Why I love everything you hate about Java - <AUTHOR> http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/why-i-love-everything-you-hate-about-java/

<comment><USER2> Um, I don't hate Factories, Dependency Injection and Decorators. I hate that Java makes it very cumbersome to use them, typically via xml configuration files (so that it can be dynamic) and adding complex syntax (generics, annotations). And I hate that I can not pass functions as parameters. As he says in the article: "function composition is a degenerate case of the Decorator pattern." (not sure why "degenerate") - so instead of just composing functions, in Java I have to write countless classes and interfaces. That's what I hate.

<comment><USER3> What the hell has XML got to do with Java? You're confusing frameworks with languages. Most Java frameworks suck. Agreed.

<comment><USER2> No, it is not a coincidence that Java and XML go hand in hand. Heavy XML usage was introduced into common Java practice to compensate for the lack of dynamic features in Java. So dynamic features were introduced (badly) through the XML backdoor. Also often XML is used as a poor mans DSL.

It could have been something similar to XML (like JSON or YAML), but that is not the point. Also, the verbosity of XML aligns itself well with the Java mindset.

<comment><USER3> Utter BS. I've been doing Java programming for 10 years and have never touched XML thank god.

"the Java mindset" - more utter BS. There isn't a 'Java mindset' unless you're a bad programmer who is ruled by his language instead of using languages as tools.

The "mindset" you have depends on how good a coder you are. Which is the same regardless of which language you decide to use to solve a particular problem.

<comment><USER2> Fine, then you are the exception to the rule.

As for the mindset, it seems to me that at least SUN was very busy churning out cookbooks for a lot of things. Mostly Enterprise Java - if you managed to avoid that, more power to you. But I think most people tried to do things the "official" way.

<comment><USER3> Totally @ Enterprise. Horrible horrible stuff that, but really, there's some great technology in the JVM, and built in libs.

And the Java language is a pretty sane general purpose language. It's fairly easy to spot all the crap and avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quoth the author:

In a very dynamic language like Ruby, open classes and method aliasing (e.g., alias_method_chain) mitigate this problem, but they don't solve it. If you manipulate a class to add logging, all instances of that class will have logging; you can't take a surgical approach and say "just objects instantiated in this context".

This is not true in Ruby!

      myinstance = MyClass.new
      def myinstance.special_method()
        puts "only on these instances!"
      end
      myinstance.special_method()

The author's point about avoiding unnecessary binding is well taken, but he should refrain from declaiming on languages he doesn't know that well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Since you don't control the code that manufactures instances of MyClass.new, you don't have an opportunity to manipulate the metaclass/singleton class of instances of MyClass. So this technique doesn't work.

<comment><USER5> The basic idea is adding methods to single instances. It _does_ work. What you're talking about is sugar. You could easily create a factory which manipulates instances as they are created.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but you still need to inject the Factory. My point is not that Java is better than Ruby but that this style, which is commonly associated with Java, is better in any language.

<comment><USER6> Parameterizing behavior is usually a good thing in any language, yes...

The part that Python/Ruby got right is that their culture says _don't parameterize until you have to_. While Java culture tends to build in generality for the sake of generality, whether or not the actual system needs it. Many systems don't, but if you use typical Java libraries, you need to pay the costs for it regardless.

There was a red-flag in one of your comments above: "since you don't control the code, this technique doesn't work". If you don't control the code enough to make necessary modifications, you have a cultural problem, not a technical problem. Fix the culture, not the code. You should be building the simplest system that possibly works, not hacking around code ownership restrictions.

Parameterization is useful when you have one piece of code that you know needs to work in multiple contexts, not when you're trying to make sure a piece of code will work in all possible contexts a priori.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article has nothing to do with Java. You can write modular code in any decent language. In fact, I would argue that the author's approach would work better in a more dynamic language.

</comment><comment><USER8> Java especially in its enterprisey form is reasonably good at covering the maximum number of possible use cases, but it's bad at making the common cases simple. Yes, I should be able to write the one-line Future without boilerplate to get reasonable default behavior, and then add custom configuration later if I actually need it. That both reduces the amount of code and makes nonstandard usage more prominent.

<comment><USER9> True enough. Why do I have to write this:

      SingleFilenameFilter myFilenameFilter = new SingleFilenameFilter()
      List myList = new File("/tmp").listFiles(myFilenameFilter)

Why should I have to create a class that implements FilenameFilter, just to filter on some file names? Especially in a one-off instance, why should I have to create a class that I will only ever use once?

Why isn't there a default implementation? Something like:

      public class RegexFilenameFilter implements FilenameFilter {
        private String regex;
        public RegexFilenameFilter(String re) {
          this.regex = re;
        }
        public accept(File dir, String name) {
         // matching here
        }
      }

Then I could just write:

      List relevantFiles = new File("/tmp").listFiles(new RegexFilenameFilter("^tmp\\.[a-z0-9]+$"))

Why should I have to create this class for every project (or create my own little 'utils' library)? It's easily one of the simplest usages of a FilenameFilter.

<comment><USER10> anonymous inner classes are your friend (poor mans closure):

      File[] textFiles = directory.listFiles(new FileFilter() {
        public boolean accept(File file) {
          return file.isFile() && file.canRead() && file.getName().endsWith(".txt");
        }
      });

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's Scala, not Java.

And this doesn't even begin to cover everything I dislike about Java.

<comment><USER12> Fine sir, I believe you have missed the point.

<comment><USER13> Disagree. There's 'boilerplate' introduced by the framework/pattern, which may be necessitated when you throw out default assumptions to scale (which I, wooster, the OP, and yourself probably all agree are not so cumbersome after all). Then there's boilerplate introduced by the language. That's where wooster diverges, and I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was a little confused by the fact that the post lists Scala as one of the "hipster" languages in the opening paragraph and then starts using it as an example of the java way? Just a slip?

<comment><USER15> "I was a little confused by the fact that the post lists scala as one of the "hipster" languages in the opening paragraph and then starts using it as an example of the java way? "

Well once you define the "java way" to be "build highly configurable code by providing a way to combine small granular pieces of code into larger chunks of functionality" (which is just Programming 101 , See SICP for e.g) it probably still makes sense to write the "java way" programs in Scala ;-)

Makes sense to me! :-P

As nostrademons says elsewhere on this thread ,"Parameterizing behavior is usually a good thing in any language, yes..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Writing Java apologetics with using Scala sounded like a great idea at first...

</comment><comment><USER17> I think folks who complain about java must make sure that they are using a very powerful ide first (example: eclipse or intellij idea) If, having used and mastered a good ide and all it's features, you still don't like it, it's a fair point.

Eclipse can make so many things in java drastically fast and easy. And I think that's where java shines. I'm yet to see as powerful an IDE for any other language. (Although I admit, I do not program for msft platforms and hence, never used msft ides)

<comment><USER18> Here's a Java IDE question: why doesn't Eclipse have a REPL in the default install? That's the one thing I use most in other languages. It's nice to be able to right click to rename things (although a perl oneliner works just as well in practice), but it's nicer to be able to know that your mini-algorithm works before you design a class around it. Why is the focus on "rename" and "extract method" instead of "write code that actually works"?

<comment><USER19> Instead of writing throw-away code in your REPL you can write a unit test around your function and you get a permanent unit test as a bonus.

<comment><USER18> I would generally say the same thing, but most of the experimentation I do in the REPL is "is this crazy thing possible", not "is f(4) = 3.23432198"?

And sometimes it's just not worth testing, because it's something like ``hmm, I wonder if 'intercalate ", " ["foo", "bar", "baz"]' returns 'foo, bar, baz'; ahh yes, it does.'' The only reason to test that is because you want your test suite to run slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Abstraction is essential in building complex systems but it comes at a price. Every layer increases the overall complexity of the code base and increases the cost of maintaining and extending it.

Ideally languages and tools would allow you to begin with concrete & explicit code and gradually introduce increasing layers of abstraction as necessary. The problem I have with most Java frameworks is that they assume you're going to need a lot more abstraction than you likely need, so just getting an idea off the ground takes a lot of extra work.

It's really just worse is better all over again. The reason things like Ruby and Rails are so popular is that they let you toss together something that "works" so much faster. It's a lot easier to rewrite a good first-mover app than it is to try to hoist all that Java baggage into a new problem space you don't understand.

Come to think of it, isn't this exactly what Twitter did? If Twitter had been written as the article suggests would it have ever taken off?

</comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting to consider that Ruby blocks are essentially function composition with an anonymous function.

</comment><comment><USER22> "If you're one of those hipster programmers who loves Clojure, Ruby, Scala, Erlang, or whatever, you probably deeply loathe Java and all of its giant configuration files and bloated APIs of AbstractFactoryFactoryInterfaces."

Can we just get a moratorium on usage of "hipster" now? Everybody's using it wrong.</comment>


Holography Transmission Equations - <AUTHOR> https://www.holographyforum.org/wiki/Holography_Transmission_Equations_Part_I <comment><USER2> Funny to see this item on HN. I taught holography with Steve Benton at MIT, and put together a few of the documents available at MIT Open Courseware referenced in the document. The material is pretty specific to the optics of diffractive elements. I have a bunch of great Tcl/Tk holography demo apps I used with the course that I need to port to something that isn't Tcl/Tk.

Sadly, much of Steve's pioneering work in holography at Polaroid and later with the Spatial Imaging Group at MIT predated the blossoming of the world wide web (and "pre Google") and thus has been lost to history.

I am pleased to see work in autostereoscopic displays, computer-based optical predistortion and light fields - all of which Steve and Spatial Imaging did some neat stuff to develop - continues.

Steve would have loved the Looking Glass display. "Lovely!"

<comment><USER3> I just emailed someone in holography a question, maybe you wouldn't mind answering...

Say I have a transparent hologram plate and shine a laser into the "front of the plate" to get a virtual hologram (the hologram appears "inside" the plate). Now let's say we break the plate in half (or otherwise have a clone) and we place the duplicate in the same plane (like dominos) only the 2nd plate is facing front out (so laser, plate 1 front facing laser to get "virtual" hologram, an inch of space then plate 2 with back of plate facing plate 1/laser) what happens? Does plate one give the "virtual" hologram and plate two give a "real" hologram (project)? So in other words, is this right:

Laser —— | (virtual hologram) | (real hologram) ?

<comment><USER2> Is the goal to have a "walk around hologram": one that you can look through from one side and see a real image projection on the other?

If so, what you propose won't work for a couple of reasons. First, you're flipping the plate, which means left-right or top-bottom is going to get flipped. Second, with a single laser you'll be illuminating one version as a transmission hologram, and the other as a reflection hologram. That's not going to work, I'm pretty sure.

Another way to attempt to do what you describe is to use two lasers to illuminate the same hologram: one, say, at 45 degrees to the plate coming from one direction, and the other 180 degrees opposite, shining on the plate from the other direction. If the two beams mimic the original reference source (but with one being the perfect conjugate: same angle but opposite direction), you'll get both a real and a virtual image.

However, and this is the big however, the hologram "knows" only about light from the parts of the object that are visible to it at exposure time, and it faithfully images them back into space exactly where they were. That means that the real or projected image will be pseudoscopic. It will be viewed from behind it's original location and will appear inside out or depth-reversed.

An interesting effect, but probably not what you were looking for.

Breaking the plate in half isn't like cloning the hologram, although it's a common myth. Imagine a hologram like an ordinary window. If you look through it, you can see objects on the other side from many different perspectives. Now cover up half the window. You can still see many of the same objects, but from a restricted range of views. And if a fly was climbing up one side of the window, you probably can't see the fly from the uncovered piece: the optical information about the fly is gone. To clone a hologram, you can either recreate the interference pattern (e.g., stamped foil holograms from a master) or reconstruct the original image optically and make a new hologram of the original. Rainbow or "Benton" holograms use this technique (can be used for both techniques, actually).

Hope that helps.

<comment><USER3> I know HN rules don't want simple "thank you posts" but I really appreciate your thoughtful response.

In my proposal I did know the real hologram (if it worked) would be "inside out"/"depth reversed" but I left that part out. These are very difficult concepts to try to visualize and when googling them I tend to come up with academic papers (like this very interesting article) or cartoonish representations of the concepts as opposed to say pictures/video of the specific hologram properties.

I did not know setting up the hologram using two lasers to mimic the original reference source (with one from the back of the plates would give both real and virtual from the single plate (though it makes perfect sense). It just creates more fascination and questions. I really need to get my hands on some master plates and start playing to satisfy these curiosities.

<comment><USER2> Doing what you describe (getting an off-axis laser transmission hologram and playing around with it) is one of the best ways I know to build intuition about light fields. A hologram is essentially a dense surface of light field emitters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awhile ago, for a different article, I wrote "Best article on HN ever." I take that back. That "award" goes to this article. Best article on HN ever. Makes me want to study Holography. Absolutely fascinating!</comment>


Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and new Galaxy Tab 10.1 hands-on - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/22/samsung-galaxy-tab-8-9-and-new-galaxy-tab-10-1-thinner-than-the/ <comment><USER2> "The models we saw weren't final -- in fact, they didn't even power on"

Stopped reading.

<comment><USER3> I think pre-announcing tablets at this point in time is a clever thing to do, it makes sure that nearly every article talking about iPads or tablets in general will mention that comparable products from Samsung are coming very soon.

<comment><USER4> Ummm...who cares? There's always something coming out very soon.

<comment><USER3> There aren't that many high profile Android tablets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Competition just heated up. Slightly thinner and slighter lighter than the iPad 2, and at the same price. Wow!

Samsung makes so much of the internals of the iPad 2, I think they might be Apple's biggest hardware competition. Too bad Samsung makes only slim margins on the hardware while Google and Apple make lots more off of the apps and browser.

<comment><USER5> This includes their "TouchWiz" UI customizations, so there's definitely the chance for them to make some money from the software side of things or cross- promote more profitable products. Example: Functionality could be bundled in that pushes content to only Samsung-brand TVs.

<comment><USER6> Please, let's not give manufacturers any more ideas on how to lock down their functionality to specific hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was really looking forward to getting the 10.1, but the addition of TouchWiz onto the stock Android makes me very hesitant. I'm hoping it will feature the same unlockable bootloader found on the Nexus One, Nexus S, and Xoom; if so, then I can just reflash it with a stock image if I don't like TouchWiz. I refuse to be at the mercy of Samsung to get updates for my $500 devices...

<comment><USER8> You would prefer to be at the mercy of Apple for your updates?

Software written for a specific piece of hardware can be a very good thing.

<comment><USER9> Stock Android update timing tends to be much, much worse than iOS update timing, especially when custom firmware is involved. I say this as someone who borders on being an Android fanboy. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to prefer Android, but guaranteed on-time updating is not one of them, unless you've got a custom ROM. But if you're going to mention custom device images, aren't there similar options for jailbroken iPhones anyway?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find engadget reviews a bit too quick to praise. While this is actually a problem with most review sites, I notice it an awfully lot with engadget.

I'd like for them to actually use the device, load it with data and let data from regular use accumulate, and THEN make an assessment.

For example: they gave the HTC evo spectacular reviews. And the phone is actually pretty nice. But after a few thousand text messages, a few apps installed, email, etc., the device is very sluggish - not quite what your led to believe from reading their reviews.

<comment><USER11> Strange that you brought up the Evo, which after almost a year has held up as a top 3 phone for 2010.. I think high praise was deserved, regardless of whether it had a few issues.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, do you have an Evo that you've used for the past year or are you anointing it top 3 status based on reviews alone?

If you actually have one, It would be interesting to know how it's held up after heavy use.

Personally, my experience with it, and those of people I know that have it has been less than stellar, though by no means awful.

<comment><USER12> HTC Evo owner here. Bought it on the day it came out.

Since then, I've upgrade the battery, and am currently running CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3.3).

I just purchased a Samsung Epic 4G for my wife 2 months ago ... and comparing stock Evo with stock Epic, Evo blows the Epic away. The battery life also seems to be much better than the Epic's.

The Evo is the best phone I've ever owned, and I've owned an iPhone 3GS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In regards to competing with Apple, I feel like a lot of people forget the advantage that Apple's retail stores give them. The Apple retail stores give people an opportunity to use iPads preloaded with software in a nice shopping environment.

How will Samsung (and others) reach the average consumer with these new tablets? Will Best Buy just stick them in the middle of 4 other tablets with price tags?

<comment><USER14> Sounds like an opportunity for Best Buy competitors. There's no reason stores other than Apple can't deliver a nice shopping experience.

Not an easy problem, though: people will just browse and evaluate at your store, and then order online.

Solution: aggressively charge for shelf space, just like grocery stores do for end cap placement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its nice to see well funded competition to the iPad.

As with most technologies, we can describe the 'killer' product which would cut off the iPad at the knees:

* Tegra _3_ [1] quad core mobile processor

* 2400 x 1800 10.1" screen (300 ppi) with 'real' pixels (which is to say every pixel can be every color)

* Combined capacitive touch and wacom equivalent stylus control.

* 2 GB low power DDR3 ram, 64GB flash

* Wifi, LTE, Bluetooth wireless stacks

* Micro SD, Sim, micro hdmi, usb2 (or 3) port

* Android OS with FOSS drivers for all peripherals.

* $400 / $600 / $800 price points

* 10 - 12 hr Battery life

If one started shipping that device today, I would bet my 401k that it would outsell the iPad2 by the end of the year.

Of course you can't ship it today, nVidia won't commit to a ship date on Tegra3, No one will commit to the 'high def' glass for the LCD (ideally OLED so no backlight to add thickness), Android isn't yet good enough at managing the battery to get that sort of efficiency, and the Wacom equivalent near field stylus interface will need a new driver and API to integrate with the rest of the stack.

Which is why Steve Jobs can make an iPad and most people can't. Steve would say (as legend has it) "Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me when you'll have it done or I'll find someone else who can." (and since really there isn't any new physics here, just engineering work, he'd be right) So far none of the players in the field seem to have shown that sort of attitude, which is unfortunate.

I'm also on record saying that Android is too heavy weight for this type of thing. I suspect that hiring 150 smart people who were told that after every checkin the total number of lines of code in the android build had to be less than it was prior to their checkin, and that the feature set had to remain the same. Let those folks run for a year and it might get close.

[1] [http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/02/tegra-roadmap-revealed- next-...](http://blogs.nvidia.com/2011/02/tegra-roadmap-revealed-next-chip- worlds-first-quadcore-mobile-processor/)

<comment><USER2> ...and not a word about user experience.

This is why competitors are playing catch-up.

<comment><USER15> I don't dispute that user experience is a factor, but I did not include it in the above based on the following reasoning; If Apple's UX was sufficient to keep an equivalent product running Android with equal or better technical performance off the market, then Android phones would not currently outnumber Apple phones.

Manufacturing a technically competitive tablet form factor device is not something that can be taken on by a small start up. Creating a better UX is well within the reach of a wide variety of shops from small to large.

The G1->N1->N2 evolution is a nice empirical example of the presence of competitive hardware allowing for a rapidly developed competitive UX.

Android based phones aren't playing 'catch up' any more, once we have a reasonable execution of Android in a tablet form factor I reason that they will catch and surpass iPad volume and sales. If a technically superior platform was released ahead of an iPad refresh then I reason that platform would take substantial share from current and future iPad sales.

<comment><USER16> I won't argue that Android tablets will never overtake the iPad, but I disagree with the reasoning you cite in paragraph 1. I don't think the comparison with smartphones holds up because the tablet and smartphone markets are so different. A few big reasons:

-phones are a "necessary" device whereas a tablet is a luxury device

-consumers don't want another carrier contract so most tablets are sold without subsidies or contracts, whereas nearly all phones here are sold with subsidies and 2-year contracts.

-with phones, the carriers have influence/control over what devices are available to their customers. would Android be where it is today in the US if Verizon hadn't pushed it so hard before they got the iPhone? Carriers don't have nearly the same influence over tablets, and most people don't and won't buy tablets from their carriers anyway.

And I'm sure others can come up with many more. Again I'm not saying that Android tablets will never catch the iPad. I'm just saying that the smartphone market is sufficiently different from the tablet market that arguing for Android tablets vs iPad by citing Android phones vs iPhone isn't very convincing.

<comment><USER15> Fair enough, some questions though;

"phones are a "necessary" device whereas a tablet is a luxury device"

Ok, but are _smart_ phones a necessary device? What if your phone reverts back to just a dial and talk unit while the "smart" part migrates into the tablet you are carrying with you? [not that I think that will save Nokia :-)]

"consumers don't want another carrier contract so most tablets are sold without subsidies or contracts, whereas nearly all phones here are sold with subsidies and 2-year contracts."

Except the Android Revolution as envisioned by Google is that nobody wants contracts at all. So perhaps a single contract? How about a Wifi tablet connected via tether to a single contract phone? Or both your phone and tablet using SIP over a Metro-Fi scale white spaces network? I believe auction priced spectrum at the consumer level without contract will become a key business in the next 10 years.

"with phones, the carriers have influence/control over what devices are available to their customers. would Android be where it is today in the US if Verizon hadn't pushed it so hard before they got the iPhone? Carriers don't have nearly the same influence over tablets, and most people don't and won't buy tablets from their carriers anyway."

I agree that this is the current state, do you have reason to believe it won't change? Certainly it seems that people are pushing to change it. Can you talk more about your reasoning that leads you to the conclusion that carriers will also control an individual's communications infrastructure?

You make this claim "I'm just saying that the smartphone market is sufficiently different from the tablet market that arguing for Android tablets vs iPad by citing Android phones vs iPhone isn't very convincing."

I certainly agree that "the smartphone market is different from the tablet market" _today_ but back in the last century I witnessed a similar transformation in the computer market. I don't know if it will resonate with you but allow me to share it.

In the 70's a "Computer" was a big machine that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, had a large staff to maintain it, and was so costly to run that keeping it 100% utilized the was goal of every owner to maximize the value.

Computers were controlled by a few big names which can be stand ins for "carriers" in your smartphone argument. Along came companies could build you a computer for a few tens of thousands of dollars, that were expensive for individuals but cheap for departments. They were typically called "mini- computers" and there were some upstarts named Digital Equipment Corporation, Prime, and Data General Corporation who were disruptive forces.

Then microcomputers came out, they were toys. It was a completely different market, you played games on them or used them like oversized adding machines, sufficiently different from the "real" computer market that they were in a space all by themselves.

The microcomputers eventually displaced 99% of the computing needs of individuals and businesses. Because computation and data handling, were the fundamental "product" that people used, not "computers", "mini-computers", or "microcomputers".

I see the players in the smartphone market, attacking the big players the same way the mini-computers attacked mainframes. A smartphone is just like a feature phone, except it also can do internet things and run applications. Now we have tablets and they are more like laptops than phones (although you can make phone calls on them too) and they are coming at the market from the other side. But what all of these pieces of gear have in common is that they are the communication tools we use in our day to day lives to keep up to date, and communicate with our friends, colleagues, and family. Its not difficult to see that one could build a tablet that easily included phone calling features, accessed via a hands free headset that were both more robust and more useful than today's 'smartphone'.

Because I see analogies in the computer revolution with the current phone/smartphone/tablet phenomena, I'm inclined to feel that companies that can be disruptive in the smart phone market can be disruptive in the tablet market as well. It was of course the capitulation of IBM in 1981 with the release of the IBM PC that signaled the beginning of the end for mid-range computers, perhaps we'll see a similar capitulation with tablets by a phone vendor. The addressable market is larger so there is more money at stake. And when carrying a tablet means you don't have to carry any printed matter it becomes a net benefit to many professionals to prefer a tablet with phone call capability over a smart phone.

So my claim is that the communications market, of which smart phones and tablets are both participants, will become much more homogenized in the future (perhaps to the point where no one bothers to break them out) and that in such a market, technical performance and choice will be the dominant variables in driving market penetration. Android wins handily over iOS when it comes to "choice", so by my reasoning if the technical performance was there to meet or exceed the contemporary offering from Apple, it will have greater market share, in spite of a less refined UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The WiFi 10.1 will hit on June 8th -- the 16GB version will cost you $499 > and the 32GB $599.

Awesome! The Xoom's pricing is hard for many consumers to swallow (personally I can't wait to buy one myself as soon as they come to Canada). But the Tab 10.1 looks like it will be the first awesome Android tablet that's truly competitively priced with the iPad.

<comment><USER11> The prices are the same, but Xoom just doesn't have a 16gb model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why do engagdet.com urls always seem to create 2-4 additional urls in browser, so that clicking back once keeps me on the same page?

<comment><USER19> If you look at all the photographs in the gallery relating to the article, you must click back the amount of images you looked at. Plus there is no back-to- article button. Bad navigation, Engadget. Use jQuery, it would make things much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> noooooo.. Samsung screwed up a perfectly good OS again. Welcome to the tablet compatibility hell.</comment>


Google Wave Sunsetting in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://support.google.com/wave/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1083134

<comment><USER2> Google Wave is a great example of a lack of customer development. Trying to create something technically cool, with little practical value to any end- user. I imagine that some of the technology created has been patented or being used in other products, which could be valuable long-term. Still the only clear value add at this point was the logo - the Google Wallet marketing/design team had it easy!</comment>


City accounting system set to crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09189/982388-53.stm

<comment><AUTHOR> An excellent example of the need for #5 on "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund"

<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html></comment>


Forget GDPR, EU's New Copyright Proposal Will Be a Disaster for the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180525/10072939912/forget-gdpr-eus-new-copyright-proposal-will-be-complete-utter-disaster-internet.shtml <comment><USER2> From a point of view of a creator who's had there work copied for someone else's profit, I created some music for cats. It was a bit of fun really, you wouldn't like it, but your cat might, [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKWUX7aMnlEK3edghsEnS...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKWUX7aMnlEK3edghsEnSyBU7FjosH0qd)

anyway, occasionally my music is copied and monetised on other youtube channels without me knowing. While this annoys me, YouTubes approach to this is very good, If I report this copyright infringement, YouTube allows me to enter an agreement with the copyright infringer for shared revenue or other. I balance this multi tiered approach as very good, since this other channel may be getting better views than me, and the cost of marketing is so high, and this other user is effectively endorsing my brand and creating awareness for me, and to waiver their violation, I can enter a shared revenue agreement with them. This is a win/win for me as I get another opportunity to profit, and my music is shared in more places than just the places I manage to manually put it myself or pay someone to.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Make platforms directly liable for all copyright infringements by their > users, and then offer that they can avoid that unreasonable liability if > they can show they've done everything in their power to prevent copyrighted > content from appearing online – namely, by deploying upload filters (Article > 13, paragraph 4). Which remain totally optional, of course! Wink, wink, > nudge, nudge.

I have some personal story about this. A while ago a certain person decided to scan some books copyrighted by me and put it on Scribd. Every few weeks he'd scan one and upload it, saying that information should be free. I contacted Scribd and my experience was overly negative. Yes, they would wait a few days, then answer and remove the book. Then this person would reupload it, and the story repeated itself. Basically, the book was longer on rather than off Scribd. I repeatedly asked Scribd to take it more seriously, and, for example, remove the offending account, but they refused. They did it in the end after some weeks. Of course the same day that person uploaded all books again under another account. It all looked like a joke, as if the copyright law was some boring invention that they only pretended to observe.

Now, this was a few years ago, and maybe things changed since, I don't know. But at that time it felt like Scribd was cooperating more with the offender than with me.

<comment><USER4> You should go after the person directly rather than relying on the 3rd party platform to enforce law and carry out investigation.

<comment><USER3> He was using Tor for uploading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope someone could explain _who_ is supposed to check content, _under which conditions_ and _how_. If this applies to anybody running a web site or offering hosting services I simply fail to see how this can be realistically implemented at all. I don't even understand the primary goal of this proposal for a law, and thus question it's adequateness (which gives rise to appeal before court). Criminal persecution is the police's/attorney's job; offloading these duties to private entities prompts the question why we need those institutions in the first place.

<comment><USER6> If this draft passes tech companies "storing and giving access to large amounts of works and other subject-matter uploaded by their users" would be liable for copyrighted content that is shared on their platforms.

They can (but aren't forced to) avoid that liability by making "best efforts to prevent the availability of specific works or other subject matter by implementing effective and proportionate measures, [...], to prevent the availability on its services of the specific works or other subject matter identified by rightholders and for which the rightholders have provided the service with relevant and necessary information for the application of these measures" and "upon notification by rightholders of works or other subject matter, it has acted expeditiously to remove or disable access to these works".

There's also some stuff in there saying these measures should be "effective and proportionate", taking into account how big the company is, how much content is uploaded on their platform and the availability, cost and effectiveness of the measures.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. They seem to want to go after sharing platforms just shrugging when their community uploads videos, music, and warez, yet receiving all the commercial benefit, and I guess that's fair. But clearly this law needs more exposure, discussion and refinement. It also should be unbundled from the law about link previews for news snippets which is an entirely different legal issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> The proposal should also consider the product placement business model. For example, I create a movie, and I get some funding from a trusted advertiser because I said my famous hero actor will wear your shoes, use your earphones, use your phone, drive your car, shoot your guns, flash your badge, wear your glasses and drink your drink on film and at all press events. I say, I think I can get millions of views using clever marketing techniques. I won't need to spend anything on distribution and promotion. I get the money and I release the film on pirate bay. I even cry my film was copied by the North Koreans and the Russians since the BBC is so eager shove it in people's faces as they eat breakfast. Win/Win. The people can share and copy my film as much as they want, I still own the original copyright, and I would have monetised the product placement better than anybody else.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article is a gloss on a more original source, which was submitted at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244).

</comment><comment><USER8> This sounds Orwellian to me.

We should not give in to so called "content producers". Their privileges are not more important than peoples rights.

</comment><comment><USER2> The internet wayback machine is one of the biggest copyright thiefs in my opinion. I hope the proposal considers how that business model works and why it should be immune from prosecution

<comment><USER9> > The internet wayback machine is one of the biggest copyright thiefs in my > opinion.

Ugh, Is Google too then?

EDIT: Misunderstood OP, it appears he/she was being sarcastic.

<comment><USER10> > _why it should be immune from prosecution_

I don't think the parent is _raging against_ the Internet Archive, just pointing out the legal problems of what it does. Strict copyright law will destroy archives.

<comment><USER11> Libraries tend to have (some) exemptions to such laws, no? And the Internet Archive is recognised as a library AFAIK

<comment><USER12> Some limited exceptions. Section 108. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108)

But these don't really address digital archives as the Copyright Office recognizes. [https://www.copyright.gov/policy/section108/](https://www.copyright.gov/policy/section108/)

Presumably the Internet Archive is considered a library, museum, or archive although I don't know if there are specific technical factors that would make them one or if it's more of a "know it when you see it" situation in the event of a dispute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The EU is just a disaster in general.

Unless you believe corporatist technocracy is the future of civilisation.

This proposal is just another example of that process.

<comment><USER9> The GDPR is pretty good, this is terrible, like any org/government they have both good and bad policies. Sadly, i.e. Brexiteers generally want to eliminate the good ones, (food standards), and keep the bad ones, (copyright), so am not sure what the solution to eliminating is here, but it doesn't seem to be specific to the EU.

<comment><USER13> You know that ascribing views to a group without evidence is prejudice.

<comment><USER9> You can ascribe certain views to a group certainly, if that's what you read, observed etc. about them and it is not discriminatory. For example, I can say "religious people generally believe in a God". This is problematic when you start making judgments about people based on outright false claims or based on attributes that they have no control over.

I said "generally" on purpose. There are exceptions of course, but from speaking to a lot of them, watching interviews etc. that's the impression I got for their general sentiment. I of course am not presenting this as a fact, just as what I observed.

<comment><USER13> If you get an impression from lots of rap videos that people of colour behave like gangsters can you then legitimately describe them all as such 'generally'?

Or is it incumbent upon you to realise that you have selected a small and unrepresentative sample and look for balance. It's not difficult to find and talk to Paul Embery, Kate Hoey, Brendan Chilton, Thomas Fazi, Bill Mitchell, etc. Or for that matter me.

<comment><USER9> Of course not, however people of color is not a voluntarily made up group that represents an idea, since race is an attribute. You can criticize ideas a voluntary group stands for. I said this in my previous comment. If you cannot make observations about a voluntary group of people and their ideas, there's no point of them being associated with that group. Them being in that group is supposed to signify _something_. Opinions may differ as to what _exactly_ it is supposed to be, I just offered my observation on that, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related discussion

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164244)

HN, unfortunately, seems biased towards laws like the GDPR and somehow believes that start-ups can no longer self regulate or Do-no-evil. I hope I am wrong regarding this.

Self-regulation was once the gold standard on boards like HN.

Imagine creating the Google search engine in 2018 without the new proposed EU copyright law in place. Seems difficult right? Most websites have anti- scraping techniques in place if you are not Google-bot. Now imagine, creating the next Google after laws like the new EU copyright law go live.

Laws like the GDPR are red tape and are poison to start-ups. Self regulation is the way to go and we need industry bodies who can stand up and talk to government bodies like the EU to come up with meaningful regulations which help both the industry and the end user.

<comment><USER15> Self regulation, really?

Startups could never self regulate and never will. And a few bad startups can be enough to do massive damages.

Look Cambridge analytica: this startup alone made the case for regulations like GDPR.

As a user, I really am pleased with gdpr, so that "do-no-evil" startups stop selling my data around and not caring at all about my privacy.

<comment><USER16> (For the record, and to confuse my own statement, I actually generally agree that self-regulation isn't historically effective. I'm just also not sold on GDPR as a US resident/am as nervous as heavy regulation as I am of a lack thereof, and when I read your post it begged a devils-advocate counter to your statement from a different angle.)

As a user, I'm _not_ pleased that the law has devoided me of a choice to participate with businesses under a previously acceptable business model, and without any input/say on my part, assumes my agency to chose which businesses I interact with. I accepted it as my responsibility to know that some may be selling my information, and to make conscientious choices accordingly. This not even touching on that the law does precisely nothing against the sort of data incidences that I have the most issue with (Equifax).

<comment><USER17> > As a user, I'm _not_ pleased that the law has devoided me of a choice to > participate with businesses under a previously acceptable business model, > and without any input/say on my part

Which business model do you think is killed by GDPR? Can you point to the bit of GDPR that you think causes that change?

<comment><USER16> Since GDPR began to come into force, I've seen an increasing pivot from ad- based revenue models to subscription/pay per view based models, I imagine motivated in part by the fact that if you have to acquire non-implied consent, so you might as well force that friction point to fully onboard a user, and part as well by fears as to how targeted advertising will continue to provide a revenue source given the new requirements. It's fair to say that this may be an overreaction, but historically these sorts of experiments don't get reverted, once the infrastructure is in place. I personally do not find the benefits offered under GDPR to be worth losing what was previously a "relatively free" ecosystem. Others can disagree with whether they are OK with the prior state of affairs, but this is not the law I would have written to change it, and as I said before, a lot of my frustration comes in from having 0 say in the matter, (or deriving 0 benefit) yet being exposed to the friction of the legislation.

(One can also observe that this may serve as a regulatory moat protecting e.g. large ad networks that have enough scale to merit the overhead/costs of global compliance infrastructure, but not new startup networks. We've seen similar problems in recent HN writeups re: starting a bank; where something much more consensus, financial security, can still serve to overreach and serve incumbents more than it protects users.)

As a meta comment, I notice you are _very often_ present defending GDPR in threads where I've stayed quiet in the past; to the point that as someone who almost never notices names on this site, I've noticed yours before this interaction. Can I be curious about why you advocate this so comprehensively while also answering your question? (because, frankly, even the advocates I know personally agree that there are costs and risks involved, and that the letter of the law itself also left a lot up in the air)

<comment><USER17> > I imagine motivated in part by the fact that if you have to acquire non- > implied consent, so you might as well force that friction point to fully > onboard a user, and part as well by fears as to how targeted advertising > will continue to provide a revenue source given the new requirements.

Again, please can you point to the actual part of GDPR that forces people to gain consent before targetting ads?

Here's the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner, saying that legitimate interests (one of the lawful reasons for processing data) might be ok for marketing.

[https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general- da...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data- protection-regulation-gdpr/legitimate-interests/when-can-we-rely-on- legitimate-interests/)

> As a meta comment, I notice you are _very often_ present defending GDPR in > threads where I've stayed quiet in the past; to the point that as someone > who almost never notices names on this site, I've noticed yours before this > interaction. Can I be curious about why you advocate this so comprehensively

It's because almost all of the people posting against the GDPR will post things that just aren't in GDPR. They haven't read any of the regulation; they believe things that are not true and they spread those incorrect statements. Some of this is unintentional - they've read a bad blog and they beleive it. Some of it is intentional - fuck the EU.

I don't mind people being against GDPR if they've read it and are against things it's actually doing.

<comment><USER14> I have read the GDPR. The point is not what this law directly impacts today. The point is what laws like the GDPR open up the industry to.

<comment><USER17> Sure, if we elect Hitler next year we're all fucked.

I'm not sure how that's an argument against GDPR today, especially since it's built on long standing EU traditions and law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Make platforms directly liable for all copyright infringements by their > users, and then offer that they can avoid that unreasonable liability if > they can show they've done everything in their power to prevent copyrighted > content from appearing online – namely, by deploying upload filters

I guess that's okay, as long as the EU provides those upload filters. Or a machine-readable specification of one. And as long as the EU is penalized for false positives.

<comment><USER19> Why should platforms not be held liable for copyright infringement? Most of them are directly benefiting from distributing pirated content (page views), which means they have a selfish interest not to act forcefully against copyright infringement. For instance, Youtube would likely not have been the success that it was without pirated content.

Edit: It's okay to disagree with my comment. But why not share your view with us instead of just downvoting me?

<comment><USER12> YouTube is a really interesting case. I'm probably not unique in thinking they were going to go the way of Napster given how much of the content of YouTube 1.0 infringed copyrights. It operated in a time when "user-generated content" wasn't nearly as big a thing and certainly wasn't monetizable for the most part.

I doubt they'd have made it out the other side had Google not acquired them.

<comment><USER20> Copyright infringement is still big in Youtube. It is flooded with stolen content. Big things The Simpson or Family guy or even full films. But also compilation channels from other Youtubers:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRwTep1kvrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRwTep1kvrw)

<comment><USER17> But youtube has mechanisms to remove monetisation from the uploader and funnel it to the rights-holder.

I haven't read the proposed EU regulation, and it sounds like there's a bunch more stuff in it.

It would have been nice if Techdirt had a clear link to the proposal.

<comment><USER20> I completely agree with you.

Some channels get some money before they get closed though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Alan Kay: With the Tablet, Apple Will Rule the World - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-the-tablet-apple-will-rule-the-world/ <comment><USER2> With McGraw-Hill's CEO for all intents and purposes confirming this product to be real and running iPhone OS, I'll be very surprised, and saddened, if a shut-tight, app-store-limited device like this will lead to world domination.

Are tightly closed environments like this where we want personal computing to go next?

Are only a small number of people going to own powerful computers with which they can do anything they want, with the rest going through app stores and the cloud? It sounded good to me before, but now that we may all be on the receiving end, it seems disheartening.

<comment><USER3> I posted this in the other thread before, but I'm going to repost it here because people still don't seem to understand why the iPhone's restrictions are so important.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

I don't see how it's anything other than a net positive, you gain in security and ease of use for consumers. If you're more hacker minded like this audience is, it's extremely trivial to jailbreak - the distinction being that it is totally independent and not sanctioned by Apple whatsoever. This is an important point.

After working in user support I can totally empathise with Apple's decision to keep the platform closed via the App Store. The vast majority of the people buying these phones (ie, normal users - not geeks) are the ones who voluntarily install spyware on their PC's, click yes to every dialog box they see and execute random email attachments without thinking twice. They don't scrutinise certificate errors in their browser, use PGP, constantly have a bash window or two hanging around - in fact I think a lot of the people who have bought iPhones as fashion accessories would have trouble even changing their wallpaper.

The iPhone undeniably has the biggest mindshare, and a very hefty marketshare slice of any high-end mobile communications device yet, one notably skewed toward people with large disposable incomes.

Remember, it's constantly connected to the internet, has a connection to the phone network (and thus an unlimited tab conveniently linked to your credit card), knows where you are and even in which direction you're facing. It knows who you talk to, who your contacts are...etc. I could go on. The point is this device and it's associated popularity is a fucking GOLDMINE for the kind of people who write malware.

The App Store and it's uncompromising restriction is the _final solution_ to keeping this cesspool of a software "ecosystem" off the platform.

Even if Apple provided an "Advanced" setting which gains you root access on your device the malware writers would simply instruct the clueless user to enable it, and I KNOW that 99.9% of people would do it without hesitation, for the promise of nothing more than a cheap thrill. All the EULA-type warning "this-is-a-bad-idea-and-we're-not-responsible" notifications in the world won't stop them. It's based on the same psychology as that study where an alarming majority of people would tell you their password for a chocolate bar.

Oooh, kittens!!! _cue screaming and convenient lawsuits targeting high-profile Apple when their phone bill arrives with a $50,000 total_

Yeah, I think we can do without that sort of thing, and Apple certainly doesn't need that kind of unrepairable damage done to their brand perception.

We put up with malware on Windows because like it or not it's the de-facto standard, and consequently most people don't know any better. There is an almost bewildering array of choice when it comes to mobile handsets, and people are likely to go with the one that _doesn't_ have a reputation for involuntarily emptying your bank account.

<comment><USER4> _If you're more hacker minded like this audience is, it's extremely trivial to jailbreak - the distinction being that it is totally independent and not sanctioned by Apple whatsoever._

Not only "not sanctioned" by Apple, but actively opposed by them. They go out of their way to stop jailbreakers and consider them criminals, and per the DMCA they're probably right. It will be terrible for future innovation if the only way to gain control over your own hardware is to become a felon.

 _The App Store and it's uncompromising restriction is the final solution to keeping this cesspool of a software "ecosystem" off the platform._

Along with anything that remotely competes with Apple's business model. If Microsoft had that level of control 20 years ago, we wouldn't have the web.

 _Even if Apple provided an "Advanced" setting which gains you root access on your device the malware writers would simply instruct the clueless user to enable it, and I KNOW that 99.9% of people would do it without hesitation_

That's a testable prediction, since Android offers exactly that setting. We'll see if it becomes a cesspool of malware; I don't expect it to.

<comment><USER3> _Not only "not sanctioned" by Apple, but actively opposed by them. They go out of their way to stop jailbreakers and consider them criminals, and per the DMCA they're probably right. It will be terrible for future innovation if the only way to gain control over your own hardware is to become a felon._

Of course they don't like people jailbreaking, they've worked very long and hard on making a store with a fair and seamless DRM system - then barely a week after it's jailbroken somebody has gone and made an almost one-step process for cracking, distributing and downloading pirated applications. DRM relies on a closed system by it's very nature - it's understandable they like to discourage against subjugating their entire business model.

HOWEVER: they have never (as of my knowlege) put in additional effort to prevent jailbreaking. The online media a few years ago was buzzing with warnings about updates bricking jailbroken iPhones - like if done out of some sort of malice when it turns out the problem was AnySIM completely trashing some areas of the baseband, rendering it unusable when updated next.

So let's see, Apple getting a ton of bad press misdirected at them (as usual) because of the clumsy mistakes of some people who didn't really test their baseband modifying software before releasing it to the public.

Oh, and a more recent example. The installer for OpenSSH in Cydia didn't bother to prompt a change for the default root password on the iPhone (alpine) - suddenly there's a "virus" spreading between unsecured jailbroken iPhones because of clueless idiots once again thinking they know what they're doing when they clearly don't. The press? "OMG ITS TEH IPHONE VIRUSSSSS RUN FOR THE HILLS!!" Do you think they bothered to mention that you had to a) Jailbreak your phone, b) Install OpenSSH and c) Neglect to change the default password? Of course not, who cares insignificant details like that when you can have a headline with the words "iPhone" and "virus" both in it.

Gee, I wonder why Apple don't like jailbreaking guys?

Meanwhile, it would be naîve to think that Apple doesn't have plenty of jailbroken iPhones they use internally for various things. I have no doubt they are keeping a very close eye on the progress of the JB scene.

 _Along with anything that remotely competes with Apple's business model. If Microsoft had that level of control 20 years ago, we wouldn't have the web._

We don't know the exact reason for many Apple's rejections, but I disagree with this sentiment in general - there are hundreds of examples of approved apps which directly with Apple's own offerings and if you're referring to the GV rejection in particular that's even more puzzling as it doesn't compete with Apple at all (unless they're secretly planning on becoming a telco?) Examples of approved apps which might enroach on Apple's territory are various Safari replacements (iCab etc), Map applications, and even Spotify; clearly stepping on the toes of iTunes store. The problem is the inconsistency, which to me points more toward individual agent whims or moods rather than policy. I agree this is unacceptable but they have promised to make it better. They have stated publicly that they approve > 99% of apps, so as usual it's a vocal minority.

 _That's a testable prediction, since Android offers exactly that setting. We'll see if it becomes a cesspool of malware; I don't expect it to._

There has already been a bank account phishing app which was undiscovered for weeks on the Android Marketplace. I wonder why whoever coded that didn't target the iPhone instead and get 100x the opportunity?

Oh that's right, they couldn't. The system works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Real Story: Some off hand comment made over 2 years ago is dredged up to provide a tantalizing headline which is put in place solely to drive traffic.

<comment><USER6> Well, he also claims to have spoken to Kay late last year:

 _Kay still wasn't sure whether Apple would actually come out with a tablet when I talked to him late last year, noting that such a device could theoretically compete with the company's iPhone business. But, he added: "I bet a thousand dollars that they had a five-by-eight-inch version for the last couple years in house."_

<comment><USER7> The original series of prototypes was called the SafariPad, and one of the form-factors was similarly Newton-sized. Apparently only good for surfing the web on the toilet.

<comment><USER8> You say that like it's bad. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At this point I would not be surprised with the headline "Apple tablet to poop rainbows and give you a pony."

<comment><USER10> Done <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079784>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 5x8? add a keyboard, and it's very close to the eeePC's dimensions. Differences:

\- much lighter (because ARM uses less power, therefore lighter batteries for same battery life; lighter construction in general; and lighter because no keyboard.

\- connectivity (3G). This really is an internet appliance.

BUT I really don't think it can work without a keyboard (please make me famous by quoting me if I'm wrong!) Possibly, a large touch-screen keyboard would be workable _enough_ to be useful, even without tactile feedback; but I really think it would be mainly a gimmick.

BTW: I typed on a video-hire kiosk's touchscreen today, and although slow, it was much less frustrating than I expected.

<comment><USER12> Spend much time on the go with a netbook and you will find out how much more essential a (multi) touch screen is than a keyboard for something that's primarily intended as a _browsing_ device (as opposed to a tiny, tiny computer you can do your Excel spreadsheets on).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know that the masses are going to fall in love with the upcoming Apple Tablet, but I still don't understand why its getting so much hype =/

Hopefully to stand up to the buzz, it is more than just a souped up iPod Touch.

Am I one of the few to think that it might not be "all that"?

</comment><comment><USER14> This taught me what it would take to get me to click on another gigaom.com link - an implication of an interview with Alan Kay.

It's right back on my "do not click" mental list, with an extra strong negative weighting. An article about how Alan Kay's comment from several years ago re: the iPhone suggests he might like the alledged new tablet, plus a quip from an interview a year ago does not a worthwhile post make.

The only good thing I can say about not having a universal micropayment system is that I'm _glad_ it cost them hosting and bandwidth fees to handle my page load. I hope it was disproportionately expensive.

</comment><comment><USER15> 5"x8" doesn't fit in my pocket. I have a paper notebook here on my desk that is 5"x8". I never use it. I have a moleskine that goes with me everywhere. It's harder to write in the moleskine than the larger notebook, but then I don't ever have the larger notebook with me, so it doesn't matter.

If you're making me give up ergonomic input by giving up the desktop, I need to gain portability. That's why netbooks sucked so hard, input sucked and they weren't more portable than my laptop. The on screen and slideout keyboards on the iPhone and Droid are awful, but at least the devices fit in your pocket.

And can we please get over the techy self importance? The iPhone is pretty popular -- amongst geeks and rich people. Most people who have cellphones in general still have the freebie brick or folder that came with their plan. Just because Apple has done something to make a big splash in our pond called the tech industry doesn't mean our pond is large enough to matter to The World.

According to this site (<http://www.wirefly.org/news/cell-phone-facts.php>), 72% of the US population owns cell phones. I don't know exactly what they mean by that, but if that's 72% of the approximate 300 million population of the US, then that's 216 million cellphone users in the country. According to Wikipedia, Apple has sold 42 million iPhone units (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone>). That's roughly 20% if you aren't accounting for people who have paid for upgrades to the 3G and 3GS models. This page indicates that 16% of the market owns PDAs in general, lumping the iPhone into the PDA category ([http://ticketsdotcom.blogspot.com/2009/09/mobile-trends- amer...](http://ticketsdotcom.blogspot.com/2009/09/mobile-trends-americans- cell-phone.html)). Significant for sure, but not "taking over the world". Why should we expect a device of _less_ utility than a cellphone to do better?

<comment><USER16> Wait, so you want a tablet that is smaller than 5x8", smaller than a netbook, and that fits in your pocket? You know you can buy those already from Apple, right?

<comment><USER15> That's my point entirely. Predictions that an "<insert-any-company> tablet is going to take over the world" are woefully self-interested and fail to consider what "the world" actually means. I'm sure from a technology standpoint, it will be a neat device, but it's only going to matter to technophiles, and even then, only for novelty.</comment></comment></comment>


These Toys Send What They Hear to a Defense Contractor - <AUTHOR> https://consumerist.com/2016/12/06/these-toys-dont-just-listen-to-your-kid-they-send-what-they-hear-to-a-defense-contractor/ <comment><USER2> My rule of thumb? Don't buy a ton of microphones and stick them in your home. Don't overthink it, just don't do it; there's no really compelling argument in favor of it after all. If you have something like a webcam or a mic, unplug it. Avoid the IoT. Be aware of your cell phone.

<comment><USER3> I took a different approach. I have an outbound firewall hardware device that alerts me of suspicious activity like a device sending a lot more data than it should. I just stay very conscious of it.

Plus I love my Amazon Echo and the rest of my smart home.

<comment><USER4> If you really want to get your tinfoil hat on though, what's to say the firewall isn't all part of it?

<comment><USER3> I use an open source pfSense firewall. I have not audited their code but I can SSH into it and see what is going on.

But mostly I just don't worry about it that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The scary thing is not that this happened. The scary thing is how easily this could be going on with any microphone equipped IoT device. How will we continue to monitor for malware and other things that any type of company wants to put on a device? There's just too much IoT right now and most manufacturers lack the infrastructure to cope with this problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thinking about it, I'm sure there are already hackers that have targeted all kinds of IOT devices with microphones trying to get all kinds of information. Blackmail, trade secrets, etc.

You could probably make a bundle in the stock market with the right hacks -- although your trade patterns might eventually get you caught.</comment>


Ask HN: Zend PHP 5.3 Certification Worth It? - <AUTHOR>

I am a PHP Developer looking to better my employment opportunities in the future. I know the history behind Zend and why it is as important as it is, but do their certifications live up to the Zend name? Does having the ability to market oneself as a Zend Certified Engineer hold any water? <comment><USER2> I would say it depends where you want to get a job. I think most start-ups would weigh you having a kick ass GitHub profile more than a Zend certificate. If you don't have that, then that's what you should work on. If you do already have that, and you have both money and time to spend on getting the Zend certificate, then go ahead and get it. It's an accomplishment and will only help you. Not much to lose. Also don't be afraid to look into cisco certificate, which may not be directly related to the job your applying for, but look really good on a resume and can give you a better overhead picture.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say no. Unless you really want to work somewhere that makes heavy use of Zend.</comment>


Tiny Lisp Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.technoblogy.com/show?1GX1 <comment><USER2> uLisp is cool (code is a bit scary in places though),

I'm working on a virtual game console which uses an AVR.

I added some simple drawing functions.

[http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/lisptri.gif](http://fingswotidun.com/cruft/lisptri.gif)

The emulator is at [http://fingswotidun.com/avr/](http://fingswotidun.com/avr/) but it's very alpha. If you have a small screen you can't even click on the run button because of an old debugging div is sitting on top of it.

<comment><USER3> I would like to read a blog post about your virtual game console if you have or ever write one.

<comment><USER2> I have one from the very early days.

[http://blag.fingswotidun.com/2015/09/8-bit- machine.html](http://blag.fingswotidun.com/2015/09/8-bit-machine.html)

I've been planning on an update talking about Getting C programs running on it then building avr BASIC and Lisp for run time languages.

Probably far more likely to do updates given someone has actually shown interest in reading them. I kind of assumed My blog posts went into a void.

It's also on github [https://github.com/Lerc/kwak-8](https://github.com/Lerc/kwak-8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh. I thought about doing this, figured it would be impossible / pointless, and that (apparently wrong) assumption led me on a year-long journey:

The core problem, I thought, would be that AVRs have very very little memory. 316 Lisp cells sounds about right. I figured, well that's pointless. How can I do better?

I wasn't able to find a microcontroller that you can attach external memory to (without cheating and using something like an SPI RAM chip, although that's super easy). So I ended up figuring out how to build a real computer instead, around a Z80, with 64k total address space. The one I'm working on now has 32k RAM (still not great for Lisp) but you can divide up the address space between RAM and ROM however you want, so I'm planning for the next version to have the whole thing be RAM and use an AVR to "boot" it by loading code into RAM from an SD card.

<comment><USER5> Some of the devices in the Mega AVR line support external memory. The ATmega640 is an example. Generally you'll only find it on higher pin-count devices which aren't available in DIP packages. If you need something that's a bit easier to work with, the Teensy 2.0++ is an option.

As for your Z80 computer, another option would be to add some simple bank- switching hardware to allow you to boot from ROM. Probably more work and less flexible than just using an AVR for boot though.

<comment><USER4> I'm fine working with surface-mount stuff, I can solder it by hand, it's not actually as hard as it looks. Bank switching seems like a pain to manage though.

I wish I had learned this stuff in school. I majored in CS, and we didn't go any lower level than C++.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work. Now you can make a programmable pocket calculator, that's programmed in Lisp!

</comment><comment><USER3> The article links to [http://www.technoblogy.com/list?1GLV](http://www.technoblogy.com/list?1GLV) calling it the full code listing for this Tiny Lisp Computer, however, that link leads to code for a ATtiny841 "I2C Display Module" which is from the "Make your own I2C peripherals" blog post at [http://www.technoblogy.com/show?1G29](http://www.technoblogy.com/show?1G29). Hope the author sees this so he can change the link to be the correct one.

<comment><USER3> I notified the author about it on the uLisp forums. He has now updated the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my opinion, this is among the coolest / revolutionary computer products that I have seen in the last 30 years of my usage of computers. It is also great to see that LISP is gaining more and more popularity as people realize the advantages of the stateless, reentrant, idempotent functional programming paradigm.

<comment><USER8> I don't mean to sound snarky in the least, genuinely curious, but haven't a large proportion of tinkerers, especially with an EE bent, tried to put a simple lisp interpreter on some limited hardware at some point in their lives? I certainly know that a bunch of people learning FPGA programming in a user group i once belonged to all tried to put a lisp machine on one after working through the last chapter of SICP, and there's that lovely article about lisp interpreters running on old JPL probes back in the day. What about this makes it revolutionary?

<comment><USER9> Of course it's not revolutionary. Lisp is the past technology of the future. And indeed lots of people have done things like this, with Lisp or Forth or Basic or microPython or Lua.

I believe a very early Raspberry Pi prototype was an Atmel chip that ran a Lua interpreter with bit-banged VGA display. It was _extremely_ cheap but ultimately deemed not capable enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another option for running a lisp (like language) on a small package is esp- lisp [1] running on ESP8622. The ESP8622 has a 32 bit processor running quite fast, and comes with 64K of RAM, so it's clearly not as challenging a platform to run lisp on as the Atmega used here. Its just a software project, though, and leaves the hardware part for others to design.

[1] [https://github.com/yesco/esp-lisp](https://github.com/yesco/esp-lisp)

</comment><comment><USER11> it's basically a uLisp shell on Arduino?

it will be shuned by the Haskell elite unless you need a monad to toggle the led, since it's intrinsically a non functional side effect :)

<comment><USER12> >it will be shuned by the Haskell elite

Seems like a feature, not a bug :^)</comment></comment>


BARTER: Radeon $240 video card, for use in distributed computing - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bar/2246878268.html

<comment><USER2> bitcoin?

<comment><AUTHOR> i am pretty sure it is.</comment></comment>


Csrf-magic: Wizard CSRF Protection for PHP - <AUTHOR> http://csrf.htmlpurifier.org/

<comment><USER2> Django actually makes it easier...all you have to do is add django.contrib.csrf.middleware.CsrfMiddleware to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES, and it protects the whole webapp.

<http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/csrf/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't forget to protect all of your AJAX calls, too, if they modify any backend state.</comment>


The Top 7 StartUps That Will Save The World - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/20/top-7-startups-that-will_n_292715.html

<comment><USER2> Is that site a mess or is it a mess? I see only one startup. Presumably there is some sort of pagination thing somewhere to see the others, but I can't really figure it out. #fail

<comment><USER3> > In this video slideshow, we feature the top 7 hottest new tech startups

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I meant also to say "the slide show is under the video" and clicking on a new slide reloads the page with a different video.

It is a mess though.

<comment><USER2> Ah, guess I didn't see it because of flashblock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend not to read articles with such sensational titles.</comment>


Embracing a Future Where Memes Choose the Hit Songs - <AUTHOR> https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/05/memes-choose-the-hit-songs/ <comment><USER2> 1720 - Embracing a Future Where Choral Music is not Totally Lit, an interview with Johann Sebastian Bach</comment>


Concurrency: "having the smallest locks is not cool anymore" - <AUTHOR> http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/xeon-lock-scaling-analysis-paper.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Original quote from the author: «batch your locks. Don't make critical sections too small. Having the smallest locks is not cool anymore.» <http://halobates.de/blog/p/231>

In the whitepaper: «The longer lock region has potentially longer block times, but minimizes the communication overhead of transferring the lock too frequently. This is a simple case with only two threads. With more cores in each socket, the queueing delays of transferring will increase. Similarly, on larger systems that have more sockets, the communication delays will also increase. Having too many small lock regions increases communication overhead, while having too many large lock regions increases blocking time.»</comment>


Hacking a cheap fitness tracker bracelet - <AUTHOR> https://rbaron.net/blog/2018/05/27/Hacking-a-cheap-fitness-tracker-bracelet.html <comment><USER2> If someone were able to find a reliable source for the same band this work could turn into the nucleus of many wearable projects. It's hard for beginners to build electronics that are 1. small 2. comfortable 3. power efficient. These bands already take care of all of that.

There are many applications for this sort of platform. One could easily build a discreet pen testing tool which records information it sees about Bluetooth devices nearby. Or create an embedded engineering Swiss Army knife which exposes IO on your wrist to an app on your phone so you can jack into gadgets you find and poke around on the spot. Fun social applications to try too, like buying one of these for every attendee at your conference and building peer- to-peer applications on top.

Mapping out the programming interface is essential to enabling all that fun, but so is finding a reliable source for these devices.

<comment><USER3> One simple hack I can imagine is a text-to-morse transmitter. He's figured out how to vibrate the motor, if one can have an app that reads the phone's notification and talks over Bluetooth, one could convert it to morse so the user can receive his messages through vibrations in his wrist.

Although I suppose it would remain as a hack, if my I programmed this and bracelet starts vibrating the first thing I would do is pick up my phone to use my eyes instead of the morse code...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone is looking for a business idea, if you could hack these things to be a remote control so that dance teachers can use it to pause/play and skip-to- next on the cheap and without having to run to their phone, that would sell like hotcakes. Typical scenario now is: teacher plugs phone into amp, then needs to run up and down to phone every 5 minutes. Having a bluetooth connection so that the bracelet can work as a play/skip remote for the phone would be enough. Range might be an issue, needs to be 30 meters (reliably) or so.

<comment><USER5> Can't most (or at least, many) of these BLE fitness bands act as music controls for smartphones already? I know that every smartwatch under the sun does this, and since it's just a software feature, I feel it's such low- hanging fruit that every off-brand manufacturer must have implemented it a long time ago. But maybe I'm wrong?

<comment><USER4> From what I could tell, they all act as music players, not as remotes. But yes, I too thought this would be something obvious.

<comment><USER6> I bet all the hybrid smart watches work as remotes. I had a Skagen that did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious about the level of expertise you need in order to do this. I also have a cheap bracelet and I wanted to do the same thing, but reading this article seems like you need to be an expert in electronics/lowlevelprogramming.

<comment><USER8> Hi, author here. I can honestly say that I'm definitely not an expert. I tried to systematically write down questions on a text file and solve them one after the other. Solving one usually added a few other ones. "What chip is this?", "how to program this chip?", "do I need a development board?", "what's SWD?", "how to pull an output high?" Etc. Lots of these are specific to this chip, too, so a lot of it is just reading the documentations and drilling down on libraries.

It's something I find refreshing to read and like to state when I can: none of this was easy for me. But it was definitely fun. Having no deadlines helps. Having no practical goal and just enjoying the process was also refreshingly nice.

<comment><USER9> Hi author, nice hacking and writeup!. Nordic employee here. Note that if instead of the SoftDevice and the SDK you would've used Zephyr then you'd be able to do the same you did but with a fully open source software stack, including all layers of the BLE protocol stack. More here [https://github.com/zephyrproject- rtos/zephyr](https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr)

<comment><USER8> First time hearing about this. Looks awesome. Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome work and inspiring write up. I've started doing similar things lately and I can imagine exactly how much grinding was involved to get the end result. You must have felt great when the display finally showed the image :)

<comment><USER8> Thank you. Getting the display to work was very motivating for next steps :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I look very much forward to rellocate it all the way to the back of my > drawer and leave it there for some time.

This is funny - I feel the same way about a lot of side projects I undertake. Great writeup btw. I feel like this type of stuff gets harder and harder as ICs fit into tighter packages. Glad someone is taking the time to explore.

</comment><comment><USER12> As far as I can see it doesn't do the heart rate monitoring - the only thing on the features list a smartphone can't do. What I really want (writing it here just in hope somebody might know a suitable model) of a hackable fitness device is to supply reasonably precise real-time heart rate data letting my DIY Android app react on its change.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very nice and extensive write-up.have always been curious about these Nordic devices that seem to be so pervasive these days.

</comment><comment><USER14> Anyone know where to find this particular bracelet on ebay or alibaba?

<comment><USER15> search for ID115 on Aliexpress</comment></comment>


App Store search is broken - <AUTHOR> lots of apps can't be searched right now <comment><USER2> OK, so?

Outages happen. News at 11.</comment>


Someone wants to invest in my startup. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

I work as a network engineer but have been working on a project for the better part of this year. I showed the demo to my employers, with whom I am very close, and they loved it enough that they want to invest. We agreed on a number for what my partner and I need to operate for about 6 months, they told me a percentage of the business they want... but now what?<p>I haven't formed my business entity yet and that is first priority, from what I've read. I know there innumerable blogs and articles written about starting a startup, but can anyone give me any tips that I might not pickup quickly on my own or anything I might overlook? <comment><USER2> Find a collection of experts you can turn to that are on your side: accountant, lawyer, web designer, insurance, business coach/advisor. You want your ducks in a row in these areas from the start even if you just have conversations and people picked out.

Understand the danger of early stage investment. It can shelter you from market realities. It can also enable something big that you own very little of.

My 6 month project turned into 12 years... It will take longer than you expect. The sooner you release something the better. Once you have people paying for something, it gets real and exciting.

</comment><comment><USER3> No tips but but did you employers know about this before you demoed it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I told the one guy shortly after I started working on it, just casually, along the lines of, "Hey man, I started working on this thing and I think it could be really cool." There's still no public demo up (or I'd have linked it) but I showed him my dev build as it started coming together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> checkout stuff on lean startups. you'll need a term sheet.</comment>


I'm a woman in computer science. Let me ladysplain the Google memo to you - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/8/11/16130452/google-memo-women-tech-biology-sexism <comment><USER2> Probably the most persuasive rebuttal I've read in trying to follow memo story. It has an honesty about it. So the issues with the memo are lie largely in the subtext and motivations, it seems. When framed this way, it's easier to understand.

One issue I have is that the author implies the memo is alluding to a lack of aptitude, where in my reading of the original memo, the issue was of a lack of _interest_ (wrt affinity towards people vs. objects and so forth). Perhaps that's six of one vs half a dozen of the other from a certain perspective, but it comes off as a misrepresentation.

<comment><USER3> > So the issues with the memo are lie largely in the subtext and motivations, > it seems.

It is very interesting that so much of the response focuses on outrage, mischaracterizations of the memo, and (seemingly accurate) ad hominem attacks on the author.

This appears to support the central point of the manifesto: that we are not able to have a mature discussion about this. While we may disagree with what James said the response makes this point undeniable.

It seems that Google isn't the only place stuck in an ideological echo chamber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe HN is fatigued with discussions of the Google memo, I don't think there has been enough.

I'm vouching for the new contributor to Vox, hoping she can continue talking about issues she's seen.

<comment><USER5> I've vouched as well. We have tools to handle inappropriate comments threads without needing to avoid the topic wholesale.

<comment><USER6> Vouching still exists? I suppose I got it taken away for using it 'wrong'.

<comment><USER7> You can vouch for comments. You can't vouch threads. You upvotes threads.

<comment><USER8> I believe you can vouch stories once they are marked [dead]. If they're just [flagged] but not actually [dead] yet then you can't vouch.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's right. More info here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12984398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12984398).

<comment><USER10> From the linked comment:

> _You 're right that we could have 'vouch' show up even if an article is > merely [flagged] rather than [dead]._

There's the problem right now that flagging articles can drop them so low on the new articles feed (3rd or 4th page) that they are effectively dead. Some discussion may continue for a while from people who were already participating in discussions or are dropping in via the comments link. But typically this will be a very small number of people. So even if an article is not, strictly speaking, dead, it is effectively zombie-ified.

Allowing a "vouch" on a flagged article which actually works to offset a single flag might be a good compromise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > If, as the manifesto's defenders claim, the population averages do not have > anything to say about individual Googlers, who are all exceptional, then why > is Google the subject of the manifesto's arguments at all? What do averages > have to do with hiring practices at a company that famously hires fewer than > one percent of applicants? In the name of the rational empiricism and > quantitative rigor that the manifesto holds so dear, shouldn't we insist > that it only cite studies that specifically speak to the tails of the > distribution — to the actual pool of women Google draws from?

This is a great point.

<comment><USER12> > shouldn't we insist that it only cite studies that specifically speak to the > tails of the distribution — to the actual pool of women Google draws from?

Yes. If women fall on a bell curve, and Google pulls only from the far right (x-axis is skill, y-axis is number of women), then the research used to change Google's hiring practices should be based on that selected portion of the curve, not the whole population.

If Damore was really just questioning Google's hiring practices, he should have sought out research that looks only at the pool of candidates from which Google draws. And, if he was questioning all affirmative action policies for women, then he was being disingenuous by targeting Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for posting this. Since gender-based employment policies affect women much more than they do men, it seems like women should be the ones leading the discussion about whether these policies are a good idea or not.

<comment><USER14> > Since gender-based employment policies affect women much more than they do > men

How so? If men are advantaged, women are disadvantaged. Likewise, if women are advantaged, men are disadvantaged. Therefore, gender-based employment policies affect both genders, in equal but opposite ways.

<comment><USER15> This is not a zero sum game (like war) but a greater-than-the-parts game (like trade). Having access to a larger pool of potential employees because the workplace environment is not unpleasant or toxic makes the averages go up. Who doesn't want to work with great people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The memo came across as both arrogant and poorly constructed. To cherry-pick some pieces of data without context of the greater body of work is the domain of politicians and talk radio hosts. I can find you a paper with data showing whatever fact you want.

Second, I find this whole thing American centric. When it comes to politics, there are never examples cited from other countries.

<comment><USER17> Gender differences in personality is cross-cultural [1].

Something to consider is that the Scandinavian countries have arguably done the most for gender equality, but instead saw gender proclivities in occupation choice and personality maximize [2][3][4][5]. Probably because by creating an equality of opportunity, people were free to pursue their interests.

[1]: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14018323_Gender_Dif...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14018323_Gender_Differences_in_Extraversion_Neuroticism_and_Psychoticism_in_37_Nations)

[2]: Watch "The Gender Equality Paradox": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70)

[3]: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223529887_Culture_c...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223529887_Culture_consumption_in_Sweden_The_stability_of_gender_differences)

[4]: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24001221_Why_Can%27...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24001221_Why_Can%27t_a_Man_Be_More_Like_a_Woman_Sex_Differences_in_Big_Five_Personality_Traits_Across_55_Cultures_vol_94_pg_168_2008)

[5]: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11825676_Gender_Dif...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11825676_Gender_Differences_in_Personality_Traits_Across_Cultures_Robust_and_Surprising_Findings)

<comment><USER12> > Gender differences in personality is cross-cultural [1].

Meanwhile, gender differences in career choice is not cross-cultural.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My problem is not with diversity programs. But with the fact that diversity programs are usually benefiting those of the creamy layer who are already in a position to utilize these and not the genuine women who need the same.

Arguments on both sides completely miss this. No data no specifics, just rhetoric.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Why do women report higher levels of anxiety at Google, according to the > manifesto? Because of their gender's higher levels of "neuroticism."

Neuroticism is one of the Big Five personality traits and, as such, is a very mainstream topic in the psychology of personality. Scare quotes are used to suggest that a word is being used inaccurately, or in an unusual way. As such, a reader of this article who is not familiar with the Big Five model (aka OCEAN/CANOE) is likely to erroneously believe that the memo author is using 'neuroticism' to mean to having a neurosis or some kind of mental illness, which would indeed be inaccurate here.

</comment><comment><USER20> Another rebuttal guilty of misrepresenting and being dismissive of the original memo, and just being wrong on certain details.

Her reasons for outrage:

> 1) Fatigue

She claims women 'feel as the legitimacy of [their] presence is constantly questioned.' Of course I'm not going to argue this, I'm sure it's true, but it's also not a reason to ignore his arguments.

> 2) Women's resistance to the "divide and conquer" strategy.

Trying to paint Damore as attempting to undermine females as a group and turn them against each other. I certainly got none of that from reading the original memo. Because some women might actually agree with some of Damore's points, he's trying to divide the gender against each other? Not buying it.

She again is misinterpreting Damore's claim that there may be a reason why women might prefer not to work in IT aside from male sexism as 'skepticism and condescension' of women's ability in general.

> 3) The author cites science about "averages." But Google isn't average.

First off, her claim that Stanford at 30% and Harvey Mudd at 50% female CS graduates is irrelevant when the average across the US as of 2014 is 18%[1], a percent less than Google's 19% female workforce. Those figures are just cherry picked data and useless unless we have statistics on where Google hires from.

Second, she's trying to undermine his claim that the diversity initiatives may actually be doing harm to the company by making it a foregone conclusion that they are "Google's attempts at creating a fair and broadly welcoming working environment." Lots of saying "Artificial diversity good, Damore bad" without attempting to consider what he's suggesting or even addressing it or rebutting his individual points at all. Just glossing over his claims using citations of scientific studies as 'dispassionate facts [with] no rigorous connection to [average women].' It seems if she could have constructed an argument against these she would have.

She again misses the point by claiming that "it wouldn't be some abstract concept of 'average' that doesn't get a scholarship, it would be an actual individual woman." Of course making changes to diversity programs would affect individuals. But right now, Damore is claiming that they're already affecting individuals negatively by stifling speech outside the list of culturally whitelisted opinions and giving individuals with (possibly) less merit more opportunities over others. Considering the alternative seems to never have entered the author's mind.

> 4) Race

Though Damore's essay is primarily about gender, he also mentioned race because Google's diversity initiatives (and usually whenever diversity is discussed in general) also are aimed at achieving a more equal gender and race representation. I actually ctrl-f'd 'race' in the memo and every time it was used it was also accompanied by 'and gender'. I see no reason to accuse him of being a racist because of this.

> 5) The author says he's open to diversity, yet no real-world diversity- > enhancing program meets his standards

It's like she didn't even read the memo. Diversity-enhancing programs are bad according to Damore when they give opportunities to one group of people over another based on their gender (or race). He's suggesting we step back one level of causation and consider that there may be another reason besides sexism that causes there to be a gender imbalance. Based on this article, I don't think the author ever did that.

I will agree with her that his suggestions for alternatives are lacking and vague. However, the memo still has merit for drawing attention to the problem. A suggestion I might make (and has been made many times and more articulately by much smarter people than me) is while cutting back on the forced diversity initiatives, we increase cultural acceptance of girls in STEM starting in preschool. This won't yield results in the short term but I believe it is at least a part of the long term answer.

[1] [https://www.usnews.com/news/data- mine/articles/2016-10-20/st...](https://www.usnews.com/news/data- mine/articles/2016-10-20/study-computer-science-gender-gap-widens-despite- increase-in-jobs)

<comment><USER21> I find it bit weird that women and minorities seem to be able to use this "fatigue" thing as argument or excuse to blow up on some situations. The same does not seem to apply to white men, as otherwise she would started how Damore might have felt exhausted before writing that memo. Holding white men to higher standard might backfire in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Re the "fatigue", that sucks. But unfortunately, it's a rational reaction to AA, etc.

I recall running into women in CS in the 80s, far before the days of diversity hires. It was instant respect, as you knew that that person was not only legit, but had probably overcome extra obstacles to get where they were.

These days, anyone who could have been a diversity hire is guilty until proven innocent.

<comment><USER23> FWIW -- google does not have diversity hires in the interview pipeline. Everyone gets the same interview bar. But 'diversity recruiting' is more aggressive to try and increase the available interview pool.

<comment><USER24> The author claimed he attended a workshop and discovered that this is not entirely true.

Do diversity hires get any special treatment after a no-hire vote?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Will HN censor this article?

<comment><USER26> They have. All Google related news of the last two days got censored. "The user flagged it", "the algorithm flagged it" \- blabla. Disgusting.

Over at NYT, an many other media, one can read the stories from both sides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Cynthia produces a compelling argumentation that brings important views to the table.</comment>