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M: Show HN: Australia Quiz (Sound) - gaving https://terraaustralis.herokuapp.com/ R: gaving Weekend(ish) project to play with React. [https://github.com/gaving/terra](https://github.com/gaving/terra) Related:- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178358) R: simonblack Faulty quiz - needs work.

M: Twitter Picks Berlin For German Headquarters - platzhirsch http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-25/twitter-picks-berlin-for-german-headquarters-focus-says.html R: untog I'm surprised more companies _haven't_ chosen Berlin. Big startup scene, desirable location, great transit links... seems to be obvious to me. I must be missing something. R: blumentopf I can certainly think of German cities with advantages over Berlin. Karlsruhe for instance has an extremely awesome scientific community, its university is in fact home to the oldest computer science faculty in Germany and coincidentally was the first place in Germany to have leased-line Internet connectivity (in 1989). There's an abundance of excellent engineers coming out of the university which is definitely a plus when you're staffing a startup. Also, much nicer weather compared to Berlin and a much more affluent region with better infrastructure and more companies. Frankfurt/Main also comes to mind, the secret Internet capital of Europe and home to the largest Internet exchange in the world (DE-CIX). I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin. R: untog _I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin._ I know it sounds like that shouldn't matter, but it does. People want to live in desirable places with other amenities than just good jobs. I would agree that Frankfurt/Main would be a good destination too, though. R: sneak This is great news for the Berlin technology scene, if for the halo effect alone (big brands attract big talent). Berlin is indeed a great place to live, and I think a lot of companies will follow suit in the next few years. Accordingly, rents will continue to rise sharply and all of the qualities that initially made Berlin an above-average-attractiveness choice for employees and employers alike will eventually evaporate - but that will take ten years, and lots of people and companies will build lots of awesome stuff in the interim, all while saving tons on rent and other living expenses. Give it a whirl! 'tis a fantastic place. Ping me when y'all arrive. R: tferris Great news. Hamburg is usually very good in attracting strong online brands (Airbnb Germany, Facebook Germany) but this time they weren't and it seems that Hamburg as a online/tech destination is slowly questioned. Hamburg and the people there are quite nice but Berlin it's a completely different ball game. Everyday, VCs shotgun boatloads of money to Berlin based startups, the largest European VC are moving to Berlin and really EVERYBODY is in Berlin right now. R: excuse-me Although presumably, like Google and Facebook, it will still claim that it has no substantial presence in Germany and all it's Eu revenue is generated in Eire and so pay no tax. R: herge The real name is Ireland, or the Republic of Ireland if you need to disambiguate. R: justincormack The "real name" depends on what language you speak. It has two official languages, and in one is Éire. Edit: see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state> not sure why getting downvoted for factually correct information. R: herge The real name is what people who live there actually use. You only sound like a twat when using Eire, or calling Irish "Gaelic". R: disgruntledphd2 Well, yes and no. I agree that I have never heard anyone call the country Eire (except for me when posting letters from the UK), it still remains that the canonical interpretation of our constitution is in Irish, as as such , the name Eire takes legal preference above the Republic of Ireland. R: excuse-me Ireland is ambiguous and likely to annoy half the inhabitants, Republic of Ireland sounds like legal small print and "the south" is a euphamism if you don't know who you are talking to in a bar in Belfast. So Eire is safest ;-0 R: urgeio Great news for Berlin, the place to be right now. I am using this thread for a shameless plug: if you are interested to come to Berlin and to work here please check out opportunities at our brand new startup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3653322> R: suking Why does twitter need so many employees? I could see like 50... Nothing has changed in years there, they have 1 product which is posting 140 characters. Everything else is pretty basic, just big scale. I don't get the need for thousands of employees. R: magnusgraviti I think they need not so many programmers but staff for call-centers, marketing, R&D etc. R: suking What - call centers??? R&D? What are they researching - how store 140 characters? R: magnusgraviti They have millions of companies posting twitter messages and they provide analytics and other tools for businesses. I think they need a lot of people at call centers, support department etc. All we see as users is 140 characters + apps <https://twitter.com/#!/download> as there is nothing to ask about :) Look at <http://business.twitter.com/> they have more than just 140 characters. R: platzhirsch Kind of a game changer given that Google and Facebook chose Hamburg and Munich for Germany. R: sneak Munich is stuffy and expensive, Berlin is comparatively poor and open verrrry very late. The game hasn't changed - it's just a totally different environment, for vastly different hiring objectives.

M: Best VC firms database - thankuz http://venture-capital-firms.findthebest.com/ R: zzleeper What are their sources? Is it <http://www.nvca.org/> ?

M: Reddit Offline in EU 9am-5pm in Support of Don't Wreck the Net - OJFord https://dontwreckthe.net/ R: OJFord GDPR has already 'challenged' the open internet, by causing many American websites to decide it's simply not worth it, and just block European access, as discussed previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17714152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17714152) R: ToFab123 Good. Gives room for competition and creation of alternatives to the American sites we are pested with right now.

M: Starting sometime today, Safari on Yosemite cannot play HTML5 YouTube videos - gittes https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/youtube/safari/mlfwY4s-1Lg R: gittes Seems youtube.com did some update that is making HTML5 video playback stop working with a loud squeak and no play, or dropping to Flash. I'm experiencing it myself. Submitted link to YouTube Google Product Forums. From initial post: About an hour ago, all HTML5 playback just stopped. I was running OS X 10.10.1 (now 10.10.2) and Safari 8.0. Videos would either switch to the Flash Player, throw an error, make a loud "squeak" noise and throw an error, or just crash the Safari page outright and forcing a Force Reload. I know this is unrelated to the recent Yosemite update, as this issue was happening before I installed the update. In the meanwhile, Chrome does work. R: gittes Is it "sometime today" or "some time today"?

M: At what point should an intelligent machine be considered a person? - spacey2 http://robohub.org/at-what-point-should-an-intelligent-machine-be-considered-a-person/ R: basicplus2 When it has self awareness R: CuriouslyC Young babies don't display any signs of self awareness.

M: Warren Buffett Flags a Successor - grellas http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574630162624198.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories R: jeffmiller "He is extremely well-trained, reads 500 pages a week and does his own deep- dive research." Sounds like a Buffett guy. Generating returns on a fund of Berkshire's scale is no joke, though. Good luck to him.

M: Brief History of JIT in MoarVM for Perl 6 - Ultimatt http://brrt-to-the-future.blogspot.com/2018/07/perl-6-on-moarvm-has-had-jit-for-few.html R: 3rdAccount I'm always impressed with the size of the problem that the Perl6 core team is trying to solve relative to the number of volunteers and funding. It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and presentations I've watched. It just needs some better performance before I'll really start using it and I think there are many in the community that are in the same boat. It's a pity, because it's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. I would try to help, but when it comes to computer science I am a consumer and not a producer (I have my own large projects in my domain :)). R: tyil > It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and > presentations I've watched. It just needs some better performance before > I'll really start using it I'm also very impressed in how the language is turning out. It's a pleasure to write and read. I know most people really don't like Unicode operators, but I find them to be very useful. They're short and concise, and allow those writing mathematical equations to stick to their regular symbols. And for those that don't know how to do Unicode on their OS/editor, there's ASCII equivalents. Performance-wise, it seems to be fast enough for all my personal projects, and it's getting faster every release. Is there a certain piece of code that you want to have running within a certain amount of time? That would allow you (and Perl 6 devs) to have a goal to look at, and work towards. R: 3rdAccount Running grammars past very large datasets. You hear enough people talk about the performance and you decide to stay away a bit until things improve. I also have some numeric code and that is generally probably not a great P6 fit (more of a Python + Numpy thing). As a general scripting language, P6 looks nice as a lot of features such as concurrency that are aren't super straightforward (Ex: python) seem to be dead simple in P6. R: b2gills Perl 6 was designed in part to allow PDL (Perl Data Language) type features to be added easily. In fact some things that you would do in PDL have already been added, they just currently aren't as fast as they could be. (1,2,3; 4,5,6; 7,8,9) "**" 2 (1,4,9; 16,25,36; 49,64,81) The above is specifically allowed to do all of the operations in parallel, but doesn't currently. (Perhaps even on a GPU) R: aidenn0 Why did I think the Perl 6 VM was called parrot? R: Ultimatt There is an intermediate language the Rakudo compiler is implemented in called NQP. That split from the Parrot project to support several VMs as the stuff emitted as the "compiled" code. For a while Parrot and JVM were supported simultaneously. With the addition of MoarVM the project moved away from supporting Parrot. There are other targets in development including JavaScript and most recently Truffle/GraalVM [https://github.com/perl6/nqp/commits/truffle](https://github.com/perl6/nqp/commits/truffle) Essentially a _lot_ happens within the Perl 6 project at a pace that's kind of surprising if you keep an eye on it. R: aidenn0 Thanks for the summary! R: totalperspectiv I appreciate the time taken to fill in the history! R: sunseb Is Perl 6 fast now? R: jdoege It really depends. The question really should be, "Is Perl 6 fast enough?" For my purposes, the answer is almost always yes. I can imagine some applications where the answer would be no, but then I would probably be looking at C/C++ for a solution, anyway. Language bench-racing has really begun to look counter-productive to me. R: b2gills Someone once posted code that they had written in both Perl 6 and C/C++. The Perl 6 code was shorter, arguably easier to understand, and they said it was also faster for their data. My guess would be that the strings had to be copied more often in the C/C++ code.

M: Code bullies - ShannonRohn In response to the harassment conversation.. I read the entire article a few moments ago. Interesting... Don't we want this young girl to be able to stand up for herself one day? Instead of looking at it as harassment in the adult world, shouldn't we be teaching her to 'code like a girl?' That should not only entail one thing individually, at her age we should be transforming her thought of inability into ability. What she learns now will shape her every being, as an adult. Teach young ladies that the opinions of others can be far off of your own intentions.. not to be bothered by it. Stand up to the code bullies, fight against it. The opinions of others don't matter, don't let it overcome you. With the teenage suicide epidemic in this country, we cannot afford to be defeated by words or thoughts of others that may shape us to who we become as a person. No, harassment is not okay, but not teaching this young girl how to really, and intellectually code like a GIRL, is not okay either. (Stand on the only floor in front of you) it's the only thing holding you up. Instead of running to her defense, making it a bigger deal than it is, will scare her too. I've been teaching youth cheerleading for 17 years. So I know all about teenage girl emotion. However, let's teach our children how to be strong without us. Lead the way now, so they can show us how to get there next time. R: jamesmp98 I'm confused?

M: Ask HN: How do you host your personal domain email accounts? - clappski I'm looking at getting an email service provider account to associate my own personal domains email address with. Who offers the best service/price? How much effort is it to host it myself? R: mattkrea Fastmail.com They are reliable and I like to know that it'll just work™. I've been a customer for over 3 years or so now. R: Artemix My old workplace uses that for their entire staff, and I use the personal 5€/month plan, with no complaint. R: sadris Epik.com seems to be the cheapest. Most providers are at least $10/mo but for only one address I'm paying $3/mo at epik R: rapnie With ProtonMail you get 1 custom domain and 5 addresses for $5/mo. R: feistypharit Migadu. Pay by number of mails sent. Not by number of domains. R: tumdum_ Zoho.com (it's free).

M: Bending Over Backwards - freerobby http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/bending_over_backwards R: Kylekramer So I guess Gruber is just giving up on even trying to be a bit objective anymore? This read more like a hurt comic book fan forum post about a bad review of his favorite superhero's movie than anything else. Worse battery life, a non improved screen, weak cameras and lack of 4G/flash are drawbacks, no matter how you slice it. The funny thing is Mossberg's review is overwhelmingly positive. R: spicyj The point is, the iPad's real competitors don't beat it in any of those categories except for camera. (Also, Gruber said in his own review that he got identical battery life to the previous model.) The Xoom is the only tablet that promises 4G and Flash and got mediocre reviews even without those components, which will probably make it run worse. R: greatDismay I have a Xoom and I don't know why people are giving it such a bad rap. It does everything I want it to do and it does it really fast. R: jarek I'm now going to be That Guy: one person disputing another person's statements about a mainstream consumer electronics device? Hacker News? R: ZeroGravitas He missed the criticism of the iPad covers: _"Unfortunately, I found the cover's magnetic latch came open in my briefcase, turning the screen on and wasting the battery. Also, the light gray color I had picked up smudges."_ R: fod Great, a review of a review.

M: Dynamic Pricing and Major League Baseball - jamessun http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is_dynamic_pricing_a_hit R: jamessun Link to the referenced paper, [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407)

M: Ask HN: What product most improved your quality of life? - miguelrochefort R: marapuru A good bed. There is no bed like my own. I have a good night's rest so I can fully take the next day again. I was doubting to write the next one. Since it's obviously not a "product", but want to mention anyway. My wife. She really completed me in such a way that it significantly improved my quality of life. She holds the mirror in front of me at the right times and works in an entirely different field, making her a great sparring partner. R: drakonka It's hard to pick just one. * Laser eye surgery in 2009 - I know it isn't really a "product", but it is one of the best purchasing decisions I've made. * Kindle - it is so much more convenient than reading or collecting physical books, and with the e-ink screen doesn't detract from that "book feel" for me * Tretinoin - this might be a weird one, but as someone who is very into skincare this single product makes me feel confident that I am effectively taking care of my skin for the long term. I don't have to worry about if I'm "doing it right", or bother with gimmicky expensive "texture-enhancing" or "anti-ageing" or whatever-the-next-buzzword-is products. Tretinoin has a very large body of research behind it. We know it works. A single tube of tretinoin (coupled with sunscreen!) saves me a lot of wondering and money. This is not to say I use nothing else at all, it's more like this one product and the knowledge base we have on it keeps me from spending money on otherwise expensive skincare that I don't need, which is _marketed_ to do the same thing as tretinoin but isn't actually shown to work like tretinoin is. R: ak39 How old were you when you did LASIK - and what did it fix? (I am in early stages of flirting with the idea - had 2020 vision till about 3 years ago. I am 47 now.) R: drakonka I was 21 at the time; I hear that this is a bit young to get that kind of procedure as my eyes may still change rapidly, but I went to a reputable doctor who ran various tests before concluding that I was a candidate, and luckily my eyesight is still going strong almost 11 years later. I can't remember exactly what my deficiencies were at the time to be honest, other than I could not see well far away. I was told I needed glasses but never bothered wearing them or paying attention to my sight other than knowing it sucked. When doing an eye test for my driver's permit I was one line away from not being able to legally drive without glasses, if that gives you any idea. Now there are apparently other options than LASIK which might work better for some. For example, a few years ago a coworker of mine got a procedure that he described as them basically inserting a lens into his eye instead of resurfacing part of the eye itself. Apparently it means if his eyesight changes sufficiently over the years he can just go back and get a new lens inserted! R: muzani Nice glasses. There are a lot of bad ones out there that I've been wearing for over 10 years. The bad ones DoS my brain with pointless information, greatly harmed my focus and ability to think, as well as gaming abilities. It's also made driving, especially in heavy rain, difficult and hazardous. The good one made life seem really high resolution. It reduces eye strain a lot, which is wonderful when you work with computers a lot and live in a sunny area. R: polyterative Peak Design messenger - solved all things bags in my life. Proud of having it on me all the time, beautiful and functional. Sennheiser PXC-550 - One of the best wireless headphones out there. I can keep them on 8 hours a day without any stress. Keychron K2, just a well-thought wireless/wired mechianical keyboard. Less fatigue and more confort, I can type 4x more text now. I've been using these every single day for years now. R: aynyc MacBook - Spent years developing software on windows/xterms, my company finally approved Mac for work. Safari Online - Getting learning material has never been so easy. Actually learning all of them is different :) AWS - I can get hardware resource without lengthy PO and approval. Wireless Headphone - Apple Airpod. A fully stocked and well equiped kitchen in the apartment R: tmm84 * My exercise bike - I have no reason not to get in some physical activity (rain, time, etc.). * My desk whiteboard - It helps so much when confirming/working out a solution. * My wireless mouse and keyboard - They fit my hands and I can put them away when the whiteboard is what I need. R: kleer001 A membership in the car sharing company Car2Go. It was amazing being able to be my own taxi driver and then drop off the car. Too bad it'll be leaving my home area soon. R: catacombs Wireless headphones. Bar none. The fact I can walk around my apartment and listen to a {book,podcast,song}, without worrying about cables or carrying my phone, has been amazing.

M: Ruby 1.9.1 released - vaksel http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google/browse_thread/thread/35e963933f9d0b1a?pli=1 R: rockbilly This is a duplicate of: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458357>

M: Ask HN: What projects have you made with boards like Raspberry Pi, Arduino? - akudha R: stevekemp When I was getting ready to take paternity leave I figured I'd either a) explore "hardware", or b) take a stab at learning mobile development. In the end I started playing with Arduinos. After a very short while I got a little addicted, but switched to using ESP8266 devices - because having onboard wifi made the hardware so much more useful. I've built, experimented with, and torn down a hell of a lot of projects in the three years since. But my absolute favourite project is nothing more than an LCD screen which shows me the next tram-departures from the local stop: [https://steve.fi/hardware/helsinki-tram- times/](https://steve.fi/hardware/helsinki-tram-times/) That project was hacked up in an hour or two, but later made much more "producty" \- being configurable with a web-browser, and being installed in a 3d-printed case I paid somebody to make for me. Over time I've added little hacks, so now it alternates between showing "$HOUR $DATE" and "$HOUR $TEMPERATURE" in the top-line. Because my wife would often ask me "Is it cold outside?" I've done more impressive things; such buying a random radio-based temperature/humidity sensor, then having to sniff for the packets, decode the bitstream, and inject the temp/humidity into an MQ queue. But for sheer practicality, and sheer usefulness, the always-on clock and tram display has been worth it. R: devenblake My Pi 3B is a media server right now. I have it hooked up through HDMI, converted to composite, and run to my Commodore 1702 so I can watch cartoons. It has probably around 80GB of movies and another 80GB of music, 10GB of books, and a couple gigs of pictures on a partition of a hard drive that's hooked up via a SATA bay. Over the years it's been an IRC server, a Tor webserver, an emulation station, and a backup computer to watch South Park after my old one died. R: user_agent Nothing very fancy: 1) A home server for hosting a couple small websites for free, instead of wasting cash on $5/mo VPS. 2) A cluster of PIs for training with distributed computing (Docker, K8s). 3) An EMP proof remote backup case with a Pi and a large, encrypted HDD -- mounted in a metal military case intended for storing ammunition. I keep it in my pal's place. R: aosaigh I'm currently working on a controller for my standing desk. The built-in switch was just a plain old up/down one. I'm using a relay switch, home bridge and an infrared height sensor to automatically raise and lower the desk to certain presets. Another project I have is to use the pi camera and a small display to detect movement and show a fact/quote/lyric on the screen. R: akudha wow, that standing desk idea is nice. Do you have a blog?

M: Use standard deviation (not mad about MAD - vasili111 http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2014/01/use-standard-deviation-not-mad-about-mad/ R: vasili111 Also look here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11737743)

M: It's easy to make something incredible. - dhotson http://unalone.tumblr.com/post/88825593/its-easy-to-make-something-incredible-all-you-do R: pkaler This reminds me of a passage from "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance" that I love to quote: _You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Just make yourself perfect and then paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together. The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together._ R: jamongkad That was a great quote. I guess no matter how much you know about the latest and greatest paradigms involved in the art of software. You can never truly become "perfect" if it does not become a part of yourself. And to extend that you can never truly become "perfect" if your description of software is not art, but work. When I think about it, it only shows how far I have to go to reach that kind of Zen like state. R: paulhart This brings to mind an old saying: You can't polish a turd The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd being polished there is a nugget of gold. Not every turd is hiding a nugget of gold. And not every polisher of turds has the capacity or understanding to find the nugget. The other saying that comes to mind is: There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it. R: unalone _The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd being polished there is a nugget of gold._ It's not that so much as that in the process of polishing the turd, it's possible for you to realize you're working on a turd and start over again. That's part of the revision process. One case that stands out to me was that in the writing of my novel, I had a 70-page part that I thought was great and slaved away on, then realized in one blinding moment that it was awful. I threw it away, rewrote the entire section over a day, and now it's the best part of the book. (I'll say in advance that the book wasn't exactly a nugget of gold, but at least I was aware of that when I published it. If I'd spent more time in it it could have become much better.) R: melvinram I don't doubt that making something awesome is about removing the unawesome parts. But what most people are missing is the sense of what is unawesome and what is awesome. This trait of having excellent taste is what most are missing... at least from my experience of interacting with others. The people who are really good at something have an evolved sense of what they are willing to accept. For example, I knew of a guy named Rod Weckworth who was/is really good with relationships. And I think he was really successful because he had a sense of what level of a connection he was willing to accept with people. He wasn't okay with having an okay relationship with people. He makes sure to write thank you notes, call on birthdays, etc. So more than just not letting shit stay, you have to have a nose for detecting shit. R: unalone Yeah! On IRC somebody read this and disagreed with me: something to the effect of "I've seen amateurs revise and they still churn out shit." But you can't just sit down and revise something. You've got to develop the ability to be self-critical, and that means learning what to be self-critical _of._ So in my case of an amateur writing a symphony, he'd have to be willing to learn just what makes symphonies suck, and if he's not willing to do that, chances are he won't be so successful after all. R: harpastum "In the same way I fancied that those nations which, starting from a semi- barbarous state and advancing to civilization by slow degrees, have had their laws successively determined, and, as it were, forced upon them simply by experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and disputes, would by this process come to be possessed of less perfect institutions" \- Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method I think that Descartes' thrust here is that building anything up slowly will introduce artifacts that have nothing to do with the optimal solution. Sometimes the only way to truly succeed is to come up with a truly amazing starting point. If you try to build off a bad idea, you will often get nowhere. From the article: "It baffles me that people think making...worldshocking pieces of work is a particular challenge. It's mainly a battle of endurance." I don't disagree with you here, but I think you are vastly underestimating the backbreaking effort in that single word: _endurance_. Try telling a marathoner that just hit the wall at mile 22 that all they need is a little more endurance. "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." \- Thomas Edison R: robotrout I was struck, on reading your post, the similarities between your premise and the premise of "Intelligent Design" advocates. To paraphrase both you and they, "How can something so perfect have occurred iteratively?" Not judging, just noting the similarity. R: harpastum I admit there is some similarity there, and it might be because I didn't fully explain myself, but I would argue that it's neither a perfect conception nor iterative development that creates true greatness, but repetitive rebirth. When you simply build on the past, you aren't considering its true intentions. How many laws are there in the US that are simply reactions to British rule (i.e. safety from the quartering of troops)? Should those laws be held in as high esteem as those laws that are truly based on human rights? Descartes continues in _Discourse on Method_ : As for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either other more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. I firmly believed that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust. The entirety of _Discourse on Method_ is a very interesting read. You can read the whole document at project Gutenberg (<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/59>). Wikipedia also has a decent write-up (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_method>). R: brc "The longer you try and deshit something, the less shit it is." Not true for the 20%, but true for the 80%. Software is a good example : all 1.0 versions are crap. The trick is to get to the next n revisions and still be interested in the project. You may end up with none of the original code, but it's the act of revision and correction that makes it better. All those who say you can't polish a turd, I say look at Windows. From version 1 to version 7, there's a gloss in the side of that nugget that you would not have believed possible 20 years ago. R: staunch Someone said it best, I can't remember who it was: _"It's like knowing a fabulous sculpture is hidden inside a block of marble, and all you have to do is remove the marble that isn't part of it. It's an encouraging thought, because it reminds you there is an answer, but it's not much use in practice because the search space is too big."_ R: echair If it's easy to make something incredible, this post should be, and it's not. It's ok, but it's not incredible. (Except in the original, literal sense, because of the fact that it's not in the colloquial sense.) R: unalone I'll explain something about this blog, because it's not something that I wrote specifically on the page and so it's not seen by a lot of the people that haven't been reading this daily. I don't use this blog like other people use blogs. I essentially write down every thought that comes to me, without planning it out or revising it. So there's a ramble about Valve on the front page right now, and not a particularly interesting one, and I'm aware of the fact that it's not interesting. I'm fine with that, because my blog isn't a marketing tool. It's simply a place where I store my thoughts. So this post was conceived of pretty much instantaneously, written in 5 minutes, and posted without a double check. I didn't even bother to go back and look at the spelling. It's all about intent. My blog is not a masterpiece in any sense other than the fact that I attempt not to filter myself in any way. But at the same time, this post was interesting enough to provoke a nice little discussion, and it was interesting enough for somebody to think it merited posting.

M: Java: All about 64-bit programming - AndreyKarpov http://vanillajava.blogspot.com/2011/07/java-all-about-64-bit-programming.html R: Khaki _As of mid 2011, for £1K you can buy a PC with 24 GB of memory and for £21K you can buy a server with 512 GB of memory._ I'm not sure where he gets his computers from but those prices seem to be at least a few years away. R: Roritharr [http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-10...](http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GeIL/DIMM_24_GB_DDR3-1066_Hex- Kit/663956/)? <\- 180€ for 24gb of memory... i think his prices are pretty accurate. R: obtino You also have to remember that to run 64-bit applications, you must specify the -d64 flag. Otherwise your app will run in 32-bit mode! R: peter_lawrey AFAIK -d32 was the default on some versions of Solaris, but -d64 is the default now. Windows doesn't support these options. Linux does support -d32 but it has to be installed seperately, otherwise -d64 is the default for a 64-bit JVM. R: abdulhaq A big win for 64bit java over 32bit is that the kernel can provide more memory to the 64 bit process. This is because the java heap has to be 'contiguous' memory, and this is difficult to offer when in 32 bit mode due to memory fragmentation. In 64 bit mode the kernel can cobble together disparate blocks of memory and make it appear contiguous to the process.

M: 12,000 year old pre-agricultural temple findings - Gobekli Tepe - jackchristopher http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/449/gobekli_tepe_paradise_regained.html R: tokenadult Wikipedia article on the temple: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe> Is anyone else troubled by the submitted article coming from Fortean Times? That's not usually considered a reliable source, as it doesn't fact-check the way many other publications would. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Times> R: davi I was troubled, but read the article. It was a little breathless, but seemed okay. Though I didn't like clicking through a link on HN and seeing, essentially, "Garden of Eden located!" I was suspicious enough that I googled Gobekli Tepe and found this Smithsonian article: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli- te...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html) So at least I knew the subject was valid before reading further on the submitted link. Definitely seems like a weird source though. R: jackchristopher I read all the links from Wikipedia entry and searched for more articles before submitting, but I liked this one. But all articles I found beside the Wikipedia one, had something I didn't like; they were boring, less information, or had needless speculation. But the submitted one despite the speculation had extra detail. I never heard of Fortean Time. I didn't know of their reputation. R: idm These time scales do cause one to consider: what is the lifetime of SGML, HTML, XML, RDF, ... How have those Gutenberg typefaces held up? I was in a British church last year, and the floors were made of carved granite, which were completely illegible.... People walking on the floors for centuries caused gradual wear. Chiseled granite!! What names or words were written? I don't know, but 12,000 years is a long time to propagate a certain signal... This causes one to consider... R: rjurney This is a must-read.

M: Ask HN: What would be a safe and secure VPN to use when I visit China - ForFreedom I will be visiting China in 2 days and found that most of the apps social network apps that we use in the US are blocked.<p>I would like to know a safe and secure VPN.<p>Thanks in Advance R: TravelTechGuy I've been successfully using proXPN on my laptops and tablets for a couple of years now. Used it all over the world, though not in China. They have several exit points, in different countries, to choose from. R: ForFreedom From what I heard the problem in China is that they would block VPN servers too. R: Zombieball I used PIA while in China with no issues. R: ForFreedom privateinternetaccess.com ?

M: After five years, "dancing baby" YouTube takedown lawsuit nears a climax - 001sky http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/after-five-years-dancing-baby-youtube-takedown-lawsuit-nears-a-climax/ R: jstclair The article summary of Universal Music's defense seems to say that since Universal had no procedures in place to determine if something was fair use, they can't be liable for the portion of the DMCA that punishes take-down attempts that are, in fact, fair use. Kafka-esque barely begins to describe this situation. I imagine that the defense will also introduce pictures of Universal compliance officers with their fingers in their ears as well. R: sageikosa We cannot be held liable for abuses we committed, because we didn't spend the effort to think before we acted. That about wraps it up... R: 001sky If this in fact is how it plays out in court, it would says alot about how USA laws are made (and form whom). Not a pretty picture for the great democracy. Public servants => providing carte-blanche to abuse the public interest. R: jgiancarlo <http://xkcd.com/343/> Panel 2 specifically. Fighting in a broken system does nothing. R: parfe Copyright has taken too much from society to benefit IP holders. Corporations have the power to erase context from your life. It reminds me of Soviets erasing people from history. Universal doesn't approve of your dancing baby? Sorry, but that event is no longer something you can freely distribute. R: Sumaso Worse yet, it appears that the best way to avoid this is to flat out ignore the law, rather than go along with it. Your video gets taken down? Just put it back up again and hope it wont get found a second time. R: 89a Or just upload it to a non-Google service seen as Google are happy to bend over and let the music industry/hollywood do whatever they want.

M: Ask HN: Why a big org like Amazon release a mediocer windows primevideo app? - anongoesprivate i have been using the Amazon PrimeVideo for Windows recently,mostly for downloading in hi-res and view on Weekend with out buffering issues.<p>the app seems to be lacking even Basic Q&#x2F;A in lot of things, for example a simple download feature they have is not downloading anything and if we minimize it the download restarts , it works very unpredictably.<p>so my question is how a Big org like amazon that produce stable platforms like AWS, but at the same time produce a mediocre products like this<p>what structure they have in terms of engineering, that&#x27;s making this differences? R: thesuperbigfrog It was probably written by an intern and maintained by an overworked team. I would recommend giving feedback using a bug reporting or feedback dialogue if it exists in the app. (I have no idea I don't use Windows at home and have never used the app.) If you downloaded the app from the Windows App Store, you could leave a review there and might get developer contact info for feedback there too. R: anongoesprivate yeah, i have given feedback via the help chat in the app already, I'm just curios how these simple things got missed, considering how huge the organizations is and it have most talented people in it, like what kind of process will lead to this, in a structured org like amazon R: speedgoose Different teams, different budgets. The app may also be made by another company. R: anongoesprivate between the copyright they will be paying for movies and shows, the development cost will be very minimal i think, their web app and android app is pretty good, as for last point , prime video seems like a major product , will amazon outsource it?

M: Post your Friendfeed ID here - rms http://friendfeed.com/kfischer is mine, feel free to follow me<p>I'd also like some more people to follow, so post here. R: utnick I made a little app to to help people find people to follow <http://livebloglist.com/> Here is a list of other people interested in new.yc: [http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina...](http://livebloglist.com/list/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com) R: engtech Pretty cool, but there's lots of dupes in the result. Would be great if I could put in my FF username and it would filter out the people I'm already friends with. R: engtech <http://friendfeed.com/engtech> <http://friendfeed.com/ruby> Here's a tool I wrote for importing your Twitter contacts into friendfeed: [http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to- fri...](http://internetducttape.com/2008/04/21/import-twitter-to-friendfeed/) Here's a ton of greasemonkey scripts I've written for Friend Feed: <http://internetducttape.com/tools/#friendfeed> R: mhartl <http://friendfeed.com/mhartl> The only service aggregated by FriendFeed that I currently use regularly is Twitter, so you might as well go to <http://twitter.com/michaelhartl> R: mhartl Update: now it's <http://twitter.com/mhartl> R: mpfefferle This post has singlehandedly killed my productivity for the entire day. R: rms I do what I can. R: immad <http://friendfeed.com/immad> R: paul <http://friendfeed.com/paul> R: rms Feature request: news.yc support! R: paul I would like that too. We just need per-user feeds from news.yc. Patrick has actually written the code, but I think that perhaps PG is concerned about the extra load. R: randomuttering <http://friendfeed.com/randomutterings> R: glenstansberry <http://friendfeed.com/glenstansberry> R: gourneau <http://friendfeed.com/joshuagourneau> R: philcrissman <http://friendfeed.com/philcrissman> R: jaredhanson <http://friendfeed.com/jaredhanson> R: codesurgeon <http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon> R: cryptovenom <http://friendfeed.com/cryptovenom> R: truebosko <http://friendfeed.com/truebosko> R: msnoulten <http://friendfeed.com/msnoulten> R: mwmanning <http://friendfeed.com/mwmanning> R: nilobject <http://friendfeed.com/nilobject> R: maheshcr <http://friendfeed.com/maheshcr> R: rantfoil <http://friendfeed.com/garrytan> R: jrockway <http://friendfeed.com/jrockway> R: STHayden <http://friendfeed.com/sthayden> R: justindz <http://friendfeed.com/justindz> R: rksprst <http://friendfeed.com/rksprst> R: mariorz <http://friendfeed.com/mariorz> R: mdemare <http://friendfeed.com/mdemare> R: pierrebombay <http://friendfeed.com/pierrel> R: brlewis <http://friendfeed.com/brlewis> R: jraines <http://friendfeed.com/jraines> R: adityakothadiya <http://friendfeed.com/aditya> R: gaborcselle <http://friendfeed.com/gabor> R: mk <http://friendfeed.com/emkay> R: jasoncartwright <http://friendfeed.com/jason> R: mpfefferle <http://friendfeed.com/pfeff> R: TrevorJ <http://friendfeed.com/trev> R: icey <http://friendfeed.com/icey> R: abstractbill <http://friendfeed.com/bill> R: rjb <http://friendfeed.com/rjb> R: adk <http://friendfeed.com/adk> R: talkeinan Great idea! <http://friendfeed.com/talkeinan> Feel free to follow me as well... R: mosburger <http://friendfeed.com/mikedesjardins> R: abstractwater <http://friendfeed.com/ettorepasquini> R: dustineichler <http://friendfeed.com/dustineichler> R: entelarust <http://friendfeed.com/entelarust> R: calvin <http://friendfeed.com/anwamehtar> R: sdpurtill <http://friendfeed.com/sdpurtill> R: kschrader <http://friendfeed.com/kschrader> R: madsimian <http://friendfeed.com/madsimian> R: juzmcmuz <http://friendfeed.com/juzmcmuz> R: hooande <http://friendfeed.com/hooande> R: lyime <http://friendfeed.com/dodeja> R: epi0Bauqu <https://friendfeed.com/yegg> R: nadim <http://friendfeed.com/nadim> R: awt <http://friendfeed.com/awt> R: ca98am79 <http://friendfeed.com/uglychart> R: nikpay <http://friendfeed.com/nikpay> R: theproductguy <http://friendfeed.com/theproductguy>

M: Microsoft sues TiVo over patent - wglb http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/01/18/daily50.html R: wglb By way of Groklaw: <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2010012014205446>

M: Sustainable bricks made from sewage - pseudolus http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2019/01/sustainable-bricks-made-from-sewage/ R: leed25d You too can live in a shit-brick house.

M: NoSQL Smackdown with Werner Vogels and MongoDB, CouchDB and Cassandra devs - stuhood http://thechangelog.com/post/457259567/episode-0-1-8-nosql-smackdown R: codexon Is there a transcript for this? R: oldgregg I can summarize. Mostly just people making snarky comments about opposing products. The guy from CouchDB is particularly annoying. Apparently he feels like he has to raise his voice and cut people off to defend his product. R: basugasubaku One the other hand, the discussion is punctuated with the audience yelling "Louder!" and "We can't hear you!" on top of a lot of background noise (including various interruptions from the audience). I got the sense you almost had to be loud and aggressive to be heard. It got kind of stressful to listen to. R: brandnewlow Listening to this, I'm struck by how wimpy and tame all the journalism/media panels were by comparison. We need to raise our game! R: brandnewlow The guys on this podcast mapped it out at the SXSW table I was sitting at over lunch. It seemed pretty clear to me there was going to be some spirited arguing when they got down to it. R: bradleyjoyce this was really great to see/hear these guys duking it out. props to @pengwynn for holding it down for mongodb against the big boys. R: janl Agreed, @pengwynn did a great job! R: jchrisa If it doesn't have a theme song, it ain't NoSQL! R: ncb000gt I hear you have to have a dance too?

M: Show HN: Nudj - One Touch iPhone Messaging App - 04rob http://nudjapp.com R: 04rob My friends and I created a new iPhone messaging app focused on speed and simplicity. You can send or respond to a request for a picture, location, yes/no, or quantity in as little as one touch. We'd love the community's feedback on the landing page or app itself. BTW, this app was also an experiment for serverless architecture, and utilizes AWS Lambda for the entire backend.

M: Google Announces Adsense For Mobile - luccastera http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/18/google-announces-adsense-for-mobile/ R: ivankirigin The elephant in the room with Google is locality. Where are the brick & mortar ads and coupons in g-maps? Will they incorporate GPS location to aid mobile Adsense? One problem with locality is that your average store front operator knows nothing about the internet. There are probably huge franchise opportunities here. R: jsjenkins168 Yes, based on a recent patent application and whats been hinted at, they have plans of incorporating location and time into mobile search results: <http://www.redherring.com/Home/22459> Mobile ads already have higher click through rates than most traditional sites (like > 5% in some cases), so the prospect of incorporating location and time sensitive ads could be huge. R: gustaf Lots of people have high hopes in location based advertising. For no reason, i think. at least not right now. [http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on- consumer-l...](http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-consumer-lbs) R: nreece I wonder when they'll officially launch Adsense for RSS (currently in private beta)?

M: Simlish, the language that defined The Sims - tintinnabula https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/7/21126705/the-sims-simlish-language-history-20th-anniversary-game R: stock_toaster The article reminded me of Pingu[1], which also used an invented Grammelot[2] named "Penguinese". Fond memories of watching Pingu with my kid. I'm not sure which of us enjoyed it more! Noot noot! [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingu) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammelot) R: alisonatwork There is a bit more of an in-depth take of the history of Simlish and the people who created it in this article: [https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game- tu...](https://www.techradar.com/news/simlish-how-an-improv-game-turned-into- the-most-recognisable-language-in-gaming) R: snthd The timing of the articles (both in the same week) makes it appear to be a PR push. [http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html) R: erk__ The reason for the timing is likely that The Sims was released on february 4th in 2000 so it is the 20 years anniversary. R: jeanvaljean2463 The Sims is where I learned the appropriate way to interact with others based on what provided higher relationship status. I grew up in a very rigid, structured family without a lot of external interaction so this was my primer to "succeeding" later in life. I still experience crippling anxiety from social interactions, but at least the The Sims provided an appropriate socialization path to allow for quasi normal relationships with coworkers. R: James_Henry I played quite a few of the Maxis games and I thought that the Simlish of the Sims was the natural progression from the Sim noises of SimCopter which can be heard here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU) R: TwoBit Sim Copter was indeed the first appearance of the Sims. The Sim character tree editor was first used for Sim Copter, which was in development concurrently with Sims. They were "project X" and "project Y" respectively. R: emilfihlman Heh, based on the title I first thought it was a novel domain specific programming language, not a human language!

M: Want a project? Buy BluWiki. All proceeds go to charity. - Sam_Odio http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160421557085#ht_884wt_1167 R: Sam_Odio You might remember BluWiki from an Apple censorship lawsuit a few months back. More info: <http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/apple-backs-down-blu> Of my web projects, BluWiki is Divvyshot's ugly sister. The site has always been much larger but has received a fraction of the attention. This would be a great move if you're looking for an instant source of traffic. R: ErrantX The auction isn't all that clear in some aspects... 1) What's being sold? The domain and content or the whole server/setup? 2) What's the current monthly costs like? R: Sam_Odio Everything you need to achieve massive wiki success (domain, similar domains, wiki, slicehost account, etc) is included. Another note: I was just told that our pagerank fell from 5/10 to 0. Probably happened a few months ago from wiki spam that we've been strugling with. If you implement a captcha you can might convince google to restore the PR. R: timdorr It's funny. I used to help out with the PackRat (Alamofire's Facebook game that came before Gowalla) Bluwiki site: <http://packrat.bluwiki.com/> But due to some heavy-handed community leadership I ended up creating my own: <http://packratwiki.com/> I'm not really involved with the operations of either (and don't play the game anymore), but I think I emailed you at some point or talked to you via your Talk page. I might end up snatching this up out of nostalgia. Could definitely be more monetized (look at Wikia for an extreme example), but I'd be more interested in the community-building aspects of it. Is Nathan Richards going to stay involved after the sale? That wasn't clear.

M: San Francisco residents can now switch to 100% wind power - vipulved http://CleanPowerSF.com R: masonic It's only accounting theater. The electrons still come from the same sources. R: ZguideZ That's super cool, but doesn't change the whole problem of exploiting planetary resources for personal gain R: vipulved Not sure which problem you are referring to and would like to hear more. It's cool that you can go to a website, spend 5 mins to fill out a form and start getting emission free power. A good step in the right direction.

M: Doom as a System Administration tool (1999) - ColinWright http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/ R: ColinWright Also relevant: Doom as an Interface for Process Management: [http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html) Doom SysAdmin Tool: [http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool) More: [https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration](https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+system+administration)

M: Google's Microsoft Moment - blasdel http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/googles-microsoft-moment.html R: ZeroGravitas Am I wrong or is this just not true: _"Google's recent development work on applications for mobile devices has often been delivered exclusively as applications for their own Android platform instead of as iPhone applications"_ I don't own an Android phone so maybe there's lots going on I'm not aware of but there seems to be plenty of stuff developed for a) any browser, b) any decent browser, c) iPhones specifically, d) java smartphones, e) Windows, f) Mac, g) Linux. He state's this is what Microsoft was like 5 or 10 years ago, and yet I think this is still true of Microsoft today. Certainly Microsoft sales folk I've recently come into contact with seem to be actively denying the existance of other browsers in relation to Sharepoint stuff. R: nostrademons Yeah, I was gonna point that out. I've got some friends & family members with iPhones, and they use Maps & GMail all the time. I've met someone on the Mobile-Maps team, and he's always carrying around at least 3 different phones because he has to develop for them all. I work on the search UI, and a rough ordering of the amount of time I spend on each browser goes something like Firefox > IE7 > IE8 > IE6 > Chrome > Safari > Opera > Konqueror. The only browser that _really_ gets screwed is Konqueror, and to a lesser extent Opera (sorry guys). There've been features that we launched for Firefox+IE but cut for Chrome due to time restrictions - yeah, it's embarrassing to not support our own browser, but it's less painful than cutting off 20% of the market. R: iamelgringo I've had this nagging feeling/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not comfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If someone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring system that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was keeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly. R: jsz0 Safe from what? Safe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third party provider. Being one of many millions of users does provide some security through obscurity in that respect. Chances are most of us are just not special enough to be legitimate targets. Safe from misuse by bad guys outside of Google via security problems? I'm pretty confident Google has some of the best engineers out there. You also have a strength in numbers thing going for you with Google. Lots of people are looking at it. Google is very high profile -- if they did have a leak you'd at least know about it. I can't say the same about some random provider. They could have half wit engineers who cover up data leaks. You might never know. Even bad providers can have sterling record if they choose not to report problems or simply have a run of good luck until someone copy & pastes the wrong command and every bit gets leaked. Safe from being an anonymous fraction of a statistic when Google aggregates its data? I'd be more worried about my ISP spying on me. Overall I think it's good to be aware of the risks but realistically there isn't a whole lot you can do about it no matter which provider you're using. If you were to separate all your different accounts to different providers you might at least spread the risk out. If you choose to run your own server(s) you quickly become the weakest link in the security chain. Even if you're a pro it probably won't be your full time job to administrate your servers so that already puts you at a disadvantage. R: tome What worries me about Google is not that it has my data, but that it has a _massive_ cross section of my data: * search records * e-mail * calendaring * documents * which youtube videos I've watched etc. I'm sure it's _much_ more than proportionally easier to abuse this information the wider the spread of it they have. R: jodrellblank You wish that's all they have on you - they also own doubleclick, and Google ads, two of the largest web advert providers in the world tracking you as you go to www.unrelated.example.org, and Google Analytics, one of the most popular web tracking extensions also tracking you as you go to www.anysite.example.org. Also any site that pulls graphs in from Google's public graphing API, or a sidebar from blogger or picasa. The bought DejaNews, so anything you post(ed) to Usenet is in their grasp, and they spider the entire web so if they can pull a probable forum name from your existing data then they can try linking them together. If you've ever used Google Maps to find directions, then the most likely place to find directions is from/to your home and from/to your workplace, so they can get highly probable locations for you. (Used it from an iPhone with GPS?). Shop with Google Checkout? Browse with Google Toolbar? Use any of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products> ? R: dflock Ok, serious question: what's the worst that could happen? Some internet entity (could be Google, could be someone else) knows everything about me - all my personal details, everything I've ever done on the internet that wasn't encrypted. What's the worst case scenario for me, realistically? R: jodrellblank WARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;) I follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting rapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to constrain ideas of "the worst" thing that could happen to be limited to things I can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is power and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in exactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul. (That is, within a small number of years, "the worst" thing could be very much worse, and in unpredictable ways). However, let's see: 1) "Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power" scenario --> Governments use phone companies to track "terrorists" by who calls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far fetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up suspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation mandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate Google.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so good, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power and starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are picked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical fraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in a week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender, sexual orientation, political leanings? 2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in the public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search all that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever wanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to forget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't get much worse? 3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto choice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google CCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web accessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed, people are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all companies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across systems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population- scale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by dint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different slants _influnece_ where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone? Which way you vote? 3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate, Apple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly training on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google mobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car stereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because you can talk in whole sentences and say things like "remind me to watch XYZ on channel 123 on Sunday" and it does. Google offer this for free because now they know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're talking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3). 4) Google starts accepting "bribes" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by some ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards. Not happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors results fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen. Forums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The only products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are those with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you _really_ buy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank because "it's the best free bank" (well, that's why you think you bank with them). 5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All international business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All international _political_ phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate isn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations. Information is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more information flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad things, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees, hackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that can happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn in someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch hunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that doesn't even notice us. We are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for those to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently pushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb. (And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it? Which company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart people, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale processing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you. Have you read "I have no mouth but I must scream"? [http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070227202043/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html) ;) ) R: jsz0 You forgot the obvious one: Google's secret robot army is unleashed and enslaves humanity. I find this possibility to be as valid as some of the ones you list. It could happen, sure, but Google ultimately cannot risk alienating their customers so they wouldn't do it. Even at Microsoft's peak the doomsday scenarios never came to fruition for the same reason. The first time Google does anything unsavory with the data they collect is the moment when they open the flood gates for their competitors to rush in. I do think there's some value in keeping information offline and people should consider that as a valid alternative. You don't really need to account for every second of your life in Google Calendar. You don't need to upload every single photograph you've ever taken. You don't need to geotag the photos you do choose to upload. You may not want to use Google Docs to store your bank account information. Part of this whole situation is consumers protecting themselves. R: rjurney The problem here is that in combination with Wave, Google is setting the platform that we are supposed to develop for a year or more before it exists. That IRRITATES the hell out of me. It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything. Watching the Wave introduction video... when I see that semi-euro, T-shirt wearing trim-bearded fuck up there on that stage with his falsely elegant peppy smart talk planning a 'boating trip', and the scripted passing back and forth with 'the best project manager in the world,' I see one thing and one thing only in my mind: Ballmer's sweaty bitch tits bouncing up and down, round and round, as he stomps and screams, vibrating to the tune of "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers!" At least Ballmer had the good sense to be ugly, which gave him an odd kind of dignity. I think I prefer this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/pwGXs> to this stagecraft <http://bit.ly/15aSar> because Google's culture of arrogance is starting to disgust me. R: freetard > It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: > pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything. Well no, Google Wave will be open source and they already published the whole protocol and API so people can build clones of it before it's even released. Microsoft releases proprietary API ran on secret protocol no once can clone unless they get sued or do crazy reverse engineering in a country where they can't be sued. Not quite the same thing. R: rjurney Granted - FOSS is good. But the traffic will still be running through google for almost all of this. And that, combined with their sole invention of this... I don't like it. I'm tired of them. They are too big. The worship bothers me. They've turned a corner. R: stilist Interesting theory. There have certainly been occasional questions about exactly how trustworthy the company is, but no lasting negativity that I've seen. I suppose it has been long enough - and Google is big and broad enough - that a real backlash could begin to appear. R: anigbrowl Agree. Extra points for the cartoon, which I hadn't seen before. R: dustice I've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser to OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key distiction that Google's offerings are /free/ and open-source. You don't like the OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want. No lock-ins, no harm to the user. R: trezor Chrome != Chromium. Anyone who has tried Chromium in Linux will instantly notice they are using a much less polished product. Chromium may be open source, but Chrome is not. R: ljlolel If I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right now (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful. Excepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work yet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the configuration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I see they have added many of them). R: trezor It has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain Chrome. Text rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't even configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that you are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode. R: tybris I thought we were past the short-sighted Microsoft is evil childishness. In general, if you think a large group of people is evil or stupid (especially if these people are known to be very, very smart), you are wrong and should be wondering why. If a company is growing its business is to be on the offense, challenging the competitors products. When it becomes too big to adapt to the changing needs of the customer quickly it needs to go on defense to protect its business. Has nothing to do with stupid or evil, just business. R: rdrimmie The post isn't about evilness (and in fact Dash has frequently defended Microsoft, as he states). The post is about a corporate entity growing past the point where the internal concept of 'self' that its staff has differs largely from the external concept of its identity that the public has.

M: Over a Million Are Denied Bank Accounts for Past Errors - GabrielF00 http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/over-a-million-are-denied-bank-accounts-for-past-errors/?hp R: DamnYuppie So if a person has an over draft, they repay the fees and interest, yet it is still a reason to disqualify them? That seems a bit to harsh to me. Yet being the NY Times is also likely that they left out other details of those they profiled, such as bad credit history or other things that would preclude them from getting a checking account. It seems that businesses, and our society in general, are moving to a state where all sins are held against you into perpetuity.

M: Ask HN: What new skills have you learned since shelter-in-place started? - johndavid9991 We don't know yet when could COVID-19 pandemic ends, so picking up a new skill or learning a new programming language/technology could be worth the use of your time. What new skills have you learned or started learning so far? If you are a developer, what learning resources do you recommend? R: pmdulaney I've had the time to start writing a book in earnest. I've used LaTeX extensively in the past -- albeit not in the past 5 years or so. * Refreshed my knowledge of LaTeX using the lualatex engine * Learned how to use the Memoir class * Learned how to use the subfiles package (highly recommended!) * Learned how to version control my chapters using Mercurial / MacHg * Learned how to use the Zettelkasten tool The Archive * Switched from Terminal to iTerm2 * Switched (mostly) from regular vim to MacVim (love it) * Discovered and am using vifm, the vi-oriented file manager (the type of classic nerdy Unix tool I love!) * Started using Typinator to ease work with The Archive * Started using aspell - a great spell checker R: johndavid9991 Wow, that's a lot! Thanks for sharing, especially iTerm2 and MacVim. R: pmdulaney A couple of tips for iTerm2: 1\. iTerm2 looks in .bash_profile at start-up, not in .bashrc. I imagine your system is the same, but I found the following advice in a forum which was pretty clever, I thought. If you have both a .bash_profile and a .bashrc and you're wondering which one iTerm2 is sourcing, type export BASH_CONF="bash_profile" somewhere in .bash_profile and export BASH_CONF="bashrc" in .bashrc. Then open up a new iTerm2 window and type echo $BASH_CONF on the command line to see which one got set. 2\. Being able to select something with the mouse and then paste it with a right-mouse click is great. Here's the right way of setting it up: a. Open iTerm's Preferences b. General> Selection> Check "Copy to pasteboard on selection" (for me this was the default) c. Pointer> Bindings> Double-click on "Right button single click"; Select "Paste from Clipboard" The _wrong_ way to do it would have been to just set up the right button click to paste from selection. That would be bad because you would lose the ability to paste something that you had copied, say, using Cmd-C in a Word document. R: krupan I think I'm getting a better handle on my anxiety issues. Also, I played with Legos for the first time in a long time. R: johndavid9991 Good for you. This is the part that I struggle the most, I quarantined for more almost a month and depression and anxiety kicks in the most when you are alone. R: DanBC Baking bread using a sourdough starter instead of yeast; noodling about with NodeMCU (really fun and dirt cheap) and BBC Micro:Bit (really fun, not as cheap as NodeMCU but still pretty cheap, and really easy for younger people to get started with); and I've just started pencil sketching. I'm an absolute total beginner, but it's enjoyable. R: pmdulaney A nice sourdough bread recipe with hi-res photos: [https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread- code/blob/master/bas...](https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread- code/blob/master/basics/sourdough.md)

M: The Cookie Cutter Guide to Charting in the App Store - jsatok http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/the-cookie-cutter-guide-to-charting-in-the-app-store/ R: wallflower Aside from the preachy tone, practical advice on iPhone marketing - send out a sexy rich HTML email the morning after your app is released to your targeted mailing list that tastefully showcases your brand new iPhone app with the all- important 'Available on the iPhone App Store' badge. Not explicitly mentioned in the linked article is that the more gorgeous and _non cookie-cutter_ your app's UI is, the better a chance it has of breaking through into the top charts. How else to differentiate your app from the standard UITableView/UITabBar drones out there? The best looking iPhone apps combine good looks with focused functionality. Weightbot <http://tapbots.com/weightbot/> Note: I've bought the MacHeist bundle before and I did recall getting the Voices launch email blast (and GMail search confirms) so I assume it was sent to Tap Tap Tap's (600k strong?!) mailing list only. R: jsatok The TapTapTap email was sent out to MacHeist's email list. When purchasing a bundle, you can specify if you don't want to be part of the list, but by default, you are: <http://grab.by/1n8R>. I've worked on some MacHeist developer relations projects before, and one of the benefits is the massive email list. Dan Grover, the developer of ShoveBox, participated in one of the bundles recently, and sums up his feelings in this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=945891>.

M: Asynchronous Multi-Threaded Parallel World of Swift - leogdion https://learningswift.brightdigit.com/asynchronous-multi-threaded-parallel-world-of-swift R: alfanick 7x "How can I deliver a better user experience with asynchronous operations?" sign-up form, impressive!

M: Ask HN: Stemmers in ruby, any good? or should I just go ahead and write my own? - arindam_ The most popular option seems to be https://github.com/aurelian/ruby-stemmer. But its kinda outdated and gives poor-ish results. &quot;why&quot; becomes &quot;whi&quot;, &quot;people&quot; becomes &quot;peopl&quot; and a lot lot many incorrect ones.<p>Something like Solr&#x27;s reduction to stems is what I was hoping for to be able to use it in my project.<p>Thinking of going for a full port of Porter&#x27;s stemming. Thoughts? R: danso Thanks for asking this, I'd also be interested in knowing... Did you try the uea-stemmer? Also pretty old: [https://github.com/ealdent/uea- stemmer](https://github.com/ealdent/uea-stemmer) Also, there's the treat gem, which is an all-in-one package...it uses both the stemmer you mentioned and the uea one...so maybe that's it for Rubyists. [https://github.com/louismullie/treat](https://github.com/louismullie/treat) R: boyter [https://github.com/raypereda/stemmify](https://github.com/raypereda/stemmify) Not a Ruby guy so no idea if its any good, but it is the implementation linked from here [http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/](http://tartarus.org/~martin/PorterStemmer/)

M: Algorithms and Bias: Q. And A. With Cynthia Dwork - v4n4d1s http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/algorithms-and-bias-q-and-a-with-cynthia-dwork.html R: Trombone12 "Q: Whose responsibility is it to ensure that algorithms or software are not discriminatory? A: This is better answered by an ethicist. I'm interested in how theoretical computer science and other disciplines can contribute to an understanding of what might be viable options." Weird response considering the (mild) advocacy for regulation later since regulation presumes target to be regulated... Hard to shake the feeling the response is influenced by her employer.

M: A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others' Fate - jmorin007 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/technology/18vc.html?em&ex=1203483600&en=e905b7a83fc460e5&ei=5087%0A R: jdueck I'm skeptical. At best, they'll have 20/20 hindsight. At worst, these are two kids who haven't yet enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks.

M: Being Overweight in the Workplace an Advantage for Men, Not Women - atlasunshrugged https://www.syracuse.com/news/2020/02/cornell-study-being-overweight-in-workplace-an-advantage-for-men-but-not-women.html R: quotemstr > A new study at Cornell University found overweight men in the workplace are > perceived as more persuasive than their thinner male co-workers, according > to the Huffington Post. This study fails the common sense gut check. This study will not reproduce: it smacks of the same p-hacked, publication-bias social psychology nonsense that's plagued us for a decade. It's plausible that men experience a smaller penalty for being overweight than women do, but to imagine that there's an _advantage_ in being portly? That flies in the face of prior work (and much better-established work, though still shaky) on halo effects, but more importantly, it defies common sense and daily experience. When will we stop believing that studies like this actually tell us anything? R: downerending Indeed, it's very hard to believe that being fat works as some sort of advantage. (Source: am fat.)

M: Features Of SQL Server 2012 - KarenLopez http://mcpmag.com/articles/2012/03/14/top-12-features-of-sql-server-2012.aspx R: stevear SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time. As an admin it has been rock solid and not produced any headaches that weren't our own fault. With that said, to really get the most out of SQL Server (and most likely most other SQL implementations) you really have to do your homework and put in the time to go through the features. Perhaps more than anything this is why NoSQL has taken off-- it's very simple to get going. At user groups I hear a lot of people saying they selected MongoDB because "They had millions of rows and SQL just couldn't keep up" and to me it just sounded like no one in their organization had any solid SQL experience. It's too bad MS didn't build a 'SQL Admin' into their product that sent an email on occasion to say things like "You have a query that is called frequently and could be sped up if you simply included this column in this index. Here are some details!" R: einhverfr _SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time._ I feel the same way about PostgreSQL, along with the bit about learning all the features. I suspect that most decent RDBMS's are this way. _At user groups I hear a lot of people saying they selected MongoDB because "They had millions of rows and SQL just couldn't keep up" and to me it just sounded like no one in their organization had any solid SQL experience._ hahahaha. I have customers with db's with 10's of millions of rows (And I expect hundreds of millions or rows in the foreseeable future) and I can't imagine MongoDB keeping up in terms of reporting...... R: nwatson Purported new feature: "Columnstore Indexes -- This a cool new feature that is completely unique to SQL Server. They are special type of read-only index designed to be use with Data Warehouse queries. Basically, data is grouped and stored in a flat, compressed column index, greatly reducing I/O and memory utilization on large queries." Many DB engines such as Vertica, SenSage, Sybase IQ, all use column-oriented storage. Perhaps the only novel-but-obvious thing here is that these "read- only" indexes are implied to live alongside the regular DB table data, though I'm not sure how these "read-only" indexes would mesh with the need to support deletion on regular tables. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column_oriented_database> R: mgkimsal Perhaps the engine will update the "read only indexes" when the corresponding data in regular tables are deleted, but not in realtime, but only on demand or on a predetermined schedule? R: orcadk The columnstore indexes are purely read-only; they will not be updated without requiring a rebuild. However, you can create columnstore indexes on specific partitions, and thus, by partitioning your source data, you can continue to add new data in new partitions. As most DW/"big data" solutions use partitioning anyways, this is a usable solution, giving you the benefits of the readonly performance as well as the maintainability aspects, while still allowing you to feed in new data. Columnstore indexes are not meant for OLTP type solutions, so there's no need for realtime regular data deletion; it simply doesn't happen on this kind of historical data. You might switch out a partition of your data, or you might switch in a partition of new data, but you won't change the actual data itself. Comparing SQL Servers columnstore index implementation with other columnstore based databases doesn't make sense. I won't laud columnstore indexes as a revolutionary new feature, but the way it's implemented is new, AFAIK. Comparing it to "normal" columnstore based databases will make SQL Server look bad - but the thing is, it's not meant to compete with those. Use it where it makes sense. R: gizzlon A little OT, but this was very surprising: _"MS is making a push back to the command line for server products). Core is the GUI-less version of Windows that uses DOS and PowerShell for user interaction. It has a much lower footprint (50% less memory and disk space utilization), requires fewer patches, and is more secure than the full install. Starting with SQL 2012, it is supported for SQL Server."_ R: KarenLopez What is surprising about it? Server core is for specific situations. R: NDizzle I'd be happy with simple syntax for things like OFFSET/LIMIT and GROUP_CONCAT at this point. R: mgkimsal if they gave you that, it'd be too easy to port a lot of basic stuff away from sql server. I worked someplace that was primarily a SQL Server shop, although was still largely Java and some PHP at the time. I was tasked with building something to paginate through records. There were several hundred thousand to paginate through, and I had to resort to getting the DBA to build some weird sproc with cursors and junk in it. "I just need _some_ of the rows" "Why would you need that?" (honest to goodness question from the DBA) "Well, because I only need to show 30 items on the screen, not 400,000. Showing 400,000 might take a while." "Just use TOP. SQL Server lets you do SELECT TOP(30) already!" "Umm... but I might need to see the second 30, or the 99th 30." "Why? No one does that!" Insane. They experimented with some monstrosity of nested TOP() queries. They refused to allow MySQL to be used ("it's just a toy"), when it was perfectly capable for the requirement, and had developer-useful stuff like LIMIT in it. I got some overly engineered sproc that had to be updated whenever I needed a change, and I ended up leaving a few months later. Not specifically because of that, but that culture was one I couldn't fit in to. I've heard it's gotten better, but I don't really believe it's better so much as the people who've stayed there have adapted and worked around the cognitive dissonance it triggered. R: saryant I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've implemented pagination in SQL Server and it wasn't as complicated as that. Maybe I produced the world's worst pagination technique but I don't think I ever resorted to TOP. The ROW_NUMBER() function takes care of this. R: steverb Yes. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548475/efficient-way- to-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/548475/efficient-way-to-implement- paging) R: Smrchy Now if only MS would sit down and create a useable NodeJS client for MS-SQL. The lack of a good clients outside the Windows world is what makes me move away from this otherwise great product. R: locusm There is some great features there but Reporting Services is a turd that should have been flushed, not polished. R: reagan83 I disagree. Reporting Services in 2008 (especially with R2 and Report Builder 3.0) is great. It serves as a great alternative to Crystal and it comes included with the SQL Server license. IMHO SSRS in SQL Server 2012 has matured more than I expected and offers a lot of the same functionality that comes with others in the Enterprise Reporting space. It's worth giving it another shot. R: cosha Microsoft is so last year

M: Donald Glover Is an Innovator and Advocates for Coding - thefifthprint https://festivalpeak.com/donald-glover-jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-most-of-them-c3595f297e38#.24ve4q6it R: thefifthprint He also has a line about coding in his freestyle here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKB66pjw- JA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKB66pjw-JA) Around time 2:50 in the video

M: Arsenic life does not exist after all... - t3rcio http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328493.300-arsenic-life-does-not-exist-after-all.html R: tokenadult The claim that living things could use the usual molecules, just with arsenic switched for phosphorus in their DNA, was an extraordinary claim, and such a claim requires extraordinary evidence. [http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.h...](http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.html) But the first report about "arsenic-based life" was no more than a preliminary research finding announced in a press event by the study sponsor, and such an announcement is not enough to establish a new body of scientific fact. <http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html> The specific preliminary finding was criticized right away for sloppiness of technique and a rush to reach an unwarranted conclusion, [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arseni...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic- based_life.php) [http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/08/first- evidence-...](http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2011/08/first-evidence- refuting-wolfe-simon-et.html) so the journal slated to publish the preliminary finding had to invite in critiques of the finding to save its own reputation. [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/science- publishes-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/science-publishes- arsenic-is-life-responses-game-on/) Science is all about reproducible results, so much so that there is a humor magazine for scientists called the Journal of Irreproducible Results. <http://www.jir.com/> The headline in New Scientist, a British popular magazine about science (something like Scientific American in the United States), which has been published since before I was born, is correct. There isn't any reliable evidence of arsenic-based life living anywhere within reach of scientists on earth. Not now, and not last year. The best summary of the current evidence, after the efforts of many more careful researchers, is "arsenic life does not exist after all," period (as an American would say), full stop (as a Briton might say). R: robinhouston I don't think the scientific community really bought it in the first place. The original experiment wasn't especially rigorous; e.g. see Rosie Redfield's review [http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic- associa...](http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated- bacteria-nasas.html) And then the authors declined to respond in detail to any of the specific criticisms that had been made by other scientists, which is very rarely a good sign. R: biasedstudy Serious biologists were very skeptical from the start : [http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-and-new- micro...](http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-and-new- microbes.html) Soon, there were lots of questions : [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/01/return_of_th...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/06/01/return_of_the_arsenic_bacterium.php) I'm thinking NASA is good at space exploration, not so good at biology. R: rylz The title is a bit misleading. One other lab's failure to reproduce the results does not prove invalidity of the original publication. It certainly raises some eyebrows, but it makes sense to wait and see what comes of Wolfe- Simon's further analysis before we declare that arsenic life definitely does not exist. R: Tim-Boss Agreed; a sensationalist title adds nothing to an otherwise accurate article! R: nwatson Even if the organisms were shown to swap out phosphorus for arsenic in some instances in their DNA, would that be surprising? Arsenic comes from the same column in the periodic table as phosphorus, and exhibits many of the same macro chemical properties as phosphorus. It would be like a software engineer swapping out their optimized, say, C++ string library, for one that was less optimal but perhaps took less space or ran better in a constrained embedded environment. Arsenic might not be optimal but it's what's available, what can be used. In the software case you'd probably be OK but run more slowly than otherwise, or else maybe you'd stumble when for some strange reason the sub-optimal string library didn't guarantee thread-safe read operations. The arsenic could similarly trip up the organism in some cases. R: synparb I think your analogy is not quite right. Although seemingly similar, inserting Arsenic into DNA would be like taking a very large and complicated piece of software that was fundamentally dependent on the precise API of a component, and then changing that API to make it largely incompatible, thus requiring a large piece of your software to be re-written. It is not just like swapping in a suboptimal component that has no downstream effects. R: veyron I've never heard of new scientist. Is it a real science journal or sensationalist? (based on this article I'd guess the latter) R: corin_ It's an English magazine that's somewhere inbetween your two options. Generally their reporting is pretty good and they avoid headlines for the sake of headlines, however they do put a lot of focus on making their content understandable to non-scientists - it's aimed at smart, curious people, not scientists. An example of this is their "last word" feature, where they take a question from a reader and let anyone write in with answers - these are usually random questions like "Why is the sky blue?" or "If it's raining, will I get less wet if I run than if I walk?" They've also released two or three Last Word compilation books. R: coob If anyone is interested in the sound of this there is something similar over on this subreddit: <http://reddit.com/r/askscience> R: SilasX More direct, permanent link: [http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/oxz9b/arsenic_life_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/oxz9b/arsenic_life_does_not_exist_after_all/) R: coob I wasn't talking about the article, but the 'ask for a scientific answer' type service. R: geuis Summary: Scientist B failed to replicate the results of Scientist A. Scientist A stands by her continuing research. Research continues and is not definitive yet. New Scientist has a slow news days and publishes said results, mucking up an extra controversy for the day and getting a few more clicks through to their website.

M: EFF Applauds Amazon for Pushing Back on Request for Echo Data - DiabloD3 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/eff-applauds-amazon-pushing-back-request-echo-data R: M_Grey The EFF must feel totally hopeless at this point. People are _buying_ microphones with internet connections and sticking them in their homes. They're making the _choice_ to buy "smart" IoT shit that spies on them. They're at a point of defending a major company selling that stuff, because they didn't instantly roll over when approached by law enforcement. It's like... PETA complimenting a butcher on a clean kill. I don't blame them though... who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even started, because people want their toaster to go online? R: kardos > who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even started, > because people want their toaster to go online? I really despise this sentiment, it's quite defeatist and comes across as the "resistance is futile" talking point from the "privacy is dead" camp What we need is some kind of spousal privilege [1] or secrecy of correspondence [2] for the internet age, ie, for IoT things. Surreptitious recordings from phones, messaging apps, "amazon echo"s, xbone cameras, etc, should be impermissible in court (or some variation on this theme). We struck a balance in the past, we can do it again. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spousal_privilege) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence) R: M_Grey It's easy to accuse people of "defeatism", or "alarmism", when really you just don't like the simple truth. Your idea is nice, but unless you're capable of producing a workable roadmap and seeing it enacted, who really cares? Everyone has "good ideas" and many people have good intentions, but if you can't produce results that differ from the next guy it just doesn't matter. Unless you're Churchill rallying a nation to fight, you're in no position to accuse anyone of defeatism for pointing out the reality we live in. R: kardos My point was more along the lines of "lets stop repeating the 'give up' mantra" and move forward to "lets explore how we might rectify the situation". But alas you are also right, I did not present a shovel ready legal pathway to success. R: M_Grey I'm not suggesting that anyone give up, I was suggesting that the EFF must feel despair in the context of their efforts. I would argue that there is more need than ever to fight, but that fight hasn't _really_ materialized yet. Outside of places like HN, so few people appreciate that there even is a fight, and fewer care. That may change, but until it does, the best you can do is educate people. R: gkoberger While I'm glad Amazon pushed back, it did set some precedents and isn't exactly a victory. They eventually handed over the data (at the owner's consent), which does two things: 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over 2) makes anyone who doesn't hand over the data seems guilty (hey, if you have nothing to hide...) Privacy is eroded one step at a time. R: Xorlev > 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over Not necessarily. We don't know what they handed over. For all we know right now, it literally could be a single request to start a timer or check the weather. The use of the data seems dubious assuming that Alexa has to hear the trigger word before sending data to Amazon. Judging by the traffic on my network, I'd say that's the case. I don't see a persistent stream coming from my Alexa device beyond periodic pings. R: M_Grey Keep in mind that a key piece of evidence in the murder case in question is a single datapoint from his smart water-meter. "Why did you use 140 gallons of water around 2AM? Long shower bud?" R: icebraining How is it not relevant whether someone used a lot of water after the homeowner was dead? R: M_Grey _According to police records, a city utility billing and collections manager told detectives that, on the night of Collins 's death, 140 gallons of water were used at Bates's home between 1 and 3 a.m., an amount of water usage that exceeded all other periods there since October 2013. "In comparison, while all four [men] were together earlier that evening, they never used more than 10 gallons of water in an hour," police reports said. "The amount of water used between 0100-0300 hours was consistent with spraying down the back patio area, which may have resulted in the wet concrete patterns observed on the morning of November 22nd." The utility department's source? Each home in Bentonville was on a smart meter, police were told, to measure and record the exact consumption of electricity and water every hour._ -Washington Post The homeowner wasn't the one who died. R: codedokode Would not it be better if Amazon didn't keep those data at all and maybe even made sound recognition on a client? R: tannhaeuser I absolutely support EFF, but it must be said that privacy and decentralization can be in conflict with Free software. Namely, by flooding the world with GPL and liberally-licensed web software, it becomes a commodity item, making "the cloud" possible in the first place, and enslaving people. R: kardos Ehh, not really, the cloud is similarly possible without free software. Indeed much of the big name cloud provider's backend software would be in-house anyway. Windows VMs exist too. I guess your point is closer to 'free software makes the cloud cheaper', which in turn makes it easier to ensnare people..

M: Egyptian Cryptocurrency Exchange Coming This Month - MasterTokens http://www.cryptocoinstockexchange.com/egyptian-cryptocurrency-exchange-coming-this-month/ R: MasterTokens Last month, the Central Bank of Egypt has shot down rumours that suggested it would allow banks to handle cryptocurrencies.

M: Show HN: A Go implementation of TensorFlow's streaming quantiles estimator - seiflotfy https://github.com/axiomhq/quantiles R: tsenart How does it compare to [https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest](https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest)? R: vvern Aren't the goals of t-digest a little bit different? T-digest seeks to have a bounded size and an error proportional to q*(1-q), hence it gives up quantile accuracy in the middle of the distribution when under load. This algorithm seems to provide total bounded error without small but unbounded size. R: tsenart Could you elaborate on the differences a bit deeper? I'm really interested in understanding. R: seiflotfy [http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~weiwang/paper/SSDBM07_2.pdf](http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~weiwang/paper/SSDBM07_2.pdf) is the paper its mostly based on Figure 1. Actually describes how big the datastructure can get. It keeps getting bigger the more data you feed it. R: gonyere TensorFlow's implementation is looking great - RAM usage is fantastic!!

M: Ask HN: best music background to work? - creonik For example, I am finding I prefer <i>not</i> to listen to songs I know since I would try to follow the lyrics and that would take part of my brain and distract me.What's your favourite music when you code,design or work in general? R: kroger Like many people, if I'm thinking and designing I prefer to have no music. If I'm doing these things in a noisy environment I may listen to some rain recordings such as [1]. When I'm coding I mainly listen to classical music. The problem is that I need to listen to things I know very well or I'll get distracted, so I end up listening to the same compositions over and over again, to the annoyment of my wife ;-) These days the compositions I list the most while coding are: \- Beethoven String Quartets, for instance [2] (I really like the fugato at 5:00 ;-) \- Mahler Symphonies, for example [3] \- Ravel music \- Some Monteverdi madrigals [4] I like to use headphones, either a Sennheiser PX 200 [5] or a Sennheiser HD-280 PRO [6]. [1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRv-243Cmk> [2] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55PIXCQgEfE> [3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkoeH5BtLyQ> [4] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDyNzPUQbo> [5] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-200-II- Headphones/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PX-200-II- Headphones/dp/B002VPDOHS) [6] [http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro- Headphones/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro- Headphones/dp/B000065BPB) R: creonik Thanks.I am switching to classical music and works much better. Right now I am listening to Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone playing Moses and Marco Polo Theme. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoQbusZ7os>. It's beautiful (when not interrupted by Spotify ads!) R: hboon I've tried white noise, Naturespace, Kap Slap mixes, Pop mixes, Gregorian, etc. I've found that I am pretty productive in a cafe these days, so I started listening to tracks of cafe background noise when I work from home recently, such as "People Talking in Coffee Shop" by Finnolia Productions [1]. Might write more about this if it works well enough. [1] iTunes affiliate link: [http://click.linksynergy.com/fs- bin/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&...](http://click.linksynergy.com/fs- bin/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Falbum%2Fpeople- sound-effects-2%2Fid582685672&u1=h) R: radq I usually listen to one of the Music for Programming[1] mixes, and when I'm in the mood for more ambient music I listen to Brian Eno. [1] <http://musicforprogramming.net/> R: creonik I did not it. Thanks for the link. R: deathwithme Depends on your work. For instance, if you have a good software design a web application, you can code it with heavy metal music because listing metal music with programming is improving the velocity of coding. R: creonik You are right. As I listen to a lot of classical music, I realize I am thinking better but also slowing down too much. Thanks R: jlengrand Best site I could find was created by a fellow HN follower :) <http://www.getworkdonemusic.com/#> I listen to it everyday and never get bored :) R: rex64 I usually listen to slow tempo piano jazz or rainymood.com R: whichdan There are a couple threads on this already. turntable.fm's "Ambient Chillout & Trip Hop" room is usually quite good. R: keva161 I usually just go on 8tracks and listen to the first 'coding' or 'programming' playlist that shows up. R: vojant Depends on the mood I'm in. From slow piano/classic to techno. R: anons2011 soma.fm - Mission Control, Space station or Drone Zone di.fm - Chillout, Minimal or Ambient bassdrive.com (liquid dnb)

M: Physicists create hole in Time to hide events - ekm http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/07/18/physicists-create-a-hole-in-time-to-hide-events/ R: glimcat Normally I'd blame the media for putting a sensational spin on things, but the paper is really at fault here. The usual metamaterials cloaking trick involves spatial-domain cloaking. You make the probe beam go around the target. They're doing time-domain cloaking by selectively altering the velocity of the beam. Not time cloaking. R: evilswan Awesome.

M: Show HN: I made an extension that adds time cost to Amazon products - vilvadot https://moneyistime.vilva.io/ R: vilvadot Hi everyone, author here! I just released this project I made for fun for myself, I had the idea in my mind for forever now and wanted to try my best at building and extension over it. So here it is. Hope you like it and contribute! Right now it only supports Amazon since it is the site I use the most, but it is pretty trivial to add more shops. BTW, I just searched for myself on the Chrome Store and found a surprisingly identical extension O_o. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is- money/oopp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/time-is- money/ooppbnomdcjmoepangldchpmjhkeendl) it seems it's more mature than mine, so here you have another option! R: elwell I like the idea, what are the chrome permissions like? Is the code open-source so I can analyze? R: vilvadot Sure, you can find the repo in the site, here it is: [https://github.com/vilvadot/money-is- time/](https://github.com/vilvadot/money-is-time/) Only explicitily asks for storage access to set a flag when the extension is enabled and to save the hourly rate. It does have access to execute the code on amazon too, which basically is reading info from html and inject another html node.

M: Ask HN: Is the stock market the AI paper clip machine? - sharemywin R: SirLJ How AI Could Destroy The Universe... With Paperclips: [https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe- wit...](https://hackernoon.com/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-with- paperclips-a5b19901056e) R: bulatb Not just the stock market. Money is a measure that became a target, with the usual results. Goodhart's law is always in effect. R: yasp no? R: sharemywin obviously not literally. If jobs are paper clips. If the goal of the stock market is to maximize corporate profits. The best way to do that is through automation. Both, physical and mental. Doesn't that create a machine that controls most of the wealth and eliminates a need for humans.

M: Why Good Visualization Matters: Rethinking the Food Label - apievangelist http://blog.infochimps.com/2011/09/23/why-good-visualization-matters-rethinking-the-food-label/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+infochimps-blog+%28blog.infochimps.org%29 R: hugh3 I'm not sure this is great visualization. Firstly, trace ingredients are often what's important to the consumer. Fine, I know my peanut butter is mostly peanuts, but how much salt is there? Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives down in a tiny box in the corner. Thirdly, apparently labellers aren't obliged to split up certain categories (eg broccoli, sugar snap peas, green beans and carrots are all in a single green square). So presumably this doesn't even solve the specified problem of not knowing how much white vs whole wheat is in your food -- why would you split up white and whole wheat into separate categories when beans and carrots are the same? R: calebmpeterson > Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of > chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty > ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives > down in a tiny box in the corner. How about inverting the tree-map such that the smaller the amount, the greater the portion of the tree-map taken up? You're going to need all of that space anyway for the names of those potentially-nasty additives to be printed in a legible font size... R: hugh3 Ah, the homeopathic approach to food labelling. I'm gonna sprinkle a grain of gold dust on every twinkie I sell, just to screw with the label. R: oscilloscope A few friends of mine built something similar. Loaded the USDA nutrition database in a dropdown, and scaled 24 vitamins, nutrients, calories, etc by recommended daily intake: <http://exposedata.com/intake/foodpick.html> (takes a minute to load) Many people have told me an added layer of discovering foods with particular nutritional qualities (filtering, sorting) would be very appealing. A recommendation engine for food. If you're looking to hack on the dataset, check out this JSON version: <http://ashleyw.co.uk/project/food-nutrient-database> R: andreyon wow, that's really cool! can they make a side by side comparator? it doesn't have to actually compare, can be just another frame ( or frames) where I can select the same and do the comparison myself. For example I want to see the differences in raw broccoli and steamed broccoli. R: oscilloscope Open two browser windows ;) Here are a few other concepts we messed around with: <http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/rdi.html> (stacked bars) <http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/groups.html> (hover to see vegetable/nutrients) <http://fleetinbeing.net/intake/web/matrix.html> (matrix plot) R: SeanLuke This is pretty bad I think. The amount of substance by mass is nearly completely unimportant. Consider a package which has 99.999% Organic Apples and 0.001% Plutonium. But hey, it's 99.999% organic! Look at all that red! Much better is a simple ordered list of ingredients, so we're not bamboozled into ignoring certain ingredients just because they're not the majority of the content. But wait, thats ... what we already have on our packaging? What good visualization! R: rossriley The new food labelling in the UK is based on a traffic light principle and, imho seems to be clearer: [http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44434000/jpg/_44434134...](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44434000/jpg/_44434134_foodlabel203pa.jpg) The problem with this exaple is that it's hard to see quickly what the key points are, since prominence is automatically given to higher scores, whether they're good or bad. R: aaronblohowiak IMHO, the Nutrition Information box is actually a shining example of good design already. It is very, very legible and has a clear information hierarchy. R: astarwithin I like knowing how much of things is in my food. :) R: notatoad it's a cool idea, but i believe most manufacturers would claim 'trade secrets' protections before putting proportions on their labels. R: jzb They'd claim something to avoid having to make it easy to visualize just what's in processed food... R: rorrr His example with 5 ingredients in unreadable already. What will happen with 10-20?

M: HN Roundup: Hacker News Hacks - rcfox Between browser extensions, Dotjs, Greasemonkey, etc., there are many ways of hacking HN. Most of them seem to be crappy or esoteric.<p>Let's round up all of the hacks that we actually find useful! R: jawns Highlight new comments on HN homepage (Greasemonkey script): [http://coding.pressbin.com/74/Update-on-Greasemonkey- script-...](http://coding.pressbin.com/74/Update-on-Greasemonkey-script-for- Hacker-News-homepage) R: rcfox HNCommentTracker (Chrome extension) - Highlights comments you haven't seen before, and shows an indicator of how many new comments exist for comment pages that you've previously read. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnccaddiplgjjhbog) R: rcfox Hacker News Collapsible Comments (Chrome extension) - Lets you collapse entire comment threads. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd)

M: Ask HN: Why are Americans always the good guys in video games? - turkthrower123 R: zabana This is a very interesting question. I've always wondered what the backlash would be if a studio were to release a Call of Duty style game from the point of view of middle eastern factions resisting the illegal invasion of their land and massacre of their people. Because it seems to me that these FPS war simulations are very close to reality (ie using real location names and sometimes actual 3D rendered versions of said locations) and are somehow being used as a propanganda tool to get most people on board with whatever the political agenda is at the time. I know this sounds very conspiratorial and I'm open to counter arguments but I can't shake off this feeling. Hope I'm wrong though because this is rather depressing. R: viraptor > I know this sounds very conspiratorial Not really. Some games got American military funding to promote the army. > wondered what the backlash would be For examples, look at backlash to farcry 5. See [https://www.change.org/p/ubisoft-cancel-far- cry-5](https://www.change.org/p/ubisoft-cancel-far-cry-5) where people just can't handle white American Christians being the bad guys. R: non-entity > Us Gamers have had to endure a lot of crap over the last few years. The > targeted harassment by the mainstream press through Gamergate, the terrible > launch and outright lies of highly anticpated video games, the outright > censorship of art through "localization" policies, the continued rejection > of romantic partners when they find out our hobby, the appropriation of our > culture by so-called "gamers" on twitter. NO MORE! This has got to be satire. This reads almost like the gamers rise up memes. R: viraptor I remember seeing a lot of this kind of ideas at the time farcry 5 was released. This site may be satire itself. But if it is, it's heavily inspired by reality. R: ajeet_dhaliwal Because they _are_ the good guys of course :-) Almost all triple A games are made in the US itself or allies (UK/Canada/Japan/EU) so it's expected these games will have a positive view. Same reason it's true in Hollywood. Most people just want to get on and have fun with a game, not overthink politics and ethics and I don't see it as an issue. The more annoying thing is when you're nudged to know random guy is evil due to generic Russian/Middle East accent. R: iDemonix Because the Americans make a lot of those types of video games, and if you want to pander to your biggest market, you make them the good guys. R: LUmBULtERA I've played a lot of video games where they aren't. In fact, I'd posit most video games don't take place with real-world geopolitics/national boundaries at all. And where they do, I don't think it's unusual that the antagonist may be an American. R: blaser-waffle Because the US won the struggle against the USSR and now the global economy is loosely based around US-style liberal capitalism. Most countries and their place in the international order is relative to their participation in this system. This is best explained in Jihad vs. McWorld by Barber[1]. What this means is that those who want to buy-in to this global system have to deal with Western (US) media, Western (US) norms, and even the language of the West (the language most common in the US). English is the new lingua franca, and is the language of business. This creates huge incentives to develop media (games, movies, whatever) that can be ported into English and sold to wealthy US consumers (something the Japanese figured out in the 90s -- think of bad Final Fantasy translations a la FF7). Plus many studios are in the US and make games for the US market, and to a lesser degree the export market (Chinese and Korean gaming leagues being the biggest pushes, IMO). That said, I remember one of the Medal of Honor games (WW2 themed) which has you killing Japanese in the Pacific -- and was still hugely popular in Japan.[2] [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad_vs._McWorld) [2] [https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers- love-a...](https://slate.com/culture/2004/02/why-japanese-gamers-love- avenging-pearl-harbor.html) R: tsukikage Because, as an English speaker, most video games you play are of American origin. R: turkthrower123 As a Turk, I Believe that _all_ games I play are of American or Japanese origin. R: krapp There are European game studios as well. R: stuxnet79 But European game studios have to cater to the American market or they risk going out of business. The simple answer to OPs question is: Americans are always the good guys in gaming because the American market is a large one for gaming and a lot of what's trendy and tasteful in gaming has to have an American bias for this very reason.

M: What should Apple do with the iPod? - barredo http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/apple-ipod/ R: dpcan Market it against the Nintendo DS. I bought iPod Touches for my 2 oldest kids and my wife last Christmas. So, this year, instead of buying $30-$40 games, they have been able to buy several $2 games throughout each month. It's been a blast, the savings are starting to really show, and they even like the games better. R: georgemcbay "they even like the games better." That's just what they tell you so you don't feel bad for getting them iPod touches. They secretly play Nintendo 3DS games at friends' houses. R: ericd Yeah, I really wish people would start making some meatier games for the iPhone to go with all the 5 minute junk food distractions that are about as entertaining as bouncing a ball. There have been a few games of more substance, but for the most part, it doesn't hold a candle to the DS' library. R: mdemare For "extremely meaty", try King of Dragon Pass, an indie PC hit from 10 years ago just released on iOS. R: ericd That looks like what I was talking about, thanks! I just downloaded it. Any other recs? R: Gring Carcassonne is also very complex and rewarding to master. It's also a great social game when everybody sits around one iPad. R: daimyoyo I think as long as it remains profitable, they should keep it. The R&D costs are already well recouped so it's basically little more than a profit center. I understand Apple doesn't exactly need the money, but I think it would be a bad idea to kill off a licence to print money like the iPod. R: qq66 Apple likes to keep a limited product lineup, so if a model isn't particularly necessary they can replace it with another product (such as an Apple TV variant), as well as consuming display space in stores. R: skizm Please please please make a waterproof one. The only reason I use my ipod over my phone for music is because I do not like to sweat all over my phone when I work out. Also for running in the rain (maybe for battery life on a long plane ride). If they made a waterproof ipod nano that would solve all my problems. Also if they for that direction just make headphones and a case that I can use to swim with. There is h2oaudio.com (which is awesome) but I would rather it just come straight from apple. </2cents> R: gry It will become like the Mac business. Routine updates with nothing to announce unless it's special; unibody fabrication or designs like the Air. That is until they reset their business. The iPod product will be rebranded and remain iOS device that does everything but have a phone. iPod rebranded with iPhone form and function, except no phone functionality. A Mac line, iPad line and a handset line. Face it, calling is now a feature on a computer. It's not a phone with features. R: tomelders The only graph that matters there is the first one, and no one should be surprised that units have dropped. They should be surprised that they've dropped so little since the iPhone does everything the iPod does and more. % of revenue presented like that is misleading. The iPhone and the iPad are selling like hot cakes and making a ton of money, but they're not iPods. Revenue growth at around -6% may look bad, but that just means they're making 1.48 billion minus 6%. If you don't think that's a lot of money, you're mad. iDevice revenue breakdown.... what's the point of that graph? Here's what Apple should do with the iPod. Keep innovating. $1.48 Billion is a lot of money. It's a business in it's own right. IT'S MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS!!!! R: Steko Obviously they don't have to do anything with it, it's still profitable and has high margins. There's obviously some potential to grow though. The touch is basically a prepaid phone with no phone chip. They could add that phone chip and absorb the margin hit through scale in China, etc. Bound to happen sooner or later. The nano is a redesign away from assaulting the global watch market (over $40 bln this year). The shuffle, I could seem them innovating the form factor, why not abstract it right into the earbuds. The classic is dead, growth wise so they can keep selling it but don't think it'd shock anyone if they shut it down tomorrow. R: ROFISH I think the classic will die when you can fit 256GB into an iPod Touch, either through flash memory or a thicker hard drive version. Otherwise the iPod Classic still sells to those that _HAVE_ to have 200+ GB of music with them at all times. R: Steko Yeah well there was still a market for x-serves but it wasn't big enough so eventually they killed it. The only way I can see them getting growth out of the classic would be to put the massive memory to work hauling HD video around instead of music. That does suggest an interesting iOS device maybe aimed at high end camcorders if they can find a tiny 1 TB drive in the pipe somewhere. R: nknight They're probably selling 20-30 times as many iPod Classics/year as they ever did xserves, even at their peak. The xserve also didn't do anything to act as a draw toward other Apple products, and required frequent revisions to keep up. I bet ongoing iPod Classic R&D budget is statistical noise. R: Steko I'm not making a close analogy and I'm not saying they should shut it down. I'm just saying Apple will know when the classic isn't worth the time/energy/shelf space and I wouldn't be shocked if they announced this is the case in weeks rather then years. And I guess I'm making a wild guess as to how they might keep an HDD based idevice relevant although I don't think that's particularly likely either. R: whichdan For what it's worth, I have a relatively large music collection (100gb+) and used an 80gb iPod for two years before getting a 32gb iPhone. The difference in usability was /huge/, to the point where I didn't miss the 50gb of space. If I didn't have a smartphone and had the option of a 128gb iPod Touch, it would be a no-brainer for me. Personally, I don't think anything would be lost by discontinuing the iPod Classic, as long as something with a sizeable capacity replaced it. R: jcampbell1 Apple would be nuts to get rid of the shuffle. Keeping the iTunes ecosystem strong is really important, as the kid with a shuffle today is best served by an iPhone in the future. R: TallTalesOrTrue Keep it around. Its a hook to get people to use the mac ecosystem. That's the product that started the resurrection of mac. I'm sure Apple will keep it around and keep on making minor changes to it overtime. R: bkorte They should do nothing. Keep upgrading the capacity upgrading periodically. I bet that in the same keynote as the next iPhone release, Apple will rename the iPod Touch to just "iPod". R: signalsignal With the iCloud service ramping up, I suspect that the iPod classic may get PC-less syncing at some point. But then it would have to include some sort of wireless option as well. R: glhaynes I'd be surprised if they spent the engineering dollars on writing the non-iOS code to do that and integrating wireless equipment into what I _think_ is the lowest-selling model of iPod, a product whose sales are rapidly being replaced by iOS-based iPods and iPhones. R: sliverstorm If they thought about this ahead of time, perhaps developing for both platforms is similar enough they could add the feature to both the iPhone/iTouch and the iPod Classic at the same time? R: marze 200M iPod users are nothing to sneeze at: they represent an enormous pool of potential iPhone and iPad users, and Apple has been using the iPod Touch as a "gateway drug" for iOS for years now. The Retina display 16G iPod touch has to be the lowest margin product in Apple's lineup, due to its place as a low cost stepping stone to the more expensive iOS devices. It would be cool if they made the Nano a wrist mounted remote display for the iPhone, though. R: p4wnc6 They should make it into a phone. R: SurfScore Apple has always been one to do what THEY think is best, and then make everybody follow along. They did it with iOS and flash, basically saying "hey we don't like this, you shouldn't either, so we aren't going to let you use it." for better or for worse, this has always been Apple's Modus Operandi, and whether or not you believe in it, judging by their stock prices, it's worked. One of the biggest killers of the iPod is the fact that the iPhone is no longer exclusive to AT&T. How many millions of people bought an iPod because they had Verizon and didn't feel like dealing with AT&T? This is only going to get worse with the iPhone 5, which will presumably be on all major carriers. I think the emergence of Android has made all altogether killing the iPod unrealistic. I have yet to see an Android phone that handles music as well as the iPod does, and Apple knows this. I think what is going to happen is that Apple will revamp the line again in a year or so, and do something to make it relevant. I would say the iPod touch, ironically enough, is the one in the most danger of being killed off, what with it's big brother iPad owning the tablet market and the iPhone doing everything that it does and more. R: smackfu I still see a lot of nanos at the gym, but there are also a lot of people just using their iPhones / Droids. (And for actual street running, the nano is a bit better being smaller and lighter and not $600 to replace when you drop it.) R: georgemcbay For street running I personally prefer my phone to a small dedicated music player. Having a phone means having access to all of my music via Google Music plus gps with apps to track my speed/distance progress. R: smackfu I just think it's a little heavy to strap to your arm, and holding it in my hand seems like a disaster waiting to happen. R: rob08 I actually hadn't thought of the rumored new iPhone 5 design as a possibility of it being the next iPod Touch. Maybe that's why we haven't heard any iPod Touch rumors yet? R: jmmcd The ipod shuffle is awesome, I use it everyday because it's tiny and I don't care what happens to it. I almost never use my ipod touch or classic. R: Apocryphon Not everyone needs or wants a smartphone yet. Keep it. R: pointyhat I think they should bring back the "old" Nano. A lot of people haven't bought the new one as they still like tactile controls and want a screen large enough to watch a video. They also don't want an iPhone or to pay for the touch. They shot themselves there. There has been a lot of innovation with the iPod but some of it hasn't always been that great. Consider the "stick" shaped shuffle which reverted back to the old design in the latest revision. I consider the touch-based iPod Nano to be the same sort of unnecessary crock.

M: Safari's text-shadow Anti-aliasing CSS hack (applies to Chrome as well) - coderdude http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2009/03/safari-text-shadow-anti-aliasing-css-hack/ R: robflynn I noticed this a while back when I mocking up a few designs in Chrome. It's a pretty neat trick that I make use of on occasion when things look rougher than I'd like. Be sure to test in multiple browsers, though, as I actually ran into a situation once where it looked great in webkit based browsers but looked oddly blurry despite my settings in Firefox. That may have improved with recent updates. R: coderdude Here's a convenient way to test it out: <http://www.elfboy.com/text-shadow/>

M: Edward Tufte - Technophilis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte R: mwexler Forgive me for asking, but why is this link here on HN? I mean, he's a great guy and all, but what is the relevance to HN at this point? R: elblanco Lots of companies/projects work in the field of information visualization, on the bookshelves of almost all of them, you can find Tufte's books. He's largely considered the leader in the theory of displaying information in as dense and as clear of a method as possible than enables people to perceive the encoded information as rapidly and as correctly as possible. He's best known for sparklines we all enjoy when looking at tables of stock prices, but those are likely the the least of his contributions to the field. references: <http://www.palantirtech.com/> <http://www.futurepointsystems.com/> <http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_(computer_graphic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visualization_\(computer_graphics\)) <http://www.esri.com/> <http://nvac.pnl.gov/>

M: People Keeping Mold-A-Rama Alive - artsandsci https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mold-a-rama-archive-retro-plastic-mold-a-matic R: justinph I grew up collecting these from the Milwaukee County Zoo. I never realized they were a somewhat regional thing. Neato! R: muttech Just seeing the picture of the machine brings back the melted plastic smell. I remember trying to collect each one at the Milwaukee zoo, and inevitably breaking the head off of them before long. R: hahamrfunnyguy I've always found these machine fascinating, never seen one in person though. I am surprised the molds are aluminum instead of steel. Typically aluminum molds are considered suitable for smaller runs only. If they do 100 parts a day that's 36.5K cycles per year. R: anfractuosity Why is aluminium considered suitable for smaller runs only out of interest? R: mcphage Aluminum is softer than steel, so the mold wears out quicker - the models lose details. R: anfractuosity Ah cheers that makes sense. One thing I was wondering would they use stainless steel for moulds, to prevent them rusting? R: TylerE Nope, "real" molds are made out of tool steel. Corrosion isn't really a problem since machines are typically stored indoors. R: mcphage They have several machines at the Lowry Park Zoo, in Tampa, Florida. I got one a few years back - the hippopotamus that is shown in the article. I love it, and if I ever get back there, I'm going to get a few more. It was cool to do! R: the_trapper They're all over the San Antonio Zoo as well. My kids loved making them. R: zafka I am actually coveting one of those little plastic toys. I need to think on this for a while :) R: ChuckMcM I find myself coveting a Mold-a-rama machine to make molds for it :-). Injection molding is pretty expensive to do in small quantities, I would like to have a 'table top' machine where I could trade time for money. R: cr0sh Combine this: [https://makezine.com/projects/make-41-tinkering-toys/diy- inj...](https://makezine.com/projects/make-41-tinkering-toys/diy-injection- molding/) With this: [http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Plastic-Injection- Moldi...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-Plastic-Injection-Molding-with- an-Epoxy-Mold/) Alternatively, you can purchase a hand injection molding machine as mentioned in the above instructable, if you don't want to build your own: [http://www.easyplasticmolding.com/model_150/home.html](http://www.easyplasticmolding.com/model_150/home.html) ...for $1800.00. So - if you have more money than time, materials and skill - well, it's possible. R: ChuckMcM And they are reasonably close in Scotts Valley. I'm definitely going to have to get one of those. EDIT: Interesting that the Makezine article has a pretty big problem. It doesn't actually show you how to make the 'second half' of the epoxy mold. To make the second half, you would have to assemble the mold and then pour epoxy into the assembled mold. Depending on the material you'd probably end up some how pumping that epoxy in, and you would need to pull a vacuum on it to avoid bubbles. Its a nit of course, but worth considering. R: monocasa Oh wow, I totally forgot I had one of those (the T Rex) growing up. Ended up being one of my favorite bath toys. Memories.

M: Dilithium crystal fusion impulse engine in development - aneth4 http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57523867-1/star-trek-fusion-impulse-engine-in-the-works/ R: uvdiv The other article has a nonzero information content, for a change: [http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star- tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek- researchers-to-begin-fusion) Summary: it's nuclear pulse propulsion (riding the shock wave of a nuclear explosion). _Small_ nuclear explosions in this concept: they hope to create small (~1 ton TNT eq.) pure-fusion explosions using nanosecond bursts of extremely powerful electric currents (plasma Z-pinch). Basically, it's the same problem as fusion power plants based on "inertial confinement" (euphemism for "explosion"). Lithium is a progenitor of tritium. This is common D+T fusion. This concept is not remotely close to practicality. Which is why the reported goal ("a mind-bending 62,600 mph") is bizarre; it's only a small factor better than chemical rockets. It's just as bad as e.g. nuclear thermal propulsion, which was designed and built 40 years ago. So I really don't see the point. R: WiseWeasel The fuel has a much greater energy density than chemical rockets, making longer distances practical, and the process is safer than nuclear fission. R: uvdiv That's my complaint, it _doesn't_ have much greater energy density, or more precisely it's not usefully translated to momentum. The speed target in the article is extremely low ("62,600 mph") -- only a small factor higher then what chemical rockets achieve, and comparable (as I mentioned) to nuclear thermal rockets. (It looks like they edited their article to mention NTRs.) They have extremely energetic fuel, but they don't get any meaningful specific impulse out of it. Maybe they don't easily extract momentum from high-energy radiation. Or maybe they lose too much mass to radiation damage or vaporization ("ablative shield") -- their mass consumption could be dominated by shielding, not fuel. _Their ultimate goal is to develop a nuclear fusion propulsion system by 2030 that can spirit spacecraft from Earth to Mars in around three months - about twice as fast as researchers think they could go with a nuclear fission engine, another scheme that is being investigated but has not yet been built._ R: WiseWeasel The speed doesn't tell us the whole story. If a chemical rocket can only practically carry enough fuel to burn a couple times on a one-way trip to Mars, while this has fuel to burn for maneuvers and a return journey, then it is a big advancement. We weren't given enough info, so it's a bit early to discount it as worthless. R: sitharus Dilithium crystals weren't used in the impulse drive though, they're used to catalyse the matter/antimatter reaction through their crystal structure. Also it seems to be fusion pulse propulsion. Pretty good for going fast. R: Hoff Original article: [http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star- tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek- researchers-to-begin-fusion)

M: I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1B in revenue - saadalem https://www.thefxck.com/interviews/product-positioning-april-dunford R: gk1 Agh. April is terrific, and I agree that the right messaging and positioning can have disproportionately high impacts on revenue (speaking from experience with Netlify, Gravitational, and others), but this click-bait title is a huge disservice to April, other marketers, and founders who may be dissuaded from trying new messaging and positioning. The actual story is that the person (April) was asked by a manager to interview a bunch of customers. When they brought back the data, the manager (or the team, collectively) acted on it by coming up with new product positioning. Some years later, after countless product iterations and _three_ acquisitions, the product landed at a tech giant that does $30B/year. The author speculates it was then responsible for $1B in revenue, though doesn't know for sure. So... It's fair to say "I was there early and it was neat to solve these problems for a DB that later ended up at SAP." But to imply that your work directly resulted to $1B in revenue--as this title does--is just nonsense. What the F*ck were the editors thinking. R: whack Why so angry. The title reads: > _How I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1 billion > in revenue_ It doesn't say _" How I single handedly repositioned"_ or even _" How I repositioned"_. The author literally _helped_ in the process that led to repositioning. By uncovering a key use-case for the product, which then became the key feature and selling point of the updated product. And regarding the comment about $1B in revenue, is there any good reason not to give her the benefit of the doubt? She literally worked with the team and rubbed shoulders with them every day. A lot of non-public numbers get talked about casually at the water cooler. There seems to be a trend where people are hyper-obsessed with nitpicking titles and calling out "clickbait". In this case, the article title is a pretty great representation of the article's contents - or at least as great as you can get in one sentence. I personally enjoyed the article, and was hoping to read a discussion about the main points raised in the article, or similar stories others may have. Instead, the top comment is an angry rant nitpicking the article's title. R: smnrchrds Two points: 1\. The title does not make huge claims directly, but strongly implies it. That's how I read it when I was skimming the front page of HN. It's like writing an article with the title "I taught Michael Jordan basketball" and then explain how you showed him how to throw a ball for 30 minutes when he was the 5 years old. Or the old maxim that if you are a cashier at McDonald's, you can technically say that you "process high-frequency cash transactions for multi-billion dollar company on rotating supply-demand cycle". 2\. I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says you must quantify your achievements. You cannot just say I wrote the login system. You must somehow tie it to a business objective and achievement (increases sales by 7%, reduced support calls by 12%, etc). In reality, projects are often team efforts and except for certain niches such as sales and consulting, there is rarely a clear correlation between an individual employee's actions and business's results. I don't like writing pretending there is and writing it, and I don't like reading it. R: noch > I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only > presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says > you must quantify your achievements. It's not about résumés but about how the skill of measuring/estimating one's own effectiveness/impact/productivity is positively correlated with successful outcomes and rate of progress in life in general. Recall Mike Acton's principle questions[0] that a goal-orientated individual must answer: >> \- I can articulate precisely what problem I am trying to solve. >> \- I have articulated precisely what problem I am trying to solve. >> \- I have confirmed that someone else can articulate what problem I am trying to solve. >> \- I can articulate why my problem is important to solve. >> \- _I can articulate how much my problem is worth solving._ [0]: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/doiq8ovho1k9d4b/fired.pptx?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/doiq8ovho1k9d4b/fired.pptx?dl=0) R: bonoboTP Or more cynically, keep on doing your thing at your core, but do know that people expect to hear stuff like that so consciously sit down and architect some answers to those things. You can reinterpret and rewrite the story later, but you need to have one. Also you don't have to get too attached to it and believe it too much. Think of it as your interface towards society. They cannot all have time to actually latch onto your inner person. You must present to them all the handles you want to be grabbable by. R: andygcook April Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome, is very good and worth reading if you're a founder or marketer (or both.) We reverse engineered her workshop and did it as a team at the end of last year for my startup. Was very much worth the day. R: kristianc Second this - it's a great book, and one of the few truly actionable guides to doing positioning (a lot of them get pretty academic). Accessible to founders, and helps lay out the art and science of positioning, and give a methodology for actually doing it. Would recommend it also to technical people who are sceptical of marketing in general. R: richsherwood Do you have any similar books that you would recommend? I am always looking for good marketing books but these days it's all some guru trying to sell their book so hard to identify the solid through the noise. R: kristianc Josh Kaufman's 'Your Personal MBA' is excellent - its rare that you have one book which goes through all of targeting, segmentation, positioning, marketing planning, and how it all sits together. Often books will focus on one small piece (like positioning, or value propositions) but without understanding how these pieces sit into the wider whole it's hard to put them to really effective use. Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow is also a great book from one of the world's leading marketing professors, and aims to lay out some iron laws about buying behaviour. Byron is quite a spiky and contrarian personality, which makes the book a lot of fun to read, but he also really knows his stuff. R: redis_mlc I'm going to give a lot of credit to April for this, and say the title is not click-bait. Long before sqlite, or CouchBase, there was SQL Anywhere. And SQL Anywhere had something in the 90's that's still rare even today - hands-off built-in production-ready replication. (MySQL struggled for a decade to ship reliable replication after Yahoo paid them $40k for the original statement-based replication, and Postgres still doesn't have a great story out of the box.) It's that multi-source production-ready replication that April shone a spotlight on that made Sybase worth $5.8 billion when it was sold to SAP. [https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-acquires-sybase- for-5-8-bi...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-acquires-sybase- for-5-8-billion-but-why/) So kudos to April for finding a huge diamond in the rough. I've been to lectures on SQL Anywhere, but I hope some day to use it in a project. It's a killer embedded database. Source: DBA. R: icedchai I worked on some systems in the 90's that used Sybase SQL Server (AKA Adaptive Server Enterprise, not the Anywhere version.) Maybe "Anywhere" is okay, but you'd be laughed at if you suggested using Sybase SQL for a project these days. It's legacy tech. R: redis_mlc > Sybase SQL for a project these days. It's legacy tech. 1) SQL Anywhere is not "Sybase SQL." Different products, with SQL Anywhere being an embedded database that can run on a smartphone and replicate bidirectionally to other masters. Not many alternatives, even in 2020. 2) Legacy tech - when you care about your data, accept nothing less. Fun fact: the #1 most popular and regarded RDBMS for the past few years is considered to be MySQL, and it was the key technology that powered both Web 1.0 and 2.0. If that's legacy, I want more legacy. Source: DBA. R: icedchai Yes, I know they are different products. Early on, MySQL was known for anything but caring about your data. I've been using it since the 90's. Without "strict" mode, fields would be truncated and data types would be silently converted. Never mind the <5.x days where MyISAM was the default table type. R: wyck This happened at the first start-up I worked at, 3 years in and almost bankrupt, one large customer kept using the product for a different reason ( kinda hacking it all together), so we completely pivoted to survive with this customers needs and it became a huge success. That pivot was towards such a niche market that no one was really in the space, and no one outside it would have really even know about it. R: achow Can you please give a link to the product page - assuming that you commercialized it for others as well. R: wyck No sorry, but I can tell you it provides video/text/meta data archiving for many countries' parliaments and state legislatures. R: willart4food It was the year 1999, remember that? I was working at a startup and we were preparing to IPO. I got a cold call from a - I kid you not - "Color Consultant"; I don't know why but I listened to her instead of hanging up, her spiel was: "Do you know [Inser name of recent IPO]? Well they hired me and I changed the color of their corporate identity from Black on Green to Green on Black; well 4 months later they IPO's raising $250 million at a $1+ billion-dollar valuation". WUT? Her implication was that she was taking credit for the successful IPO. So, there it is. I am not saying that April's contribution was not useful, but... everything in a long process is useful, but not 1 single contribution is responsible for the entire (or majority) of success. Except for grit! R: pkaye This reminds me of an early job. It was my first job as a mechanical engineer. I was lucky enough to work in a R&D team on an entirely new product line. Crazy but rewarding work from months on end. Near completion, I was moved to a side team to help out with other smaller projects. At this point the marketing guy comes in to decide on the name and color of the machine. So they bring in the consultants and in the end decided to stay with the name the engineers gave it and the same color as older machines (beige and black.) And the kicker was at the launch party they forget to invite me but invited the marketing guy who spent a couple days helping out. What a punch in the guts it was. R: abraae I've been in more than one meeting where, after lengthy discussion about product name, the group circled again back to the original (temporary) name created by the developers. And in that time it had somehow subtly become adopted by marketing as theirs :) (To be fair, picking names is hard, even if you are in marketing. I'm sure there's plenty of science, but one of the best ways IMO is to just blather them all around for a while and see what feels right/sticks after a day or two). R: dblohm7 I did my first internship working at Sybase on SQL Anywhere. Some great people worked at that office. Even some of the original Watcom guys were still there. Fun fact: SQL Anywhere was still compiled using Watcom C++ long after the latter was discontinued as a commercial product. Most of the people who worked on the compiler still worked there, so they maintained it internally until SQL Anywhere finally switched over to MSVC. R: zaphirplane > MSVC I thought it ran on multiple operating systems R: dblohm7 It does. I'm referring to the Windows builds. R: astroalex Completely unrelated to the content of the article, but I find it so annoying when interview responses are rendered in italics. For contrast, here's a nicely typeset interview from the NYTimes: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/25/magazine/hann...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/25/magazine/hannah- gadsby-interview.html) R: huangc10 Not sure why you're downvoted. I completely agree. I couldn't get past the first answer because of the italics. Why would someone do that. I'm sure it's an interesting Q&A, but I just can't read it. R: tigerstripe I searched online - seems that when SAP bought Sybase, net revenues of Sybase were around $1b - this was only one product in their portfolio. Is it true that the product was making $1b / year? R: jcampbell1 It looks like the product was conceived in 1992, Watcom was first acquired in 1994 by Powersoft, which was bought by Sybase in 1995. SAP bought Sybase in 2010. I'd bet the product has seen significant growth in the mobile / IoT era. Applications that work offline and synchronizes later are a pain to build. Seems like the kind of infrastructure that exists in every police car these days. R: teleforce Despite the promise of Starlink of pervasive internet connection, there are always blind spots where connection just do not exist or just pain intermittent. Personally I think the future of desktop applications should be designed around the premise of localhost first and cloud second. The ability of the locally host application to synchronize to the cloud or central repository (similar to rsync and Git) should be the default not the other way around (I am looking at you Microsoft Teams). Technically there should be no different between people working independently with their local copy of data to be merged centrally later, and an offline application with an intermittent internet connection. Now with readily available VPN tools like Wireguard becoming more popular the notion of using web applications for distributed authoring and collaboration, etc, is not necessary anymore. But if you insist to use web based technology there is always protocol like webdav to the rescue. If you do not want either of them (VPN and webdav), the recently announced SMB over QUIC can be a very good alternative solution [1]. [1][https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/03/02/microsoft-smb- ove...](https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/03/02/microsoft-smb-over-quic-to- windows.aspx) R: nojito survivorship bias in full swing here. Can't find any followup successes after this product repositioning R: haltingproblem Yes, more like narrative fallacy akin to sayin that one feature we added to a product was responsible for its success. R: andai To read the article normally, open the web inspector and add em { font-style: normal; } R: yuvalr1 I think that the talk here about taking the credit for the 1 billion is missing the point. What I think she wanted to emphasize is that they almost shut down a product that made more than 1 billion, and that she took part in the process that saved it. R: Traster I think a lot of the discussion in here is about how whoever wrote the title managed to destroy any chance of this interview getting any meaningful discussion. Which I think is appropriate, because it's a blog about marketing that manages to market their blog about marketing with the kind of deftness I expect from my 8 year old daughter's rendition of _Let it go_. R: haltingproblem tl;dr version - Desktop DB product. She called customers, found most were not using, one was and was crazy about the product. Product "repositioned" around that use case. End of story. I am sure there is a lot more to Dunford's book that this article reveals but IMHO product positioning is the wrong takeaway. Product positioning, which sounds management consultancy speak like "product strategy" is top-down. Implies near perfect knowledge of the marketplace, customer use cases, existing alternatives..... Anti-thetical, if not opposite, to the Lean Startup method. Lean implies you have incomplete information but you map out the profitable niches by experimentation. You want to build that which is needed, not build and position it later. Recommend Robert Fitzpatrick's Mom test instead. [http://momtestbook.com/](http://momtestbook.com/). He also has an youtube channel. R: hodgesrm SQL Anywhere was an amazing product. What's left out in the article is that it was also really fast. I had an assignment in 1998 to benchmark it against another pocket database. SQL Anywhere was 100x faster. On the Excel throughput graphs I had to use right and left Y axes for each product. Otherwise product #2 was just a flat line on the X axis. ;-) R: listenallyall This is a strange story. Did the company really believe there was a large market of people who "had to manipulate some data and write structured queries, but you didn't want to do it in Excel"? What was the actual incentive or opportunity that the product was meant to fill? Did anyone acknowledge the popularity of dBase, FoxPro, FileMaker (with Access coming soon)? What was the product failing to do for the 90% of customers who bought it then abandoned it, surely some common themes must have arisen via all her cold calls -- and why didn't they address those issues? On the other hand, Oracle compatibility and sync surely weren't trivial to build, how were these features not already a major part of the marketing strategy? R: blunte Lesson: know your customers and their needs. R: sankalp221 Please add RSS to the site. Would've loved to subscribe via my Feedly reader. R: nstart They do have RSS. Unfortunately it's truncated at /interviews/rss.xml R: suyash Click Bait Alert R: ykevinator This is stupid R: abiogenesis > And we had almost killed the product! Well, one could argue that you _killed_ the product. You just reused the source code for a new product. A product is much more than the software.

M: Bitcoin Backlash: Back to the Drawing Board? - rbcgerard http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2017/10/bitcoin-backlash-back-to-drawing-board.html R: tzakrajs Orthogonal, but related: Bitcoins are used in illegal arbitrage and they are traceable to the current holder. Why shouldn't a Bitcoin holder worry that their local government won't compel them with laws to relinquish their Bitcoin?

M: CompTIA - A malicious site? - eznet http://flickr.com/photos/mattezell/sets/72157606012121192/ I recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over until I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech work). I headed to CompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a Firefox's "Reported Attack Site" warning. According to Google's Safe Browsing Diagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in the installation of Malicious content without users consent... Maybe the CompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information...<p>http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=88 R: eznet I recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over until I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech work and no one wants a programmer with 'no' experience). I headed to CompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a Firefox's "Reported Attack Site" warning. According to Google's Safe Browsing Diagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in the installation of Malicious content without users consent... Maybe the CompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information... <http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=88> R: icey This isn't really related to CompTIA, but in regards to nobody wanting to hire a programmer with "no" experience. If you're having a hard time getting an entry-level gig somewhere, I would suggest building a code portfolio. It should contain code samples (in multiple languages, if you can) as well as some working program code. Web development is going to be the easiest place to get your foot in the door, so maybe you should build a web page with some forms, some javascript, etc etc etc. There are entry level jobs out there, you just have to put yourself ahead of everyone else trying for them. R: eznet Thanks for the pointers... Yea, I have recently acquired a rough understanding of Python and am picking up Django at the moment to hopefully increase my marketability and show my ability to pick new skills... R: icey As someone who does hiring of entry level people from time to time; making the effort and being enthusiastic has been the deal-sealer more than a few times. Employers like to know if you're interested in the work or the paycheck. (At least your primary interest - everyone wants to get paid lots and lots of money, but for the real geeks like us; reading YC on a Sunday, we're in it because we love to hack.) R: eznet Called CompTIA today - at first they said I was mistaken... Then I sent links to my flickr account and to the various tech/certification sites making the "maybe they should increase their Security+" crack. I was called back this afternoon and told that their tech dept is working with Google (?) to resolve the issues...

M: Jsteg, a package for hiding data inside JPEG - aloknnikhil https://github.com/lukechampine/jsteg R: aloknnikhil More about the JSTEG algorithm: [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8893/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e4...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8893/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e42b9c454cfb7770.pdf)

M: Sept. 23, 1846: Neptune Right Where They Said It Would Be - danso http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/09/0923neptune-discovered-where-predicted/ R: bdhe The orbit of Neptune takes it ~ 164 yrs and 9 months and indeed, earlier this year Neptune completed its first orbit around the sun since its discovery. [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/12/ha...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/12/happy- birthday-neptune/) This simultaneously puts into perspective how recent our knowledge of the solar system is and how large the orbits of the outer planets are. R: hugh3 Newtonian gravitation: it approximately works, bitches!

M: Airobotics has built a Transformer-like base station for its drones - JSeymourATL http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11989734/watch-this-robotic-arm-swap-fresh-batteries-into-an-autonomous-drone R: sharemywin what would be neat is to have drones that can pass a package from one to the other while in flight using a battery charging base station like that. sorta of like an internet router for things.

M: Review my startup - Plura Processing: Web Traffic = Grid Computer - westside1506 http://www.pluraprocessing.com/games R: ynniv You aren't the first company to try grid computing on personal computers, so once people stop talking about how cool the idea of grid computing is or how to protect the web surfers rights, they'll start asking the hard questions. Like, how you're going to make money. How do your paying customers feel about their data being strewn about the Internet? How does your processing interfere with the game that the user is playing? What kind of problems have you earmarked as being particularly parallelizable like this (ie what is your marketing plan?), and how usable is your API? At the end of the day, is going through the effort to rewrite a program to work on distributed Java applets going to produce substantially more processing for the customer dollar than a $150 headless dual-core 1gz board with a gig of RAM running C++? You say that you can provide a $1500/yr savings over EC2, but this is only for applications that are "embarrassingly parallel", and will certainly require hiring a programmer to write code to run in tiny chunks on lots of clients. Will this cost less than $1,500? Worse, it will be money up front instead of spread out over a year. You could say that the system is best leveraged by clients looking for a lot of compute power on a budget, but those are the people most likely to build their own grid. When you can get linux running on a dual-core 2.0gz for $200 / node, spending that money every year on an untested platform that will require substantial development work and vendor tie in, your service is going to be a tough sell. You will be the only people interested in writing code for this platform, so please repost when you know which algorithm you can run to gross $10 million a year. R: westside1506 These are all very good questions and we certainly know that we're not the first company to do grid computing on PCs. :) First, $1500/node-year (or even $200/node-year) comes to a very substantial amount of money for our target customers. These customers use 10000s of nodes and buy high-end computers and pay a ton for network, power, cooling, and support personnel. My background is in HPC and I've faced and solved these issues many times. We have a multi-pronged approach to using the compute power: 1) We are definitely writing our own apps on top of Plura. It's a great source of compute power and we have lots of ways we want to use it ourselves. 2) We have a short list of very high impact embarrassingly parallel customers that are evaluating Plura. We intend to help our customers absorb the porting cost associated with Plura. 3) We are open to letting students and universities use Plura's excess capacity for free. We've had several nibbles at this already. That being said, we realize Plura is not for everyone. It is for a subset of the class of embarrassingly parallel applications out there. R: cliffy Are there ample warnings to, or explicit agreement with the user that his/her CPU time is going to be used by non-game functions? This seems suspiciously like theft of services. When I run any process I expect it to restrict all its actions to servicing direct functions related to that process. Plura is expressly unrelated to ANY process/game it is bundled with. I would personally be annoyed/angry that a program I was using, web-based or not, was using my computer's resources to make money without my knowledge. In fact, you're not just using my computer's resources, you're also drawing more power from my electrical grid, because a processor doing more work consumes more electricity. That's something that directly costs me, the end user, more money. So I would absolutely classify this as theft of service unless the user explicitly agrees to have Plura running in the background. If there is ample warning to the user, I am fine with this, and would consider it a good idea. Otherwise, it feels really sleazy and wrong. R: danielh I can see your point, but wouldn't be any ad-driven website/game be considered theft of service? A ton of flash ads might have a bigger impact on your system performance (and on your wallet, if your ISP charges by traffic) R: wmf At least ads are visible. A zero-pixel Java applet seems like it's over the line IMO. R: westside1506 Hey guys, we just launched our private beta for Plura. I submitted our game page as the HN link, but www.pluraprocessing.com has more general information. Take a look and tell me what you think. We've been paying our alpha affiliates for months now and are ready to take on a much larger pool of affiliates in our beta. "Affiliates" are the people that put Plura on their site, browser game, or other content (even download apps) and get paid for their user time. R: jmatt It seems like there is potential for a much bigger market than games. Streaming video and audio... fantasy sport applets, etc. Is plura just starting with games since they provide what I suspect are ideal conditions (already using CPU and running long enough to for Plura to actually do some work). R: LogicHoleFlaw There is a big search in the gaming industry for new sources of revenue. Development costs are skyrocketing but income is not. Retail and subscription are the big two, with online advertisements growing in popularity. If harnessing players' compute time enables a gaming service provider to offer a better product at a lower price, this could be a win for the gamer, the game company, and the ultimate computing consumer. R: jmatt Sounds like you read one of my other threads ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=346832> And, yes I totally agree. R: bigthboy I think this is an innovative approach to getting more people involved with grid computing for major computations and a clever way to market it in general. However, I agree with some other people here, there has got to be some sort of licensing issue. As much as the whole "you clicked okay to the TOS, you gave us permission." is a tank in court, it still seems to risky. If nothing else, it would risk users no longer using the games from the providers using that service if they found out that their computer slowed down at all during playing that game because it was doing things it wasn't supposed to. Not that I would likely have a problem with it, but lets face it...the general public is slap happy with lawsuits. Also privacy issues in the entire concept. I didn't notice any (note: I didn't go out of my way to find one either) way for the end users to directly go and see exactly what kind of materials were being processed and what data, if any, was being collected from the user's machine. That might also be a source of trouble in the long run. R: westside1506 Interesting comments. First, let me explain that the client side runs entirely within memory; the hard drive is not touched at all. All processing or computation is done within the Java sandbox. In other words, you are not giving us unfettered access. In fact, it's quite the opposite. :) We follow everything listed at <http://java.sun.com/sfaq/>, whether we're running an applet from the browser or from within a desktop application. Second, although we encourage disclosure, we leave the disclosure up to the individual sites and some have chosen to use some form of opt-out or opt-in. That being said, we also provide a TOS that they can use for disclosure if they choose. If the disclosure is done in a positive way, the users should see the benefits of getting more game features for free. R: bigthboy Nice rebuttal, I wish you the best of luck, it seems like something with a good amount of potential. I especially liked your perspective on because the gaming services do this and you pay them for it, they can implement better features for their own users. R: Hexstream Oh well, most Flash stuff already runs my CPU to 100% even when it's clear it shouldn't. (100% CPU to display a static "Game Paused" screen? Give me a break!). \--- "After receiving the WU, the user's computer will perform the computation. The game developer can control how much of the user's CPU is devoted to computation by setting the % usage (either statically or dynamically)." How do you accurately control the amount of CPU a program takes in user-space? Can you really have a process that will restrict itself to using no more than 25% CPU? (Also, 25% of a fast CPU is more than 25% of a slow one) R: westside1506 The apps that we're running right now control it pretty well using a sneaky trick. We can't get much computer information from java in an unsigned app, so we measure how long each sub-part of a work unit has taken and sleep an appropriate amount of time. For example, if we are trying to use 25% and a sub-work takes 100ms, we sleep for 300ms. This effectively gives us 25% usage of the available CPU. It will be no higher than that anyway - it might be lower if something else is using substantial CPU time. As far as the fast versus slow nodes, we normalize everything based on the average computer that completes work each day. So a fast computer may earn 2X or more what a slow computer earns. R: smoody Very clever. R: ced _Monthly payment = $2.60 times # avg. simultaneous users times CPU %_ It sounds dishonest to summarize this as 2.60$ per user per month. It is 2.60$ per user, _if that particurlar user plays non-stop for 30 days straight, assuming 100% CPU_ In other words, you get 1 cent per 3 hours of play time. To get 100$ per month, you need 10000 users, playing one hour every week or so. (hopefully, my math and interpretation is correct) R: westside1506 We put it in terms of average simultaneous users because that's the way a lot of affiliates think. They say, we have an average of N people playing the game at any given time. For websites and other affiliate types, we say we pay $15/MWU (million work units) where a work unit is 15 seconds on an average node (the system-wide Plura average node performance). R: ced Fair enough. Good luck. R: Harkins What's with the payment being per-user per-month? Why not just straight per- work unit? Isn't a user who plays the game 20h/m (or at least leaves their browser window open that long) more valuable than the one who only plays for five minutes? R: randomwalker It is in fact per work unit. See the "How it works" page. It's $2.60 per month per _concurrent_ user, which is the same thing. R: olefoo This does strike me as verging on unethical; you (and your affiliates) need to make very clear statements to end users that you will be using their computers to do other processing while they are playing. That said this is a pretty cool model, and I'm sure that most people would be happy to let a few of their CPU cycles pay for the game they are playing. R: huhtenberg I guess it's time to null-route pluraprocessing.com. In other words I really really really don't like hidden or undisclosed functionality in whatever the software I am running. Especially if it is explicitly _designed_ to utilize my otherwise idle resources. Few years back my friends and I were talking about putting a DES brute-forcing client into a flash applet and then sticking it on a high-traffic site. It never went anywhere beyond a discussion though exactly because of the ethical issues involved. R: tectonic Run a distributed GA. Plura becomes self aware on August 29th, 2010. R: poppysan I applaud your effort. Great idea! Personally, I can see this widely used, on both the user and customer side. Man, why didn't I think of that! hahahha. R: shaunxcode This is an awesome idea. I have actually been working on a game that I have been looking for a platform/revenue model for - this is perfect! R: westside1506 Great! Fill out the form on the website and we'll get you signed up in the private beta. R: sireat This could be huge! There is no question there will be plenty of affiliates/CPU time (re)sellers. The real question is whether there is big enough demand from those who need grid computing. You had a quote from some quant guy, I suppose sciences is another market, not sure about others. R: westside1506 Thanks. We are really focused on this as well. :) Here's a blog post we wrote comparing us to Amazon's EC2 for HPC apps: [http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/comparing- pl...](http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/comparing-plura-to- amazons-ec2-for-high-performance-computing/). Our numbers should be very compelling for certain types of applications compared to the cost of building your own clusters or using an EC2-type service. There are definitely certain applications where this form of grid or cloud computing (I hate to use such a popular buzzword) will enable apps that weren't possible before. Previous attempts at grid computing for HPC depended more on philanthropy instead of having a scalable business model that allowed the addition of 100s and 1000s of nodes at a time. R: musiciangames 1) I think this is a really smart idea, and hope it works well for you. It seems like a win for everybody, as long as the end user knows what's happening. 2) You maybe should look at the phrase on savings in your paper: "if your application is suitable for Plura, you can save 7X on your compute costs". I take this to mean you save 7 times your compute costs, where it should be six sevenths of the cost. There's a difference, and your customers will understand it. Sorry if I've just misunderstood. R: johnrob Is it possible to use a "purchased" CPU to make internet (http) requests? R: westside1506 Yes and no. We have created a signed applet capability in the Plura infrastructure, but we have not pushed this out yet. In the future, if an affiliate chooses, he can request work units for a signed applet that would allow them to make http requests. We will probably pay more to affiliates that do this and will certainly require user opt-in. Our normal applet is unsigned and cannot make http requests due to the java sandbox. We have one company (80legs.com) that is developing a web crawling solution using Plura. We are using a different model to acquire the nodes for this. R: kowlaga Folding@Home is of April 2009 sustaining over 8.1 PFLOPS [1], the first computing project of any kind to cross the four petaFLOPS milestone. This level of performance is primarily enabled by the cumulative effort of a vast array of PlayStation 3 and powerful GPU units.[2] The entire BOINC averages over 1.5 PFLOPS as of March 15, 2009[3]. SETI@Home computes data averages more than 528 TFLOPS[4] Einstein@Home is crunching more than 150 TFLOPS[5] R: knarf It's an interesting idea but it kind feels like cpu robbery to me.. R: ideamonk [http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2007/06/ajax-based- supercomputi...](http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2007/06/ajax-based- supercomputing.html) nice indeed ;P R: kowlaga i like what you are doing, i just don't understand the commericail opp when these guys do it at the univ. for free?Folding@Home is of April 2009 sustaining over 8.1 PFLOPS [1], the first computing project of any kind to cross the four petaFLOPS milestone. This level of performance is primarily enabled by the cumulative effort of a vast array of PlayStation 3 and powerful GPU units.[2] The entire BOINC averages over 1.5 PFLOPS as of March 15, 2009[3]. SETI@Home computes data averages more than 528 TFLOPS[4] Einstein@Home is crunching more than 150 TFLOPS[5] R: rrhyne Would this work in a JS+HTML AIR app? The Plura for websites iframe code seems like it would work if you got the AIR sandbox requirements right. Also, what is the average CPU percentage your developers run on their clients systems? R: westside1506 No, we tried to do this, but we can't run Plura in Adobe AIR. AIR uses Webkit for its browser, but Adobe has removed support for browser plugins, including Java. R: rrhyne That's too bad, this sounds like a great monetization scheme that's close to painless for the user. R: westside1506 Yep, we'd love to find a way for it to work. If you have any ideas, let us know. :) R: trefn Really cool concept. One cosmetic issue - when you mouse over the links on the right side, the underline makes the text below look really cramped. A few more pixels of padding would be nice. R: dpapathanasiou I'm curious about where the money is coming from, i.e., what kinds of computational problems are you solving for your clients, and what kinds of clients have hired you? R: westside1506 Here's an example: [http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/example- appl...](http://pluraprocessing.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/example-applications- using-plura/) R: seemann Hey nice concept! May be personal, but I don't like the color-scheme. Game developers work for and with love, so probably they want some colors with love ;) R: mseebach Yeeess.. that one game out there that's not about killing, maiming, conquering and dismembering various adversaries, I think it might be about love. R: kirubakaran It is probably a silly thing to say... but I was working on something like this some time ago. Now I wish I had followed through with it. R: chime Does it have to be a game? What if I have a site or two that get good traffic but not a lot of page reloads because it's all Ajaxy? R: westside1506 No, it does not have to be a game. We're just focusing our initial affiliate marketing on games because of the higher engagement. The type of sites you mention will work well too. Send us a note through the Contact Us page on the website and we can help you figure out how much you could earn. R: moonpolysoft One of the issues that I see with this approach is that for most applications the scaling issue is data scaling rather than CPU. Here's why I think you will run into scaling issues: Lets assume you have a gigabit line out of your colo. Lets also assume that your average game client is on a cable modem with a 1megabit connection. That gives you capabilities to stream work units to 1024 clients simultaneously as an upper limit. In keeping with an average 1 megabit client, it will take 3 minutes to stream down a 20 megabyte work unit, maxing their connection. 1024 concurrent clients * 20 megabytes = 20 gigabytes. So you're looking at 3 minutes of overhead transfer out, and likely another 3 minutes or so of overhead transfer of results back from the client. So that's approximately 6 minutes per gigabyte just in transmission overhead. And it gets worse as clients are added to the system, since you would need scale out your datacenter just to handle coordinating all of the clients. Which begs the question: why aren't all those servers just doing the dang work already? That kind of overhead limits this technique's usefulness only to applications which have relatively high computational complexity and relatively small amounts of data. And those applications do exist, however they're pretty far from the day to day needs of most companies. Sun found this out the hard way with their Sun Grid project, which last time I checked was a failure. Sorry, I really wish you the best of luck. R: westside1506 Yep, we quite aware of all of these issues. My background is in HPC and my previous company was a successful exit to a major oilfield services firm. My software and its descendants are used on nearly 100,000 CPUs. We are definitely focused on the applications that have extremely high compute/io ratios. In general, these boil down to either high compute problems with no real data or problems where the data can be shared between multiple work units. An example of the latter is stock market analysis - the nodes download stock data for a few stocks and stay busy running different combinations for a very long time. R: moonpolysoft So that brings up a good issue, namely the proprietary nature of the code you're distributing. For instance, stock market analysis firms zealously guard their algorithms. Let's say I'm a potential customer: How will you protect my bytecode from being stolen by competitors when it has to be run on unmanaged machines in the wild? R: westside1506 Good question. There really isn't anything that stops someone from reading and trying to interpret the byte code. There is some protection in the fact that you never know what type of work unit is happening at a given time. The algorithms are typically each snippets of code instead of full applications, so someone would need to piece together quite a lot of information. Of course, if someone is particularly concerned, they can run a jar obfuscator.

M: The cure for ebola - lisper http://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/the-cure-for-ebola.html R: simonblack If it sounds too-good-to-be-true, it usually is. "I have this magical substance, but I have to keep it secret". If the drug works, you don't need to have tests to show _why_ it works, you just need to _show_ it works. (We still don't exactly know why general anaesthetics work, but that doesn't stop us from using them every day.) R: lisper The causal theory adds plausibility that it might work, otherwise there would be no reason to believe that the experiment is even worth doing.

M: Ask HN: What software can I use, that runs on Mac, to write a book? - iDemonix I&#x27;m writing a book on basic monitoring for DevOps engineers, just for fun really and something for my CV. BookPrintingUK will print from a PDF, I&#x27;m aware I could use MarkDown, and I could use LeanPub - but I want a physical book.<p>Can anyone recommend some software they&#x27;ve used to write a book? R: 100ideas Try the gitbook editor by [https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/), then export as pdf. You can write in markdown or asciidoc, revision content in git/github, export to pdf or ebook, and develop your layout with a custom theme ([https://toolchain.gitbook.com/themes/](https://toolchain.gitbook.com/themes/)). Asciidoc + custom theme is probably feature-rich enough for you to accomplish whatever content organization + layout you want. Gitbook has some kind of subscription model if you use their site, but the editor is free I believe. R: 100ideas O'Reilly Media has shared some of the toolchain they've developed internally to help their book authors create content. [https://github.com/oreillymedia/atlas_book_skeleton](https://github.com/oreillymedia/atlas_book_skeleton) [https://github.com/oreillymedia/orm_book_samples](https://github.com/oreillymedia/orm_book_samples) In particular, you might be interested in the asciidoc_only folder in that second repo. Potentially you could author your book with the same asciidoc structure... then see if O'Reilly wants to publish it. R: oddlyaromatic I've heard good things about Scrivener from several authors.

M: President Obama - Will Seek Approval of Congress for Attacking Syria - loupeabody http://www.whitehouse.gov/live/president-obama-speaks-syria R: venomsnake My take on that - he has decided on inaction but needs the congress to save him from his "chemical weapons are a red line" remark from an year ago. I am not sure if there is any salvage of the Middle East situation right now - there are generational grudges and hatreds to unfold there. I don't think that there are good moves on that board. The pessimist in me just wonders whether the firewall should be on Bulgaria/Greece border or on the Bosphorus. Disclaimer - I live in Bulgaria for now. R: ankitml This man had never deserved Nobel Peace, never. Worst decision of committee till date after deciding not to give it to MK Gandhi. R: grandalf The more moralistic and self-righteous the justification for war, the more likely it is to be a dishonest reason... R: awakeasleep Sort of off topic, but I have never seen streaming video with such a high resolution and framerate. How the hell are they doing this. R: denzil_correa Is it possible that Youtube provides the backbone infrastructure? [https://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse](https://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse) R: ExpiredLink Disappointment, thy name is Obama. R: kersif Just concluded. Missed it. R: loupeabody Title updated to reflect the major takeaway. Obama said that he and his various advisors feel that Syria must be attacked in response to their usage of chemical weapons. He specified that there would be no infantry sent to Syria, just a long distance strike of "limited duration and scope". Congress will hold a vote on whether or not to approve the attack. The President has the authority to order the strike, with or without the approval of Congress. *edit: see reply R: thenmar He didn't say he needed congress to approve, just that he was going to have congress vote. He also emphasized that he does have the authority to strike without congress's approval. R: loupeabody Yeah, you're right. I'll update my comment

M: Google Open Sources AMP via OpenJS Foundation - gumby https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/14/googles_amp_openjs/ R: usr1106 Title is misleading. I believe AMP has always been open source. Google just tries breathe new life into AMP by trying to give it a more neutral image by profiting from OpenJS and Linux Foundation labels. And Linux Foundation does not say no to money from Google, although most opinions outside of Google seem to be very negative on AMP.

M: San Francisco officials follow Mountain View with bid to ban free lunch - parvenu74 https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/08/01/san-francisco-officials-follow-mountain-view-with-bid-to-ban-free-lunch-for-techies/ R: erkose I like this trend. Companies were given huge tax breaks to set up shop in SF. The least they can do is allow the local economy to flourish.

M: If You Can't Express Yourself By Email, You're Not Worthy of Anyone's Time - pieterhg https://levels.io/email-cuts-through-bullshit/ R: jqm Good article expressing something I have felt for a long time. Emailing asking to set up a call to do something email could have handled better drives me nuts. R: rhizome It's an incontrovertible fact that more people are adept at voice communication than textual. R: mariuolo I wonder if they will also draft specs or ($DEITY forbid) contracts over a Skype call. R: uptown Shouldn't this be published as an email? R: adyus I can't believe I'm saying this at 28, but that's a really young-person point of view. You have to understand most of us younglings grew up with the Internet and have adopted text as the de facto mode of relaying information. Sadly, most of the business world is made up of people who've learned to communicate (in their formative years) before the Internet was a thing. These business people cannot easily change their main mode of communication, and will have a hard time adopting email the way a newer generation has. The generation following you (and me) has already moved past email, to instant messaging. R: rabbyte The finer point to me is that sometimes there are perfectly valid reasons you wouldn't want to express yourself by email or online and I don't think that has anything to do with age. We have evolved to understand face-to-face communication. It's an effective way to relay a thought. People can waste your time through any media. R: greenyoda _" People can waste your time through any media."_ That's true, but it's much easier to cut your losses with an e-mail than with a face to face conversation. If, after reading the first couple of sentences of an e-mail, you decide that the sender is an idiot and reading his message is a waste of time, you can just hit delete (or reply, "Sorry, not interested") and move on to the next thing. However, if you've agreed to meet with somebody, and thirty seconds into the meeting you've come to the same conclusion, most people would be too polite to ruthlessly tell the person to their face that the meeting is pointless, and then get up and leave. (Also, if the meeting is not in your own office, you'll have expended time just to get there.) This is even true of a phone call: most people are too polite to hang up on someone, except maybe a telemarketer. If someone wants me to make time to meet with them in person, they should be able to clearly express the purpose of the meeting in a few lines of text beforehand.

M: Ask HN: Redditers want a product, can we help connect the dots? - zupa-hu Hey HN-ers!<p>I came across this post on reddit where some are looking for an up-to-date Picasa equivalent. (It was killed.) I know lots of startuppers are looking for ideas, it seems there are at least some users who need this.<p>Is there a site where users can vote on ideas they need? I think I&#x27;ve seen one posted here some time ago but can&#x27;t find it. Any ideas? Maybe we could help connect the dots..<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;photography&#x2F;comments&#x2F;hbt3aq&#x2F;i_wish_someone_would_create_a_real_replacement&#x2F;<p>ps - I&#x27;m in no way benefiting from this R: mtmail There's a "Ask HN: What would you pay $10 per month for?" (or $100 or similar) question about once per week, usually few if any responses. Maybe the question is too broad or has simply been asked too often. The most traction recently was "Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23290536) Picasa equivalent: "Ask HN: Personal photo library recommendations? Open source, browser-based" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756110) might have hints. R: zupa-hu Thanks, great recommendations! R: Alupis Picasa's equivalent is Google Photos... Google folded it into their Photos service long ago, and it's quite nice (if you don't mind it being a Google service). Lots of AI, automatic categorization, face recognition of who's in photos, location tagging, album generation, "This Day Last Year" (my favorite feature), slideshows, etc. R: zupa-hu Unfortunately, Google Photos is the source of their grief. Thanks though!

M: The backdoor file named man.cy in Linux mint - cujanovic https://gist.github.com/Oweoqi/31239851e5b84dbba894 R: elcano Where I this file supposed to be located in an installed system, if I wanted to check?

M: Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past) - llambda http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2012/02/why-cognitive-enhancement-is-in-your-future-and-your-past/252566/ R: tokenadult Previous submission of canonical URL (no comments): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3562364>

M: Ask YC: Hacker Homes - catch404 We've had requests for peoples desks and screenshots - I thought it may be interesting to see/ discuss what people have done with their homes. Such as media centre setups, eco installs, or diy. R: catch404 Until I move I've only really had a bedroom to work with: standing desk with media pc, stereo amp on bedside table and a few lamps on the floor so far! Looking for ideas for the next place. R: Mz Nothing exciting. I own almost no furniture. What little furniture I do own is mostly to hold a flat screen TV, Wii, laptop and some CD's and game cartridges. We have our priorities straight. :-) R: bemmu We don't even have that. Instead of a TV, we have a projector that is on the same desk with my computer, and just project on the wall. For music I have Spotify, for games there is Steam, for books I have my Bebook. Instead of a sofa we have bean bags that can be stacked when not in use, although it has turned out not to be such a comfortable solution. Still, always looking for ways to get rid of more things. R: Mz Bean bags are way more furniture than I have. I bet you also have a bed (or at least a sleeping bag) too. Um, too much stuff for me. (No, I'm not neurotic. I'm highly motivated. :-D ) R: bemmu I guess we could switch to Japanese-style stoveaway futons, but I like sleep way too much to make any kind of compromises there :)

M: The Four Finns Who Pioneered the Graphical Browser - bobbud http://www.xconomy.com/national/2009/03/03/the-greatest-internet-pioneers-you-never-heard-of-the-story-of-erwise-and-four-finns-who-showed-the-way-to-the-web-browser/ R: wallflower Two years later... WWW-Talk Marc Andreessen () Thu, 25 Feb 93 21:09:02 -0800 "I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag: IMG Required argument is SRC="url". This names a bitmap or pixmap file for the browser to attempt to pull over the network and interpret as an image, to be embedded in the text at the point of the tag's occurrence." [http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0182.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0182.html) R: henning And thus was born the beginnings of Internet porn. R: Ras_ Recent past of Finnish sci&tech includes a bewildering amount of similar cases of wasted potential. Telecommunication is the worst area. Its mega-successes, such as SMS can be described as lucky mistakes, while several very potent innovations have gone to waste in state telco's (TeliaSonera) and cell manufacturers. If a product reached the market, it was often too premature, such as 1999 Benefon Esc GPS-phone (5 years premature), or its launch marketing failed badly. I believe Finland produces second most patents per capita. But lack of funding (esp. in 1-5M range) and lack of marketing/commercialization skills destroys the ample potential. Finns are generally seen as a "country of engineers". This might be the key to understanding why recent extraordinary successes like Skype (Sweden/Estonia) have appeared in neighboring countries. Finland has succeeded lately in open source sw (Linux, MySQL), not much else. I would place a lot of the blaim of not identifying these candidates to the Finnish VC industry. It has been dominated by lazy state controlled institutions. They haven't been greedy(?) enough to invest in big plays. Only safe bets or dumping money to major players such as Nokia. R: lacker Another story that shows it isn't the idea, it's the execution. As they say in the article, it was tough to get any funding in Finland at the time, but that's probably faint consolation now. Who knows what might have happened if they had actually released it and kept working on it in their spare time. R: zandorg Academics in Europe have an addiction to grants/funding (and that's as much their fuel as coffee). I've met a few academic people who were astonished that I'd work on software for free, for sale or glory. There's also a perception that you need a PhD to commercialise your ideas and run a business. Footnote: I'm from the UK.

M: Ask HN: What is your advise to move up the ladder? Any anecdotes? - gisnotgoogle Hi HN,<p>I am asking for some specific advise regarding my case. I am on H1B visa working for one of top 10 software firms in the valley. There are about 10000+ employees in my org.<p>In 2013 , I actually joined startup to move up but our startup got acquired by big software company.<p>My question is - How do I move up ?<p>I have 9 years of experience so far in software development. I hold Engineering degree from India and 3 certifications that are business , management related.<p>To move up I finished Stanford APM certificate in 2013 before joining said startup. However, that didn&#x27;t help in getting management position.<p>I like coding , system design, large scale systems, scalability, contribution to business in general. I would say I am good , if not best, programmer and can get stuff done fast without any supervision. I can contribute to technical discussions, can mentor junior programmers, can help determine long term approach and more.<p>However, after 9 years of programming I am feeling there is too much stuff now to learn. Everyday I hear about new tool, every other week &#x2F; month there is new language out there. I am also 31 years old and unmarried. I would like to have some time for personal improvement rather than running every second like everyone else in bay area ( at least ).<p>What are your tips for moving up in the organization? I would love to do coding but I want to make equal contribution to business. I look to someone like Jack Dorsey , Paul Graham, Marissa Mayer as inspiration on who I want to be when I will be 40. Jack is not favorite of many people ( especially on HN ) but I think he is strong leader.<p>My goal is both money and position in new company. I don&#x27;t care about size of the company. I can switch jobs but that might not be immediate due to visa. Does joining Google, FB make any sense or should I join startup and move up ?<p>Any tips ?<p>How did you move up in large organization ?<p>Thank you !! R: mmanulis I'm curious if you discussed your desire to move into a management position with your supervisor. If you did discuss it, what, if any, feedback did you get? Based on your statements in your question, the frustration is obvious, so is a sense of entitlement, like you've earned this right but it's not happening for you. I am sorry that you are feeling like that, it's a terrible place to be and it can drive you to make some really stupid decisions. Hopefully, in simply asking this here has helped you relieve some of the stress, if not, maybe the following will be of some help. This is not a direct answer, but should give you some ideas and thoughts to ponder, plus a couple of next steps. Here are some of the themes I'm seeing in your question: * Too much stuff to learn when it comes to coding * Want to spend more time on personal projects instead of on technology treadmill * Feel like you can complete coding tasks quickly Let's address these themes: I'm going to treat leadership / management interchangeably here, even though there are some serious differences between the two roles. For the purposes of being a line manager, they can be treated interchangeably. Moving into a leadership role, whether you're looking for a tech lead or a management role, does not stop the first bullet point above. If anything, you have to be aware of all of the new trends enough to make a judgement call on it's validity, maturity and use-cases. You need to know this because you'll have your reports coming to you on a regular basis wanting to use some of these techniques / tools / languages / etc. How do you say no without offending your report? On the flip side, you'll have your manager(s) coming to you asking if something is a good idea. How do you explain the tradeoffs if you're a one-trick pony? To the second bullet: you have, significantly, more time as an individual contributor than as a manager. As a manager, you have to make sure everyone is on target with what they need to do, run 1-1s to make sure the people are satisfied / happy and are not planning to resign shortly, report up the progress, report down the needs of the bosses. You are, perpetually, stuck between trying to communicate up, down and across the organization, while sitting in a lot of meetings (assuming a large org) and being on the hook to get more stuff done. This is doubly so if you are new to management. The hard truth is that the role doesn't matter, you have to know where to draw the line(s) and have a life. It's a constant tradeoff, do you pick up a new hobby or go out with your friends or learn the latest framework / language / algorithm / etc. Your ability to code or get engineering tasks done quickly has very little to do with your ability to lead / manage. You need to learn new skills, mostly around communication, relationship building, messaging, ownership, delegation, accountability of others, etc. Just because you are a good developer does not mean you'll be a good manager. I would argue that most developers should never be allowed to lead as the skills and roles are so different, they are not transferrable. This means that you're starting from scratch, again. By the way, as you get promoted, you're constantly starting from scratch, unless you are, already, doing some of the things your manager is doing. None of this directly answers your question, as there is no direct answer or how-to guide, it is very industry- and organization-specific. Being a manager at a startup is very very different from being a manager at a large corporation. Moving into that role is, also, a different process. In some ways, moving into a leadership role at a startup has more to do with raw leadership skills then anything else; you see a problem, you own solving it - rinse and repeat, boom you're a leader now. By the way, replace __boom__ with months, potentially. In a larger company, it's more involved as managers are expensive, both in terms of salary and training / knowledge acquisition. Imagine the disruption to the team, the delivery flow, unofficial communication channels (aka social glue), etc. when a manager leaves. To be perfectly blunt, if you have ask the question, you need to really think about what it means to be a manager / leader. Look at how your role models came to be leaders, what paths did they take? Based on what you stated, your goals are position and money, that will make you a terrible manager, if you don't care about the people. You'll have a hard time retaining people or producing results in any high-performing organization as you won't be able to motivate anyone based on those drivers. Another thought, position is meaningless in a high-quality tech environment. Power does not come, just, from the title, it comes from the group differing to you because of respect. Having worked at places where the position/title alone denoted power, it's a crappy place to be. My suggestion, as to the next steps, is to: * Reflect on the instances when you were put in charge of something and how people reacted to you, how they treated you and how you treated them * Have several coffee dates with managers / leaders in your organization (don't go outside of your org) You are looking for people doing the role you would move into as your next step and their managers. Tell them you're interested in being a manager and what lessons they learned, what their day looks like, what keeps them awake at night, etc. You want to learn as much as you can from them and get your name out there. This is part of building relationships but also information gathering. This will tell you if you actually want the job and are willing to put up with the politics and dealing with people without the context of code to help you. * Sit down with your manager in your next 1-1 and explain what you're seeking and ask for help to move into that role. Also, read Managing Humans by Michael Lopp. It will give you a good idea about what it's like to manage engineers.

M: Ask HN: should you have users verify accounts through e-mail confirmation? - palidanx I'd like to hear from the HN community what you think about the pro/con of a user having to verify a new user account on a website by clicking an e-mail verification.<p>So the workflow would be + go to website + create account + click e-mail confirmation + login R: ColinWright Multiple times I've had someone complete a registration, only to find that they'd mistyped their own email address. Twice. Without their subsequent "Where's my confirmation?" email I might not have known, and they might never have completed their registration successfully. It's a pain, but it's now reasonably familiar, and it serves a specific purpose - confirming the email address. If you can get accurate details from people without requiring the explicit test of the explicit function then I'd be interested. R: skrish That is right. But you need to reduce friction in signup to allow user to explore app. So a better way could be Signup => Allow them in but say that email confirmation is required for next login => Send email confirmation => Allow login only with confirmation. R: 27182818284 I think people reasonably expect it these days. I'm often comforted by it because generally a site with it also has the correct lost password recoveries by email, etc. R: ScottWhigham I love how this is downvoted b/c someone disagreed. Silly. R: a12b It depends of your needs. If you plan to use their email (newsletters, password recovering, ...), then that's very valuable to have a verified email. But if you don't, I think you could go further by removing the email field from the signup form. R: koopajah You also could allow the user to create an account and access the website directly but remind him that he needs to verify its email address. Of course it depends on your website and what you are offering, but allowing user to access your application as fast as possible should be a good idea. Take the example of twitter which allows you to create an account and start using it without the verification. But it reminds you to verify the email everytime you log in. R: pseudorocker We've found it's easiest to just ask for email adress twice in the initial form (and try to prevent pasting for the second field). Works pretty darn well. Email confirmation is a hassle to build and often for users to act on, from our experience. R: pasbesoin When a company does _not_ use or correctly use email confirmation [1], and I start subsequently receiving emails regarding an account I never set up, I consider that a form of abuse on the part of the company. Please confirm the email addresses of your users. \-- [1] And I've had more than one major player boggle the latter.

M: Batch process creating new users - 5partan http://tuxradar.com/answers/492 R: memset This article cites using `pwcrypt` to return the password, and that doesn't seem to be easily available (at least, not in Ubuntu 10.04.) Is there an alternative command-line interface to the crypt() function? R: 5partan yes there is: perl -e 'print crypt("password", "salt") so you would do something like: useradd -d / -g users -p $(perl -e'print crypt("foo", "aa")') -M -N foo working example for the site: cat newusers | while read u p n do useradd --comment "$n" --password $(python -c 'import crypt; import os; print crypt.crypt(os.environ.get("p", ""),"salt")') --create-home $u done Couldn't get it work with perl:) R: 5partan Correct Version: cat newusers | while read u p n do export p useradd --comment "$n" --password $(python -c 'import crypt; import os; print crypt.crypt(os.environ.get("p", ""),"salt")') --create-home $u done R: memset Hey, this worked! Thank you so much :) R: 5partan You are welcome :)

M: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo - cbcowans https://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/ R: hedgew Many of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written well enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better language, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is used as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and most persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever matching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch up. I do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from discussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to understand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and kindness. R: ryanbrunner I think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that the memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't "let's have a chat", it was "here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong". I think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion rather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion. And if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as inappropriate work communication. R: nicolashahn Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more aggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that have not been criticized in the same way. And for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I thought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I think many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an opposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to. R: Blackthorn > Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence > bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit > of claiming it's "too confrontational," "poorly written," "naive," or > whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully > misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). This was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they were teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend themselves at work this time, is ridiculous. R: nicolashahn I'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her male coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's bullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so. I'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest way. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about them (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about, but I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for picking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least some spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten nearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if it were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man? Those who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of Google and doubled down on their diversity initiatives/echo chamber. We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. R: camgunz > We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally > without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least. We are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is that the workplace isn't the venue for this. R: nicolashahn I'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll disagree with you. The workplace _was_ the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that Google(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the company. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in another part of the comment section for this very article. Completely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he received confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he decided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective, introduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and help make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire' among other things. What it did _not_ do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel the need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that many take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it, they vilified and ousted him. Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as interested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo, and those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about what he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some credit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did not mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally introduced it to, at least at that point in time. Really, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial. It easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the company by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point is, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it especially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent of memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it looked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage. R: naasking > Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly > harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not > as interested in it) has created such outrage I think the larger problem is that this is an overstatement. Women might not be interested in joining the _current tech culture_ , but that doesn't mean they aren't interested in tech to a larger extent than the current numbers suggest. Part of the disconnect is that these initiatives are aimed at changing the culture to be more attractive to women, and the people who really like the culture don't see the need. Certainly the current tech culture is effective and fairly productive, but I certainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with these culture changes. R: delroth If this is a "current tech culture" problem, how do you explain the fact that this is a trend shared across most of the engineering professions? Example: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- business/11692996/Wo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- business/11692996/Women-In-Engineering-Day-Gender-gap-in-male-dominated- industry-falls.html) I don't think you can claim that "tech" and e.g. civil engineering have much in common in terms of culture, but they still share the lack of men/women parity. R: nostrebored Yet somehow, programming is considered a woman's job throughout vast swathes of India. China is much closer to parity in engineering as well. You're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math, science, etc. Boys are told the opposite and are pushed in this direction. I certainly was. My parents were drilling me on math by age five. R: Const-me In all developed countries, only 10-25% of engineers are female. An American society in is very different from that of Australia, Sweden, Greece or Germany. Not sure why, but I know one possible explanation. In developing countries, people are pressured by their basic needs. An engineering job generally pays well. People in such countries are less likely to do what they want and more likely to do what pays well, so gender ratio in engineering is close to 50/50. In developed countries, people are guaranteed to survive even without a profession or job. Less financial pressure, more freedom of choice, less women in engineering. R: deepGem Well doesn't this sort of support Damore's hypothesis ? Some of the smartest girls I know went into marketing, purely because they just loved that field. Somehow to them sitting in an office in front of a computer all day didn't seem that appealing. Is it safe to infer that, in th developed world, given a career choice women have a propensity to not choose tech ? R: the_af On the contrary, it sort of refutes Damore's hypothesis: the difference is not inherent but merely societal, because we observe that, when encouraged, women can succeed at engineering as much as men. In other words, if true, we should strive to understand _why_ fewer women choose tech in developed countries and fix it, not automatically assume it's because they are inherently less interested. R: randomdata Succeeding at engineering is not the same as having the desire to do engineering. If it takes encouragement to push women into the field, that says the desire is not there. I am going to go further and suggest that software engineering is just not that desirable of a career, _no matter who you are_. Given that compensation is a function of supply and demand, and this career is fairly well compensated, the lack of people - both male and female - entering the career path would suggest is not the top choice of _anyone_. What appears to be happening is that some men are willing to put up with an undesirable career because of the higher than average compensation, while women are less wooed by those monetary factors. The only 'fix' here is to drive home the importance of doing unhappy careers for big money towards the female population. But do we really want to do that? That does not really seem like a great goal. There is more to life than money. R: the_af All of that enters the realm of the highly subjective, with some parts I may agree with and other I don't. I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money. Other people I know did. I certainly cannot generalize to large groups of people. I disagree with your observation about "some men" and "women", or rather, I'd say "what happens is that _some_ men are willing (and some, like me, are not) and _some_ women aren't", and furthermore, I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things. I happen to think working long hours is crap, and something that needs to change (and the reason I find startups unattractive). What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of _biological_ (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about. R: randomdata _> I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money._ But we're talking about the population at large, not the tiny group of 'geeks' who revel in the tech environment. There are always outliers. If the general population - both men and women - wanted to do this kind of work, they would be falling all over each other to do it, just as they do in careers that are desirable. Instead, you see businesses falling over the few people who are willing to do it. That is not a sign of an attractive career path. Quite the opposite. Again, not even _men_ want to do this type of work. This is not even a gender issue at the heart of it. _> I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things._ But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the general population? Programming is simply an awful time that most people wouldn't wish upon their worst enemy. It is as simple as that. We can go around and try and blame things like culture, but at the end of the day the work that has to be done sucks. Yes, some people are wired strangely and happen to like it. Pick anything you find distasteful and I can find you at least one person who loves it. That's the nature of having 7 billion people and all of their random mutations. That does not mean the masses have any interest whatsoever. _> What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as successful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This automatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or inherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was fundamentally about._ Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed. The fact that women can be as successful as men in the field does not mean that there is not some biological reason to not want to do the job. R: the_af You're mixing highly subjective aspects that I don't find worthwhile to debate here ("the job sucks") and that I disagree with. No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices. Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs? > _But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the > general population?_ But it's not the general population we're talking about; that's a straw man. We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice. And yes, not excluding a segment of the population just because of irrelevant biological traits is desirable and worth the effort. > _Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed_ To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow _explained_ biological differences. Money is not a biological factor, it's a societal one! The logical disconnect is so pronounced that it _must_ point to an emotional blind spot. R: randomdata _> No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices._ Then why are men and women alike rejecting the field? Men less so, perhaps, but neither gender are jumping at the chance to have the job. Not even the well above average compensation that attempts to attract them to the industry. _> Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?_ This is not my opinion, this is what the data shows. I'm glad you do not feel that the professional is awful. I personally do not feel that way either, but we cannot use our biases to believe that everyone feels the same way. Be very careful of your biases. _> We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice._ In order to even think about whether the workplace is hostile to women, we first have to determine why _neither_ gender is interested in the profession. Again, this is not my opinion. This is what the data is telling us. _> To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim "of course, they do it for the money in third-world countries!" as if this somehow explained biological differences._ Let me be clear: I am not saying it is explained by biological differences. I am saying that your explanation does nothing to exclude biological differences. Women proving success in the tech workplace does nothing to discount a biological aspect, and it is flawed logic to believe otherwise. R: the_af > _neither gender is interested in the profession_ This is false. > _but we cannot use our biases_ Exactly. Please re-examine what you're saying in light of your own advice. R: belorn A common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo effected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward. This strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten teacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot of media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to constantly having prove to parents and fellow female teachers that just because they are male and chosen that profession it doesn't mean that they are criminals or are higher risk employees. Not only that, but many school implemented procedures that limited what male teacher were allowed to do, furthering pushing a second class status on them. Many also received threats of violence, and since both the left, the feminist movement, and the right fanned the flame against male teachers, many just gave up and left the profession. If memory is right, one news article ended with "I just wish I could go to work and do my job, but that is no longer possible". I would very much like to see a discussion on how to solve this kind of problem. R: azernik The feminist movement as a whole is very much _against_ gendered norms about who should and shouldn't be a kindergarten teacher. Which feminist movements did you see fanning these particular flames? R: ryanx435 3rd wave, whose actions betray their true goals: men as second class citizens. R: dang Please keep ideological talking points off HN. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do. R: rublev The onus is on you to disprove them, they made no irrational claims. If you have some problem with any of their concepts, say so. Your attack on whether his comment is 'thoughtful' or not is weak. R: igravious If you could point out to us here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- wave_feminism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism) where it says that all so-called or self-described third wave feminists see men as second class citizens that would be super helpful in this debate. R: dang Please don't take HN threads further down generic ideological rabbit holes, or rather black holes. Nothing good comes of them and the thread never returns. R: igravious Understood. No problem. R: rpiguy I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public. There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech. R: tedivm Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document _still_ did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? How do I prove > myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional > burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it's also a > pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: "Will the team/manager/VC I > talk with today realize I'm qualified, or will they be making stereotypical > assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my > job?" To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it's > an unequal burden my male coworkers don't have to deal with every day. That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there. R: mizzack From your quote: > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? Your perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt, so the memo was the problem. From Damore's perspective, if there were no quota/diversity hiring programs at that place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to suspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem. Totally different interpretations of cause and effect. R: onion2k I've met engineers who have expressed a belief that women are often hired if the recruiter found them attractive, and that those women shouldn't have been hired. While those engineers are able to find employment there will always be places where women don't feel welcome, even with diversity programs in place. It is simply the case that some engineers are grossly sexist and will _always_ think a woman has been hired for some other reason beside technical merit if they have an opportunity to. If Damore can't see that then he hasn't enough experience to be talking about hiring. R: e9 Google doesn't operate that way, they has strict hiring policies and procedures. Recruiter or anyone else has no way to influence hiring without doing something shady (doing selective interview like what Damore claimed they were doing). R: tedivm Damore literally said they were "lowering the bar". You can't have it both ways here. R: Cogito He said "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate". He did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting (proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified female candidates, the bar is effectively lowered. If what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men, it's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered. The one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all qualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would expect the bar to be level. If however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more plausible, the effect would be to change the bar. I hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the statistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what the real expected outcome should be. R: jdoliner > He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. > Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more > resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than > lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to > those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based > other factors beside our skills. This to me is the most interesting question that hasn't been answered about the memo. There seems to still be two camps, those who believe Google does not lower the bar for women and those who do. They can't both be right and I'd imagine if we could take a look at Google's hiring practices it wouldn't be too hard to tell which is which. Of course, we can't Google keeps its hiring practices, at least the ones relating to diversity very hush hush. This was actually Damore's impetus for writing the memo, he attended a diversity summit at Google where he learned about his employer's hiring practices and also observed that this summit was, unlike other meetings at Google, not recorded for later viewing. Damore's conclusion was that the hiring processes were unethical and likely illegal, although afaik he's yet to say specifically what it was that he observed. Still I don't think it's very reasonable to say that Damore has caused harm with this misrepresentation unless you can show conclusively that it is indeed a misrepresentation, and so far I haven't seen anything conclusive that shows that. R: pj_mukh He specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get assigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the first round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be controlling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion. R: jdoliner > Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking > shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion. Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind. I'd ask a few questions about this interview practice though. 1) Is this the entirety of Google's diversity practices in hiring? I'd be surprised if it is. So even if this isn't lowering the bar it still doesn't prove conclusively that's not what they're doing. Again I'd like to see a more complete accounting of what exactly it is they do. However, I'm certainly not saying that you need to provide this in order to have a legitimate argument, you don't have access to this information any more than I do. 2) This practice seems to have a somewhat narrow view of what a interviewer bias looks like. In particular it only tries to eliminate bias in the case of a minority being rejected. What would happen if we were to instead attempt to detect interviewers who were prone to bias by randomly giving rejected candidates second interviews and seeing which interviewers wound up frequently disagreeing with their peers? If the assumption that bias only effects minority candidates is true this would have much the same effect. 3) What if it wasn't a second chance but 100 chances? I.e. if you're a minority you get to interview for Google 100 times and if any of those say yes your in. White people only get 1 shot. Unless you think Google's false positive rate is 0, this would have to lower the bar wouldn't it? R: pj_mukh "Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about Damore's state of mind." So let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring committee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved, which would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the hiring process. The rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which you just told me not to do. The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence. Maybe go talk to the hiring committee about their motives/state of mind first Mr. Damore? R: jdoliner We're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of mind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to learn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not Google's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar. My "points" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as questions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non- speculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that information. The original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a great deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it quite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself was a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for skeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong. R: pj_mukh It was a lot of scientific studies he cited (since contradicted by meta studies), nothing about Google's processes. Another commenter on this thread seems to suggest that almost all interviewers can get second shots, which (albeit anecdotally) makes his argument weaker (showing restraint here in not calling him an outright liar) I know with my (again anecdotal) experience with large SV firms, if Google had these kinds of holes in their hiring process they would be standing alone in the valley. Also, "lowering the bar" is not consistent with their absolute global market dominance. He also claims in the same interview that he had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it[1], so I don't know how much of this was a "request for clarification". He even had action items. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng) R: jdoliner I've yet to see a meta study which contradicts those studies. Would be interested to see one. I've seen studies that say in X% of studies about differences between men and women the differences found are negligible. That's not a contradiction though, and it's not really meaningful at all. The % of studies which find negligible differences can be arbitrarily inflated because it's simple to find as many axis along which there are no gender differences as you want. It doesn't matter how many you find, even if it's .000001% of studies that find a difference if those differences happen to be particularly important that still means there's a meaningful difference. Scott Alexander has a more in depth explanation of this here: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/) If all interviewees have the same access to second interviews then I agree that it does nothing to lower the bar. In general if a policy doesn't concern itself with the identity of the candidate I don't see a way that it could be lowering the bar. However, my understanding, based on previous comments, is that diversity interviewees get a second chance immediately while the others must wait 12 months before they get a second chance. If that's the case then Damore's argument (and mine) stand. I don't think Google's market dominance can be used as evidence of good hiring practices since I believe in the early days they didn't have such practices and wound up with a very undiverse company. This didn't seem to stop them achieving market dominance, draw from this what you will about how much they need diversity to succeed. I'm having a bit of trouble understanding how you simultaneously believe that he "had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it" and "The article shouldn't have been written without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence." It seems to me that not only did Damore make an honest effort to seek out clarification but that you're well aware of this fact. R: pj_mukh Tonnes of speculation. So I'm just gonna stop refuting all that. "had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted it" I didn't claim this, he did (see: Youtube link). My point is that he didn't actually look into or ask hiring committees why they were doing what they did. Instead, he made bold recommendations, that (like the OP link shows) made women in tech feel like they didn't belong. He wasn't open to a discussion as many characterize, in his mind, he'd already had discussions and incorporated feedback (his words) R: corndoge Frances: ...if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. And then Frances: ...I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. Frances: ...Many powerful men in Silicon Valley have huge bases of social media followers. By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and technical founders. So, what? Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue if my silence is sending a message that philosophical principles and whatever matter more than women in technology? What if I just want to work my 9-5, treat all my coworkers well regardless of sex or gender, and let the PC warriors duke it out in the streets away from me? Can't even stay silent without sending a message. While I agree with much of what is said in this piece, I find this pretty demonstrative of the "damned if i do, damned if I don't" situation I'm in as a male trying to survive in this PC crucifixion culture. R: droopybuns This section struck out to me too. what I realized is that I am older, more world wary and far more cynical about anyone looking out for me than your average young millennial. I think the dividing line is in that cynicism. I have never felt like anyone looked out for me. "How do I prove myself to people one way or another?" I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very wary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how you prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always risk being cast out. If young social activists were less strident about how society stacks the deck for all white people- even the ones who have been abused, who had a shitty childhood, who have had bad relationships, who are suffering from depression or chemical abuse or other problems, then I think we'd stop running into this very boring and predictable conflict. Everyone is suffering on some level. Stop talking about white men like we've never experienced pain. I do think the memo was foundationally stupid. Compassion is needed on all sides. R: kevinwang >"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?" I don't think this was about generic proving-to-others. I think it's about being prejudged by others at first glance which minorities in tech get in every interaction they have. I think that it's valid to say that's a significant struggle. I have no expertise in this field of social ethics, so I'm hesitant to critique your comment when I'm as uninformed as anyone else, but I also think that your following comment shows an ignorance of that struggle: >I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very wary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how you prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always risk being cast out. If I'm interpreting this correctly as "This is what I did in response to my impulse to prove myself. This is what women in tech should do about their's as well.", then I think you are not considering the fact that you have the privilege of not needing to prove yourself. When people meet you, they don't assume a baseline level of incompetence. This same strategy that you use wouldn't apply to minorities who always feel like they need to prove themselves because of what they look like. So I think this need to prove yourself stems from a serious, real issue, and so it's wrong to downplay this issue by equating minorities' perpetual feeling of needing to prove themselves with your feelings, to conclude that the problem exists inside them, and not outside them. Apologies if I misinterpreted your words, but if not, I'd like to hear your response, because this is something I've been thinking about lately. R: jack_h > I think it's about being prejudged by others at first glance which > minorities in tech get in every interaction they have. I think that it's > valid to say that's a significant struggle. > When people meet you, they don't assume a baseline level of incompetence. In a way they are prejudging him though. They consider the baseline for him to be one who assumes they're incompetent. He has to prove otherwise. Or perhaps not quite as severe, he is assumed to have privilege which you yourself stated. It seems to be a problem with assuming things about an individual from population distributions. Perhaps we've forgotten how to treat others as individuals and be treated by others as an individual. R: dreta All i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and others managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there are biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being less interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's sexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity hires. Was i reading the wrong memo? Because everybody, including the 3 interviewees, no matter if they seem calm and collected, keep attributing malice, and talking about how the author said women are less suited to being good engineers, and that women shouldn't be encouraged to get interested in STEM. Where was that stated? R: humanrebar One of the women said: > I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general > populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an > individual level." She goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her. It seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he takes responsibility for how his ideas affect people. Another says: > I don't really see how it's useful to have a discussion of general group > traits in a work setting. Assuming that it's true that women on average are > more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the > additional barrier of proving that she's not like other women, or that if > she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job > performance? Again, she's not really disagreeing with Damore in this snippet. She's saying the ideas themselves are counterproductive and shouldn't be discussed. R: Danihan Sure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, "stereotyping people by group is productive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)" but any criticism of it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the workplace." R: freetime2 So firstly - let me say that this has been one of the most level-headed responses to the memo that I have seen so far. I personally found it very constructive. Bravo to the author and the interviewees. I did want to discuss one particular line of thought from the interview though: _I can see that there are wide swaths of people who would refuse to work with him_ Two of the interviewees gave this justification for why he should have been fired, and I have seen it elsewhere as well. I disagree, though. I have worked with with people in the past with whom I have ideological differences. But it has never stopped me from at least trying to get along and work productively with that person. We just don't know from the evidence presented thus far what James Damore is like to worth with. Maybe he's a sexist asshole who is incapable of treating women fairly (in which case he does deserve to be fired). Or maybe we can take him at face value when he says he appreciates diversity and prefers to judge people as individuals rather than as a group. We just don't know. On the other hand, if there are employees at Google who despite having never met James Damore before are telling their managers "I can't work with him based on this thing he wrote or this idea he believes", aren't they also in the wrong here? R: spydum fully agree here. If you can't put aside your personal feelings based on someone elses political views to get work done, YOU are the one with the problem. I'm sure plenty of us have worked with people who have lifestyles, beliefs, and demonstrated actions we personally deeply disagree with. Heck, I've worked with people where we legitimately disliked each other. Yet when I come into the office to work, we sit down together and get stuff done. Now, my personal opinion is: leave your politics at home, don't spend company time on such things. I'm glad you think of work as a family, but it's not (regardless of the HR feel-good marketing). However, if they are asking for commentary and feedback on diversity initiatives, and you provide it honestly, it's extraordinarily poor form to then fire you. They had the responsibility to respond to him, and address it privately. I think the more troubling problem was as others have commented: the fact that it was leaked from an internal conversation and turned into such a contentious issue for google. R: mastazi So the takeaway is: you should become extremely proficient at writing memos and back them up with vast amounts of research, or be fired. But all of the above applies only if your memo expresses conservative ideas. I don't consider myself a conservative but I find all of this disturbing. R: dguaraglia Maybe the takeaway is: you shouldn't write "memos" that generate a lot of noise and lost productivity in your work environment and affect your company's external image. If you have political points you want to make, go find a group of like-minded individuals and discuss with them first. R: lliamander What if you think the issues you are bringing up are already a problem for the company, and the company just isn't willing to admit it? R: dguaraglia In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to validate your idea. If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at the next TGIF (the internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully and without making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory arguments against your perceived political leanings of the company. I was there during the whole Nest reorg/culture drama for crying out loud. I've seen people lob _really hairy_ questions at the TGIF panel and I don't recall a single one of them getting fired. R: lliamander > In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to > validate your idea. He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason. > If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at the next TGIF (the > internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully and without > making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory arguments > against your perceived political leanings of the company. What point would that be? R: dguaraglia > He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason That's not an off-line resource. That's a public mailing list reachable by any employee. It's not even remotely what I am suggesting. > What point would that be? "I believe our current hiring practices might be affecting certain candidates because A, B and C mechanism stop/hinder/disproportionally-favor X, Y, Z groups" No need for building an argument about biological differences between men and women, no reason to build an antagonistic recount of what _you think_ the motivations are, no need to call your peers and higher ups "Leftist." State the facts, ask the question, move on. Assuming he really cared about hiring practices (which is purportedly the reason he wrote the memo), that would've gotten everyone's attention and I can guarantee that nobody would've gotten fired. R: framebit As for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are seeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor that the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent manner. The conversation about "women in tech" is severely hamstrung by folks conflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two very different problems requiring two very different conversations. Lastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic to be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially pointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up focusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men, hispanic men, etc. R: moduspol I'd like to think it's everyone seeing what they want to see in it, but that's not really a fair description. The writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame it as "women have inferior genes," then this is a discussion that can't be had. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the only causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an "anti- diversity" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable. R: ATsch I think it's interesting how the Edith stated Damore had said women were worse at their job, while one of the other women explicitly said he didn't, and the other only mentioned interest in programming. This is similar to the divide I've seen in the media. I have not read the memo in it's entirety, but since the impression I got from reading a few news stories was that Damore had only made his controversial statements in regard to the population, not skill of programmers, I'm curious what causes this disagreement. I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, considering that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. (I'm not a biology nerd so feel free to correct me on this.) R: jorgemf > I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in > a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, > considering the fact that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, > you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't. I think she refers that gender is not binary as you can be straight male, straight female, gay male, gay female, bisexual, asexual, etc. I am not completely sure but I think there can be mutations where you have 2 chromosomes X and 1 Y. So XXY [1] [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome) R: bumblebeard Sex, sexual orientation, and gender are different things. By gender spectrum she means that most people's behavior is somewhere along a continuum between completely masculine and completely feminine and that virtually nobody is at one extreme or the other. I think the point she's making is that while men and women have different interests as groups, there are plenty of women who are interested in what are perceived as masculine things (in this case probably computer programming) and vice versa. R: jccalhoun I think this is one of the better responses I've seen This line really struck me as being spot on: >There's a difference between "let's have a discussion" and "let me tell you what's up, all you wrong people." R: Will_Parker On the other hand, [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law) Emphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what points do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form of discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific progress. R: lutorm I disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process. Certainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve apparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are making arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing in good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that evidence should be discounted. R: Will_Parker > Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware > of to see if those arguments "withstand scrutiny" is not scientific process. Indeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in this way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most psychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant) conclusions and speculations. This sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great points (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some terrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful and vibrant tech company should encourage. R: TACIXAT >Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that's where it mostly was taking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to complement it). This is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned and people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in this blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality community. R: chippy Most submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front page. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is because of it's provenance. Now, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are fed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more reasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at themselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then. R: dang > _That this article hasn 't been flagged and remains on the front page is > because of it's provenance_ I'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN moderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar detector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're surprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly remained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple weeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other authors put into crafting the post. R: alecco Could you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other opinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in the other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion. Remember, the content here is made by the users. For free. R: dang I'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that the comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions. That's a great thing. Perhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's not so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed users. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to the conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about this tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter. Indeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on! This bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being bothered by an optical illusion. More about this in the many comments at [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20bias&sort=byDate&pre...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20bias&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment) R: alecco > I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other > threads Funny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another dominant opinion in this one. 1695 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787) 754 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759) 590 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626) 448 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601) R: dang Those threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant time on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally: these perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you that someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This obviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the perceiver - specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It comes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly even-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the same perceptions and accusations. R: alecco Significant time? I don't recall it that way. Had to find them via algolia. R: curtis They might have been discoverable via the "comments" link (lots of active comments still going on) well after the stories have dropped off the front page. I have also been checking the Algolia "Last 24h" view to find flagged discussions that I missed, however. R: chippy I found most of these threads via comments and active. R: sampo Why has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software engineering context? Whatever talent or affinity to abstract and inanimate things we do or don't assume being correlated with gender, isn't software engineering just a lighter version, compared to mathematics and physics? Did math and physics communities already have their internal crisis/debate on these things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope without lighting such a fire? R: izacus Hmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger percentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's somewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation. I guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working with women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove how women aren't worthy . R: mcfunk Right on the nose. And in fact, the proportion of women in computer science was tracking with other sciences until the mid-eighties, when it started to dive, while women's representation in other sciences continued to climb. One of the more glaringly inconsistent observations with Damore's claims. [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding) R: mpweiher Except that CS isn't a science, it's engineering. And it tracked down to the level of other engineering fields. [http://news.janegoodall.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/perce...](http://news.janegoodall.org/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png) So the mystery is not why it went down, it was why it was higher initially. R: izacus Hmm, Computer Science is most definetly a science (which shares quite a bit with maths as expected). A lot of algorithms and data structures you use under the hood when doing engineering were born as a paper in academic CS sphere. Of course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work. That doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most people employed in private companies don't do it. R: mpweiher My bad, I should have been more precise: _natural_ science, which is part of a "liberal arts" education. "Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include: Arts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature) Mathematics Natural science (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth science) Philosophy Religious studies Social science (anthropology, economics, geography, political science, psychology, sociology, Linguistics, history)" Note the absence of engineering disciplines. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education) Vs. engineering or engineering sciences. See for example how Stanford groups things (CS is part of the "School of Engineering"). [https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment- statistic...](https://registrar.stanford.edu/everyone/enrollment- statistics/enrollment-statistics-2015-16/school-engineering- enrollment-2015-16) And then note the difference in enrollment in "chemistry" (the science) and "chemical engineering" [https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcom...](https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/membership/acs/welcoming/diversity/diversity- data.pdf) R: izacus Is the difference you're trying to paint perhaps a US only thing? I've never heard of this type of differentiation. R: mpweiher The exact delineation of "liberal arts" seems to be a US thing (not sure about "only"). However, in Germany we also have "Naturwissenschaften" and "Ingenieurwissenschaften". [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenieurwissenschaften) [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturwissenschaft) So it's a common distinction: figuring out how nature works vs building stuff. R: in3d Damore is planning to sue under the National Labor Relations Act or California's tough law against restricting political activity. The legal experts seem to think he might have a weak to a decent case. I would think Google would try to settle anyway, in order to prevent discovery and the release of their internal communications about the memo and their internal data about the performance of different groups on job interviews. Is there anything that would prevent another Google (or Facebook, etc.) employee (with a lower salary or thinking Google is not for him anyway) from going completely by the letter of the law and suing when fired? That employee could make a more limited case that Google's diversity programs discriminate against white or Asian men in hiring, complain about diversity training sessions, say something about agreeing with Trump's policies and with the conservatives (to make it more explicitly about political activity), write about organizing other employees who agree, make sure to file an NLRB complaint before getting fired, bring up some IQ meta-analysis studies to make sure it's scientific, yet controversial enough to get him fired, state that he's happy to work with Googlers of all sexes and races and that he holds their skills in high esteem and hopes everybody else does too (to make a firing based on the employee manual less credible), use email (because that's what's specifically in the law), run it all through a lawyer first, and don't do any post-firing interviews as Damore has done. Wouldn't that cause huge headaches for Google and other tech companies? If such emails get leaked, the bad PR would force Google's hand to fire him, as happened with Damore. It seems like companies that want to see themselves portrayed as socially progressive might end up between a rock and a hard place. R: foobar_femme As a longtime female engineer at fintech startups, there was absolutely nothing new in Damore's memo. The only thing that gave these tired arguments any cachet at all was Google's name. And I really wish Google hadn't fired Damore. Special projects exists?! For years I have worked with and continue to work with guys who think just like this. In fact, thanks to Twitter, I now know all of my followers who also follow Damore. Thanks for that? When I interview you and ask you a technical question, you don't meet my eyes and then you answer the guy sitting next to me. When I present my own ideas in a group, you ignore them; fine, I'll pregame males colleages and let them present my ideas instead. If I brainstorm as part of the group, you think I'm asking you to explain basic programming concepts to me. You probably think I'm not that smart. And that's OK. Good news: getting things done requires multiple skills. One of mine is overtaking you from behind. Nobody ever thinks of promoting me first. Whatever I get, I work twice as hard and twice as long for it as you did. The existence of a female networking group does not represent an unfair advantage: it represents barely any advantage at all, on the basis of the ones I've attended. And anyway, I don't have time for that, I'm trying to figure out what's caused the unexplained performance reversion over the past two days. Whether you think I am a diversity candidate or not, I am here to code. That is all. Statistically speaking, biology does give me one edge: longer life span. I'll imagine I will still be here doing just that long after everyone else has forgot James Damore exists. ;) R: zaroth Everything you said that's wrong with the interactions you have with male engineers, I'm not sure that James Damore would disagree with any of it, or claim that it doesn't happen, or say that we shouldn't be trying hard to change it. What James argued is that the efforts Google is making and the way they are doing it are in some ways contributing to and making all of those bad experiences you listed _worse_. R: PrimHelios James also argued that women are biologically inferior for STEM fields, which is objectively and demonstrably incorrect. With that, I think he'd disagree with absolutely all of it. He clearly has a confirmation bias, and is actively cherry picking articles (from fucking Wikipedia I might add) and misrepresenting their contents to make women seem inferior. R: Cogito I keep hearing people say this but didn't read it in the memo. Can you point to the bit where he says they are biologically inferior, or the sources he links to that say it? The best I can come up with is the bit where he says Google lowers the bar by reducing the false-negative rate, meaning that a greater percentage of qualified men are rejected than qualified women. [Edit] Reading through again to see more about biology claims in the memo, this is the one that sticks out the most: _I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership._ This sticks out because it mentions abilities - and is indeed the only place where ability is mentioned at all. The wording doesn't say that women are "biologically inferior for STEM fields", but I can see how it might be read that way. I don't read it that way, but I can understand how others might. The surrounding context is pretty much all about the preferences that people have as well, so "women are biologically inferior" doesn't seem like a point that is trying to be made at all. R: wilde I think it comes back to how you read this part of the TL;DR. "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." Google currently has an 80M/20F split. Does that mean that very few women have the traits to work in CS at Google? If so, another way to phrase that might be "the large majority of women do not possess the innate biological traits necessary to work in CS at Google". From which it's not a far leap to "the large majority of women are biologically inferior for CS work at Google." Etc. Normally, one might soften that by asking what population the distribution is drawn from. Sadly, the memo author makes it explicitly clear that he thinks it's largely due to biology: "Be open about the science of human nature. Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems." R: gavanwoolery Interesting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves generalizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of people, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that generalization. For example you could say "80 percent of males are into action movies" \- but you should not go up to an individual male and state "you are into action movies" if you care about factual accuracy. Whether or not Damore's generalizations are accurate is up for debate, but lets say for the sake of argument that they are. I do not think its harmful to say "10 percent of women are really into engineering currently" no more than it is harmful to say "50 percent of women are really into engineering currently." In fact, only a subset of the male population is into engineering, so it is preferential even within a sex. If anything, I think it makes it worth celebrating the women who ARE into engineering even more. So (hypothetically) you could say fewer women are interested in engineering, but it does not mean those who are into engineering are somehow less qualified than males. R: dguaraglia I'll just refer to the women in the article: > Assuming that it's true that women on average are more likely to have trait > X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving > that she's not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that > the trait has no bearing on her job performance? R: gavanwoolery Statistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on behalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that really matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - a generalization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To answer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If they are a good worker and still facing scrutiny, then I would reexamine if the boss or manager questioning them is competent. R: dguaraglia Do you agree that stereotypes affect peoples choices of careers? R: gavanwoolery Its definitely possible although I personally have yet to meet someone whose threshold for not taking a job was that a stereotype existed around it. I tend to go with Occam's razor: I think it is far more likely that peoples choices of careers affect stereotypes. R: dguaraglia Right, but that's not how stereotypes affect career choice. It's not like someone is going to study 5 years for a career, and then at the last minute say "nah, dammit, that makes me look effeminate" or "hmm... I don't know, I'm a woman, I shouldn't be doing that." Like you, I have never heard of anyone doing that (I have heard of someone doing a postdoc in math and then giving up because he thought teaching was going to be boring... go figure.) There's lots of good literature on how gender stereotyping actually affect people's choices. R: potatote > For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the > USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women's work. But ability to do > those jobs? Can anyone with similar experience comment on this? I am just surprised (if what one of the interviewees said is true) because I'd assume the math/engineering/science are highly regarded in the USSR and both genders would pursue that. Side note: People in my country (from southeast asia) don't have a notion that girls are not as good as boys in math. In fact, when I was in (elementary/middle/high) school, I--along with most students in the class-- always looked up to my female peers who are always the top 3 in the classroom (from among ~80 students). In fact, it's almost always natural to assume that girls would outperform boys in the class (meaning, more girls would become the highest ranked student in the class and/or more girls would be ranked as top ten in the nationwide high school exam--a.k.a. matriculation exam). As a result, engineering classes have plenty of female population (although, of course, the number of women in such classes is always fewer than that of men). R: myth_drannon In general after WWII women had to take traditional men's roles since entire male generation was gone and from then on it became the new normal. STEM is not physically hard so it can be considered a more suitable field for women, also STEM paid less in USSR. [http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly- wolansk...](http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/moderneurope/molly-wolanski/) R: Tehnix Please note that this is a comment on a specific remark, and is not meant to make it seem as though that invalidates the rest of the text - I'm mainly interested in the subconscious reason why things are the way they are. > I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages > they've had I think the reason many take annoyance with this particular opinion (at least I do), that men had it easy, is rooted in how "nerds" were viewed growing up, and how that has changed over time with public known successes such as Zuckerburg or Musk. I'm only 24, and even I remember growing up with being interested in programming in no way being an attractive thing to be. If I revealed to people what I did I would be called a "nerd" with a bit of a disproving look. Luckily for me, I was quite good at socializing also, but many definitely didn't have that and suffered social stigma for it. Even the friends I was gaming with didn't quite understand my interest in that area, so I mostly relied on myself with few to no peers to discuss that particular subject with. This is obsviously anecdotal and I would be interested in hearing how people had it growing up with these interests, from both sides obviously. Now, that said, we are definitely in another age currently. These days with the success of Silicon Valley, Facebook, heck even The Big Bang Theory, our culture has shifted to a glorification of the field, and as such we have a clash of what the 24+ (or there about a) generation grew up facing, and them now being called privileged and being told they had it oh so easy, basically casting aside all those struggles they had growing up. I guess my point is, with is a more general point, promoting equality by bringing down another group, is a fundamentally wrong way to go about things. You don't get the bars at the same place by making it worse for one group, you do it by making it better for the other group (see they distinction?). Anyways, I'm interested to know what people think :) R: hippich I had pretty much same experience, minus socialization skills. So you are definitely not alone in your experience. And I observed similar from (very) few friends in the same situation. R: astrocat > Edith: I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average > differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain > jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly. This is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, _average_ differences in _interests_ between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by society/culture, and _maybe_ by biology/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely no correlation with performance. If fewer women are, on average, _interested_ in software engineering, this absolutely does NOT mean that women software engineers are, on average, worse at their jobs. The error so many "Team-Damore" men make is that they zealously stand behind the argument that "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing women/minorities." And yet there is absolutely no way to possibly back up that claim: can anyone clearly demonstrate over the course of a statistically significant number of hirings that most of the women candidates who were hired were A)chosen from a candidate pool that included at least one equivalently-or-more talented man; and B) that those men who were not picked would have been both better performing as individuals and better employees for the team/company as a whole? No. Nobody has shown this because it is, essentially, impossible to demonstrate. Citing studies of character traits or interests of men and women "on average" does absolutely nothing to support claims A and B. And so all these men end up doing is simply implying: "well, I BELIEVE that all these _real_ women coworkers of mine are worse than the hypothetical male candidate that wasn't hired... _on average._ " Which is clearly an insult to your existing coworkers and toxic to your work environment. R: jorgemf > "Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing > women/minorities." That sentence is backed if there is a correlation between genetics and skills. > this has absolutely no correlation with performance if gender does not have correlation with performance, why do we split sports into male and female? Why physical strength, endurance is related with biology and the mind is not? when the brain is the most important organ in our bodies and in charge of controlling all the hormones which gives us more or less strength. In what facts do you support that claim? R: taysic The physical is different from the mental. Are you saying women are less mentally capable? I can't tell but this is basically exactly why women feel legitimizing this line of discussion is unproductive. R: jorgemf > The physical is different from the mental. Why? Can you probe it? Most researchers I read says the opposite. R: reitanqild Not sure what you mean here? Women and men are different: agree. Physical is different than mental: yes Example of a sport that takes really strong mental skills and where women compete alongside men: competitive shooting. R: jorgemf > Physical is different than mental: yes If you say that there is no relation between our biological features (like genes or hormones) and our mental capabilities, I have to disagree completely. And I want someone to support that affirmation with facts and research studies. As far as I know there are a lot of mental illness treated with chemicals and hormones and a lot of studies that link malformations in genes with mental capabilities. There are also philosophical studies that link the mind to the body and that claim that there cannot be intelligence without embodiment. So all this things and other papers lead me to think that biological traits are linked to mental skills. R: taysic At one point you're talking about malformations and in the next you're talking about perfectly healthy people. Academically, we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental capabilities. What other evidence do you need? I can tell you as a women in tech, there is absolutely nothing about tech that is that difficult to understand or comprehend. Nothing more than the many other professions women excel in and are equally represented. R: jorgemf you are having bias with the word malformation. It is not something bad per se, it only means it is not what you find in most people and that is have bad consequences (or what we want to classify as bad). > we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental > capabilities This doesn't mean anything. Performance is not only about mental capabilities but also in effort. There are mentally disabled people who can pass college, but it is so hard for them and they have to strive a lot to succeed, and this is why you don't see so many of them in college. So this argument doesn't probe anything. R: throwawaygmemo These comments are largely directed at a straw-man, and in many cases actually agree with the memo, when they think they disagree. "I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary reason that there aren't more female software engineers" \- straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50/50 representation. from the TLDR: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women (and not "socially constructed oppression") may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership" "I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly." \- you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: "Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas" "It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn't seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups." \- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other opinions. "differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or worse on average at any job that relies on mental work." \- straw man. men or women being "better" is not the concern of the memo. "his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in the text than a footnote - had he led with this and made it clear he wasn't sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been blasted the same way." \- the first "background" paragraph literally is this. "Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside our skills." \- the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of increased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as lowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the author felt the practices "effectively" lowered the bar. R: Danihan It's so funny (and sad) to me that you had to create a throwaway to outline these obvious strawmen misrepresentations of what Damore wrote. Whatever happened to reading comprehension..? R: kbenson The sad part about all this is that by presenting and alternative narrative to his own in good light with a question as to how the facts presented actually play out, we might have had a good discussion. For example, even if it's true that on average women do worse in general in technical or engineering fields, that doesn't necessarily mean that the women _in those fields currently_ are worse on average. There are a few possible reasons why they may be _better_ than the average men in those fields. Firstly, if we accept that women have different levels of aptitude in certain skill sets, there's no reason to assume they have the same variability. It's entirely possible that women on average are worse in certain skills, but that they have more exceptional outliers. Secondly, even if there is not more variability in the female population for the skills in question, it's entirely possible that cultural and social pressure has resulted in those that choose careers on those skills having higher than average abilities in them. For example, if my family has a legacy of being fairly clumsy and uncoordinated, but my brother is a pro athlete, what's more likely, that he's a crappy athlete, or that perhaps the criticisms that apply well to my family do not apply accurately to him, for whatever reason? Providing an olive branch can make all the difference in a discussion like this, and the fact that neither explanation put forth here is contradictory with each other or the premise that perhaps a 50/50 gender split isn't necessarily ideal makes this particularly lamentable, since we might have been able to have a good discussion about gender differences while minimizing the impact it has on individual members of that gender. Of both sides (there's plenty of fields where men face an uphill battle too). R: neerkumar "He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups." -> so an employee accuses a company of illegal behavior, the company denies it, and that's it? It proves the company is not doing it? No need for investigating or anything? Elizabeth Holmes and Travis are probably thinking: damn, I wish people thought like that for me too! R: tracker1 First off, _nobody_ in tech, male or female is really "average". Second, _everybody_ must prove they're good at their job by doing it well. But to suggest that there is absolutely no correlation that makes men or women disproportionately want to work in certain fields or have a higher aptitude to certain roles is a bit premature. The vitriol and disdain in response by some from the original memo, completely discounting some of the reservations on opinion vs fact and presenting them as only a footnote is somewhat disingenuous. R: sniglom "Ask a female engineer". That headline in itself implies that there are differences between males and females, as the memo states. Why would I otherwise listen to the opinion these engineers have over any other? I'm from Sweden and our universities have fought for years with getting more females to study IT. Same goes for senior highschool. And it's not only to get you to study, it's while you study as well. Benefits just for women. Courses just for women. Meeting people from business, just for women. And so on. The last discussion was about whether women studying IT should pay back their study loans, even though the education itself is already payed for. I think the questions we should ask ourselves are, is this improving diversity in opinions and thoughts? Is this beneficial for the field? Does this improve the state of the companies within IT? Otherwise we're just pushing one gender over the other, for no particular reason, except gender. Choosing people for their gender, over their thoughts and performance is sexist and horrible. R: FooHentai >I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club. Some people at Google reacted by saying "well if he's so wrong, then why not refute him," but that requires spending a significant amount of time building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. Anyone else see the hypocrisy here? >the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I'm not an "average" woman That's not the takeaway I got. What I got from it was 'Google's hiring practices are counterproductive and will increase people's questioning of each other's capabilities, based on their gender'. Talk about changing the narrative and shooting the messenger. R: nilkn I find it interesting how much the memo is misinterpreted even by folks who have read it multiple times and have been pretty engaged in discussions about it. Example: "He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar. Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar for these groups." This is what he actually wrote: "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for "diversity" candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" I'll admit this is a surprisingly dense sentence. And the phrase "lowering the bar" is controversial for an obvious reason, so it was a really bad decision by Damore to combine such a phrase with such a dense line of reasoning. It's just a recipe for disaster. Some things to note: * The use of "effectively" here is critical and means that the bar is not directly lowered in interview or technical standards. Rather, it's lowered as a (potentially complex) side effect of other more indirect policies. * That indirect policy is to decrease the false negative rate. This doesn't mean standards are _actually_ lowered for minority candidates; rather, it means extra time and money are invested to make sure that a negative result is actually a negative result. This can cause the standards to be _effectively_ lowered, because it means that extra time and money are not invested in non-minority candidates, who therefore must overcome a higher false negative rate -- and the easiest way to do that is to be so good that none of your interviewers might feel ambiguous about your abilities. To state that second bullet point differently and in a way that totally avoids politics, if you imagine that the interview is producing a noisy estimate of your technical ability, and the noise is predominantly negative/subtractive, then the expected score of an accepted candidate is higher with the noise than without. But if you offer a second interview to candidates and let a candidate's final estimate be the greater of the two samples, then the negative noise is reduced (though not eliminated), which will lower the expectation (but NOT below the expected value you'd get by eliminating the noise entirely). With this analysis in place, I think it's more helpful to rephrase it as effectively _raising_ the bar for non-minority candidates rather than _lowering_ it for minority candidates, though ideally I'd prefer to avoid any phrases about bars being lowered or raised in general. R: kromem Can anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological differences mapped to job performance? I read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did talk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors citing that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused. R: xigency On pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added): \- On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the distribution of _PREFERENCES and ABILITIES_ of men and women differ in part _due to biological causes_ and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. \- Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men \- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics. \- Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance). \- This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs. And later proposes these solutions: \- We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. \- Make tech and leadership less stressful. So he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women _in their abilities_ (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to suitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need to be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies differing performance levels. R: humanrebar For what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or less, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable career choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently nonverbal jobs (programming) less often. [https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_jame...](https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesDamore/comments/6thcy3/im_james_damore_ama/dlknpme/) "For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and verbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative skills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women have more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer." R: xigency Yeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another opinion piece. That said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices. As someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and co-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All of this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in one AMA answer, it might by "cultural." I believe that is a far more acceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology. R: ethanhunt_ > I also agree that there are differences between the behavior of men and > women, on average. Isn't saying that a fire-able offense at Google? I hope YC is really sure that these are anonymous because if she gets doxxed her career is over. R: rsp1984 Honest question: Will this thread be quickly flagged by HN moderators or taken off the front page like many others on the topic (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967819) for more info)? Or are there "exceptions"? R: dang You seem to be mistaken about what's been happening. Moderators haven't been flagging those articles; users have. That's what '[flagged]' means. The different outcome in this case is because of community response. There are still a lot of flags, but there are many more upvotes. That, plus the discussion quality (i.e. not a trainwreck) surprised us quite a bit. I emailed Cadran this morning that she should probably expect the post to get flagged the same way as others (by users) and that we wouldn't be able to intervene if that happened. Instead, it went straight to #1. That's fine by me because the discussion has remained relatively civil and substantive. For completeness I should mention that we did do one intervention: we turned off a software penalty called the 'flamewar detector' that kicks in on discussions that get a great many comments. But that's routine: we always turn off that penalty when the discussion isn't actually a flamewar, and this one qualifies. Other than that, moderators haven't touched the post at all, so yeah I think it's fair to say no exceptions. R: rsp1984 Thanks for taking the time to clarify. R: moduspol So at the top of the article, just before the interview starts, there's this: > There's been a lot of anger on both sides, but I haven't seen many > constructive discussions between people who disagree on these issues. I and > all the women who have contributed in this post feel that there's forward > progress to be made by finding common ground and discussing different > viewpoints without yelling. I hope this will be a good forum for that. Do you feel like this article does this? To me, it looks like three people (two of whom openly identify as having left- wing political views) mostly agreeing. That's still useful, but falls way short of "constructive discussion between people who disagree on these issues." R: wolco What troubles me is the resolution. Man who spoke out is fired everything is now fine at google. Google will remove anyone who dare speaks out. Managers will create blacklists now and singled out. Anyone with oppposing views will be pushed down and/or pushed out. R: spacemanmatt What troubles me is how easily this community, who typically values employer discretion in how they run their businesses, turns into labor-protection lefties when someone gets canned for crapping on half the workforce. R: merb Everything I actually read about the memo (and I didn't read it besides some points) is: \- Some Points are valid \- Some Points are discussable (that's why this post was created, wasn't it?) but nearly none addresses them as totally invalid. I mean even in this post of ycombinator the person in question couldn't straight said "No! This is wrong" and back it up with data. I just don't get the whole gender/race discussions, but if such a memo can exists and things like gender diversity programs do exists, than something is probably really really wrong. But with one thing I disagree with her, firing him was not the right thing to do, at least not directly. I mean wouldn't it be better to just discuss this, probably in the open, with him, the company and even more and make a great discussion panel? I mean with just firing him, they actually just ignored all points, even valid ones. R: dguaraglia From the article: > Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a > debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for > agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work. That, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and probably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his "dialectical skills." That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where people feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for the gratification of a single person's whims. R: dandare But Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about Google's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do you object/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with? R: dguaraglia There's a slight difference between technical flamewars, pointed debates about expanding the amount of bathrooms available per building and Damore's post. If you can't see the difference, honestly I can't help you. R: dandare Lol, I can not argue with this :D R: shaftoe I'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I haven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a female repellant. Look at the work/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry. Compare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture, women disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing. When there's a work emergency and the kids HAVE to be picked up at daycare, who goes? When a kid is sick, who stays home? When a child is born, who takes several months of leave to care for them? Consider that many women leave the tech industry or stay away from the all- consuming work culture because they have or will eventually want a family life. It doesn't matter what are people's abilities when they see a job as incompatible and contrary to their life goals. R: e9 But that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech culture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to introduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to have all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and figure out what is truly feasible at Google... R: e9 great rant by Jordan Peterson on this topic that touches on work and work cultures that don't appeal to women: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE- xFXuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo) R: md224 On a side note, I would like to thank the HN mods for allowing this discussion to take place. Previous attempts at discussion were quickly silenced by flagging, and while it's a little weird that a piece on YCombinator just happens to be the sole exception, I'm glad that an exception was made. These kinds of discussions are difficult but necessary, critical to the process of gaining a greater understanding of those we disagree with. I hope we're able to keep having these discussions going forward. R: dang Thanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised as anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained as civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com domain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to moderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1]. I emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably meet the same fate as the others, but I was wrong - the community responded quite differently. That's fine by us as long as the discussion meets the site guidelines, which this one mostly has. Edit: also, the community should know that it, not moderators, produced this effect. IMO that makes the thread more interesting. 1\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20no...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0) R: md224 Thanks for clarifying and correcting my assumptions. I'm guessing the content of the article in addition to the domain led users to view this as a more productive contribution to the debate. Apologies for assuming that it was HN favoritism on the part of the mods... very interesting that this happened organically. (While I'm replying to you, one super trivial and completely unrelated feature request... if comment forms are being submitted via JS, could you guys add code to prevent duplicate form submission when the enter key is held down too long? Very low priority and I know you're busy enough, but just figured I would pass along the suggestion. I've had to go back and fix my own accidental dupes a few times.) R: dang Could you email us about this at so it goes into our todo list? sctb and I just had an idea about how we might fix this and it's been an annoying bug for years. R: md224 Done! R: thomasfromcdnjs "As a female engineer, you don't get to just love coding, or love problem solving and hacking on hardware - you also have to figure out how to navigate men who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don't consider you an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they assume you don't have as much expertise as your peers." Not picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sentiment more. In my entire career I've dealt with co-workers who observably considered me less smart. To the point I barely think it was their innate nature but more so a by product of being a programmer. Too much isolation and brain reward circuitry leads to inflated egos. I understand that the comment I quoted is speaking of sexist discrimination, but if I re-read it removing female and replacing men with people, it would be a pretty apt description of my life as a developer. I believe that it would be hard to delineate whether it was discrimination or just work place egos if you weren't from a similar background e.g. minority groups Sidestory: I'm an Indigenous Australian, plenty of times in my life I have seen family and friends make statements, that I'm sure plenty of you have also seen such as "You are racist" or "That's racist" when clearly to a third party the accuser seems way off the mark. R: seanmcdirmid Wasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for both men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work in the industry. R: thomasfromcdnjs I didn't read it as such and I wouldn't say it was the point I was attempting to make. (not your fault, I suck at writing sentences) In short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature tend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is discrimination and what is just normal work crap. R: seanmcdirmid Ah, yes, I agree. R: token92375 _> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and technical founders._ In my world view philosophical principles generally take precedence over lived experiences of others. Lived experiences are not universal, cannot be relayed exactly (memories are often colored and retellings may be selective to make a particular point). If we want our ethical systems to apply to everyone, to be inclusive, we need principles that work for everyone, not just correctives for individual cases. A lot of TFA appears to put emotion, form, "lack of consideration" and presentation over facts. I am abstractly aware that those things have quite an impact on people. But it is quite alien to me, in text form the factual content of argument is more important because text can be easily misinterpreted and it is not a dialogue where the writer can clarify and correct any misunderstandings. That said, the response is still far more measured than the immediate news and social media response. _> Social skills are part of a professional skillset. It is important to learn how to handle difficult subjects in a workplace - we all have to do it. There are consequences for doing it in a way that causes problems for your employer_ He was not the one who leaked it. It was those people who were so offended that they thought the world had to see it instead of engaging in a discussion with him. If the issue is "causing problems for the employer" then aren't those others also guilty? R: rurounijones [https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo- what...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does- the-research-say-about-gender-differences/) This is a document that puports to examine the science as much as possible from both sides to try and educate impartially. R: AnimalMuppet First, a summary: There are differences between men and women. There are _also_ barriers to entry into tech for women. Let's try to fix those, and _keep_ trying, without necessarily expecting that we'll have 50% of engineers being women when we've finally fixed (all) the barriers. And one detailed opinion: On Edith's reply to "What do you disagree with or find objectionable?": She complained about having to wonder whether people she encountered on the job felt that she was qualified. I suspect that quite a few male Google employees actually feel the same fear (call it imposter syndrome). The question to me is, does she feel the same fear as men and wonder if, in her case, it's because she's female? Or does she feel _additional_ fear because of being female? (I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. I merely observe that, if you remove the male/female aspects, what she said sounds a lot like how people describe imposter syndrome.) R: rllin Are any of these engineers East Asian immigrants or Asian Americans? From my own circles both near and extended, it seems like there is a much more even split within especially East Asian H1Bs and to a less degree Asian Americans? This may be from my own experience of hearing Asian parents push children regardless of gender towards STEM. It keeps leading me back to the idea that increased volition allows gender differences to propagate. I've been trying very hard to find data for say H1Bs by race and by gender at Oracle. Any thoughts? R: interlocutor The 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: "Developers in India are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United States." See [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2015) Actually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in the United States are H1Bs from India, China and other Asian countries, and Romania and other eastern-European countries. If you subtract their numbers then the difference is more severe. There is something in the US culture that makes American women not want to take up tech. The diversity memo doesn't address the fact that more women take tech jobs when impediments are removed, as evidenced by the larger percentage of women in tech jobs in other countries. R: humanrebar I think the discrepancy between American women and immigrant women is interesting. I'm not sure we can conclude from the given evidence that the difference is reduced impediments. It could be that that the increased economic opportunity (or potential immigration benefits) makes up for other things. R: rllin I agree the increased economic opportunity could very well be the primary factor, but why is this not enough of a factor for white American women? Or are there other factors in raising a child in an economically stable society lead to more "do what you want, my child, regardless of your gender"? R: humanrebar > ...why is this not enough of a factor for white American women? Working as an engineer in America is a bigger jump in economic opportunity for someone in India than for someone in America. Also, it's likely that Indians are better informed about what the pay for top notch engineers is these days. I suspect the average American underestimates what coding pays by quite a bit. R: MichaelMoser123 I think the problem with tech is that many of us are arrogant pricks (let the down votes start) because of this fact we are facing a lot of politics at the workplace - all with the common source of a desire to dominate. More women might create a more healthy atmosphere at most places, but who cares. However this is unlikely to happen because many women are not attracted by a heavily male dominated work environment. The argument that women are inherently bad at tech is not based on historical evidence - lots of women in early computing. Believe me it is very tough to debug a stack of punch cards, much tougher than what we have today... Are HR practices and PC the right way to solve deep problems? I don't think so. Maybe discussions of this sort can move some people, but most people only seek and find confirmation for their own position... R: aidenn0 Does anyone know if there is anywhere with discussions with women who _aren 't_ engineers? I'm thinking find a dozen random women who were 95th percentile or higher on the SATs 6 years ago and ask them 1) Why they chose their field and 2) Why they didn't go into computer science. At least at the college I went to, the ratio of women graduating in CS was slightly higher than the ratio of women enrolled in my freshman CS class (proportionally, slightly more men switched majors or dropped out than women). Places like Google hiring more female engineers is good, and even helps with the pipeline problem, since role-models are one way of encouraging disadvantaged groups to pursue particular careers. However, it would be nice to know if there are interventions we could make directly earlier in the pipeline. R: poohblahoyamo I live in the land of prestigious doctors - we all did well on the SAT. CS was not super prominent in my life despite me knowing some code in early high school, but my mom is a doctor, so that was obviously a viable option in my mind. The thought that it is a job that only lasts until you are 45 and I have to make as much money as I humanly can before being forced to retired at middle age is a bit unattractive. Also, the idea of doing stuff on computer all day looking for bugs, vs playing medicine puzzles was less attractive. LOL, medicine is fairly tedious as well now that I am in it, but yes, while I am more interested in programming to do a few practical things, I am not interested in working as a SWE. A lot of the med students have SWE spouses. We do sit around and lament about how we could have done it too with much better pay and some passes for interviewing, about the Google Hawaii powow and how nice the Christmas party as Museum of Natural History is, while we get a Christmad party at the local bar with the drunk emergency technicians. Tech has a lot of glamour now, medicine doesn'.t But in the end, I don't think I would choose differently. Female physicians really don't get any passes... Okay, if you are lady going into Urology or trauma surgery, and a dude going into obgyn, I hear there is a bit more help, otherwise we don't really get any bonus points for being a woman or minority. R: ykler I would like to hear more about why so many people feel it would be intolerable for a woman to be assigned to work with this guy. I'm a Jewish man, and I feel that I could deal OK with being assigned to work with a radical anti-Semite or a feminist who professed beliefs about men being evil, or with someone who held me in contempt and thought my technical abilities were subpar. R: exelius There's a difference between "starting a conversation" and blasting out an e-mail to 50,000 people that doesn't really even grasp the realities of modern software development. There's a chain of command about this kind of stuff for a reason. The author is simply mistaken on the requirements that make a good software developer: yes, it is true that on average, men are probably better at heads-down software development. But that's at most half of the job of software development, and it's honestly the least important part to get right. On other metrics (such as interpersonal communication, conflict resolution, etc - all critical components of modern engineering) women are better on average. How many Silicon Valley startups fail because their product represents the problems that the team members (who tend to be mostly white men) are facing? How many investors went along with this because they too had the same problem? Point is, you don't get to cherry-pick statistics that match your perceived criteria for the job and claim to be trying to start an unbiased dialog. I don't think it's intentionally disingenuous -- I think that the author of the original memo has a limited view of the job and the problems associated with it. That's honestly the biggest problem here: white men very often believe their viewpoint is the only valid one, and don't even consider alternate viewpoints. I'm not saying this as "white men bad!" \-- I'm totally empathetic to the fact that many white men feel they are under attack -- but that misses the point. Everyone who is not a white man has felt that way their entire lives in some degree. Every way you deviate from the "straight white male" archetype (by being black, gay, female, transgender, etc.) is another front you have to play defense on. I think the right response is something along the lines of "Your viewpoint is valid, but please understand that it is not the only one that is valid." We have to be careful not to invalidate someone's lived experience -- that's exactly the problem we accuse white men of, and showing the same behavior right back isn't going to solve the problem. R: jmcgough This is one of the first rational discussions I've seen of the memo. edit: for context, I'm a female engineer R: fche If female engineers need to worry that, in the aftermath of the memo, people will wonder their genuine qualifications, they should not aim their blame toward the memo. The only people overtly and explicitly injecting non- qualification factors into hiring are affirmative-action type people. They created the quandary. R: dandare Who wants to play a game of Arguman with me? I state that "Positive discrimination of disadvantaged groups in employment and education is immoral" [http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is- imm...](http://en.arguman.org/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral) R: GuB-42 I've read the memo and I don't see the part where it says that women make worse engineers in general. It says that a lower proportion of women meet Google's expectations for engineering positions. This is not the same thing at all. First, he explicitly rejects the idea of a gender binary, using an overlapping Gaussian distribution instead. Second, he says that many positions at Google have expectations that favor men (competition, work-over-home, ...) even though these traits don't necessarily make better engineers. R: thieving_magpie >I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about. Interesting takes on the memo. This part stood out to me. I'm not really in a situation where I have many coworkers around but, just knowing myself, I can say I likely would be someone that would have stayed silent on the topic unless it was specifically brought up. That's more about my personality than anything, I generally avoid starting conversations because I'm bad at small talk. I'd like to know what I can do differently. My opinion generally mirrors the thoughts put forward by the female engineers but I feel like maybe I've let someone in my life down by not being more vocal and supportive. Really the only thing I've done is tried to encourage female coworkers in non-development positions to try it out, and offer them help. I've tried to nudge our hiring team to look at a more diverse crowd - though that's hampered by low wages and living very literally in one of the more remote parts of the country (our town has 3.5k people and is considered a large town for our region). I guess I'm saying I want to do more but I don't know what to do without seeming disingenuous. R: alexandercrohde Wow. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to close the gap. I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a reasonable/polished way. >> A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with. When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? So it sounds like we're implying that anybody who presents facts to your coworkers that might enable them to come to stereotypical conclusions has made a hostile work environment? I find it absurd that an environment is hostile because "maybe people are thinking X." I would think hostility would require some form of visible action. >> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts. It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn't seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal Google groups. Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to fact. His views are certainly much more in line with the facts that what I've heard from his opponents. For example, I don't see anybody disagreeing that women score higher on "neuroticism" measures (wikipedia agrees). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psyc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psychology) >> There's a difference between "let's have a discussion" and "let me tell you what's up, all you wrong people." Great, but that has nothing to do with this. The other side certainly would never extend him (or me) that civility. This is a power struggle and I don't know why we're pretending it's not. \--- As an aside, this whole debate has made me realize that I was kidding myself if I told myself SJWs were on the side of equality. They are on the side of politically advancing their own in-group-alliance (which doesn't include most minorities, nor the minority most in need - the lower class). They have no interest in fact because they aren't trying to achieve a clear vision of a better world, rather it's because they are playing politics where facts are just another form of weapon. The only reason they have so much power in tech (and not say, finance) is because we are altruists/optimists ourselves and tried to see something greater in SJW political games. R: bronson > I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a > reasonable/polished way. That's a decent description of Damore's memo. > I would think hostility would require some form of visible action. Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even though there was almost no visible action. > Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to > fact. Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't rigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote preconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics, etc). I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds like you're saying the women who wrote this article are part of a powerful in- group-alliance? R: alexandercrohde >> Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even though there was almost no visible action. What do you mean? They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently? >> Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't rigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote preconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics, etc). This is fair. Except from my side, I feel like I'm seeing cherry-picking by the other side. I studied psychology, and in college nobody seemed to dispute innate differences between men and women (I was taught of some in infants). So since both sides feel the other is cherry-picking, we can either A) fire people for it B) talk it out like scientists. >> I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds like you're saying the women who wrote this reply are part of some powerful in-group-alliance? I'm not suggesting there is an alliance of women. I'm suggesting there is a _politically motivated_ core (SJW is the closest word I know for the group) at google and the larger public. The fact that this group is treating science as politics explains why: \- They are trying to fire people for ideas (because it's US vs THEM in their heads) \- They are deliberately lying about what Damore said (because it's politics, so no holds barred). \- They are not at all expressing a coherent vision of what "equality" would look like if they could make all the rules, but instead fighting for their own minorities (and disregarding Jews, Mexicans, ugly people, fat people, tattooed people, and all the other groups that certainly are slightly discriminated against) R: bronson > They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently? Sure, now prove it. Other than the lack of black engineers in his department and some comments made at non-work-related functions, there wasn't anything you could point to and say "a-ha!" It can be insidious. > nobody seemed to dispute innate differences between men and women I think everyone agrees there are innate differences. At least, the women who wrote this article do as well. Now, do those innate differences make women inferior engineers? (I know, Damore never explicitly said this, but he implied it. Maybe it's just poor writing? I wish he'd run his memo past some interested women before posting internally so he'd have a chance to clarify.) The "core" of which you speak is basically Google's exec staff. It's not a conspiracy, it's just the company. They fired Damore because, whether it's due to unfair implications or just bad writing, his presence had become hostile to a good percentage of Google's workforce. He's not going to be in a position to manage many female engineers after posting that. Personally, I wish Google could have condemned the memo and let HR handle it. Their reaction seemed over the top. Ah well, sometimes life isn't fair, even for white male engineers. :) R: yarg This I think is a problem with the culture and education system of our society, by the time we reach the point of hiring someone the damage is already done. I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to chose someone on the grounds of what minority or oppressed group they happen to be a part of - hire the best person for the job (this shouldn't simply take into account the skills of the individual, but also how well they can be expected to integrate into the group that they are becoming a part of). We need to look into the underlying causes of the gender and race imbalances in the pool from which we are hiring. For women, this means looking at why it is that girls seem to be disuaded from interest in the fields in question. From my perspective my interest in the engineering fields emerged from being exposed to things as simple as transformers (the toys, not the modern explosion porn), while my sisters were playing with Barbies (a line of toys that I still consider vapid and pointless) I was marvelling at the fact that a few joints and pivots can be structured in such a way as to allow transition between vehicular and humanoid forms. Allowing girls to think in mathematical and engineering terms without attaching a social stigma of acting boyish will help in this regard. From the perspective of racial minorities, there is a multi-generational poverty cycle coupled with a far lower standard of education. It cuts them off at the knees before they even get started. Fix the education system and the discouraging culture in and of our society and things will balance out - eventually. But the current way of doing things is a feel good solution that deals with the symptoms - and ignores the underlying disease. R: phkahler I find it annoying how all these people get to freely debate this and voice their opinions, but the person who started it lost his job for doing the same. R: randyrand > particularly his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary > reason that there aren't more female software engineers I believe it was just _a_ reason. Not necessarily the primary one. I should probably go back and reread it, but I also remember the biological points were primarily about _interest_ rather than the suitability of those that _are already_ interested. It seems most of the disagreement on the memo are things he never said. R: throwaway9287 I just can't figure out why it is so difficult to even discuss the fact that men and women are not identical. It is really difficult to research and measure, but it is a really, really strong (and untrue) assumption that men and women are just exactly the same in every possible way. Now if we accept that fact, even if we are not able to quantify it, also the demographics are going to vary by occupation, just by choice, even in a perfect world without discrimination. Given how impossible this is to research, how are we to know whether occupational gender differences are good or bad? How do we know what's discrimination and what's just choice, knowing that the two are also related, and choice is also related with ability regardless of the gender. We should fix discrimination by punishing the actors behaving that way, not by establishing countermeasures that are just discriminatory in the other direction. This is what I understood to be Damore's main argument. R: anon0192 People wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting point showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people: [http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as- a-s...](http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a- stereotypical-male) Two examples extracted and paraphrased: * When women and men were both asked to "think like men" (article details how this was done) on a mental rotation test, they did about the same. When asked to think like women, there was a significant difference - around 1/3 drop of average score for women, 10% for men. * Two groups were asked to take a test, but one of the groups was primed by the statement: "This is a genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations due to various personal factors involved in performance." - the test takers were given the impression that their score on the test was associated with their personal academic aptitude. The second group wasn't primed in this way. In the primed group, black people had a drop of performance of 2x (the number of items solved was halved). Imagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can be affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically insignificant biological differences. If even the stereotyped are personally affected, imagine how much worse that can be in multiple-people situations (interviews, meetings etc) where the other people are not the target of the stereotype but has been influenced by it in their life... So now a colleague is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes are going viral. His argument may be more nuanced than that, but you fear that the stereotypes are all that people will take from it. For the most part that fear seems to be coming true. Whats the normal reaction there? R: trophycase After having this sort of discussion with people, there seems to be a huge number of people, some very intelligent, that don't understand the relationship between sex hormones and behavior R: staticelf Can't we just agree on that generalizing people in general is a pretty bad idea? Better to give equal opportunity, which in my opinion doesn't mean that you give anyone more attention because of physical factors like what sex a person have. I am principally against using any form of discrimination even if the reason is to fight discrimination. Having for example courses only for women, hiring women only because there is a disparity is bad idea. I honestly think if we just treated everyone with the same respect that we want to be treated ourselves a lot of these issues would disappear. Maybe there will still be a lack of a specific sex in some jobs but honestly, who cares? I certainly do not and do not believe in the notion that a company is more successful because of a more mixed environment. I think the competence of each employee and their worldview and view towards another is way more important. As I've written many times before, please just treat everyone the same. R: thetruthseeker1 I for one believe James Damore wasn't fired for his views on women, but Google fired him because he was a PR problem and that could affect their business/financial bottom line. Google probably understands the user base and decided they would rather not displease women (bigger group) compared to conservatives. My analysis adds up to what James Damore had to say as to what happened in a WSJ article. He said his memo didn't bother many people until it was leaked, and the google HR got many complaints from the outside world. I think the google management fired him not because of his view, nor were they worried that he questioned google's purported wasteful spending on diversity programs (which for Google is drop in the bucket if it is effective...if it is not effective I dont think they care, it makes them look good). But google fired James because they thought he was bad for business (consumer base). R: seanmcdirmid If thst were true, why didn't google negotiate a gag agreement (using a few million $$$, cheap for them) with Damore to make this just go away? The fact that they didn't take the easy way out makes me think that they didn't fire him for business reasons. R: thetruthseeker1 But that wouldn't appease the public who wanted him fired? If the public( let's say women's group) aren't appeased and they boycott google, it affects google ? It is possible that google gave an offer to James D to be silent along with the pink slip, which he might have turned down? R: seanmcdirmid There is a lot of anti-SJW sentiment these days that I'm sure even Google doesn't really want to tap into...the public is more broadly defined than one side of the story. Also, the longer this story goes on, the left isn't really appeased and the right grows angrier, very much a lose-lose situation for google right now. The guy might have turned down a gag agreement, maybe they just didn't offer enough money? A non-disparagement ageement would also be on the table just for severence, but Google seems to have opted out of that already (you can't talk about the guy and expect that him not to talk about you). R: Ensorceled The main issue I had with the document is that it read like an 80's USENET posting in alt.politics. I've seen this entire discussion play out over and over again, at multiple companies, with the same talking points, for all 35 years of my career. My stepson just graduated from the same comp sci program I graduated from in the late 80's and I was startled by how fewer women there were in his graduating class than mine. I've watched my female classmates and colleagues leave the industry. I've watched the number of female candidates for my positions dwindle to the point where I recently hired three developers and there was a dearth of female candidates. There is definitely a problem and the first step is to get beyond the point where smart, professionals in their late 20's think 80's reruns are adding to the debate. R: nodamage I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an individual level." A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with. I strongly agree with this criticism and thought it was ridiculous that people even attempted to use this defense in the first place, so I'm glad it's being called out. When you are discussing statistical differences between populations as an explanation for certain behaviors, _of course_ it is acknowledged by both sides that there are individuals that are outliers and that averages do not apply to every individual. R: jansho Fantastic interview, I relate to many of the things the engineers mentioned. I was also disappointed by the heat and rage from both sides, IMO this whole gender thing is _not_ a debate, it's more like a cat fight that everyone gets hurt and become more hardened about their views. It's anti-productive and _exhausting._ I hope that the silver lining here is that more people, particularly those who subconsciously share Damore's views on women, understand better about the real challenges of girls and women in the tech field. Cos it's not enough for a small segment to drive positive change, _everyone_ needs to be onboard too. Let's shift the debate to that level now. R: hippich If Google would not have such diversity program in the first place, none of that would be happening. Reason why female engineers might have anxiety about what male engineers think about them is exactly result of having such program in place. R: diedyesterday The government and society's (including workplaces) responsibility towards gender/race equity is to remove any legal/moral/social barriers for anyone (provided they have the interest and qualifications) to become anything. Going beyond that and trying to enforce a 50-50 gender quota/division in everything is itself ideologically motivated and an idiotic attempt at fighting biology. All you have to and should do is let anyone be anything. Whether this leads to a 50-50 division (gender-wise) is something biology and other factors will determine and should not concern us fundamentally. R: simonebrunozzi This "ask" has an issue for me already: why would a female engineer know better than a male engineer? As long as someone feels to have an informed opinion about the subject, he/she should feel free to present his view. (I am a male (ex) software engineer, and I sure as hell have an opinion about it - to give you the TL;DR: his intention was to stimulate a conversation, he did it in an awkward way, and he's not perfect. And no, Google should have not fired him, but if you have ever worked in a large corporate environment, you might have a good idea why they did anyway). R: redthrowaway >I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an individual level." I'd be curious to hear an actual defence of this line of thinking. I mean, it's simply a fact that group differences aren't particularly useful indicators of what an individual is like. Nevertheless, they're very _good_ indicators of what populations are like. Is there any actual criticism of that argument, or is the objection more about how people feel about that argument? R: sevilo I really enjoyed this interview, finally, some voices of reasons and not blind yelling at men for being sexist pigs just from reading some biased media's twisted headlines. All these times around this memo, how many people actually cared to ask for female engineer's thoughts on this? All I see is women who don't work in engineering positions or men trying to interpret this memo from their perspective. How many actually cared what are the thoughts and impact on the main subject being discussed in the original article? R: someguydave One feature of these "victim identity" wars is that a tiny number of individuals claim to speak for an entire identity group without authorization. These claims should be ignored as illegitimate. R: alexryan What bothers me most about this article is how all of us, when we feel threatened, tend to close off our empathy for the other side which prevents us from seeing clearly that they too feel threatened. We both come across as selfish and uncaring to the other and are completely oblivious to the fact that we are doing exactly the same thing ourselves. Marshall Rosenberg used to say that "all objectionable behavior is a tragic expression of an unmet need". That's worth thinking about because it points the way towards an actual solution to the problem. The simple "nonviolent communication" method that he developed was designed to help people to break down the barriers of hostility and connect in a fashion that enables both parties to achieve a mutually satisfying resolution and a closer and more fulfilling relationship. I have found it to work very well in my personal relationships. As a general rule, when the other person feels that you genuinely care about their needs and are truly committed to helping them to meet them, they are very likely to return the favor. At that point the hostility fades and the seeking of zero sum solutions on both sides gives way to both sides working together to brainstorm a positive sum solution that fully meets everyone's needs. This is really quite a beautiful process and I wish more people used it because I truly believe it could make the world a far better place for all of us. R: Tehnix First off, sorry if it seems a bit incoherent, on a mobile so hard to keep an overview. While it has (at least vocally) gotten a lot of backlash, the memo did give me an opportunity to have a deep conversation about both it, and sexism in general, not just in tech and not just towards one gender, with a female friend of mine that I study with. We came into a lot of what annoys us both about the way the topic is treated in PC culture, and also gave us a bit of a better understanding of what types of things both gender face in society as a whole. Quite enjoyable conversation, but honestly you can do with someone you trust. So at least in that regard the memo "worked" for us. One thing in the OP that stuck with me was > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? How do I prove > myself to people one way or another? Which in my opinion is what happens when you go about "fixing" the gender disparity by such metrics as hiring. I really liked the suggestion to measure retention, how long they stayed and how happy they were, instead of some artificial quota for which you stop thinking after checking that box off. I really think we need to re-evaluate what works, and I hope at least the ongoing discussions bring us a little bit closer to that. R: exodust I'm baffled as to why these anonymous engineers or any female colleague would be offended by his memo. Some of the responses are quite condescending, calling him a "confused, questionably informed kid". Wow. His memo is clear and reasonable. His interviews are reasonable and respectful, he approaches the topic calmly and scientifically, the exact opposite to the reactionary anger. The _only_ part of the memo I can see that could cause a fuss is this: > "distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part > due to biological causes" Even if true, it should be mentioned that _ability_ often stems from preference. We are driven to invest time and effort into our preferences, so our abilities in those areas will improve. In a population average, we should be able to graph this difference without failing any gender bias scrutiny. As for "native ability", all else equal except gender, you will face opposition to the idea that your gender might start you at a disadvantage in given disciplines. As soon as a child starts growing up and investing time in their preference, their abilities will cluster around those preferences. So it would be very difficult to prove that gender abilities are present before socialisation. Either way, it's a scientific question, and deserves respect rather than over- sensitive knee-jerk political reactions. R: sonabinu Thank you for posting this! Since that memo came out, I've asked myself several times - am I not woman enough because I love math and programming. I didn't know I would love either till I did a bit of deliberate slogging on both when I changed careers. Math, I deliberately learnt in high school simply because I no longer wanted to confused. Computing I learnt the slow hard way, again deliberately. But once I got a hang of it, it's been my passion!!! R: xigency I think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an employer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will and relationships _can end_ over personal differences. One reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is this individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city government and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius findings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they might be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an opinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for dismissal.) In the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart person weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one think that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think Damore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his outlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not a necessity for any corporation or organization to do so. I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the adversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity and human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a narrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The correct forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something similar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a relevant party or audience. R: humanrebar > I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word > documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate. What is the right forum? R: Delmania For this conversation? A woman. He should have given that document to a female friend, told her it would probably offend her, and ask for her advice on how to improve it. He should have been there and watched her reaction as she read it. the single greatest fault of forums is that they do not give people a chance to read someone else's body language. R: throw2016 Very few social and scientific studies offer room for the average individual to make links and draw conclusions outside the context of academic study. For a random individual to not only draw conclusions these studies were not designed to support, that even their authors don't, outside of context of academic inquiry, and seek to apply it in the real world is an inexcusable transgression. That some should fail to register this abuse of science and fail to notice the transgression is surprising. What if someone circulates a memo citing studies saying introverts are not suitable for social collaboration roles, or aggression in males makes them unsuitable for collaboration roles and we should look for more 'suitable roles for males'. Studies definitively show aggression is predominant in males but no one seeks to connect it to a real world workplace and that too without the credentials or expertise to. Is this science? Seeking to apply social and genetic studies that are rarely as certain as the experimental sciences 1=1 to draw conclusions in the real world has traditionally been the refuge of supremacists and eugenicists. That any well adjusted individual would seek to join this group in a workplace memo is an indiscretion too far. Individuals can't simply be reduced to genetics. R: bleair Why not have a real discussion about the environmental differences that influence interests and expectations. American society has very clear gender roles and expectations. Why are girls by age 6 conditioned to think "math is hard". Why are men encouraged to "crush it" or "kill it" and promoted if they do so at work, and yet if a women took a similar approach she would be criticized for being too pushy or bitchy. R: suzzer99 The Economist really nails it imo. Pointing to some random stats that support your hypothesis, ignoring others, and speculating the significance of said stats is not science - it's motivated reasoning. [https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper- said...](https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said- alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal) R: look_lookatme Also known as "modern journalism". R: unityByFreedom Great to hear from more women. Here's another from an evolutionary scientist who gives a point-by-point response to Damore, using quotes from his text as a launching point for discussion [1] She mentions that Damore brings up IQ, "the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between people (e.g., IQ and sex differences)" IQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it? The quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in discussions over racial differences [2]. It begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we replace "IQ" with "race", would that change the meaning he meant to convey? [1] [https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the- bio...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological- claims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in- August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin) [2] [https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race- bla...](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white- iq-response-critics) R: Noughmad The very first answers about what they disagree with starts with > I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences > between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. If you look at just about any sport, there is a big difference between men and women. And that's not just for really physically intensive sports such as athletics. Even in chess, only 2 of the top 100 are women. R: MikeGale An important part of this discussion is using general population statistics, to describe programmers at Google. Programmers at Google are NOT general population. Without seeing that specific data, it may be that female programmers at Google are better than the males. I don't know, and it varies by project and role. Then when we are talking about specific people, all the population statistics are irrelevant anyway. R: syrrim >When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? Damore never said he thought this way; this is merely an implication of something he did say. What he did say was that he believes that - even though there are 4 times as many men as women at Google - the men who are there deserve to be there as much as the women. This implies that, were you to utilize quotas to achieve gender parity, then this same equality would not be true - men would now "deserve" their jobs more than women. Conversely, if you think that gender parity through quotas would bring about equality of the sexes, then that implies that you think men employed right now are less capable then women. Men around you should then ask themselves the inverse question: how do they know which colleagues think they were hired purely because they are a man? R: SOLAR_FIELDS One of the most interesting things I got from this was referencing usage of the term TL;DR. While it's unclear where the Term "TL;DR" originated it certainly gained popularity in SomethingAwful and 4chan, two places that have long been known by the general society as havens for degeneracy. It's an interesting parallel when the term (which has obviously come a long way from where it originated) appears in a professional discussion alongside viewpoints that the original group of people who popularized the term would have considered widely abhorrent. Not that it really speaks to anything about this particular issue, more to the fact that many people who use meme references are fully unaware that the cesspool of places like SA and 4chan are the originators/popularizers of the jokes that are repeated by one who might turn around and fully condemn those communities in the next sentence without skipping a beat. R: josteink > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my > colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired > because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? That's a question which will keep popping up as long as you have discriminatory practices in the hiring process. This memo changed nothing in this regard. R: free2buandme In support of workplaces in which all employees know and feel the company is doing what it can feasibly to support them, regardless of who they are. I'm a man, I love women, and I'm a feminist. So, despite my thought that it was utterly moronic for someone at Google to write out his beliefs in such a way that he would certainly get fired, unless he plans to go into politics, I'd like to respond to something one of the female interviewees stated in this interview: "I also think that society should have room for the discussion of ideas that are not in step with what is considered acceptable at a given time. There is, of course, a difference between an unfounded opinion and the pursuit of scientific truth, but logically, we should not avoid pursuing a scientific truth for fear that the answer will not be aligned with currently accepted dogmas." While these statements are incredibly close to my own, I call bullshit. The pursuit of "scientific truth" in such a way to not be aligned with accepted dogmas is equivalent to having unfounded opinions in the sense that "scientific truth" itself is a lie, and has been so since the first "truth" was found to be "false". Beliefs attributed to scientific work are beliefs, and modern science evolved from philosophers who established "truths" based on speculation. To add to that, even what's been established is suspect, even if it were true once. Our minds believe things to be true from past experience that may not align with recorded history. People made mistakes when recording history. Therefore, according to "scientific truth" (which itself may be unwise!), we cannot assume everything we believe to be true to be true. How then could the pursuit of a truth that could easily become a lie later any different than unfounded opinion or accepting dogma? I'm considering a Paleo Diet now; that's full circle from our beginning. R: free2buandme2 Please ignore. R: chaostheory > For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the > USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women's work. A few generations ago, programming was primarily a woman's job in the US. R: fizwhiz 1058 comments all descendents of hedgew's comment. First time I've ever seen something like that on HN. Edit: FWIW, the best female engineers I've worked with were just as good as the males. But yes, distribution is a thing, and we see fewer female engineers compared to male engineers because of a pipeline problem. Lowering the hiring bar just to converge to an unrealistic and superficial hurts everyone. Maintain the hiring bar and address the pipeline issue by encouraging more women to get into this field. R: thedays Remarkably few comments on the actual linked article. I found most of the comments in the article calm, reasonable, nuanced and reflective. To me, this shows the benefits of conversation and long form text, which we often seem to forget in this age of short attention spans driven by social media. We need more discussion like this. I for one would appreciate hearing more about how this discussion was facilitated. Is it a transcript of a face to face conversation, or was it done online, and if so, how? R: perseusprime11 It was basically a bullshit memo from the beginning written to appeal to a certain segment of the population. Google should have used this opportunity to educate the masses on diversity and should have fired him on the basis of hurting Google's brand & reputation and the ability to hire smart people in the future instead of citing code of conduct. Missed opportunity and a rookie mistake on Google's part. R: AlexCoventry > he wasn't sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a > discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview) Anyone got a link? R: ovao He stated on Tucker Carlson that he has based his argument on what he referred to as scientific consensus. I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it isn't my field, but just relaying what he said. R: Diederich > I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it > isn't my field, but just relaying what he said. Perhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did you feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence: > He stated on .... Thanks! R: AlexCoventry > why did you feel the need to emphasize this Not the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0] It's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the supposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down to a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major undergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference for "people" jobs vs "things" jobs.[1] [0] [https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is- fucke...](https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucked-the- syllabus/) [1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Th...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta- Analysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests) R: seany There are plenty of articles that touch on this. [https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo- what...](https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/08/10/the-google-memo-what-does- the-research-say-about-gender-differences/) R: AlexCoventry What's the most relevant one, in your opinion? R: seany The heterodox article is one of them, but they also link to several others they saw as reasonably backed up by the literature cited. The included counter points as well if they were written by people in that field. R: AlexCoventry I meant the most relevant one cited by the Heterodox Academy in the blog post you linked. R: seany I've only read one of them [1] in full, so it's hard to say with any depth my opinions of the others. Some of the findings listed in the abstracts have varying mentions of biological involvement. The larger point they were trying to make is that there are differences _now_, and given some of the research that's influenced as far back as at least middle school for the cultural part of it. Where the ratio is for nature/nurture they leave open for a future post (which they claim to be working on). 1) [http://sci-hub.io/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x](http://sci- hub.io/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x) R: cp33 As a person of color, I feel the need to give my perspective here, since I am part of an underrepresented group in tech, just like women. So I feel like I have some insight on the issue even though my reaction may still not be the same as what a woman would say about this. When you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what the responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he didn't take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as mentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with the louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority group. You probably won't have the same experiences, and one or two studies is not enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or sociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really wonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically? It seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on diversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this is the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution because there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you're not an expert on the subject. So from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google right? Was he right? Somewhat. I can't say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his view as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the backlash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his opinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn't have been fired. This is the bigger problem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more flexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at interacting with people. Was Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think Google fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true and unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the right. Damore should've been smarter and we would not have this discussion. I'm almost certain that Google wouldn't be where it is today without diversity of thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing everyone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if they didn't fire him, but more dammed if they didn't. It got leaked and the media attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason and it harmed Google's image and female employees. We can all mostly agree that Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and emphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left leaning organization? You can't say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at Google, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your views weren't respected. Come on. That's what sexism is. What if you said this about Hispanics, or Native Americans? If you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then make a better argument than saying "we don't need diversity programs at Google". I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the engineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual representation. Google can't have 50% of all women engineers because some of them work for different companies. Google shouldn't use immoral or illegal hiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have diversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the number of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit everyone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less qualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of one minority group does not necessarily lower the bar. Biases do exist, but it doesn't always mean it's bad. I told you I was a person of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I want my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my probability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage of women and other minorities posting. I don't think that I face tough obstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say that I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don't want to be seen as "the black guy" and I've done this enough of my life that people say that I'm not the same as many other black guys. They don't say it in a negative way, because I still act "somewhat" black, if that makes sense to you. R: k_sze I haven't read the whole piece yet, but I find that the first question I ask myself is: if the interviewees were males, would they have been given pseudonyms? I don't have an answer to that question. It's all hypothetical. I'm just pondering. R: losteverything Were the questions asked in person and scribed "live" or submitted? R: alecco Every thread about the Google Memo in the past weeks got flagged (?) promptly out of the homepage but this one stays at the top with just 400 points. I wonder what's the difference. 1695 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14952787) 754 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15009759) 590 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14968626) 448 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14959601) And many more. Then people wonder how Trump got elected. R: boobsbr What's the relation with the Trump election, if you please? R: alecco Sorry I missed your reply. To speak bluntly, white guys in US (not me!) are being shamed as being misogynists. Now the hardcore left "liberal" groups and media turned its eyes on STEM. See how they treated that poor guy in LHC a few years ago. See how they ousted Brendan Eich from Mozilla. Sure, the Uber CEO and that other VC cases are real and I support that. But those are used as spearheads to take control. Hundreds of YouTube content producers are being demonetized or their Google accounts frozen, like Jordan Peterson's recently. Bernie Sanders was attacked by BLM as an old white guy. The leftist media turned on him, even though he was the most honest guy aligned with what they theoretically support. It's all a big joke. So people vote something else, whatever, even Trump. (And I think Trump is a media player and incompetent businessman, never mind President of US). R: dunkedonkino at current time, 1273 comments and _no_ mention of Jordan B Peterson? I'm disappointed in the community and lack of science based approach here. Leaving facts at a feelings fight, I guess? R: cerealbad What makes female engineers different from male engineers again? R: yy77 Take the example of plumber, any girls are expected to be a plumber? Engineer is a bit alike as techical. The different part in google case is more mental but not physical. R: wellboy Well, now this discussion should give the author of the memo enough data, to make a follow up memo with his arguments backed up by deep research if there is research. Mission accomplished? R: jack9 > that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by > trans, non-binary, and intersex folks. 2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong. > I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general > populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an > individual level." Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat? > there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a > lot of research that counters what was in the memo I'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made available. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely interested and informed in related topics: [https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent- More-Women-Science/dp/15914...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Arent-More-Women- Science/dp/159147485X) who reached a similar conclusion to James Damore: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci- women-i...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/opinions/williams-ceci-women-in- science/index.html) Let's at least present the field studies/research, which can throw existing clinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible flaws. It's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average engineer. R: joshuamorton >2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other 98% This is just wrong. This is a strawman. She said "complicate" not "invalidate". >Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat? What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore didn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went further and suggested actions based on these population differences. To continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to "We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have black fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears instead". Whereas the other side might be "Given that gorillas typically have black fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do extra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist". R: jack9 > She said "complicate" not "invalidate". That's true. However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Her statement was meant to throw trending into question and I overstated by taking a bad position (phrase-wise). > What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Provide more shaded areas (canopy or artificial), of course. I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy" (populations vs individuals turned into a warped "industry is a zoo" metaphor?) is supposed to help. R: joshuamorton > However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and how they interact with the trends. But such an analysis would be more _complicated_ than the binary trends in the original document. That is, such trends are an imperfect model of reality, and to better match reality, one needs a more complex model. >I'm not sure who this elaborate "analogy" Nor am I, you're the one that felt the need to bring up Gorillas. I felt that was a bad analogy, and that by continuing it, it would reveal why it was bad. It appears that it worked. R: sol_remmy > Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis > would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people > and how they interact with the trends. How about this: the memo was about men and women. The 98%. R: DinoDano Shame on you google! You are failing baddly. I would never think to do any adwords or youtube moneytizing business with you. You lie and cheat. Thats core of google today. Google, bye bye R: ChemicalWarfare >> political correctness makes it hard for people with unpopular opinions to ask questions and discuss their viewpoints... non_PC != unpopular R: Spivak I'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are popular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean that they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular enough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against speaking up in fear of social punishment. R: alexandercrohde PC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC, and that minority happens to be on the left. If the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say "Talking about baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if it is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment" R: Spivak I will absolutely agree that there's a minority a very vocal people, but they themselves could not maintain a PC atmosphere. If they were truly in the minority they would be easily dismissed as overly sensitive. It's the large body of moderate people, who in general agree with the idea, that provide the muscle for enforcing a PC atmosphere. R: alexandercrohde I think a vocal minority (10%) has bullied the silent majority into a position of "If you're not on our side you're hurting us and should be fired." They did this by controlling the language, by getting to define who's a victim, who's a minority, what's "offensive," what's a "safe-space." We're seeing the backlash now, because people are finally admitting it's gone too far. R: graphememes Everyone is always upset when real scientific data alludes that they might be wrong. R: stefek99 I have nothing valuable to say. Roughly the same time I've created #hck2fck - an analogy to pwn2own as I was going to SHA2017 hacker camp. I'm not sure if I'm ready to handle all the controversy related to the project. Intention - get some free press, media attention, eyeballs, hit to the actual website. R: alexmuro just want to say thanks to all involved in this interview. This is exactly the kind of discussion that imho can change minds and move this issue forward. I have so much respect for these women. R: Myrmornis The memo contained assertions like "women are more neurotic" I'm a bit baffled why the author isn't being criticized more for the childish sexism in that sentence. (This is coming from someone who despairs over the politically correct left). R: HillaryBriss based on all the sound and fury, one might think that somehow Google's hands are tied, that it has no control over who it hires. but the reality is that it has _total_ control over who it hires. if Google can choose to fire Mr. Damore for expressing his thoughts about diversity, it can sure as hell extend tens of thousands of new job offers _starting today_ to people in underrepresented groups. there's nothing to it. they have the money and the power. so do it already and silence the critics. it's not that hard. R: jcmoscon Trump is Goldstein! 1984 is now! R: havetocharge I think it's very ironic that males took over the discussion that intended to seek our female opinion. R: etiene I actually thought the document was reasonably well written, using language that was not confrontational or aggressive, and providing some sources. So, from a superficial view, it looks well-thought, scientific and non-malicious. This is why I presume it gathered a lot of supporters. The problem is when you actually look at the message and the information given. Some of his arguments are just wrong. And doing what he did was naive. Biological differences between men and women are completely irrelevant to the very few highly competitive folks in the tech industry and more precisely in Google. Especially considering the huge chunk of the world who is illiterate, we simply cannot have any clue how biology is actually affecting us and how it plays with all the other variables in the game (such as being socialised for specific tasks when growing up, or just finding the workplace hostile). On the contrary, he shows lack of basic knowledge on history of computer science. Since women used to be the majority in the field some decades ago, there is no way evolution / innate difference could have worked its way in this fraction of time. It also makes me question what are his thoughts on people who are disabled and work for Google, for example? This discussion not only is not productive but puts him under a very bad light. Secondly, he seems not to understand the role of Software Engineering really well. He argues that women are more focused on people and therefore don't feel attracted to high pressure rational fields, but choses to ignore how important people are to the career as a Software Engineer? It seems he is very attached to the idea that programmers are isolated nerds on a basement, which does not reflect at all the actual reality of successful people in the field. Last but not least, as I said, he was very naive. He writes this 10 page thing about how women are maybe not interested in CS for these many reasons and criticises Google's approach to diversity, with the message that maybe it's not worth it, proposing we use even less empathy. Google has these programs after counselling with experts in the field, which he certainly is not. He says Google is an echo chamber and complains they are not listening. What he doesn't realise, however, is that by circulating that document he is shitting on the head of many of his female co-workers with his wrong arguments, and shitting on the head of whoever are the experts responsible for these diversity programs. And even if he was right, it would still be a bad idea. You don't circulate a document arguing that a certain gender may be in general unfit for the job, and expect people of said gender to be cool with it, even if you claim the people working with you are exceptions. Replace "women" with different groups and how his piece really hit me may be understood better. I don't want to hear "women are bad at math, irrational etc. but you are different, you are cool". Imagine saying to my happily married gay friends that gays are promiscuous but they are ok? He really did not think through how this would sit on people's ears. I felt really disrespected and I don't even work in Google, imagine the women who felt the same but actually had to work with him? It's a massive disruption to the workplace. Google had no alternative but to fire him. A bunch of people would quit if they didn't. I know I would. So Google made the right choice for the company. They put a lot of effort into hiring the best people. Losing one of them is better than losing credibility and losing many. I'm not saying he's a horrible person and deserves to be fired. I'm saying he is wrong and he made a terrible mistake that offended many people and led things to where they are now at no one's fault but his own. Everything related to this document is really unfortunate, to him and to everyone else involved. It decreased morale of women at his workplace, it got him fired. It also got a bunch of alt-right nazis spreading hate about women using his document as a base, which I'm certain was not his intention. R: stillkicking If people were willing to apply such meticulous criticism and high standards to the Women in Tech movement in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue. While the sober opening and acknowledgement is a refreshing start in a sea of shitty takes, I have yet to see anyone bother to show the same kind of psychological concern for the men in tech and the same kind of rigor for scientific standards, when the shoe is on the other foot. What would it do to your confidence and comfort to know you can't state certain scientific truths without being labelled a sexist and a misogynist? To know that there is a whole network of eager feminist writers ready to label you a troglodyte techbro and scoff at the notion you might have something interesting to say on an industry you've been part of for 10+ years? To know that, if speaking at a conference, every single word out of your mouth will be dissected for possibly implying the wrong thing, even as a first time speaker? To carefully weigh socializing with your coworkers against the chance of being accused of impropriety, with no practical defense accepted? The people who complain about "an unequal burden my male coworkers don't have to deal with every day" are showing an utterly stunning lack of empathy in the other direction. They are wilfully ignoring the disastrous effect these efforts can have on the people who do not share their views. Similarly, if people are supposed to actively seek out dissenting views and avoid cherry picking research, why is it feminists are notorious for protesting anyone who dares to disagree? Seminars, men's centers, documentaries, ... really, their track record in silencing and misrepresenting dissent is impressively consistent, the Google Memo included. The women cited in this interview feel "emotionally drained". "The onus is on me to prove to men in tech that I'm not an "average" woman". Strange, because all I hear from tech feminists is that men need to constantly prove themselves to be "good allies". No amount of previous piety is sufficient to avoid being lynched when you draw their ire. Their track record in eating their own is equally impressively consistent. "Who might I talk to who could tell me about their experiences working within a system that is biased against them, so I can understand better?" Start with James Damore, an autist who worked at a company biased against him, sharing his experiences, and getting roasted for it. They complain his memo wasn't written in an inquisitive enough tone, well guess what, that sort of difference in preferred communication style is exactly the kind of thing you should expect in a diverse environment. On the other hand, the numerous articles in the style of "I'm a woman in tech, let me ladysplain the google memo to you" leave no question about who is actually parading around with the attitude of "let me tell you what's up, all you wrong people." Contemporary feminism is 90% projection, this article is more of the same. R: RealityNow > "I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences > between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs." Where did the memo say this? This is the most common strawman used to attempt to discredit the memo. The memo author never states that men are better at software engineering, just that these biological differences may help explain why women are underrepresented, choosing to pursue computer science and careers in tech less than men. > "the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to > men in tech that I'm not an "average" woman" > "This is literally a discussion of whether half the human race is innately > unsuited for a certain kind of work" See above > "I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general > populations, then walk it back to say "but of course it doesn't apply at an > individual level." Essentially what you're saying is, "we're not allowed to talk about biological differences that make underrepresented minorities look bad". I disagree. No fact should be barred from mentioning, and it's not the author's responsibility to ensure that you don't misconstrue his facts to advance your own agenda of claiming oppression. > "He did not address any counter arguments or research that opposes his > views, or the validity of the studies he did cite and their > reproducibility." Did you address any counter-arguments in your research report? This is some dude's memo in an opt-in internet forum, not a comprehensive/rigorous discipline-defining research report seeking publication in an academic journal. > "He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the > bar." I agree that he should have elaborated on this bold claim. Though it's not outrageous to suspect that this could be the case given that affirmative action policies in higher education do lower the bar. > "Some people at Google reacted by saying "well if he's so wrong, then why > not refute him," but that requires spending a significant amount of time > building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, > if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should > not be forced into that kind of debate at work." The memo was posted in an opt-in forum, you didn't have to debate it. Silence does not imply that you agree with him. > "I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male > colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate, > either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of > understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about." Why do you think they remained silent? You said it yourself - anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Damore got fired for stating a well-articulated opinion, why would any of your male colleagues jeopardize their jobs as well by speaking honestly on the matter? > I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages > they've had - the situations in which they were more likely to be trusted, > deemed competent, promoted, given raises, etc. as men than they would be as > women. This exercise isn't intended to place blame, but to inspire empathy > toward those who feel the weight of their gender each day at work. I wish more women in tech vilifying Damore would think about the advantages they have received (affirmative action), think about it from the perspective of a male in a field where we get no hand-holding or "women in tech" scholarships and are constantly accused of being sexist oppressors, and stop pretending like discrimination is the only or main reason women are underrepresented in tech. I firmly believe that women chose to pursue tech less than men and that this is the biggest driver of the underrepresentation (posted a little about that here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012364)). If it is indeed the case that women are choosing to pursue the study of computer science less than men, then stop placing the burden on us males to increase your participation. Before you automatically dismiss me and others with views differing to you as a misogynist, consider that most of us in the first world do not consider women as being any less capable than men at software engineering, let alone ANY discipline. Women used to dominate the field, and no reasonable man believes that women aren't fit for the job or shouldn't pursue this field. > By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are > sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take > precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female > engineers and technical founders What does this even mean? It's just another way of saying "by not agreeing with me, you're wrong" > I think he could have written it differently, so that people who chose not > to read the whole 10-pages could have read the tl;dr and not immediately > concluded he was sexist. So the onus is on the author to ensure that people don't flippantly conclude that he's a sexist? > This is an emotional topic That's the problem, it shouldn't be. > He was not fired for speaking truth to power, he was fired for mishandling a > complex subject in a way that caused harm to his employer (and many of his > colleagues). He wouldn't have been fired if the memo argued the opposite viewpoint R: jcmoscon 1984 is now! R: jorgemf > I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts. Funny. So if you backed your opinions with science that is not right? It was hard to keep reading after that statement. R: sidlls "Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion incorrectly" and "applied science to form an opinion" are different things. Damore did the former. R: alexandercrohde Except "what is correct" is the whole point of the debate, so nobody knows which side is doing the former until everybody agrees, which they most certainly do not agree yet. Mind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the former and not the latter (until some common ground is found). R: sidlls No, there is not an equivalent act that "both sides" are engaged in, here. R: mpweiher Well, true. He tried to be factual, balanced, fair. His detractors mostly grossly misrepresent what he wrote, including claiming the very opposite, and then hurl ad-hominems at their straw man. R: EGreg Let me offer what could be a controversial opinion, but one based on faacts neverteless. When there is a war to fight, men are drafted far more than women (if any are drafted at all). This is true in pretty much every country. Risky construction jobs are mostly filled by men. The homeless and incarcerated are mostly men. Obviously, survival and risk to life and working conditions and homelessness are major topics. So why isn't society talking as much about balancing men and women in these areas? For example, in the USA, men are incarcerated 10x more often than women, despite making up something like 50% of the population. _Why doesn 't anyone claim this is prima facie evidence of systemic sexism?_ When it comes to race, such claims are in fact made, but not when it comes to sex. I believe the reason is that people really do believe that men are more prone to violence and the "population-level differences in biology" (to put it in the Google Guy's terms) are a totally socially acceptable answer. One that even liberals and progresives give. Or take another example of where sex-based discrimination against men is not just tolerated but shrugged off, while the same would cause outrage if it was based on sex: clubs in the city. Men have to pay a cover and stand in line, ladies are ushered in. Men may come in if they have 2-3 good looking ladies with them. Imagine the same business model with white/black people. It wouldn't last. So why is this happening? Because we all believe there are differences between men and women that come down to biology (whether it is "really" true or not). Our society contains many places where men are discriminated against, but they don't make a very good cause for an activist (well, there are men's rights activists, but not many). Now here is what I think about the whole "women in tech" thing: it is too corporation-centric. People's lives consist of more than working in a corporation. A major part of life, for example, is raising children. If you look at this aspect of life, we see women are favored in every society to be the primary caretakers of children. Most of this is explained by - wait for it - biological differences that supposedly make women better nurturers. States often say it is in the _the best interests of the child_ for the mother to get primary custody of a child in a divorce. The consequences are plainly laid out in the statistics. Women are much more likely to be the ones to devote their time and energy to raising children. This is basically _another job_ which the men are not expected, by society, to _have to do_. Certainly, many do, but it is fr more _optional_ for a man. These days, women are graduating college at higher rates than men, and _make more than men_ out of the gate. But when women start having children, that's when the gender pay gap appears. This seems to be _the largest factor_ that explains the gender gap Someone has to raise the children, though. And this is why I say the argument is too corporation-centric: it assumes the goal for women and men is to earn a money in a large, hierarchical corporation. One can phrase it the other way: _women are actually ahead of men in the work-life balance department_ , and we should try to help everyone achieve more of THAT goal. This is bigger than men and women. How many families today have both parents working, or a single parent, sticking the kids into public school as a _daycare center_? (Read what pg wrote about high school as a prison.) How about putting parents in nursing homes? All for what? So people can commute many miles (burning tons of fuel) to corporate jobs and sit on their butt doing something someone else wants them to do? Why is that considered the goal, when corporate world is only 150 years old and on its way out when automation hits? Work-life balance is way better. Small teams and self employment - that is what I want for more people, women and men alike! R: pm24601 My feelings as a white male...who happens to have 2 kids. Sometimes my kids will "why?" "why?" me to death. They really don't care about the answer and can never be persuaded. They are just trying to stretch out the moment of truth before they actually have to do the thing they don't want to do. Everyone: it is the 21st century. In the 20th century, we had that discussion and debate about whether or not half of the human race is biologically able comprehend CS. At this point, there are some people who refuse to be persuaded. I feel that Google did the correct thing. Q: "Is it o.k. for me to have these attitudes about a high percentage of (present, past and future) my co-workers?" A: "No" Q: "Why?" A: "Because we are running the company and we said so." Q: "Why?" A: "We are done explaining this." (Damore writes his memo) A: "We said we are done explaining. Maybe you can get the answer you want at another company." R: EpicBlackCrayon If only I could upvote twice, this is an excellent analogy. R: 0xbear >> For example, students and professors I met in college >> that grew up in the USSR thought engineering was >> stereotypically women's work Um, no. I grew up in the USSR, too, and engineering never was stereotypically women's work. If anything, the enrollment of women in engineering programs was even more skewed than it is in the US today. We only had 2 women out of a cohort of roughly 40 people, and they barely managed to graduate. Ironically neither of the two works as an engineer, but then neither do most men from that cohort. Truth is, engineering is not actually the most lucrative occupation in today's Russia, so I can't blame women (or men for that matter) for not pursuing it. Also, most people here probably don't know this, but Russian language is gendered, and the very word "инженер" is masculine, though it can be used unchanged to refer to women engineers. There is no special word form for female engineers. R: sremani <Quote> with the recognition that gender and sex aren't binary. </Quote> Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you. R: peterwwillis The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about simple biology you should have learned in school. [https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes- genders-...](https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-are- there) [http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes- are...](http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are- there.html?pagewanted=all) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex) [http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html](http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction) R: dragonwriter > Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology. Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines, _everything_ about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology is, ultimately, biology. R: toxik Seems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also physics. R: sndean I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as chemistry. The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology. [0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/) R: AmIFirstToThink Google having diversity hiring policy was what made "diversity hire" impressions among employees. Damore talking about it did not cause "diversity hire" impressions. Google shot the messenger in this case. R: glibgil Are ten-page screeds on _any_ subject welcome and most companies? Google was this guy's only job after academia. I value his opinions on Google and corporate life in the same way that I value the opinions of unmarried people or people without kids on those respective subjects. I wince a smile and nod and think, "check back with me in ten years when you've been around the block a few times". This is not a person to take seriously. He does not even know what he doesn't know R: Mz _Are ten-page screeds on any subject welcome at most companies?_ Probably not. I blogged just today about my opinion that if this 10 page screed had been about how Google was doing the office furniture all wrong, he likely still would have ended up fired, sooner or later, for being an egomaniac who cannot play nice with his corporate overlords, basically. R: averagewall If saying that female applicants are given preferential treatment is harmful to female employees, then surely the people doing the preferential treatment (HR?) are the ones who are actually guilty, not the messenger? Why is there no complaints against those practices? Are they not real? He shouldn't be criticized for raising concerns about discriminatory hiring because, right or wrong, he had a legally protected right to do that without suffering retaliation. If people don't like those ideas being mentioned, they should try to get the law changed because this is one of the very few things Californians can't be fired for yet it seems to be the main point of complaints against Damore. R: bluecalm Now imagine how "we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black people but we are not lowering the bar" would fare in court of law or public opinion. R: Dylan16807 Sure, everyone would call that a bad policy. It's taking a minority that's biased against and making those biases worse. But imagine it was "90% of our hires are white, so we're trying to change that by throwing out some white resumes". You'd get a much more mixed reaction. R: peoplewindow Hence the fact that so many people are sick of the racism card and voted for Trump. As you point out, the same behaviour would be called bad policy (and possibly illegal) if it's against blacks but not against whites. That seems fundamentally problematic. R: Dylan16807 Sometimes local bias can make things fairer overall. The difference is that something anti-black is _obviously_ making things worse, while something anti- white _might_ be helping or hurting in various ways. You have to be intentionally myopic to think all bias is equally unfair. Especially consider how racist you can make desegregation sound, even though it's giving everyone the same treatment: "They're going to start sending most of the kids of one race to much worse schools!". R: ebbv Anybody who sends out a political bomb like that to a large internal mailing list should expect to get fired. And the memo was poorly thought out and the dude was not well informed. All this hand-wringing is silly. He deserved to get fired and he did not have any really salient points beyond "Could Google do MORE to encourage diversity?" R: davidreiss Isn't a ycombinator blog dedicated solely for women sexist. Isn't "Ask a Female Engineer" sexist? If ycombinator only had "Ask a Male Engineer" wouldn't they be attacked for it? R: DalaiObama So if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as you write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹. If you argue _for_ it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant. Isn't this what leftists call "privilege"? ¹ Scott Alexander R: dang You appear to be using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please not? We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021772) and marked it off-topic. R: DalaiObama I think of it as participating in these kind of discussions without risking my career. But I hear what you're saying, and I agree that this post was needlessly confrontational. I'll try to be a better HN citizen! R: sheepmullet More likely your female teammates are creating a hostile work environment by being unable to handle minor ideological disagreement. Or even more likely, you have misinterpreted them and are unaware that they were not shaken or seriously disturbed in any way. Edit: edited to remove the personal attack while still keeping the meaning. R: Blackthorn I was there. Literally. Why are you trying to say you understand my colleagues, who you do not know, better than I do? R: sheepmullet Do you see what you are implying about your female colleagues? R: baitbiter Even more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented in all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned to shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with > 80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those? R: mpweiher Considering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that has more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater imbalance). How about: People are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices and don't second guess them. R: mathw That doesn't account for the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood to be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while boys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns. We're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while the men go out and earn the money. R: mpweiher "Gender-Differentiated Parenting Revisited: Meta-Analysis Reveals Very Few Differences in Parental Control of Boys and Girls" [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0159193) R: Udik No. The memo says: "The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11], which constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC- authoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause." So it's not that "leftists are violent", it's PC that's complacent to violent PC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming. A bit different. Again, I have the impression that parts of this debate could be avoided by accepting some of the caveats and distinctions already made in the memo. Edit: replaced angry outburst with more civilized one. R: bjl He explicitly mentions 'cultural marxism', which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory from the 60s. R: Udik Don't know where, certainly not in the memo. R: bjl In his Jordan Peterson interview he talks about it quite extensively. R: lsd5you Now extend your attitude to religous belief. All the parallels are there, including believing others are inferior (certainly islam). Should they be done as well? You are infact imposing a moral belief system. Once upon a time it used to be wrong to not believe in god. Well similarly you are saying the same about gender differences. R: dang For heaven's sake let's not take this into religious flamewar as well. (I'm sure you didn't mean to, but we know empirically what sort of effect this has.) We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15021907) and marked it off-topic. R: lsd5you Ok, but to me it is as plain as day that there is a double standard here and taking the debate on to that kinda territory is the only way to convince the other side about what they are doing... i.e. shutting down people who don't share their belief (you should believe ...). Once upon a time it was you should believe in god. If it is ok to persecute (or at least censor) people who don't believe in various forms of equality then it is ok to do the same to those who don't believe in a god. Certainly the fact that some people believe in supernatural things (ridiculous, right?) but are allowed to state these beliefs despite the fact that on the face of it they are far more extraordinary than the extremely plausible some people are better than others in someway due to the differences in their genetics... The answer is of course that the prevailing pc mainstream does not feel threatened by these daft belief systems (beyond fighting creationism in schools). Anyway, you may be right that it is currently irreconcileable. R: xname2 When they say they feel they are hurt / offended, do they know this is a typical easy thing for women to do in the society, not men? I don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society where men and women cry equally. R: e12e Of course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just as we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers. That said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time stating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are hurt/offended. And a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy for women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women can have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be absurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward a free/equal society. All that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be repression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society is in general not good for anyone. I think Dar Williams puts it well in her song "When I was a boy": [http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar- willi...](http://www.metrolyrics.com/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar- williams.html) R: toxiccwm I'm not sure which world people live in where men are not expected to defend their ideas against the great misunderstanding masses who don't accept them on pronouncement, but it sounds lovely. Can I move there? R: dang We've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait to HN. That's vandalism if not arson, and ideological battle is not what this site is for. We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15022166) and marked it off-topic. R: kolbe Edith is on point. R: kansface A related post from SSC on the subject: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on- exagger...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exaggerated- differences/) TLDR: Personal interests can plausibly explain the _entire_ gender imbalance. R: cyanexttuesday That blew my mind too. I wish that article could be pinned to the top of hackernews forever. R: Hermel The term "diversity" already implies that there are differences between genders, otherwise we would have to call it "more of the same". Everyone who insists on valuing diversity while also insisting that man are women are equal is contradicting herself. R: youdontknowtho I've been trying not to comment in these threads. The thing that gets me though is how much people WANT to argue about this shit. So many people on this site want to defend that guy and his ideas like they gain something from it. It's weird. R: Blackthorn It really doesn't matter if the memo had any truth to it or not. At the end of the day, that really is immaterial to the result. What happened because of the memo is it managed to piss off virtually every woman in the company. You don't piss off 20,000 of your coworkers in a completely avoidable manner and keep your job. R: alexandercrohde Did the memo piss them off, or did a non-existent "Sexist manifesto" created by click-bait sites piss them off? R: Blackthorn Considering how it pissed them off before any leaks happened, I'm going to have to do with the former. R: kristianc > I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences > between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest > in certain jobs, certainly. And we know - and many of us have experienced - > that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural > factors. This is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science. It's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo chambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions ('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions they already have. R: 9j9j9j9ju >> Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy psuedo-science If you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment at gynaecologist's :) R: kristianc Well done for proving I can't get pregnant. What else you got? Edit: But while we're at it, there are male gynaecologists too, largely because while they're studying, they develop an affinity for gynaecology. R: 9j9j9j9ju That wasn't the point. I think that Americans in particular are too obsessed with their "American dream", their belief that "you can be whoever you want if you work hard enough" that they cannot even accept basic facts from their own biology. There's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have separate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get places below 100th. Try to explain that with "socio-cultural factors" or other gender pseudo-science. R: kristianc > A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of > women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected, > given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all. > Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this > statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the > Royal Society B. > In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women > participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self- > selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to > drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial > assumption, the researchers say. That is, it _requires that there is an > innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated > with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support > it._ Luckily, people have studied this, and in the case of chess, it's simple. More men play chess. And did you just dismiss the entire field of sociology? [https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess- biologi...](https://phys.org/news/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess- biological.html#jCp) R: 9j9j9j9ju Yes, I dismiss entire field of sociology as pseudo-science. Same as psychology.

M: Our presentation on investing with ETFs using Modern Portfolio Theory - mattbaker http://www.slideshare.net/wealthfront/engineering-your-portfolio-with-etfs R: maxdemarzi So you took ifa.com and made it open to low end retail investors exchanging etfs for dfa funds. I had this idea a few years ago... then I read the Black Swan and realized I didn't want to be responsible for possibly ruining people's lives. Hopefully no "1 in 10,000" year type events happen on your watch. R: investordude cool stuff. this is very helpful!

M: Tell HN: I made $11.21 on a single Hacker News Comment and so can you - drakaal 6 days ago I commented on a thread about 37% chocolate. In my response I linked to some dark godiva chocolate on Amazon and included my affiliate tag in the link.<p>When I was called out on including the affiliate tag I promised to follow up in a week. Well I&#x27;m a day early, but I&#x27;m calling it close enough.<p>If you didn&#x27;t know, Amazon will pay you for referrals to their site that result in sales. Not just for the product you linked to, but for all products purchased in that visit. This can pay off pretty well.<p>301 of you clicked on the link in my comment. That&#x27;s more than I anticipated. 3 things of chocolate sold. Commission on that doesn&#x27;t add up to much. 7% on $63 is about $4. I made almost triple that because of other things people purchased.<p>The largest and strangest of those purchases being a Shimano RD-M591 Deore SGS Rear Derailleur (for a bike) ( http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B003OWPRLI?tag=itemsid-20 )<p>So here are the results:<p>Items Shipped Revenue Advertising Fees<p>Amazon.com Items Shipped 6 $98.97 $6.16<p>Third Party Items Shipped 5 $109.25 $5.05<p>Items Shipped 11 $208.22 $11.21<p>I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m going to get rich by this method. The turn out was way better than I expected. I though 40 people would click and 1 would buy an HDMI cable for $4 and I&#x27;d make 28 cents.<p>Probably I violated a Hacker News Rule somewhere, and I apologize for that. I don&#x27;t think this is much different than linking to your own site that has ads in it so I don&#x27;t feel too bad. In truth I really just wanted the click through stats, all the other numbers were just incidental.<p>Here is the thread I commented on: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7125646 R: judk "You will not issue any press release or make any other public communication with respect to this Operating Agreement, your use of the Content, or your participation in the Program." Interesting, talking about being an affiliate is a violation of the operating agreement. R: benologist This should be put to good use with links tagged automatically with some useful organization and overwriting others to remove any financial incentive to comment. EFF has an affiliate tag "electronicfro-20". R: crusty I was thinking about Amazon affiliate referrals for charity just the other days after a friend posted his charity's Amazon Smile referral link. Of course the Smile payout is a fraction of what the affiliate percentage pays. I was thinking about just having a page of with maybe the current top 50 items (five rows of ten) for the week in Amazon's sales rank - as cards with thumbnail and name/price/rating. Then I'd rotate through charities each week based on visitor input, verify the week's haul for them and cut a check to the charity. An alternative to the top 50 items would be to incorporate items related to LifeHacker's "best times to buy" lists. I figured I should just double check the TOS first and haven't had the chance. It's interesting to see others thinking about this. R: stp-ip They closed down all charity and affiliate related projects and replaced them with smile to make it cheaper. aflattr.com + socialvest.com R: rgbrgb Affiliate links seem pretty interesting but I'm not sure they're actually positive for the consumer. In some cases it's a way to support legitimate content but I've seen too many "reviews" that were actually advertisements. Like ideally you want to use ads to make good content free and inform people about products they actually want. I'm working on something kind of related to affiliate links (users make money) but the affiliate's motivation is centered around getting their own content seen, so hopefully we're aligning goals of visitors and posters (make something great, get paid). EDIT: Planning to post something more substantial to HN but here's a preview for people in this thread [https://surfer.io/](https://surfer.io/) R: nkurz While I appreciate the insight into the results, I think it be extremely bad for HN to encourage or allow this practice. I've upvoted your submission in the hopes that it gains further attention, and flagged it and the post containing the affiliate link. I realize this affiliate links are a divisive issue, but my hope is that they will be reviewed and your account will be banned. I don't know whether others agree with me, but I think adding affiliate links to comments here is uncivil and intolerable behaviour. R: znmeb I believe it's against Amazon's Terms of Service. They're bigger than you are and they _will_ sue you if you violate their TOS. So check it out! R: stp-ip And even if you do not yet violate their TOS, they do change them to their liking and kick you out anyway. Relying on Amazon as a partner is not really something I can recommend. R: jayzalowitz So basically if i link to a horse mask like this [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003G4IM4S?tag=t0c8f-20](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003G4IM4S?tag=t0c8f-20) on hacker news, it will make money (Ill donate anything I get from this to Glide), I wonder what the most successful hacks you can do with this are... writing a pinterest chrome app? a reddit app? R: whichdan How long after clicking on an affiliate link do purchases count for? And does each successively clicked affiliate link override the previous one? Also, as an affiliate, do you see any metadata, or just which items were purchased overall? I like the EFF idea posted in a few other comments, but I'm wondering how affiliate links are handled in general. R: msinghai Money is credited to the affiliate account after the product gets shipped; so that's around 24 hours. Yes, each successively clicked affiliate link overwrites the previous one. Any metadata? No, affiliates just see which items were purchased and the quantities. Hope that helps. R: whichdan That's interesting - thanks! R: jfoster Would be interesting to know how you go after this post, too. I imagine more people will click through to the original post after this. R: kassner This is not the same than posting a blog link with Adsense on it? The content is being presented and someone is getting a few cents... R: drakaal Sorry for the bad formatting on the table I apparently don't know how to mark down to get the tabs for a psuedo table. R: possibilistic The comments on HN are not parsed as markdown. * case (newline) * in (newline) * point (newline) __Double asterisk for bold? __Nope. [Link]([http://google.com](http://google.com)) I believe the only formatting options are these: 1) _encloded by single asterisk = italics_ 2) four leading spaces for <pre> / monospaced great for code, quotes, etc. R: tzs Close. You only need two or more leading spaces. Here's the list of formatting options: [http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

M: (Awesome programming font!) Gohu Font converted to TTF - rnetocombr http://www.rneto.com.br/ (http://font.gohu.org/)<p>Gohu Font converted to TTF R: gus_massa I'd like to see more text written in that font in the example (before downloading). Does it have a slashed 0? Monospaced? Some ALL_CAPS text? How is the * verticaly aligned? I googled some images from the original font: [http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Gohufont](http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Gohufont)

M: Backbone Debugger - kwellman https://github.com/Maluen/Backbone-Debugger R: odiroot That's nice but what about garbage collection. Doesn't this extension prevent views/models from being cleaned up? Or does it use weak references of some kind? R: asolove I don't even know what to say. I think I might cry. This is going to be so useful. R: coolsunglasses [https://github.com/angular/angularjs- batarang](https://github.com/angular/angularjs-batarang)

M: The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet - ohjeez http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-the-teen-hackers-who-transformed-th-1770977586 R: fallingfrog I found this quote pretty poignant: "When I went to Santa Monica to meet Bill, I was pretty sure I'd hear a story about how the FBI had ruined his life. But I left believing that it hadn't. The world ruined Bill's life - a world that couldn't quite find a place for his particular talents, faults, and petty mistakes." Makes you a little more sympathetic to homeless people, doesn't it? I mean, I could have easily ended up in his position with just little less luck or different choices. And I think it's totally true that there are some people that just don't fit in to our current social/economic system, and that really isn't their fault.

M: Amazon Takes Sales Tax War to California - aarghh http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/technology/amazon-takes-sales-tax-war-to-california.html?hp R: ajkessler I found this quote hilarious: "I don't think we want to send the message that companies can fund a political campaign for a referendum and maybe your customers won't be subject to sales tax." Because it's not like some companies funded political campaigns to get this measure passed in the first place. ([http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870439650457620...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704396504576204791377862836.html)) Heaven forbid another big company ask what the citizenry thinks... R: blahedo It's really patently unfair for purchases from Amazon.com not to require sales taxes while purchases from BarnesAndNoble.com do require sales taxes. That's what this all boils down to. Amazon is not, on some level, competing directly with your local friendly indy bookshop (if you still have one), and that's not the right direction to look for a comparison... but they are competing with other online booksellers, who have to pay sales tax on their online book sales if and only if they _also_ have a bricks-and-mortar business. That's dumb. R: kevinskii Sales taxes fund local infrastructure. Why should Amazon have to pay for a fire department that it will never possibly need? In regards to the "fairness" question, put it a different way: It's unfair that brick and mortar companies can offer their customers immediate gratification and the ability to physically inspect items before buying. Amazon can do neither. R: Anechoic _Why should Amazon have to pay for a fire department that it will never possibly need?_ It's certainly in Amazon's interest that their _customers_ have access to those local FD's. Even if one doesn't agree with the FD example, those sales taxes also pay for local roads and surely Amazon makes use of those. (Lest I be accused of being a hypocrite, I do pay the local sales tax for internet purchases via the Massachusetts 'safe harbor' provision for small purchases and itemized listings of my larger purchases with my state tax filings) R: yummyfajitas Amazon doesn't use local roads. Fedex, UPS, etc do. Those companies all have a local presence and (presumably) pay their taxes to the state in which they operate. The taxes are then passed on to Amazon or the consumer in the form of higher prices on shipping. As for local fire departments, I use Pivotal Tracker. Should Pivotal Labs be forced to pay Maharashtra taxes since it's in their best interest that my company not burn down? R: babl With 2 day shipping through the prime service, they pretty much emulate a local retailer. The prices are awesome but I can see how their tax advantages give them an unfair advantage on local competition. R: X-Istence Because the user that is receiving the item is tax dodging Amazon should be punished? R: babl I wasn't aware anyone actually declared their Amazon purchases at tax time. R: dprice1 I do as well. I sum up my online purchases from Amazon, add my wife's in, and pay the money. It goes to funding the things I use: Roads, firefighters, the library, the park next to my house. Heck, there was a fire two weeks ago in the apartment building next to where I live-- we sure as hell appreciated the firemen who came at 4:00am to prevent a catastrophe. The argument above about how it's impossible/expensive/complicated/etc. to collect sales tax seems exceedingly bogus to me especially given the nature of HN: Sounds like a business problem to be solved, not some byzantine task. Someone should go make an online sales-tax-computing web service and be done with it. Oh wait, someone did: <http://salestaxwebservice.com/>, <http://www.avalara.com/products/avatax/calc>, et cetera. R: earl What's even more annoying is amazon damn well does have a large physical presence in CA: a2z: <http://a2z.com/> : SF, OC, and San Luis Obispo; A9: near caltrain, and from their page, "As A9 is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Amazon.com, we have the strength that comes from being part of a Fortune 500 company, and the flexibility and energy of a Silicon Valley start- up." I'm ambivalent about the exception to collecting taxes for companies without an instate presence, but this is pure bullshit. Amazon operates multiple companies with hundreds of employees in CA. Just like other companies that take advantage of what CA has to offer, they should be forced to pay the tax man. R: dangrossman It's not as if Amazon is arguing that if the subsidiaries sell products in California they wouldn't be subject to sales tax. If you (earl) bought stock in a company in another state, does that give you a physical presence there and make whatever you sell subject to their sales tax? That company you are a partial (or full) owner of already pays sales tax in its state. R: aphexairlines a2z makes the Amazon Appstore and Android MP3 player. So who gets taxed on those digital purchases? R: dangrossman Appstore apps are sold by Amazon Digital Services Inc. They also sell all the downloadable games and such on Amazon.com. I don't know what state that company is in, but that'd be the state that gets taxed.

M: Utter.io API Reference - kordless https://gist.github.com/kordless/9dbac7af840e8ded1fc3 R: kordless Wrote this for a friend who was wanting to give away some instance time. Figured I'd share it up here!

M: Show HN: A weekly 3D printing newsletter - philipDS http://www.3dprintingletter.com/ R: bglenn09 I'm looking for opportunities in this space and am just getting up to speed, so thank you for this. I eagerly subscribed. Best of luck with it. R: philipDS Thanks! Hopefully I can offer some opportunities (as in jobs) through this newsletter as it grows. Feel free to share it with other people interested in 3D printing :) R: philipDS I started this side project because I find myself reading a lot of 3D printing news lately. On top of that, I'm not satisfied with the distribution of 3D printing news. There is the weekly Shapeways newsletter where they promote products, but they hardly cover any interesting news IMHO. Any feedback? Feel free to subscribe.. and see you next week! :) R: phylosopher Just reviewed the first newsletter. Good cross-section of a very hot sector. Any chance you can include a section on 3D scanning? Also interested in copyright law. R: philipDS Thanks for the feedback. Right now a section on 3D scanning is possible, but it will most likely be included under the general News section. Same for copyright law.

M: Google is facing a lawsuit for tracking people even when they opt out - djsumdog https://www.businessinsider.com/google-lawsuit-app-tracking-without-permission-reuters-2020-7 R: shadowgovt Interesting. Between this and the Incognito Mode lawsuit, it seems some lawyers are trying to make a case that companies have the burden of making their systems plain-language understandable to the consumer, not technically understandable. "Incognito mode" has never meant "Third party sites can't track you," but one could argue its plain-language understanding should be that. Similarly, disabling "Web & App Activity" actually means Android's built-in tracking is disabled, but does nothing about third-party site tracking (which is what Firebase is; it's a framework for third parties building usage tracking into apps that _happens_ to be owned by Google but doesn't drop its data into the same hopper as the Android project's tracking). One can clearly see how turning off Web & App Activity tracking could cause a person to assume systems like Firebase are also disabled, but it doesn't. I don't know what the right answer is yet. Manufacturer responsibility v. personal responsibility is an old question, and it's why we have court systems. R: strictnein > "third-party site tracking (which is what Firebase is; it's a framework for > third parties building usage tracking into apps" Firebase isn't that at all. It can be used to build such things, but so can PHP and CSV files. R: WhyNotHugo > Firebase isn't that at all. It can be used to build such things, but so can > PHP and CSV files. You can use PHP and CSV for purposes unrelated to tracking. Firebase cannot be used without any tracking going on. R: strictnein Yes, it absolutely can. I'm doing so currently. Firebase at its core is cloud functions, triggers, and storage. R: gundmc This is the second suit from this firm that seems to be formed on an incredibly weak and intentionally misleading argument. Here: the user turns off data collection from Google services, but third party apps use a Google Cloud offering to collect analytics (which Google cannot access). Previously: I launched Chrome in incognito mode, but when I log into Google it records my activity. Given the article's mention of Oracle as a client, it seems likely this is part of Oracle's continued smear campaign against Google. Keeping a stream of negative headlines regardless of substance, especially as the big Supreme Court case looms. R: pd33 Parts of Firebase do share data with Google that Google can access and use. [https://firebase.google.com/policies/analytics](https://firebase.google.com/policies/analytics) R: gundmc I'm not seeing anything that obviously supports your statement in that link, but I may be missing something. Could you quote the relevant section? R: gundmc I'm outside the edit window, but this page [1] looks more relevant. App owners can opt in to sharing additional data with Google for use in things such as spam prevention. It is off by default. [1] [https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6383877?hl=en](https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6383877?hl=en) R: dependenttypes Google should face a lawsuit for intentionally breaking the audio challenge in captcha when someone is using a proxy or has the fingerprinting protection enabled (same for cloudflare with their hcaptcha actually which does not even have an audio challenge). Also for making captcha more difficult when using firefox. R: dang The similar suit filed a month ago by the same firm was discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23405022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23405022) also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397045) R: ForHackernews Can any googlers comment on whether "turning off" activity on your user page actually does anything? My understanding has always been that it just hides that data from the end-user. R: lrem It does exactly what it says on the tin - Google stops collecting data you tell it to stop. This lawsuit, from a quick glance, is about Google not preventing "hundreds of thousands" of third parties from collecting, including third parties building with Google tech. R: CobrastanJorji Is the "Google tech" argument the equivalent of saying "Toyota promised not to track me, but a stalker followed me around town in a Corolla?" R: shadowgovt Basically. Firebase and Google Analytics can be used to build user behavior tracking in an app. That doesn't imply turning off web & app activity tracking the Android OS itself does turns off behaviors in apps running on that OS. R: digitalpacman Literally no one stops tracing you when you opt out. R: a3n Well, they have to track people that they aren't tracking. Otherwise they wouldn't know who they're not tracking. R: dudus I realize this is a joke. But that's an interesting contradiction, how do you know how many people you didn't track? The answer is that you don't. These companies estimate how many people block cookies or pie-hole requests to /dev/null or have ad blockers, etc. Their estimations are bad and they don't really know. It's a real problem. R: zelphirkalt Well, how come I am not surprised. Google is an ad company and I think lots of people still have not understood this. Google abuses that and does whatever they can to get more data. Ethics play no role for them. R: spodek "Don't Be Evil", according to Wikipedia: "In April 2018, the motto was removed from the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil) Since you can't demote it past the last sentence, maybe they should change it to "Whatever sells" or something similarly mercenary. R: notRobot This is Google we're talking about. I'm sure they've run the numbers and come to the conclusion that a lawsuit and a fine costs less than the amount of money that they earn by tracking users even after saying that they won't. Is anyone surprised at this point? R: shadowgovt Honestly, I doubt they've run any numbers on this because I think this lawsuit hasn't occurred to Google. Web & App Activity tracking collects data on usage of apps and browsing and sends them to the Android project (for improving the OS). Firebase is a framework and service for third parties to build tracking like that into their individual _products,_ and it has an entirely separate history from W&AA tracking. It happens to be _owned_ by Google (as of recently), but the data isn't in the same hoppers as the Android hoppers and Google can't see it (it's part of the Cloud offering; Google offers the service and stores the data, but aggregating or using the data itself would be a violation of their agreements with Firebase customers). Firebase and W&AA tracking are two different subsystems owned and maintained by two different departments at Google (in fact, hypothetically, they could build W&AA tracking as a client project _on top of_ Firebase, if they hadn't already built it). Firebase was an acquisition; when the W&AA tracking feature was added, Firebase wasn't even part of Google. This is a lawyer recognizing that an acquisition has created a novel arrangement that could be interpreted as suspicious.

M: Betable: Bringing real gambling to social casino games - wilfra http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/09/betable-could-disrupt-social-casino-games-by-cleverly-fusing-them-with-legal-real-money-gambling/ R: dsrguru Is it definitely clear that it would be legal for a startup based in the U.S. and with American founders to use Betable? It wasn't until "Black Friday" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011)>) that it became clear the U.S. government viewed NLH poker as a game of chance, and Googling I've done in the past suggests that certain aspects of the government's intrepretation of online poker's legality remain vague. So is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble? Or was it that those casinos made money off of their American customers? I.e. would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers? (I assume not, but then I'm unclear what the alleged money laundering charges were.) So to make a medium-length post short, I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable? If so, this is great news for me. R: wilfra "is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble?" It is definitely that they were allowing Americans to gamble. "would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers?" This definitely would not be allowed. You mentioned the money laundering charges a couple of times. Those were ancillary charges. The primary charge was that they were operating an illegal online gambling business i.e. letting Americans gamble on the internet. "I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable?" It is not illegal for an American company to offer real money online gambling to citizens of other countries where it is legal and regulated. So Zynga could get a UK gambling license and offer online gambling to UK citizens. It is a long, slow, difficult and expensive process - Betable has already done it and is allowing others to leverage their infrastructure (legal and technical). R: dsrguru Thanks! Would companies using Betable need to get licenses from the same countries that Betable already has licenses from (which so far means the UK) or would Betable's licenses mean that users of Betable would be covered as well. Edit: Just discovered the 50/50 revenue share. That's going to turn away a lot of potential customers. R: cellis Also don't just jump into this shit unless, you know, you have legal counsel that specializes in gaming. It's _still_ a huge risk. E.g. U.S. customers could circumvent and bet on your site. Guess what, you're on the hook for that! R: davidtyleryork That's incorrect cellis. Betable is handling all gambling, so any gambling- related legal risk (such as US customers gambling) is strictly our problem. This is why we have advanced geolocation, IP and identity checks. R: cellis Incorrect that U.S. developers of a game implementing Betable could be targets of legal action? Or incorrect that your software is circumventable? Here's another question. Is Betable willing / able to provide legal counsel to U.S. developers who get squeezed by the FBI? R: T_S_ Can anybody explain to me how much value I can give the user in a "gamified" app before it is considered gambling? R: wilfra These are the three criteria, all of which must be met to be considered gambling: -prize (they have to get paid money or something of value) -consideration (they have to pay to participate) -chance (so skill games are exempted i.e. chess) If any of those is missing, it is not gambling. Zynga Poker does not have a prize but they have consideration and chance, thus it is not gambling. There are legal subscription poker sites (i.e. clubwpt.com) that do not require people to pay, so no consideration - but they have chance and a prize. Not gambling. We ran a leaderboard contest last month to get some more alpha testers and gave $500 to the top 10. It was free to participate (no consideration) and our game is (we think) a game of skill, not chance. So we were confident it wasn't gambling and thus was legal. Consult your attorney before making any business decisions, but thats the gist of it. R: gregpurtell I think the idea is that Betable lets you do real gambling, but for games of chance. Not sure how it works with their platform to make it legal, but that's what the article claims their service is R: dminor Only players in places where gambling is legal can participate. So a US developer could make a game using Betable's API, but it won't be US players gambling. R: davidtyleryork That is correct dminor :) R: gamingfiend Have you guys been evaluated/certified by an independent testing lab? R: rcrowley We're audited multiple times a year. Our UK Gambling Commission license compels us to be audited against their codes of practice and additionally we have the correctness and security of our systems audited independently. R: gamingfiend Can you put your audit results and/or certifications on your web site? We would like to use you but having been in the cash gaming business in Europe and to an extent in the US, we won't touch a vendor unless we know they are some way to GLI-19 compliant. R: rcrowley Betable's license number from the UK Gambling Commission <http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk> is 000-023328-R-307313-003. We're audited (by GLI, incidentally) against their codes of practice. R: wilfra Was surprised not to see this on the front page. This is pretty big news: "Today, the company has received an undisclosed amount of money from 25 investors including Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave Morin (ex-Facebook employee and current founder of Path) and Yuri Milner, the Russian investor who took big stakes in Facebook and Zynga. Those are big-name supporters who believe that Betable has a shot at raising the average revenue per user and average customer lifetime value for social games. Among the other investors are CrunchFund (Michael Arrington's fund), Marc Abramowitz (first investor in Palantir), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance), Auren Hoffman (founder of Rapleaf), Sean Knapp (founder of Ooyala), Howard Lindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Matt Ocko (angel investor in Zynga), Joshua Schacter (founder of delicious), and Arjun Sethi (former CEO of Lolapps)." R: joshu misspelled my name again. damnit. R: davidtyleryork D'oh! We're sorry :( R: haberdasher If there are any Android game devs that are interested in being alpha integraters for a similar (but better?) gaming layer, please email:

M: Joyent's SSL certificate expired? - secoif https://no.de R: secoif Screencap: <http://i.imgur.com/ExMCo.png> Doesn't instil confidence. R: arunoda no.de is not available any more.

M: Ask HN: Google Gmail as a recovery address, function or security hole? - hbarka Why does Google allow anyone to use your gmail address as their recovery email without requiring confirmation of any kind? If you google for any help on this issue, you'll get forum posts excusing that it's harmless and you can simply "disavow", says the email alert you get when someone enters your email address for their recovery, that somehow it's their mistake and isn't a security issue. That's not really a good answer. I've been getting this "attack" repeatedly and I'm inclined to think that it's a vector which is being probed for social hacking. Google should not allow this practice and they can fix it easily by putting a confirm hold before letting anyone use anybody else's email randomly as a recovery address. R: 086421357909764 How does it make you a greater risk? Is it possible you have an email address similar to someone else's? I receive emails obviously targeted at a different person, but because our addresses are so similar It's a common occurrence. Unless you're speaking of a spear phish trying to lure you into clicking a link, it's just harmless spam. Hell the same could be said if I signed your email up for dirty porn emails, you'd just delete or ignore. R: hbarka It's an easy vector for spear phishing because it contains an official click- through button for disavowing. Very easy to manipulate and do the podesta trick with it. Saying it's harmless isn't actually true and also isn't a good answer. R: 086421357909764 Right but the matter stands as this, if you weren't expecting it and it's not relevant to you, it's likely spam, so get rid of it. R: hbarka It's not the same class as spam, as you're insisting. Merely deleting the email doesn't "get rid of it". Now there's a hard association between you and the other party and can be social hacked as a recovery email. It's bad practice on Gmail's part to create an official function which commits without authorization or authentication.

M: Are you on twitter? - ivankirigin I'm starting to love using Twitter. There is something liberating about the constraints.<p>I'm @tipjoy<p>http://twitter.com/tipjoy R: abarrera Wow a lot of twitter guys here. I wished you could a) Import an opml file with Twitter accounts. b) Create groups of Twitter friends you can message like @group1 If someone knows of any webapp that implements a) please let me know :D I'm putting all the twitter accounts so far together here: <http://twitter.com/tipjoy> <http://twitter.com/danielha> <http://twitter.com/iamdanw> <http://twitter.com/codergnome> <http://twitter.com/jraines> <http://twitter.com/yansarazin> <http://twitter.com/lukebrdn> <http://twitter.com/darreld> <http://twitter.com/hooande> <http://twitter.com/nkohari> <http://twitter.com/timothyandrew> <http://twitter.com/hasanv> <http://twitter.com/dcurtis> <http://twitter.com/webwright> <http://twitter.com/pkaler> <http://twitter.com/npost> <http://twitter.com/rosshill> <http://twitter.com/avinashv> <http://twitter.com/bootload> <http://twitter.com/stejules> And I'll add mine: <http://twitter.com/abarrera> R: mosburger Chris Brogan tried the group idea with "Twitter Packs"... he implemented it quickly and dirtily using a Wiki though, so editing it runs into some obvious pitfalls (e.g., contention when a page is edited by more than one person)... <http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/> I toyed with the idea of implementing it as an actual standalone service without the wiki... but I have too many other "side projects" right now! :) Here's my twitter account: <http://twitter.com/mdesjardins> R: danielha <http://twitter.com/danielha> holler @ me. Also subscribe to the RSS of your company name (or keyword of choice) at <http://terraminds.com/twitter>. My favorite Kirigins have Tipjoy on that badboy. R: ivankirigin Hell yah. Terraminds twitter search is actually pretty useful. Searching for your company name is particularly valuable. Go tip 'em. R: jraines Peronally I've gotten a lot more utility out of Friendfeed so far. Twitter is neat though -- I'm building a site that will scrape replies to a Twitter user called @rating and put them in a database of ratings. The reply just has to look like this: @rating 5 "Thing Being Rated" Mini-review goes here. I'll post it when the battle of Rails deployment is over. I'm 'jraines' on Twitter and Friendfeed. R: samwise I don't get it. There is no real need for it. I also don't see how you could easily monetize it. R: ryanspahn It's description and the inane posts I originally read made me think the same thing! But, after much use it's a great piece of technology. It allows you to survey a crowd, use it for emergency purposes (San Diego Fire Dept did just this), learn about what your friends are reading/sharing, where they are going for the evening, how they feel, etc... R: bootload " _... I'm starting to love using Twitter. There is something liberating about the constraints ..._ " I've used twitter from Nov2006. Some of the constraints I don't like: \- how they handle urls [0] \- how they handle people who you like but talk to much [1] The rest is pretty good. Not too much info, uptime ok (well when I use it) and api is simple & works ~ <http://twitter.com/bootload> [0] I don't know a good solution but if google created their own shortcuts like tinyurl the web would be a better place. [1] stacks of quick posts one after the other why not group them by person after a threshold of say 3? R: dcurtis I can see the reason for footnotes on a long post for meta information, but why do you use them in your little messages? Why not just explain what's in the footnote when you first mention it? Not an attack, just a friendly question. I've noticed you do this fairly often. I agree with [1] though; Robert Scoble is the worst offender, seconded closely by Guy Kawasaki. Bundling messages together would screw up the API and break things like twitterific, probably. I wonder if there's a better solution. R: bootload _"... Why not just explain what's in the footnote when you first mention it? ..."_ good point, I'll see what I can do. _"... I wonder if there's a better solution. ..."_ friendfeed does the obvious thing that is it restricts view to the latest 3 by person so as to not clutter the page. Another idea I can think of would be allow you to select who you want to clamp. _"... Not an attack, just a friendly question. I've noticed you do this fairly often. ..."_ to stop adding ellipses (that mess up the text especially if there is a lot of them) allowing you to read. This is especially for links or side notes that relate to the main text but is added interest. Also I use hackernews as a scribble ( <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600280904949/> ) for later posts on flickr _"... Bundling messages together would screw up the API and break things like twitterific ..."_ No just the display, not the data itself. Just grab the latest submission. If more submissions occur in "N" minutes time frame just display the latest 3, have a click & fetch more if required. It shouldn't break app using the api doing this. Friendfeed does this well. R: joshwa <http://twitter.com/joshwa> Though I think that their potential as messaging glue has yet to be realized-- payloads would be a start, as Winer has suggested, incorporating Yahoo Pipes, Twitterfeed, etc, and make twitter the social messaging bus for the entire web. My hypothesis is that Obvious is working on this stuff (since it's so, well, ovbious!), but isn't ready to release it until they get their infrastructure stuff sorted out, sign up partners, etc. R: danw <http://twitter.com/iamdanw> Who's on tumblr? I'm <http://tumblr.iamdanw.com> on there R: iseff <http://twitter.com/iseff> And, on tumblr, <http://featureorbug.com> (recently became a Tumblr staff pick!). R: blinks <http://twitter.com/hackerblinks> Tumblr: <http://adam.blinkinblogs.net/> (And, on Pownce: <http://pownce.com/hackerblinks/>) (Does this mean I win teh Internets? I have social networking fever. (And the only cure is more cowbell.)) (Need caffeine.) R: npost It gets interesting when they start offering commercial services around it. What a great platform for project teams, or even disaster notifications (civil services), etc. It would be great for emergency services to coordinate their activities. However, that is assuming that it can handle the volume without going down! <http://twitter.com/npost> R: orion Twitter is pretty darn cool, especially if you use it to keep friends and collealleagues up to date with what's going on in your world. It cracks me up to hear people ask "how can I monetize this?" If you have something of value to offer it will monetize itself. Nobody truly enjoys being "sold." If nothing you do is of any value, attempts to monetize are just wasted effort. R: webwright I'm digging Twitter too. Here's me: <http://twitter.com/webwright> If you care about marketing, learn to use Twitter Track (google it). I get an SMS every time ANYONE mentions RescueTime on Twitter (friend or no). It's slightly creepy when I immedietely pounce on them and thank them. ;-) R: a-priori <http://twitter.com/codergnome> I don't update a whole lot. R: pkaler <http://twitter.com/pkaler> But I use Jaiku a whole lot more. Seems to be more of a Vancouver area tech phenomena though. <http://pkaler.jaiku.com> R: walesmd I only use Twitter to integrate with beanstalkapps.com - this way my clients can see my SVN commits in real-time (since I'm cheap and don't pay for them to have an account to the beanstalkapps.com backend). R: engtech For tumblr I am <http://engtech.tumblr.com> \-- lifestream, kinda messy <http://rubeh.tumblr.com> \-- ruby/rails links R: izak30 <http://www.twitter.com/issackelly> and <http://twitter.com/servee> R: engtech <http://twitter.com/engtech> \-- bitching and moaning <http://twitter.com/et> \-- link dump R: hooande Twitter has been great for our startup. It's true what they say, news travels fast on there. I'm here: <http://twitter.com/hooande> R: hassy <http://twitter.com/hasanv> Started using it recently, still haven't worked out what it's really about. R: lbrdn It's an amazingly fast way to spread info.I'd recommend it to all you start-up guys if you're not on it already. I'm twitter.com/lukebrdn R: jeffisageek I am on twitter. feel free to add me <http://twitter.com/jeffisageek> R: avinashv I'm @avinashv. Most of my friends tend to use more traditional IM or vanilla email, so I don't use the thing at all. R: statikpulse <http://twitter.com/yansarazin> Just started using it more often. R: jfoutz @jfoutz <http://twitter.com/jfoutz> just started using it last week. R: Mistone I'm @mistone <http://twitter.com/mistone> no massive posting activity but not stale R: glasner <http://twitter.com/glasner> R: nkohari <http://twitter.com/nkohari> R: PStamatiou <http://twitter.com/Stammy> R: cyberhill I'm @rosshill <http://twitter.com/rosshill> R: astrec @cammacrae <http://twitter.com/cammacrae> R: earle im obviously partial to <http://www.groovr.com> but i generally prefer sending and receiving photos, especially form mobile. other then that, i still use twitter from time to time. R: darreld <http://twitter.com/darreld> Love it. R: dcurtis Yeah, @dcurtis. Recently, I've become addicted. R: stejules Hello I am @stejules and wanna have more friends! ;D R: brk I'm NotoriousBRK ... R: timothyandrew twitter.com/timothyandrew Twitter is amazing.

M: Drafting your first investment round. - andreasklinger http://klinger.io/post/49773016181/drafting-your-first-investment-round R: andreasklinger OP here. I would love to try something here. The goal is to have a good source for early stage founders. And my advice - in the end - is also just one opinion. I would love to hear yours. If you got your own insights to add (or spot errors) I would recommend you to submit your changes via draft[1]. I will add them step by step. [1]: [https://draftin.com/documents/57927?token=tGIgh5zd28S0cGt0Yy...](https://draftin.com/documents/57927?token=tGIgh5zd28S0cGt0Yy4frppsMmFYH5ymUQVkbPGU3Ko) R: staurimas Right. Every founder should look for A-level co-founders as well as A-level investors. The only thing I would make more clear here is how long does it take to find those A-level people and close investment round. Founders have to multiply by two whatever number they have in their head :) Closing round alone takes about 4 months in average. The worst thing that can happen is to get short on money while looking for investment. This not only makes things complicated for startup, but also scares away investors. So it is very important to save/earn enough money in order to get more (smart) money. Good poker players have at least 100 stakes (the amount they can loose in one game) in their bankroll. This way they can avoid short term harmful decisions. If this comparison makes sense... Post is great like many other recent presentations/posts by Andreas and def deserves retweet :) Cheers @staurimas R: andreasklinger thx for the kind words. agree on your point about the fact that it just might take to long to close a round if you reach for a-level. it's more about a more strategic approach to drafting the round if you reach a or b or c in the end is a different topic. but at least you reach the right direction in each area R: missy What I like is that its an honest hands on approach from a founders view with the thus resulting experiences. I work as a VC and I could not explain these observations in the same way and give the feeling of being with you in a bar in a founder to founder relationship. Look forward to reading more :) R: sgs1370 Great article. For something even more in-depth, see Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld <http://amzn.com/0470929820> (I just finished reading it, and found it extremely informative.) R: ldn_tech_exec1 I love the quote from @msuster

M: MarioNETte: Few-Shot Face Reenactment Preserving Identity of Unseen Targets - shurain https://hyperconnect.github.io/MarioNETte/ R: shurain \- Project page: [https://hyperconnect.github.io/MarioNETte/](https://hyperconnect.github.io/MarioNETte/) \- Paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08139](https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.08139) \- Video: [https://youtu.be/Y6HE1DtdJHg](https://youtu.be/Y6HE1DtdJHg) Here's a summary of the work. We can perform face reenactments under a few- shot or even a one-shot setting, where only a single target face image is provided. Previous approaches to face reenactments had a hard time preserving the identity of the target and tried to avoid the problem through fine-tuning or choosing a driver that does not diverge too much from the target. We tried to tackle this "identity preservation problem" through several novel components. Instead of working with a spatial-agnostic representation of a driver or a target, we encode the style information to a spatial-information preserving representation. This allows us to maintain the details that easily get lost when utilizing spatial-agnostic representation such as those attained from AdaIN layers. We proposed image attention blocks and feature alignment modules to attend to a specific location and warp feature-level information as well. Combining attention and flow allows us to naturally deal with multiple target images, making the proposed model to gracefully handle one-shot and few-shot settings without resorting to reductions such as sum/max/average pooling. Another part of the contribution is the landmark transformer, where we alleviate the identity preservation problem even further. When the driver's landmark differs a lot from that of the target, the reenacted face tends to resemble the driver's facial characteristics. Landmark transformer disentangles the identity and expression and can be trained in an unsupervised fashion. Check out the video and tell us what you think. Thanks! R: gohu_cd Great work. Any code available please? R: shurain We're internally discussing the code release at the moment. Meanwhile, we did try to include all the details required to reproduce the results on the paper. You're welcome to try out your own implementation and ask us questions regarding the implementation details.

M: What Does the Average Cannabis Consumer Look Like? - wslh http://headset.io/blog/what-does-the-average-cannabis-consumer-look-like R: xkcd-sucks That bar at the top of the webpage is really terrible. It fills up the screen when you zoom in mobile to look at the graphs.

M: PCC builds OpenBSD kernel (4.6 -current) - Fixnum http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20091228231142 R: ams6110 It would be interesting to see how kernels compiled with pcc and gcc compare, size-wise and performance-wise. R: old-gregg I am curious: what is it about GCC that BSD folks want to get rid of it so bad? I don't really follow GCC development, but on a multiple occasions I've heard people wishing there was something else. I've used C component of it and it was fine. Their C++ implementation is lacking compared to Visual C++ (especially in generated code size and template-related error messages). What else do people dislike about it? R: mstevens BSD people tend to like BSD licensed things. R: bensummers I think it's more the bugs, which tend to show up in kernel code, and the ability to extend the compiler with security features, which is difficult in the rather hairy gcc code. OpenBSD used a custom gcc 2.95 derived compiler for ages because of bug fixes and their security extensions. R: stevan An other problem is when GCC drops architecture support -- say some old arch which Linux doesn't run on but which the BSDs do -- then the BSDs are forced to maintain multiple old versions of GCC... R: ajross Which architectures are those? And this is a FreeBSD announcement, which has a much more limited port list than NetBSD. R: silentbicycle Here are the hardware platforms that OpenBSD runs on (<http://openbsd.org/plat.html>). Not as many as NetBSD, but several. Porting a program that was written primarily with (say) i386 Debian Linux in mind to other platforms is a great way to find bugs due to incorrect assumptions. They may be asymptomatic on systems with 32-bit processors, the same endian-ness, etc., but they're just lying dormant. Patches from porting and the OpenBSD security audits are contributed upstream, too.

M: Better to prevent mistakes than to fix them quickly - kevinburke http://kev.inburke.com/kevin/better-to-prevent-mistakes-than-to-fix-them-quickly/ R: 13rules "But there's another person who is to blame: the referee. Before inbounding the ball, the referee will signal to the player that they either can or cannot run the baseline. Sure, the referee can blow the whistle every time there is a violation, but it's better to prevent the error in the first place. It would be like letting players line up for a free throw in the wrong order, letting the player shoot and then blowing the whistle for incorrect order." That is completely absurd. Letting the players line up incorrectly would be the _referee's_ mistake - so, yes, it would be better to prevent the mistake from happening. But the player running on the baseline after a violation is the PLAYER's mistake. It's not the official's job to prevent players from committing violations. It's not a technicality either - it's the same rule from when this kid started playing basketball. It's HIS stupid mistake. Period. You can safely assume that he has been playing basketball for 10+ years. The rule is the same throughout junior high, high school, and college. If the player doesn't know the rule by the time he is in the NCAA Tournament, I have a hard time feeling sorry for him. Same goes for the players that got called for running in from behind the 3-point line on free throws before the ball hit the rim. The announcers and fans may not have liked it, but the rule has been there for well over a decade. R: bulletmagnet What a stupid sports analogy. A websites success isnt defined in a literal zero sum game with a limited time boundary.

M: Convert Twitter Boostrap to a "flat" design - nodesocket https://gist.github.com/nodesocket/5843712 R: mark_integerdsv How long until this flat fad fades? It seems (to me at least) like very little thought goes into these designs apart from 'it must be flat.' There also seems to be very little variation in the final products. The examples linked in the OP are indistinguishable from say, Microsoft's Technet : [http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki](http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki) ...I dont want everything to look the same. It's confusing and boring... Am I alone in this? R: esolyt It's not a fad. The reason we are moving towards flat design is high resolution displays. Flat design emphasizes typography which isn't ugly anymore. R: NoodleIncident Hmm. Interesting. I've heard a lot of reasons for this trend, but that's a new one to me. R: esolyt Typography is now beautiful and something to show off. There is no need for glossy UI elements or textures to hide it. If you look at iOS and early Android, everything they did was to hide the ugliness resulting from low-res screen. Today, the content itself is beautiful. R: rpicard I think the next iteration of Bootstrap (3.0) is largely flat. I could be mistaken though. R: parkrrr The previews were all flat but I seem to recall that it was a temporary thing: [https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/pull/6342#issuecomment-12332378) R: tagliala may be permanent: [https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/8199#issuecommen...](https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/8199#issuecomment-19630149) R: rpicard Oh, cool. R: andyfleming This doesn't really make bootstrap "flat". Removing rounded corners doesn't make it flat. Removing shadows (and depth) is the main issue. You should be removing borders too, right? Even still, "flat" design isn't right for everything. Design should be evaluated for the specific application. The design of bootstrap now is safer than a "flat"-er option, IMO. R: daenney "Sometimes a new project doesn't need rounded corners or gradients. So we decided to get rid of them. We <3 Bootstrap." [http://www.littlesparkvt.com/flatstrap/](http://www.littlesparkvt.com/flatstrap/) R: runn1ng Flatstrap doesn't work for me (mainly, "download flatstrap" just.... downloads the website... with standard Bootstrap.) R: kmfrk Already exists: [http://bootswatch.com/cosmo/](http://bootswatch.com/cosmo/). I really like the theme for mobile devices, especially if it's very button- based. R: arocks and another: [http://bootswatch.com/flatly/](http://bootswatch.com/flatly/) R: keikun17 Isn't this what bootstrap 3 is trying to achieve? I haven't visited the bootstrap 3 release candidate docs in a while but the last time I did it seemed like it's going towards the flat direction. R: juzfoo I stumbled up on this while looking for Bootstrap 3.0 demo. [http://bs3.codersgrid.com/](http://bs3.codersgrid.com/) And the design does follow flat design principles R: techaddict009 This is what something i was waiting for. Flat UI is completely into trends this days. R: abhidilliwal !important, bad !dea R: woah Advanced.