{"text":"M: Show HN: Australia Quiz (Sound) - gaving\nhttps:\/\/terraaustralis.herokuapp.com\/\n\nR: gaving\nWeekend(ish) project to play with React.\n\n[https:\/\/github.com\/gaving\/terra](https:\/\/github.com\/gaving\/terra)\n\nRelated:-\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=7178358](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=7178358)\n\nR: simonblack\nFaulty quiz - needs work.","meta":{"id":"9085620"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7514450867,"avg_line_length":26.6153846154,"char_rep_ratio":0.0949554896,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.7470474243,"max_line_length":92,"num_words":86,"perplexity":1205.4,"special_char_ratio":0.289017341,"text_len":346,"word_rep_ratio":0.0519480519},"simhash":6084770455595648312} {"text":"M: Twitter Picks Berlin For German Headquarters - platzhirsch\nhttp:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2012-03-25\/twitter-picks-berlin-for-german-headquarters-focus-says.html\n\nR: untog\nI'm surprised more companies _haven't_ chosen Berlin. Big startup scene,\ndesirable location, great transit links... seems to be obvious to me. I must\nbe missing something.\n\nR: blumentopf\nI can certainly think of German cities with advantages over Berlin.\n\nKarlsruhe for instance has an extremely awesome scientific community, its\nuniversity is in fact home to the oldest computer science faculty in Germany\nand coincidentally was the first place in Germany to have leased-line Internet\nconnectivity (in 1989). There's an abundance of excellent engineers coming out\nof the university which is definitely a plus when you're staffing a startup.\nAlso, much nicer weather compared to Berlin and a much more affluent region\nwith better infrastructure and more companies.\n\nFrankfurt\/Main also comes to mind, the secret Internet capital of Europe and\nhome to the largest Internet exchange in the world (DE-CIX).\n\nI guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin.\n\nR: untog\n_I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin._\n\nI know it sounds like that shouldn't matter, but it does. People want to live\nin desirable places with other amenities than just good jobs.\n\nI would agree that Frankfurt\/Main would be a good destination too, though.\n\nR: sneak\nThis is great news for the Berlin technology scene, if for the halo effect\nalone (big brands attract big talent). Berlin is indeed a great place to live,\nand I think a lot of companies will follow suit in the next few years.\n\nAccordingly, rents will continue to rise sharply and all of the qualities that\ninitially made Berlin an above-average-attractiveness choice for employees and\nemployers alike will eventually evaporate - but that will take ten years, and\nlots of people and companies will build lots of awesome stuff in the interim,\nall while saving tons on rent and other living expenses.\n\nGive it a whirl! 'tis a fantastic place. Ping me when y'all arrive.\n\nR: tferris\nGreat news. Hamburg is usually very good in attracting strong online brands\n(Airbnb Germany, Facebook Germany) but this time they weren't and it seems\nthat Hamburg as a online\/tech destination is slowly questioned.\n\nHamburg and the people there are quite nice but Berlin it's a completely\ndifferent ball game. Everyday, VCs shotgun boatloads of money to Berlin based\nstartups, the largest European VC are moving to Berlin and really EVERYBODY is\nin Berlin right now.\n\nR: excuse-me\nAlthough presumably, like Google and Facebook, it will still claim that it has\nno substantial presence in Germany and all it's Eu revenue is generated in\nEire and so pay no tax.\n\nR: herge\nThe real name is Ireland, or the Republic of Ireland if you need to\ndisambiguate.\n\nR: justincormack\nThe \"real name\" depends on what language you speak. It has two official\nlanguages, and in one is Éire.\n\nEdit: see not sure why\ngetting downvoted for factually correct information.\n\nR: herge\nThe real name is what people who live there actually use. You only sound like\na twat when using Eire, or calling Irish \"Gaelic\".\n\nR: disgruntledphd2\nWell, yes and no. I agree that I have never heard anyone call the country Eire\n(except for me when posting letters from the UK), it still remains that the\ncanonical interpretation of our constitution is in Irish, as as such , the\nname Eire takes legal preference above the Republic of Ireland.\n\nR: excuse-me\nIreland is ambiguous and likely to annoy half the inhabitants, Republic of\nIreland sounds like legal small print and \"the south\" is a euphamism if you\ndon't know who you are talking to in a bar in Belfast.\n\nSo Eire is safest ;-0\n\nR: urgeio\nGreat news for Berlin, the place to be right now. I am using this thread for a\nshameless plug: if you are interested to come to Berlin and to work here\nplease check out opportunities at our brand new startup:\n\n\nR: suking\nWhy does twitter need so many employees? I could see like 50... Nothing has\nchanged in years there, they have 1 product which is posting 140 characters.\nEverything else is pretty basic, just big scale. I don't get the need for\nthousands of employees.\n\nR: magnusgraviti\nI think they need not so many programmers but staff for call-centers,\nmarketing, R&D etc.\n\nR: suking\nWhat - call centers??? R&D? What are they researching - how store 140\ncharacters?\n\nR: magnusgraviti\nThey have millions of companies posting twitter messages and they provide\nanalytics and other tools for businesses. I think they need a lot of people at\ncall centers, support department etc.\n\nAll we see as users is 140 characters + apps \nas there is nothing to ask about :)\n\nLook at they have more than just 140\ncharacters.\n\nR: platzhirsch\nKind of a game changer given that Google and Facebook chose Hamburg and Munich\nfor Germany.\n\nR: sneak\nMunich is stuffy and expensive, Berlin is comparatively poor and open verrrry\nvery late. The game hasn't changed - it's just a totally different\nenvironment, for vastly different hiring objectives.","meta":{"id":"3752587"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7892647893,"avg_line_length":41.6614173228,"char_rep_ratio":0.0310488451,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9491449594,"max_line_length":101,"num_words":1077,"perplexity":595.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2175392175,"text_len":5291,"word_rep_ratio":0.0168539326},"simhash":14552300807667779722} {"text":"M: Best VC firms database - thankuz\nhttp:\/\/venture-capital-firms.findthebest.com\/\n\nR: zzleeper\nWhat are their sources? Is it ?","meta":{"id":"2407556"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7382550336,"avg_line_length":29.8,"char_rep_ratio":0.0785714286,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.7312999368,"max_line_length":54,"num_words":39,"perplexity":1391.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2617449664,"text_len":149,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1684142680397439436} {"text":"M: Reddit Offline in EU 9am-5pm in Support of Don't Wreck the Net - OJFord\nhttps:\/\/dontwreckthe.net\/\n\nR: OJFord\nGDPR has already 'challenged' the open internet, by causing many American\nwebsites to decide it's simply not worth it, and just block European access,\nas discussed previously:\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=17714152](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=17714152)\n\nR: ToFab123\nGood. Gives room for competition and creation of alternatives to the American\nsites we are pested with right now.","meta":{"id":"18493483"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7878192534,"avg_line_length":42.4166666667,"char_rep_ratio":0.084,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9140170217,"max_line_length":94,"num_words":118,"perplexity":1841.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2534381139,"text_len":509,"word_rep_ratio":0.0366972477},"simhash":3885048454111092152} {"text":"M: Starting sometime today, Safari on Yosemite cannot play HTML5 YouTube videos - gittes\nhttps:\/\/productforums.google.com\/forum\/#!category-topic\/youtube\/safari\/mlfwY4s-1Lg\n\nR: gittes\nSeems youtube.com did some update that is making HTML5 video playback stop\nworking with a loud squeak and no play, or dropping to Flash. I'm experiencing\nit myself.\n\nSubmitted link to YouTube Google Product Forums.\n\nFrom initial post: About an hour ago, all HTML5 playback just stopped. I was\nrunning OS X 10.10.1 (now 10.10.2) and Safari 8.0.\n\nVideos would either switch to the Flash Player, throw an error, make a loud\n\"squeak\" noise and throw an error, or just crash the Safari page outright and\nforcing a Force Reload.\n\nI know this is unrelated to the recent Yosemite update, as this issue was\nhappening before I installed the update. In the meanwhile, Chrome does work.\n\nR: gittes\nIs it \"sometime today\" or \"some time today\"?","meta":{"id":"8644220"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7820372399,"avg_line_length":41.5,"char_rep_ratio":0.0542035398,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9029660225,"max_line_length":88,"num_words":195,"perplexity":1474.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2365826944,"text_len":913,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":5640620520334796846} {"text":"M: At what point should an intelligent machine be considered a person? - spacey2\nhttp:\/\/robohub.org\/at-what-point-should-an-intelligent-machine-be-considered-a-person\/\n\nR: basicplus2\nWhen it has self awareness\n\nR: CuriouslyC\nYoung babies don't display any signs of self awareness.","meta":{"id":"13704895"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7964285714,"avg_line_length":35.0,"char_rep_ratio":0.0922509225,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8533895016,"max_line_length":86,"num_words":59,"perplexity":907.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2107142857,"text_len":280,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":16519687972176303979} {"text":"M: Warren Buffett Flags a Successor - grellas\nhttp:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052702303467004575574630162624198.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories\n\nR: jeffmiller\n\"He is extremely well-trained, reads 500 pages a week and does his own deep-\ndive research.\" Sounds like a Buffett guy.\n\nGenerating returns on a fund of Berkshire's scale is no joke, though. Good\nluck to him.","meta":{"id":"1832257"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7994652406,"avg_line_length":41.5555555556,"char_rep_ratio":0.0520547945,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8983106017,"max_line_length":104,"num_words":84,"perplexity":3419.8,"special_char_ratio":0.3181818182,"text_len":374,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":12424054431367964167} {"text":"M: Brief History of JIT in MoarVM for Perl 6 - Ultimatt\nhttp:\/\/brrt-to-the-future.blogspot.com\/2018\/07\/perl-6-on-moarvm-has-had-jit-for-few.html\n\nR: 3rdAccount\nI'm always impressed with the size of the problem that the Perl6 core team is\ntrying to solve relative to the number of volunteers and funding.\n\nIt is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and presentations\nI've watched. It just needs some better performance before I'll really start\nusing it and I think there are many in the community that are in the same\nboat. It's a pity, because it's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. I would\ntry to help, but when it comes to computer science I am a consumer and not a\nproducer (I have my own large projects in my domain :)).\n\nR: tyil\n> It is a really nice language based off of all the tutorials and\n> presentations I've watched. It just needs some better performance before\n> I'll really start using it\n\nI'm also very impressed in how the language is turning out. It's a pleasure to\nwrite and read. I know most people really don't like Unicode operators, but I\nfind them to be very useful. They're short and concise, and allow those\nwriting mathematical equations to stick to their regular symbols. And for\nthose that don't know how to do Unicode on their OS\/editor, there's ASCII\nequivalents.\n\nPerformance-wise, it seems to be fast enough for all my personal projects, and\nit's getting faster every release. Is there a certain piece of code that you\nwant to have running within a certain amount of time? That would allow you\n(and Perl 6 devs) to have a goal to look at, and work towards.\n\nR: 3rdAccount\nRunning grammars past very large datasets. You hear enough people talk about\nthe performance and you decide to stay away a bit until things improve. I also\nhave some numeric code and that is generally probably not a great P6 fit (more\nof a Python + Numpy thing).\n\nAs a general scripting language, P6 looks nice as a lot of features such as\nconcurrency that are aren't super straightforward (Ex: python) seem to be dead\nsimple in P6.\n\nR: b2gills\nPerl 6 was designed in part to allow PDL (Perl Data Language) type features to\nbe added easily.\n\nIn fact some things that you would do in PDL have already been added, they\njust currently aren't as fast as they could be.\n\n \n \n (1,2,3; 4,5,6; 7,8,9) \"**\" 2\n (1,4,9; 16,25,36; 49,64,81)\n \n\nThe above is specifically allowed to do all of the operations in parallel, but\ndoesn't currently. (Perhaps even on a GPU)\n\nR: aidenn0\nWhy did I think the Perl 6 VM was called parrot?\n\nR: Ultimatt\nThere is an intermediate language the Rakudo compiler is implemented in called\nNQP. That split from the Parrot project to support several VMs as the stuff\nemitted as the \"compiled\" code. For a while Parrot and JVM were supported\nsimultaneously. With the addition of MoarVM the project moved away from\nsupporting Parrot. There are other targets in development including JavaScript\nand most recently Truffle\/GraalVM\n[https:\/\/github.com\/perl6\/nqp\/commits\/truffle](https:\/\/github.com\/perl6\/nqp\/commits\/truffle)\nEssentially a _lot_ happens within the Perl 6 project at a pace that's kind of\nsurprising if you keep an eye on it.\n\nR: aidenn0\nThanks for the summary!\n\nR: totalperspectiv\nI appreciate the time taken to fill in the history!\n\nR: sunseb\nIs Perl 6 fast now?\n\nR: jdoege\nIt really depends. The question really should be, \"Is Perl 6 fast enough?\" For\nmy purposes, the answer is almost always yes. I can imagine some applications\nwhere the answer would be no, but then I would probably be looking at C\/C++\nfor a solution, anyway. Language bench-racing has really begun to look\ncounter-productive to me.\n\nR: b2gills\nSomeone once posted code that they had written in both Perl 6 and C\/C++. The\nPerl 6 code was shorter, arguably easier to understand, and they said it was\nalso faster for their data.\n\nMy guess would be that the strings had to be copied more often in the C\/C++\ncode.","meta":{"id":"17496789"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7694641052,"avg_line_length":42.085106383,"char_rep_ratio":0.0331897644,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9784214497,"max_line_length":92,"num_words":845,"perplexity":657.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2439332659,"text_len":3956,"word_rep_ratio":0.0358851675},"simhash":7512335114786204845} {"text":"M: Code bullies - ShannonRohn\nIn 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.\n\nR: jamesmp98\nI'm confused?","meta":{"id":"12923103"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7783149171,"avg_line_length":289.6,"char_rep_ratio":0.0562890896,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9723884463,"max_line_length":1390,"num_words":301,"perplexity":474.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2244475138,"text_len":1448,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":7471487063800491668} {"text":"M: Ask HN: How do you host your personal domain email accounts? - clappski\nI'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?\n\nR: mattkrea\nFastmail.com\n\nThey are reliable and I like to know that it'll just work™. I've been a\ncustomer for over 3 years or so now.\n\nR: Artemix\nMy old workplace uses that for their entire staff, and I use the personal\n5€\/month plan, with no complaint.\n\nR: sadris\nEpik.com seems to be the cheapest. Most providers are at least $10\/mo but for\nonly one address I'm paying $3\/mo at epik\n\nR: rapnie\nWith ProtonMail you get 1 custom domain and 5 addresses for $5\/mo.\n\nR: feistypharit\nMigadu. Pay by number of mails sent. Not by number of domains.\n\nR: tumdum_\nZoho.com (it's free).","meta":{"id":"18949512"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7615658363,"avg_line_length":33.72,"char_rep_ratio":0.0479616307,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9305394888,"max_line_length":189,"num_words":194,"perplexity":1180.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2479240807,"text_len":843,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1765941423575032974} {"text":"M: Bending Over Backwards - freerobby\nhttp:\/\/daringfireball.net\/2011\/03\/bending_over_backwards\n\nR: Kylekramer\nSo I guess Gruber is just giving up on even trying to be a bit objective\nanymore? This read more like a hurt comic book fan forum post about a bad\nreview of his favorite superhero's movie than anything else. Worse battery\nlife, a non improved screen, weak cameras and lack of 4G\/flash are drawbacks,\nno matter how you slice it.\n\nThe funny thing is Mossberg's review is overwhelmingly positive.\n\nR: spicyj\nThe point is, the iPad's real competitors don't beat it in any of those\ncategories except for camera. (Also, Gruber said in his own review that he got\nidentical battery life to the previous model.) The Xoom is the only tablet\nthat promises 4G and Flash and got mediocre reviews even without those\ncomponents, which will probably make it run worse.\n\nR: greatDismay\nI have a Xoom and I don't know why people are giving it such a bad rap. It\ndoes everything I want it to do and it does it really fast.\n\nR: jarek\nI'm now going to be That Guy: one person disputing another person's statements\nabout a mainstream consumer electronics device? Hacker News?\n\nR: ZeroGravitas\nHe missed the criticism of the iPad covers:\n\n _\"Unfortunately, I found the cover's magnetic latch came open in my\nbriefcase, turning the screen on and wasting the battery. Also, the light gray\ncolor I had picked up smudges.\"_\n\nR: fod\nGreat, a review of a review.","meta":{"id":"2311726"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7837837838,"avg_line_length":40.0833333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.0271966527,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9366522431,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":311,"perplexity":745.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2217602218,"text_len":1443,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":16690052623418295347} {"text":"M: Dynamic Pricing and Major League Baseball - jamessun\nhttp:\/\/knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu\/article\/is_dynamic_pricing_a_hit\n\nR: jamessun\nLink to the referenced paper,\n[http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407](http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2796407)","meta":{"id":"12218881"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7909407666,"avg_line_length":47.8333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.1079136691,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.6941571236,"max_line_length":120,"num_words":75,"perplexity":1880.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2648083624,"text_len":287,"word_rep_ratio":0.2424242424},"simhash":14352331384221206645} {"text":"M: Ask HN: What product most improved your quality of life? - miguelrochefort\n\nR: marapuru\nA good bed. There is no bed like my own. I have a good night's rest so I can\nfully take the next day again.\n\nI was doubting to write the next one. Since it's obviously not a \"product\",\nbut want to mention anyway.\n\nMy wife. She really completed me in such a way that it significantly improved\nmy quality of life. She holds the mirror in front of me at the right times and\nworks in an entirely different field, making her a great sparring partner.\n\nR: drakonka\nIt's hard to pick just one.\n\n* 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.\n\n* 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\n\n* 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.\n\nR: ak39\nHow old were you when you did LASIK - and what did it fix? (I am in early\nstages of flirting with the idea - had 2020 vision till about 3 years ago. I\nam 47 now.)\n\nR: drakonka\nI was 21 at the time; I hear that this is a bit young to get that kind of\nprocedure as my eyes may still change rapidly, but I went to a reputable\ndoctor who ran various tests before concluding that I was a candidate, and\nluckily my eyesight is still going strong almost 11 years later.\n\nI can't remember exactly what my deficiencies were at the time to be honest,\nother than I could not see well far away. I was told I needed glasses but\nnever bothered wearing them or paying attention to my sight other than knowing\nit sucked. When doing an eye test for my driver's permit I was one line away\nfrom not being able to legally drive without glasses, if that gives you any\nidea.\n\nNow there are apparently other options than LASIK which might work better for\nsome. For example, a few years ago a coworker of mine got a procedure that he\ndescribed as them basically inserting a lens into his eye instead of\nresurfacing part of the eye itself. Apparently it means if his eyesight\nchanges sufficiently over the years he can just go back and get a new lens\ninserted!\n\nR: muzani\nNice glasses. There are a lot of bad ones out there that I've been wearing for\nover 10 years.\n\nThe bad ones DoS my brain with pointless information, greatly harmed my focus\nand ability to think, as well as gaming abilities. It's also made driving,\nespecially in heavy rain, difficult and hazardous.\n\nThe good one made life seem really high resolution. It reduces eye strain a\nlot, which is wonderful when you work with computers a lot and live in a sunny\narea.\n\nR: polyterative\nPeak Design messenger - solved all things bags in my life. Proud of having it\non me all the time, beautiful and functional.\n\nSennheiser PXC-550 - One of the best wireless headphones out there. I can keep\nthem on 8 hours a day without any stress.\n\nKeychron K2, just a well-thought wireless\/wired mechianical keyboard. Less\nfatigue and more confort, I can type 4x more text now.\n\nI've been using these every single day for years now.\n\nR: aynyc\nMacBook - Spent years developing software on windows\/xterms, my company\nfinally approved Mac for work.\n\nSafari Online - Getting learning material has never been so easy. Actually\nlearning all of them is different :)\n\nAWS - I can get hardware resource without lengthy PO and approval.\n\nWireless Headphone - Apple Airpod.\n\nA fully stocked and well equiped kitchen in the apartment\n\nR: tmm84\n* My exercise bike - I have no reason not to get in some physical activity (rain, time, etc.).\n\n* My desk whiteboard - It helps so much when confirming\/working out a solution.\n\n* My wireless mouse and keyboard - They fit my hands and I can put them away when the whiteboard is what I need.\n\nR: kleer001\nA membership in the car sharing company Car2Go. It was amazing being able to\nbe my own taxi driver and then drop off the car. Too bad it'll be leaving my\nhome area soon.\n\nR: catacombs\nWireless headphones. Bar none. The fact I can walk around my apartment and\nlisten to a {book,podcast,song}, without worrying about cables or carrying my\nphone, has been amazing.","meta":{"id":"21813332"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.776465798,"avg_line_length":49.12,"char_rep_ratio":0.0285539466,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.972656846,"max_line_length":822,"num_words":1064,"perplexity":568.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2298452769,"text_len":4912,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":5878566925012484371} {"text":"M: Ruby 1.9.1 released - vaksel\nhttp:\/\/groups.google.com\/group\/ruby-talk-google\/browse_thread\/thread\/35e963933f9d0b1a?pli=1\n\nR: rockbilly\nThis is a duplicate of: ","meta":{"id":"458511"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7766990291,"avg_line_length":41.2,"char_rep_ratio":0.0710659898,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.527221024,"max_line_length":91,"num_words":56,"perplexity":2232.5,"special_char_ratio":0.3252427184,"text_len":206,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":7951939935035299944} {"text":"M: Ask HN: What projects have you made with boards like Raspberry Pi, Arduino? - akudha\n\nR: stevekemp\nWhen I was getting ready to take paternity leave I figured I'd either a)\nexplore \"hardware\", or b) take a stab at learning mobile development.\n\nIn the end I started playing with Arduinos. After a very short while I got a\nlittle addicted, but switched to using ESP8266 devices - because having\nonboard wifi made the hardware so much more useful.\n\nI've built, experimented with, and torn down a hell of a lot of projects in\nthe three years since. But my absolute favourite project is nothing more than\nan LCD screen which shows me the next tram-departures from the local stop:\n\n[https:\/\/steve.fi\/hardware\/helsinki-tram-\ntimes\/](https:\/\/steve.fi\/hardware\/helsinki-tram-times\/)\n\nThat project was hacked up in an hour or two, but later made much more\n\"producty\" \\- being configurable with a web-browser, and being installed in a\n3d-printed case I paid somebody to make for me.\n\nOver time I've added little hacks, so now it alternates between showing \"$HOUR\n$DATE\" and \"$HOUR $TEMPERATURE\" in the top-line. Because my wife would often\nask me \"Is it cold outside?\"\n\nI've done more impressive things; such buying a random radio-based\ntemperature\/humidity sensor, then having to sniff for the packets, decode the\nbitstream, and inject the temp\/humidity into an MQ queue. But for sheer\npracticality, and sheer usefulness, the always-on clock and tram display has\nbeen worth it.\n\nR: devenblake\nMy Pi 3B is a media server right now. I have it hooked up through HDMI,\nconverted to composite, and run to my Commodore 1702 so I can watch cartoons.\nIt has probably around 80GB of movies and another 80GB of music, 10GB of\nbooks, and a couple gigs of pictures on a partition of a hard drive that's\nhooked up via a SATA bay. Over the years it's been an IRC server, a Tor\nwebserver, an emulation station, and a backup computer to watch South Park\nafter my old one died.\n\nR: user_agent\nNothing very fancy:\n\n1) A home server for hosting a couple small websites for free, instead of\nwasting cash on $5\/mo VPS. 2) A cluster of PIs for training with distributed\ncomputing (Docker, K8s). 3) An EMP proof remote backup case with a Pi and a\nlarge, encrypted HDD -- mounted in a metal military case intended for storing\nammunition. I keep it in my pal's place.\n\nR: aosaigh\nI'm currently working on a controller for my standing desk. The built-in\nswitch was just a plain old up\/down one.\n\nI'm using a relay switch, home bridge and an infrared height sensor to\nautomatically raise and lower the desk to certain presets.\n\nAnother project I have is to use the pi camera and a small display to detect\nmovement and show a fact\/quote\/lyric on the screen.\n\nR: akudha\nwow, that standing desk idea is nice. Do you have a blog?","meta":{"id":"23588267"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7756272401,"avg_line_length":45.737704918,"char_rep_ratio":0.0345199569,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9389925599,"max_line_length":87,"num_words":626,"perplexity":700.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2318996416,"text_len":2790,"word_rep_ratio":0.0064829822},"simhash":15159868085312558251} {"text":"M: Use standard deviation (not mad about MAD - vasili111\nhttp:\/\/www.win-vector.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/use-standard-deviation-not-mad-about-mad\/\n\nR: vasili111\nAlso look here:\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=11737743](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=11737743)","meta":{"id":"11743369"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7748091603,"avg_line_length":43.6666666667,"char_rep_ratio":0.1106719368,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.5861659646,"max_line_length":94,"num_words":58,"perplexity":2863.2,"special_char_ratio":0.3320610687,"text_len":262,"word_rep_ratio":0.0816326531},"simhash":7804224425869061191} {"text":"M: It's easy to make something incredible. - dhotson\nhttp:\/\/unalone.tumblr.com\/post\/88825593\/its-easy-to-make-something-incredible-all-you-do\n\nR: pkaler\nThis reminds me of a passage from \"Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance\"\nthat I love to quote:\n\n _You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Just make\nyourself perfect and then paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do\nit. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from\nthe rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the\nweek you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks,\ncan make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.\n\nThe real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that\nappears to be \"out there\" and the person that appears to \"in here\" are not two\nseparate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together._\n\nR: jamongkad\nThat was a great quote. I guess no matter how much you know about the latest\nand greatest paradigms involved in the art of software. You can never truly\nbecome \"perfect\" if it does not become a part of yourself. And to extend that\nyou can never truly become \"perfect\" if your description of software is not\nart, but work. When I think about it, it only shows how far I have to go to\nreach that kind of Zen like state.\n\nR: paulhart\nThis brings to mind an old saying:\n\n \n \n You can't polish a turd\n \n\nThe underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd\nbeing polished there is a nugget of gold.\n\nNot every turd is hiding a nugget of gold. And not every polisher of turds has\nthe capacity or understanding to find the nugget.\n\nThe other saying that comes to mind is:\n\n \n \n There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying.\n The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the\n ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker's\n Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.\n\nR: unalone\n_The underlying assumption to the post is that somewhere deep within the turd\nbeing polished there is a nugget of gold._\n\nIt's not that so much as that in the process of polishing the turd, it's\npossible for you to realize you're working on a turd and start over again.\nThat's part of the revision process.\n\nOne case that stands out to me was that in the writing of my novel, I had a\n70-page part that I thought was great and slaved away on, then realized in one\nblinding moment that it was awful. I threw it away, rewrote the entire section\nover a day, and now it's the best part of the book. (I'll say in advance that\nthe book wasn't exactly a nugget of gold, but at least I was aware of that\nwhen I published it. If I'd spent more time in it it could have become much\nbetter.)\n\nR: melvinram\nI don't doubt that making something awesome is about removing the unawesome\nparts. But what most people are missing is the sense of what is unawesome and\nwhat is awesome. This trait of having excellent taste is what most are\nmissing... at least from my experience of interacting with others.\n\nThe people who are really good at something have an evolved sense of what they\nare willing to accept. For example, I knew of a guy named Rod Weckworth who\nwas\/is really good with relationships. And I think he was really successful\nbecause he had a sense of what level of a connection he was willing to accept\nwith people. He wasn't okay with having an okay relationship with people. He\nmakes sure to write thank you notes, call on birthdays, etc.\n\nSo more than just not letting shit stay, you have to have a nose for detecting\nshit.\n\nR: unalone\nYeah! On IRC somebody read this and disagreed with me: something to the effect\nof \"I've seen amateurs revise and they still churn out shit.\"\n\nBut you can't just sit down and revise something. You've got to develop the\nability to be self-critical, and that means learning what to be self-critical\n_of._ So in my case of an amateur writing a symphony, he'd have to be willing\nto learn just what makes symphonies suck, and if he's not willing to do that,\nchances are he won't be so successful after all.\n\nR: harpastum\n\"In the same way I fancied that those nations which, starting from a semi-\nbarbarous state and advancing to civilization by slow degrees, have had their\nlaws successively determined, and, as it were, forced upon them simply by\nexperience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and disputes, would by this\nprocess come to be possessed of less perfect institutions\"\n\n\\- Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method\n\nI think that Descartes' thrust here is that building anything up slowly will\nintroduce artifacts that have nothing to do with the optimal solution.\n\nSometimes the only way to truly succeed is to come up with a truly amazing\nstarting point. If you try to build off a bad idea, you will often get\nnowhere.\n\nFrom the article: \"It baffles me that people think making...worldshocking\npieces of work is a particular challenge. It's mainly a battle of endurance.\"\n\nI don't disagree with you here, but I think you are vastly underestimating the\nbackbreaking effort in that single word: _endurance_. Try telling a marathoner\nthat just hit the wall at mile 22 that all they need is a little more\nendurance.\n\n\"Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.\"\n\n\\- Thomas Edison\n\nR: robotrout\nI was struck, on reading your post, the similarities between your premise and\nthe premise of \"Intelligent Design\" advocates. To paraphrase both you and\nthey, \"How can something so perfect have occurred iteratively?\"\n\nNot judging, just noting the similarity.\n\nR: harpastum\nI admit there is some similarity there, and it might be because I didn't fully\nexplain myself, but I would argue that it's neither a perfect conception nor\niterative development that creates true greatness, but repetitive rebirth.\nWhen you simply build on the past, you aren't considering its true intentions.\nHow many laws are there in the US that are simply reactions to British rule\n(i.e. safety from the quartering of troops)? Should those laws be held in as\nhigh esteem as those laws that are truly based on human rights? Descartes\ncontinues in _Discourse on Method_ :\n\n \n \n As for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than \n resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either other\n more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. I firmly believed\n that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old \n foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.\n \n\nThe entirety of _Discourse on Method_ is a very interesting read. You can read\nthe whole document at project Gutenberg ().\nWikipedia also has a decent write-up\n().\n\nR: brc\n\"The longer you try and deshit something, the less shit it is.\"\n\nNot true for the 20%, but true for the 80%. Software is a good example : all\n1.0 versions are crap. The trick is to get to the next n revisions and still\nbe interested in the project. You may end up with none of the original code,\nbut it's the act of revision and correction that makes it better.\n\nAll those who say you can't polish a turd, I say look at Windows. From version\n1 to version 7, there's a gloss in the side of that nugget that you would not\nhave believed possible 20 years ago.\n\nR: staunch\nSomeone said it best, I can't remember who it was: _\"It's like knowing a\nfabulous sculpture is hidden inside a block of marble, and all you have to do\nis remove the marble that isn't part of it. It's an encouraging thought,\nbecause it reminds you there is an answer, but it's not much use in practice\nbecause the search space is too big.\"_\n\nR: echair\nIf it's easy to make something incredible, this post should be, and it's not.\nIt's ok, but it's not incredible.\n\n(Except in the original, literal sense, because of the fact that it's not in\nthe colloquial sense.)\n\nR: unalone\nI'll explain something about this blog, because it's not something that I\nwrote specifically on the page and so it's not seen by a lot of the people\nthat haven't been reading this daily.\n\nI don't use this blog like other people use blogs. I essentially write down\nevery thought that comes to me, without planning it out or revising it. So\nthere's a ramble about Valve on the front page right now, and not a\nparticularly interesting one, and I'm aware of the fact that it's not\ninteresting. I'm fine with that, because my blog isn't a marketing tool. It's\nsimply a place where I store my thoughts.\n\nSo this post was conceived of pretty much instantaneously, written in 5\nminutes, and posted without a double check. I didn't even bother to go back\nand look at the spelling.\n\nIt's all about intent. My blog is not a masterpiece in any sense other than\nthe fact that I attempt not to filter myself in any way. But at the same time,\nthis post was interesting enough to provoke a nice little discussion, and it\nwas interesting enough for somebody to think it merited posting.","meta":{"id":"529337"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7699967529,"avg_line_length":47.137755102,"char_rep_ratio":0.0321776815,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9769614339,"max_line_length":113,"num_words":1928,"perplexity":352.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2329256413,"text_len":9239,"word_rep_ratio":0.0145909328},"simhash":13806737954947566281} {"text":"M: Java: All about 64-bit programming - AndreyKarpov\nhttp:\/\/vanillajava.blogspot.com\/2011\/07\/java-all-about-64-bit-programming.html\n\nR: Khaki\n_As of mid 2011, for £1K you can buy a PC with 24 GB of memory and for £21K\nyou can buy a server with 512 GB of memory._\n\nI'm not sure where he gets his computers from but those prices seem to be at\nleast a few years away.\n\nR: Roritharr\n[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-\nKit\/663956\/)? <\\- 180€ for 24gb of memory... i think his prices are pretty\naccurate.\n\nR: obtino\nYou also have to remember that to run 64-bit applications, you must specify\nthe -d64 flag. Otherwise your app will run in 32-bit mode!\n\nR: peter_lawrey\nAFAIK -d32 was the default on some versions of Solaris, but -d64 is the\ndefault now. Windows doesn't support these options. Linux does support -d32\nbut it has to be installed seperately, otherwise -d64 is the default for a\n64-bit JVM.\n\nR: abdulhaq\nA big win for 64bit java over 32bit is that the kernel can provide more memory\nto the 64 bit process. This is because the java heap has to be 'contiguous'\nmemory, and this is difficult to offer when in 32 bit mode due to memory\nfragmentation. In 64 bit mode the kernel can cobble together disparate blocks\nof memory and make it appear contiguous to the process.","meta":{"id":"2762632"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7642335766,"avg_line_length":44.1935483871,"char_rep_ratio":0.0521675239,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9034420848,"max_line_length":133,"num_words":314,"perplexity":1882.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2875912409,"text_len":1370,"word_rep_ratio":0.0393442623},"simhash":7106937030915123951} {"text":"M: 12,000 year old pre-agricultural temple findings - Gobekli Tepe - jackchristopher\nhttp:\/\/www.forteantimes.com\/features\/articles\/449\/gobekli_tepe_paradise_regained.html\n\nR: tokenadult\nWikipedia article on the temple:\n\n\n\nIs anyone else troubled by the submitted article coming from Fortean Times?\nThat's not usually considered a reliable source, as it doesn't fact-check the\nway many other publications would.\n\n\n\nR: davi\nI was troubled, but read the article. It was a little breathless, but seemed\nokay.\n\nThough I didn't like clicking through a link on HN and seeing, essentially,\n\"Garden of Eden located!\" I was suspicious enough that I googled Gobekli Tepe\nand found this Smithsonian article:\n\n[http:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history-archaeology\/gobekli-\nte...](http:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history-archaeology\/gobekli-tepe.html)\n\nSo at least I knew the subject was valid before reading further on the\nsubmitted link. Definitely seems like a weird source though.\n\nR: jackchristopher\nI read all the links from Wikipedia entry and searched for more articles\nbefore submitting, but I liked this one.\n\nBut all articles I found beside the Wikipedia one, had something I didn't\nlike; they were boring, less information, or had needless speculation. But the\nsubmitted one despite the speculation had extra detail.\n\nI never heard of Fortean Time. I didn't know of their reputation.\n\nR: idm\nThese time scales do cause one to consider: what is the lifetime of SGML,\nHTML, XML, RDF, ... How have those Gutenberg typefaces held up? I was in a\nBritish church last year, and the floors were made of carved granite, which\nwere completely illegible.... People walking on the floors for centuries\ncaused gradual wear.\n\nChiseled granite!! What names or words were written? I don't know, but 12,000\nyears is a long time to propagate a certain signal... This causes one to\nconsider...\n\nR: rjurney\nThis is a must-read.","meta":{"id":"533743"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7851405622,"avg_line_length":39.0588235294,"char_rep_ratio":0.0458900656,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9628568888,"max_line_length":85,"num_words":426,"perplexity":433.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2223895582,"text_len":1992,"word_rep_ratio":0.0239808153},"simhash":16041193901786575798} {"text":"M: Ask HN: What would be a safe and secure VPN to use when I visit China - ForFreedom\nI 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.

I would like to know a safe and secure VPN.

Thanks in Advance\n\nR: TravelTechGuy\nI've been successfully using proXPN on my laptops and tablets for a couple of\nyears now. Used it all over the world, though not in China. They have several\nexit points, in different countries, to choose from.\n\nR: ForFreedom\nFrom what I heard the problem in China is that they would block VPN servers\ntoo.\n\nR: Zombieball\nI used PIA while in China with no issues.\n\nR: ForFreedom\nprivateinternetaccess.com ?","meta":{"id":"10572725"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7772988506,"avg_line_length":40.9411764706,"char_rep_ratio":0.0727802038,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9385144114,"max_line_length":187,"num_words":154,"perplexity":684.2,"special_char_ratio":0.224137931,"text_len":696,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1584657606256893116} {"text":"M: After five years, \"dancing baby\" YouTube takedown lawsuit nears a climax - 001sky\nhttp:\/\/arstechnica.com\/tech-policy\/2012\/10\/after-five-years-dancing-baby-youtube-takedown-lawsuit-nears-a-climax\/\n\nR: jstclair\nThe article summary of Universal Music's defense seems to say that since\nUniversal had no procedures in place to determine if something was fair use,\nthey can't be liable for the portion of the DMCA that punishes take-down\nattempts that are, in fact, fair use. Kafka-esque barely begins to describe\nthis situation. I imagine that the defense will also introduce pictures of\nUniversal compliance officers with their fingers in their ears as well.\n\nR: sageikosa\nWe cannot be held liable for abuses we committed, because we didn't spend the\neffort to think before we acted.\n\nThat about wraps it up...\n\nR: 001sky\nIf this in fact is how it plays out in court, it would says alot about how USA\nlaws are made (and form whom). Not a pretty picture for the great democracy.\nPublic servants => providing carte-blanche to abuse the public interest.\n\nR: jgiancarlo\n Panel 2 specifically. Fighting in a broken system does\nnothing.\n\nR: parfe\nCopyright has taken too much from society to benefit IP holders. Corporations\nhave the power to erase context from your life. It reminds me of Soviets\nerasing people from history.\n\nUniversal doesn't approve of your dancing baby? Sorry, but that event is no\nlonger something you can freely distribute.\n\nR: Sumaso\nWorse yet, it appears that the best way to avoid this is to flat out ignore\nthe law, rather than go along with it.\n\nYour video gets taken down? Just put it back up again and hope it wont get\nfound a second time.\n\nR: 89a\nOr just upload it to a non-Google service seen as Google are happy to bend\nover and let the music industry\/hollywood do whatever they want.","meta":{"id":"4668601"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7877795963,"avg_line_length":41.6590909091,"char_rep_ratio":0.03125,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9606687427,"max_line_length":113,"num_words":378,"perplexity":809.3,"special_char_ratio":0.222040371,"text_len":1833,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":16010085491262075230} {"text":"M: Ask HN: Why a big org like Amazon release a mediocer windows primevideo app? - anongoesprivate\ni have been using the Amazon PrimeVideo for Windows recently,mostly for downloading in hi-res and view on Weekend with out buffering issues.

the app seems to be lacking even Basic Q/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.

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

what structure they have in terms of engineering, that's making this differences?\n\nR: thesuperbigfrog\nIt was probably written by an intern and maintained by an overworked team.\n\nI would recommend giving feedback using a bug reporting or feedback dialogue\nif it exists in the app. (I have no idea I don't use Windows at home and have\nnever used the app.)\n\nIf you downloaded the app from the Windows App Store, you could leave a review\nthere and might get developer contact info for feedback there too.\n\nR: anongoesprivate\nyeah, i have given feedback via the help chat in the app already, I'm just\ncurios how these simple things got missed, considering how huge the\norganizations is and it have most talented people in it, like what kind of\nprocess will lead to this, in a structured org like amazon\n\nR: speedgoose\nDifferent teams, different budgets. The app may also be made by another\ncompany.\n\nR: anongoesprivate\nbetween the copyright they will be paying for movies and shows, the\ndevelopment cost will be very minimal i think, their web app and android app\nis pretty good, as for last point , prime video seems like a major product ,\nwill amazon outsource it?","meta":{"id":"24186284"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7961603614,"avg_line_length":63.25,"char_rep_ratio":0.0527809308,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9483955503,"max_line_length":593,"num_words":371,"perplexity":1008.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2055335968,"text_len":1771,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":9097894556929668856} {"text":"M: Post your Friendfeed ID here - rms\n\nhttp:\/\/friendfeed.com\/kfischer is mine, feel free to follow me

I'd also like some more people to follow, so post here.\n\nR: utnick\nI made a little app to to help people find people to follow\n\n\n\nHere is a list of other people interested in new.yc:\n\n[http:\/\/livebloglist.com\/list\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombina...](http:\/\/livebloglist.com\/list\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com)\n\nR: engtech\nPretty cool, but there's lots of dupes in the result.\n\nWould be great if I could put in my FF username and it would filter out the\npeople I'm already friends with.\n\nR: engtech\n\n\n\n\nHere's a tool I wrote for importing your Twitter contacts into friendfeed:\n[http:\/\/internetducttape.com\/2008\/04\/21\/import-twitter-to-\nfri...](http:\/\/internetducttape.com\/2008\/04\/21\/import-twitter-to-friendfeed\/)\n\nHere's a ton of greasemonkey scripts I've written for Friend Feed:\n\n\n\nR: mhartl\n\n\nThe only service aggregated by FriendFeed that I currently use regularly is\nTwitter, so you might as well go to\n\n\n\nR: mhartl\nUpdate: now it's \n\nR: mpfefferle\nThis post has singlehandedly killed my productivity for the entire day.\n\nR: rms\nI do what I can.\n\nR: immad\n\n\nR: paul\n\n\nR: rms\nFeature request: news.yc support!\n\nR: paul\nI would like that too. We just need per-user feeds from news.yc. Patrick has\nactually written the code, but I think that perhaps PG is concerned about the\nextra load.\n\nR: randomuttering\n\n\nR: glenstansberry\n\n\nR: gourneau\n\n\nR: philcrissman\n\n\nR: jaredhanson\n\n\nR: codesurgeon\n\n\nR: cryptovenom\n\n\nR: truebosko\n\n\nR: msnoulten\n\n\nR: mwmanning\n\n\nR: nilobject\n\n\nR: maheshcr\n\n\nR: rantfoil\n\n\nR: jrockway\n\n\nR: STHayden\n\n\nR: justindz\n\n\nR: rksprst\n\n\nR: mariorz\n\n\nR: mdemare\n\n\nR: pierrebombay\n\n\nR: brlewis\n\n\nR: jraines\n\n\nR: adityakothadiya\n\n\nR: gaborcselle\n\n\nR: mk\n\n\nR: jasoncartwright\n\n\nR: mpfefferle\n\n\nR: TrevorJ\n\n\nR: icey\n\n\nR: abstractbill\n\n\nR: rjb\n\n\nR: adk\n\n\nR: talkeinan\nGreat idea! Feel free to follow me as\nwell...\n\nR: mosburger\n\n\nR: abstractwater\n\n\nR: dustineichler\n\n\nR: entelarust\n\n\nR: calvin\n\n\nR: sdpurtill\n\n\nR: kschrader\n\n\nR: madsimian\n\n\nR: juzmcmuz\n\n\nR: hooande\n\n\nR: lyime\n\n\nR: epi0Bauqu\n\n\nR: nadim\n\n\nR: awt\n\n\nR: ca98am79\n\n\nR: nikpay\n\n\nR: theproductguy\n","meta":{"id":"172345"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7491408935,"avg_line_length":19.1267605634,"char_rep_ratio":0.2420664207,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.4564841092,"max_line_length":134,"num_words":1050,"perplexity":2623.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2574864998,"text_len":4074,"word_rep_ratio":0.0211335255},"simhash":14391688202526396324} {"text":"M: Microsoft sues TiVo over patent - wglb\nhttp:\/\/sanjose.bizjournals.com\/sanjose\/stories\/2010\/01\/18\/daily50.html\n\nR: wglb\nBy way of Groklaw: ","meta":{"id":"1065868"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7810945274,"avg_line_length":40.2,"char_rep_ratio":0.0677083333,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.4969443381,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":56,"perplexity":3258.9,"special_char_ratio":0.3482587065,"text_len":201,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":10236801320104765384} {"text":"M: Sustainable bricks made from sewage - pseudolus\nhttp:\/\/www.anthropocenemagazine.org\/2019\/01\/sustainable-bricks-made-from-sewage\/\n\nR: leed25d\nYou too can live in a shit-brick house.","meta":{"id":"19082666"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7978142077,"avg_line_length":36.6,"char_rep_ratio":0.0804597701,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.75391078,"max_line_length":80,"num_words":44,"perplexity":1077.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2459016393,"text_len":183,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":3697002479742754962} {"text":"M: NoSQL Smackdown with Werner Vogels and MongoDB, CouchDB and Cassandra devs - stuhood\nhttp:\/\/thechangelog.com\/post\/457259567\/episode-0-1-8-nosql-smackdown\n\nR: codexon\nIs there a transcript for this?\n\nR: oldgregg\nI can summarize. Mostly just people making snarky comments about opposing\nproducts. The guy from CouchDB is particularly annoying. Apparently he feels\nlike he has to raise his voice and cut people off to defend his product.\n\nR: basugasubaku\nOne the other hand, the discussion is punctuated with the audience yelling\n\"Louder!\" and \"We can't hear you!\" on top of a lot of background noise\n(including various interruptions from the audience). I got the sense you\nalmost had to be loud and aggressive to be heard. It got kind of stressful to\nlisten to.\n\nR: brandnewlow\nListening to this, I'm struck by how wimpy and tame all the journalism\/media\npanels were by comparison. We need to raise our game!\n\nR: brandnewlow\nThe guys on this podcast mapped it out at the SXSW table I was sitting at over\nlunch. It seemed pretty clear to me there was going to be some spirited\narguing when they got down to it.\n\nR: bradleyjoyce\nthis was really great to see\/hear these guys duking it out. props to @pengwynn\nfor holding it down for mongodb against the big boys.\n\nR: janl\nAgreed, @pengwynn did a great job!\n\nR: jchrisa\nIf it doesn't have a theme song, it ain't NoSQL!\n\nR: ncb000gt\nI hear you have to have a dance too?","meta":{"id":"1203149"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7809187279,"avg_line_length":36.2820512821,"char_rep_ratio":0.0362731152,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9624843597,"max_line_length":87,"num_words":342,"perplexity":759.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2296819788,"text_len":1415,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":11127741330002116572} {"text":"M: Show HN: Nudj - One Touch iPhone Messaging App - 04rob\nhttp:\/\/nudjapp.com\n\nR: 04rob\nMy friends and I created a new iPhone messaging app focused on speed and\nsimplicity. You can send or respond to a request for a picture, location,\nyes\/no, or quantity in as little as one touch. We'd love the community's\nfeedback on the landing page or app itself. BTW, this app was also an\nexperiment for serverless architecture, and utilizes AWS Lambda for the entire\nbackend.","meta":{"id":"11915754"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7801724138,"avg_line_length":46.4,"char_rep_ratio":0.0461538462,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9034827948,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":103,"perplexity":591.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2284482759,"text_len":464,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":8772819324030634399} {"text":"M: Google Announces Adsense For Mobile - luccastera\nhttp:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2007\/09\/18\/google-announces-adsense-for-mobile\/\n\nR: ivankirigin\nThe elephant in the room with Google is locality. Where are the brick & mortar\nads and coupons in g-maps? Will they incorporate GPS location to aid mobile\nAdsense?\n\nOne problem with locality is that your average store front operator knows\nnothing about the internet. There are probably huge franchise opportunities\nhere.\n\nR: jsjenkins168\nYes, based on a recent patent application and whats been hinted at, they have\nplans of incorporating location and time into mobile search results:\n\n\n\nMobile ads already have higher click through rates than most traditional sites\n(like > 5% in some cases), so the prospect of incorporating location and time\nsensitive ads could be huge.\n\nR: gustaf\nLots of people have high hopes in location based advertising. For no reason, i\nthink. at least not right now.\n\n[http:\/\/www.russellbeattie.com\/blog\/my-thoughts-on-\nconsumer-l...](http:\/\/www.russellbeattie.com\/blog\/my-thoughts-on-consumer-lbs)\n\nR: nreece\nI wonder when they'll officially launch Adsense for RSS (currently in private\nbeta)?","meta":{"id":"56227"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7928452579,"avg_line_length":37.5625,"char_rep_ratio":0.0645431685,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9256936908,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":254,"perplexity":1121.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2212978369,"text_len":1202,"word_rep_ratio":0.0326530612},"simhash":99938892714056261} {"text":"M: Simlish, the language that defined The Sims - tintinnabula\nhttps:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/2\/7\/21126705\/the-sims-simlish-language-history-20th-anniversary-game\n\nR: stock_toaster\nThe article reminded me of Pingu[1], which also used an invented Grammelot[2]\nnamed \"Penguinese\".\n\nFond memories of watching Pingu with my kid. I'm not sure which of us enjoyed\nit more! Noot noot!\n\n[1]:\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pingu](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pingu)\n\n[2]:\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grammelot](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grammelot)\n\nR: alisonatwork\nThere is a bit more of an in-depth take of the history of Simlish and the\npeople who created it in this article:\n[https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/simlish-how-an-improv-game-\ntu...](https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/simlish-how-an-improv-game-turned-into-\nthe-most-recognisable-language-in-gaming)\n\nR: snthd\nThe timing of the articles (both in the same week) makes it appear to be a PR\npush.\n\n[http:\/\/paulgraham.com\/submarine.html](http:\/\/paulgraham.com\/submarine.html)\n\nR: erk__\nThe reason for the timing is likely that The Sims was released on february 4th\nin 2000 so it is the 20 years anniversary.\n\nR: jeanvaljean2463\nThe Sims is where I learned the appropriate way to interact with others based\non what provided higher relationship status. I grew up in a very rigid,\nstructured family without a lot of external interaction so this was my primer\nto \"succeeding\" later in life. I still experience crippling anxiety from\nsocial interactions, but at least the The Sims provided an appropriate\nsocialization path to allow for quasi normal relationships with coworkers.\n\nR: James_Henry\nI played quite a few of the Maxis games and I thought that the Simlish of the\nSims was the natural progression from the Sim noises of SimCopter which can be\nheard here:\n\n[https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jKDsoasXgQU)\n\nR: TwoBit\nSim Copter was indeed the first appearance of the Sims. The Sim character tree\neditor was first used for Sim Copter, which was in development concurrently\nwith Sims. They were \"project X\" and \"project Y\" respectively.\n\nR: emilfihlman\nHeh, based on the title I first thought it was a novel domain specific\nprogramming language, not a human language!","meta":{"id":"22279520"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.782589483,"avg_line_length":40.4107142857,"char_rep_ratio":0.0647737356,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9263533354,"max_line_length":98,"num_words":525,"perplexity":351.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2311091471,"text_len":2263,"word_rep_ratio":0.0930232558},"simhash":3799646758677157278} {"text":"M: Want a project? Buy BluWiki. All proceeds go to charity. - Sam_Odio\nhttp:\/\/cgi.ebay.com\/ws\/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160421557085#ht_884wt_1167\n\nR: Sam_Odio\nYou might remember BluWiki from an Apple censorship lawsuit a few months back.\nMore info: \n\nOf my web projects, BluWiki is Divvyshot's ugly sister. The site has always\nbeen much larger but has received a fraction of the attention. This would be a\ngreat move if you're looking for an instant source of traffic.\n\nR: ErrantX\nThe auction isn't all that clear in some aspects...\n\n1) What's being sold? The domain and content or the whole server\/setup?\n\n2) What's the current monthly costs like?\n\nR: Sam_Odio\nEverything you need to achieve massive wiki success (domain, similar domains,\nwiki, slicehost account, etc) is included.\n\nAnother note: I was just told that our pagerank fell from 5\/10 to 0. Probably\nhappened a few months ago from wiki spam that we've been strugling with. If\nyou implement a captcha you can might convince google to restore the PR.\n\nR: timdorr\nIt's funny. I used to help out with the PackRat (Alamofire's Facebook game\nthat came before Gowalla) Bluwiki site: But due\nto some heavy-handed community leadership I ended up creating my own:\n I'm not really involved with the operations of\neither (and don't play the game anymore), but I think I emailed you at some\npoint or talked to you via your Talk page.\n\nI might end up snatching this up out of nostalgia. Could definitely be more\nmonetized (look at Wikia for an extreme example), but I'd be more interested\nin the community-building aspects of it. Is Nathan Richards going to stay\ninvolved after the sale? That wasn't clear.","meta":{"id":"1248399"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7759593679,"avg_line_length":46.6315789474,"char_rep_ratio":0.0357345434,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9440866709,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":390,"perplexity":1152.9,"special_char_ratio":0.2415349887,"text_len":1772,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":13896076778304561731} {"text":"M: San Francisco residents can now switch to 100% wind power - vipulved\nhttp:\/\/CleanPowerSF.com\n\nR: masonic\nIt's only accounting theater. The electrons still come from the same sources.\n\nR: ZguideZ\nThat's super cool, but doesn't change the whole problem of exploiting\nplanetary resources for personal gain\n\nR: vipulved\nNot sure which problem you are referring to and would like to hear more. It's\ncool that you can go to a website, spend 5 mins to fill out a form and start\ngetting emission free power. A good step in the right direction.","meta":{"id":"22018600"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7862453532,"avg_line_length":38.4285714286,"char_rep_ratio":0.0434782609,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.948410809,"max_line_length":77,"num_words":112,"perplexity":762.0,"special_char_ratio":0.2211895911,"text_len":538,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":11230464343360536952} {"text":"M: Doom as a System Administration tool (1999) - ColinWright\nhttp:\/\/www.cs.unm.edu\/~dlchao\/flake\/doom\/\n\nR: ColinWright\nAlso relevant:\n\nDoom as an Interface for Process Management:\n[http:\/\/www.cs.unm.edu\/~dlchao\/flake\/doom\/chi\/chi.html](http:\/\/www.cs.unm.edu\/~dlchao\/flake\/doom\/chi\/chi.html)\n\nDoom SysAdmin Tool:\n[http:\/\/doom.wikia.com\/wiki\/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool](http:\/\/doom.wikia.com\/wiki\/Doom_SysAdmin_Tool)\n\nMore:\n[https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=doom+system+administration](https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=doom+system+administration)","meta":{"id":"7934747"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7602996255,"avg_line_length":38.1428571429,"char_rep_ratio":0.1028571429,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.5142760277,"max_line_length":120,"num_words":159,"perplexity":417.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2471910112,"text_len":534,"word_rep_ratio":0.4133333333},"simhash":2782540032122578830} {"text":"M: Google's Microsoft Moment - blasdel\nhttp:\/\/dashes.com\/anil\/2009\/07\/googles-microsoft-moment.html\n\nR: ZeroGravitas\nAm I wrong or is this just not true:\n\n _\"Google's recent development work on applications for mobile devices has\noften been delivered exclusively as applications for their own Android\nplatform instead of as iPhone applications\"_\n\nI don't own an Android phone so maybe there's lots going on I'm not aware of\nbut there seems to be plenty of stuff developed for a) any browser, b) any\ndecent browser, c) iPhones specifically, d) java smartphones, e) Windows, f)\nMac, g) Linux.\n\nHe state's this is what Microsoft was like 5 or 10 years ago, and yet I think\nthis is still true of Microsoft today. Certainly Microsoft sales folk I've\nrecently come into contact with seem to be actively denying the existance of\nother browsers in relation to Sharepoint stuff.\n\nR: nostrademons\nYeah, I was gonna point that out. I've got some friends & family members with\niPhones, and they use Maps & GMail all the time. I've met someone on the\nMobile-Maps team, and he's always carrying around at least 3 different phones\nbecause he has to develop for them all. I work on the search UI, and a rough\nordering of the amount of time I spend on each browser goes something like\nFirefox > IE7 > IE8 > IE6 > Chrome > Safari > Opera > Konqueror. The only\nbrowser that _really_ gets screwed is Konqueror, and to a lesser extent Opera\n(sorry guys). There've been features that we launched for Firefox+IE but cut\nfor Chrome due to time restrictions - yeah, it's embarrassing to not support\nour own browser, but it's less painful than cutting off 20% of the market.\n\nR: iamelgringo\nI've had this nagging feeling\/paranoia the past year, that I'm really not\ncomfortable with the massive amounts of data that google obtains on me. If\nsomeone came along and gave me a better email experience with a calendaring\nsystem that I could pay for and be reasonably ensured that my payment was\nkeeping my data private. Id jump off the Google platform relatively quickly.\n\nR: jsz0\nSafe from what?\n\nSafe from misuse by Google? I think that's a risk you take with any third\nparty provider. Being one of many millions of users does provide some security\nthrough obscurity in that respect. Chances are most of us are just not special\nenough to be legitimate targets.\n\nSafe from misuse by bad guys outside of Google via security problems? I'm\npretty confident Google has some of the best engineers out there. You also\nhave a strength in numbers thing going for you with Google. Lots of people are\nlooking at it. Google is very high profile -- if they did have a leak you'd at\nleast know about it. I can't say the same about some random provider. They\ncould have half wit engineers who cover up data leaks. You might never know.\nEven bad providers can have sterling record if they choose not to report\nproblems or simply have a run of good luck until someone copy & pastes the\nwrong command and every bit gets leaked.\n\nSafe from being an anonymous fraction of a statistic when Google aggregates\nits data? I'd be more worried about my ISP spying on me.\n\nOverall I think it's good to be aware of the risks but realistically there\nisn't a whole lot you can do about it no matter which provider you're using.\nIf you were to separate all your different accounts to different providers you\nmight at least spread the risk out. If you choose to run your own server(s)\nyou quickly become the weakest link in the security chain. Even if you're a\npro it probably won't be your full time job to administrate your servers so\nthat already puts you at a disadvantage.\n\nR: tome\nWhat worries me about Google is not that it has my data, but that it has a\n_massive_ cross section of my data:\n\n \n \n * search records\n * e-mail\n * calendaring\n * documents\n * which youtube videos I've watched\n \n\netc. I'm sure it's _much_ more than proportionally easier to abuse this\ninformation the wider the spread of it they have.\n\nR: jodrellblank\nYou wish that's all they have on you - they also own doubleclick, and Google\nads, two of the largest web advert providers in the world tracking you as you\ngo to www.unrelated.example.org, and Google Analytics, one of the most popular\nweb tracking extensions also tracking you as you go to\nwww.anysite.example.org. Also any site that pulls graphs in from Google's\npublic graphing API, or a sidebar from blogger or picasa.\n\nThe bought DejaNews, so anything you post(ed) to Usenet is in their grasp, and\nthey spider the entire web so if they can pull a probable forum name from your\nexisting data then they can try linking them together.\n\nIf you've ever used Google Maps to find directions, then the most likely place\nto find directions is from\/to your home and from\/to your workplace, so they\ncan get highly probable locations for you. (Used it from an iPhone with GPS?).\n\nShop with Google Checkout? Browse with Google Toolbar? Use any of\n ?\n\nR: dflock\nOk, serious question: what's the worst that could happen?\n\nSome internet entity (could be Google, could be someone else) knows everything\nabout me - all my personal details, everything I've ever done on the internet\nthat wasn't encrypted. What's the worst case scenario for me, realistically?\n\nR: jodrellblank\nWARNING: I'm not as paranoid as this post. Quite. ;)\n\nI follow the arguments that computer processing power is cheap and getting\nrapidly cheaper at a surprising rate. Because of this, I don't want to\nconstrain ideas of \"the worst\" thing that could happen to be limited to things\nI can imagine now. I doubt it would end up killing you, but information is\npower and giving out information about you is giving away power over you in\nexactly the way that some people feared photographs were capturing their soul.\n\n(That is, within a small number of years, \"the worst\" thing could be very much\nworse, and in unpredictable ways).\n\nHowever, let's see:\n\n1) \"Government does bad things, made worse by Google's position and power\"\nscenario --> Governments use phone companies to track \"terrorists\" by who\ncalls who and what is said (or is rumoured to - see Echelon). It's not too far\nfetched that they could forge links with Google for Google to flag up\nsuspicious persons by net activity (See recent story about German legislation\nmandating that ISPs block a list of pornographic websites. They could mandate\nGoogle.de to be included), and the list of triggers could be secret. So far so\ngood, but ... a change in public opinion, a terrible government gets in power\nand starts adding more triggers based on the kneejerk fears of the day. Are\npicked up by it because you were reading an unusual amount about medical\nfraud? Because you were in the vicinity of a known communist's house thrice in\na week (picked up by your GPS mobile phone)? Because of your religion, gender,\nsexual orientation, political leanings?\n\n2) Techno-illiterate courts legislate that Google's information hoard is in\nthe public interest and must be made publicly available. Anyone can now search\nall that stuff about you, all your emails, their contents. Have you ever\nwanted a stalker? Have any jealous friends? Is there nothing you would like to\nforget? Think employer-employee profiling, discrimination and bullying can't\nget much worse?\n\n3) Nobody emerges as a Google sized competitor. Google becomes the de-facto\nchoice for advanced image, video, audio processing. Google announces Google\nCCTV - desirable for companies because of the unlimited storage, web\naccessibility and tremendous analysis capability. Voices are transcribed,\npeople are tracked, identified by sight, motion, limb length, gait... Soon all\ncompanies use GCCTV. Soon local councils do. Soon dflock can be tracked across\nsystems. Google acquires eyes all over the country. Google starts population-\nscale experiments in secret. Can they predict where you will be? Can they, by\ndint of showing you different adverts, search results, articles with different\nslants _influnece_ where you will be? Which stores you shop in? Who you phone?\nWhich way you vote?\n\n3.1) Voice control hasn't really got much further. Microsoft, Dragon Dictate,\nApple, they're all roughly as good as they were. Google has been quietly\ntraining on youtube videos, GrandCentral phonecalls, GTalk calls, google\nmobile search. Theirs is much better. Any device from your satnav or car\nstereo to your TV or Kindle has Google Voice tie-in. Everyone loves it because\nyou can talk in whole sentences and say things like \"remind me to watch XYZ on\nchannel 123 on Sunday\" and it does. Google offer this for free because now\nthey know what you're doing when you're not on the net - and what you're\ntalking about when not directly addressing your devices. Goto (1) and (3).\n\n4) Google starts accepting \"bribes\" by another name. CrummyLabs Sound Cards by\nsome ad-words and they appear at the top of search results for Sound Cards.\nNot happy with this, they backhand a few more quid and their competitors\nresults fall lower. Then vanish. Competitors drivers are nowhere to be seen.\nForums discussing their competitors wind up on page 50. Reviews vanish. The\nonly products you see, hear about, can easily purchase and get support for are\nthose with ties to Google. Not just IT products though - why did you _really_\nbuy that cooker? Google hires Derren Brown. You start to bank with Google Bank\nbecause \"it's the best free bank\" (well, that's why you think you bank with\nthem).\n\n5) It's 2025 and Google translate is as good as a human translator. All\ninternational business phonecalls go through Google Translate. All\ninternational _political_ phonecalls go through Google Translate. Tranlsate\nisn't always completely honest and unbiased in its translations.\n\nInformation is power, Google's net is wide and growing wider. The more\ninformation flows through them, the more scope there is for them to do bad\nthings, and the more incentive for legislative bodies, malicious employees,\nhackers, spies, to try to get their hands involved too. The worst thing that\ncan happen is probably along the lines of you (us) being more and more a pawn\nin someone's business and political games, or being caught up in some witch\nhunt or having our lives ground up and spat out ruined by a juggernaut that\ndoesn't even notice us.\n\nWe are buffetted by massive tidal forces now. Google is paving the way for\nthose to be controllable, all the media forces synchronised and coherently\npushing in the same ways. A laser not a light bulb.\n\n(And if a sentient computer appears, which company do you think will spawn it?\nWhich company has masses of computing power, masses of data, masses of smart\npeople, masses of money, a corporate culture of machine learning and megascale\nprocessing? Such an AI would be constructed with implicit knowledge of you.\nHave you read \"I have no mouth but I must scream\"?\n\n[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)\n;) )\n\nR: jsz0\nYou forgot the obvious one: Google's secret robot army is unleashed and\nenslaves humanity. I find this possibility to be as valid as some of the ones\nyou list. It could happen, sure, but Google ultimately cannot risk alienating\ntheir customers so they wouldn't do it. Even at Microsoft's peak the doomsday\nscenarios never came to fruition for the same reason. The first time Google\ndoes anything unsavory with the data they collect is the moment when they open\nthe flood gates for their competitors to rush in.\n\nI do think there's some value in keeping information offline and people should\nconsider that as a valid alternative. You don't really need to account for\nevery second of your life in Google Calendar. You don't need to upload every\nsingle photograph you've ever taken. You don't need to geotag the photos you\ndo choose to upload. You may not want to use Google Docs to store your bank\naccount information. Part of this whole situation is consumers protecting\nthemselves.\n\nR: rjurney\nThe problem here is that in combination with Wave, Google is setting the\nplatform that we are supposed to develop for a year or more before it exists.\nThat IRRITATES the hell out of me. It is the same kind of egotistical\ndouschebaggery Microsoft used to pull: pre-launching products to gain control\nbefore contributing anything.\n\nWatching the Wave introduction video... when I see that semi-euro, T-shirt\nwearing trim-bearded fuck up there on that stage with his falsely elegant\npeppy smart talk planning a 'boating trip', and the scripted passing back and\nforth with 'the best project manager in the world,' I see one thing and one\nthing only in my mind: Ballmer's sweaty bitch tits bouncing up and down, round\nand round, as he stomps and screams, vibrating to the tune of \"Developers,\nDevelopers, Developers, Developers!\"\n\nAt least Ballmer had the good sense to be ugly, which gave him an odd kind of\ndignity.\n\nI think I prefer this stagecraft to this stagecraft\n because Google's culture of arrogance is starting to\ndisgust me.\n\nR: freetard\n> It is the same kind of egotistical douschebaggery Microsoft used to pull:\n> pre-launching products to gain control before contributing anything.\n\nWell no, Google Wave will be open source and they already published the whole\nprotocol and API so people can build clones of it before it's even released.\nMicrosoft releases proprietary API ran on secret protocol no once can clone\nunless they get sued or do crazy reverse engineering in a country where they\ncan't be sued. Not quite the same thing.\n\nR: rjurney\nGranted - FOSS is good. But the traffic will still be running through google\nfor almost all of this. And that, combined with their sole invention of\nthis... I don't like it. I'm tired of them. They are too big. The worship\nbothers me. They've turned a corner.\n\nR: stilist\nInteresting theory. There have certainly been occasional questions about\nexactly how trustworthy the company is, but no lasting negativity that I've\nseen. I suppose it has been long enough - and Google is big and broad\nenough - that a real backlash could begin to appear.\n\nR: anigbrowl\nAgree. Extra points for the cartoon, which I hadn't seen before.\n\nR: dustice\nI've seen many articles recently that suggest Microsoft's bundling of Browser\nto OS is analagous to Google's bundling of OS to Browser. They miss the key\ndistiction that Google's offerings are \/free\/ and open-source. You don't like\nthe OS? No problem, you can run Chrome (or Chromium) on whichever OS you want.\nNo lock-ins, no harm to the user.\n\nR: trezor\nChrome != Chromium. Anyone who has tried Chromium in Linux will instantly\nnotice they are using a much less polished product.\n\nChromium may be open source, but Chrome is not.\n\nR: ljlolel\nIf I may ask, how is it less polished? I'm posting with Chrome for Linux right\nnow (and I used Chromium before, which is identical) and it looks beautiful.\n\nExcepting of course external plugin type issues (printing and Flash don't work\nyet), the browser runs super-fast, never crashes, and looks great. Some of the\nconfiguration options aren't complete, but those are minor issues (oh and I\nsee they have added many of them).\n\nR: trezor\nIt has gotten better recently, but it is lagging quite a lot compared to plain\nChrome.\n\nText rendering used to be horrible but it has gotten better. But if I can't\neven configure proxy settings without hacky gconf editing, that tells you that\nyou are definitely using a browser in catch-up mode.\n\nR: tybris\nI thought we were past the short-sighted Microsoft is evil childishness. In\ngeneral, if you think a large group of people is evil or stupid (especially if\nthese people are known to be very, very smart), you are wrong and should be\nwondering why.\n\nIf a company is growing its business is to be on the offense, challenging the\ncompetitors products. When it becomes too big to adapt to the changing needs\nof the customer quickly it needs to go on defense to protect its business. Has\nnothing to do with stupid or evil, just business.\n\nR: rdrimmie\nThe post isn't about evilness (and in fact Dash has frequently defended\nMicrosoft, as he states). The post is about a corporate entity growing past\nthe point where the internal concept of 'self' that its staff has differs\nlargely from the external concept of its identity that the public has.","meta":{"id":"698716"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7864130765,"avg_line_length":52.0791139241,"char_rep_ratio":0.0241974708,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9607191086,"max_line_length":188,"num_words":3402,"perplexity":536.3,"special_char_ratio":0.217597375,"text_len":16457,"word_rep_ratio":0.008841733},"simhash":3742552215243115112} {"text":"M: Over a Million Are Denied Bank Accounts for Past Errors - GabrielF00\nhttp:\/\/dealbook.nytimes.com\/2013\/07\/30\/over-a-million-are-denied-bank-accounts-for-past-errors\/?hp\n\nR: DamnYuppie\nSo if a person has an over draft, they repay the fees and interest, yet it is\nstill a reason to disqualify them? That seems a bit to harsh to me. Yet being\nthe NY Times is also likely that they left out other details of those they\nprofiled, such as bad credit history or other things that would preclude them\nfrom getting a checking account.\n\nIt seems that businesses, and our society in general, are moving to a state\nwhere all sins are held against you into perpetuity.","meta":{"id":"6134561"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7899543379,"avg_line_length":54.75,"char_rep_ratio":0.0385802469,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9723656178,"max_line_length":98,"num_words":147,"perplexity":504.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2252663623,"text_len":657,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":18116342423656397435} {"text":"M: Ask HN: What new skills have you learned since shelter-in-place started? - johndavid9991\nWe 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?\n\nR: pmdulaney\nI've had the time to start writing a book in earnest. I've used LaTeX\nextensively in the past -- albeit not in the past 5 years or so.\n\n* Refreshed my knowledge of LaTeX using the lualatex engine\n\n* Learned how to use the Memoir class\n\n* Learned how to use the subfiles package (highly recommended!)\n\n* Learned how to version control my chapters using Mercurial \/ MacHg\n\n* Learned how to use the Zettelkasten tool The Archive\n\n* Switched from Terminal to iTerm2\n\n* Switched (mostly) from regular vim to MacVim (love it)\n\n* Discovered and am using vifm, the vi-oriented file manager (the type of classic nerdy Unix tool I love!)\n\n* Started using Typinator to ease work with The Archive\n\n* Started using aspell - a great spell checker\n\nR: johndavid9991\nWow, that's a lot!\n\nThanks for sharing, especially iTerm2 and MacVim.\n\nR: pmdulaney\nA couple of tips for iTerm2:\n\n1\\. iTerm2 looks in .bash_profile at start-up, not in .bashrc.\n\nI imagine your system is the same, but I found the following advice in a forum\nwhich was pretty clever, I thought. If you have both a .bash_profile and a\n.bashrc and you're wondering which one iTerm2 is sourcing, type\n\nexport BASH_CONF=\"bash_profile\"\n\nsomewhere in .bash_profile and\n\nexport BASH_CONF=\"bashrc\"\n\nin .bashrc. Then open up a new iTerm2 window and type\n\necho $BASH_CONF\n\non the command line to see which one got set.\n\n2\\. Being able to select something with the mouse and then paste it with a\nright-mouse click is great. Here's the right way of setting it up:\n\na. Open iTerm's Preferences\n\nb. General> Selection> Check \"Copy to pasteboard on selection\" (for me this\nwas the default)\n\nc. Pointer> Bindings> Double-click on \"Right button single click\"; Select\n\"Paste from Clipboard\"\n\nThe _wrong_ way to do it would have been to just set up the right button click\nto paste from selection. That would be bad because you would lose the ability\nto paste something that you had copied, say, using Cmd-C in a Word document.\n\nR: krupan\nI think I'm getting a better handle on my anxiety issues. Also, I played with\nLegos for the first time in a long time.\n\nR: johndavid9991\nGood for you. This is the part that I struggle the most, I quarantined for\nmore almost a month and depression and anxiety kicks in the most when you are\nalone.\n\nR: DanBC\nBaking bread using a sourdough starter instead of yeast; noodling about with\nNodeMCU (really fun and dirt cheap) and BBC Micro:Bit (really fun, not as\ncheap as NodeMCU but still pretty cheap, and really easy for younger people to\nget started with); and I've just started pencil sketching. I'm an absolute\ntotal beginner, but it's enjoyable.\n\nR: pmdulaney\nA nice sourdough bread recipe with hi-res photos:\n\n[https:\/\/github.com\/hendricius\/the-bread-\ncode\/blob\/master\/bas...](https:\/\/github.com\/hendricius\/the-bread-\ncode\/blob\/master\/basics\/sourdough.md)","meta":{"id":"23008104"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7702325581,"avg_line_length":35.8333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.0497512438,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9253203273,"max_line_length":292,"num_words":747,"perplexity":1129.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2368992248,"text_len":3225,"word_rep_ratio":0.0162601626},"simhash":13651141141531136905} {"text":"M: The Cookie Cutter Guide to Charting in the App Store - jsatok\nhttp:\/\/www.taptaptap.com\/blog\/the-cookie-cutter-guide-to-charting-in-the-app-store\/\n\nR: wallflower\nAside from the preachy tone, practical advice on iPhone marketing - send out a\nsexy rich HTML email the morning after your app is released to your targeted\nmailing list that tastefully showcases your brand new iPhone app with the all-\nimportant 'Available on the iPhone App Store' badge.\n\nNot explicitly mentioned in the linked article is that the more gorgeous and\n_non cookie-cutter_ your app's UI is, the better a chance it has of breaking\nthrough into the top charts. How else to differentiate your app from the\nstandard UITableView\/UITabBar drones out there? The best looking iPhone apps\ncombine good looks with focused functionality.\n\nWeightbot\n\n\n\nNote: I've bought the MacHeist bundle before and I did recall getting the\nVoices launch email blast (and GMail search confirms) so I assume it was sent\nto Tap Tap Tap's (600k strong?!) mailing list only.\n\nR: jsatok\nThe TapTapTap email was sent out to MacHeist's email list. When purchasing a\nbundle, you can specify if you don't want to be part of the list, but by\ndefault, you are: .\n\nI've worked on some MacHeist developer relations projects before, and one of\nthe benefits is the massive email list. Dan Grover, the developer of ShoveBox,\nparticipated in one of the bundles recently, and sums up his feelings in this\ncomment: .","meta":{"id":"1013112"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7875647668,"avg_line_length":48.25,"char_rep_ratio":0.0390879479,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8987106085,"max_line_length":83,"num_words":339,"perplexity":779.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2195595855,"text_len":1544,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":4153561293643385979} {"text":"M: Asynchronous Multi-Threaded Parallel World of Swift - leogdion\nhttps:\/\/learningswift.brightdigit.com\/asynchronous-multi-threaded-parallel-world-of-swift\n\nR: alfanick\n7x \"How can I deliver a better user experience with asynchronous operations?\"\nsign-up form, impressive!","meta":{"id":"21083118"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.8198529412,"avg_line_length":45.3333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.0836501901,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.7822047472,"max_line_length":89,"num_words":61,"perplexity":969.9,"special_char_ratio":0.1838235294,"text_len":272,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":150591378283987369} {"text":"M: Ask HN: Stemmers in ruby, any good? or should I just go ahead and write my own? - arindam_\n\nThe most popular option seems to be https:\/\/github.com\/aurelian\/ruby-stemmer. But its kinda outdated and gives poor-ish results.\n"why" becomes "whi", "people" becomes "peopl" and a lot lot many incorrect ones.

Something like Solr's reduction to stems is what I was hoping for to be able to use it in my project.

Thinking of going for a full port of Porter's stemming. Thoughts?\n\nR: danso\nThanks for asking this, I'd also be interested in knowing...\n\nDid you try the uea-stemmer? Also pretty old: [https:\/\/github.com\/ealdent\/uea-\nstemmer](https:\/\/github.com\/ealdent\/uea-stemmer)\n\nAlso, there's the treat gem, which is an all-in-one package...it uses both the\nstemmer you mentioned and the uea one...so maybe that's it for Rubyists.\n\n[https:\/\/github.com\/louismullie\/treat](https:\/\/github.com\/louismullie\/treat)\n\nR: boyter\n[https:\/\/github.com\/raypereda\/stemmify](https:\/\/github.com\/raypereda\/stemmify)\n\nNot a Ruby guy so no idea if its any good, but it is the implementation linked\nfrom here\n[http:\/\/tartarus.org\/~martin\/PorterStemmer\/](http:\/\/tartarus.org\/~martin\/PorterStemmer\/)","meta":{"id":"6708543"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7569331158,"avg_line_length":55.7272727273,"char_rep_ratio":0.0961380444,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8926551342,"max_line_length":302,"num_words":304,"perplexity":1075.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2463295269,"text_len":1226,"word_rep_ratio":0.0406779661},"simhash":628953751779278052} {"text":"M: Algorithms and Bias: Q. And A. With Cynthia Dwork - v4n4d1s\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/08\/11\/upshot\/algorithms-and-bias-q-and-a-with-cynthia-dwork.html\n\nR: Trombone12\n\"Q: Whose responsibility is it to ensure that algorithms or software are not\ndiscriminatory?\n\nA: This is better answered by an ethicist. I'm interested in how theoretical\ncomputer science and other disciplines can contribute to an understanding of\nwhat might be viable options.\"\n\nWeird response considering the (mild) advocacy for regulation later since\nregulation presumes target to be regulated... Hard to shake the feeling the\nresponse is influenced by her employer.","meta":{"id":"10039271"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.8015625,"avg_line_length":45.7142857143,"char_rep_ratio":0.0459587956,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9135646224,"max_line_length":92,"num_words":132,"perplexity":599.1,"special_char_ratio":0.21875,"text_len":640,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":13335687790202500053} {"text":"M: A Start-Up Says It Can Predict Others' Fate - jmorin007\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/02\/18\/technology\/18vc.html?em&ex=1203483600&en=e905b7a83fc460e5&ei=5087%0A\n\nR: jdueck\nI'm skeptical. At best, they'll have 20\/20 hindsight. At worst, these are two\nkids who haven't yet enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks.","meta":{"id":"118375"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.768488746,"avg_line_length":51.8333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.0562913907,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9109919667,"max_line_length":102,"num_words":74,"perplexity":3189.3,"special_char_ratio":0.3665594855,"text_len":311,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":12655944732744081929} {"text":"M: Being Overweight in the Workplace an Advantage for Men, Not Women - atlasunshrugged\nhttps:\/\/www.syracuse.com\/news\/2020\/02\/cornell-study-being-overweight-in-workplace-an-advantage-for-men-but-not-women.html\n\nR: quotemstr\n> A new study at Cornell University found overweight men in the workplace are\n> perceived as more persuasive than their thinner male co-workers, according\n> to the Huffington Post.\n\nThis study fails the common sense gut check. This study will not reproduce: it\nsmacks of the same p-hacked, publication-bias social psychology nonsense\nthat's plagued us for a decade.\n\nIt's plausible that men experience a smaller penalty for being overweight than\nwomen do, but to imagine that there's an _advantage_ in being portly? That\nflies in the face of prior work (and much better-established work, though\nstill shaky) on halo effects, but more importantly, it defies common sense and\ndaily experience.\n\nWhen will we stop believing that studies like this actually tell us anything?\n\nR: downerending\nIndeed, it's very hard to believe that being fat works as some sort of\nadvantage.\n\n(Source: am fat.)","meta":{"id":"22323388"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.795679568,"avg_line_length":44.44,"char_rep_ratio":0.0426497278,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9576937556,"max_line_length":121,"num_words":241,"perplexity":470.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2097209721,"text_len":1111,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":5109030719889302113} {"text":"M: Features Of SQL Server 2012 - KarenLopez\nhttp:\/\/mcpmag.com\/articles\/2012\/03\/14\/top-12-features-of-sql-server-2012.aspx\n\nR: stevear\nSQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time. As an\nadmin it has been rock solid and not produced any headaches that weren't our\nown fault.\n\nWith that said, to really get the most out of SQL Server (and most likely most\nother SQL implementations) you really have to do your homework and put in the\ntime to go through the features. Perhaps more than anything this is why NoSQL\nhas taken off-- it's very simple to get going. At user groups I hear a lot of\npeople saying they selected MongoDB because \"They had millions of rows and SQL\njust couldn't keep up\" and to me it just sounded like no one in their\norganization had any solid SQL experience.\n\nIt's too bad MS didn't build a 'SQL Admin' into their product that sent an\nemail on occasion to say things like \"You have a query that is called\nfrequently and could be sped up if you simply included this column in this\nindex. Here are some details!\"\n\nR: einhverfr\n_SQL Server has been one of my favorite software products of all time._\n\nI feel the same way about PostgreSQL, along with the bit about learning all\nthe features. I suspect that most decent RDBMS's are this way.\n\n _At user groups I hear a lot of people saying they selected MongoDB because\n\"They had millions of rows and SQL just couldn't keep up\" and to me it just\nsounded like no one in their organization had any solid SQL experience._\n\nhahahaha. I have customers with db's with 10's of millions of rows (And I\nexpect hundreds of millions or rows in the foreseeable future) and I can't\nimagine MongoDB keeping up in terms of reporting......\n\nR: nwatson\nPurported new feature: \"Columnstore Indexes -- This a cool new feature that is\ncompletely unique to SQL Server. They are special type of read-only index\ndesigned to be use with Data Warehouse queries. Basically, data is grouped and\nstored in a flat, compressed column index, greatly reducing I\/O and memory\nutilization on large queries.\"\n\nMany DB engines such as Vertica, SenSage, Sybase IQ, all use column-oriented\nstorage. Perhaps the only novel-but-obvious thing here is that these \"read-\nonly\" indexes are implied to live alongside the regular DB table data, though\nI'm not sure how these \"read-only\" indexes would mesh with the need to support\ndeletion on regular tables.\n\n\n\nR: mgkimsal\nPerhaps the engine will update the \"read only indexes\" when the corresponding\ndata in regular tables are deleted, but not in realtime, but only on demand or\non a predetermined schedule?\n\nR: orcadk\nThe columnstore indexes are purely read-only; they will not be updated without\nrequiring a rebuild.\n\nHowever, you can create columnstore indexes on specific partitions, and thus,\nby partitioning your source data, you can continue to add new data in new\npartitions. As most DW\/\"big data\" solutions use partitioning anyways, this is\na usable solution, giving you the benefits of the readonly performance as well\nas the maintainability aspects, while still allowing you to feed in new data.\n\nColumnstore indexes are not meant for OLTP type solutions, so there's no need\nfor realtime regular data deletion; it simply doesn't happen on this kind of\nhistorical data. You might switch out a partition of your data, or you might\nswitch in a partition of new data, but you won't change the actual data\nitself.\n\nComparing SQL Servers columnstore index implementation with other columnstore\nbased databases doesn't make sense. I won't laud columnstore indexes as a\nrevolutionary new feature, but the way it's implemented is new, AFAIK.\nComparing it to \"normal\" columnstore based databases will make SQL Server look\nbad - but the thing is, it's not meant to compete with those. Use it where it\nmakes sense.\n\nR: gizzlon\nA little OT, but this was very surprising:\n\n _\"MS is making a push back to the command line for server products). Core is\nthe GUI-less version of Windows that uses DOS and PowerShell for user\ninteraction. It has a much lower footprint (50% less memory and disk space\nutilization), requires fewer patches, and is more secure than the full\ninstall. Starting with SQL 2012, it is supported for SQL Server.\"_\n\nR: KarenLopez\nWhat is surprising about it? Server core is for specific situations.\n\nR: NDizzle\nI'd be happy with simple syntax for things like OFFSET\/LIMIT and GROUP_CONCAT\nat this point.\n\nR: mgkimsal\nif they gave you that, it'd be too easy to port a lot of basic stuff away from\nsql server.\n\nI worked someplace that was primarily a SQL Server shop, although was still\nlargely Java and some PHP at the time. I was tasked with building something to\npaginate through records. There were several hundred thousand to paginate\nthrough, and I had to resort to getting the DBA to build some weird sproc with\ncursors and junk in it.\n\n\"I just need _some_ of the rows\"\n\n\"Why would you need that?\" (honest to goodness question from the DBA)\n\n\"Well, because I only need to show 30 items on the screen, not 400,000.\nShowing 400,000 might take a while.\"\n\n\"Just use TOP. SQL Server lets you do SELECT TOP(30) already!\"\n\n\"Umm... but I might need to see the second 30, or the 99th 30.\"\n\n\"Why? No one does that!\"\n\nInsane. They experimented with some monstrosity of nested TOP() queries. They\nrefused to allow MySQL to be used (\"it's just a toy\"), when it was perfectly\ncapable for the requirement, and had developer-useful stuff like LIMIT in it.\nI got some overly engineered sproc that had to be updated whenever I needed a\nchange, and I ended up leaving a few months later. Not specifically because of\nthat, but that culture was one I couldn't fit in to. I've heard it's gotten\nbetter, but I don't really believe it's better so much as the people who've\nstayed there have adapted and worked around the cognitive dissonance it\ntriggered.\n\nR: saryant\nI might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've implemented pagination in SQL\nServer and it wasn't as complicated as that. Maybe I produced the world's\nworst pagination technique but I don't think I ever resorted to TOP. The\nROW_NUMBER() function takes care of this.\n\nR: steverb\nYes.\n\n[http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/548475\/efficient-way-\nto-i...](http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/548475\/efficient-way-to-implement-\npaging)\n\nR: Smrchy\nNow if only MS would sit down and create a useable NodeJS client for MS-SQL.\n\nThe lack of a good clients outside the Windows world is what makes me move\naway from this otherwise great product.\n\nR: locusm\nThere is some great features there but Reporting Services is a turd that\nshould have been flushed, not polished.\n\nR: reagan83\nI disagree. Reporting Services in 2008 (especially with R2 and Report Builder\n3.0) is great. It serves as a great alternative to Crystal and it comes\nincluded with the SQL Server license.\n\nIMHO SSRS in SQL Server 2012 has matured more than I expected and offers a lot\nof the same functionality that comes with others in the Enterprise Reporting\nspace. It's worth giving it another shot.\n\nR: cosha\nMicrosoft is so last year","meta":{"id":"3711449"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7833614865,"avg_line_length":44.1242236025,"char_rep_ratio":0.036222692,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.960531354,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":1506,"perplexity":562.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2269144144,"text_len":7104,"word_rep_ratio":0.0561122244},"simhash":16602931502169278687} {"text":"M: Donald Glover Is an Innovator and Advocates for Coding - thefifthprint\nhttps:\/\/festivalpeak.com\/donald-glover-jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-most-of-them-c3595f297e38#.24ve4q6it\n\nR: thefifthprint\nHe also has a line about coding in his freestyle here:\n[https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zKB66pjw-\nJA](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zKB66pjw-JA)\n\nAround time 2:50 in the video","meta":{"id":"13097697"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7857142857,"avg_line_length":42.0,"char_rep_ratio":0.0975609756,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8483747244,"max_line_length":108,"num_words":100,"perplexity":698.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2671957672,"text_len":378,"word_rep_ratio":0.1098901099},"simhash":14434019109793512142} {"text":"M: Arsenic life does not exist after all... - t3rcio\nhttp:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg21328493.300-arsenic-life-does-not-exist-after-all.html\n\nR: tokenadult\nThe claim that living things could use the usual molecules, just with arsenic\nswitched for phosphorus in their DNA, was an extraordinary claim, and such a\nclaim requires extraordinary evidence.\n\n[http:\/\/skeptico.blogs.com\/skeptico\/2008\/01\/extraordinary-c.h...](http:\/\/skeptico.blogs.com\/skeptico\/2008\/01\/extraordinary-c.html)\n\nBut the first report about \"arsenic-based life\" was no more than a preliminary\nresearch finding announced in a press event by the study sponsor, and such an\nannouncement is not enough to establish a new body of scientific fact.\n\n\n\nThe specific preliminary finding was criticized right away for sloppiness of\ntechnique and a rush to reach an unwarranted conclusion,\n\n[http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2010\/12\/its_not_an_arseni...](http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2010\/12\/its_not_an_arsenic-\nbased_life.php)\n\n[http:\/\/rrresearch.fieldofscience.com\/2011\/08\/first-\nevidence-...](http:\/\/rrresearch.fieldofscience.com\/2011\/08\/first-evidence-\nrefuting-wolfe-simon-et.html)\n\nso the journal slated to publish the preliminary finding had to invite in\ncritiques of the finding to save its own reputation.\n\n[http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2011\/05\/science-\npublishes-...](http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2011\/05\/science-publishes-\narsenic-is-life-responses-game-on\/)\n\nScience is all about reproducible results, so much so that there is a humor\nmagazine for scientists called the Journal of Irreproducible Results.\n\n\n\nThe headline in New Scientist, a British popular magazine about science\n(something like Scientific American in the United States), which has been\npublished since before I was born, is correct. There isn't any reliable\nevidence of arsenic-based life living anywhere within reach of scientists on\nearth. Not now, and not last year. The best summary of the current evidence,\nafter the efforts of many more careful researchers, is \"arsenic life does not\nexist after all,\" period (as an American would say), full stop (as a Briton\nmight say).\n\nR: robinhouston\nI don't think the scientific community really bought it in the first place.\nThe original experiment wasn't especially rigorous; e.g. see Rosie Redfield's\nreview [http:\/\/rrresearch.fieldofscience.com\/2010\/12\/arsenic-\nassocia...](http:\/\/rrresearch.fieldofscience.com\/2010\/12\/arsenic-associated-\nbacteria-nasas.html)\n\nAnd then the authors declined to respond in detail to any of the specific\ncriticisms that had been made by other scientists, which is very rarely a good\nsign.\n\nR: biasedstudy\nSerious biologists were very skeptical from the start :\n[http:\/\/omicsomics.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/arsenic-and-new-\nmicro...](http:\/\/omicsomics.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/arsenic-and-new-\nmicrobes.html)\n\nSoon, there were lots of questions :\n[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)\n\nI'm thinking NASA is good at space exploration, not so good at biology.\n\nR: rylz\nThe title is a bit misleading. One other lab's failure to reproduce the\nresults does not prove invalidity of the original publication. It certainly\nraises some eyebrows, but it makes sense to wait and see what comes of Wolfe-\nSimon's further analysis before we declare that arsenic life definitely does\nnot exist.\n\nR: Tim-Boss\nAgreed; a sensationalist title adds nothing to an otherwise accurate article!\n\nR: nwatson\nEven if the organisms were shown to swap out phosphorus for arsenic in some\ninstances in their DNA, would that be surprising? Arsenic comes from the same\ncolumn in the periodic table as phosphorus, and exhibits many of the same\nmacro chemical properties as phosphorus.\n\nIt would be like a software engineer swapping out their optimized, say, C++\nstring library, for one that was less optimal but perhaps took less space or\nran better in a constrained embedded environment. Arsenic might not be optimal\nbut it's what's available, what can be used.\n\nIn the software case you'd probably be OK but run more slowly than otherwise,\nor else maybe you'd stumble when for some strange reason the sub-optimal\nstring library didn't guarantee thread-safe read operations. The arsenic could\nsimilarly trip up the organism in some cases.\n\nR: synparb\nI think your analogy is not quite right. Although seemingly similar, inserting\nArsenic into DNA would be like taking a very large and complicated piece of\nsoftware that was fundamentally dependent on the precise API of a component,\nand then changing that API to make it largely incompatible, thus requiring a\nlarge piece of your software to be re-written. It is not just like swapping in\na suboptimal component that has no downstream effects.\n\nR: veyron\nI've never heard of new scientist. Is it a real science journal or\nsensationalist? (based on this article I'd guess the latter)\n\nR: corin_\nIt's an English magazine that's somewhere inbetween your two options.\nGenerally their reporting is pretty good and they avoid headlines for the sake\nof headlines, however they do put a lot of focus on making their content\nunderstandable to non-scientists - it's aimed at smart, curious people, not\nscientists.\n\nAn example of this is their \"last word\" feature, where they take a question\nfrom a reader and let anyone write in with answers - these are usually random\nquestions like \"Why is the sky blue?\" or \"If it's raining, will I get less wet\nif I run than if I walk?\" They've also released two or three Last Word\ncompilation books.\n\nR: coob\nIf anyone is interested in the sound of this there is something similar over\non this subreddit:\n\n\n\nR: SilasX\nMore direct, permanent link:\n\n[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\/)\n\nR: coob\nI wasn't talking about the article, but the 'ask for a scientific answer' type\nservice.\n\nR: geuis\nSummary: Scientist B failed to replicate the results of Scientist A. Scientist\nA stands by her continuing research. Research continues and is not definitive\nyet. New Scientist has a slow news days and publishes said results, mucking up\nan extra controversy for the day and getting a few more clicks through to\ntheir website.","meta":{"id":"3517937"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7918678922,"avg_line_length":45.524822695,"char_rep_ratio":0.047425897,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9340281487,"max_line_length":152,"num_words":1301,"perplexity":697.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2240224334,"text_len":6419,"word_rep_ratio":0.0464396285},"simhash":17521502013643894637} {"text":"M: EFF Applauds Amazon for Pushing Back on Request for Echo Data - DiabloD3\nhttps:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2017\/03\/eff-applauds-amazon-pushing-back-request-echo-data\n\nR: M_Grey\nThe EFF must feel totally hopeless at this point. People are _buying_\nmicrophones with internet connections and sticking them in their homes.\nThey're making the _choice_ to buy \"smart\" IoT shit that spies on them.\nThey're at a point of defending a major company selling that stuff, because\nthey didn't instantly roll over when approached by law enforcement.\n\nIt's like... PETA complimenting a butcher on a clean kill. I don't blame them\nthough... who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even\nstarted, because people want their toaster to go online?\n\nR: kardos\n> who knew the great battle over privacy would be lost before it even started,\n> because people want their toaster to go online?\n\nI really despise this sentiment, it's quite defeatist and comes across as the\n\"resistance is futile\" talking point from the \"privacy is dead\" camp\n\nWhat we need is some kind of spousal privilege [1] or secrecy of\ncorrespondence [2] for the internet age, ie, for IoT things. Surreptitious\nrecordings from phones, messaging apps, \"amazon echo\"s, xbone cameras, etc,\nshould be impermissible in court (or some variation on this theme). We struck\na balance in the past, we can do it again.\n\n[1]\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spousal_privilege](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spousal_privilege)\n[2]\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Secrecy_of_correspondence](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Secrecy_of_correspondence)\n\nR: M_Grey\nIt's easy to accuse people of \"defeatism\", or \"alarmism\", when really you just\ndon't like the simple truth. Your idea is nice, but unless you're capable of\nproducing a workable roadmap and seeing it enacted, who really cares? Everyone\nhas \"good ideas\" and many people have good intentions, but if you can't\nproduce results that differ from the next guy it just doesn't matter.\n\nUnless you're Churchill rallying a nation to fight, you're in no position to\naccuse anyone of defeatism for pointing out the reality we live in.\n\nR: kardos\nMy point was more along the lines of \"lets stop repeating the 'give up'\nmantra\" and move forward to \"lets explore how we might rectify the situation\".\nBut alas you are also right, I did not present a shovel ready legal pathway to\nsuccess.\n\nR: M_Grey\nI'm not suggesting that anyone give up, I was suggesting that the EFF must\nfeel despair in the context of their efforts. I would argue that there is more\nneed than ever to fight, but that fight hasn't _really_ materialized yet.\nOutside of places like HN, so few people appreciate that there even is a\nfight, and fewer care.\n\nThat may change, but until it does, the best you can do is educate people.\n\nR: gkoberger\nWhile I'm glad Amazon pushed back, it did set some precedents and isn't\nexactly a victory.\n\nThey eventually handed over the data (at the owner's consent), which does two\nthings: 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over 2) makes\nanyone who doesn't hand over the data seems guilty (hey, if you have nothing\nto hide...)\n\nPrivacy is eroded one step at a time.\n\nR: Xorlev\n> 1) confirms they do have data and the ability to turn it over\n\nNot necessarily. We don't know what they handed over. For all we know right\nnow, it literally could be a single request to start a timer or check the\nweather.\n\nThe use of the data seems dubious assuming that Alexa has to hear the trigger\nword before sending data to Amazon. Judging by the traffic on my network, I'd\nsay that's the case. I don't see a persistent stream coming from my Alexa\ndevice beyond periodic pings.\n\nR: M_Grey\nKeep in mind that a key piece of evidence in the murder case in question is a\nsingle datapoint from his smart water-meter.\n\n\"Why did you use 140 gallons of water around 2AM? Long shower bud?\"\n\nR: icebraining\nHow is it not relevant whether someone used a lot of water after the homeowner\nwas dead?\n\nR: M_Grey\n_According to police records, a city utility billing and collections manager\ntold detectives that, on the night of Collins 's death, 140 gallons of water\nwere used at Bates's home between 1 and 3 a.m., an amount of water usage that\nexceeded all other periods there since October 2013.\n\n\"In comparison, while all four [men] were together earlier that evening, they\nnever used more than 10 gallons of water in an hour,\" police reports said.\n\"The amount of water used between 0100-0300 hours was consistent with spraying\ndown the back patio area, which may have resulted in the wet concrete patterns\nobserved on the morning of November 22nd.\"\n\nThe utility department's source? Each home in Bentonville was on a smart\nmeter, police were told, to measure and record the exact consumption of\nelectricity and water every hour._ -Washington Post\n\nThe homeowner wasn't the one who died.\n\nR: codedokode\nWould not it be better if Amazon didn't keep those data at all and maybe even\nmade sound recognition on a client?\n\nR: tannhaeuser\nI absolutely support EFF, but it must be said that privacy and\ndecentralization can be in conflict with Free software. Namely, by flooding\nthe world with GPL and liberally-licensed web software, it becomes a commodity\nitem, making \"the cloud\" possible in the first place, and enslaving people.\n\nR: kardos\nEhh, not really, the cloud is similarly possible without free software. Indeed\nmuch of the big name cloud provider's backend software would be in-house\nanyway. Windows VMs exist too.\n\nI guess your point is closer to 'free software makes the cloud cheaper', which\nin turn makes it easier to ensnare people..","meta":{"id":"13848402"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7805397727,"avg_line_length":45.056,"char_rep_ratio":0.0400142273,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9675369263,"max_line_length":114,"num_words":1219,"perplexity":435.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2263849432,"text_len":5632,"word_rep_ratio":0.0429752066},"simhash":15237013733807200499} {"text":"M: Egyptian Cryptocurrency Exchange Coming This Month - MasterTokens\nhttp:\/\/www.cryptocoinstockexchange.com\/egyptian-cryptocurrency-exchange-coming-this-month\/\n\nR: MasterTokens\nLast month, the Central Bank of Egypt has shot down rumours that suggested it\nwould allow banks to handle cryptocurrencies.","meta":{"id":"15041376"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.8366666667,"avg_line_length":50.0,"char_rep_ratio":0.0996563574,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8519650698,"max_line_length":90,"num_words":68,"perplexity":621.9,"special_char_ratio":0.1633333333,"text_len":300,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":10299897667584071893} {"text":"M: Show HN: A Go implementation of TensorFlow's streaming quantiles estimator - seiflotfy\nhttps:\/\/github.com\/axiomhq\/quantiles\n\nR: tsenart\nHow does it compare to\n[https:\/\/github.com\/tdunning\/t-digest](https:\/\/github.com\/tdunning\/t-digest)?\n\nR: vvern\nAren't the goals of t-digest a little bit different?\n\nT-digest seeks to have a bounded size and an error proportional to q*(1-q),\nhence it gives up quantile accuracy in the middle of the distribution when\nunder load. This algorithm seems to provide total bounded error without small\nbut unbounded size.\n\nR: tsenart\nCould you elaborate on the differences a bit deeper? I'm really interested in\nunderstanding.\n\nR: seiflotfy\n[http:\/\/web.cs.ucla.edu\/~weiwang\/paper\/SSDBM07_2.pdf](http:\/\/web.cs.ucla.edu\/~weiwang\/paper\/SSDBM07_2.pdf)\nis the paper its mostly based on Figure 1. Actually describes how big the\ndatastructure can get. It keeps getting bigger the more data you feed it.\n\nR: gonyere\nTensorFlow's implementation is looking great - RAM usage is fantastic!!","meta":{"id":"17766068"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7821782178,"avg_line_length":38.8461538462,"char_rep_ratio":0.0699300699,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8626019955,"max_line_length":106,"num_words":239,"perplexity":796.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2257425743,"text_len":1010,"word_rep_ratio":0.0695652174},"simhash":3483106268575615753} {"text":"M: Ask HN: best music background to work? - creonik\nFor example, I am finding I prefer 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?\n\nR: kroger\nLike many people, if I'm thinking and designing I prefer to have no music. If\nI'm doing these things in a noisy environment I may listen to some rain\nrecordings such as [1].\n\nWhen I'm coding I mainly listen to classical music. The problem is that I need\nto listen to things I know very well or I'll get distracted, so I end up\nlistening to the same compositions over and over again, to the annoyment of my\nwife ;-)\n\nThese days the compositions I list the most while coding are:\n\n\\- Beethoven String Quartets, for instance [2] (I really like the fugato at\n5:00 ;-)\n\n\\- Mahler Symphonies, for example [3]\n\n\\- Ravel music\n\n\\- Some Monteverdi madrigals [4]\n\nI like to use headphones, either a Sennheiser PX 200 [5] or a Sennheiser\nHD-280 PRO [6].\n\n[1] \n\n[2] \n\n[3] \n\n[4] \n\n[5] [http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sennheiser-PX-200-II-\nHeadphones\/dp\/B00...](http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sennheiser-PX-200-II-\nHeadphones\/dp\/B002VPDOHS)\n\n[6] [http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-\nHeadphones\/dp\/B0...](http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Sennheiser-HD-280-Pro-\nHeadphones\/dp\/B000065BPB)\n\nR: creonik\nThanks.I am switching to classical music and works much better. Right now I am\nlistening to Yo-Yo Ma and Ennio Morricone playing Moses and Marco Polo Theme.\n. It's beautiful (when not\ninterrupted by Spotify ads!)\n\nR: hboon\nI've tried white noise, Naturespace, Kap Slap mixes, Pop mixes, Gregorian,\netc.\n\nI've found that I am pretty productive in a cafe these days, so I started\nlistening to tracks of cafe background noise when I work from home recently,\nsuch as \"People Talking in Coffee Shop\" by Finnolia Productions [1].\n\nMight write more about this if it works well enough.\n\n[1] iTunes affiliate link: [http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-\nbin\/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&...](http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-\nbin\/click?id=dE0y3GuqVK4&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Falbum%2Fpeople-\nsound-effects-2%2Fid582685672&u1=h)\n\nR: radq\nI usually listen to one of the Music for Programming[1] mixes, and when I'm in\nthe mood for more ambient music I listen to Brian Eno.\n\n[1] \n\nR: creonik\nI did not it. Thanks for the link.\n\nR: deathwithme\nDepends on your work. For instance, if you have a good software design a web\napplication, you can code it with heavy metal music because listing metal\nmusic with programming is improving the velocity of coding.\n\nR: creonik\nYou are right. As I listen to a lot of classical music, I realize I am\nthinking better but also slowing down too much. Thanks\n\nR: jlengrand\nBest site I could find was created by a fellow HN follower :)\n\n\n\nI listen to it everyday and never get bored :)\n\nR: rex64\nI usually listen to slow tempo piano jazz or rainymood.com\n\nR: whichdan\nThere are a couple threads on this already.\n\nturntable.fm's \"Ambient Chillout & Trip Hop\" room is usually quite good.\n\nR: keva161\nI usually just go on 8tracks and listen to the first 'coding' or 'programming'\nplaylist that shows up.\n\nR: vojant\nDepends on the mood I'm in. From slow piano\/classic to techno.\n\nR: anons2011\nsoma.fm - Mission Control, Space station or Drone Zone\n\ndi.fm - Chillout, Minimal or Ambient\n\nbassdrive.com (liquid dnb)","meta":{"id":"5051922"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7562349155,"avg_line_length":33.9,"char_rep_ratio":0.0744623656,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8508010507,"max_line_length":232,"num_words":886,"perplexity":977.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2716545991,"text_len":3729,"word_rep_ratio":0.086659065},"simhash":11576566640477014703} {"text":"M: Physicists create hole in Time to hide events - ekm\nhttp:\/\/blogs.forbes.com\/alexknapp\/2011\/07\/18\/physicists-create-a-hole-in-time-to-hide-events\/\n\nR: glimcat\nNormally I'd blame the media for putting a sensational spin on things, but the\npaper is really at fault here.\n\nThe usual metamaterials cloaking trick involves spatial-domain cloaking. You\nmake the probe beam go around the target.\n\nThey're doing time-domain cloaking by selectively altering the velocity of the\nbeam. Not time cloaking.\n\nR: evilswan\nAwesome.","meta":{"id":"2775246"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7949709865,"avg_line_length":34.4666666667,"char_rep_ratio":0.061023622,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8770655394,"max_line_length":93,"num_words":115,"perplexity":1025.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2205029014,"text_len":517,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":12173390090713370693} {"text":"M: Show HN: I made an extension that adds time cost to Amazon products - vilvadot\nhttps:\/\/moneyistime.vilva.io\/\n\nR: vilvadot\nHi everyone, author here! I just released this project I made for fun for\nmyself, I had the idea in my mind for forever now and wanted to try my best at\nbuilding and extension over it. So here it is. Hope you like it and\ncontribute!\n\nRight now it only supports Amazon since it is the site I use the most, but it\nis pretty trivial to add more shops.\n\nBTW, I just searched for myself on the Chrome Store and found a surprisingly\nidentical extension O_o. [https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/time-is-\nmoney\/oopp...](https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/time-is-\nmoney\/ooppbnomdcjmoepangldchpmjhkeendl) it seems it's more mature than mine,\nso here you have another option!\n\nR: elwell\nI like the idea, what are the chrome permissions like? Is the code open-source\nso I can analyze?\n\nR: vilvadot\nSure, you can find the repo in the site, here it is:\n[https:\/\/github.com\/vilvadot\/money-is-\ntime\/](https:\/\/github.com\/vilvadot\/money-is-time\/)\n\nOnly explicitily asks for storage access to set a flag when the extension is\nenabled and to save the hourly rate.\n\nIt does have access to execute the code on amazon too, which basically is\nreading info from html and inject another html node.","meta":{"id":"21991644"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7742181541,"avg_line_length":40.96875,"char_rep_ratio":0.0560675883,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.899225533,"max_line_length":81,"num_words":316,"perplexity":649.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2257818459,"text_len":1311,"word_rep_ratio":0.0586319218},"simhash":1341811693487915916} {"text":"M: Ask HN: Is the stock market the AI paper clip machine? - sharemywin\n\nR: SirLJ\nHow AI Could Destroy The Universe... With Paperclips:\n\n[https:\/\/hackernoon.com\/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-\nwit...](https:\/\/hackernoon.com\/how-ai-could-destroy-the-universe-with-\npaperclips-a5b19901056e)\n\nR: bulatb\nNot just the stock market. Money is a measure that became a target, with the\nusual results.\n\nGoodhart's law is always in effect.\n\nR: yasp\nno?\n\nR: sharemywin\nobviously not literally. If jobs are paper clips. If the goal of the stock\nmarket is to maximize corporate profits. The best way to do that is through\nautomation. Both, physical and mental. Doesn't that create a machine that\ncontrols most of the wealth and eliminates a need for humans.","meta":{"id":"18471174"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7731543624,"avg_line_length":32.3913043478,"char_rep_ratio":0.0692934783,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9366041422,"max_line_length":76,"num_words":167,"perplexity":596.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2389261745,"text_len":745,"word_rep_ratio":0.0886075949},"simhash":11696278452765237877} {"text":"M: Why Good Visualization Matters: Rethinking the Food Label - apievangelist\nhttp:\/\/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\n\nR: hugh3\nI'm not sure this is great visualization.\n\nFirstly, trace ingredients are often what's important to the consumer. Fine, I\nknow my peanut butter is mostly peanuts, but how much salt is there?\n\nSecondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of\nchicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty\ningredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives\ndown in a tiny box in the corner.\n\nThirdly, apparently labellers aren't obliged to split up certain categories\n(eg broccoli, sugar snap peas, green beans and carrots are all in a single\ngreen square). So presumably this doesn't even solve the specified problem of\nnot knowing how much white vs whole wheat is in your food -- why would you\nsplit up white and whole wheat into separate categories when beans and carrots\nare the same?\n\nR: calebmpeterson\n> Secondly, these are simple examples. What do you do with, say, a can of\n> chicken and vegetable and noodle soup, which could easily have thirty\n> ingredients before you even start counting the potentially-nasty additives\n> down in a tiny box in the corner.\n\nHow about inverting the tree-map such that the smaller the amount, the greater\nthe portion of the tree-map taken up? You're going to need all of that space\nanyway for the names of those potentially-nasty additives to be printed in a\nlegible font size...\n\nR: hugh3\nAh, the homeopathic approach to food labelling. I'm gonna sprinkle a grain of\ngold dust on every twinkie I sell, just to screw with the label.\n\nR: oscilloscope\nA few friends of mine built something similar. Loaded the USDA nutrition\ndatabase in a dropdown, and scaled 24 vitamins, nutrients, calories, etc by\nrecommended daily intake:\n\n (takes a minute to load)\n\nMany people have told me an added layer of discovering foods with particular\nnutritional qualities (filtering, sorting) would be very appealing. A\nrecommendation engine for food.\n\nIf you're looking to hack on the dataset, check out this JSON version:\n\n\n\nR: andreyon\nwow, that's really cool!\n\ncan they make a side by side comparator? it doesn't have to actually compare,\ncan be just another frame ( or frames) where I can select the same and do the\ncomparison myself.\n\nFor example I want to see the differences in raw broccoli and steamed\nbroccoli.\n\nR: oscilloscope\nOpen two browser windows ;)\n\nHere are a few other concepts we messed around with:\n\n (stacked bars)\n\n (hover to see\nvegetable\/nutrients)\n\n (matrix plot)\n\nR: SeanLuke\nThis is pretty bad I think. The amount of substance by mass is nearly\ncompletely unimportant. Consider a package which has 99.999% Organic Apples\nand 0.001% Plutonium. But hey, it's 99.999% organic! Look at all that red!\n\nMuch better is a simple ordered list of ingredients, so we're not bamboozled\ninto ignoring certain ingredients just because they're not the majority of the\ncontent. But wait, thats ... what we already have on our packaging? What good\nvisualization!\n\nR: rossriley\nThe new food labelling in the UK is based on a traffic light principle and,\nimho seems to be clearer:\n[http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/44434000\/jpg\/_44434134...](http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/44434000\/jpg\/_44434134_foodlabel203pa.jpg)\n\nThe problem with this exaple is that it's hard to see quickly what the key\npoints are, since prominence is automatically given to higher scores, whether\nthey're good or bad.\n\nR: aaronblohowiak\nIMHO, the Nutrition Information box is actually a shining example of good\ndesign already. It is very, very legible and has a clear information\nhierarchy.\n\nR: astarwithin\nI like knowing how much of things is in my food. :)\n\nR: notatoad\nit's a cool idea, but i believe most manufacturers would claim 'trade secrets'\nprotections before putting proportions on their labels.\n\nR: jzb\nThey'd claim something to avoid having to make it easy to visualize just\nwhat's in processed food...\n\nR: rorrr\nHis example with 5 ingredients in unreadable already. What will happen with\n10-20?","meta":{"id":"3031484"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7867941307,"avg_line_length":40.5225225225,"char_rep_ratio":0.0447761194,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9207679629,"max_line_length":196,"num_words":959,"perplexity":796.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2289906625,"text_len":4498,"word_rep_ratio":0.0336842105},"simhash":1579255571328579041} {"text":"M: HN Roundup: Hacker News Hacks - rcfox\n\nBetween browser extensions, Dotjs, Greasemonkey, etc., there are many ways of hacking HN. Most of them seem to be crappy or esoteric.

Let's round up all of the hacks that we actually find useful!\n\nR: jawns\nHighlight new comments on HN homepage (Greasemonkey script):\n\n[http:\/\/coding.pressbin.com\/74\/Update-on-Greasemonkey-\nscript-...](http:\/\/coding.pressbin.com\/74\/Update-on-Greasemonkey-script-for-\nHacker-News-homepage)\n\nR: rcfox\nHNCommentTracker (Chrome extension) - Highlights comments you haven't seen\nbefore, and shows an indicator of how many new comments exist for comment\npages that you've previously read.\n\n[https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...](https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/imeeonmdbakdmilnnccaddiplgjjhbog)\n\nR: rcfox\nHacker News Collapsible Comments (Chrome extension) - Lets you collapse entire\ncomment threads.\n\n[https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/hockhafcdegocajmjh...](https:\/\/chrome.google.com\/webstore\/detail\/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd)","meta":{"id":"2709920"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.795432921,"avg_line_length":45.6956521739,"char_rep_ratio":0.1074856046,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.7530779839,"max_line_length":197,"num_words":293,"perplexity":749.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2083729781,"text_len":1051,"word_rep_ratio":0.2042253521},"simhash":13715014700737259777} {"text":"M: Ask HN: Why are Americans always the good guys in video games? - turkthrower123\n\nR: zabana\nThis is a very interesting question.\n\nI've always wondered what the backlash would be if a studio were to release a\nCall of Duty style game from the point of view of middle eastern factions\nresisting the illegal invasion of their land and massacre of their people.\n\nBecause it seems to me that these FPS war simulations are very close to\nreality (ie using real location names and sometimes actual 3D rendered\nversions of said locations) and are somehow being used as a propanganda tool\nto get most people on board with whatever the political agenda is at the time.\nI know this sounds very conspiratorial and I'm open to counter arguments but I\ncan't shake off this feeling. Hope I'm wrong though because this is rather\ndepressing.\n\nR: viraptor\n> I know this sounds very conspiratorial\n\nNot really. Some games got American military funding to promote the army.\n\n> wondered what the backlash would be\n\nFor examples, look at backlash to farcry 5. See\n[https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/ubisoft-cancel-far-\ncry-5](https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/ubisoft-cancel-far-cry-5) where people just\ncan't handle white American Christians being the bad guys.\n\nR: non-entity\n> Us Gamers have had to endure a lot of crap over the last few years. The\n> targeted harassment by the mainstream press through Gamergate, the terrible\n> launch and outright lies of highly anticpated video games, the outright\n> censorship of art through \"localization\" policies, the continued rejection\n> of romantic partners when they find out our hobby, the appropriation of our\n> culture by so-called \"gamers\" on twitter. NO MORE!\n\nThis has got to be satire. This reads almost like the gamers rise up memes.\n\nR: viraptor\nI remember seeing a lot of this kind of ideas at the time farcry 5 was\nreleased. This site may be satire itself. But if it is, it's heavily inspired\nby reality.\n\nR: ajeet_dhaliwal\nBecause they _are_ the good guys of course :-) Almost all triple A games are\nmade in the US itself or allies (UK\/Canada\/Japan\/EU) so it's expected these\ngames will have a positive view. Same reason it's true in Hollywood. Most\npeople just want to get on and have fun with a game, not overthink politics\nand ethics and I don't see it as an issue. The more annoying thing is when\nyou're nudged to know random guy is evil due to generic Russian\/Middle East\naccent.\n\nR: iDemonix\nBecause the Americans make a lot of those types of video games, and if you\nwant to pander to your biggest market, you make them the good guys.\n\nR: LUmBULtERA\nI've played a lot of video games where they aren't. In fact, I'd posit most\nvideo games don't take place with real-world geopolitics\/national boundaries\nat all. And where they do, I don't think it's unusual that the antagonist may\nbe an American.\n\nR: blaser-waffle\nBecause the US won the struggle against the USSR and now the global economy is\nloosely based around US-style liberal capitalism. Most countries and their\nplace in the international order is relative to their participation in this\nsystem. This is best explained in Jihad vs. McWorld by Barber[1].\n\nWhat this means is that those who want to buy-in to this global system have to\ndeal with Western (US) media, Western (US) norms, and even the language of the\nWest (the language most common in the US). English is the new lingua franca,\nand is the language of business. This creates huge incentives to develop media\n(games, movies, whatever) that can be ported into English and sold to wealthy\nUS consumers (something the Japanese figured out in the 90s -- think of bad\nFinal Fantasy translations a la FF7). Plus many studios are in the US and make\ngames for the US market, and to a lesser degree the export market (Chinese and\nKorean gaming leagues being the biggest pushes, IMO).\n\nThat said, I remember one of the Medal of Honor games (WW2 themed) which has\nyou killing Japanese in the Pacific -- and was still hugely popular in\nJapan.[2]\n\n[1]\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jihad_vs._McWorld](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jihad_vs._McWorld)\n[2] [https:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2004\/02\/why-japanese-gamers-\nlove-a...](https:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2004\/02\/why-japanese-gamers-love-\navenging-pearl-harbor.html)\n\nR: tsukikage\nBecause, as an English speaker, most video games you play are of American\norigin.\n\nR: turkthrower123\nAs a Turk, I Believe that _all_ games I play are of American or Japanese\norigin.\n\nR: krapp\nThere are European game studios as well.\n\nR: stuxnet79\nBut European game studios have to cater to the American market or they risk\ngoing out of business. The simple answer to OPs question is: Americans are\nalways the good guys in gaming because the American market is a large one for\ngaming and a lot of what's trendy and tasteful in gaming has to have an\nAmerican bias for this very reason.","meta":{"id":"22043493"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7816377171,"avg_line_length":45.6226415094,"char_rep_ratio":0.0377045784,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9577484727,"max_line_length":98,"num_words":1036,"perplexity":488.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2251861042,"text_len":4836,"word_rep_ratio":0.0253164557},"simhash":5388697036386626399} {"text":"M: What should Apple do with the iPod? - barredo\nhttp:\/\/www.splatf.com\/2011\/09\/apple-ipod\/\n\nR: dpcan\nMarket it against the Nintendo DS.\n\nI bought iPod Touches for my 2 oldest kids and my wife last Christmas. So,\nthis year, instead of buying $30-$40 games, they have been able to buy several\n$2 games throughout each month.\n\nIt's been a blast, the savings are starting to really show, and they even like\nthe games better.\n\nR: georgemcbay\n\"they even like the games better.\"\n\nThat's just what they tell you so you don't feel bad for getting them iPod\ntouches. They secretly play Nintendo 3DS games at friends' houses.\n\nR: ericd\nYeah, I really wish people would start making some meatier games for the\niPhone to go with all the 5 minute junk food distractions that are about as\nentertaining as bouncing a ball. There have been a few games of more\nsubstance, but for the most part, it doesn't hold a candle to the DS' library.\n\nR: mdemare\nFor \"extremely meaty\", try King of Dragon Pass, an indie PC hit from 10 years\nago just released on iOS.\n\nR: ericd\nThat looks like what I was talking about, thanks! I just downloaded it. Any\nother recs?\n\nR: Gring\nCarcassonne is also very complex and rewarding to master. It's also a great\nsocial game when everybody sits around one iPad.\n\nR: daimyoyo\nI think as long as it remains profitable, they should keep it. The R&D costs\nare already well recouped so it's basically little more than a profit center.\nI understand Apple doesn't exactly need the money, but I think it would be a\nbad idea to kill off a licence to print money like the iPod.\n\nR: qq66\nApple likes to keep a limited product lineup, so if a model isn't particularly\nnecessary they can replace it with another product (such as an Apple TV\nvariant), as well as consuming display space in stores.\n\nR: skizm\nPlease please please make a waterproof one. The only reason I use my ipod over\nmy phone for music is because I do not like to sweat all over my phone when I\nwork out. Also for running in the rain (maybe for battery life on a long plane\nride). If they made a waterproof ipod nano that would solve all my problems.\nAlso if they for that direction just make headphones and a case that I can use\nto swim with. There is h2oaudio.com (which is awesome) but I would rather it\njust come straight from apple.\n\n<\/2cents>\n\nR: gry\nIt will become like the Mac business. Routine updates with nothing to announce\nunless it's special; unibody fabrication or designs like the Air.\n\nThat is until they reset their business.\n\nThe iPod product will be rebranded and remain iOS device that does everything\nbut have a phone. iPod rebranded with iPhone form and function, except no\nphone functionality.\n\nA Mac line, iPad line and a handset line. Face it, calling is now a feature on\na computer. It's not a phone with features.\n\nR: tomelders\nThe only graph that matters there is the first one, and no one should be\nsurprised that units have dropped. They should be surprised that they've\ndropped so little since the iPhone does everything the iPod does and more.\n\n% of revenue presented like that is misleading. The iPhone and the iPad are\nselling like hot cakes and making a ton of money, but they're not iPods.\n\nRevenue growth at around -6% may look bad, but that just means they're making\n1.48 billion minus 6%. If you don't think that's a lot of money, you're mad.\n\niDevice revenue breakdown.... what's the point of that graph?\n\nHere's what Apple should do with the iPod. Keep innovating. $1.48 Billion is a\nlot of money. It's a business in it's own right.\n\nIT'S MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS!!!!\n\nR: Steko\nObviously they don't have to do anything with it, it's still profitable and\nhas high margins. There's obviously some potential to grow though.\n\nThe touch is basically a prepaid phone with no phone chip. They could add that\nphone chip and absorb the margin hit through scale in China, etc. Bound to\nhappen sooner or later.\n\nThe nano is a redesign away from assaulting the global watch market (over $40\nbln this year).\n\nThe shuffle, I could seem them innovating the form factor, why not abstract it\nright into the earbuds.\n\nThe classic is dead, growth wise so they can keep selling it but don't think\nit'd shock anyone if they shut it down tomorrow.\n\nR: ROFISH\nI think the classic will die when you can fit 256GB into an iPod Touch, either\nthrough flash memory or a thicker hard drive version. Otherwise the iPod\nClassic still sells to those that _HAVE_ to have 200+ GB of music with them at\nall times.\n\nR: Steko\nYeah well there was still a market for x-serves but it wasn't big enough so\neventually they killed it.\n\nThe only way I can see them getting growth out of the classic would be to put\nthe massive memory to work hauling HD video around instead of music. That does\nsuggest an interesting iOS device maybe aimed at high end camcorders if they\ncan find a tiny 1 TB drive in the pipe somewhere.\n\nR: nknight\nThey're probably selling 20-30 times as many iPod Classics\/year as they ever\ndid xserves, even at their peak. The xserve also didn't do anything to act as\na draw toward other Apple products, and required frequent revisions to keep\nup. I bet ongoing iPod Classic R&D budget is statistical noise.\n\nR: Steko\nI'm not making a close analogy and I'm not saying they should shut it down.\n\nI'm just saying Apple will know when the classic isn't worth the\ntime\/energy\/shelf space and I wouldn't be shocked if they announced this is\nthe case in weeks rather then years.\n\nAnd I guess I'm making a wild guess as to how they might keep an HDD based\nidevice relevant although I don't think that's particularly likely either.\n\nR: whichdan\nFor what it's worth, I have a relatively large music collection (100gb+) and\nused an 80gb iPod for two years before getting a 32gb iPhone. The difference\nin usability was \/huge\/, to the point where I didn't miss the 50gb of space.\nIf I didn't have a smartphone and had the option of a 128gb iPod Touch, it\nwould be a no-brainer for me.\n\nPersonally, I don't think anything would be lost by discontinuing the iPod\nClassic, as long as something with a sizeable capacity replaced it.\n\nR: jcampbell1\nApple would be nuts to get rid of the shuffle. Keeping the iTunes ecosystem\nstrong is really important, as the kid with a shuffle today is best served by\nan iPhone in the future.\n\nR: TallTalesOrTrue\nKeep it around. Its a hook to get people to use the mac ecosystem. That's the\nproduct that started the resurrection of mac. I'm sure Apple will keep it\naround and keep on making minor changes to it overtime.\n\nR: bkorte\nThey should do nothing. Keep upgrading the capacity upgrading periodically.\n\nI bet that in the same keynote as the next iPhone release, Apple will rename\nthe iPod Touch to just \"iPod\".\n\nR: signalsignal\nWith the iCloud service ramping up, I suspect that the iPod classic may get\nPC-less syncing at some point. But then it would have to include some sort of\nwireless option as well.\n\nR: glhaynes\nI'd be surprised if they spent the engineering dollars on writing the non-iOS\ncode to do that and integrating wireless equipment into what I _think_ is the\nlowest-selling model of iPod, a product whose sales are rapidly being replaced\nby iOS-based iPods and iPhones.\n\nR: sliverstorm\nIf they thought about this ahead of time, perhaps developing for both\nplatforms is similar enough they could add the feature to both the\niPhone\/iTouch and the iPod Classic at the same time?\n\nR: marze\n200M iPod users are nothing to sneeze at: they represent an enormous pool of\npotential iPhone and iPad users, and Apple has been using the iPod Touch as a\n\"gateway drug\" for iOS for years now.\n\nThe Retina display 16G iPod touch has to be the lowest margin product in\nApple's lineup, due to its place as a low cost stepping stone to the more\nexpensive iOS devices.\n\nIt would be cool if they made the Nano a wrist mounted remote display for the\niPhone, though.\n\nR: p4wnc6\nThey should make it into a phone.\n\nR: SurfScore\nApple has always been one to do what THEY think is best, and then make\neverybody follow along. They did it with iOS and flash, basically saying \"hey\nwe don't like this, you shouldn't either, so we aren't going to let you use\nit.\" for better or for worse, this has always been Apple's Modus Operandi, and\nwhether or not you believe in it, judging by their stock prices, it's worked.\n\nOne of the biggest killers of the iPod is the fact that the iPhone is no\nlonger exclusive to AT&T. How many millions of people bought an iPod because\nthey had Verizon and didn't feel like dealing with AT&T? This is only going to\nget worse with the iPhone 5, which will presumably be on all major carriers.\n\nI think the emergence of Android has made all altogether killing the iPod\nunrealistic. I have yet to see an Android phone that handles music as well as\nthe iPod does, and Apple knows this. I think what is going to happen is that\nApple will revamp the line again in a year or so, and do something to make it\nrelevant. I would say the iPod touch, ironically enough, is the one in the\nmost danger of being killed off, what with it's big brother iPad owning the\ntablet market and the iPhone doing everything that it does and more.\n\nR: smackfu\nI still see a lot of nanos at the gym, but there are also a lot of people just\nusing their iPhones \/ Droids. (And for actual street running, the nano is a\nbit better being smaller and lighter and not $600 to replace when you drop\nit.)\n\nR: georgemcbay\nFor street running I personally prefer my phone to a small dedicated music\nplayer. Having a phone means having access to all of my music via Google Music\nplus gps with apps to track my speed\/distance progress.\n\nR: smackfu\nI just think it's a little heavy to strap to your arm, and holding it in my\nhand seems like a disaster waiting to happen.\n\nR: rob08\nI actually hadn't thought of the rumored new iPhone 5 design as a possibility\nof it being the next iPod Touch. Maybe that's why we haven't heard any iPod\nTouch rumors yet?\n\nR: jmmcd\nThe ipod shuffle is awesome, I use it everyday because it's tiny and I don't\ncare what happens to it. I almost never use my ipod touch or classic.\n\nR: Apocryphon\nNot everyone needs or wants a smartphone yet. Keep it.\n\nR: pointyhat\nI think they should bring back the \"old\" Nano. A lot of people haven't bought\nthe new one as they still like tactile controls and want a screen large enough\nto watch a video. They also don't want an iPhone or to pay for the touch. They\nshot themselves there.\n\nThere has been a lot of innovation with the iPod but some of it hasn't always\nbeen that great. Consider the \"stick\" shaped shuffle which reverted back to\nthe old design in the latest revision. I consider the touch-based iPod Nano to\nbe the same sort of unnecessary crock.","meta":{"id":"3028560"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7787842002,"avg_line_length":42.496031746,"char_rep_ratio":0.0279439252,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.978243053,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":2284,"perplexity":559.7,"special_char_ratio":0.227565599,"text_len":10709,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":15355213558086430376} {"text":"M: Safari's text-shadow Anti-aliasing CSS hack (applies to Chrome as well) - coderdude\nhttp:\/\/www.komodomedia.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/safari-text-shadow-anti-aliasing-css-hack\/\n\nR: robflynn\nI noticed this a while back when I mocking up a few designs in Chrome. It's a\npretty neat trick that I make use of on occasion when things look rougher than\nI'd like.\n\nBe sure to test in multiple browsers, though, as I actually ran into a\nsituation once where it looked great in webkit based browsers but looked oddly\nblurry despite my settings in Firefox. That may have improved with recent\nupdates.\n\nR: coderdude\nHere's a convenient way to test it out: ","meta":{"id":"2141941"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7804154303,"avg_line_length":44.9333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.0556390977,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8888691664,"max_line_length":86,"num_words":157,"perplexity":776.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2284866469,"text_len":674,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":3035186725307451628} {"text":"M: Edward Tufte - Technophilis\nhttp:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edward_Tufte\n\nR: mwexler\nForgive me for asking, but why is this link here on HN? I mean, he's a great\nguy and all, but what is the relevance to HN at this point?\n\nR: elblanco\nLots of companies\/projects work in the field of information visualization, on\nthe bookshelves of almost all of them, you can find Tufte's books. He's\nlargely considered the leader in the theory of displaying information in as\ndense and as clear of a method as possible than enables people to perceive the\nencoded information as rapidly and as correctly as possible.\n\nHe's best known for sparklines we all enjoy when looking at tables of stock\nprices, but those are likely the the least of his contributions to the field.\n\nreferences:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Visualization_(computer_graphic...](http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Visualization_\\(computer_graphics\\))\n\n\n\n","meta":{"id":"1015783"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7703081232,"avg_line_length":35.7,"char_rep_ratio":0.093220339,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8896850348,"max_line_length":131,"num_words":242,"perplexity":247.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2296918768,"text_len":1071,"word_rep_ratio":0.0429184549},"simhash":1642210057283421270} {"text":"M: People Keeping Mold-A-Rama Alive - artsandsci\nhttps:\/\/www.atlasobscura.com\/articles\/mold-a-rama-archive-retro-plastic-mold-a-matic\n\nR: justinph\nI grew up collecting these from the Milwaukee County Zoo. I never realized\nthey were a somewhat regional thing. Neato!\n\nR: muttech\nJust seeing the picture of the machine brings back the melted plastic smell. I\nremember trying to collect each one at the Milwaukee zoo, and inevitably\nbreaking the head off of them before long.\n\nR: hahamrfunnyguy\nI've always found these machine fascinating, never seen one in person though.\nI am surprised the molds are aluminum instead of steel. Typically aluminum\nmolds are considered suitable for smaller runs only. If they do 100 parts a\nday that's 36.5K cycles per year.\n\nR: anfractuosity\nWhy is aluminium considered suitable for smaller runs only out of interest?\n\nR: mcphage\nAluminum is softer than steel, so the mold wears out quicker - the models lose\ndetails.\n\nR: anfractuosity\nAh cheers that makes sense. One thing I was wondering would they use stainless\nsteel for moulds, to prevent them rusting?\n\nR: TylerE\nNope, \"real\" molds are made out of tool steel. Corrosion isn't really a\nproblem since machines are typically stored indoors.\n\nR: mcphage\nThey have several machines at the Lowry Park Zoo, in Tampa, Florida. I got one\na few years back - the hippopotamus that is shown in the article. I love it, and\nif I ever get back there, I'm going to get a few more. It was cool to do!\n\nR: the_trapper\nThey're all over the San Antonio Zoo as well. My kids loved making them.\n\nR: zafka\nI am actually coveting one of those little plastic toys. I need to think on\nthis for a while :)\n\nR: ChuckMcM\nI find myself coveting a Mold-a-rama machine to make molds for it :-).\nInjection molding is pretty expensive to do in small quantities, I would like\nto have a 'table top' machine where I could trade time for money.\n\nR: cr0sh\nCombine this:\n\n[https:\/\/makezine.com\/projects\/make-41-tinkering-toys\/diy-\ninj...](https:\/\/makezine.com\/projects\/make-41-tinkering-toys\/diy-injection-\nmolding\/)\n\nWith this:\n\n[http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/Home-Plastic-Injection-\nMoldi...](http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/Home-Plastic-Injection-Molding-with-\nan-Epoxy-Mold\/)\n\nAlternatively, you can purchase a hand injection molding machine as mentioned\nin the above instructable, if you don't want to build your own:\n\n[http:\/\/www.easyplasticmolding.com\/model_150\/home.html](http:\/\/www.easyplasticmolding.com\/model_150\/home.html)\n\n...for $1800.00. So - if you have more money than time, materials and skill -\nwell, it's possible.\n\nR: ChuckMcM\nAnd they are reasonably close in Scotts Valley. I'm definitely going to have\nto get one of those.\n\nEDIT: Interesting that the Makezine article has a pretty big problem. It\ndoesn't actually show you how to make the 'second half' of the epoxy mold. To\nmake the second half, you would have to assemble the mold and then pour epoxy\ninto the assembled mold. Depending on the material you'd probably end up some\nhow pumping that epoxy in, and you would need to pull a vacuum on it to avoid\nbubbles.\n\nIts a nit of course, but worth considering.\n\nR: monocasa\nOh wow, I totally forgot I had one of those (the T Rex) growing up.\n\nEnded up being one of my favorite bath toys.\n\nMemories.","meta":{"id":"16205133"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7747555012,"avg_line_length":36.3555555556,"char_rep_ratio":0.036775973,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9358116388,"max_line_length":110,"num_words":742,"perplexity":571.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2322738386,"text_len":3272,"word_rep_ratio":0.0436562074},"simhash":2937072892614503284} {"text":"M: Dilithium crystal fusion impulse engine in development - aneth4\nhttp:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-17938_105-57523867-1\/star-trek-fusion-impulse-engine-in-the-works\/\n\nR: uvdiv\nThe other article has a nonzero information content, for a change:\n\n[http:\/\/txchnologist.com\/post\/32463368168\/channeling-star-\ntre...](http:\/\/txchnologist.com\/post\/32463368168\/channeling-star-trek-\nresearchers-to-begin-fusion)\n\nSummary: it's nuclear pulse propulsion (riding the shock wave of a nuclear\nexplosion). _Small_ nuclear explosions in this concept: they hope to create\nsmall (~1 ton TNT eq.) pure-fusion explosions using nanosecond bursts of\nextremely powerful electric currents (plasma Z-pinch). Basically, it's the\nsame problem as fusion power plants based on \"inertial confinement\" (euphemism\nfor \"explosion\").\n\nLithium is a progenitor of tritium. This is common D+T fusion.\n\nThis concept is not remotely close to practicality. Which is why the reported\ngoal (\"a mind-bending 62,600 mph\") is bizarre; it's only a small factor better\nthan chemical rockets. It's just as bad as e.g. nuclear thermal propulsion,\nwhich was designed and built 40 years ago. So I really don't see the point.\n\nR: WiseWeasel\nThe fuel has a much greater energy density than chemical rockets, making\nlonger distances practical, and the process is safer than nuclear fission.\n\nR: uvdiv\nThat's my complaint, it _doesn't_ have much greater energy density, or more\nprecisely it's not usefully translated to momentum. The speed target in the\narticle is extremely low (\"62,600 mph\") -- only a small factor higher then\nwhat chemical rockets achieve, and comparable (as I mentioned) to nuclear\nthermal rockets. (It looks like they edited their article to mention NTRs.)\nThey have extremely energetic fuel, but they don't get any meaningful specific\nimpulse out of it. Maybe they don't easily extract momentum from high-energy\nradiation. Or maybe they lose too much mass to radiation damage or\nvaporization (\"ablative shield\") -- their mass consumption could be dominated\nby shielding, not fuel.\n\n _Their ultimate goal is to develop a nuclear fusion propulsion system by 2030\nthat can spirit spacecraft from Earth to Mars in around three months - about\ntwice as fast as researchers think they could go with a nuclear fission\nengine, another scheme that is being investigated but has not yet been built._\n\nR: WiseWeasel\nThe speed doesn't tell us the whole story. If a chemical rocket can only\npractically carry enough fuel to burn a couple times on a one-way trip to\nMars, while this has fuel to burn for maneuvers and a return journey, then it\nis a big advancement. We weren't given enough info, so it's a bit early to\ndiscount it as worthless.\n\nR: sitharus\nDilithium crystals weren't used in the impulse drive though, they're used to\ncatalyse the matter\/antimatter reaction through their crystal structure.\n\nAlso it seems to be fusion pulse propulsion. Pretty good for going fast.\n\nR: Hoff\nOriginal article:\n\n[http:\/\/txchnologist.com\/post\/32463368168\/channeling-star-\ntre...](http:\/\/txchnologist.com\/post\/32463368168\/channeling-star-trek-\nresearchers-to-begin-fusion)","meta":{"id":"4610311"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.791011236,"avg_line_length":48.671875,"char_rep_ratio":0.0669671603,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9316162467,"max_line_length":92,"num_words":614,"perplexity":740.9,"special_char_ratio":0.2356340289,"text_len":3115,"word_rep_ratio":0.0694214876},"simhash":4704799200992867589} {"text":"M: I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1B in revenue - saadalem\nhttps:\/\/www.thefxck.com\/interviews\/product-positioning-april-dunford\n\nR: gk1\nAgh.\n\nApril is terrific, and I agree that the right messaging and positioning can\nhave disproportionately high impacts on revenue (speaking from experience with\nNetlify, Gravitational, and others), but this click-bait title is a huge\ndisservice to April, other marketers, and founders who may be dissuaded from\ntrying new messaging and positioning.\n\nThe actual story is that the person (April) was asked by a manager to\ninterview a bunch of customers. When they brought back the data, the manager\n(or the team, collectively) acted on it by coming up with new product\npositioning.\n\nSome years later, after countless product iterations and _three_ acquisitions,\nthe product landed at a tech giant that does $30B\/year. The author speculates\nit was then responsible for $1B in revenue, though doesn't know for sure.\n\nSo...\n\nIt's fair to say \"I was there early and it was neat to solve these problems\nfor a DB that later ended up at SAP.\" But to imply that your work directly\nresulted to $1B in revenue--as this title does--is just nonsense. What the\nF*ck were the editors thinking.\n\nR: whack\nWhy so angry. The title reads:\n\n> _How I helped reposition a database product that went on to make $1 billion\n> in revenue_\n\nIt doesn't say _\" How I single handedly repositioned\"_ or even _\" How I\nrepositioned\"_. The author literally _helped_ in the process that led to\nrepositioning. By uncovering a key use-case for the product, which then became\nthe key feature and selling point of the updated product.\n\nAnd regarding the comment about $1B in revenue, is there any good reason not\nto give her the benefit of the doubt? She literally worked with the team and\nrubbed shoulders with them every day. A lot of non-public numbers get talked\nabout casually at the water cooler.\n\nThere seems to be a trend where people are hyper-obsessed with nitpicking\ntitles and calling out \"clickbait\". In this case, the article title is a\npretty great representation of the article's contents - or at least as great\nas you can get in one sentence. I personally enjoyed the article, and was\nhoping to read a discussion about the main points raised in the article, or\nsimilar stories others may have. Instead, the top comment is an angry rant\nnitpicking the article's title.\n\nR: smnrchrds\nTwo points:\n\n1\\. The title does not make huge claims directly, but strongly implies it.\nThat's how I read it when I was skimming the front page of HN. It's like\nwriting an article with the title \"I taught Michael Jordan basketball\" and\nthen explain how you showed him how to throw a ball for 30 minutes when he was\nthe 5 years old. Or the old maxim that if you are a cashier at McDonald's, you\ncan technically say that you \"process high-frequency cash transactions for\nmulti-billion dollar company on rotating supply-demand cycle\".\n\n2\\. I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only\npresume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says\nyou must quantify your achievements. You cannot just say I wrote the login\nsystem. You must somehow tie it to a business objective and achievement\n(increases sales by 7%, reduced support calls by 12%, etc). In reality,\nprojects are often team efforts and except for certain niches such as sales\nand consulting, there is rarely a clear correlation between an individual\nemployee's actions and business's results. I don't like writing pretending\nthere is and writing it, and I don't like reading it.\n\nR: noch\n> I don't like how the common advice for writing resume, which I can only\n> presume reflects what hiring managers want to see in someone's resume, says\n> you must quantify your achievements.\n\nIt's not about résumés but about how the skill of measuring\/estimating one's\nown effectiveness\/impact\/productivity is positively correlated with successful\noutcomes and rate of progress in life in general.\n\nRecall Mike Acton's principle questions[0] that a goal-orientated individual\nmust answer:\n\n>> \\- I can articulate precisely what problem I am trying to solve.\n\n>> \\- I have articulated precisely what problem I am trying to solve.\n\n>> \\- I have confirmed that someone else can articulate what problem I am\ntrying to solve.\n\n>> \\- I can articulate why my problem is important to solve.\n\n>> \\- _I can articulate how much my problem is worth solving._\n\n[0]:\n[https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/doiq8ovho1k9d4b\/fired.pptx?dl=0](https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/doiq8ovho1k9d4b\/fired.pptx?dl=0)\n\nR: bonoboTP\nOr more cynically, keep on doing your thing at your core, but do know that\npeople expect to hear stuff like that so consciously sit down and architect\nsome answers to those things. You can reinterpret and rewrite the story later,\nbut you need to have one. Also you don't have to get too attached to it and\nbelieve it too much. Think of it as your interface towards society. They\ncannot all have time to actually latch onto your inner person. You must\npresent to them all the handles you want to be grabbable by.\n\nR: andygcook\nApril Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome, is very good and worth reading if\nyou're a founder or marketer (or both.) We reverse engineered her workshop and\ndid it as a team at the end of last year for my startup. Was very much worth\nthe day.\n\nR: kristianc\nSecond this - it's a great book, and one of the few truly actionable guides to\ndoing positioning (a lot of them get pretty academic).\n\nAccessible to founders, and helps lay out the art and science of positioning,\nand give a methodology for actually doing it. Would recommend it also to\ntechnical people who are sceptical of marketing in general.\n\nR: richsherwood\nDo you have any similar books that you would recommend? I am always looking\nfor good marketing books but these days it's all some guru trying to sell\ntheir book so hard to identify the solid through the noise.\n\nR: kristianc\nJosh Kaufman's 'Your Personal MBA' is excellent - its rare that you have one\nbook which goes through all of targeting, segmentation, positioning, marketing\nplanning, and how it all sits together. Often books will focus on one small\npiece (like positioning, or value propositions) but without understanding how\nthese pieces sit into the wider whole it's hard to put them to really\neffective use.\n\nByron Sharp's How Brands Grow is also a great book from one of the world's\nleading marketing professors, and aims to lay out some iron laws about buying\nbehaviour. Byron is quite a spiky and contrarian personality, which makes the\nbook a lot of fun to read, but he also really knows his stuff.\n\nR: redis_mlc\nI'm going to give a lot of credit to April for this, and say the title is not\nclick-bait.\n\nLong before sqlite, or CouchBase, there was SQL Anywhere.\n\nAnd SQL Anywhere had something in the 90's that's still rare even today -\nhands-off built-in production-ready replication.\n\n(MySQL struggled for a decade to ship reliable replication after Yahoo paid\nthem $40k for the original statement-based replication, and Postgres still\ndoesn't have a great story out of the box.)\n\nIt's that multi-source production-ready replication that April shone a\nspotlight on that made Sybase worth $5.8 billion when it was sold to SAP.\n\n[https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/sap-acquires-sybase-\nfor-5-8-bi...](https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/sap-acquires-sybase-\nfor-5-8-billion-but-why\/)\n\nSo kudos to April for finding a huge diamond in the rough.\n\nI've been to lectures on SQL Anywhere, but I hope some day to use it in a\nproject. It's a killer embedded database.\n\nSource: DBA.\n\nR: icedchai\nI worked on some systems in the 90's that used Sybase SQL Server (AKA Adaptive\nServer Enterprise, not the Anywhere version.) Maybe \"Anywhere\" is okay, but\nyou'd be laughed at if you suggested using Sybase SQL for a project these\ndays. It's legacy tech.\n\nR: redis_mlc\n> Sybase SQL for a project these days. It's legacy tech.\n\n1) SQL Anywhere is not \"Sybase SQL.\" Different products, with SQL Anywhere\nbeing an embedded database that can run on a smartphone and replicate\nbidirectionally to other masters.\n\nNot many alternatives, even in 2020.\n\n2) Legacy tech - when you care about your data, accept nothing less.\n\nFun fact: the #1 most popular and regarded RDBMS for the past few years is\nconsidered to be MySQL, and it was the key technology that powered both Web\n1.0 and 2.0. If that's legacy, I want more legacy.\n\nSource: DBA.\n\nR: icedchai\nYes, I know they are different products.\n\nEarly on, MySQL was known for anything but caring about your data. I've been\nusing it since the 90's. Without \"strict\" mode, fields would be truncated and\ndata types would be silently converted. Never mind the <5.x days where MyISAM\nwas the default table type.\n\nR: wyck\nThis happened at the first start-up I worked at, 3 years in and almost\nbankrupt, one large customer kept using the product for a different reason (\nkinda hacking it all together), so we completely pivoted to survive with this\ncustomers needs and it became a huge success. That pivot was towards such a\nniche market that no one was really in the space, and no one outside it would\nhave really even know about it.\n\nR: achow\nCan you please give a link to the product page - assuming that you\ncommercialized it for others as well.\n\nR: wyck\nNo sorry, but I can tell you it provides video\/text\/meta data archiving for\nmany countries' parliaments and state legislatures.\n\nR: willart4food\nIt was the year 1999, remember that? I was working at a startup and we were\npreparing to IPO. I got a cold call from a - I kid you not - \"Color\nConsultant\"; I don't know why but I listened to her instead of hanging up, her\nspiel was:\n\n\"Do you know [Inser name of recent IPO]? Well they hired me and I changed the\ncolor of their corporate identity from Black on Green to Green on Black; well\n4 months later they IPO's raising $250 million at a $1+ billion-dollar\nvaluation\".\n\nWUT?\n\nHer implication was that she was taking credit for the successful IPO.\n\nSo, there it is.\n\nI am not saying that April's contribution was not useful, but... everything in\na long process is useful, but not 1 single contribution is responsible for the\nentire (or majority) of success. Except for grit!\n\nR: pkaye\nThis reminds me of an early job. It was my first job as a mechanical engineer.\nI was lucky enough to work in a R&D team on an entirely new product line.\nCrazy but rewarding work from months on end. Near completion, I was moved to a\nside team to help out with other smaller projects. At this point the marketing\nguy comes in to decide on the name and color of the machine. So they bring in\nthe consultants and in the end decided to stay with the name the engineers\ngave it and the same color as older machines (beige and black.) And the kicker\nwas at the launch party they forget to invite me but invited the marketing guy\nwho spent a couple days helping out. What a punch in the guts it was.\n\nR: abraae\nI've been in more than one meeting where, after lengthy discussion about\nproduct name, the group circled again back to the original (temporary) name\ncreated by the developers.\n\nAnd in that time it had somehow subtly become adopted by marketing as theirs\n:)\n\n(To be fair, picking names is hard, even if you are in marketing. I'm sure\nthere's plenty of science, but one of the best ways IMO is to just blather\nthem all around for a while and see what feels right\/sticks after a day or\ntwo).\n\nR: dblohm7\nI did my first internship working at Sybase on SQL Anywhere. Some great people\nworked at that office. Even some of the original Watcom guys were still there.\n\nFun fact: SQL Anywhere was still compiled using Watcom C++ long after the\nlatter was discontinued as a commercial product. Most of the people who worked\non the compiler still worked there, so they maintained it internally until SQL\nAnywhere finally switched over to MSVC.\n\nR: zaphirplane\n> MSVC\n\nI thought it ran on multiple operating systems\n\nR: dblohm7\nIt does. I'm referring to the Windows builds.\n\nR: astroalex\nCompletely unrelated to the content of the article, but I find it so annoying\nwhen interview responses are rendered in italics.\n\nFor contrast, here's a nicely typeset interview from the NYTimes:\n[https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/05\/25\/magazine\/hann...](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/05\/25\/magazine\/hannah-\ngadsby-interview.html)\n\nR: huangc10\nNot sure why you're downvoted. I completely agree. I couldn't get past the\nfirst answer because of the italics. Why would someone do that. I'm sure it's\nan interesting Q&A, but I just can't read it.\n\nR: tigerstripe\nI searched online - seems that when SAP bought Sybase, net revenues of Sybase\nwere around $1b - this was only one product in their portfolio.\n\nIs it true that the product was making $1b \/ year?\n\nR: jcampbell1\nIt looks like the product was conceived in 1992, Watcom was first acquired in\n1994 by Powersoft, which was bought by Sybase in 1995. SAP bought Sybase in\n2010.\n\nI'd bet the product has seen significant growth in the mobile \/ IoT era.\nApplications that work offline and synchronizes later are a pain to build.\nSeems like the kind of infrastructure that exists in every police car these\ndays.\n\nR: teleforce\nDespite the promise of Starlink of pervasive internet connection, there are\nalways blind spots where connection just do not exist or just pain\nintermittent.\n\nPersonally I think the future of desktop applications should be designed\naround the premise of localhost first and cloud second. The ability of the\nlocally host application to synchronize to the cloud or central repository\n(similar to rsync and Git) should be the default not the other way around (I\nam looking at you Microsoft Teams). Technically there should be no different\nbetween people working independently with their local copy of data to be\nmerged centrally later, and an offline application with an intermittent\ninternet connection.\n\nNow with readily available VPN tools like Wireguard becoming more popular the\nnotion of using web applications for distributed authoring and collaboration,\netc, is not necessary anymore. But if you insist to use web based technology\nthere is always protocol like webdav to the rescue. If you do not want either\nof them (VPN and webdav), the recently announced SMB over QUIC can be a very\ngood alternative solution [1].\n\n[1][https:\/\/redmondmag.com\/articles\/2020\/03\/02\/microsoft-smb-\nove...](https:\/\/redmondmag.com\/articles\/2020\/03\/02\/microsoft-smb-over-quic-to-\nwindows.aspx)\n\nR: nojito\nsurvivorship bias in full swing here.\n\nCan't find any followup successes after this product repositioning\n\nR: haltingproblem\nYes, more like narrative fallacy akin to sayin that one feature we added to a\nproduct was responsible for its success.\n\nR: andai\nTo read the article normally, open the web inspector and add\n\n \n \n em {\n font-style: normal;\n }\n\nR: yuvalr1\nI think that the talk here about taking the credit for the 1 billion is\nmissing the point. What I think she wanted to emphasize is that they almost\nshut down a product that made more than 1 billion, and that she took part in\nthe process that saved it.\n\nR: Traster\nI think a lot of the discussion in here is about how whoever wrote the title\nmanaged to destroy any chance of this interview getting any meaningful\ndiscussion. Which I think is appropriate, because it's a blog about marketing\nthat manages to market their blog about marketing with the kind of deftness I\nexpect from my 8 year old daughter's rendition of _Let it go_.\n\nR: haltingproblem\ntl;dr version - Desktop DB product. She called customers, found most were not\nusing, one was and was crazy about the product. Product \"repositioned\" around\nthat use case. End of story.\n\nI am sure there is a lot more to Dunford's book that this article reveals but\nIMHO product positioning is the wrong takeaway.\n\nProduct positioning, which sounds management consultancy speak like \"product\nstrategy\" is top-down. Implies near perfect knowledge of the marketplace,\ncustomer use cases, existing alternatives..... Anti-thetical, if not opposite,\nto the Lean Startup method. Lean implies you have incomplete information but\nyou map out the profitable niches by experimentation. You want to build that\nwhich is needed, not build and position it later.\n\nRecommend Robert Fitzpatrick's Mom test instead.\n[http:\/\/momtestbook.com\/](http:\/\/momtestbook.com\/). He also has an youtube\nchannel.\n\nR: hodgesrm\nSQL Anywhere was an amazing product. What's left out in the article is that it\nwas also really fast.\n\nI had an assignment in 1998 to benchmark it against another pocket database.\nSQL Anywhere was 100x faster. On the Excel throughput graphs I had to use\nright and left Y axes for each product. Otherwise product #2 was just a flat\nline on the X axis. ;-)\n\nR: listenallyall\nThis is a strange story. Did the company really believe there was a large\nmarket of people who \"had to manipulate some data and write structured\nqueries, but you didn't want to do it in Excel\"? What was the actual incentive\nor opportunity that the product was meant to fill? Did anyone acknowledge the\npopularity of dBase, FoxPro, FileMaker (with Access coming soon)? What was the\nproduct failing to do for the 90% of customers who bought it then abandoned\nit, surely some common themes must have arisen via all her cold calls -- and\nwhy didn't they address those issues? On the other hand, Oracle compatibility\nand sync surely weren't trivial to build, how were these features not already\na major part of the marketing strategy?\n\nR: blunte\nLesson: know your customers and their needs.\n\nR: sankalp221\nPlease add RSS to the site. Would've loved to subscribe via my Feedly reader.\n\nR: nstart\nThey do have RSS. Unfortunately it's truncated at \/interviews\/rss.xml\n\nR: suyash\nClick Bait Alert\n\nR: ykevinator\nThis is stupid\n\nR: abiogenesis\n> And we had almost killed the product!\n\nWell, one could argue that you _killed_ the product. You just reused the\nsource code for a new product. A product is much more than the software.","meta":{"id":"23311329"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7826496674,"avg_line_length":42.8503562945,"char_rep_ratio":0.0317786035,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.970120728,"max_line_length":129,"num_words":3745,"perplexity":596.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2251108647,"text_len":18040,"word_rep_ratio":0.0248929336},"simhash":176226516355844373} {"text":"M: Bitcoin Backlash: Back to the Drawing Board? - rbcgerard\nhttp:\/\/aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com\/2017\/10\/bitcoin-backlash-back-to-drawing-board.html\n\nR: tzakrajs\nOrthogonal, but related: Bitcoins are used in illegal arbitrage and they are\ntraceable to the current holder. Why shouldn't a Bitcoin holder worry that\ntheir local government won't compel them with laws to relinquish their\nBitcoin?","meta":{"id":"15799852"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.8112244898,"avg_line_length":49.0,"char_rep_ratio":0.0496083551,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9189311862,"max_line_length":87,"num_words":100,"perplexity":413.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2040816327,"text_len":392,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":9683108996546827386} {"text":"M: CompTIA - A malicious site? - eznet\nhttp:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/mattezell\/sets\/72157606012121192\/\nI 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...

http:\/\/blog.eznet.frih.net\/?p=88\n\nR: eznet\nI recently got my A+ certification so that I can nab a job to hold me over\nuntil I can get a programming gig (no one wants to hire a CS major for tech\nwork and no one wants a programmer with 'no' experience). I headed to\nCompTIA's website to download my certificate and was presented with a\nFirefox's \"Reported Attack Site\" warning. According to Google's Safe Browsing\nDiagnostic report, there are 2 pages being hosted at CompTIA that result in\nthe installation of Malicious content without users consent... Maybe the\nCompTIA organization needs to brush up on their security information...\n\n\n\nR: icey\nThis isn't really related to CompTIA, but in regards to nobody wanting to hire\na programmer with \"no\" experience.\n\nIf you're having a hard time getting an entry-level gig somewhere, I would\nsuggest building a code portfolio. It should contain code samples (in multiple\nlanguages, if you can) as well as some working program code.\n\nWeb development is going to be the easiest place to get your foot in the door,\nso maybe you should build a web page with some forms, some javascript, etc etc\netc.\n\nThere are entry level jobs out there, you just have to put yourself ahead of\neveryone else trying for them.\n\nR: eznet\nThanks for the pointers... Yea, I have recently acquired a rough understanding\nof Python and am picking up Django at the moment to hopefully increase my\nmarketability and show my ability to pick new skills...\n\nR: icey\nAs someone who does hiring of entry level people from time to time; making the\neffort and being enthusiastic has been the deal-sealer more than a few times.\n\nEmployers like to know if you're interested in the work or the paycheck. (At\nleast your primary interest - everyone wants to get paid lots and lots of\nmoney, but for the real geeks like us; reading YC on a Sunday, we're in it\nbecause we love to hack.)\n\nR: eznet\nCalled CompTIA today - at first they said I was mistaken... Then I sent links\nto my flickr account and to the various tech\/certification sites making the\n\"maybe they should increase their Security+\" crack. I was called back this\nafternoon and told that their tech dept is working with Google (?) to resolve\nthe issues...","meta":{"id":"237989"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7824282255,"avg_line_length":56.6862745098,"char_rep_ratio":0.0419847328,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9583657384,"max_line_length":576,"num_words":613,"perplexity":602.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2255274991,"text_len":2891,"word_rep_ratio":0.3112582781},"simhash":2026078569233655435} {"text":"M: Jsteg, a package for hiding data inside JPEG - aloknnikhil\nhttps:\/\/github.com\/lukechampine\/jsteg\n\nR: aloknnikhil\nMore about the JSTEG algorithm:\n[https:\/\/pdfs.semanticscholar.org\/8893\/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e4...](https:\/\/pdfs.semanticscholar.org\/8893\/ba76f2e358e80ef5bd93e42b9c454cfb7770.pdf)","meta":{"id":"20948496"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.819112628,"avg_line_length":48.8333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.1056338028,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.3321157694,"max_line_length":145,"num_words":87,"perplexity":5083.3,"special_char_ratio":0.3208191126,"text_len":293,"word_rep_ratio":0.2307692308},"simhash":12164150221924464679} {"text":"M: Sept. 23, 1846: Neptune Right Where They Said It Would Be - danso\nhttp:\/\/www.wired.com\/thisdayintech\/2011\/09\/0923neptune-discovered-where-predicted\/\n\nR: bdhe\nThe orbit of Neptune takes it ~ 164 yrs and 9 months and indeed, earlier this\nyear Neptune completed its first orbit around the sun since its discovery.\n\n[http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2011\/07\/12\/ha...](http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2011\/07\/12\/happy-\nbirthday-neptune\/)\n\nThis simultaneously puts into perspective how recent our knowledge of the\nsolar system is and how large the orbits of the outer planets are.\n\nR: hugh3\nNewtonian gravitation: it approximately works, bitches!","meta":{"id":"3031504"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7919762259,"avg_line_length":44.8666666667,"char_rep_ratio":0.0722891566,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8650056124,"max_line_length":130,"num_words":134,"perplexity":2022.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2630014859,"text_len":673,"word_rep_ratio":0.048},"simhash":2635661866078457574} {"text":"M: Airobotics has built a Transformer-like base station for its drones - JSeymourATL\nhttp:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/6\/21\/11989734\/watch-this-robotic-arm-swap-fresh-batteries-into-an-autonomous-drone\n\nR: sharemywin\nwhat would be neat is to have drones that can pass a package from one to the\nother while in flight using a battery charging base station like that. sorta\nof like an internet router for things.","meta":{"id":"12018353"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.8044554455,"avg_line_length":57.7142857143,"char_rep_ratio":0.0607594937,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9218220711,"max_line_length":111,"num_words":93,"perplexity":1069.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2326732673,"text_len":404,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":9763333789239876947} {"text":"M: Review my startup - Plura Processing: Web Traffic = Grid Computer - westside1506\nhttp:\/\/www.pluraprocessing.com\/games\n\nR: ynniv\nYou aren't the first company to try grid computing on personal computers, so\nonce people stop talking about how cool the idea of grid computing is or how\nto protect the web surfers rights, they'll start asking the hard questions.\nLike, how you're going to make money.\n\nHow do your paying customers feel about their data being strewn about the\nInternet? How does your processing interfere with the game that the user is\nplaying? What kind of problems have you earmarked as being particularly\nparallelizable like this (ie what is your marketing plan?), and how usable is\nyour API?\n\nAt the end of the day, is going through the effort to rewrite a program to\nwork on distributed Java applets going to produce substantially more\nprocessing for the customer dollar than a $150 headless dual-core 1gz board\nwith a gig of RAM running C++? You say that you can provide a $1500\/yr savings\nover EC2, but this is only for applications that are \"embarrassingly\nparallel\", and will certainly require hiring a programmer to write code to run\nin tiny chunks on lots of clients. Will this cost less than $1,500? Worse, it\nwill be money up front instead of spread out over a year.\n\nYou could say that the system is best leveraged by clients looking for a lot\nof compute power on a budget, but those are the people most likely to build\ntheir own grid. When you can get linux running on a dual-core 2.0gz for $200 \/\nnode, spending that money every year on an untested platform that will require\nsubstantial development work and vendor tie in, your service is going to be a\ntough sell.\n\nYou will be the only people interested in writing code for this platform, so\nplease repost when you know which algorithm you can run to gross $10 million a\nyear.\n\nR: westside1506\nThese are all very good questions and we certainly know that we're not the\nfirst company to do grid computing on PCs. :)\n\nFirst, $1500\/node-year (or even $200\/node-year) comes to a very substantial\namount of money for our target customers. These customers use 10000s of nodes\nand buy high-end computers and pay a ton for network, power, cooling, and\nsupport personnel.\n\nMy background is in HPC and I've faced and solved these issues many times. We\nhave a multi-pronged approach to using the compute power: 1) We are definitely\nwriting our own apps on top of Plura. It's a great source of compute power and\nwe have lots of ways we want to use it ourselves. 2) We have a short list of\nvery high impact embarrassingly parallel customers that are evaluating Plura.\nWe intend to help our customers absorb the porting cost associated with Plura.\n3) We are open to letting students and universities use Plura's excess\ncapacity for free. We've had several nibbles at this already.\n\nThat being said, we realize Plura is not for everyone. It is for a subset of\nthe class of embarrassingly parallel applications out there.\n\nR: cliffy\nAre there ample warnings to, or explicit agreement with the user that his\/her\nCPU time is going to be used by non-game functions? This seems suspiciously\nlike theft of services.\n\nWhen I run any process I expect it to restrict all its actions to servicing\ndirect functions related to that process. Plura is expressly unrelated to ANY\nprocess\/game it is bundled with.\n\nI would personally be annoyed\/angry that a program I was using, web-based or\nnot, was using my computer's resources to make money without my knowledge. In\nfact, you're not just using my computer's resources, you're also drawing more\npower from my electrical grid, because a processor doing more work consumes\nmore electricity. That's something that directly costs me, the end user, more\nmoney. So I would absolutely classify this as theft of service unless the user\nexplicitly agrees to have Plura running in the background.\n\nIf there is ample warning to the user, I am fine with this, and would consider\nit a good idea. Otherwise, it feels really sleazy and wrong.\n\nR: danielh\nI can see your point, but wouldn't be any ad-driven website\/game be considered\ntheft of service?\n\nA ton of flash ads might have a bigger impact on your system performance (and\non your wallet, if your ISP charges by traffic)\n\nR: wmf\nAt least ads are visible. A zero-pixel Java applet seems like it's over the\nline IMO.\n\nR: westside1506\nHey guys, we just launched our private beta for Plura.\n\nI submitted our game page as the HN link, but www.pluraprocessing.com has more\ngeneral information.\n\nTake a look and tell me what you think. We've been paying our alpha affiliates\nfor months now and are ready to take on a much larger pool of affiliates in\nour beta. \"Affiliates\" are the people that put Plura on their site, browser\ngame, or other content (even download apps) and get paid for their user time.\n\nR: jmatt\nIt seems like there is potential for a much bigger market than games.\nStreaming video and audio... fantasy sport applets, etc. Is plura just\nstarting with games since they provide what I suspect are ideal conditions\n(already using CPU and running long enough to for Plura to actually do some\nwork).\n\nR: LogicHoleFlaw\nThere is a big search in the gaming industry for new sources of revenue.\nDevelopment costs are skyrocketing but income is not. Retail and subscription\nare the big two, with online advertisements growing in popularity. If\nharnessing players' compute time enables a gaming service provider to offer a\nbetter product at a lower price, this could be a win for the gamer, the game\ncompany, and the ultimate computing consumer.\n\nR: jmatt\nSounds like you read one of my other threads ~\n\n\nAnd, yes I totally agree.\n\nR: bigthboy\nI think this is an innovative approach to getting more people involved with\ngrid computing for major computations and a clever way to market it in\ngeneral. However, I agree with some other people here, there has got to be\nsome sort of licensing issue. As much as the whole \"you clicked okay to the\nTOS, you gave us permission.\" is a tank in court, it still seems to risky. If\nnothing else, it would risk users no longer using the games from the providers\nusing that service if they found out that their computer slowed down at all\nduring playing that game because it was doing things it wasn't supposed to.\nNot that I would likely have a problem with it, but lets face it...the general\npublic is slap happy with lawsuits.\n\nAlso privacy issues in the entire concept. I didn't notice any (note: I didn't\ngo out of my way to find one either) way for the end users to directly go and\nsee exactly what kind of materials were being processed and what data, if any,\nwas being collected from the user's machine. That might also be a source of\ntrouble in the long run.\n\nR: westside1506\nInteresting comments. First, let me explain that the client side runs entirely\nwithin memory; the hard drive is not touched at all. All processing or\ncomputation is done within the Java sandbox. In other words, you are not\ngiving us unfettered access. In fact, it's quite the opposite. :) We follow\neverything listed at , whether we're running an\napplet from the browser or from within a desktop application.\n\nSecond, although we encourage disclosure, we leave the disclosure up to the\nindividual sites and some have chosen to use some form of opt-out or opt-in.\nThat being said, we also provide a TOS that they can use for disclosure if\nthey choose. If the disclosure is done in a positive way, the users should see\nthe benefits of getting more game features for free.\n\nR: bigthboy\nNice rebuttal, I wish you the best of luck, it seems like something with a\ngood amount of potential. I especially liked your perspective on because the\ngaming services do this and you pay them for it, they can implement better\nfeatures for their own users.\n\nR: Hexstream\nOh well, most Flash stuff already runs my CPU to 100% even when it's clear it\nshouldn't. (100% CPU to display a static \"Game Paused\" screen? Give me a\nbreak!).\n\n\\---\n\n\"After receiving the WU, the user's computer will perform the computation. The\ngame developer can control how much of the user's CPU is devoted to\ncomputation by setting the % usage (either statically or dynamically).\"\n\nHow do you accurately control the amount of CPU a program takes in user-space?\nCan you really have a process that will restrict itself to using no more than\n25% CPU? (Also, 25% of a fast CPU is more than 25% of a slow one)\n\nR: westside1506\nThe apps that we're running right now control it pretty well using a sneaky\ntrick. We can't get much computer information from java in an unsigned app, so\nwe measure how long each sub-part of a work unit has taken and sleep an\nappropriate amount of time. For example, if we are trying to use 25% and a\nsub-work takes 100ms, we sleep for 300ms. This effectively gives us 25% usage\nof the available CPU. It will be no higher than that anyway - it might be\nlower if something else is using substantial CPU time.\n\nAs far as the fast versus slow nodes, we normalize everything based on the\naverage computer that completes work each day. So a fast computer may earn 2X\nor more what a slow computer earns.\n\nR: smoody\nVery clever.\n\nR: ced\n_Monthly payment = $2.60 times # avg. simultaneous users times CPU %_\n\nIt sounds dishonest to summarize this as 2.60$ per user per month. It is 2.60$\nper user, _if that particurlar user plays non-stop for 30 days straight,\nassuming 100% CPU_\n\nIn other words, you get 1 cent per 3 hours of play time. To get 100$ per\nmonth, you need 10000 users, playing one hour every week or so. (hopefully, my\nmath and interpretation is correct)\n\nR: westside1506\nWe put it in terms of average simultaneous users because that's the way a lot\nof affiliates think. They say, we have an average of N people playing the game\nat any given time.\n\nFor websites and other affiliate types, we say we pay $15\/MWU (million work\nunits) where a work unit is 15 seconds on an average node (the system-wide\nPlura average node performance).\n\nR: ced\nFair enough. Good luck.\n\nR: Harkins\nWhat's with the payment being per-user per-month? Why not just straight per-\nwork unit? Isn't a user who plays the game 20h\/m (or at least leaves their\nbrowser window open that long) more valuable than the one who only plays for\nfive minutes?\n\nR: randomwalker\nIt is in fact per work unit. See the \"How it works\" page. It's $2.60 per month\nper _concurrent_ user, which is the same thing.\n\nR: olefoo\nThis does strike me as verging on unethical; you (and your affiliates) need to\nmake very clear statements to end users that you will be using their computers\nto do other processing while they are playing.\n\nThat said this is a pretty cool model, and I'm sure that most people would be\nhappy to let a few of their CPU cycles pay for the game they are playing.\n\nR: huhtenberg\nI guess it's time to null-route pluraprocessing.com.\n\nIn other words I really really really don't like hidden or undisclosed\nfunctionality in whatever the software I am running. Especially if it is\nexplicitly _designed_ to utilize my otherwise idle resources.\n\nFew years back my friends and I were talking about putting a DES brute-forcing\nclient into a flash applet and then sticking it on a high-traffic site. It\nnever went anywhere beyond a discussion though exactly because of the ethical\nissues involved.\n\nR: tectonic\nRun a distributed GA. Plura becomes self aware on August 29th, 2010.\n\nR: poppysan\nI applaud your effort. Great idea! Personally, I can see this widely used, on\nboth the user and customer side. Man, why didn't I think of that! hahahha.\n\nR: shaunxcode\nThis is an awesome idea. I have actually been working on a game that I have\nbeen looking for a platform\/revenue model for - this is perfect!\n\nR: westside1506\nGreat! Fill out the form on the website and we'll get you signed up in the\nprivate beta.\n\nR: sireat\nThis could be huge!\n\n \n \n There is no question there will be plenty of affiliates\/CPU time (re)sellers.\n The real question is whether there is big enough demand from those who need grid computing. \n\nYou had a quote from some quant guy, I suppose sciences is another market, not\nsure about others.\n\nR: westside1506\nThanks. We are really focused on this as well. :)\n\nHere's a blog post we wrote comparing us to Amazon's EC2 for HPC apps:\n[http:\/\/pluraprocessing.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/23\/comparing-\npl...](http:\/\/pluraprocessing.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/23\/comparing-plura-to-\namazons-ec2-for-high-performance-computing\/). Our numbers should be very\ncompelling for certain types of applications compared to the cost of building\nyour own clusters or using an EC2-type service.\n\nThere are definitely certain applications where this form of grid or cloud\ncomputing (I hate to use such a popular buzzword) will enable apps that\nweren't possible before. Previous attempts at grid computing for HPC depended\nmore on philanthropy instead of having a scalable business model that allowed\nthe addition of 100s and 1000s of nodes at a time.\n\nR: musiciangames\n1) I think this is a really smart idea, and hope it works well for you. It\nseems like a win for everybody, as long as the end user knows what's\nhappening.\n\n2) You maybe should look at the phrase on savings in your paper:\n\n\"if your application is suitable for Plura, you can save 7X on your compute\ncosts\".\n\nI take this to mean you save 7 times your compute costs, where it should be\nsix sevenths of the cost. There's a difference, and your customers will\nunderstand it. Sorry if I've just misunderstood.\n\nR: johnrob\nIs it possible to use a \"purchased\" CPU to make internet (http) requests?\n\nR: westside1506\nYes and no. We have created a signed applet capability in the Plura\ninfrastructure, but we have not pushed this out yet. In the future, if an\naffiliate chooses, he can request work units for a signed applet that would\nallow them to make http requests. We will probably pay more to affiliates that\ndo this and will certainly require user opt-in. Our normal applet is unsigned\nand cannot make http requests due to the java sandbox.\n\nWe have one company (80legs.com) that is developing a web crawling solution\nusing Plura. We are using a different model to acquire the nodes for this.\n\nR: kowlaga\nFolding@Home is of April 2009 sustaining over 8.1 PFLOPS [1], the first\ncomputing project of any kind to cross the four petaFLOPS milestone. This\nlevel of performance is primarily enabled by the cumulative effort of a vast\narray of PlayStation 3 and powerful GPU units.[2] The entire BOINC averages\nover 1.5 PFLOPS as of March 15, 2009[3]. SETI@Home computes data averages more\nthan 528 TFLOPS[4] Einstein@Home is crunching more than 150 TFLOPS[5]\n\nR: knarf\nIt's an interesting idea but it kind feels like cpu robbery to me..\n\nR: ideamonk\n[http:\/\/ideamonk.blogspot.com\/2007\/06\/ajax-based-\nsupercomputi...](http:\/\/ideamonk.blogspot.com\/2007\/06\/ajax-based-\nsupercomputing.html)\n\nnice indeed ;P\n\nR: kowlaga\ni like what you are doing, i just don't understand the commericail opp when\nthese guys do it at the univ. for free?Folding@Home is of April 2009\nsustaining over 8.1 PFLOPS [1], the first computing project of any kind to\ncross the four petaFLOPS milestone. This level of performance is primarily\nenabled by the cumulative effort of a vast array of PlayStation 3 and powerful\nGPU units.[2] The entire BOINC averages over 1.5 PFLOPS as of March 15,\n2009[3]. SETI@Home computes data averages more than 528 TFLOPS[4]\nEinstein@Home is crunching more than 150 TFLOPS[5]\n\nR: rrhyne\nWould this work in a JS+HTML AIR app? The Plura for websites iframe code seems\nlike it would work if you got the AIR sandbox requirements right.\n\nAlso, what is the average CPU percentage your developers run on their clients\nsystems?\n\nR: westside1506\nNo, we tried to do this, but we can't run Plura in Adobe AIR. AIR uses Webkit\nfor its browser, but Adobe has removed support for browser plugins, including\nJava.\n\nR: rrhyne\nThat's too bad, this sounds like a great monetization scheme that's close to\npainless for the user.\n\nR: westside1506\nYep, we'd love to find a way for it to work. If you have any ideas, let us\nknow. :)\n\nR: trefn\nReally cool concept. One cosmetic issue - when you mouse over the links on the\nright side, the underline makes the text below look really cramped. A few more\npixels of padding would be nice.\n\nR: dpapathanasiou\nI'm curious about where the money is coming from, i.e., what kinds of\ncomputational problems are you solving for your clients, and what kinds of\nclients have hired you?\n\nR: westside1506\nHere's an example: [http:\/\/pluraprocessing.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/23\/example-\nappl...](http:\/\/pluraprocessing.wordpress.com\/2008\/10\/23\/example-applications-\nusing-plura\/)\n\nR: seemann\nHey nice concept! May be personal, but I don't like the color-scheme. Game\ndevelopers work for and with love, so probably they want some colors with love\n;)\n\nR: mseebach\nYeeess.. that one game out there that's not about killing, maiming, conquering\nand dismembering various adversaries, I think it might be about love.\n\nR: kirubakaran\nIt is probably a silly thing to say... but I was working on something like\nthis some time ago. Now I wish I had followed through with it.\n\nR: chime\nDoes it have to be a game? What if I have a site or two that get good traffic\nbut not a lot of page reloads because it's all Ajaxy?\n\nR: westside1506\nNo, it does not have to be a game. We're just focusing our initial affiliate\nmarketing on games because of the higher engagement.\n\nThe type of sites you mention will work well too. Send us a note through the\nContact Us page on the website and we can help you figure out how much you\ncould earn.\n\nR: moonpolysoft\nOne of the issues that I see with this approach is that for most applications\nthe scaling issue is data scaling rather than CPU. Here's why I think you will\nrun into scaling issues:\n\nLets assume you have a gigabit line out of your colo. Lets also assume that\nyour average game client is on a cable modem with a 1megabit connection. That\ngives you capabilities to stream work units to 1024 clients simultaneously as\nan upper limit. In keeping with an average 1 megabit client, it will take 3\nminutes to stream down a 20 megabyte work unit, maxing their connection. 1024\nconcurrent clients * 20 megabytes = 20 gigabytes. So you're looking at 3\nminutes of overhead transfer out, and likely another 3 minutes or so of\noverhead transfer of results back from the client. So that's approximately 6\nminutes per gigabyte just in transmission overhead. And it gets worse as\nclients are added to the system, since you would need scale out your\ndatacenter just to handle coordinating all of the clients. Which begs the\nquestion: why aren't all those servers just doing the dang work already?\n\nThat kind of overhead limits this technique's usefulness only to applications\nwhich have relatively high computational complexity and relatively small\namounts of data. And those applications do exist, however they're pretty far\nfrom the day to day needs of most companies. Sun found this out the hard way\nwith their Sun Grid project, which last time I checked was a failure. Sorry, I\nreally wish you the best of luck.\n\nR: westside1506\nYep, we quite aware of all of these issues. My background is in HPC and my\nprevious company was a successful exit to a major oilfield services firm. My\nsoftware and its descendants are used on nearly 100,000 CPUs.\n\nWe are definitely focused on the applications that have extremely high\ncompute\/io ratios. In general, these boil down to either high compute problems\nwith no real data or problems where the data can be shared between multiple\nwork units. An example of the latter is stock market analysis - the nodes\ndownload stock data for a few stocks and stay busy running different\ncombinations for a very long time.\n\nR: moonpolysoft\nSo that brings up a good issue, namely the proprietary nature of the code\nyou're distributing. For instance, stock market analysis firms zealously guard\ntheir algorithms. Let's say I'm a potential customer: How will you protect my\nbytecode from being stolen by competitors when it has to be run on unmanaged\nmachines in the wild?\n\nR: westside1506\nGood question. There really isn't anything that stops someone from reading and\ntrying to interpret the byte code.\n\nThere is some protection in the fact that you never know what type of work\nunit is happening at a given time. The algorithms are typically each snippets\nof code instead of full applications, so someone would need to piece together\nquite a lot of information.\n\nOf course, if someone is particularly concerned, they can run a jar\nobfuscator.","meta":{"id":"347359"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7847874504,"avg_line_length":45.4933920705,"char_rep_ratio":0.0335190119,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9544123411,"max_line_length":98,"num_words":4267,"perplexity":686.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2297859979,"text_len":20654,"word_rep_ratio":0.0446218882},"simhash":14054132058547335401} {"text":"M: The cure for ebola - lisper\nhttp:\/\/blog.rongarret.info\/2014\/12\/the-cure-for-ebola.html\n\nR: simonblack\nIf it sounds too-good-to-be-true, it usually is.\n\n\"I have this magical substance, but I have to keep it secret\".\n\nIf the drug works, you don't need to have tests to show _why_ it works, you\njust need to _show_ it works. (We still don't exactly know why general\nanaesthetics work, but that doesn't stop us from using them every day.)\n\nR: lisper\nThe causal theory adds plausibility that it might work, otherwise there would\nbe no reason to believe that the experiment is even worth doing.","meta":{"id":"8743275"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7614213198,"avg_line_length":39.4,"char_rep_ratio":0.0481099656,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9398728609,"max_line_length":77,"num_words":138,"perplexity":447.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2487309645,"text_len":591,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1440004205389275517} {"text":"M: Ask HN: What software can I use, that runs on Mac, to write a book? - iDemonix\nI'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'm aware I could use MarkDown, and I could use LeanPub - but I want a physical book.

Can anyone recommend some software they've used to write a book?\n\nR: 100ideas\nTry the gitbook editor by\n[https:\/\/www.gitbook.com\/](https:\/\/www.gitbook.com\/), then export as pdf.\n\nYou can write in markdown or asciidoc, revision content in git\/github, export\nto pdf or ebook, and develop your layout with a custom theme\n([https:\/\/toolchain.gitbook.com\/themes\/](https:\/\/toolchain.gitbook.com\/themes\/)).\n\nAsciidoc + custom theme is probably feature-rich enough for you to accomplish\nwhatever content organization + layout you want.\n\nGitbook has some kind of subscription model if you use their site, but the\neditor is free I believe.\n\nR: 100ideas\nO'Reilly Media has shared some of the toolchain they've developed internally\nto help their book authors create content.\n\n[https:\/\/github.com\/oreillymedia\/atlas_book_skeleton](https:\/\/github.com\/oreillymedia\/atlas_book_skeleton)\n\n[https:\/\/github.com\/oreillymedia\/orm_book_samples](https:\/\/github.com\/oreillymedia\/orm_book_samples)\n\nIn particular, you might be interested in the asciidoc_only folder in that\nsecond repo. Potentially you could author your book with the same asciidoc\nstructure... then see if O'Reilly wants to publish it.\n\nR: oddlyaromatic\nI've heard good things about Scrivener from several authors.","meta":{"id":"13981767"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7799495586,"avg_line_length":51.1612903226,"char_rep_ratio":0.0830691186,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8590571284,"max_line_length":311,"num_words":364,"perplexity":974.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2276166456,"text_len":1586,"word_rep_ratio":0.0563380282},"simhash":3770741420431050996} {"text":"M: President Obama - Will Seek Approval of Congress for Attacking Syria - loupeabody\nhttp:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/live\/president-obama-speaks-syria\n\nR: venomsnake\nMy take on that - he has decided on inaction but needs the congress to save\nhim from his \"chemical weapons are a red line\" remark from an year ago.\n\nI am not sure if there is any salvage of the Middle East situation right now -\nthere are generational grudges and hatreds to unfold there. I don't think that\nthere are good moves on that board. The pessimist in me just wonders whether\nthe firewall should be on Bulgaria\/Greece border or on the Bosphorus.\n\nDisclaimer - I live in Bulgaria for now.\n\nR: ankitml\nThis man had never deserved Nobel Peace, never.\n\nWorst decision of committee till date after deciding not to give it to MK\nGandhi.\n\nR: grandalf\nThe more moralistic and self-righteous the justification for war, the more\nlikely it is to be a dishonest reason...\n\nR: awakeasleep\nSort of off topic, but I have never seen streaming video with such a high\nresolution and framerate. How the hell are they doing this.\n\nR: denzil_correa\nIs it possible that Youtube provides the backbone infrastructure?\n\n[https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/whitehouse](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/whitehouse)\n\nR: ExpiredLink\nDisappointment, thy name is Obama.\n\nR: kersif\nJust concluded. Missed it.\n\nR: loupeabody\nTitle updated to reflect the major takeaway.\n\nObama said that he and his various advisors feel that Syria must be attacked\nin response to their usage of chemical weapons. He specified that there would\nbe no infantry sent to Syria, just a long distance strike of \"limited duration\nand scope\". Congress will hold a vote on whether or not to approve the attack.\nThe President has the authority to order the strike, with or without the\napproval of Congress.\n\n*edit: see reply\n\nR: thenmar\nHe didn't say he needed congress to approve, just that he was going to have\ncongress vote. He also emphasized that he does have the authority to strike\nwithout congress's approval.\n\nR: loupeabody\nYeah, you're right. I'll update my comment","meta":{"id":"6307444"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7881274131,"avg_line_length":35.724137931,"char_rep_ratio":0.0445952496,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9444926977,"max_line_length":84,"num_words":443,"perplexity":434.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2118725869,"text_len":2072,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1183061425607642659} {"text":"M: Google Open Sources AMP via OpenJS Foundation - gumby\nhttps:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2019\/10\/14\/googles_amp_openjs\/\n\nR: usr1106\nTitle is misleading. I believe AMP has always been open source. Google just\ntries breathe new life into AMP by trying to give it a more neutral image by\nprofiting from OpenJS and Linux Foundation labels. And Linux Foundation does\nnot say no to money from Google, although most opinions outside of Google seem\nto be very negative on AMP.","meta":{"id":"21340038"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7982832618,"avg_line_length":51.7777777778,"char_rep_ratio":0.0765864333,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9244653583,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":101,"perplexity":1154.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2274678112,"text_len":466,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":13340641394937367010} {"text":"M: San Francisco officials follow Mountain View with bid to ban free lunch - parvenu74\nhttps:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2018\/08\/01\/san-francisco-officials-follow-mountain-view-with-bid-to-ban-free-lunch-for-techies\/\n\nR: erkose\nI like this trend. Companies were given huge tax breaks to set up shop in SF.\nThe least they can do is allow the local economy to flourish.","meta":{"id":"17667031"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7922437673,"avg_line_length":60.1666666667,"char_rep_ratio":0.0511363636,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9264109731,"max_line_length":123,"num_words":80,"perplexity":739.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2354570637,"text_len":361,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":17505817553565575277} {"text":"M: If You Can't Express Yourself By Email, You're Not Worthy of Anyone's Time - pieterhg\nhttps:\/\/levels.io\/email-cuts-through-bullshit\/\n\nR: jqm\nGood article expressing something I have felt for a long time.\n\nEmailing asking to set up a call to do something email could have handled\nbetter drives me nuts.\n\nR: rhizome\nIt's an incontrovertible fact that more people are adept at voice\ncommunication than textual.\n\nR: mariuolo\nI wonder if they will also draft specs or ($DEITY forbid) contracts over a\nSkype call.\n\nR: uptown\nShouldn't this be published as an email?\n\nR: adyus\nI can't believe I'm saying this at 28, but that's a really young-person point\nof view.\n\nYou have to understand most of us younglings grew up with the Internet and\nhave adopted text as the de facto mode of relaying information. Sadly, most of\nthe business world is made up of people who've learned to communicate (in\ntheir formative years) before the Internet was a thing.\n\nThese business people cannot easily change their main mode of communication,\nand will have a hard time adopting email the way a newer generation has.\n\nThe generation following you (and me) has already moved past email, to instant\nmessaging.\n\nR: rabbyte\nThe finer point to me is that sometimes there are perfectly valid reasons you\nwouldn't want to express yourself by email or online and I don't think that\nhas anything to do with age. We have evolved to understand face-to-face\ncommunication. It's an effective way to relay a thought. People can waste your\ntime through any media.\n\nR: greenyoda\n_\" People can waste your time through any media.\"_\n\nThat's true, but it's much easier to cut your losses with an e-mail than with\na face to face conversation. If, after reading the first couple of sentences\nof an e-mail, you decide that the sender is an idiot and reading his message\nis a waste of time, you can just hit delete (or reply, \"Sorry, not\ninterested\") and move on to the next thing. However, if you've agreed to meet\nwith somebody, and thirty seconds into the meeting you've come to the same\nconclusion, most people would be too polite to ruthlessly tell the person to\ntheir face that the meeting is pointless, and then get up and leave. (Also, if\nthe meeting is not in your own office, you'll have expended time just to get\nthere.) This is even true of a phone call: most people are too polite to hang\nup on someone, except maybe a telemarketer.\n\nIf someone wants me to make time to meet with them in person, they should be\nable to clearly express the purpose of the meeting in a few lines of text\nbeforehand.","meta":{"id":"7729099"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7815912637,"avg_line_length":42.7333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.043444227,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9763729572,"max_line_length":88,"num_words":545,"perplexity":308.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2191887676,"text_len":2564,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":3150645128340438348} {"text":"M: Ask HN: Redditers want a product, can we help connect the dots? - zupa-hu\nHey HN-ers!

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.

Is there a site where users can vote on ideas they need? I think I've seen one posted here some time ago but can't find it. Any ideas? Maybe we could help connect the dots..

https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/hbt3aq/i_wish_someone_would_create_a_real_replacement/

ps - I'm in no way benefiting from this\n\nR: mtmail\nThere's a \"Ask HN: What would you pay $10 per month for?\" (or $100 or similar)\nquestion about once per week, usually few if any responses. Maybe the question\nis too broad or has simply been asked too often. The most traction recently\nwas \"Ask HN: Looking for side project ideas\"\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23290536](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23290536)\n\nPicasa equivalent: \"Ask HN: Personal photo library recommendations? Open\nsource, browser-based\"\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=19756110](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=19756110)\nmight have hints.\n\nR: zupa-hu\nThanks, great recommendations!\n\nR: Alupis\nPicasa's equivalent is Google Photos... Google folded it into their Photos\nservice long ago, and it's quite nice (if you don't mind it being a Google\nservice).\n\nLots of AI, automatic categorization, face recognition of who's in photos,\nlocation tagging, album generation, \"This Day Last Year\" (my favorite\nfeature), slideshows, etc.\n\nR: zupa-hu\nUnfortunately, Google Photos is the source of their grief. Thanks though!","meta":{"id":"23578955"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.764436821,"avg_line_length":60.3103448276,"char_rep_ratio":0.0798850575,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8987295032,"max_line_length":604,"num_words":396,"perplexity":1543.9,"special_char_ratio":0.265294454,"text_len":1749,"word_rep_ratio":0.0723514212},"simhash":13630687247637293863} {"text":"M: The backdoor file named man.cy in Linux mint - cujanovic\nhttps:\/\/gist.github.com\/Oweoqi\/31239851e5b84dbba894\n\nR: elcano\nWhere I this file supposed to be located in an installed system, if I wanted\nto check?","meta":{"id":"11146257"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7894736842,"avg_line_length":34.8333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.07,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9200060964,"max_line_length":76,"num_words":52,"perplexity":2534.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2775119617,"text_len":209,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1502592599417815202} {"text":"M: Why Cognitive Enhancement Is in Your Future (and Your Past) - llambda\nhttp:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/print\/2012\/02\/why-cognitive-enhancement-is-in-your-future-and-your-past\/252566\/\n\nR: tokenadult\nPrevious submission of canonical URL (no comments):\n\n","meta":{"id":"3570844"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7894736842,"avg_line_length":43.4285714286,"char_rep_ratio":0.0610169492,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.6583843231,"max_line_length":117,"num_words":69,"perplexity":1304.7,"special_char_ratio":0.2730263158,"text_len":304,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":12807944557229420405} {"text":"M: Ask YC: Hacker Homes - catch404\n\nWe'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.\n\nR: catch404\nUntil I move I've only really had a bedroom to work with: standing desk with\nmedia pc, stereo amp on bedside table and a few lamps on the floor so far!\nLooking for ideas for the next place.\n\nR: Mz\nNothing exciting. I own almost no furniture. What little furniture I do own is\nmostly to hold a flat screen TV, Wii, laptop and some CD's and game\ncartridges.\n\nWe have our priorities straight. :-)\n\nR: bemmu\nWe don't even have that. Instead of a TV, we have a projector that is on the\nsame desk with my computer, and just project on the wall. For music I have\nSpotify, for games there is Steam, for books I have my Bebook. Instead of a\nsofa we have bean bags that can be stacked when not in use, although it has\nturned out not to be such a comfortable solution. Still, always looking for\nways to get rid of more things.\n\nR: Mz\nBean bags are way more furniture than I have. I bet you also have a bed (or at\nleast a sleeping bag) too. Um, too much stuff for me. (No, I'm not neurotic.\nI'm highly motivated. :-D )\n\nR: bemmu\nI guess we could switch to Japanese-style stoveaway futons, but I like sleep\nway too much to make any kind of compromises there :)","meta":{"id":"887577"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7582733813,"avg_line_length":43.4375,"char_rep_ratio":0.037653874,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9639961123,"max_line_length":193,"num_words":312,"perplexity":614.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2460431655,"text_len":1390,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":8402748355729291932} {"text":"M: The Four Finns Who Pioneered the Graphical Browser - bobbud\nhttp:\/\/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\/\n\nR: wallflower\nTwo years later...\n\nWWW-Talk Marc Andreessen () Thu, 25 Feb 93 21:09:02 -0800\n\n\"I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag:\n\nIMG\n\nRequired argument is SRC=\"url\".\n\nThis names a bitmap or pixmap file for the browser to attempt to pull over the\nnetwork and interpret as an image, to be embedded in the text at the point of\nthe tag's occurrence.\"\n\n[http:\/\/1997.webhistory.org\/www.lists\/www-\ntalk.1993q1\/0182.ht...](http:\/\/1997.webhistory.org\/www.lists\/www-\ntalk.1993q1\/0182.html)\n\nR: henning\nAnd thus was born the beginnings of Internet porn.\n\nR: Ras_\nRecent past of Finnish sci&tech includes a bewildering amount of similar cases\nof wasted potential.\n\nTelecommunication is the worst area. Its mega-successes, such as SMS can be\ndescribed as lucky mistakes, while several very potent innovations have gone\nto waste in state telco's (TeliaSonera) and cell manufacturers.\n\nIf a product reached the market, it was often too premature, such as 1999\nBenefon Esc GPS-phone (5 years premature), or its launch marketing failed\nbadly.\n\nI believe Finland produces second most patents per capita. But lack of funding\n(esp. in 1-5M range) and lack of marketing\/commercialization skills destroys\nthe ample potential. Finns are generally seen as a \"country of engineers\".\nThis might be the key to understanding why recent extraordinary successes like\nSkype (Sweden\/Estonia) have appeared in neighboring countries. Finland has\nsucceeded lately in open source sw (Linux, MySQL), not much else.\n\nI would place a lot of the blaim of not identifying these candidates to the\nFinnish VC industry. It has been dominated by lazy state controlled\ninstitutions. They haven't been greedy(?) enough to invest in big plays. Only\nsafe bets or dumping money to major players such as Nokia.\n\nR: lacker\nAnother story that shows it isn't the idea, it's the execution. As they say in\nthe article, it was tough to get any funding in Finland at the time, but\nthat's probably faint consolation now. Who knows what might have happened if\nthey had actually released it and kept working on it in their spare time.\n\nR: zandorg\nAcademics in Europe have an addiction to grants\/funding (and that's as much\ntheir fuel as coffee). I've met a few academic people who were astonished that\nI'd work on software for free, for sale or glory.\n\nThere's also a perception that you need a PhD to commercialise your ideas and\nrun a business.\n\nFootnote: I'm from the UK.","meta":{"id":"501404"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7827560241,"avg_line_length":41.5,"char_rep_ratio":0.0377786173,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9479520321,"max_line_length":166,"num_words":561,"perplexity":668.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2379518072,"text_len":2656,"word_rep_ratio":0.0072463768},"simhash":6662451214614914464} {"text":"M: Ask HN: What is your advise to move up the ladder? Any anecdotes? - gisnotgoogle\nHi HN,

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.

In 2013 , I actually joined startup to move up but our startup got acquired by big software company.

My question is - How do I move up ?

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.

To move up I finished Stanford APM certificate in 2013 before joining said startup. However, that didn't help in getting management position.

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.

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 / 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 ).

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.

My goal is both money and position in new company. I don't care about size of the company.\nI 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 ?

Any tips ?

How did you move up in large organization ?

Thank you !!\n\nR: mmanulis\nI'm curious if you discussed your desire to move into a management position\nwith your supervisor. If you did discuss it, what, if any, feedback did you\nget?\n\nBased on your statements in your question, the frustration is obvious, so is a\nsense of entitlement, like you've earned this right but it's not happening for\nyou.\n\nI am sorry that you are feeling like that, it's a terrible place to be and it\ncan drive you to make some really stupid decisions. Hopefully, in simply\nasking this here has helped you relieve some of the stress, if not, maybe the\nfollowing will be of some help.\n\nThis is not a direct answer, but should give you some ideas and thoughts to\nponder, plus a couple of next steps.\n\nHere are some of the themes I'm seeing in your question:\n\n* Too much stuff to learn when it comes to coding\n\n* Want to spend more time on personal projects instead of on technology treadmill\n\n* Feel like you can complete coding tasks quickly\n\nLet's address these themes:\n\nI'm going to treat leadership \/ management interchangeably here, even though\nthere are some serious differences between the two roles. For the purposes of\nbeing a line manager, they can be treated interchangeably.\n\nMoving into a leadership role, whether you're looking for a tech lead or a\nmanagement role, does not stop the first bullet point above. If anything, you\nhave to be aware of all of the new trends enough to make a judgement call on\nit's validity, maturity and use-cases. You need to know this because you'll\nhave your reports coming to you on a regular basis wanting to use some of\nthese techniques \/ tools \/ languages \/ etc. How do you say no without\noffending your report? On the flip side, you'll have your manager(s) coming to\nyou asking if something is a good idea. How do you explain the tradeoffs if\nyou're a one-trick pony?\n\nTo the second bullet: you have, significantly, more time as an individual\ncontributor than as a manager. As a manager, you have to make sure everyone is\non target with what they need to do, run 1-1s to make sure the people are\nsatisfied \/ happy and are not planning to resign shortly, report up the\nprogress, report down the needs of the bosses. You are, perpetually, stuck\nbetween trying to communicate up, down and across the organization, while\nsitting in a lot of meetings (assuming a large org) and being on the hook to\nget more stuff done. This is doubly so if you are new to management. The hard\ntruth is that the role doesn't matter, you have to know where to draw the\nline(s) and have a life. It's a constant tradeoff, do you pick up a new hobby\nor go out with your friends or learn the latest framework \/ language \/\nalgorithm \/ etc.\n\nYour ability to code or get engineering tasks done quickly has very little to\ndo with your ability to lead \/ manage. You need to learn new skills, mostly\naround communication, relationship building, messaging, ownership, delegation,\naccountability of others, etc. Just because you are a good developer does not\nmean you'll be a good manager. I would argue that most developers should never\nbe allowed to lead as the skills and roles are so different, they are not\ntransferrable. This means that you're starting from scratch, again. By the\nway, as you get promoted, you're constantly starting from scratch, unless you\nare, already, doing some of the things your manager is doing.\n\nNone of this directly answers your question, as there is no direct answer or\nhow-to guide, it is very industry- and organization-specific.\n\nBeing a manager at a startup is very very different from being a manager at a\nlarge corporation. Moving into that role is, also, a different process. In\nsome ways, moving into a leadership role at a startup has more to do with raw\nleadership skills then anything else; you see a problem, you own solving it -\nrinse and repeat, boom you're a leader now. By the way, replace __boom__ with\nmonths, potentially.\n\nIn a larger company, it's more involved as managers are expensive, both in\nterms of salary and training \/ knowledge acquisition. Imagine the disruption\nto the team, the delivery flow, unofficial communication channels (aka social\nglue), etc. when a manager leaves.\n\nTo be perfectly blunt, if you have ask the question, you need to really think\nabout what it means to be a manager \/ leader. Look at how your role models\ncame to be leaders, what paths did they take? Based on what you stated, your\ngoals are position and money, that will make you a terrible manager, if you\ndon't care about the people. You'll have a hard time retaining people or\nproducing results in any high-performing organization as you won't be able to\nmotivate anyone based on those drivers.\n\nAnother thought, position is meaningless in a high-quality tech environment.\nPower does not come, just, from the title, it comes from the group differing\nto you because of respect. Having worked at places where the position\/title\nalone denoted power, it's a crappy place to be.\n\nMy suggestion, as to the next steps, is to:\n\n* 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\n\n* 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.\n\n* 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.\n\nAlso, read Managing Humans by Michael Lopp. It will give you a good idea about\nwhat it's like to manage engineers.","meta":{"id":"10824704"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7810453478,"avg_line_length":76.3490566038,"char_rep_ratio":0.0320385948,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9740409255,"max_line_length":1770,"num_words":1581,"perplexity":509.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2229086865,"text_len":8093,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":11571739621241191614} {"text":"M: Ask HN: should you have users verify accounts through e-mail confirmation? - palidanx\n\nI'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.

So the workflow would be\n+ go to website\n+ create account\n+ click e-mail confirmation\n+ login\n\nR: ColinWright\nMultiple times I've had someone complete a registration, only to find that\nthey'd mistyped their own email address. Twice. Without their subsequent\n\"Where's my confirmation?\" email I might not have known, and they might never\nhave completed their registration successfully.\n\nIt's a pain, but it's now reasonably familiar, and it serves a specific\npurpose - confirming the email address.\n\nIf you can get accurate details from people without requiring the explicit\ntest of the explicit function then I'd be interested.\n\nR: skrish\nThat is right. But you need to reduce friction in signup to allow user to\nexplore app.\n\nSo a better way could be Signup => Allow them in but say that email\nconfirmation is required for next login => Send email confirmation => Allow\nlogin only with confirmation.\n\nR: 27182818284\nI think people reasonably expect it these days. I'm often comforted by it\nbecause generally a site with it also has the correct lost password recoveries\nby email, etc.\n\nR: ScottWhigham\nI love how this is downvoted b\/c someone disagreed. Silly.\n\nR: a12b\nIt depends of your needs. If you plan to use their email (newsletters,\npassword recovering, ...), then that's very valuable to have a verified email.\nBut if you don't, I think you could go further by removing the email field\nfrom the signup form.\n\nR: koopajah\nYou also could allow the user to create an account and access the website\ndirectly but remind him that he needs to verify its email address. Of course\nit depends on your website and what you are offering, but allowing user to\naccess your application as fast as possible should be a good idea.\n\nTake the example of twitter which allows you to create an account and start\nusing it without the verification. But it reminds you to verify the email\neverytime you log in.\n\nR: pseudorocker\nWe've found it's easiest to just ask for email adress twice in the initial\nform (and try to prevent pasting for the second field). Works pretty darn\nwell. Email confirmation is a hassle to build and often for users to act on,\nfrom our experience.\n\nR: pasbesoin\nWhen a company does _not_ use or correctly use email confirmation [1], and I\nstart subsequently receiving emails regarding an account I never set up, I\nconsider that a form of abuse on the part of the company.\n\nPlease confirm the email addresses of your users.\n\n\\--\n\n[1] And I've had more than one major player boggle the latter.","meta":{"id":"5098360"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7844983702,"avg_line_length":40.6029411765,"char_rep_ratio":0.0574127907,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9591324925,"max_line_length":193,"num_words":563,"perplexity":807.5,"special_char_ratio":0.220934444,"text_len":2761,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":16172638083310393654} {"text":"M: Batch process creating new users - 5partan\nhttp:\/\/tuxradar.com\/answers\/492\n\nR: memset\nThis article cites using `pwcrypt` to return the password, and that doesn't\nseem to be easily available (at least, not in Ubuntu 10.04.) Is there an\nalternative command-line interface to the crypt() function?\n\nR: 5partan\nyes there is:\n\nperl -e 'print crypt(\"password\", \"salt\")\n\nso you would do something like:\n\nuseradd -d \/ -g users -p $(perl -e'print crypt(\"foo\", \"aa\")') -M -N foo\n\nworking example for the site:\n\ncat newusers | while read u p n\n\ndo\n\nuseradd --comment \"$n\" --password $(python -c 'import crypt; import os; print\ncrypt.crypt(os.environ.get(\"p\", \"\"),\"salt\")') --create-home $u\n\ndone\n\nCouldn't get it work with perl:)\n\nR: 5partan\nCorrect Version:\n\ncat newusers | while read u p n\n\ndo\n\nexport p\n\nuseradd --comment \"$n\" --password $(python -c 'import crypt; import os; print\ncrypt.crypt(os.environ.get(\"p\", \"\"),\"salt\")') --create-home $u\n\ndone\n\nR: memset\nHey, this worked! Thank you so much :)\n\nR: 5partan\nYou are welcome :)","meta":{"id":"3128359"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.6968810916,"avg_line_length":20.9387755102,"char_rep_ratio":0.0609636185,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.5991066098,"max_line_length":77,"num_words":270,"perplexity":1798.2,"special_char_ratio":0.3138401559,"text_len":1026,"word_rep_ratio":0.2681992337},"simhash":12575027264266543466} {"text":"M: Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo - cbcowans\nhttps:\/\/blog.ycombinator.com\/ask-a-female-engineer-thoughts-on-the-google-memo\/\n\nR: hedgew\nMany of the more reasonable criticisms of the memo say that it wasn't written\nwell enough; it could've been more considerate, it should have used better\nlanguage, or better presentation. In this particular link, Scott Alexander is\nused as an example of better writing, and he certainly is one of the best and\nmost persuasive modern writers I've found. However, I can not imagine ever\nmatching his talent and output, even if I practiced for years to try and catch\nup.\n\nI do not think that anyone's ability to write should disbar them from\ndiscussion. We can not expect perfection from others. Instead we should try to\nunderstand them as human beings, and interpret them with generosity and\nkindness.\n\nR: ryanbrunner\nI think one thing that struck me from the linked article was the point that\nthe memo wasn't structured to invite discussion. It wasn't \"let's have a\nchat\", it was \"here's an evidence bomb of how you're all wrong\".\n\nI think advancing points is fine, but if you're after productive discussion\nrather than an adversarial debate, you need to proactively invite discussion.\nAnd if an adversarial debate was what he was after, that does strike me as\ninappropriate work communication.\n\nR: nicolashahn\nThen the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence\nbomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit of\nclaiming it's \"too confrontational,\" \"poorly written,\" \"naive,\" or whatever\nother secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully misrepresenting\nhis claims, which is definitely a bigger problem). Plenty of far more\naggressive articles and essays have been written from the opposite side that\nhave not been criticized in the same way.\n\nAnd for the record, I did not get any aggressive tone from his paper. I\nthought he was as polite as he needed to be and made the necessary caveats. I\nthink many people were just so unprepared to hear any argument from an\nopposing viewpoint that they read into it what they wanted to.\n\nR: Blackthorn\n> Then the correct way to handle it is to drop another refutational evidence\n> bomb attacking his primary points instead of picking the low hanging fruit\n> of claiming it's \"too confrontational,\" \"poorly written,\" \"naive,\" or\n> whatever other secondary problems exist (this is aside from wilfully\n> misrepresenting his claims, which is definitely a bigger problem).\n\nThis was addressed in the article. This burden has fallen on women since they\nwere teenagers. To expect them to do it yet again, to have to defend\nthemselves at work this time, is ridiculous.\n\nR: nicolashahn\nI'm not talking about a woman having to prove her technical ability to her\nmale coworkers at work because of their prejudices. I know that that's\nbullshit and I'm sorry they have to do so.\n\nI'm talking about handling what Damore claimed in an intellectually honest\nway. You can't dismiss his points just because you're tired of talking about\nthem (or what you think are the same points you've always been talking about,\nbut I think Damore's comments on each gender's preference and pressures for\npicking careers had something worth discussing). What he said had at least\nsome spark of originality and insight, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten\nnearly the attention it did. Consider, would we be talking about the memo if\nit were about how he thought Sundar Pichai was a lizard man?\n\nThose who disagreed with Damore already won the battle. They kicked him out of\nGoogle and doubled down on their diversity initiatives\/echo chamber. We should\nbe able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally without falling\nback on gendered reasons at this point at least.\n\nR: camgunz\n> We should be able to talk about his arguments honestly and rationally\n> without falling back on gendered reasons at this point at least.\n\nWe are and lots of people are doing so, but another point made in this post is\nthat the workplace isn't the venue for this.\n\nR: nicolashahn\nI'm still making up my mind on this one, but for the sake of argument, I'll\ndisagree with you.\n\nThe workplace _was_ the venue for this, because 'this' was evidence was that\nGoogle(his workplace)'s diversity initiatives and censorship were harming the\ncompany. He attempted to go through the proper channels (HR) as discussed in\nanother part of the comment section for this very article.\n\nCompletely ignored by HR, and after some watercooler discussion in which he\nreceived confirmation that he was not the only one to have such thoughts, he\ndecided to organize his thoughts into a memo, which from his perspective,\nintroduced ideas that could explain the gender employment gap at Google and\nhelp make the company better by erasing the notion of being a 'diversity hire'\namong other things.\n\nWhat it did _not_ do was claim that his female coworkers were inferior. I feel\nthe need to reiterate that because that seems to be the disinformation that\nmany take home with them and use for their arguments against him. With it,\nthey vilified and ousted him.\n\nGoing back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly harmless\nclaim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not as\ninterested in it) has created such outrage. I blame this mainly on Gizmodo,\nand those who piggybacked their original article (that blatantly lied about\nwhat he wrote and presented his memo which they had quietly edited). Some\ncredit also needs to go to whoever leaked the memo, which Damore probably did\nnot mean to leave the relatively small group of people he originally\nintroduced it to, at least at that point in time.\n\nReally, what he presented and how he presented it were not very controversial.\nIt easily could have been addressed internally by HR, or discussed within the\ncompany by its employees without the dishonesty and witch hunting. My point\nis, what he presented should have been acceptable in the way he did it\nespecially given Google's claims of free speech and the historical precedent\nof memos like these, but dishonesty and close-mindedness distorted it until it\nlooked like he was calling for repealing women's suffrage.\n\nR: naasking\n> Going back and reading it now, it's hard to believe such a seemingly\n> harmless claim (women aren't as well represented in tech because they're not\n> as interested in it) has created such outrage\n\nI think the larger problem is that this is an overstatement. Women might not\nbe interested in joining the _current tech culture_ , but that doesn't mean\nthey aren't interested in tech to a larger extent than the current numbers\nsuggest.\n\nPart of the disconnect is that these initiatives are aimed at changing the\nculture to be more attractive to women, and the people who really like the\nculture don't see the need.\n\nCertainly the current tech culture is effective and fairly productive, but I\ncertainly don't know that it will be more, equally, or less productive with\nthese culture changes.\n\nR: delroth\nIf this is a \"current tech culture\" problem, how do you explain the fact that\nthis is a trend shared across most of the engineering professions? Example:\n[http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/women\/womens-\nbusiness\/11692996\/Wo...](http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/women\/womens-\nbusiness\/11692996\/Women-In-Engineering-Day-Gender-gap-in-male-dominated-\nindustry-falls.html)\n\nI don't think you can claim that \"tech\" and e.g. civil engineering have much\nin common in terms of culture, but they still share the lack of men\/women\nparity.\n\nR: nostrebored\nYet somehow, programming is considered a woman's job throughout vast swathes\nof India. China is much closer to parity in engineering as well.\n\nYou're ignoring that girls are socialized to think they're bad at math,\nscience, etc. Boys are told the opposite and are pushed in this direction. I\ncertainly was. My parents were drilling me on math by age five.\n\nR: Const-me\nIn all developed countries, only 10-25% of engineers are female. An American\nsociety in is very different from that of Australia, Sweden, Greece or\nGermany.\n\nNot sure why, but I know one possible explanation.\n\nIn developing countries, people are pressured by their basic needs. An\nengineering job generally pays well. People in such countries are less likely\nto do what they want and more likely to do what pays well, so gender ratio in\nengineering is close to 50\/50.\n\nIn developed countries, people are guaranteed to survive even without a\nprofession or job. Less financial pressure, more freedom of choice, less women\nin engineering.\n\nR: deepGem\nWell doesn't this sort of support Damore's hypothesis ? Some of the smartest\ngirls I know went into marketing, purely because they just loved that field.\nSomehow to them sitting in an office in front of a computer all day didn't\nseem that appealing.\n\nIs it safe to infer that, in th developed world, given a career choice women\nhave a propensity to not choose tech ?\n\nR: the_af\nOn the contrary, it sort of refutes Damore's hypothesis: the difference is not\ninherent but merely societal, because we observe that, when encouraged, women\ncan succeed at engineering as much as men.\n\nIn other words, if true, we should strive to understand _why_ fewer women\nchoose tech in developed countries and fix it, not automatically assume it's\nbecause they are inherently less interested.\n\nR: randomdata\nSucceeding at engineering is not the same as having the desire to do\nengineering. If it takes encouragement to push women into the field, that says\nthe desire is not there.\n\nI am going to go further and suggest that software engineering is just not\nthat desirable of a career, _no matter who you are_. Given that compensation\nis a function of supply and demand, and this career is fairly well\ncompensated, the lack of people - both male and female - entering the career\npath would suggest is not the top choice of _anyone_.\n\nWhat appears to be happening is that some men are willing to put up with an\nundesirable career because of the higher than average compensation, while\nwomen are less wooed by those monetary factors.\n\nThe only 'fix' here is to drive home the importance of doing unhappy careers\nfor big money towards the female population. But do we really want to do that?\nThat does not really seem like a great goal. There is more to life than money.\n\nR: the_af\nAll of that enters the realm of the highly subjective, with some parts I may\nagree with and other I don't. I, for example, definitely didn't enter this\nfield because of the money. Other people I know did. I certainly cannot\ngeneralize to large groups of people. I disagree with your observation about\n\"some men\" and \"women\", or rather, I'd say \"what happens is that _some_ men\nare willing (and some, like me, are not) and _some_ women aren't\", and\nfurthermore, I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things. I\nhappen to think working long hours is crap, and something that needs to change\n(and the reason I find startups unattractive).\n\nWhat matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as\nsuccessful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This\nautomatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of _biological_ (or\ninherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was\nfundamentally about.\n\nR: randomdata\n_> I, for example, definitely didn't enter this field because of the money._\n\nBut we're talking about the population at large, not the tiny group of 'geeks'\nwho revel in the tech environment. There are always outliers.\n\nIf the general population - both men and women - wanted to do this kind of\nwork, they would be falling all over each other to do it, just as they do in\ncareers that are desirable. Instead, you see businesses falling over the few\npeople who are willing to do it. That is not a sign of an attractive career\npath. Quite the opposite.\n\nAgain, not even _men_ want to do this type of work. This is not even a gender\nissue at the heart of it.\n\n _> I'd question whether this is a desirable state of things._\n\nBut can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the\ngeneral population? Programming is simply an awful time that most people\nwouldn't wish upon their worst enemy. It is as simple as that. We can go\naround and try and blame things like culture, but at the end of the day the\nwork that has to be done sucks.\n\nYes, some people are wired strangely and happen to like it. Pick anything you\nfind distasteful and I can find you at least one person who loves it. That's\nthe nature of having 7 billion people and all of their random mutations. That\ndoes not mean the masses have any interest whatsoever.\n\n _> What matters here is that, with the right incentives, women can be as\nsuccessful as men in this field. Note that the converse is also true. This\nautomatically destroys the notion that there is some kind of biological (or\ninherent, whatever) impediment for women, which is what the memo was\nfundamentally about._\n\nYour overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed. The fact that\nwomen can be as successful as men in the field does not mean that there is not\nsome biological reason to not want to do the job.\n\nR: the_af\nYou're mixing highly subjective aspects that I don't find worthwhile to debate\nhere (\"the job sucks\") and that I disagree with. No, the job doesn't suck more\nthan other career choices. Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing\njobs?\n\n> _But can you fundamentally change the job so that it is desirable to the\n> general population?_\n\nBut it's not the general population we're talking about; that's a straw man.\nWe just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to women\nand which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice. And yes, not\nexcluding a segment of the population just because of irrelevant biological\ntraits is desirable and worth the effort.\n\n> _Your overall point may be true, but your logic seems flawed_\n\nTo me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and when\nshown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim \"of course, they do\nit for the money in third-world countries!\" as if this somehow _explained_\nbiological differences. Money is not a biological factor, it's a societal one!\nThe logical disconnect is so pronounced that it _must_ point to an emotional\nblind spot.\n\nR: randomdata\n_> No, the job doesn't suck more than other career choices._\n\nThen why are men and women alike rejecting the field? Men less so, perhaps,\nbut neither gender are jumping at the chance to have the job. Not even the\nwell above average compensation that attempts to attract them to the industry.\n\n _> Sorry you feel that way, maybe consider changing jobs?_\n\nThis is not my opinion, this is what the data shows. I'm glad you do not feel\nthat the professional is awful. I personally do not feel that way either, but\nwe cannot use our biases to believe that everyone feels the same way. Be very\ncareful of your biases.\n\n _> We just must strive to create a work environment that's not hostile to\nwomen and which doesn't discriminate against them based on prejudice._\n\nIn order to even think about whether the workplace is hostile to women, we\nfirst have to determine why _neither_ gender is interested in the profession.\nAgain, this is not my opinion. This is what the data is telling us.\n\n _> To me it's logically flawed to claim there's a biological impediment and\nwhen shown cases where women are successful, to suddenly claim \"of course,\nthey do it for the money in third-world countries!\" as if this somehow\nexplained biological differences._\n\nLet me be clear: I am not saying it is explained by biological differences. I\nam saying that your explanation does nothing to exclude biological\ndifferences. Women proving success in the tech workplace does nothing to\ndiscount a biological aspect, and it is flawed logic to believe otherwise.\n\nR: the_af\n> _neither gender is interested in the profession_\n\nThis is false.\n\n> _but we cannot use our biases_\n\nExactly. Please re-examine what you're saying in light of your own advice.\n\nR: belorn\nA common criticism by each four of the female engineers is how the memo\neffected them in their job and how they had to prove themselves afterward.\nThis strongly reminds me of about a case a year ago when a kindergarten\nteacher was tried and charged for rape against several children. After a lot\nof media attention, many male teachers all over the nation reported to\nconstantly having prove to parents and fellow female teachers that just\nbecause they are male and chosen that profession it doesn't mean that they are\ncriminals or are higher risk employees. Not only that, but many school\nimplemented procedures that limited what male teacher were allowed to do,\nfurthering pushing a second class status on them. Many also received threats\nof violence, and since both the left, the feminist movement, and the right\nfanned the flame against male teachers, many just gave up and left the\nprofession. If memory is right, one news article ended with \"I just wish I\ncould go to work and do my job, but that is no longer possible\".\n\nI would very much like to see a discussion on how to solve this kind of\nproblem.\n\nR: azernik\nThe feminist movement as a whole is very much _against_ gendered norms about\nwho should and shouldn't be a kindergarten teacher. Which feminist movements\ndid you see fanning these particular flames?\n\nR: ryanx435\n3rd wave, whose actions betray their true goals: men as second class citizens.\n\nR: dang\nPlease keep ideological talking points off HN. If you have a substantive point\nto make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.\n\nR: rublev\nThe onus is on you to disprove them, they made no irrational claims. If you\nhave some problem with any of their concepts, say so.\n\nYour attack on whether his comment is 'thoughtful' or not is weak.\n\nR: igravious\nIf you could point out to us here: [https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Third-\nwave_feminism](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Third-wave_feminism) where it\nsays that all so-called or self-described third wave feminists see men as\nsecond class citizens that would be super helpful in this debate.\n\nR: dang\nPlease don't take HN threads further down generic ideological rabbit holes, or\nrather black holes. Nothing good comes of them and the thread never returns.\n\nR: igravious\nUnderstood. No problem.\n\nR: rpiguy\nI really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive\ndialog is happening now that people have calmed down.\n\nOf all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the\ncomment that Damore did the company harm.\n\nHe posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked\nthis internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore.\nIn fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was\nleaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm,\nyou should look at the person who took an internal company document and made\nit public.\n\nThere are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for\noffending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that\nis a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending\nstrongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.\n\nR: tedivm\nLets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never\nleaked.\n\nThe document _still_ did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article-\n\n> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my\n> colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired\n> because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? How do I prove\n> myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional\n> burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it's also a\n> pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: \"Will the team\/manager\/VC I\n> talk with today realize I'm qualified, or will they be making stereotypical\n> assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my\n> job?\" To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it's\n> an unequal burden my male coworkers don't have to deal with every day.\n\nThat quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused\nby it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who\nwork at a company don't feel they are welcome there.\n\nR: mizzack\nFrom your quote:\n\n> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my\n> colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired\n> because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?\n\nYour perspective is that this is harmful because the memo caused self doubt,\nso the memo was the problem.\n\nFrom Damore's perspective, if there were no quota\/diversity hiring programs at\nthat place of employment, the woman in question would have no reason to\nsuspect the latter. The hiring policy was the problem.\n\nTotally different interpretations of cause and effect.\n\nR: onion2k\nI've met engineers who have expressed a belief that women are often hired if\nthe recruiter found them attractive, and that those women shouldn't have been\nhired. While those engineers are able to find employment there will always be\nplaces where women don't feel welcome, even with diversity programs in place.\nIt is simply the case that some engineers are grossly sexist and will _always_\nthink a woman has been hired for some other reason beside technical merit if\nthey have an opportunity to. If Damore can't see that then he hasn't enough\nexperience to be talking about hiring.\n\nR: e9\nGoogle doesn't operate that way, they has strict hiring policies and\nprocedures. Recruiter or anyone else has no way to influence hiring without\ndoing something shady (doing selective interview like what Damore claimed they\nwere doing).\n\nR: tedivm\nDamore literally said they were \"lowering the bar\". You can't have it both\nways here.\n\nR: Cogito\nHe said \"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for \"diversity\"\ncandidates by decreasing the false negative rate\".\n\nHe did not say they were lowering the bar, but that by rejecting\n(proportionally) a greater number of qualified male candidates than qualified\nfemale candidates, the bar is effectively lowered.\n\nIf what he says is true, that there is a higher false negative rate for men,\nit's hard to imagine a system where the bar isn't effectively lowered.\n\nThe one possibility I saw argued elsewhere is that you could take all\nqualified men, and randomly reject some of them. At that point, you would\nexpect the bar to be level.\n\nIf however you rejected qualified men in a non-random way, which is more\nplausible, the effect would be to change the bar.\n\nI hadn't ever really thought about this kind of selection effect on the\nstatistics of populations, so would love to hear if this sounds wrong or what\nthe real expected outcome should be.\n\nR: jdoliner\n> He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar.\n> Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more\n> resources on searching for candidates in minority groups rather than\n> lowering the bar for these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to\n> those of us at Google who have to overcome the bias that we were hired based\n> other factors beside our skills.\n\nThis to me is the most interesting question that hasn't been answered about\nthe memo. There seems to still be two camps, those who believe Google does not\nlower the bar for women and those who do. They can't both be right and I'd\nimagine if we could take a look at Google's hiring practices it wouldn't be\ntoo hard to tell which is which. Of course, we can't Google keeps its hiring\npractices, at least the ones relating to diversity very hush hush. This was\nactually Damore's impetus for writing the memo, he attended a diversity summit\nat Google where he learned about his employer's hiring practices and also\nobserved that this summit was, unlike other meetings at Google, not recorded\nfor later viewing. Damore's conclusion was that the hiring processes were\nunethical and likely illegal, although afaik he's yet to say specifically what\nit was that he observed. Still I don't think it's very reasonable to say that\nDamore has caused harm with this misrepresentation unless you can show\nconclusively that it is indeed a misrepresentation, and so far I haven't seen\nanything conclusive that shows that.\n\nR: pj_mukh\nHe specifically mentions in an interview that minority interviewees get\nassigned to a second interviewer if one interviewer doesn't like them in the\nfirst round. He saw this as a 'second chance' when the committee might just be\ncontrolling for interviewer biases. Though, the fact that he jumped to this\n'lowering the bar' line of thinking shows to me that he was fishing for a\nconclusion.\n\nR: jdoliner\n> Though, the fact that he jumped to this 'lowering the bar' line of thinking\n> shows to me that he was fishing for a conclusion.\n\nLet's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about\nDamore's state of mind.\n\nI'd ask a few questions about this interview practice though.\n\n1) Is this the entirety of Google's diversity practices in hiring? I'd be\nsurprised if it is. So even if this isn't lowering the bar it still doesn't\nprove conclusively that's not what they're doing. Again I'd like to see a more\ncomplete accounting of what exactly it is they do. However, I'm certainly not\nsaying that you need to provide this in order to have a legitimate argument,\nyou don't have access to this information any more than I do.\n\n2) This practice seems to have a somewhat narrow view of what a interviewer\nbias looks like. In particular it only tries to eliminate bias in the case of\na minority being rejected. What would happen if we were to instead attempt to\ndetect interviewers who were prone to bias by randomly giving rejected\ncandidates second interviews and seeing which interviewers wound up frequently\ndisagreeing with their peers? If the assumption that bias only effects\nminority candidates is true this would have much the same effect.\n\n3) What if it wasn't a second chance but 100 chances? I.e. if you're a\nminority you get to interview for Google 100 times and if any of those say yes\nyour in. White people only get 1 shot. Unless you think Google's false\npositive rate is 0, this would have to lower the bar wouldn't it?\n\nR: pj_mukh\n\"Let's focus on things we can actually know rather than speculating about\nDamore's state of mind.\"\n\nSo let us extend him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't extend the hiring\ncommittee? How about we extend the benefit of the doubt to everybody involved,\nwhich would result in him never writing this memo and second guessing the\nhiring process.\n\nThe rest of your points seem to be just a whole lot of speculation, which you\njust told me not to do. The article shouldn't have been written without\nclarification on these points and conclusive evidence. Maybe go talk to the\nhiring committee about their motives\/state of mind first Mr. Damore?\n\nR: jdoliner\nWe're not extending Damore any benefits by not speculating about his state of\nmind. We're just avoiding discussing a topic about which we can't hope to\nlearn the truth and which isn't necessary to understand whether or not\nGoogle's hiring processes do indeed lower the bar.\n\nMy \"points\" are indeed speculative, that's why they were presented as\nquestions. I don't know the truth and it's impossible for us to talk non-\nspeculatively about Google's hiring process because we simply don't have that\ninformation.\n\nThe original memo (not article, this distinction matters) did indeed cite a\ngreat deal of evidence, you may or may not consider it conclusive, I found it\nquite compelling. But I think it's important to remember that the memo itself\nwas a request for clarification, posted to an internal message board for\nskeptics in the hopes that somebody would be able to tell him why he's wrong.\n\nR: pj_mukh\nIt was a lot of scientific studies he cited (since contradicted by meta\nstudies), nothing about Google's processes. Another commenter on this thread\nseems to suggest that almost all interviewers can get second shots, which\n(albeit anecdotally) makes his argument weaker (showing restraint here in not\ncalling him an outright liar)\n\nI know with my (again anecdotal) experience with large SV firms, if Google had\nthese kinds of holes in their hiring process they would be standing alone in\nthe valley. Also, \"lowering the bar\" is not consistent with their absolute\nglobal market dominance.\n\nHe also claims in the same interview that he had already done his fact and\nopinion finding, and incorporated feedback into the memo by the time he posted\nit[1], so I don't know how much of this was a \"request for clarification\". He\neven had action items.\n\n[1]\n[https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=s4WoeOkj2Ng)\n\nR: jdoliner\nI've yet to see a meta study which contradicts those studies. Would be\ninterested to see one. I've seen studies that say in X% of studies about\ndifferences between men and women the differences found are negligible. That's\nnot a contradiction though, and it's not really meaningful at all. The % of\nstudies which find negligible differences can be arbitrarily inflated because\nit's simple to find as many axis along which there are no gender differences\nas you want. It doesn't matter how many you find, even if it's .000001% of\nstudies that find a difference if those differences happen to be particularly\nimportant that still means there's a meaningful difference. Scott Alexander\nhas a more in depth explanation of this here:\n[http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2017\/08\/07\/contra-grant-on-\nexagger...](http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2017\/08\/07\/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-\ndifferences\/)\n\nIf all interviewees have the same access to second interviews then I agree\nthat it does nothing to lower the bar. In general if a policy doesn't concern\nitself with the identity of the candidate I don't see a way that it could be\nlowering the bar. However, my understanding, based on previous comments, is\nthat diversity interviewees get a second chance immediately while the others\nmust wait 12 months before they get a second chance. If that's the case then\nDamore's argument (and mine) stand.\n\nI don't think Google's market dominance can be used as evidence of good hiring\npractices since I believe in the early days they didn't have such practices\nand wound up with a very undiverse company. This didn't seem to stop them\nachieving market dominance, draw from this what you will about how much they\nneed diversity to succeed.\n\nI'm having a bit of trouble understanding how you simultaneously believe that\nhe \"had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback\ninto the memo by the time he posted it\" and \"The article shouldn't have been\nwritten without clarification on these points and conclusive evidence.\" It\nseems to me that not only did Damore make an honest effort to seek out\nclarification but that you're well aware of this fact.\n\nR: pj_mukh\nTonnes of speculation. So I'm just gonna stop refuting all that.\n\n\"had already done his fact and opinion finding, and incorporated feedback into\nthe memo by the time he posted it\"\n\nI didn't claim this, he did (see: Youtube link). My point is that he didn't\nactually look into or ask hiring committees why they were doing what they did.\nInstead, he made bold recommendations, that (like the OP link shows) made\nwomen in tech feel like they didn't belong.\n\nHe wasn't open to a discussion as many characterize, in his mind, he'd already\nhad discussions and incorporated feedback (his words)\n\nR: corndoge\n\n Frances: ...if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement.\n I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.\n \n\nAnd then\n\n \n \n Frances: ...I'm also disappointed that the men I know,\n including most of my male colleagues, remained silent\n on the topic.\n \n Frances: ...Many powerful men in Silicon Valley have\n huge bases of social media followers. By remaining\n silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore,\n they are sending a message that philosophical arguments\n and principles take precedence over the lived\n experiences of many smart, talented female engineers\n and technical founders.\n \n\nSo, what? Is it just impossible to stay out of the issue if my silence is\nsending a message that philosophical principles and whatever matter more than\nwomen in technology? What if I just want to work my 9-5, treat all my\ncoworkers well regardless of sex or gender, and let the PC warriors duke it\nout in the streets away from me? Can't even stay silent without sending a\nmessage.\n\nWhile I agree with much of what is said in this piece, I find this pretty\ndemonstrative of the \"damned if i do, damned if I don't\" situation I'm in as a\nmale trying to survive in this PC crucifixion culture.\n\nR: droopybuns\nThis section struck out to me too.\n\nwhat I realized is that I am older, more world wary and far more cynical about\nanyone looking out for me than your average young millennial.\n\nI think the dividing line is in that cynicism. I have never felt like anyone\nlooked out for me.\n\n\"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?\"\n\nI have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very\nwary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how\nyou prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always\nrisk being cast out.\n\nIf young social activists were less strident about how society stacks the deck\nfor all white people- even the ones who have been abused, who had a shitty\nchildhood, who have had bad relationships, who are suffering from depression\nor chemical abuse or other problems, then I think we'd stop running into this\nvery boring and predictable conflict.\n\nEveryone is suffering on some level. Stop talking about white men like we've\nnever experienced pain.\n\nI do think the memo was foundationally stupid. Compassion is needed on all\nsides.\n\nR: kevinwang\n>\"How do I prove myself to people one way or another?\"\n\nI don't think this was about generic proving-to-others. I think it's about\nbeing prejudged by others at first glance which minorities in tech get in\nevery interaction they have. I think that it's valid to say that's a\nsignificant struggle.\n\nI have no expertise in this field of social ethics, so I'm hesitant to\ncritique your comment when I'm as uninformed as anyone else, but I also think\nthat your following comment shows an ignorance of that struggle:\n\n>I have stopped trying to prove myself. I do what I think is right and am very\nwary of external validation that is not based on engineering data. Asking how\nyou prove yourself seems very foreign. You always risk being wrong. You always\nrisk being cast out.\n\nIf I'm interpreting this correctly as \"This is what I did in response to my\nimpulse to prove myself. This is what women in tech should do about their's as\nwell.\", then I think you are not considering the fact that you have the\nprivilege of not needing to prove yourself. When people meet you, they don't\nassume a baseline level of incompetence. This same strategy that you use\nwouldn't apply to minorities who always feel like they need to prove\nthemselves because of what they look like.\n\nSo I think this need to prove yourself stems from a serious, real issue, and\nso it's wrong to downplay this issue by equating minorities' perpetual feeling\nof needing to prove themselves with your feelings, to conclude that the\nproblem exists inside them, and not outside them.\n\nApologies if I misinterpreted your words, but if not, I'd like to hear your\nresponse, because this is something I've been thinking about lately.\n\nR: jack_h\n> I think it's about being prejudged by others at first glance which\n> minorities in tech get in every interaction they have. I think that it's\n> valid to say that's a significant struggle.\n\n> When people meet you, they don't assume a baseline level of incompetence.\n\nIn a way they are prejudging him though. They consider the baseline for him to\nbe one who assumes they're incompetent. He has to prove otherwise. Or perhaps\nnot quite as severe, he is assumed to have privilege which you yourself\nstated.\n\nIt seems to be a problem with assuming things about an individual from\npopulation distributions. Perhaps we've forgotten how to treat others as\nindividuals and be treated by others as an individual.\n\nR: dreta\nAll i got from the memo, besides the echo chamber part, which google, and\nothers managed to prove almost immediately, was that the author thinks there\nare biological differences between men and women, which lead to women being\nless interested in the field, thus being under-represented, and that google's\nsexist practices won't change that, only make people resent the diversity\nhires.\n\nWas i reading the wrong memo? Because everybody, including the 3 interviewees,\nno matter if they seem calm and collected, keep attributing malice, and\ntalking about how the author said women are less suited to being good\nengineers, and that women shouldn't be encouraged to get interested in STEM.\nWhere was that stated?\n\nR: humanrebar\nOne of the women said:\n\n> I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general\n> populations, then walk it back to say \"but of course it doesn't apply at an\n> individual level.\"\n\nShe goes on to say that people will likely misapply the ideas and judge her.\nIt seems a lot of detractors think Damore should have known better and he\ntakes responsibility for how his ideas affect people.\n\nAnother says:\n\n> I don't really see how it's useful to have a discussion of general group\n> traits in a work setting. Assuming that it's true that women on average are\n> more likely to have trait X, why should any woman have to overcome the\n> additional barrier of proving that she's not like other women, or that if\n> she IS like other women, that the trait has no bearing on her job\n> performance?\n\nAgain, she's not really disagreeing with Damore in this snippet. She's saying\nthe ideas themselves are counterproductive and shouldn't be discussed.\n\nR: Danihan\nSure, but it's the hypocrisy of saying, \"stereotyping people by group is\nproductive sometimes (when hiring and trying to hit quotas)\" but any criticism\nof it is unproductive, in fact, how dare you even discuss it at the\nworkplace.\"\n\nR: freetime2\nSo firstly - let me say that this has been one of the most level-headed\nresponses to the memo that I have seen so far. I personally found it very\nconstructive. Bravo to the author and the interviewees.\n\nI did want to discuss one particular line of thought from the interview\nthough:\n\n _I can see that there are wide swaths of people who would refuse to work with\nhim_\n\nTwo of the interviewees gave this justification for why he should have been\nfired, and I have seen it elsewhere as well. I disagree, though. I have worked\nwith with people in the past with whom I have ideological differences. But it\nhas never stopped me from at least trying to get along and work productively\nwith that person.\n\nWe just don't know from the evidence presented thus far what James Damore is\nlike to worth with. Maybe he's a sexist asshole who is incapable of treating\nwomen fairly (in which case he does deserve to be fired). Or maybe we can take\nhim at face value when he says he appreciates diversity and prefers to judge\npeople as individuals rather than as a group. We just don't know.\n\nOn the other hand, if there are employees at Google who despite having never\nmet James Damore before are telling their managers \"I can't work with him\nbased on this thing he wrote or this idea he believes\", aren't they also in\nthe wrong here?\n\nR: spydum\nfully agree here.\n\nIf you can't put aside your personal feelings based on someone elses political\nviews to get work done, YOU are the one with the problem. I'm sure plenty of\nus have worked with people who have lifestyles, beliefs, and demonstrated\nactions we personally deeply disagree with. Heck, I've worked with people\nwhere we legitimately disliked each other. Yet when I come into the office to\nwork, we sit down together and get stuff done.\n\nNow, my personal opinion is: leave your politics at home, don't spend company\ntime on such things. I'm glad you think of work as a family, but it's not\n(regardless of the HR feel-good marketing).\n\nHowever, if they are asking for commentary and feedback on diversity\ninitiatives, and you provide it honestly, it's extraordinarily poor form to\nthen fire you. They had the responsibility to respond to him, and address it\nprivately. I think the more troubling problem was as others have commented:\nthe fact that it was leaked from an internal conversation and turned into such\na contentious issue for google.\n\nR: mastazi\nSo the takeaway is: you should become extremely proficient at writing memos\nand back them up with vast amounts of research, or be fired. But all of the\nabove applies only if your memo expresses conservative ideas. I don't consider\nmyself a conservative but I find all of this disturbing.\n\nR: dguaraglia\nMaybe the takeaway is: you shouldn't write \"memos\" that generate a lot of\nnoise and lost productivity in your work environment and affect your company's\nexternal image. If you have political points you want to make, go find a group\nof like-minded individuals and discuss with them first.\n\nR: lliamander\nWhat if you think the issues you are bringing up are already a problem for the\ncompany, and the company just isn't willing to admit it?\n\nR: dguaraglia\nIn that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to\nvalidate your idea. If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at\nthe next TGIF (the internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully\nand without making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory\narguments against your perceived political leanings of the company.\n\nI was there during the whole Nest reorg\/culture drama for crying out loud.\nI've seen people lob _really hairy_ questions at the TGIF panel and I don't\nrecall a single one of them getting fired.\n\nR: lliamander\n> In that case you have an off-line discussion with a group of friends to\n> validate your idea.\n\nHe brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason.\n\n> If there seems to be a consensus, you raise the point at the next TGIF (the\n> internal Alphabet-wide gathering every Thursday), tactfully and without\n> making generalizations about gender and without inflammatory arguments\n> against your perceived political leanings of the company.\n\nWhat point would that be?\n\nR: dguaraglia\n> He brought it to the Google Skeptics group for precisely that reason\n\nThat's not an off-line resource. That's a public mailing list reachable by any\nemployee. It's not even remotely what I am suggesting.\n\n> What point would that be?\n\n\"I believe our current hiring practices might be affecting certain candidates\nbecause A, B and C mechanism stop\/hinder\/disproportionally-favor X, Y, Z\ngroups\" No need for building an argument about biological differences between\nmen and women, no reason to build an antagonistic recount of what _you think_\nthe motivations are, no need to call your peers and higher ups \"Leftist.\"\nState the facts, ask the question, move on.\n\nAssuming he really cared about hiring practices (which is purportedly the\nreason he wrote the memo), that would've gotten everyone's attention and I can\nguarantee that nobody would've gotten fired.\n\nR: framebit\nAs for the memo itself, I think it's a bit of a Rorschach blot: people are\nseeing what they want to see in it, largely because the writing is so poor\nthat the author fails completely to get his own points across in a coherent\nmanner.\n\nThe conversation about \"women in tech\" is severely hamstrung by folks\nconflating issues of sexual harassment with the hiring pipeline. These are two\nvery different problems requiring two very different conversations.\n\nLastly, I found Dr. Charles Isbell's comments via Ian Bogost in The Atlantic\nto be very interesting. This is majorly paraphrasing, but he's essentially\npointing out that conversations about diversity have a tendency to end up\nfocusing on women to the exclusion (accidental or otherwise) of black men,\nhispanic men, etc.\n\nR: moduspol\nI'd like to think it's everyone seeing what they want to see in it, but that's\nnot really a fair description.\n\nThe writing's not ideal, but truly if opponents can read even this and frame\nit as \"women have inferior genes,\" then this is a discussion that can't be\nhad. There is no way to make the case that sexism and oppression are not the\nonly causes for inequal representations in tech that will not be an \"anti-\ndiversity\" position that makes some coworkers uncomfortable.\n\nR: ATsch\nI think it's interesting how the Edith stated Damore had said women were worse\nat their job, while one of the other women explicitly said he didn't, and the\nother only mentioned interest in programming.\n\nThis is similar to the divide I've seen in the media. I have not read the memo\nin it's entirety, but since the impression I got from reading a few news\nstories was that Damore had only made his controversial statements in regard\nto the population, not skill of programmers, I'm curious what causes this\ndisagreement.\n\nI also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a\ndiscussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job,\nconsidering that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either\nhave at least one Y chromosome or you don't. (I'm not a biology nerd so feel\nfree to correct me on this.)\n\nR: jorgemf\n> I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in\n> a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job,\n> considering the fact that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary,\n> you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't.\n\nI think she refers that gender is not binary as you can be straight male,\nstraight female, gay male, gay female, bisexual, asexual, etc.\n\nI am not completely sure but I think there can be mutations where you have 2\nchromosomes X and 1 Y. So XXY [1]\n\n[1]\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Klinefelter_syndrome](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Klinefelter_syndrome)\n\nR: bumblebeard\nSex, sexual orientation, and gender are different things. By gender spectrum\nshe means that most people's behavior is somewhere along a continuum between\ncompletely masculine and completely feminine and that virtually nobody is at\none extreme or the other.\n\nI think the point she's making is that while men and women have different\ninterests as groups, there are plenty of women who are interested in what are\nperceived as masculine things (in this case probably computer programming) and\nvice versa.\n\nR: jccalhoun\nI think this is one of the better responses I've seen\n\nThis line really struck me as being spot on:\n\n>There's a difference between \"let's have a discussion\" and \"let me tell you\nwhat's up, all you wrong people.\"\n\nR: Will_Parker\nOn the other hand,\n[https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Cunningham%27s_Law](https:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Cunningham%27s_Law)\n\nEmphatically defending the wrong ideas in a debate forum, and seeing what\npoints do and do not withstand scrutiny, is a very traditional and pure form\nof discourse. I claim that this process is even at the heart of scientific\nprogress.\n\nR: lutorm\nI disagree. Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you\nare aware of to see if those arguments \"withstand scrutiny\" is not scientific\nprocess.\n\nCertainly, arguing about which evidence is more important, or how to resolve\napparent conflicts between various data, is perfectly fine. But if you are\nmaking arguments that you know don't hold up to evidence, you are not arguing\nin good faith. For that to be a legit argument, you have to motivate why that\nevidence should be discounted.\n\nR: Will_Parker\n> Making arguments by selectively withholding counter-evidence you are aware\n> of to see if those arguments \"withstand scrutiny\" is not scientific process.\n\nIndeed, but I didn't read Damore's memo as being intellectually dishonest in\nthis way. He presented (with citations) some views that are held by most\npsychology researchers. And then he drew a few of his own (possibly flagrant)\nconclusions and speculations.\n\nThis sparked debate, and it is getting us talking. Damore wrote some great\npoints (especially on free speech and intellectual diversity) and some\nterrible ones. This is the kind of free exchange of ideas that a successful\nand vibrant tech company should encourage.\n\nR: TACIXAT\n>Twitter is the worst way to have this debate but that's where it mostly was\ntaking place (with a sprinkling of medium posts and malformed news pieces to\ncomplement it).\n\nThis is why I really appreciate HN. The discussion here was fairly reasoned\nand people could be pretty open. I appreciate the perspectives provided in\nthis blog post too. Thanks to you all for making such a high quality\ncommunity.\n\nR: chippy\nMost submissions about this topic have been flagged or moved off the front\npage. That this article hasn't been flagged and remains on the front page is\nbecause of it's provenance.\n\nNow, the discussions do tend to be good on the whole - but many users here are\nfed up with the topic and want to get back to hacking. I'm glad to see more\nreasoned discussions happening, and hope that people could look back at\nthemselves when this thing first occured and see how they reacted then.\n\nR: dang\n> _That this article hasn 't been flagged and remains on the front page is\n> because of it's provenance_\n\nI'm not sure what you mean by provenance but people should know that HN\nmoderators haven't touched this article (other than to turn off the flamewar\ndetector, because the thread, against all odds, is not a flamewar). We're\nsurprised that it made it to #1 and delighted that the discussion has mostly\nremained respectful, at least compared to the tire fires of the last couple\nweeks. IMO this has a lot to do with the care that Cadran and the other\nauthors put into crafting the post.\n\nR: alecco\nCould you please at least try to think how this looks to people with other\nopinions on this subject? This kind of attitude makes people move further in\nthe other direction. I wish HN to still be a place for rational discussion.\n\nRemember, the content here is made by the users. For free.\n\nR: dang\nI'm afraid I'm not following you. I see plenty of opinions on this subject in\nthis thread, as in the other threads. The main difference in this one is that\nthe comments are more civil and substantive across the spectrum of opinions.\nThat's a great thing.\n\nPerhaps it feels to you like HN moderation is ideologically driven, but that's\nnot so. It does feel that way, unfortunately, to most ideologically committed\nusers. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it; everyone jumps to\nthe conclusion that the deck is stacked against them, and the comments about\nthis tend to be much the same regardless of the ideology of the commenter.\nIndeed the evils of HN moderation seem to be the only thing they all agree on!\nThis bothered me for a few years but eventually there's little sense in being\nbothered by an optical illusion.\n\nMore about this in the many comments at\n[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)\n\nR: alecco\n> I see plenty of opinions on this subject in this thread, as in the other\n> threads\n\nFunny, I see a dominant opinion in the other (flagged) threads and an another\ndominant opinion in this one.\n\n1695\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14952787](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14952787)\n\n754\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15009759](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15009759)\n\n590\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14968626](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14968626)\n\n448\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14959601](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14959601)\n\nR: dang\nThose threads were all extremely active and most if not all spent significant\ntime on HN's front page, so I'm not sure what your point is? More generally:\nthese perceptions are strongly in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee you\nthat someone with opposite views to yours sees the opposite bias on HN. This\nobviously doesn't vary with HN, but it does vary with the\nperceiver - specifically with the perceiver's beliefs and their intensity. It\ncomes down to sample bias and other cognitive biases. Even the most perfectly\neven-handedly moderated site (which I'm not saying HN is!) would get all the\nsame perceptions and accusations.\n\nR: alecco\nSignificant time? I don't recall it that way. Had to find them via algolia.\n\nR: curtis\nThey might have been discoverable via the \"comments\" link (lots of active\ncomments still going on) well after the stories have dropped off the front\npage.\n\nI have also been checking the Algolia \"Last 24h\" view to find flagged\ndiscussions that I missed, however.\n\nR: chippy\nI found most of these threads via comments and active.\n\nR: sampo\nWhy has this topic exploded like it did now especially in the software\nengineering context? Whatever talent or affinity to abstract and inanimate\nthings we do or don't assume being correlated with gender, isn't software\nengineering just a lighter version, compared to mathematics and physics?\n\nDid math and physics communities already have their internal crisis\/debate on\nthese things, perhaps a decade or two ago? Or have they been able to cope\nwithout lighting such a fire?\n\nR: izacus\nHmm, anectodally, both math and physics communities have significantly larger\npercentage of actual women graduating and working. At least here in EU - it's\nsomewhere between 40-60% split depending on generation.\n\nI guess because of that there's actually more men used to actually working\nwith women in those fields and they don't waste this much time trying to prove\nhow women aren't worthy .\n\nR: mcfunk\nRight on the nose. And in fact, the proportion of women in computer science\nwas tracking with other sciences until the mid-eighties, when it started to\ndive, while women's representation in other sciences continued to climb. One\nof the more glaringly inconsistent observations with Damore's claims.\n[http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2014\/10\/21\/357629765\/when-...](http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2014\/10\/21\/357629765\/when-\nwomen-stopped-coding)\n\nR: mpweiher\nExcept that CS isn't a science, it's engineering. And it tracked down to the\nlevel of other engineering fields.\n\n[http:\/\/news.janegoodall.org\/wp-\ncontent\/uploads\/2016\/11\/perce...](http:\/\/news.janegoodall.org\/wp-\ncontent\/uploads\/2016\/11\/percent-bachelors-degrees-women-usa.png)\n\nSo the mystery is not why it went down, it was why it was higher initially.\n\nR: izacus\nHmm, Computer Science is most definetly a science (which shares quite a bit\nwith maths as expected). A lot of algorithms and data structures you use under\nthe hood when doing engineering were born as a paper in academic CS sphere.\n\nOf course, most CS graduates don't do science, but actual engineering work.\nThat doesn't make CS any less of a science though, it just means that most\npeople employed in private companies don't do it.\n\nR: mpweiher\nMy bad, I should have been more precise: _natural_ science, which is part of a\n\"liberal arts\" education.\n\n\"Academic areas that are associated with the term liberal arts include:\n\nArts (fine arts, music, performing arts, literature)\n\nMathematics\n\nNatural science (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth science)\n\nPhilosophy\n\nReligious studies\n\nSocial science (anthropology, economics, geography, political science,\npsychology, sociology, Linguistics, history)\"\n\nNote the absence of engineering disciplines.\n\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Liberal_arts_education](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Liberal_arts_education)\n\nVs. engineering or engineering sciences.\n\nSee for example how Stanford groups things (CS is part of the \"School of\nEngineering\").\n\n[https:\/\/registrar.stanford.edu\/everyone\/enrollment-\nstatistic...](https:\/\/registrar.stanford.edu\/everyone\/enrollment-\nstatistics\/enrollment-statistics-2015-16\/school-engineering-\nenrollment-2015-16)\n\nAnd then note the difference in enrollment in \"chemistry\" (the science) and\n\"chemical engineering\"\n\n[https:\/\/www.acs.org\/content\/dam\/acsorg\/membership\/acs\/welcom...](https:\/\/www.acs.org\/content\/dam\/acsorg\/membership\/acs\/welcoming\/diversity\/diversity-\ndata.pdf)\n\nR: izacus\nIs the difference you're trying to paint perhaps a US only thing? I've never\nheard of this type of differentiation.\n\nR: mpweiher\nThe exact delineation of \"liberal arts\" seems to be a US thing (not sure about\n\"only\").\n\nHowever, in Germany we also have \"Naturwissenschaften\" and\n\"Ingenieurwissenschaften\".\n\n[https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ingenieurwissenschaften](https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ingenieurwissenschaften)\n\n[https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Naturwissenschaft](https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Naturwissenschaft)\n\nSo it's a common distinction: figuring out how nature works vs building stuff.\n\nR: in3d\nDamore is planning to sue under the National Labor Relations Act or\nCalifornia's tough law against restricting political activity. The legal\nexperts seem to think he might have a weak to a decent case. I would think\nGoogle would try to settle anyway, in order to prevent discovery and the\nrelease of their internal communications about the memo and their internal\ndata about the performance of different groups on job interviews.\n\nIs there anything that would prevent another Google (or Facebook, etc.)\nemployee (with a lower salary or thinking Google is not for him anyway) from\ngoing completely by the letter of the law and suing when fired? That employee\ncould make a more limited case that Google's diversity programs discriminate\nagainst white or Asian men in hiring, complain about diversity training\nsessions, say something about agreeing with Trump's policies and with the\nconservatives (to make it more explicitly about political activity), write\nabout organizing other employees who agree, make sure to file an NLRB\ncomplaint before getting fired, bring up some IQ meta-analysis studies to make\nsure it's scientific, yet controversial enough to get him fired, state that\nhe's happy to work with Googlers of all sexes and races and that he holds\ntheir skills in high esteem and hopes everybody else does too (to make a\nfiring based on the employee manual less credible), use email (because that's\nwhat's specifically in the law), run it all through a lawyer first, and don't\ndo any post-firing interviews as Damore has done.\n\nWouldn't that cause huge headaches for Google and other tech companies? If\nsuch emails get leaked, the bad PR would force Google's hand to fire him, as\nhappened with Damore. It seems like companies that want to see themselves\nportrayed as socially progressive might end up between a rock and a hard\nplace.\n\nR: foobar_femme\nAs a longtime female engineer at fintech startups, there was absolutely\nnothing new in Damore's memo. The only thing that gave these tired arguments\nany cachet at all was Google's name.\n\nAnd I really wish Google hadn't fired Damore. Special projects exists?!\n\nFor years I have worked with and continue to work with guys who think just\nlike this. In fact, thanks to Twitter, I now know all of my followers who also\nfollow Damore. Thanks for that?\n\nWhen I interview you and ask you a technical question, you don't meet my eyes\nand then you answer the guy sitting next to me. When I present my own ideas in\na group, you ignore them; fine, I'll pregame males colleages and let them\npresent my ideas instead. If I brainstorm as part of the group, you think I'm\nasking you to explain basic programming concepts to me. You probably think I'm\nnot that smart. And that's OK. Good news: getting things done requires\nmultiple skills. One of mine is overtaking you from behind.\n\nNobody ever thinks of promoting me first. Whatever I get, I work twice as hard\nand twice as long for it as you did. The existence of a female networking\ngroup does not represent an unfair advantage: it represents barely any\nadvantage at all, on the basis of the ones I've attended. And anyway, I don't\nhave time for that, I'm trying to figure out what's caused the unexplained\nperformance reversion over the past two days.\n\nWhether you think I am a diversity candidate or not, I am here to code. That\nis all. Statistically speaking, biology does give me one edge: longer life\nspan. I'll imagine I will still be here doing just that long after everyone\nelse has forgot James Damore exists. ;)\n\nR: zaroth\nEverything you said that's wrong with the interactions you have with male\nengineers, I'm not sure that James Damore would disagree with any of it, or\nclaim that it doesn't happen, or say that we shouldn't be trying hard to\nchange it.\n\nWhat James argued is that the efforts Google is making and the way they are\ndoing it are in some ways contributing to and making all of those bad\nexperiences you listed _worse_.\n\nR: PrimHelios\nJames also argued that women are biologically inferior for STEM fields, which\nis objectively and demonstrably incorrect. With that, I think he'd disagree\nwith absolutely all of it. He clearly has a confirmation bias, and is actively\ncherry picking articles (from fucking Wikipedia I might add) and\nmisrepresenting their contents to make women seem inferior.\n\nR: Cogito\nI keep hearing people say this but didn't read it in the memo.\n\nCan you point to the bit where he says they are biologically inferior, or the\nsources he links to that say it?\n\nThe best I can come up with is the bit where he says Google lowers the bar by\nreducing the false-negative rate, meaning that a greater percentage of\nqualified men are rejected than qualified women.\n\n[Edit] Reading through again to see more about biology claims in the memo,\nthis is the one that sticks out the most:\n\n _I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men\nand women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences\nmay explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and\nleadership._\n\nThis sticks out because it mentions abilities - and is indeed the only place\nwhere ability is mentioned at all. The wording doesn't say that women are\n\"biologically inferior for STEM fields\", but I can see how it might be read\nthat way. I don't read it that way, but I can understand how others might. The\nsurrounding context is pretty much all about the preferences that people have\nas well, so \"women are biologically inferior\" doesn't seem like a point that\nis trying to be made at all.\n\nR: wilde\nI think it comes back to how you read this part of the TL;DR. \"Differences in\ndistributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't\nhave 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.\"\n\nGoogle currently has an 80M\/20F split. Does that mean that very few women have\nthe traits to work in CS at Google? If so, another way to phrase that might be\n\"the large majority of women do not possess the innate biological traits\nnecessary to work in CS at Google\". From which it's not a far leap to \"the\nlarge majority of women are biologically inferior for CS work at Google.\" Etc.\n\nNormally, one might soften that by asking what population the distribution is\ndrawn from. Sadly, the memo author makes it explicitly clear that he thinks\nit's largely due to biology: \"Be open about the science of human nature. Once\nwe acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to\ndiscrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human\ncondition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.\"\n\nR: gavanwoolery\nInteresting thoughts - I think the biggest misunderstanding thus far involves\ngeneralizations. You can accurately make generalizations about a group of\npeople, without implying that a given individual necessarily falls under that\ngeneralization. For example you could say \"80 percent of males are into action\nmovies\" \\- but you should not go up to an individual male and state \"you are\ninto action movies\" if you care about factual accuracy. Whether or not\nDamore's generalizations are accurate is up for debate, but lets say for the\nsake of argument that they are. I do not think its harmful to say \"10 percent\nof women are really into engineering currently\" no more than it is harmful to\nsay \"50 percent of women are really into engineering currently.\" In fact, only\na subset of the male population is into engineering, so it is preferential\neven within a sex. If anything, I think it makes it worth celebrating the\nwomen who ARE into engineering even more. So (hypothetically) you could say\nfewer women are interested in engineering, but it does not mean those who are\ninto engineering are somehow less qualified than males.\n\nR: dguaraglia\nI'll just refer to the women in the article:\n\n> Assuming that it's true that women on average are more likely to have trait\n> X, why should any woman have to overcome the additional barrier of proving\n> that she's not like other women, or that if she IS like other women, that\n> the trait has no bearing on her job performance?\n\nR: gavanwoolery\nStatistics are statistics and I do not believe they should be censored on\nbehalf of being unpalatable. That said, its how we interpret statistics that\nreally matters. Like in my examples, a generalization is just that - a\ngeneralization, and thus not necessarily applicable to a given individual. To\nanswer the question, a woman's (or man's) work should speak for itself. If\nthey are a good worker and still facing scrutiny, then I would reexamine if\nthe boss or manager questioning them is competent.\n\nR: dguaraglia\nDo you agree that stereotypes affect peoples choices of careers?\n\nR: gavanwoolery\nIts definitely possible although I personally have yet to meet someone whose\nthreshold for not taking a job was that a stereotype existed around it. I tend\nto go with Occam's razor: I think it is far more likely that peoples choices\nof careers affect stereotypes.\n\nR: dguaraglia\nRight, but that's not how stereotypes affect career choice. It's not like\nsomeone is going to study 5 years for a career, and then at the last minute\nsay \"nah, dammit, that makes me look effeminate\" or \"hmm... I don't know, I'm\na woman, I shouldn't be doing that.\" Like you, I have never heard of anyone\ndoing that (I have heard of someone doing a postdoc in math and then giving up\nbecause he thought teaching was going to be boring... go figure.)\n\nThere's lots of good literature on how gender stereotyping actually affect\npeople's choices.\n\nR: potatote\n> For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the\n> USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women's work. But ability to do\n> those jobs?\n\nCan anyone with similar experience comment on this? I am just surprised (if\nwhat one of the interviewees said is true) because I'd assume the\nmath\/engineering\/science are highly regarded in the USSR and both genders\nwould pursue that.\n\nSide note: People in my country (from southeast asia) don't have a notion that\ngirls are not as good as boys in math. In fact, when I was in\n(elementary\/middle\/high) school, I--along with most students in the class--\nalways looked up to my female peers who are always the top 3 in the classroom\n(from among ~80 students). In fact, it's almost always natural to assume that\ngirls would outperform boys in the class (meaning, more girls would become the\nhighest ranked student in the class and\/or more girls would be ranked as top\nten in the nationwide high school exam--a.k.a. matriculation exam). As a\nresult, engineering classes have plenty of female population (although, of\ncourse, the number of women in such classes is always fewer than that of men).\n\nR: myth_drannon\nIn general after WWII women had to take traditional men's roles since entire\nmale generation was gone and from then on it became the new normal. STEM is\nnot physically hard so it can be considered a more suitable field for women,\nalso STEM paid less in USSR.\n\n[http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/guidedhistory\/moderneurope\/molly-\nwolansk...](http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/guidedhistory\/moderneurope\/molly-wolanski\/)\n\nR: Tehnix\nPlease note that this is a comment on a specific remark, and is not meant to\nmake it seem as though that invalidates the rest of the text - I'm mainly\ninterested in the subconscious reason why things are the way they are.\n\n> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages\n> they've had\n\nI think the reason many take annoyance with this particular opinion (at least\nI do), that men had it easy, is rooted in how \"nerds\" were viewed growing up,\nand how that has changed over time with public known successes such as\nZuckerburg or Musk.\n\nI'm only 24, and even I remember growing up with being interested in\nprogramming in no way being an attractive thing to be. If I revealed to people\nwhat I did I would be called a \"nerd\" with a bit of a disproving look. Luckily\nfor me, I was quite good at socializing also, but many definitely didn't have\nthat and suffered social stigma for it. Even the friends I was gaming with\ndidn't quite understand my interest in that area, so I mostly relied on myself\nwith few to no peers to discuss that particular subject with.\n\nThis is obsviously anecdotal and I would be interested in hearing how people\nhad it growing up with these interests, from both sides obviously.\n\nNow, that said, we are definitely in another age currently. These days with\nthe success of Silicon Valley, Facebook, heck even The Big Bang Theory, our\nculture has shifted to a glorification of the field, and as such we have a\nclash of what the 24+ (or there about a) generation grew up facing, and them\nnow being called privileged and being told they had it oh so easy, basically\ncasting aside all those struggles they had growing up.\n\nI guess my point is, with is a more general point, promoting equality by\nbringing down another group, is a fundamentally wrong way to go about things.\nYou don't get the bars at the same place by making it worse for one group, you\ndo it by making it better for the other group (see they distinction?).\n\nAnyways, I'm interested to know what people think :)\n\nR: hippich\nI had pretty much same experience, minus socialization skills. So you are\ndefinitely not alone in your experience. And I observed similar from (very)\nfew friends in the same situation.\n\nR: astrocat\n> Edith: I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average\n> differences between men and women map to being better or worse at certain\n> jobs. Interest in certain jobs, certainly.\n\nThis is, I think, the key. We can all recognize that there are REAL, _average_\ndifferences in _interests_ between men and women, DEFINITELY driven by\nsociety\/culture, and _maybe_ by biology\/genetics... BUT, this has absolutely\nno correlation with performance. If fewer women are, on average, _interested_\nin software engineering, this absolutely does NOT mean that women software\nengineers are, on average, worse at their jobs.\n\nThe error so many \"Team-Damore\" men make is that they zealously stand behind\nthe argument that \"Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of\nworse-performing women\/minorities.\" And yet there is absolutely no way to\npossibly back up that claim: can anyone clearly demonstrate over the course of\na statistically significant number of hirings that most of the women\ncandidates who were hired were A)chosen from a candidate pool that included at\nleast one equivalently-or-more talented man; and B) that those men who were\nnot picked would have been both better performing as individuals and better\nemployees for the team\/company as a whole? No. Nobody has shown this because\nit is, essentially, impossible to demonstrate. Citing studies of character\ntraits or interests of men and women \"on average\" does absolutely nothing to\nsupport claims A and B. And so all these men end up doing is simply implying:\n\"well, I BELIEVE that all these _real_ women coworkers of mine are worse than\nthe hypothetical male candidate that wasn't hired... _on average._ \" Which is\nclearly an insult to your existing coworkers and toxic to your work\nenvironment.\n\nR: jorgemf\n> \"Better-performing men are being overlooked in favor of worse-performing\n> women\/minorities.\"\n\nThat sentence is backed if there is a correlation between genetics and skills.\n\n> this has absolutely no correlation with performance\n\nif gender does not have correlation with performance, why do we split sports\ninto male and female? Why physical strength, endurance is related with biology\nand the mind is not? when the brain is the most important organ in our bodies\nand in charge of controlling all the hormones which gives us more or less\nstrength. In what facts do you support that claim?\n\nR: taysic\nThe physical is different from the mental. Are you saying women are less\nmentally capable? I can't tell but this is basically exactly why women feel\nlegitimizing this line of discussion is unproductive.\n\nR: jorgemf\n> The physical is different from the mental.\n\nWhy? Can you probe it? Most researchers I read says the opposite.\n\nR: reitanqild\nNot sure what you mean here?\n\nWomen and men are different: agree.\n\nPhysical is different than mental: yes\n\nExample of a sport that takes really strong mental skills and where women\ncompete alongside men: competitive shooting.\n\nR: jorgemf\n> Physical is different than mental: yes\n\nIf you say that there is no relation between our biological features (like\ngenes or hormones) and our mental capabilities, I have to disagree completely.\nAnd I want someone to support that affirmation with facts and research\nstudies. As far as I know there are a lot of mental illness treated with\nchemicals and hormones and a lot of studies that link malformations in genes\nwith mental capabilities. There are also philosophical studies that link the\nmind to the body and that claim that there cannot be intelligence without\nembodiment. So all this things and other papers lead me to think that\nbiological traits are linked to mental skills.\n\nR: taysic\nAt one point you're talking about malformations and in the next you're talking\nabout perfectly healthy people. Academically, we see that women excel up to\ncollege with no barriers in their mental capabilities. What other evidence do\nyou need?\n\nI can tell you as a women in tech, there is absolutely nothing about tech that\nis that difficult to understand or comprehend. Nothing more than the many\nother professions women excel in and are equally represented.\n\nR: jorgemf\nyou are having bias with the word malformation. It is not something bad per\nse, it only means it is not what you find in most people and that is have bad\nconsequences (or what we want to classify as bad).\n\n> we see that women excel up to college with no barriers in their mental\n> capabilities\n\nThis doesn't mean anything. Performance is not only about mental capabilities\nbut also in effort. There are mentally disabled people who can pass college,\nbut it is so hard for them and they have to strive a lot to succeed, and this\nis why you don't see so many of them in college. So this argument doesn't\nprobe anything.\n\nR: throwawaygmemo\nThese comments are largely directed at a straw-man, and in many cases actually\nagree with the memo, when they think they disagree.\n\n\"I disagree with...his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary\nreason that there aren't more female software engineers\"\n\n\\- straw-man - he argues that biology may in part explain the lack of 50\/50\nrepresentation. from the TLDR: \"Differences in distributions of traits between\nmen and women (and not \"socially constructed oppression\") may in part explain\nwhy we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership\"\n\n\"I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences\nbetween men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest\nin certain jobs, certainly.\"\n\n\\- you actually agree with the memo. From the memo: \"Women generally also have\na stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to\nmen...These...differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in\nsocial or artistic areas\"\n\n\"It seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and\ndidn't seek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to\ninternal Google groups.\"\n\n\\- The purpose of posting this memo was to seek dissenting research and other\nopinions.\n\n\"differences are so significant as to suggest that men or women are better or\nworse on average at any job that relies on mental work.\"\n\n\\- straw man. men or women being \"better\" is not the concern of the memo.\n\n\"his skepticism of his own views deserves a much more prominent placement in\nthe text than a footnote - had he led with this and made it clear he wasn't\nsure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a discussion (as he\nsubsequently stated in a YouTube interview), he likely would not have been\nblasted the same way.\"\n\n\\- the first \"background\" paragraph literally is this.\n\n\"Google has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources\non searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar\nfor these groups. Such misrepresentation is harmful to those of us at Google\nwho have to overcome the bias that we were hired based other factors beside\nour skills.\"\n\n\\- the author is also concerned with harm to female employees in the form of\nincreased tension resulting from hiring practices that are perceived as\nlowering the bar. Google obviously would not do this intentionally, but the\nauthor felt the practices \"effectively\" lowered the bar.\n\nR: Danihan\nIt's so funny (and sad) to me that you had to create a throwaway to outline\nthese obvious strawmen misrepresentations of what Damore wrote.\n\nWhatever happened to reading comprehension..?\n\nR: kbenson\nThe sad part about all this is that by presenting and alternative narrative to\nhis own in good light with a question as to how the facts presented actually\nplay out, we might have had a good discussion.\n\nFor example, even if it's true that on average women do worse in general in\ntechnical or engineering fields, that doesn't necessarily mean that the women\n_in those fields currently_ are worse on average. There are a few possible\nreasons why they may be _better_ than the average men in those fields.\n\nFirstly, if we accept that women have different levels of aptitude in certain\nskill sets, there's no reason to assume they have the same variability. It's\nentirely possible that women on average are worse in certain skills, but that\nthey have more exceptional outliers.\n\nSecondly, even if there is not more variability in the female population for\nthe skills in question, it's entirely possible that cultural and social\npressure has resulted in those that choose careers on those skills having\nhigher than average abilities in them. For example, if my family has a legacy\nof being fairly clumsy and uncoordinated, but my brother is a pro athlete,\nwhat's more likely, that he's a crappy athlete, or that perhaps the criticisms\nthat apply well to my family do not apply accurately to him, for whatever\nreason?\n\nProviding an olive branch can make all the difference in a discussion like\nthis, and the fact that neither explanation put forth here is contradictory\nwith each other or the premise that perhaps a 50\/50 gender split isn't\nnecessarily ideal makes this particularly lamentable, since we might have been\nable to have a good discussion about gender differences while minimizing the\nimpact it has on individual members of that gender. Of both sides (there's\nplenty of fields where men face an uphill battle too).\n\nR: neerkumar\n\"He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar.\nGoogle has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources\non searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar\nfor these groups.\"\n\n-> 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?\n\nElizabeth Holmes and Travis are probably thinking: damn, I wish people thought\nlike that for me too!\n\nR: tracker1\nFirst off, _nobody_ in tech, male or female is really \"average\". Second,\n_everybody_ must prove they're good at their job by doing it well. But to\nsuggest that there is absolutely no correlation that makes men or women\ndisproportionately want to work in certain fields or have a higher aptitude to\ncertain roles is a bit premature.\n\nThe vitriol and disdain in response by some from the original memo, completely\ndiscounting some of the reservations on opinion vs fact and presenting them as\nonly a footnote is somewhat disingenuous.\n\nR: sniglom\n\"Ask a female engineer\". That headline in itself implies that there are\ndifferences between males and females, as the memo states. Why would I\notherwise listen to the opinion these engineers have over any other?\n\nI'm from Sweden and our universities have fought for years with getting more\nfemales to study IT. Same goes for senior highschool. And it's not only to get\nyou to study, it's while you study as well. Benefits just for women. Courses\njust for women. Meeting people from business, just for women. And so on. The\nlast discussion was about whether women studying IT should pay back their\nstudy loans, even though the education itself is already payed for.\n\nI think the questions we should ask ourselves are, is this improving diversity\nin opinions and thoughts? Is this beneficial for the field? Does this improve\nthe state of the companies within IT?\n\nOtherwise we're just pushing one gender over the other, for no particular\nreason, except gender. Choosing people for their gender, over their thoughts\nand performance is sexist and horrible.\n\nR: FooHentai\n>I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a debate club.\nSome people at Google reacted by saying \"well if he's so wrong, then why not\nrefute him,\" but that requires spending a significant amount of time building\nan argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand, if I remain\nsilent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should not be forced\ninto that kind of debate at work.\n\nAnyone else see the hypocrisy here?\n\n>the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to\nmen in tech that I'm not an \"average\" woman\n\nThat's not the takeaway I got. What I got from it was 'Google's hiring\npractices are counterproductive and will increase people's questioning of each\nother's capabilities, based on their gender'.\n\nTalk about changing the narrative and shooting the messenger.\n\nR: nilkn\nI find it interesting how much the memo is misinterpreted even by folks who\nhave read it multiple times and have been pretty engaged in discussions about\nit. Example:\n\n\"He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the bar.\nGoogle has stated many times that its efforts involve focusing more resources\non searching for candidates in minority groups rather than lowering the bar\nfor these groups.\"\n\nThis is what he actually wrote:\n\n\"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for \"diversity\"\ncandidates by decreasing the false negative rate\"\n\nI'll admit this is a surprisingly dense sentence. And the phrase \"lowering the\nbar\" is controversial for an obvious reason, so it was a really bad decision\nby Damore to combine such a phrase with such a dense line of reasoning. It's\njust a recipe for disaster.\n\nSome things to note:\n\n* 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.\n\n* 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.\n\nTo state that second bullet point differently and in a way that totally avoids\npolitics, if you imagine that the interview is producing a noisy estimate of\nyour technical ability, and the noise is predominantly negative\/subtractive,\nthen the expected score of an accepted candidate is higher with the noise than\nwithout. But if you offer a second interview to candidates and let a\ncandidate's final estimate be the greater of the two samples, then the\nnegative noise is reduced (though not eliminated), which will lower the\nexpectation (but NOT below the expected value you'd get by eliminating the\nnoise entirely).\n\nWith this analysis in place, I think it's more helpful to rephrase it as\neffectively _raising_ the bar for non-minority candidates rather than\n_lowering_ it for minority candidates, though ideally I'd prefer to avoid any\nphrases about bars being lowered or raised in general.\n\nR: kromem\nCan anyone cite the parts of the document where he claimed that the biological\ndifferences mapped to job performance?\n\nI read it, but definitely don't recall that association being made (he did\ntalk a lot about preference and job satisfaction), but see numerous detractors\nciting that association as a criticism, so I'm a bit confused.\n\nR: xigency\nOn pages 3 and 4 he claims that these differences exist (emphasis added):\n\n\\- On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. ...the\ndistribution of _PREFERENCES and ABILITIES_ of men and women differ in part\n_due to biological causes_ and that these differences may explain why we don't\nsee equal representation of women in tech and leadership.\n\n\\- Women, on average, have more: Openness directed towards feelings and\naesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in\npeople rather than things, relative to men\n\n\\- These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in\nsocial or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires\nsystemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end,\nwhich deals with both people and aesthetics.\n\n\\- Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress\ntolerance).\n\n\\- This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on\nGooglegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.\n\nAnd later proposes these solutions:\n\n\\- We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming\nand more collaboration.\n\n\\- Make tech and leadership less stressful.\n\nSo he has 1) cited biological differences between men and women _in their\nabilities_ (not simply preferences) and 2) claimed that these lead to\nsuitability for different jobs and also indicated the specific jobs would need\nto be changed in order to be more suitable for women, which strongly implies\ndiffering performance levels.\n\nR: humanrebar\nFor what it's worth, he addressed your first point in a reddit AMA. More or\nless, he thinks smart women are more verbally gifted, so they have more viable\ncareer choices on average. If that's true, they may they pick apparently\nnonverbal jobs (programming) less often.\n\n[https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/JamesDamore\/comments\/6thcy3\/im_jame...](https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/JamesDamore\/comments\/6thcy3\/im_james_damore_ama\/dlknpme\/)\n\n\"For high achieving women, they tend to be good at both quantitative and\nverbal skills. For high achieving men, they tend to be good at quantitative\nskills and proportionally not as good at verbal. Thus, high achieving women\nhave more choices of careers (like being a lawyer), while men may have fewer.\"\n\nR: xigency\nYeah, I still think that's transparently BS. His source there is another\nopinion piece.\n\nThat said, it does sound as if Google is engaged in illegal hiring practices.\n\nAs someone who went to a private engineering school, formerly boys only and\nco-ed in the past decade, there are many brilliant women in engineering. All\nof this spouting does them a huge disservice. As Damore himself admitted in\none AMA answer, it might by \"cultural.\" I believe that is a far more\nacceptable argument than evolutionary psychology and political ideology.\n\nR: ethanhunt_\n> I also agree that there are differences between the behavior of men and\n> women, on average.\n\nIsn't saying that a fire-able offense at Google? I hope YC is really sure that\nthese are anonymous because if she gets doxxed her career is over.\n\nR: rsp1984\nHonest question: Will this thread be quickly flagged by HN moderators or taken\noff the front page like many others on the topic (see\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14967819](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14967819)\nfor more info)?\n\nOr are there \"exceptions\"?\n\nR: dang\nYou seem to be mistaken about what's been happening. Moderators haven't been\nflagging those articles; users have. That's what '[flagged]' means.\n\nThe different outcome in this case is because of community response. There are\nstill a lot of flags, but there are many more upvotes. That, plus the\ndiscussion quality (i.e. not a trainwreck) surprised us quite a bit. I emailed\nCadran this morning that she should probably expect the post to get flagged\nthe same way as others (by users) and that we wouldn't be able to intervene if\nthat happened. Instead, it went straight to #1. That's fine by me because the\ndiscussion has remained relatively civil and substantive.\n\nFor completeness I should mention that we did do one intervention: we turned\noff a software penalty called the 'flamewar detector' that kicks in on\ndiscussions that get a great many comments. But that's routine: we always turn\noff that penalty when the discussion isn't actually a flamewar, and this one\nqualifies. Other than that, moderators haven't touched the post at all, so\nyeah I think it's fair to say no exceptions.\n\nR: rsp1984\nThanks for taking the time to clarify.\n\nR: moduspol\nSo at the top of the article, just before the interview starts, there's this:\n\n> There's been a lot of anger on both sides, but I haven't seen many\n> constructive discussions between people who disagree on these issues. I and\n> all the women who have contributed in this post feel that there's forward\n> progress to be made by finding common ground and discussing different\n> viewpoints without yelling. I hope this will be a good forum for that.\n\nDo you feel like this article does this?\n\nTo me, it looks like three people (two of whom openly identify as having left-\nwing political views) mostly agreeing. That's still useful, but falls way\nshort of \"constructive discussion between people who disagree on these\nissues.\"\n\nR: wolco\nWhat troubles me is the resolution. Man who spoke out is fired everything is\nnow fine at google. Google will remove anyone who dare speaks out. Managers\nwill create blacklists now and singled out. Anyone with oppposing views will\nbe pushed down and\/or pushed out.\n\nR: spacemanmatt\nWhat troubles me is how easily this community, who typically values employer\ndiscretion in how they run their businesses, turns into labor-protection\nlefties when someone gets canned for crapping on half the workforce.\n\nR: merb\nEverything I actually read about the memo (and I didn't read it besides some\npoints) is: \\- Some Points are valid \\- Some Points are discussable (that's\nwhy this post was created, wasn't it?)\n\nbut nearly none addresses them as totally invalid. I mean even in this post of\nycombinator the person in question couldn't straight said \"No! This is wrong\"\nand back it up with data.\n\nI just don't get the whole gender\/race discussions, but if such a memo can\nexists and things like gender diversity programs do exists, than something is\nprobably really really wrong.\n\nBut with one thing I disagree with her, firing him was not the right thing to\ndo, at least not directly. I mean wouldn't it be better to just discuss this,\nprobably in the open, with him, the company and even more and make a great\ndiscussion panel? I mean with just firing him, they actually just ignored all\npoints, even valid ones.\n\nR: dguaraglia\nFrom the article:\n\n> Nevertheless, I maintain that when I go to work, I go to work, and not to a\n> debate club... if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for\n> agreement. I should not be forced into that kind of debate at work.\n\nThat, right there, is why Damore should've looked for a different outlet (and\nprobably one that wasn't 50k+ people big) for testing his \"dialectical\nskills.\" That's the very definition of creating a hostile environment, where\npeople feel forced into actions they normally wouldn't engage into just for\nthe gratification of a single person's whims.\n\nR: dandare\nBut Google was and is a debate club - there is extensive information about\nGoogle's multiple discussion boards and lively cluture of dialectics. Why do\nyou object\/punish a single discussion that you happen to disagree with?\n\nR: dguaraglia\nThere's a slight difference between technical flamewars, pointed debates about\nexpanding the amount of bathrooms available per building and Damore's post. If\nyou can't see the difference, honestly I can't help you.\n\nR: dandare\nLol, I can not argue with this :D\n\nR: shaftoe\nI'm amazed that, in all of the debates stemming from the Google Memo, I\nhaven't seen anyone point their finger at the unhealthy tech culture as a\nfemale repellant.\n\nLook at the work\/life balance of your typical engineer in the tech industry.\nCompare this to the reality of a mother of small children. In our culture,\nwomen disproportionately bear the brunt of child rearing.\n\nWhen there's a work emergency and the kids HAVE to be picked up at daycare,\nwho goes? When a kid is sick, who stays home? When a child is born, who takes\nseveral months of leave to care for them?\n\nConsider that many women leave the tech industry or stay away from the all-\nconsuming work culture because they have or will eventually want a family\nlife. It doesn't matter what are people's abilities when they see a job as\nincompatible and contrary to their life goals.\n\nR: e9\nBut that was part of point in the memo, he was proposing how to change tech\nculture to make it more appealing for women. Like one of his proposals was to\nintroduce part-time jobs into Google among other things. He wasn't claiming to\nhave all answers but wanted to start official conversation on this topic and\nfigure out what is truly feasible at Google...\n\nR: e9\ngreat rant by Jordan Peterson on this topic that touches on work and work\ncultures that don't appeal to women: [https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eieVE-\nxFXuo](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eieVE-xFXuo)\n\nR: md224\nOn a side note, I would like to thank the HN mods for allowing this discussion\nto take place. Previous attempts at discussion were quickly silenced by\nflagging, and while it's a little weird that a piece on YCombinator just\nhappens to be the sole exception, I'm glad that an exception was made. These\nkinds of discussions are difficult but necessary, critical to the process of\ngaining a greater understanding of those we disagree with. I hope we're able\nto keep having these discussions going forward.\n\nR: dang\nThanks, but we didn't do anything different in this case and are as surprised\nas anyone that the post went to #1 and (better still!) the discussion remained\nas civil as it has. I don't want people to think that the ycombinator.com\ndomain affects moderation on an article like this, since our first rule is to\nmoderate less, not more, when YC is involved [1].\n\nI emailed Cadran to warn her that the post would probably meet the same fate\nas the others, but I was wrong - the community responded quite differently.\nThat's fine by us as long as the discussion meets the site guidelines, which\nthis one mostly has.\n\nEdit: also, the community should know that it, not moderators, produced this\neffect. IMO that makes the thread more interesting.\n\n1\\.\n[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)\n\nR: md224\nThanks for clarifying and correcting my assumptions. I'm guessing the content\nof the article in addition to the domain led users to view this as a more\nproductive contribution to the debate. Apologies for assuming that it was HN\nfavoritism on the part of the mods... very interesting that this happened\norganically.\n\n(While I'm replying to you, one super trivial and completely unrelated feature\nrequest... if comment forms are being submitted via JS, could you guys add\ncode to prevent duplicate form submission when the enter key is held down too\nlong? Very low priority and I know you're busy enough, but just figured I\nwould pass along the suggestion. I've had to go back and fix my own accidental\ndupes a few times.)\n\nR: dang\nCould you email us about this at so it goes into our todo\nlist? sctb and I just had an idea about how we might fix this and it's been an\nannoying bug for years.\n\nR: md224\nDone!\n\nR: thomasfromcdnjs\n\"As a female engineer, you don't get to just love coding, or love problem\nsolving and hacking on hardware - you also have to figure out how to navigate\nmen who seem to demonstrate with words and actions that they don't consider\nyou an equal, that they consider you less smart or capable, or that they\nassume you don't have as much expertise as your peers.\"\n\nNot picking any fights, I'd love to really understand this sentiment more. In\nmy entire career I've dealt with co-workers who observably considered me less\nsmart. To the point I barely think it was their innate nature but more so a by\nproduct of being a programmer. Too much isolation and brain reward circuitry\nleads to inflated egos.\n\nI understand that the comment I quoted is speaking of sexist discrimination,\nbut if I re-read it removing female and replacing men with people, it would be\na pretty apt description of my life as a developer.\n\nI believe that it would be hard to delineate whether it was discrimination or\njust work place egos if you weren't from a similar background e.g. minority\ngroups\n\nSidestory: I'm an Indigenous Australian, plenty of times in my life I have\nseen family and friends make statements, that I'm sure plenty of you have also\nseen such as \"You are racist\" or \"That's racist\" when clearly to a third party\nthe accuser seems way off the mark.\n\nR: seanmcdirmid\nWasn't that her point? Software development can be a hostile environment for\nboth men and women because of the many socially inept caustic people who work\nin the industry.\n\nR: thomasfromcdnjs\nI didn't read it as such and I wouldn't say it was the point I was attempting\nto make. (not your fault, I suck at writing sentences)\n\nIn short, apologetically generalising, I'm suggesting that humans by nature\ntend to barely get along ever, and sometimes it is hard to tell what is\ndiscrimination and what is just normal work crap.\n\nR: seanmcdirmid\nAh, yes, I agree.\n\nR: token92375\n_> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are\nsending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take precedence\nover the lived experiences of many smart, talented female engineers and\ntechnical founders._\n\nIn my world view philosophical principles generally take precedence over lived\nexperiences of others. Lived experiences are not universal, cannot be relayed\nexactly (memories are often colored and retellings may be selective to make a\nparticular point). If we want our ethical systems to apply to everyone, to be\ninclusive, we need principles that work for everyone, not just correctives for\nindividual cases.\n\nA lot of TFA appears to put emotion, form, \"lack of consideration\" and\npresentation over facts. I am abstractly aware that those things have quite an\nimpact on people. But it is quite alien to me, in text form the factual\ncontent of argument is more important because text can be easily\nmisinterpreted and it is not a dialogue where the writer can clarify and\ncorrect any misunderstandings.\n\nThat said, the response is still far more measured than the immediate news and\nsocial media response.\n\n _> Social skills are part of a professional skillset. It is important to\nlearn how to handle difficult subjects in a workplace - we all have to do it.\nThere are consequences for doing it in a way that causes problems for your\nemployer_\n\nHe was not the one who leaked it. It was those people who were so offended\nthat they thought the world had to see it instead of engaging in a discussion\nwith him. If the issue is \"causing problems for the employer\" then aren't\nthose others also guilty?\n\nR: rurounijones\n[https:\/\/heterodoxacademy.org\/2017\/08\/10\/the-google-memo-\nwhat...](https:\/\/heterodoxacademy.org\/2017\/08\/10\/the-google-memo-what-does-\nthe-research-say-about-gender-differences\/)\n\nThis is a document that puports to examine the science as much as possible\nfrom both sides to try and educate impartially.\n\nR: AnimalMuppet\nFirst, a summary: There are differences between men and women. There are\n_also_ barriers to entry into tech for women. Let's try to fix those, and\n_keep_ trying, without necessarily expecting that we'll have 50% of engineers\nbeing women when we've finally fixed (all) the barriers.\n\nAnd one detailed opinion:\n\nOn Edith's reply to \"What do you disagree with or find objectionable?\": She\ncomplained about having to wonder whether people she encountered on the job\nfelt that she was qualified. I suspect that quite a few male Google employees\nactually feel the same fear (call it imposter syndrome). The question to me\nis, does she feel the same fear as men and wonder if, in her case, it's\nbecause she's female? Or does she feel _additional_ fear because of being\nfemale? (I don't know, and I'm not going to guess. I merely observe that, if\nyou remove the male\/female aspects, what she said sounds a lot like how people\ndescribe imposter syndrome.)\n\nR: rllin\nAre any of these engineers East Asian immigrants or Asian Americans? From my\nown circles both near and extended, it seems like there is a much more even\nsplit within especially East Asian H1Bs and to a less degree Asian Americans?\nThis may be from my own experience of hearing Asian parents push children\nregardless of gender towards STEM.\n\nIt keeps leading me back to the idea that increased volition allows gender\ndifferences to propagate.\n\nI've been trying very hard to find data for say H1Bs by race and by gender at\nOracle. Any thoughts?\n\nR: interlocutor\nThe 2015 stackoverflow survey has this interesting statement: \"Developers in\nIndia are 3-times more likely to be female than developers in the United\nStates.\" See\n[https:\/\/insights.stackoverflow.com\/survey\/2015](https:\/\/insights.stackoverflow.com\/survey\/2015)\n\nActually it is worse than it sounds because most of the female developers in\nthe United States are H1Bs from India, China and other Asian countries, and\nRomania and other eastern-European countries. If you subtract their numbers\nthen the difference is more severe.\n\nThere is something in the US culture that makes American women not want to\ntake up tech. The diversity memo doesn't address the fact that more women take\ntech jobs when impediments are removed, as evidenced by the larger percentage\nof women in tech jobs in other countries.\n\nR: humanrebar\nI think the discrepancy between American women and immigrant women is\ninteresting. I'm not sure we can conclude from the given evidence that the\ndifference is reduced impediments. It could be that that the increased\neconomic opportunity (or potential immigration benefits) makes up for other\nthings.\n\nR: rllin\nI agree the increased economic opportunity could very well be the primary\nfactor, but why is this not enough of a factor for white American women? Or\nare there other factors in raising a child in an economically stable society\nlead to more \"do what you want, my child, regardless of your gender\"?\n\nR: humanrebar\n> ...why is this not enough of a factor for white American women?\n\nWorking as an engineer in America is a bigger jump in economic opportunity for\nsomeone in India than for someone in America. Also, it's likely that Indians\nare better informed about what the pay for top notch engineers is these days.\nI suspect the average American underestimates what coding pays by quite a bit.\n\nR: MichaelMoser123\nI think the problem with tech is that many of us are arrogant pricks (let the\ndown votes start) because of this fact we are facing a lot of politics at the\nworkplace - all with the common source of a desire to dominate. More women\nmight create a more healthy atmosphere at most places, but who cares. However\nthis is unlikely to happen because many women are not attracted by a heavily\nmale dominated work environment.\n\nThe argument that women are inherently bad at tech is not based on historical\nevidence - lots of women in early computing. Believe me it is very tough to\ndebug a stack of punch cards, much tougher than what we have today...\n\nAre HR practices and PC the right way to solve deep problems? I don't think\nso. Maybe discussions of this sort can move some people, but most people only\nseek and find confirmation for their own position...\n\nR: aidenn0\nDoes anyone know if there is anywhere with discussions with women who _aren\n't_ engineers? I'm thinking find a dozen random women who were 95th percentile\nor higher on the SATs 6 years ago and ask them 1) Why they chose their field\nand 2) Why they didn't go into computer science.\n\nAt least at the college I went to, the ratio of women graduating in CS was\nslightly higher than the ratio of women enrolled in my freshman CS class\n(proportionally, slightly more men switched majors or dropped out than women).\n\nPlaces like Google hiring more female engineers is good, and even helps with\nthe pipeline problem, since role-models are one way of encouraging\ndisadvantaged groups to pursue particular careers. However, it would be nice\nto know if there are interventions we could make directly earlier in the\npipeline.\n\nR: poohblahoyamo\nI live in the land of prestigious doctors - we all did well on the SAT. CS was\nnot super prominent in my life despite me knowing some code in early high\nschool, but my mom is a doctor, so that was obviously a viable option in my\nmind. The thought that it is a job that only lasts until you are 45 and I have\nto make as much money as I humanly can before being forced to retired at\nmiddle age is a bit unattractive. Also, the idea of doing stuff on computer\nall day looking for bugs, vs playing medicine puzzles was less attractive.\nLOL, medicine is fairly tedious as well now that I am in it, but yes, while I\nam more interested in programming to do a few practical things, I am not\ninterested in working as a SWE. A lot of the med students have SWE spouses. We\ndo sit around and lament about how we could have done it too with much better\npay and some passes for interviewing, about the Google Hawaii powow and how\nnice the Christmas party as Museum of Natural History is, while we get a\nChristmad party at the local bar with the drunk emergency technicians. Tech\nhas a lot of glamour now, medicine doesn'.t But in the end, I don't think I\nwould choose differently. Female physicians really don't get any passes...\nOkay, if you are lady going into Urology or trauma surgery, and a dude going\ninto obgyn, I hear there is a bit more help, otherwise we don't really get any\nbonus points for being a woman or minority.\n\nR: ykler\nI would like to hear more about why so many people feel it would be\nintolerable for a woman to be assigned to work with this guy. I'm a Jewish\nman, and I feel that I could deal OK with being assigned to work with a\nradical anti-Semite or a feminist who professed beliefs about men being evil,\nor with someone who held me in contempt and thought my technical abilities\nwere subpar.\n\nR: exelius\nThere's a difference between \"starting a conversation\" and blasting out an\ne-mail to 50,000 people that doesn't really even grasp the realities of modern\nsoftware development. There's a chain of command about this kind of stuff for\na reason. The author is simply mistaken on the requirements that make a good\nsoftware developer: yes, it is true that on average, men are probably better\nat heads-down software development. But that's at most half of the job of\nsoftware development, and it's honestly the least important part to get right.\n\nOn other metrics (such as interpersonal communication, conflict resolution,\netc - all critical components of modern engineering) women are better on\naverage. How many Silicon Valley startups fail because their product\nrepresents the problems that the team members (who tend to be mostly white\nmen) are facing? How many investors went along with this because they too had\nthe same problem?\n\nPoint is, you don't get to cherry-pick statistics that match your perceived\ncriteria for the job and claim to be trying to start an unbiased dialog. I\ndon't think it's intentionally disingenuous -- I think that the author of the\noriginal memo has a limited view of the job and the problems associated with\nit.\n\nThat's honestly the biggest problem here: white men very often believe their\nviewpoint is the only valid one, and don't even consider alternate viewpoints.\nI'm not saying this as \"white men bad!\" \\-- I'm totally empathetic to the fact\nthat many white men feel they are under attack -- but that misses the point.\nEveryone who is not a white man has felt that way their entire lives in some\ndegree. Every way you deviate from the \"straight white male\" archetype (by\nbeing black, gay, female, transgender, etc.) is another front you have to play\ndefense on.\n\nI think the right response is something along the lines of \"Your viewpoint is\nvalid, but please understand that it is not the only one that is valid.\" We\nhave to be careful not to invalidate someone's lived experience -- that's\nexactly the problem we accuse white men of, and showing the same behavior\nright back isn't going to solve the problem.\n\nR: jmcgough\nThis is one of the first rational discussions I've seen of the memo.\n\nedit: for context, I'm a female engineer\n\nR: fche\nIf female engineers need to worry that, in the aftermath of the memo, people\nwill wonder their genuine qualifications, they should not aim their blame\ntoward the memo. The only people overtly and explicitly injecting non-\nqualification factors into hiring are affirmative-action type people. They\ncreated the quandary.\n\nR: dandare\nWho wants to play a game of Arguman with me?\n\nI state that \"Positive discrimination of disadvantaged groups in employment\nand education is immoral\"\n\n[http:\/\/en.arguman.org\/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-\nimm...](http:\/\/en.arguman.org\/positive-discrimination-at-work-is-immoral)\n\nR: GuB-42\nI've read the memo and I don't see the part where it says that women make\nworse engineers in general. It says that a lower proportion of women meet\nGoogle's expectations for engineering positions.\n\nThis is not the same thing at all. First, he explicitly rejects the idea of a\ngender binary, using an overlapping Gaussian distribution instead. Second, he\nsays that many positions at Google have expectations that favor men\n(competition, work-over-home, ...) even though these traits don't necessarily\nmake better engineers.\n\nR: thieving_magpie\n>I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male\ncolleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate,\neither seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of\nunderstanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about.\n\nInteresting takes on the memo. This part stood out to me.\n\nI'm not really in a situation where I have many coworkers around but, just\nknowing myself, I can say I likely would be someone that would have stayed\nsilent on the topic unless it was specifically brought up. That's more about\nmy personality than anything, I generally avoid starting conversations because\nI'm bad at small talk.\n\nI'd like to know what I can do differently. My opinion generally mirrors the\nthoughts put forward by the female engineers but I feel like maybe I've let\nsomeone in my life down by not being more vocal and supportive. Really the\nonly thing I've done is tried to encourage female coworkers in non-development\npositions to try it out, and offer them help. I've tried to nudge our hiring\nteam to look at a more diverse crowd - though that's hampered by low wages and\nliving very literally in one of the more remote parts of the country (our town\nhas 3.5k people and is considered a large town for our region). I guess I'm\nsaying I want to do more but I don't know what to do without seeming\ndisingenuous.\n\nR: alexandercrohde\nWow. I really feel like this was a missed opportunity to close the gap. I feel\nlike some very unreasonable thing are being said in a reasonable\/polished way.\n\n>> A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as\nevidence that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with.\nWhen I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my\ncolleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired\nbecause I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?\n\nSo it sounds like we're implying that anybody who presents facts to your\ncoworkers that might enable them to come to stereotypical conclusions has made\na hostile work environment? I find it absurd that an environment is hostile\nbecause \"maybe people are thinking X.\" I would think hostility would require\nsome form of visible action.\n\n>> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts.\nIt seemed like he cherry-picked research that agreed with his views and didn't\nseek dissenting research or opinions before sending the document to internal\nGoogle groups.\n\nIsn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to\nfact. His views are certainly much more in line with the facts that what I've\nheard from his opponents. For example, I don't see anybody disagreeing that\nwomen score higher on \"neuroticism\" measures (wikipedia agrees).\n\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psyc...](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sex_differences_in_humans#Psychology)\n\n>> There's a difference between \"let's have a discussion\" and \"let me tell you\nwhat's up, all you wrong people.\"\n\nGreat, but that has nothing to do with this. The other side certainly would\nnever extend him (or me) that civility. This is a power struggle and I don't\nknow why we're pretending it's not.\n\n\\---\n\nAs an aside, this whole debate has made me realize that I was kidding myself\nif I told myself SJWs were on the side of equality. They are on the side of\npolitically advancing their own in-group-alliance (which doesn't include most\nminorities, nor the minority most in need - the lower class).\n\nThey have no interest in fact because they aren't trying to achieve a clear\nvision of a better world, rather it's because they are playing politics where\nfacts are just another form of weapon.\n\nThe only reason they have so much power in tech (and not say, finance) is\nbecause we are altruists\/optimists ourselves and tried to see something\ngreater in SJW political games.\n\nR: bronson\n> I feel like some very unreasonable thing are being said in a\n> reasonable\/polished way.\n\nThat's a decent description of Damore's memo.\n\n> I would think hostility would require some form of visible action.\n\nNope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even\nthough there was almost no visible action.\n\n> Isn't the whole point of science is to move the debate away from opinion to\n> fact.\n\nYes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't\nrigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote\npreconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics,\netc).\n\nI apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds\nlike you're saying the women who wrote this article are part of a powerful in-\ngroup-alliance?\n\nR: alexandercrohde\n>> Nope. My dad's tech workplace in the '70s was hostile to black people even\nthough there was almost no visible action.\n\nWhat do you mean? They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently?\n\n>> Yes, but cherry-picking results and selectively quoting articles isn't\nrigorous science. There is a long history of misusing science to promote\npreconceived agendas (tobacco industry, new age quantum garbage, eugenics,\netc).\n\nThis is fair. Except from my side, I feel like I'm seeing cherry-picking by\nthe other side. I studied psychology, and in college nobody seemed to dispute\ninnate differences between men and women (I was taught of some in infants).\n\nSo since both sides feel the other is cherry-picking, we can either A) fire\npeople for it B) talk it out like scientists.\n\n>> I apologize, I just can't understand the last half of your post. It sounds\nlike you're saying the women who wrote this reply are part of some powerful\nin-group-alliance?\n\nI'm not suggesting there is an alliance of women. I'm suggesting there is a\n_politically motivated_ core (SJW is the closest word I know for the group) at\ngoogle and the larger public. The fact that this group is treating science as\npolitics explains why:\n\n\\- They are trying to fire people for ideas (because it's US vs THEM in their\nheads)\n\n\\- They are deliberately lying about what Damore said (because it's politics,\nso no holds barred).\n\n\\- They are not at all expressing a coherent vision of what \"equality\" would\nlook like if they could make all the rules, but instead fighting for their own\nminorities (and disregarding Jews, Mexicans, ugly people, fat people, tattooed\npeople, and all the other groups that certainly are slightly discriminated\nagainst)\n\nR: bronson\n> They didn't hire, fire, promote, or speak differently?\n\nSure, now prove it. Other than the lack of black engineers in his department\nand some comments made at non-work-related functions, there wasn't anything\nyou could point to and say \"a-ha!\" It can be insidious.\n\n> nobody seemed to dispute innate differences between men and women\n\nI think everyone agrees there are innate differences. At least, the women who\nwrote this article do as well.\n\nNow, do those innate differences make women inferior engineers? (I know,\nDamore never explicitly said this, but he implied it. Maybe it's just poor\nwriting? I wish he'd run his memo past some interested women before posting\ninternally so he'd have a chance to clarify.)\n\nThe \"core\" of which you speak is basically Google's exec staff. It's not a\nconspiracy, it's just the company.\n\nThey fired Damore because, whether it's due to unfair implications or just bad\nwriting, his presence had become hostile to a good percentage of Google's\nworkforce. He's not going to be in a position to manage many female engineers\nafter posting that.\n\nPersonally, I wish Google could have condemned the memo and let HR handle it.\nTheir reaction seemed over the top. Ah well, sometimes life isn't fair, even\nfor white male engineers. :)\n\nR: yarg\nThis I think is a problem with the culture and education system of our\nsociety, by the time we reach the point of hiring someone the damage is\nalready done.\n\nI don't think it makes a hell of a lot of sense to chose someone on the\ngrounds of what minority or oppressed group they happen to be a part of - hire\nthe best person for the job (this shouldn't simply take into account the\nskills of the individual, but also how well they can be expected to integrate\ninto the group that they are becoming a part of).\n\nWe need to look into the underlying causes of the gender and race imbalances\nin the pool from which we are hiring.\n\nFor women, this means looking at why it is that girls seem to be disuaded from\ninterest in the fields in question. From my perspective my interest in the\nengineering fields emerged from being exposed to things as simple as\ntransformers (the toys, not the modern explosion porn), while my sisters were\nplaying with Barbies (a line of toys that I still consider vapid and\npointless) I was marvelling at the fact that a few joints and pivots can be\nstructured in such a way as to allow transition between vehicular and humanoid\nforms. Allowing girls to think in mathematical and engineering terms without\nattaching a social stigma of acting boyish will help in this regard.\n\nFrom the perspective of racial minorities, there is a multi-generational\npoverty cycle coupled with a far lower standard of education. It cuts them off\nat the knees before they even get started.\n\nFix the education system and the discouraging culture in and of our society\nand things will balance out - eventually.\n\nBut the current way of doing things is a feel good solution that deals with\nthe symptoms - and ignores the underlying disease.\n\nR: phkahler\nI find it annoying how all these people get to freely debate this and voice\ntheir opinions, but the person who started it lost his job for doing the same.\n\nR: randyrand\n> particularly his arguments pointing to biological factors as a primary\n> reason that there aren't more female software engineers\n\nI believe it was just _a_ reason. Not necessarily the primary one.\n\nI should probably go back and reread it, but I also remember the biological\npoints were primarily about _interest_ rather than the suitability of those\nthat _are already_ interested.\n\nIt seems most of the disagreement on the memo are things he never said.\n\nR: throwaway9287\nI just can't figure out why it is so difficult to even discuss the fact that\nmen and women are not identical. It is really difficult to research and\nmeasure, but it is a really, really strong (and untrue) assumption that men\nand women are just exactly the same in every possible way.\n\nNow if we accept that fact, even if we are not able to quantify it, also the\ndemographics are going to vary by occupation, just by choice, even in a\nperfect world without discrimination.\n\nGiven how impossible this is to research, how are we to know whether\noccupational gender differences are good or bad? How do we know what's\ndiscrimination and what's just choice, knowing that the two are also related,\nand choice is also related with ability regardless of the gender.\n\nWe should fix discrimination by punishing the actors behaving that way, not by\nestablishing countermeasures that are just discriminatory in the other\ndirection. This is what I understood to be Damore's main argument.\n\nR: anon0192\nPeople wonder why there was such an outrage. This article is a good starting\npoint showing some of the effects that stereotypes can have on people:\n\n[http:\/\/mitadmissions.org\/blogs\/entry\/picture-yourself-as-\na-s...](http:\/\/mitadmissions.org\/blogs\/entry\/picture-yourself-as-a-\nstereotypical-male)\n\nTwo examples extracted and paraphrased:\n\n* 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.\n\n* 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).\n\nImagine having looked at studies like these. They show how severely people can\nbe affected by stereotypes - orders of magnitude more than any statistically\ninsignificant biological differences. If even the stereotyped are personally\naffected, imagine how much worse that can be in multiple-people situations\n(interviews, meetings etc) where the other people are not the target of the\nstereotype but has been influenced by it in their life...\n\nSo now a colleague is seemingly perpetuating stereotypes and those stereotypes\nare going viral. His argument may be more nuanced than that, but you fear that\nthe stereotypes are all that people will take from it. For the most part that\nfear seems to be coming true. Whats the normal reaction there?\n\nR: trophycase\nAfter having this sort of discussion with people, there seems to be a huge\nnumber of people, some very intelligent, that don't understand the\nrelationship between sex hormones and behavior\n\nR: staticelf\nCan't we just agree on that generalizing people in general is a pretty bad\nidea? Better to give equal opportunity, which in my opinion doesn't mean that\nyou give anyone more attention because of physical factors like what sex a\nperson have.\n\nI am principally against using any form of discrimination even if the reason\nis to fight discrimination. Having for example courses only for women, hiring\nwomen only because there is a disparity is bad idea.\n\nI honestly think if we just treated everyone with the same respect that we\nwant to be treated ourselves a lot of these issues would disappear.\n\nMaybe there will still be a lack of a specific sex in some jobs but honestly,\nwho cares? I certainly do not and do not believe in the notion that a company\nis more successful because of a more mixed environment. I think the competence\nof each employee and their worldview and view towards another is way more\nimportant.\n\nAs I've written many times before, please just treat everyone the same.\n\nR: thetruthseeker1\nI for one believe James Damore wasn't fired for his views on women, but Google\nfired him because he was a PR problem and that could affect their\nbusiness\/financial bottom line. Google probably understands the user base and\ndecided they would rather not displease women (bigger group) compared to\nconservatives.\n\nMy analysis adds up to what James Damore had to say as to what happened in a\nWSJ article. He said his memo didn't bother many people until it was leaked,\nand the google HR got many complaints from the outside world.\n\nI think the google management fired him not because of his view, nor were they\nworried that he questioned google's purported wasteful spending on diversity\nprograms (which for Google is drop in the bucket if it is effective...if it is\nnot effective I dont think they care, it makes them look good).\n\nBut google fired James because they thought he was bad for business (consumer\nbase).\n\nR: seanmcdirmid\nIf thst were true, why didn't google negotiate a gag agreement (using a few\nmillion $$$, cheap for them) with Damore to make this just go away? The fact\nthat they didn't take the easy way out makes me think that they didn't fire\nhim for business reasons.\n\nR: thetruthseeker1\nBut that wouldn't appease the public who wanted him fired? If the public(\nlet's say women's group) aren't appeased and they boycott google, it affects\ngoogle ?\n\nIt is possible that google gave an offer to James D to be silent along with\nthe pink slip, which he might have turned down?\n\nR: seanmcdirmid\nThere is a lot of anti-SJW sentiment these days that I'm sure even Google\ndoesn't really want to tap into...the public is more broadly defined than one\nside of the story. Also, the longer this story goes on, the left isn't really\nappeased and the right grows angrier, very much a lose-lose situation for\ngoogle right now.\n\nThe guy might have turned down a gag agreement, maybe they just didn't offer\nenough money? A non-disparagement ageement would also be on the table just for\nseverence, but Google seems to have opted out of that already (you can't talk\nabout the guy and expect that him not to talk about you).\n\nR: Ensorceled\nThe main issue I had with the document is that it read like an 80's USENET\nposting in alt.politics. I've seen this entire discussion play out over and\nover again, at multiple companies, with the same talking points, for all 35\nyears of my career.\n\nMy stepson just graduated from the same comp sci program I graduated from in\nthe late 80's and I was startled by how fewer women there were in his\ngraduating class than mine. I've watched my female classmates and colleagues\nleave the industry. I've watched the number of female candidates for my\npositions dwindle to the point where I recently hired three developers and\nthere was a dearth of female candidates.\n\nThere is definitely a problem and the first step is to get beyond the point\nwhere smart, professionals in their late 20's think 80's reruns are adding to\nthe debate.\n\nR: nodamage\n\n I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general populations,\n then walk it back to say \"but of course it doesn't apply at an individual level.\"\n A lot of people have used that argument in defense of what he wrote, as evidence\n that the memo was not harmful or hostile to the women he worked with.\n \n\nI strongly agree with this criticism and thought it was ridiculous that people\neven attempted to use this defense in the first place, so I'm glad it's being\ncalled out. When you are discussing statistical differences between\npopulations as an explanation for certain behaviors, _of course_ it is\nacknowledged by both sides that there are individuals that are outliers and\nthat averages do not apply to every individual.\n\nR: jansho\nFantastic interview, I relate to many of the things the engineers mentioned. I\nwas also disappointed by the heat and rage from both sides, IMO this whole\ngender thing is _not_ a debate, it's more like a cat fight that everyone gets\nhurt and become more hardened about their views. It's anti-productive and\n_exhausting._\n\nI hope that the silver lining here is that more people, particularly those who\nsubconsciously share Damore's views on women, understand better about the real\nchallenges of girls and women in the tech field. Cos it's not enough for a\nsmall segment to drive positive change, _everyone_ needs to be onboard too.\nLet's shift the debate to that level now.\n\nR: hippich\nIf Google would not have such diversity program in the first place, none of\nthat would be happening. Reason why female engineers might have anxiety about\nwhat male engineers think about them is exactly result of having such program\nin place.\n\nR: diedyesterday\nThe government and society's (including workplaces) responsibility towards\ngender\/race equity is to remove any legal\/moral\/social barriers for anyone\n(provided they have the interest and qualifications) to become anything. Going\nbeyond that and trying to enforce a 50-50 gender quota\/division in everything\nis itself ideologically motivated and an idiotic attempt at fighting biology.\nAll you have to and should do is let anyone be anything. Whether this leads to\na 50-50 division (gender-wise) is something biology and other factors will\ndetermine and should not concern us fundamentally.\n\nR: simonebrunozzi\nThis \"ask\" has an issue for me already: why would a female engineer know\nbetter than a male engineer?\n\nAs long as someone feels to have an informed opinion about the subject, he\/she\nshould feel free to present his view.\n\n(I am a male (ex) software engineer, and I sure as hell have an opinion about\nit - to give you the TL;DR: his intention was to stimulate a conversation, he\ndid it in an awkward way, and he's not perfect. And no, Google should have not\nfired him, but if you have ever worked in a large corporate environment, you\nmight have a good idea why they did anyway).\n\nR: redthrowaway\n>I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general populations,\nthen walk it back to say \"but of course it doesn't apply at an individual\nlevel.\"\n\nI'd be curious to hear an actual defence of this line of thinking. I mean,\nit's simply a fact that group differences aren't particularly useful\nindicators of what an individual is like. Nevertheless, they're very _good_\nindicators of what populations are like. Is there any actual criticism of that\nargument, or is the objection more about how people feel about that argument?\n\nR: sevilo\nI really enjoyed this interview, finally, some voices of reasons and not blind\nyelling at men for being sexist pigs just from reading some biased media's\ntwisted headlines.\n\nAll these times around this memo, how many people actually cared to ask for\nfemale engineer's thoughts on this? All I see is women who don't work in\nengineering positions or men trying to interpret this memo from their\nperspective. How many actually cared what are the thoughts and impact on the\nmain subject being discussed in the original article?\n\nR: someguydave\nOne feature of these \"victim identity\" wars is that a tiny number of\nindividuals claim to speak for an entire identity group without authorization.\n\nThese claims should be ignored as illegitimate.\n\nR: alexryan\nWhat bothers me most about this article is how all of us, when we feel\nthreatened, tend to close off our empathy for the other side which prevents us\nfrom seeing clearly that they too feel threatened. We both come across as\nselfish and uncaring to the other and are completely oblivious to the fact\nthat we are doing exactly the same thing ourselves.\n\nMarshall Rosenberg used to say that \"all objectionable behavior is a tragic\nexpression of an unmet need\". That's worth thinking about because it points\nthe way towards an actual solution to the problem.\n\nThe simple \"nonviolent communication\" method that he developed was designed to\nhelp people to break down the barriers of hostility and connect in a fashion\nthat enables both parties to achieve a mutually satisfying resolution and a\ncloser and more fulfilling relationship. I have found it to work very well in\nmy personal relationships.\n\nAs a general rule, when the other person feels that you genuinely care about\ntheir needs and are truly committed to helping them to meet them, they are\nvery likely to return the favor. At that point the hostility fades and the\nseeking of zero sum solutions on both sides gives way to both sides working\ntogether to brainstorm a positive sum solution that fully meets everyone's\nneeds. This is really quite a beautiful process and I wish more people used it\nbecause I truly believe it could make the world a far better place for all of\nus.\n\nR: Tehnix\nFirst off, sorry if it seems a bit incoherent, on a mobile so hard to keep an\noverview.\n\nWhile it has (at least vocally) gotten a lot of backlash, the memo did give me\nan opportunity to have a deep conversation about both it, and sexism in\ngeneral, not just in tech and not just towards one gender, with a female\nfriend of mine that I study with.\n\nWe came into a lot of what annoys us both about the way the topic is treated\nin PC culture, and also gave us a bit of a better understanding of what types\nof things both gender face in society as a whole. Quite enjoyable\nconversation, but honestly you can do with someone you trust. So at least in\nthat regard the memo \"worked\" for us.\n\nOne thing in the OP that stuck with me was\n\n> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my\n> colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired\n> because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have? How do I prove\n> myself to people one way or another?\n\nWhich in my opinion is what happens when you go about \"fixing\" the gender\ndisparity by such metrics as hiring. I really liked the suggestion to measure\nretention, how long they stayed and how happy they were, instead of some\nartificial quota for which you stop thinking after checking that box off. I\nreally think we need to re-evaluate what works, and I hope at least the\nongoing discussions bring us a little bit closer to that.\n\nR: exodust\nI'm baffled as to why these anonymous engineers or any female colleague would\nbe offended by his memo. Some of the responses are quite condescending,\ncalling him a \"confused, questionably informed kid\". Wow.\n\nHis memo is clear and reasonable. His interviews are reasonable and\nrespectful, he approaches the topic calmly and scientifically, the exact\nopposite to the reactionary anger.\n\nThe _only_ part of the memo I can see that could cause a fuss is this:\n\n> \"distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part\n> due to biological causes\"\n\nEven if true, it should be mentioned that _ability_ often stems from\npreference. We are driven to invest time and effort into our preferences, so\nour abilities in those areas will improve. In a population average, we should\nbe able to graph this difference without failing any gender bias scrutiny.\n\nAs for \"native ability\", all else equal except gender, you will face\nopposition to the idea that your gender might start you at a disadvantage in\ngiven disciplines.\n\nAs soon as a child starts growing up and investing time in their preference,\ntheir abilities will cluster around those preferences. So it would be very\ndifficult to prove that gender abilities are present before socialisation.\nEither way, it's a scientific question, and deserves respect rather than over-\nsensitive knee-jerk political reactions.\n\nR: sonabinu\nThank you for posting this! Since that memo came out, I've asked myself\nseveral times - am I not woman enough because I love math and programming. I\ndidn't know I would love either till I did a bit of deliberate slogging on\nboth when I changed careers. Math, I deliberately learnt in high school simply\nbecause I no longer wanted to confused. Computing I learnt the slow hard way,\nagain deliberately. But once I got a hang of it, it's been my passion!!!\n\nR: xigency\nI think it's a fatal mistake to underestimate the amount of discretion an\nemployer has over its employees' behavior. In general, employment is at-will\nand relationships _can end_ over personal differences.\n\nOne reason it might be shocking to be let go over a 'free-speech' issue is\nthis individual was working at Google. If someone worked for their city\ngovernment and mailed around a ten-page manifesto of either their genius\nfindings or deluded beliefs (either way), it's not unreasonable that they\nmight be let go without anyone reading it. (The action of sending around an\nopinionated piece of information without authority could be grounds for\ndismissal.)\n\nIn the past, there have been incidents like Steve Y's note where a smart\nperson weathered a major faux pas for better or worse, which might make one\nthink that all forms of speech are encouraged at this company. But I think\nDamore made some unique foibles when publishing this note and assumed that his\noutlook and motivation would be either respected or endorsed. Again, it is not\na necessity for any corporation or organization to do so.\n\nI also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word\ndocuments are the correct forum for this sort of debate. Given that the\nadversaries that Damore faces in this debate have most liked studied diversity\nand human resources at the graduate level, peppering survey references into a\nnarrative argument will not be sufficiently persuasive of anything. The\ncorrect forum for this discussion is an anthropology thesis or something\nsimilar, or a very finely combed, deeply vetted, considerate action to a\nrelevant party or audience.\n\nR: humanrebar\n> I also doubt that internal employee message boards or collective Word\n> documents are the correct forum for this sort of debate.\n\nWhat is the right forum?\n\nR: Delmania\nFor this conversation? A woman. He should have given that document to a female\nfriend, told her it would probably offend her, and ask for her advice on how\nto improve it. He should have been there and watched her reaction as she read\nit. the single greatest fault of forums is that they do not give people a\nchance to read someone else's body language.\n\nR: throw2016\nVery few social and scientific studies offer room for the average individual\nto make links and draw conclusions outside the context of academic study.\n\nFor a random individual to not only draw conclusions these studies were not\ndesigned to support, that even their authors don't, outside of context of\nacademic inquiry, and seek to apply it in the real world is an inexcusable\ntransgression.\n\nThat some should fail to register this abuse of science and fail to notice the\ntransgression is surprising.\n\nWhat if someone circulates a memo citing studies saying introverts are not\nsuitable for social collaboration roles, or aggression in males makes them\nunsuitable for collaboration roles and we should look for more 'suitable roles\nfor males'.\n\nStudies definitively show aggression is predominant in males but no one seeks\nto connect it to a real world workplace and that too without the credentials\nor expertise to. Is this science?\n\nSeeking to apply social and genetic studies that are rarely as certain as the\nexperimental sciences 1=1 to draw conclusions in the real world has\ntraditionally been the refuge of supremacists and eugenicists.\n\nThat any well adjusted individual would seek to join this group in a workplace\nmemo is an indiscretion too far. Individuals can't simply be reduced to\ngenetics.\n\nR: bleair\nWhy not have a real discussion about the environmental differences that\ninfluence interests and expectations. American society has very clear gender\nroles and expectations. Why are girls by age 6 conditioned to think \"math is\nhard\". Why are men encouraged to \"crush it\" or \"kill it\" and promoted if they\ndo so at work, and yet if a women took a similar approach she would be\ncriticized for being too pushy or bitchy.\n\nR: suzzer99\nThe Economist really nails it imo. Pointing to some random stats that support\nyour hypothesis, ignoring others, and speculating the significance of said\nstats is not science - it's motivated reasoning.\n\n[https:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/21726276-last-week-paper-\nsaid...](https:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/21726276-last-week-paper-said-\nalphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal)\n\nR: look_lookatme\nAlso known as \"modern journalism\".\n\nR: unityByFreedom\nGreat to hear from more women.\n\nHere's another from an evolutionary scientist who gives a point-by-point\nresponse to Damore, using quotes from his text as a launching point for\ndiscussion [1]\n\nShe mentions that Damore brings up IQ,\n\n\"the Left tends to deny science concerning biological differences between\npeople (e.g., IQ and sex differences)\"\n\nIQ has no relevance to a discussion on gender gaps, so, why mention it?\n\nThe quote's context is politics. In that context, IQ has recently been used in\ndiscussions over racial differences [2].\n\nIt begs the question, is Damore being honest about his views on race? If we\nreplace \"IQ\" with \"race\", would that change the meaning he meant to convey?\n\n[1] [https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-\nbio...](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-\nclaims-made-in-the-document-about-diversity-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-\nAugust-2017\/answer\/Suzanne-Sadedin)\n\n[2] [https:\/\/www.vox.com\/the-big-idea\/2017\/6\/15\/15797120\/race-\nbla...](https:\/\/www.vox.com\/the-big-idea\/2017\/6\/15\/15797120\/race-black-white-\niq-response-critics)\n\nR: Noughmad\nThe very first answers about what they disagree with starts with\n\n> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences\n> between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs.\n\nIf you look at just about any sport, there is a big difference between men and\nwomen. And that's not just for really physically intensive sports such as\nathletics. Even in chess, only 2 of the top 100 are women.\n\nR: MikeGale\nAn important part of this discussion is using general population statistics,\nto describe programmers at Google.\n\nProgrammers at Google are NOT general population.\n\nWithout seeing that specific data, it may be that female programmers at Google\nare better than the males. I don't know, and it varies by project and role.\n\nThen when we are talking about specific people, all the population statistics\nare irrelevant anyway.\n\nR: syrrim\n>When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my\ncolleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired\nbecause I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?\n\nDamore never said he thought this way; this is merely an implication of\nsomething he did say.\n\nWhat he did say was that he believes that - even though there are 4 times as\nmany men as women at Google - the men who are there deserve to be there as\nmuch as the women. This implies that, were you to utilize quotas to achieve\ngender parity, then this same equality would not be true - men would now\n\"deserve\" their jobs more than women.\n\nConversely, if you think that gender parity through quotas would bring about\nequality of the sexes, then that implies that you think men employed right now\nare less capable then women. Men around you should then ask themselves the\ninverse question: how do they know which colleagues think they were hired\npurely because they are a man?\n\nR: SOLAR_FIELDS\nOne of the most interesting things I got from this was referencing usage of\nthe term TL;DR. While it's unclear where the Term \"TL;DR\" originated it\ncertainly gained popularity in SomethingAwful and 4chan, two places that have\nlong been known by the general society as havens for degeneracy. It's an\ninteresting parallel when the term (which has obviously come a long way from\nwhere it originated) appears in a professional discussion alongside viewpoints\nthat the original group of people who popularized the term would have\nconsidered widely abhorrent.\n\nNot that it really speaks to anything about this particular issue, more to the\nfact that many people who use meme references are fully unaware that the\ncesspool of places like SA and 4chan are the originators\/popularizers of the\njokes that are repeated by one who might turn around and fully condemn those\ncommunities in the next sentence without skipping a beat.\n\nR: josteink\n> When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my\n> colleagues thinks I'm an outlier among women versus someone who was hired\n> because I'm female that doesn't deserve the job they have?\n\nThat's a question which will keep popping up as long as you have\ndiscriminatory practices in the hiring process.\n\nThis memo changed nothing in this regard.\n\nR: free2buandme\nIn support of workplaces in which all employees know and feel the company is\ndoing what it can feasibly to support them, regardless of who they are. I'm a\nman, I love women, and I'm a feminist.\n\nSo, despite my thought that it was utterly moronic for someone at Google to\nwrite out his beliefs in such a way that he would certainly get fired, unless\nhe plans to go into politics, I'd like to respond to something one of the\nfemale interviewees stated in this interview:\n\n\"I also think that society should have room for the discussion of ideas that\nare not in step with what is considered acceptable at a given time. There is,\nof course, a difference between an unfounded opinion and the pursuit of\nscientific truth, but logically, we should not avoid pursuing a scientific\ntruth for fear that the answer will not be aligned with currently accepted\ndogmas.\"\n\nWhile these statements are incredibly close to my own, I call bullshit.\n\nThe pursuit of \"scientific truth\" in such a way to not be aligned with\naccepted dogmas is equivalent to having unfounded opinions in the sense that\n\"scientific truth\" itself is a lie, and has been so since the first \"truth\"\nwas found to be \"false\".\n\nBeliefs attributed to scientific work are beliefs, and modern science evolved\nfrom philosophers who established \"truths\" based on speculation.\n\nTo add to that, even what's been established is suspect, even if it were true\nonce. Our minds believe things to be true from past experience that may not\nalign with recorded history. People made mistakes when recording history.\nTherefore, according to \"scientific truth\" (which itself may be unwise!), we\ncannot assume everything we believe to be true to be true.\n\nHow then could the pursuit of a truth that could easily become a lie later any\ndifferent than unfounded opinion or accepting dogma?\n\nI'm considering a Paleo Diet now; that's full circle from our beginning.\n\nR: free2buandme2\nPlease ignore.\n\nR: chaostheory\n> For example, students and professors I met in college that grew up in the\n> USSR thought engineering was stereotypically women's work.\n\nA few generations ago, programming was primarily a woman's job in the US.\n\nR: fizwhiz\n1058 comments all descendents of hedgew's comment. First time I've ever seen\nsomething like that on HN.\n\nEdit: FWIW, the best female engineers I've worked with were just as good as\nthe males. But yes, distribution is a thing, and we see fewer female engineers\ncompared to male engineers because of a pipeline problem. Lowering the hiring\nbar just to converge to an unrealistic and superficial hurts everyone.\nMaintain the hiring bar and address the pipeline issue by encouraging more\nwomen to get into this field.\n\nR: thedays\nRemarkably few comments on the actual linked article. I found most of the\ncomments in the article calm, reasonable, nuanced and reflective. To me, this\nshows the benefits of conversation and long form text, which we often seem to\nforget in this age of short attention spans driven by social media.\n\nWe need more discussion like this. I for one would appreciate hearing more\nabout how this discussion was facilitated. Is it a transcript of a face to\nface conversation, or was it done online, and if so, how?\n\nR: perseusprime11\nIt was basically a bullshit memo from the beginning written to appeal to a\ncertain segment of the population. Google should have used this opportunity to\neducate the masses on diversity and should have fired him on the basis of\nhurting Google's brand & reputation and the ability to hire smart people in\nthe future instead of citing code of conduct. Missed opportunity and a rookie\nmistake on Google's part.\n\nR: AlexCoventry\n> he wasn't sure whether he was correct and simply wanted to start a\n> discussion (as he subsequently stated in a YouTube interview)\n\nAnyone got a link?\n\nR: ovao\nHe stated on Tucker Carlson that he has based his argument on what he referred\nto as scientific consensus.\n\nI'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it\nisn't my field, but just relaying what he said.\n\nR: Diederich\n> I'm not making any endorsement of the comment or of the science, since it\n> isn't my field, but just relaying what he said.\n\nPerhaps this is an off-topic question, if you don't mind responding: why did\nyou feel the need to emphasize this, after your initial sentence:\n\n> He stated on ....\n\nThanks!\n\nR: AlexCoventry\n> why did you feel the need to emphasize this\n\nNot the author, but: The psychology research literature is mostly garbage.[0]\nIt's surprising to me that through all this, hardly anyone has dug into the\nsupposedly scientific papers behind Damore's claims. Ultimately they come down\nto a massive leap of faith that job aspirations of psychology-major\nundergraduates can be generalized to a somehow biologically-driven preference\nfor \"people\" jobs vs \"things\" jobs.[1]\n\n[0] [https:\/\/hardsci.wordpress.com\/2016\/08\/11\/everything-is-\nfucke...](https:\/\/hardsci.wordpress.com\/2016\/08\/11\/everything-is-fucked-the-\nsyllabus\/)\n\n[1]\n[https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/38061313_Men_and_Th...](https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/38061313_Men_and_Things_Women_and_People_A_Meta-\nAnalysis_of_Sex_Differences_in_Interests)\n\nR: seany\nThere are plenty of articles that touch on this.\n[https:\/\/heterodoxacademy.org\/2017\/08\/10\/the-google-memo-\nwhat...](https:\/\/heterodoxacademy.org\/2017\/08\/10\/the-google-memo-what-does-\nthe-research-say-about-gender-differences\/)\n\nR: AlexCoventry\nWhat's the most relevant one, in your opinion?\n\nR: seany\nThe heterodox article is one of them, but they also link to several others\nthey saw as reasonably backed up by the literature cited. The included counter\npoints as well if they were written by people in that field.\n\nR: AlexCoventry\nI meant the most relevant one cited by the Heterodox Academy in the blog post\nyou linked.\n\nR: seany\nI've only read one of them [1] in full, so it's hard to say with any depth my\nopinions of the others. Some of the findings listed in the abstracts have\nvarying mentions of biological involvement. The larger point they were trying\nto make is that there are differences _now_, and given some of the research\nthat's influenced as far back as at least middle school for the cultural part\nof it. Where the ratio is for nature\/nurture they leave open for a future post\n(which they claim to be working on).\n\n1) [http:\/\/sci-hub.io\/10.1111\/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x](http:\/\/sci-\nhub.io\/10.1111\/j.1751-9004.2010.00320.x)\n\nR: cp33\nAs a person of color, I feel the need to give my perspective here, since I am\npart of an underrepresented group in tech, just like women. So I feel like I\nhave some insight on the issue even though my reaction may still not be the\nsame as what a woman would say about this.\n\nWhen you are trying to make an effective argument, you have to anticipate what\nthe responses would be. The biggest problem with Damore is that apparently he\ndidn't take enough into account about what women felt about the issue, as\nmentioned in the article. People in the majority are naturally the ones with\nthe louder voice, but it can be misleading if you are speaking on a minority\ngroup. You probably won't have the same experiences, and one or two studies is\nnot enough to explain something as complicated as biology, psychology, or\nsociology. This is especially true if the science is easily refuted. I really\nwonder why Damore chose to write about the lack of women in tech specifically?\nIt seems to me so that he could better support his proposal to not focus on\ndiversity efforts or to face less backlash for not speaking on race. If this\nis the case, strengthening confirmation bias is not an effective solution\nbecause there may be a lot more than what meets the eye if you're not an\nexpert on the subject.\n\nSo from this, the two biggest questions are was he right? and was Google\nright?\n\nWas he right? Somewhat. I can't say yes or no 100%. He tried to explain his\nview as best as he could but he supported it terribly. It deserved the\nbacklash. But he made some good points about it being unsafe to express his\nopinion. If he was smarter, he wouldn't have been fired. This is the bigger\nproblem with the situation. A good engineer, in my opinion should be more\nflexible in thought, think more about surrounding outcomes, and be better at\ninteracting with people.\n\nWas Google right? Absolutely. The bigger problem is that many people think\nGoogle fired him for having a dissenting opinion, which I think is not true\nand unfortunate because it polarized America more between the left and the\nright. Damore should've been smarter and we would not have this discussion.\nI'm almost certain that Google wouldn't be where it is today without diversity\nof thought. You can have a differing opinion and express it without pissing\neveryone off. Google would have been dammed if they did fire him, dammed if\nthey didn't fire him, but more dammed if they didn't. It got leaked and the\nmedia attention, complete with hostile arguments from both sides for a reason\nand it harmed Google's image and female employees. We can all mostly agree\nthat Damore had some decent points to be made if he were a better writer and\nemphasizer. Would you still say that he was fired because Google is a left\nleaning organization?\n\nYou can't say women are not biologically suited for an engineering position at\nGoogle, face harsh backlash including termination from work and say that your\nviews weren't respected. Come on. That's what sexism is. What if you said this\nabout Hispanics, or Native Americans?\n\nIf you want to say that the diversity efforts at Google are misguided, then\nmake a better argument than saying \"we don't need diversity programs at\nGoogle\". I would say not to strive for 50% women because not all of the\nengineers are 50% women. Strive for a closer percent of their actual\nrepresentation. Google can't have 50% of all women engineers because some of\nthem work for different companies. Google shouldn't use immoral or illegal\nhiring practices to achieve this number. But Google should still have\ndiversity programs so that more women get into tech which would bring the\nnumber of women in the workforce in general closer to 50% and it could benefit\neveryone. Also keep in mind that a minority can possibly have more or less\nqualified people as a whole proportionally within the group. Hiring more of\none minority group does not necessarily lower the bar.\n\nBiases do exist, but it doesn't always mean it's bad. I told you I was a\nperson of color at the beginning of this to make you form a bias against me. I\nwant my voice to be heard in the hundreds of these comments when my\nprobability of being read is lower because there are likely a lower percentage\nof women and other minorities posting. I don't think that I face tough\nobstacles, which turns people off of arguments like this, but I want to say\nthat I do, however minor. Often times I act a certain way BECAUSE I don't want\nto be seen as \"the black guy\" and I've done this enough of my life that people\nsay that I'm not the same as many other black guys. They don't say it in a\nnegative way, because I still act \"somewhat\" black, if that makes sense to\nyou.\n\nR: k_sze\nI haven't read the whole piece yet, but I find that the first question I ask\nmyself is: if the interviewees were males, would they have been given\npseudonyms?\n\nI don't have an answer to that question. It's all hypothetical. I'm just\npondering.\n\nR: losteverything\nWere the questions asked in person and scribed \"live\" or submitted?\n\nR: alecco\nEvery thread about the Google Memo in the past weeks got flagged (?) promptly\nout of the homepage but this one stays at the top with just 400 points. I\nwonder what's the difference.\n\n1695\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14952787](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14952787)\n\n754\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15009759](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15009759)\n\n590\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14968626](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14968626)\n\n448\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14959601](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=14959601)\n\nAnd many more.\n\nThen people wonder how Trump got elected.\n\nR: boobsbr\nWhat's the relation with the Trump election, if you please?\n\nR: alecco\nSorry I missed your reply.\n\nTo speak bluntly, white guys in US (not me!) are being shamed as being\nmisogynists. Now the hardcore left \"liberal\" groups and media turned its eyes\non STEM. See how they treated that poor guy in LHC a few years ago. See how\nthey ousted Brendan Eich from Mozilla.\n\nSure, the Uber CEO and that other VC cases are real and I support that. But\nthose are used as spearheads to take control. Hundreds of YouTube content\nproducers are being demonetized or their Google accounts frozen, like Jordan\nPeterson's recently.\n\nBernie Sanders was attacked by BLM as an old white guy. The leftist media\nturned on him, even though he was the most honest guy aligned with what they\ntheoretically support. It's all a big joke. So people vote something else,\nwhatever, even Trump. (And I think Trump is a media player and incompetent\nbusinessman, never mind President of US).\n\nR: dunkedonkino\nat current time, 1273 comments and _no_ mention of Jordan B Peterson? I'm\ndisappointed in the community and lack of science based approach here. Leaving\nfacts at a feelings fight, I guess?\n\nR: cerealbad\nWhat makes female engineers different from male engineers again?\n\nR: yy77\nTake the example of plumber, any girls are expected to be a plumber? Engineer\nis a bit alike as techical. The different part in google case is more mental\nbut not physical.\n\nR: wellboy\nWell, now this discussion should give the author of the memo enough data, to\nmake a follow up memo with his arguments backed up by deep research if there\nis research.\n\nMission accomplished?\n\nR: jack9\n> that these arguments about innate biological traits are complicated by\n> trans, non-binary, and intersex folks.\n\n2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other\n98% This is just wrong.\n\n> I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general\n> populations, then walk it back to say \"but of course it doesn't apply at an\n> individual level.\"\n\nGorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?\n\n> there have been some really fabulous responses, including many laying out a\n> lot of research that counters what was in the memo\n\nI'm interested in this research. I have not seen it, nor has it been made\navailable. The following book, with 2 female authors who seem genuinely\ninterested and informed in related topics: [https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Arent-\nMore-Women-Science\/dp\/15914...](https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Arent-More-Women-\nScience\/dp\/159147485X)\n\nwho reached a similar conclusion to James Damore:\n[http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/04\/13\/opinions\/williams-ceci-\nwomen-i...](http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/04\/13\/opinions\/williams-ceci-women-in-\nscience\/index.html)\n\nLet's at least present the field studies\/research, which can throw existing\nclinical views into doubt. eg Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex\nDifferences by Cordelia Fine is at least a rigorous critique of possible\nflaws.\n\nIt's a little saddening, to have this dialog represent the views of an average\nengineer.\n\nR: joshuamorton\n>2% (outliers) of the population does not invalidate the trends of the other\n98% This is just wrong.\n\nThis is a strawman. She said \"complicate\" not \"invalidate\".\n\n>Gorillas typically have black fur. So no gorilla can have white fur? Wat?\n\nWhat actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas? Damore\ndidn't just reach scientific conclusions about differences in genders. He went\nfurther and suggested actions based on these population differences.\n\nTo continue your analogy, one could say that Damore's argument comes down to\n\"We only want white furred animals in our zoo, and gorillas typically have\nblack fur, therefore we should ignore gorillas and look for Polar Bears\ninstead\". Whereas the other side might be \"Given that gorillas typically have\nblack fur, and we think Gorillas are a valuable part of a zoo, we should do\nextra work to locate the rare white-furred gorillas that do exist\".\n\nR: jack9\n> She said \"complicate\" not \"invalidate\".\n\nThat's true. However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers. Her\nstatement was meant to throw trending into question and I overstated by taking\na bad position (phrase-wise).\n\n> What actions do you wish to take based on the fur color of gorillas?\n\nProvide more shaded areas (canopy or artificial), of course. I'm not sure who\nthis elaborate \"analogy\" (populations vs individuals turned into a warped\n\"industry is a zoo\" metaphor?) is supposed to help.\n\nR: joshuamorton\n> However, the trends are not complicated by the outliers.\n\nWell, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis\nwould really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people and\nhow they interact with the trends. But such an analysis would be more\n_complicated_ than the binary trends in the original document. That is, such\ntrends are an imperfect model of reality, and to better match reality, one\nneeds a more complex model.\n\n>I'm not sure who this elaborate \"analogy\"\n\nNor am I, you're the one that felt the need to bring up Gorillas. I felt that\nwas a bad analogy, and that by continuing it, it would reveal why it was bad.\n\nIt appears that it worked.\n\nR: sol_remmy\n> Well, but, they are. A gender binary is a simplification. A full analysis\n> would really need to take a look at things like trans and nonbinary people\n> and how they interact with the trends.\n\nHow about this: the memo was about men and women. The 98%.\n\nR: DinoDano\nShame on you google!\n\nYou are failing baddly. I would never think to do any adwords or youtube\nmoneytizing business with you.\n\nYou lie and cheat. Thats core of google today.\n\nGoogle, bye bye\n\nR: ChemicalWarfare\n>> political correctness makes it hard for people with unpopular opinions to\nask questions and discuss their viewpoints...\n\nnon_PC != unpopular\n\nR: Spivak\nI'm going to disagree with you there. 'PC' ideas and speech are those that are\npopular enough to be said in the company of a diverse crowd. This doesn't mean\nthat they have to be bland or inoffensive to absolutely everyone; just popular\nenough that any dissenters will be a small minority and pressured against\nspeaking up in fear of social punishment.\n\nR: alexandercrohde\nPC and popular are not at all the same. A vocal minority gets to define PC,\nand that minority happens to be on the left.\n\nIf the right were as aggressive as the left were about PC, they'd say \"Talking\nabout baby-murder [abortion] makes me feel unsafe as a mother and therefore if\nit is mentioned at work creates a hostile work environment\"\n\nR: Spivak\nI will absolutely agree that there's a minority a very vocal people, but they\nthemselves could not maintain a PC atmosphere. If they were truly in the\nminority they would be easily dismissed as overly sensitive. It's the large\nbody of moderate people, who in general agree with the idea, that provide the\nmuscle for enforcing a PC atmosphere.\n\nR: alexandercrohde\nI think a vocal minority (10%) has bullied the silent majority into a position\nof \"If you're not on our side you're hurting us and should be fired.\" They did\nthis by controlling the language, by getting to define who's a victim, who's a\nminority, what's \"offensive,\" what's a \"safe-space.\"\n\nWe're seeing the backlash now, because people are finally admitting it's gone\ntoo far.\n\nR: graphememes\nEveryone is always upset when real scientific data alludes that they might be\nwrong.\n\nR: stefek99\nI have nothing valuable to say.\n\nRoughly the same time I've created #hck2fck - an analogy to pwn2own as I was\ngoing to SHA2017 hacker camp.\n\nI'm not sure if I'm ready to handle all the controversy related to the\nproject.\n\nIntention - get some free press, media attention, eyeballs, hit to the actual\nwebsite.\n\nR: alexmuro\njust want to say thanks to all involved in this interview. This is exactly the\nkind of discussion that imho can change minds and move this issue forward. I\nhave so much respect for these women.\n\nR: Myrmornis\nThe memo contained assertions like\n\n\"women are more neurotic\"\n\nI'm a bit baffled why the author isn't being criticized more for the childish\nsexism in that sentence. (This is coming from someone who despairs over the\npolitically correct left).\n\nR: HillaryBriss\nbased on all the sound and fury, one might think that somehow Google's hands\nare tied, that it has no control over who it hires.\n\nbut the reality is that it has _total_ control over who it hires.\n\nif Google can choose to fire Mr. Damore for expressing his thoughts about\ndiversity, it can sure as hell extend tens of thousands of new job offers\n_starting today_ to people in underrepresented groups. there's nothing to it.\nthey have the money and the power. so do it already and silence the critics.\n\nit's not that hard.\n\nR: jcmoscon\nTrump is Goldstein! 1984 is now!\n\nR: havetocharge\nI think it's very ironic that males took over the discussion that intended to\nseek our female opinion.\n\nR: etiene\nI actually thought the document was reasonably well written, using language\nthat was not confrontational or aggressive, and providing some sources. So,\nfrom a superficial view, it looks well-thought, scientific and non-malicious.\nThis is why I presume it gathered a lot of supporters.\n\nThe problem is when you actually look at the message and the information\ngiven. Some of his arguments are just wrong. And doing what he did was naive.\n\nBiological differences between men and women are completely irrelevant to the\nvery few highly competitive folks in the tech industry and more precisely in\nGoogle. Especially considering the huge chunk of the world who is illiterate,\nwe simply cannot have any clue how biology is actually affecting us and how it\nplays with all the other variables in the game (such as being socialised for\nspecific tasks when growing up, or just finding the workplace hostile). On the\ncontrary, he shows lack of basic knowledge on history of computer science.\nSince women used to be the majority in the field some decades ago, there is no\nway evolution \/ innate difference could have worked its way in this fraction\nof time. It also makes me question what are his thoughts on people who are\ndisabled and work for Google, for example? This discussion not only is not\nproductive but puts him under a very bad light.\n\nSecondly, he seems not to understand the role of Software Engineering really\nwell. He argues that women are more focused on people and therefore don't feel\nattracted to high pressure rational fields, but choses to ignore how important\npeople are to the career as a Software Engineer? It seems he is very attached\nto the idea that programmers are isolated nerds on a basement, which does not\nreflect at all the actual reality of successful people in the field.\n\nLast but not least, as I said, he was very naive. He writes this 10 page thing\nabout how women are maybe not interested in CS for these many reasons and\ncriticises Google's approach to diversity, with the message that maybe it's\nnot worth it, proposing we use even less empathy. Google has these programs\nafter counselling with experts in the field, which he certainly is not. He\nsays Google is an echo chamber and complains they are not listening. What he\ndoesn't realise, however, is that by circulating that document he is shitting\non the head of many of his female co-workers with his wrong arguments, and\nshitting on the head of whoever are the experts responsible for these\ndiversity programs. And even if he was right, it would still be a bad idea.\nYou don't circulate a document arguing that a certain gender may be in general\nunfit for the job, and expect people of said gender to be cool with it, even\nif you claim the people working with you are exceptions. Replace \"women\" with\ndifferent groups and how his piece really hit me may be understood better. I\ndon't want to hear \"women are bad at math, irrational etc. but you are\ndifferent, you are cool\". Imagine saying to my happily married gay friends\nthat gays are promiscuous but they are ok? He really did not think through how\nthis would sit on people's ears. I felt really disrespected and I don't even\nwork in Google, imagine the women who felt the same but actually had to work\nwith him? It's a massive disruption to the workplace. Google had no\nalternative but to fire him. A bunch of people would quit if they didn't. I\nknow I would. So Google made the right choice for the company. They put a lot\nof effort into hiring the best people. Losing one of them is better than\nlosing credibility and losing many.\n\nI'm not saying he's a horrible person and deserves to be fired. I'm saying he\nis wrong and he made a terrible mistake that offended many people and led\nthings to where they are now at no one's fault but his own. Everything related\nto this document is really unfortunate, to him and to everyone else involved.\nIt decreased morale of women at his workplace, it got him fired. It also got a\nbunch of alt-right nazis spreading hate about women using his document as a\nbase, which I'm certain was not his intention.\n\nR: stillkicking\nIf people were willing to apply such meticulous criticism and high standards\nto the Women in Tech movement in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue.\nWhile the sober opening and acknowledgement is a refreshing start in a sea of\nshitty takes, I have yet to see anyone bother to show the same kind of\npsychological concern for the men in tech and the same kind of rigor for\nscientific standards, when the shoe is on the other foot.\n\nWhat would it do to your confidence and comfort to know you can't state\ncertain scientific truths without being labelled a sexist and a misogynist? To\nknow that there is a whole network of eager feminist writers ready to label\nyou a troglodyte techbro and scoff at the notion you might have something\ninteresting to say on an industry you've been part of for 10+ years? To know\nthat, if speaking at a conference, every single word out of your mouth will be\ndissected for possibly implying the wrong thing, even as a first time speaker?\nTo carefully weigh socializing with your coworkers against the chance of being\naccused of impropriety, with no practical defense accepted?\n\nThe people who complain about \"an unequal burden my male coworkers don't have\nto deal with every day\" are showing an utterly stunning lack of empathy in the\nother direction. They are wilfully ignoring the disastrous effect these\nefforts can have on the people who do not share their views.\n\nSimilarly, if people are supposed to actively seek out dissenting views and\navoid cherry picking research, why is it feminists are notorious for\nprotesting anyone who dares to disagree? Seminars, men's centers,\ndocumentaries, ... really, their track record in silencing and misrepresenting\ndissent is impressively consistent, the Google Memo included.\n\nThe women cited in this interview feel \"emotionally drained\". \"The onus is on\nme to prove to men in tech that I'm not an \"average\" woman\". Strange, because\nall I hear from tech feminists is that men need to constantly prove themselves\nto be \"good allies\". No amount of previous piety is sufficient to avoid being\nlynched when you draw their ire. Their track record in eating their own is\nequally impressively consistent.\n\n\"Who might I talk to who could tell me about their experiences working within\na system that is biased against them, so I can understand better?\"\n\nStart with James Damore, an autist who worked at a company biased against him,\nsharing his experiences, and getting roasted for it. They complain his memo\nwasn't written in an inquisitive enough tone, well guess what, that sort of\ndifference in preferred communication style is exactly the kind of thing you\nshould expect in a diverse environment.\n\nOn the other hand, the numerous articles in the style of \"I'm a woman in tech,\nlet me ladysplain the google memo to you\" leave no question about who is\nactually parading around with the attitude of \"let me tell you what's up, all\nyou wrong people.\"\n\nContemporary feminism is 90% projection, this article is more of the same.\n\nR: RealityNow\n> \"I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences\n> between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs.\"\n\nWhere did the memo say this? This is the most common strawman used to attempt\nto discredit the memo. The memo author never states that men are better at\nsoftware engineering, just that these biological differences may help explain\nwhy women are underrepresented, choosing to pursue computer science and\ncareers in tech less than men.\n\n> \"the takeaway from the memo is literally that the onus is on me to prove to\n> men in tech that I'm not an \"average\" woman\"\n\n> \"This is literally a discussion of whether half the human race is innately\n> unsuited for a certain kind of work\"\n\nSee above\n\n> \"I disagree that it's possible to write what he did about general\n> populations, then walk it back to say \"but of course it doesn't apply at an\n> individual level.\"\n\nEssentially what you're saying is, \"we're not allowed to talk about biological\ndifferences that make underrepresented minorities look bad\". I disagree. No\nfact should be barred from mentioning, and it's not the author's\nresponsibility to ensure that you don't misconstrue his facts to advance your\nown agenda of claiming oppression.\n\n> \"He did not address any counter arguments or research that opposes his\n> views, or the validity of the studies he did cite and their\n> reproducibility.\"\n\nDid you address any counter-arguments in your research report? This is some\ndude's memo in an opt-in internet forum, not a comprehensive\/rigorous\ndiscipline-defining research report seeking publication in an academic\njournal.\n\n> \"He claimed that Google's diversity efforts represent a lowering of the\n> bar.\"\n\nI agree that he should have elaborated on this bold claim. Though it's not\noutrageous to suspect that this could be the case given that affirmative\naction policies in higher education do lower the bar.\n\n> \"Some people at Google reacted by saying \"well if he's so wrong, then why\n> not refute him,\" but that requires spending a significant amount of time\n> building an argument against the claims in his document. On the other hand,\n> if I remain silent, that silence could be mistaken for agreement. I should\n> not be forced into that kind of debate at work.\"\n\nThe memo was posted in an opt-in forum, you didn't have to debate it. Silence\ndoes not imply that you agree with him.\n\n> \"I'm also disappointed that the men I know, including most of my male\n> colleagues, remained silent on the topic. And the ones that did participate,\n> either seemed to support Damore or demonstrated a fundamental lack of\n> understanding for the issues women engineers are faced with and care about.\"\n\nWhy do you think they remained silent? You said it yourself - anyone who\ndisagrees with you is wrong. Damore got fired for stating a well-articulated\nopinion, why would any of your male colleagues jeopardize their jobs as well\nby speaking honestly on the matter?\n\n> I wish more successful men in tech thought deeply about the advantages\n> they've had - the situations in which they were more likely to be trusted,\n> deemed competent, promoted, given raises, etc. as men than they would be as\n> women. This exercise isn't intended to place blame, but to inspire empathy\n> toward those who feel the weight of their gender each day at work.\n\nI wish more women in tech vilifying Damore would think about the advantages\nthey have received (affirmative action), think about it from the perspective\nof a male in a field where we get no hand-holding or \"women in tech\"\nscholarships and are constantly accused of being sexist oppressors, and stop\npretending like discrimination is the only or main reason women are\nunderrepresented in tech. I firmly believe that women chose to pursue tech\nless than men and that this is the biggest driver of the underrepresentation\n(posted a little about that here\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15012364](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15012364)).\nIf it is indeed the case that women are choosing to pursue the study of\ncomputer science less than men, then stop placing the burden on us males to\nincrease your participation.\n\nBefore you automatically dismiss me and others with views differing to you as\na misogynist, consider that most of us in the first world do not consider\nwomen as being any less capable than men at software engineering, let alone\nANY discipline. Women used to dominate the field, and no reasonable man\nbelieves that women aren't fit for the job or shouldn't pursue this field.\n\n> By remaining silent on this topic or tweeting support for Damore, they are\n> sending a message that philosophical arguments and principles take\n> precedence over the lived experiences of many smart, talented female\n> engineers and technical founders\n\nWhat does this even mean? It's just another way of saying \"by not agreeing\nwith me, you're wrong\"\n\n> I think he could have written it differently, so that people who chose not\n> to read the whole 10-pages could have read the tl;dr and not immediately\n> concluded he was sexist.\n\nSo the onus is on the author to ensure that people don't flippantly conclude\nthat he's a sexist?\n\n> This is an emotional topic\n\nThat's the problem, it shouldn't be.\n\n> He was not fired for speaking truth to power, he was fired for mishandling a\n> complex subject in a way that caused harm to his employer (and many of his\n> colleagues).\n\nHe wouldn't have been fired if the memo argued the opposite viewpoint\n\nR: jcmoscon\n1984 is now!\n\nR: jorgemf\n> I disagree with his use of science and data to convert opinions into facts.\n\nFunny. So if you backed your opinions with science that is not right? It was\nhard to keep reading after that statement.\n\nR: sidlls\n\"Applied science incorrectly to confirm a bias or advance an opinion\nincorrectly\" and \"applied science to form an opinion\" are different things.\nDamore did the former.\n\nR: alexandercrohde\nExcept \"what is correct\" is the whole point of the debate, so nobody knows\nwhich side is doing the former until everybody agrees, which they most\ncertainly do not agree yet.\n\nMind you that to the other side, it looks to us like what you're doing is the\nformer and not the latter (until some common ground is found).\n\nR: sidlls\nNo, there is not an equivalent act that \"both sides\" are engaged in, here.\n\nR: mpweiher\nWell, true.\n\nHe tried to be factual, balanced, fair.\n\nHis detractors mostly grossly misrepresent what he wrote, including claiming\nthe very opposite, and then hurl ad-hominems at their straw man.\n\nR: EGreg\nLet me offer what could be a controversial opinion, but one based on faacts\nneverteless.\n\nWhen there is a war to fight, men are drafted far more than women (if any are\ndrafted at all). This is true in pretty much every country. Risky construction\njobs are mostly filled by men. The homeless and incarcerated are mostly men.\n\nObviously, survival and risk to life and working conditions and homelessness\nare major topics. So why isn't society talking as much about balancing men and\nwomen in these areas?\n\nFor example, in the USA, men are incarcerated 10x more often than women,\ndespite making up something like 50% of the population. _Why doesn 't anyone\nclaim this is prima facie evidence of systemic sexism?_ When it comes to race,\nsuch claims are in fact made, but not when it comes to sex. I believe the\nreason is that people really do believe that men are more prone to violence\nand the \"population-level differences in biology\" (to put it in the Google\nGuy's terms) are a totally socially acceptable answer. One that even liberals\nand progresives give.\n\nOr take another example of where sex-based discrimination against men is not\njust tolerated but shrugged off, while the same would cause outrage if it was\nbased on sex: clubs in the city. Men have to pay a cover and stand in line,\nladies are ushered in. Men may come in if they have 2-3 good looking ladies\nwith them. Imagine the same business model with white\/black people. It\nwouldn't last.\n\nSo why is this happening? Because we all believe there are differences between\nmen and women that come down to biology (whether it is \"really\" true or not).\nOur society contains many places where men are discriminated against, but they\ndon't make a very good cause for an activist (well, there are men's rights\nactivists, but not many).\n\nNow here is what I think about the whole \"women in tech\" thing: it is too\ncorporation-centric. People's lives consist of more than working in a\ncorporation. A major part of life, for example, is raising children.\n\nIf you look at this aspect of life, we see women are favored in every society\nto be the primary caretakers of children. Most of this is explained by - wait\nfor it - biological differences that supposedly make women better nurturers.\nStates often say it is in the _the best interests of the child_ for the mother\nto get primary custody of a child in a divorce.\n\nThe consequences are plainly laid out in the statistics. Women are much more\nlikely to be the ones to devote their time and energy to raising children.\nThis is basically _another job_ which the men are not expected, by society, to\n_have to do_. Certainly, many do, but it is fr more _optional_ for a man.\nThese days, women are graduating college at higher rates than men, and _make\nmore than men_ out of the gate. But when women start having children, that's\nwhen the gender pay gap appears. This seems to be _the largest factor_ that\nexplains the gender gap\n\nSomeone has to raise the children, though. And this is why I say the argument\nis too corporation-centric: it assumes the goal for women and men is to earn a\nmoney in a large, hierarchical corporation. One can phrase it the other way:\n_women are actually ahead of men in the work-life balance department_ , and we\nshould try to help everyone achieve more of THAT goal.\n\nThis is bigger than men and women. How many families today have both parents\nworking, or a single parent, sticking the kids into public school as a\n_daycare center_? (Read what pg wrote about high school as a prison.) How\nabout putting parents in nursing homes? All for what?\n\nSo people can commute many miles (burning tons of fuel) to corporate jobs and\nsit on their butt doing something someone else wants them to do? Why is that\nconsidered the goal, when corporate world is only 150 years old and on its way\nout when automation hits? Work-life balance is way better. Small teams and\nself employment - that is what I want for more people, women and men alike!\n\nR: pm24601\nMy feelings as a white male...who happens to have 2 kids.\n\nSometimes my kids will \"why?\" \"why?\" me to death. They really don't care about\nthe answer and can never be persuaded. They are just trying to stretch out the\nmoment of truth before they actually have to do the thing they don't want to\ndo.\n\nEveryone: it is the 21st century. In the 20th century, we had that discussion\nand debate about whether or not half of the human race is biologically able\ncomprehend CS.\n\nAt this point, there are some people who refuse to be persuaded. I feel that\nGoogle did the correct thing.\n\nQ: \"Is it o.k. for me to have these attitudes about a high percentage of\n(present, past and future) my co-workers?\"\n\nA: \"No\"\n\nQ: \"Why?\"\n\nA: \"Because we are running the company and we said so.\"\n\nQ: \"Why?\"\n\nA: \"We are done explaining this.\"\n\n(Damore writes his memo)\n\nA: \"We said we are done explaining. Maybe you can get the answer you want at\nanother company.\"\n\nR: EpicBlackCrayon\nIf only I could upvote twice, this is an excellent analogy.\n\nR: 0xbear\n>> For example, students and professors I met in college >> that grew up in\nthe USSR thought engineering was >> stereotypically women's work\n\nUm, no. I grew up in the USSR, too, and engineering never was stereotypically\nwomen's work. If anything, the enrollment of women in engineering programs was\neven more skewed than it is in the US today. We only had 2 women out of a\ncohort of roughly 40 people, and they barely managed to graduate. Ironically\nneither of the two works as an engineer, but then neither do most men from\nthat cohort. Truth is, engineering is not actually the most lucrative\noccupation in today's Russia, so I can't blame women (or men for that matter)\nfor not pursuing it.\n\nAlso, most people here probably don't know this, but Russian language is\ngendered, and the very word \"инженер\" is masculine, though it can be used\nunchanged to refer to women engineers. There is no special word form for\nfemale engineers.\n\nR: sremani\n with the recognition that gender and sex aren't binary. <\/Quote>\n\nIs there a biological basis for this? I do not want \"Gender Studies\"\nreferences. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.\n\nR: peterwwillis\nThe best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain\nto you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no\nbiological explanation.\n\nFor people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor\nor use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about\nsimple biology you should have learned in school.\n\n[https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-\ngenders-...](https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-are-\nthere)\n\n[http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1993\/03\/12\/opinion\/how-many-sexes-\nare...](http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1993\/03\/12\/opinion\/how-many-sexes-are-\nthere.html?pagewanted=all)\n\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intersex](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intersex)\n\n[http:\/\/www.who.int\/genomics\/gender\/en\/index1.html](http:\/\/www.who.int\/genomics\/gender\/en\/index1.html)\n\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sex_and_gender_distinction](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sex_and_gender_distinction)\n\nR: dragonwriter\n> Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation.\n\nThere is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological\nsex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the\nother sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology.\n\nWhich, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines,\n_everything_ about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology\nis, ultimately, biology.\n\nR: toxik\nSeems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also\nphysics.\n\nR: sndean\nI wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the\ngenetic (biological) basis for brain function\/behavior [0]. Once you're at the\nlevel of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a\nlevel of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as\nchemistry.\n\nThe bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain\nfunction\/behavior stuff and psychology.\n\n[0]\n[https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3030621\/](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3030621\/)\n\nR: AmIFirstToThink\nGoogle having diversity hiring policy was what made \"diversity hire\"\nimpressions among employees.\n\nDamore talking about it did not cause \"diversity hire\" impressions.\n\nGoogle shot the messenger in this case.\n\nR: glibgil\nAre ten-page screeds on _any_ subject welcome and most companies? Google was\nthis guy's only job after academia. I value his opinions on Google and\ncorporate life in the same way that I value the opinions of unmarried people\nor people without kids on those respective subjects. I wince a smile and nod\nand think, \"check back with me in ten years when you've been around the block\na few times\". This is not a person to take seriously. He does not even know\nwhat he doesn't know\n\nR: Mz\n_Are ten-page screeds on any subject welcome at most companies?_\n\nProbably not. I blogged just today about my opinion that if this 10 page\nscreed had been about how Google was doing the office furniture all wrong, he\nlikely still would have ended up fired, sooner or later, for being an\negomaniac who cannot play nice with his corporate overlords, basically.\n\nR: averagewall\nIf saying that female applicants are given preferential treatment is harmful\nto female employees, then surely the people doing the preferential treatment\n(HR?) are the ones who are actually guilty, not the messenger? Why is there no\ncomplaints against those practices? Are they not real?\n\nHe shouldn't be criticized for raising concerns about discriminatory hiring\nbecause, right or wrong, he had a legally protected right to do that without\nsuffering retaliation. If people don't like those ideas being mentioned, they\nshould try to get the law changed because this is one of the very few things\nCalifornians can't be fired for yet it seems to be the main point of\ncomplaints against Damore.\n\nR: bluecalm\nNow imagine how \"we just randomly throw away some of the resumes from black\npeople but we are not lowering the bar\" would fare in court of law or public\nopinion.\n\nR: Dylan16807\nSure, everyone would call that a bad policy. It's taking a minority that's\nbiased against and making those biases worse.\n\nBut imagine it was \"90% of our hires are white, so we're trying to change that\nby throwing out some white resumes\". You'd get a much more mixed reaction.\n\nR: peoplewindow\nHence the fact that so many people are sick of the racism card and voted for\nTrump. As you point out, the same behaviour would be called bad policy (and\npossibly illegal) if it's against blacks but not against whites. That seems\nfundamentally problematic.\n\nR: Dylan16807\nSometimes local bias can make things fairer overall. The difference is that\nsomething anti-black is _obviously_ making things worse, while something anti-\nwhite _might_ be helping or hurting in various ways. You have to be\nintentionally myopic to think all bias is equally unfair. Especially consider\nhow racist you can make desegregation sound, even though it's giving everyone\nthe same treatment: \"They're going to start sending most of the kids of one\nrace to much worse schools!\".\n\nR: ebbv\nAnybody who sends out a political bomb like that to a large internal mailing\nlist should expect to get fired.\n\nAnd the memo was poorly thought out and the dude was not well informed. All\nthis hand-wringing is silly. He deserved to get fired and he did not have any\nreally salient points beyond \"Could Google do MORE to encourage diversity?\"\n\nR: davidreiss\nIsn't a ycombinator blog dedicated solely for women sexist. Isn't \"Ask a\nFemale Engineer\" sexist? If ycombinator only had \"Ask a Male Engineer\"\nwouldn't they be attacked for it?\n\nR: DalaiObama\nSo if you argue against Google's diversity policies, you're fine as long as\nyou write on par with one of the greatest writers of his generation¹.\n\nIf you argue _for_ it, you can get away with any angry incoherent rant.\n\nIsn't this what leftists call \"privilege\"?\n\n¹ Scott Alexander\n\nR: dang\nYou appear to be using HN primarily for political and ideological battle.\nThat's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it, so would you\nplease not?\n\nWe detached this comment from\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15021772](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15021772)\nand marked it off-topic.\n\nR: DalaiObama\nI think of it as participating in these kind of discussions without risking my\ncareer.\n\nBut I hear what you're saying, and I agree that this post was needlessly\nconfrontational. I'll try to be a better HN citizen!\n\nR: sheepmullet\nMore likely your female teammates are creating a hostile work environment by\nbeing unable to handle minor ideological disagreement.\n\nOr even more likely, you have misinterpreted them and are unaware that they\nwere not shaken or seriously disturbed in any way.\n\nEdit: edited to remove the personal attack while still keeping the meaning.\n\nR: Blackthorn\nI was there. Literally. Why are you trying to say you understand my\ncolleagues, who you do not know, better than I do?\n\nR: sheepmullet\nDo you see what you are implying about your female colleagues?\n\nR: baitbiter\nEven more harm is done by Affirmative Action for women now being implemented\nin all companies. Feminism has given up on the aspect of competing and turned\nto shaming all men. There are several professions where women dominate with >\n80%. Where's all this fucking outrage in those?\n\nR: mpweiher\nConsidering women make up >50% of college graduates, for every profession that\nhas more men there are more profession that have more women (or a greater\nimbalance).\n\nHow about:\n\nPeople are capable of choosing professions they like. Respect their choices\nand don't second guess them.\n\nR: mathw\nThat doesn't account for the cultural pressure on girls throughout childhood\nto be princesses, like pink things and cooking and babies and ponies, while\nboys are supposed to like computers and engineering and guns.\n\nWe're still preparing girls to stay home, cook dinner and have babies while\nthe men go out and earn the money.\n\nR: mpweiher\n\"Gender-Differentiated Parenting Revisited: Meta-Analysis Reveals Very Few\nDifferences in Parental Control of Boys and Girls\"\n\n[http:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal....](http:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0159193)\n\nR: Udik\nNo. The memo says:\n\n\"The same compassion for those seen as weak creates political correctness[11],\nwhich constrains discourse and is complacent to the extremely sensitive PC-\nauthoritarians that use violence and shaming to advance their cause.\"\n\nSo it's not that \"leftists are violent\", it's PC that's complacent to violent\nPC-authoritarians that use violence and shaming. A bit different.\n\nAgain, I have the impression that parts of this debate could be avoided by\naccepting some of the caveats and distinctions already made in the memo.\n\nEdit: replaced angry outburst with more civilized one.\n\nR: bjl\nHe explicitly mentions 'cultural marxism', which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy\ntheory from the 60s.\n\nR: Udik\nDon't know where, certainly not in the memo.\n\nR: bjl\nIn his Jordan Peterson interview he talks about it quite extensively.\n\nR: lsd5you\nNow extend your attitude to religous belief. All the parallels are there,\nincluding believing others are inferior (certainly islam). Should they be done\nas well?\n\nYou are infact imposing a moral belief system. Once upon a time it used to be\nwrong to not believe in god. Well similarly you are saying the same about\ngender differences.\n\nR: dang\nFor heaven's sake let's not take this into religious flamewar as well. (I'm\nsure you didn't mean to, but we know empirically what sort of effect this\nhas.)\n\nWe detached this comment from\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15021907](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15021907)\nand marked it off-topic.\n\nR: lsd5you\nOk, but to me it is as plain as day that there is a double standard here and\ntaking the debate on to that kinda territory is the only way to convince the\nother side about what they are doing... i.e. shutting down people who don't\nshare their belief (you should believe ...). Once upon a time it was you\nshould believe in god. If it is ok to persecute (or at least censor) people\nwho don't believe in various forms of equality then it is ok to do the same to\nthose who don't believe in a god.\n\nCertainly the fact that some people believe in supernatural things\n(ridiculous, right?) but are allowed to state these beliefs despite the fact\nthat on the face of it they are far more extraordinary than the extremely\nplausible some people are better than others in someway due to the differences\nin their genetics...\n\nThe answer is of course that the prevailing pc mainstream does not feel\nthreatened by these daft belief systems (beyond fighting creationism in\nschools).\n\nAnyway, you may be right that it is currently irreconcileable.\n\nR: xname2\nWhen they say they feel they are hurt \/ offended, do they know this is a\ntypical easy thing for women to do in the society, not men?\n\nI don't know, maybe everything is sexist. Maybe we should expect a society\nwhere men and women cry equally.\n\nR: e12e\nOf course we should all have equal opportunity to express our feelings, just\nas we should have equal opportunities to become software engineers.\n\nThat said, I don't think it's true in general that men have a hard time\nstating (like this, pseudomously, in an interview) that they are\nhurt\/offended.\n\nAnd a brief look at comment-threads should illustrate that it's hardly easy\nfor women to state such things in public. The power mild statements by women\ncan have to bring out raging trolls with death and rape threats would be\nabsurd if it wasn't such a sad indicator of how far we still have to go toward\na free\/equal society.\n\nAll that said, part of the structural repression of women tend to be\nrepression of certain traits in men as well - limiting gender roles in society\nis in general not good for anyone.\n\nI think Dar Williams puts it well in her song \"When I was a boy\":\n\n[http:\/\/www.metrolyrics.com\/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-\nwilli...](http:\/\/www.metrolyrics.com\/when-i-was-a-boy-lyrics-dar-\nwilliams.html)\n\nR: toxiccwm\nI'm not sure which world people live in where men are not expected to defend\ntheir ideas against the great misunderstanding masses who don't accept them on\npronouncement, but it sounds lovely. Can I move there?\n\nR: dang\nWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting flamebait to HN. That's\nvandalism if not arson, and ideological battle is not what this site is for.\n\nWe detached this comment from\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15022166](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=15022166)\nand marked it off-topic.\n\nR: kolbe\nEdith is on point.\n\nR: kansface\nA related post from SSC on the subject:\n[http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2017\/08\/07\/contra-grant-on-\nexagger...](http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2017\/08\/07\/contra-grant-on-exaggerated-\ndifferences\/)\n\nTLDR: Personal interests can plausibly explain the _entire_ gender imbalance.\n\nR: cyanexttuesday\nThat blew my mind too. I wish that article could be pinned to the top of\nhackernews forever.\n\nR: Hermel\nThe term \"diversity\" already implies that there are differences between\ngenders, otherwise we would have to call it \"more of the same\". Everyone who\ninsists on valuing diversity while also insisting that man are women are equal\nis contradicting herself.\n\nR: youdontknowtho\nI've been trying not to comment in these threads.\n\nThe thing that gets me though is how much people WANT to argue about this\nshit. So many people on this site want to defend that guy and his ideas like\nthey gain something from it. It's weird.\n\nR: Blackthorn\nIt really doesn't matter if the memo had any truth to it or not. At the end of\nthe day, that really is immaterial to the result. What happened because of the\nmemo is it managed to piss off virtually every woman in the company. You don't\npiss off 20,000 of your coworkers in a completely avoidable manner and keep\nyour job.\n\nR: alexandercrohde\nDid the memo piss them off, or did a non-existent \"Sexist manifesto\" created\nby click-bait sites piss them off?\n\nR: Blackthorn\nConsidering how it pissed them off before any leaks happened, I'm going to\nhave to do with the former.\n\nR: kristianc\n> I disagree completely and utterly that the (yes, real) average differences\n> between men and women map to being better or worse at certain jobs. Interest\n> in certain jobs, certainly. And we know - and many of us have experienced -\n> that interest levels are also heavily influenced by social and cultural\n> factors.\n\nThis is the key point. Even if you accept that there are average genetic\ndifferences, they are far outweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing\npeople to their genes is lazy psuedo-science.\n\nIt's absolutely necessary that we start to break down ideological echo\nchambers, but I'd argue that Damore's memo and his subsequent actions\n('Goolag' etc) haven't done much other than entrench people in the positions\nthey already have.\n\nR: 9j9j9j9ju\n>> Even if you accept that there are average genetic differences, they are far\noutweighed by socio-cultural factors. Reducing people to their genes is lazy\npsuedo-science\n\nIf you are a man I dare you to use that argument to get yourself appointment\nat gynaecologist's :)\n\nR: kristianc\nWell done for proving I can't get pregnant. What else you got?\n\nEdit: But while we're at it, there are male gynaecologists too, largely\nbecause while they're studying, they develop an affinity for gynaecology.\n\nR: 9j9j9j9ju\nThat wasn't the point. I think that Americans in particular are too obsessed\nwith their \"American dream\", their belief that \"you can be whoever you want if\nyou work hard enough\" that they cannot even accept basic facts from their own\nbiology.\n\nThere's a reason why all sports, including non-physical ones, like chess, have\nseparate competition for women - and when there is mixed competition women get\nplaces below 100th. Try to explain that with \"socio-cultural factors\" or other\ngender pseudo-science.\n\nR: kristianc\n> A team of researchers from the UK has shown that the under-representation of\n> women at the top end in chess is almost exactly what would be expected,\n> given the much greater number of men that participate in the game at all.\n> Researchers Merim Bilalic, et al., have published their research on this\n> statistical sampling explanation in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the\n> Royal Society B.\n\n> In the study, the scientists also discussed the question of why so few women\n> participate in chess at all. While it's possible that there exists a self-\n> selection process based on innate biological differences that leads women to\n> drop out of chess early on, this argument rests on a controversial\n> assumption, the researchers say. That is, it _requires that there is an\n> innate difference between genders in the intellectual abilities associated\n> with chess - an assumption that has little empirical evidence to support\n> it._\n\nLuckily, people have studied this, and in the case of chess, it's simple. More\nmen play chess. And did you just dismiss the entire field of sociology?\n\n[https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess-\nbiologi...](https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2009-01-men-higher-women-chess-\nbiological.html#jCp)\n\nR: 9j9j9j9ju\nYes, I dismiss entire field of sociology as pseudo-science. Same as\npsychology.","meta":{"id":"15021427"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7906309191,"avg_line_length":47.6270634736,"char_rep_ratio":0.0366001904,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9756263494,"max_line_length":584,"num_words":41265,"perplexity":468.2,"special_char_ratio":0.2141873816,"text_len":204844,"word_rep_ratio":0.0711896451},"simhash":9747999683085492619} {"text":"M: Our presentation on investing with ETFs using Modern Portfolio Theory - mattbaker\nhttp:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/wealthfront\/engineering-your-portfolio-with-etfs\n\nR: maxdemarzi\nSo you took ifa.com and made it open to low end retail investors exchanging\netfs for dfa funds. I had this idea a few years ago... then I read the Black\nSwan and realized I didn't want to be responsible for possibly ruining\npeople's lives. Hopefully no \"1 in 10,000\" year type events happen on your\nwatch.\n\nR: investordude\ncool stuff. this is very helpful!","meta":{"id":"3431392"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.790960452,"avg_line_length":44.25,"char_rep_ratio":0.0421455939,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9447931051,"max_line_length":84,"num_words":123,"perplexity":731.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2203389831,"text_len":531,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":6147272542330753118} {"text":"M: Tell HN: I made $11.21 on a single Hacker News Comment and so can you - drakaal\n6 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.

When I was called out on including the affiliate tag I promised to follow up in a week. Well I'm a day early, but I'm calling it close enough.

If you didn'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.

301 of you clicked on the link in my comment. That's more than I anticipated. 3 things of chocolate sold. Commission on that doesn't add up to much. 7% on $63 is about $4. I made almost triple that because of other things people purchased.

The largest and strangest of those purchases being a Shimano RD-M591 Deore SGS Rear Derailleur \n(for a bike) ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003OWPRLI?tag=itemsid-20 )

So here are the results:

Items Shipped Revenue Advertising Fees

Amazon.com Items Shipped 6 $98.97 $6.16

Third Party Items Shipped 5 $109.25 $5.05

Items Shipped 11 $208.22 $11.21

I don't think I'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'd make 28 cents.

Probably I violated a Hacker News Rule somewhere, and I apologize for that. I don't think this is much different than linking to your own site that has ads in it so I don't feel too bad. In truth I really just wanted the click through stats, all the other numbers were just incidental.

Here is the thread I commented on: \nhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7125646\n\nR: judk\n\"You will not issue any press release or make any other public communication\nwith respect to this Operating Agreement, your use of the Content, or your\nparticipation in the Program.\"\n\nInteresting, talking about being an affiliate is a violation of the operating\nagreement.\n\nR: benologist\nThis should be put to good use with links tagged automatically with some\nuseful organization and overwriting others to remove any financial incentive\nto comment.\n\nEFF has an affiliate tag \"electronicfro-20\".\n\nR: crusty\nI was thinking about Amazon affiliate referrals for charity just the other\ndays after a friend posted his charity's Amazon Smile referral link. Of course\nthe Smile payout is a fraction of what the affiliate percentage pays. I was\nthinking about just having a page of with maybe the current top 50 items (five\nrows of ten) for the week in Amazon's sales rank - as cards with thumbnail and\nname\/price\/rating. Then I'd rotate through charities each week based on\nvisitor input, verify the week's haul for them and cut a check to the charity.\nAn alternative to the top 50 items would be to incorporate items related to\nLifeHacker's \"best times to buy\" lists. I figured I should just double check\nthe TOS first and haven't had the chance. It's interesting to see others\nthinking about this.\n\nR: stp-ip\nThey closed down all charity and affiliate related projects and replaced them\nwith smile to make it cheaper. aflattr.com + socialvest.com\n\nR: rgbrgb\nAffiliate links seem pretty interesting but I'm not sure they're actually\npositive for the consumer. In some cases it's a way to support legitimate\ncontent but I've seen too many \"reviews\" that were actually advertisements.\n\nLike ideally you want to use ads to make good content free and inform people\nabout products they actually want. I'm working on something kind of related to\naffiliate links (users make money) but the affiliate's motivation is centered\naround getting their own content seen, so hopefully we're aligning goals of\nvisitors and posters (make something great, get paid).\n\nEDIT: Planning to post something more substantial to HN but here's a preview\nfor people in this thread [https:\/\/surfer.io\/](https:\/\/surfer.io\/)\n\nR: nkurz\nWhile I appreciate the insight into the results, I think it be extremely bad\nfor HN to encourage or allow this practice. I've upvoted your submission in\nthe hopes that it gains further attention, and flagged it and the post\ncontaining the affiliate link.\n\nI realize this affiliate links are a divisive issue, but my hope is that they\nwill be reviewed and your account will be banned. I don't know whether others\nagree with me, but I think adding affiliate links to comments here is uncivil\nand intolerable behaviour.\n\nR: znmeb\nI believe it's against Amazon's Terms of Service. They're bigger than you are\nand they _will_ sue you if you violate their TOS. So check it out!\n\nR: stp-ip\nAnd even if you do not yet violate their TOS, they do change them to their\nliking and kick you out anyway. Relying on Amazon as a partner is not really\nsomething I can recommend.\n\nR: jayzalowitz\nSo basically if i link to a horse mask like this\n[http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B003G4IM4S?tag=t0c8f-20](http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B003G4IM4S?tag=t0c8f-20)\non hacker news, it will make money (Ill donate anything I get from this to\nGlide), I wonder what the most successful hacks you can do with this are...\nwriting a pinterest chrome app? a reddit app?\n\nR: whichdan\nHow long after clicking on an affiliate link do purchases count for? And does\neach successively clicked affiliate link override the previous one? Also, as\nan affiliate, do you see any metadata, or just which items were purchased\noverall?\n\nI like the EFF idea posted in a few other comments, but I'm wondering how\naffiliate links are handled in general.\n\nR: msinghai\nMoney is credited to the affiliate account after the product gets shipped; so\nthat's around 24 hours.\n\nYes, each successively clicked affiliate link overwrites the previous one.\n\nAny metadata? No, affiliates just see which items were purchased and the\nquantities.\n\nHope that helps.\n\nR: whichdan\nThat's interesting - thanks!\n\nR: jfoster\nWould be interesting to know how you go after this post, too. I imagine more\npeople will click through to the original post after this.\n\nR: kassner\nThis is not the same than posting a blog link with Adsense on it? The content\nis being presented and someone is getting a few cents...\n\nR: drakaal\nSorry for the bad formatting on the table I apparently don't know how to mark\ndown to get the tabs for a psuedo table.\n\nR: possibilistic\nThe comments on HN are not parsed as markdown.\n\n* case (newline) * in (newline) * point (newline)\n\n __Double asterisk for bold? __Nope.\n\n[Link]([http:\/\/google.com](http:\/\/google.com))\n\nI believe the only formatting options are these:\n\n1) _encloded by single asterisk = italics_\n\n2)\n\n \n \n four leading spaces for 

 \/ monospaced\n        great for code, quotes, etc.\n\nR: tzs\nClose. You only need two or more leading spaces. Here's the list of formatting\noptions:\n[http:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/formatdoc](http:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/formatdoc)","meta":{"id":"7164609"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7722744093,"avg_line_length":51.2846715328,"char_rep_ratio":0.0437508907,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.942637682,"max_line_length":882,"num_words":1516,"perplexity":1297.5,"special_char_ratio":0.24480501,"text_len":7026,"word_rep_ratio":0.0092899801},"simhash":14784850142144140900}
{"text":"M: (Awesome programming font!) Gohu Font converted to TTF - rnetocombr\nhttp:\/\/www.rneto.com.br\/\n(http:\/\/font.gohu.org\/)
Gohu Font converted to TTF\n\nR: gus_massa\nI'd like to see more text written in that font in the example (before\ndownloading). Does it have a slashed 0? Monospaced? Some ALL_CAPS text? How is\nthe * verticaly aligned?\n\nI googled some images from the original font:\n[http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?tbm=isch&q=Gohufont](http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?tbm=isch&q=Gohufont)","meta":{"id":"5147529"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7541322314,"avg_line_length":44.0,"char_rep_ratio":0.0884210526,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.6812615395,"max_line_length":100,"num_words":133,"perplexity":853.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2479338843,"text_len":484,"word_rep_ratio":0.1290322581},"simhash":11998281340481327216}
{"text":"M: Backbone Debugger - kwellman\nhttps:\/\/github.com\/Maluen\/Backbone-Debugger\n\nR: odiroot\nThat's nice but what about garbage collection. Doesn't this extension prevent\nviews\/models from being cleaned up? Or does it use weak references of some\nkind?\n\nR: asolove\nI don't even know what to say. I think I might cry. This is going to be so\nuseful.\n\nR: coolsunglasses\n[https:\/\/github.com\/angular\/angularjs-\nbatarang](https:\/\/github.com\/angular\/angularjs-batarang)","meta":{"id":"5845885"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7807017544,"avg_line_length":30.4,"char_rep_ratio":0.1118568233,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9208906889,"max_line_length":77,"num_words":118,"perplexity":514.6,"special_char_ratio":0.2192982456,"text_len":456,"word_rep_ratio":0.0366972477},"simhash":4199668651510570389}
{"text":"M: The Untold Story of the Teen Hackers Who Transformed the Early Internet - ohjeez\nhttp:\/\/paleofuture.gizmodo.com\/the-untold-story-of-the-teen-hackers-who-transformed-th-1770977586\n\nR: fallingfrog\nI found this quote pretty poignant: \"When I went to Santa Monica to meet Bill,\nI was pretty sure I'd hear a story about how the FBI had ruined his life. But\nI left believing that it hadn't. The world ruined Bill's life - a world that\ncouldn't quite find a place for his particular talents, faults, and petty\nmistakes.\" Makes you a little more sympathetic to homeless people, doesn't it?\nI mean, I could have easily ended up in his position with just little less\nluck or different choices. And I think it's totally true that there are some\npeople that just don't fit in to our current social\/economic system, and that\nreally isn't their fault.","meta":{"id":"11499298"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7869047619,"avg_line_length":64.6153846154,"char_rep_ratio":0.0348977136,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9736186266,"max_line_length":97,"num_words":185,"perplexity":359.2,"special_char_ratio":0.225,"text_len":840,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":12786749040300544516}
{"text":"M: Amazon Takes Sales Tax War to California  - aarghh\nhttp:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/07\/14\/technology\/amazon-takes-sales-tax-war-to-california.html?hp\n\nR: ajkessler\nI found this quote hilarious:\n\n\"I don't think we want to send the message that companies can fund a political\ncampaign for a referendum and maybe your customers won't be subject to sales\ntax.\"\n\nBecause it's not like some companies funded political campaigns to get this\nmeasure passed in the first place.\n([http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB1000142405274870439650457620...](http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704396504576204791377862836.html))\n\nHeaven forbid another big company ask what the citizenry thinks...\n\nR: blahedo\nIt's really patently unfair for purchases from Amazon.com not to require sales\ntaxes while purchases from BarnesAndNoble.com do require sales taxes. That's\nwhat this all boils down to. Amazon is not, on some level, competing directly\nwith your local friendly indy bookshop (if you still have one), and that's not\nthe right direction to look for a comparison... but they are competing with\nother online booksellers, who have to pay sales tax on their online book sales\nif and only if they _also_ have a bricks-and-mortar business. That's dumb.\n\nR: kevinskii\nSales taxes fund local infrastructure. Why should Amazon have to pay for a\nfire department that it will never possibly need?\n\nIn regards to the \"fairness\" question, put it a different way: It's unfair\nthat brick and mortar companies can offer their customers immediate\ngratification and the ability to physically inspect items before buying.\nAmazon can do neither.\n\nR: Anechoic\n_Why should Amazon have to pay for a fire department that it will never\npossibly need?_\n\nIt's certainly in Amazon's interest that their _customers_ have access to\nthose local FD's. Even if one doesn't agree with the FD example, those sales\ntaxes also pay for local roads and surely Amazon makes use of those.\n\n(Lest I be accused of being a hypocrite, I do pay the local sales tax for\ninternet purchases via the Massachusetts 'safe harbor' provision for small\npurchases and itemized listings of my larger purchases with my state tax\nfilings)\n\nR: yummyfajitas\nAmazon doesn't use local roads. Fedex, UPS, etc do.\n\nThose companies all have a local presence and (presumably) pay their taxes to\nthe state in which they operate. The taxes are then passed on to Amazon or the\nconsumer in the form of higher prices on shipping.\n\nAs for local fire departments, I use Pivotal Tracker. Should Pivotal Labs be\nforced to pay Maharashtra taxes since it's in their best interest that my\ncompany not burn down?\n\nR: babl\nWith 2 day shipping through the prime service, they pretty much emulate a\nlocal retailer. The prices are awesome but I can see how their tax advantages\ngive them an unfair advantage on local competition.\n\nR: X-Istence\nBecause the user that is receiving the item is tax dodging Amazon should be\npunished?\n\nR: babl\nI wasn't aware anyone actually declared their Amazon purchases at tax time.\n\nR: dprice1\nI do as well. I sum up my online purchases from Amazon, add my wife's in, and\npay the money. It goes to funding the things I use: Roads, firefighters, the\nlibrary, the park next to my house. Heck, there was a fire two weeks ago in\nthe apartment building next to where I live-- we sure as hell appreciated the\nfiremen who came at 4:00am to prevent a catastrophe.\n\nThe argument above about how it's impossible\/expensive\/complicated\/etc. to\ncollect sales tax seems exceedingly bogus to me especially given the nature of\nHN: Sounds like a business problem to be solved, not some byzantine task.\nSomeone should go make an online sales-tax-computing web service and be done\nwith it.\n\nOh wait, someone did: ,\n, et cetera.\n\nR: earl\nWhat's even more annoying is amazon damn well does have a large physical\npresence in CA:\n\na2z:  : SF, OC, and San Luis Obispo;\n\nA9: near caltrain, and from their page, \"As A9 is a wholly owned and operated\nsubsidiary of Amazon.com, we have the strength that comes from being part of a\nFortune 500 company, and the flexibility and energy of a Silicon Valley start-\nup.\"\n\nI'm ambivalent about the exception to collecting taxes for companies without\nan instate presence, but this is pure bullshit. Amazon operates multiple\ncompanies with hundreds of employees in CA. Just like other companies that\ntake advantage of what CA has to offer, they should be forced to pay the tax\nman.\n\nR: dangrossman\nIt's not as if Amazon is arguing that if the subsidiaries sell products in\nCalifornia they wouldn't be subject to sales tax. If you (earl) bought stock\nin a company in another state, does that give you a physical presence there\nand make whatever you sell subject to their sales tax? That company you are a\npartial (or full) owner of already pays sales tax in its state.\n\nR: aphexairlines\na2z makes the Amazon Appstore and Android MP3 player. So who gets taxed on\nthose digital purchases?\n\nR: dangrossman\nAppstore apps are sold by Amazon Digital Services Inc. They also sell all the\ndownloadable games and such on Amazon.com. I don't know what state that\ncompany is in, but that'd be the state that gets taxed.","meta":{"id":"2761512"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7894937191,"avg_line_length":44.5254237288,"char_rep_ratio":0.0362249762,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.958564043,"max_line_length":147,"num_words":1091,"perplexity":628.7,"special_char_ratio":0.227826418,"text_len":5254,"word_rep_ratio":0.0129390018},"simhash":13157170630052571346}
{"text":"M: Utter.io API Reference - kordless\nhttps:\/\/gist.github.com\/kordless\/9dbac7af840e8ded1fc3\n\nR: kordless\nWrote this for a friend who was wanting to give away some instance time.\nFigured I'd share it up here!","meta":{"id":"9549037"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7912621359,"avg_line_length":34.3333333333,"char_rep_ratio":0.076142132,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9447963238,"max_line_length":72,"num_words":58,"perplexity":2012.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2475728155,"text_len":206,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":10642627289317120969}
{"text":"M: Show HN: A weekly 3D printing newsletter - philipDS\nhttp:\/\/www.3dprintingletter.com\/\n\nR: bglenn09\nI'm looking for opportunities in this space and am just getting up to speed,\nso thank you for this. I eagerly subscribed. Best of luck with it.\n\nR: philipDS\nThanks! Hopefully I can offer some opportunities (as in jobs) through this\nnewsletter as it grows. Feel free to share it with other people interested in\n3D printing :)\n\nR: philipDS\nI started this side project because I find myself reading a lot of 3D printing\nnews lately. On top of that, I'm not satisfied with the distribution of 3D\nprinting news. There is the weekly Shapeways newsletter where they promote\nproducts, but they hardly cover any interesting news IMHO.\n\nAny feedback? Feel free to subscribe.. and see you next week! :)\n\nR: phylosopher\nJust reviewed the first newsletter. Good cross-section of a very hot sector.\nAny chance you can include a section on 3D scanning? Also interested in\ncopyright law.\n\nR: philipDS\nThanks for the feedback. Right now a section on 3D scanning is possible, but\nit will most likely be included under the general News section. Same for\ncopyright law.","meta":{"id":"4493136"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7869565217,"avg_line_length":39.6551724138,"char_rep_ratio":0.0666082384,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9449461699,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":236,"perplexity":832.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2208695652,"text_len":1150,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":8226358950625280882}
{"text":"M: Google is facing a lawsuit for tracking people even when they opt out - djsumdog\nhttps:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/google-lawsuit-app-tracking-without-permission-reuters-2020-7\n\nR: shadowgovt\nInteresting. Between this and the Incognito Mode lawsuit, it seems some\nlawyers are trying to make a case that companies have the burden of making\ntheir systems plain-language understandable to the consumer, not technically\nunderstandable. \"Incognito mode\" has never meant \"Third party sites can't\ntrack you,\" but one could argue its plain-language understanding should be\nthat. Similarly, disabling \"Web & App Activity\" actually means Android's\nbuilt-in tracking is disabled, but does nothing about third-party site\ntracking (which is what Firebase is; it's a framework for third parties\nbuilding usage tracking into apps that _happens_ to be owned by Google but\ndoesn't drop its data into the same hopper as the Android project's tracking).\nOne can clearly see how turning off Web & App Activity tracking could cause a\nperson to assume systems like Firebase are also disabled, but it doesn't.\n\nI don't know what the right answer is yet. Manufacturer responsibility v.\npersonal responsibility is an old question, and it's why we have court\nsystems.\n\nR: strictnein\n> \"third-party site tracking (which is what Firebase is; it's a framework for\n> third parties building usage tracking into apps\"\n\nFirebase isn't that at all. It can be used to build such things, but so can\nPHP and CSV files.\n\nR: WhyNotHugo\n> Firebase isn't that at all. It can be used to build such things, but so can\n> PHP and CSV files.\n\nYou can use PHP and CSV for purposes unrelated to tracking. Firebase cannot be\nused without any tracking going on.\n\nR: strictnein\nYes, it absolutely can. I'm doing so currently.\n\nFirebase at its core is cloud functions, triggers, and storage.\n\nR: gundmc\nThis is the second suit from this firm that seems to be formed on an\nincredibly weak and intentionally misleading argument.\n\nHere: the user turns off data collection from Google services, but third party\napps use a Google Cloud offering to collect analytics (which Google cannot\naccess).\n\nPreviously: I launched Chrome in incognito mode, but when I log into Google it\nrecords my activity.\n\nGiven the article's mention of Oracle as a client, it seems likely this is\npart of Oracle's continued smear campaign against Google. Keeping a stream of\nnegative headlines regardless of substance, especially as the big Supreme\nCourt case looms.\n\nR: pd33\nParts of Firebase do share data with Google that Google can access and use.\n[https:\/\/firebase.google.com\/policies\/analytics](https:\/\/firebase.google.com\/policies\/analytics)\n\nR: gundmc\nI'm not seeing anything that obviously supports your statement in that link,\nbut I may be missing something. Could you quote the relevant section?\n\nR: gundmc\nI'm outside the edit window, but this page [1] looks more relevant. App owners\ncan opt in to sharing additional data with Google for use in things such as\nspam prevention. It is off by default.\n\n[1]\n[https:\/\/support.google.com\/firebase\/answer\/6383877?hl=en](https:\/\/support.google.com\/firebase\/answer\/6383877?hl=en)\n\nR: dependenttypes\nGoogle should face a lawsuit for intentionally breaking the audio challenge in\ncaptcha when someone is using a proxy or has the fingerprinting protection\nenabled (same for cloudflare with their hcaptcha actually which does not even\nhave an audio challenge). Also for making captcha more difficult when using\nfirefox.\n\nR: dang\nThe similar suit filed a month ago by the same firm was discussed here:\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23405022](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23405022)\n\nalso\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23397045](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=23397045)\n\nR: ForHackernews\nCan any googlers comment on whether \"turning off\" activity on your user page\nactually does anything? My understanding has always been that it just hides\nthat data from the end-user.\n\nR: lrem\nIt does exactly what it says on the tin - Google stops collecting data you\ntell it to stop. This lawsuit, from a quick glance, is about Google not\npreventing \"hundreds of thousands\" of third parties from collecting, including\nthird parties building with Google tech.\n\nR: CobrastanJorji\nIs the \"Google tech\" argument the equivalent of saying \"Toyota promised not to\ntrack me, but a stalker followed me around town in a Corolla?\"\n\nR: shadowgovt\nBasically. Firebase and Google Analytics can be used to build user behavior\ntracking in an app. That doesn't imply turning off web & app activity tracking\nthe Android OS itself does turns off behaviors in apps running on that OS.\n\nR: digitalpacman\nLiterally no one stops tracing you when you opt out.\n\nR: a3n\nWell, they have to track people that they aren't tracking. Otherwise they\nwouldn't know who they're not tracking.\n\nR: dudus\nI realize this is a joke. But that's an interesting contradiction, how do you\nknow how many people you didn't track?\n\nThe answer is that you don't. These companies estimate how many people block\ncookies or pie-hole requests to \/dev\/null or have ad blockers, etc. Their\nestimations are bad and they don't really know. It's a real problem.\n\nR: zelphirkalt\nWell, how come I am not surprised. Google is an ad company and I think lots of\npeople still have not understood this. Google abuses that and does whatever\nthey can to get more data. Ethics play no role for them.\n\nR: spodek\n\"Don't Be Evil\", according to Wikipedia: \"In April 2018, the motto was removed\nfrom the code of conduct's preface and retained in its last sentence.\"\n[https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Don%27t_be_evil](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Don%27t_be_evil)\n\nSince you can't demote it past the last sentence, maybe they should change it\nto \"Whatever sells\" or something similarly mercenary.\n\nR: notRobot\nThis is Google we're talking about. I'm sure they've run the numbers and come\nto the conclusion that a lawsuit and a fine costs less than the amount of\nmoney that they earn by tracking users even after saying that they won't.\n\nIs anyone surprised at this point?\n\nR: shadowgovt\nHonestly, I doubt they've run any numbers on this because I think this lawsuit\nhasn't occurred to Google.\n\nWeb & App Activity tracking collects data on usage of apps and browsing and\nsends them to the Android project (for improving the OS). Firebase is a\nframework and service for third parties to build tracking like that into their\nindividual _products,_ and it has an entirely separate history from W&AA\ntracking. It happens to be _owned_ by Google (as of recently), but the data\nisn't in the same hoppers as the Android hoppers and Google can't see it (it's\npart of the Cloud offering; Google offers the service and stores the data, but\naggregating or using the data itself would be a violation of their agreements\nwith Firebase customers). Firebase and W&AA tracking are two different\nsubsystems owned and maintained by two different departments at Google (in\nfact, hypothetically, they could build W&AA tracking as a client project _on\ntop of_ Firebase, if they hadn't already built it).\n\nFirebase was an acquisition; when the W&AA tracking feature was added,\nFirebase wasn't even part of Google. This is a lawyer recognizing that an\nacquisition has created a novel arrangement that could be interpreted as\nsuspicious.","meta":{"id":"23846103"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7908755634,"avg_line_length":45.1913580247,"char_rep_ratio":0.0439004376,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9591987729,"max_line_length":116,"num_words":1511,"perplexity":636.8,"special_char_ratio":0.2178664117,"text_len":7321,"word_rep_ratio":0.0572569907},"simhash":1398489171482607522}
{"text":"M: Betable: Bringing real gambling to social casino games - wilfra\nhttp:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2012\/07\/09\/betable-could-disrupt-social-casino-games-by-cleverly-fusing-them-with-legal-real-money-gambling\/\n\nR: dsrguru\nIs it definitely clear that it would be legal for a startup based in the U.S.\nand with American founders to use Betable? It wasn't until \"Black Friday\"\n() that it became clear the\nU.S. government viewed NLH poker as a game of chance, and Googling I've done\nin the past suggests that certain aspects of the government's intrepretation\nof online poker's legality remain vague. So is it a definite that what the\nU.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans\nwere taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three\ncasinos were allowing Americans to gamble? Or was it that those casinos made\nmoney off of their American customers? I.e. would a gambling site that didn't\ntake a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers?\n(I assume not, but then I'm unclear what the alleged money laundering charges\nwere.)\n\nSo to make a medium-length post short, I'm an American citizen. Would I\ndefinitely be allowed to use Betable? If so, this is great news for me.\n\nR: wilfra\n\"is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money\nlaundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online\ncasinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to\ngamble?\"\n\nIt is definitely that they were allowing Americans to gamble.\n\n\"would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be\nallowed to have American customers?\"\n\nThis definitely would not be allowed.\n\nYou mentioned the money laundering charges a couple of times. Those were\nancillary charges. The primary charge was that they were operating an illegal\nonline gambling business i.e. letting Americans gamble on the internet.\n\n\"I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable?\"\n\nIt is not illegal for an American company to offer real money online gambling\nto citizens of other countries where it is legal and regulated. So Zynga could\nget a UK gambling license and offer online gambling to UK citizens. It is a\nlong, slow, difficult and expensive process - Betable has already done it and\nis allowing others to leverage their infrastructure (legal and technical).\n\nR: dsrguru\nThanks! Would companies using Betable need to get licenses from the same\ncountries that Betable already has licenses from (which so far means the UK)\nor would Betable's licenses mean that users of Betable would be covered as\nwell.\n\nEdit: Just discovered the 50\/50 revenue share. That's going to turn away a lot\nof potential customers.\n\nR: cellis\nAlso don't just jump into this shit unless, you know, you have legal counsel\nthat specializes in gaming. It's _still_ a huge risk. E.g. U.S. customers\ncould circumvent and bet on your site. Guess what, you're on the hook for\nthat!\n\nR: davidtyleryork\nThat's incorrect cellis. Betable is handling all gambling, so any gambling-\nrelated legal risk (such as US customers gambling) is strictly our problem.\nThis is why we have advanced geolocation, IP and identity checks.\n\nR: cellis\nIncorrect that U.S. developers of a game implementing Betable could be targets\nof legal action? Or incorrect that your software is circumventable?\n\nHere's another question. Is Betable willing \/ able to provide legal counsel to\nU.S. developers who get squeezed by the FBI?\n\nR: T_S_\nCan anybody explain to me how much value I can give the user in a \"gamified\"\napp before it is considered gambling?\n\nR: wilfra\nThese are the three criteria, all of which must be met to be considered\ngambling:\n\n-prize (they have to get paid money or something of value)\n\n-consideration (they have to pay to participate)\n\n-chance (so skill games are exempted i.e. chess)\n\nIf any of those is missing, it is not gambling.\n\nZynga Poker does not have a prize but they have consideration and chance, thus\nit is not gambling. There are legal subscription poker sites (i.e.\nclubwpt.com) that do not require people to pay, so no consideration - but they\nhave chance and a prize. Not gambling.\n\nWe ran a leaderboard contest last month to get some more alpha testers and\ngave $500 to the top 10. It was free to participate (no consideration) and our\ngame is (we think) a game of skill, not chance. So we were confident it wasn't\ngambling and thus was legal.\n\nConsult your attorney before making any business decisions, but thats the gist\nof it.\n\nR: gregpurtell\nI think the idea is that Betable lets you do real gambling, but for games of\nchance. Not sure how it works with their platform to make it legal, but that's\nwhat the article claims their service is\n\nR: dminor\nOnly players in places where gambling is legal can participate. So a US\ndeveloper could make a game using Betable's API, but it won't be US players\ngambling.\n\nR: davidtyleryork\nThat is correct dminor :)\n\nR: gamingfiend\nHave you guys been evaluated\/certified by an independent testing lab?\n\nR: rcrowley\nWe're audited multiple times a year. Our UK Gambling Commission license\ncompels us to be audited against their codes of practice and additionally we\nhave the correctness and security of our systems audited independently.\n\nR: gamingfiend\nCan you put your audit results and\/or certifications on your web site?\n\nWe would like to use you but having been in the cash gaming business in Europe\nand to an extent in the US, we won't touch a vendor unless we know they are\nsome way to GLI-19 compliant.\n\nR: rcrowley\nBetable's license number from the UK Gambling Commission\n is 000-023328-R-307313-003. We're\naudited (by GLI, incidentally) against their codes of practice.\n\nR: wilfra\nWas surprised not to see this on the front page. This is pretty big news:\n\n\"Today, the company has received an undisclosed amount of money from 25\ninvestors including Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave\nMorin (ex-Facebook employee and current founder of Path) and Yuri Milner, the\nRussian investor who took big stakes in Facebook and Zynga. Those are big-name\nsupporters who believe that Betable has a shot at raising the average revenue\nper user and average customer lifetime value for social games.\n\nAmong the other investors are CrunchFund (Michael Arrington's fund), Marc\nAbramowitz (first investor in Palantir), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance),\nAuren Hoffman (founder of Rapleaf), Sean Knapp (founder of Ooyala), Howard\nLindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Matt Ocko (angel investor in Zynga), Joshua\nSchacter (founder of delicious), and Arjun Sethi (former CEO of Lolapps).\"\n\nR: joshu\nmisspelled my name again. damnit.\n\nR: davidtyleryork\nD'oh! We're sorry :(\n\nR: haberdasher\nIf there are any Android game devs that are interested in being alpha\nintegraters for a similar (but better?) gaming layer, please email:","meta":{"id":"4220943"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.788458771,"avg_line_length":43.43125,"char_rep_ratio":0.0410662824,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9639068842,"max_line_length":131,"num_words":1438,"perplexity":618.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2177291697,"text_len":6949,"word_rep_ratio":0.0713785864},"simhash":15737494389176714960}
{"text":"M: Joyent's SSL certificate expired? - secoif\nhttps:\/\/no.de\n\nR: secoif\nScreencap: \n\nDoesn't instil confidence.\n\nR: arunoda\nno.de is not available any more.","meta":{"id":"4752665"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7351351351,"avg_line_length":18.5,"char_rep_ratio":0.0738636364,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8101812005,"max_line_length":45,"num_words":52,"perplexity":956.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2648648649,"text_len":185,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":16289397492078879295}
{"text":"M: Ask HN: Google Gmail as a recovery address, function or security hole? - hbarka\nWhy 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.\n\nR: 086421357909764\nHow does it make you a greater risk? Is it possible you have an email address\nsimilar to someone else's? I receive emails obviously targeted at a different\nperson, but because our addresses are so similar It's a common occurrence.\n\nUnless you're speaking of a spear phish trying to lure you into clicking a\nlink, it's just harmless spam. Hell the same could be said if I signed your\nemail up for dirty porn emails, you'd just delete or ignore.\n\nR: hbarka\nIt's an easy vector for spear phishing because it contains an official click-\nthrough button for disavowing. Very easy to manipulate and do the podesta\ntrick with it. Saying it's harmless isn't actually true and also isn't a good\nanswer.\n\nR: 086421357909764\nRight but the matter stands as this, if you weren't expecting it and it's not\nrelevant to you, it's likely spam, so get rid of it.\n\nR: hbarka\nIt's not the same class as spam, as you're insisting. Merely deleting the\nemail doesn't \"get rid of it\". Now there's a hard association between you and\nthe other party and can be social hacked as a recovery email. It's bad\npractice on Gmail's part to create an official function which commits without\nauthorization or authentication.","meta":{"id":"14713167"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7898909812,"avg_line_length":72.0714285714,"char_rep_ratio":0.0482827277,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9774500728,"max_line_length":726,"num_words":431,"perplexity":502.1,"special_char_ratio":0.224975223,"text_len":2018,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":12502047843825222230}
{"text":"M: Are you on twitter? - ivankirigin\nI'm starting to love using Twitter. There is something liberating about the constraints.
I'm @tipjoy
http:\/\/twitter.com\/tipjoy\n\nR: abarrera\nWow a lot of twitter guys here. I wished you could a) Import an opml file with\nTwitter accounts. b) Create groups of Twitter friends you can message like\n@group1\n\nIf someone knows of any webapp that implements a) please let me know :D\n\nI'm putting all the twitter accounts so far together here:\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\nAnd I'll add mine: \n\nR: mosburger\nChris Brogan tried the group idea with \"Twitter Packs\"... he implemented it\nquickly and dirtily using a Wiki though, so editing it runs into some obvious\npitfalls (e.g., contention when a page is edited by more than one person)...\n\n\n\nI toyed with the idea of implementing it as an actual standalone service\nwithout the wiki... but I have too many other \"side projects\" right now! :)\n\nHere's my twitter account: \n\nR: danielha\n\n\nholler @ me.\n\nAlso subscribe to the RSS of your company name (or keyword of choice) at\n. My favorite Kirigins have Tipjoy on that\nbadboy.\n\nR: ivankirigin\nHell yah. Terraminds twitter search is actually pretty useful. Searching for\nyour company name is particularly valuable. Go tip 'em.\n\nR: jraines\nPeronally I've gotten a lot more utility out of Friendfeed so far.\n\nTwitter is neat though -- I'm building a site that will scrape replies to a\nTwitter user called @rating and put them in a database of ratings. The reply\njust has to look like this:\n\n@rating 5 \"Thing Being Rated\" Mini-review goes here.\n\nI'll post it when the battle of Rails deployment is over.\n\nI'm 'jraines' on Twitter and Friendfeed.\n\nR: samwise\nI don't get it. There is no real need for it. I also don't see how you could\neasily monetize it.\n\nR: ryanspahn\nIt's description and the inane posts I originally read made me think the same\nthing!\n\nBut, after much use it's a great piece of technology. It allows you to survey\na crowd, use it for emergency purposes (San Diego Fire Dept did just this),\nlearn about what your friends are reading\/sharing, where they are going for\nthe evening, how they feel, etc...\n\nR: bootload\n\" _... I'm starting to love using Twitter. There is something liberating about\nthe constraints ..._ \"\n\nI've used twitter from Nov2006. Some of the constraints I don't like:\n\n\\- how they handle urls [0]\n\n\\- how they handle people who you like but talk to much [1]\n\nThe rest is pretty good. Not too much info, uptime ok (well when I use it) and\napi is simple & works ~ \n\n[0] I don't know a good solution but if google created their own shortcuts\nlike tinyurl the web would be a better place.\n\n[1] stacks of quick posts one after the other why not group them by person\nafter a threshold of say 3?\n\nR: dcurtis\nI can see the reason for footnotes on a long post for meta information, but\nwhy do you use them in your little messages? Why not just explain what's in\nthe footnote when you first mention it?\n\nNot an attack, just a friendly question. I've noticed you do this fairly\noften.\n\nI agree with [1] though; Robert Scoble is the worst offender, seconded closely\nby Guy Kawasaki. Bundling messages together would screw up the API and break\nthings like twitterific, probably. I wonder if there's a better solution.\n\nR: bootload\n_\"... Why not just explain what's in the footnote when you first mention it?\n...\"_\n\ngood point, I'll see what I can do.\n\n _\"... I wonder if there's a better solution. ...\"_\n\nfriendfeed does the obvious thing that is it restricts view to the latest 3 by\nperson so as to not clutter the page. Another idea I can think of would be\nallow you to select who you want to clamp.\n\n _\"... Not an attack, just a friendly question. I've noticed you do this\nfairly often. ...\"_\n\nto stop adding ellipses (that mess up the text especially if there is a lot of\nthem) allowing you to read. This is especially for links or side notes that\nrelate to the main text but is added interest. Also I use hackernews as a\nscribble (  ) for\nlater posts on flickr\n\n _\"... Bundling messages together would screw up the API and break things like\ntwitterific ...\"_\n\nNo just the display, not the data itself. Just grab the latest submission. If\nmore submissions occur in \"N\" minutes time frame just display the latest 3,\nhave a click & fetch more if required. It shouldn't break app using the api\ndoing this. Friendfeed does this well.\n\nR: joshwa\n\n\nThough I think that their potential as messaging glue has yet to be realized--\npayloads would be a start, as Winer has suggested, incorporating Yahoo Pipes,\nTwitterfeed, etc, and make twitter the social messaging bus for the entire\nweb.\n\nMy hypothesis is that Obvious is working on this stuff (since it's so, well,\novbious!), but isn't ready to release it until they get their infrastructure\nstuff sorted out, sign up partners, etc.\n\nR: danw\n\n\nWho's on tumblr? I'm  on there\n\nR: iseff\n\n\nAnd, on tumblr,  (recently became a Tumblr staff\npick!).\n\nR: blinks\n\n\nTumblr: \n\n(And, on Pownce: )\n\n(Does this mean I win teh Internets? I have social networking fever. (And the\nonly cure is more cowbell.))\n\n(Need caffeine.)\n\nR: npost\nIt gets interesting when they start offering commercial services around it.\nWhat a great platform for project teams, or even disaster notifications (civil\nservices), etc. It would be great for emergency services to coordinate their\nactivities. However, that is assuming that it can handle the volume without\ngoing down!\n\n\n\nR: orion\nTwitter is pretty darn cool, especially if you use it to keep friends and\ncollealleagues up to date with what's going on in your world. It cracks me up\nto hear people ask \"how can I monetize this?\" If you have something of value\nto offer it will monetize itself. Nobody truly enjoys being \"sold.\" If nothing\nyou do is of any value, attempts to monetize are just wasted effort.\n\nR: webwright\nI'm digging Twitter too. Here's me: \n\nIf you care about marketing, learn to use Twitter Track (google it).\n\nI get an SMS every time ANYONE mentions RescueTime on Twitter (friend or no).\nIt's slightly creepy when I immedietely pounce on them and thank them. ;-)\n\nR: a-priori\n\n\nI don't update a whole lot.\n\nR: pkaler\n\n\nBut I use Jaiku a whole lot more. Seems to be more of a Vancouver area tech\nphenomena though. \n\nR: walesmd\nI only use Twitter to integrate with beanstalkapps.com - this way my clients\ncan see my SVN commits in real-time (since I'm cheap and don't pay for them to\nhave an account to the beanstalkapps.com backend).\n\nR: engtech\nFor tumblr I am\n\n \\-- lifestream, kinda messy\n\n \\-- ruby\/rails links\n\nR: izak30\n and \n\nR: engtech\n \\-- bitching and moaning\n\n \\-- link dump\n\nR: hooande\nTwitter has been great for our startup. It's true what they say, news travels\nfast on there. I'm here:\n\n\n\nR: hassy\n\n\nStarted using it recently, still haven't worked out what it's really about.\n\nR: lbrdn\nIt's an amazingly fast way to spread info.I'd recommend it to all you start-up\nguys if you're not on it already. I'm twitter.com\/lukebrdn\n\nR: jeffisageek\nI am on twitter. feel free to add me \n\nR: avinashv\nI'm @avinashv. Most of my friends tend to use more traditional IM or vanilla\nemail, so I don't use the thing at all.\n\nR: statikpulse\n\n\nJust started using it more often.\n\nR: jfoutz\n@jfoutz \n\njust started using it last week.\n\nR: Mistone\nI'm @mistone\n\n\n\nno massive posting activity but not stale\n\nR: glasner\n\n\nR: nkohari\n\n\nR: PStamatiou\n\n\nR: cyberhill\nI'm @rosshill\n\n\n\nR: astrec\n@cammacrae\n\n\n\nR: earle\nim obviously partial to  but i generally prefer sending\nand receiving photos, especially form mobile.\n\nother then that, i still use twitter from time to time.\n\nR: darreld\n\n\nLove it.\n\nR: dcurtis\nYeah, @dcurtis. Recently, I've become addicted.\n\nR: stejules\nHello I am @stejules and wanna have more friends!\n\n;D\n\nR: brk\nI'm NotoriousBRK ...\n\nR: timothyandrew\ntwitter.com\/timothyandrew\n\nTwitter is amazing.","meta":{"id":"134808"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7520150738,"avg_line_length":30.9158576052,"char_rep_ratio":0.0883277452,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.851011157,"max_line_length":130,"num_words":2320,"perplexity":861.4,"special_char_ratio":0.2514393384,"text_len":9553,"word_rep_ratio":0.0242319342},"simhash":12931397878863804053}
{"text":"M: Drafting your first investment round. - andreasklinger\nhttp:\/\/klinger.io\/post\/49773016181\/drafting-your-first-investment-round\n\nR: andreasklinger\nOP here.\n\nI would love to try something here. The goal is to have a good source for\nearly stage founders. And my advice - in the end - is also just one opinion. I\nwould love to hear yours.\n\nIf you got your own insights to add (or spot errors) I would recommend you to\nsubmit your changes via draft[1]. I will add them step by step.\n\n[1]:\n[https:\/\/draftin.com\/documents\/57927?token=tGIgh5zd28S0cGt0Yy...](https:\/\/draftin.com\/documents\/57927?token=tGIgh5zd28S0cGt0Yy4frppsMmFYH5ymUQVkbPGU3Ko)\n\nR: staurimas\nRight. Every founder should look for A-level co-founders as well as A-level\ninvestors. The only thing I would make more clear here is how long does it\ntake to find those A-level people and close investment round. Founders have to\nmultiply by two whatever number they have in their head :) Closing round alone\ntakes about 4 months in average. The worst thing that can happen is to get\nshort on money while looking for investment. This not only makes things\ncomplicated for startup, but also scares away investors. So it is very\nimportant to save\/earn enough money in order to get more (smart) money.\n\nGood poker players have at least 100 stakes (the amount they can loose in one\ngame) in their bankroll. This way they can avoid short term harmful decisions.\nIf this comparison makes sense...\n\nPost is great like many other recent presentations\/posts by Andreas and def\ndeserves retweet :)\n\nCheers @staurimas\n\nR: andreasklinger\nthx for the kind words.\n\nagree on your point about the fact that it just might take to long to close a\nround if you reach for a-level.\n\nit's more about a more strategic approach to drafting the round if you reach a\nor b or c in the end is a different topic. but at least you reach the right\ndirection in each area\n\nR: missy\nWhat I like is that its an honest hands on approach from a founders view with\nthe thus resulting experiences. I work as a VC and I could not explain these\nobservations in the same way and give the feeling of being with you in a bar\nin a founder to founder relationship.\n\nLook forward to reading more :)\n\nR: sgs1370\nGreat article. For something even more in-depth, see Venture Deals: Be Smarter\nThan Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld\n (I just finished reading it, and found it\nextremely informative.)\n\nR: ldn_tech_exec1\nI love the quote from @msuster","meta":{"id":"5662788"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7851703407,"avg_line_length":40.9016393443,"char_rep_ratio":0.0434432824,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9445651174,"max_line_length":152,"num_words":549,"perplexity":1168.9,"special_char_ratio":0.2368737475,"text_len":2495,"word_rep_ratio":0.0407407407},"simhash":5057759163575748734}
{"text":"M: MarioNETte: Few-Shot Face Reenactment Preserving Identity of Unseen Targets - shurain\nhttps:\/\/hyperconnect.github.io\/MarioNETte\/\n\nR: shurain\n\\- Project page:\n[https:\/\/hyperconnect.github.io\/MarioNETte\/](https:\/\/hyperconnect.github.io\/MarioNETte\/)\n\\- Paper: [https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1911.08139](https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1911.08139)\n\\- Video: [https:\/\/youtu.be\/Y6HE1DtdJHg](https:\/\/youtu.be\/Y6HE1DtdJHg)\n\nHere's a summary of the work. We can perform face reenactments under a few-\nshot or even a one-shot setting, where only a single target face image is\nprovided. Previous approaches to face reenactments had a hard time preserving\nthe identity of the target and tried to avoid the problem through fine-tuning\nor choosing a driver that does not diverge too much from the target. We tried\nto tackle this \"identity preservation problem\" through several novel\ncomponents.\n\nInstead of working with a spatial-agnostic representation of a driver or a\ntarget, we encode the style information to a spatial-information preserving\nrepresentation. This allows us to maintain the details that easily get lost\nwhen utilizing spatial-agnostic representation such as those attained from\nAdaIN layers.\n\nWe proposed image attention blocks and feature alignment modules to attend to\na specific location and warp feature-level information as well. Combining\nattention and flow allows us to naturally deal with multiple target images,\nmaking the proposed model to gracefully handle one-shot and few-shot settings\nwithout resorting to reductions such as sum\/max\/average pooling.\n\nAnother part of the contribution is the landmark transformer, where we\nalleviate the identity preservation problem even further. When the driver's\nlandmark differs a lot from that of the target, the reenacted face tends to\nresemble the driver's facial characteristics. Landmark transformer\ndisentangles the identity and expression and can be trained in an unsupervised\nfashion.\n\nCheck out the video and tell us what you think. Thanks!\n\nR: gohu_cd\nGreat work. Any code available please?\n\nR: shurain\nWe're internally discussing the code release at the moment. Meanwhile, we did\ntry to include all the details required to reproduce the results on the paper.\nYou're welcome to try out your own implementation and ask us questions\nregarding the implementation details.","meta":{"id":"21591141"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.8098318241,"avg_line_length":50.4130434783,"char_rep_ratio":0.0588744589,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.8864990473,"max_line_length":88,"num_words":461,"perplexity":717.9,"special_char_ratio":0.1996550237,"text_len":2319,"word_rep_ratio":0.0420353982},"simhash":4262222311736966412}
{"text":"M: What Does the Average Cannabis Consumer Look Like? - wslh\nhttp:\/\/headset.io\/blog\/what-does-the-average-cannabis-consumer-look-like\n\nR: xkcd-sucks\nThat bar at the top of the webpage is really terrible. It fills up the screen\nwhen you zoom in mobile to look at the graphs.","meta":{"id":"12193210"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7802197802,"avg_line_length":45.5,"char_rep_ratio":0.0606060606,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.879958272,"max_line_length":77,"num_words":70,"perplexity":459.1,"special_char_ratio":0.2197802198,"text_len":273,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":1040716532627974535}
{"text":"M: PCC builds OpenBSD kernel (4.6 -current) - Fixnum\nhttp:\/\/undeadly.org\/cgi?action=article&sid=20091228231142\n\nR: ams6110\nIt would be interesting to see how kernels compiled with pcc and gcc compare,\nsize-wise and performance-wise.\n\nR: old-gregg\nI am curious: what is it about GCC that BSD folks want to get rid of it so\nbad? I don't really follow GCC development, but on a multiple occasions I've\nheard people wishing there was something else.\n\nI've used C component of it and it was fine. Their C++ implementation is\nlacking compared to Visual C++ (especially in generated code size and\ntemplate-related error messages). What else do people dislike about it?\n\nR: mstevens\nBSD people tend to like BSD licensed things.\n\nR: bensummers\nI think it's more the bugs, which tend to show up in kernel code, and the\nability to extend the compiler with security features, which is difficult in\nthe rather hairy gcc code. OpenBSD used a custom gcc 2.95 derived compiler for\nages because of bug fixes and their security extensions.\n\nR: stevan\nAn other problem is when GCC drops architecture support -- say some old arch\nwhich Linux doesn't run on but which the BSDs do -- then the BSDs are forced\nto maintain multiple old versions of GCC...\n\nR: ajross\nWhich architectures are those? And this is a FreeBSD announcement, which has a\nmuch more limited port list than NetBSD.\n\nR: silentbicycle\nHere are the hardware platforms that OpenBSD runs on\n(). Not as many as NetBSD, but several.\n\nPorting a program that was written primarily with (say) i386 Debian Linux in\nmind to other platforms is a great way to find bugs due to incorrect\nassumptions. They may be asymptomatic on systems with 32-bit processors, the\nsame endian-ness, etc., but they're just lying dormant. Patches from porting\nand the OpenBSD security audits are contributed upstream, too.","meta":{"id":"1021299"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7845659164,"avg_line_length":43.3953488372,"char_rep_ratio":0.0290791599,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.951115787,"max_line_length":78,"num_words":393,"perplexity":877.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2304394427,"text_len":1866,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":919269426840866762}
{"text":"M: Better to prevent mistakes than to fix them quickly - kevinburke\nhttp:\/\/kev.inburke.com\/kevin\/better-to-prevent-mistakes-than-to-fix-them-quickly\/\n\nR: 13rules\n\"But there's another person who is to blame: the referee. Before inbounding\nthe ball, the referee will signal to the player that they either can or cannot\nrun the baseline. Sure, the referee can blow the whistle every time there is a\nviolation, but it's better to prevent the error in the first place. It would\nbe like letting players line up for a free throw in the wrong order, letting\nthe player shoot and then blowing the whistle for incorrect order.\"\n\nThat is completely absurd. Letting the players line up incorrectly would be\nthe _referee's_ mistake  -  so, yes, it would be better to prevent the mistake\nfrom happening. But the player running on the baseline after a violation is\nthe PLAYER's mistake. It's not the official's job to prevent players from\ncommitting violations.\n\nIt's not a technicality either  -  it's the same rule from when this kid started\nplaying basketball. It's HIS stupid mistake. Period. You can safely assume\nthat he has been playing basketball for 10+ years. The rule is the same\nthroughout junior high, high school, and college. If the player doesn't know\nthe rule by the time he is in the NCAA Tournament, I have a hard time feeling\nsorry for him.\n\nSame goes for the players that got called for running in from behind the\n3-point line on free throws before the ball hit the rim. The announcers and\nfans may not have liked it, but the rule has been there for well over a\ndecade.\n\nR: bulletmagnet\nWhat a stupid sports analogy. A websites success isnt defined in a literal\nzero sum game with a limited time boundary.","meta":{"id":"3728196"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7866744594,"avg_line_length":53.46875,"char_rep_ratio":0.0605170388,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.975135982,"max_line_length":81,"num_words":361,"perplexity":299.5,"special_char_ratio":0.2162478083,"text_len":1711,"word_rep_ratio":0.0},"simhash":13103142462660045523}
{"text":"M: Convert Twitter Boostrap to a \"flat\" design - nodesocket\nhttps:\/\/gist.github.com\/nodesocket\/5843712\n\nR: mark_integerdsv\nHow long until this flat fad fades?\n\nIt seems (to me at least) like very little thought goes into these designs\napart from 'it must be flat.'\n\nThere also seems to be very little variation in the final products. The\nexamples linked in the OP are indistinguishable from say, Microsoft's Technet\n:\n[http:\/\/social.technet.microsoft.com\/wiki](http:\/\/social.technet.microsoft.com\/wiki)\n\n...I dont want everything to look the same. It's confusing and boring... Am I\nalone in this?\n\nR: esolyt\nIt's not a fad. The reason we are moving towards flat design is high\nresolution displays. Flat design emphasizes typography which isn't ugly\nanymore.\n\nR: NoodleIncident\nHmm. Interesting.\n\nI've heard a lot of reasons for this trend, but that's a new one to me.\n\nR: esolyt\nTypography is now beautiful and something to show off. There is no need for\nglossy UI elements or textures to hide it. If you look at iOS and early\nAndroid, everything they did was to hide the ugliness resulting from low-res\nscreen.\n\nToday, the content itself is beautiful.\n\nR: rpicard\nI think the next iteration of Bootstrap (3.0) is largely flat. I could be\nmistaken though.\n\nR: parkrrr\nThe previews were all flat but I seem to recall that it was a temporary thing:\n[https:\/\/github.com\/twitter\/bootstrap\/pull\/6342#issuecomment-...](https:\/\/github.com\/twitter\/bootstrap\/pull\/6342#issuecomment-12332378)\n\nR: tagliala\nmay be permanent:\n[https:\/\/github.com\/twitter\/bootstrap\/issues\/8199#issuecommen...](https:\/\/github.com\/twitter\/bootstrap\/issues\/8199#issuecomment-19630149)\n\nR: rpicard\nOh, cool.\n\nR: andyfleming\nThis doesn't really make bootstrap \"flat\". Removing rounded corners doesn't\nmake it flat. Removing shadows (and depth) is the main issue. You should be\nremoving borders too, right?\n\nEven still, \"flat\" design isn't right for everything. Design should be\nevaluated for the specific application. The design of bootstrap now is safer\nthan a \"flat\"-er option, IMO.\n\nR: daenney\n\"Sometimes a new project doesn't need rounded corners or gradients. So we\ndecided to get rid of them. We <3 Bootstrap.\"\n[http:\/\/www.littlesparkvt.com\/flatstrap\/](http:\/\/www.littlesparkvt.com\/flatstrap\/)\n\nR: runn1ng\nFlatstrap doesn't work for me (mainly, \"download flatstrap\" just.... downloads\nthe website... with standard Bootstrap.)\n\nR: kmfrk\nAlready exists: [http:\/\/bootswatch.com\/cosmo\/](http:\/\/bootswatch.com\/cosmo\/).\n\nI really like the theme for mobile devices, especially if it's very button-\nbased.\n\nR: arocks\nand another: [http:\/\/bootswatch.com\/flatly\/](http:\/\/bootswatch.com\/flatly\/)\n\nR: keikun17\nIsn't this what bootstrap 3 is trying to achieve? I haven't visited the\nbootstrap 3 release candidate docs in a while but the last time I did it\nseemed like it's going towards the flat direction.\n\nR: juzfoo\nI stumbled up on this while looking for Bootstrap 3.0 demo.\n[http:\/\/bs3.codersgrid.com\/](http:\/\/bs3.codersgrid.com\/) And the design does\nfollow flat design principles\n\nR: techaddict009\nThis is what something i was waiting for. Flat UI is completely into trends\nthis days.\n\nR: abhidilliwal\n!important, bad !dea\n\nR: woah\nAdvanced.","meta":{"id":"5926165"},"stats":{"alnum_ratio":0.7705992509,"avg_line_length":33.375,"char_rep_ratio":0.0654147105,"flagged_words_ratio":0.0,"lang":"en","lang_score":0.9043101072,"max_line_length":137,"num_words":738,"perplexity":693.3,"special_char_ratio":0.2462546816,"text_len":3204,"word_rep_ratio":0.0438957476},"simhash":16771918843598834617}