I mean, it’s super-rare, but I was putting objects in AWS S3 while holed up writing code in my dorm room at Howard in late 2006-early 2007, so... https://twitter.com/infosecjae/status/1201977004561698816

It’s not impossible.

I don’t know if I ever gave this presentation (probably not), but I was building a cell phone backup thing back then. My “cofounder” came to me with S3 and was like, “What do you think you could build with this?” I wrote an app that sent phone contacts into S3.

This is also a nice lesson in not knowing WTF you were building. I was building effing iCloud lmaoooooo. (I know that sounds crazy, but seriously. If they hadn’t been deleted some of my college classmates’ phone numbers are still in S3 somewhere )

And just in case you’re wondering what “app” I was writing in 2006, it was a PalmOS app. I’d just come off spending 6 months at IBM stressing like hell writing for that OS in C. A lot of people on campus had Palm Treo 650s haha. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS 

Facebook was on campus at that point (Howard got it in 2004), and people used to periodically post, “Lost all my phone numbers, send me yours!” When “cofounder” asked me what to build with S3, that was the first thing that came to mind.

We had some infighting, though, and the project never made it out of our hands (IIRC). It also taught me about working with ppl who will go incorporate stuff and not include your name on any the paperwork, but d’ahhh well.

Story time’s over :)

One more thing: this little anecdote is why if you ever see me talking to students (especially focused on STEM), I will tell them to take a business class or two.

Something that talks about business models and IP, preferably.