Hackers send silent commands to speech recognition systems with ultrasound - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/06/hackers-send-silent-commands-to-speech-recognition-systems-with-ultrasound/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15191640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15191640)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is MUCH bigger deal than most understand. This will cost less than $10 to build and their is no hardware solution on phones or Alexia.

Phreaking is back.

<comment><USER4> This will be fixed with a simple software update that ignores all sounds at inaudible frequencies.

<comment><USER5> It's happening at the hardware level, so there is potentially limited scope to fix it in software. My guess is that when the author refers to "harmonics" they are really talking about intermodulation.

The idea is that if you want to create a frequency of "A", you can emit two powerful tones at frequencies "B" and "B+A", where the frequency B is high enough to be out of hearing range. The non-linearity of the microphone means the two tones mix together to produce a number of other frequencies, including the frequency "B+A"-"B" = "A".

Thus the conversion from ultrasonics to audible is happening in the microphone itself, before the software has a chance to distinguish the difference. The mixing process typically produces other frequencies other than "A", so there might be hope of a countermeasure if the microphone is able to pick up these other frequencies and the software is smart enough to use them to figure out that an attack is in progress. It's not a simple case of just filtering out a particular frequency and an intelligent choice of ultrasonic frequencies may leave only a single frequency in the band of the microphone.

It's the same principle that is used in ultrasonic beamforming speakers. That adds another element of stealth to the attack, in that the high frequencies can allow the sound to be beamformed and illuminate the microphone and not much else.

<comment><USER6> > The idea is that if you want to create a frequency of "A", you can emit two > powerful tones at frequencies "B" and "B+A", where the frequency B is high > enough to be out of hearing range. The non-linearity of the microphone means > the two tones mix together to produce a number of other frequencies, > including the frequency "B-A"-"B" = "A".

Does this work for ears, too?

If so, are the non-linearities of different people's ears similar enough that two people hearing the same A and B would get the same results, or would person to person variations in non-linearity mean they might hear different results?

<comment><USER5> Yes it does:

[https://makezine.com/2008/10/08/homebrew-parametric- speak/](https://makezine.com/2008/10/08/homebrew-parametric-speak/)

[http://www.soundlazer.com/](http://www.soundlazer.com/)

It's reasonably consistent. Differences in non-linearity will result in different amplitudes for each intermodulation product, but not different frequencies. Typically these systems use the "third order" product. I gather that the non-linearity exploited is as much a property of the air as the ear.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if this has any implications for recording?

If someone is listening to a live musical instrument that is producing both audible sound and ultrasonic sound [1], is what the person perceives affected by intermodulation in the ear?

If the performance is also recorded using a technology that for all practical purposes reproduces perfectly everything in the audible range, then I can see a couple possible cases.

1\. The microphone is designed to filter out ultrasonics or is sufficient linear to not have intermodulation.

In this case, the recording is what would be heard with no intermodulation. When played back, all the listener gets is the audible portion of the original sound, without any ultrasonics. Thus there is nothing to produce intermodulation in the listner's ear, and so the listener might perceive the recording as having a different timbre than the live instrument.

2\. The microphone does not filter ultrasonics and is non-linear enough to have intermodulation. The audible intermodulation products will then be included in the recording.

When played back the listener will hear intermodulation products, but they will be the ones from the microphone's non-linearity, not the ear's non- linearity.

The question then is how close are microphone non-linearities to ear non- linearities. If they are similar, then the timbre of the recording should match live. If they are sufficiently different, the timbre could sound off.

It should be possible to design a system that records only audible frequencies and plays back only audible frequencies and sounds identical to live, but it may require specifically taking into account ultrasonics instead of just cutting them out like I think we currently do.

[1] A trumpet with a Harmon mute playing a quiet note has about 2% of its energy above 20 KHz. Playing a loud note drops that to about 0.5%. A cymbal crash is about 40% above 20 KHz. (Keys jangling are almost 70% above 20 KHz, which probably has something to do with why back in the early days of TV remote controls when they were ultrasonic instead of IR or RF people would report that if someone's keys jangled the channel would sometimes change). See: [https://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm](https://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talking Behind Your Back (33c3)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1-xnTIDjQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1-xnTIDjQ)

<comment><USER8> 33c3 was in 2016, for those like me who can't keep track of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Using ultrasounds as a side-channel is also used by Cisco's proximity sensors for telepresence units and the new Spark Boards. While on a call on my phone, I can walk into any conference room and swipe to handoff the video call from my phone to the room's telepresence unit, even if my phone is not on wifi (e.g. because I just walked into the building or had wifi turned off). In my experience, this flows much smoother than any wifi– or bluetooth–based pairing.

[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collaboration- endpoin...](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collaboration- endpoints/spark-board/index.html)

Full disclaimer: I work in that BU.

</comment><comment><USER10> Could this phenomena have caused the recent hearing loss among US and Canadian diplomats in Cuba?

<comment><USER11> That's actually a very good question. I'm very curious to learn what was the actual cause of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As the article says, there is a physical presence bar to meet to make this workable now, but I can't not think about clever ways that this could become a "worm" or spread digitally. Infected viral (actually viral!) YouTube videos? Robocalls that you hope go on speakerphone (where the fidelity of the attack signal may be questionable)? Or drive a car with big speakers around a neighborhood? How about a mobile phone botnet that just constantly speaks to digital assistants?

<comment><USER13> The speakers would have to be able to emit ultrasonic waves. I'm pretty sure that you need special hardware for this. (because the researchers themselves used a special ultrasonic emitter, not the speaker of the phone they used).

<comment><USER12> Good point. I wouldn't trust that the speaker on a mobile phone has a very good frequency response, but a TV or car stereo might be able to swing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The "solution" will be another layer of security hacks: passphrases (which anybody can trivially register), registration of known tone (which means the phone will stop accepting it in noisy surroundings)... another cat & mouse game starts and it's like we're back to 1970.

</comment><comment><USER15> The range limitation seems possible to overcome too.

There are directional megaphones that can send sound for hundreds of meters. Directional megaphones send a beam of ultrasound that is focused on the surface where the sound is to be generated, so an attacker may be able to use a directional megaphone to beam the voice commands to the target's vicinity.

Suddenly all kinds of movie plot tricks could be used in heist movies now! Perp uses an air vortex cannon to press a door bell button from a distance and a directional megaphone to talk to in the buzzer and then ... well, easy to get carried away :)

</comment><comment><USER16> These speech recognition tools need to have some sort of authentication:

\- How about having a secret "wake word" instead of "Alexa" or "Hey Siri"? \- Only treating signals using human voice range \- Voice identification

If this isn't patched soon (excluding ultrasounds), it could mean that these tools are already using inaudible signals for other purposes. For example, commercials could add ultrasounds to know who's watching them.

<comment><USER17> You know, I'm ok with a physical button press as the authentication method.

<comment><USER18> Preferably some kind of hardware on-off switch for the physical microphone.

<comment><USER19> And camera

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Even if the commands are not inaudible it's a security issue if the device performs a dangerous action because someone in the neighborhood said something.

The feature is presented as if it only responds to the owner but realistically that distinction doesn't work at all.

If you shout 'hey Siri' into the microphone at a large event, a lot of phones are going to respond.

<comment><USER21> > If you shout 'hey Siri' into the microphone at a large event, a lot of > phones are going to respond.

Curious - anybody ever tried that?

<comment><USER22> Burger King had a TV ad[1] that triggered Google Assistant and Google Home ("OK Google, what is the whopper?")

1\. [https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15277278/google-home- burg...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15277278/google-home-burger-king- whopper-ad-campaign)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Presumably, you could also broadcast an AM radio signal at just the right frequency that the wires in the microphone pick it up.

<comment><USER24> This already been demonstrated on headphones[0].

[0] [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-radio-trick-silently- hack...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/this-radio-trick-silently-hacks-siri- from-16-feet-away/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could get pretty sci-fi with this. Repeatedly send "Hey Siri" with a custom message in a crowded area. Watch people shake heads whenever they check their phones.

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't for forget hiding audible commands inside noise, like A/C startups, vacuums, any grinding / background noise we typically ignore can be a carrier.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can't Alexa, et al simply look for a certain volume and duration in the audible range, which sounds like speech, in order to activate?

<comment><USER28> I think volume is the key here... The hackers induced harmonics in the audible range but at a volume that was only perceivable by the microphone and not by the bystanders. So to me it seems that it's possible to prevent this by require a higher threshold of volume to activate.

<comment><USER27> I am just worried the hackers will then make sounds that sound like noise, but at least it will be characteristic and alert the person (maybe).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wait.. wouldn't the ear hear the harmonics as well, since it's also a membrane-based microphone?

</comment><comment><USER30> "None worked farther than 5 feet away"

Well, that seems pretty easy to combat.

<comment><USER31> There are a lot of audio positioning options that very few have the expertise to apply. Reminds me of this Kickstarter:

[http://www.soundlazer.com/what-is-a-parametric- speaker/](http://www.soundlazer.com/what-is-a-parametric-speaker/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can't it be fixed by a simple low-pass filter?

</comment><comment><USER33> You can't stop the phantom frequencies from appearing on microphone, so the solution is to stop the recognition if there are powerful ultrasonic waves and alert user something weird is happening.</comment>


Why human feet evolved arches - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/why-human-feet-evolved-arches-what-happens-if-you-lack-them/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.is/Hs211](https://archive.is/Hs211)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a biological compiler? - <AUTHOR> I keep hearing people say it would be super useful to have a design environment for biology, where the output is either a genetic circuit or some other implementable design, but I never really see anything that comes close. Cello and the folks behind Asimov are an interesting attempt, but I'm thinking more along the lines of Michael Levin's talk. Does anything like that exist? <comment><USER2> I am also curious as well.

I have seen this article about encoding an image into DNA. [https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-40585299](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40585299)

But have not seen a compiler for which the output is DNA, or other biological materials.</comment>


Why Write a Bilingual English-Chinese Tech Blog - <AUTHOR> https://interconnected.blog/why-write-a-bilingual-english-chinese-tech-blog/ <comment><USER2> Can you format it so that English and Chinese are side-by-side? Or interleaved (alternating lines)?

It will help me learn Chinese. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there, thank you for your comment. I'll look into it for sure. Would you prefer side-by-side or interleaving or something else?

<comment><USER2> Interleaved might be easier. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best book keeping software for startups? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering what others would recommend? Ideally something really simple to use. <comment><AUTHOR> ps: I'm trialing xero at the moment</comment>


How to Code Four iOS 6 Features into Your App Today - <AUTHOR> http://www.kinvey.com/blog/item/174-ios-corner-wwdc-2012-and-adding-ios-6-features-to-your-app-today# <comment><USER2> Ironically, this page is unreadable on my iPhone.

<comment><USER3> I love when sites tell Safari to not let me zoom and then overflow their content past the bounds of the viewport. Saves me time because I can leave the site and never come back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isnt all of this still under NDA? I dont think you can really talk about this yet.

<comment><USER5> Nah, all of these were announced during the WWDC keynote which means its public knowledge, it looks like Kinvey are a cloud based file / document store so it's showing you how you can implement similar features to iOS6 in your own apps using their API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It'll be interesting to see how they compete with Parse in the long run.

At this point, it doesn't seem to offer anything different from Parse, so what would motivate me to switch if I'm already using Parse?

</comment><comment><USER7> Kinvey looks great, although I wonder if they'll do a Parse and change their pricing model as soon as they go out of beta?

<comment><AUTHOR> My name is Eli and I run client services at Kinvey (they wisely don't trust me with my own HN account just yet...). While I can't promise that we'll never change any aspect of our pricing (since, as almost all growing companies, we'll almost certainly make at least a few tweaks over time), what I can promise is that we will never lose our commitment to what we've dubbed "success pricing" -- i.e. pricing that is not only compelling compared to the alternatives out there, but a model that directly aligns with a developer's growth goals. That is, our pricing will kick in and increase only when a developer directly benefits, and we feel strongly that this is the most fair and mutually beneficial way to go about pricing any such service (<https://console.kinvey.com/#pricing>).

Feel free to reach out directly with any additional questions / concerns -- all of my contact info can be found here: <http://kinvey.com/eli-lederman>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good stuff, pro tip for getting the jump on some ios6 quick wins.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great! Thanks for the post. :)</comment>


Simple distributed computation with Clojure and nREPL  - dj-wonk https://github.com/bluemont/kuzu

<comment> dj-wonk Some comments, which may be obvious:

* I have not tested Kuzu in production yet.

* It has a tiny fraction of the power of real projects like Hadoop, Storm, Spark, and so on.

* I created it because I wanted a simple way to run maps, reduces, and filters over many machines without making big changes to my original Clojure code. For this simple use case, many distributed computation systems seem quite complicated, so I thought it would be fun to write something extremely simple.

* I was inspired by how PigPen [https://github.com/Netflix/PigPen](https://github.com/Netflix/PigPen) offers a very natural interface to Clojure. I wondered if that could work on top of something simpler than Hadoop + Pig.

* This isn't the first time something like this has been done. See net-eval for example [http://nakkaya.com/2010/02/16/net-eval-dead-simple-distribut...](http://nakkaya.com/2010/02/16/net-eval-dead-simple-distributed-computing-for-clojure/).

* Kuzu may or may not be useful to you, but I'd be interested in any and all commentary.</comment>


Org-Mode for Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ajtoo/vscode-org-mode <comment><USER3> As much as I like spacemacs/emacs, org mode truly is one of the best things about that editor, and its amazing to see it gaining some real momentum with those outside that ecosystem. This should do wonders for org mode, but more than that, give a lot of people scared off by emacs the chance to use the amazing org mode features.

<comment><USER4> > give a lot of people scared off by emacs

I'm not even scared off, but I won't use Emacs because it doesn't have tabs. I know about the alternatives presented, but I just want tabs. I find it funny that the kitchen sink "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" Emacs doesn't have a built in tab implementation while the supposedly small Vim has one :)

<comment><USER5> I've found tabs to not scale as a UI idiom, generally. They're ok for up to about 10 documents, after that, I'm looking for something else.

I normally use IntelliJ with two panes open, and about 120 tabs between the two of them. But because IntelliJ tabs can't scroll and Java filenames are long, the tab I want to switch to is never visible, and the tab list dropdown is painful to scan. C-n and C-S-n are what I end up using.

And for the browser, I use tree-style tabs. The hierarchy keeps related tabs together, and I can collapse when I do a context switch. The fact I can see all the (top-level) tabs at once in a long list means spatial memory works better.

In emacs, I use Helm and Projectile, bound to F11 and F12 for buffer and project searches. I've bound buffer switching to C-prior and C-next (those are PgUp and PgDown), and since the buffer order is basically a LIFO of whatever buffer you jumped to, the buffer you're looking for is usually within easy scrolling reach.

<comment><USER6> In the current reality as it is tabs seem an essential part of a web browser and some other apps. But I feel like tabs should not be done by any app - <USER2> window manager is to take care of this IMHO.

I especially don't like tabs in IntelliJ Idea: I never (except the cases when I want to detach one to a separate window) actually use them, every time I want to switch to a particular file in a project I choose it in the project tree in the left panel, the tabs only pile up atop of the editor pane and annoy me so I close them every now and then.

<comment><USER7> Hey, I'm with you in feeling that tabs are essential to web browsing but that they should ideally be the window manager's responsibility. For a while I used surf [1] (which lacks tabs) and the i3 window manager, but for various reasons I wanted to move back to Firefox.

I made a very simple webextension that disables tabs in firefox, so that I can use my window manager's tabs instead. I've been using it since the stable release of Firefox 57. [http://static.adrusi.com/notable.html](http://static.adrusi.com/notable.html)

[1] [https://surf.suckless.org/](https://surf.suckless.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not org-mode if it can't do folding. Folding is main purpose of every outliner.

Another fundamental thing is narrow to subtree (C-x n s/w in org-mode or just click in workflowy)

So this is just .org syntax highliter with some snippets and shortcuts.

.org markup language is much less common than markdown, and this is bad. Nobody wants to learn 2 similar languages with conflicting syntax.

<comment><USER9> [https://github.com/ajtoo/vscode-org- mode/issues/85](https://github.com/ajtoo/vscode-org-mode/issues/85)

There's an issue, and the project is in alpha, but this doesn't sound good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For anyone who thinks infinitely nested lists sounds like a good way to organize things, but would prefer an online, less editor-centric (but still keyboard friendly) tool, I recommend workflowy.com (or their more recent competitor dynalist.io who add more rich content support if that is your thing).

I've been using Workflowy for years to organize my work, both for tasks and for mental maps and note-taking. I've found that it maps extremely well to the recursive nature of my mental map of an application and it subcomponents, tasks and subtasks, and so on. And overall I find that collapsible nested lists have all the benefits of a classic 'mind map' but without the constraints and 'easier to read than edit' nature of a bubble visualization.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me the whole point of org-mode is that the stuff in it is to valuable to trust with a vendor that stores it in a proprietary format that cant be extracted in a meaningful way if the service/company folds.

<comment><USER11> So one more note here, my open source Workflowy clone backs up all your data to a .txt file in your Dropbox every night. If my hosted service goes away, you can just run it locally, import the .txt file, and you're good to go. [https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes](https://github.com/NickBusey/BulletNotes)

A large part of the reason I made it was for exactly the scenario you described. I run my entire life out of it and wasn't comfortable relying on one company for it.

<comment><USER12> Nick, thank you for this, you've got another user!

<comment><USER11> Hey thank you! And please don't hesitate to create GitHub issues or let me know about any problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Forgive my ignorance but what makes org mode better than markdown? Whenever I see it demonstrated it seems to be just another way of marking up content in plain text. Is there more to it?

<comment><USER14> If you're looking at it purely as an interchange format for pretty documents, no. However, once you think about actually using it, the tooling for the format is _fantastically_ more powerful. A small selection of some of the standouts:

Emacs' better understanding of the structure gives you much better editing; I have chords for operations like "move this item up/down" and "promote/demote this item", plus excellent folding, jumping, and a measure of intellisense- like functionality.

org-babel can do anything that even looks like literate programming. I make regular use of both its notebook functionality (like ipython) and its more traditional features (compile to a documentation part and a code part), and its integration with emacs lets you do things like pop out to edit a code block in its native mode as if it were a little tiny file.

org-agenda and org-todo use the format's support for rich semantic metadata to do anything you could want from a calendar, bug tracker, organizer, note- taker, or list manager. You can tag your items with indexed keywords, arbitrary and even simultaneous to-do workflows, and arbitrary (and I do mean _arbitrary_ , it's emacs and everything can be an elisp snippet) to-do deadlines and recurrences. And all that data isn't just a wash; a wealth of options exist for slicing and dicing your data in any number of ways, high- level overview or detailed statistics.

And on top of all that, you can render org-mode documents to nearly any markup under the sun! I regularly compose documents in org, using all of this power, and export to markdown or html to publish.

<comment><USER13> But it really sounds like you're telling me about things Emacs can do. If I don't use Emacs, what advantage does org mode hold for me? This link is for org mode in vscode, which I do use, but from what I can see it doesn't do any of that fancy stuff there?

<comment><USER14> Yes, if you're not using emacs you don't get much from the format itself. Which is why everyone talks about org- _mode_ , not the file format. That said, available libraries matter when you're choosing a programming language, and interop and available integrations matter when you're choosing, say, a bug tracker; why wouldn't the available editing tools matter when you're choosing a calendar+agenda+literate-programming environment+note-taker+organizer?

I'd almost say that a "mode" for editing org-mode files almost doesn't deserve to be called "org-mode for X" if it doesn't do all the fancy stuff. It'd be like calling telnet a gmail client because you can theoretically negotiate an SSL handshake by hand - yes, but that's not the point. I think that people came into this thread hoping for a vscode extension that does everything that emacs org-mode does, but I don't think that that's something that'll happen, unfortunately, not unless vscode's architectural philosophy is very different from what I expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7095-org4idea](https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7095-org4idea)

</comment><comment><USER16> We need that on Vim

<comment><USER17> Or just accept that emacs is objectively better software and switch to it? Evil mode is by far the most complete/true to vim vim emulation that exists, as far as I know.

<comment><USER18> It's easier said than done. I decided to switch about a month ago, and after playing around with evil mode for a week, I gave it up in favor of emacs-std bindings. The core editor evil emulation was flawless. All my 20-year muscle memory commands just worked without a second thought.

When going into other packages like org, magit, etc. I noticed that all their default bindings were emacsey as well (for obvious reasons). I realized that I would be forever mapping evil bindings into new packages every time I wanted to use something new, so I gave it up as a bad job and just bit the bullet and switched to stock emacs without evil. I'm like halfway through the learning curve (I hope!) and it's tough. I've always had the caps lock key mapped to Ctrl anyway, but I still feel like my pinkie is about to fall off. After using vi/elvis/vim for almost 25 years, I do admit that I like emacs, but "just switch" still means a period of remarkably reduced productivity to many.

(Yes, I know that for any popular package someone has published evil mode bindings and use-package makes them trivial, but it's not the point.)

<comment><USER19> have you looked into evil-collection? This is a collection of evil bindings for various emacs packages. [https://github.com/jojojames/evil- collection](https://github.com/jojojames/evil-collection)

<comment><USER18> Thanks; I have, but I thought I might as well try to do it right. If after another month or so, I still have "Emacs pinkie", I might just bite the bullet and go to evil mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are "checkboxes" like [ ] and [x] understood by the real org mode or would I need to define say [_] and [x] as TODO keywords if I wanted highlighting of that sort of syntax? (It's been ~20 years since I was a heavy emacs user, looking forward to finally getting to play with Org Mode or at least an alpha of it)

<comment><USER21> Yes, they're understood, but in the different way. Org mode opted to treat _headlines_ as TODO items (this choice is important for the purpose of e.g. generating agendas), whereas checkboxes apply to _list items_.

As for the checkboxes, org mode understands [ ] and [X], and can process them relative to checkboxes in a sublist. For instance, if you write something like this:

      - [/] Foo
        - [X] Bar
        - [ ] Baz
      - [%] Foo
        - [X] Bar
        - [ ] Baz

and then make org-mode reevaluate the list (by e.g. using a shortcut that toggles a checkbox state), it will automagically turn into:

      - [1/2] Foo
        - [X] Bar
        - [ ] Baz
      - [50%] Foo
        - [X] Bar
        - [ ] Baz

(similar / and % feature is available for TODOs in headlines too). Org mode maintains such associations itself, recomputing them as you change state using org-mode commands, and it can also be configured to enforce additional structural constraints - e.g. preventing you from turning a TODO to DONE, if its subtasks are not all in DONE state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Finally, a thing that I was using before it made it to the top of HN.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very nice! Congrats for this.

In GNU Emacs, Org is both a plain text format and a set of tools to edit .org files: it's nice to see both implemented outside Emacs!

</comment><comment><USER24> These all seem really useful. Specially the date thing, handy.</comment>


Google made one of Android's jokes into something clever - <AUTHOR> https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3790-google-made-one-of-androids-jokes-into-something-clever

<comment><USER2> > is Google Goggles a thing still?

The tech was folded into the Google Translate app.</comment>


The Post-Millennial Generation Is Here - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/04/what-its-like-to-work-at-the-museum-of-ice-cream/558269/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> So in other words, it's service jobs for hipsters, in businesses aimed at hipsters.

Seriously though, am I the only one disturbed by all this 'community' stuff? I don't want my workplace to be a community or family, I want it to be a place to work and my colleagues to be colleagues. To do anything else feels like a way to turn work into a cult.

But hey, I guess I'm old fashioned. Seems like people nowadays don't like the idea of working for the money and doing what they enjoy in their free time.

<comment><USER3> When you realize that all your time is free time, then you try to maximize what you get out of it. Whether that is money or something else seems like it should be up to the particular individual.</comment></comment>


How Piracy Made 'Go the Fuck to Sleep' a No. 1 Amazon Best-Seller - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1753287/go-the-fuck-to-sleep-number-one-amazon-piracy-adam-mansbach

<comment><USER2> Bad conclusion.

The same factors that make something inherenty viral or popular will also make something highly pirated. You can't draw causation because they are born from the same factor.

(Just from the excerpt in this article, I sent a link to this book to 3 people this moment.)

</comment><comment><USER3> All this article does is massage the egos of pirates, it doesn't explain _why_ this book was popular because of piracy or how it converted into real world popularity. This article has so little substance... it could be interesting if it had something worth reading.

<comment><USER4> This article is an example of where piracy has positively benefited a creative work. Previously the debate was that "All piracy is always bad". People are starting to find evidence that piracy can be good. This changes the debate.

<comment><USER5> I suppose it's similar to the debate that "pulling out" is a safe contraception method. It works in very few cases.

<comment><USER6> Coitus interruptus has a failure rate of 15%-28% per year, 4% when used perfectly. In comparison, condoms have a failure rate of 10%-16% (2% when used perfectly).

You were perhaps aiming for a sound-bite, but saying "It works in very few cases" is inaccurate.

<comment><USER5> I think it made my point quite nicely. Piracy works in a very small percentage of cases. We shouldn't be clinging to this fact and saying that it's an effective way to market and advertise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is blogspam. Here's the original post that this one lifts all its facts from and references explicitly 4 times: [http://www.baycitizen.org/books/story/go-f-sleep-case- viral-...](http://www.baycitizen.org/books/story/go-f-sleep-case-viral-pdf/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I suggest those who plan to use a kid theme with adult content to consider strong legal backing in USA [0].

[0] [http://hypervocal.com/news/2011/update-youtube-musician- evan...](http://hypervocal.com/news/2011/update-youtube-musician-evan-emory- sentenced-to-60-days-in-jail/)

<comment><USER9> Crazy that that would get taken so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think books are becoming more souvenirs than strictly vessels for information.

People I know get most of their information digitally, reading books, articles, news, doing research, etc., all via computers, ipads, kindles, etc. It's just an easier way to consume information.

But, a physical book can easily serve as a party favor or a souvenir, of an event or of an idea. If some information is particularly valuable, or moving, or memorable, it's nice to have something to put on your coffee table or shelf. I would guess that the types of books that fit that description, just like Go the Fuck to Sleep does, are going to be the only books that are still profitably printed a decade from now.

<comment><USER11> You're talking about "doing research" but reading a technical reference on a PC / iPad / Kindle DX is very painful - first you need a big screen (plain Kindle won't do), devices like the iPad don't do so well in strong light, and one thing I really miss - taking notes, which is very hard, if possible at all.

That said, a device like Kindle DX could very well replace my printed books someday.

<comment><USER10> I can't really speak to doing technical research digitally. I've read many coding/graphics/web books, all digitally, and found it pretty much the same as reading a book.

Literally all legal research is done online now, though.

What, specifically, is so difficult about replicating technical references digitally? Is it just the screen/notes aspect? (I bet that is fixed within 2 generations) Layout? Graphics? Is it limited by the reproductions rather than the physical displays?

<comment><USER11> My biggest problem is that I like taking notes, especially for programming- related stuff, using a pencil.

I'm reading books in my dead time, like the daily commute, and I don't have the luxury to use a notebook. I like marking important paragraphs, or add notes on stuff that was previously defined in former chapters, or add question marks reminding me to do further research online.

And yes, the device has to have a big screen with good resolution, and that screen has to be readable in sunlight. And my problem with E-Ink is that it doesn't come in color (making them useless for reading some topics, like design/photography stuff for example).

Of course, I will be very happy when such technical limitations are removed. And I'll also be very happy that such reading devices are more green, and my reading habits aren't the reason for cutting down forests :)

<comment><USER10> Very understandable. Full motion, color e-ink should be out by next year (according to rumors about Amazon's ipad competitor). Flexible screens are very close to being useful. I bet we'll see what you want within 5 years. It will be fun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the artwork of a children's book, especially one as good as Go the F to Sleep make piracy beneficial. The content and the artwork are both very funny. So the PDF makes you realize it's actually quite good and then want the actual hard copy.

For parents on HN, if you haven't seen the book, you should. It'll make you laugh when you're having one of those nights.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this effect may only be successful in very specific cases of certain genres.

For example An Awesome Book (<http://veryawesomeworld.com/>), a similar adult/everyone children's book is offered for free and in full on the website while still quickly selling out on Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER14> A childrens book is not a regular kind of book. The book is filled with full- page images that support the texts and these are better appreciated in hardcopy form.

Also, you're not going to sit down with your baby and read them a bedtime story from your laptop.

<comment><USER15> > Also, you're not going to sit down with your baby and read them a bedtime > story from your laptop.

No, but from your iPad.

<comment><USER16> My three year old loves to read books on my Nook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think every kid that has stalled at bedtime is what made this the #1 best seller.

</comment><comment><USER18> Misleading title.

Correlation does not imply causation, etc...

</comment><comment><USER19> >There are many reasons why Go the Fuck to Sleep deserves to be a best-seller, and probably would have attained that status anyway.

No, it wouldn't.</comment>


Terminal – Virtual computers that start, resize, and scale in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.terminal.com <comment><USER2> _" Publish a fully functional working machine with your project on it_

 _Don 't worry about complex package management systems, or what environment a consumer of your program might have._

 _Just give them a copy of your environment: it will always work in the future. "_

I'm not convinced that a virtual machine snapshot is an adequate replacement for wrestling with a package manager. If all you distribute is a VM image, then:

\- Users can't easily run your software without provisioning an entire virtual server and, as far as I can tell, giving Terminal money and their email address.

\- Without active maintenance on your part, the other software on the image will get out of date. Security holes will be discovered in the versions of nginx and openssl that your image uses. Have you ever tried to upgrade a Linux box that hasn't been touched in a few years to the latest version? After a few years, every potential user of your software will have to go through that first.

\- If Terminal goes out of business or pivots, your image will no longer work (I think?).

\- Your software will not fit naturally into your users' deployment environments. It will not by default show up in their administration tools, know about their VPNs, integrate with their logging infrastructure, or appear on their graphs.

I think this makes a lot of sense as a low-friction way to distribute software, but if you're writing code that people will care about in a few years it shouldn't be the only way.

<comment><USER3> Certainly one could just create a tar ball of a terminal when logged into it and download it, so the data is exportable, right? Terminal could make that more convenient for sure, and probably will do so.

Software updates could be done the same way it always is: Run a script in a terminal that updates all packages. One could snapshot first, and verify that the updates do not break things.

<comment><USER2> After a few years, it's a safe bet that updating will break _something_. At that point, assuming you even notice the brokenness, you've got to either fix it manually (without necessarily knowing how to distinguish a working system from a somewhat-broken one or where to start debugging) or give up. I'd expect most users to give up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they are running on AWS -- you can see in the video "xlarge" and other systems types that are named the same in AWS. Interesting how they are playing some "tricks" to enable some cool capabilities. I am willing to bet they have a AWS box running of each type and using Docker or something like that. Probably spinning up instance types as they are used up. I am also willing to bet that if they got some non-significant traffic, that 5 sec will be 5-10 min. Don't mean to throw cold water on it but over all looks cool -- not sure what I would use it for. I would love to see the architecture for this product.

<comment><USER5> Your explanation is clever and could account for most of the behavior of the product. Certainly the environments, rapid booting, and even hot resizing.

What's missing, however, is how they do machine state snapshots (not supported in any container system afaik). I know Xen/VMWare support these, but if they are running atop AWS they will not have access to the hypervisor. I can imagine kludgily running another hypervisor atop AWS, but there would appear to be a more clever solution.

<comment><USER6> Check out CRIU.

<comment><USER5> Cool, thanks. I hadn't seen this before.

For those wondering: CRIU is Checkpoint/Restore In Userspace.

[http://criu.org/Main_Page](http://criu.org/Main_Page) is the project, and [http://criu.org/LXC](http://criu.org/LXC) is container support.

From a quick look, it seems that there are some limitations in CRIU, especially with LXC support, but it is work in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Give [http://Runnable.com](http://Runnable.com) a shot too :-) It's 100% free, and will remain so.

<comment><USER7> Runnable provides containers across high-performance AWS virtual machines. We launch millions of containers every month. Publishing your own image is as simple as installing packages in our terminal and hitting "publish"

\- Yash (Founder, Runnable.com)

<comment><USER8> What kind of isolation are you using between containers, if any?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would like to see some info on how they're counting CPUs in their pricing. 50 CPUs for $30/mo is too good to be true unless the CPU is not very powerful. Also, most apps that could actually use 50 CPUs would be hurt by only having 800 MB of memory. I think they should just price CPUs and RAM independently.

<comment><USER6> Their pricing page has a typo; it's 50% of a CPU for $30/month. And by "CPU" they may mean hyperthread.

[http://www.terminal.com/faq#instanceTypes](http://www.terminal.com/faq#instanceTypes)

<comment><USER9> I also saw the FAQ with CPU listed as % -- but they write:

      Type      CPU (%)

      micro   2 (max)*

      *Micro instances [...] are limited to 2 CPUs at best

So that indicates to me the pricing page is right and the FAQ header is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So someone turned Docker into an online service. Interesting. It seems promising, though not yet mature. For every day computing the cost still seems high however, and I worry about security. Still, it smacks of the future.

<comment><USER11> Doesn't look like this has anything to do with Docker. It's more like lipstick on a full blown hypervisor.

<comment><USER12> You are right that we don't use Docker, but we also don't use hypervisors which are too slow.

We are a lot faster than a hypervisor. Our machines start in 5 seconds. Neither can resize a machine up and down live without a reboot. None of them can do RAM snapshots.

<comment><USER13> It's OpenVZ or Virtuozzo.

[http://openvz.org/](http://openvz.org/)

[http://www.parallels.com/products/pvc/](http://www.parallels.com/products/pvc/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for the feedback everyone! We didn't expect this. If you are in SF, we have a meetup for data scientists tomorrow evening in SoMa at ThoughtBot offices.

[http://www.meetup.com/Terminal-com- Developers/events/1922628...](http://www.meetup.com/Terminal-com- Developers/events/192262892/)

<comment><USER14> [http://www.terminal.com/terminals](http://www.terminal.com/terminals) is broken in Firefox 30.0

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice.

I currently use [http://nitrous.io](http://nitrous.io) for ad-hoc linux terminal sessions with an integrated editor, and it looks like this does pretty much the same at what will be (for me) a fraction of the price.

I like nitrous, so am unlikely to move away - but I will be checking this offering out.

The editor could probably do with some polishing, and I'd need an obvious way to create and set environment variables.

There's some confusion for me as to what it is you're selling. Is it an adhoc terminal people can spin up when they need - or is it an application server? If just the former, then why have gitlab, and ghost in your images list. If the latter, then why the auto-shutdown on sessions, and what is relatively a high price for hosting.

</comment><comment><USER16> I, for one, love the name. (I'm impressed they were able to get the domain.) "Terminal" seems like a perfectly natural name for this sort of product.

Very excited to see this tech used for online computer science education. When I took CS classes (and TA'd them) it was always a royal pain in the ass to configure everything right on every student's personal computer / OS / etc. Being able to pre-install all the libraries, code, and data once and then blast it to everyone seems like a huge win. Not sure how the pricing would work for a large CS class (or even an online version) but hopefully they can figure that out.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, that's sure one pricey domain name :) But this service looks very promising. I will try to update with some feedback soon.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really like the idea of being able to take a snapshot of my scalable computing environment and sharing it with others. Everything looks slick - will definitely try it the next time I'm building/tweaking a ML model. Are there other solutions which enable the same ?

</comment><comment><USER19> So for $61 I can access 3,200 CPUs for one day?

How does that work?

I didn't know there were any computers that had 3,200 CPUs?

How would I test that?

<comment><USER14> You get 3,200% of a CPU, not 3,200 CPUs.

<comment><USER20> make that 320,000%

<comment><USER14> Looks like they finally clarified their Pricing page, it now simply says 32 CPUs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I participated in a user study for terminal, although it was a modified version marketed toward a specific use case. We came away quite disappointed in the product, primarily because it didn't include most of the community- provided features/functionality provided here on their full site.

Needless to say, we all walked away from the meeting, hit terminal.com and were puzzled as to why they didn't show us this version of the site. Our opinions/feedback would have been drastically different.

I'm looking forward to giving this version of terminal a proper run through. The overall concept I found very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do you use CPU sharing, or how do I actually get 50 CPUS? I guess I'd like to know how fast the cpus are....

<comment><USER23> Think that is the percentage of a CPU you get?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now, the next problem is to make applications that can scale down on RAM dependably without having to restart.

<comment><USER25> VMWare ESX solves this with a technique called ballooning[0] which is pretty clever.

[0][https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedin...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/osdi02/tech/full_papers/waldspurger/waldspurger_html/node6.html)

<comment><USER6> If a process refuses to give up allocated memory (which is usually the case), ballooning will cause the app to swap. If the app's heap is fragmented it will thrash to death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Curious, what do they use to create these machines? Is there some sort of open source package that allows you to create elastic machines?

<comment><USER6> LXC or Docker. You can resize a container by changing the parameters on the cgroups.

<comment><USER5> Xen/VMWare also support hot resizing of CPU and RAM.

What's interesting is that neither LXC nor Docker support memory snapshots (machine state), which Terminal.com has demonstrated. Xen, KVM, and VMWare do, but I can't really imagine people running these atop AWS infrastructure (Xen underneath).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there no way to create a clean instance, with a fresh OS installation, without having to use someone else's snapshot?

<comment><USER28> we just added some official base instances. check them out!

[http://www.terminal.com/explore#query=username%3Aterminal](http://www.terminal.com/explore#query=username%3Aterminal)

<comment><USER27> Very cool. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It looks very cool. Am going to try it out.

Agree with what others are saying on the name. Terminal is spoken for.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice job - I like it. Definitely the fastest nothing -> RoR install I've every had.

</comment><comment><USER31> Are these remotely accessible? Can I set up SSH/STFP with a public IP?

<comment><USER32> I'd like to know as well. I just tried but I can't get it to work following the documentation.

Edit: It seems that the request must be made over HTTPS.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, looks like right now they just forward http[s] requests via nginx to your "terminal" so SSH or any other raw, non-HTTP connection won't work.

<comment><USER12> We are going to have SSH/SFTP access publicly soon. Email us at email@example.com if you need access now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why is there a six character minimum on usernames?

</comment><comment><USER34> Just because my dog is called Napoleon doesn't mean he's the king of France. What kind of ridiculous name is that?

<comment><USER35> Uh, one that seems to sum up what the product does quite nicely?

<comment><USER36> When dealing with any new and unfamiliar system, the best way to troubleshoot unclear features or generic errors is usually to hit up Google for those who ran into the same thing. Making your product ungooglable is a great way to ensure developers never touch it.

<comment><USER37> This was my first thought as well. This product name is the sure way to failure because it describes all kinds of things. Their product is one of the least significant items called Terminal, due to being the new kid on the block. They hide in plain sight.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The ghost of _why returns to teach people programming & Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://hackety-hack.com/

<comment><USER2> Effectively a dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2038976>.

<comment><USER3> This is a problem that even DupeDetector couldn't have caught. Hm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just finished all of the lessons. Great stuff.

I'd like to find out more about how to contribute, whether content, marketing, etc. I think it's spot on for simple step by step "learn by doing" approach to beginner programming.

I think there are a lot of possibilities...

<comment><USER3> Hey vnchr, thanks!

Can you send me an email, and we'll talk about it? Its' in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Haha, I'm not a ghost, but if I can be half the coder _why was, I'll be happy.

<comment><USER5> _whynot

<comment><USER6> This reminds me of _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.

<comment><USER7> How so?

<comment><USER8> Wye. ("Wye not?")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't tried hackety-hack yet. But my initial assessment tells me that stuff like these are very good for people who want to learn new stuff. Is there something like this for Python?

<comment><USER10> Hackety-hack is a wonderful piece of software for teaching programming. Take it from me, it's how I learned a lot of beginning knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My sister has little programming experience but wants to learn to make webapps. Should I send her this or point her to some javascript stuff?

<comment><USER3> It depends. Two thoughts:

1: programming is programming. I'm trying to keep it about programming in general, not just Ruby specifically. You can read the lessons here[1], they're written in a simple DSL.

2: Webapps have both a server side and a client side component. I doubt that she'll be starting off with Node.js, eh? It could be because I'm a back-end kinda guy, but I'd rather start with simple, more old-school apps before getting into javascript heavy AJAXy client-side ones. YMMV.

1: [https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/tree/master/lesso...](https://github.com/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/tree/master/lessons)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aww... you got my hopes up for _why's return and you reminded me how much I missed his contributions to the ruby community.

If you're out there somewhere _why, please come back. We miss you.

</comment><comment><USER13> Didn't work on ubuntu. ;(

/tmp/selfgz13504/hacketyhack-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libssh2.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

<comment><USER3> Been fighting with it all day. I want to have .deb and .rpms eventually, but for now build your own Shoes seems to be the best way for Linux:

<https://github.com/shoes/shoes/wiki/Building-Shoes-on-Linux>

[https://github.com/downloads/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/hackety...](https://github.com/downloads/hacketyhack/hacketyhack/hacketyhack-1.0.0.shy)

Yes, this is a non-answer for now. But better than nothing. :/

<comment><USER13> No problem, thanks for the links..

It says, "Shoes has to be built with Ruby 1.9.1." Is that strict, or will 1.9.2 work? Edit: Actually, I'll tell you in a minute.

Update: This is a bit beyond what I was expecting. What do I do with the .shy file after shoes is installed?

<comment><USER3> Mind shooting me an email? This thread will just get lost in my HN replies... 1.9.2 should build it properly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-VCDB-18760 <comment><USER3> In a slightly older thread concerning this topic, at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11306290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11306290) I made some objections to this analysis.

I think there's a fundamental problem in how to interpret this analysis. It says that a company is founded by an immigrant if there is at least one immigrant founder. This means that if 1 of 10 founders is foreign born, then it classified as immigrant founded. An aggregate calculation like this is very likely to give a number which is higher than the more important number, the over- or under- representation of immigrant founders relative to the immigrant population.

For example, if every company has 10 founders, and every company has 1 immigrant founder, then by the given definition, 100% of the companies would be founded by an immigrant. However, only 10% of the founder population would be an immigrant. As immigrants make up about 13% of the US population, this would mean that immigrants would be proportionally _less likely_ to be founders of $1B valuated startups than non-immigrants.

Curiously, and I believe significantly, the study does not give this population information, and it makes it difficult to determine that ratio.

I did not find an explicit count of the number of immigrant founders. Table 4 has a list of all of the name, and Table 3 has a count of immigrants from a given country, so it's possible to figure this out. I am perturbed that the first contains 60 people and the second 61. Perhaps I have miscounted, but I believe there is an error in the report. (I double checked the report by searching for "60" or "61", but found no explicit total of the number of immigrant founders.)

I did not find an explicit count of the total number of founders, which means I have to compute that myself from the list of companies. I did not find an explicit list of companies, which means I have to go to the original WSJ data source.

Which I did, though my count was off by one from the report's count. It would have been much better if the report included the explicit list of companies _and_ founder counts.

I took the current WSJ list of 106 companies and picked a few in the top, middle, and bottom range. (Statistical sampling would have been better, I know.) I found founder counts of 65 of them before tedium kicked in. I found 161 founders.

This gives an estimated total founder size of 161/65x87 = 215.5, and implies that about 60/215.5 = 28% of founders are immigrants.

This number, while twice as large as expected from the general immigrant population of the US, is also around half of the eye-catching 51%.

The next step would be to do a sensitivity analysis to give an idea of error bars. I do not know anything beyond basic statistics, but will point out that 60 is a very small number compared to the number of foreign visa, and hardly representative.

Speaking of statistics, while 28% is twice as large as 13%, there's likely also a form of p-hacking, or "garden of forking paths" going on. With enough sampling, you will be able to find very unrepresentative subgroups in your data. Why was this population of $1B startups chosen? Do the results change with $2B? Do they change for companies that go public?

For a more specific example, last year there was an analysis going around which pointed out that "Most high tech companies are founded by founded by First/2nd gen immigrants". This is definitely in the same vein, though with different measures. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9085970) for my observation that this is almost exactly what you would expect given the immigrant population in the US.

Since I can point to two reports related to the topic, how many more negative and thus unpublished correlations are there?

Finally, the report includes the suggestion that diversity among the founders helps improve the success of the company. If that were the case, then should we not exclude companies where the all founders are from the same foreign country, as in Nutanix where all three founders are from India?

<comment><USER4> I'm jaded. But stories like this are planned to divert to things like what IBM are doing or job shops like Tata,etc.

"Oh look at what immigrants are contributing in entrepreneurial sense, but ignore how big companies are moving jobs overseas."

IBM and Disney, iconic US brands are at the for front of outsourcing local jobs using H1B scabs as the route.

<comment><USER5> Well, there are two groups of companies. Companies that can't find the talent that they need in this country, and companies trying to save money.

There definitely is a STEM shortage, and you are being really dishonest if you say there isn't. Ask any hiring manager at a tech company. Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and many, many other companies _do not_ underpay or maltreat their visa-holding employees in any way. It is primarily this class of companies that are asking for an expansion in the number of visas.

Several bills have been introduced in Congress that would have (further) restricted the ability of the less-nice companies to underpay immigrants or displace native-born workers. For example, S.744 from the 113th Congress.

It is wrong to paint all companies with the same brush.

<comment><USER3> No, there is _not_ a STEM shortage because "STEM" is a nonsense term. The companies you mentioned don't want to hire anthropologists, general relativity theorists, large animal biologists, nuclear power engineers, differential geometry experts, meteorologists, pharmaceutical chemists, or most of the other diverse fields in STEM.

No, the shortage is only in from a much smaller subset of primarily programming related skills.

If there were a real shortage, FB and others would start their own training program, give people scholarships to attend for a year and get up to speed, then hire the best candidates from that pool. We are nowhere near there because it's cheaper to get people to pay for their own education (or get the government to pay for it), and hire from that.

Historical, that's similar to what happened when there were real labor shortages. After all, it's not like all the women welders during WWII came in knowing how to weld.

<comment><USER5> The idea that good programmers are as easily trainable as good welders is ridiculous. If that were the case, we wouldn't have a shortage.

My company actually does try to train people. We hire people who come out of coding camps like General Assembly -- and we _actually pay these camps_ when we hire them. Students attend these camps for free.

After that, we pair program with them, and painstakingly explain various concepts to them. We hold them by the hand, and _literally teach them_. I found it amazing that my company had to do this, and shocking that they literally could not find good developers. My company is just looking for developers _that can get shit done_. We are not looking for rock stars, or master algorithm puzzle solvers. Just people who can build decent, functioning non-broken software.

FYI, I graduated very recently with a B.S. in Computer Science, and my total comp (incl. bonuses) is slightly over $150,000. And, at my company, the typical workday is from 10 am to 6 pm. _I am not over-worked, or under-paid_.

It is clear that you've neither been in a position of hiring developers, nor have an idea of what good programming skill is.

<comment><USER3> That explains why you have so little knowledge of labor history that you don't know what a "scab", is nor know of the strikes by people in a STEM field. You have neither the training nor the experience.

What you might take from that is that, while you are neither "over-worked, or under-paid", you are under-educated about history, and more specifically labor history.

Your last line continues your tiring practice of name calling. Please stop.

<comment><USER5> > practice of name calling

There is a time and place for everything. When a person makes remarks that are beyond a shadow of doubt hateful and xenophobic, naming those things (specifically) and calling them out is absolutely the right thing to do.

It would be morally wrong, cowardly, and reprehensibly politically correct _not to do so_.

Jesus said to the Pharisees: "You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell?"

So, _no_ , I absolutely will not stop speaking the truth, and naming and calling out _evil_ when I see it.

I have experienced an incredible amount of hate here. You hate me and despise me because I immigrated to this country (that too, legally). Your hatred and your contempt is based solely on the fact that I wasn't born here.

You believe that I deserve a lesser shot at life, and fewer rights and freedoms than you have, simply because I wasn't born here.

That is a disgusting, contemptible, elitist, and entitled set of beliefs. Especially considering that the families of most people in this country immigrated in the last few hundred years.

You and your ilk are a shame and a disgrace to this country, like the KKK. You do not embody the American spirit. Nor do you understand the values and principles this country was founded on. Specifically, you and your ilk embody the spirit of Andrew Jackson, and not that of Abraham Lincoln.

<comment><USER3> And what of your professed morality gives you the right to say that I don't "have an idea of what good programming skill is"? What evidence justifies that name calling? Or do you justify it because you have concluded I am the despised Enemy who deserves no better?

It's easy to dress yourself in the clothes of righteousness. The feeling of moral outrage is powerful. But your call to "ich kann nicht anders", used so profoundly by Martin Luther King Jr. while in the Birmingham jail, no more justifies your conclusion than it might justify King's namesakes' 'Von den Juden und ihren Lügen'.

I tell you again _I AM AN IMMIGRANT_. _MY FATHER WAS AN IMMIGRANT_. Your shots are clearly wild and disconnected from reality. You appear to believe that anyone who disagrees with you in the slightest is "beyond a shadow of doubt hateful and xenophobic".

Isn't life so clear when you live in a absolutist world of black&white world, and work on the side of Jesus? Too bad for you that that's not the real world. Nor is it world I aspire towards. I don't want to be subject to the whims of people who ignore evidence counter to their conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are not the downtrodden masses. Immigrant does not mean poor. These are wealthy upper class people coming to the most logical place to create a successful technology company, because they can afford to do so. Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are.

Investors in Silicon Valley care a lot about status and pedigree. A foreigner that can afford elite credentials is far more likely to get funding than a poor local.

And of course H1B visas drive down wages. This is basic supply and demand.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure H1B visas are relevant here? I would imagine EB-5 (investment) visas would be the more common route for upper class immigrant entrepreneurs coming to the US.

<comment><USER8> Not quite so sure. I was a startup cofounder (never made it to billion dollar though :), and came to the US via grad school on an F1 visa, which then morphed into an H1B, and am now in the process of getting a green card.

I know this is a very common path.

Regarding the class thing: my grandparents were blue collar workers who never went to high school, my parents were engineers.

<comment><USER9> IANAL, but you cannot legally work on your own startup if you are on H1B

<comment><USER10> You can be a "co-founder" of a funded startup though. As long as the company has enough financial backing to prove they can pay you a market wage, and you meet the other requirements.

<comment><USER9> Oh, that makes sense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article is advocating for increasing H1-B caps. I wonder what does H1-B (a non-immigrant visa, which does not allow running your own business) has to do with immigrants founding billion dollar startups other than them using it to acquire cheap labor?

<comment><USER12> Because many of them came to the US to study because of being able to work here through the OPT/H1/GreenCard/citizen route. Same with many top professors, researchers and tech execs like Nadella, Gundotra, Pichai etc.And many people on this list too like the inventor of USB etc. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Americans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Americans)

<comment><USER13> > Same with many top professors, researchers and tech execs like Nadella, > Gundotra, Pichai etc.And many people on this list too like the inventor of > USB etc.

Some of them might have, but the H1B is an _awful_ avenue for this. You are not allowed any side businesses while you are employed on an H1B visa (and you can't be self employed using it). If you are Indian, you are looking at what is currently an 11 year processing delay before you can get a green card, not counting the time it takes to get your H1B initially. If you're from other countries, the backlog is shorter, but it is still multiple years before you can leave your company to try self employment.

Assuming you get approved for a green card. It's possible to get an H1B and then get denied for a green card.

Academics and other similar figures of note can already apply directly for a green card, which I suspect many of the people on this list have done. If you want to expand immigration, a simpler, faster path to permanent residency is essential.

<comment><USER14> > If you want to expand immigration, a simpler, faster path to permanent > residency is essential.

Comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to do that, adopting a more streamlined points system like Canada and Australia, but of course the bill ended up covering amnesty for undocumented immigrants too and the whole thing got shot down.

Unfortunately for most people an H1-B is the best path to a green card, and only once you have a green card are you free to be an entrepreneur etc.

<comment><USER13> Yes, as a Canadian working in the USA on an H1B, I am painfully aware of this fact.

The point remains: Increasing the number of H1Bs will not have a great impact on the number of founders, especially not in the short term, because the vast majority of them will end up shackled to an employer for years.

<comment><USER15> The real reform would be to unshackle H1B's. Sadly, in today's political climate, I don't think that's likely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not a U.S. citizen, and obviously one day I hope to be one of those U.S. Billion-Dollar startup founders and I would appreciate a VISA if it would help me achieve that, but there's something shaky with the premise here.

Why does the U.S. need to depend on the ~80.000 odd first order immigrants per year to generate that amount of wealth. Couldn't the U.S. somehow draw those ambitious out of its current population?

What if people could 'emigrate' from Detroit to California? They'd basically be refugees from a low-opportunity environment as well.

Or is it not the fact that they came from a low-opportunity environment, but rather that they came like Bill Gates from the tender love and care of rich/succesful parents, and being born abroad was just a small hurdle?

<comment><USER17> When an Elon Musk or a Max Levchin shows up in your country itching to get to work, the best course of action is _not_ to say, "couldn't we some how draw your kind of ambition out of a local?"

Far better is to give them visas let them build in your country rather than elsewhere.

<comment><USER18> The better option is to make sure that everyone in your country that has the POTENTIAL to be an Elon Musk gets the education and skills they need to become him. Elon went to many prestigious private schools and had early childhood access to expensive computers, which is a common thread in MANY founders and current executives and VCs in the startup world.

Meanwhile I know a lot of smart people who don't go to college in the US because they don't want to be saddled with $100k in debt. And a lot more who don't persue higher degrees because their parents aren't poor enough to receive assistance but not rich enough to pay for college. We do a terrible job of helping people in America live up to their potential - its the best country to be born rich in, but the worst first-world country to be born poor in.

<comment><USER19> These are not mutually exclusive possibilities. You can accept highly skilled immigrants AND improve your education system. If anything, doing the former might make it easier to do the latter, since those highly skilled immigrants will provide more tax revenue to spend on public education.

<comment><USER18> True enough, but companies only argue for more immigration (quicker fix) than an educated populace (not their problem/criticism of govt is bad for business)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most CS students want to come to the U.S. from around the world because the CS Rock Stars are here! Where else are you able to go to a meet up and strike up a conversation with the person who wrote popular software you admire? How often do you get to do that in another country? The immigrants want to start companies here because there are success stories here - especially immigrant success stories. I love the CS classes here ... I love the passion that students show, I love the side projects people are willing to invest free time in ...

</comment><comment><USER21> It's no secret that the continuing economic dominance of the US is not due to a post-WW2 windfall or the unique capabilities of Americans, but more to the ability of the US to attract and retain the very best, and then subsequently give them unique opportunities.

Few nativists are opposed to the best and the brightest (and the already- wealthy) coming to the US in very, very small numbers, but what they don't realize is that it's pretty much impossible to tell in advance who's going to be a winning lottery ticket.

<comment><USER22> What factors do you think contribute to the ability of the US to attract the best?

<comment><USER23> \- A culture that strongly promotes entrepreneurial activity and doesn't lambast you for failing at starting a business.

\- Venture capital on every corner. Most new businesses are started with capital from friends, family, or other local semi-well-off people (think: the doctors etc. that helped fund Warren Buffett's first company with initial investment). It's extremely common in the US, people don't find it strange.

\- Large scale venture capital, eg Silicon Valley or NY.

\- The best universities, by far. Beyond the concentration of talent that places like Stanford or MIT have, the US produces immense amounts of research and innovation from its top ~100 universities, which then frequently spin-off into new businesses. Bill Gates has estimated that the US produces 1/2 of all the scientific output on earth.

\- Very enshrined protections around freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. This has been critical for companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, Blogger, Medium, Wordpress, Movable Type, LiveJournal and a thousand others. Relatively strong property rights protections also help.

\- An approach to creating new things that mostly says that things are legal until or unless they're named to be illegal. Basically: do it, don't ask permission. It's why PayPal, Uber and Airbnb were able to break the rules and get away with it for so long. Despite the criticism you'll see of this on HN, it's invaluable. Otherwise, you have a system where you must seek permission for every single thing.

\- Common language, common currency and a mostly unified large market under one federal system. Free movement between states allowing talent to go where it needs / wants to. Starting in the US enables you to rush to scale much faster than you can in almost any other market, a position of strength from which you can then go after every other market.

\- Massive rewards. The US owns around 43% of all global wealth, with among the highest median incomes, and the fifth highest GDP per capita - <USER2> with three hundred million people that have a high rate of consumer activity. That enables very outsized results.

\- Extremely high productivity and high technology adoption across most industries. The US economy remains among the top nations in terms of productivity (as witnessed by its very high GDP per capita), despite its size.

\- Plentiful and relatively cheap energy / energy costs. The US is the world's second largest manufacturer. If you need to make something physical in the US, you can still do it for the most part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _According to the study, Mr. Bansal couldn't leave his job to start a new company because it was unclear if he'd be able to keep his H-1B status._

For 7 years. What a lock-in. And during that time, your employer can probably abuse you and freeze your salary, knowing exactly that your stay depends on that visa and you have a hard time leaving.

Another point on immigrants. The US does it right: It causes brain-drain in other countries and actually takes in skilled workers. I can guarantee you that the kind of mass immigration central Europe is experiencing right now won't lead to an array of startups.

<comment><USER25> Funnily, due to country quotas that 7-9 yr wait on employment-based green cards is almost exclusively Indian problem.

<comment><USER26> Today, sure. 5 years ago, the EB2 and EB3 quotas for all other countries were almost as long, but this changes over time. For instance, in 2007, the line was 5 years after labor certification, so, in practice, about 6 years for everyone.

Nowadays that to get an H1B you need to go through a lottery, the big Indian outsources are increasing their percentage of H1Bs, making the problem both harder for India, and easier for the rest of the world. Instead of waiting 5 or 6 years like I did, now you probably can't stay in the US, but if you can, the green card is easier.

It's a downright bizarre situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So those immigrants are taking all that VC money away from me!

(Kidding, kidding, kidding, just a Trump joke).

<comment><USER28> And yet this is what the majority of people in on HN are arguing here. So you have to ask, why is a certain viewpoint laughable when applied to illegal immigrants from South America, but reasonable when applied to H-1B visas?

<comment><USER29> Because their interests are not hurt by illegal immigrants from South America, but hurt by legal immigrants on H-1B visas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> 1\. Many want it to be true that it's an objectively good idea to allow more immigration, or for there to be a broad consensus that more immigration is objectively good, or for there to be more ammunition to conduct moral posturing upon the outgroup when the outgroup has negative valence about immigration, or maybe two or all three. (I don't particularly disagree, immigration is fine.)

2\. One great way to accomplish all of those is to create an association between "immigrant" and "success" or "innovation" in people's minds.

3\. People gloss over the difference between P(A|B) and P(B|A) _all the time_. If you can show that P(B|A) is surprisingly high, and there's sufficient motivation to do so, people will instead think something much more like "A and B are associated" than "A often implies B though not at all necessarily the converse".

4\. So, just show that {thing you want people to have positive valence about} is overrepresented in {tiny set of things with positive valence}. This will probably be easy, since there are lots of tiny sets of things with positive valence.

This strategy is far more used in the negative case -- "people who do bad thing Y are often from group X, don't concern yourself with the base rate of bad thing Y among all members of group X" \-- but either way it's very effective and very insidious.

</comment><comment><USER31> "These 44 companies, the study says, are collectively valued at $168 billion and create an average of roughly 760 jobs per company."

Firstly, that's 33,000 jobs or about 0.0003% of the US workforce, so hardly the backbone of the economy.

Secondly, the H1B program, the subject of the article, is not an immigration program but a guest worker program. Generally, H1B workers leave the country and don't go on to start companies because the visa is limited to six years.

<comment><USER26> Nope, the H1B visa is THE immigration program. Every university will tell you that.

The route used to go like this: Studying in an American university will get you an F1 visa, which gets you either a first job or an internship. Then, if you are any good, the only sensible way for your employer to retain you is to file for H1B. Back when I did it, it was really easy to get it (as opposed to today's 1/3 lottery). At that point, you can say that you want a green card. Nobody is going to be crazy enough to sponsor someone for a Green Card if they aren't working there already, if just because it's a relatively long process in the best of cases, and many years the worst. So we get H1Bs so that companies will be OK sponsoring us. Once your green card process is pending, the visa stops being limited: You just have to wait as many years as it might take to get to the front of the green card queue. Then you will be approved, and become a permanent resident.

Today, getting the H1B is actually HARDER than getting the green card, but getting one first is pretty much mandatory due to the delays. This is what makes the H1B the main road in. If you look at the employment based green cards handed out every year, a very large percentage comes from H1s, or maybe L1s(which only works in a company that has an international subsidiary)

There are H1Bs that go back home, but they are those that get laid off at the wrong time, so they give up on the green card process.

<comment><USER32> Good comment. Just a clarification: there is no path to the Green Card from L1B. There is a path from L1A, but I would guess they are a minority of the L1 visas.

So yes, H1 seems to be the one and only skilled immigration program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > These 44 companies, the study says, are collectively valued at $168 billion > and create an average of roughly 760 jobs per company in the U.S.

$168B divided by 760 employees: $220M of value created per job.

If there's no error in the numbers, that means that employees at these startups are tremendously underpaid, in spite of probably making above-market salaries.

<comment><USER34> Isn't the number 760 employees PER company? That would make the total as 760*44=33,440 employees.

<comment><USER35> Correct. That comes down to $5M per employee, which is still pretty damn good by my standards

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Not on a serious note...this title could be phrased as 'With no immigrants flooding, americans will found 100% of U.S. Billion-Dollar startups'

<comment><USER37> "Immigrants Stealing 51% of Best Paying Jobs"

This game is fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The arbitrary criteria for deciding what companies to include shows they could have just searched for one (valued at over $1B at 2016-01-01 and not publicly traded) that gives the most favorable result. Why $1B? Why not $10B, $100M, or $1 million? Why 2016? Why not 2015 or any time in the past decade or two? Why not listed companies? Is that so they can call them "startups", or is it because $1B+ listed companies are mostly founded by American born people?

I couldn't find any mention of their methodology for selecting criteria in the linked report. Without that, the only conclusion seems to be "water is wet". This doesn't look like science. It looks like politics and is inherent dishonesty.

</comment><comment><USER39> They could do with a startup founder visa really. Maybe allow people to hang out and launch companies for a year or 2 and allow conversion to a long term visa if they employ a few Americans. Bit like a relaxed version of the E2 visa.

Edit - I read to the bottom of the article and see they tried to bring something like that in with the "EB-JOBS Act of 2015" which didn't get through the political system.

<comment><USER40> This already exists in the EB-5 visa[0] assuming you start with .5 million funding. You get to stay forever too.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa)

<comment><USER41> EB-5 visa requires $1 million funding. .5 million is for "Targeted Employment Area", which is basically area with bad economy, you really don't want to start a startup there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> There aren't many Billion Dollar startups out there (44 as said in the article) so the apparently precise percentage (51%) is slightly misleading (base size is small so not so representative). If they had looked at, let's say, 500M startups, the actual figure would have been more telling.

</comment><comment><USER43> No matter how you feel about the whole legal immigration thing, If it is true that immigrants who form significantly less than 51% of the working population found 51% of the startups there is an interesting insight statistically speaking (This is not normal, but good)

May be there needs to be a distinction between the kind of immigrants who go on to found startups vs the one who come to take low paying jobs. May be create different visa category for each. Encourage one discourage another(limiting it), but that doesn't mean that every person who comes under 1st category starts a company or everybody who comes under the second category doesn't start a company.

I see it as math, maximize one function and minimize the other.

</comment><comment><USER44> What good is a billion dollar startup if it pays little US tax, and only employs one or two hundred high paying jobs? A 100 Million dollar company typically employs just as many high paying jobs and may pay more US tax than a lot of these tech companies.

Also, a lot of these tech companies that are "shaking up" industries are profitable at the expense of other more traditional businesses (For example: AirBnB taking business from Hotels, Uber from taxi services, etc).

So bringing in more Billion dollar unicorn startups may not be the best thing for a country.

<comment><USER45> > What good is a billion dollar startup if it pays little US tax?

Your line of thought implies that the only way a company can add value to the economy is through employment and taxes. You only need to look for a couple seconds at the mess in DC to glimpse how much money from taxes is wasted, not to mention allocated towards ethically questionable activities (drones, domestic spying, wars, etc). That's for another conversation.

In the case of airbnb, you are taking money from larger more established corporations (hotel chains) and giving it to homeowners who have a spare bedroom or are away for the weekend. You are also providing a wider range of pricing options for consumers. So the company contributes to the economy in those ways as well, not just through employment and taxes.

> Also, a lot of these tech companies that are "shaking up" industries are > profitable at the expense of other more traditional businesses

These companies take business from traditional companies because they _provide more value_. Keep in mind the whole point of a company to fulfill a need. I would say that it's not really up to you or anyone other than consumers to decide if it's a good thing or not that these companies succeed. Competition is always a good thing for consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> tldr; WSJ want to raise H1B cap and cherry-picks/mis-represents data to justify that.

</comment><comment><USER47> The study found that 51 percent of the country's $1 billion startup companies had at least one immigrant founder.

To say that "immigrants founded 51% of U.S. billion-dollar startups" seems a bit misleading to me.

</comment><comment><USER48> We're talking theses United States right?! So unless you're talking 'bout Native Americans then 99%+ of all companies since 1776 have been created by Immigrants. Think about folks!

<comment><USER49> If so, how did us Europeans "immigrating" to the US work out for the Native Americans?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> What was thd class of the inmigrant? Where did they go to school? And were those that funded them immigrants?

Then the big picture emerges.

<comment><USER51> I don't know about the US, but in Britain a lot of university funding comes from charging foreigners an arm and a leg to study there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Pretty sure white immigrants like Elon Musk are not who Donald Trump and his followers are talking about.

</comment><comment><USER53> Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It'll be extremely costly;

</comment><comment><USER54> 49% of US billion-dollar startups were founded by native americans?

</comment><comment><USER55> Clicked this expecting to see much breast-beating about H1B and "driving down wages". Top comment has this:

 _" And of course H1B visas drive down wages"_

Wasn't disappointed. Never change hacker news.

<comment><USER56> xenophobia is big part of this myth. in the future, mail wife will be the only way to get into US

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Immigrants are awesome and unfortunately exploited but don't you think an orderly immigration is far more effective than having borders Zerg rushed?</comment>