Finding secrets in Python source code - <AUTHOR> https://eng.lyft.com/finding-a-needle-in-a-haystack-b7e0627b01f6#.x7et0d9t4 <comment><USER2> This article's interesting. But my biggest takeaway is the existence of Bandit [1]. It looks really neat.

This "try_except_pass" check for example [2], is a great one. It might be rated "Low" severity from a security context. But from a functionality point- of-view, it's high on my list. It masks NameError among many others. You very nearly always want NameError to propagate, lest you conceal a glaring design error.

[1] [https://github.com/openstack/bandit](https://github.com/openstack/bandit)

[2] [https://github.com/openstack/bandit/blob/430dfceca9cebd7ebe4...](https://github.com/openstack/bandit/blob/430dfceca9cebd7ebe4c808f65bcace22965911e/bandit/plugins/try_except_pass.py)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Bandit is really nice. We're also really excited about it and are working on enabling many of the checks :).

<comment><USER3> I would be ecstatic if Bandit integrated with Code Climate.

But wait, there's more! 18F is discussing pushing for exactly that. [1] There's also a sorta-recent call on Twitter to figure out interest. [2] Speak up if you think it would be useful!

[1] [https://trello.com/c/PTL7z9uU/20-investigate-writing-a- code-...](https://trello.com/c/PTL7z9uU/20-investigate-writing-a-code-climate- platform-engine-for-bandit)

[2] [https://twitter.com/aidanfeldman/status/695670289879928832](https://twitter.com/aidanfeldman/status/695670289879928832)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This bit is interesting:

"Thanks also to the Dropbox product security team for feedback on docs and signal/noise issues"

Dropbox, as I remember it, is distributed as "encrypted" pyc files and a modified python runtime that decrypts them. This implies that "secrets" are in their python runtime binary.[1]

Makes you wonder what their feedback on signal/noise was,then...perhaps something that kept this from being used to trivially retrieve the keys :)

[1] [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjcvMTKt- vKAhWhloMKHSEZB50QFghEMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2F0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f.r43.cf2.rackcdn.com%2F12058-woot13-kholia.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEkxjJCRSHvlUSJq6GcOW97ieZp_A&sig2=IUF09dc40fq8G0kUFWI3CQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> Excellent idea. I would assume there would be many false positives when adding unit tests (e.g. faking out a password), so I wouldn't be so sure to add it to an automated gating system. Although, I guess you can choose non-random strings for unit tests.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also the option of using "# nosec" for those parts of the code. I opened an issue upstream to be more fine-grained about nosec, to be able to disable individual test numbers, like "# nosec-B103".</comment></comment>


New Coronavirus Stimulus Bill in Congress Creates U.S. Digital Dollar - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/03/23/new-coronavirus-stimulus-bill-introduces-digital-dollar-and-digital-dollar-wallets/ <comment><USER2> A software consulting company will win the contract, the project will be "delivered" in 2022, but then cancelled because they got the requirements wrong, followed by huge lawsuits.

<comment><USER3> It will be written in 5 different languages including Oracle stored procedures, J2EE, and ASP.NET, the web site will only work on Chrome (with popups enabled), and the mobile app will take ten seconds to start and then crash. The cloud backend will crash on the first day. Total cost will be at least a billion dollars. A lot of rank and file coders will be paid to do nothing and a lot of enterprise software companies will get fat contracts to deliver software that is never really used.

Yup, I've seen these before. This is what big corporate and government consultant-driven IT projects are like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The Federal Reserve banks themselves would also make available a digital > dollar wallet to any U.S. person eligible for the payments as well.

I'll pass on the stimulus grant then. The chance to de data mined is too high.

</comment><comment><USER5> "digital dollar wallet is identified as 'a digital wallet or account, maintained by a Federal reserve bank on behalf of any person"

so, a plain old debit card directly from the fed?

<comment><USER6> That tracks every purchase? In the hands of the government?</comment></comment>


As fake videos become more realistic, seeing shouldn't always be believing - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-fake-videos-20180219-story.html <comment><USER2> > With more time, Pinscreen, the Los Angeles start-up behind the technology, > believes its renderings will become so accurate they will defy reality.

Pinscreen is getting sued by their former VP of Engineering for faking their results and for assault and battery [1].

[1] [http://sadeghi.com/dr-iman-sadeghi-v-pinscreen-inc-et- al/](http://sadeghi.com/dr-iman-sadeghi-v-pinscreen-inc-et-al/)

<comment><USER3> The linked piece is a surprisingly compelling read.

<comment><USER4> There's something so refreshing about reading things in legal point form. No fluff, easy to read fast, and no "life story before the recipe" type writing.

I wish more news articles were written with such brevity. I read pretty much the whole thing with ease, whereas I would struggle to read an article the quarter the length with all the fluff and irrelevant drivel added to most articles these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My fear is less about people being "duped" by a fake video and more that fake videos will serve as feedback loops for misguided or false beliefs that people already "cherish" and "love". Most will make little effort to research the legitimacy of a video that agrees with their current beliefs, but those beliefs will probably be strongly reinforced by fake videos.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it matters. Those people are already in an intellectually closed pocket universe. People overestimate the extent to which universal consensual reality exists or has ever existed.

The first line of defense is education. Fundamentally, we have to make the case for why we know what we know. This is why K-12 exists, although the availability of effective primary and secondary education remains a major issue.

The next line of defense is social interaction. Most people will have to leave their bubbles to have any sort of upward mobility and ability to steer society. There will always be cynical people who exploit constituencies of deceived people to gain power, but many others eventually defect.

We have little reason to believe that this is a long-term equilibrium, but it's the story of the past 500 years of history, ever since the printing press created decentralized mass media.

<comment><USER7> "Those people" indicates that the majority on this forum (including myself) is part of the general dupe-susceptible population. That seems dubious to me.

Edit: *is not! I do think Hacker News readers are dupe-susceptible.

<comment><USER6> Don't get me wrong, everyone is susceptible. I don't mean to talk down about people. Everyone wants to confirm their own worldview.

But I do think a lot of people come to forums like this because they like having their mind expanded and care about how we know what we know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think people overestimate the concern of fake videos. Consider photos for comparison. There have been fake photos of well known people for decades online, many of which are indistinguishable from reality. It doesn't lead to much confusion or issues in our everyday life. We just assume every noteworthy image is fake unless it comes from, or is cleared by, a credible source. The same will apply to video.

<comment><USER9> > We just assume every noteworthy image is fake unless

Who is we? How do you know this? Citation needed. I think it is a very small portion of the population who actively operates under this assumption for photos. I would guess 5-15% but I don't know. Surely it is not most people though, or everyone.

Just because you/your friends do something doesn't mean other people do, or even most people do. I'd guess that for a great number of things that it would often be the opposite for technical people; often the things we do are things most people _don 't_ do.

I think people _underestimate_ the coming confusion from video.

> It doesn't lead to much confusion or issues in our everyday life.

I mean, I think it does. I think it leads to massive issues in society where people don't know what is real or not without even knowing it. Magazine photos of people are well-known to be touched-up at a minimum, but how many people in a population actively think about that when the look at the cover?

I would posit that our society has been heavily damaged by the proliferation of fake photos.

<comment><USER7> Okay. Name a specific negative incident stemming from fake photos, off the top of your heard. (No googling or otherwise searching for an example.)

<comment><USER9> That one tabloid that showed those fake, grossed out "images" of Hillary during the last election cycle. Not linking the image because your requested no links allowed. These were displayed by the millions at grocery store checkouts across America for months leading up to the election. They portrayed a sick, ill woman who looked like she was dying. Completely fake photo.

Next: Why did you ask for a specific 'incident' when I clearly described that the problem is a general, societal problem that arises in specific instances every single time someone looks at a photo that they think is real but isn't? I could also cite a specific instance from earlier today when I saw a stack of magazines at the store and felt like a slob in my normal clothes and non- digital face and existence. Happens billions of times a day.

Edit: Since I really prefer to provide citations, I have since Googled for my example to provide context for other readers. Rest assured I wrote out my initial comment first.

[https://qz.com/1369399/david-peckers-national-enquirer- ami-t...](https://qz.com/1369399/david-peckers-national-enquirer-ami-trashed- hillary-clinton-to-help-trump/)

<comment><USER7> I didn't say no links, I said you had to remember the incident off the top of your head.

Also: 1) The Quartz link you provided does not say the photos are fake. 2) "[N]egative incident stemming from fake photos" requires more than "fake photo existed."

<comment><USER10> The line between a completely made-up depiction and a real one isn't necessarily the important one. The photos of Hillary Clinton were real enough, but carefully selected and post-processed to make her look as unsympathetic as possible.

Does a photo of a candidate scowling or sneering constitute a genuine portrayal of their appearance and personality? If so, why not make that scowl or sneer just a _bit_ more menacing or disgusting, if your publication is in the opponent's corner?

A better example might be this one: [http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/darkened_mug_shot/](http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/darkened_mug_shot/)

Imagine what it's going to be like when the tools are good enough to do more than just airbrush or darken a static image, but not yet good enough to create entire "fake news" segments from scratch. It's absurd to think that ML-based tools won't be used to turn a real audio or video recording into something different that you and I will incorrectly assume is still real.

That's when things are going to get scary. I'm sure this tech is coming soon to an election near you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For the fellow Europeans that cannot read the LA Times: [https://archive.fo/heTle](https://archive.fo/heTle)

<comment><USER12> This site can't provide a secure connection archive.fo uses an unsupported protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

Remember when the web just worked?

<comment><USER13> I remember when pretty much everything was http rather than https. It's better now.

<comment><USER10> How?

Why do I need an https connection to read a newspaper?

<comment><USER14> Herd immunity is one perk.

It prevents anyone between you and the newspaper from inserting some js to turn your machine into a cannon targeting someone else.

"Need" may be a bit strong, but there are positive security externalities.

<comment><USER10> When has this ever actually happened? Would be curious if there are any good case studies.

<comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> S-E-P > Now imagine a phony video of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un announcing a > missile strike. The White House would have mere minutes to determine whether > the clip was genuine and whether it warranted a retaliatory strike.

Really? Hard hitting journalism everybody. "Mere minutes", it will be warranted when they see proof of a launch, do you really think the government just decides based on a video when we have much more surefire ways to determine these things!?

<comment><USER15> Imagine somebody interested in war starts realistically faking radar etc. signatures, perhaps supported by tiny planted chips in army infrastructure. Could be fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think part of the problem is that we watch too many movies with CGI and we trained ourselves to ignore it.

At this point in time face-replace videos can be relatively easily spotted if you watch them in high quality. At least the ones I've seen demonstrated.

But overall, videos are getting either to fake. At the same time, the weren't bullet-proof in the past either. The bad part is that now you can do a lot of it in near real time. So you can change something in a live report.

I see a growing need for public services that cryptographically timestamp files.

Also, I would like to see research in using machine learning to spot fake videos.

<comment><USER17> A nice video channel that shows how some of these videos are made is Captain Disillusion's: [https://m.youtube.com/user/CaptainDisillusion](https://m.youtube.com/user/CaptainDisillusion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it just me, or does this phrasing make it seem like he's full of it?

"With further deep-learning advancements, especially on mobile devices, we'll be able to produce completely photoreal avatars in real time."

What "deep learning advancements" is he referring to?

Doesn't surprise me that he's being sued by his former VP of Engineering for fabricating the truth (and assault and battery) at all.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ever since I saw that 'elephant landing at an airport' video, I've had little faith in anything on YT being real:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm8FJ8la2VU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm8FJ8la2VU)

</comment><comment><USER20> Hasn't this been the case for nearly 100 years now. Stalin was notorious for editing out "comrades" from photos.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union#/media/File:Soviet_censorship_with_Stalin2.jpg)

Even FDR's photos were edited to hide his paralysis early on.

As long as we have "histories" of videos as we do of photos, can't we reasonably compare them?

</comment><comment><USER21> Our team at Mirage is working on solving exactly the same problem. Our current prototype allows users to detect deepfakes in YouTube videos. Currently very early stage and any feedback is greatly appreciated. Max video length 60 seconds. Link to demo: [https://deepbuster.com/](https://deepbuster.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think people overestimate the bad consequences and underestimate the good consequences of such things.

1\. I see amazing potential in AI based content creation. Imagine a world where you can have all the music/movies you want, personalized to your specific taste. I would love to have an AI watch Avatar The Last Airbender and invent a few more seasons for me (find out what happened to Zuko's mom :))

2\. It is true that we should be more careful about what content is genuine vs fake, but cryptography has you covered, anyone can easily digitally sign the content they create with their private key and be able to prove the authenticity of their content.

3\. One thing to note is that AI cannot be used to distinguish reals from fakes because the fakes are generated (using GANs) precisely so they can't be distinguished from the reals.

</comment><comment><USER13> There is going to be a period of time during which videos are easy to fake but people are still convinced they are real. This will lead to a lot of fake news, as well as wrongful criminal convictions.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is starting to become impressive. Isn't there a huge opportunity for software able to analyze videos and verify their authenticity?

<comment><USER24> Why not just rely on signatures and watermarks

<comment><USER25> Photography can be unreliable even if you can't tamper with whatever the sensor records. The "Russian Ghost Car" viral video is a simple example of this sort of effect. It does really look like a ghost car, and the video itself was not tampered with. The camera recording the action just happened to have a very unlucky angle, occluding the "ghost car" for much longer than you'd expect. The result is a misleading but 100% authentic video.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQALBUY7OH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQALBUY7OH4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Don't believe certain politicians are guilty of certain crimes, even if you see video evidence!

</comment><comment><USER27> The first worry comes to my mind is, in case of extreme inequality, the richest could buy the truth.

<comment><USER28> I think that's already been the case, ever since there's been lawyers for hire.

<comment><USER27> So isn't that enough to prefer social democracy over capitalism?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The thing about video evidence is that it should be treated like witness testimony should - verified with other evidence. Manipulative editing can have similar effects like the James O'Keefe's infamous Acorn libel. If someone makes a deep-fake of Donald Trump shooting someone on main street with a rifle the lack of actual blood, 9-11 calls in the area or similar would give it away as a fake even if technically perfect.

</comment><comment><USER30> sadly the latimes still not reachable from europe

</comment><comment><USER31> great. now we are on the other side, with the moon landers deniers?

</comment><comment><USER32> Very trashy article, doesn't even display in my country.</comment>


Show HN: AI Powered RSS Reader - <AUTHOR> https://www.nooshub.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Uses AI to group similar content and to find trending topics. By that it cleans up your feeds. Works for english and german, more languages on public demand :) Auto dark mode included</comment>


Google's 'superhuman' DeepMind AI claims chess crown - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42251535 <comment><AUTHOR> Some commentators pointed out that Stockfish was crippled by running on incomparable hardware.

maelic: It is a nice step different direction, perhaps the start if the revolution but Alpha Zero is not yet better than Stockfish and if you keep up with me I will explain why. Most of the people are very excited now and wishing for sensation so they don't really read the paper or think about what it says which leads to uninformed opinions.

The testing conditions were terrible. 1min/move is not really suitable time for any engine testing but you could tolerate that. What is intolerable though is the hashtable size - with 64 cores Stockfish was given, you would expect around 32GB or more otherwise it fills up very quickly leading to markant reduce in strenght - 1GB was given and that far from ideal value! Also SF was now given any endgame tablebases which is current norm for any computer chess engine.

The computational power behind each entity was very different - while SF was given 64 CPU threads (really a lot I've got to say), Alpha Zero was given 4 TPUs. TPU is a specialized chip for machine learning and neural network calculations. It's estimated power compared to classical CPU is as follows - 1TPU ~ 30xE5-2699v3 (18 cores machine) -> Aplha Zero had at it's back power of ~2000 Haswell cores. That is nowhere near fair match. And yet, eventhough the result was dominant, it was not where it would be if SF faced itself 2000cores vs 64 cores, It that case the win percentage would be much more heavily in favor of the more powerful hardware.

From those observations we can make an conclusion - Alpha Zero is not so close in strenght to SF as Google would like us to believe. Incorrect match settings suggest either lack of knowledge about classical brute-force calculating engines and how they are properly used, or intention to create conditions where SF would be defeted.

With all that said, It is still an amazing achievement and definitively fresh air in computer chess, most welcome these days. But for the new computer chess champion we will have to wait a little bit longer.

</comment><comment><USER2> I have made the comment before that there is nothing superhuman about such systems. Nothing at all. The system in question is running at GHz, is focussed only on one subject and has no sensory interruptions to deal with when compared to a human. We don't run at MHz let alone GHz (not even at kHz). We are continually processing huge amounts of sensory information in parallel to any thinking about playing such a game and we are usually focussed on more things than just the game.

[EDIT; add missing words]</comment>


How to Make an iBeacon Out of a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/10/09/how-to-make-an-ibeacon-out-of-a-raspberry-pi.html

<comment><USER2> I just tried this using the hardware specified. Works remarkably well, and Roximity have released an app on the App Store which can pick up this iBeacon, so no need to compile the AirLocate app mentioned.

Can anyone in the know advise if you could advertise multiple iBeacons (say 2 or 5 different UUIDs) off the one Raspberry Pi with the one BTLE dongle?</comment>


Nurturing Genius - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nurturing-genius/ <comment><USER2> Only tangentially related, but this article reminded me of Edward Kmett's presentation from YOW! 2014:

[https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2014-1222/stop-treading-water- le...](https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2014-1222/stop-treading-water-learning-to- learn-by-edward-kmett-1750) (~40min)

(slides: [http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/Kmett- StopTreadin...](http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/Kmett- StopTreadingWater.pdf))

One of the topics he touched upon is Richard Feynman's approach to "being a genius":

      You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems
      constantly present in your mind, although by and large
      they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or
      read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of
      your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once
      in a while there will be a hit, and people will say,
      "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

<comment><USER3> As time passes, free time gets rarer, problems get more complex, and it gets harder and harder to keep many open problems on my mind.

What you quoted is probably a genius not aware what limitation is the bottleneck for most people.

<comment><USER4> Something that may be related is that the further you get in an area, the less structured coaching available (through textbooks, academic advisors, etc..). In this sense, a new problem pops up, which is learning to decompose complex problems into simpler pieces. Something that is often done for people in the early stages of learning (and I find super difficult without collaborating with others).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article buried in the middle what to do about the ones who fall through the cracks.

Speaking from a Texas point of view, there's three big problems: 1) Focusing on athletics. 2)Lack-luster public schools and of course the be-all end-all: 3) Crappy parents.

What are the people who were "gifted" but live a mediocre life supposed to do? Be bitter and drink for 40-60 years?

<comment><USER6> The notion that an identified aptitude for calculation, or written expression, or memorization, or abstract symbol manipulation _entitles_ one to something more than a "mediocre" life is worth challenging, for several reasons.

<comment><USER7> We as a society would be better off if those people are provided with growth opportunities.

<comment><USER6> We'd generally be better off if everyone was given growth opportunities; that's just a restatement of the idea of human capital.

<comment><USER7> We would. But given limited resource it might make sense to try to maximize the ROI.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but even in a utilitarian analysis it's worth challenging the idea that our outcomes would be maximized by further advantaging people with the skills we typically associate with "high IQ".

<comment><USER8> "In Europe and the U.S., support for research and educational programs for gifted children has ebbed, as the focus has moved more toward inclusion."

Not sure if utilitarian or humanitarian is the better metric, or if there is a real choice. The article does not seem to address the downsides to high prospect/low achievers.

<comment><USER6> Clearly there is a choice, since there's an obvious deontological argument against choosing a set of sparsely distributed human attributes as a basis for privileging some people above others.

<comment><USER8> If it is so common in sports, why not in intellectual development?

As far as I can tell, we in the US have more resources devoted to creating environments where equality is tested in only in material status, and to transcend this fairly prescribed order is to risk ostracism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is my (probably controversial) belief that humans can teach other humans how to become geniuses. We just haven't figured out how to yet.

With one caveat: My guess is intervention probably has to start early.

<comment><USER9> I think it's more controversial to suggest the opposite: that mental ability is innate

<comment><USER10> Mental ability is innate. I think his point was that is also plastic. Perhaps even low IQ individuals can develop genius level ability on a specific topic or function in life or even brought up to the IQ of someone capable of success in grad school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The results are really impressive. It's also comforting to see them dealing with some of the subtleties that were intuitive but not always practiced. That labeling people high and low can both be damaging. That putting children in college could sometimes save them emotionally rather than cause problems. That IQ tests are bullshit when used improperly and even the best tests are still missing people who should be nurtured.

Other factors seem very important anecdotally, have these been dismissed or just not fully studied yet?

1\. Socioeconomic background - they mention it's not as predictive, but how sure are we Microsoft would exist if BG's/PA's parents were illiterate and couldn't afford to give them access to computers?

2\. Mental health - Someone could be a 4th standard deviation genius yet be debilitated by anxiety, depression, or some other condition.

3\. Occasionally mental "disability" can seemingly be related to success. So many great scientists have been on the Autistic spectrum, or suffered from severe OCD. Can the success of the person be separated from the disorder? Could "cures" for Autism and OCD actually negatively affect scientific progress? Or could their condition cause them to be incorrectly screened out?

4\. How do curiosity, motivation, and ambition affect success? Do high scoring kids automatically have these traits or is it a separate variable?

<comment><USER12> > _how sure are we Microsoft would exist if BG 's/PA's parents were illiterate > and couldn't afford to give them access to computers?_

We can be entirely sure it would not exist. This is not a hard prediction.

<comment><USER11> I think you're right. But I don't understand why they implied its predictive ability is low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The idea that people are blank slates as children and of equal capabilities aside from their environment is so prominent in this country. Many people are very dogmatic about this, so I wonder where this belief comes from? Religious and/or Leftist political theory?

<comment><USER6> Reluctance to accept the genetic mental superiority of specific "races" of people isn't a leftist principle. The left has no proprietary claim on egalitarianism.

<comment><USER14> Wut? _searches mental database for any trace of right-wing egalitarians..._ You must be thinking of... Nietzsche? Definitely not Nietzsche. Maistre? Mmm... no. Can't be Maistre. Bonald? Filmer? Okay, you win, I give up.

In case you're wondering how this plays out in practice:

[http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicf...](http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicfreedom.pdf)

<comment><USER6> "Right-wing" means something different from "rightward on the right-left spectrum". I too would have a hard time coming up with an example of a "right- wing" egalitarian. Reihan Salam might be a decent example of a right-leaning egalitarian.

<comment><USER14> A: "Dogs have no proprietary claim on barking."

B: "Wolves don't bark. No other canid barks."

A: "My neighbor's wolf barks all the time. Drives me crazy."

B: "That might lead you to suspect that your neighbor's 'wolf' is actually a wolf-dog. Or maybe just a husky? You should get out more, meet some actual wolves..."

<comment><USER6> I'm a little lost. Is your argument here that there's no such thing as an egalitarian conservative?

<comment><USER14> Depends on whether you're willing to call a wolf-dog a wolf.

East Coast coyotes are apparently full of dog DNA, as well as wolf DNA. So maybe they bark, or even howl a bit. But I maintain that barking remains a dog thing.

<comment><USER6> I can't follow this any better than the last one. Can you state your claim in plain language?

<comment><USER14> Leftists won the last three big wars, so even most of today's "conservatives" are more than a little hybridized. You won't find any independent clade of wolves who bark for their own separate wolf reasons. Barking is a marker of dogness, egalitarianism is a marker of leftness.

<comment><USER6> What about people who support school choice, believe government should be local, and are strongly pro-life, but who believe in equality of potential and thus the need for equality of opportunity among all people? Lots of those people exist.

(I'm not one of them).

<comment><USER14> I think you're making the very common mistake of thinking about transmitted traditions phenotypically, rather than genetically/cladistically. This methodology leads you to wander around comparing birds to bats.

The question that enables rigorous analysis is always: "where did these ideas come from?" Some people invent ideas on their own, but that's so rare it's lost in the noise.

It's very, very unlikely that your hypothetical observer looked at the world and concluded independently that all members of the species _Homo sapiens_ have equal potential.

First, this person would have to be thinking independently, which is very rare. Second, there is no empirical evidence for this proposition -- or at least, none has ever been brought to my attention. (Fortunately, equality of potential is by no means the only reason to believe in equality of opportunity.)

If I observe that someone is a Catholic, which is more likely: that he learned his Catholicism from another Catholic? Or that he independently derived the Trinity from empirical evidence?

Your hypothetical observer may have derived his or her opinions about school choice and local government from personal observation. More likely, they came from Rush Limbaugh. Their opinions on human biology are straight-up American humanism, ie, leftism. (With nontrivial historical links to Christianity, but that's a separate conversation.) So... a wolf-dog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As an aside, think we should all be impressed that Scientific American includes an "In Brief" summary of the article (aka an abstract aka tl;dr). Reading on the internet will be substantially better once these are widely adopted.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, I was agreeably surprised as well. I like the "Bottom Line Up Front" style.

Speaking of abstracts ... [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2832.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2832.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Personally I think the goal isnt to be called a "genius". That seems like a trick for parties - like to show off ones intellect like a lion shows off his roar at a zoo. Sometimes I feel we worship at the altar of genius way too much.

I'd rather take smarts and apply them to have better relationships, discover new and wonderful things, and build things i and other people find useful.

Being labeled as a genius seems like a huge drag.

</comment><comment><USER18> I attended CTY three times but I definitely wasn't one of those "genius"es. I was a goddamn stubborn nerd who wasnt smart enough not to give up. I remember the fundamentals of comp Sci course finished with a short section on C and I amused myself not implementing data structures as assigned but seeing what sorts of segfaults lead to what pop up messages...

There were real smart people there. I mean they just took one look at a red black tree and just got it. Not me I sweat all the way through that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> Enough with the geniuses cargo cult.

How about nurturing normal people collaborating, respecting the scientific process, loving to discover new things, be curious, etc?

<comment><USER16> I don't think it's cargo cult. We didn't have a program for skipping years in my country.

My older siblings are much older and in STEM, which means I was informally schooled by them and spoke three languages before going to school. I used to read Science and Engineering magazines laying around as a child, then you get to school and you're put with kids who are just learning how to actually read the alphabet, and they're using pictures and scenes, and write big chunky letters. They're learning addition and multiplication while you at home write programs. Any idea how fucking miserable this could make anyone? I was excited about disassembling programs as a teenager and couldn't wait to get to college and study Engineering and meet teachers so I could avoid reinventing the wheel, only to be disappointed (if you teach programming and a kid who just turned 18 shows you programs he wrote in a bunch of languages including x86 assembly but you don't care: wake the fuck up and turn him to a colleague who does actually care about this stuff). I'm sure a smarter kid would have figured a way to end up at the right office at the right teacher, but I've sampled many professors to loose faith.

I tried to go study abroad in a very respected college to save my soul because I knew I wouldn't last in my college, received a response, then financing fell through like a Damocles sword. I spent 9 years in college. I resented academia where stupidity and cheating were more acceptable than absenteeism. If you didn't show up and did well, you were a cheat; if you showed up and cheated, you were okay. I was so used to proving I didn't cheat because the work was "too good" to be of a student (and this started in 4th grade with my fucking handwriting on a homework not being a child's handwriting. The teacher had accused me and it was _my_ idea to write in front of her to disculpate me). I resented incompetent fossilized professors with out of date knowledge who'd just crush you for not following exactly their (factually wrong) exact way, and you could do nothing about it because they've been friends for 30 years with the dean or know the Minister or something. A system that reproached you of doing a good job, where doing nice work had bad consequences and of course it wasn't your work, just tell the truth. A system where it'd be so much easier to be mediocre.

I hated every fucking day of school from the day I got in, to the day I got out.

I'm all for increasing the average level of education, but "non-average" kids shouldn't be "tied" to average kids. Many people talk about "osmosis" and what the smart kids could bring when they're in class and these people don't really get osmosis: It's not the average kids who end up smarter, it's the smart kids who end up withering away. This may work for adults, but for kids? I think it's hard.

The system judges outliers with the same mindset it judges the average. They're just not the same. Special needs kids are not just on the left side of the Gaussian.

EDIT - To put things in context: I grew up in the midst of a civil war that made 200,000+ victims; son of a father with a job that made him a target; belonging to an ethnicity that is the prime target, and survived a bunch of explosions. Great childhood.

When I say education is the worst thing that's happened to me and that's left the bitterest of tastes in my mouth, I hope I'm able to fully convey to which extent it has traumatized me.

<comment><USER20> My experience is similar, but I didn't ever have any mentorship. I just decided to stop going to university, because I've hated every minute of school since I was 10 and have been having a very hard time staying motivated for the studies' material in the face of useless teachers and a perverse all-consuming focus on attendance and (group) homework. I didn't want to be stuck there for at least another 2.5 years.

I feel like every bit of will to submit to education has been beaten out of me, and I'm done grinding my teeth. Feeling my energy draining away day by day. I was having symptoms similar to seasonal depression, except they didn't match the seasons but the academic year. The safety net a diploma offers is just. not. worth it.

.

It's a load off my mind and I'm feeling very good about my decision. It's been a week, and I haven't found any good reasons to revert it. I'm getting my website up and running again, setting up backups worthy of a professional and practicing my coding. I've always been interested in the work people around me do, and because of that (and my previous programming experience) I'm meeting my first client right after the holiday.

It's not exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I think it's a great start (developing integration tests for an Angular-based EFQM/project management tool on a fixed-price + costs basis), and I'm considering subcontracting it to freelancers.

(Advice and comments are more than welcome. I'm 21 and HAVE to earn money for the first time, I want to build products as an entrepeneur but plan to do contracting to keep me afloat in the meantime. I'm located in the Netherlands.)

<comment><USER21> No advice, but plenty of congratulations and encouragement. Staying in college lead to some very unhealthy behaviors and decisions for me. The college I went to was quite competitive -- I kept it up for six semesters and managed to make the dean's list each time, and then crashed my last year and nearly didn't graduate on time. I was also nearly expelled many times throughout, which was incredibly stressful because my parents would've nearly disowned me if I blew the 40K tuition that way.

Just a thought, but living in certain countries can be very cheap while you build up your skills and pick up freelancing clients. If you want a totally knew experience, it can be a great way to educate yourself while working only part-time. Even teaching English abroad can be very lucrative and will afford you a lot of free time to continue learning on your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> " _"Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society," says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke Talent Identification Program, which collaborates with the Hopkins center. Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal studies, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early cognitive ability and adult achievement. "The kids who test in the top 1 percent tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs, and federal judges, senators and billionaires," he says._ "

I'm telling you, the Chinese were onto something with the imperial examinations.

What we do is set up a test focusing on IQ and aptitude taken at, say 10 years. Based on that, we segregate everyone into castes; say, manual laborers, blue collar workers, white collar workers, and professionals. Then we focus subsequent instruction for the particular caste: professionals and white collars get pre-college material, blue collars get trade schools and the rest get baby-sat to keep them out of trouble. Further tests can provide finer gradations, particularly important for the higher castes, to identify that 1% that will become the leaders. Those are given all the advantages they need to reach their potential without having resources sapped by sheer wastage.

Careers and such are determined properly, by aptitude and intelligence, and not by stupid crap like which class the hot girl is taking.

The system has a number of other advantages: we can ditch the goofy democracy for everyone thing, since the majority aren't going to have valid opinions anyway. The result is less stress and more happiness for everyone.

[Edit] It just occurred to me that Plato would probably think that this is his _Republic._ Except that we could make this actually work.

<comment><USER23> Since there seems to be a lot of variation in the developmental pace of different individuals, it seems that a program such as this would need multiple tests, and a way to detect students who were put in the wrong track. Even then, you can expect significant opposition to such a program in any established society.

Unfortunately, this kind of caste system already exists as a _de facto_ result of socioeconomic background, and I think it would be better to acknowledge and counteract the effects of background, than to make an explicit division based on early age testing.</comment></comment>


Startup Vooza wants to show people 'how the sausage gets made' - simba-hiiipower http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/25/vooza-interview

<comment> simba-hiiipower _The product is described as "a mobile web app that is realtime, cloud-based, social and local". According to their intro video, Vooza is still in beta, and has been for about four years, so they haven't worked out what the company does yet, but it will "probably be like Pinterest, Instagram for weddings or sandwiches of something". Vooza uses all of your favourite technologies such as "crowdsourcing, geotagging, and wiki stuff" -- the latter being illustrated by a picture of Julian Assange._

lol.</comment>


In Case You Were Wondering If Google Inbox Uses Polymer: They Don't [pdf] - florian-f https://plus.google.com/+RayCromwell/posts/PgczYdBPZkh

<comment> florian-f The slides are from a talke Ray Cromwell recently gave at the gwt.create conference. Hopefully, the recordings will be available soon.</comment>


A Search Engine for Javascript, HTML, and CSS - <AUTHOR> https://search.nerdydata.com/search/#!/searchTerm=document.cookie/searchPage=1/sort=pop

<comment><USER2> Ha no way! So is this a list of all of optimizely's clients?

[https://search.nerdydata.com/search/#!/searchTerm=cdn.optimi...](https://search.nerdydata.com/search/#!/searchTerm=cdn.optimizely.com/searchPage=1/sort=pop) all

Wonder what else this could be useful for?</comment>


Hybrid theory: Lockheed Martin, Boeing pitch upgraded F-22, F-15 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/11/hybrid-theory-lockheed-martin-boeing-pitch-upgraded-f-22-f-15/ <comment><USER2> Whose idea was it to toss the decidedly non-stealthy F-15 into this mix? A sop to Boeing? This would be a great platform for getting our Keynesian stimulus, pity it has to always be military spending and not money in average Joe's pockets.

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of instances where the very expensive stealth technology of the F-22 and F-35 is not needed. The odd thing about what's discussed in the article is that they're implying air superiority might be one of those missions where it's not needed.</comment></comment>


What are some of side project ideas that don't take much time? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys!
I love side-projecting (usually for being able to try some new technology). My head is usually full of stupid little ideas, but now I don't really have any.
If you have something interesting and not too time-consuming, please share! <comment><USER2> Here's one I did recently: [https://jacobobryant.com/post/2019/pipeline/](https://jacobobryant.com/post/2019/pipeline/) (aggregate all the content you like on your personal website).

</comment><comment><USER3> A while ago I started playing with the geolocation API and tying it in with Google Maps. I might try to use it with Bing maps which I think is better, at least aesthetically. It looks more like a real map.</comment>


The greatest flops in computer history - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/5132085/The-10-greatest-flops-in-computer-history.html

<comment><USER2> It depends what you mean by "flop" — yes, I know they mean commercial flop — but several of these have had great effects, even though money for the original companies wasn't among them:

Xerox Alto: I don't think I need to mention all the stuff developed in PARC that is now utterly ubiquitous.

Apple Lisa: A big influence on her more famous brother, the Macintosh.

Sinclair QL: Helped Linus Torvalds to decide to target Linux initially at the x86.

NeXT: Spawned OS X ; kept Steve Jobs in the computer industry until his return to Apple.

<comment><USER3> yep, the Alto, Lisa, QL, and NeXT where huge successes in my book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix>

</comment><comment><USER5> They forgot #1: IBM's failure to keep DOS proprietary.

Imagine a world with no Microsoft and IBM having a 70% share instead of being just another consultancy.

<comment><USER6> If IBM had retained DOS, I don't think it would have a 70% share. There were other PC operating systems that were somewhat portable, such as CP/M and whatever Digital Research was doing at the time.

My bet is that if there was no MS-DOS, one of the others would have risen in its place.

<comment><USER5> IBM's mistake wasn't allowing other PC operating systems to survive. (CP/M was only 8 bit and not a threat.) It was allowing Microsoft to license MS-DOS to other hardware manufacturers. They simply didn't understand the threat. They do now.

(Another way to think about it: If IBM had retained license to DOS, the only 2 laptops you could buy today would be Apple & Lenova.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> and I thought it would be about supercomputers and teraflops

</comment><comment><USER8> My first ever computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. It was given to my by my uncle, who won it in a golf tournament. It came with a 16k memory expansion module, that plugged into the back of it, and a couple of cassette games, Frogger, and something else that I can't remember now. It took about 20-30 minutes to load the games by cassette. The membrane keyboard was terrible. Of course there was no modem or printer, so it was pretty limited. The best thing about it was that it was so small. Less than a year after I got it, the keyboard stopped accepting inputs, so I took it into the shop and smashed it to smithereens with a hammer.</comment>


How to build an autonomous, voice-controlled, face-recognizing drone for $200 - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/how-to-build-an-autonomous-voice-controlled-face-recognizing-drone-for-200 <comment><USER2> What it uses JavaScript? Muy interesante</comment>


Supply and Demand, Labor and Visas - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@reppep/paul-graham-appears-confused-about-supply-and-demand-labor-and-visas-and-great-programmers-d1d4854bc928?hn=1 <comment><USER2> I don't understand why the author of this piece describes granting new work visas as offering employers an "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)". I would view it as exactly the opposite -- I see _requiring visas_ for employees in the first place as the "exemption from supply and demand (of labor)".

I guess this is a pretty deep disconnect. Some people see the normal or basic state of affairs as one in which _any employer can hire any employee in the world_ , and then governments alter this background situation for political and cultural reasons by choosing to prevent some migration and employment offers (thereby artificially depressing the supply of labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories). Other people see the normal or basic state of affairs as one in which _people can only seek employment in their own countries of origin_ ; then governments alter this background situation for political and economic reasons by choosing to permit some migration and employment offers (thereby artificially increasing the supply of labor in their territory and the demand for labor in other territories).

On one view, granting work visas is undoing a very small part of a very large prior government intervention in the economy; on the other view, it's creating a new intervention where none existed before. On one view, the baseline is a single world market for labor which then gets distorted by migration restrictions; on the other, the baseline is hundreds of largely isolated national markets for labor which then get distorted by importing foreigners.

<comment><USER3> Until very recently, in human terms, the view of the "any employer can hire any employee in the world" was the default and only view.

<comment><USER4> Does the most effective argument against immigration controls require us to relitigate the concept of nations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Graham didn't write that some programmers are merely worth 100x more than other programmers. He wrote:

 _A great programmer will invent things an ordinary programmer would never even think of. This doesn 't mean a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because any invention has a finite market value. But it's easy to imagine cases where a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary._

The job of someone trying to rebut this statement is to foreclose on the idea of imagining that a great programmer might invent something worth $10,000,000 (or that an "ordinary" programmer could do that while leaving their "ordinary" status intact). Graham didn't say this happens every day; he said "it's easy to imagine cases". And, obviously, it is.

Scale the hyperbolic 100x down to Fred Brooks' 10x. The rebuttal is still wrong. It compares ordinary programmers to Zuckerberg and Andreesen, on the premise that those are two programmers worth >100x. But nobody, including Graham, has said those two are worth more as programmers.

The telling comparison is to John Carmack. "Nobody would ever hire John Carmack instead of 100 programmers". OK. But they might hire Carmack instead of 10 developers. That's because there probably is such a thing as a 10x developer.

I do not like or for the most part agree with Paul Graham's immigration essay. I think regional labor stickiness is a much more reasonable problem to solve than immigration. Our industry should get better at sourcing talent from Tulsa before lobbying to let more talent in from Krakow. Sadly, I haven't yet read a lot of strong rebuttals to Graham.

<comment><USER5> IMO the biggest problem with PG's essay is that it was a bit too timid and too focused on only "really good people":

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and- jobs...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2014/12/29/people-places-and-jobs/)

<comment><USER6> Great post. You summarily rebut every single argument against immigration made regularly in Hacker News threads on immigration.

You cite a great article: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/immigration- helps-american-workers-the-definitive-argument/)

From one of the research papers cited in the article [1]:

"We find that H-1B-driven increases in STEM workers in a city were associated with significant increases in wages paid to both STEM and non-STEM college- educated natives. Non-college educated show no significant wage or employment effect."

[1] [http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_s...](http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_shih_sparber_05_feb_2013_TEMPO.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> First, it is hard to take this article seriously when the author seems confused by what PG and Y Combinator actually do. For example, consider these sentences:

 _One obvious difference between Paul is that he's an employer and I'm an employee._

 _We have too many people coming out of school who cannot find jobs, and not enough tech types for Y Combinator (or my various employers) to hire._

 _What would happen if a few large companies (let's start with Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe from the lawsuit; I'd add Y Combinator, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle), all announced they would raise salaries in all H-1B categories by 5% /year for 10 years, while the US reduced H-1B visas by 10% per year for 9 years, ending at 8,500 (10% of current volume)?_

In light of this severe misunderstanding, it is no wonder that this article makes so little sense. The author seems to make the point that H1-B visas tend to go to more average programmers. And, then argues that if companies want to attract more qualified people, they should start offering higher salaries/more options to top people. The problem is that they already do this and there is still a scarcity of truly amazing programmers.

This isn't all that complex, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> One could make the argument (and it has been made by others) that company founders are essentially glorified project managers, And VCs and especially incubators are just a mechanism to reduce risk by treating them as independent contractors and paying them well below the market rate, with e promise of some a lottery-type payout if they work every waking hour and are really really lucky.

<comment><USER7> That's one possibility.

Another possibility is that founding a company is a tactic on an entirely different career path. Yes, you will likely fail and make below market money in the process. But, after you fail, you'll arrive at your next job with experience that people 20 years older than you could only dream of having.

This might just be a sign that I drank the Kool-Aid, but I think it's another way of looking at your excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I began programming when I was 8, like a lot of people on HN and elsewhere. Programming has always been my hobby, and I've enjoyed writing beautiful, readable, maintainable, and (sometimes) efficient code. I was blessed enough to have parents who were willing and could afford to send me over to the United States for college. But I was far more lucky to have won the H1B lottery that let me live here after college. Not everyone was as lucky. (See [http://app.fwd.us/stories/429](http://app.fwd.us/stories/429)) Students graduating with PhDs from Ivy League schools who wish to stay get kicked out of the country every year because they didn't win a lottery. The truth is it's incredibly hard to immigrate to the US legally.

For a lot of people, the H1B acts as a stepping stone to a green card (i.e., to an EB visa). These people aren't really "guest workers" — a lot of them will stay and become citizens. If you don't have relatives here, are not a refugee, and aren't lucky enough to score a diversity visa, skilled/employment-based immigration is the only route. And it's incredibly hard to come to this country under the skilled/employment-based immigration route.

One of the fallacies that a lot of people who oppose skilled immigration subscribe to is the "lump-of-labor theory". It's a hardened belief that jobs are a zero-sum game — and from this arises the idea that every skilled immigrant takes away a job from a U.S. worker. This isn't true. More skilled, educated workers will actually add to the economy — and grow the economy. Just imagine: what if the U.S. had not let in the millions of immigrants it did during the 1800s out of a fear that citizen workers would loose their jobs? We'd have a much smaller population, and subsequently a lower total GDP. We might be equally well-off on a per capita basis, but we wouldn't be the country we are today.

PG might have been wrong in that not every skilled immigrant is 100x more skilled that his native counterpart. But I agree with him that letting more skilled/educated people in, would be a good thing for this country overall.

<comment><USER10> While what you say is true, many countries will not allow a company to hire a foreigner if you can fill the same position with a citizen. From the perspective of an American, it's often an uncomfortable fact that we pay taxes to the government who willingly allows companies to outsource or externally hire our jobs, The effect of this does cap/limit salaries for all involved. That is one side of the coin. The other side which I fully agree with, that more skilled and educated a population is the more enriched it can become,. There are great benefits to have a large number of smart educated people working together for the greater good.

<comment><USER6> >> it's often an uncomfortable fact that we pay taxes to the government who willingly allows companies to outsource or externally hire our jobs

I think your argument is weakened by the fact that H1B holders pay the same taxes as US citizens. It does stand when it comes to outsourcing, though.

>> The effect of this does cap/limit salaries for all involved

Do you have evidence for that claim? Research seems to point otherwise [1][2].

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/i...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/06/immigration- helps-american-workers-the-definitive-argument/)

[2] [http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_s...](http://economics.ucdavis.edu/people/gperi/site/papers/peri_shih_sparber_05_feb_2013_TEMPO.pdf)

<comment><USER10> >> I think your argument is weakened by the fact that H1B holders pay the same taxes as US citizens. It does stand when it comes to outsourcing, though.

Except they are paying essentially to come here and work, where as citizen tax payers should be paying to help enrich the place they live in and reap the benefits of paying taxes. The fact that they both pay isn't the point, it's what you are paying for.

>>Do you have evidence for that claim? Research seems to point otherwise

The only evidence I have is what the companies I have worked for pay people, it's a very limited sample size but its from more than 1 company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sorry to re-use a reddit meme, but in this thread, as well as the previous one: you can read about american developers arguing about why they should be the only one to have access to the most lucrative market for developers worldwide.

It is pretty clear to most intelligent observers that:

a) there is a low-end-market of mostly indian consulting companies abusing the H1B program. It would be very easy to stop this. My suggestion: set a H1B worker minimum salary of 120% of the average salary for existing native workers.

b) The US, and the US companies wanting to employ the best software developers would benefit by getting the whole world as recruiting ground.

c) Individual developers outside of the US wanting to work in silicon valley would benefit

d) Not very good US developers in silicon valley, currently getting big salaries could be at risk.

e) The rest of the world would not benefit by the brain drain this would cause.

<comment><USER12> your right and can make the same argument in other professions eg the AMA, Bar asociations and interestingly enough lawyers and accountants in India.

<comment><USER4> An irony here is that the legal profession was recently ravaged by a structural shift that eliminated lots of jobs, and it was caused in large part by the tech industry.

<comment><USER13> I missed this apparently. Can someone explain this change and the technology which led to it?

<comment><USER14> Lots of jobs in the legal profession involves researching past court decisions - going through mountains of documents. This can now be done in low-cost countries such as India where there are tons of English speaking people. The technology that led to it is the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd gladly hire 1 John Carmack over 100 average programmers. Is he really more valuable than 100 programmers? If you factor the added cost of managing 100 engineers (and the intangible communication overhead cost of getting all those engineers to agree and be on the same page), than yes it is far more valuable.

<comment><USER16> That is part of what makes this whole article so absurd to me. John Carmack or whatever other 10x employee is never going to work to sell your ads, or share your photos, or anything.

A 10x programmer is a genius who understands the business well enough to pull ideas out of the air and has the chops to make them real. They're running their own companies. And if they join companies, they join for ownership stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hey, guess what.

There is a visa category for immigrants with "extraordinary talents". It is the O-1 visa. Someone on the level of John Carmack or Jeff Dean, for instance, would have no problem getting one of these.

[http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary- workers...](http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary- workers/o-1-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement/o-1-visa- individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement)

H1B, by contrast, is primarily used for cheap bodies, at not-at-all high salaries. This website makes it nicely available, but the raw data is available from the Department of Labor.

[http://www.h1bwage.com/](http://www.h1bwage.com/)

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

</comment><comment><USER18> 1) Some programmers really are worth orders of magnitude more than others. Really great programmers will help drive product decisions that can change direction of the company and the ultimate success/failure. The more responsibility a programmer has over product/quality/cost/delivery schedule, the more they can be worth a huge amount. 10X is probably a more common variance, but I'm sure there are single developers building the right thing that are worth more than 1,000 crap developers getting bogged down in product management BS.

The thing is that communication/management gets harder the more people there are, so crap developers have very little value (and maybe even negative marginal value in certain cases). IE a developer that's 10X better than another developer can actually be worth 1000X because you can't just hire a 10 mediocre developers and have them be worth the same as a single great developer.

2) Really great developers are really paid a lot more than less good ones (but not their full value). Smart developers with no experience are paid more than what he suggests. A smart college grad can get paid 6 figures without any experience in the right job (not ~50K). People who prove their worth can ultimately get paid a lot more. However, they're pay will usually be increased above their peers outside of salary using RSUs/options that will be very valuable but vest over time. It is true that great developers often have to either co-found their own companies or take high level management roles to get 100X pay of an average developer. That said most companies don't pay programmers their true value, and it often takes a long time for a developer to fully demonstrate their value and develop a name for themselves.

edit: TBC, I'm not arguing anything about immigration or the OP as a whole. I just take issue with the idea that there is little variance in value between programmers.

<comment><USER19> 1) This can't be discovered through an interview, nevermind an immigration process. It would just be increasing the entire pool of people who might qualify as "top talent" or "average" programmers. The author raised the point that 3rd world countries probably don't have as high a proportion in their general populace of skilled labour as the US.

<comment><USER20> We are not talking about 3rd world countries though? Most of Europe has as skilled programmers as the US, of which some would like to move to the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I say the following as a software developer so I'm one of the lucky ones in this new world:

When someone from the silicon valley uses the argument that "We need to do X to maintain our technological competitiveness." the "our" should be viewed as referring to those that have the capital to benefit from this increased "competitiveness". The Chinese are very competitive - because their labor is relatively cheap. This is the axis of "competitiveness" capital is aiming for with increasing H1B quotas, not "get smarter people". They could get all the smart people they want but that would require them to share more of the profits with those smart people - you know, the ones that actually create the value in the first place.

All this "disruption" has benefited a very few disproportionately and the "winners" would like the rest of the populace to give up a little more so they can make even more money.

"Oh but Chris, these new companies create jobs so we should cut them a special break - it helps us all in the end."

According to Chris Benner, a regional economist at the University of California, Davis, there has been no net increase in jobs in Silicon Valley since 1998; digital technologies inevitably mean you can generate billions of dollars from a low employment base.[1]

[1] [http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technol...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technology- and-inequality/)

</comment><comment><USER22> There are so many complexities to this debate. For example, if you oppose foreigners coming to America, do you also oppose America exporting stuff to these foreigners wherever they currently are? Presumably no. If not, how are they able to afford your exports, which in turn keep you, an American, in your job? Their ability to create value, and trade this value for somebody else's value. What if, then, their ability to produce this value is magnified by their coming to America? You know, like that example given by a commentor, of a fashion designer from Oklahoma moving to Paris or Milan? Or my friend from Thika, Kenya? He has done design work for Daimler Trucks, but was denied a visa by the American embassy in Nairobi, having been seconded to the American branch of Daimler's trucks business by their German business. The embassy simply didn't see how this Kenyan kid landed this gig, despite all the supporting documentation and opportunity to verify, so they alluded his paperwork was fake and denied him the visa. Would he have made more money over there? You bet. At any rate I bet. Would he be able to buy more American stuff, keep more Americans in their jobs? Yes. But now he can't, coz your govt won't let him come over. Who is the loser here? Remember, the reason he caught Daimler's attention in the first place, despite his lack of formal design training, was his work. In fact, they wanted him to come to America to formally study design at Daimler's cost, since that formal education was part of Daimler's hiring policy. So it wasn't merely that he'd have taken an American job, or that Daimler can train plenty of the available Americans. He was a "great programmer", and I'd say America is worse off for not hiring him.

</comment><comment><USER23> The arguments keep going back and forth: just pay developers more if they're worth more (supply and demand, pay more for what's better, etc) vs work visa requirements are protectionist and we should get rid of them.

What people seem to forget is that there is a lovely experiment going on that can (partially, with some caveats) answer some of these questions as to what would happen: NAFTA.

If you have a technical degree, getting a work visa for the USA as a Mexican or Canadian is fairly simple. There aren't (afaik) any limit to how many there are. I've had a few (internships, full time job in Seattle).

So what is the average experience for a Canadian or Mexican on TN visas to the US? I've been one, and I've known quite a few. Purely anecdotal, but as far as I can tell, we're just an increase in the usual supply of developers, which eventually just lowers the average wage of all developers. I'm sure we're pretty smart folks, but we're not worth 10x as much as anyone else- we certainly weren't being paid any more than the others.

I think immigration limits for people with jobs lined up in the country they wish to enter are silly, and the whole world ought to have the same access NAFTA residents do. But I also think Paul Graham should admit that simply offering people more money would solve his problem. He's chosen the price he wants to pay, the market says you can't get very many great people at this price, so he's demanding the market change rather than his chosen price.

</comment><comment><USER24> My problem with PG's original post is that there's no easy way to identify the so-called exceptional programmers, and he seems to disregard that. We can't magically find the "other" 95%", and give visas only to them. And, in most cases, you won't know for sure till many years later.

Also, I dislike the ideological debate of H1B's, which seems to be OP's main point. H1B's _are_ used to increase supply, which has the collateral effect of lowering wages (or keeping them at reasonable levels).

Per PG's post: " _I asked the CEO of a startup with about 70 programmers how many more he 'd hire if he could get all the great programmers he wanted. He said: We'd hire 30 tomorrow morning_". What, exactly, is holding this CEO from hiring 30 great developers, today? They simply can't _afford_ them. Particularly being a small-ish startup, that can't compete head-to-head in terms of wages/benefits with Google, Facebbok, Apple. Of course a massive influx of talented immigrants (100x or not) would be a blessing.

This is not a bad thing. It's possible that this startup would create even more value, more jobs, and pay more taxes, if they had the 30 additional programmers. H1B's or not. But let's not pretend the reason why this CEO is not filling the open positions is because they're not available in the US, and immigrants would be the only solution.

Above all, I think the US needs a better immigration policy for the talents that will supply demand in the next 5, 10 years. It's insane that our taxpayer dollars go to fund education to bright foreign student, and we (forcibly) send them home after graduation. This is the dumbest use of taxpayer dollars, ever.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think both authors miss the point that historically (esp. post WW2 which corrected the abberation during WW2) that capital flow was increasingly borderless.

It has been labor that is held back in some anachonistic time warp with visa restrictions and so on. In prior times, European colonialism in Asia precisely solved the labor issues by directly annexing, then enhanching, controlling, and regulating the historical Asian labor productivity flows.

After decolonization, with diversions to socialist/communist and autarkic models in Asia, most of these countries are now back in the game largely in control of developed (and mostly Western) nations.

You have to see the regulation of labor in these slightly larger timelines to appreciate what is happening even in SV, and in other parts of the world.

Majority of labor needs were of blue-collar variety, but thanks to technology, even white-collar labor is not immune to this economic rationale of matching capital to labor.

Borders will dissolve (they are mostly unnatural and artificial barriers), and before people bring up all the cultural and historical rights, even these items are ultimately driven by economics. High-tech jobs are no different in this equation and are driven by the same forces.

The only thing that can upset globalization trends is war which is precisely what happened with WW1 and WW2 in the 20th century (which also arrested the globalization trends which started to peak just prior to WW1). You want to stop labor migration flows? Start preparing for war.

The other possibility is for the labor vs capital imbalances to level out - for e.g. China and India become sufficiently advanced and developed to a point where there is no need for them to export their surplus populations, exactly how the British did in 18th and 19th century as they colonized North America (USA and Canada), Australia, and South Africa.

</comment><comment><USER22> Paul Graham's entire argument rests, as far as I can tell, on the assumption that the distribution of great programmers maps to the population distribution. Can this be empirically established or refuted? Because doing so would bring this matter to a close pretty quickly, I think. After all, is anybody arguing about whether America needs to import middle eastern oil? Of course not, because the global distribution of oil has been empirically established, and the need to meet local deficits with imports meets little, if any, resistance. I feel that the intractability of this immigration debate, such as it is, is due primarily to the fact that the global distribution of top quality "digital talent", as Graham calls it, hasn't been established. Some people say most of the best is out there, others say the best is just a matter of training.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is alot more to it I think than meets the eye. I've seen a wide spectrum of talents. I've seen some with the capacity to be 10x who have no motivation, and some with almost no chance of reaching 10x status with all the motivation in the world.

I think one of the differentiators, in what makes a 10x programmer significantly more valuable is alot of things people are trying today have never been done before. So to have the insight that a 10x programmer can bring to the table is priceless.

I think it's entirely wrong to believe, in these cases, that you can achieve the same result with average developers.

On the other hand, if you're doing things that have been done a million times before, there's likely to be a few tried and true templates people can follow to get a functioning system up and running.

<comment><USER26> I do agree with the article regarding not enough competition between tech companies. Due to the enormous value a 10x programmer can bring to a company, there should be at least a few [pick your favorite job board] postings for $1 million / yr salary.

Right now the state of hiring in Silicon Valley (being an outsider) seems to be a high level of collusion or some "unspoken promise" between employers in the area that they should not "rock the boat".

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That, like other articles say that the real answer is "bid higher." Is that correct? There is one way to find out: Would employers pay significantly more for an H1-B employee than any other. Auction the visas, with a high minimum bid.

If you need that PhD with a stellar track record from outside the US you will willingly pay $50-100k. If your goal is to supress wage growth in an industry with very high productivity, GTFO.

</comment><comment><USER28> PG's time would be better spent arguing for top marginal tax rate increases. Or something else that's testimony against self-interest. I think it's not at all surprising that the overall reaction to his transparently talking his book is blind rage. (This isn't a particularly great response, but it's in line with every other one I've read.)

</comment><comment><USER29> To those making the argument that if companies can't find talent they are not paying enough (which I don't disagree with), I can't help but wonder isn't there a price point past which it's more cost effective and sensible for companies to open an office in a country which allows to hire from a pool of 7B people vs 300M?

</comment><comment><USER30> > John Carmack is an obvious genius who keeps pushing the edge — but nobody > ever hired him instead of 100 programmers.

If I had the choice of working with 100 programmers or working with John Carmack, I'd go with Carmack Every. Single. Time. Wouldn't even hesitate.

</comment><comment><USER31> One thing that bothers me about the "immigration takes jobs from locals" argument is that it would imply a reduction on job positions which I haven't seen in the technology industry.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'll note that when poaching between companies reached a critical mass, major companies like Google and Apple colluded to keep salaries down (see Techtopus for details).

</comment><comment><USER33> Some things this article doesn't address (though I think many of the things it does address are useful additions to the conversation, as was the previous discussion here at HN, which helped me grasp a lot of the nuances of the question):

Ageism, sexism, and white/Asian supremacy, in the tech jobs market. Every time I read about the disastrous shortage of tech workers in the US, I have to fill in the fact that it's actually probably saying, "There is a shortage of young, male, white or Asian tech workers". Companies, in the general case, aren't hiring developers over 40, developers who are women, and developers who are black or brown. The best companies probably tap into one or two of these options, but very few tap into all of them.

Even Google and Facebook, widely regarded as amazing employers with good diversity programs tend to draw primarily from the recently graduated, and even pre-graduated, including paid internship-to-employee programs that channel the best students into Google jobs beginning a couple years into a student's education at "good" universities. In the youth-focused culture of Silicon Valley, it would seem absurd to suggest the same resources be expended to re-train existing programmers (despite pretty good data indicating that experience is one of the bigger leading indicators of programmer efficiency).

So, I understand why so many are reacting negatively to pg's essay. I know enough women, minorities, and older folks, who have left tech because the industry was simply not friendly to them--it paid them too little, it worked them too long and too hard, it treated them as outsiders--to make me suspicious of the motivations behind the pro-H1B camp.

I am for open borders, which would imply companies being able to hire from anywhere (but also employees being able to work and live anywhere), but the H1B process leads to a sort of indentured servitude that provides employers with an effectively captive pool of talent. If there were anywhere near full employment in the tech industry, and if there were a convincing case to be made that employers genuinely were hiring across a broad spectrum of people to fill tech roles, and were paying tech workers what they're worth, I'd be more inclined to get on board with this particular push.

This one is hard for me to figure out, because I genuinely do want more freedom for _everyone_ to be able to move about freely and work anywhere they choose, and H1B is currently the only way a lot of my friends have been able to come to the US...so I support it, and even support expansion of the program. But, I don't like that it so clearly serves large corporations at the expense of workers. It makes immigration to the US _much_ easier but only for those people willing to kowtow to their US employer.

</comment><comment><USER34> In my opinion PG does his article a disservice by not being more specific about the great programmers should be let into the US.

For example he could touched on the O-1 visa for "Aliens of extraordinary ability".

Instead the conversation has devolved into the costs and benefits of H-1B visa.

PGs goal is to bring more great programmers to the US, however the H-1B visa is specifically targeted to good programmers, not great programmers.

From wikipedia: > The law requires H-1B workers to be paid the higher of the prevailing wage for the same occupation and geographic location, or the same as the employer pays to similarly situated employees. Other factors, such as age and skill were not permitted to be taken into account for the prevailing wage.

Here are some other points of confusion:

1) Some people are hung on the term "programmer", I think what is meant by this term is someone who is A) deeply technical, B) codes, C) contributes to product fit, and D) contributes project planning.

2) Some people are hung up on the term "great" programmer". Good programmers get their work done on time and with high quality. Great programmers contribute key insights that transform the product or team in ways that that directly lead to accomplishing the team's goals. Personally I've found that it is often possible to distinguish between good and bad programmers. It has been much harder to distinguish between good and great programmers.

3) Some people are hung up on the fact that great programmers are frequently not paid 10 or 100 or 1000 times what good programmers are paid. There are three very good reasons for this. A) A great programmer has to be in the right position to be commensurately rewarded. (The world's greatest fly fisherman will receive a normal wage on a commercial fishing boat.) B) A great programmer is making decisions and taking actions that will result in raised profits. They don't get paid up front because the money isn't there yet. C) Many people have never worked with a great programmer. The programmers that they think are great are only 1.5X or 2X or 3X. That isn't.

4) Some people are hung up on the fact that PG seems to make either A) the assumption that H-1B recipients are great programmers, or B) the assumption that if the US grants more H-1Bs annually that there all the additional recipients will be great programmers. I don't think he's making either of those assumptions. There is a curve of capability and potential for H-1B recipients just like every other population. PG is saying that any increase in the number of great programmers in the US is good for the US.

5) The final question is what does it mean for something to be good for the US? A) If an H-1B recipient starts the next facebook is it good for the US? It will be great for angels, VCs and institutional investors. It will be good for the US because the US will tax everyone's personal compensation (although any eventually corporate profits will likely be tax sheltered). It will be good for the US because jobs will be created (although there might be fewer jobs at the companies being disrupted. B) If the H-1B recipient only winds up doing good job at a corporation then the corporation did not need offer a more attractive salary to a US citizen or train a US citizen to do the job. This is good for the corporation because their costs are lower (assuming the cost of the H-1B application process is lower than the cost of offering a more attractive salary or training an individual with potential). This is bad for the individual who might otherwise have been trained or received increased compensation. However if the role is truly a role that would not otherwise have been filled then there is no individual who is negatively impacted by hiring an H-1B applicant.

Here is something to think about: 1) The company is willing to compensate a programmer $COST for a role. 2) The company expects an increase in revenue of $REVENUE as result of the additional headcount. 3) The company has a return on investment goal of ROI for the year. It might be an internal figure or something promised to its investors. 4) The company can only hire a candidate if (REVENUE-COST)/COST > ROI 5) There are two reasons for hiring H-1Bs A) because the company can not find anyone else who will accept a compensation that makes the equation work or B) because the company can not hire anyone for the role (perhaps they or their industry has a negative reputation or no reputation).

There are certainly things that complicate this equations: 1) Perhaps the company is forward looking enough to hire in advance of expected attrition. 2) Perhaps the individual is in a role that supports revenue creation by another individual. 3) Perhaps the company has an "up or out" approach and they are hungry to find stars. 4) Perhaps the revenue that the new hire would bring in is very hard to predict. In this case the up front compensation would be reduced to account for the risk. Typically the role would come with the potential for increase compensation in the form of a bonus, stock options or commission.

</comment><comment><USER35> It really seems like both sides of the issue are arguing here. PG wants to argue for finding more of the diamonds in the rough, instead of spending triple the $$ to pry them away from a competitor. "There isn't enough to go around" he cries - well, if you pay more, of course you'll "get your guy". There isn't enough gold to go around either, that's why it is expensive. If programmer salaries doubled (say) - the programmers make the widgets so you have to hire them, and the customers probably won't pay more, so you have less $$ for the VCs. So they, would naturally, like to increase supply. This doesn't seem too controversial.

On the other end, you have an engineer who is (I would guess?) competent and feels underpaid. That is what we all feel like, isn't it? And he'd prefer to make more $$ for his job. And he looks around and sees (or thinks he does) that the guys with the $$ don't want to pay him more - instead they go find other people to fill his role. "Don't want what I'm paying? Sorry! I'll find someone else". He would like to be paid more for his services, instead of the job getting given to someone else.

I think it must be made clear that the people PG is talking about (rockstars hired by a startup) - and the people that are normally associated with H1Bs (junior level talent) - are NOT the same groups of people.

With 65000 visas available - I would suspect what is really happening is this. Since there is no way for a government agency to determine if an engineer is good / bad / excellent / sucky. They have to pretty much "trust" the company to only submit the visa application in good faith. However, if you are a business manager with less than stellar scruples, you need to fill 50 seats and you can find them all with H1B visas for a "competitive" salary! (remember that is the gov'ts competitive salary, which probably lumps all engineers from the help desk to the architects into the same bucket...). Slam dunk! I just saved my company thousands! And those engineers I do hire _can 't leave for a few years_! Double score! There is _no_ risk for a company to try to bring in any and all H1B workers. And there is great upside.

So - PG may be correct that there are hundreds / thousands of top top top engineers trying to get in on an H1B to a startup or google. There are also most likely tens / hundreds of thousands of middling engineers brought in to fill slots. We should not try to compare a "free market" like buying something off ebay, with employees and labor. Employees and labor have many many more real-life implications - and a wise handling of the issue should see that. _real_ people have families, homes, mortgages, relationships, cultures, history, commuting times, taxes, immigration... There is a cost to switching things up in real life. On ebay, you just click a different link to select a better priced product. There is very little (no?) cost to switching things in a virtual "free" market. It can't be a "free market" when switching producers costs a large percentage of the products' cost. Think if a trade on the NYSE cost $10,000 a trade - instead of $15.

I tend to view it as a class-based argument. And when someone tries to make it a "logical argument" it seems a bit farcical. There is too much self-serving going on. Facebook/PG/VCs arguing for more labor and less pay? And individuals arguing for less labor and more pay? I mean - that's pretty straight-forward. Both have a valid argument - both have selfish motivations.

And given those two, I'd lean towards making a stronger middle class.

</comment><comment><USER36> I do hope this isn't just ghosted since it's been up for an hour with no discussion, but.. Right on.

You really want a 10x'er, you'll discover that they're usually happy where they are, which is part of why they bloomed into one. If you want to make them move, you need to offer them something above contentment and personal satisfaction -- at that point, if you can't offer me contentment and happiness -- money is really your best proxy, and you should fight with it. If they're really a 10xer though, expect the other side to fight back.

Now, if you want to /make/ more 10x'ers, bringing in immigrants is probably a good way to ensure you're being selective (top 5% of people in schools around the world, as long as they're comparable to some selected baseline) -- but that's to /make/ the 10x'er, not to hire them, and the H1-B is to hire talent that cant be /found/ domestically, not talent that can't be nurtured domestically.

<comment><USER37> I generally agree. But I am not sure that bringing in immigrants is a good way to make more 10x'ers, if you actually want to grow the domestic talent pool as opposed to just finding undervalued talent.

People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options.

I would love to see a credible study on this, but intuitively I think it's likely that this effect could cancel out much of the net growth in the domestic talent pool that would otherwise have come from immigration.

Before anyone argues that this is morally wrong, remember, we're not worried about what SHOULD be true, just about how to increase participation of talent in the field, empirically.

<comment><USER6> >> People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options.

First of all, as someone born in what you term a "third world" country, I do find your argument morally outrageous, but apparently I'm not allowed to argue morality.

But let's see: "Foreign-born entrepreneurs helped start one-fourth of all new U.S. engineering and technology business established between 1995 and 2005, including Google and eBay. In high-tech Silicon Valley, California, more than one-half of business start-ups over that period involved a foreign-born scientist or engineer; one-fourth included an Indian or Chinese immigrant" [1]. Is being a founder of a multi-billion or multi-million dollar company no longer considered prestigious?

What is prestigious? Being a doctor? "Of the roughly 853,000 health care professionals employed as physicians and surgeons in 2010, more than one- quarter (27 percent) were foreign born. ... Persons born in India, the Philippines, and China accounted for 34 percent of employed foreign-born physicians and surgeons." [2]

[1] [http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignborns...](http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/usforeignbornstem.aspx)

[2] [http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born- health-c...](http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/foreign-born-health-care- workers-united-states#4)

<comment><USER37> Unless I misunderstand the underlying argument, more skilled immigration is argued to be good because it is good for business. That's an economic argument, and I was making an economic argument in turn, that more skilled immigration may not straightforwardly result in a bigger talent pool in the US.

On the moral side, I do wonder if the West will be criticized in 50 years for its intellectual draining of the third world, not unlike the West's draining of colonies' natural resources 50 or 100 or more years ago. But this is a favorite thought experiment of mine, the question of "What currently fashionable thing will our grandchildren denounce us for doing?"

Anyway, you're disputing my assertion that "People choose careers for social reasons as well as for money. Adding a significant fraction of third world immigrants to a career lowers that career's prestige, meaning that talented natives who might have joined the field are less likely to, since they have options." First of all, I wish I had written that better in that I don't mean "a career", but rather "our career", ie, technology / programming. My mistake.

Still, doctors are a poor example since their supply is constrained by an outside force (medical education and licensing), and so their salaries are higher than they'd otherwise be, and their power is based on our awe for people who can save human life. In other words, they are nothing like programmers.

Also, I have heard that many governments like importing foreign doctors since in some cases this offloads parts of their education to their native land, and training doctors is expensive. Probably not the point you're looking for.

As for founders, I am not certain individual founders matter much in the cultural image of tech as a career. Most non-Californians can't name many founders, and certainly not many foreign born founders. I suspect that the only founders who get many people to consider tech to be a possible career are Jobs and Zuckerberg.

But as for programmers, people have various ideas floating around in their heads. They remember outsourcing, where American programmers ended up with no power and no money. This didn't do much for the prestige of the career. They think of nerds, obviously, who aren't too great on social norms. Does it seem reasonable that adding people to that labor market who are accustomed to lower living standards (wages), locked in by restrictive visas (power), and unfamiliar with American social norms (nerds) is actually going to make the field more attractive to natives?

<comment><USER6> > I do wonder if the West will be criticized in 50 years for its intellectual > draining of the third world, not unlike the West's draining of colonies' > natural resources 50 or 100 or more years ago

I do not think these are equivalent at all. When the Westerners drained the colonies of natural resources, the ones who were colonized got no benefit from that whatsoever. That was pure exploitation. (It will be very interesting indeed if you argue otherwise.) However, when educated immigrants from under- developed nations are hired in a developed country, the immigrants can 1) have a much better quality of life; 2) send money back home to their families; 3) can use what they learn to go back to their home countries and start businesses there (if they so choose). Thus, the immigrants, and their countries of origin, are being helped. _Most_ people from the third world will tell you the same. But (hopefully) no one is going to say that the Scramble for Africa was a good thing. And I doubt that the Africans thought it was good thing when it was going on.

But going back to the argument you're making -- "people have various ideas floating around in their heads. They remember outsourcing, where American programmers ended up with no power and no money. This didn't do much for the prestige of the career. They think of nerds, obviously, who aren't too great on social norms." Hmm, maybe. But this [1] article argues, with some interesting charts, that interest in CS education is increasing. The Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the UW argues that "Kids are waking up. Every field is becoming an information field, and if you can program at a level beyond an intro course, it's a huge value to you." The CS department chair at Harvey Mudd College says "Students feel that computing is socially relevant and even hip."

[1] [http://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer- sci...](http://www.geekwire.com/2014/analysis-examining-computer-science- education-explosion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Come on, PG just wrote this piece as an homage to this movie: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Here's an idea, what if the funds that go towards H1-B visas were parceled out towards training domestic workforces of the future.

There is a systemic flaw in this analysis (both the author's and PG's) in that we're comparing short vs long term solutions and problems and blending them together as if they were one.

<comment><USER9> It's funny that you mention that because it's being done already. With every work visa application, a company with more than 50 employees has to pay $1500 towards the training of US workers, and companies with less than 50 employees have to pay $750.

It's called the ACWIA fee. It was introduced by the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998 (ACWIA). Source: [http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees- form-i-129-pe...](http://www.uscis.gov/forms/h-and-l-filing-fees- form-i-129-petition-nonimmigrant-worker)

<comment><USER39> Ah I had no idea. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>