New Linux userland rootkit with anti-debugging, new backdoors and pcap hiding - <AUTHOR> http://blackhatlibrary.net/Azazel <comment><USER2> I think it was mentioned on a comment, but just to make it clear:

A rootkit is not a virus nor a way to obtain privileges on a Linux box, but a set of tools providing various features to keep hidden a root access to the hacked box.

This rootkit provides various backdoors allowing to get root ssh access and advanced anti-detection features, but as far as I know, this package won't hurt you badly as far as you don't manipulate it with a privileged user.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I misunderstood the grammar somehow, but did you just say:

> This rootkit provides various backdoors allowing to get root ssh access

followed by:

> this package won't hurt you badly

Allowing root ssh is the ultimate death of your machine's security. Having this installed hurts you badly.

<comment><USER4> > Allowing root ssh is [...] your machine's security.

Taking stuff out of context is fun!

He said it won't hurt you badly as long as you don't run it as root. From that, I understand that it can't install itself unless it's run as a privileged user.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that, I guess I misread a bit.

So what he's saying is that there's no privilege escalation exploit packaged with this rootkit. Gotcha.

Still I wouldn't mention "this package won't hurt you" along with such a tool. Many userland exploits exist.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I wrote my comment quickly, this is what I meant.

I said that "it won't hurt you" as a reaction to people saying "I won't even click on that link" in some comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The site seems to be getting hammered by HN so here's the google cache [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8o5FkN6...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8o5FkN6LOuYJ:blackhatlibrary.net/Azazel+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER5> And link to source on github: [https://github.com/chokepoint/azazel](https://github.com/chokepoint/azazel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Azazel hooks ptrace() and returns -1, hence denying any debugging from occuring. The message displayed to the sysadmin is really more of a joke than anything and will definitely set off alarms that something is wrong.

Okay, that's interesting - how would you remove this hook?

<comment><USER7> Use statically-linked utilities compiled elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> Can you explain in a more newbie friendly language? How do you detect this? Then how do you remove this? This type of high level tools becoming more mainstream as time passes. Today there is not much generic anti-tools for this or the upcoming ones!

<comment> Tuna-Fish Firstly, this is not some virus or worm that works it's way onto your machine. It's a payload that someone puts there possibly among other things. This means that if you have this on your machine, or if you have reason to think you have this on your machine, simple removal is not an acceptable solution. Whoever put the rootkit on the machine could have done almost anything else while he did it, and you are not guaranteed to find it all. If you find this on your machine, you need to produce a _data-only_ backup of the machine, kill the partitions, and set it up again.

As these rootkits are designed by rather smart people to overcome all existing tools, there simply cannot be generic tools that catch them all. If you get hit by a bunch of script kiddies using outdated tools, things like rkhunter and chkrootkit can help. Modern rootkits are almost by definition undetectable by them. If it's actually new, the way you find out about it is typically either a separate NID box between the machine and the wall that alerts, or the behaviour of the box changing.

<comment><USER9> So for a low traffic Web server like application, we might be running the OS itself (/) from a read only filesystem (e.g. making a 'live' CD-ROM or USB image) and having read/write only for user files and logs?

End user here: I just have a Linux laptop, interested in servers on the 'wild' web

<comment><USER10> Booting from an unchangeable image is the Joyent SmartOS approach, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title suggests there is a new virus for Linux, but I see a wiki listing features from the malware and even linking to source code on Github. Was this thing engineered as some sort of demonstration? Or how else did they get the source code?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's a demonstration of various techniques used in more modern rootkits. As such, certain bits and pieces, like its masking of ptrace() is set to an obvious message. The blog post regarding the release -- [http://www.chokepoint.net/2014/02/detecting-userland- preload...](http://www.chokepoint.net/2014/02/detecting-userland-preload- rootkits.html) \-- is much more useful than this wiki page in discussing how certain things are accomplished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Running "make install" will inject the live kit into your system. While > removal is not impossible, it's an unnecessary and painful procedure, not to > mention you may forget to remove it.

Why even have an install step for this? Actually, why does it exist?

<comment><USER13> You're supposed to install it on a VM to study it, and then throw away the VM

<comment><USER6> I think I may do this at some stage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Website is offline No cached version of this page is available.

...and we broke it.

This is, for all intended purposes, a static page. When will people learn to put a caching nginx in the front... that's all it takes, really.

<comment><USER4> The phrase is "for all intents and purposes", although your variation also fits, very interesting!

<comment><USER15> Curiously, I use that variation as well. I tried to look it up to find out where I could have picked it up, but couldn't get any interesting results. Does anyone else uses that?

<comment><USER16> Similar: [http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/32/intensive- purposes/](http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/32/intensive-purposes/)

<comment><USER17> But "intended purposes" actually makes sense in context.

<comment><USER16> Yes, that's one of the defining features of an "eggcorn", that it does make sense. Or even more sense than the original. Here's a more thurough definition: [http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/about/](http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/about/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if all-statically-linked Linux distros will become popular on the server as a defense against userland rootkits like this.

<comment><USER19> That would be cool. Are there any? I'm aware of sta.li, but it doesn't seem to be there yet.

As a matter of fact, is it possible to get stuff like nsswitch working without dynamic linking on Linux?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just a quick test with LTTng (lttngtrace part of lttngtop) : [http://pastebin.com/rvebt7rp](http://pastebin.com/rvebt7rp)

I know kernel tracing is cheating for this kind of backdoor, but it can be easy ;-)

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra I thought that Vernor Vinge greatly exaggerated hackability when he wrote Fire in the Deep, but now I see he was right and I was wrong. Go read it now.

Scary.

<comment><USER21> [http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones- Thought/dp/081251...](http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-Zones- Thought/dp/0812515285)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't even want to click on this.

<comment><USER23> It's a wiki with a link to github repo. You need to compile it first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What are some applications for this?

<comment><USER25> Security research, malware analysis, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Will this work on OpenBSD?

<comment><USER27> No, this is very much Linux-only.

<comment><USER26> But in theory could something similar have been developed for OpenBSD?

<comment><USER28> There is even a book about designing FreeBSD rootkits: [http://www.amazon.com/Designing-BSD-Rootkits-Introduction- Ha...](http://www.amazon.com/Designing-BSD-Rootkits-Introduction-Hacking- ebook/dp/B002MZAR6I/)

<comment><USER29> OpenBSD does not have loadable kernel modules, so the techniques described for FreeBSD most likely do not apply.

As for the Azazel rootkit, it uses LD_PRELOAD. According to the ld.so manpage[1] it is ignored for setuid/setgid executables. This looks like the behaviour is not exactly that of the Linux ld.so so perhaps this limits the rootkit's impact.

[1] [http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=ld.so&section=1](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=ld.so&section=1)

<comment><USER30> openbsd does have loadable kernel modules

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=lkm](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=lkm)

LD_PRELOAD and friends are also ignored on linux for setuid/setgid binaries, otherwise privilege escalation would be trivial, just start any dynamicly linked setuid binary with LD_PRELOAD and go to town.

<comment><USER31> OpenBSD's kernel modules are for development only. They require a securelevel change and a reboot to enable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> lol , is ptrace() hooking only technique that backdoor has as a anti-debugging feature? If so , i will shit to my pants.

</comment><comment><USER33> someone from blackhatlibrary.net here?

<comment><USER34> Ping.

edit: Just created this account to answer this question. Otherwise I'm only on HN to lurk.</comment></comment>


Coinlist - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2017/05/funding-friday-coinlist/ <comment><USER2> I think the blockchains now are like the internet was in '95\. Besides BTC's proof of work consensus algorithm the majority of the rest of technologies are in alpha/beta stages, ready to launch sometimes next year: proof of stake algos, smart contracts, blockchain based computing, the lightning network, most of the governments not knowing how to treat the crypto economy, etc.

While the market capitalization grew from 20 billion usd, close to 70 billion this year alone, I think the big growth will start next year, when some of these technologies will reach the production ready phase.

As a technologist, I wouldn't forgive it to me, in say 10 years, that I didn't tried to ride the blockchain train if it becomes mainstream.

<comment><USER3> I used the internet in '95\. It was awesome: I played Trade Wars with my friends. I received and sent email with Juno. I chatted with random strangers on BBSes (a few were super weird, but whatevs).

Despite the limited options and the slowness of my 28k baud modem, the internet in '95 still fulfilled my needs for entertainment, communication and socialization. Blockchain today doesn't fulfill any human needs.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. One of my eternal questions about shiny new technologies is, "Great, but who's getting value from it on a daily basis?"

I keep asking this about Bitcoin, et al. For 6 years I've been getting, "Oh, it's just about to take off! You'll see soon!"

The Internet was definitely delivering value daily by 1990. It wasn't just a technological curiosity. Email, Usenet, mailing lists, file transfer, remote computing: all providing the sort of benefits that let researchers and academics justify paying to connect up.

I think cryptocurrencies and blockchains are technologically neat, and I appreciate them on that level. But neat technology doesn't always end up being useful.

<comment><USER5> The raison d'être of Bitcoin is that it makes the entire banking infrastructure (ie. the equivalent of the huge settlement industry currently in place to keep global finance running) accessible to everyone with a smartphone and internet access. Or think of it like this: Before the internet the knowledge you had access to depended mainly on the people and libraries around you. With the internet you gained access to all the knowledge in the world. Blockchains are doing the same with regards to the accessibility of financial resources and services.

<comment><USER4> Again, I understand the _theory_ of Bitcoin. What I'm pointing out is that the _actual use_ of Bitcoin does not yet appear to support the theory.

Here you are basically reiterating the metaphor "the blockchain is like the Internet was back in the day". Since that's what I was responding to, I already am familiar with the metaphor. Repeating it doesn't help me.

What I'm saying is that for the metaphor to be useful in terms of evaluating the commercial/societal impact of a technology, I want to see evidence of utility that is similar to what we could see for the early Internet.

So who do you believe the early vanguard is? Who is actually getting value? Who are the people previously isolated from global finance that are now making daily or at least weekly transactions?

I see you're already aware of M-Pesa, which is only a couple of years older than Bitcoin. But M-Pesa has, per CNN, "30 million users in 10 countries and a range of services including international transfers, loans, and health provision. The system processed around 6 billion transactions in 2016 at a peak rate of 529 per second." Bitcoin's numbers are orders of magnitude smaller, and it's my impression that it would be much smaller still if we subtracted the speculative transactions to match what people use M-Pesa for.

<comment><USER5> The most important (legal) use case is probably as an alternative to international wire transfers or services like Western Union. There are a few startups in this space, like luno or localbitcoins.

<comment><USER4> Apparently I'm not being clear here. I understand the _theory_. I am looking for proof of _actual daily use_ among specific groups of real-world users. And by real-world, I mean people who are not in it for the tech, but just regular people who are doing it because it's the best solution for their needs.

That startups exist doesn't prove anything about use. What I'm looking for is traction.

<comment><USER5> I found a good article that you might be interested in: [https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-money- transfer/](https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-money-transfer/) (make sure to read the comments as well for some actual use cases!) Growth in usage for international remittances indeed seems to be minimal. An important takeway from the article is that changes to people's behaviours take much much longer than we usually expect. In the countries mentioned, people still rely on cash agents rather than using the available (and cheaper) online banking tools. A similar story can be observed in e-commerce. 25 years after the invention of the WWW e-commerce has only reached 10% of all sales. A similar development can be expected when consumers are changing their banking behaviours. These things take a lot of time.

Now, regarding actual demand for blockchain assets (outside of speculation): Previous price rallies in 2016 were most likely caused by the Chinese as a method for capital flight ( [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-02/bitcoin- surges-abov...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-02/bitcoin-surges- above-1000-china-unveils-new-capital-controls) ). Another recent surge in ethereum prices was caused by more and more ICOs, which use ethereum as way to crowdfund their project. So those two I believe are currently the most important sources of demand: Tax evasion / capital flight and funds raising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please stop pumping little mini Ponzi ICO's. Please stop shoving new tokens to get rich under the guise of "anti-spam." Please stop trying to get rich on tokens. Storj and it's stupid token preceded this stupid token.

Blockchains are useful for an extremely limited set of circumstances. They enhance trust at extreme throughput and expense. If you can solve trust almost any other way, its better. disclaimer, I'm long as fuck bitcoin, however I know that it's still risky, and has a rather unaddressed lists of vulnerabilities in it's wiki, and has very limited use cases beyond emergent ponzi value.

That being said, creating a digital scarcity to act as functional proxy for human productivity, thus money, is hampered by every new shitcoin. Digital scarcity can be ruined for a couple decades, and every new shitcoin enhances that negative outcome. Utility before pump and dump please.

<comment><USER7> HN really needs to start cracking down on the coin pumping, out right ponzis have no place here.

<comment><USER8> If you think particular submissions are inappropriate for HN, flag them. If you think particular comments are inappropriate for HN, downvote them. Similarly, up-vote submissions and comments you believe are substantive and contribute meaningfully. Each of us plays a role in curating HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo _Investing in token sales shouldn't just have the potential for profit, it should also be simple, understandable, and enjoyable. It's time to take token sales mainstream._

\- coinlist homepage

Because there isn't enough speculation in the space already. Wonder when this bubble pops?

The pitch must have been something like "did you know that there are over 800 coins listed on Coin Market Cap and that 795 of them are nothing more than vehicles for speculation. What if...what if we created a platform which allowed us to launch the next line of speculation?"

The person in the meeting who asked about practical use and societal benefit got overruled pretty quickly because all the VCs saw was $$$.

<comment><USER9> Also, this isn't taking token sales mainstream, token sales are already mainstream. This is making token sales available to the privileged (accredited investors) before they are available to the public.

<comment><USER10> On the plus side, token sales are actually mainstream - so companies will actually be able to choose this hacked together version of the old public securities model and controlling their own destiny via DAOs and, well, simply setting up shop outside of the US. Choice is a good thing for companies, and it's a clever compromise - but if the only way VCs can invest is with hacks like this, I'm not feeling bullish on America's chance of participating in this new economy.

<comment><USER11> I don't know how you consider token sales mainstream. I wrote a post explaining how difficult it is to participate in a token sale. www.arilewis.com/blog/2017/5/15/my-mom-cant-buy-an-ico

It's very plausible that there could be a bubble, but just to give some context, the cryptocurrency market is valued at $68 billion dollars. The Bloomberg US Internet Index went from $2.948 trillion at its peak to $1.193 trillion. We are nowhere those types of valuations.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but the internet at its peak was providing _real_ goods and services, not just a _financial_ service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there some sort of aggregator for these early crypto offerings? Still kicking myself for not participating in the Ethereum pre-sale after a friend linked it to me and I just wrote it off completely. Love me some gambling.

<comment><USER14> Check the bitcointalk forums. There are lots of altcoin announcement threads. Most are absolute drek and not worth your time, and most of the comments are people deceiving others or themselves by engaging in pumping/bashing. I scanned those a little more when I started, but they're awfully crowded now.

<comment><USER15> I think GP means an aggregating _fund_ , not a news aggregator.

<comment><USER16> Is there a mining aggregator? I've got a few decent GPUs around, enough to mine a couple hundred bucks worth of, eg Monero a month. I'd love to run a script to automatically jump in on new coins where GPU mining is feasible. Not the most profitable at the moment, but more like speculation. Am I stuck with dredging through news and manually mining each one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like there are at least three semi serious storage related blockchains: sia, filecoin and storj.

Are any of these reasonable to actually use at this point? It looks like siacoin doesn't actually allow for true backups yet. Filecoin hasn't launched. Haven't looked into storj much yet.

<comment><USER18> None of them are ready to use in a serious capacity yet. However, Sia's network has been live for 2 years now, and people are forming smart contracts, getting paid to host data, and backing up real files on the network. The fundamentals are solid -- it's just Bitcoin with one extra transaction type -- but there's a lot of potential left to be explored.

Based on the Filecoin announcement, they are building something very similar to Sia. It appears to depart from traditional Bitcoin proof-of-work consensus though. I'm looking forward to reading their whitepaper.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders of Sia.

<comment><USER17> I was under the impression that you can't currently recover your files from a seed on sia. Is that correct?

I was also wondering if siacoin is LN compatible. Can you speak to that? It looks like there is something similar up, but will I be able to pay for storage with any other LN compatible coin?

I'd have loved to see the value of coins like these that are supposed to provide a specific economic utility have their value essentially determined by it. For instance you could simply mint new bitseconds * mining efficiency each time that someone issues a proof of storage over a given time period. This way the value of bitseconds shouldn't never go above the real price for storage over time.

Obviously you'd need to set the mining efficiency below 1 to encourage people to actually store user files, or else it'd always be more profitable to just store for the mining rewards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article is about how Juan Benet's Protocol Labs is getting into cryptocurrencies to fund protocol development. The basic idea seems be that a new protocol will have a cryptocurrency attached to it that will capture some of the value the protocol provides, and this will provide funds for developing additional new protocols.

In addition, if I understand it correctly, they are developing a way of making investing in the development of new protocols into securities that ordinary people can buy, instead of raising funds from VC's.

[https://protocol.ai/blog/protocol-labs-creating-new- networks...](https://protocol.ai/blog/protocol-labs-creating-new-networks/)

</comment><comment><USER20> If you like to follow good blockchain progress to move beyond proof of work take a look at [https://dfinity.network](https://dfinity.network) using threshold relay chains.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's too weird and obscure to become a tech bubble, but making "pre-purchasing new digital coins" easier is not something I would support or encourage in any way.

<comment><USER22> I get (and agree) with your point but aren't they making it harder than other coins here by limiting the pre-sale to accredited investors?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How is this meaningfully different than Siacoin et al?

</comment><comment><USER24> coinlist announces SAFT - Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, inspired by YC Safe! [https://coinlist.co/about/help/saft/](https://coinlist.co/about/help/saft/)

anybody know why this is generally relevant w.r.t the regulatory landscape around bitcoins ?

</comment><comment><USER25> there is something odd about a new modern company like this not using SSD drives [https://coinlist.co/static/media/landing.6efaa9c2.png](https://coinlist.co/static/media/landing.6efaa9c2.png)

<comment><USER26> CoinList uses this background photo b/c those HDDs are shiny like silver coins.

The actual representation of tokens as a uint256 variable in Solidity contract is not as sexy ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't wait for the SEC to come in and crack down on the crypto space.

<comment><USER27> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Calm down folks, Coinlist is not for you (and not for me):

[https://coinlist.co/about/help/investors/2](https://coinlist.co/about/help/investors/2)

They require you to be an accredited investor. For those who don't know what it is:

It's the single biggest reason why rich become richer and the rest stay the same. In short, you have to have at least $200k yearly income (per individual) or $1M liquid net worth in order to be an accredited investor according to SEC.

I hate so much this regulation! Just because of some retarded voters can't realize risks they taking, the rest must be out of all sweet deals angels and VCs are making.

What the government tells you: stay where you are or invest in crappy index fund and it takes you about 23 years to get $1M if you invest $1000 each single month and every single year index grow 10% which never happens by the way.

I'm so so glad that first time in history the government forgot to put their heavy hand and I had a chance to invest in Ripple before Google Ventures did. So now, for the first time in my entire life, I'm enjoying the same rate of grow as Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

So folks enjoy the crypto-party, dance till music stops!

It won't last long before the government with support from leftists impose new regulations when a few retards lose their money in obviously scammy ICOs.

<comment><USER29> Google ventures bought a share of ripple labs. Sounds like you sunk money into useless and worthless ripple coins which are currently in a pump and dump due to there low float and majority control by a few insiders. You are invested in the penny stock of cryptocurrencies. I hope it ends well for you but I doubt it will.

<comment><USER28> > useless and worthless ripple coins

[https://ripple.com/files/xrp_cost_model_paper.pdf](https://ripple.com/files/xrp_cost_model_paper.pdf)

<comment><USER29> Can you find anyplace in that doc where it shows an individual being able to send ripple. It's a banking platform unless you are a bank xrp has no value.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Do what you love and the money will follow? - <AUTHOR>

In another thread this was brought up and I thought it might be a good thought experiment.
The refrain, "Do what you love and the money will follow," is repeatedly frequently.
Is it truth? Can you think of examples of doing something you'd love but it not provide for your financially? ("I love living in a log cabin in Alaska!")
Can you point to examples in your own life where you did follow this advice -- and it didn't pan out?
And if you share, maybe you can give us hackers an attempt to figure out why it didn't work out -- and how we can improve our own odds as we follow our passion in the future. <comment><USER4> I played poker for a living for over 5 years. I never really cared for it, but it paid very well, and so I told myself that if I just did it for a short while, I'd have enough money saved up that I could do whatever I wanted for the next 100.

While that is a solid theory, what happened was that I grew to hate it so much that I never spent enough hours to save up retirement-type amounts of money. I also became largely desensitized to money (when you can win or lose $10k in a day with ease, it's not too hard to convince yourself to buy a $500 camera) and spent way too much.

Eventually I realized that for those reasons, I was never going to get there, no matter how good I had gotten or how profitable the game was, so I left to do a startup. The pay is pretty low now, but I'm happier, because I enjoy the process rather than the results, and there is some realistic chance of a windfall at the end.

I think the optimal strategy is to pick something you enjoy but that can pay the bills. Most people could probably enjoy multiple professions. Choose the one you would enjoy that pays the best.

<comment><USER5> >I think the optimal strategy is to pick something you enjoy but that can pay the bills. Most people could probably enjoy multiple professions. Choose the one you would enjoy that pays the best.

I think this is pretty good advice, but with a caveat. Enjoyment is not just a boolean function, but varies from unbelievably painful to completely enjoyable. I think is more of a two-dimensional optimization problem than a simple matter of picking the maximal paying element from the column named 'fun and interesting'. Doing java development at a large company and doing python development at a small company would both rank 'fun and interesting' relative to the rest of the total set of available professions, but I would still seriously consider the python position, even though the java position is bound to pay a lot better on average. But maybe you meant that, and I am just misreading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Best piece of advice I every received from a poster: <http://despair.com/potential.html>

So, I've really hated my day job for years (ER nurse). It just paid too darn well. And, I've tried a whole bunch of things as possibilities to change careers: theology, philosophy, world religions, painting, sculpting, computer graphics, animation, furniture design, interior architecture, visual effects, video editing... And by trying, I mean, researching the hell out of it, taking formal training or actively studying on my own for more than a year.

Why did I do these things? Because I believed the "Do what you love, and money will follow" mantra. Problem: I wasn't making money doing what I loved, and therefore I had to keep doing what I hated for money, which was being a nurse. I was not willing to do the starving artist/philosopher thing for too long.

Solution: I found something that I like reasonably well, allows me to be creative and think widely and that has a potential to make a decent amount of cash, with potentially a huge financial upside: programming and starting my own business.

The chief problem with the "Do what you love and the money will follow" mantra, is that it essentially paints the career problem and money problem as a binary issue. Either do what you love, or do what you hate. There are many choices in between those things that have varying degrees of financial outcomes.

Another thought: If you do what you love, and feel continually pressured for cash, there is a lot of pressure to compromise yourself and your loves for money. Some handle that better than others. For example, there are a lot of people who start out wanting to be musicians, painters, artists or writers who try to do it for money. The problem comes when the rent is continuously due, and you're broke. You're then stuck with being a writer/painter/musician and needing to make cash. Do you write/paint/compose for purely commercial projects (like an ad agency), or do you only write/paint/compose what you love?

Finally: Speaking from experience, spend some time in LA, and you'll come to the conclusion that there are more people who are trying to chase their dreams and be actors/directors/filmmakers than the market will bear. This leads to a huge culture of abusing the people trying to get their break in those industries. After years of work and studing 3D modeling, animation and image compositing, I finally got offered an entry level job at Sony Pictures Imageworks (Big film VFX house in LA). Salary: $20 an hour, minimum of 60 hours per week if not 80 to 100, and you get laid off after the current movie finishes production in 4 months. You're then unemployed until the next round of FX films start post-production. Why did workers tolerate this? Because there were many more people vying for those jobs than there were positions available.

</comment><comment><USER7> Logically speaking, sure.

If you do what you're passionate about, you're sure to develop a strong set of skills for that particular subject. A strong set of skills for a subject _with a market_ makes you good competition, at a reasonable price.

As for myself, I remember writing a keylogger in Visual Basic when I was 11 because I wanted to steal my sister's AIM password. I loved everything about software development, and still do. Years later, I'm making 6 figures with Rails.

<comment><USER8> So did you get her password?

<comment><USER7> Yes. It was "paparoach", and I had very elegant conversations with her friends. I'm sure they had no idea it wasn't my sister.

>.>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some problems I have with this saying:

1.It implies the money part flows effortlessly from the "do what you love" part.

From what I've seen, people do something they love and then try and find a way to make money with it. Sometimes they are successful, and sometimes not, but in any case it involves effort to go from doing what you love to doing what you love for money.

2.It implies people have one passion or one reason to be on this earth. That is crap. You can have several passions or you may have none. I have many interests but I can't say for sure that I have a passion about any one thing - yet I've been able to make money following my interests and make money not following my interests.

3.It's often taken as meaning that making money doing something other than when you are doing what you love is somehow a lesser choice. Maybe so, maybe not. Should I fault the programmer whose real passion is ski-boarding because they'd rather make more money or make money doing something they know they can make money at and then use it to enjoy their passion in their spare time rather than making less money as a ski-bum or taking a risk in what may be a dead end venture? I don't think I can.

4.It implies people can't or shouldn't love the pursuit of money. This might be true insofar as money itself is just a store of value or a means to an end. The problem I have is that anyone with a desire for just starting businesses regardless of the product seems to be included, which I think is a wrong categorization. Businesses create wealth, money is just the representation of the wealth created by business. I see nothing wrong with pursuing business for business sake because to be successful in business, for most people, means you are creating value.

So my conclusion is that this saying is more useful for selling books than as real advice.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's better advice than this:

Do what you hate for money and the love will follow.

<comment><USER11> s/what/who

Still bad advice...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My mother is an excellent writer and novelist, but the market has completely dried up for that. Nobody really reads any more.

She's turned to writing scripts though, there seems to be more traction there.

<comment><USER13> I don't know if nobody reads. Nobody reads modern books, perhaps.

It's tough to say something meaningful in a medium that's existed for centuries. You know? So much has already been done that now the medium is shrinking. The people who do remain are less likely to be as talented, because the really talented people have moved on to other things.

Television, for instance. The last 10 years has seen better TV shows than ever existed in the past. The best-written thing I've come across in the last two years was The Wire. I'd compare the quality of writing in that to anything up- to-and-including Shakespeare. And it did stuff that you _couldn't_ have done in a novel. Or in a movie, for that matter.

Mind you, my all-time-favorite novel was published in 2006. And Mark Z Danielewski is still innovating within the form: his _House of Leaves_ is a classic, and it was written just 8 years ago. But those writers are rarer. There's less to be done within the form of pure prose than there was even 40 years ago.

<comment><USER14> _my all-time-favorite novel was published in 2006_

The Road? (I'm extrapolating from what you say about The Wire.)

<comment><USER13> I don't know why, but I really can't stand McCarthy. I've tried again and again, and the man is so imprecise with his language. I want to like him, because I like interpretations of his work by, say, the Coen Brothers, but I'll read a few pages of his book and just not be able to take it anymore.

No, my favorite book is a novel called _Adverbs_ , and it's by Daniel Handler, who wrote the kid's Series of Unfortunate Events. I've read it far too many times and I still love it, though now I spend a few months between reading it. And it's just incredibly beautiful. It's a collection of 17 short stories that are all interrelated, and it's playful with language to a fault. It's tough reading the first few times, but it's so worth grasping, because it does stuff I've never seen in other books.

So I don't think it's the best book ever written, but it's enjoyable and it's in love with words, and far too few people have heard it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If what you love is building finance-directed B2B desktop apps then, yeah, you're golden.

I think the key is directing your passion in a broad enough way that you can satisfy an unaddressed market demand. If you love building challenging software, there are many ways you can pragmatically apply that passion if you cast your net wide enough.

On the other hand, if you love building socially directed news-ranking sites with clickable arrows, your options will be somewhat limited.

</comment><comment><USER16> If the goal is to get rich, then do what creates value for others. If the goal is to enjoy every day then do what you love. The luckiest among us are able to figure out how to combine the two and create value while doing something they are passionate about.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did Gandhi get rich? Does it matter?

<comment><USER4> Would you want to trade places with Gandhi? I wouldn't.

<comment><USER18> You are missing the point. Ghandi wouldn't trade places with you either.

<comment><USER4> You are missing the point. Saying that getting rich doesn't matter because Ghandi didn't get rich is silly. You could use that argument, with some hero, in favor of anything.

<comment><USER18> Who said getting rich doesn't matter? It is what matters to you that is important, for all values of you. Being rich didn't matter to Ghandi. If you do what you love, you are likely to be happy, even if you are not rich. If you just love money, I suppose doing what you love is equivalent to getting rich.

Why does the thought that many people may consider Ghandi's life to be more meaningful than your own upset you so much? Boy, you have an ego...

For the record, Ghandi's accomplishment is not "putting his name in the history books", but rather "being spiritual and political leader of hundreds of millions of people and having a great impact on their lives".

<comment><USER4> This is just plain getting stupid. You've wandered so far off the topic in a maze of misunderstanding.

And the original poster implied it doesn't matter. And I pointed out that just because it doesn't matter to Ghandi (if it didn't) doesn't mean it shouldn't matter to others. And somehow you managed to derive from that that I am upset because a billion Indians like Ghandi better than me. Brilliant.

Gotta love Sunday conversations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What if you're not remotely arsed about getting mega-rich, but just want to get by and earn enough money to survive doing what you love? I'd rather live frugally and work on something fun than be loaded but despising what I spend ten hours a day doing.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is of course oversimplified. The argument seems to me like: 1) If you love what you do, you will care. You will go the extra mile to do it right. 2) After a couple of years of doing what you love, and caring, and improving every day, you will be very good at what you do. You will be able to beat most competitors (who don't really care and are in for a quick buck anyway). 3) Assuming your clients can tell the difference, you will never lack work. 4) Assuming your market is big enough to support you and your more important competitors, you will be able to pick clients, and rise your fees, and have lots of work anyway. 5) Then money follows the good work.

Now, there are 2 big assumptions here. One is that the world will be able to figure out how great you are and how lame are most of the others. If they cannot, or doesn't care, you are in a lemon market. The scam artists grow rich and the good practicioners get exploited. Not a nice place to be, unless what you love is take advantage of other people.

The other big assumption is that there is enough demand for what you love to do. By example, if you love classic music and want to be a piano concertist, good luck with that. There is not enough demand for that skill to support but a handfull of performers. Unless your talent is that of a genius or have all the right connections, you will not survive long enough to actually learn to play well. Again, not a nice place to be.

What you want to do if not to do what you like the most. You want to ask yourself what are those things that you like. Get a list of a dozen items. Cut half of those that seem like lemon markets, the cut again by half those whose market is to small.

You will end up with a couple of solid options of what you can realistically pursue.

</comment><comment><USER21> Happiness and money are not correlated.

You are always 100% in control of your emotions: the choice to be happy is up to you regardless of what you're doing or what's happening to you. Money (or value) will come from following fundamental principles of success: diligence, hard work, honesty, etc. You often find the two together, but neither is required for the other.

For more information read Dan Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure I agree that you're always 100% in control of your emotions. If you think you're in control, they're not really emotions anymore; you've suppressed them, and replaced them with what you wanted to feel, which is fine but isn't really the same thing. I do agree that your general outlook will have great influence on whether you are happy or not though.

Generally speaking, I think you're more likely to be happy if you are honest about your emotions and then follow them in deciding what to do. Then it won't really matter if you make money or not, because you'll be happy to do what you're doing (unless you decide that making money is a goal in and of itself, in which case you'd need to make money in order to feel that you've accomplished what you set out to do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A basic issue with this is that people love doing many different things (and are curious to try new stuff all the time), so there is little time to get particularly good at them. It's hard to make money from things you are not good at.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you only focus on doing what you love then there's no guarantee money will follow. However if you are able to connect with others who appreciate what you love to do enough to sponsor your doing it, then there will be the _potential_ for money to follow. It is also necessary to balance time between attending to the things that can generate this potential and the things necessary to make that distibution channel sufficiently efficient. Ignoring your channel just means your potential for money goes to waste or ends up making someone else wealthy instead of you.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think it's not all that clear with the question. How much money? If we're talking about money you get from your regular job and you feel okay about working for someone - then the answer is yes. If you feel you don't like working for someone and will only be happy working on your own stuff - <USER2> the answer is "not necessary". From what I've seen and heard, good money is a result of different (for each person) combination of professional skills, business skills, persistence and luck. And you never know if your combinations' going to make you rich.

</comment><comment><USER26> When you do what you really love, you don't count the money. Your pay-off is from the sense of accomplishment. Doing something for love and wishing that the money follows really depends on who else gains value from what you do. E.g. living in a log cabin in Alaska - minimal payback. Creating, building and selling iPods - huge payback. The difference being not many people are chuffed at you living in a log cabin. Lot of people are very chuffed at having the music they love when they want it and having a cool gadget to play it on.

</comment><comment><USER27> Or if what you love isn't very lucrative, make lots of money by whatever means necessary (within reason) to allow you to do what you love later.

The problem with that is if you take a long time to make enough money to do that, you've just wasted all that time doing something you don't love.

</comment><comment><USER28> You don't have to love your job in order to be happy. If it provides you with the money you need and still leaves you time to do the things you love, is it horrible not to love it?

And what if loving your job results in you neglecting other important parts of your life?

</comment><comment><USER29> You need three things: skill, love, and market.

      skill + love - market = hobby
      skill - love + market = job
      skill + love + market = career

(The other combinations are less interesting and are left as an exercise to the reader.)

</comment><comment><USER30> I like Mike Rowe's advice on working: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-udsIV4Hmc>

</comment><comment><USER31> Its true as long as money != unfathomable riches.

</comment><comment><USER32> I rather do something I love and not get any money at all than doing something I hate for all of the money in the world.

</comment><comment><USER33> It might - if anything it'll help you get through the long hard slog to the pot of gold - if there is one at all.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yet another version: Do what you love and happiness will follow. How about that?

</comment><comment><USER35> Do what you love _and figure out how to make money follow_.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe it works if you learn to love making money.

</comment><comment><USER37> Has worked for me, so far, but I love hacking...

</comment><comment><USER38> Follow the money, and you'll love what you do.

</comment><comment><USER39> Quoting Austrian actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr (1913-2000):

 _"I know why most people never get rich. They put the money ahead of the job. If you just think of the job, the money will automatically follow. This never fails."_

So, do what you love. Excel at what you do. One day you might get rich... or NOT. Either way, you will have led a productive and interesting life. Cheers.

<comment><USER16> I am glad I didn't take this advice when I was a dishwasher.

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily true - if you were _really_ passionate about washing dishes, maybe you would have started a dish washing company, organized a dish washing union, or whatever :-P

<comment><USER16> "Excel at what you do" is not passion. It is admirable to do the current job the best you can, but I think a discontent with the current job has fueled many entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER39> Quite true. I would argue that loving what one does is necessary to attain excellence. But it certainly is not sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If doing what you love has a market, yes, the money will follow. If doing what you love does not have a market, it doesn't matter how much you love it. For example, there is a market for hybrid cars. There is not a market for flying cars, even though the relevant technology - fold-up wings and so on - <USER3> available. So if you love making hybrids, great, the money will indeed follow. If you love making flying cars, sorry, no market there. So the trick I guess is to find something you love, that also has a market. Not the easiest thing in the world to figure out.</comment>


Patents Are An Economic Absurdity - <AUTHOR> http://fare.tunes.org/articles/patents.html <comment><USER2> What _utter_ gibberish. The patent system is designed to work like this:

1) You invest time and money in research and come up not with an idea but a concrete implementation of that idea.

2) You patent it

3) The patent gives you the exclusive right to use that implementation but ALSO requires you to divulge everything to the public. That bit is crucial. If someone wants to use your patent, they license it off you. Before that everyone had to keep everything secret in order to justify investing in the research in the first place, which really did harm innovation.

4) When the patent expires, it becomes public property. You HAVE to go on innovating if you want to make a living in intellectual property.

Now the patent system at present is a little broken, but the author of that article has fundamentally misunderstood how it's even _supposed_ to work.

I don't think many people, who think of themselves as tech-savvy, really comprehend that because something can be copied for little or no cost, it cost nothing to create the first time.

<comment><USER3> You don't have to build a working implementation. You can patent a design.

<comment><USER2> The point being that you can't patent an idea "do X" you have to have a "way to do X".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The patent system is clearly broken. Case in point the drug industry where derivative, "me too" drugs get through a system, and they are clearly not innovative. Plus some patents are so broad that they completely stiffle innovation.

Patents, per se, are not necessarily bad, but the current system is so flawed, it likely hinders innovation rather than helps. I've been in situations where someone came up with something very interesting but there was the possibility of patent infringement due to some broad patent, so you had to either license the technology) or reimplement.

<comment><USER5> _I've been in situations where someone came up with something very interesting but there was the possibility of patent infringement due to some broad patent, so you had to either license the technology) or reimplement._

No. If one can improve upon an existing patent, one can potentially collect royalties on that improvement.

[http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectId/EFF260E8-76BA-438A-...](http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectId/EFF260E8-76BA-438A-80A7546BC09CA8F0/catID/2D212B35-B211-4FD4-B46D84A00C15CEBF/310/101/134/ART/)

 _You can also get an improvement patent for an innovation that provides a new use for an existing invention._

A party leveraging the improvement would then simply pay royalties to _both_ the holders of the old broad, and the new less-broad, patents.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, but the situation was a little different. We licensed software from academics, and during integration you'd find there were methods that seemingly ran afoul of an obscure patent, etc. These were not improvements (just general algorithms)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> s/Absurdity/Gridlock

[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/07/the- gridlock-ec.html)</comment>


I don't want to be the pink elephant in the room - <AUTHOR> https://imallika.com/post/168625383130/why-i-dont-want-to-be-the-pink-elephant-in-the <comment><USER2> This seems like a good illustration of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Yes, we should make an effort to be inclusive of all individuals, but when that's done by putting people on a pedestal simply because they're a minority, it's superficial, cringy and embarrassing for everyone involved.

<comment><USER3> In my team, where we have a 50-50 target goal, we were told that if we know a potential woman hire we should refer her not to the regular hiring track, but to a special "woman friendly" hiring track.

<comment><USER4> Is that evidence that there's a "softer" path to employment, or that the regular hiring track sucks?

<comment><USER3> That's exactly what I'm also wondering. Given that the whole company seems genuinely devoted to increasing diversity, I would tend towards the first possibility, especially since the team manager boasted a lot that his team has one of the highest female to male ratio in the company.

<comment><USER5> Why would one boast about less diversity? Did you mean "highest ratio"?

<comment><USER6> But highest ratio is still less diversity. Only 50-50 is highest diversity, right?

<comment><USER5> It is, which is my point. Why would you brag about being less diverse? The OP responded and said he made a mistake and got the order wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "All one should care about is - is this excellent or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?"

I generally agree with this article. But you can't be a white male and speak this way in silicon valley without being shamed and being labeled a Trump supporter. Especially if your company has militant diversity advocates.

<comment><USER8> The tragedy here cannot be overstated. The truth itself has been demonized by people who claim to be "just speaking the truth" when they lie, and people who can't see through it and believe it's ok to sacrifice truth on the altar of their ideology.

<comment><USER9> The tragedy is that for hundreds if not thousands of years half the population has had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectually hamstrung

<comment><USER10> For hundreds if not thousands of years 90%+ of the population had their voice muted and ability to contribute intellectual hamstrung. It's only the few hundred years that we've had the resources to change this.

<comment><USER11> 90% is an heavily underestimated number, where reality should be closer to 99%. We only need to go back a bit more than 100 years where researchers either was extremely wealthy and supported the work themselves (generally through inheritance), or required a patronage from someone who was wealthy. Going through the list of famous scientists that dates back hundreds if not thousands and the idea that you need to be rich to do intellectual work is a repeating pattern.

Not many people, then or now, can afford at an early age to stop focusing on creating food on the table and roof over their head, and on top of that fund what is generally a rather expensive passion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something I've noticed after 10 years in tech/finance is that there are very, very few western women in engineering roles. I think I've only ever worked with 1 woman who wasn't an Eastern European or Asian immigrant (and yeah, I eventually married one of the immigrant ones).

The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us. This article really hits the nail on the head in terms of what we do in the west (ie: "math is for boys!") vs other places where your sex isn't really factored into what subjects are appropriate. It's very good.

<comment><USER13> >The gender gap is purely cultural, and we should be learning from what those cultures are doing that's different than us.

The countries with low gender gap in science/tech are also the countries that measure low on general measures of gender equality. It turns out there isn't anything to learn from these cases. In regions with low gender equality and weak social safety nets, technology is seen as the means to economic security and thus empowerment. Conversely, regions with high gender equality and strong social safety nets have the largest gender gaps. There is something to be learned from this, but we probably won't like what we find.

<comment><USER14> Instead of hinting at something, why not just tell us how you really feel? Is it because it's a conclusion that is generally not accepted when put in plain terms?

<comment><USER15> Not op but since you asked, I will draw the conclusion.

Given that we observe a larger gender gap in countries that are more gender equality we can conclude that when men and women feel more equal their choice of profession diverge.

<comment><USER16> i don't think you're allowed to speak that heresy in polite society.

<comment><USER15> Which is a shame, because even though it makes sense, I am not sure it is true because it isn't debated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The political correctness climate is so unpredictable. I'm considered both sexist & feminist due to being a white male who doesn't pay attention to the gender of my non romantic relationships. Laissez faire ideals makes you an enemy of everyone in an age of 'allies'

<comment><USER18> I have not experienced this. How does it play out in real life? Can you give some examples?

<comment><USER19> Easy. Don't make discounts or other a priori judgments about the other person based on gender. Outside of childbirth, and certain extreme physical activities, assume no difference between carriers of XX and XY chromosomes. Age, culture, experience, etc play by far a bigger role, and make the real difference.

For me, this works reasonably well, and meets about equal (quite moderate) resistance from tradition-minded people in countries as different as US and Russia. (This also illustrates that a culture predominant among engineers likely differs less between countries that between different social strata or education backgrounds in the same country. Compared to this, inter-gender differences can be very safely assumed to be zero.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dear Mallika, Many thanks for writing this article! Totally echoes my thoughts.

fwiw, as an Indian male engineer in US, I initially was very enthusiastically thinking "lets go out of our way to support the pink elephants" and later was surprised when some of my peers (female engineers from India in US or of Indian origin) showed utter disinterest in being part of many of these women centric meetups/conferences.

They were more enthusiastic to go to conferences that successfully enforced a 'No Asshole Rule' on attendees, followed by attending conferences without 'all male' speakers, than conferences of any other type. (I thought the feedback I received was an outlier, but it is good to know I'm not alone).

Hope such articles bring positive changes to improve diversity organically and address the pink elephant syndrome.

This article reminded me of this video "Modern Educayshun" (by an Aussie Comedian of Indian origin) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM) . Feels like the video makes a similar point.

<comment><USER21> I'm surprised that you were not very enthusiastic about conferences with a "No Asshole Rule". Maybe it's possible to try multiple approaches at the same time? And that trying several different things is good?

<comment><USER20> [you were not very enthusiastic about conferences with a "No Asshole Rule"]

Not sure where I mentioned that?

<comment><USER21> I would be pleasantly surprised if you were also very enthusiastic about conferences with a "No Asshole Rule", but that would make your previous comment a bit strange.

<comment><USER20> Not sure where the miscommunication is, but it looks like one of us is really bad at understanding English :)

Either way, I'm not a fan of the bro-mentality places(jobs/conferences) and I absolutely love conferences which make it nice for people (of any gender, orientation, race, culture, language) to attend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> On the one hand, I agree. And on the other hand, I wonder how helpful it is to be writing this and posting it to HN instead of writing about some engineering subject and posting that instead.

I think we need more women in tech talking about tech and less women in tech talking about the problems with being women in tech and only getting attention of the wrong kind -- for being women in tech.

I mean, it's kind of recursive.

<comment><USER23> That's exactly why I started The Women in Tech Show: [https://thewomenintechshow.com/](https://thewomenintechshow.com/)

To have women in tech talking about tech topics instead of what it feels like to be a woman in tech. Although the show is labeled "women in tech", it's simply to raise awareness of this. This is a good way to help our industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone seen the scene from SV where Jared is excited after they hired a woman engineer? And Jared expects her to be pals with Monica because both are female?

I feel some of us men behave that way. :(

link to clip: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dek5HtNdIHY)

</comment><comment><USER11> I often see people arguing against the idea of sexless-ness based on the idea that its been tried and failed, but I honestly the only time I truly seen evidence of this is in movies making fun of the 70th's. It seems that when the feminist movement moved away from equality feminism it cultural had to disavow the concept of sexless-ness.

The idea of sexless-ness, which can also be describe as women/men as equal and undifferentiated from that of men/women, seems to me as the way to reach optimal freedom and agency in life. Gender roles and associated expectations affect incentives and disincentives, neither which is optimal if we want to reach the point where every individual can seek their own passions. I only hope that the ideas behind equality feminism can once again raise to be dominant within the progressive culture.

<comment><USER25> The problem with sexless-ness is that it only addresses what we're conscious of, when we know that there's lots of unconscious or systemic biases that still exist.

One famous example was a study that involved submitting resumes to various jobs with names removed and then randomly reassigned (to avoid any actual correlation between the name's perceived gender and the quality of the resume). Resumes with female names received half the callbacks than if they had male names. You can't practice sexless-ness when you're not aware that you're discriminating.

<comment><USER26> > Resumes with female names received half the callbacks than if they had male > names.

I'm a man named Lyndsy. I've experienced the opposite bias - companies that were initially very enthusiastic about my interviewing with them, right up to the moment where they realized I was male.

Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether I received fewer callbacks as a result of my name - but I do know with a very high degree of confidence that I have landed at least one interview based on my name.

It seems to me that actively "working against" this unconscious bias merely replaces it with another.

<comment><USER25> It's probably true that a person trying to self-correct for bias will tend to over-correct, to no one's benefit. But the sort of things you do to correct for widespread unconscious bias are different. For instance, the New York Symphony Orchestra found that female applicants were making it through the tape screening round more often when their tapes were blinded, replacing identifying information with a serial number. Women were still being rejected at the audition stage in higher numbers than men, so they started having the applicants play from behind a screen so the judges couldn't see the gender of the audition, and once again, the number of women making it through that round increased[1]. This was all at a time when the NYSO was consciously trying to practice sexless-ness, if not actively increase the number of women in the orchestra.

Several years ago, GoGaRuCo brought in blind judging of their talk applicants pool after ensuring the pool was seeded with half women. Suddenly their roster was half women too, on judging the talks purely on the merits of the proposal.

We constantly see that when we successfully block stimuli to unconscious bias, the bias is disarmed.

[1] Interestingly, they didn't significantly increase until they made auditions walk on stage in their socks, because the sound of their formal-wear shoes were obviously different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think it's important to note that women's issues in different cultures are often very different, and if you start diagnosing one culture's issues with the yardstick of another, you will cause a lot of false positives and negatives.

For instance, India, where the author comes for, is often celebrated for having had a 1) female prime minister all the way back in the 60s 2) a female president 10 years ago, and lots of women in the three pillars of democracy. Compared to the US, that makes India look like a bastion of women's rights.

But anyone who's lived there will obviously tell you that women there have their own set of problems. And in fact, when it comes to the president and the prime minister too, some would argue that they were instated as 'puppets' (Google for "Indira Gandhi dumb doll"). It's a different matter that she towered above all that and developed an identity of her own.

<comment><USER28> A certain Indian MP tried to play the female president card with me. I pointed out that the election of Barack Obama had hardly heralded the end of racism in my own country.

<comment><USER29> Maybe not the end of racism, but it did reflect some decades of empowering African American voters. Plus Republican disarray, culminating in the bone- headed McCain-Palin ticket. And you know, he's no Wyclef Jean ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Damn. This nails it. Ever since my first exposure to computing and "programming", I always _deeply felt_ it was a great equalizer and meritocracy filter. A field where instead of your skin, the only color that mattered was of the grey in your brain. Where gender was as meaningless as asking androids their sex. Where your "accent" didn't matter, because code does not have any. Where what you smell of didn't matter because all anyone smelt was factory- fresh PCBs, come to life with electrons. Where money was a result of smarts, hard work and imagination. It was, and will likely always be my utopia. It may or not exist in the world out there. Maybe it never did. But, it is real to me, somewhere within me and will _always_ be, in some way small or large. DudeBros, CodeJocks and SoftDogs be damned along with PussyPasses and the GoldDiggers.

</comment><comment><USER31> >It's substantive and grounded in personal experience.

Yes, but it's the personal experience of someone who has never "had to defend their choice of or fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice". Which makes it seem like more of an "argument by outlier" than the expression of some deep universal insight-- yes, maybe Mallika doesn't appreciate someone listening to her talk as "being supportive", but maybe women who _have_ had to fight an uphill battle _would_ appreciate the show of solidarity and the chance afterwards to swap war stories.

(I do agree that it was unfair to flag the article.)

<comment><USER28> Indeed. When I visited India on a delegation to learn about these very issues, I was told that the local elementary schools didn't even have girls' bathrooms, that young women can't attend the entrance exam prep classes because they're held at night and it's too dangerous, and that when women do get into engineering schools, it's never the tier one schools.

Obviously I did not grow up in India so I can't say with certainty that the author is an outlier. But I have heard face-to-face from many, many, many Indian women who tell a very different story from the one we're reading here.

<comment><USER20> I hope anyone (including you and the author) talking about India is aware that it is a country of 1.3 billion people.

So you can find a Germany+Austria+Italy equivalent number of poor people in desolate conditions, but there also a UK+France+Spain+Nordic-countries equivalent number of people who are doing much better and have access to many resources.

So one's view of India totally depends on which European country equivalent you interfaced with, unless they have travelled to every region/state in India and lived there for a few months/years, without having a political/religious/NGO entity planning their itinerary.

In support of the author, I agree with what she says. Those women who do make it to engineering / tech / high-skilled professions tend to do so without having experienced the pink-elephant phenomena. In fact, I can totally empathize with what the author is saying in her post.

PS: I just made up the list of countries and equivalents, but I hope my analogy helps in understanding how vast India is, in terms of population, the demography, including the languages spoken, scripts written, religions / cultures followed by people.

<comment><USER28> Absolutely agree. India is a huge place. I may not have been strong enough in my caveats: this was a delegation with a specific purpose and fixed meetings; we visited two regions only; the use of the word "local"; and obviously none of us on the delegation are even from there, so what do we know, really? I just wanted to point out that I've heard stories from Indian women that are different than this one.

As a woman I can also empathize with the author and would of _course_ prefer to have my work valued on its merits. I just don't think that's contradictory to having a robust diversity effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > There is no room for "maybe" - and there is no room for "is this a woman who > wrote this or is it a man". All one should care about is - is this excellent > or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?

The general way that I have understood folks who advocate the programs that are being presented as problematic here is: whether or not there _should be_ room for "maybe", and whether or not one _should_ care about anything else, people inject maybes and do care about gender. That is, the diversity programs and the sense of "I should support this person because she is a woman" is rooted in an observation or impression that being a woman puts you at a disadvantage in one way or another. The bias is already there, and the attempt is at a counterbias.

I think it's very good that this isn't a problem in the author's experience, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem at all. That said, I'm wondering if there can be a better balance between supporting women who are good but aren't judged to be, or feel like they aren't even though they are, and women who are perfectly confident in their abilities and just want to operate like a sexless engineer at work. Certainly I'm hopeful that women don't experience that bias in every organization, and a (hypothetical) organization that's already structured in an unbiased way would perhaps not want to focus on gender.

From a purely practical standpoint, though, it feels like the right question here is, does the approach the author doesn't like _reduce_ the number of women who don't enter or who leave the industry due to bias more than it _increases_ the number of women who leave in frustration from being treated as 'different'. If the problem these programs are meant to address is 'many women leave the industry or don't join it because of perceived bias', then that's the real metric. In a perfect world, nobody cares… But in a world where people are biased against women, perhaps you have to try to adjust explicitly for that in the short term, so that you can get to the goal of a world where nobody cares in the longer run.

</comment><comment><USER33> One side ostracizes the "other" in an attempt at superiority and domination, as they are naturally driven to do. The other side places the "other" on a pedestal, in an attempt at submissiveness and placation, as they feel natural.

The "other" sees this for what it is - 2 people pandering instead of including them into a group of 3 equals. When confronted, each side will claim this is how they include people, and accuse of sowing dissent.

The more people I meet, the more I realize there is no "them" \- there is us, just us, and more of us.

</comment><comment><USER34> Quoting article:

> I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability > to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity > ranked far, far below. Growing up as a South Indian in Mumbai, neither me, > not anyone I know or grew up with, has ever had to defend their choice of or > fight an uphill battle while selecting engineering as a career choice, > regardless of their sex.

I come from the different country but I've got few Indian colleagues. We're talking a lot because I've been always interested in cultural differences. From what they said I feel like above sentence is not true. Male's role in the society is to become an engineer and bring money. Female's - to get married and raise kids. Society's expect you to fit in your role and it's difficult to do something else without tons of comments from your family and friends. One example could be a male colleague who's interested in cooking and wish he could open a restaurant. Yet, he's an engineer. Another one says he didn't really have a choice - he could be an engineer or nobody so, obviously, he choose to be an engineer.

Could anyone confirm how does the reality look like? Maybe it differs by region. It's a big country after all.

<comment><USER35> Maybe the picture you're getting is not from South Indian people? There's a different mentality and situation in the south. The southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala have the highest literacy rates in India, with Kerala especially having the highest literacy rate for women. Mallika's perceptions about the cultural importance of education are almost certainly correct especially if she is from the south.

<comment><USER29> Ah, Kerala!

[http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/living- examples...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/living-examples-of- matrilineal-societies-in-india/1/614739.html)

And now I'm vaguely remembering a section of Stephenson's _The Baroque Cycle_ , where Jack Shaftoe gets help from a so-called "pirate queen". In Kerala, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> " _I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity ranked far, far below._ "

Wait! Where is this fabled land? I would bow humbly before the philosopher- kings who rule it, grovel at their feet to learn how they so wisely manage mere human weaknesses! Surely there the streets are paved with gold and happiness and good fortune follow all those who fail to foolishly abandon such a blessed land.

<comment><USER37> Even developed country that was never exploited, suffered no war damage to their production capacity since the beginning of industrial revolution, basically used WWII to switch their industry to high gear and sucked in half of the world scientists doesn't have streets paved with gold.

Then again it might be just because they think they owe their success to being right about everything, which they are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I liked the article, but disappointed that I had to run code from tumblr.com in order to be able to read it. I'd urge the author and others to reconsider site designs like this.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South > Indian families.

What's the evidence for that claim?

<comment><USER40> She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?

<comment><USER41> "Lived experience" is anecdote, which is a fine way of coming up with hypotheses about generalities, and a very bad basis for asserting any but very weak, tentative conclusions about generalities.

<comment><USER40> Absolutely. I agree with you. For the purposes of her article, I think it's more than enough. Most discussions about issues of diversity and similar "dangerous ideas" try to use statistics to back them up but often do use statistics terribly.

It's better in my opinion to be upfront about anecdotal data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Its nice that author ended up going to engineering school via massive social and economic inertia afforded only to a tiny sliver of indian population. But there are lot more women who need the helping hand and encouragement provided by those groups. So perhaps a little empathy towards those programs and what they are trying to achieve, even if it causes minor distress?

<comment><USER20> I know many women/engineers from/in India who have braved worse situations to become engineers, because that often is the only hope for anyone irrespective of their gender, to gain a good career and escape from poverty or move up the wealth ladder.

Not sure of the author's family background, but either way, its not trivial for women in India to escape the social pressure (of getting married earlier than men) even if parents are supportive.

From my Indian POV, it feels a little frustrating to see that there's so much focus on getting women into tech after they are out of college or mid career, than focusing on it when they are in middle/high school.

As you said, "helping hand and encouragement provided by those groups" is needed, but it needs to focus disproportionately more on kids about to start middle school / high school than girls at any other age. It is too late to think of helping for a transition once a girl / woman is out of college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This article was flagged unfairly. It's substantive and grounded in personal experience. Those are good qualities for an HN piece whether one agrees or disagrees, so I've turned off flags and rolled back the clock on this submission to give it a second shot.

If you want to comment here, please (re-)familiarize yourself with the site guidelines at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), including this one: _Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._

Edit: I feel bad about not being able to find a way to let the author know that her article is currently being discussed on HN, so if any of you know her, could you give a heads-up? When people submit an article, it doesn't get attention, and then we re-boost it, we always email them if we can.

<comment><USER44> Wonder if the flagging system can be enhanced by having the flagger provide a reason. Maybe having to explain would reduce the incidence of drive-by flagging.

<comment><USER35> Would be better to de-anonymise flagging so that we could interrogate flaggers. Show 'flagging's as actions that appear like comments on the page.

<comment><USER43> There can be few things HN users would like worse than being interrogated.

<comment><USER35> Perhaps 'interrogated' is the wrong word? How about 'discuss'. Since HN is a discussion forum, presumably users are open to discussing their flags and reasons for flagging. If not, just like any other type of discussion, we don't have to give their flag any credence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Excellent title. It conveyed the entire meaning of the article in this context. That's wonderful, because the moment I clicked through, I realized I would not be able to read the article without enabling javascript. All I receive is a loading spinner. I closed the page and checked the comments to confirm my understanding of the article was accurate. It seems it was. Excellent title. I wish more articles could be this clever and succinct at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER46> She really seems to think that South India is particular in parents wanting their children to excel in math and engineering. That's...really a strange assumption. That extreme of cultural ignorance is all anyone would notice about this article were it pointed the other direction.

Also "pink elephant" is a kind of symbol for delirium tremens, though I don't know how common that is anymore.

</comment><comment><USER47> I make this point every time with my friends whenever discussing these "Girls who code" kind of initiatives. I grew up with two sisters who took interest in science naturally. In my class in computer science, girls outnumbered boys and scored well. It is natural for girls in India (middle class educated Indian, which is the majority of the country for the past 50 years) to pursue science related degrees. I think, in US this is not the case and US girls were encouraged to impress boys for dating and activism is targeted at US girls.</comment>


Show HN: Place to land your visitors while you work on fixing your app - <AUTHOR> https://downtimepage.com/setup.html <comment><USER2> This is just the definition of simplicity

Awesome</comment>


Twitter just passed 10 Billion Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://popacular.com/gigatweet/

<comment><USER2> unfortunately the 10,000,000,000 tweet was private. <http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/show/10000000000.xml>

<comment><USER3> Here's the 10,000,000,001st, if anyone's looking for a keepsake: <http://twitter.com/SheSz_FUcINgBAD/status/10000000001>

<comment><USER4> Also private, sadly.</comment></comment></comment>


Mahaloism 1.0 - <AUTHOR>

Mahaloism is a socioeconomic structure that promotes long hours and low wages for humans based on the means of out producing machines. What do you think about Mahalo? <comment><USER2> Long hours + low pay = less incentive to work long hours.

Delivering a product is the result of maximizing resources and getting the best ROI (monetary or through effort related output) from the functionality of said product. If you can compensate for the low wages to develop at high capacities, it may be something worth effectively discussing.

But alas, this is a capitalist society and it wont work, though I'm in favor of improving the idea of maximizing the value of human production.</comment>


How to raise $2M with a 5 slide presentation – about nothing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.plexidigest.com/summary/f793fac63069ce9bfc05a3753f95c3ea.html

<comment><USER2> A startup about nothing- Seinfeld</comment>


Stack Computers: the new wave (1989) - <AUTHOR> https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/stack_computers/ <comment><USER2> "Burroughs Machines: Implementation: A series of minicomputers" This is misleading; these were often very well regarded military grade and size, 48/51 bit stack based machines, hundreds of disk spindles and massive I/O, up to 8 CPU symmetric multiprocessing (7 IIRC cause you needed an I/O cabinet). And a sophisticated OS called MCP. Virtual memory. In 1977, or 1969, or earlier. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems) Datamation archives tell the story.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's some pretty cool references here [1] from a former TA of mine.

[1] [http://fpgacpu.ca/stack/index.html](http://fpgacpu.ca/stack/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Are we going back to programming in Forth now?

<comment><USER5> So going back to Forth is probably not a good idea, but consider this....

1\. Modern CPU microarchitectures issue multiple instructions/micro- instructions per clock.

2\. Modern CPU microarchitectures rely heavily on register renaming in order to avoid bottlenecking on register allocation.

3\. High code density is a huge win because: a) highly dense code reduces the cache footprint for a given amount of expressed functionality, which in turn reduces the amount of die area that need be dedicated to instruction cache in a well-balanced processor. b) highly dense code reduces the amount of bus traffic filling the instruction cache from main memory, thus reducing the overall memory bandwidth required to execute a given amount of functionality. Taking a & b together, they explain, in part, why X86 is still king of the hill, and it certainly explains why X86 won over Itanium. X86 code, for all its accumulated cruft, is very dense.

4\. Stack machine code is also very dense, because exactly zero bits are dedicated to register names in every instruction.

So... given that the register numbers in typical 2-address or 3-address machines are getting renamed away anyway, why have them at all? Let the compiler generate 0-address code for a stack machine, and let the instruction decoder parse a long string of tokens during a single clock, using standard register renaming techniques to assign virtual stack locations from a large buffer pool. It could issue multiple stack ops per clock, but unwound into simple 3-address micro-ops for the CPU back end. It's really just the final step in moving the register allocator from the compiler to the CPU.

These are all solved problems for the X86 instruction set. Given that existence proof, it is difficult to argue that it would be hard to do for a clean stack-machine ISA.

<comment><USER6> This is the premise of the Mill architecture; though I haven't heard from them for a while now.

<comment><USER5> Really? The stuff I've seen about Mill is that they are doing a VLIW machine, which is a very different concept.

<comment><USER7> While I think that's true, it's also orthogonal to the 'belt' concept [1] they're using, which I think GP was referring to.

I'm also curious about the state of the Mill - judging by the forums on their website they've been basically dark for about a year and a half now, though Ivan Godard claims that everything is still moving along, just slightly slower than expected.

[1] [https://millcomputing.com/docs/belt/](https://millcomputing.com/docs/belt/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I joined Harris Semiconductors' RTX2000 dev team after grad school & helped customers benchmark code using hand-built assembly language.

It was a ton of fun explaining stack ops to x86 designers :), plus the architecture ran rings around competitors' microcontrollers. Alas, cool architectures do not guarantee design wins.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been waiting for a stack computer with a GaAs CPU and bubble memory for I don't know how long!

</comment><comment><USER10> Most compilers use AST for internal intermediate code. TempleOS uses a stack machine intermediate code. At the end, it converts from intermediate code to x86_64 machine code.

<comment><USER11> Hi Terry, Do you have a document describing the stack machine intermediate code for TempleOS?</comment></comment>