February 2016 Articles

Y Combinator has always used Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the past. AWS sponsored Y Combinator startups. Interesting move to DigitalOcean for the W16 batch and alumni.

We’re excited to announce that DigitalOcean will be giving $250,000 in cloud hosting credits to YC’s W16 batch and alumni.

Lots of YC founders are already huge fans of DigitalOcean. Their cloud control panel is dead simple, their customer success team offers excellent support, and they provide a great price-to-performance offering.

On September 14th, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves for the first time. And the story is fascinating:

It took years to make the most sensitive instrument in history insensitive to everything that is not a gravitational wave. Emptying the tubes of air demanded forty days of pumping. The result was one of the purest vacuums ever created on Earth, a trillionth as dense as the atmosphere at sea level. Still, the sources of interference were almost beyond reckoning–the motion of the wind in Hanford, or of the ocean in Livingston; imperfections in the laser light as a result of fluctuations in the power grid; the jittering of individual atoms within the mirrors; distant lightning storms. All can obscure or be mistaken for a gravitational wave, and each source had to be eliminated or controlled for. One of LIGO’s systems responds to minuscule seismic tremors by activating a damping system that pushes on the mirrors with exactly the right counterforce to keep them steady; another monitors for disruptive sounds from passing cars, airplanes, or wolves.

For a quick primer on gravitational waves, check out this PHD Comic on gravitational waves.

Great article.

When it comes to ad-supported services, pundits everywhere are fond of the adage “If you’re not the customer you’re the product”. It’s interesting, though, how quickly that adage is forgotten when it comes to evaluating the viability of said services.

A strong voice on the United States Supreme Court has died. Justice Antonin Scalia died at age 79. While I may not always agree with his opinions, he made a large impact on our nation’s highest court.

Justice Scalia began his service on the court as an outsider known for caustic dissents that alienated even potential allies. But his theories, initially viewed as idiosyncratic, gradually took hold, and not only on the right and not only in the courts.

He was, Judge Richard A. Posner wrote in The New Republic in 2011, “the most influential justice of the last quarter century.” Justice Scalia was a champion of originalism, the theory of constitutional interpretation that seeks to apply the understanding of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution. In Justice Scalia’s hands, originalism generally led to outcomes that pleased political conservatives, but not always. His approach was helpful to criminal defendants in cases involving sentencing and the cross-examination of witnesses.

It’s amazing how associations can condem people, contracts and erode trust. From Antonin Scalia’s obituary:

In 2004, for instance, he went on a duck-hunting trip with Dick Cheney, who was then vice president and a litigant in a case before the court over whether Mr. Cheney would have to reveal who had appeared before his energy task force. When the trip came to light, Justice Scalia issued a 21-page defense of the trip and refused to disqualify himself from the case.

“While the political branches can perhaps survive the constant baseless allegations of impropriety that have become the staple of Washington reportage, this court cannot,” he wrote. “The people must have confidence in the integrity of the justices, and that cannot exist in a system that assumes them to be corruptible by the slightest friendship or favor, and in an atmosphere where the press will be eager to find foot-faults.”

And from current day.

A longtime senior official [Richard Lombardi] in the Air Force has been removed from his job by the service secretary after he disclosed that he had not reported his wife’s ties to the defense contractor Northrop Grumman before he was selected to be one of the service’s senior weapons buyers…Lombardi was not a part of the team that selected Northrop Grumman’s design for the new bomber, Karns said Friday.

There is an extremely important discussion happening right now around Apple, privacy, “back-doors”, terrorism, hacking and encryption. If you’re not tuned in, there are countless folks chiming in from across the technology industry in support of Apple.

Summary of the Issue

From Bloomberg

A federal judge ordered Apple Inc. to help the U.S. Justice Department unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. Federal investigators haven’t been able to unlock the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, who carried out a Dec. 2 shooting that killed 14 people at a holiday party, the government said in a filing in federal court in Riverside, California. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym on Tuesday ordered Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to the FBI to recover information from the phone…

Farook was using an iPhone 5c owned by the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health with an iOS 9 operating system. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, were killed in a gun battle with police after the attack on his co-workers. The Justice Department wants Apple to provide customized software that will prevent the data on the phone from being deleted after 10 attempts to input the passcode. The software also must enable agents to send electronic passcodes to the phone, rather than manually typing them in, according to the application. The software will allow agents to automatically enter multiple passcodes to get around the encryption standards.

Apple’s Statement

From Apple:

The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.

This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake…

Further Reading Links

• Summary & Analysis by Ben Thompson
• Google’s CEO
• Microsoft President & Chief Legal Officer
• WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum
• ACLU Statement
• Electronic Frontier Foundation Statement and blog post from October
• TechCrunch - “Why Apple Is Fighting Not To Unlock iPhones For The Government”
• Macworld - “Why the FBI’s request to Apple will affect civil rights for a generation”
• BuzzFeed - “‘Apple chose to protect a dead ISIS terrorist’s privacy over the security of the American people,’ Sen. Tom Cotton says, while Sen. Dianne Feinstein vows to introduce a bill to force Apple to comply with a court order giving the FBI access to the San Bernardino shooters’ phone.”
• Edward Snowden
• Conversation on the ability to hack the iPhone’s security as it stands
• Thoughts on Apple’s Position by John Gruber

John Srouji, the senior vice president for hardware technologies at Apple, profiled alongside his division by Bloomberg Business:

Srouji runs what is probably the most important and least understood division inside the world’s most profitable company. Since 2010, when his team produced the A4 chip for the original iPad, Apple has immersed itself in the costly and complex science of silicon. It develops specialized microprocessors as a way to distinguish its products from the competition. The Apple-designed circuits allow the company to customize products to perfectly match the features of its software, while tightly controlling the critical trade-off between speed and battery consumption.

Kieran Healy, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University, commenting on the discourse around the ongoing legal case involving the FBI and Apple.

As a sidelight to this debate, I want to ask why is it that Apple, of all companies, is the one taking such a strong stand on this issue? It’s clear that Apple wants to resist the court order because of the precedent it would set–essentially requiring firms to break the security on their own products when investigators demand it. But that doesn’t answer my question. Why is Apple, specifically, fighting so hard on this?

Specifically, I keep seeing reports that Apple has unlocked “70 iPhones” for the government. And those reports argue that Apple is now refusing to do for the FBI what it has done many times before. This meme is completely inaccurate at best, and dangerous at worst.

Why the FBI’s request is so significant from a forensics point of view:

…What many haven’t considered is the significant difference — in the legal world — between providing lab services and developing what the courts will consider an instrument.

An instrument is the term used in the courts to describe anything from a breathalyzer device to a forensics tool, and in order to get judicial notice of a new instrument, it must be established that it is validated, peer reviewed, and accepted in the scientific community. It is also held to strict requirements of reproducibility and predictability, requiring third parties (such as defense experts) to have access to it.

In other words, were the courts to follow Zdziarski’s line of thinking and interpret the FBI’s request as one to produce an “instrument”, there truly is no guarantee of secrecy and in fact a burden of public peer review.

Rich Mogull at Securosis:

Don’t be distracted by the technical details. The model of phone, the method of encryption, the detailed description of the specific attack technique, and even the feasibility are all irrelevant.

Don’t be distracted by the legal wrangling. By the timing, the courts, or the laws in question. Nor by politicians, proposed legislation, Snowden, or speeches at think tanks or universities.

Don’t be distracted by who is involved. Apple, the FBI, dead terrorists, or common drug dealers.

Everything, all of it, boils down to a single question.

Do we have a right to security?

“The island nation [of Palau] has mounted an aggressive response to illegal fishing in their waters. How they protect themselves may help the rest of the world save all of the oceans.”

The oceans belong to everyone and no one, and the general perception is that they are too big to need protection. We also tend to think of fish as an ever-regenerating crop, there forever for our taking. But roughly 90 percent of the world’s ocean stocks are depleted or overexploited; one study predicts that by 2050, the sea could contain more plastic waste than fish. Though most governments have neither the inclination nor the resources to patrol the oceans, Palau is trying a different approach, and whether it succeeds or fails may have consequences for the entire planet.

Apple’s responses to common questions about the current legal proceedings with the FBI. Answers include:

• Why is Apple objecting to the government’s order?
• Is it technically possible to do what the government has ordered?
• Could Apple build this operating system just once, for this iPhone, and never use it again?
• Has Apple unlocked iPhones for law enforcement in the past?
• The government says your objection appears to be based on concern for your business model and marketing strategy. Is that true?
• Is there any other way you can help the FBI?
• What should happen from here?

Apple’s answer to that last question:

Our country has always been strongest when we come together. We feel the best way forward would be for the government to withdraw its demands under the All Writs Act and, as some in Congress have proposed, form a commission or other panel of experts on intelligence, technology, and civil liberties to discuss the implications for law enforcement, national security, privacy, and personal freedoms. Apple would gladly participate in such an effort.

Re/Code obtained a copy of the email Tim Cook sent to employees this morning:

Email to Apple employees from Apple CEO Tim Cook
Subject: Thank you for your support

Last week we asked our customers and people across the United States to join a public dialogue about important issues facing our country. In the week since that letter, I’ve been grateful for the thought and discussion we’ve heard and read, as well as the outpouring of support we’ve received from across America.

As individuals and as a company, we have no tolerance or sympathy for terrorists. When they commit unspeakable acts like the tragic attacks in San Bernardino, we work to help the authorities pursue justice for the victims. And that’s exactly what we did.

This case is about much more than a single phone or a single investigation, so when we received the government’s order we knew we had to speak out. At stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people, and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.

As you know, we use encryption to protect our customers – whose data is under siege. We work hard to improve security with every software release because the threats are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated all the time.

Some advocates of the government’s order want us to roll back data protections to iOS 7, which we released in September 2013. Starting with iOS 8, we began encrypting data in a way that not even the iPhone itself can read without the user’s passcode, so if it is lost or stolen, our personal data, conversations, financial and health information are far more secure. We all know that turning back the clock on that progress would be a terrible idea.

Our fellow citizens know it, too. Over the past week I’ve received messages from thousands of people in all 50 states, and the overwhelming majority are writing to voice their strong support. One email was from a 13-year-old app developer who thanked us for standing up for “all future generations.” And a 30-year Army veteran told me, “Like my freedom, I will always consider my privacy as a treasure.”

I’ve also heard from many of you and I am especially grateful for your support.

Many people still have questions about the case and we want to make sure they understand the facts. So today we are posting answers on apple.com/customer-letter/answers/ to provide more information on this issue. I encourage you to read them.

Apple is a uniquely American company. It does not feel right to be on the opposite side of the government in a case centering on the freedoms and liberties that government is meant to protect.

Our country has always been strongest when we come together. We feel the best way forward would be for the government to withdraw its demands under the All Writs Act and, as some in Congress have proposed, form a commission or other panel of experts on intelligence, technology and civil liberties to discuss the implications for law enforcement, national security, privacy and personal freedoms. Apple would gladly participate in such an effort.

People trust Apple to keep their data safe, and that data is an increasingly important part of everyone’s lives. You do an incredible job protecting them with the features we design into our products.

Thank you

Over the weekend, James Comey, Director of the FBI, wrote an open letter from his perspective:

The particular legal issue is actually quite narrow. The relief we seek is limited and its value increasingly obsolete because the technology continues to evolve. We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land. I hope thoughtful people will take the time to understand that. Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead.

Adam Lashinsky interviewed Tim Cook on February 12th (prior to the FBI court case news). The interesting notes comes in how Tim approaches Research and Development (R&D) with Lashinsky pushing Tim around automobile R&D:

[Adam:] Indeed. You’ve talked generally about autos, but you haven’t commented on Apple’s widely reported car project. Wikipedia has a long list of prominent auto industry people who have joined Apple. Why not take this opportunity to say, “You know what? It’s basically all there, and this is why we’re doing it”?

[Tim:] Yeah, I’m probably not going to do that. The great thing about being here is we’re curious people. We explore technologies, and we explore products. And we’re always thinking about ways that Apple can make great products that people love, that help them in some way. And we don’t go into very many categories, as you know. We edit very much. We talk about a lot of things and do fewer. We debate many things and do a lot fewer.

[Adam:] Can you afford to spend relatively large amounts of money on things you don’t end up commercializing?

[Tim:]Well, could we? Yes. But would we? We don’t have to spend large amounts to explore. So I can’t talk about this certain area that you’re talking about. But when we start spending large amounts of money, we’re committed at that point. But we explore things with teams of people. And that’s a part of being curious. Part of exploring technologies and picking the right one is becoming so familiar with it you can see ways that it can be used. And for us, we’ve never been about being first. We’ve been about being best. So we explore many different things, many different technologies. And at first we might not know what product it might wind up in. And then later we’ll see that that really cool technology enables maybe things that we’re doing today to take on something bigger, maybe something new. But once we start spending gobs of money–like when we start spending on tooling and things like that–we’re committed.

Another good summary by Ben Thompson (last one for a while until something new comes to light) regarding the Apple v. FBI litigation.

The dispute between Apple and the FBI is a much closer question than it is being framed as in most of the tech press. In large part this is because the dispute itself is being serially mischaracterized by both Apple supporters and detractors.

Apple supporters are, in my estimation, too easily conflating the security issues at hand with the more fundamental debate about encryption; detractors are trivializing the the significance of the FBI’s request by suggesting they simply want Apple to unlock the phone.

My goal with this piece is to, in as plain of language as possible, lay out the issues at hand, give a framework to think about them, and explain why I am ultimately supporting Apple’s decision.

Given June 12, 2005 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California

I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college. And this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. And so at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, and I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. And don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and thankfully, I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who wanna to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It’s Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 60s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then, when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

---

The prepared text from this speech was posted on Stanford’s website but I found it differed slightly from his as-delivered version. The text above reflects the speech as Steve gave it.

A detail I missed in the initial news reports. This was filed by the Associated Press on February 16th:

The couple took pains to physically destroy two personally owned cell phones, crushing them beyond the FBI’s ability to recover information from them. They also removed a hard drive from their computer; it has not been found despite investigators diving for days for potential electronic evidence in a nearby lake.

Leads me to wonder how much information, if any, the FBI might find on Syed Farook’s work iPhone.