Show HN: I Built a "Google Alerts" for Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://pipedream.com/@marc/google-alerts-for-hacker-news-p_jmCzVJ/readme <comment><USER2> A lot of people on this thread wanted a true "Google Alerts" tool that notifies you when a post on HN contains a given keywords in the title. I agree, so I forked the workflow and created my own that does this: [https://pipedream.com/@dylburger/google-alerts-for-hacker- ne...](https://pipedream.com/@dylburger/google-alerts-for-hacker-news- p_ezCJ7p/readme) .

The README explains how it works in detail, but you can modify the KEYWORDS constant at the top of the Node.js code step to receive alerts for any keywords you'd like. Then, on the schedule you specify (e.g. every 30 minutes), this hits the HN API and sends you a Slack message with the story link.

Let me know if y'all have any feedback on this, happy to modify it to suit specific needs. If you know Node, you can fork and run a copy yourself and modify it however you'd like, too.

<comment><USER3> I just use Google Alerts itself and scope the URL, for example site:[https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) "Apple Watch" or site:[https://news.ycombinator.com](https://news.ycombinator.com) tennis

<comment><USER4> do you get notified reliably? I always found out Google Alerts don't fire as often as they should

<comment><USER3> I do. I have each set to fire "as-it-happens," but it'll often be a few hours before it appears in my email.

<comment><USER5> How do you know it's reliable? In my experience, Google Alerts misses a lot of mentions on HN and Reddit.

I would challenge you to try an alternative (like [https://f5bot.com/](https://f5bot.com/)) for a week. You may be surprised at how many more hits it gets over Google Alerts.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps you should share that you own/operate f5bot

<comment><USER5> Of course. It's not a secret.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the first I've heard of Pipedream. What's the use case for it? Personal? Enterprise?

Looking through the documentation, apparently it's [1] free to use!...

[1] [https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/](https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/)

<comment><USER2> Hi there, Dylan, a Pipedream founder here.

Right now, the product is in alpha, so its programming model is subject to change. As a result we expect it to serve mostly personal use cases, and hope to serve the enterprise over time.

And yes, it's free! You can run any number of cron jobs up to a frequency of once / minute [1]. You can also trigger workflows via HTTP requests [2], up to 10 QPS for free (after that, we'll rate limit you and issue 429s, but you can always reach out to us to raise that limit if you have a use case).

We think it's the easiest way to run Node.js code on a schedule or in response to HTTP requests. There's no infra to manage or other cloud resources to provision. You just write Node code.

We support a lot of first-class "destinations", like S3 [3] and a hosted data warehouse where you can send any JSON and query it using SQL, also for free [4] (we generate and update the table schema for you, based on the JSON you send). We use these destinations internally to store e.g. data from webhooks for analytics. If you need to run basic transformations on HTTP requests using Node, then send that data somewhere, it's a trivial way to do it. You can add any number of these destinations to a single workflow. We also support returning custom HTTP responses if you'd like to build out simple APIs [5].

I'd love if you found a use case for it and gave us any technical feedback you have. That's exactly what we're looking for at this stage!

dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com

[1] [https://docs.pipedream.com/cron/](https://docs.pipedream.com/cron/) [2] [https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/sources/#webhook- sources](https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/sources/#webhook-sources) [3] [https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/destinations/s3/](https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/destinations/s3/) [4] [https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/sql/](https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/sql/) [5] [https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/sources/#http- responses](https://docs.pipedream.com/notebook/sources/#http-responses)

<comment><USER8> I really like it. I'm a node dev, I immediately understood what it does. Feels good.

Can you let me resize the columns? I had to zoom out to 80% to see what was going on.

<comment><USER2> That's great to hear! I really appreciate the feedback.

Which columns would you like to resize? The event inspector on the left, code steps, or all of the above?

<comment><USER8> Here's what it looks like at 100%: [https://imgur.com/a/OgFAtIV](https://imgur.com/a/OgFAtIV)

<comment><USER2> Oh wow, that's definitely a bug. Thanks for the screenshot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I saw the title, I imagined that this was a service that let you receive notifications when certain strings were in Hacker News article titles.

<comment><AUTHOR> The code I provided doesn't let you receive notifications when certain strings were in Hacker News article titles but you could certainly fork it and modify the code to do just that. If you do, please share the version here so we can all use it.

<comment><USER8> TBH this would be a good thing for you, as the developer, to do - "we added 5 lines of code and now it searches for a specific title" etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also very useful are [http://www.hnreplies.com](http://www.hnreplies.com) for emailing when someone replies to your comment and hnrss.org which can seach for any keywords when used with your RSS reader. I recommend Inoreader.

<comment><USER11> Does hnreplies stop working randomly for other folks too? For me I sometimes don't get any notifications for replies.

<comment><USER12> Nobody's reported any missed notifications to me in about a year.

<comment><USER11> Oh haha, thanks for replying here! Funny enough, I didn't even receive a notification for this comment, although I think it's probably unrelated to the previous instances. In this particular case, I accidentally unsubscribed (speaking of which, it would be nice if the page asked for a confirmation before unsubscribing?), but after re-subscribing and verifying, I haven't received anything, so I suspect it's a glitch there. In previous instances (which come up every several weeks/few months), some notifications seem to go missing for a day or two -- if I get a chance I might report them from now on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> there is also [https://f5bot.com/](https://f5bot.com/) which allows you to monitor certain keywords on HN, Reddit and Lobsters. I find it quite useful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The top story on HN changes around 10 - 20 times per day so it is nice to get a notification in Slack (or Discord, text, email, or your preferred method) when a new story hits #1.

My version of "Google Alerts" for Hacker News runs a cron job every five minutes that sends me a new Slack message each time a new story hits #1.

I know there's a lot I can improve here and so would love any feedback, ideas and/or opinions.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for sharing.

Also pipedream looks really powerful (it looks like you're affiliated but correct me if I'm wrong). Any plans to support typescript and/or other languages?

<comment><USER2> Hi, this is Dylan, a Pipedream founder.

Yes! We do plan to support other languages, but we're prioritizing other parts of the platform first, e.g. getting the developer UX right, environment separation, the ability to connect to accounts via OAuth, etc.

We've had a lot of requests for Python support, and we would love to ship support for TypeScript, as well.

I appreciate the feedback. Please let me know if you have any more!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone have an alternative that behaves closer to Google Alerts, i.e. alerts for when a website or brand is mentioned on HN? Looking for something that's also realtime :)

<comment><USER16> I use F5bot and it's great

<comment><USER17> Seconded. I have watch words setup for several keywords. I turn off lobste.rs since I feel HN is already high enough for me in the ivory tower (aka I haven't networked enough to get an in crowd lobsters invite).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it already exists for quite a while: [https://www.hnwatcher.com](https://www.hnwatcher.com)

It seems like their TLS key expired but I've been getting regular emails about topics that I care about posted to HN.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm running [https://mentionme.app](https://mentionme.app) (I guess we're somewhat competing) and when talking with users I learned that there is a common misconception with Google Alerts. I don't think it works how people think it works. It will miss mentions on social news sites, it seems it's more of a trend measuring tool than an alerting tool. Just monitor and post a random string to reddit.com/r/test to see yourself.

<comment><USER20> Google account locked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty cool.

I was able to build the same app with a slicker UX for letting people sign up. It's here if you want to check it out: [https://hnnotify- bgon9.transposit.io](https://hnnotify-bgon9.transposit.io)

You can see the app code here: [https://console.transposit.com/t/mooreds/hnnotify/code/op/ge...](https://console.transposit.com/t/mooreds/hnnotify/code/op/getTopStories)

You have to sign up to see the code and fork it (so you could change it to send you email or a text instead of posting to slack.) Sorry, we're working on a way to see code without authentication)

</comment><comment><USER22> We made a similar service called Porter[1] that people could subscribed to HN items related to their GitHub starred repos with digest email.

[1] [https://porter.io](https://porter.io)

</comment><comment><USER23> I find quite a few alert(s) to be hit/miss (even Google alerts @ times), always good to have a backup search so for certain keywords I have a page + they just link out to Algolia ... [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=last24h&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER24> Alternative I use is hnwatcher. No complaonts about it

</comment><comment><USER25> You should check out [https://alerthn.com/](https://alerthn.com/) (reliable and free).

Also: woah, pipedream is sweet. Looking forward to playing with it.

<comment><USER2> Dylan, a founder here. One thing we learned from this post is how many great tailored solutions there are for HN alerts. It's pretty amazing.

Thank you for the kind words! We hope it's fun to program in, send us feedback or suggestions any time.

dylan [at] pipedream [dot] com

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thing I would really want is "What you missed on HN" page. It can go through my upvotes and figures out relevant stories that appeared in HN since last visit or date range/

</comment><comment><USER27> For people who'd like to digest articles with certain keywords in a weekly manner, try [https://hnmail.io](https://hnmail.io)

<comment><USER28> This is actually really cool! Are you just searching for content in the description, or do you scrape the link's contents too to get your curation of content?

<comment><USER27> Only article titles are searched.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> also interesting: [https://github.com/lrusnac/hn- notifier](https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier)

</comment><comment><USER30> hmm, wouldn't a RSS to email service combined with something like [https://siftrss.com/](https://siftrss.com/) do the job?!</comment>


"It's hard to take risks if you don't have a safety net" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1129929178382446592 <comment><USER3> Twitter wins again.

We keep reducing these complex multivariate social issues to simple cause- effect situations then beating one another up over what the simple cause is.

When we're doing definitions, the key phrase is "necessary and sufficient" In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two things being missing. So really the discussion is much more like "Does condition X provide a 3 or a 4 percent boost?"

But that's not as fun to argue about.

We oversimplify life and public policy-making at our own peril.

<comment><USER4> > In this case, being rich or poor is neither necessary nor sufficient since > we have plenty of examples of things working out with either of these two > things being missing.

You are totally missing the point Matthew Prince is trying to make, that is, you need to have a "safety net" before you can take risks. If one can't even get them fed and not worrying about what the next meal is and where to stay, all bets are off.

If you don't agree with me, name one entrepreneur who has found a startup that exited successfully(IPO or Acquisition) by now and that the founder(s) were living below poverty line or on social welfare. Borrowing money from parents doesn't count as living below poverty does it? Having parents or friends or family to lean onto economically means there is a safety net there.

<comment><USER5> "Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to being the world's first billionaire author."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling)

Oprah's another:

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

<comment><USER6> Neither of them "founded a start-up" while living below the poverty line. Rowling wrote a book in her spare time that eventually got popular. She wasn't putting any money or asking of anyone else's money to fund her book.

Oprah followed the more usual path of "get a job, get promoted, rinse repeat" until she was a household name before she started her own company. Per the article you yourself linked, she was co-anchoring the local evening news at 19. That isn't the same thing as taking a risk on a start-up.

<comment><USER5> Writing a book while on welfare is certainly a startup. She didn't self- publish the book. The publisher provided the funding to edit, print, market, and distribute the book (which is not trivial money). Rowling pitched the book to several publishers before one decided to fund it.

Oprah bootstrapped herself out of poverty to become a media billionaire. You might say she took the long way by routing through various jobs to get the money, but she still came from poverty, founded companies, and became a billionaire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> PG seems worried that tweets saying you have to be rich to do a startup will discourage non-rich folks from trying a startup.

This doesn't give those folks much credit. It implies that a few tweets will have a bigger impact on their decision-making than their own detailed understanding of the constraints and anxieties of their own lives.

I don't think PG is in a good position to understand those constraints and anxieties. And he is somewhat incentivized not to, since YC benefits from having more startups to choose from. But YC does not experience significant downside on the startups that they reject or which fail. Unlike: the founders of those failed startups.

<comment><USER8> I'm not an expert on the subject but according to "science", the reason that woman do not go to engineering fields in the US is a byproduct of their environment not a difference in their genetics.

If I got it right, Robert Sapolsky claims that the way to make more woman into tech is to make young girls believe that they can do tech. They already have the cognitive capacity.

In this same sense, PG might be hitting the nail in the head: The reason poor people don't do startups is because they believe they can't; and that it is a white privilege.

If they believe they can't, they will not try. If they don't try, the probability that they succeed is exactly %0. Re-enforcing the myth and further convincing poor people not to try.

The only way out is to convince them otherwise and see what the real odds are.

Robert Sapolsky also claims that we need to change our speech and views (ie: remove "negativity") in order to level the playing field. PG is doing the same. He thinks that other ideas need to be censored as it is important to maximalize the propaganda.

That's a dangerous thinking as it touches on freedom of speech. One might wonder if you can level the social "cognitive" field while also preserving freedom of speech. Educating people is the only way I guess.

<comment><USER9> They won't try because the consequences for them could be disastrous. It's not even about how much money is in your bank account, though that obviously helps. It's more about how stable and reliable your support structure is. Without that the consequences of failure can be devastating.

I think it's dangerous to encourage people to gamble their lives on a low probability outcome if they don't have a strong network of friends and family to fall back on. If you have that, then go for it, but don't pretend that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and do what you did (I'm using the royal you here). That attitude is what the criticism is aimed at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They're talking past each other. Thing is, they're both right.

Paul seems to be saying you don't have to be rich to do a startup.

Matthew is saying lots of founder have some resources (family home, savings, great education, i.e. middle-class) that made doing a startup feasible

Both these positions are true and aren't incompatible. Being middle class (Matthew's position) and prudent with savings can afford you probably a year of runway.

But I'd never recommend someone who was truly destitute or food insecure to do a startup. If you come from a poor family there will also be family/cultural pressure not to do a startup and instead get a good paying job(assuming you have the ability).

<comment><USER11> The problem is PG says that you don't have to be a rich kid, and then takes Airbnb as an example where the founders are definitely rich kids compared to the rest of the nation and world (not rich as in "daddy has a private jet", but definitely in the top couple of percent).

Of course PG is right that you don't need to be a rich kid, but he chose his anecdote poorly.

PS: Also Sam recently said (in the StrictlyVC interview) that most founders at YC are from upper middle class families, so there's your data.

<comment><USER12> Worldwide, definitely top 0.1% (at approx. 80K annual income).

<comment><USER13> Worldwide is an unhelpful metric. They're starting up in a specific place, so their wealth should be measured relative to that location.

For example 80K won't get a roof over your head in NYC or Silicon Valley, but could support an entire family in middle-America.

<comment><USER11> It should be measured within the geographic bounds of where you can relatively freely and easily move within. If you're making 80k, maybe don't live in San Francisco (or do, but then you need to cut back other expenses).

And yes, I know, it's not easy to move for everyone to another city or region because of several reasons, but generally speaking most Americans could move to another region where they would get a similar paying job and more value for their buck.

Edit: Typos

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The reality is that money lets you "take risks," and money gives you options (in this world).

To be honest, I don't think that starting your company with the "risk" that you might move back in with your parents if it fails... is _at all_ a meaningful risk.

<comment><USER15> Psychologically this is not true at all. It's much easier to take risks when you have nothing to lose.

How many 18-30 year olds do you see having a swing at it and trying something, vs 30+ people with families and savings to burn?

<comment><USER16> Most successful startup founders are in their 30s and 40s.

Providing a link: [https://www.kauffman.org/what-we- do/research/2009/04/educati...](https://www.kauffman.org/what-we- do/research/2009/04/education-and-tech-entrepreneurship)

<comment><USER15> That's not actually relevant to what I'm saying.

The more relevant question would be, what % of 20-30 and 30-40 year olds start businesses?

I'm not surprised most become successful over 30, it takes time to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm shaking my head right now because I can't believe people at the top is still susceptible to sampling/survivorship bias.

I've tried searching but cannot find a good empirical study of privilege and entrepreneurship correlation. However, I've found an essay paper [0] that _exactly_ predicted this twitter drama; that entrepreneurs simultaneously present and erase this conversation about class and entrepreneurship.

The paper also concluded:

> Whereas gender, together with race, have long been foregrounded in studies > of entrepreneurial identity and difference, class may be a more powerful > organizing discourse, though certainly one supported by discourses of gender > and race.

[0] [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/135050841246489...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1350508412464895)

<comment><USER18> The only data I can get is this: [https://www.kauffman.org/what-we- do/research/2009/04/educati...](https://www.kauffman.org/what-we- do/research/2009/04/education-and-tech-entrepreneurship)

93% had a degree, with 30% having a masters, That would suggest to me that you'd need a decent wedge of cash.

Now, what is interesting, is that in 2016 at least, the US created gross 960k new companies (there is some smoothing here, so +- 100k) The UK created 460k. Seeing as how the UK is 60 million, versus 300 million people, either the US is under performing, or the UK is wildly over performing. ([https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...](https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small- Business-Profiles-US.pdf) and [https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06...](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06152/SN06152.pdf) for stats)

Perhaps, as we don't have to worry about healthcare or no competes, that might be a factor.

<comment><USER19> Registering a company in the UK, and keeping it running, is both simpler and cheaper than in the US.

Registering a company takes a few minutes and costs less than $30. Compulsory annual filing costs less than $20. If your company's revenue is below some threshold, you don't need to register for VAT (similar to sales tax). And there's another (even higher) threshold below which you can file very simple annual accounts (unaudited, and including neither income statements nor cash flow).

<comment><USER20> Eh, in my state in the US it is like $85 every 2 years for a LLC and essentially no paperwork if a simple pass-thru. Not everyone needs a Delaware C-Corp from day 1.

<comment><USER21> Nice. That's a lot simpler than CA. Here there's paperwork, more complicated taxes and $800/yr for a single-member LLC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Everyone from my country (NL) has a safety net to start with (you can screw up but still) and that goes for many EU countries anyway and yet all the entrepreneurs I know from NL are extremely risk averse compared to the US ones. Most of my NL friends are entrepreneurs but more of the lifestyle kind than even wanting to become the #1 in their field with the monetary status that comes with it. I dare to say that I only know Chinese and US entrepreneurs that look beyond getting more than few million on their account and that is it.

I wonder why that is.

<comment><USER23> I wonder too.

One idea I have: In these countries you don't really need that much more because you're already cushioned against risk. You also don't need to provide a cushion to anyone around you (since everyone's taxes are already doing that). Which means, below you is not the gaping abyss but a shrub that is a little bit thorny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretty disappointed in PG's response:

"I would ordinarily just let your bullshit go, but this myth that you have to be a rich kid to start a startup is terribly dangerous, because it discourages people who aren't from trying it. Brian Chesky's parents were social workers. That is not a rich kid."

As if having two parents with stable jobs isn't considered a safety net. I agree, you don't need to be rich, but I also agree if you are struggling to work enough to eat, you aren't really working on making a startup.

There are huge swaths of people with a much less stable safety net than the example he provided.

<comment><USER25> This is a kind of No True Scotsman fallacy. Anyone that is successful was 'advantaged' because her family was rich, or she had two parents, or she had a parent, or she was born in America, or she was born with the right number of chromosomes... The whole conversation strikes me as just snarky and reductive. I don't see the point. Why not try to promote a conversation to lift people up and empower them rather than writing off the hard work and perseverance of others?

<comment><USER26> > Anyone that is successful was 'advantaged'

> Why not try to promote a conversation to lift people up and empower them > rather than writing off the hard work and perseverance of others?

I think these two can live together - if you succeed, there was something that allowed that. Whether it was privilege, whether it was luck, or timing, or the right application of hard work and a blend of them all.

It's important to recognise what advantages are best leveraged for success, and then we can optimise to ensure most people have access to it.

In the argument in question, what advantage did Airbnb's founders have that allowed them to take that risk? How did they get the flat they were struggling to pay for in the first place for example? Why did they not skip rent and have to work 3 part time retail shifts to cover it like large swathes of workers in a similar boat.

Identifying privilege is an important piece of the puzzle - noone succeeds solely by hard work alone (otherwise all coal miners would be millionaires, and 996ers would be everywhere), so if we can spot the factors that successful people leverage, we can support others to get there (whether that's better education, cheaper housing, familial support etc...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's a nice mini soap opera but the core is that actually they agree but have a different definition of "rich kids".

<comment><USER28> I agree, and would go a step further to say that the response to PG is woefully exaggerated. The fate of the poor is truly deplorable in the US, but that doesn't mean that every conversation about risk, opportunity, and entrepreneurship has to rise to the defense of the disadvantaged.

PG is saying you don't have to be rich to launch a successful startup. By this, I believe he means private-school, summer-house, frequent-flyer-miles- in-your-early-20s rich. I would contend this is at least 90th-percentile rich for US households.

His critics suggested he be sensitive to those who literally have no safety net, and could not move back in with their parents if it all came crashing down—I would contend this is at most 40th-percentile "rich" for US households.

Can we cut the guy some slack and let him speak to the 50+% of people in the middle? Honestly, that's undoubtedly where the bulk of his target audience resides—people who'd like to launch a startup but worry that they're not sufficiently privileged to do it.

<comment><USER29> > By this, I believe he means private-school, summer-house, frequent-flyer- > miles-in-your-early-20s rich.

The example given literally attended one of the top private art school in the world. The reason people are reacting is likely because of this often damaging non-differentiation of being temporarily and perpetually poor. Many people can't even afford to move to a city these days, let alone start a startup. And if they do it might have negative consequences for years and years.

<comment><USER28> Fair point, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think if Paul G. came out a little less strong at the beginning - <USER2> 'bullshit' \- this wouldn't be an issue.

On the other hand there is the habit nowadays of having to guard and specify ones statements zealously in order not to get called out for something a reasonably lenient reading would allow, but calling something 'bullshit' probably doesn't get you into that other hand category.

<comment><USER31> Idk, it seems to me that PG is just wrong about this. Not categorically and in every single instance, but on the whole. It's like saying women are physically stronger than men, and pointing to some woman who is clearly an outlier. You could word it less strongly and say that _some_ women are stronger than _some_ men. But then what would be your point?

<comment><USER32> He's saying more something along the lines of "women can be elite performers _too_ " (and that being genetically/on average less strong shouldn't stop them from trying) - which isn't entirely wrong, especially since we're _already_ talking about like 0.01% of the population (successful entrepreneurs / elite sports(wo)men).

<comment><USER31> Don't get blinded by the analogy. There's an important difference between it and the problem we're discussing: We can't actually change the fact that woman generally are not as strong as men. We can however as a society change the fact that many people don't have a safety net. I appreciate that Paul G's intended meaning was different, but it's kind of hard not to interpret what he wrote, as _no, we don 't actually have to change society [which has worked well for me], poor or underprivileged people just have to try harder_.

<comment><USER32> You're just painting your own bias over his words. How about interpreting what he said _literally_ i.e. "even poor people can start businesses" instead of misinterpreting him as "against social nets"?

<comment><USER33> If you take him literally, I.e. without the social context, then his statements is essentially meaningless.

All it would take is one single example of a poor person being successful while all of the others fail and die in poverty to prove him right.

His example is part of the context, and the fact that his example was not in fact of a poor person demonstrates that he isn't being responsible for what he says, and deserves the criticism he is receiving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Easier, sure. Not having a backstop means failure == death. Which isn't for the faint of heart, but that's the story of almost every Americans lineage at some point in the past. It takes a bit of luck, but rarely is it more luck than nose to the grindstone effort.

My anecdotes:

I have one great-great-grandfather who thought he had an office job in British Columbia, but by the time he sailed from England and crossed the continent the company had folded. But his family was already on their way, so he started working every mining job he could, and invested every spare pence he had into real estate. His sons did the same.

My paternal great-grandfather came over from Italy, got harassed out of NYC by the Irish, bought a small farm in Oklahoma, and his children did the same.

<comment><USER35> That seems overly dramatic. Not everybody who loses their job dies. Most people seem to not die in that situation, actually.

Failing at your startup would at most be equal to losing your job. You won't die just because of that.

Even if you end up in debt, there are insolvency laws. You can just go flipping burgers for a couple of years and be good.

<comment><USER34> Of course it's recoverable. If you're under 35 you can join the miliary as well. There are options. Not glamorous, but survivable. Better to have tried and failed than to never have tried.

But when you're an Italian who can't speak English or out west in the late 1800s, it was a case of with your shield or on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> A poor person betting everything on their startup is definitely good for pg - it increases the pool of people whose work he can profit from.

It's not that obvious if it's good for the poor person. I guess that everybody has their own risk aversion threshold.

<comment><USER37> A poor person not betting on anything is bound to stay poor. Your point is?

<comment><USER38> Isn't that oversimplifying the whole social issue of why people are poor, stay poor or become poor?

<comment><USER37> Strawman. I was answering the previous point: betting is probably a reasonable choice when you have not much to begin with. I would not make a 2 lines comment to explain poverty as a whole.

<comment><USER39> No. Betting is a reasonable choice when you, like a VC can bet on a ton of options and still have cash left for immediate problems. All other times, betting is playing your luck and bound to fail.

<comment><USER38> First, I don't want to read to much into the OP regarding betting. Because there is something to it. Without risks no rewards. Yet what constitutes a risk and a reward differ significantly based on your resources.

That being said, risking some of your resources, money, time, whatever, to get out of poverty is reasonable. Betting on a start-up might not be. Simply because if it goes wrong instead of rewards there might be debt and even worse poverty.

<comment><USER40> >Without risks no rewards.

This is a fallacy. The vast majority of people are rewarded for minimizing risk, not taking it. People justify extra risk for disproportionate reward, not reward in general. You have to take risks if you want relatively _unbounded_ returns. Getting out of poverty does not require that at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A close cousin of this topic would be the background of new full professors in major universities. Ph.D. is risky, especially considering the slim chance of getting the full professorship and its tremendous opportunity cost. The competition to become a full professor in a major institution is fierce and also it takes longer and longer as the competition heats up. The path is quite comparable to that of the unicorn founders in many ways.

I'd wonder how much study has been done around the socioeconomic backgrounds of those prominent professors. I'd also be interested how those backgrounds have been shifted as time goes by. It would be also interesting if not much research has been done about it when some of them are supposed to do such a thing.

</comment><comment><USER42> A story where a billionaire downplays the problems created by wealth inequality. How novel.

</comment><comment><USER43> Silly Twitter fight aside, the key piece of advice that us regular non-rich folk should take away is this:

"Your first goal after university should be to build yourself a safety net."

Once you have $10k in the bank, you can start taking risks just like those privileged kids that are starting all the startups with their unfair advantages.

Best of all for us, we work in software, where socking away your first ten thousand dollars happens automatically after landing an entry level dev gig, provided you don't go out of your way to blow your entire outlandish salary on silly possessions.

<comment><USER44> $10k is hardly a safety net.

<comment><USER45> Yeah I was going to say 10k is a trip to ER after a small accident.

<comment><USER46> Our terrible health insurance situation makes potential spending any given month very _bumpy_. $10k should be enough to keep a single, frugal person in an OK situation for a good chunk of a year, at least, but could just as well be blown inside 24hrs by one slip on some ice or any number of other ER-worthy problems, and isn't enough to cover a healthcare plan that removes much of that uncertainty for any length of time while also paying rent and buying food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How do countries with good social safety nets factor in here? In EU people are definitely not nearly as likely to start their own business as in the US, and many people that would otherwise be labelled 'jobless' (or on the dole) are 'self employed' instead.

<comment><USER18> This is demonstrably untrue.

Looking at the official docs here: [https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...](https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small- Business-Profiles-US.pdf) for the US and here: [https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06...](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06152/SN06152.pdf) for the UK (both are PDFs)

In the USA for the first quarter of 2016, there were 240,000 new companies. So just million in a year, assuming that trend. Also, that is all companies, including those with no employees

in 2016 for the UK in the whole year, there fore 416,000 new businesses, all of which had at least one registered employee.

The USA, in 2016 only created twice as many companies compared to the UK.

Given the gulf between population _and_ economy, I would say the US is significantly underperforming compared to the UK

<comment><USER47> The UK and quite a few other places require gig economy operators to register as an independent business.

<comment><USER48> I don't think that applies to this stat, though; gig economy workers are required to register as self-employed for tax and NI purposes, but that's not the same thing as being a business, which I think in those stats requires one of VAT (turnover higher than a threshold of £85k) or PAYE (employing someone else).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Actually the headline of this is the takeaway you should get from this story. People with safety nets are the ones who get to do startups. This is logical and how it should be. If you weren't born into a rich family, then make saving up your number 1 financial priority to build that nest egg for yourself. Even the kids from privileged families are mostly in that position because their parents made a series of good financial decisions in regards to savings.

</comment><comment><USER50> For whatever it's worth, there was a recent episode of Econtalk in the guest discusses his work with those below the poverty line and how some communities have been successful in entrepreneurship: [http://www.econtalk.org/extra/discovering-positive- deviants/](http://www.econtalk.org/extra/discovering-positive-deviants/)

I don't know of a quantitative study and obviously the source is biased, but the guest came himself from a "no safety net" situation and now works with others in a similar situation, so his take is interesting even if one disagrees.

</comment><comment><USER51> I like to think Swedens extensive social safety nets are a factor to the large number of startups here.

<comment><USER52> How does this large number compare to the US? Genuinely interested. Having lived in a few EU countries before moving to the US, I've always been under the impression that creating a startup in the US was way easier/more common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Fuck the rich kids. And I'm not saying this as an insult. I mean it as "good for them". In terms that I'm 38 years old and I have enough maturity to know that:

1-Life isn't fair 2-Some people start the game 50 tiles ahead of you.

None of these reasons are going to stop me (a poor entrepreneur) to build the company I want to build.

I think PG's comment is idiotic, but I think he is very smart.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's easy to take risks when there's little to lose.

If the only fallout is wasting some family money and at worst delaying your entry-level career by a couple of years for some experience that many employers consider valuable anyway, there's little downside to throwing the dice.

<comment><USER55> > It's easy to take risks when there's little to lose.

> If the only fallout is wasting some family money and at worst delaying your > entry-level career by a couple of years for some experience that many > employers consider valuable anyway, there's little downside to throwing the > dice.

This, in no way whatsoever, resembles the conditions of the poor.

<comment><USER54> That's right. It doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> It makes it easier to launch a startup if you've got a strong safety net, but not impossible.

I think the article misses the point, though. Look at Bill Gates-- he had rich parents, and so he started Microsoft. Which has gone on to make millionaires of lots of ordinary folks and continues to provide good jobs to many, many people today. It's a good system, it benefits a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER8> > "It's hard to take risks if you don't have a safety net"

Okay, here is a twist: How much do poor people spend on lottery/gambling activity? How much is that proportionally to their income?

From looking at small casinos, betting shops, lottery and online sites (sports) it seems that poor people are risk takers. One reason, in my opinion, is that they have little to lose. They also have really shitty lives and are looking for an escape.

If you were starting a startup alone in Bangladesh vs. starting solo with YC in SF. Building a remote-based startup that sell SaaS online for clients all over the world. Location of clients is everywhere.

Technically, the playing-field is equal. You start a C-Corp from Bangladesh and trade your business. But which one do you think will make it? Which one do you think will raise funding? Or succeed if both do not raise funds?

You live your life trying the optimize a problem. There is a number of steps that if you take, carefully, you'll become rich in some duration of time. You don't know these steps, so you keep searching. You know gradient descent. Life is like that, if you are moving successfully down, you are probably on the right track and so you keep moving on that direction.

However, you start stochastically on a random location and keep trying to find a path that leads somewhere. That's where YC comes in. They help you reduce the surface area of your search. You are less likely to land somewhere futile.

What poor people are missing is discovery of this surface area. It is a very complicated problem for them and they lack resources and education to optimize the problem.

They are hoping that this lottery ticket will help land them directly on the optimized spot. Their lack of understanding of why this doesn't work explain why they can't navigate the surface area.

<comment><USER57> Of course people have different risk appetites, including poor people.

The point isn't so much about "risk" per se, it's about whether or not there's a viable Plan B.

If I'm working two jobs to barely keep a roof over my head and play the lotto and lose, I'm still keeping a roof over my head (by working two jobs). The odds are long, but the cost of failure is low.

If, on the other hand, I have the Best Startup Idea Ever (and all the necessary skills to make it a reality) then I will still be unable to pursue it. Sure, I'm like 80% certain it's going to be a huge success, but in the 20% case I'm fuuuuuuuuucked so taking a swing at it is a nonstarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The world isn't fair. Pontificating about how the world isn't fair is useless. It's a waste of your time.

Both Paul and Matthew would be more helpful by providing advice to effectively deal with one's situation in order to found a company. That would be valuable, instead of engaging in adversity olympics which is what most of Twitter seems to be nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER59> It's not taking a risk if you have a safety net. That is the point of the safety net, to eliminate the risk.

</comment><comment><USER60> I don't think anyone else should pay for a startup's safety net. Doing a startup requires calculated risk. It may or may not work. Whoever wants to attempt need to sit down and calculate the costs and the risks and take precautions. This is not the same as someone becoming unemployed because they got laid off, and it's not the same as providing welfare to people in poverty. Startups by their nature are risky and no one else should have to pay for a safety net in case it doesn't work out. The market does well weeding out the bad ideas and companies that aren't actually solving any problems. Creating a safety net might just contribute to perpetual "startupdom" (with everyone else paying for it), when in reality certain ideas and efforts need to just die off.

</comment><comment><USER61> He said hard, not impossible. You're playing with a higher difficulty level, because you need to spend time and effort and divert your focus on mitigating the worst case scenarios instead, and market timing is one of the big factors in getting it right.

</comment><comment><USER62> So why aren't highly socialized countries with tons of safety nets meccas of innovation?

</comment><comment><USER63> exactly, its a different matter when that risk isnt "oh ill lose a bit of my buffer" but "if this doesnt work im on the streets"

you may have a fantastic idea but if youre working for min wage theres a good chance youre little more than one missed pay cheque from being in serious trouble

but those from privilidged backgrounds see it differently, many of them have never been "broke" and i mean truly broke so i guess they simply dont understand what theyre saying, theyve never taken an actual risk in their lives

</comment><comment><USER64> If you are in india the emotional blackmail and the pressure to marry before 30 is a huge hindrance. In india a graduate has no real world knowledge when he gets out of college. It takes about 6 to 8 years to get the confidence in coding and creating something. But by the time the marriage is done and no way to take risk. To be honest the salary earned by women is like an additional income and never considered primary income in 99 percent marriages.

</comment><comment><USER65> Experiencing first hand. I hope at this age, I should have saved enough. But, single income and mortgage means better be realistic. I do take risk though, working for startup on cutting edge tech, than for a large company. Basically insurance for future job security. The risk I cannot think of is starting my own business.

Related - it is impossible to take risks if you or family have crippling health issues.

And when you have both, why even bother to take major risks.

</comment><comment><USER66> _I had to borrow money from my mom to pay my taxes_

I would agree that in some US locations the taxes are a bit too high...

<comment><USER18> or that lump sum taxes are somewhat perverse (see PAYE in the UK)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is anyone keeping statistics on YC applications?

What happens to people who don't get funded (by YC or otherwise)? What happens to those who do get funded but then fail? What proportion succeed, for various definitions of success?

</comment><comment><USER68> This a common debate point for basic income, providing the safety net for entrepreneurs, startups, artists, etc. Really was expecting a mention but it seems to have shifted toward boring arguments about privilege.

</comment><comment><USER69> The original twitter post, twitter responses, and responses here made me muse about how the definition of 'start-up' has changed in the last few decades. Ennui ensued.

</comment><comment><USER70> PG and Matthew are talking past each other here.

PG is defining "rich kids" as the spawn on the 1% and is arguing that these kids don't have any significant advantages over more normal people when it comes to accessing funding from VCs etc and that such a belief is harmful.

Basically that there is a point of diminishing returns to being "rich" and that it's probably lower than you think.

Matthew is arguing that being in crushing poverty is probably a barrier to building a successful startup.

Both views can be basically correct.

</comment><comment><USER71> Well, that's not really a risk then, is it?

</comment><comment><USER72> Let's not forget that Graham has also publicly written he would be loath to choose any woman as a startup founder "who had small children, or was likely to have them soon." The man has a type, and the demographics of YC reflect it.

<comment><USER73> Do you maybe have a source for it?

<comment><USER74> Footnote 2 of this Paul Graham essay:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html)

<comment><USER73> Thanks. I'm sure I had read that before, it's surprising that I didn't notice that yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> r/murderedbywords

</comment><comment><USER5> By definition, it's not a risk if there's a safety net.

</comment><comment><USER76> When someone uses the word "privilege" it's a good indicator that the rest of the discussion is going to be a waste of time.

<comment><USER77> Can you elaborate on this?

<comment><USER78> Not parent.

But in my experience, but "privilege" usually relies on invoking stereotypes (males, females, white, etc) and then shutting down individuals by invoking that their discussion is just 'privilege'.

I saw a 'yelling over each other' thread on Facebook in which white feminists were being name-called by black feminists calling them names of various sorts for supporting only white rights. Any modicum of discussion was drowned out by chest-beating of lines of racism and sexism. I believe that thread is still going on.

"Mansplaining" is yet another term that does that on sex based grounds. The term "manspreading" is yet another term with a sexist root- as only men can sit down and spread their lags in relaxation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> It depends also of your lifestyle : if you can't leave without buying expensive stuff, going in vacation in French Polynesia and skiing in Aspen, the safety net should be $100k or $1m. If you can leave in a cheap neighborhood, cook your own food, reading books and HN, doing cheap sport like running or cycling, $10k can take you a long way. The revenue and/or lifestyle of your significant other is also a huge factor.

</comment><comment><USER35> Most people, even poor people, have parents who would help them out in case of need. They seem to be discussing a pretty low bar here.

And of course it is a "privilege" to have supporting parents. So what? If you don't have that privilege, what are you supposed to do? Kill yourself?

I think such privilege discussions are rather silly. What's the point? That people should be showered with tax payer money to even out their privileges? Or people with bad parents should be given state assistance (substitute parents)?

<comment><USER18> I'd suggest you think more deeply.

All parent, regardless of class/richness want to be supportive. the question is what support can they offer? Sure, a sofa, most people have that. But thats not a long term solution. What if your parents don't have any savings, how will they help you with that debt?

They can't

Its not an issue of will, its an issue of possibility.

Now, I intensely dislike the use of "privilege", as its more often than not tool to stop discourse. But, to assume that every parent is _capable_ of providing long term accommodation, financial, transport or other support is shore sighted at best.

I suggest perhaps you might want to expand your social circle, so you can see this sort of thing first hand.

<comment><USER35> I was thinking of the basic "moving back in with the parents fallback".

Of course different people have different advantages and disadvantages.

Paul Graham's children will probably have an enormous head start in becoming entrepreneurs. They'll have "startup privilege" en masse. But so what? Should we begrudge them having it? Should we compensate children of other parents for the non-privilege of not being Paul Graham's children? And if so, how? What amount of money would be appropriate? Or should we punish his children to take away their unfair advantage?

I just think the whole "privilege" mindset is unhelpful and unproductive.

Try to make the most of what you have. Can only PG's children become successful founders? I think not. Maybe your children will only become millionaires if the become founders, and PG'S children will become billionaires. Cry me a river.</comment></comment></comment>


Hardly Working: Start-up Guys - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

<comment><USER2> "So the company you started 20 minutes ago already failed."

"Yeah it crashed 8 minutes ago."

Also I thought the name Brushfire was hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We'll take it to South By, and get some Grilled Cheese"

...ouch. There also should have been at least 100 more .ly domains in there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe people like this exist, but I have never worked with anyone like this before. The ones actually building startups and raising VC money are better than this... I hope

<comment><USER5> That's the point of satire and caricature--taking the small realities that we see of this mentality every day and exploding into a parody of itself.

No, I've never seen people exactly like this--but I have seen tons of the people who motivated the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Posers posing. I see that a lot in the corporate world.

</comment><comment><USER7> Welcome to 2012.</comment>


Formal Verification Creates Hacker-Proof Code - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160920-formal-verification-creates-hacker-proof-code/ <comment><USER2> Worth noting formally verified programs are unhackable to the extent three things hold true:

1) Your model of the world corresponds to the world in which the program runs - for example, hardware is usually assumed to be bug-free.

2) The properties you've proven the program to hold are sufficient to stop the hacker from accomplishing their goals.

3) No bugs exist in your theorem prover.

<comment><USER3> > 3) No bugs exist in your theorem prover

Seems to me that at some point we want theorem provers to be self hosting, as it were.

That of course won't fix problems with bugs in hardware, and hardware that behaves like analog devices (rowhammer, cold boot, data recovery, stray gamma rays...)

<comment><USER4> Gödel proved that we will never get such a prover: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

Particularly, he proved that it is impossible for a formal system to prove its own consistency.

<comment><USER5> However, prover[p-1] can prove prover[p], modulo the bugs prover[p-1]. Then prover[p-2] can prove prover[p-1], modulo the bugs in prover[p-2]. If you can have prover[i-1] is simplier than prover[i], and prover[0] is so simple that any 5-years old can prove it's correct, then you win.

<comment><USER6> Something seems wrong about this. Could you not describe the combination of all provers as a formal system? Would this system then not run afoul of Goedel?

<comment><USER7> Theoretically, you are 100% correct.

In practice, it is still worthwhile to have N redundant independently developed provers to prove each other, and to benchmark against each other. This will help uncover subtle bugs that result from ordinary programming mistakes.

This will, however, not protect against deeper issues that are common to all N provers. e.g. Potential biases or mistaken assumptions in the formal verification comunity.

At the end of the day, it is an engineering decision. How much of the available resources are you willing to through at the practical problem of making your implementation approach asymptotically to the theoretical limits. The fact that those limits is indeed a peg or two below perfection is an independent issue.

<comment><USER8> "In practice, it is still worthwhile to have N redundant independently developed provers to prove each other, and to benchmark against each other. This will help uncover subtle bugs that result from ordinary programming mistakes."

I strongly advise that to deal with both mistakes and subversion. Mutually- suspicious parties in various countries using different logics, compilers, hardware, etc. with a common, executable spec that's basically state machines or functions. That way they get same output from same input.

So, when I saw Milawa was verified first-order, I immediately looked for other verifications of first-order provers (found 1). Then the idea would be diverse implementations of executable parts of that stack with diverse reviews of logic combinations they did. Exhaustive testing done by each party. Even do implementations of key parts of TCB in other logics to check results. The prover with its code is trustworthy when everyone got the same results on same logics, code, shared tests, and individual tests. Plus have paper copies of the resulting text files with hashes stashed away somewhere in case a nation- state wants to throw money at countering diversity via hacking host systems. ;)

Then we rinse and repeat for more complex provers. The fun never stops in this game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This comment on the page is insightful:

 _Anecdote – Erlang designer Armstrong does contract work for formal verification with high-assurance applications. A widget-maker for a large European car manufacturer wanted to ensure their widget was fully compliant with all of the specifications as issued by the overseeing administrative authority (ISO, ANSI, whatever). He and his team of engineers sat down and took 1k + /\- .2k pages of written specifications, translated them into invariant properties, and let 'er rip. Of the ~foo bugs they found, ~40% of the bugs were internally inconsistent bugs _within the specification _. [An average car of model year 2016 has somewhere between 500-800 MCUs within them. Scary prospect…] So, lets say LDAP 's RFC has 3 'bugs' in them (a proposition: p in section one, then a proposition: ~p in section 3). Microsoft wants to implement Active Directory to have LDAP compliance to work with Kerberos, Apple devices, etc etc. By definition, this implementation will be buggy. These bugs are of a class which have no fix!_

... if you want to read some formal proofs from the software and mathematics worlds, see [https://www.isa-afp.org/](https://www.isa-afp.org/)

<comment><USER10> Haha, that was my comment! Glad you liked it. Never thought it'd show up on HN. I normally don't comment on Quanta, but there were so many half-informed remarks propagating misinformation that I felt compelled to make not one, but two, comments in that thread (and formal verification isn't even my domain of expertise!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Formal verification doesn't mean your design can't be flawed in other ways that your theorem prover can't identify.

See also: Software AES with cache-timing information leaks.

<comment><USER12> The practice of formal methods has progressed by acknowledging and accepting those limitations. It now attempts to prove useful properties of your code, rather than stamping it "correct" or "incorrect."

FTA:

"We're not claiming we're going to prove an entire system is correct, 100 percent reliable in every bit, down to the circuit level," Wing said. "That's ridiculous to make those claims. We are much more clear about what we can and cannot do."

<comment><USER11> The headline is what I take issue with. Calling it hacker-proof just because it's formally verified is wrong.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, they really need to knock that off. Formal verification creates hard-to- hack code is still a decent headline. Or "Researchers using formal verification stopped hackers in their tracks." That's entirely accurate plus can be followed by specifics to understand what context it was true and what contexts it might be true elsewhere.

Hacker-proof is just going to hurt branding of formal methods the second a hacker takes out a high-assurance system. Whereas, the formal methods and high-assurance literature written by anyone with sense acknowledges plenty of assumptions that might be targeted plus just human error. Even the people they quote in the article don't say it's hacker-proof!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." \- Donald Knuth

<comment><USER14> > "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried > it." \- Donald Knuth

"Beware of people slinging around the famous Knuth quote as if it invalidated progress in program proving." \- Me

(Not a reference to you personally, but I think that this quote is too often used to disparage all work on program provers, rather than as just—as I take it to be—pointing out that, no matter how good your prover is, you should still check your code.)

<comment><USER8> That and the Godel one above. For first point, they could link to a presentation on high-assurance systems showing one needs a combination of specs, proofs, testing, and human review for max assurance. For the second, the alternative is showing how the prover problem is greatly reduced by using simple, proof checkers and/or logics in the process that are easy to verify by hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Side-channel attacks, attacks that depend on physical characteristics of the system, are a thing [0] and formal correctness doesn't really prevent them.

Also there's crazy stuff like Row Hammer [1] which depends on escaping the abstraction that memory bytes are independent entities.

While these are maybe crazy or extreme attacks, they are still practical in some cases. Any abstraction can eventually be hacked simply because an abstraction is a simplification of a more complex system which can be manipulated.

Reminds me of the joke of the junior functional programmer convinced that their code is side effects free and who then proceeds to crash the garbage collector because memory allocation is not considered a side effect...

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side- channel_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-channel_attack) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_hammer)

<comment><USER8> I addressed this here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12762323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12762323)

The military, EE's, and even RAM suppliers knew about those issues. There are products in high-security (esp Defense) that try to counter as many as they can afford to. The problem was the knowledge was ignored or intentionally not applied. The first just keeps happening in general in so-called INFOSEC. The second is a result of market incentives where the suppliers' goal is to hit specific performance, energy, area, cost, etc targets to maximize market share and profit. On cost, they also want to minimize that in general for the executives and shareholders to pocket more income. This really affects RAM vendors as people involved in QA have said on various forums that they're basically just pushed to get shit out the door as quickly as possible since competition is intense. That they do this with ever-increasing complexity in designs and physics in shrinking nodes means problems can only go up.

So, it's not a new discovery in terms of hardware correctness or even an accident. These problems are intentionally there to increase profits. Compare that to the design of things like 1802, NonStop, AAMP7G, rad-hard ASIC's... all that trade off marketable criteria at higher prices to get higher reliability. They exist but almost nobody buys them. That's why such practices aren't and won't be status quo.

EDIT to add NonStop link to show what earlier systems accomplished with careful hardware and software design. Similar, even more clever, techniques were used inside ASIC's as well.

[http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-86.2.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-86.2.pdf)

<comment><USER15> The point that I was trying to make is that they have proven correctness within a specific abstraction, but the article incorrectly say the code is "hacker-proof". Hacking in most cases happens because we can break through abstractions.

<comment><USER8> "The point that I was trying to make is that they have proven correctness within a specific abstraction, but the article incorrectly say the code is "hacker-proof"."

The title is terrible as several of us argued here. The article itself at least describes the process accurately with many quotes talking about how tricky it is or that you should test it anyway. Just a terrible title...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [Audio]

Edit: Link was originally a podcast that auto-played. Has since been updated to a written content link.

</comment><comment><USER17> No new breakthroughs in formal proofs or deriving programs, just incremental progress. The cost of formal methods stays high. The high cost means that it does not work well with iterative programming, or changes in specs.

So far only some military and safety critical applications and parts of Intel's silicon have been worth of the cost.

I took my first course in formal methods using the book Programming: The Derivation of Algorithms by A. Kaldewaij. It would be perfectly reasonable to implement something similar to Kaldewaij's guarded programming language today over some other programming language and use it to derive formally proven programs if someone really values the correctness. It would be also cool and fun but not for everyone.

<comment><USER18> I hope that one of these days (years?) we might start seeing formally verified versions of code for dealing with standards that don't change rapidly and that have proved to be security problems in the past. I'm thinking of things like font rasterizers, TIFF readers, full PDF readers, and JavaScript engines intended for browsers.

<comment><USER8> The problem with many of these formats is they're Turing-Complete languages with input driving what they do. The input is also malicious. So, the solution so far is to isolate and mediate such things with verification going into the mechanisms for that.

An example of one for exactly your types of programs is Microsoft's Xax:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/xax-osdi08.pdf)

My preferred approach is the old-school method of highly-assured microkernels that just separate everything else from one another. Here's a browser OS based on that principle:

[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi10/tech/full_papers/...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi10/tech/full_papers/Tang.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Aren't microprocessors Turing-Complete machines that undergo formal verification?

<comment><USER8> The kind of verification they undergo varies considerably. The amount of errata in modern CPU's shows both they're not fully verified for correctness and that the verification they get works wonders given number of components & interactions. Even if fully verified, the verification would be that the Turing-Complete hardware properly implemented a model of the Turing-Complete hardware.

That kind of buys us nothing in terms of whether we'll know if programs are malicious or contain them, eh? And look at the giant, losing game that followed between the mice and the well-fed cats. It's why safety-critical systems often used deterministic, state-machines running on simple MCU's or PLC's. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Curious if there is an opposite process: having some program, ask some prolog- like system if given program has any vulnerabilities, and how to exploit them?

<comment><USER8> You're basically describing static analysis but with Prolog and a weaponize option. I haven't looked up bug-to-attack research in ages but last I did it was generating exploits from patches. That one was pretty evil if one is aware of why delaying patches often makes sense for mission-critical apps. They need testing as they can do damage themselves. So, instantly turning even a chunk of patches into exploits can give an attacker an advantage in that windows between release and application.

Example:

[http://bitblaze.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/apeg.pdf](http://bitblaze.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/apeg.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mods - please label this audio (and auto-playing)

</comment><comment><USER22> Worth noting that we've open sourced the toolset used to generate code for the Little Bird, available at [http://ivorylang.org](http://ivorylang.org)

</comment><comment><USER23> Code can still be exploited through vulnerable hardware, though.

</comment><comment><USER24> pls warn podcast in title, i dislike podcasts

</comment><comment><USER25> I wouldn't call anything unhackable.

<comment><USER26> Sometimes the best hack is to leave a unhackable program alone. And by unhackable I mean proprietary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> how would they anticipate timing attacks with this method?

<comment><USER8> Lots of work in that area. Here's an example:

[http://www.cse.psu.edu/~dbz5017/pub/pltiming- pldi12.pdf](http://www.cse.psu.edu/~dbz5017/pub/pltiming-pldi12.pdf)

<comment><USER27> Impressive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here is the readable version.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160920-formal- verification-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160920-formal-verification- creates-hacker-proof-code/)

<comment><USER29> Thank you, we've updated the link from [https://www.quantamagazine.org/?powerpress_pinw=29937-podcas...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/?powerpress_pinw=29937-podcast&utm_source=Quanta+Magazine&utm_campaign=2f0887e749-Quanta_Newsletter_Feb_27_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f0cb61321c-2f0887e749-389523389)</comment></comment>


Getting started contributing to Rust - <AUTHOR> http://kmcallister.github.io/talks/rust/2015-contributing-to-rust/slides.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks to Keegan and the other Rust team members for hosting this event. It was fun to see how things work under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER3> A more accurate title for the slide deck might have been "Getting started _modifying_ Rust".

Only a single slide deals with "contributing" the changes made.

And I'm happier with the actual slides than the ones the title implies.

<comment><USER4> There are some good things on the later slides that refer to the test suites and documentation. From experience, that knowledge is really useful if you want to start making changes and fixes to the compiler and libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone having links to the video of the talk?

<comment><USER6> There was a technical issue and so the video didn't work :(

<comment><USER5> That is _really_ sad :(</comment></comment></comment>


Intel Edison Development Platform is now available - <AUTHOR> https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/do-it-yourself/edison.html

<comment><USER2> This board has two CPUs: a 500MHz dual-core Atom and a 100MHz Quark.

What does the Quark chip do? How is it programmed?</comment>


One new HTML5 game per week - <AUTHOR> http://www.lessmilk.com/

<comment><USER2> Game #5 could easily make a nice iOS game. Make it free and IAP for additional puzzles. You'd just need to generate a whole mess more puzzles. Two little bits of feedback:

1\. When one of the pieces goes off the screen, you should automatically restart, or at least let the player know they've failed. The first time this happened I wasn't immediately sure what to do--even though it was obvious after a couple seconds. Even once I knew, it was annoying to have to press restart when I'd obviously lost. Auto-restart will make players less likely to quit in frustration.

2\. The "locked into place" pieces should have their design more differentiated from the moveable pieces--remove the arrows, for instance. This will help with clarity as levels get more and more complicated.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I'm considering doing some iOS games in the near future. I'm currently looking at CocoonJS, a technology that converts html5 games into native apps.

And that is some really good feedback, thanks!

And if you want to not miss my next games, or want some tutorials on how I make my games, please subscribe to my newsletter :)

<comment><USER2> Subscribed and will definitely be following you. Our game team is exploring HTML5 games and I'm very interested to see where this takes you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out agameaweek.com. The Dev is really cool in various forums, and has been doing this for about a year I think. He's using Monkey-x to code them now. I don't know how you guys do it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Marvelous stuff! Having worked for years in the corporate trenches as a Software Engineer, your games once again reminded me how fun programming can be. I definitely will be taking a look at Phaser for hobby projects of my own.

<comment><USER6> Man I had the exact same reaction. Playing that box game made me think "wow that is the kind of thing I would have loved to spend days implementing in horribly written Turbo Pascal 15 or 16 years ago".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Box jump is great, really addicting. Thanks for ruining my productive evening!

<comment><USER8> It's a clone of the "Space is Key" series from Chris Jeff -see (for part 2): [http://chris-jeff.com/games/spaceiskey2/](http://chris- jeff.com/games/spaceiskey2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm the guy making the "one new game per week". It's amazing to see my little project posted on HN!

Thanks for the support, and let me know if you have any question about lsesmilk.

<comment><USER9> Any chance of making all the code public? Would be awesome to follow up on your coding progress and it would be a great resource for beginners as well.

<comment><USER3> The javascript is not minified, so you can easily look at the games' code in the html if you want.

And I'm seriously considering to open source my code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These are really impressive, great work. I'd also like to make games and admire the shotgun, just-do-it approach here. If I started working with a framework like phaser, how much of that experience would be applicable to other frameworks? Is it all very similar concepts, with differences in execution (say, like the difference between jQuery and mootools or whatever)? I get a little hesitant at the point of choosing where to start.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really dig the chiptune soundtrack on game #5.

</comment><comment><USER12> I played Man vs Penguins and thought "Ha, nice, a super mario clone. They're practicing JS skills and the music is fun."

Then I played Fill the Holes. Man. The mechanics and puzzle design there were great. Keep it up, I imagine you'll be getting job offers soon!

</comment><comment><USER13> The related TigSource forum thread: [http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=38022.0](http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=38022.0)

</comment><comment><USER14> Good learning project. It doesn't take a lot of graphics and sounds to make an addictive game.

</comment><comment><USER15> #5 was a couple of fun minutes; it made my day slightly better. You deserve a pint, sir.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot, I'm glad that you enjoyed my little game :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "You won! You clicked 104 times during the game"

Fun game :)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really great. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER18> This is AAAAddictive..

</comment><comment><USER19> HOW DO YOU HAVE TIME</comment>


As NSA Worries Cloud Dropbox, Tonido Offers its "Personal Cloud" - <AUTHOR> http://techonomy.com/2013/07/as-nsa-worries-cloud-dropbox-tonido-offers-its-personal-cloud/

<comment><USER2> I handle Dropbox privacy by having a script that GPG encrypts critical files (SSH keys for customer's servers, confidential material that I have signed strong NDAs for, etc.) and backs up the encrypted versions to my Dropbox account. So, I end up with maybe 0.1% of my Dropbox storage being encrypted.

My standard consulting contract stipulates that I take reasonable precautions with customer materials, and I feel like this is good enough.

I don't trust any computer systems to be absolutely secure from organized crime and all governments (I am not equating the two :-) and having the NSA, GCHQ, etc. store mass quantities of data seems like a real problem since organized crime and other governments might hack in and then have a lot of business sensitive material in one place, and also, get a potential source of blackmail material all in one place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, There is no way to avoid NSA type surveillance.. without or without "Personal Clouds". I guess It does help reduce the footprint, but with the move to think clients (like mobile devices) and Cloud backends, I am afraid, the public cloud move seems quite irreversible and therefore no way to avoid snooping either by governments or abuse by corporations.

<comment><USER4> At least with personal clouds you own your data. The real fundamental issue with public cloud is all the data at one place. When you have everything at one place it is prone for abuse.

<comment><USER3> Yes that is precisely the problem (and one that is probably in the interest of government and companies.. just not in the interest of the actual owner of data). Even companies like google providing cloud services like music/mail/docs scan for usage information to push advertisement. So even though this article is for NSA, it applies to companies as well.

The Personal cloud in spite of increased simplicity still requires certain amount of computer setup knowledge, that coupled with murky privacy policies (think facebook) means that user data in public cloud is always going to be a well sought after prize

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> perhaps 'cloud' is a misnomer - any ideas what the _real_ name should be?

<comment><USER4> Can you explain?

<comment><USER5> A cloud is what exactly - something fluffy in the sky, an omen of rain perhaps? It's supposed to make you feel safe, but is this really what they are when you're surrendering your most personal information to some greedy corporation and the all seeing eye of the government?

Perhaps a prison cell or operating table would be more appropriate?</comment></comment></comment>


Israeli startup StoreDot's prototype charges your phone in 30 seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/30-second-phone-charger-by-storedot-2014-4

<comment><USER2> I was curious about the technology they were using, and it turns out the background is more interesting than I thought.

[http://www.zdnet.com/storedot-inside-the-nanotech-that- can-c...](http://www.zdnet.com/storedot-inside-the-nanotech-that-can-charge- your-phone-in-30-seconds-7000028240/)</comment>


To Save Gas, Shoppers Stay Home and Click - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/business/19shop.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

<comment><USER2> Isn't this only true until the moment retailers start passing shipping costs through to consumers? Yes, truck rolls to a whole district may have a lower footprint than 200 round trips in cars, but many of the retailers in this article are also doing long-haul hops in air freight to distribute their goods. Isn't oil going to fuck these people too?

<comment><USER3> Not as much. A company can figure out its logistics in a way a consumer can't. Overnight shipping is going to become a lot more expensive, but one-week shipping probably isn't. And if people start buying everything from home, there are economies of scale there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if todays postal services are the best fit for the coming wave of online shopping, or if there is an opportunity for a better system. I don't really know how delivery works these days, though.

In my country, the mailman drives the same route every day and visits every house. But the trucks for bigger things don't stop everywhere, and I am not sure if they take the same route every day. For sure they have fancy algorithms for finding the optimum route. What will distribution look like if there are lots of big deliveries for every house, every day?

</comment><comment><USER5> _Internet_ : serious business.</comment>


Ask HN: Suggested services to test Android apps on actual devices - <AUTHOR>

I am developing an Android App and I would like to test it on real devices. I just have four (Galaxy S4, Nexus 5, Moto X and Galaxy S2).
Can you recommend me services where "real people" test the app on "real devices" and then send you a bug report?
I am willing to pay for it.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Learn how to use the alpha testing and beta testing options in the developer console for the Google Play Store. That should get you coverage of popular devices.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I am looking into this. If you have any suggestions to test the app on less popular devices, please let me know!</comment></comment>


Learn Git in the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://try.github.io/

<comment><USER2> Shameless self promotion:

[http://pcottle.github.io/learnGitBranching/?demo](http://pcottle.github.io/learnGitBranching/?demo)

I found the try.github.io tutorial very underwhelming -- it emulates enough of git to just fall into the uncanny valley. I also prefer visual learning -- hence I made the above!

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the great tutorial! It definitely helped my understanding when I went through it.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome! as well as mendelk and ahurmazda below -- glad you all found it useful (and my self-promotion wasnt too annoying) :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the tutorial. I appreciate that Git is complex and powerful, but I didn't need a tutorial for Subversion. Git is baffling. The error messages are cryptic and unhelpful. It deters the casual user. Can I suggest a list of the absolute, bare-bones minimum set of commands for a project where there will be no merging, just uploading by one person, and downloading by others?

<comment><USER5> Use Mercurial.

There's [http://hginit.com](http://hginit.com). Given your comment about "I didn't need a tuturial for Subversion", though, maybe you'll find that inadequate, too. As someone who tried using SVN before ever touching hg or git or its forebears, I found SVN baffling. To me, the DVCSes make sense. HgInit's "Subversion Re-education" page says:

> Mercurial separates the act of committing new code from the act of > inflicting it on everybody else.

The fact that this isn't the case in SVN is mystifying to me.

I still struggle with git. In fact, I don't use it, largely because I still don't know _how_ to use it. Note how I said that "the DVCSes make sense". I say that, because I can read "Understanding Git Conceptually" <[http://www.sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/git/>\--which](http://www.sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/git/>--which) a number of HN commenters have posted before--and I get it. The problem is not that I don't understand the concepts backing git. It's that I don't understand _how these concepts map onto git 's infuriatingly obtuse UI_.

So use Mercurial. Because,

a) it's better (read: nicer to use), and b) when you use Mercurial, it comes with the benefit that you're helping inoculate the dev world against a DVCS monoculture.

If it helps, know this: I write as someone whose use case is largely the one you outline. I mostly find myself working alone, on a side project of mine where I'm the only committer.

      # Crystallize your changes in a revision marked with your
      # commit comment:
      hg commit

That's it, pretty much. Occasionally you'll need to do an hg addremove to make sure Mercurial isn't ignoring any new files you've introduced (hg add and hg remove if you want to do things manually), and an hg mv whenever you need to move things around.

Everything ramps up pretty sensibly and steadily from there, so that you're really only spending the mindspace to pay for the features you're really using.

For example, if you have a public-facing repo:

      hg push # read as "publish", if it helps.

Do this, occasionally preceded by an hg out (when you find that you want to see _what_ you'll be pushing), and you're good to go.

<comment><USER5> > > [http://www.sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/git/>\--which](http://www.sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/git/>--which)

... aaaaand HN is busted, and won't update the post when I try to edit that to fix the link.

That's [http://www.sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/git/](http://www.sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/git/) for convenience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is good as well: [http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2012/07/minimal-version- contr...](http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2012/07/minimal-version-control- lesson-use-it/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Shouldn't git add -A be used as default instead of git add . ?

<comment><USER8> Hmmm, I think you're right. That's less dangerous, especially when people don't really know what they're doing. I'll push an update.

That said . should be specified per manpages:

> If no <pathspec> is given, the current version of Git defaults to "."; in > other words, update all files in the current directory and its > subdirectories. This default will change in a future version of Git, hence > the form without <pathspec> should not be used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've always found the git CLI really odd. For example, when doing a git diff, how would anyone use the following information that gets printed out?

new file mode 100644

index 0000000..cfbc74a

And you have all of these symbols that show up in the diff like "+" before a new line (why not just +?). I imagine there are good reasons for all of this, but I also feel like some of this should be hidden behind a --verbose flag or something.

<comment><USER10> Do you mean you get '+[m' instead of '+' in front of an added line? If so, this looks suspiciously like ecma formatting escapes (\e[XXXm).

Try if calling git diff --no-color, if this helps then something is broken on your setup. Another way i could see that happening is if you have color set to 'always' and then use some app that wraps git's command line output.

<comment><USER5> j2kun means the stuff that shows up from TFA when using git diff:

      diff --git a/octocat.txt b/octocat.txt
      index 7d8d808..e725ef6 100644
      --- a/octocat.txt
      +++ b/octocat.txt
      @@ -1 +1 @@
      -A Tale of Two Octocats
      +A Tale of Two Octocats and an Octodog

<comment><USER11> phaker is correct, that's just an escape sequence that the JS terminal didn't handle (or handled incorrectly). Using --no-color you get:

        diff --git a/octocat.txt b/octocat.txt
        index 7d8d808..e725ef6 100644
        --- a/octocat.txt
        +++ b/octocat.txt
        @@ -1 +1 @@
        -A Tale of Two Octocats
        +A Tale of Two Octocats and an Octodog

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks good. Another option: [https://www.git- tower.com/learn/ebook](https://www.git-tower.com/learn/ebook)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm no designer but I would move the 'Advice' section to the top of the page below the command. I didn't notice the lower right hand side of the screen kept changing.

I feel like I was just doing what I was told rather than learning. Is this more for individuals with SCM experience or beginners?

<comment><USER8> Absolute beginners.

Our advice box is something for people who want to learn more, it's not essential enough to be below the command before the output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On an iPad, I just get a blank white screen... Does the site use flash, or is there a problem right now?

<comment><USER8> We released this on July 4th 2012. I can't remember if we tested it for tablets & phone but generally I recall the jQuery Console plugin not being too fond of either. It's only more recently that console/editors have become more responsive to different environment/viewports.

To summarize, this is not a load problem, it looks like a display bug. We'll look into it but I can't promise this will work on your iPad anytime soon, sorry.

<comment><USER14> No problem; I finally had time to open it up on my laptop, and it works fine in Chrome and Safari. I understand not doing any major updates for mobile/tablet users, but if would be nice to at least be able to see something :)

<comment><USER8> Found the bug. I did a maintenance update of jQuery on April 29th and they removed a (bad) $.browser method we used for some reason. Reverted and deploying so it should work on iOS from now on. Give it 5 minutes for the soft restart to kick in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What the heck is an octobox? Do you really want a git tutorial to use github- specific terms like that?

<comment><USER8> GitHub sponsored it, and I like picking fun examples. Is that so offensive?

<comment><USER9> It would be nice to explain what it means. Try googling "octobox" :)

<comment><USER8> After some consideration and re-reading the copy, you folks are right that people could be confused into thinking the word "octobox" is somehow a git concept or something important. I rephrased all the instances where we mention it in order to highlight the fact that we "decided" to name our directory that way. I think it should prevent confusion from now on.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. :-)

<comment><USER15> That's great, thanks. I'm sharing it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool for learning Git. However, not that great for the first time somebody uses a version control system.

Does anybody have a good tutorial for "Code Version Control for Dummies (while using Git)"?

</comment><comment><USER17> We used this tutorial at a Girl Develop It workshop last year. It worked really well! I also learned jQuery via Code School on my own time the year before that. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER18> Just sent this to a new co worker who just got into her first programming job. It's a great resource that helped me when I was starting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Found this a really useful introduction to Git, thanks!

<comment><USER8> Glad you think so Mike. Did you have version control experience or Git experience prior to it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice tool. I keep suggesting it to people wanting to learn git.</comment>


Beautiful is better than ugly - <AUTHOR> http://use.perl.org/~Alias/journal/38842 <comment><USER2> This particular rant is pretty Perl-specific. This may be more general: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081120073130.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081120073130.htm)</comment>


Google Gives Free Security Keys to Activists, but Not If You're in Iran or Syria - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kxy4p/google-titan-keys-iran-syria-cuba-crimea-sudan-north-korea <comment><USER2> Who trusts Google with their privacy anyways?

<comment><USER3> I do.

<comment><USER4> Ditto, the only thing I don't have is fiber. Still think Google has the best engineering. They made some major privacy announcements at Next.</comment></comment></comment>


Bluesman B.B. King, the would-be CS student - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2008-09.html#e2008-09-01T14_31_45.htm

<comment><USER2> _"The Delta plantation owners cut a deal with the draft board, and we [African-Americans] got only partial basic training, served a few months, and went back to work on the plantation,"_

I didn't know that, and I usually keep up with that sort of thing. Plowmen dig my earth, I guess.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vWL8jAWbP8>

</comment><comment><USER3> So he would have made shitty overproduced garbage with GarageBand on his MacBook Pro? I hope not

</comment><comment><USER4> This guy is unreal. He is a genius and he is so modest. Most important he is always eager to learn. He said somthing simular about classical music. A lot of people should pattern oneself on him.(This includes me!)

</comment><comment><USER5> B.B King is one of the few celebrities I would actually really like to meet.</comment>


Bad Connection: Inside the iPhone Network Meltdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_att_fail/all/1 <comment><USER2> This is a nice overview of the iPhone vs AT&T debacle, but the conclusion is sensationalized. It may be that Apple and Google are helping the wireless carriers reach new levels of poor service, but the reality is the carriers have never been that good.

In the 10 years I've had a mobile phone, I can't think of any time when people weren't complaining about their carrier and wondering if any of the others were better. It didn't seem to matter who you were with. Like the Mutt motto: "All mobile carriers suck. This one just sucks less."

<comment><USER3> It's worth pointing out the one major relevant fact they didn't cover, that Fake Steve Jobs pointed out at the end of last year: every quarter after the first "iPhone Christmas" (4Q07, the first Christmas after the release of the first iPhone), AT&T's had lower wireless capital expenditures (capex): <http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/12/att-by-the-numbers.html> (through 3Q09 at least).

AT&T made a conscious choice to maintain its operating and net earnings at the expense of its quality of service (something we've heard detailed bits and pieces about, e.g. insufficient backhaul, like this article's comments on the not much used in the US market chip Apple used/uses). We'll see if that was a good choice as Verizon et. al. converge on LTE along with AT&T.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I expected a serious article from Wired about how 3G networks promise so much but can never realistically could deliver the bandwidth consumers want along with an explanation of the reasons why.

Instead I got a puff piece about twitter and people complaining with hashtags (yet again(!)) and about meetings with managers who most likely don't know or understand the issues with the network.

Nobody has approached the topic of 3G network saturation in a serious manner yet. I hope someone does one day.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought I would throw this out there because I am sure someone here knows this.

The article said Qualcomm is working with Apple to make a chip that would allow the iPhone to operate on both AT&T and Verizon networks. Does that mean the chip would also work with Sprint by virtue of it also using CDMA or is there more to it than that?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there might be more to it than that. I think Sprint uses 1.9 GHz and 800 MHz frequencies, whereas Verizon uses 1.9 GHz and 850 Mhz.

But they both use EV-DO (specifically CDMA2000 EV-DO Rev. A), which is a standard...

On the other hand, it looks like Verizon is fast moving towards LTE. See: [http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/18/verizons-lte-rollout- is-i...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/18/verizons-lte-rollout-is-imminent- computers-updated-for-4g-sim/)

and

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/verizons-4g-lte-sim-in- th...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/verizons-4g-lte-sim-in-the-wild/)

My guess is that the next iPhone supports LTE and is available on either AT&T or Verizon.

Sprint, on the other hand, is only now thinking about using LTE:

[http://gigaom.com/2010/07/13/sprint-going-lte-makes-sense- bu...](http://gigaom.com/2010/07/13/sprint-going-lte-makes-sense-but-not-a-t- mobile-merger/)

<comment><USER6> I doubt that a single iPhone design will work on AT&T and Verizon any time soon. AT&T would need GSM+UMTS+LTE while Verizon would need CDMA2000+LTE. An omni-protocol super-chipset is possible but unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting point about the Infineon chips and the cell tower distances. I wonder what advantages the Infineon chips had/

</comment><comment><USER8> _When an AT &T representative suggested to one of Jobs' deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T's board of directors, he was told, "We're Apple. We don't wear suits. We don't even own suits."_

That's the joke, jackass. It's easy to make someone look stupid by reporting a joke as a serious suggestion. If you get called on it, you flaunt your low opinion of their intelligence by saying, "Whatever, they say so much bizarre and retarded stuff it's impossible to tell when they're joking."

None of that is unusual, but why did Wired decide to include itself and its readership inside this junior high put-down instead of reporting it straight?

<comment><USER9> Of course, there's always the possibility that this is basic factual reporting, and not a joke.

This is a real issue at larger tech companies who must interface with older, established players. Even back at Dell in the early 1990s there was some friction between sales/marketing managers and engineers, with the former arguing that the latter should dress a little sharper in case they inadvertently got on an elevator with a customer.

<comment><USER10> It's worth linking to Don Burleson's famous dress code for Oracle consultants:

<http://www.dba-oracle.com/dress_code.htm>

The idea being that banks and that expect "professional appearance and behavior".

<comment><USER11> from that link: "If you have been working all night and have an early morning meeting, you can use an anti-inflammatory hemorrhoid cream (e.g. Preparation H) to quickly shrink those unsightly puffy bags under your eyes. Just carefully dab the roid cream on your lower eyelids (being careful not to get any in your eyes) and you will look fresh and well-rested."

well, I guess you learn something new everyday.</comment></comment></comment></comment>