Philip Greenspun Reviews "Lean In" - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/05/12/lean-in/ <comment><USER2> Those who enjoy this review will also enjoy Philip's review [1] of "Straight from the Gut" by Jack Welch (former CEO of GE):

 _If you want to learn the names of every person who ever worked at GE during Jack Welch's 40 years there, you'll find this book invaluable. If you want to learn something about what made GE successful, however, good luck picking out the few saplings of wisdom from the thick forest of names. Golf and tennis fans will also find the book fascinating for its endless catalog of golf and tennis resorts nationwide. Apparently being anywhere near the top at GE requires moving to Fairfield, Connecticut and aping the Lifestyles of the Bland and WASPy.

One interesting thing I learned is that GE went from 0 percent employee ownership to 31 percent during Jack Welch's tenure as CEO, primarily through granting of stock options to top managers such as Jack himself. Jack doesn't talk about this except to say that he's proud of the number. He doesn't get into the question of whether the investors from 1980 are happy now that they own less than 70 percent of the company. Nor does he talk about what would have happened to GE's earnings if they'd accounted for all of these stock options at time of issue.

The useful and interesting content in this book could have been presented in 75 pages if the editors and ghostwriter had been doing their jobs. But they weren't doing their jobs. So the readers all have to "give 110 percent" or "give 1000 percent". Maybe this is what Jack Welch wanted because he uses these expressions numerous times throughout Straight from the Gut._

[1] <http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Straight-Gut-Welch/dp/0446690686>

<comment><USER3> His reviews would've been a lot funnier if Arsdigita didn't crash and burn years ago.

>He doesn't get into the question of whether the investors from 1980 are happy now that they own less than 70 percent of the company.

They should be happy considering GE's value rose 4000% during Jack Welch's tenure at GE.[1]

When Jack Welch became General Electric's CEO in 1981, the company was worth about $14 billion. When he retired 20 years later, GE was worth nearly $500 billion.[2]

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch>

[2][http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/jack-welch- and-...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/jack-welch-and-the-lone- ranger-theory/)

<comment><USER4> _His reviews would've been a lot funnier if Arsdigita didn't crash and burn years ago._

On the other hand, it's famously uncertain as to whether that's his fault: <http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/> . I haven't seen a compelling rebuttal of this narrative.

<comment><USER3> It's his company, he was the CEO. It's his fault.

<comment><USER5> It's not the CEO's fault if he gets fired/forced out and then the bad stuff happens, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is utterly devastating and long overdue. Sandberg makes $845 million in a year (at a company she didn't found), lives a charmed life, and is promoted aggressively by men...yet has managed to convince herself that the world is/was biased against women.

But even Greenspan is prevented by polite convention from making the obvious point: women and men have different chromosomal structures, lifespans, organs, and hormone levels. There's also substantial evidence[1,2] that they differ in average levels of spatial, verbal, and mathematical reasoning ability (with women generally having an advantage in verbal and men in visuospatial/mathematical). We should not expect them to have the same outcomes on average.

Women also can only have at most 10-20 children over their lifespan, whereas men like Genghis Khan[3] can have a virtually unbounded number. This is why males have a greater evolutionary payoff for high-risk, high-reward behavior: intrinsically higher reproductive variance.

But hey. That's evolution, and even though it provides a consilient explanation for a variety of allied phenomena, everyone knows that doesn't and couldn't apply to human beings (we all well know what happens to people who propose that a behavior has _genetic_ influences). It is instead easier to pretend that humans aren't biological creatures with hard biological constraints.

Yet if your premises are wrong, one is simply practicing fashionable creationism. And that is where we are today, presented with the spectacle of a privileged billionairess who lashes out at phantasms rather than wrestling with the realities of molecular biology. Why not lean in to a publication on behavioral neuroendocrinology, for a change?

[1]: <http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm>

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann- Brizendine/dp/0767...](http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann- Brizendine/dp/0767920104)

[3]: [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html)

[4]: [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex- diff...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex- differences/201101/which-sex-is-playing-higher-stakes-reproductive-game)

<comment><USER7> The reason that people are berated for suggesting inherent differences is that there's so much more to the story. Almost nothing derives purely from genes; it's a complex interaction of genes, epigenetics (environmental and hereditary factors other than genes that control which genes are active), and socialization.

Males and females are treated extremely differently _from birth_. Literally, in the very first day. Thus, it is nearly impossible to actually prove scientifically that a significant difference comes from genetic and biological factors. The socialization is a confounding factor that's impossible to separate out unless you're willing to do a study where you raise kids in isolation from society so you can treat them identically.

And even "inherent" differences are often easily overcome with social solutions. There's research to suggest that the difference in spatial reasoning is societal.[1] Furthermore, I believe I saw a study suggesting that even in our society, if you put everyone through a proper course teaching them spatial reasoning, the women catch up to the men. So society can choose to eliminate "inherent" differences by devoting a few resources to something that helps one group catch up to the other.

Furthermore, it ultimately doesn't matter that much. Western society has decided that we want equality between men and women. If that's not happening, then we've committed ourselves to make it happen. There are currently differences between men and women, largely from socialization. Since our society was largely built by men, it unsurprisingly is oriented toward having successful men in it. That doesn't mean we throw up our hands and say, "well, this is how our society is structured, and our society socializes men to win in that structure. I guess equality is inherently impossible." No. We find ways to reduce gender socialization (see: radical schools in Sweden). We find ways to restructure society so that there are fewer barriers to some groups' success.

1: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/7fk/gender_differences_in_spatial_re...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/7fk/gender_differences_in_spatial_reasoning_appear_to/)

<comment><USER6> You don't link to actual molecular genetic research on behavior and sex differences. I will. Let's do two quick examples.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/science/studying-recent- hu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/science/studying-recent-human- evolution-at-the-genetic-level.html?_r=0)

      Gaining a deep insight into human evolution, researchers
      have identified a mutation in a critical human gene as the
      source of several distinctive traits that make East Asians
      different from other races.

      The traits — thicker hair shafts, more sweat glands,
      characteristically identified teeth and smaller breasts —
      are the result of a gene mutation that occurred about
      35,000 years ago, the researchers have concluded.

One pleiotropic mutation actually causes smaller breasts, among other things. For added visual impact, take a look at the EDAR transgenic mouse:

[http://mathildasanthropologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/10...](http://mathildasanthropologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/picture-2-741394.png)

Wow! Across _species_ , you can actually see that a single variant makes the mouse hair look East Asian. It's so crazily reductionist, it looks like what a troglodyte like Strom Thurmond might sketch if you had him draw an "Asian- looking mouse". Here's another great one, Fruitless:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitless_(gene)#Function>

      Although many genes are known to be involved in male
      courtship behavior, the fruitless gene has been considered
      noteworthy because it exhibits sex-specific alternative
      splicing. When females produce the male-spliced gene
      product, they behave as males. Males that do not produce
      the male-specific product do not court females and are
      infertile.[1] ... The fruitless gene locus also controls
      the expression of hundreds of other genes,[6] any subset of
      which may actually regulate behavior.

We don't yet know the human analog of Fruitless, the master regulator of sex differences. But if it exists, it's a good bet that it's on the Y or X chromosomes.

Point: it's not all super-complex gene-environment interactionism that we'll never understand[1]. Indeed, as Fruitless or the EDAR story show, the genetic origins of complex gender differences and/or behavioral traits can be almost cartoonishly reductionist, attributable to a single master upstream regulator!

So: do you really want to bet it all on black, bet that genetics researchers aren't going to find governing loci for human gender differences and/or sexual orientation, bet that it's 100% social construction? Because if you know anything about where genomics is going, that is a bet you are going to lose.

[1] PS: I love it when people bring up _epistasis_ , for god's sake, as a sort of catch-all neo-Lamarckianism, reached for like a drowning sailor flailing for a life preserver. Methylome much? Didn't think so.

EDIT: You know what? Let's actually go line by line on this thing.

      Males and females are treated extremely differently from
      birth. Literally, in the very first day. Thus, it is nearly
      impossible to actually prove scientifically that a
      significant difference comes from genetic and biological
      factors.

Science: doing the impossible since ten years ago. Behold, gene expression analysis of innate male/female neurological differences _before birth_ , known since 2003 (and well before):

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031022062408.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031022062408.htm)

      Using two genetic testing methods, they compared the
      production of genes in male and female brains in embryonic
      mice — long before the animals developed sex organs.

      To their surprise, the researchers found 54 genes produced
      in different amounts in male and female mouse brains, prior
      to hormonal influence. Eighteen of the genes were produced
      at higher levels in the male brains; 36 were produced at
      higher levels in the female brains.

      "We didn't expect to find genetic differences between the
      sexes' brains," Vilain said. "But we discovered that the
      male and female brains differed in many measurable ways,
      including anatomy and function."

How about this little flail-for-a-life-preserver:

      There's research to suggest that the difference in spatial
      reasoning is societal.

Which in turn links to this paper: [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/19/1015182108.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/19/1015182108.full.pdf)

This is almost a caricature of academia. To come to the conclusion that gender differences in spatial rotation ability are "culturally influenced"...they analyze two tribes in Northeast India on a "spatial puzzle" that has never been administered to anyone before (Figure 1). And in Table 1 the mean puzzle solving time for men in the "matrilineal" society is still actually lower than that for females, even though the medians point the other way.

Forget about the crimes against psychometry that such a test perpetrates. It goes without saying that they did not compute test-retest reliabilities or do a proper battery of spatial tests, let alone estimate IRT parameters for their single idiosyncratic "spatial" item. And this innocence of all aspects of item-response theory is confirmed by their supplementary information (<http://goo.gl/ltysD>).

The more fundamental point is the lack of thinking. Not only does this study cut against the grain of literally hundreds of other datasets, it is intentionally designed to not be reproducible. Among other things, why else would one use such an obscure population? And why not use the standard Shepard/Metzler test, in which one is actually mentally rotating two objects and seeing if they correspond? One can programmatically vary the rotation parameter to increase the difficulty, and Shepard famously even observed that reaction time varies linearly with rotation angle ([http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/mental- rota...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/mental- rotation.html)), as if people were actually rotating the objects slowly in their heads.

Anyway. You know what is reproducible? Let's consult this handy meta-analysis of 70 studies...

<http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10648-012-9215-x>

It shows a huge and _reproducible_ spatial rotation ability difference between men and women. Don't believe me? Put up a web-based test with WebGL, pay participants, and reproduce the result for yourself. But something tells me that you may not really be interested in such studies. Instead:

      Furthermore, it ultimately doesn't matter that much.
      Western society has decided that we want equality between
      men and women. If that's not happening, then we've
      committed ourselves to make it happen.

Right. Comrade, here is where I bid you adieu. If men and women have fundamental neurological differences, which all the evidence indicates that they do, attempting to "close the gap" in mathematically & spatially challenging software engineering is a Sisyphean task. It is as futile as encouraging women to make it to the NBA and out-dunk the very best men. While there will be a Lisa Leslie or Cheryl Miller, there won't be very many of them, and that won't be the fault of men.

Because there can be no obligation to do _that which cannot be done_.

<comment><USER8> I try to keep an open mind, but I am finding it difficult to get past your tone. I find people as confident and dismissive as you appear to be, are the crackpots who are not worth my time. You don't have anything in your HN profile either. But you also went to the trouble to provide references, so I am confused and want to learn more.

Are you seriously suggesting its a Sisyphean task to teach women maths or business on the basis that - on average - these have historically been male dominated careers? If not, can you please explain further. Are you aware that 50 years ago women faced massive discrimination and that this may still be having a lag effect today? Have you heard of stereotype threat enough to convince someone who believes in it?

You are being condescending and rude and seem to expect your audience to share your conviction in a fringe view of genetic determinism. Nobody is disputing men and women are genetically different. That this change extends to neurological changes should hardly be surprising. Different machinery require different control structures. The scientific debate is on exactly how significant these differences are compared to other factors that have significant influence including the culture. I don't think the parent was even suggesting it was 100% cultural effect either. Whereas you seem to suggest its 100% genetic, which would preclude the possibility of any woman having better spatial abilities than any man - which I hope sounds as ridiculous to you as it does me.

<comment><USER6>
      Have you heard of stereotype threat enough to convince
      someone who believes in it?

Well, stereotype threat has actually been debunked. I encourage you to read this full pdf, including Steele and Aronson's response and Sackett/Hardison/Cullen's reply:

[http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/ogandy/C45405%20resources/Sacke...](http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/ogandy/C45405%20resources/Sackett%20et%20al%20stereotype%20threat.pdf)

      I find people as confident and dismissive

This is a matter of perception. From my vantage point, people who don't know much about genetics, neuroscience, biochemistry and the like are extraordinarily confident in dismissing the influence of hard scientific evidence in favor of the wishful thinking and hand-waving of much less rigorous sociological disciplines.

      I don't think the parent was even suggesting it was 100%
      cultural effect either.

See above: jackowayed himself notes that people with an alternative opinion are "berated". Only on the internet can the facts about genetics even be stated without character assassination. And then, and only then, the backpedal starts from a 100% cultural to a "50/50" position.

 _Who knows what the split is? How can we know? Gene-culture environment interaction is so complex. And what about _epistasis_._

But "we don't know" is not the position that Sandberg takes. And of course, if the position is actually not 100/0 then these gaps can never be fully closed [even if this were desirable], and this resilient inequality is not the fault of men but of Nature itself. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think "the gap can never be closed" is a position you would subscribe to (let alone jackowayed or Sandberg herself). So yeah, I think it's fair to characterize the conventional wisdom as a 100% social constructionist position, which executes a tactical rhetorical fallback when confronted with overwhelming fact...changing not one iota in its policy prescriptions, which are still in the main comprised of struggle sessions at places like Facebook HQ.

      Whereas you seem to suggest its 100% genetic, which would
      preclude the possibility of any woman having better spatial
      abilities than any man

You know, there's something about this topic which makes people unable to reason statistically. Obviously there are tall women and short men. Obviously there are Emmy Noethers. That's just not where the averages or medians are. I mentioned Lisa Leslie and Cheryl Miller; y'all _really_ think people who know what item-response theory is aren't intimately familiar with the concept of overlapping Gaussians...maybe even more so than people who blanche at the very thought of Bell Curves?

But overlap isn't equality.

<comment><USER9> My basic gripe with Bell-curve arguments against female genius is that at the high end, in the exponential tail, fine-tuning is needed to explain why a non- negligible fraction of professors at MIT (say) are women. Even a small difference in variance would lead to overwhelming male dominance.

On the other hand, if there were no difference in the distribution of intelligence, but cultural factors held women back, then the current "one- tenth to one-third" fraction of women in jobs needing high intelligence is naturally explained.

A recent PNAS paper showed that International Mathematics Olympiad teams from countries with high gender equality contain more women. <http://www.pnas.org/content/106/22/8801.abstract> IMO team members are one- in-a-hundred-thousand people - deep into the exponential tail of any Bell curve.

A study in 1999 showed 70% of psychology professors hiring Robert, and 45% hiring Ruth, on the basis of an identical CV. The waters of geek sexism run deep.

Cordelia Fine wrote a good book on the evidence. PDF: [http://hagocrat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/delusions-of- gen...](http://hagocrat.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/delusions-of-gender- cordelia-fine.pdf)

It's totally anecdotal, but the young people in the canteen at JPL are about 50/50.

Notice also the political fine-tuning of the variance argument: it doesn't dare suggest that mean female intelligence is lower (because we'd all reject that). God of the gaps, anyone?

Getting this right matters. If you must hire very good people, and you have the wrong model of how very good people are distributed among the population, you will fail.

<comment><USER6>
      My basic gripe with Bell-curve arguments against female
      genius is that at the high end, in the exponential tail,
      fine-tuning is needed

Well, actually no fine-tuning is needed. The Central Limit Theorem is most valid for a sum process in the middle of the distribution. It converges most slowly in the tails [1,2]; indeed, if your goal is to model the tails you really are dealing with a max-phenomenon rather than a mean-phenomenon.

In this case, the underlying sum process could be a bunch of small alleles of roughly equivalent size, each contributing to high IQ (viz. a QTL model for a multifactorial trait [3]). In that case, if you cared about the tails rather than the body, the discrete chunkiness of the underlying binomial distribution becomes more crucial.

Put another way: Bell Curve arguments (aka "statistical genetics") are at the lowest level based on discrete alleles, not perfect Gaussians. Now, those in the field would love to get better models of the genetics of highly intelligent people -- but to study that kind of thing you need to move to China and work at BGI. Remember, thoughtcriminals who propose genetic explanations for behavioral phenomena are "berated" in the US [See jackowayed's wonderful admission against interest up thread].

      International Mathematics Olympiad.. Notice also the
      political fine-tuning of the variance argument: it doesn't
      dare suggest that mean female intelligence is lower
      (because we'd all reject that). God of the gaps, anyone?

While we're talking about fine-tuning, why do you cherry-pick a few stats without acknowledging that the history of science is male? Do the thousands of male names (Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Gauss, Euler) that have inscribed their name into history count as a datapoint here? Do the Fields Medals? The Nobel Prizes in Physics? The faculty of math and science departments around the world? The gender of the inventors of the locomotive, the aeroplane, and the automobile? The names of those men who built steam engines and search engines?

I know why. All the conquests and murders in history are counted against men; but is a little odd that every male invention is counted in the demerits column too! I think the idea is that said ancient men ostensibly discriminated against women, shoving them out of the way before they could figure out the value of pi. Without said invidious discrimination women - biologically, neurologically, hormonally, genetically different women - would have been tearing it up on the math tip at the same rate. Just as they have been dunking from the free throw line ever since we started the WNBA.

Bottom line: you can't have it both ways. If achievement in science and engineering is to be a signal, if you are to cite any stats related to IMOs and whatnot, you need to take on board the enormous imbalance in the favor of men on historical measures of sci/eng aptitude and achievement. All due respect to Noether, Daubechies, and Curie -- but the prior probabilities of achievement are not equal.

      If you must hire very good people, and you have the wrong
      model of how very good people are distributed among the
      population, you will fail.

That's right. Your statement is: if you have the wrong model, you will fail.

The logically equivalent contrapositive is: if you succeed, you didn't have the wrong model.

So given that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube succeeded with highly male software engineering staffs, logically they _did not_ have the wrong model of how very good people are distributed among the population.

[1] [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/314659/central- limit...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/314659/central-limit- theorem-speed-of-convergence-in-center-vs-tails)

[2] <http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~yuvalf/CLT.pdf> (see page 2)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_trait_locus#Multif...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_trait_locus#Multifactorial_traits_in_general)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is so embarrassingly bad...it starts bad, and then gets worse... examples:

He discredits one of Sandberg's scientifically verified claims that women take criticism worse than men, by referencing "as John Ioannidis notes, "Most Published Research Findings are False."

Yet he begins his review with a US News report:

"This US News article describes research that found that, among college graduates, left-handed men earned 20 percent more than right-handed men."

Talk about a bayesian paradox here. It's easy to prove people wrong (and right) when you believe A and ~A.

I could go on, it gets much worse. Does he really think Harvard uses the same internet bandwidth for their particle physics dept and the dorms? Ugh...

<comment><USER11> Philip Greenspun used sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire.

<comment><USER10> ah. so being methodically retarded is all part of his plan. how clever!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, for me, this review points to a bigger picture issue. Why is the tech / startup scene so easily lured in by establishment values?

Of course there are exceptions, Fog Creek's articles about their compensation policy comes to mind, but very little of the egalitarian ethos that made hacking so cool survives in the way people talk and write about working in tech.

Corporate long-hours and ladder climbing ambition? Where every dating site [or other product] presumes fixed gender, sexual preferences, and monogamous behavior. Happily pouring your earnings in to high rents and overpriced 401ks, quibbling over the .02% equity versus the extra $5k a year at the next job while recreating the hierarchy and wage slavery which characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. To the point where even the feminism seems regressive. And the "art" is airbrushed illustrations and all the music is power pop.

Did I wander too far? Well it is one lens to view it through.

<comment><USER13> As below, thanks for saying all this. I often wonder what the bloody hell happened to the hacker-ethic and hacker-aesthetic that had drawn me towards tech in the first place.

It's getting very close to flipping my switch for, "Burn it all down and start over."

<comment> qu4z-2 I think the hacker ethic alive and well, and living outside the startup scene/Hacker News.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We all know "Lean In" is a ploy to get her into the national election psyche. She is probably a better candidate than most of the other jokers. However, we really can't take the book that seriously nor it's pseudo science. I listened to a NPR event by her and was so surprised how she used stereotypes about men to dispel stereotypes about women and no one once called her on it! It's very simple. She now has "business" background, she is using Lean In to recruit activist women who she needs as volunteers. Her Facebook credentials will endear her to younger voters as well. So she will get some of independents who might like her business background. She will get the female and youth vote. So on paper she is a good candidate and the book is her gateway.

<comment><USER15> Sandberg Schmidt 2016. You heard it here first. They're in the middle of PR marathon saturated with juicy election tidbits: North Korea, Facebook, etc.

<comment><USER14> Sandberg wont run with another technology person. She would need a policy person to give her credibility and help her win 1-2 states. She will get Florida based on the Jewish vote probably. So she needs to get a VP to win Pennsylvania and Ohio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know why people are so critical of Greenspun. Maybe I'm the only one who finds cynical curmudgeons amusing.

<comment><USER17> No, no! He's always a pleasure to read. But then I come from a long line of cynical curmudgeons and this stuff always reminds me of my (now deceased) uncles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Last Psychiatrist also covered Sandberg as a female role model, you might find it interesting:

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because_shes_suc.html)

<comment><USER19> That was so deliciously brutal.

<comment><USER20> TheLastPsychiatrist is an excellent and polarizing writer. Heres a punch in the gut on Steubenville. Much like her (I think her, its a matter of debate on gender, but mostly accepted via the comments page as "she") other posts, the storytelling and long-form leads to meta "aha!" points.

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self- respecting_wo...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self- respecting_woman_would.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Greenplum's mean-spiritedness makes this more a review of himself than the book, which is too bad because he manages a few golden nuggets here and there among all the brown ones.

<comment><USER22> You should be evaluating data warehouse software. You got the name wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could someone explain this paragraph? I've read it several times and I don't understand what his point is:

 _"Sandberg's personal experience, however, contradicts this. She says that she has never worked for a woman. All of the mentors and sponsors she describes are men. When she was 27 years old, a man hired her to be Chief of Staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Would a woman have been willing to hire her for the same job at age 17?"_

<comment><USER24> My rephrasing of that is, "If the working world is systematically biased against women, was it biased against Sandberg? Why did her male bosses and mentors choose her to be the exception? Would female bosses and mentors have made Sandberg's success easier to achieve?"

<comment><USER23> Hmm. I guess I got the gist that you've expressed. That makes me feel a little better, thanks. That last sentence was the puzzler.

<comment><USER25> Here's the point of the last sentence, which I had to read a few times as well:

When she was 27 years old, a man hired her to be Chief of Staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. What, if women were in charge, she'd have not been biased against and gotten that job when she was 17 instead?

<comment><USER23> AHA! Thank you. It finally clicked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I couldn't read this entire thread because it made me so incredibly angry. As a woman in tech I have done plenty of reading about the genders and their capabilities. I've read that while women tend to be stronger in English comprehension and men tend to be stronger in Math, this is lately due to how we are socialized, not genetic factors. I am saddened by how this thread degenerates from reviewing Sandberg's book in a horribly irresponsible way to discussing the incompetence of women in general. This entire thread is so discouraging and I am disappointed there hasn't been a more rational discussion of this book and the topics it raises.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seeing how quickly this entirely negative, picky-pants review got voted to the front page of hacker news has inspired me to purchase and start reading Lean In immediately.

It makes me think there must be something to this book.

</comment><comment><USER28> The value of lean in is almost unrelated to anything except for it's author's gender. Most of this stuff has been said before. There are tons of career books, and she cites a lot of existing research.

It's valuable because it shows a career track to women in technology, which is undoubtedly a male-dominated field. It also repackages a lot of existing knowledge into a format that is accessible to ambitious young women.

It's valuable because it allows me to talk to my sister about how she perceives gender issues. She is a mechanical engineer, and without having a common language it would be difficult for me to relate my career to hers.

It's valuable because my girlfriend can pick it up and use it to develop an understanding of how she fits in the workplace. Having a reference text allows her to interface with peers and build a dialogue.

When I first started editing inside investing, I realized something about two days into the job: we commonly conceive writing as the pursuit of truth through argumentation. In many cases, that is patently wrong. Most writing serves to stoke conversation.

All of this discussion--whether it suggests males are intrinsically different or that there is more to women's pay and achievement gap in terms of social dynamics--is the point of the book.

All of this criticism is valid, but guess what--did the book get you to think about women in the workplace? Have you considered how you behave in relation to your female colleagues and employees as a result of reading this book? If so, it's done its job.

</comment><comment><USER29> Mean but juicy.

Kudos on stirring the pot.

Sheryl's book - and the important topics it addresses - were at risk of being a bit forgotten.

Your review could help change that.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can someone explain this to me:

> When government cannot impose right-thinking via new regulations it must be > imposed by our social and intellectual superiors bullying us: "Everyone > needs to get more comfortable with female leaders"

I'm having a lot of trouble finding the implication of Greenspun's summary in the quote he uses from Sandberg's book.

<comment><USER31> That's because you don't know what bullying is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> $845,000,000 salary...

Doesn't this strike anyone else as rather a lot?

</comment><comment><USER33> This is an interesting piecemeal critique of Sandberg's book but doesn't seem to look for or address any overall theme or thrust of the book. If there is no such theme, this itself is worthy of comment.

Yes, the bolts of which the bridge is assembled are rusted, but where, if anywhere, does it lead?

</comment><comment><USER34> The problem that I see has little to do with the fact that Sandberg is a woman. It's that the Corporate System (yes, there is such a thing) deliberately promotes people who are smart enough to run operations but don't have what it takes (which is more of an out-of-band creativity than raw IQ) to figure out how people and organizations really work. Then its pre-selected leaders go on to peddle Success Crack that tells us how we can be successful, and how it's just _so_ easy.

The title alone is enough to give me pause. "Lean In" refers to the antiquated idea that the reason why so few women succeed in the workplace is because they "lean back" instead of "in" during meetings. Right, because all you need to do to wring a few more dollars out of a stingy, psychopathic billionaire institution that would throw you out on the street if it saw profit in it, is a little more work on your posturing. Keep an acute angle between your spine and your pelvis and everything else will follow.

Reality: most people who are successful have no insight into how they got there, and the system's supposed to work that way; the elevator up is made of glass, but the people allowed into it were deliberately picked not to look anywhere but at the digital red numbers that say what floor they are on. Of course, most people who fail (and that's most people) have little insight either, which is why these books sell so well.

Also, let's talk about Small Data, the realm not of normal distributions but of Poisson distributions on discrete events. Reputations are a Small Data problem. So are introductions, resumes, and all of the other mechanical rat- traps that make up the career game. You can control serendipity to some degree. If you know a disgusting secret on a Harvard MBA alumnus (which is not that hard, because as unethical people become increasingly arrogant, they get worse at hiding it) you can use it to get a powerful recommendation, get in to Harvard Business School, and make influential friends. Sure, there are things like that that you can control. Then there are things that you can't.

Filthy secret: the workplace is full of extortionist thugs, bullies, and generally horrible people. I'd estimate that horrid people are 1-in-10 in the general population (but you rarely see them in daily life, because there isn't money involved) but they are 1-in-5 co-workers at the most competitive companies, and 1-in-3 bosses. Okay. Let's just get that on the table. Unless you have extreme luck that makes you independent in your first 5 years, you _will_ meet horrible people who will fuck up your career, damage your reputation, gaslight you until you embarrass yourself in a major way, steal credit that you needed to get out of corporate hell, possibly even give you PTSD (that's rare, but if you have the condition pre-existing, it can flare up again). One such encounter takes you out of the running for those COO/Facebook jobs that require a flawless career history, but you can still be modestly successful. Two hits and you will never raise VC. You're too damaged for that. Three and you're barely holding on to the upper-middle-class. Four, and you're lucky to stay in the _middle_ class. Now, some people manage to get hit _zero_ times. Look up Poisson distributions if you don't believe me. It's not many of them, but it happens. Good for them.

Why do so few women succeed in the workplace? This "they stop leaning in!!!111" bullshit is useless, because it glosses over the real problem. It's because bullies (including workplace bullies) prey on the people they consider to be weakest, and those are disproportionately going to be women. It's not that they're sexist. Not all bad people are everything bad (i.e. not all psychopaths are sexist or racist). They're just opportunists. They hit women disproportionately because they presume them to be weak.

You can really tell what kind of career (in a corporate context, and VC-istan is corporate because of the king-making around funding) someone will have based on one integer number: how many times that person has been attacked by a workplace thug. You will never be a Sheryl Sandberg if you've dealt with a true workplace bully, and at least 90% of people get hit at least once in the first 10 years. Your reputation and career history are too damaged, and you really can't "start over" because every achievement is age-graded.

It's great that some people like Sandberg are able to enjoy legitimate careers, but the fact of never having been bullied or attacked (they might have been laid off once or twice, but never robbed or extorted) makes them extreme statistical anomalies. They end up with these rosy-eyed half-picture views of the workplace, and they're able to _sell_ it in business books and TED talks, because most of the proles _want_ to believe there's something different out there, and that they're just missing one easy insight (i.e. just "lean in" during meetings!)

Success Crack presents a view of the workplace that is so non-repeatable and often self-serving as to be indistinguishable from a fantasy novel-- but with a less inspiring setting and worse writing.

<comment><USER35> _If you know a disgusting secret on a Harvard MBA alumnus (which is not that hard, because as unethical people become increasingly arrogant, they get worse at hiding it) you can use it to get a powerful recommendation, get in to Harvard Business School, and make influential friends._

[citation needed]

No doubt this is true in an abstract sense, but is there any recorded data on this (reports of scandals, etc) or is this just speculation.

<comment><USER36> Right. While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon.

In the real world, it's so much more likely to be "he's a cool guy, we went to the same prep school, why not?" Which renders the same result, but in less of a movie-script dramatic way.

<comment><USER34> _While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon._

Wrong. It's extremely common, but it's also _subtle_.

It's best if the target doesn't know what you have on him. That's the beauty of business school. You were out drinking with him 25 times and he doesn't remember half of them, so you don't have to mention "the dirt". (Also: you shouldn't. Explicit extortion will put you in jail.) He has no memory of _what_ specific episodes you have on him, and there might not even be any. He just knows that if you say, "introduce me to <Y>" or "invite me to your winter party" that he has no choice.

<comment><USER11> Sigh. I clearly went to the wrong business school, and I bet being married and having a kid didn't help me either on this score. :(

(I was there in that capstone project where you had a bug in the excel spreadsheet and we just pasted value over it!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> People should read (if they must) this in context of Greenspun's rather fanatical political ideology. His blog has plenty of samples, I don't want to link to it.

<comment><USER38> I've never read anything of Greenspun, other than this review. I don't know, or particularly care, what his "fanatical political ideology" is. As far as I'm concerned this essay is perfectly capable of being judged on its own merits.

I am however greatly annoyed whenever someone thinks they are doing everyone else a favour by trying to dissuade others from reading an opinion (especially through vague ad hominem attacks). I don't think you need to protect anyone here from uncomfortable opinions.

<comment><USER39> I'm in the same boat as you with regards not not having read anything else he's written (I glanced at a few of his political essays this morning but didn't read any thoroughly), so this comment is a general thought not specific to Greenspun.

Surely every article/essay has the potential to be read differently in the context of who wrote it. If it was on the subject of, for example, Israel/Palestine, would you not want to know that it was a Palestinian campaigner who wrote about their suffering, or a Zionist who wrote about their acts of terrorism? Whether you agree or disagree with one side or the other, context is often relevant.

<comment><USER38> >Whether you agree or disagree with one side or the other, context is often relevant.

Is it really, in this case? If Greenspun was a Neo-Nazi who was serving time for killing 12 people, would it really have changed the content of this review?

I understand it would probably colour your perception of him, and certainly that's what the OP was going for, but I still think that this review stands on its own.

<comment><USER39> I haven't actually read this review, it's not something that interested me, but I do find that (for better or for worse) I judge content on its author. Yes, if he was a Neo-Nazi who had killed 12 people, it would make me lose respect for his opinions.

<comment><USER38> Alright. Do you want to go and research Philip Greenspun before you decide whether or not you agree with his review?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Memwa: A complete C64 system emulated on an STM32 - <AUTHOR> http://www.staringlizard.com/index.php/projects/3-memwa#software

<comment><USER2> I shot over there to see if they successfully implemented a software SID. No joy.

<comment><USER3> Oh I see, his emulator includes a hardware SID chip. When I read your comment I thought you meant there was no sound at all. It would be really cool to emulate it in software, but this solution isn't so bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> SO great, I want to scream... This is awesome, you are the man!

</comment><comment><USER5> We changed the url from [http://www.staringlizard.com/index.php/projects/3-memwa#imag...](http://www.staringlizard.com/index.php/projects/3-memwa#images) because the current page seems to give the most background to the project.</comment>


New Rules for the New Internet Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2011/03/18/new-rules-for-the-new-bubble/

<comment><USER2> It doesn't look like a bubble on the scale of previous bubbles because the general public is largely uninvolved (from an investing standpoint). If it popped now, the burned VCs and angels wouldn't even make the local news.

On the other hand, if the IPO market heats up coincident with a strong economy, then watch out.

<comment><USER3> well the ipo market heating up would then in turn involve the general public. imagine people clamoring for facebook stock? coupled with resurging economy, you get an interesting bubble action, as people will invest more than they can afford to and risk more than they should.

<comment><USER4> I don't know - fund managers might well wish to pile in, but people in general still seem to feel burned by the recession and wary of the market. The tech bubble in the 90s took off from a position of much higher consumer confidence as I recall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _sigh_ We're in a bubble, we're not in a bubble...where are we, guys? If anything it feels like a VC purgatory. Blanks advice doesn't really amount to more than "keep doing Lean Startup, but think of companies looking to acquire as a type of customer as well." The 3/4 of both the blog post and the presentation will be nothing new to anyone who has been here for some time (and the last 55 slides are "backups"). The last quarter has some conflicting advice, "now's a better time than ever to be lean" but "seriously invest in PR so you can be acquired." It's a bit disconcerting that for a guy whose mantra is to create a lean business that is self-sufficient (i.e. without venture funding), he's advocating that people pivot their businesses so that they can be acquired. This article just feels like scaremongering.

<comment><USER6> I equate bubbles with cycles. So in that sense we're always in a "bubble" of some sort. The question is are we at the bottom of the bubble, the mid-point or the top. It's everyones job to workout at which point in the cycle we are so that they can adjust the risk that they are willing to take accordingly. Thus the constant speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think start-ups needs to get physical in some ways. Way too much information, nowadays. While Facebook and RSS feeds me like food does, I get enough of it that I don't want to try the next app. There is too much apps and too much information.

By physical, I mean startups like Wake Mate. They make use of technology, the web, mobiles, your computer... but they give you something more than just virtual-information. Something physical is happening. There is an important added value here.

<comment><USER8> I've always disliked the idea that a physical good has more value than a virtual or knowledge good.

It's about creating value. A pet-rock is as valuable as a virtual rock.

If a competitor to wakemate was able to monitor your sleep without the wristband and was only a piece of software, would that make it any less valuable to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 2011-2014.

Okay, looks like I've got three years.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand this:

 _During the the Lean Startup era, the advice was clear; focus on building the company and avoid hype. Now that advice has changed. Like every bubble this is a game of musical chairs. While you still need irrational focus on customers for your product, you and your company now need to be everywhere and look larger than life. Show and talk at conferences, be on lots of blogs, use social networks and build a brand. In the new bubble PR may be your new best friend, so invest in it._

The only justification Steve gives for hype-seeking is that this is a game of musical chairs. What does that mean?

<comment><USER5> The hidden message is he's eating his own dogfood: he's pivoting lean startups to maintain relevancy while priming for a bubble by finding the change in market as a way to re-advertise the Lean Startup methodology. It's a numbers game - the higher your exposure, the greater your chances of finding the company that just so happens is looking to acquire you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think we are in a bubble in the sense that none of this family of companies (facebook, zynga, groupon, twitter) increases the overall productivity of society as a whole (or even their user base for that matter) and yet still garnering such high valuations. Whereas if you look at the last generation of tech companies (especially google) did in fact increase the productivity of the overall society.

I think the overall emphasis on marketing is an outcome of commoditization of software. In an earlier hn news item, OReilly talked about the thing that is adjacent to whatever is commoditized becomes valuable. I think in the case of software commoditization, that adjacency is data. User data has become much more valuable because it is now the biggest moat that can protect a tech business. Its no longer the software and hardware The more ability you have to collect and monitize the data, the more defensible your business becomes. The only way to collect more user data is to have an effective funnel driven by marketing.

Thats my 2 cents anyway.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. What Twitter and Facebook both do is decrease the cost for new ideas to spread - HUGE value to society.

Twitter and Facebook are my primary news sources - and I'm not alone. I doubt the protesters in the Arab world would agree when you say Facebook and Twitter adds no value to their life.

<comment><USER11> Yes, the Arab protester does show the potential of facebook/twitter for productive use. However from my point of view, facebook and twitter will be more like TV. On the surface it looks like it has a great potential for spreading of ideas, but I don't think it would actually reach that potential where it actually improves the overall productivity of society. I hope I am proved wrong...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the likelihood we're in a bubble if everyone says we're in one and investors continue to pour money into tech?

<comment><USER14> People aren't always rational, especially with money.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool>

<comment><USER13> I wonder how bad the first .com bubble was for big investment firms in toto.

I know it was bad for the market, but how bad was it really for the investors?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, I am going to disagree with Steve Blank but I don't think it is a bubble. In a previous comment, I referred to it as a bulge as I do not think it will be nearly as extreme as the previous bubble. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2336204>

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a lot to like here, including this: "Like every bubble, this is a game of musical chairs. While you still need irrational focus on customers for your product, you and your company now need to be everywhere and look larger than life."

But is it realistic to plan on the bubble going on through 2014?

</comment><comment><USER17> Not sure about the blog post, but the linked Johnny Cash song is worth a listen for the hilarious analogy and well, it's Johnny Cash.</comment>


River (Typography) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography) <comment><USER2> The caption of one of the article's images says "Czech proofreader's marks for a river". Does this mean that points were deducted for a student unintentionally creating a river? The article does not elaborate

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a section which talks about the (perceived) negatives of rivers. In short: it makes the text harder to read.

> Typographers try to minimize or eliminate the river effect. In Finer Points > in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type, Canadian typographer Geoffrey Dowding > explains as follows.

> A carefully composed text page appears as an orderly series of strips of > black separated by horizontal channels of white space. Conversely, in a > slovenly setting the tendency is for the page to appear as a grey and > muddled pattern of isolated spats, this effect being caused by the over- > widely separated words. The normal, easy, left-to-right movement of the eye > is slowed down simply because of this separation; further, the short letters > and serifs are unable to discharge an important function—that of keeping the > eye on "the line". The eye also tends to be confused by a feeling of > vertical emphasis, that is, an up & down movement, induced by the relative > isolation of the words & consequent insistence of the ascending and > descending letters. This movement is further emphasized by those "rivers" of > white which are the inseparable & ugly accompaniment of all carelessly set > text matter.</comment></comment>


At an Outback Steakhouse Franchise, Surveillance Blooms - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/outback-steakhouse-presto-vision-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> So much wrong with this. Look, hire good people. If you need to pay a little more, do it. Then trust them to do their jobs. If they don't, the _customers_ will let you know. But for ... sake, just treat your employees like people; people who have bills to pay and family to take care of.

And make the food better. I was at a (admittedly not Outback) restaurant the other week and the food tasted about as good as what you would pour out of a frozen bag. Why do people eat out if this is what they get?

This incessant wringing of every penny out of every dollar is tiring. Tell your investors quality matters, employees matter, not their returns.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't patron an establishment that utilizes such a system, out of respect for the waitstaff.

Anyone who has ever worked at a call center knows just how soul-sapping these types of metric-monitoring systems can be.

<comment><USER4> I imagine you also keep an eye on the manager everywhere you dine to ensure they aren't actively monitoring the patrons or staff?

This article is the kind of sensationalism that discredits very real concerns about a technology by bundling all use cases up with a big, scary bow.

<comment><USER5> >I imagine you also keep an eye on the manager everywhere you dine to ensure they aren't actively monitoring the patrons or staff?

Surely you're not suggesting that human managers and a 24/7 machine learning- powered surveillance system are the same? We expect managers to do their rounds through the kitchen and the dining room to check on both customers and employees, and to speak with people directly so that they can understand the many nuances of why things are the way they are that come with running a restaurant. Cameras placed above diners feeding raw data to management at the end of the day not only A.) Doesn't allow issues to be resolved as they're happening, and B.) Does not take into account the variety of nuances that occur in a restaurant on a nightly basis.

Managers _can_ be sent texts in real-time if, say, the number of people waiting for a table exceeds a certain threshold, but c'mon, is it truly cost- effective? Why implement costly machine learning software, and place the extra stress of 24/7 job performance surveillance on your employees, for something like this if your waitlist is managed digitally and you can easily look at the total number of people waiting? Even if it's not managed digitally, it's easy to look at a sheet of paper or a crowd in front of you and know that you've got a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Restaurants treat wait staff like straws, cheap, of no value and easily discarded and replaced.

Using surveillance to track the efficiency of people who are poorly trained, poorly managed, and poorly paid is the hallmark idea of a consulting company trying to prevent a company from sliding into oblivion because their food is just not that compelling.

</comment><comment><USER7> How is this different from Jira, or remote worker software that periodically captures your screen to be sure you're actually writing code and not grabbing a coffee?

The amount of surveillance I've seen lately is scary. We had a new policy come down from on-high that said we can't bring laptops to meetings anymore because whatever the folks upstairs were using to track us said there were too many emails being sent by people who were scheduled in outlook as being in a meeting.

I'm required to go to these pointless meetings and also required to get all my points done by sprint close, almost always requiring lots of overtime, that I can't track. I have to fill out timesheets, but I can't put more than 8 hours a day even though I work 14, but yet if I'm out of the office for half a day for a dentist appointment, I can only report 4 hours even though I skip lunch almost every day to rework some story the BA's got wrong because they didn't really care what the business wanted.

And if we don't meet the sprint deadline, all hell breaks loose and the bosses ask why the developers are losing productivity when the system is 1000x bigger now but you require us to put the same points on stories as when there was no code written, no other systems to integrate with, no regression tests to execute. And don't even think about working on automated testing because that's not a deliverable. No, you need to retest those 100 scenarios manually. Then the business says, "Oh wait, we forgot about this scenario." Recode, Retest, Re-architect the system to track more data, rebuild all the forms, reports, audit logs, on and on...

But _I_ have to care and all the mistakes made up stream from me are on _my_ back to solve and I don't even get to record how long it _actually_ takes?

Frankly, if you're waiting my table and I need more water, you should bring me more water.

If surveillance helped me meet my customer demands better, then by all means, watch me like a hawk. If it's just there as automated paperwork for the project manager then buzz off.

<comment><USER8> > How is this different from Jira, or remote worker software that periodically > captures your screen to be sure you're actually writing code and not > grabbing a coffee?

Those are... two _extremely_ different things. Did you really intend to put a communal chalkboard and an invasive surveillance program in the same category?

<comment><USER9> They are different but certainly Jira is tracking your individual productivity and reporting to leadership.

<comment><USER10> If you're working somewhere that treats Jira stays as a measure of your worth as an employee, that's a company problem, not a Jira problem. We literally wouldn't function as a team if we didn't use some kind of task/epic tracking. Remote screen capture isn't even on the same planet as Jira.

<comment><USER9> Much of management's function is to measure and improve worker productivity. [http://bostonreview.net/race/caitlin-c-rosenthal-how- slavery...](http://bostonreview.net/race/caitlin-c-rosenthal-how-slavery- inspired-modern-business-management)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > At the end of a shift, managers receive an email of the compiled statistics, > which they can then use to identify problems and infer whether servers, > hostesses, and kitchen staff are adequately doing their jobs.

> "It's not that different from a Fitbit or something like that," says Suri. > "It's basically the same

This is completely and utterly unlike "a Fitbit". They are presenting their metrics to the _managers_ first. Thus not allowing the employees the chance to self-correct, and to even know what metrics are being evaluated. THAT would be "like a Fitbit".In such a system, you don't even need to present metrics to the management (although I reckon the chances it would be implemented like this would be slim).

Not to mention, that's a massive disrespect to the employees.

<comment><USER12> Another thing that makes it different from "a Fitbit" is that most Fitbit users wear the device completely voluntarily. But with this device tied to employment these workers now would have to choose between their privacy or their job. Very unlike a Fitbit as far as the general implications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If they're watching their employees, ya think they're not going to use those same cameras to collect customer data at very low marginal cost? And if the workers want to make a stink about it to the media or the like, I would suggest that they pound that point until it reached the Earth's core.

<comment><USER14> What customer data? That you chew with your mouth open? What are you doing in a restaurant that is such a tremendous, valuable secret?

<comment><USER15> I suppose one risk would be if you collect who is in the restaurant with whom and then this data "leaks" out from some S3 bucket. It would be similar to the dating/cheating sites that were breached some time ago. Do all of these systems link up with the payment system or tie into any systems that can do facial recognition? /shrug Maybe not yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The issue with all these systems is: you aren't measuring anything useful, you are just measuring what you can measure AND the people who use these reports are clueless.

More common sense about the real world is needed. In economics, you have people making huge top-down decisions who, often, have spent years studying how to become stupid. More and more of the world is going this way as the "specialists/self-appointed experts" take over.

</comment><comment><USER17> For those that do not know, the Bloomin' Onion is an iconic appetizer available at Outback Steakhouse. It's a battered deep fried onion that's been sort of julienned to look like a flower.

<comment><USER18> And its delicious

<comment><USER19> When they do it properly! I remember my first bloomin' onion as a revelation. But the next two times I went back over the years, what I received as a soggy mess, sometimes with undercooked batter. I have coincidentally only gone to Outback three times, since I was so disappointed by the repeated failure on my third attempt that I felt no need to return a fourth time. (This was back in the '00s at multiple franchises.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My partner and I were recently eating at an Olive Garden. On each table at Olive Garden there are these Ziosk tablets that you can use to call your waiter, order drinks, or close out your bill with a card.

Our server was a bit irritable and disengaged, and food was taking a loooooooong time to come out. We noticed that tables that were seated after us were being served. It wasn't a big deal -- we weren't in a hurry and were doing fine talking and sipping our drinks. I used to work in restaurants for years so I tend to empathize a little with underpaid, overworked, and now evidently hyper-surveilled waiters and waitresses, so her demeanor didn't really bug me.

Anyway after close to an hour I said to my partner "yikes... Food is super late and the service really left something to be desired huh?"

Perhaps a minute later, a non-uniformed, well-dressed managerial looking fellow tapped my shoulder, and said "I am so, so sorry for the experience that you had here tonight. Your food will be out in just a few minutes."

Shortly thereafter, the waitress arrived, looking flustered, and said "Your food is on its way out guys -- is there anything else I can get for you? Your drinks are on the house tonight".

Our food came, and the rest of the night her demeanor was entirely different: she was hyper-attentive, warm, and apologetic.

I read later that the Ziosk tablets are equipped with microphones and cameras. I could find one article about the tablets mentioning the microphones and cameras [0], but it seems unclear as to whether or not restaurants use them to surveil patrons -- both Ziosk and the restaurants themselves deny doing so.

I'm aware that our experience was probably purely a fluke and completely explainable by my comments by chance coinciding with someone in the kitchen finally noticing our ticket, but the whole experience really irked me regardless.

Probably because it's technically feasible -- the tablets are literally equipped with microphones, cameras, and possibly other sensors and are already speaking with remote servers to handle payments and ordering -- and probably also because this sort of thing is already happening at scale in other physical and digital spaces we inhabit, where pointy haired types mindlessly seek opportunities to gather data allegedly in the name of optimizing process and driving basket sizes.

[0][https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/11/18/call-kurtis- inves...](https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/11/18/call-kurtis-investigates- are-restaurant-tablets-spying-on-you/)

<comment><USER21> I've known more than a few restaurant managers in my day, and I have zero confidence any of them would have been able to keep a secret if they were actively surveilling their customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think we almost have enough technology for someone to build the manna system for a restaurant (1). What do you guys think?

Instead of monitoring what they do and punishing them why not just tell them what to do at all times?

(1) [https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

<comment><USER23> Indeed; I would consider this story (by the HowStuffWorks guy) required reading if you're in the field.

We have a lot of important decisions to make soon regarding what kind of society we want in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of a good story.

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment> dawg- In college I waited tables at a Big Corporate Restaurant, the one that gives out unlimited breadsticks.

This was like 2014-2016, and the trend we see here was already in full swing. They came out with these little touch screens where the customers could swipe their card to pay instead of waiting for the check(which was actually a cool feature). But they would also be prompted to take a survey after their meal, rating their experience. The managers would print the survey results for the 60-something servers on staff and posted them outside the office. If you were below an 80 out of 100 for three shifts in a row you would get your hours cut. If you couldnt get the rating up it was widely understood that you would be essentially fired by just not getting on the schedule.

It was all incredibly stupid and clear that whoever came up with the idea had NEVER worked in a restaurant in any capacity. Like yeah, lets give the customers, the people with the LEAST information about whats happening in the restaurant, the ability to be the sole evaluators of performance. Its "the customer is always right" in its absolute worst iteration ever.

So if the star dishwasher had the bubonic plague and was out for two weeks, and the kitchen was backed up because the line cooks had to do double duty washing dishes, and the host team kept forgetting to give custmers silverware because they were constantly waiting for all of it to be cleaned, then the surveys were fucked because theres nothing you can do to make someone happy if their food take 45 minutes to come out and they dont have silverware when they get it. And it all went on the servers, who then lost money by losing shifts.

I could see how this Outback system may even be an improvement on certain aspects of the data. First, you are not relying on the idiot customers of Outback to rate your restaurant's performance - something a manager should be trained to do anyway. Second, if the above scenario happens, the servers can avoid culpability by showing that they are doing their job- check tables often and refill drinks - so if customer is pissed that their food took 45 minutes at least you can narrow it down and be able to tell whose fault it is. That sounds like an improvement to me.

BUT, i would never trust the managers to actually be able to interpret the data and pinpoint something like that. The average manager of TGI Chilibees, or Outback, or Olive Garden, does not know anything about data or how to interpret survey results. So more often than not, the numbers just become another weapon for them to exercise their power trip with. And the more numbers they get, the more opportunity to screw it up. Its gonna be too much information for them to handle.

Hell, it would be too much info for a full blown data savant to handle considering how damn busy running a restaurant is, and dealing with the human element of employees and customers on top of the data. Even if they aced their high school statistics class and are capable of properly interpreting the data to make adjustments, they will NEVER have enough time to sit there and crunch numbers enough to make proper "data driven" decisions. For that reason, this will fail.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Presto Vision takes advantage of preexisting surveillance cameras that many > restaurants already have installed.

For staff, this isn't going to go over well.

For customers, this isn't _adding_ more surveillance than they already have in their restaurants. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out.

<comment><USER26> _You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when dining out._

You have no reasonable expectation of enough privacy for sex.

That doesn't mean it's open season and you should expect photos and audio recordings of your conversations to be on the local front page.

Privacy exists along a continuum. It isn't an on/off switch type thing.

<comment><USER14> There's nothing in the article that implies they're going to be making audio recordings of customer conversations. They're using existing surveillance cameras, so even if that were possible, it's already been the status quo.

Do you have an expectation of privacy in regard to whether your drink got refilled when you're at a restaurant? I should hope not.

<comment><USER26> When I was child, you simply didn't have the kind of ubiquitous cheap tech you have now. You didn't need to worry that anyone would photograph you or record you and publish it for free via a medium -- the internet -- that could reach millions of people.

It's a slippery slope. Arguing this small thing doesn't matter and that small thing doesn't matter ends up having consequences down the line.

When I was a child, yes, you had a completely reasonable expectation that no one was going to record anything you did at a restaurant. And our sense of privacy has fundamentally changed with the rise of the ability to record and broadcast things so readily and easily.

My comment was not about the article per se. My comment was about a sweeping statement that I don't agree with.

<comment><USER14> I don't know how old you are, but I was a kid in the 80s. There were surveillance cameras then.

The society page in the newspaper is even older and that consists mainly of taking pictures of people at restaurants and publishing them in the local newspaper.

<comment><USER26> Society pages were considered shocking when they first came out and generally were pictures of famous people, not random nobodies.

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

<comment><USER14> I'm just pointing out that it was always possible for someone to take your picture in a restaurant. And even to publish it in the newspaper if they wanted to. In the future, as in the past, there is no reason for anyone to do this if you aren't a celebrity.

Lots of things were controversial when they came out. People thought cameras would steal your soul at first. Time moves on and it becomes commonplace.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Social network Ello gets boost after Facebook boots drag queens - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/25/social-network-ello-gets-boost-after-facebook-boots-drag-queens/

<comment><USER2> How many more times do we need to hear about Ello here, really?</comment>


It's pancakes. In a can. It's made $15 million. - <AUTHOR> http://att.cnnmoney.mlogic.mobi/money/business/business/detail/188710/full#p1

<comment><USER2> > US Patent Application US 2007/0286933 A1

Refrigerator Stable Baking Batter

In various embodiments of the present invention, a bakable batter mixed using cold process conditions and provided in a pressurized can, can be used to bake a variety of food products. In various embodiments of the present invention, a bakable batter mixed under inert atmosphere conditions and...

[http://www.google.com/patents/download/11_760_647_REFRIGERAT...](http://www.google.com/patents/download/11_760_647_REFRIGERATOR_STABLE_PRESSURIZ.pdf?id=NmCjAAAAEBAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U1u50T_pVkpadJOoPcT9ZYFaSVmsQ&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0)

<comment><USER3> Interesting reading! I wasn't aware you'd include things like details of pathogen-contamination testing in a patent application. (Or compare the results with CO2 vs N2. That's a detail of genuine interest to anyone trying to make a related product outside the scope of the patent, or a similar product after the patent expires.)

I think they've shown their work.

<comment> Tuna-Fish > That's a detail of genuine interest to anyone trying to make a related > product outside the scope of the patent, or a similar product after the > patent expires.

This is the very purpose of patents. To speed up innovation by forcing people to share their research in exchange for a limited monopoly. I find it both hilarious and scary that you find something special in this patent application.

<comment><USER3> I find it predictable and dull that someone here would half-read what I wrote and display what would, anywhere else, be staggering social incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apologies, but the mobile version of the story that is linked to here got me so frustrated I almost threw my mouse across the room. Can't highlight text, can't copy text as a result, and the article itself looks like garbage.

Here's a (better) link to the original article:

[http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/23/smallbusiness/batter_blaster...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/23/smallbusiness/batter_blaster.fsb/index.htm)

<comment><USER5> Not sure why aw3c2's comment got killed - I've been seeing this sometimes and I wonder if the autokill isn't a bit too strong.

But indeed, you can highlight and everything just fine in Opera.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something is wrong with a society that needs shortcuts to make pancake batter. It takes less than 5 minutes --- and even less time if you take just a few minutes to premix the dry ingredients ahead of time.

I 100% believe this product adds value to people's lives, but I'm also pretty confident that that's because people are terrified to learn how to cook.

<comment><USER7> Time is money. The fact that this man came up with a product that customers want doesn't mean "Something is wrong with a society". I bike to work, if I used your logic I would think: "Something is wrong with a society" because most people drive to work. But I don't think this. I realize context matters and again; time is money.

.

It frustrates me when people insult others ideas because the idea is successful but it isn't something they would use. If the earth's population was 1, then it would be okay. Until that day, please have an open mind.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't use this, but I also wish others wouldn't either, as it changes the market in which I live by further lowering the quality standards deemed acceptable in the marketplace. It's not about being closed minded.

Its existence also dramatically increases the likelihood that I'll have to eat a pancake from a can at some point in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Bjelkeman's (Swedish) pancakes/crepes, serves two:

3 eggs

6 dl milk

3 dl wheat flour

1 table spoon sugar

1 tea spoon salt

1/2 dl cooking oil (I use olive oil)

100 g butter

If you cook electric, start warming the frying pans. I normally fry on 7 (out of 10). Mix the eggs. Add half the milk. Add the flour. Whisk together until smooth. Add the sugar, salt and remainder of the milk. Add the oil. Mix until the batter is smooth.

About now the pans should be warm. Put a tea spoon of butter in each pan, spread it out in the pan. Add about a cup of batter (or so) to each pan. When the batter is congealed on the top of the pancake, use a long thin spatula to turn the pancake over. It should be yellow/golden brown on the fried side. Wait a minute. The pancake is done. Repeat from beginning of paragraph until out of batter.

Serve with sweats or savoury as you prefer. Blueberries, ice cream, sugar and butter, strawberry jam, are my favourite toppings.

All in all you can do this, with a bit of practice, from a standing start in 20 minutes. And the pancakes are superior to anything you will buy in a pack or a box. Promise.

Notes:

1) can easily be scaled to fit, 1 egg = 2 dl milk = 1 dl flour

2) dl = decilitre 1/10 litre (about a small coffee cup)

<comment><USER9> If you want to, you can add some carbonated water.

<comment> bjelkeman-again What does that do to the pancakes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OMG I love this stuff. My wife brought some home about a month ago and damnit - they taste as good or better than most homemade pancakes. We buy them at Costco - try them if you see them.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried them once and I thought they tasted pretty bad. I'm not sure how I could have screwed them up (shake, spray on hot griddle).

<comment><USER12> Same thing for me. They tasted awful. Threw the rest of the can away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's inspiration everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> My 7 year old cousin LOVES these. Every Sunday morning she gets to help dad make pancakes for the family.

</comment><comment><USER15> Produces too much waste and it doesn't take that long to mix the batter yourself.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's $15m in revenues, he would have made much less.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Per year, with over 30% yearly growth. He could sell it for twice that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if they sell these in the UK?

<comment><USER18> Likely not. Just like we don't get/want spray cheese.

All sounds a bit yuck to me.

I get the powder stuff. You can buy it from Tesco. Comes in a bottle, which is about 1/4 full of powder. You can store in the cupboard for ages. When you want pancakes you just open the bottle, fill it up with fresh milk, shake for ages then start cooking. Really tasty as well.

<comment><USER19> I don't think anybody wants spray cheese...

<comment><USER18> Slightly off topic now, but I really don't understand how a nation like the US eats so much cheese, yet simply cannot make cheese :/ It's horrible depressing tasteless mush.

I wonder if there's a specific reason you can't get real cheese in the US.

<comment><USER20> the uk seems to be particularly good at cheese (disclaimer - i am an englishman). it is something you don't appreciate til you leave (here in chile the only decent cheese i could find to have with my christmas cake was an argentinian parmesan!).

<comment><USER18> As far as I understand though, France would consider us to be absolutely piss- poor at cheese.

<comment><USER21>
        s/cheese/food/

<comment><USER18> Which is why we consider the main trait of Frenchmen to be arrogance ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish I could take the guy who came up with the headline to task! We've had a headline homicide...

1) "it is pancakes" isn't a sentence (ambiguous in the extreme).

2) The words "[it is] pancakes" are incompatible because "are" is the plural equivalent of "is".

3) "in a can" is not a sentence (lack of a subject & verb).

4) "it's made" is "it is made" not the "it has made" it should be. (It's as "it has" is not an official contraction due to its obvious ambiguity.)

The unmurdered headline would be,−

      It's pancakes in a can, and it has made $15 million.

</grammar-nazi>

To CNN: Remember, it's _my_ language you're abusing. Maybe you should care too? As a "big news agency" you should at least care enough to force your writers to learn _basic_ English grammar!

<comment><USER23> I like how you call yourself a grammar nazi, cite the old (and wrong) definition of a sentence as something with a subject and verb, but then say that "it is pancakes" is not a sentence. Why not? It's got a subject -- it -- and it's got a verb -- is.

Further, English has subject-verb agreement not subject-object agreement or verb-object agreement, hence "it is pancakes" is completely fine. Sure there maybe be some semantic anomalies, what with the singularity of the subject, the plurality of the object, and the copula which provides some sense of equivalence between them, but that's entirely a semantic issue and not a grammatical one.

Further further, setting off non-sentences by periods is common practice. You may not like it, but everyone else accepts it. You're just an idiot.

Further further further, "it's" is completely acceptable English, and isn't an official contraction only because there ARE no official contractions -- unlike French, with its (wholly impotent) French Academy, there is no authority on English, and thus no such thing as official English. The best we can do (as if we should care) is to reference the great authors of English literature (whoever they may be) and if you go by them, then you're most certainly wrong.

Further further further further, it's not your language, it's everyones, and I think the headline is fine; and they're not abusing it, they're using it in a completely standard fashion.

</actual linguist>

<comment><USER6> You're awesome and I'm looking forward to everything else you might write about linguistics on HN, but I'm not going to be the only person on Hacker News to tell you not to call people "idiots" on our comment threads.

<comment><USER23> You're one of the first. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Continuous Integration for Snabb Switch - <AUTHOR> http://mr.gy/blog/snabb-ci.html <comment><AUTHOR> I find the following quote very provocative but interesting and worth discussing:

      continuous integration should not be an external tool,
      but part of the program it tests in the same way a
      program's test suite is part of that program.</comment>


Bitcoin and the Future of Money – Lyn Alden and Jeff Booth [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Oy6FPUyAPg <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. Lyn Alden is one of the better independent voices out there.</comment>


Tell HN: Am hosting a meetup for 40 journalists in Chicago. Hackers welcome - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=117251992399

<comment><AUTHOR> There are lots of journalists in Chicago working on different forward-thinking media projects. Several of them and I decided to rent out a bar and invite them all out for drinks this Thursday.

We'd love to get some technology people out there as well, especially if you're interested in news, transparency and journalism.

<comment><USER2> Also, for those of you that don't know, Brad (brandnewlow) founded the excellent Chicago news site, Windy Citizen:

<http://www.windycitizen.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> We had our first story break 50 votes yesterday!

[http://www.windycitizen.com/ourmaninchicago/press/2009/09/01...](http://www.windycitizen.com/ourmaninchicago/press/2009/09/01/chi- town-daily-news-calls-copycat-on-tribune-watchdog-story/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doh, I really don't want to re-enable my Facebook account, but I'm tempted for this. :) Can I RSVP some other way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just show up. Won't be a problem.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I will!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm at ad:tech. There was an amazing session yesterday that I had no business sitting in on, but did, and oh yeah, it was amazing. I'll try to regurgitate the ideas the smart folks on the panel shared. And I'll bring my drinking hat.

[http://www.ad-tech.com/chicago/session_detail.asp?refad=1...](http://www.ad- tech.com/chicago/session_detail.asp?refad=1&session=1082)

<comment><USER5> please, regurgitate some of those views here as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rats. My son's birthday tomorrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will figure out this whole meetup thing some time soon. :)</comment></comment>