive.

\- Google wants to be "Helpful"

<comment><USER3> Sounds like exactly what Apple said when they launched the X. All on board AI, secure enclave, no shipping your data off to the cloud for security.

The issue with Google is that they're an advertising company, so they're always going to have an incentive that pushes them to market your data unlike Apple.

<comment><USER4> Then why are they releasing on-device voice recognition to replace their cloud-based voice recognition?

<comment><USER5> Because it's faster and works with spotty/no reception?

(I'm just guessing because I can't find details on this stuff by wading through the feed.)

Also, just because it's doing local inference doesn't mean it won't be uploading data back to Google periodically. As GP said, they have a strong incentive to do this, so it's reasonable to just assume they will do this until they can prove otherwise.

<comment><USER6> And doing the inference locally, and just uploading transcripts for the most part is way more cost effective. They don't have to pay for the power on these endpoints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That live transcription built into Android Q that works on device and for any app is incredible. I can see so many uses for that myself, I cannot imagine how awesome something like that would be for people who have difficulty hearing.

</comment><comment><USER8> On device speech recognition is pretty great, but as a whole the keynote was pretty conservative. Probably because they promised too much stuff in previous years that either wasn't released or quickly failed.

</comment><comment><USER9> As models start fitting on devices, what keeps it a competitive advantage? Are specific models patentable? Copyrightable?

What's stopping Apple or a foreign company from shipping these models themselves?

<comment><USER10> Creating & improving that model is the competitive advantage. It's like saying what is the competitive advantage of compiled executables that run on customer devices. I estimate it's copywriteable.

<comment><USER9> But any would be copy-cat could simply push out the new model a day later.

I'm also struggling with whether such a model should fall under copyright. Models would naturally converge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The on-device Machine Learning sounds pretty amazing. Does anyone know if this will be a part of AOSP or be a closed-source extension (like digital wellbeing)?</comment>


Richard Dawkins: If AI Ran the World, Maybe It Would Be a Better Place - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/videos/richard-dawkins-if-ai-ran-the-world-maybe-it-would-be-a-better-place/ <comment><USER2> I find it so interesting that many people are concerned about AI "waking up" and taking over, which I don't believe can ever happen, but are blissfully unworried about this much more serious and immediate danger: that we ourselves will _choose_ to put machines in control of things they cannot possibly understand. It is the kind of thinking reflected here -- remarkably romantic and naïve for a self-styled "skeptic" \-- that exposes us to this danger.

"It might not be such a bad thing if we went extinct" and ceded the world to our machines? For all his classy, educated-sounding British accent, this man is a nutcase.

<comment><USER3> > For all his classy, educated-sounding British accent, this man is a nutcase.

He just seems to not like people at all, over the years he's gotten more and more aggressive and abrasive when debating anyone about anything. He just comes across as a very unpleasant person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Assuming AI decided humans were still necessary. Without us it would be a safer place for the planet, but we'd miss out.

<comment><USER5> After seeing the results of US politics in the last year, the AI would be foolish to keep us around it should be pretty apparent that we cannot be trusted especially en masse.

<comment><USER6> You think there was a time in US politics that an AI would choose to keep us around?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Depends on who programmed the AI.

<comment><USER8> Not even just that - depends on how the training data was gathered

<comment><USER9> And the choice of objective function.

[http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03](http://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/2012-04-03)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the most disturbing things to me about a potential AI future is that anything beyond a very basic education will not be necessary. No point other than personal enjoyment to learn about physics, computer science, engineering, electronics, AI, etc. Not only that, but at some point technology would be so advanced, it may not be possible for a human to understand how things actually work. Everything we know about how our society works will be limited to "lies to children".

</comment><comment><USER11> Only one way to find out, from the POV of an evolutionary biologist.

</comment><comment><USER12> better for who.. or what?

<comment><USER13> Probably for the sum, or weighted average of happiness of all conscious entities on the planet. This may include ants, dogs, humans, and non- biological consciousness/beings.

<comment><USER14> If an AI were created to run things, I feel like it would more likely make us stop using hydrocarbon fuels before it would go all terminator on us, as that would take into account our natural right to life right along with all other creatures. That is, if we program it that way. Asimov's _The Evitable Conflict_ from "I, Robot" fits right along with what you're saying about there being some sort of weighted average driven decision process.

Although, I fear we'd probably end up with a "Butlerian Jihad" instead...</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help me scam a CL scammer - <AUTHOR>

I have a Craigslist scammer trying to buy a phone off of me. I'm wondering if someone has experience with that kind of thing and wants to have some fun.
Send me an email and we can talk. I will be posting updates here later.
v the_at_symbol slowpoison the_dot enn eee tee <comment><USER2> Except having some fun, please email his email address to the dozens of email address list CL scam websites so his email comes up when someone Googles him. This way you can prevent someone else from being scammed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, will do that.</comment></comment>


Researcher sets up illegal 420,000 node botnet for IPv4 Internet map - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/19/carna_botnet_ipv4_internet_map/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just saw this posted here yesterday: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5395009>

Interestingly, I fell for the sensationalist headline of the Register instead of clicking the original HN link entitled "Port scanning /0 using insecure embedded devices" (which I saw and ignored).

I wonder if it will be same here on HN!

<comment><USER3> I did the same. Network programming and embedded devices are both not my forte, but this headline grabbed me. Can't take back my upvote now!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it raises an interesting point: how many interesting links get overlooked because of poor titles? And how many titles are more interesting than the links?

Coming from a technical/academic background, good copy is not something that is emphasised - are we missing a trick?

<comment><USER4> A specific problem I see a lot on HN is blog post titles that do not make sense out of context. Titles like "Thoughts on music" or "An update on performance" might make sense if I'm reading on your site, but it gives no incentive to click through in the first place. This problem is exacerbated by HN's recent zero tolerance policy for headline changes.

<comment><USER5> I think I'm going to write up a nice study of comparative multitenant app-mesh queuing performance or something--and then, just for HN, I'll set the actual blog post title to:

> This Is A Bad Title With No Relevance; If You Revert To It You're A Bad > Editor And You Should Feel Bad

...and then give the link a more sensible (but slightly editorializing) title when I submit it to HN, and see what happens. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jesus. If getting that many bots in an evening is so easy, it's a wonder botherders spend so much effort on exploiting vulnerabilities in apps or engaging in phishing. Granted, Linux boxes probably aren't going to have the banking or email info you could grab off a Windows machine, but at the very least you could generate a decent number of bitcoins for very little effort. Actually, for that matter, 420k bots could launch a pretty nasty DDoS were the herder so inclined. That's enough firepower to take out some fairly large services, which I'm sure someone would be willing to pay for.

<comment><USER7> Given the number of these that are some form of router, why waste time bitcoin mining? Just MITM everyone.

<comment><USER6> HTTPS would tend to rob you of anything interesting, though.

<comment><USER8> For many users and many sites, SSL stripping is still quite a significant vulnerability.

<http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/sslstrip/>

Assuming DNSSEC isn't in use, controlling someone's DNS settings is enough to carry out an SSL stripping attack!

<comment><USER9> Which is why everyone needs to learn about HSTS (my new favorite thing). There's room for a stripping attack upon first connecting and being redirected from http to https but from then on you've mitigated most of the problem.

<comment><USER10> You use webmitm[1] or ettercap[2] to get the traffic. Sure users will get a cert warning, but you are going to at least catch a few people that click through it.

[1] <http://manned.org/webmitm/8187425a>

[2] [http://samiux.blogspot.com/2011/05/howto-sniffing-ssl- with-e...](http://samiux.blogspot.com/2011/05/howto-sniffing-ssl-with- ettercap-on.html)

<comment><USER7> Amusingly the general classes of "users who leave default passwords" and "users who click through a warning" are going to have a big intersection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has to be some of the best research done on the public Internet itself in the past 10 years. I'm not sure what I'm going to try and do with the dump of data, but I can't imagine not finding something to extract from the ~600GB.

Highly illegal, yet highly intriguing that building a 400k+ node botnet is this damn simple.

<comment><USER12> That's ~600GB _compressed_ \- over 9TB when decompressed...... extremely slowly by ZPAQ. Seriously, at current rates the entire data set would take over 100 days to decompress on my computer. I'm only downloading a subset so I expect decompression will only take a couple of weeks. -_-

<comment><USER13> Are you extracting TO another device?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I predict more and more "interesting research" will be done anonymously, like this. This time was blatantly illegal, but simply releasing security vulnerabilities, if you're not willing to comply fully with a vendor's requests, might be prudent to do anonymously as well.

</comment><comment><USER15> This speaks about Internet scale and the vast problems of security we shall face in the coming decades

I mean rtm's Internet worm was supposed to be the great wake up call - <USER2> thirty years later look !

<comment><USER16> _"This speaks about Internet scale and the vast problems of security we shall face in the coming decades"_

Exactly... And the very fact that even people don't see anything wrong with "autonomous cars", probably "because this time the company in charge is going to create a separate network whis is really secure" is precisely part of the problem.

We live in a world were people who are supposed to be smart enough to program all these machines and set up all these infrastructure are thinking: _"Nothing can ever go wrong with this"_.

As a result we have more and more insecurity and the problem is only going to get worse.

And I've got a bridge to sell to people who think that autonomous are never going to get hacked...

<comment><USER17> Some autonomous cars will be hacked in the future. But it does not mean that they are not a great idea. If we reduce car accidents to half of accidents we have _now_ it would be amazing. Imagine being able to drink and then return home safely, on your own car. Imagine being able to pick up your kids without having to go, or playing with them instead driving. Or having sex with your significant other instead of driving, or lurking on the internet instead of driving, etc. Autonomous cars are a huge deal. Some of them being hacked is not a reason to not have them.

<comment><USER18> What are you talking about 'hacked in the future'? Cars have been hacked for years.

<https://www.google.com/?q=tadayoshi+kohno+automobile>

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't mean to sound like such a jerk about it :-)

<comment><USER17> Don't worry, I did not take it personally. Besides the link is interesting :).

OTOH, I was talking about autonomous cars. AFAIK none of those was hacked yet (but regular cars were hacked, as proven by your link).

Peace!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _After releasing the code overnight the report's writer found 420,000 suitable botnet endpoints ... The botnet was able to spread quickly and efficiently just using the four login combinations and was soon reporting back in healthy numbers._

That doesn't actually say he infected 420,000 machines, does it?

<comment><USER20>
      To further verify our sample data, we developed a small binary that could be uploaded to insecure devices.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5395009>

<http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/paper.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Github repository which includes the raw data dump: <https://github.com/InternetCensus2012/InternetCensus2012>

</comment><comment><USER22> Can somebody here ballpark how much this would cost if you rented servers instead of using a botnet?

<comment><USER23> The problem with renting is that your provider will probably shutdown you, if your scan rate is high. At least that is the problem with large dedicated server hosters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Using the botnet to run security patches is what fascinates me.

> But it soon found it was getting competition from a malicious botnet dubbed > Aidra and the researcher adapted the binary to block this competitor where > possible[...]

<comment><USER18> My understanding is that it's actually not that uncommon for botnet malware to patch the exploit that it came in on.

I too wonder if this is some deep principle at work or just something obvious.

<comment><USER25> You don't want other malware running on your botnet. They take up resources and may make the owner realise that their computer is infected. If you patch their biggest security holes, their computer keeps on running smoothly and nobody suspects a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hmm...I wonder if this has anything to do with <https://factorable.net/weakkeys12.extended.pdf>

<comment><USER8> The paper says that they compromised machines by guessing credentials -- not by breaking crypto. ("Four simple stupid default telnet passwords" is how the paper refers to the scope of the vulnerability.)

<comment><USER26> Agreed, I just happened to skim over the paper to spot any similarities but there appear to be none; in fact the paper's authors have used EC2 instances ---a legal means. Also noteworthy difference is the paper's limited attention to SSH/TLS ports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for the list of 1.3 billion potentially in-use IP addresses! I had to spend USD15 to run 8 medium EC2 instances for 16 hours to only find 200++ million hosts.

<comment><USER28> So the same results can be achieved for less than a hundred bucks without the risk of spending the rest of your life in jail?

<comment><USER27> Not quite. My method was far from what this guy is doing. I only did a minimal ping, one packet per IP with a Python script:

      s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.getprotobyname("icmp"))
      for address in addresses:
        s.sendto(pkt, (address, 1))
      s.close()

At the same time, I had tcpdump running, i.e. "tcpdump -i en1 icmp[icmptype] == icmp-echoreply" to capture the replies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Potentially risks thousands of years in jail". Did I miss the post on the invention of cryogenic jails?

<comment><USER30> Well he would be sentenced to thousands of years in jail not made to serve them all against nature and death. When someone is given several consecutive life sentences no one goes looking for them when they are reborn!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> this bit is much more interesting: <http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2013/Mar/166>

</comment><comment><USER32> > _A reboot of the infected system would wipe the binary completely and..._

Why in the heavens would you reboot obviously badly administrated machines quite literally half across the globe if you otherwise took every initiative to not harm the target machines and keep your foot print as small as possible? (lowest possible priority, watchdog) Killing the process and removing the files should have been more than enough and you just don't know what a reboot could do to these systems; regardless of how much the admins of those machines are to blame.

<comment><USER33> It doesn't say that he reboots the compromised machines, just that if the sysadmin happens to reboot then the bot would disappear.

<comment><USER34> I hope they did not infect any medical device e.g. a ventilator.

<comment><USER35> I hope there are no medical devices(e.g. a ventilator) accessible from the public internet with a default password.

<comment><USER36> Hope, or expect?

<comment><USER35> Unfortunately, only hope.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Getting a life (on Saturdays) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webengage.com/2013/05/20/we-are-now-off-on-saturdays/

<comment><USER2> Good move. This will pay off.</comment>


The 90/10 rule - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/6/10/90-10-rule <comment><USER2> This reminds me of Blizzard's motto of a depth first, accessibility later approach (<http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10773>).

Sure, you can focus on a few features that allows you to cater to your core market. But, what if they outgrow your program? What if they want to go to the next "level"?

A "deep" program like Photoshop allows for that flexibility. A beginner can start off with perhaps the most basic of features but as they become more comfortable with it, at least they still have the flexibility to move on to the next set of (more complex) features.</comment>


Delhi: The World's Most Polluted City - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160425-new-delhi-most-polluted-city-matthieu-paley/ <comment><USER2> The air quality in Karachi and Lahore is really, really bad as well. Spend one work day in Lahore wearing a clean white collared shirt and then take a photo of the shirt...</comment>


They released Tinder for Investors - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/tech/bullboard <comment><AUTHOR> I'm honest! Because I'm fed up with app ads, limitations in-app purchases and other bull shit. And would like to share guy's work with audience to help people do better at finance.

</comment><comment><USER2> Please be honest about your involvement with a submitted product</comment>


Will Nokia's first WP7 phone run Qt apps? - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/87702-nokias-first-wp7-device-outed-on-video

<comment><USER2> As a commercial license holder with 7 years experience that would make my day. However, we should approach this a bit differently. The question should not be will Nokia's first wp7 phone run qt apps. It should be will we be able to develop wp7 apps using Qt technologies. I am specifically speaking of QML. Qt has been using web style technologies for a while. I use CSS to style my c++ apps for example. QML is basically what amounts to javascript and a json like syntax sitting on top of a c++ runtime. With that in mind, it should not be that difficult for them to allow QtCreator to target, Symbian, MeeGo, traditional apps with QDeclaritiveView, a new Windows 8 runtime and a new WP7 runtime.

It would be huge if Nokia was able to leverage the existing Qt developer base for there new wp7 phones. Personally, I am way more excited about the N9 running MeeGo than any of the future wp7 devices. However that could change based on the developer tools available. A Dev stack that runs on linux, osx and windows that I already know and use (QtCreator, QMake etc) would be huge.

<comment><USER3> Creator has a long way to go to be a viable development tool for QML. This stuff is still quite rough.

Granted, the N9 finally has a processor with enough horsepower to handle the Declarative runtime, so maybe there's hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, then you could develop for WP7 and Win8 using HTML+CSS or... Qt?

</comment><comment><USER5> Nokia's CTO categorically said no in a video interview a couple months back.</comment>


Ask HN: VAT and sales taxes for small SaaS - <AUTHOR> Hello fellow HNewsers.
I would love to learn how you handle VAT (Value Added Tax – and other applicable sales related taxes) for your small (or large) SaaS businesses.
For example: the VAT rules are quite complex in the EU. The rate you pay is based on the location of the customer, rather than where you are located. In some countries elsewhere I know there to be a threshold you need to reach before you have to start paying. Additionally it seems the rules and rates keep changing.
My question to you is:

  - Do you handle this yourself? If so, how much time does it take?
  - Do you outsource it to a third party? If so to whom, and would you recommend them?
  - Do you altogether ignore it, and hope you won't be caught?
 When first becoming consciously aware of the need to collect the applicable taxes myself I was quite surprised to find it wasn't something companies such as Stripe handles for you out of the box. It seems like a no-brainer service for a payment provider to handle?
There are services like Paddle which act as the merchant and deal with the taxes for you. Paddle comes at quite a hefty premium though (5% + 50c/transaction – meaning if you have a subscription price of 5EUR and sell to a customer in a country where the VAT is 20% VAT, the maths end up looking like: 5 - 20% - (50c + 25c) = 3.25EUR going to you. In other words Paddle effectively costs you 15% of the sales price...). The premium might of course still be worth it given they deal with all the bureaucracy.
Thanks for your time and suggestions! <comment><AUTHOR> For those coming across this post later, here is a nice comparison of FastSpring, Paddle, Gumroad, and Avangate [1] (in fact the whole post is an interesting read).

It also sounds like Quaderno [2] + Stripe is a common and decent combo.

I think I'll go with Paddle for now. It sounds simple and safe.

1: [https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/my-vat-moss-experience- so-...](https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/t/my-vat-moss-experience-so- far/2497/51) 2: [https://www.quaderno.io/](https://www.quaderno.io/)

<comment><USER2> Hi there! I'm the founder of Quaderno. Managing EU VAT MOSS shouldn't be cost you so much money. In fact, VAT is a consumption tax and, therefore, it's paid by your customer. You business is just a mere collector of that tax. Quaderno can help you calculate taxes in real time based on your customer location, issue tax receipts automatically, generate a billing history for your customers, and generate the tax reports you'll need for your filings. Much cheaper than paying 15% of your income :) Let me know if you have any questions. Happy to help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I was doing a lot of ecommerce we used to recommend Avalara (www.avalara.com), for both US and international businesses in regards to sales/use tax compliance and import duties.

They are not a SaaS startup where you just sign up and use it, but for all the headaches they took off clients hands they were worth it. I don't remember their costs, and it has been long enough now it probably wouldn't be valid anyway. Not sure they'd be cost effective for a smaller business but I'd call them if I had a need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent! Thanks, I'll check them out!</comment></comment>


How the work-life balance of one IT guy threw the NYC subway system into chaos - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/2018/07/09/mta-it-department-miguel/#4l3SR496fqq9 <comment><USER2> Interesting how it's the personal work-life balance of one employee tagged in the title, when it should have been a management staffing failure to maintain proper skill mixes and redundancies for their workforce.

<comment><USER3> And Miguel will suffer the most from it.

If I were him, I'd make sure I have some kind of job security in place before I begin cross-training my replacements.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Startup Weekend Newcaste Hack Twilio + Insurance - <AUTHOR> http://insurance-app.herokuapp.com/# Weekend hack for the Newcastle startup weekend!<p>Feedback will be much appreciated guys!!! <comment><USER2> Really neat idea - I can see it working incredibly well for those of us just looking for a quick estimate when thinking about buying a car.

I really hope you guys take it further, and maybe sneak in the ability to check motorcycles too? :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm always intrigued by Twilio hacks. I'm always intrigued by APIs that work in the 'real world' or have physical outputs - i.e. not just web apps talking to each other.

Are there other examples of APIs like this? (e.g. MOO for printing)

</comment><comment><USER4> Lots of: "Message recieved [sic] in wrong format. Please retry"

The topbar is really confusing.

Other than that, good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Top bar is only for a product demo at 5pm so everyone can clearly see. :)

Thanks for the great feedback!

The error message is being changed as we speak to be more specific so users know where they went wrong.

Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice work - cool idea for a Startup weekend project</comment>


'Rocket science' VS 'OS Development' - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/indian_os.html#c469367 <comment><USER2> There seems to be a disconnect between his argument for tighter engineering standards as the single key for building better software and the stated fact that software is not bound by the constraints of physical reality.

In designing and producing the physical components of a 747 (like a bolt to use his example), there isn't the same level of potential abstraction as there is for even a very basic software component.

The fact that he's talking specifically about the development of a secure OS does strengthen his argument though. So in that sense I agree with him.

</comment><comment><USER3> We insist that software should, for any input, either accept and work normally (if the input is valid) or reject and fail gracefully and safely (if the input is invalid). I'm not yet convinced that applying this standard to engineering projects will find a much better success rate than applying it to software has found.</comment>


Hacker Vanity - Get GitHub user stats from the command line - <AUTHOR> http://thechangelog.com/post/2903183012/vain-check-github-watchers-forks-from-the-command-line

<comment><USER2> How does one get there prompt to look like that?</comment>


A Bird's-Eye View of Nature's Hidden Order - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/hyperuniformity-found-in-birds-math-and-physics-20160712/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the awesome interactive visualization of random distributions found on [https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/#sampling](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/#sampling)

That link refers to it as Poisson-disc sampling and offers several really easy to grasp visual explanations of the algorithm and the end goal, as well as working code.</comment>


Open Alpha of SpatialOS MMO and large scale simulation back end - <AUTHOR> https://spatialos.improbable.io/ <comment><USER2> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13167796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13167796)</comment>


"This Feature Should Be Easy" - <AUTHOR> https://inessential.com/2019/11/03/this_feature_should_be_easy <comment><USER2> "I can't believe it doesn't let you do [blank]. It's _literally just a checkbox_."

If I ever hear that again I think I will add _literally just a checkbox_ that doesn't do anything.</comment>