Wirecard is 'beyond salvageable,' according to analyst - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/wirecard-is-beyond-salvagable-analyst-says-and-rivals-may-benefit-2020-6 <comment><USER2> FYI, many prepaid cards in the UK are inoperable this weekend due to the failure of Wirecard, which they depended upon:

[https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/06/pockit-- curve...](https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/06/pockit--curve-and- other-prepaid-card-customers-see-accounts-froz/)

No clear answer of when these cards will be working again.

This will hurt disadvantaged people the most, who are more likely to depend on a prepaid card, just have the one card, or to find £100 being temporarily out of reach as more than an inconvenience.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I have a Pockit account and haven't heard anything from them. Maybe because it's the weekend, but they usually send notification emails when their services go down sometimes for maintenance (card withdrawals were usually unaffected though)..

<comment><USER2> There are notification emails to affected customers this weekend, or at least, I have received 2 so far, so I assume that all affected customers got them. I'm not sure if all Pockit accounts are with Wirecard.

You can see more at the links that they give: [https://twitter.com/PockitUK](https://twitter.com/PockitUK) [https://blog.pockit.com/important-update-pockit-accounts- tem...](https://blog.pockit.com/important-update-pockit-accounts-temporarily- inaccessible-4b038228cc93)

I am thankfully, not substantially unconvinced by this account being frozen. But I am sure that it's not good for many Pockit customers or for Pockit's business.

<comment><USER3> My card says Wirecard, and the last email from Pockit was on the 20th ("Summer of cashback"). Strange.

But I'm not using it much, it's just a card for safe online purchases. Saved me twice, it's a good thing to have.

<comment><USER2> Right, I also see the words "issued by Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd" in the small print on the back of the card.

Getting the email might also be related to recent activity, e.g. when you last used the card?

Be aware that while it's good to have a backup card, this one is not going to save you today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slate Money podcast was surprisingly good on Wirecard this week. Three things popped out - that this had been widely claimed as a fraud (millions in business going through offices that were just postal drops etc) but the German "establishment" supported them because they had no native german payment processor otherwise (and once you were in the Dax 30 it's a big deal to declare fraud).

Also the failings of shorting a business - it's not enough to know they will collapse sometime, but you cannot keep covering your short for _five years_ without wondering if the bet is worth it.

But really this is just yet another example of regulatory failure and it's hard to see how we fix it without destroying the culture of entrepreneurship

<comment><USER5> Agree, with the exception of the last paragraph. SOX didn't kill NASDAQ or the Dow. And if an entrepreneur is only successful because regulations are lax, not enforced and his business is ignoring corporate governance, that business doesn't seem to have any justification to exist in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Wow. I have really bought into a line sold to me subconsciously haven't I.

Yeah. Let's have proper regulation and policing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most important asset of any financial institution is trust. Banks, fintechs need utmost trust from customers in order to run their business their business. Imagine Wirecard customers debating if they will continue to use Wirecard as payments as processor considering that they can't manage neither account for their own money.

<comment><USER7> There were numerous reports of PayPal withholding funds for unknown reasons and ruining people and businesses. Did these dent the trust? Seems not at all.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if this is a matter of trust or lack of choice in this case. There simply aren't too many options to achieve the same results as with PayPal. Every site I go to gives me several payment options but the only ones present across every one are PayPal and card payment. So if that's what the buyer uses, the seller doesn't get much of a choice either.

<comment><USER9> This. Based on the offerings I saw, Paypal is noticably cheaper than other options for basic small business use case ( minor ebay shop, small online store ). The charges are straighforward and easy to predict. Compare that to most other providers and you find yourself digging through reams for legalese with fees calculations that are ridiculously complex and, seemingly, designed to deceive.

I am not a big fan of Paypal and heavens know it has some major issues to address, but the entire field kinda sucks in its own unique way.

<comment><USER10> I think the biggest issue with the entire field is not respecting the users. They're treated as potential criminals, their livelihoods and money are not respected at all, they have no recourse to protest administrative action, etc.

Its a terrible experience overall. It has gotten better but still leaves a lot to be desired

<comment><USER11> Just like there's no way around the fact that a large portion of email is spam, there's no way around the fact that in the field of receiving money on internet, a substantial niche of potential users actually _are_ criminals. Their volume of transactions is quite large, they are sophisticated and eager to try out new services, and they can rapidly direct the flow of (many) fraudulent payments to a new payment service provider or scale the exploitation of some cash-out system to thousands of accounts managed dozens of actual people (generally 'money mules' who get scammed themselves).

So if your service is friendly to that group of customers, no matter if accidentally through some process flaw or intentionally (because you're not treating criminals creating accounts as potential criminals), then you can (and will) suddenly get a _lot_ of criminal activity. For a small service, as soon as organized criminals notice that your policies allow them to use you for making fraudulent transactions, they can quickly bring in much more transactions that any of your marketing activities.

The general result of doing what you propose is that it works until criminals notice a particular vulnerability in your processes/policies caused by excessive trust in users, and then suddenly you get a _LOT_ of fraudulent activity which makes all your operations unviable. I've seen small merchants get a tenfold increase in transactions over a single week, with all of that increase being fraud, enabled by some weakness that is massively exploited until they close the weakness. Or close their business - for a small business, a single major fraud campaign can easily be enough to bankrupt them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I keep hearing this "not salvageable" but this seems odd to me. Wirecard has been issuing physical cards for many companies and runs the payment systems for many large companies. The cost of switching off that infrastructure is high.

Why wouldn't someone want to acquire a miniature wirecard after the bankruptcy is through?

<comment><USER13> The cost of switching off that infrastructure may be high, but it's not borne by the creditors.

In any case, the article states that Visa and Mastercard will likely revoke the Wirecard license on their respective platforms and most if not all customers will seek an alternative payment provider long before the bankruptcy is through. Presumably most of the employees will have sought greener pastures by then as well. What is left is a company shell with (maybe) some source code but no customers, no license, no employees and the name of Wirecard haunting it. Possibly also some leftover liabilities. Might as well start a brand new company at that point, if you want to enter the payment processing industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I worked for a fintech company until 2018 and learned a lot about the payment ecosystem. At an industry event in 2017 (or maybe early 2018) I discussed with an industry veteran about a bunch of things and he mentioned wirecard, saying that nobody believed they had a profitable business and advised to stay away from them. I didn't pay too much attention.. until last week!

</comment><comment><USER15> The Wirecard stack so far:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23662704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23662704)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638624)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611347)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23573386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23573386)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23598824)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438323)

This, from a year ago, reads interestingly now: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737344)

</comment><comment><USER16> Short video from the FT reporter who was investigated by German authorities and followed by people working for Wirecard: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-8-QbDpqqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-8-QbDpqqw)

</comment><comment><USER17> Payoneer customers have been hit hard by this. And judging by the past, there's a slim chance of recovering their funds.

</comment><comment><USER18> Somehow bitfinex keeps chugging along, though.

<comment><USER19> It's almost as if cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, only extrinsic/speculative value.

Due diligence doesn't matter to the people that expect a 10x or 50x gain.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Young developer looking for some guidance - <AUTHOR> I'm currently in my first year of a two year masters degree in software engineering. I'm comfortable with the coursework and am really enjoying it.
Where I feel lost is in my spare time. I have a bookmarks folder with about 200 links to articles, resources, videos, etc. I'm incredibly overwhelmed with the amount of 'stuff' out there; languages, frameworks, tools, and so on. I feel a bit lost every time I sit down at my laptop and try to do something productive.
My short-term goal is to secure an internship/junior position in Europe (Poland) over my next summer break (I live in Aus).
I'm looking for some ideas on what to do in my spare time to make myself the most competitive for an entry-level position.
With only a few months of experience I haven't really been exposed to enough different areas of development to say I want to work in X, Y or Z.
I'm suffering from the fact that pretty much everything interests me. Web dev, data analysis, machine learning, databases, and so on. I think that for me I need someone to pigeon-hole me into an area so that I can self-study in depth and get an internship in this area.
Would some more experienced developers offer some advice? Where did you start? Where would you have liked to start? What are some good ways to kick-off a successful development career?
I hope this wasn't too much of a ramble. Cheers <comment><USER2> Algorithms.

Yes boring old pure data and programming algorithms. This skill is more useful then learning a dozen frameworks. In interviews you'll have people asking you dozens of questions that will all boil down to, "Do you know algorithms?" And not to mention that toolset is applicable over nearly every development domain. You'll very very rarely find software teams who will scoff at somebody who knows their algorithms. You'll rarely find times in your developer life time where you'll think, "Jeeze I wish I didn't know how trees, bloom filters, hash based indexing, etc. works this has been such a determent to my career!"

Most fields of development end up needing to use algorithms at some time or another. How does your data analysis work, How is machine learning done? What are databases doing to make 10,000 queries per second? What are the pros and cons? Are you entering data in inefficient ways to slow this down? Are you or the tool the problem?

When you learn algorithms you can answer these questions. Then apply those answers to your job! Impress your friends and enemies! Demonstrate counting sort running circles around their quick sort implementations because your data is highly specialized.

Yes it isn't sexy. Its not a buzz word. Its horn rim glasses, dnd nerd boring stuff. But at the same time it isn't. Rock-stars learn music theory one way or another, how are you gonna audition for the rolling stones if you don't know what an G cord is?

<comment><USER3> Any recommended books or resources? I'm out of university but feel I need to brush up on algorithms.

<comment><USER4> You should also try going through MIT's online course on algorithms based on CLR: [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/)

<comment><USER5> FYI, if you download the course materials, there are transcripts of the video lectures included, so you can get a good feel for what the lectures are like and, maybe, not have to spend over an hour per lecture. You can download the course materials here:

[http://ocw.mit.edu/ans15436/ZipForEndUsers/6/6-046j-fall-200...](http://ocw.mit.edu/ans15436/ZipForEndUsers/6/6-046j-fall-2005/6-046j-fall-2005.zip)

Note: you may still want/need to watch them since there's notation that is likely easier to read off a blackboard vs reading a transcript of someone describing it, e.g.

 _" The conclusion is the same thing, but summing over all k. So, k equals one to n, alpha_k _ x_k. Take f of that versus taking the sum of the alphas times the f's. k equals one to n. So, the definition of convexity is exactly that statement, but where n equals two." _

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Instead of thinking about the area of study (web dev, data, etc), how about you look at the openings in Poland to see which companies are hiring, and for what languages. Then pick a few of those companies that you think are cool, and concentrate on the technologies that they are using. That way instead of shooting in the dark, your aspiring to fulfill a need in your community.

<comment><USER7> Spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Experience is significantly more valuable than reading 200 articles (and as a result, I am inclined to view CS grad school as a waste for many people).

Build stuff. It doesn't really matter what it is, there is enough overlap between all of the disciplines to compensate.

Having said that, and as was mentioned already, Algorithms is probably the one topic that truly differentiates people.

</comment><comment><USER9> Programming is the 'easy' part. To be employable learn the rest of the process, which is typically language agnostic: Dev Processes & workflow (scrum), DVCS (git), TDD, CI/CD (Travis/Jenkins/TeamCity), devops (puppet). etc

They're the things, regardless of language or project you will need, but which are rarely taught properly.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is good to hear. I'm currently attending a program through a software consultancy here in my city in which we create a project in teams of devs/BA's using Agile/Scrum, a heavy git focus, continuous integration, and testing frameworks. I'm learning heaps (things we don't really cover at uni) and hope it will help in internships/junior positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You need have a specific target, otherwise you're just shooting in the dark and you'll get bored easily.

But if you say, "I want to make a web site that does ABC", or "I want to make an app that does XYZ", you won't just be - as mkremer90 said - shooting in the dark at a whole bunch of different technologies</comment>


"How I Met My Cofounder" Story? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> This is for you, looking for your cofounder. It's a story about how the original two guys in a garage met each other. If you have a founder story, it's my hope that you also share it here, for all of us. From 'The HP Way', by David Packard:

"Largely because of (Fred) Terman's classes, the four of us - Hewlett, Porter, Oliver, and I (Packard) - became fast friends. It is not a coincidence that a few years later this group would become the management team of HP. Our (Bill and I) common interest in the outdoors first manifested itself in our junior year. There is no question that a shared love of the outdoors strengthened our friendship and helped build a mutual understanding and respect that is the core of their successful business relationship lasting more than a half century."

At the start of Dave's junior year as a Stanford electrical engineer, he demonstrated an interest in ham radios that caught Terman's eye. This led to his invitation to join Terman's graduate course on ham radios, which also included Bill and others, who were crucial to starting and building HP. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I hope this story (and the story you have to share) inspires you and the YC faithful, helping you with THE question: how do I find my cofounder?

</comment><comment><USER2> I met my cofounder at 7 in the morning while having a beer walking down "Las Ramblas", in Barcelona. He came to my friend asking for a cigarrette, we started talking, and we inmediately realised we shared the passion about technologies, web 2.0, social networking and Open Source, so in 15 days we had our vision of what could we do to change the world :)

elias

<comment><AUTHOR> elias, THAT story is a keeper, and it's going in the vault!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm planning on flying out from Connecticut to join the meetups and try and get to know other people who share my goals even though I won't be attending the actual startup school event. I look forward to being able to tell the story about how I met my cofounder while crashing a YC "everyone is welcome" social session.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This one comes from Paul Graham, from 'How To Start A Startup':

"What you should do in college is work on your own projects. Hackers should do this even if they don't plan to start startups, because it's the only real way to learn how to program. In some cases you may collaborate with other students, and this is the best way to get to know good hackers. The project may even grow into a startup. But once again, I wouldn't aim too directly at either target. Don't force things; just work on stuff you like with people you like."

Granted, it's targeted towards a college student (which I am), there's an underlying principle that can be applied to most any case you might face. Just do projects with people you like. Too simple.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope to ride on this soon as I'm still looking for a cofounder :(</comment>


Ask HN: Must read books of all time? - <AUTHOR> I'm bored during this lockdown
anyone know of some good books like lets say top 5 books of all time in life to read lol
I just love knowledge and learning it doesnt' matter what kind of book I just want something to read that will help me learn and get more knowledge.
or something interesting and fun to help pass the boredom
it can be history,science, math, technology or anything really I just want to learn more and know more than the average human.
I want to be up to par with my fellow human beings so top 5 books of all time is greatly appreciated <comment><USER2> Definetly interesting, but also challenging: Archipel Gulag from Solschenitzyn. I learnd a lot about human nature, shaped by circumstances. Scary stuff. But this book is a historic document. Names are real, places are real, events are real. Absolutely worth a read. EDIT: "The Gulag Archipelago" is the english title.</comment>


Vgo – verifiable go - <AUTHOR> http://vgo.readthedocs.org/en/latest/introduction.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but it looks like it doesn't detect threading errors (concurrent access)?

</comment><comment><USER3> They should name something in their toolchain 'Mortensen'.</comment>


Preventing CSRF Attacks with AJAX and HTTP Headers - <AUTHOR> https://nealpoole.com/blog/2010/11/preventing-csrf-attacks-with-ajax-and-http-headers/ <comment><USER2> Oh wow, I wrote this post a while ago! :-)

It was a neat little idea to play around with when I first wrote the post, since setting X-Requested-With on an arbitrary domain requires a violation of the same-origin policy. But as I point out at the top of the post, there was at least one recent case of a same-origin violation (via the Flash 307 bug) that allowed for arbitrary headers to be written.

CSRF tokens, whether they're in headers or in a form, are the more secure way to prevent an attack. They require a violation of the same-origin policy where an attacker can read (at least part of) the HTTP response sent by your server. If an attacker can do that, you already have larger issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think that HTTP headers are enough and feel that setting csrf tokens is the best approach to this. My reasoning behind this is that there are a lot of privacy plugins[1] that people use that interfere with the headers and using referer header is even worse because a lot of websites have redirection vulnerabilities eg if you want to be returned to the page you were at after logging into a website the url would be something like login.php?url=/page/id , a lot of websites do not sanatize this which would render this useless. It is also not an option for some websites that must have a function like this, a prime example of this is Youtube[2] which uses csrf token (hidden fields) in forms to mitigate this issue.

[1] - <http://www.ghostery.com> [2] - <http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http://youtube.com/page>

</comment><comment><USER4> There are comments on stackoverflow that setting headers via xhr isn't completely reliable.

<comment> james-skemp Article was seemingly invalid in 2011. Not sure why it's on page one now.</comment></comment>


YouTube TV costs $50 per month after another price hike - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/10/youtube-tv-price-hike-and-discovery/ <comment><AUTHOR> We are basically at cable company pricing again.</comment>


7 things to keep in mind building Amazon Alexa Skills - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/building-things-people-want/building-an-amazon-alexa-skill-here-are-7-things-you-need-to-know-2866b3062aba?source=linkShare-e59055cc7a8e-1460311738 <comment><USER2> Alexa's done an admiral job of showing us what's possible. Still impressed how good it is (and how good it could become)</comment>


Sorry crranky and Dan Shipper, you're both wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.timsoo.com/2012/08/17/sorry-crranky-and-dan-shipper-youre-both-wrong-and-youre-both-right/

<comment><USER2> A capable non-tech founder can learn, in a few months, enough about coding to: * Build a prototype, which could be used to fund experience developers * Talk sensibly with developers and get some insight into their skills and ability * Build certain classes of application for real-world use, e.g. a content website, a basic mobile app

All of these are useful skills for a non-tech founder and in most cases, it would be worth their time investment (and unlike learning most other professions, it really is just a time commitment, for the most part).

I think the comparison to a physician is a fair one when it comes to full- blown development work. At the same time, an early developer is much more useful than an early physician, ie someone with the equivalent several months of medical training. Mostly because the developer has more leverage, ie if their early work succeeds, they can gain more resources to build on it.</comment>


Tutorial: Designing a GraphQL API - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/swalkinshaw/3a33e2d292b60e68fcebe12b62bbb3e2 <comment> chao- Solid writeup. Happy to see I am not crazy in the conclusions I had drawn in my first GraphQL project. Or if I am crazy, at least I am not alone.

However, on the topics of pagination and authorization, it took many hours of comparing differing viewpoints across guides, blogs, videos and so forth to puzzle out where the lines were between GraphQL itself, and the way it is often "experienced" by developers (i.e. filtered through the lens of Relay or Apollo). So when this tutorial says:

 _> For situations like this, GraphQL provides for list pagination... the necessary architecture around [connection types] are well-specified and will be taken care of at implementation time._

I have to push back.

GraphQL does not "provide for" pagination out of the box any moreso than the abstract concepts in REST "provide for pagination" out of the box. Or RPC. Or what-have-you. The GraphQL website _suggests_ an implementation for pagination that seems to translate to "Relay is opinionated and does it this way", only without calling Relay by name [0]. It then leaves a bunch of questions open with the whole "connection" metaphor, as it relates to types. That was both confusing and a shame, because the rest of the explanations involving types in the GraphQL guide are solid. Trying to uncover why Relay does this, I sought to compare it to Apollo, and their answer for pagination seemed to be _" Whateva' ya want, kid! Go nuts!"_, so at least they are honest about it being a question open to many answers [1].

Similarly for authorization, GraphQL suggests things by saying "Well... that's not a GraphQL problem", which is true! Mostly! In my case the story was happier than with pagination. For our particular domain, where stock libraries providing "roles" don't cut it, GraphQL forced me to rethink our authorization more systematically than our existing REST interface did.

It finally "clicked" for me on both topics while reading a really minor sub- point in the GraphQL pagination article that reminded me that, in the mathematical notion of a graph, an edge can have properties just as a node can. Maybe no one besides me had this problem, but after a decade steeped in the entity-centric lens common to REST API implementations, it was something I had become unintentionally blind to.

[0] [https://graphql.org/learn/pagination/](https://graphql.org/learn/pagination/)

[1] [https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/features/pagination...](https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/features/pagination.html)

\--

Edit/Afterthought: I realize that this is an internal doc from Shopify, so if their statement "will be taken care of at implementation time" was meant to just hand-wave for an audience of front-end engineers, that is a reasonable thing to say. I don't mean to be too critical without having the context, I just needed to vent about my first encounters with GraphQL.

<comment><USER2> Isn't the Relay way the de facto standard?

<comment><USER3> The Relay patterns are are decent starting point, but even if using Relay they're more-or-less optional

Relay connections (cursor-based pagination) are decent for many reasonable use cases, but if you absolutely do need random access (let's say you have a virtualized list where a user can scroll quickly to a specific point and load only the data local to it), you'll have to bring your own pagination solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great document. Very useful for maturing a GraphQL API past that of a cloned tutorial.</comment>


Edward Snowden's book profits must go to the government, judge rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21028600/edward-snowden-book-profits-government-judge-ruling-memoir-sales <comment><USER2> "The government argued that since Snowden had failed to provide the book for a contractually obligated review, he had no right to the profits from the book or his public speeches. Snowden's lawyers have countered that it would be impossible for the book to receive a good-faith review from the government."

I agree with Snowden on this one. He's said repeatedly he's willing to return to the US and stand trial on the condition he's allowed to argue to the jury why he did what he did -- which isn't allowed when one is tried for treason (you either did it or you don't and there's no leeway for justified defense or jury nullification).

Given those circumstances I too would stay in Russia -- where at least I knew I could be free...</comment>


There Are No Famous Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1275989245.html <comment><USER3> If you want to be famous, go be an entertainer, athlete, or politician.

If you want to be a programmer, check your ego at the door. The two biggest roadblocks to success in programming are incompetence and attitude. BigEgo = BadAttitude.

I measure my success not in fame, but in the value gained by those who use my software, and the value gained by those they serve, and so on, and so on. I don't know them and they don't know me, but I'd like to think the world's a better place because of all the ones and zeroes I've arranged. They are the stars and that's good enough for me.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't everyone have an ego? Isn't it really hard to check it at the door? I think students of Buddhism have been trying to figure out how to do this for centuries. I don't think it's as simple as checking it at the door.

<comment><USER5> _"Doesn't everyone have an ego? Isn't it really hard to check it at the door?"_

My thoughts exactly. The parent comment is the sort of "advice" that is easy to dispense and makes everyone feel good, but is fundamentally useless. These platitudes are the honeypot comments of online forums -- everyone votes for them because they "agree", but they might as well be voting up a picture of a kitten hanging from a tree branch. It's comforting to think that we're somehow above the base human need for recognition, but not very close to the truth.

For example, why is it okay for entertainers, actors and politicians to pursue fame, while programmers must toil in selfless obscurity? Are we supposed to be martyrs?

Also, not for nothing, but when the guy with the top comment score on HN -- _the guy who wore a t-shirt bearing his HN login name at Startup School_ \-- tells you to abandon your ego, well...I'm no english major, but there's a certain situational irony there.

<comment><USER6> I wish _more_ people would have identified themselves with their HN usernames somehow at last year's startup school.

It sucks to find out that there were a bunch of people from HN there and I missed out on the chance to talk to them in person because I couldn't make the connection based on their name.

Although to be fair, I put my twitter address on my name tag which happens to be my username here... So I suppose I'm guilty of doing whatever it is you're accusing edw519 of.

<comment><USER5> _"Although to be fair, I put my twitter address on my name tag which happens to be my username here... So I suppose I'm guilty of doing whatever it is you're accusing edw519 of."_

Not really. Fortunately, the world is not binary, and there's a fairly large, practical gap between "writing your ID on a nametag" and having a t-shirt custom made.

That said, I'm not accusing him of anything bad -- it was a clever self- promotional ploy. I'm just pointing out the irony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Let's try an experiment. Think of a project you use all day. Maybe it's Rails or Python or something. Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking them up. I can't do that for anything I use. Alright, let's say you can do that. You know a myriad of things about the people who make your tools, but can you honestly say you know as much about them as you do about the tools they made you? Be honest with yourself and really look at how much you know about the people behind your gear as you do about the gear itself."

This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we use? I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or even the apartment I live in. And when I do know their names I certainly don't know them better than I do my tools. Why should I want to?

"I still have to do programmer interviews like everyone else. No matter how much code I put out, I still have to solve stupid puzzles about coconuts and manholes. No matter how many web servers or email frameworks or database servers or chat servers or assemblers I write I still have to prove I can code. No matter how many copies of my software get deployed I still have to prove I can make reliable software."

I wouldn't want to comment on what Zed's personal experience is , but I know many programmers who wouldn't have to "prove that they can code". "Fame" sees to correlate inversely with having to jump through hoops. I doubt if anyone really wants to test Linus (or Carmack or DHH or any other "famous" programmer) for "ability to code". Outside the MegaCorp, and especially in startups, a reputation for Open Source contributions helps you avoid stupid questions/tests etc, at least in my limited experience. It is often the undistinguished guy with the undistinguished cv that has to go through the technical nitpick interview.

I think this experience may be somewhat unique to Zed. No harm in that of course. Just pointing out that is far from universal.

Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes. I don't mean that he is crazy or anything, just that the logic in his posts seems increasingly frayed.

<comment><USER8> "This is very bizarre. Isn't this true for all tools/man made artifacts we use? I have no idea who exactly designed my car, my guitar , my cellphone, or even the apartment I live in."

I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products.

Of course then he dives off into this strange diatribe about being forced to interview the same way we peons have to despite his previous works - <USER2> the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel (most of the devs using it haven't either, for that matter).

I also think he is wrong on this latter point as - even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had.

"Just my perception, but Zed seems to get weirder with every post he writes."

I'll agree with you on that one.

<comment><USER9> _the fact that most of the time there is about a 0% chance the hiring manager has read the code to mongrel_

Just wait a minute here! Isn't this _weird?_ It's like hiring designers and refusing to look at their portfolios.

The interview process puts people through all these weird contortions so we can (among other things) get some indirect indications of how they code. Why not just read their code? We want to know if they can collaborate on a project, why not look at the result of projects they collaborated on?

I think in the corporate world at least, programming _has_ become a commodity.

<comment><USER10> I highly doubt that hiring managers are going to have the time to read code. Very few people go through a candidate's code before an interview.

<comment><USER9> Then I would ask: why is it that designers almost always have their portfolios looked at when they are getting hired? I think we're being slaves to an illogical social pattern.

<comment><USER11> For one thing, a visual portfolio can be looked through in the time it would take to dig into one complex method.

<comment><USER9> In the context of is thread, I read this as, "We're trapped in an illogical social pattern, because we are _lazy_."

<comment><USER11> I'd agree with that, but I'd prefer the term "energy conserving."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Zed's thesis is flawed. He set out to be famous--ostensibly because he didn't get enough respect in Ruby-land. It's not clear what his goal was, but now he's jumping to the conclusion that fame doesn't bypass bureaucratic red tape. However Zed wasn't satisfied with his small notoriety, and instead chose to accelerate it by deliberately becoming a flaming asshole writing vitriolic rants full of personal attacks.

I enjoyed Zed's rants, and I thought they were fairly insightful. I certainly never interpreted them as being completely out of line, or that Zed was a total asshole. He explicitly stated that he was testing the theory of being an internet blowhard to get attention. Fine.

But the problem is now he's famous for being a blowhard. He went from being moderately famous (and misunderstood) among the Ruby elite, to being widely famous for writing snarky articles. Well, that's obviously not going to get you past any technical interviews. Also, he decided to burn his bridges in the Ruby community, where I guarantee you he could have gotten plenty of jobs without an interview before. Nowadays, as someone who does a lot of hiring, I can tell you that I would think twice before hiring Zed for fear of what kind of drama he would bring to the team. That fear may be totally unfounded--I don't know him personally--but where before I knew Zed as "the guy who made Rails deployment viable", now I know him as "the guy who thinks he's god's gift to programming and hates a lot of shit."

Zed hasn't discovered anything about programmer fame, he just learned that internet-famous is worthless.

<comment><USER13> Sadly, no. " Also, he decided to burn his bridges in the Ruby community, where I guarantee you he could have gotten plenty of jobs without an interview before." I think Zed made it pretty clear in the discussion around the "Rails is a ghetto" article that he did not, in fact, get any jobs period. My understanding is that the article was the outcome of his frustration at not reaping any rewards, particularly financial ones, for contributing a pretty important piece of technology to the rails stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fame is a distraction. 'Nuff said.

As far as coders becoming factory workers - I think this is true, depending on the route you take. Do you just write code? Or do you also manage people, make great presentations, or define business models?

Just because you can write code, its hard to think about something invisible, and no one else in your business can do it doesn't mean you're a rock star. _This requires a programmer to walk around thinking they can do everyone else's job but not vice versa._

If there was only one thing about (us) programmers I hate the most it is our collective attitude. Our holier-than-thou more-technical-and-logical-than you bull shit. Then we complain about accolades, accomplishment, social standing.

We are what we make ourselves. What we do does not define who we are or what we think we are entitled to. I agree it takes a lot of distinguishing to get noticed as a programmer but I would say that's true whatever you do in life.

<comment><USER15> Wow, I really needed to hear this right now. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was stunned to read that this guy wishes he were more famous, and that the purpose of said fame would be to get him out of coding interviews, especially after his first paragraph made it sound like he really was happy being nerdy.

Hacking a x0xb0x (did I spell that right?) sounds pretty cool. Only after googling around for a bit did I learn what Zed is 'famous' for, as he refers to it later in his essay. Only after reading the whole essay did I learn he thinks programmers are second class citizens.

This just seems silly to me; if you want to be famous, go do something that captures hearts and minds, (and have a good press team.) Or, get really rich, (and have a good press team.) Or, get a job in the media, (and have a good press team.)

To me, his essay reads like he wants respect, and thinks it will come with fame. I feel sad for him; this probably won't work for him, just like it doesn't work for anyone else.

<comment><USER17> Proving yourself at a new company is a huge pain point. No matter how good you are, you always go through the slow process of earning rights in order to get some freedom to work autonomously within the framework and procedures of the company.

That the OP wants to avoid this pain is understandable. It's probably just not realistic.

<comment><USER16> But this is true for senior executives on down to office admin staff. Even a hotshot CEO should be closely watched by the board until he/she has earned trust and proven an ability to execute, lead and inspire.

Wanting out of that cycle seems juvenile to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, I've never come away from a HN article embarrassed for the author before.

I had expected from the title to see an article explaining why there don't tend to be a lot of famous computer programmers. I was completely unprepared to read a complaint from a guy who thinks he should be famous, yet isn't treated with the deference he thinks he deserves.

Yikes! I had to stop after 3 paragraphs.

<comment><USER19> You must be reading a different essay.

I interpret that the author's fame doesn't help the author at all and that fame is a pointless asset.

<comment><USER18> Indeed, that would be the case if the author were indeed famous. But he's not.

Fame is defined by people knowing who you are, yet this guy's issue is that nobody knows who he is. QED, he's not famous.

<comment><USER9> In that case, most celebrities arguably aren't famous. All people know is a fiction and nobody knows who they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I personally actually find myself agreeing with pretty much all of this article.

The point is, is that it is not about fame, that is tangential to point, which is that programmers don't celebrate other programmers, that they don't value other programmer's work.

This is the only industry I know of, where people give away so much for so little, and they don't ask anything in return, because none of you seem able to appreciate the effort involved in your own or anyone else's work.

I don't think that it is absurd to know the name of the person who created the tool you use EVERY day, when they are from your OWN industry, only other programmers have the capacity to appreciate the craftsmanship and work involved.

That is the saddest thing about the programming industry, that you all can't see how much difference you can make, you give a project attention, hey, maybe you even donate some money and express some gratitude that someone went out of their way to work in their spare time, to give you something that you don't even have to pay for and you all reap dividends.

Maybe it's because this industry is so young, but something has to give, or you WILL be relegated to the positions of machinery, actual real people have to sit there and code this stuff, they give up evenings and weekends, they sacrifice time with family and friends, non-programmers don't get this, YOU do.

This industry needs to learn how to appreciate and stop attacking those who put their creations out there, the one man band who spends every weekend keeping a ruby gem up to date matters, the handful of guys coding frameworks and platforms and libraries and everything else matter, because you guys use their work, regularly.

They should get your attention, not Jobs who has his billions to play with, or Linus, who has his enormous Linux universe to maintain, or any of the guys famous by association with big companies, products or projects. The little guys, who keep the whole shebang ticking over, who work endlessly, in the shadows of your attention, creating awesome, cool things for you play with, tools for you to work with and games for you to relax with.

<comment><USER20> Reading more recent comments, I see a common theme, the "I don't code for glory", this isn't a rant about fame, it is a rant about recognition, from within the industry.

I worked as a dog groomer years ago and we had competitions and awards and yes there were even famous dog groomers.

Nobody codes for glory, lol, but recognition is a different thing, I read once "people will crawl over broken glass for recognition", which is funny because it seems that programmers run away from recognition.

The things you write do not need to be ground-breaking, game-changing or revolutionary to garner recognition, you deserve recognition for putting the time in, for creating something that people rely on, that works.

Somewhere there is a disconnect, everybody DESERVES recognition, it is not about ego, or fame, or fortunes, or groupies, it is about connecting with someone within your own field and saying "hey, you did a good job, I appreciate it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "I still have to do programmer interviews like everyone else. No matter how much code I put out, I still have to solve stupid puzzles about coconuts and manholes. No matter how many web servers or email frameworks or database servers or chat servers or assemblers I write I still have to prove I can code. No matter how many copies of my software get deployed I still have to prove I can make reliable software."

I still think that's an isolated fact though, and most software shops would offer Zed a job without asking him 'What is a pointer?' questions if he was, for instance, being interviewed by some rubyist (given the notoriety of mongrel). Maybe as he says, I'm wrong. But it could also be just like the guy that offered Ninh Bui a job where 'the candidate must have some experience with Phusion Passenger' (Ninh is one of the creators of Passenger). Some employers just mess up, and having offered Zed a sysadmin job might just have been that, an isolated fact.

Now, I would risk on saying that famous programmers could be made more of 'web presence' and 'open source code' than commercial code. Like, Zed's famous for mongrel and his other open source works (lamson, etc), but I'd say that, in my opinion, he's also _famous_ because of his blog and being a prolific writer and, at the same time, quite controversial. Curiously, he's working on a very cool project commercially, Dropbox (very cool in my opinion anyway), but I don't think that has anything to do with how _famous_ he is, even though, in my opinion, that might be the skill that's most relevant for me, as an employer, to know if I wanted to hire him (as most software shops are making apps, and not email frameworks or web servers).

So maybe, just like the first step on being famous is having lots of blog readers and open source projects (rather than having made a great contribution to a commercial product), the second step is getting funding, being to parties, etc. (and I just don't notice that because I'm not famous, or because I'm not on SF)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think Zed should know by now that the tech interview is also a personality screen. It's helpful to know if you're hiring someone who rolls his eyes when asked to do something he thinks trivial. Or who wants to be treated like a rockstar.

Also, it's a way of getting team buy-in, even when hiring a lead. Whatever the team rituals are to establish respect, the new guy has to pass them. If it's dumb questions about missionaries and cannibals, that's lame, but so be it.

<comment><USER9> In short, ritual justifies lameness?

<comment><USER23> No, he's saying lame rituals help you avoid hiring prima donnas.

<comment><USER9> It may also scare away those who do not like lameness.

I once had an interview for a Smalltalk position, where, after the 3rd question, I asked, "are _all_ of these questions from the well known list of Smalltalk interview questions? I already know those."

I suspect that this lost me the position, which I think is strange, but fortunate. The lameness of an interview is often a good indicator of how bureaucratized or politicized the corporate environment is.

<comment><USER24> > It may also scare away those who do not like lameness.

This is precisely the point ekanes was trying to make. It's not lameness, but perceived lameness. If you perceive the company as lame, you would not be a good fit anyway.

But rest assured that, if I were the interviewer, your recognition of a known list of interview questions would not cost you the position.

And my interviews are neither lame, nor only about coding skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting post from Zed there.

 _It's even gone so far that people demand that we use the BSD license (or any license) that doesn't require credit for using your work. Other programmers don't want to have to put your name in a credits section of their applications._

Counter opinion (I realise this is only a subset of Zeds point, which I do agree has some useful points)?

The reason many of us like to see libraries, frameworks and support structure (as opposed to _software_ which has an end use) licensed under BSD or similar is less because we actively desire to remove attribution.. but because we like to have control over our own code licensing choices. Generally programmers are pretty good about credit. More importantly the GPL does not force you to mention anything in the credits... at all... you can just leave all the references in the code - and in many cases people just won't read that. So I don't buy this argument much at all.

(side point: I maintain a couple of FOSS/Open Source projects and love the idea of stuff I find interesting being used in all sorts of ways. I couldn't really care less about whether someone makes $100 Million using it in their app. In fact I do care about that; firstly I care _positively_ about the fact that I helped them with their success. Secondly I kick myself that it wasn't something I thought of doing. Doh! I prefer to trust that someone will use my code ethically; by which I mean a) tell other people about the cool piece of code X that they are using and b) contribute back to us. But I personally don't like the idea of forcing that behavior :P

Although; it's understandable why people do use the GPL for non-software code).

You know; on a related note I think the section before the above quote was interesting. And he has something of a point - that we don't think enough about the people making useful code for us. I don't think we are _stealing their soul_ :) but there is definitely a lack of communication (even when the GPL is in use).

tl;dr - I don't buy the idea that certain licenses address the problem of programmer fame.

<comment><USER26> Everyone knows that BSD requires you give them credit. Right? Right? I hope people are fulfilling the full requirement of the copyright and not just #1

"2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

3\. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the <organization>."

For example in safari click Help/Acknowledgments

<comment><USER27> The third clause was removed in 1999, although apparently some software is still using the 4-clause form.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> For some reason, this very strongly reminded me of this scene from Entourage where Johnny Drama has to audition. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIHC57rdYMM>

"Still I have to sing for my supper."

It's like Zed Shaw is really angry and yelling at the hiring manager "Do you know who I am?!"

<comment><USER29> I read a story on HN a while ago about a guy who was connected to a powerful politician who was getting hassled at airport security, who didn't care about this name-dropping, and his ego got the better of him and he just flipped and started screaming "Do you know who I am?!" at them over and over. The response of the security guys was to casually call over the radio to the drag-you-away- for-a-free-prostate-exam TSA hardmen "I think you better come down here, there is a guy who doesn't know who he is".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not convinced that Zed was suggesting that programmers should be famous for what they do (or that anyone should). The idea of programmers being like rock-stars is wholly preposterous. It's much harder for us to convince anyone that we're cool. I highly doubt I will ever get a coterie of groupies and sycophants to feed me drugs and sleep with me because I have a high wpm and can write a 2000-line report script without a single bug or syntax error.

What I do think he is suggesting is that industry should give us recognition for what we do. I honestly don't know who designed the car my taxi driver drove me to work in this morning. However, I'm pretty sure that if the design of the car was a significant feat in engineering then the engineer who designed it probably has a shiny little trophy above their desk. And if that person ever went looking for a job I doubt their interviewer would waste time asking them questions to ascertain whether they're an engineer. This person would have the industry recognition to open certain doors implicitly.

There is _some_ industry recognition, sure. Amongst us programmers. I just finished reading "Coders at Work" not too long ago. There are names in there that I'd expect most geeks would know and be familiar with. It was a very inspiring read.

Now as an experiment, ask your boss if they know what any of those people are recognized for.

I know I'm probably begging the question. The point I'm trying to make is that the people we work for that make so much money off of what we build... they don't know who these people are. They don't take time to familiarize themselves with these sorts of things.

I think industry awards, trade publications, and the like would go a long way to bridge that gap. It has worked for pretty much every other industry. Why is programming such an exception?

</comment><comment><USER31> It's a good point that programmers only become famous among non-programmers because of non-code reasons, but the same applies to specialists in almost any technical field (except for maybe physics and math).

<comment><USER32> > It's a good point that programmers only become _famous among programmers_ > because of non-code reasons

There, fixed that for you.

<comment><USER33> Actually, a lot of programmers are famous for what they've created (code reasons). Think Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, etc.

To be honest, Zed Shaw seems to be the exception since he's almost certainly more well known for blogging than any code that he's written.

<comment><USER34> > Actually, a lot of programmers are famous for what they've created (code > reasons). Think Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, etc.

Not at all: "Let's try an experiment. Think of a project you use all day. [...] Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking them up." Can you name 4 people on Linux, Perl, etc. core teams? I'd bet you can't. Or do we think that Torvalds, Wall, etc. wrote the software they are famous for on their own? That's what Zed is talking about.

<comment><USER33> I was responding to the poster I responded to, not Zed's post. Specifically, I think most famous programmers (at least among other programmers) are famous for what they coded.

That said, I can actually name 4 core contributers to Linux although I'm not sure what the significance of that might be (Linus, Ted T'so, David Miller, Andrew Morton).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can't name the architect for the office building I'm sitting in. Or the designer of my (distinctly average) car.

Having said that, I know that Tim Berners Lee created the Web, Jon Resig built jQuery and James Dyson designed my vacuum cleaner.

I don't think creating something "you use all day" should qualify you for being famous. Doing something new and very innovative sometimes does though.

<comment><USER36> Are those the people that really created the products you use today though?

Tim Berners Lee may have created the web, but he created it without fonts tags, images, layout and so on. The web exists because of the millions of people who put a lot of work into it including Amazon, Altavista, Google, Yahoo, Netscape and so on.

jQuery lists 21 people in it's team and 8 past members: <http://jquery.org/team>

Did you buy the very first Dyson vacuum cleaner? (the DC01 in 1993) or one designed by one of it's 1500+ staff <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_%28company%29>

Most products are built by a lot of people but just have a famous leader (who may or may not have made the very first version that you probably never saw).

<comment><USER16> In the interest of securing our oral history about the web, Tim Berners Lee had layout and images. And built-in click-to-edit. <http://info.cern.ch/NextBrowser1.html>

<comment><USER36> In 1991 it looked like this: [http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T...](http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)

In 1992 Erwise, ViollawWW and Lynx were created and Mosaic in 1993, Netscape in 1994. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web>)

That picture was from 1993, though I'd concede I got a few inaccuracies in my comment, however Tim Berners Lee, didn't create the whole web by himself, even in the very early days there were others creating it too, that have now been forgotten.

<comment><USER16> Re: TBL, I totally agree with you.

Re the links: Interesting -- [http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/M...](http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html) has an SGML DTD for HTML, which mentions images, but that DTD is dated 1995, many years after TBL was speccing the web originally.

An interesting bit of history lost, the first DTDs for HTML, as well as some canonical first pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think this post nails down what I think is a recurring issue with us techies. We concentrate too much on _what we do_ , and too little in _being known for what we do_ , which, according to Chris Lytle, is the third reason of success:

"The third secret of success is that you have to be known for what you know. Other people have to know you know what you're doing. When other people know you know what you're doing, they come to you for help and advice, not just for your low price."

What about the former two reasons of success? Here they are:

"The first secret of success is that you have to know what you're doing. There are a lot of people who fail simply because they don't study their industry. They don't go to seminars. They don't read. And they fail. [...] The second secret of success is that you have to know you know what you're doing. Success is a process, and repeating successful behaviors over and over again is key. But you have to know what is working so you can repeat what's working."

(from The Accidental Salesperson, a book about selling I highly recommend)

</comment><comment><USER37> Jeffrey Law, Richard Kenner, Mark Michell, Ian Taylor.

That wasn't hard. I apologize for any misspelling, as I went by memory. On the other hand, I don't know the names of any startup founders more recent (or less successful) than facebook.

I believe Hacker News attract a certain non-typical brand of programmers, if they are more likely to know about "VCs and term sheets" than about who made their tools.

Of course programmers are rarely famous (for programming) outside their profession. That is a fate programming share with just all but a select few professions.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, that definitely struck me as the odd bit in the article -- being jealous of the "fame" that startup founders get sure seems like a pretty specialized breed of envy!

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I'd prefer to write an application which made me wealthy, than an application which made me famous. Wealth is a useful thing to have, fame is more of an annoyance surely...?

<comment><USER39> I dunno, fame can be useful. Just imagine all the groupies that came after the publication of The Geek Atlas.

<comment><USER40> I really don't want to image what those groupies would be like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> But there is Google. And plenty of people have Googled me and I've been told in job interviews that the interviewer had downloaded code I'd written and read it.

</comment><comment><USER22> The very _definition_ of a product is an artifact that doesn't require a human relationship.

If you need to be in touch with the people that made it or maintain it, that's called consulting. (You may _want_ to be in closer contact, for instance, to shape the direction of the Linux kernel or something. But you don't _need_ to have such a relationship to use Linux.)

Excellence in product design means anonymity for the people who made it.

</comment><comment><USER41> _Yep, just a system administrator_

Well then. Nice to know Zed looks down his nose at operations.

<comment><USER42>
      I hate it when people call me a programmer, I'm a *developer*; I don't *do* IT. I have better things to do than re-install Windows all day.

...is the title of the next rant I expect to read from Zed.

<comment><USER43> What's wrong with wanting to make stuff rather than work around other people's buggy software?

<comment><USER42> IT and programmers do more than "work around other people's buggy software" all day long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It is interesting to see that someone arrived at a similar conclusion as me. However, I went a totally different way of arriving there. By now, programmers kind of feel like pioneers and/or drainers.

Think about this for a second. Did Ruby On Rails enable you to venture into new lands, because you are able to program your web application more efficiently? I think so. Does RoR make your daily programmer life easier overall? I think so, too. Thus, _someone_ ventured into a place and built roads and paths for people to come there and to live comfortably.

However, did anyone really remember the pioneers in germans marshes, in america? Does anyone see the drainers maintaining the life support systems in the cities? No. Does anyone remember the first person to write a web framework, to write a next generation language, or maintaining libraries which easen your daily life? No.

I think this is a striking similarity.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wait a moment.

Aside from a few exceptions, most product design is unattributed. Can you name four people who worked on the mobile phone you use? Or indeed any appliance you use?

Of the programmers and engineers I do know about, I don't know about them because I use the product, but because there's something interesting or unusual about the person.

<comment><USER46> Noone designs mobile phones or appliances in their free time.

<comment><USER45> Uh... so what? Are you saying people can only be famous for work they do in their free time?

<comment><USER46> I'm not saying that and you know it.

If someone uses fruits of your passion for free, it would be nice to get an acknowledgement for that, wouldn't you agree?

<comment><USER45> _"I'm not saying that and you know it."_

I had no idea what you were saying. Your point wasn't very clear.

 _"If someone uses fruits of your passion for free, it would be nice to get an acknowledgement for that, wouldn't you agree?"_

Certainly, but acknowledgements don't make you famous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> "The famous programmers aren't really famous for programming anymore, but instead because they created some business or non-profit. Their code can't stand on its own as awesome, it has to be paired with some non-code fame formation and then people can grok their concept."

Anyone read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age? There is a scene where they are discussing tech innovation and someone says there are always three parts, the money, the tech and the artist.

Money finances the tech, and the artist humanizes the tech. You're the tech (drummer/bassist? linebacker?) and you're envious of the artist (lead singer? quarter back?).

Edit: and the reason he's not really famous is because none of his consumer facing products are GREAT. (I wont debate if they are good or very good or whatever, but outside of his technical work he really isn't GREAT).

</comment><comment><USER48> If you use something enough, and truly want to understand it, then I assume you know all about some programmers, and that enough others are like you that these people can be considered famous.

It also seems laughable to think that those programmers who are considered famous do not benefit from it in the industry.

Off the top of my head: John Resig Matz Steve Yegges Shawn Hargreaves _why

And assuming you have been to one conference, or dug a little bit deeper, I am sure you know much of the core team and library teams around a technology too.

I am not sure what qualifies someone as famous, but I would be surprised if these people did not qualify given the right fields.

Just because you don't know about them doesnt mean thousands of other people don't.

</comment><comment><USER49> Haiping Zhao, the lead on Facebook's PHP compile-to-C++ project, is in Fast Company's "100 Most Creative 2010" list.

<http://www.fastcompany.com/100/2010/16/haiping-zhao>

</comment><comment><USER50> There are famous programmers, but Zed's right that they don't become famous because of their coding ability. I'd say they become famous because of impact. And I'm thinking of the _really_ famous (to us) coders here: Thompson, Richie, Fred Brooks, Dijkstra, Knuth, Larry Wall and so on.

These people had an impact for _market_ reasons, not for their code in itself: a need; an idea for a tool or product; and a benefit of it that met that need (not saying the need is first chronologically). In some cases, that "product" was something they wrote _about_ programming, not their code at all.

Programming: unimportant. Meeting needs: important.

</comment><comment><USER51> Wikipedia seems to think his fame is not quite as clear-cut as the man himself sees it:

This article may not meet the notability guideline for biographies. Please help to establish notability by adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic.

<comment><USER52> If he's a famous anything, he's a famous _blogger_ , not a famous programmer.

<comment><USER53> At least Mongrel should be enough to make the man known for his code, come on. Give credit where credit is due.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> "Famous" is also relative. I'm a programmer, and I'd never heard of him or any of the projects he mentioned.

If you go down any particular niche, I guess everyone's famous to somebody.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wow, so weird...

I'm constantly having my friends and family give me astonished looks when they see what I can do with a computer!

I get tons of recognition! I do a good amount of web work for free... for friend's bands, small businesses... for people that I know and love who don't have a lot of money...

... and they love it! They get this look in their eyes like I'm some sort of magician!

It's awesome. :)

</comment><comment><USER56> In my experience, programmers can attain a certain amount of fame at the local level.You can become well-known for being the author of a key piece of software that your company uses. Unfortunately, it just means people know who to talk to when their is a bug or a feature request.

</comment><comment><USER57> " Following his life is pointless because he's poured his life into the software and now they get to keep it.

You've stolen his soul like an old sepia tone photo of a Cherokee warrior."

He's conflating life with soul, and ego with both. I think his logic error occurs right there.

<comment><USER43> For me, my soul, if it exists, is in what I create.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> You should care about people using and enjoying what you build.

I don't really care whether my users know my birthday or what my favourite dessert is.

Actually, I'm pretty happy they don't know anything about me.

The author of this article needs an attitude adjustment.

</comment><comment><USER59> I got recognized in an airport on a city I've never been to just this week.

There are degrees.

</comment><comment><USER60> Why would you _want_ to be famous?

I could think of little more inconvenient than complete strangers thinking that they know / understand me in some way or identify with my life or work. This could be emblematic of my general misanthropy but I'm perfectly happy to be the guy behind the curtain.

I'll take the money and maybe the power, chasing fame is the milieu of the inherently insecure. Coding is one of the most empowering things a modern human can do; not waiting around for other people to make something for you, but to get the making done yourself.

</comment><comment><USER61> Well, this is the entire point of art, right? You are building an artifact for people to interact with. Sometimes the artifact reveals aspects of the creator's personality, but generally that is done subtly. You're trying to suggest and seduce, not overwhelm and assault.

(Even the arts which aggressively push the author's persona - think: a lot of hip-hop, and a lot of standup comedy - are about selling _persona_ , not person. Performers play characters. Even when they are playing themselves.)

<comment><USER11> Reminds of Hunter Thompson. He eventually got to the point where when he gave a speech or public appearance, he didn't know if the people wanted Hunter Thompson or "Hunter Thompson," and I think he began to have some difficulty distinguishing the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> There should be an Academy Awards or Tony's or Grammys for programming.

Perhaps Github and Bitbucket and Google Code can get together, select the core contributors to the most 'watched'/downloaded programs, allow those people to vote for/select other coders/programmers/contributors who should be allowed ballots and allow them to vote for people in different categories for awards.

If entertainers can merit an awards ceremony, surely code slingers and algorithm designers can as well.

</comment><comment><USER63> "[Being famous]... makes it harder because now for some bizarre reason people think my fame means I can't code."

So true. When I hear of any famous programmer, I think the same.

</comment><comment><USER64> There is no question Zed is a talented hacker, but it is obvious he's still bitter after his confrontational departure from the Ruby world. Which, IIRC, was partly precipitated by the fact he felt he didn't get enough recognition for his work on Mongrel.

See the license terms at the end of this post: <http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1273859940.html>

</comment><comment><USER65> "Maybe it's Rails or Python or something. Now, name 4 people on the core team without looking them up."

Wrong. I use python and I do know the name of at least 20 core devs. May be because I hang at #python-dev or follow them at twitter, but I do know. As a matter of fact if I love any project I'll know the core devs. Sorry Zed, you lost me there on that part or else I was loving your article.

<comment><USER66> You're certainly an exception, not the rule. In my immediate circle of python programmers, most of them would name Guido, Beazley and _maybe_ on a good day Alex Martelli.

I have to agree with Zed on that point.

<comment><USER67> I don't read python-dev and I could name 7 core Python devs without even thinking. (Guido van Rossum, Alex Martelli, Raymond Hettinger, Martin van Loweis, Jeremy Hilton, Georg Brandl, Fredrik Lundh) (I'm really bummed that David Beazley didn't come to mind right away. Sorry David)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I don't think this is necessarily true. Who, involved in RoR, doesn't know about _why. It may not be his real name but many a person still knows about his existence. I honestly don't think he was going for fame though.

<comment><USER11> Eccentricity often leads to fame, even if it wasn't intentional. People like a freak show (No negative connotation intended, but he was certainly strange).

For example, the only thing I really know about Howie Mandell is his OCD about germs, but that's more than I know about most celebrities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> > Yep, just a system administrator. Still.

There Are No Famous Sysadmins ;)

<comment><USER70> Well, there /is/ the BOFH :)

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/odds/bofh/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> What? I have a poster of Mark Pilgrim on my wall.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'll do my best to spread this message in my mind and in others. What we do is art, it always has been.

Say it: I'm with the awesome!!!

</comment><comment><USER73> Who's Zed Shaw?

<comment><USER74> Creator of the Mongrel web server that is used for Ruby web apps. Also, the creator of Lamson, the email framework for Python and several other projects. He has a reputation for speaking his mind, regardless of how you may feel about it. Personally, that gives him some serious marks in my book; saying what you mean, _and_ executing on it is an admirable trait.

I'm not trying to be an apologist here, but he's accomplished far more than I have on a good week.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zed_Shaw>

<comment><USER75> _I'm not trying to be an apologist here, but he's accomplished far more than I have on a good week._

I don't know if you were going for a backhanded compliment there, but it sure seems like one ;-)

<comment><USER74> I wasn't. I really do respect Zed and his contributions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> If Microsoft Word were written by a single programmer that programmer would have been famous!

<comment><USER77> Most of Microsoft Word was written by one programmer, the late Willoughby Whigginton, formerly of Microsoft.

"Will", as his friends knew him, despaired and committed suicide after the 8,234th time an unwitting stranger greeted him yet again with the expression "Word®, Dude!".

<comment><USER76> Well the point I was trying to make was that people become famous when they can be linked to something that a lot of people care about. We see this in the entertainment industry where it's easy to associate a blockbuster film with the stars or directors of the film.

This is not typically the case in the software industry where the Blockbuster software so to speak are produced by Companies and not lone programmers. That is to say the company is the face of the software.

I used Microsoft Word (maybe I should have used Office) because it's an example of a software application where the company that makes it is well known and I thought if it were possible for one person to create an application with as large an impact as Microsoft Office has had in the world then surely that person would be remembered.

One notable exception to the rule I think is Linus Torvalds. He still remains the face of linux although what linux is today is due to contributions from a large number of people.

<comment><USER78> Raymond Chen tells a story that Notepad won some industry award in the late 90s, but no one at Microsoft could remember who the original author was: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/99159...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/9915989.aspx)

And follow-up post: [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/99233...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/9923309.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Useless rant that doesn't add anything to my life, or probably yours.

</comment><comment><USER80> Zuck isn't a celebrity? Gates? Jobs? This article is finnicky

</comment><comment><USER81> Bill Gates, Steve Jobs

<comment><USER82> im not sure why this got downvoted. jobs, gates, zuck, brin, page, all of those guys are (are at least were) productive programmers and now have celebrity status.

<comment> daniel-cussen Jobs never coded, to my knowledge.

<comment><USER82> did a little research and you are right, my bad!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> "name 4 people on the core team"

Name four people on the core team at Facebook.

This is ironic seeing as the author is in part famous for being a terrific programmer.

</comment><comment><USER84> Ada Lovelace?

</comment><comment><USER85> i puked a little after reading this

</comment><comment><USER13> I read the article differently than most of you. I think Zed is still grumpy that contributing a big piece (if not irreplaceable, but unarguably useful) of the rails stack didn't lead to more recognition and, more importantly, the type of recognition that's useful when it's time to pay the rent. Hence his rails is a ghetto post -- I read it as something like, "This rails shit has worked out well for DHH but a bunch of other people have contributed and we haven't gotten shit. This sucks."

This post is an elaboration -- having written a bunch of big projects that are freely available for anyone who wants to to review the code, Zed still has to answer the usual weeder questions. It's kind of insulting, frankly. And from his perspective, his contributions to open source and the community at large haven't done that much for him.

I think this is part of a general problem in programming that a blog author I follow pointed out and another poster in this thread mentioned: open source has worked out well for eg Larry Wall or Linus or DHH, etc. But there are a lot of people that contribute -- maybe not as main authors, but who eg make sure all your rails db gems work with new revs of the databases and contribute lots of little pieces -- but who don't get enough out of it to financially justify the contribution. See the creator of Clojure essentially begging for donations on his website in order to continue development. Sometimes, it comes down to the simple fact that open source contributions might be fun or useful or intellectually gratifying, but they don't pay the bills. The industry as a whole, IMO, needs more ways to channel money to the masses of OS contributors who aren't famous and aren't paid to do it, but who make lots of contributions.

links I mentioned: [http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/commercial-grails- plu...](http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/posts/commercial-grails-plugins/)

and

[http://www.anyware.co.uk/2005/2009/12/11/do-we-need-a- commer...](http://www.anyware.co.uk/2005/2009/12/11/do-we-need-a-commercial- market-for-grails-plugins/)

</comment><comment><USER86> John Carmack is famous, kinda.

<comment><USER87> Probably because he worked on things which were entertaining, and not "tools" to people, simply. You can find plenty of famous people in the video game industry, recognized for their work. But you can be a wonderful tool programmer, make wonderful databases, webservers, and else... Ultimately, those are only tools. And people don't have especially respect or excitement for tools, they just use them.

<comment><USER88> That's definitely a factor, but he's still remembered. It would have been easy for the programming to have been ignored and Carmack to have been overshadowed by Romero, but that didn't happen.

Amongst game programmers, we certainly pay more attention to who writes the code, not just who designs the game or draws the art. Most gamers are more likely to know of Cliff Bleszinski than Tim Sweeney, but programmers are more likely to know of Sweeney.

<comment><USER87> Actually, nowadays, you know game designers, more than actual programmers, at least for the big industry. You know the programmers for most indie games, though (but there they are often designers themselves).

Besides, true that you don't really know the "big shot programmer" in games anymore, mostly because there is not anymore one programmer, you see a full team creating an engine. so they blend in the product.

About Carmack and Romero, I guess it also helped that Romero made a fool of himself after the "breakup".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> On the other hand, I've written Rails tutorials for newbies and people constantly think I'm a Ruby badass and ask absolutely no further questions.

Perceived character, reputation, and the way you make a person feel has more to do with whether they innately assume you are good, than sheer fame.

It's so easy to choose the wrong variable when you're trying to figure out a (social) system.

</comment><comment><USER90> ..just as there are no famous scientists anymore. Seriously, how many of you can remember the names of Nobel prize winners after the 1960s? Fame is almost as fickle as Luck and in many ways more so. In our day and time, being recognized by our peers is fame enough. Aspiring to be famous well beyond your chosen discipline requires more than genius. The right moment in time. A moment right not just for you but for your entire field. A moment that captures the imagination of people who have nothing to do with your work, but can still feel its impact. And sometimes, even that is not enough. Case in point: How many of you know the name of the person who discovered/invented/designed Viagra? :-)

<comment><USER11> Also: outside of chess fans, who the hell would recognize Anand? He's the world's best at something, and he'd probably be able to walk down any street in America unnoticed. What does Zed expect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Zed is to now as Eric S. Raymond was to the 90's

<comment><USER43> ESR got people to understand that GPL/BSD/etc apps were real software with real licenses they needed to respect, rather than Public Domain Shit From The Internet. Also: Zed's made a bunch of innovative stuff (I use his mailing list app) that shits all over Fetchmail (which is a single hack for a limited problem).</comment></comment>


Palantir raises an additional $20M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/24/big-data-company-palantir-quietly-raised-another-20m-in-november/?ncid=rss <comment><AUTHOR> SEC filing:

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000132165516...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000132165516000005/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any idea why they would raise such a (relatively) small amount of money?

<comment><USER2> Especially when they did a $225M stock buybacks from employees in May.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-employee-stock- buyba...](http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-employee-stock-buyback- liquidity-event-2016-5)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I didn't realize they were doing this. This suggests to me they simply had an investor they really wanted on the cap table. Or perhaps they wanted a current shareholder to have a greater relative ownership of the company?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Customise your car using AR - <AUTHOR> https://www.modmyrideapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Simple, cool, and your site immediately gets the point across of what it does. Nice work! How are you monetizing? Charging rim co's to be a part of the available library? Affiliate cut?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, appreciate it!

Yes we are planning on partnering with aftermarket wheel manufacturers to either make their rims available to buy from the app or provide a white-label version of this app for them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Loving this!

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you!</comment></comment>


DL people, leave language alone and stop saying you solve it - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/an-adversarial-review-of-adversarial-generation-of-natural-language-409ac3378bd7 <comment><USER2> This item has been submitted to HN six times recently:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=yoav.goldberg&sort=byDate&pref...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=yoav.goldberg&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


Graph of Github Followers with R - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-chart.com/2012/05/github-follower-graph-with-r.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Can run the code straight from GitHub (if you dare) by creating the function described here:

[http://tonybreyal.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/source_https- sour...](http://tonybreyal.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/source_https-sourcing-an- r-script-from-github/)

Then running the example is as simple as:

source_github('[https://raw.github.com/ezgraphs/R-Programs/master/github_fol...](https://raw.github.com/ezgraphs/R-Programs/master/github_followers.R))</comment>


Craigslist testing new design? - <AUTHOR> http://fresno.craigslist.org/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I noticed that this morning on the Charlotte, NC homepage as well. I googled a bit, and didn't see any news on it (I figured a Craigslist redesign would be pretty big news). Glad to see someone else is seeing this, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> They've been messing with site design for a month or two. I think they are doing some A/B testing, I've seen several different designs but then it's back to the normal design when I check later.</comment>


The Storage Tipping Point - <AUTHOR> http://storagemojo.com/2015/06/29/the-storage-tipping-point/ <comment><USER2> Funny he mentioned System/38, which largely eliminated users' storage worries, then says that company's rep never heard of it. Funny cuz they still sell it: IBM i. I posted a link [1] to original system on his site. It got so many things right in a business machine it was hard to believe. That old design still has better security and reliability than Windows or Linux boxes. Most AS/400 deployments I run into just don't... have... downtime... They also pretty much manage themselves.

I'd like to see FOSS do designs like that [minus the interface & API]. The labor advantage might lead to something pretty awesome. Meanwhile, they keep building complexity on top of UNIX architecture with a few stragglers on better OS architectures. Not much hope there. Fortunately, CHERI (capability) and SAFE (tags) are each building on mechanisms System/38 used for software reliability and security. An academic team or company might build something great on top of it. Still holding out some hope!

[1] [http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/Chapter8.pdf](http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/Chapter8.pdf)

<comment> vezzy-fnord Also worth noting is that IBM i had one of (if not probably the) first implementation of containers, in the form of LPARs.

<comment><USER2> True. Add that many "inventions" in virtualization field were in VM/370 in... the 70's. Including running itself on itself which has been celebrated in several news articles for different prototypes over the past few years. Except that was a production system. ;)

<comment><USER3> Add that IBM tried to kill VM multiple times, and wanted everyone using System/360 to standardize around OS/360.

"The Mythical Man-Month" is the story of OS/360\. Hence VM still exists.

<comment><USER2> Lol @ last line. Well-put.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article says that log-structured apps and filesystems conflict with underlying SSDs, because those are doing similar things and the two don't play well together. But then it says that "products that already incorporate log structured I/O will have a definite advantage" in the future. How can they have an advantage if they're conflicting with the storage layer? Is this a contradiction, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> The paper [0] has some suggestions: an API (already existing and somewhat supported, called TRIM) to tell the disk that certain sectors are no longer in use, and atomic writes.

I guess I buy the claim that you're better off starting with a log-structured file system that will use new APIs to allocate and free chunks on the SSD, than to use a conventional file system that the SSD tries to optimize

[0] [https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/inflow14/infl...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/inflow14/inflow14-yang.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yup, storage is going to change a lot. RAID is nearly dead. That means a whole lot of failure detection and correction needs to be reimplemented elsewhere in the stack. We'll also need to build storage layers that can deal with the crazy performance profile of SMR hard drives (at least, until SSD's are cheaper).

</comment><comment><USER7> Wait till memresistors get here. That will basically eliminate the distinction between ram and disk.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#1808](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#1808)

"They can potentially be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory, which would allow greater data density than hard drives with access times similar to DRAM, replacing both components.[14] HP prototyped a crossbar latch memory that can fit 100 gigabits in a square centimeter,[8] and proposed a scalable 3D design (consisting of up to 1000 layers or 1 petabit per cm3).[66] "

<comment><USER8> HP indefinitely postponed (canceled) memristors recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was under the impression that the storage model in the system/38 was part of what was carried forward into the as400. Not the capability model, as much as the lack of "files" because everything is just persistent objects/segments.

Is that not the case?

But I'm not really sure how this by itself solves the problems of modern SSD's. Problems caused by two things, the differing segment/page sizes between the upper layers (OS/filesystem/database/etc) and the need to rewrite static portions of the SSD in order to wear level the entire address space. (and to a lesser extent the need to update small portions in the middle of existing pieces of data).

Its the second part that seems to be forgotten by lots of people suggesting alternatives to the current storage stack. Whats really necessary is a higher level communications protocol between the flash and the filesystem. One that provides the metadata to the ssd about the sizes of individual "objects" so that they may be keep together as atomic units. That way the flash layer knows if a write is to a larger object, or a new object itself that can be managed separately.

</comment><comment><USER10> Good to see Robin Harris' article on the front page of HN (we live in the same small town and a mutual friend introduced us).

A little off topic from the article: I think the biggest tipping point is the decreasing cost of cloud storage because large companies like Google do so much of their time critical processing with data in RAM (spread over many servers) and these servers can re-purpose a lot of their disk I/O capability to service low cost cloud storage.

<comment><USER11> Can't believe I've seen two people from there on the same day on HN! Flabbergasted. Grew up there, currently living just up the rim.

Re: your comment, I'm curious to see how the I/O capacity of those servers could be distributed for cloud storage. I would imagine that even with 10Gbps if those machines are really cranking, they could have a difficult time provisioning network I/O for a storage service.

<comment><USER10> Email me when you will be in Sedona and we can have coffee. I can contact Robin to see if he is available.

re: I/O capacity: I was commenting on how Google, etc. can provide such inexpensive cloud storage, not access speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the storage company Nimble may have figured this out.

<comment><USER13> What makes you think they have? Do you have a blog post or statistical data that supports this notion? Please, share!

<comment><USER14> Not yet but the rep is taking us to the big game— a fully catered private box. I'm sure I'll hear about it there.

<comment><USER15> If they had truly solved this problem they wouldn't need to take you to "the big game" to do sales - you'd be taking them to "the big game" to be customers...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Homeland Security: Crypto makes it harder for Feds to find "terrorist activity" - <AUTHOR> https://www.dhs.gov/news/2015/04/21/remarks-secretary-homeland-security-jeh-johnson-rsa-conference-2015 <comment><USER2> Here's a few that they forgot to add to the list:

* The fact that all citizens aren't required to log all activity of any sort with the government so that government officials and scan the log files for patterns makes it harder for Feds to find "terrorist activity."

* The fact that some things require warrants makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* The lack of an all-knowing, all-seeing eye makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* Considering people as human beings rather than just numbers on a screen makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* The fact that all locks aren't required to register a master key / combination with the government so that any government official can bypass any lock at any time for any reason makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

While we're at it:

* Government officials that break the laws and get little or no punishment reduces public confidence in the rule of law. This leads to citizens viewing the government as an antagonist which makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

* The government spending copious amounts of money on the War on Drugs rather than repurposing said money to finding terrorists makes it harder to find "terrorist activity."

<comment><USER3> If everyone was in a cage there would be no terrorist activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >In the name of homeland security, we can build more walls, erect more screening devices, interrogate more people, and make everybody suspicious of each other, but we should not do this at the cost of who we are as a nation of people who cherish privacy and freedom to travel, celebrate our diversity, and who are not afraid.

I feel the ending speaks more against it than for it. It's mentioned because it is a fact. It is a fact that strong encryption helps those who wish to communicate in secret for dubious purposes.

It's not a very pretty fact. Because it means if the average citizen does not wish to be spied on or wishes to have a secure line of communication - so must "the bad guys".

Unfortunately this isn't an easy problem to solve.

<comment><USER5> Sure it is. The NSA can stop mass monitoring of U.S. civilians. The reason for the sudden growth in encryption is purely because of their blatant monitoring of U.S. citizens as terrorist's.

<comment><USER4> Your solution doesn't address the problem. The problem is not a rise in encryption but the government not being able to read encrypted communications.

Unless you are suggesting that all encrypted communication should be assumed to be terrorist communication - and the only reason this assumption is now considered unsafe is because a rising popularity of using encryption due to NSA surveillance? If that is your point, I hope you see the flaw in it.

<comment><USER6> _The problem is not a rise in encryption but the government not being able to read encrypted communications._

How is this the problem? As far as anyone knows publicly, breaking encrypted communications has resulted in zero terrorism arrests. Given that US citizens are supposed to not be under general suspicion all the time, how is encrypted communication a big deal? How is breaking that encryption the problem?

<comment><USER4> I think you're ignoring the context of my statements.

Let's assume two things off the bat:

       a) The government is only surveilling people under reasonable suspicion. [1]

       b) Encryption is not a confirmation of illicit activities.

The problem:

       1) Government has reason to suspect Person A

       2) Government cannot see their communications due to encryption

       3) Government cannot investigate any further due to encryption

In the past they could monitor communications of a suspect and determine whether or not the suspicions were true. This has prevented a number of crimes - both drug related, mafia/gang/cartel related, and terrorist related. With encryption methods becoming commonplace - the government can no longer do what they have been doing and these once preventable crimes are becoming less preventable. Encryption is now too powerful and secure.

This is not a problem in and of itself. It's a good thing for citizens too! The problem is that crimes that were once preventable through surveillance are becoming impossible to survey.

The solution is to not weaken encryption - but find other methods of confirming suspicions on a suspect who is under reasonable suspicions of illicit activity. [2]

[1] We know this to be false, but go along with me here

[2] Which is what is being asked for: "We need your help to find the solution."

<comment><USER6> I reject your assumption (a) categorically. By now, we've seen enough leaked material to believe that the NSA and FBI surveill everyone they can. The NSA and FBI apparently believe that _everyone_ is under suspicion. I reject that belief and your assumption.

<comment><USER4> See the footnote cited as [1] in assumption `A`. This does not make the argument itself false. It makes the implementation and practice flawed.

Due to improper practice, people no longer trust the government to draw its own line in the sand and declare "We shall not cross this line!"

Rightfully so! But that still does not take away the reality of the situation:

Improved encryption methods means secure communications of which cannot be intercepted or prevented by a government body with the goals of protecting its citizens. This poses a danger to the citizens.

Now the citizens can accept that danger and keep their own communications secure from a government they no longer trust to stay within the drawn lines - or they find an alternative solution. Or they accept the fact that their desire for personal privacy is worth more than their security and make that sacrifice.

I'll save you the time of finding the quote.

"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see the problem here, there are other ways to hunt terrorists then parsing everyone's emails and phone calls.

Regardless of what terrorist do, most still have to act outside of the internet, and those who do terrorist activities solely on the internet are already using encryption. Also, the government still has access to tap phone calls and get copies of people's emails through the warrant process, the only thing the private sector is doing is making it harder for people to break the law, isnt this a good thing?</comment>