Even in Denmark, children are career killers for working moms - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/business/2018/02/even-in-denmark-children-are-career-killers-for-working-moms.html <comment><USER2> It's not that children are career killers, but rather taking significant amounts of time off is.

It's also unclear if harming your career is even a bad thing to begin, considering the options given (e.g. Don't have children, have children but neglect them, have children and take care of them, but have lower income when the caregiver returns to the work force). Perhaps spending proper time with children, even if it is at the cost of potential income, is worth it.

\---

I wonder if mandating that caregivers be able to work while raising their child somehow (perhaps a combination of remote work, daycare and in laws) would be enough to negate the negative effect while preserving the benefits.

<comment><USER3> There does seem to be a element of: "people who value their careers more than children end up making more money" here, which seems pretty obvious when you think about it.

From a social and corporate perspective we have a choice though: should be allow incentive systems that reward people who value their careers over their children to continue? Or should we change our incentive systems so that people who value children over career earn equal wages or even more?

Which group of people is actually more valuable to society?

<comment><USER4> Teachers, full-time mothers and fathers, and generally anyone who's in charge of raising the next generation properly, are all underpaid and arguably undervalued.

However, when you legislate away any reward for risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work harder at the expense of something else in their lives...then you end up in a society where nobody tries, nothing happens, and everyone's pretty well subsumed into an existential crisis -like existence. What's the point of trying if it's guaranteed not to make a difference?

"They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work." \- Soviet-era saying

<comment><USER5> > risk-takers, innovators, and all those folks you mentioned who simply work > harder at the expense of something else in their lives.

Given just that description, you could be talking about parents. The consequences you list for not rewarding them aren't off the mark either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Generally speaking, equality of choice between the sexes is unequivocally a good thing...but we're going to spend years untangling the muddy notion in many people's minds that _equality of outcome_ is expected when there is perfect _equality of opportunity_.

What actually happens in the Scandinavian countries, where both sexes have the highest levels of equality of opportunity, education, and choice in the world...is that that gender effects are actually maximized. Men tend to choose STEM careers and competitive paths because they are free to choose, and women tend to choose to become doctors, nurses, and part-time workers of any kind, because they are also free to choose.

Another way to say this is, there will always be Gender Inequality because the (biological) genders are not equal to each other. A woman does not equal a man, and she shouldn't. But try saying that at a dinner party...

<comment><USER6> There's to the best of my knowledge no study that shows that the biological gender matters for the choice of profession. The issue that often muddies things is that girls have been (and still are) brought up with the notion that some professions are not suited to them. This is especially pronounced in IT, where for a long time at the start of the profession, women had the majority of employed people and things started to switch over when home computers were marketed as a boys toy. There are strong indicators that the biological gender contributes much less than what the society expects in terms of gender roles.

<comment><USER7> And, to prove this point, the gender ratio is much better in STEM fields other than computing and engineering. Biology, for example, has more women graduating nowadays than men, despite the fact that a lot of biology work is actually CS (and more intellectually challenging than most software engineering jobs at tech companies, which to a large extent involve creating CRUD apps).

<comment><USER8> From working in that field, I can tell you this is not true. There are lots of women in biology but in computational biology its more like one in three (and often much less). In the algorithmic and tool developmental parts even more so. It may be more equal than in pure CS but still the imbalance is huge.

<comment><USER9> The YouTube CEO claims that the CS graduation rate for women in the US is around 40%.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc)

So a hiring rate of 40% would indicate a level playing field in hiring. 33/40 is around 82%. The doubling down policies of "The (metaphoric) beatings will continue until equality is achieved," would seem to be misplaced at the workplace level. If there is systemic bias, it would seem to exist at the educational level.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIRvtA2JIIA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No one can have it all. Some things in life are just mutually exclusive. What about the men who work full time and miss out on spending time at home? Do they have it all? Of course not. Every hour spent at work is an hour not spent with family/friends.

I don't know why we always seem to treat earning less as being this universally terrible, bad thing whenever gender comes up. There is a lot more to life and jobs than just earning money. Work life balance, stress, danger, physical wear.

The general expectation for men seems to be: "Go get a good paying job". Obviously every family is different but where family economics allow I think woman generally have far more choice in terms of whether they stay home, work part time, work less stressful/demanding jobs than men do in today's society.

I've seen a lot of relationships/marriages where the man works a shitty backbreaking/dangerous and/or stressful jobs that pay well while the woman works part time, not at all or a much less stressful job that pays less. I'm sure the inverse does happen as well but from what I've seen it is much rarer.

These types of articles always frame earning less as being a negative for woman. In some cases I'm sure that is true. But what % of the gap is woman choosing to earn less because they have that choice?

</comment><comment><USER11> Equal, mandatory parental leave would go a long way toward leveling the playing field.

Western cultures are still much more understanding of men being absent from their children's early lives than mothers. These sorts of cultural expectations and allowances are often taken for granted by the people who argue that "inequality of outcome != inequality of opportunity."

If women are to take a career hit for raising their kids, why shouldn't the men who fathered them take that hit as well?

<comment><USER12> Why mandatory? Why not let people do as they want?

<comment><USER11> Just trying to put this in the most bare terms, there's obviously plenty of edge cases and caveats around gender, but:

a) Society places a greater burden on women than men for child-rearing. b) Women who take leave lose out on career opportunities. c) Men receive greater opportunities to advance their careers relative to women, since they are expected to take less leave.

Even in the presence of equal parental leave, men (or just as often, their employers) can lean on the social expectation to return to work sooner, disadvantaging women.

This becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem since the culture and structure are mutually reinforcing. From a policy perspective, structure is easier to change than culture. In my view, that makes it a logical first step.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some parents choose to work 75% after having kids its a legal right in Scandinavian countries. From my own experience as a parent its hard to balance being good at home and work.

Simply put your customer will not come and thank you in 20-30 years from now but your children might/will.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's hard to have this debate in terms dollars exclusively.

People who are high powered execs and other top tier professionals sacrifice life for profession. I've yet to meet a prominent executive, lawyer or physician whose home life isn't a bit of a shitshow.

If you want to look at equality and making the lives of mothers better, you need to look at everyone. If my wife and I were able to work 25 hours weeks in the same pay envelope, we would have made very different decisions about how to raise our child.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's about equality of pay. If I asked for the same terms as my wife, I would earn significantly less, and I doubt I would have much responsibility beyond a "normal" software developer, i.e. I work on what I'm told to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The point of having to ~"force fathers to take time off" rings true to me, I'd even go as far as forcing both parents to take some minimum time (and maybe of equal length) off: It would relieve all parents of the pressure to justify why they "put family before career".

<comment><USER17> Wow. You know there are sci-fi books written about a world were some people are not allowed to be better than others? If you have some advantage, you have to do extra so it's nullified.

Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance is astonishing. I suppose if I don't push my kids just the right amount you're going to claim you know enough about how all children will turn out to revoke my parental rights?

I had children when I was in college. I suppose I should have been forced to fail one of my semesters, or do only good and proper people who do things the right way count?

My wife wanted to stay home for many years. I suppose I should tell her she was full of shit for not wanting to make more money?

You think it would relieve pressure to justify putting family before career? Again, wow. These are ADULTS. If they are so fucking wrapped up in peer pressure they can't decide if they should take care of their own babies they don't deserve their own children. Seriously, at what point are people responsible for themselves? Where does the nanny state end? Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their feelings hurt? Fuck them.

<comment><USER18> > Seriously, who are you to tell me how to run my family life? Your arrogance > is astonishing.

The point of worker rights is to provide equal footing for everyone. Your boss would certainly like it if there were no mandatory holidays/PTO...

> Now we have to force men to not work because some people might get get their > feelings hurt? Fuck them.

No, but in order to provide equal chances for the kids' development in early life. This is valuable for society as early child-parent bonding issues _will_ lead to issues later on in life.

In addition, by _forcing_ employers to provide PTO for fresh parents, they cannot (legally) force those who cannot object to work. Yes, it might be 6 months or whatever time out for a couple managers but an immediate benefit to millions of poor parents.

I assume you're from the US? Well, try to come over to Europe and work here, with such things as workers' rights, minimum PTO per year, proper health insurance systems... sounds socialist as hell but guess what? Our people are happier and more productive.

<comment><USER19> >come over to Europe

>Our people are happier and more productive.

The US ranks 14th in happiness ahead of the majority of European countries. Europe as a whole ranks between 42 and 43[0]

The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2017_Wo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2017_World_Happiness_Report)

[1][https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/worlds-most- productive-...](https://www.expertmarket.co.uk/focus/worlds-most-productive- countries-2017)

<comment><USER18> > The US ranks 14th in happiness ahead of the majority of European countries.

The top 6 in said index is occupied by European countries - and all 8 European countries ranked before the US in said index are routinely bashed in the US as being prime examples of "socialist" hellholes.

> The US ranks 6th in productivity, again ahead of the vast majority of > European countries and far ahead of the European average[1]

Well, it's not that hard to beat European countries if you're working 300 hours per year more than them... and the core question is: how much of the US "productivity" originates from the scamming going on at Wall Street, i.e. it has no meaningful human labor associated by which this "profit" was created?

<comment><USER19> >The top 6 in said index is occupied by European countries - and all 8 European countries ranked before the US in said index are routinely bashed in the US as being prime examples of "socialist" hellholes.

The comment didn't say "these select 8 European countries that are a mere fraction of the overall European population", it said "Europe" which last I checked was a continent encompassing dozens of countries with hundreds of millions of people, the vast majority of which are below the US in the ranking. If the comment was meant to be restricted to a very small subset of Europe then it should have reflected that in the wording. To which I can easily select a small subset of US states that would still outrank those countries. Without getting overly specific, do you really think you are happier than the average person living in Hawaii? Really? Really?? As far as your second "point", I didn't say anything about socialist hellholes so you're straw manning me. Also FWIW, none of those countries are actually socialist so if you're asserting that, you're again, flat wrong.

>Well, it's not that hard to beat European countries if you're working 300 hours per year more than them...

So the statement that "Europe" was more productive than the US was wrong. Yes, that is what I said. As an aside to your other point, according to my research, Germans work the least of anybody and rank lower in happiness than the US. Not to mention the western European countries like Portugal and Ireland that actually work more hours than Americans. I don't see you mentioning that but then that would be inconvenient to your narrative..

> and the core question is: how much of the US "productivity" originates from > the scamming going on at Wall Street, i.e. it has no meaningful human labor > associated by which this "profit" was created?

Those weren't questions I responded to but erroneous statements. But on with the goalpost moving. I love this one. Within a few seconds you say we work 300 hours a year more thus the obviously superior productivity (which is a bit disingenuous since we are more productive per hour and many countries outwork us in total hours) then you follow up with it's all a scam cuz "Wall Street". So which is it and does it hurt talking out of both sides of your mouth like that? Basically you don't want to be enlightened and correct your errors. You want to argue and bully your way into being right no matter what. Of course, just between you and me, what you really want to do is bash the US and feel oh so superior which is just sad and pathetic. Sorry it doesn't work that way. Europe is overall less productive and less happy than the US. Period. The denial of this fact is precisely what I responded to. Choose a small subset of the continent and I can play that game too. Funny how you like to make your assertions as if they are fact when it's just a bunch of received internet wisdom that doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

Just for fun, in the CIA world fact book, I looked up Liechtenstein which has the highest productivity per capita in not just Europe but the entire world and the District of Columbia which has the highest per capita productivity in America. Both are about the same size at 60 something square miles. I'll leave it to your imagination which has the higher stats. You guys think you are so much better than everybody else. You're wrong.

I apologize for not including links this time but why bother when you'll just try to move your intellectually dishonest goalposts again necessitating further refutation. Not that I'll bother. You were wrong then and you're wrong now. You base your new assertions on mutually exclusive statements that you wrote within 30 seconds of each other. You are laughable and not worth arguing with so go ahead and entertain other readers with your whining about how much """better""" you wish you were. I'm ignoring you since I have more "productive" things to do. Ha!

edit: I just happened to glance at the tag line in your profile and realized I've been sucked in to wasting 20 minutes debating an angsty teen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess this situation will only permanently change if all fathers are completely and truly happy and comfortable with doing exactly the same amount of house work and childcare work as the mothers of their children. As long as the idea of the men as the bigger breadwinner still lingers around for the average parent and boss (consciously or unconsciously, on an individual basis and culturally), it'll impact the decisions being made which then in turn lead to children being bigger career killers for working moms than for fathers.

If that assumption is correct, then the actual question would be: Will this 50/50 (on average) state with truly happy and comfortable fathers ever happen, and will parents (on average) be happier or not? (this sounds like me questioning that they might be, but it's meant as an actual question).

Personally, I am actually quite happy that I don't have specific plans to become a father right now, because truth be told, I wouldn't want to give up so much of my work/passion for taking care of a child (although maybe me saying this is more the consequence of lacking the desire to become a father, meaning that I'd speak differently if that desire would exist).

</comment><comment><USER15> From experience, primary caretakers of children tend to favor less weekly work hours, flexible schedules, ect. All things that doesn't exactly lend itself to a "high-powered career". So the question I'd like answered is not if women should have the same earning as their male part, they should have the same oppotunity. But if they want it at the cost of the flexibility and hours they ask for?

<comment><USER21> Women on average have less flexible hours and female dominated occupations have less flex time then male dominated occupations.

Otherwise said, nurse, psychologist or teacher must be there at time. Same with service workers, call center and pretty much anyone who works with people in person. Female dominated professions that could work from home or could be flexible are not. Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God given right.

<comment><USER22> > Programmers get to choose when they come to work and see it as their God > given right.

Why frame it in this inflammatory way? The fact that programmers can choose their work hours is a privilege and a job-perk. What is the point of guilt- tripping them about it? Surely an ideal world is where more people can work when they please rather than one where everyone is forced to clock fixed hours just because there exist some workers who don't have that freedom?

<comment><USER21> That is not guilt tripping. I am programmer. The flexible work is seen as a right and company that does not provide it as overly controlling and bad place for work - that is quite universal in both real life and online. And it is not just that, occasional work from home is also seen as basic perk you totally expect. And my colleges are using that right - and that is not blame, just a statement of fact.

The fact is, majority of female dominated jobs are on the opposite of the spectrum. And those jobs are even thrown into every damm discussion about men/women differences while also the very same discussion talk about women having more flexibility. Because women are supposed to be primary care giver and primary care giver is supposed to want flexibility.

It just so happen that wanting something does not necessary gives you that.

My point is not that programmer should feel guilty. My point is that arguing that women=flexible hours is wrong, faulty argument based on some romantic idealized dream. The argument completely ignores the kind of work women do.

<comment><USER15> Do you have any experience with this? I have a father in law that has been together with a nurse manager for many years now, and she is the reason for the argument. Mothers of young children ask for less hours, less crappy shifts, and ability to take days off work with sick children. And they get it.

But regardless, those kind jobs are unionized here and the pay is not something you negotiate. Not for women, or men. In other words, they don't represent the difference in wages, because they are fixed and they do, by design, not differ just because you become a parent.

<comment><USER21> I can work full hours and more precisely because flexible hours help a lot to deal with kids needed something. If I had fixed shifts, either I or husband would have to have less hours or someone would have to help us occasionally.

Same with sick kids. When you can work from home or remote (my company does not allow much of it, husbands does a lot of it and people use it) then you do not need free time because kids are sick. You work from home or in evening.

There is no trade off between pay, perks and flexible time. People who get high salaries get perks too. Same with flexible time.

If flexibility was motivation when choosing jobs, women and men would choose completely different jobs to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> HP had some interesting policies which were of great benefit to women. I've been told that HP lets people share a position. Two people can work half time with full benefits, then they are evaluated and promoted as one unit. Many women who were raising families opted to do this.

Tactically, this seems great, but the question that comes to my mind is, if such a practice were widely adopted throughout the industrialized world, would this have the effect of _halving_ the power of women in internal workplace politics? The follow on question that comes to mind: What, exactly, is the effect on the power of women in internal workplace politics, of women taking time off work to raise children?

<comment><USER23> Where/what is HP?

<comment><USER9> Hewlett Packard

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We need more information. Is the drop in pay because women:

1\. No longer want to work in the higher-paying, overtime/dangerous/lots of travel/etc... positions?

2\. Were discriminated when looking for new work?

3\. Were discriminated when raises were handed out?

etc...

</comment><comment><USER25> If you choose to have children then your career is raising children. You have to choose to prioritize one or the other, the idea that you can take large amounts of time off and still be at the same level as people who kept working is insane. There isn't any injustice going on here. Juggling an intense career path with raising children is a bad idea. Sending children to day care for large amounts of their youth has been shown to be highly detrimental to their development.

<comment><USER15> The entire point, and what the graph clear shows, is that fathers and mothers wage-growth significantly diverges. Both become a parent, but apparently only the mothers pay suffer.

<comment><USER26> As long as only women can get pregnant, give birth, and breast feed, it turns out that choosing to make babies will (on average) be disproportionately more work for women than men.

Obviously with unlimited resources this doesn't have to be the case, but it will always be the average case.

This result isn't surprising, nor does it seem something that society should be overly concerned with fixing. Choices have all sorts of positive and negative impacts, usually foreseeable ones at that. Work less to raise a family and someone in that household will earn less outside the household.

Economically both parents are still probably producing the same value, arguably the woman is producing _significantly more economical value_ , just the economists aren't accounting for and valuing properly the work being done _inside_ the household so the graph is scewed.

You create a stacked line chart which tries to account for the net value of the cost-reducing housework performed by men and women in addition to the outside income producing activities, and I would bet the curve shows women driving significantly _increased_ economic value after having children.

It's the premise that the only metric we should be looking at is outside income which is completely flawed.

<comment><USER27> This is so intellectually dishonest it borders on insult.

> the idea that you can take large amounts of time off and still be at the > same level as people who kept working is insane

Here you talk about the "career of raising children"

> only women can get pregnant, give birth, and breast feed

And then you proceed to justify it with an activity that on average probably lasts for about a year and can in large part be made compatible with a professional life. The average SV hacker brags about taking longer sabbaticals than this.

<comment><USER28> Should be a fairly easy social experiment to do. Take a good sample size of families (>20000) and provide compulsory paid leave (and counselors that checks that no extra work is being spent at home or the government pay is taken away) so that both parents are away from home at exactly equal amount from inception until the kid moves out.

After 20 years, compare the control with those families that successful follows the trial (and for fun, throw in people who take sabbaticals as a third group) and see the results. Have poll questions about the size of social support networks, social status, income, carer, stress, perception of self worth, and so on. Last make a follow up in 50 years for life span and final carer, pensions and social support networks.

I have some predictions for all of those, backed by the research I have seen so far, but it would make for a very interesting read if such study would be made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Well, if the gap tends to 20% it may also indicate a strong tendency to 4-day week among parenting women while men won't. The fact it approaches it from below suggests a career delay but other than that I don't see signs of "career killer". That men's share of parent leave is so small may be more indicative, but the final datum would be scale promotion rates across genders (although that would restrict to collective bargaining contracts)

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is there this underlying theme that Careers are more important than Children?

They are not.

The measure of your life is not how much money you made, it's how many people love you, and actually care that you are alive.

Someone with lots of money how dies alone and unmourned, is not better off than someone with less money, who is surrounded by his descendants.

<comment><USER31> The measure of life is happiness. For many this involves parenting (probably, one imagines, biology drives this, no?).

Some people will choose to be stay-at-home parents. There is nothing wrong with that. That is a career. The household income... is the household income, not the wage earner's, because for a couple with children the family is their life project, and the stay-at-home parent's "service" is "paid for" by the wage earner.

If we really want to compare apples to apples then we have to allocate a fraction (say, half) of the wage earner's income to the stay-at-home parent for the purpose of analysis. Alternatively compare singles' income to singles and childless couples' individuals, and separately analyze married-with- children-and-both-working couples, and then separately analyze married-with- children-and-one-stay-at-home-parent couples.

<comment><USER32> People take stock of their lives in many different ways: using happiness as the unit of measurement is called hedonism. Pursuing hedonism is a defensible position to take but I'm alarmed by its rise as the default system of value in the educated/cosmopolitan world that most HN readers presumably inhabit.

Things like raising children well, championing unfashionable but important positions, fighting injustice and poverty - the really worthwhile things in life - are often extraordinarily difficult and can cause more despair than pleasure. But I choose to believe that they are nonetheless important, and not only because there is the promise of the glow of contentment in the case of a possible future triumph.

Many in the tech industry achieve extraordinary success in modern society. But when someone rises to that position, the single-minded pursuit of stimulating one's own reward circuits can look quite callous in the eyes of those who haven't been able to rise to wealth and power. In the days of the hereditary aristocracy, there existed the idea of "noblesse oblige", or the obligation of the upper classes to be a positive force for all those who lived in their society. It might do us some good to revive that idea.

<comment><USER31> Are you saying one cannot take pleasure in / derive happiness from things like raising children well??

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Oh man, this thread is going of the rails pretty quickly. Come on HN, be peaceful

<comment><USER9> Meh. Seems to have enough substantive discussion.</comment></comment>


AT&T's Text Messages Cost $1,310 per Megabyte - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/01/atts-text-messages-cost-1310-per-megabyte/ <comment><USER2> This is crap journalism at its finest. 1MB of SMS messages is about 6,500 texts (assuming that all of the 1MB is SMS, ignore overhead for this conversation). 6,500 texts would be more appropriately classified in the Unlimited $30/mo plan.

So, 1MB of SMS costs $30/mo on AT&T. Unless it's a slow news day and we extrapolate from the worst-case scenario.

Most people who are of a legal age to sign a cellphone contract generally understand that pay-per-use scenarios like this are rarely the best way to go.

<comment><USER3> I swear I read this article (or a similar one that they ripped off) about a month ago...

Ah yes, was an article about data being more expensive to text than to send to the hubble: <http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html>

In any case, a google for sms megabyte turns up a ton of hits for this, most of them at least 6 months old.

Good job TechCrunch!

(is that sarcasm I smell?)</comment></comment>


How Politicians Use Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.wahl.de In the year of the German election, wahl.de analyses and quantifies politicians usage of social media platforms like twitter, facebook, youtube, etc. <comment><USER2> <http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/090225.html>

This talk addresses the technical infrastructures, political institutions, and social practices that shape the contemporary electoral process in the United States. I provide a theoretical overview of the role of artifacts in shaping the practices of citizenship and detail the history of networked technologies in campaigning over the last twenty years as they have become incorporated into a repertoire of electoral practices among political consultants. Through consideration of the 2003-2004 Howard Dean campaign and 2007-2008 Obama campaign I demonstrate how peer networks supported by social media are structured by formal campaign organizations. I conclude by assessing the implications of these technical practices for democratic citizenship.</comment>


Rust Patterns: Enums Instead of Booleans - <AUTHOR> http://blakesmith.me/2019/05/07/rust-patterns-enums-instead-of-booleans.html <comment><USER2> This comes up quite a bit in functional languages in the ML family (which all have ADTs like rust). Bob Harper's blog had a post about this called "boolean blindness" (which seems to be locked now?), but you can find a summary of it here: [https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/boolean- blindnes...](https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/boolean-blindness/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is increasingly the standard model in large C and C++ projects, alongside the warning flags for incomplete switches and fall through you get fairly close to this.

I feel the biggest problem with Enums in c/c++ is the default implicit bool and int conversions. They are the enemy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hate to tell you C and C++ switch offers the same compile time safety as Rust here.

Just don't add a "default" clause.

<comment><USER2> Switch in C/C++ doesn't enforce mutual exclusivity though. You can forget a "break" statement and fall through multiple cases.

<comment><USER3> I believe there are warning flags you can turn on for this, and compiler defines/tokens to allow fall through.</comment></comment></comment>


Eben Moglen: Online advertising is becoming "a perfect despotism" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/05/eben-moglen-gpl-online-advertising-is-becoming-a-perfect-despotism/? <comment><USER2> > The business incentives keep the surveillance ticking over, Choudhary > explained. "Surveilling and predicting human behaviour is the new economy," > she said. "It also means more effective tyranny, an increasingly inescapable > prison for the human race."

I agree with him in principle but in practice this is simply not working. People at large have been getting better and better at outright ignoring every ad they see, the pervasiveness of ad-blocking technology has never been higher, it seems like every item from the ad company's lately is highlighting that viewership and engagement is plummeting at a record pace.

I'm not saying this isn't a fight we need to win, but it seems we're winning it pretty well. We still need to work on the privacy end of things (I think that will be coming in a big way fairly soon) but in terms of advertisements controlling people? With such a high amount of said people blocking and ignoring, I find it very hard to believe. Even if their targeting is better, the fact that people can so effectively ignore ads that are targeted to their exact behaviors makes it seem unlikely.

<comment><USER3> Does it matter if people ignore ads? These are not broadcast ads like radio or television. They analyze behavior and encourage an architecture that exactly suits the needs of government surveillance.

And I'm not confident users will win the ad blocking war. There are easy ways to permanently defeat ad blockers, but the industry hasn't embraced them yet because the current system works well enough. E.g., ad code can be served from the same server with no identifying CSS classes or ids. Or with WebAssembly the web could turn into black box binaries.

Further, there's fundamentally no way to defeat behavioral tracking, because it can be done when people merely use a website.

<comment><USER2> That's true but (the way I read it anyway) the author is contending that advertisements themselves would be used to shape public opinion which, while true, I think the effects are dwindling because people are becoming more aware of that.

Additionally, I wouldn't say behavioral tracking is implicitly always nefarious. Speaking as an app developer the analytics we get from users is 100% anonymous and not used for anything more evil than just helping us design and improve software. Usage data like that is gold to us because most people don't leave/send feedback, especially the ones we really want to hear from, i.e. the ones who stopped using it.

I think we need more regulation in the web industry in terms of how we're allowed to collect data, how we must store it, and have serious penalties for those who break those laws.

<comment><USER3> I think the idea is that a small number of corporations will have a complete knowledge of the lives and psychology of their users, be able to influence their behavior even without display ads, and be able to predict all of their behavior. Additionally, the government will piggyback on all of this technology too.

I don't think any of this is inherently nefarious. Hopefully with policy reforms and additional privacy preserving technologies, we will avert the future Moglen warns of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This unfortunately doesn't seem realistic:

> Moglen proposed deploying "freedom boxes" at every street corner—cheap > hardware running free software, deployed everywhere, that encrypt > everything, anonymise everything, and blind the service providers to our > activity.

b/c the last mile is the priciest part of a telco's network. Unless the telcos are forced to do it, it has zero odds of happening.

Also, let's not forget privacy as we know it is a distinctly modern idea. The "right to privacy" was coined with the advent of cameras in the 1890s:

[https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and- death-o...](https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and-death-of- privacy-3-000-years-of-history-in-50-images-614c26059e)

The main new thing today is the ubiquity of the public sphere owing to IT. Inadvertently ending up on a picture in the late 19th century was a rather trivial intrusion of privacy; the same picture posted on FB today instantly makes it available to anyone with an internet connection. Not saying privacy has little to no merit, but nothing short of a full-blown societal rethink is going to make taking and sharing those pictures stop - a piece of hardware just won't help.

<comment><USER5> If privacy is a distinctly modern idea invented in the 1890's what was the purpose of window curtains before then? Certainly they couldn't have been there to protect an idea that's probably older than language and likely has actual biological basis. I assume also that humans only started to have sex in private in the 1890s according to your theory as it wouldn't have been even possible to conceive of privacy before the idea of privacy existed?

The idea that privacy is something new is absolutely absurd and laughable.

<comment><USER4> Consider reading the post I linked to. And let's not forget Window taxes from the 19th century:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax)

In earlier ages, there were few windows owing to architectural and building technique related constraints. If anything the window taxes reeked of "oh shoot, these guys are rich and can afford modern construction techniques." Your home with plenty of light flowing in is in fact quite modern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not so sure things are as dire as he thinks.

Most of the people I know are growing more and more irritated by Facebook and other social media. Many have stopped using it and deleted their profiles. And these are not "tech" people but ordinary adults and teens.

I think people are quite perceptive when a service changes from being truly useful, as Facebook was in its early days, to being an intrusive pain in the ass as it is now. They may not all jump ship right away because people have different tolerances for this stuff. But from what I see, people are more aware of what's going on than Mr. Moglen is giving them credit for.

<comment><USER7> I always wonder when I see this anecdote that people are leaving Facebook, closing profiles etc. I've never been a very active Facebook user, but I also don't see myself ever closing my account. On the whole, I don't use much of the feature set but it is still useful every now and then.

is there a reason to close the account, rather than just log off when you're not using it? I feel like AB+ and Ghostery do a fine job keeping the tracking down, and the service itself is pretty benign when used casually. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> > is there a reason to close the account, rather than just log off when you're > not using it?

Probably not. Treat it like LinkedIn: Log in on those occasional times you need to use it.

<comment><USER9> Facebook: The less you use it, the mentally healthier you tend to be. I guess my parents were right after all back in the 80's: computer interaction is a vice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He's totally right, and it's scary.

The hive creature(s) will be cool, though. Little gods.

Maybe, behind his proposed barricades, little enclaves of individuals will survive, for a while.

</comment><comment><USER11> More and more people will adopt ad blocking, script controls, and of course, use a proxy, VPN, or otherwise anonymize their traffic. More and more people are (and are going to be) encrypting their traffic.

This is not a one-way street.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Guardian of the GPL

Heh</comment>


VCs Congratulating Themselves - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/vcbrags <comment><USER2> the lack of self awareness is astounding. the guy bigging himself up for leaving a 200% tip is one of the worst. do something good to do something good, not to brag about it on twitter. but the guy suggesting it was VCs who were raising the alarm about the pandemic is the grade A idiot.

</comment><comment><USER3> oof.</comment>