Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/technology/tech-workers-ask-censorship-surveillance.html <comment><USER3> At least to some extent, this is a "Hegelian pendulum."

In the beginning there where black suited corporate drones. They coded black and white "calculation solutions" for the enterprising enterprise.

Then came colour. Gates wanted cheap computers on every desk. Jobs wanted colour computers for every artist. Mission. Meaning. This worked better, especially if you needed employees to invent things. Can't invent the iPhone wearing a suit writing business requiremnt compendiums.

Startups hired world changers and made a customer and emloyee happiness index. Google wrote "Don't be evil" on a chalkboard. Gmail was better than outlook. All was good.

Then some tension surfaced. Advertisers thought they would be happier tracking users. Users thought this was creepy. Making generals happy did not make employees happy. Someone erased "don't be evil" from the blackboard.

Back to square one.

Google (and "SV") have spent 2 decades telling everyone about their open and selfless ideologies. People bought it. They went to work for Google instead of a bank. Now, they use euphemisms and secrecy to avoid saying stuff that sounds bad.

Btw... It's interesting how iconic "don't be evil" was as a slogan. They couldn't live up to it, but that doesn't mean it didn't impact.

<comment><USER4> > _Google (and "SV") have spent 2 decades telling everyone about their open > and selfless ideologies. People bought it. They went to work for Google > instead of a bank..._

Let's inject a little honesty into this discussion. People didn't flock to google et al in droves because of google's selfless ideology. That was coincidental.

People flocked to google because they wanted to get rich. _Especially_ in the early days when google touted their "don't be evil" philosophy.

For the techies going to work for google, it was never about not being evil. It was about getting rich.

We, as technologists, certainly knew and understood the dangers of companies like Facebook and Google from early on. (Again, if we're being honest, that understanding of the danger is one reason many of us don't even _have_ a facebook.) But we compartmentalize. What we would put on our own home systems rarely reflects what we would put on work systems if someone is paying us enough money. What we would develop in hobby time is, again, very different than what we would develop if someone is paying us a lot of money.

I get it. We have to feed our families. I'm not faulting anyone. I'm just saying that it's a bit revisionist to put forth the "google/facebook/whoever tricked us into working for them" narrative. Most of us understood what google and facebook were going in.

<comment><USER5> good try but.. the Google'rs originally wanted to "index the worlds information" .. very, very smart engineers are motivated by that alone. They were _competitive_ and highly-achieving coders from Berkeley-Stanford-MIT- CalTech-thatOtherOneIForget in an elite team environment.. There were ten other well-funded companies trying to be search engines with lots of publicity.. Google outperformed them..

In hindsight, after the money with so many zeroes, it is tempting to rewrite history, but this short "it was the money" doesnt tell the story

<comment><USER4> That techies were motivated by riches is not hindsight.

Google, pre-ipo, sucked in so much intellectual capital that other startups, my own included, were having trouble getting access to the elite techies at prices we could afford. Their salaries were _well_ above market, and their options were clearly going to be worth more than everyone else' at the time.

And don't even get me started on Facebook. That one of facebook's early investors was the VC wing of the CIA was an open secret. Yet techies _still_ flocked to them for the big paychecks and the options.

And good for those guys. For the vast majority of them, it worked out _REALLY_ well. I don't fault them for any of it.

I just think that you're putting on rose colored glasses here. It was clear long before Google IPO'd, that there was a lot of money to be made. (That much was even clear before keyword auctions as a matter of fact.) And everyone wanted to be in on it. Everyone _still_ wants to get in on the hot startups. Whether those startups are profitable or not. That's just the nature of this business.

Now again, I'm not complaining. That's just how the tech startup industry works. I get that. My issue is with everyone trying to turn it all around and act like a giant gold rush never blinded everyone. As if all those techies flocked to SV because it was all just about making the world a better place. That's just not true.

<comment><USER3> This isn't an all-in-one or all-out thing. Of course money was a consideration.

But, Google (and sv 2.0 generally) _did_ both present and to an extent, live up to a certain ethic. Not perfectly, not without some hypocrisy but they did have an ethic. The sold it to their employees (and others).

Today, they have trouble living up to it. People got disillusioned or upset. That is what we're talking about it.

I agree that these people joined a company, not a monestary. But, 10 years ago working at Google was easier to be proud of, on an ethical/esthetic level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment. You can work in adtech or building corporate software, ecommerce, etc. to sell plastic trinkets to people and raise your company's stock price. Or you can do ML, which will probably hurt poor people in the near to mid term and probably contribute somewhat to the more Orwellian aspects of modern life. Or you can do some third thing: some kind of applied tech a more physical engineering discipline (energy, spaceships, robots, etc.) that might or might not do anything for the common man.

I get really bummed out that there are so many smart people coming out of the US education system who go to work for Wall Street or in adtech/ecommerce roles. We have the brains and energy and passion to solve alternative energy, vertical farming, asteroid mining, carbon sequestration, and social democracy overnight but our system deliberately misallocates resources to projects that generate capital for the already wealthy instead of promoting one iota of social good. Here's to hoping this is a start of that bigger, necessary change.

<comment><USER7> I know! You're incredibly right! It's seems impossible that _so many_ smart, educated, talented, passionate, hard-working people could fail to solve any problem they put their minds to!

Yet, might it be worth considering that any individual human brain could potentially be less than infinitely malleable in all possible aspects? I have known blindingly brilliant artists who are utterly repulsed by basic arithmetic, and equally brilliant mathematicians who cannot even begin to grasp how _any_ person could be concerned with things as minor as governance structure when there is _math_ to be done. It might be possible to press those people into the service of what someone else deems social good, but I must admit I am experiencing some doubts that they would universally consider it socially good for them.

Beyond that, consider what selling trinkets and shipping things around the globe has done. It's helped lift billions of people out of abject poverty. It has made material well-being and food security possible on scales unimaginable only a few centuries ago. It has done so more successfully, and more quickly, than any effort explicitly directed at social good in human history. A critic would point to the price paid, and posit that there might have been a better option, but this critic is almost certainly making perfect the enemy of good in pursuit of an ideal.

I get really bummed out that there are so many smart people coming out of the US education system who struggle to recognize so many things in life. You're _absolutely_ right - what's lost by chasing money for its own sake is one such. It's just maybe worth considering that there could potentially be others.

<comment><USER8> What do you believe to be the cause of that abject poverty?

<comment><USER6> I believe Western imperialism has something to do with it... While it's true that capitalism has improved outcomes for some nations, it's also true that capitalist exploitation in Africa and South America really messed up the way their world works. It's made it so that free markets had something to fix later on, not fixed a pre-existing problem with these countries.

People can choose what to believe and all, but it's pretty hard to look at things like the African slave trade or Diamond mining in Zimbabwe or Sierra Leone and find anything but capitalism and imperialism run amok.

<comment><USER9> Look back further - while certainly not blameless they didn't start the fire - humanity in general did. In South America even the Conquistadors even with their vast advantages would have died if not for all of the other tribes sick of their flower wars and getting captured for sacrifice. They also had an army on their side. One they later betrayed and made an underclass but fifty men in an unfamiliar territory would die eventually to their might. Africa had its own warfare and ironically one of the most benign actions of trade helped set up a collapse - trade with others is how advancement is driven and they wound up benefiting from trade in more productive crops - some with precious metals and ivory and some through slaves. That lead to a population boom and that lead bloody wars of Shaka Zulu. The point being exploitation doesn't need any outside actors and is the true enemy. The true cause of poverty and backwardness is lack of growth.

This doesn't absolve the misdeeds of exploiters - indeed colonies end in independence usually specifically because of mercantilist mismanagement squanders the true potential of the country by seeing it only as a well of land resources instead of an extension to nurture for mutual good but it is important to recognize that getting out "the Imperialists" won't make things better automatically and the wrong replacement can ironically be even worse. As bad as the British were in Rwanda they never decided to genocide the Tutsis even though their manipulations lead to it indirectly. Evil comes from within and without "the tribe" and it is important to recognize that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once produced an open source product while working for Berkeley Lab, which is a DoE lab operated by UC. It does non-classified work. One day we got a visit from a couple employees of Lawrence Livermore Labs (classified research) and my manager glanced at their badges- he said something about "Q" and smiled while asking what they worked on.

They said "multiphysics combustion codes" and my manager looked at me and said "they run nuclear weapons simulations" (they didn't confirm).

After chatting for a while I realized they were using my code to manage nuclear weapons simulations. That's a consequence of licenses like MIT and BSD and Apache: you don't control who uses your software.

I came to terms with this a long time ago but it's still odd to think that I can write software that my own government will use to ensure our destructive weapons work as expected.

<comment><USER11> Pretty much everyone working in the high-performance computing space has to think about this. If you produce something truly useful, it may find its way into use in those kinds of HPC workloads. At the same time, much of our "civilian" use of HPC is being subsidized by those kinds of national security workloads which fund a lot of research and infrastructure.

You might also think about it positively. At least they are blowing up nukes in simulations instead of out in the desert somewhere upwind of a lot of people... speaking of upwind, there is also significant oil and gas funding behind a lot of geophysical science.

Addendum: as I recall, the Globus project was often funded by a mixture of NSF and DoE grants and a large part of its core group was based out of a midwestern national lab.

<comment><USER10> I never said I thought there was anything wrong with doing nuclear simulations testing. TBH I think it's an overall good.

Globus was mostly run out of Argonne National Lab, but it existed primarily to support scientific computing and public research. We had a subcontract to build pyGlobus since so many people wanted a Python interface (the Globus team started in C++ and then switched to Java and a really, really bad RPC technology called SOAP with WSDL for schema).

I've definitely come to terms with the modern compromise (in which a great deal of scientific research is motivated and funded by defense).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it surprising that educated people are "just now" doing this. What did people think corporations were doing to the world? Open up your eyes and look around and get your head out of the code and the bullshit slogans your companies have sold you. It's obvious something has gone wrong and is going on.

<comment><USER13> Engineering abilities does not imply political awareness. Making things work is surprisingly hard and (imho) a soul crushing process. You need a specific kind of people's profile for that. From my experience, the presence of a political vision alongside the engineering skills is much lower than expected. When both are present, the political vision does not come from a kind of enlightenment in the engineer's inner soul. But from a feedback loop coming from accurate sources of informations.

<comment><USER14> Very true. It is also easy to be so wrapped up in the trappings of what you're doing and the pleasure/sense of duty/sense of fulfillment you're getting from the actual act of your work and the compensation around it that you stop thinking about the consequences of your actions. This sounds terrible, but it's really just a small variant on the banality of evil.

Solving problems, working on tight deadlines, and getting recognition, status, and money are all things that make a person feel like what they're doing is right. It gives an endorphin high, it's a sign that other people are recognizing their work. I hesitate to use the word "addictive" in this context, but it can certainly be compulsive. It's easy to lose sight of whether what you're doing is what you _ought_ to be doing when the act of doing it is so compelling, financially rewarding, and celebrated by others.

This isn't a justification; it is a warning to anyone coming into this field, a warning that I wish I'd thought more about coming into it. This is something we need to be vigilant about as engineers, because it's easy to look the other way on questionable activities by your business when everything else in your life is becoming enriched by it and they're telling you that the ethical issues are for "their side of the business" to worry about. It is not. Do not believe them. Understand where your paycheck is coming from, and make sure that you continue to evaluate it as your company changes and ask yourself if you're okay with it.

In my career, I have:

* Been lied to about the true purpose of a product we were building, and only realized the lie because another engineer was brave enough to call them out and force them to tell the truth. I was fully prepared to be the coward that didn't follow up on it and remain willfully ignorant, and his ethical bravery was the only thing that snapped me out of it.

* Seen a company's financial plan gradually change from an ethical one to an unethical one, and have seen good people struggle and contort themselves to justify it: including myself, for a time.

* Worked in fields where the profits gained by maintaining the status quo has created a desire for minimium compliance instead of continual improvements.

The mandatory ethics class I took for my CS degree never prepared me for what to do, how to be vigilant, or how to take action when it is the company itself that is the unethical one. I feel like we need to have open and honest discussions with people coming into this field about this very real possibility, and about the need to evaluate not just the compensation and interesting problems being presented by a given business, but also the ways that they earn money and whether it is something you find acceptable. And what to do if that situation takes a turn for the worse.

The ACM has some high-level recommendations in their ethics statements, and I think they're a good start. They should be required reading for all software engineers.

[https://ethics.acm.org/](https://ethics.acm.org/)

I have been a coward. I have been an example of the banality of evil. And I don't think I'm alone in this field: not by a long shot. We've got to pay attention to the ethics of what we create, and we need to be much more brave than we have been.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like engineers (and people in general) are good at optimizing locally (achieving what's good for me) and stink at optimizing globally (achieving what's good for everyone in society).

<comment><USER14> Aye, I definitely think it's a human thing. I apologize, because I'm going to use the word "addicting" in a non-scientific sense, but the normal use of the word that best conveys the situation in my opinion. Solving problems is addictive. Getting the rush of a job well done - regardless of _what_ that job is - is addictive. Getting recognition is addictive. Having a comfortable salary is addictive.

It's so easy for me to slip into those addictions and not pay attention to the bigger picture. And I feel like I'm not the only one suffering from this problem. In fact, I can see it empirically in the people who have worked at the aforementioned jobs with me.

There needs to be a balance. A person doesn't need to be outright altruistic, but focusing exclusively on local optimization allows for a sort of hedonistic behavior set that can justify - and has historically justified - <USER2> as a cog in larger and harmful systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The NYTimes discusses this question in the context of ethics, but the hiring process for software engineers, generally speaking, often avoids any discussion of what will be built. I've interviewed at google and a few other similar places, as well as smaller startups, and remarkably often, there was almost no discussion of the company or product.

A tech interview goes like this "a list begins with an integer between 0 and 5. You then add a new set of integers that must sum to the value of the last added integer. How many different possible lists of 100 integers can be generated through this process?"

I've done this at so many companies. They don't talk about what you'll be building. They don't want your opinion. You could go through two days of whiteboard exam style interview questions and have no idea what the company does. And you could get hired without ever answering a single question about what the company does. It's remarkable, but it's actually designed to work that way.

I think tht the outside world really doesn't quite understand what goes on in tech interviews and tech hiring. If they did, they might know that the indifference to ethics may stem from general programmer unawareness of what the companies they work for actually do.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lately I've been experiencing some depression (under treatment), so maybe this is just the state of my mind right now, but is anyone else growing more and more cynical about the potential for changing the world, and adjusting their moral philosophy to compensate?

I could barely impact how my former employer ran the company, and even though I had the company's best interests at heart the whole time, I faced resistance the entire way. Political change is even more out of reach. I grow tired of obviously bad policy ideas being promoted because of political party consensus (on "both" sides). I am exhausted of the generational warfare that is causing newer generations to face an uphill battle for the rest of their lives, with higher health care costs, higher housing costs, higher environmental costs, higher education costs, and lower wages. I'm sick of inaction on important issues, misguided action on petty issues, and the nonexistent potential for small unpolitical changes that could have big impacts but won't ever see the time of day because the need for political posturing doesn't allow for it (like for example, a change to the metric system).

I feel trapped and helpless to change anything. And sometimes my feeling of helplessness has made it so I can no longer muster the effort to care for things that are so far beyond my control. I'm at the point on Maslow's Hierarchy where taking care of my family's survival is the only important thing anymore. I sometimes ponder whether I should just go out and get some kind of unethical job that pays a ton of money (and there is no shortage of those kinds of jobs for people of my talents) merely because it accomplishes that goal more efficiently. But then I feel bad about entertaining that thought. I don't really know what to do about it.

<comment><USER18> This is either going to resonate with you or seem totally out of left field, but I'm going to say it anyway: everything you're saying is unconscious defense against changing _yourself_. You don't need to affect policy on a national level to change the world. Changing the world can be as simple as putting the phone away and being present for your family, or volunteering at a local soup kitchen. Cleaning up the side of the highway or mowing an elderly neighbor's lawn. You can make a positive change for people in your own neighborhood.

This is where the defense comes in; acknowledging that there are things you can do _today_ means acknowledging that you're not doing those things which means you have to set up a straw man for yourself of world-sized problems that you can't fix so that you don't feel bad about not doing anything. We all have this heuristic in our minds whether we know it or not: feeling good > feeling bad, but feeling bad > the effort of changing yourself. So we accept feeling bad, and do mental gymnastics (I can't change America to the metric system, so I guess there's no point in doing anything) to minimize.

My advice: don't overthink it. Don't worry about doing something with your life. Just do something with your day!

<comment><USER19> Well put. I'll try to keep that in mind too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this makes a good deal of sense.

The tech job market is extremely buoyant in the present age, meaning very few programmers are in a position where they have to settle for a job they dislike just to make ends meet.

I mean, every tech company talks about wanting engaged, passionate, proud employees - so why settle for doing work you can't take pride in when you could switch to work you could be proud of, and probably get a raise while you're at it?

<comment><USER21> Because you can't get a raise - the big companies pay the most money.

<comment><USER22> Not necessarily true. There are some series A/B startups that offer extremely competitive salaries and stock options for top talent.

And also, I think he/she means if you can't get behind what Facebook is doing, maybe jump to Apple who "supposedly" have security and privacy as their top priorities and in the mean time receive a raise.

<comment><USER23> >>There are some series A/B startups that offer extremely competitive salaries and stock options for top talent.

Not everyone is top talent though - and I don't think there's anything wrong with being an average programmer and not wanting to work on morally wrong projects.

<comment><USER24> Agreed, of course, but also don't think anyone suggested that there was anything wrong with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Every person, tech or not, should evaluate what their work is contributing to and they should evaluate if they can ethically and morally accept what the company is doing or standing for.

In the end, I have to be able to look myself in the mirror and be accountable for my actions, even if that would mean to forego money, prestige, etc.

<comment><USER26> > Every person, tech or not, should evaluate what their work is contributing > to and they should evaluate if they can ethically and morally accept what > the company is doing or standing for.

> In the end, I have to be able to look myself in the mirror and be > accountable for my actions, even if that would mean to forego money, > prestige, etc.

How would you like people to square this with providing for their families? No offense to coal miners or well operators, but I don't think they're willing to destitute their families over climate change -- what's a better world for their grandchildren if their children die starving in the miners arms?

More to the point, I think the problem is "we as a society", not the individual. We're not willing to give slight inconveniences for massive increases in energy efficency. Look at how we design our cities and communities. People drive 2+ton vehicles upwards of 2 hours each day to go to work instead of living closer to the office and biking or taking public transport. (Many first and second ring suburbs of many/most/all cities have decent (or better) school systems than in the exurbs.)

Do we really need to consume all of the plastic junk or waste nearly as much food as we do? Do we need to be so wasteful of energy in our homes? Do we need to keep stores and offices frozen in the dead of summer? There is a lot of really low hanging fruit (that people as a whole are unwilling to do because it's the slightest of inconvenience or expects them to acknowledge the world they live in), before we ask people to give up their jobs.

Do you think coal miners, well operators, or big box retail associates wouldn't want a safer or more fulfilling job? We need to look at our excess consumption before pointing fingers at people for taking a job we find dirty (in the moral sense.)

<comment><USER27> > How would you like people to square this with providing for their families?

With a capable human brain, like we all have! Just because a decision is hard doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to make the right one—all people making decisions have been faced with this, including many people commonly considered evil.

Computers are levers, and developers are the fulcrum. We have quite a bit of negotiation power.

Finally, I think it's naive to think that these systemic problems can be addressed with concerted individual effort, not by addressing the underlying problems. Maybe I have some sympathy for the coal miners after all.

<comment><USER26> You're still begging the question. How does one choose between doing something supports a questionably moral company (and what isn't a company without any moral baggage?) and keeping your family fed and warm?

> Just because a decision is hard doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to > make the right [choice]

I think this is telling: you believe there is a correct choice in all situations, from all points of view.

I have no problems installing Google Analytics or AdWords on a site if my employer asks me to, but I personally run with ad blockers. The "right" decision in my case is to keep my family fed and warm because I don't think I can find a position at a company that doesn't do advertising or analytics and my own attempts to start my own companies have failed. I'm not willing to take the risk of long-term unemployment or to take a significantly lower paying job at a company that does the exact same thing (e.g. advertising).

So please tell me why my decision is unequivocally wrong, especially in light of the ability of anyone to run an adblocker and that we adhere to all relevant regulations, e.g. GDPR. Additionally, please tell me where I (and everyone who doesn't like advertising) can find a living wage from a company that does not advertise or perform analytics (or do any other morally questionable activity).

<comment><USER27> The decisions we make in life, and our difficulty making them, defines us. I can't help you define your morality here.

<comment><USER26> You're still begging the question and acting like there is a fixed morality.

<comment><USER28> Nobody is begging any question. The answer is that it is for YOU to decide. I'm sorry if that's not a simple, yes/no answer for you, but the world isn't like that.

<comment><USER26> I'm really at a loss to understand your reply.

My original question was "How would you like people to square [being accountable for the actions of their employer] with providing for their families?"

You've yet to say anything except implying that there is a single, black-and- white moral compass that everyone is capable of following in its entirety. There are no employers that have no moral shortcomings. Telling people that they're immoral for not destitute themselves is rather pointless and leads to a nowhere discussion because it started nowhere.

Moreover, it's a fairly pointless expectation that everyone is I don't know what country you live in, but I can ask with certainty the same with respect to citizenship: How can you be a citizen of a country that's perpetrated atrocities. In that case, it's even more clear that there is no option -- there is no country that hasn't committed atrocities.

<comment><USER28> "My original question was "How would you like people to square [being accountable for the actions of their employer] with providing for their families?""

And the answer to that is, "It is up to those people to decide that. No one else can do it for them."

"You've yet to say anything except implying that there is a single, black-and- white moral compass that everyone is capable of following in its entirety. "

Wrong. Nobody but you has done that. You are the one demanding answers for how people square these things."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Unfortunately, the core business of Facebook, Twitter, and Google (driving engagement) is probably contributing to tearing the US apart politically. It's not just individual projects, it's at the very core of what they are. I don't see a happy ending here. I assume that the same thing is happening in other countries.

<comment><USER30> It turns out that a lot of deep-pocketed organizations are willing to pay a lot of money to tech companies in exchange for the capability to manipulate large populations of people.

The notion of a technology company selling products or services directly to customers hasn't gone away, but it's starting to feel quaint and nostalgic, like it belongs in a Norman Rockwell illustration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For the over the decade I've been a software engineer I've always strived to work in products with a value proposition for the end user that I can understand.

I can't understand how anyone could work without this understanding and not get their soul crushed. Maybe I'm just sensitive or underpaid.

<comment><USER32> Sometimes your don't have the luxury to choose your work.

<comment><USER33> Yes, but this is a much more rare scenario for techies than other white collar professionals.

<comment><USER32> Well that depends doesn't it. If you got skill and motivation to choose between gigs, that's fine, you'll most likely just start your own if you don't find anything fitting. Those you hear alot about.

Succeeding is not easier in tech than anything else, given that success means doing exactly what you want and feeling good about it.

I do interview people and try to find techies that fit in our org, but it's tough even if there's available people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unpopular opinion: this is why the "dudebros" and their like keep getting hired. They are more than happy to do their work, accept their salary, and move on, and not have to turn everything into "changing the world"

<comment><USER35> Even before the "dudebros", i'd argue most scientists and engineers didn't really care too much about the moral implications of their work. Guns, bombs etc... were all invented by brilliant minds, we'd like to think we as a society have collectively evolved cause we have small machines in our hands with all the world's knowledge but esp in the usa, looking outside you see that nothing has really changed that much in the way humans think.

<comment><USER36> > most scientists and engineers didn't really care too much about the moral > implications of their work

Have you considered that they might care very much about the moral implications of their work — and be _proud_ to contribute to their nation's armed might?

<comment><USER37> > to contribute to their nation's armed might

I would extend that to the hope for peace through strength (might).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> [Reposting my comment shared on the earlier thread, I guess this one wasn't marked as dupe]

"In June, more than 100 students at Stanford, M.I.T. and other top colleges signed a pledge saying they would turn down job interviews with Google unless the company dropped its Project Maven contract. (Google said that month that it would not renew the contract once it expired.) "We are students opposed to the weaponization of technology by companies like Google and Microsoft," the pledge stated. "Our dream is to be a positive force in the world. We refuse to be complicit in this gross misuse of power."

This is an incredibly powerful statement. A bunch of students getting together brought Google to its knees.

Now these brave students might consider standing up en masse to Facebook and its rapidly shrinking signing bonuses before FB moves too fast and breaks reality again.

<comment><USER39> I'm confused on both of your points.

1\. How is this powerful, in the slightest? 100 students is less than a rounding error.

2\. How are these students in any way brave?

<comment><USER38> 1\. Powerful in terms of impact. Google discontinued the project, no doubt due in some part to the protest.

2\. Brave in turning down lucrative job offers for moral reasons. Many, many engineers currently work at Big Tech co's with similar doubts and fears. But to risk your salary and job security on ethical grounds, that's what I call brave.

<comment><USER40> What you posted doesn't say they turned down job offers, it says they weren't going to interview at Google. Realistically, the only risk to them is if a company goes out of their way to look for that pledge during the hiring process, then decides not to hire them. They didn't lose a job or any income from what they did.

<comment><USER38> That's a fair distinction. Still, choosing not to interview at one of the top 2 highest-paying employers does indicate some sacrifice. I'm not saying we should nominate these guys for the Nobel peace prize, but their stance does merit some respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> We do? Maybe a tiny fringe does. Most tech workers want to know the same thing nytimes employees do. The salary and benefits. That's it. That's what workers care about at the end of the day.

Does the nytimes tech team ask "Why are we spamming HN everyday for"? I doubt it. They just do what they are paid to do.

The same thing for all tech workers and all workers in general. The construction worker building a luxury tower isn't asking "why are we building this for". He just wants to get paid and paid well.

"Do no evil" is no more real in the tech world as "fair and balanced" or "all the news fit to print" is real in the news world. It's just empty slogans for PR.

</comment><comment><USER42> They sure have strong opinions about working on Government projects but none of them have any issues creating tech that intrusively monitors and manipulates people for the purposes of serving them advertisements. What heroes they are...

<comment><USER43> You can directly blame the people who developed this stuff, the programmers, most perfectly able to move jobs with no real loss in economic stability.

I think it's one of the most immoral and unethical jobs that could be taken today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This trend is nothing more than a reflection of the fact that unemployment is at record lows. It does not represent a new, heightened morality in employees (that would persist even if the job market soured, for example).

</comment><comment><USER45> For money, my dear, for money. Is there any other reason for a company to exist? The stuff like "do no evil" or "we are green" is just a smoke screen. At the end they will do everything for money.

<comment><USER46> That has been the answer for last era. I think that's why tech workers are starting to ask what we're building it for. Because we're here at this point because building "for money" is no longer good enough. Because what's the point of having money when we're cancer ridden and polluting our planet, and despite living in a rich planet people are starving, and the very resources that feed us are being destroyed. What's the point of a pile of money when there is nothing else left?

<comment><USER47> > despite living in a rich planet people are starving

A overused rhetoric that does not hold much ground when you realize that poverty is decreasing fast everywhere around, and faster than we expected it to.

[https://ourworldindata.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/World-...](https://ourworldindata.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Since-1820.png)

<comment><USER48> The way we measure a "decreasing poverty" is extremely laden politically (like most things that are supposedly "neutrally evaluated" are supposed to be, just because they're represented as spreadsheets of numbers).

We consider that a villager living from subsistence farming and therefore having almost no use for money to be part of the very poor, less than 1$/day crowd.

Take this same peasant and send it working for some multinational company harvesting cocoa or sugar cane, under horrible, exploitative conditions for 2$ a day, and bam! poverty has been halved!

Ditto if you send him and his family in some shanty town collecting plastic on a rubbish pile, feeding on refuse : he's now making 3$ a day, poverty decreased again!

What is called "lifting out of poverty" is actually "making them a cog of a worldwide, money-based economy". That's a mixed blessing, to say the least.

<comment><USER49> If subsistence farming is preferable to being a cog in a market economy, why aren't people switching in the opposite direction?

<comment><USER50> Assume you live in a "first-world" nation, how do you propose to become a subsistence farmer?

<comment><USER9> Buy cheap land out in the middle of nowhere and start farming enough to provide food for yourself and some excess to pay expenses. There is a reason people don't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> You are building it for your salary, for shareholders, both private and public, and users.

There tends to be people who will screw over one or two of those groups to enrich the other group.

</comment><comment><USER52> Now?!

Tech is not only about coding away in a cubicle, what the company does is part of the job.

<comment><USER53> "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> _Computers are war machines._

They have other uses but their primary use has always been war. (Specifically code-cracking and modeling nuclear physics for weapon design.)

As a thought experiment, try to imagine an alternate reality where WWII never happened and Alan Turing is just an obscure British _queer_ mathematician. Would he have spawned the systems we have today? Or perhaps Konrad Zuse?

War drives the information revolution. We're in the middle of WWIII now.

If you don't want to contribute to the war machine you have to _leave computer industry_ and take up gardening, specifically _applied ecology_ such as "Permaculture".

</comment><comment><USER55> I think we're in a bear market for technology, in terms of people's sentiments. Possibly for America as well. I don't really think it's justified though. Most people seem to think you can only go work for FAANG if you have a CS degree, cause they're in the news all the time. If those companies conflict with your morals, there are lots of problems in the world that can benefit from technology. A look through the YC batch every few months has a wide variety of companies, many of which would benefit humanity if successful.

</comment><comment><USER56> Some tech workers. Not all, not most. This is more or less an editorial trying to get tech workers to think about implications, presumably to make them susceptible to politization so they can be more manipulated by news.

China presents a quandary, no doubt. On the one hand we have self determination and sovereignty, on the other hand we have "western values" and so forth. Not long ago "internationalists" argued for the former, but given that that would result in something contra, they now prefer "western values" which they used to argue against (i.e. relativism).

<comment><USER43> >This is more or less an editorial trying to get tech workers to think about implications, presumably to make them susceptible to politization so they can be more manipulated by news.

So you'd rather have an uninformed tech job force with no opinions, just walk into a private government every day which strips every right you have along with having absolutely no morals or ethics so you can live in a 34th story downtown penthouse with a mini australian shepherd and a Tesla?

You realize the tech workers literally do all of the tech work, which actually makes the company run and function, right? Why should they just be drones with no say?

This is exactly the problem. Do we just do this _solely_ for money? Maybe the world would be a better place if workers had a say instead of shareholders and executives who are only in their positions to make extraordinary amounts of money in absolutely any way, morals & ethics often aside.

<comment><USER56> I'm not for tech workers becoming drones. I'm for them being informed. I'm not for them to be moulded by mass media who see them as a tool to carry out their vision or idea if what's right or wrong.

You see, if informed tech workers were to make contrarian decisions, let's say with regard to domestic issues in the US and while informed they made a Libertarian decision, this decision would be derided never the less because it would deviate from mass media concensus.

Who decides and should decide about, for example produce?

Should the produce lady at the supermarket make the decision to stock conventional or organic, or consumer denand, of the owner/cooperative?

The produce lady gets paid to put whatever the buyer gets. The burger flipper doesn't decide ti buy frizen or from this or that ranch.

We get paid to do a job.

<comment><USER43> I don't see any "mass media" effecting tech workers. A lot of us are pretty smart & can critically think. I see employee's not aligning morally with drone & censorship projects which is absolutely 100% not a bad thing.

I am fortunate to work for a company that I know of does nothing immoral or unethical, but refuse to work for Amazon, Google, or Facebook regardless of their recruiting efforts because I know I don't align with them morally or ethically.

<comment><USER56> Fair enough. At this point I would not work for either as well. But that's how to make decisions, not by politicizing the work environment.

<comment><USER43> >not by politicizing the work environment.

What type of politics should be allowed at work? What about talks about workers rights, wages? What about conversation on ethics & morals behind projects they themselves are contributing to?

Do Libertarians believe authoritarian private governments akin to communist dictatorships (employers) can strip your rights when you clock in?

<comment><USER56> Are Chinese companies in China under duress? Are they protesting? Whats the consensus of the Chinese hoi polloi?

China is not "the west", their foundational philosophy is very different than ours. We can't expect their decisions to be exactly like ours.

Would I want to live under their confitions? No. Do Chinese on the other hand object? It's still playing itself out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Really interesting money vs ethics discussion. Everyone who can choose ethics, congratulations. Everyone who can't, it's a social failure that you have to make tough choice for financial goals.

</comment><comment><USER58> Each time a topic like this get posted to HN, I feel like a broken record repeating the same thing over and over.

There are many very talented software developers that have very different political and ethical opinions than those described here. They work for military and intelligence of their respective countries, enjoy it, and believe that they're doing it for greater good. You can debate whether they're right or not, but please, don't forget that they exist - and that there are a LOT of them.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think people should do what they want and I find these articles meaningless. Don't like your company's values? Great, find another job. It's as simple as that.

Let's not shame people for wanting to stick with a company. Everyone has their reasons to stay whether it's money, values, working environment, co-workers or personal reasons. If you really cared, shouldn't you try to change the company from within? Isn't that the best place to start?

<comment><USER59> Whatever the issue is you can always find haters, I think its better to make oneself immune to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> > According to Dr. Poulson, Mr. Dean said that Google complied with > surveillance requests from the federal government and asked rhetorically if > the company should leave the United States market in protest.

How clueless can you be? People can and will die if you cooperate and share private information on your users with the Chinese government.

</comment><comment><USER61> This isn't a novel concept. Didn't anyone see Real Genius?

</comment><comment><USER62> Google management gave too much freedom and independence to its techies and now they think they run the company.

<comment><USER63> Well, that's what happens when you have an engineering-driven organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The article gives no measure of how many tech workers have adopted this mindset. It seems to largely be a narrative driven by journalists and a relatively small number of activists in some of the more high-profile tech companies (who are simultaneously pushing a number of unrelated issues like unionization, diversity, deplatforming conservatives, #resisting, and introducing identity politics into hiring and promotion decisions).

<comment><USER65> Yeah, that seems to be how the media writes stories now. They overhear a friend of theirs mention something (or maybe somehow dream up the idea on their own), say "gee, that'd make a good article!", find 2 or 3 individual examples, preferably anecdotes, so they can pad the article length and make it seem legitimate, don't bother trying to show evidence for their hypothesis with any facts (or find some tangential fact about something else that they can invent some sort of bridge between that and their idea), and write the article. If the headline can be more salacious, the better.

I keep seeing more and more articles written this way nowadays. It gets really annoying to see an interesting headline, click it hoping to read a good argument for their case, and then feeling I just wasted my time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I work in EdTech and would like to think that there is always $ for the kids.

</comment><comment><USER67> "We are students opposed to the weaponization of technology.." \- good luck with that! have they wondered which government departments financed the growth of tech in the Cold War ?

</comment><comment><USER68> since when capitalism wants workers to be aware? oh yeah, since China Communist party do a demonstration on technologycal superiority. Problem for capitalism is that a system where workers are awakened is called SOCIALISM.

</comment><comment><USER69> _bold statement alert_

if you don't know what your company is doing, and your intricate part in that dance, you are not really providing value to the company, or more importantly to yourself.

 _/ bold statement_

How can you make decisions if you don't understand the business impact? How do you know what if that optimization is worth the cost of implementation? If you don't know the impact of a product release on your customers, what are you really doing?

To say that as a tech person "I don't know the business side" you are being deliberately ignorant. "business" is simple[1]. You are being just as annoying at those useless managers who demand x feature yesterday and don't bother to think about the ramifications.

1)It really is, you are trying to make people give you cash for something. that might be things like food, or vapour (ie initial coin offerings). The mechanics are the same, monetary units in exchange for goods or services. To attach a special mystique to the process is to give power to charlatans. (see repacking of subprime debt)

TL;DR:

If you don't know what your buisness does, you are like the idiot manager dilbert.

<comment><USER70> Not necessarily true in big companies. A devops middle manager doesn't need to know whether the company is building widgets or dohickies; their job is to keep the software running securely. CTO/VP Eng should certainly know more about business priorities.

At smaller companies it is more important. Also can improve morale.

<comment><USER69> so how do you negotiate SLAs?

How do you know what level of security is required?

How do you prioritise requests?

How do you know which team to ask favours from?

How do you get more money for your department?

How do you avoid the poop-gravity interaction cycle?

All of this is intrinsically linked to the business logic/goals of the company.

For example: Our team worked with $cashCow team to reduce time to live by x percent. We have saved the company y percent a year. Now give our team more cash we can do it for other teams.

That requires a basic understanding of the business, and its priorities, so you can support the most important internal users and make them more efficient.

<comment><USER70> poop-gravity whaaa?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Workers can ask, until 2008 happens again. Then, free sodas and a lot of workers will go. Ask then :)

</comment><comment><USER72> I suspect there are plenty of people working on nasty adtech still ...

Also, tech workers can often be replaced by others (e.g. Asians) who have different standards when offered the same salary.

</comment><comment><USER73> What the widget does or whom it is for is not my main concern. What is my concern is interesting puzzles for problem solving before I move on to the next widget. Widget building at a startup in not it as I won't make a profit. I want to see the money in my bank account every two weeks so I can put food on the table.

In the words of Jerry McGuire: Show me the $$$!

</comment><comment><USER74> The idealism of a bunch of engineers won't make the slightest difference, except may be appease their own sense of morality, as long as there are enough engineers willing to be tech-whores. In this regard, the supply exceeds the demand.

Technology is the proverbial knife which can cut a fruit to feed and can also cut a throat to terrorize. Take the current darling of tech, AI/ML. If you are working on this, at a megacorp especially, you should realize that sooner or later it will be used for nefarious activities. But should that stop you from contributing to the field? Would database engineers rue the fact that their products are used to store child porn?

My point is, unless something as explicit as the ones depicted in the article happens, its highly unlikely to know what the tech you are developing is going to be adapted for besides the one it was designed and built for. The google employee notes it themselves. Having ethical concerns is always advisable, but constantly wanting to know if the tech will be used by evil doers (which is not same as wanting to know more about a specific requirement that looks questionable) just makes one come across as a dick because no one except the powers that be would know that.

I hope engineers don't go from being sheep to full on hippies, but choose the rational middle path instead.</comment>


Ask HN: Strategies for single source HTML5 mobile apps? - <AUTHOR>

Is it even possible? Most of the js toolkits like Jquery Mobile say they are cross platform and cross device ready, but none of them actually look and feel like a WEB app (They look awesome on desktop browsers but you probably need a little more on a desktop web app). The widgets and buttons look nice on mobile devices but I was wondering have people actually built applications with single source and if so how and what were some UI design strategies and methods you employed. <comment><USER2> I recently wrote about our experience with jQuery Mobile and Sencha Touch. Have a read - [http://blog.roveb.com/post/17259708005/our-experience- with-j...](http://blog.roveb.com/post/17259708005/our-experience-with-jquery- mobile-and-sencha-touch)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks that is helpful. Surprised to see no other replies. I would have hoped many people doing single source apps.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feedback, tools and libraries along with any live examples will be very helpful.</comment>


Google Invests in $300M Submarine Cable to Improve Connection Between Japan, US - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/11/google-invests-in-300m-submarine-cable-to-improve-connection-between-japan-and-the-us/?ncid=rss <comment><USER6> Obligatory link to "Mother Earth, Motherboard" whenever submarine cables are mentioned:

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html)

Best 50 page article you'll read this year.

<comment><USER7> This really makes me nostalgic.

I miss the days when Wired actually had decent content.

<comment><USER8> Well, journalism was also a good middle-class job back then. Magazines don't pay like they used to. Like upfront budgets to write a high-quality long piece.

Reading Hunter S Thompsons letters from the 60s as a freelance journalist you can tell he was able to spend time writing quality articles, with the odd hack job thrown in for extra cash. I highly doubt there are many full-time journos left like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would love to see Google do this for Australia and New Zealand as well. Both countries are at the end of the line (so-to-speak) and would benefit greatly from something like this. Our Internet is pretty rubbish and expensive, and while that might be in part due to limited choice of ISP's, archaic Government policies and equipment, bandwidth is a HUGE problem.

<comment><USER10> Australia yes, but please don't include New Zealand in that! Our internet is roaring along thanks to enlightened regulation and significant government investment. We're half-way through rolling out a GPON fibre network which will cover 75% of the population by 2019. I'm on 100/50mbit fibre right now, looking forward to a 1000/500 upgrade before the end of the year - <USER2> uncapped and unshaped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what the difference is in the technology of the 3.3TB/s cable and the 60TB/c cable, just strands? (approx 20 more?)

<comment><USER12> That jumped out at me too. My wild guess is that the older fiber is a 10G system, the new one is 40G.

From [1] > Unity cable system consists of eight fiber pairs, has design capacity up to 7.68 Tbps, with each fiber pair operating at 96x10G DWDM system.

From [2] > the SJC cable system consists of 6 fiber pairs with the initial design capacity of 28 terabits per second,

Taking a guess that there are 96x40Gb/s x 6 fibers gets you to 23 Tb/s, so in the right ballpark. (Wavelength spacing on a fiber is different between 40G and 10G, so this is a bit of a shot in the dark.)

Caveat: 40G used to be near and dear to my heart (Big Bear Networks), so everything pretty much looks like that nail to my hammer.

[1] [http://submarinenetworks.com/systems/trans- pacific/unity](http://submarinenetworks.com/systems/trans-pacific/unity) [2] [http://www.globe.com.ph/press-room/globe-regional- connectivi...](http://www.globe.com.ph/press-room/globe-regional-connectivity)

<comment><USER13> Nope this will be 100G per wave not 40G. 40G was a stop-gap technology that never really shipped in large volume. With the advent of coherent optical, everyone just went to 100G (eg. Infinera, Ciena, Alcatel-Lucent)

EDIT: One caveat, depending on a particular link many of these systems will run at half-rate. A lot of legacy cables today are running BPSK at 50G in 2 waves (25G/wave) due to nonlinearities.

<comment><USER12> > Nope this will be 100G per wave not 40G.

Do you have a link for this? Interesting news if true. Also: Things running at 50G used to be OC768 with error correction, ie 40G of data + 10G of overhead. Has this changed? At some point, the framers have to deal with standardized bitstreams, so is the 50G one part of an inverse mux or combined up from 10G?

Edit: It's been a while. Sorry for the bazillion questions, but curiousity is getting the better of me. Are folks really running 100G coherent undersea currently?

<comment><USER13> See for example: [http://newswire.telecomramblings.com/2013/01/telstra- global-...](http://newswire.telecomramblings.com/2013/01/telstra-global-and- infinera-first-to-demonstrate-soft-decision-fec-over-4200km-hawaii-to- california-submarine-link/)

So you have to separate the "wet" plant from the terminal gear. The speed of the terminal gear is completely disconnected from the wet plant these days. Nobody replaces wet plant to upgrade capacity. They run Ciena, Infinera, Alcatel gear over Tyco's old line system.

Essentially the issue with upgrading over the wet plant is basically the presence of nonlinearities on the fiber. The links are not noise limited. Some of these fibers are still running 10G OOK in half the band and that on NZ-DSF that's used for submarine cables basically causes huge nonlinear penalties. The new subsea fiber is 22ps/nm-km and essentially larger effective diameter for reducing nonlinear penalty.

[http://www.corning.com/opticalfiber/products/vascade_fibers....](http://www.corning.com/opticalfiber/products/vascade_fibers.aspx)

BTW, I also worked at BBN

<comment><USER12> > See for example:

Thanks for the link. I confess I'm a little amazed that Infinera is the basis for running 100G coherent single wavelengths. That's great progress. (Edit- See below)

> Essentially the issue with upgrading over the wet plant is basically the > presence of nonlinearities on the fiber

Yes, and there's great incentive to utilize legacy fiber if possible.

(BTW I managed to screw up my comment above when I edited. I had written: Usually the undersea guys are a generation behind, partly because of the need to send a destroyer-looking ship out for any repairs.)

> BTW, I also worked at BBN

Hello! and hope all is well, whoever you are. :)

Edit: The infinera 500G PIC in the PR from Telstra is running its basic bitstreams at 25G and muxing them up - [http://www.lightreading.com/optical/dwdm/infinera- unleashes-...](http://www.lightreading.com/optical/dwdm/infinera-unleashes- coherent-100g/d/d-id/689914)

<comment><USER13> Yes. It's a 100G service though. Infinera runs on 25G spacing so at 25G dual wave dual polarization is 100G in the same spectral efficiency as single wave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That seems really cheap for such a crucial piece of infrastructure that has to wrap a quarter of the way around the earth

<comment><USER15> While manufacturing the cable is expensive, actually laying it (in that particular part of the ocean) is not that challenging. They essentially just drive a ship along that path while slowly spooling out the cable from the rear. They have the advantage that that stretch of ocean doesn't contain much of anything to plan around.

<comment><USER6> Anyone interested in the process (or just loves captivating writing about technical subjects), read [http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html). Can't recommend it enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A sensor array along the cable line monitoring marine health would yield a data goldmine.

<comment><USER17> Totally. But who's willing to pay for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This might be an absurd question, but I can't think of a better place to ask it.

In my mind there's a huge mental disconnect between computers (servers/personal computers) and infrastructure like this.

Could someone provide insight on when/how these types of high-throughput cables are used? How the process is managed, by who, and how on earth all those bits are lined up at such a high speed.

I understand they're core to the structure of the internet, but I couldn't explain how information ends up in them to my grandmother.

edit: looks like the linked wired article is a good place to start

<comment><USER19> Routers. Routers everywhere...

The internet is broken up into different networks, each one being an 'Atonomous System' (AS). These networks are all connected to other ASes at various interconnection points, such as an Internet Exchange (IX) or another point-of-presence (PoP). At these points, a router on the edge of one network is connected to a router on the edge of another.

These 'edge' or 'border' routers talk to each other with a protocol called BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). This lets them 'advertise' all the routes that you can reach through that router to other routers (like, "hey, you can get to 126.96.36.199/16 at cost x through me").

Internally, each AS will also use an internal routing protocol, such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) or iBGP (the internal version of Border Gateway Protocol) to internally advertise this information along with information about how to get between internal routers to work out where to go. So if you have a packet at your grandmother's house, it will hit the first router that her cable or DSL is connected to, use something like OSPF to work out the best (fastest) path through the network to a border router, and then from there the best (probably cheapest!) path to the destination based on the information it got from neighboring routers with BGP.

This is because there are two ways that ASes will interconnect - <USER3> peering, where you say "we'll let you send traffic into your network for free if we can send data into yours", and transit, where you actually pay. There may be two paths to get to your destination, and one might be shorter but more expensive in transit, so the cheaper path might get chosen, depending on the priorities of the ISP.

An undersea cable is usually internal to an AS. Typically though, it's not actually the whole cable, but one or more _wavelengths_ through it - <USER4> example, some cables have up to ~128 different wavelengths (colours) of light going through them - each 1, 10, 40 or 100Gbps. So a cable operator usually doesn't actually handle any data transfer but just sell wavelengths to different providers. Each one usually has a separate laser and then they are all multiplexed by a piece of optical equipment into a fibre strand. This method of sending multiple wavelengths is called _dense wavelength division multiplexing_.

<comment><USER18> This is fascinating. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Chinese mainland will not see significant international speed improvements until the government decides people should see significant international speed improvements. Keeping things slow and unreliable, especially in peak times, is a form of subsidy for local internet-related business and therefore for government control. Subtle, but hugely effective when push comes to shove: more so than firewalling.

</comment><comment><USER21> Following the tip to Stephenson's article, here's also a really good book, 'The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers'.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Victorian-Internet-Remarkable- Nine...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Victorian-Internet-Remarkable- Nineteenth/dp/0802716040)

</comment><comment><USER22> Why only 6 strands? Doesn't it make more sense to put more fiber in there?

</comment><comment><USER23> I say this without any knowledge of the profitability of such a venture, and as someone who does not live in Australia but who is familiar with the running joke that they have poor Internet:

How about run a new cable, or two, to Australia?

<comment><USER24> From what I understand, Australia's poor internet service is more due to poor ISPs and government meddling than the quality or quantity of the backbone.

<comment><USER25> The cables are pretty limited in both number and capacity. Just compare Australia with Japan for example: [http://www.cablemap.info/](http://www.cablemap.info/)

<comment><USER26> Poor inter continental connections dont explain data caps INSIDE their uber fiber national network, do they?

<comment><USER10> No, those are explained by the average consumer not having a clue whether website X is national or international. Seperate billing has been tried in some places, AFAIK always abandoned because it confused customers and made them feel like they were getting screwed over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> On a slight offtopic note, I wonder why Japanese websites are still stuck in the mid 90s to early year 2000 style. One example of this is the imageboard type of websites, which interestingly enough has caught on here in the US.

I wonder if these better connectivity will bring more cross culture web designs or applications to both places.

<comment><USER26> Japanese are very egocentric and insular.

There was a story on Hackaday about Japanese Hackers simply ignoring English speaking part of the internet. Those are Hackers hacking on something in a Hackerspace, people on the forefront of open minded thinking.

<comment><USER28> Am I to understand then that there is a parallel online hacking community populated by Japanese-speakers? I have never really run across this, just blogs randonly-dispersed.

<comment><USER29> Of course there is! After all, the majority of Japanese developers don't speak English.

There's also a lot of offline activity: meetups, study groups and (less commonly) hackathons.

For example, look at JAWS-UG (Japan AWS User Group)'s schedule:

[http://jaws-ug.jp/](http://jaws-ug.jp/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this will improve connection to South Korea as well. Browsing .de websites from here involves a trip around the world, Seoul - San Jose - <USER5> York - London - Frankfurt for an average ping of 300ms.

<comment><USER31> Increases in bandwidth aren't going to lower latency. This path may be slightly more direct than an alternate cable system, but as long as your going through the US, the connection will never be able to go bellow ~200ms between South Korea and Germany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 60tbs is such a huge amount of bandwidth. That is the equivalent of 1 million 50mbps wifi connections. Imagine having a single WiFi network with 1 million people all within 25ms latency of one another.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone want to take a guess at Google's motive (other than goodwill)? Better access to East Asian customers?

<comment><USER34> I've been living in Japan and access across the pond is a bit flaky at times. Most of the time I can blame my local service provider (a sharehouse) for their piece of shit router, but there are countless numbers of times when a stream will suddenly cut or a connection will just time out for no good reason (while other simultaneous connections even across the ocean are fine).

<comment><USER33> Ah, thanks for the background info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> (USA) Just wanted to point out that "BTW" is most commonly expected to be an acronym for "by the way" whereas the shorthand for "between" is typically written "b/w"

edit: title has been fixed! :)

<comment><USER36> Ugh. I don't know how we missed that. (Edit: fixed.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: ONNX-Based ML Deployments - <AUTHOR> https://basejumperapi.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! We're working on a tool for deploying machine learning.

We aim to be the fastest and easiest way to bring ML to production and would love any feedback that helps us achieve this goal.</comment>


One Page Websites and Landing Pages Catalog - <AUTHOR> http://onepagelove.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a huge proponent of one-page websites for a variety of scenarios. I find that browsing existing examples is one of the best ways to get inspiration and ideas for what is possible.

It's also interesting to browse the source to get a feel for what's easily / hardly possible with different frameworks and how some things are implemented.</comment>


Apparent Evidence for Hawking Points in the CMB Sky - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.01740 <comment><USER2> I would be very sceptical of data analysis papers with Penrose's name on them.

Penrose & Gurzadyan committed this travesty:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706](https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3706)

...and the entire CMB analysis community quickly rushed to point out the numerous basic errors done in the statistical analysis.

E.g. [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/733/2/L2...](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/733/2/L29/meta)

Gurzadyan & Penrose wrote the kind of paper that should never have passed basic peer review. And even when "everyone" pointed out Gurzadyan does not have a clue about data analysis they still stuck to it.

I have no idea about this paper and if Penrose has found a better data analyst to collaborate with this time. Just be aware that while Penrose may be brilliant about the things he knows something about, his name on a data analysis paper is not any guarantee about the data analysis being sound.

Edit: Another less polite and clearer exposition of Gurzadyan's "methods" [https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2012/02/aa17344-...](https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2012/02/aa17344-11/aa17344-11.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Never trust experimental evidence presented by the author of the theory that it validates.

However, if subsequently verified by others - wow - instant Nobel Prize for Sir Roger.

<comment><USER4> Yeah they've found concentric circles in the CMB too that turned out to be not statistically significant, but it's definitely a neat theory.

<comment><USER2> "Turned out to be not statistically significant" is a very polite way of saying it... they initially said "up to 6 sigma significance", while it was obvious to anyone in the field that the data analysis in the paper was borderline crackpot.

Example of a Gurzadyan takedown. See my comment on OP for more links.

[https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2012/02/aa17344-...](https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2012/02/aa17344-11/aa17344-11.html)

<comment><USER5> How would you recommend someone to get up to speed on data reduction to the point where they would be able to recognize such errors and know how to tease out a signal without making similar mistakes?

<comment><USER2> Well I did a PhD in CMB analysis so that is how I know. Not sure if such things will ever be controllable by people who are not researchers in the field (or at least doing similar kind of data analysis). It is a shame the peer review system cannot be relied on more; I hope a revolution happens there (on the line of "N accredited researchers trust/distrust this paper").

<comment><USER5> What I'm getting at is: surely this is a transferable skill that is not specific to the field in question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some background, including (and kudos to the eds) a paragraph on the above- linked paper of 6 August:

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

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm completely uninformed on this, but I thought that in order to evaporate completely, a black hole must first shrink until it is very small, at which point the amount of energy released by its final disappearance would be rather a small amount irrespective of the original size. Why would the original size of it make any difference?

<comment><USER8> The fine abstract says:

> in CCC this radiation is enormously concentrated by the conformal > compression of the entire future of the black hole

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation in [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycles_of_Time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycles_of_Time) \- This would indeed be a fantastic find

</comment><comment><USER10> A recent video (with original authors) on this topic [0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVDJJVoTx7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVDJJVoTx7s)

</comment><comment><USER11> tldr; similar to [http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Question](http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Question) ?

</comment><comment><USER12> Could this be evidence of Information panspermia?

<comment><USER13> No. Entirely different area of science (biology vs cosmology) and nothing to do with that.

<comment><USER14> But that's the thing with information panspermia isn't? You beam genetic information via quasars across universes, which then somehow magically turn back into people.

It's indistinguishable from magic, only it's got some math trappings. I read this, and it struck me as basically the 20th century equivalent of demonology and angelology, which was basically just religion fanfic with some feudlistic political science thrown on top. (If God is the king, who is the viscount?)

<comment><USER5> Eh, it's not totally crackpot. If you knew something about the physics and initial conditions of the child universe you could "stir the pot" enough with your signal (whatever mechanism it is) to trigger natural processes of complexity formation which eventually leads to life (e.g. make sure galaxies form fast enough in the early universe to create heavy metals before inflation pulls everything apart), then project a compressed scan of your consciousness as a signal on the background radiation. Eventually intelligent life will form, find it, get curious about its structure, decipher it, and simulate it.

Makes good hard science fiction. Not something I'd give high priors for having actually happened, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't look.

<comment><USER14> But information isn't physical. I download the human genome, I don't get a clone of Craig Venter. I get some mosfets that were manufactured in a factory set. There's no mechanism that even makes sense for any of this. It's basically "But if I multiply time by -1..." There's no evidence for any of this, and no plausible mechanism of these pre-initial conditions to come about. It's just magic people from outside the universe.

That's the thing that makes it crackpot.

Sure Penrose did some good science before, but this isn't it. This is just bullshit. It happens. Tesla made a lot of discoveries with alternating current, and high voltage electricity, but then he died convinced he was talking to a martian civilization, and was on the cusp inventing a death ray. Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, but in they're later years abandoned molecular biology and started to embrace various quackery that tarnished their legacy.

<comment><USER5> If you download a connectome scan of Craig Venter, you _do_ get Craig Venter. You're reasoning from a bad analogy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Share price of the publisher of the Witcher game goes +8% after tweeting *beep* - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.pl/search?q=WSE:+CDR <comment><AUTHOR> The tweet URL: [https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/951091371200466944](https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/951091371200466944)</comment>


Ask HN: Best tools for scheduling emails with gmail? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hey, [https://mixmax.com/](https://mixmax.com/) has scheduling.

[http://www.boomeranggmail.com/](http://www.boomeranggmail.com/) has it as a main feature.

Also [http://www.getsidekick.com/](http://www.getsidekick.com/) will add it soon.

If in doubt, check: [https://zen.market/?q=schedule%20emails](https://zen.market/?q=schedule%20emails)

</comment><comment><USER3> I highly recommend Mixmax (admittedly biased; co-founder here :-P). It offers a ton of free features beyond just scheduling emails. You also get unlimited email tracking for free and can put message enhancements in your email (things like link previews, polls, surveys, meeting invites).

</comment><comment><USER4> I use my own simple google apps script. Has a benefit of working with any mail program: [https://github.com/vitaly/gmail- later](https://github.com/vitaly/gmail-later)

With gmail keyboard shortcuts work like a charm.

<comment><USER5> This seems like a cool way to hide received emails until some time in the future.

I read the OP's ambiguous question as meaning they wanted to write emails now, which would be sent later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.Yesware.com](http://www.Yesware.com). I believe the free version only gives you so many though.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.rightinbox.com/](http://www.rightinbox.com/) as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.boomeranggmail.com/](http://www.boomeranggmail.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Does that have a tracking device? I had to get rid of sidekick because it was alerting recipients with a red warning inside their emails.

<comment><USER8> Not by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google Inbox also has the "boomerang" style feature of snoozing emails.

You can't schedule emails to be sent, however.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.followupthen.com](http://www.followupthen.com)</comment>


New Zeland bans all military-style semi-automatic guns and assault rifles - sahin-boydas https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2019/mar/21/new-zealand-shooting-jacinda-ardern-to-make-policy-announcement-live-updates <comment><AUTHOR> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19450772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19450772)

</comment><comment> identity-haver Is a "military-style" gun kind of like a "sports-style" car? Snark aside, this is some pretty weak reporting. Was their parliament or whatever involved at all? The article makes it sound like their prime minister can just arbitrarily ban guns, creating crimes, but I doubt that's really the case. Also the term "buyback" is a really bad term, since it usually implies a voluntary nature. This is really a "forced buyback" or confiscation.

<comment><USER2> That's the same type of reporting I've seen everywhere. "New Zealand bans guns" — can a single PM even do that? Is there any debate in their parliament regarding the move? Do citizens have the same constitutional protections there as they do here w.r.t. gun ownership?

It's almost like the headlines are written in such a way as to say "See? It's just that easy!"

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_New_Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_New_Zealand) : apparently NZ has a UK-style uncodified constitution. I think the only country that defines weapon ownership as a right is the US?

<comment><USER4> Off the top of my head, Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala all have a "Right to Bear Arms" in some form. It's widely ignored in Mexico, though.

I also know that there are several countries where firearms are widely available to private citizens, both in their homes and in public, such as the Czech Republic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More details from the NYT: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/world/asia/new- zealand-gu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/world/asia/new-zealand-gun- ban.html)

This does not yet have Parliamentary approval, but is expected to pass. It includes mandatory buybacks, but since they do not have a gun registry law they will have some challenges measuring compliance.

<comment><USER4> Only "Class E" firearms are themselves registered, to my knowledge. A holder of a less permissive license can purchase very similar firearms, so long as they are modified to be in compliance (e.g., have a thumb-hole stock instead of a traditional pistol grip) and they only use 7-round magazines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> New Zealand has fallen.

</comment><comment><USER7> Correction: Military only.

<comment><USER2> Military "style" only. I can't find where they make that distinction.

<comment><USER8> Probably means anything that looks like it was designed after 1940. The Australian Gun Control lobby is calling for bans on "military style" bolt action and lever action rifles. These were military rifles at the end of the 19th century. "military style" means whatever they want to ban.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What happened to the "no politics" policy of HN?

<comment><USER10> If you think a post is inappropriate for HN, you can flag it.

<comment><USER9> Only after a certain score, I think. Also, not the point of policies, or is it?</comment></comment></comment>


What professions are oversaturated? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/04/what-professions-are-oversaturated.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I note that "programmer" and various related or adjacent fields are nominated by no one.

<comment><USER2> The oversubscription of a job is basically the result of perceived sexiness divided by the perceived difficulty. So find a job that's very sexy (CEO, Film Actor), or easy to start practising (pro-sports [also very sexy], service industry).

"Programmer" is a bit vague, Web Designer is sexier than Database Manager, and this is reflected in the market saturation, and hence average pay.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Family photo sharing service - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR
Daughter was born. Want to share pictures with out of town parents. Want the pictures to be private. Pictures are able to be seen by people I have sent a URL.
---
I was blessed with a daughter on June 23rd and my wife and I love taking pictures of her. Both of our parents live out of town so we need a convenient way to share pictures with them.
Ultimately I would love something that I can organize pictures into an album, keep that album private, and share it with others by sending them a URL. We are very private by nature, so I wouldn't want the pictures to be public.
I discounted Instagram because of their Terms of Service (grant of license).
We are currently using Flickr but I find the interface horrific: trying to add my Mom as "Family" was a insane. Thankfully she was already a Flickr user otherwise I would have had to get them to sign up -- from what I understand. And having to set the perms for each individual picture, as opposed to an entire album, is a little too fine grained for the use case.
Thank you very much in advance. <comment><USER2> Google drive? Add all the photos to a folder, set the sharing permission to "anyone with the link" (or your parent's google accounts).

</comment><comment><USER3> How about Dropbox or Google Photos?</comment>


"Why is such a basic spreadsheet function still not available?" - <AUTHOR> http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/TUltIeMntog

<comment><USER2> At this point it seems fairly obvious that Google isn't planning for Google Docs to compete with Excel on features. Rather, they've figured out some ratio of power users to non-power-users (like the oft-repeated claim that 80% of the users only use 20% of the features but in Excel's case I suspect the ratio is even higher) and they've decided to implement only the basic features used by non-power-users.

I'm not sure why Google bothers to have a 'share an idea' forum when they have no intention of implementing the 80% features. It's bound to be a magnet for complaints when feature requests get ignored.

<comment><USER3> _It 's bound to be a magnet for complaints when feature requests get ignored_

Maybe that's the idea, like the Close Door button on an elevator that really does nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The feelings of entitlement harbored by some of those posters is astonishing.

<comment><USER5> Thats the great thing about making your money from advertising...you can always take away products at the drop of a hat or if anyone complains you have the "you get what you paid for" defense... eventually humans will begin to realize that their focus, attention, and metadata is of value and you rarely get something for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suppose the real answer is to just use Excel. The last time I used Google's spreadsheet was probably about 2 to 3 years ago and there were major deficiencies then. I used the spreadsheet in Open Office/Libre Office for awhile. And then I went back to Excel. It has been refreshing.

<comment><USER7> Google Sheets has changed quite a bit over those "2 to 3 years", being a web app and all, Excel hasn't. I suggest taking second glance.

<comment><USER8> > Google Sheets has changed quite a bit over those "2 to 3 years", being a web > app and all, Excel hasn't.

Excel 2013 actually has changed from Excel 2010.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps, I doubt the change was as dramatic though, considering it's not just the app itself that underwent transformation but also browsers and the web platform as a whole. But then again we're talking about spreadsheet software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Although I appreciate what Ted J is trying to do, I think he's missing the point. When 50 users say "we really need this feature", the answer rarely is "you don't need it, you only think you do because you've always been wrong about it".

<comment><USER8> Ted J never says that they don't need it; he does try to provide workarounds given that they don't have it yet and don't have a timeline.</comment></comment>