Why you'll want everyone you know to wear Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://lehrblogger.com/2013/07/16/ok-glass-build-a-social-network/ <comment><USER3> If it's prediction time, here's mine: The time of hyper-multitasking, constant broadcasting of minute details to even the most distant acquaintances is over; the big luxury will be being able to spend uninterrupted time on a single, meaningful thing, without being constantly interrupted by emails/tweets/fb messages/chats etc. People rent cabins in the forest to get things done - <USER2> they got those things done and might serve as inspirational role models for others.

Even Hackernews could be considered as support for this view, as it tends to encourage people to use the long, well-thought form instead of the quick snip. The most useful posts that I read here must have taken its writers more than an hour (admittedly, this is not one of those brilliant posts).

If Google Glass succeeds - and it is possible that it does, then it will most certainly not be based on the immediate exchange of images with others a long way away. If a picture is worth taking and worth sending, it is worth getting out the smartphone or camera. At least in my generation very few people have time and the wish to constantly interrupt their work or play to check yet another sunset in NY/Shanghai/Rio.

But maybe that is truly a generational thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see these two futures as necessarily incompatible, and could certainly use more time alone in cabins. But sometimes it's better to both relax and be productive _with_ other people, and technology is good for removing the constraint that those people be in the same place. Maybe Glass won't be a device on which we receive minute social updates, but it can still be useful for the same reasons a telephone is useful. Maybe it could even have a similar busy signal, so you're not interrupted if you're already talking to someone.

I think the 'worth' of a picture depends on the circumstances – people take many more pictures than they did twenty years ago, now that we don't need to get the film developed – and a further simplification of the process might lower the threshold further. A pretty sunset is a pretty sunset, but the pretty sunset from someone you love halfway around the world is something different. An interesting thing about Glass is that it minimizes the duration of the interruption needed to both send and receive that sunset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've stayed out of this debate so far for various reasons, but there is a specific privacy issue with Glass that I haven't noticed anyone else raising yet.

It is inevitable that Google Glass will have real time facial recognition, whether Google wants them to or not ([http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/11/google- glass-...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/11/google-glass-facial- recognition)). Or, that a similar product offering that capability hits the market once Glass becomes popular enough.

If you are a felon, or have ever been arrested on an accusation of a serious crime, that is a future that you're not excited about. If you've ever been in the media -- even on a purely local basis -- for anything salacious, that's not a future you can be excited about. You can probably get Google Image Search results for "[your county] arrested" (worked for a couple of counties that I sampled at random); there are websites like mugshots.com that republish mug shots and details of the arrest.

As it is now, the only thing that ex-cons and others in similar situations have going for them is the relatively short attention span of the public and a vanishingly small support network of other ex-cons and people willing to give them another chance.

The rest of society, for the most part, regards them as unequal citizens (and in some cases, sub-human, depending on the offense).

An apartment complex might choose to rent to an ex-con for some reason; once the technology is available, management will have to deal with outraged neighbors and many apartment complexes will simply stop renting to them. An employer might give someone a job but not disclose that person's personal history to their co-workers; if the technology becomes ubiquitous enough, that will stop being an option too.

I don't think the technology itself is inherently bad. But, I don't think society has yet reached a point of maturity where it can gracefully handle this.

<comment><USER5> Can we discuss why mugshots.com is still the top result? Their main pitch is:

UNPUBLISHING SERVICE FROM

THE MUGSHOTS.COM DATABASE

HOURS OF OPERATION: 7AM -11PM EST

Which seems to be extortion. If they were a group of people deeply concerned about convicts in their midsts that would be a different issue, but they seem to be running a "pay us and we'll go away" business model, which it seems reasonable to beliebe the search engines should punish in the same way they do content farms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >>Google should ... rather develop it as a novel device for directed, private communication.

Private in what way? Private between us and Google? Private between us and Google and the NSA?

This blog post ignores the reality before our very eyes, something we don't need Google Glass for. It is merely another data acquisition tool for Google and any usefulness beyond that is incidental.

<comment><USER7> There are many Googlers here, you know :) You either talk about G positively or not at all.

The glass is the most Orwellian thing I've ever heard of. The only thing that could beat it would be direct brain interfaces, capable of stealing thoughts.

<comment><USER8> it is amusing that you mentioned this because google's business strategy is to steadily erode the privacy of all human beings and monetize it at each step. they can try to dance around this all day with marketing and it doesn't matter.

it's only a matter of time before the glass hardware has an attachment that reads your mind so you exert even less effort than currently, e.g. blinking. google will then take that data and sell it to marketers, the USG, and whoever else they can, so everyone knows what you're going to think before you think it. google predictive thinking... so sad.

<comment><USER9> _" google's business strategy is to steadily erode the privacy of all human beings and monetize it at each step"_

I wonder if most Googlers have faced up to this reality yet?

Or if they simply don't care, or think the money, perks, and "cool stuff" that they get to work on makes it all worth it?

<comment><USER8> i think most people are unwilling to acknowledge such a problem with their business strategy exists, and if they do acknowledge it, are unwilling or unable to grasp the full extent of the problem. google, like many large organizations, hides malicious actions behind a veil of complexity. "don't be evil" is certainly a matter of perspective.

i will refrain from citing other examples of hiding behind the veil of complexity since i don't want to "poke the bear" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't want to be recorded. At All!!

No video, no audio, no photographs. NOTHING!!

Take your Glass somewhere else. I am off-limits.

<comment><USER11> I also don't want to be recorded by convenience store or shopping mall cctv, or by repo man ANPR, or by red light / speeding cameras.

We've lost that argument though.

What I would like to see, is for there to be appropriate responsibility assumed by the people taking advantage of the privilege of recording everything. I eagerly await the first few court cases where someone drunkenly records and uploads to youtube something that they _really_ shouldn't have, and a judge and jury decides it's entirely appropriate to hold Glass-wearers to account for what they choose to record and publish.

<comment><USER12> I'm genuinely curious: why don't you want to be recorded at malls et al?

What's the difference between such surveillance and a security guard wondering around looking for suspicious activity and/or protecting shoppers/businesses?

Surely, it can be abused, but it can also help protect "suspicious" individuals from being profiled/targeted maliciously by such security guard, for example.

What if you were hit an intersection and said cameras helped to identify the individual who hit you and then ran, would that change your mind?

I don't think surveillance is the problem as much as who does it and the laws they implement.

<comment><USER13> > What's the difference between such surveillance and a security guard > wondering around looking for suspicious activity and/or protecting > shoppers/businesses?

Scale and awareness?

Scale, because if you ask that guard, who was buying what with whom, 742 days ago, chances are that guard won't be able to answer in any meaningful way. A database might (if eg: indexed on biometrics).

Awareness, because we come to ignore cameras, while if someone is actually there, looking at you, you are aware of being watched. (And also aware when their back is turned, so you can sneak a kiss from your mistress, or whatever you're not comfortable doing "on the permanent record" \-- but might not be wrong).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This may be right, but to me, as a doubter, I'm well aware of potential benefits, but my creepiness radar comes from the feeling that there is a point where recording becomes too intrusive. If I'm in a public bathroom and someone is snapping photos, that it's too intrusive. And the problem with glass is that you never know wether its just sitting on someone's head, or it is recording. I don't see the benefits of ubiquitous telepresence overcoming the creepiness of ubiquitous telepresence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our existing mobile devices can be used in similar creepy ways, but we've learned to discern between the postures people use for taking photos with their phones, and their postures for doing everything else with their phones. We certainly pay an "attention tax" to maintain an awareness of nearby devices, but we've gotten over the creepiness.

It's possible that we'll learn similar patterns for Glass. While we won't know if the device itself is recording, we might still be able to guess based on where the wearer is looking and how quickly they are moving. On the flip side, Glass wearers might also change their postures and habits so as to avoid matching these newly-learned patterns.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. I think it boils down to the fear that we don't know when the camera is active. When we're holding out our smart phone in a certain way, people know we're taking a photo. Google could build glass with a bright flashing on- air light, which would help, but absent obvious physical gestures, we'll wonder wether the device has been rooted to disable the light.

Don't get me wrong, I do think its unfortunate, because there are real positive sides to the device, and you touch on them in your blog, but for me, unless I feel better about the hair raising on the back of my neck, I'm going to be hesitant to accept the devices. (Caveat: I'm a bit of a privacy nut, that has never used Facebook, twitter, uses brivate browsing whereever possible, uses SMIME to encrypt most of my emails, etc., so my experience may not be very indicative)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I understand. I was speculating about possible changes to social norms and body postures in response to recording technology like Glass. As an alternative to an indicator light, maybe Glass-wearers will learn not to look at other people at all, so as not to give the impression that they are recording. Similarly, perhaps there are ways that we held our pre-camera cell phones that would now imply recording, so we've all subconsciously learned to hold our new phones differently.

In other words, it could be a lack of obvious physical gestures that indicates we _are not_ recording, rather than the presence of obvious physical gestures that indicate we _are_ recording.

A world in which we don't 'point' our heads at strangers is definitely weird and possibly undesirable, but interesting to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see the value, even though I'm ambivalent about the concept. I'd love to get my hands on something like it, but given the NSA revelations, not from Google (and not from Microsoft, either).

The irony is that I'd probably trust something from Taiwan or Korea. Ironic in that when I did work for the government,anything manufactured in these countries automatically ruled it out.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's an odd series on youtube called H+[1] that is about implanted computers (and a killer virus) that has some interesting scenes that could apply to Google Glass and its ilk. Some are amusing but dangerous (husband watching sports while driving), and some get a bit creepy. Sadly, their picture of how the media would handle it is accurate[2].

The virus and information "appropriation" fears for this type of device are very real. If you think people went batshit crazy over some startup uploading address books or Apple keeping an unencrypted list of cell towers, then you haven't seen anything when the first glass virus or "they're tracking us scare" hits a congressional committee[3].

Its one thing for the twilight zone object on my desk to freak out. Its a lot more personal when I carry it in my pocket. Its beyond scary when its on my face.

1) [http://www.youtube.com/user/HplusDigitalSeries](http://www.youtube.com/user/HplusDigitalSeries) sponsored by AT&T

2) Pundits with much fury and noise communicating no information

3) I suggest using OpenVMS as the OS

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, I'll watch some of these. I agree the viruses/etc are a serious issue, and I'm not sure if I'm more worried about the first virus for Glass, or the first viruses for self driving cars and Amazon delivery quadcopters ... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's sad when the best they can do is conjure up the twentieth consecutive year of "natural feeling video conferencing is right around the corner!" as an excuse for allowing marketeers to use techno-fetishism to push omnipresent corporatized surveillance in to society and public spaces. (The video conferencing argument is a failure and will remain such: people prefer telephones, and it never feels natural.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Highlights nicely that the hardware is a good but the omnipresent backend its plugged into isnt necessarily so.

</comment><comment><USER19> As far as I can tell, all the mentioned scenarios address pretty niche markets.

Personally I don't see mass adoption of Google Glass in any kind of conceivable future, I see head-up displays in very specific settings as the winning solution, instead of an always on, general-purpose solution.

<comment><USER20> > _niche markets_

\--or maybe we end up in a future like this: [http://www.businessinsider.com/what-back-to-the- future-2-got...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-back-to-the-future-2-got- right-2013-7#not-only-did-the-movie-get-wearable-computing-right-they-even- made-the-devices-similar-to-google-glass-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This debate about knowing when Glass is recording puzzles me a bit. We have an established way to indicate that a device is recording across both camcorders and webcams on laptops - a small light indicating when the camera is on.

On most camcorders it's a small red light. On Macs it's green.

Glass has an indicator towards the back that is poorly visible. Just move it to the front and maybe make it a little brighter.

Last I checked, no one is running away from a person walking around with a camcorder that's not on. When it is on, it's easy to see and step out of the view.

<comment> nhayes-roth Personally, I no longer trust these established indicators. I now feel justified in assuming that backdoors are built into most systems and that Glass could be recording at any time, without my approval and without any indication.

<comment><USER22> It's possible to wire the LED directly to the power of the camera. That way if the camera receives power the LED is also on. There is no way to change this behaviour in software. (This is how the indicator lights on Macs and presumably many other indicator lights are wired up.)

<comment><USER13> No, but it is comparatively easy to change this behaviour in hardware, so what's the point? Having an indicator that, "very often" works, is in some ways worse than not having an indicator at all...

<comment><USER22> Uhhhh … how so?

Yeah, if someone has actual physical access to your device they might be able to detach the LED. Not easy to do – but imaginable. But that is hardly an in any way relevant scenario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> With the recent relations of the spying that happens on civilians by the NSA, and other government security agencies, are we ready for something like Google glass?

</comment><comment><USER24> OK Glass, install a cache for my website.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://lehrblogger.com/2013/07/16/ok- glass-build-a-social-network/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Was the site down? It's hosted on S3 and served by CloudFront, so I'm not sure what might have been wrong. Thanks for the cache link, though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The perfect anti-Google Glass device: [http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/02/21/ir- leds-used-to-defeat-s...](http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/02/21/ir-leds-used-to- defeat-security-cameras/)</comment>


Tst: Ruby validations with schemas - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/monkeysquarelab/tst <comment><AUTHOR> Tst is a gem to validate objects against other objects or schemas(defined as a Hash). It abuses Ruby's hospitality and overuse the === operator.

I'm doing this as a learning project, but what do you think are the biggest problems of this approach?</comment>


Show HN: React Tiling Window Manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/palantir/react-mosaic <comment><USER2> This is super cool. I've tried a few times to build a tiling window manager in Javascript, once with Backbone, and once as an extension to Gnome Shell (yuck!) back in the days of yore. Seems like React is the right fit for this sort of component -- I could use this component in either my web apps or my Gnome Shell tinkerings...

I like that there's first-class support for mouse resizing and moving splits; I like my keyboard-driven AwesomeWM as much as the next nerd, but I frequently wish that Linux tiling WMs had better mouse support. Split resizing is also live and fluid, something that few other pane-splitting web components get right.</comment>


YC News: A Shift From Articles to Advice - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuphustle.com/2008/05/08/yc-news-a-shift-from-articles-to-advice/ <comment><USER2> I think it is a natural shift because all of us read basically the same feeds... so the articles themselves are usually not that important.. the discussion and advice is.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think the advice is a great feature.</comment>


What We're Afraid to Say About Ebola - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/what-were-afraid-to-say-about-ebola.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referrer=

<comment><USER2> One wonders if quarantine and isolation will be enough to allow it to burn itself out.</comment>


Match.com no longer top dating site, sends in the lawyers - <AUTHOR> http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/match-com-no-longer-top-dating-site-sends-in-the-lawyers/ <comment><USER2> > Match than demands that we enter into a confidential agreement where we show > them how we are able to generate more relationships and dates than they do, > and how we got so much bigger along with a lot of other things they want to > know.

If you read the letter Match.com sent to him, you will see that he is misrepresenting it here. All they ask him for is proof that the claims he is making are true.

From Match.com: > We demand that you immediately cease and desist from making these false claims. If your position is that these claims are substantiated, please promptly provide me with substantiation for each of these claims...If disclosing the substantiation data concerns you, Match.com is open to entering into a confidentiality agreement.

I don't know why Match.com would be the people to follow up on a possible false advertising claim like this. I assume they could sue plentyoffish if they don't provide Match with evidence? As plentyoffish points out, it is likely that Match.com (also?) makes false claims, so this could definitely be bluster. But they definitely don't ask for plentyoffish to reveal their processes.

<comment><USER3> I can't see how Match.com could possibly defend their case in court if they tried to sue. They'd essentially be asking a competing firm to reveal their trade secrets.

<comment><USER2> Again, it really doesn't look like they are doing that at all. They are just asking them to prove their marketing claims. My guess (IANANANAL) is that Match could sue for false advertising charges? Or bring evidence to the FTC? Dunno. But they aren't asking for their trade secrets.

False advertising _is_ illegal.

<comment><USER4> True, but the burdon of proof is on the prosecution. If they have proof, the they could sue, but this looks more like a flimsy attempt to gain information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A recent blog post from OkCupid dissects Match.com (and eHarmony, to a lesser extent) to bits: [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you- should-...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/04/07/why-you-should-never- pay-for-online-dating/)

<comment><USER6> Nice chart. I love when they break things down like that and can confirm that the graph with the girls is authentic (been out with 2 of them) One thing these numbers don't take into account is that when people pay for something they're more likely to take it seriously. It's anecdotal, but my experience with hundreds of dates over the years is the women are less flaky on Match vs. OKcupid. It's a case of having to develop a good flake-dar, such is the price you pay for free. Saying that, I'd never want them to go pay, I hope OK and the like destroy Match, they're just better companies with better ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the Intuit/Mint exchanges, pre-acquisition.

"What you say!??! You can't be more popular then we!! We demand that you prove this to us."

<comment> brown9-2 I'm curious about how common this is with big corporations?

Do they really think someone will be fooled by their demands which have no force behind them?

<comment><USER8> Lawyers routinely resolve almost all of their work with nastygrams (sternly worded letters demanding that someone take action on behalf of their client).

<comment> Tuna-Fish Mostly because it usually works. A huge proportion of all people would get quite scared from that letter and comply, simply because it looks so threatening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Match than demands that we enter into a confidential agreement where we show them how we are able to generate more relationships and dates than they do, and how we got so much bigger along with a lot of other things they want to know_

Would anyone in their right minds consider this?

<comment><USER10> Acquisition opportunity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi

<comment><USER12> This is on the wall above the front desk in the lobby of Red Hat headquarters. Always love reading it every time I go in there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for reminding me we need to decimate all the horrific dating sites out there. Who's in?

<comment><USER14> Why the downvotes? A better dating site is on YC's list of things they want to fund.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with okCupid, other than being written in C++?

<comment><USER16> It doesn't have the best revenue model and it hasn't fixed the fundamental gender imbalance problem yet.

These two problems have the same solution: charge men for membership, women join for free. Every college keg party has figured this out, I'm surprised online dating sites haven't.

<comment><USER17> Dating sites run on the network effect: they are useful in proportion to the number of people on them. If they charge money for members, they will have less people on them. Therefore someone interested in a dating website should join one (or more) that don't cost anything. Oh, and they are less likely to be scams that way too.

<comment><USER18> But the _quality_ of dating sites matters too: is a site with 1,000 flakes or 200 people seriously looking for a date better? One thing that charging, even very small amounts, can do is weed out people who don't care. For example, Love Lab: [http://thestranger.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals...](http://thestranger.selectalternatives.com/gyrobase/Personals/) through Seattle's The Stranger seems to work pretty well because a) it's already oriented in the community and b) charges, which keeps out spammers and flakes.

You might be right, but I 'm not sure which element is more important: sheer numbers or the quality of the people who have joined.

<comment><USER14> Exactly.

On a site that men pay but women join for free you're going to find a lot of women who expect men to pay for everything for them, and the only men on that site are going to be the kind who expect to get what they pay for.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, everyone's a grownup after all. But that isn't the demographic that match.com et al are after - they measure their success in how many marriages they produce. Marriage- oriented people are also more likely to be at the point in their lives where they have money to spend to, they're a highly desirable market.

<comment><USER16> In other words, you're saying women _don't_ look for a husband with the ability to provide resources.

<comment><USER14> No, I'm saying that golddiggers and sugardaddies are catered for elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good luck to Match.com - not. Any company could try and use this as justification to find out things about their competitors. For example, 37signals claims: "Over 3 million people use our web-based apps to get things done the simple way." Sending them a letter saying that you don't believe them and that they must substantiate the claim by return mail would, I suspect, be met with much laughter.

<comment><USER20> 37 signals line is genuinely horseshit though. They're quite clearly counting people who signup as "people who use our web-based apps". That's a truly false and misleading claim. It's beneath them.

<comment><USER8> The great thing about user numbers is that you have so many to choose from!

There are straightforward, well-used definitions of "user" for which I have 60, 1.5k, 2.9k, 50.0k, and "well over a hundred thousand" users. They're all equally true and none of them singly or in combination tell you a thing about the health of my business unless you're intimately acquainted with it.

<comment><USER20> The problem is that 37 signals qualified the statement. They're claiming there are 3 million "people who use our web-based apps". That pretty explicitly means active and current users of their products. If they said they had 3 million registered users that'd be an entirely different thing, and, ya'know: true.

<comment><USER21> _That pretty explicitly means active and current users of their products_

It does? Says who? This is _your_ definition of a user. That's fine, but it doesn't extend to being a common one.

Unless of course you delete all the accounts of people that have registered for your service but aren't using it as often as you'd like.

<comment><USER20> The question is not about what the _lone word_ "user" means. That's obviously not specific enough to have a single definition.

The question is what does "3 million people who use our web-based apps" mean.

A simple truth test: Are there "3 million people who use [their] web-based apps"? Absolutely not. Not under even the most remotely reasonable definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Traction really scares competitors.

</comment><comment><USER23> Plentyoffish needs to hire a designer. Assuming the number he claims is true, how many users is he loosing because of the site layout?

I might sound like a snob, but I have a hard time taking a site designed like this seriously, I don't care how many users or traffic he claims to have.

As far as dating site designs go, OkCupid looks great.

<comment><USER24> > Plentyoffish needs to hire a designer.

I'd say he knows his target audience well enough to make that decision himself. There is indeed such a thing as being too polished. The reason late- night TV commercials are cheesy and loud is not because the director lacks the skills but rather because it suits the target market. If POF redesigned their site to look like a glamor magazine website, he might indeed lose a lot of users because they might be intimidated by the design.

<comment><USER23> Its doesn't even need to look like a glamor magazine website (none of the dating websites do). Even if he doesn't need to make the site look half decent, the design itself is broken. Thumbnails doesn't seem to be properly scaled, they seemed compressed in to a smaller version (I could be wrong but the thumbnails are screwed up for some reason) and what is this in ever profile? <http://i.imgur.com/Knicz.png>

Its less than 5 minutes worth of work to fix that.

<comment><USER25> [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes- rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling- in.html)

On page 4 it discusses exactly that.

<comment><USER26> I wonder where he got that old version of Risk, that still uses the figurines. This new version with the arrows completely sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd like to hear what grellas has to say about this. Does Match have anything to stand on here? Do they have any sort of case?

</comment><comment><USER28> Match.com has been bloating numbers for a very long time, they just seem pissed that throwing money at downtoearth.com didn't pay off. I'd love for them to be forced to be truthful about their numbers for a change too.

</comment><comment><USER29> From the comments: _Yeah, 15% sounded high to me, too. But, from my Commission Junction account:

23 leads 3 sales —– 13% conversion ratio – about right._

</comment><comment><USER30> Lawyers. What will we do without them?

<comment><USER31> _Lawyers. What will we do without them?_

<http://images.google.com/images?q=champagne+popping>

<http://images.google.com/images?q=fireworks>

<http://images.google.com/images?q=parade>

<comment><USER32> Until you need one

<comment><USER33> You only need one because someone else uses one against you, and the law was written by lawyers in language only they can understand ;) Thus, in the hypothetical scenario of no lawyers having existed, either they would be replaced by some other ruling and representative class, or the problems they solve wouldn't have been invented in the first place.

<comment><USER34> Instead, the Hatfields and the McCoys just kill each others sons for a couple dozen years.

The problems are human nature. Lawyering is often childish, uncivilized and brutish, but we are making progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hahaha that is hilarious. As someone who has a dating site as a client (<http://setformarriage.com>), the numbers are especially funny to me :)</comment>


Laypeople can predict which social-science studies will replicate successfully - <AUTHOR> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2515245920919667 <comment><USER2> According to the "method" section, 138 out of 257 candidate (233 final) participants in the study were first-year psychology students - I can't help but wonder if this might have biased the study's results. The investigators also classified graduate students as laypeople, which doesn't quite feel right to me.

<comment><USER3> Maybe this particular study, but I have to say I believe it in general.

I remember working for a manufacturing company where I drove a forklift (during the summer).

One of my most vivid memories is walking into the breakroom and seeing on the television a scrolling banner that declared homosexual couples were less likely to have children than heterosexual couples.

And I remember everyone in that room laughing their asses off. And it's not as if no one in that room realized the reason for the study was so they could take into account things like adoption, etc. It's that the result was so obvious, even taking that into account, that it was amazing that someone was PAID to come to a conclusion that everyone knew without the money.

And this is the crux of the problem with "science". It wants to be "interesting", so it will literally try to drum up something against what "everyone knows".

So the idea that what everyone over generations "knows" is generally more applicable than "science" is not surprising at all.

<comment><USER4> A lot of the things that "everyone knows" are wrong. The point of science is to have a systematic way to tell the difference between things that seem intuitively true and things that are actually true.

I did a quick search and found a study about percentages of couples raising children [1]. They have a table by couple type and marital status. The difference isn't as stark as you might think.

Looking at the smallest difference in the table, married female/female partnerships have a 30.2% chance of currently raising children, while married male/female partnerships have a 38.7% chance. Is it obvious to you that this would be so close? Would you be surprised if there were countries where the numbers are reversed?

[1] [https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/same- sex...](https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/same-sex-parents- us/)

<comment><USER5> The issue is that you don't really need a study to open up a table of statistics in demographics department.

Your post just did a study on that topic. Should you get funded for that?

<comment><USER4> I spent a minute looking up the results of existing studies. If a professor at a public university spent a minute to look up an answer for a reporter, I'm ok with that professor having a salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious how much of this is lay people evaluating plausibility vs. politics. I only know the mandatory minimum of social science I was required to take in college but if you understand that gender and lgbtq+ matters are de facto immune to real criticism then you can pretty easily guess which hypothesis are likely to be right/wrong by whether or not them being correct would validate a negative interpretation of any of those groups. Basically anything that harshes the vibe is a no go in American social science unless you can use it to criticize white people or cis people, if you know that then you can predict most big stuff since everything else is just rhetorical frameworks masquerading as science.

<comment><USER7> Read the abstract of the studies involved. None of the ones evaluated negatively involve anything like you mention. No gender studies, lgbt, things like that. The most woke one was "Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief".

But the newest bad one was 2012 and you could say most of the bad ones had a socialist lean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll believe this study when it's replicated successfully.

<comment><USER9> I'm no expert, but I predict it will be.

<comment><USER10> 59% possible

<comment><USER11> ±9%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They claim that "laypeople" can predict if the study is reproducible, but they only got a 59% accuracy. It's technically true, but it's too close to 50%. I can't find how many of the 27 studies there "reproducible" and how many no. Specially because half of the subject were first year students of psychology that should have a minimal idea of the subject.

And the 67% when the people is informed about the strength of evidence is even less impressive. How much accuracy would have a parrot that just repeat the information?

To be fair they translate the strength to the evidence from a numeric scale to a simple words scale, and the participants should translate it back to a numeric scale. The real question is how good is people doing this task with random numbers, without additional information like the description of the study.

</comment><comment><USER13> Considering they only got it right 60% of the time, that still means there's a large proportion that are unintuitive, so I don't think it makes sense to trumpet this as if it's super clear cut which are obvious and which aren't.

<comment><USER14> Heh, pretty clever humour if intentional :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, this checks out

Edit: but seriously, I would assume that this applies to hard sciences as well, if you replace "laypeople" with "domain experts". Plausible hypotheses are cheap; designing a study and collecting data to prove them is hard. Many studies confirm something that feels obvious to researchers in the field, but being able to write that thing down as fact with a citation allows people to move a step forward. I would say it's the extreme outlier study where an implausible hypothesis is proven true.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why is this surprising at all?

Surely it's the expected outcome.

The opposite would be something like 'most social science results are counterintuitive'.

</comment><comment><USER17> 59% of the time, that doesn't seem very interesting at all. So ~10% of studies where results are strong enough to be replicated also have predictable outcomes (presumably these are just simple, obvious situations), the rest are a coin toss.

<comment><USER18> I actually would think it's the other way around: ~10% of studies that sound like obvious nonsense and have p of ~0.049 are probably NOT going to replicate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Isn't this why we have initiation? Since we don't ever have complete knowledge, our brain has to predict/guess at some sort of probability curve for an event happening all the time.

So much of our political rhetoric is just basic one dimensional math. "have and have nots", "wage gap", and so on.

The World would be a better place if more people understood exponential growth, statistics, game theory, and so on. It hampers our politics, when the rhetoric needs to be reduced into basic algebra.

<comment><USER20> Just trying to imagine some rhetoric recast in the language of exponential growth, statistics and game theory....

"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were making a costly signal of commitment. But it's obvious today that America has failed to support the separating equilibrium... We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of hyperbolic discounting.... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where their skin colour will not be a sufficient statistic of the content of their character!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Reproducibility crisis" doesnt really cover it. Would a layperson term like "bullshit" be more accurate?

</comment><comment><USER22> See related recent discussion about what's wrong with social science, which also touches on prediction markets for replicability: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24447724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24447724)

</comment><comment><USER23> I know hackernews is not the place for this, but my mobile browser truncated studies to stud, and the headline about a successfully replicating social- science stud had me stumped for a moment.

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem with all this is that the interesting study is the one that replicates that people _didn 't expect to_.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find that I can usually predict which topics on HN are likeliest to spark low-effort comments :)

</comment><comment><USER26> That would make social sciences half-bullshit and half-obvious :)

</comment><comment><USER27> "Are the social sciences merely dressed up pseudoscience?"

[https://www.quora.com/Are-the-social-sciences-merely- dressed...](https://www.quora.com/Are-the-social-sciences-merely-dressed-up- pseudoscience)

<comment><USER28> The ones making conjectures divorced from a strong grounding in biological purpose likely are.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a database of remote companies - <AUTHOR> https://remotehub.io <comment><USER2> 1900 sounds like a lot, but it very quickly narrows. There are only 5 or so companies listed for programming jobs at non-consultancies (i.e. companies that develop their own products) that offer paid time off. None of those 5 look that interesting...

<comment><USER3> Seems more like incomplete data. Spot checked a few of the "programming" ones that did not have "paid vacation" listed, and sure enough, they do (example: [https://convertkit.com/careers/](https://convertkit.com/careers/)).

<comment><USER4> Ah sorry, I added "paid vacation" option recently and I haven't updated ConvertKit since: [https://twitter.com/remotehubio/status/1105455924985106434](https://twitter.com/remotehubio/status/1105455924985106434)

Done now! [https://remotehub.io/remote-companies-with-paid- vacation](https://remotehub.io/remote-companies-with-paid-vacation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's saying there are zero remote programming jobs. Seems a bit low, no? :)

Love the site!

</comment><comment><USER6> Where's the data taken from? Couldn't find any mention of this on the site.

<comment><USER7> Also curious – I looked up my own company and was surprised that it had pretty accurate data on our own team, as far as location. Not everyone on the team has LinkedIn or any other obvious source they could pull from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice.

Looks like you need to do a history push instead of a replace, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Neat but tapping a search result doesn't do anything on mobile

<comment><USER10> It's wonderful that you would take the time to file a bug report, though in the future it would be convenient if you expanded "on mobile" to your device model, your used browser and your browser version at least. That will help the people developing these applications actually solve your problem and problems like yours. If you're not comfortable sharing this in public because of it's fingerprinting potential (very understandable), perhaps you could do so via a private communication channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice; bookmarked. Also found this one [https://www.remoteonly.org/](https://www.remoteonly.org/) interesting

</comment><comment><USER12> Related: [https://github.com/remoteintech/remote- jobs](https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs)

<comment><USER13> Also: [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

<comment><USER14> Also: [https://nodesk.co/remote-companies/](https://nodesk.co/remote- companies/) and [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TLJSlNxCbwRNxy14Toe1PYwbCTY7h0CNHeer9J0VRzE/edit#gid=1279011369)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One thing would be helpful is listing or explaining the criteria you used to call these "remote companies". One company that has onsite locations with teams that are remote or allows remote work frequently is going to be different than a company like Gitlab which is basically entirely remote.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, yes! I've been struggling with this! I have considered company to be remote when they are looking for remote team members (posted a remote job on the Internet) or they have members in more than one city without having offices in all of these locations.

I've been visiting a lot of "our team" pages lately! The degree that these companies are "remote" varies a lot, yes! A lot of them are just starting out to be remote and are looking for their second remote team member or something like that.

Obviously it's far from perfect and I've been working on this as a sideproject for a few past months. It's interesting topic for me though! I too work remotely and I see more and more companies going remote which is very cool. I'm much more productive coding from home than going to office every day.

Also, you have a good point with this "entirely remote" Gitlab example. I've been thinking about how to ask this from companies – how remote are you? I guess % is one option, but it makes it too complicated I think ("we're 60% remote"). I currently have a checkbox:

Remote first – hiring and working from all over the world instead of from a central location (found this from remoteonly.org manifesto although they have this as "remote only")

and you can find companies based on that. I think that's enough. Probably I don't care to search for companies who are 30% or 50% remote, but I would like to to know if they are in a "remote first" mindset or not (office + two remote devs). Also, this % changes all the time!

So I have been thinking about terms "remote first", "remote only" and "partly remote" and I don't have definitions for them really :)

For example, "remote only" maybe shouldn't definitely mean that there's really like no office at all – think Doist for example, I think they have an office but I would call them "remote only" or "entirely remote" as majority of the people is spread accross the globe: [https://remotehub.io/doist](https://remotehub.io/doist)

All ideas and suggestions would be really helpful on how to differentiate these remote levels!

<comment><USER16> Hello, Community Advocate at GitLab here. Thanks for creating this base and adding us there.

GitLab is 100% remote company [1] with 500+ team members in 50+ accross the Globe [2].

Could you please also update this info at [3] since it states 11-50 employees. Almost forgot to mention that we have the team-pets page as well :)

[1] - [https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all- remote/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/)

[2] - [https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/)

[3] - [https://remotehub.io/gitlab](https://remotehub.io/gitlab)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! Updated to 501+! I would also add GitLab locations so they would draw out on a map too. I see a list of 51 countries / regions on GitLab's website, I wonder if there's a list of cities as well or I'll use these 51? Oh and you can get access to edit profile on [https://remotehub.io/hire- remotely](https://remotehub.io/hire-remotely)

I think it would be TOP 1 on RemoteHub when I would add all cities!

<comment><USER16> Is the only option to add cities one-by-one via "edit company>cities>add city"? The list is a bit long, ~260 cities in total.

<comment><USER4> Wow, so much! Very cool! Yes, it's currently the only option, but could you please send me the list and I will add them myself. You can email me hello at remotehub.io

I would probably need to find photos for these cities anyways, so it would be better for me to add them myself!

Thanks!

<comment><USER16> That's so kind of you. I've reached out to you via email@example.com. Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Remote companies and companies offering remote jobs are not exactly the same thing, I work in a remote job but my company isn't remote, what are the criteria here?

<comment><USER18> What is the distinction?

<comment><USER17> by "remote company", I understand a company which does not have offices.

<comment><USER18> ah got it, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mapbox is listed as a remote company, yet all their jobs are in SF or DC in their careers page. What is the criteria for a remote company ?

<comment><USER4> Yep, good point! It seems they are not hiring remote, at least for now. They do have remote team members all over the world though? Check out their map: [https://remotehub.io/mapbox](https://remotehub.io/mapbox)

I filled this in based on their team page. Also found this: [https://opensource.com/life/14/7/interview-justin-miller- map...](https://opensource.com/life/14/7/interview-justin-miller-mapbox)

"I work for Mapbox remotely, but we do have offices. We've got about 30 folks in Washington, D.C., 15 in San Francisco, and about a dozen of us are remote in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, and South America."

So maybe they are open to consider remote candidates. I will need to email them and ask! If they are not considering new remote candidates, I should probably remove them from the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How can I fix incomplete info about my company?

<comment><USER4> You can create a free account here (when starting to type your company name, just choose it from the list to claim it):

[https://remotehub.io/hire-remotely](https://remotehub.io/hire-remotely)

Please enter your email at company's domain as this sign up process allows to claim a profile only with matching email domain.

You'll get an automatic email asking to confirm your email address. Let me know if you have any questions or problems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice going. I'll definitely bookmark this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Mapbox is not a remote company.</comment>


Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms (free ebook edition) - <AUTHOR> http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/itila/book.html <comment><USER2> For anyone interested in learning algorithms (and not just free books), I would also suggest Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Chris Bishop. Not free, but worth while. <http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/cmbishop/prml/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been reading through this bit by bit the last few days, mostly to get a handle on how to implement MCMC for Bayesian posteriors, and I have to say its fantastically written. I wouldn't call it comprehensive or unbiased, but it sets up the infrastructure of interrelatedness between noisy channels, information theory, statistics, and machine learning pretty much as effortlessly as possible.

Note: _I'm buying it entirely because it has wide margins. Many of the calculations he outlines deserve to be worked out in full. Wide margins are absolutely the most important publishing concern for a math/science/engineering-based text._

<comment><USER4> If you want to learn how to implement MCMC I recommend:

Bayesian Logical Analysis Physical Sciences by Gregory

Gregory's book explains a lot more of the engineering (autocorrelations, step size jumping, etc..). Even better, it discusses how to perform model selection using a clever annealing technique. Though model selection may not be of interest to you.

ps - MacKay's book is my nightly reading, so I'm not dissing MacKay :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fantastic book. The problems are interesting, and nicely bring out the connections between topics that would on the surface, seem to be disparate.

Cover and Thomas is more textbookish, and in some ways, more detailed. Personally, I'd read this first, and then take on the interesting topics in Cover and Thomas.

I read a lot of math books, and I'd put this right on top along with Needham's 'Visual Complex Analysis'.

</comment><comment><USER6> One of my favorite machine learning textbooks, if you can call it that. It's a little oddball though. For any topic, it's extremely interesting and insightful, though usually not comprehensive enough to rely on it as a reference.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've said it before and I'll say it again: this book is great. This books provides a really great foundational understanding of ML, not the toolbox approach of other textbooks. I think the exposition of coding theory is especially nice compared to, say, Cover and Thomas.

</comment><comment><USER8> God, this Mackay guy gets around: Sustainable Energy, this, and the Dasher project.

</comment><comment><USER9> This has to be the only free CS theory book out there. It comes up way too often.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen quite a few, actually... many of them on Hacker News.

<http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/>

<http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/index.html>

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and- Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer- Science/6-050JInformation-and-EntropySpring2003/CourseHome/index.htm)

<http://omega.albany.edu:8008/JaynesBook.html>

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/papers/slpj-book-1987/)

These are from my own bookmarks... looks like there are a lot more at <http://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks/top/?t=all>

<comment><USER10> Wow! The Jaynes book is on the order of 3,000 pages! Looks like a potentially comprehensive reference for all things probability.

Can anyone comment on the quality of the writing?

<comment><USER11> It's good, with a heavy focus on frequentist statistics and maximum entropy approach

<comment><USER12> I think to say the book has a heavy focus on frequentist statistics is a little misleading. Jaynes discusses a lot of frequentist methods but the emphasis is on doing so from a very Bayesian point of view.

<comment><USER11> He uses Bayesian methods in some cases, and non-Bayesian method in others. For instance on page 1412 he describes a problem for which Bayesian methods are "not appropriate." <http://omega.albany.edu:8008/ETJ-PS/cc14g.ps>

This is a bit of an anathema to purist Bayesians like Radford Neal who say that Jaynes Maximum Entropy method is not consistent with Bayesian methods and that it "doesn't make any sense"

[http://groups.google.com/group/sci.stat.consult/msg/2cf57ceb...](http://groups.google.com/group/sci.stat.consult/msg/2cf57ceb8ec46e0f?dmode=source)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


When Sued Don't Tweet - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/when-sued-dont-tweet <comment><USER2> (another attorney here)

Tweets aren't under oath or anything, but it opens up Carmack to lots of questions and possibly affects his credibility.

Often times cases come down to "he said / she said" types of claims and how a jury views them.

If ZeniMax mentions the tweets in court, it will likely be to try and make Carmack look like he acted out of hand, and that he rushed to make claims that arne't true (i.e. the IP / code distinction the poster makes).

Here's the thing about software suits. Most judges / juries are in a TERRIBLE position when it comes to evaluating the nuance involved in a suit like this. Think about the average person and how much they understand about what you do.

Lawyers will try to boil it down to themes and narratives that portray you as "bad." "Winning" in terms of how you evaluate claims or the press or your followers evaluate claims does not matter. It's all about how the lawyers convince a judge or jury you are wrong.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious to know if, were the tweets to be used, they would also have to prove it was he that made them. Sure, they're from his account, but would that hold up in court? See: the many celebrities who have people tweet on their behalf with their (the celebrities') account.

<comment><USER4> Ianal, but in a deposition he would be asked whether they were his tweets or not.

If he denied they were, he would be asked further questions and possibly caught in a lie. Such as "is this the only time that your account has been used by someone other than yourself?" or "So you are saying that this is the only tweet that you didn't make but the others before and after you did". And so on. My guess is that he would be advised to tell the truth to prevent getting further trapped as far as his credibility. There may also be other people that he discussed the tweets with that could be brought into the picture as well under oath in court I'm guessing. Bottom line: Denial is easier said than done.

<comment><USER5> To add on, some attorneys spend _their whole lives_ tearing apart people who lie. Unless you are professional psychopath, you are completely outclassed here.

<comment><USER4> Agree. Would also add that if you lie infrequently you are probably not prepared to know all the potential pitfalls of lying and how the other person can tear you a new one if you want to call it that.

Additionally I've noticed a loose correlation between people who lie and who their parents are or how they were raised. Nothing scientific of course, but people whose parents don't hold their feet to the flame are generally more likely to think that they can get away with something because "the other guy is stupid". People whose parents are either very intelligent or hold them on everything they say are generally more practiced at thinking of the various possibilities that can come about to refute something they would say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A possible exception: When you have no means to afford a lawyer and the case is obviously frivolous.

Whilst I would nearly always go for shutting up, we've probably all witnessed the David being sued by a Goliath and their only viable action is to make it know and get support.

That isn't what's happening here though... but no rule is black and white.

<comment><USER7> Also: if you're a game developer, and Zenimax offers you a job, and you know this is how they treat people people who've moved on, you might consider taking a different role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What to do when people make you angry online:

1\. GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. Everything you say and do will make you a target. The only things you can say that might help you would be contrition, so if you're not willing to do that, get the hell off social media. This is also good because it removes you from having to _read things_ about yourself that people are saying. People's talk will not harm you; your _reaction_ to people's talk will harm you.

2\. GET AN OFFLINE JOURNAL. If you have strong feelings, write them out. Write until you can't feel anymore. But don't put it online; keep it offline. The purpose is to have an exercise that gets your thoughts out, and to be able to read through your thoughts and clarify them later. Write letters to the people you're angry with, then review them and edit them many times, and never send them.

3\. TALK TO FRIENDS. It's incredibly easy to let internalizing your feelings change how you think, change your memories, and turn you into a shell of your former self. You can even develop anxiety disorders or PTSD if this gets out of hand. Talk to people who understand and love you and let them keep you in check. You need positive outside influences to keep yourself sane. Talk to a good psychiatrist if you can.

4\. KEEP THE BIG PICTURE IN MIND. It's easy to confuse yourself and wrestle over details. Start by considering the intent of your actions, and work from there to understand the whole chain of events, impartial and without emotion. It takes a while to get there. Be totally honest with yourself, but don't convince yourself of things that you didn't do.

<comment><USER9> > 1\. GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. Everything you say and do will make you a target. > The only things you can say that might help you would be contrition

IANAL, but this seems like bad advice. If there's litigation involved, any sort of apology could be taken as an admission of guilt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing I've often wondered: how does one even find the best lawyer, with the most appropriate experience etc.?

It seems you'd almost need another lawyer, who knows the best people in each specialty, to advise you.

<comment><USER11> There always remains the possibility that you may not be able to find a suitable one _at all_ : [http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgment...](http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/r-v- crawley-others.pdf)

This recent high-profile case has been thrown out because nobody that legal aid is willing to pay (for the defendants) for is capable of handling it. Even the first step, "read 10,000 pages of documents", is not affordable since the legal aid cuts.

That document describes the desperate search for someone suitable and willing ("silk" == barrister or QC, required at this level of court)

<comment><USER12> [http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgment...](http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/r-v- crawley-others.pdf) is an interesting case indeed. It's like a DoS on justice, make sure that your case requires the reading of a large document and you can get off because the lawyers, silks, etc., will refuse the work.

This is a flaw in the legal system. I'd be surprised that the monarch doesn't have power to order someone, a QC say, to take the trial on.

 _Also, aside, "bro bono" (para 19), first time I seen that one - taking on a job for free under obligation to family/friends._

\--

Edit: typo at para.85 adds more weight to my previous thoughts on needing more contextual spell checking. "scare resources" is almost always going to be a typo.

<comment><USER11> Monarch does not have those powers; in any case this is effectively a pay dispute.

The complexity issue is important and needs addressing properly. Jury trials for fraud have already been abandoned for this reason. However, I've no idea how you'd reform it; you need to have people who (a) know the law and (b) have read all the relevant documents, which is always going to take time and therefore cost money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An interesting counterpoint to this is Julie Ann Horvath, who leveraged Twitter to expose a toxic culture at Github (1) and eventually forced the CEO and his wife to leave the company (2), and has kept Github and certain employees on the defensive (3).

She may have to deal with legal repercussions because of her actions on Twitter, but I can't help but think that _nothing_ would have changed had she kept silent or quietly hired an employment lawyer after being forced out.

1\. [http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism- scan...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-scandal- julie-ann-horvath)

2\. [http://recode.net/2014/04/21/julie-ann-horvath-on-github- inv...](http://recode.net/2014/04/21/julie-ann-horvath-on-github- investigation-how-do-you-sleep-at-night/)

3\. [http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names- git...](http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names-github- harassment/)

<comment><USER14> It's an interesting counter-point, but I'm not sure it's an example to be lauded; most of her complaints were found to have no basis in fact, and she's likely poisoned any future legal suit she might wish to bring.

Additionally, she's incurred significant personal liability in the process.

> _She may have to deal with legal repercussions because of her actions on > Twitter, but I can 't help but think that nothing would have changed had she > kept silent or quietly hired an employment lawyer after being forced out._

I can't help but think the court of public opinion has been used to bludgeon an opponent, not achieve justice.

The public absolutely lacks the facts necessary to judge the merits of the accusations, and the objectivity necessary won't be forthcoming through inciting angry internet mobs. This wasn't something as simple as Sterling's overt racism -- and even then, the public's ability to observe and act on his overt racism wasn't possible until it saw the cold light of day through _objective_ and _verifiable_ evidence.

The safest and likely most productive way for GitHub to be held to account, _if_ GitHub as an organization _needed_ to be held to account, was by providing a clear, objective statement of the allegations, _vetted by her lawyer_ , and if possible, a tenacious lawsuit and refusal to settle for anything less than a public statement.

<comment><USER15> > most of her complaints were found to have no basis in fact

Enough of them had a basis in fact to get a founder fired.

<comment><USER16> While I'm not sufficiently informed on the daily operations at GitHub, "basis in fact" has nothing to do with whether a C-level remains employed or not. Companies these days are hypersensitive about their reputations and you'll be considered a liability for a single misconstrued statement despite years of stellar (and most importantly, completely politically sanitary) work.

You may even get owned for politically incorrect behavior that occurs in private and completely external to your professional affiliation. Off the top of my head I can cite a handful of such ousters that have occurred in the last month, including but not limited to Brendan Eich and Donald Sterling.

We're in a really bad spot right now. The principles that undergird free society are not well regarded anymore. Make a single statement that stirs the ire of the reigning corporate thought police and you're done for, no matter how innocuous it may or may not be. People don't care about the facts, it's all about perception, and if you're perceived as a thought criminal in any of the many varied channels now considered taboo, you're "toxic" to the company. It's as simple as that.

Considering this status, perhaps aggression and even subtlety are justified if you're seeking to defend yourself against the types of accusations that would get a toxic label applied to your name.

<comment><USER17> Eich's public behavior was absolutely material to his work. You can't work to break apart gay families and undermine gay people's constitutional rights and then expect gay people to be be perfectly comfortable working for you. And Mozilla's board reasonably felt that material to him being the CEO of a company. Well, that or his demonstrated inability to handle a corporate crisis with a big press element.

<comment><USER16> * Marriage is not a constitutional right for anyone

* The rules that say the government is not allowed to define marriage further than "two humans say they want to live together and want us to give them stuff for it" are very new, and Eich was fighting to not have this become the rule.

* Gay people should be perfectly comfortable working for people who supported Prop 8 or they're going to have a hard time, as there's a > 50% chance that a random stranger will have done so.

* Eich's ideas on what relationships the government should reward does not materially affect his performance as CEO. He'd already promised to keep Mozilla's inclusive policies.

* If you really want to say gay people would find it impossible to work for Eich, I find it hard to believe that any such persons at Mozilla are less replaceable than Brendan Eich. If they do resign in protest, Eich would've had no trouble replacing them. However, Mozilla's official statement indicated the vast majority of the company supported him, with "less than ten" current employees threatening resignation if Eich maintained his post.

* The board didn't fire or pressure Eich to leave. He resigned voluntarily as damage control. Mozilla's official statement is clear about this.

Casting anyone who supported Prop 8 as a villain is a wholly untenable philosophical stance. It condemns the majority of Californians and Americans. You can't live life with that large of a chip on your shoulder, it's completely disruptive. If you are doing so, I recommend you seek a shoulder- chip repair professional before further damage to self and others is perpetrated by political intolerance.

<comment><USER17> * The reason Prop 8 was was a constitutional amendment is that equality before the law is a right enshrined in the California constitution.

* Immaterial.

* There is a difference between "voted for" and "funded". Further, Eich refused to say whether his opinion had changed. And obviously, you don't get to say what gay people are comfortable about.

* Incorrect. Promising to be bigoted only in his off hours is not a promise that will convince everybody.

* Your view apparently is that as long as you're not powerful, injustice is fine. That's not a view many share. Especially at Mozilla.

* Fair enough.

At one point vast majorities of people opposed interracial marriage. And, earlier, were in favor of slavery for black people, an institution maintained through brutality and torture. I'm not saying those people are villains, but I am saying they were wrong, and bigoted in a way that was deeply problematic. And I'm saying the same thing about people who supported Prop 8. Thankfully, as the statistics show, people are more quickly waking up to their anti-gay bigotry, so it's a dead issue here in California, and it soon will be in the rest of the nation.

<comment><USER16> > The reason Prop 8 was was a constitutional amendment is that equality before > the law is a right enshrined in the California constitution.

OK, again, it's not that "the right to marry" is constitutional. It's just that some judges have decided "marriage" means giving benefits to any two humans who claim they want it. This isn't what marriage is supposed to be, but that's beside the point at the moment. Bans on same-sex marriage were considered unconstitutional because marital benefits were granted to persons who engaged in opposite-sex permanent coupling, and the judiciary decided that since the existence of sex was acknowledged, it was unfair. Enforcing this massive blind spot is obviously absurd, but again, currently beside the point. The point is there is not a constitutional right to marital benefits.

>* There is a difference between "voted for" and "funded". Further, Eich refused to say whether his opinion had changed. And obviously, you don't get to say what gay people are comfortable about.

Eich's contribution was minor, so not much of a difference in this case. Perhaps, as a wealthy individual, he routinely donates to political causes that accord with his beliefs and considers this good citizenship. You can't say that this issue was critical to Eich simply because a small contribution exists.

There was no reason to demand Eich recant his position. This is still a hot mainstream political topic. As Mozilla stated, almost the entire company was content to follow Eich; only a negligible number of employees threatened to leave. Eich resigned to prevent damage to Firefox and its users.

>Incorrect. Promising to be bigoted only in his off hours is not a promise that will convince everybody.

It doesn't materially affect his performance as CEO no matter what he chooses to believe on a social issue about as far removed from computer software as you can get.

>Your view apparently is that as long as you're not powerful, injustice is fine. That's not a view many share. Especially at Mozilla.

No, my view is that Eich committed no injustice by expressing his opinion via political contributions, and that we shouldn't displace extremely well- qualified persons because a very small percentage of people chose to have their feelings hurt by Eich's completely reasonable, defensible, and valid actions. It has nothing to do with anyone's power, just their value and contribution. Eich, as _the inventor of JavaScript_ , provides irreplaceable value, and as he did nothing wrong, he shouldn't have been displaced.

>At one point vast majorities of people opposed interracial marriage. And, earlier, were in favor of slavery for black people, an institution maintained through brutality and torture.

However deplorable you consider these things, you need to understand the context in which such people were developed and some basics about human moral development. The black and white, scorched earth view is not beneficial to anyone except those primarily concerned with stroking their victim complex. After the South surrendered, widespread amnesty was offered, not widespread condemnation of all "bigots". One needs to learn to live with the fact that vast majorities of his contemporaries have different belief and value systems, instead of trying to force them to adopt the same value system by shame and bullying.

I don't want to get into it here, but I believe there are major differences between opposition to same-sex marriage and racial issues. Pretty much the only thing they share is that they were controversial political issues.

I agree that in the short-term, discussion on gay marriage will be chilled and it will be grudgingly accepted in light of absurdly hypocritical bullying and shame campaigns orchestrated by gay rights activists. But I don't think it will last. I think the fact that gay marriage is even entertained demonstrates that western society has been stretched to its breaking point, and I expect it to break, at which point these realities that we prefer to ignore will pronounce themselves starkly and demand recognition, as has happened over and over again when a society gets enough wealth to drink and imbibe itself into major social stupor.

<comment><USER17> The bit about constitutionality is about equal protection under the law. The sole legal purpose and effect of Prop 8 was to strip equal protection from gay people as regards to marriage. That's not a debatable legal point, and the court decisions are quite clear on it. You can try to justify that, but pretending like that's not what went on mainly makes you look willfully ignorant.

I don't have a black-and-white, scorched-earth view of this. I have a lot of compassion for the people who find themselves on the wrong side of a social change. And if people want to be bigoted in the quiet of their own homes, far be it from me to try to change them. But people using the power of the state to be bigoted don't get that pass until they renounce their attempts at active harm. And they also don't automatically get to be the boss of people that they're bigoted against.

Regarding the "society is about to collapse from the liberals" bit: that has been a popular line at least since Lincoln freed the slaves. Wake me when it happens. And also fuck you for suggesting that letting my friends raise their families in peace is somehow akin to drunken self-indulgence.

<comment><USER16> It is a debatable point. Some judges agree with the interpretation that you're pretending is universal, and some don't. This is why this is a controversial political issue. If gay marriage were self-evidently legal, all of these court cases would not have happened. To many, the crux of the issue that the government chose to provide rewards and recognition for those willing to engage in a certain behavior, and now there are people trying to say that they should be included because they're doing something superficially similar. Whatever you believe about homosexuality or gay marriage, permanent cohabitation with same-sex individuals is not the same as permanent cohabitation with opposite-sex individuals. Maybe you think it doesn't make a difference, but a lot of people do, and only want to use state powers to encourage the latter behavior.

The issue here is that you see this as a matter of bigotry. As long as your view of the opposition is that narrow, a constructive dialogue is impossible. I understand it may be difficult to overcome that impulse with activists constantly trying to shame people into exactly that submissive position that doesn't allow them to consider the arguments of any opposition figure without automatically self-incriminating, but I hope that people can learn not to fall for that shaming.

True, there are always people anticipating major social collapse. It just so happens that occasionally, those people are right. The fact that some of them have been wrong in the past doesn't mean the suggestion is automatically invalid.

Your belligerent, empty retort only further illustrates the validity of my arguments. The attitude of "Fuck you, and the half of society that agrees with you" doesn't really make for social cohesion or stability.

<comment><USER17> It's not legally debatable in California, because those are the judgments that led up to Prop 8. It's settled law. And it was before Prop 8 aimed to change the constitution to strip equal protection from gay people. Which is why those paying for Prop 8 are literally guilty of trying to break up existing families.

You might believe permanent cohabitation between gay people is different, just like most people who were opposed to interracial marriage. But, in both cases, it's not materially different with respect to civil marriage. Not with regards to equal protection, because no anti-gay bigot has been able to demonstrate in court a rational basis for making that distinction. And not in my experience, where what I see is just like what I see when I visit my straight friends. Happy couples and struggling couples; childless couples and couples with happy, laughing children. Children who deserve society's protection, just like any others.

Regarding the last bit, you can't claim half of society on that. An ever- declining portion of society is anxious, concerned, confused, or misled on gay marriage. I have lots of compassion for them. There are also some people who believe it's against what their god(s) want, but correctly recognized that using the power of the state to impose their religious views on others is wrong. Them, I appreciate.

There are _also_ some bigots -- a much smaller number than the other groups -- who say hateful and false things, as you have. They, and you, can go fuck yourselves. We survived the much greater social upheavals of reducing anti- black bias; we'll certainly make it through accommodating the smaller number of homosexuals. You and your friends can go on to be the Jesse Helmses and the Don Sterlings of your day, muttering into your bran flakes about how it's all going to fall part any day now while your grandchildren politely ignore you and get on with their lives. Enjoy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If someone makes a spurious allegation against you then I think you should defend yourself as much as possible, including via tweets or any other communication channels. Refuse to go quietly into the night.

<comment><USER19> Did you read the article? The point is you're making it worse by tweeting and making other public statements. You may win in court of public opinion, but you're making it easier for your opponent to beat you in actual court.

<comment><USER20> The blog post is pure speculation by what appears to be a layman. It has no more weight than any random comment on HN.

It's worth stating that because people are treating it as if a famed IP lawyer has made a pronouncement of fact, when in actuality it's just someone giving, like, an opinion, man.

<comment><USER21> Let's see a famed IP lawyer that would disagree with the premise of the article.

Attack the contents, if you can.

There are several lawyers that I know of right here in this thread and I don't see anybody contradicting the advice.

<comment><USER20> Unnecessarily defensive. Was there something, anything, in my comment that is incorrect? Are you actually a contract/IP lawyer? Note that I'm not saying that you are _wrong_ , because honestly I don't know. Because I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know all of the specifics of this case. But am I wrong in what I said about the authority of the post?

This is why people preface things with IANAL.

People often petition to the public (Tesla quite recently) in such cases -- regardless of pending lawsuits -- because the damage in perception can be larger than any possible legal damage. And stating simple facts of truth (such as "I copied 0 lines of code") seems doubtful to aggravate anything if they are truthful. So there are separate issues of IP: Great, but they are neither worsened or relieved by a statement about code, are they?

<comment><USER21> Don't shoot yourself in the foot is good advice, even when it doesn't come from your surgeon.

<comment><USER20> That analogy hardly fits such a complex situation. This advice is more akin to "if someone is breaking into your house, call the police and hide in a closet". Situations may be a little more complex than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While that may help you in the courtroom, the court of public opinion doesn't wait for a verdict. It confuses silence with guilt. Acquittals are less likely to make front pages than acquittals.

<comment><USER23> Does the public care about this? I really don't think so. This is a case about some boring legalities. I really can't see it having any impact on how Carmack is viewed.

There are probably many other situation in which that is not the case, but here I really can't see anything bad happening as a consequence of Carmack not responding publicly.

<comment><USER24> What about gamers? They are their customers, and they can be a fickle bunch under the right circumstances. A recent example could be the reaction to the DRM in the latest sim city, and other games. A counterexample however could be EA, which most gamers loathe but continues to sell plenty of games. (Edit: Although now that I actually look it up EA is behind sim city. So who knows.)

<comment><USER23> Gamers don't care at all about people stealing IP. They don't have a problem with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article has some flaws. For instance, Carmack isn't getting sued, Oculus/Facebook is.

Also, I didn't get the impression that Carmack was "angry" when he tweeted that. I always get the impression that he is pretty calm about all of the things he's saying, and the two tweets being referenced are just statements about his perception on the case. Since anger is the tone of the entire "mistake" from the article's perspective, it seems the article author is the one jumping to conclusions and writing things on the internet before they're due.

<comment><USER21> Good points! Have an upvote...

The actual defendant for now is Oculus Rift (because I suspect that's where the money is), but Carmack is very much in the line of fire (as the one who allegedly did the deed) and is currently CTO of Oculus Rift, so even if he's not the named party he definitely is in a defensive position here.

On top of that his current interest is in this particular case probably not aligned with Oculus Rift.

That means that your words should be weighed on a gold scale, especially when uttered through a public medium. I've fixed the post to take into account your comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Without commenting on why Zenimax would launch such a lawsuit now and be public about it, I can't help but see Carmack's response as a potential intimidation move, e.g "You may win in court, but you will lose in the court of public opinion, and this will hurt your business more than losing this suit. Now think again about wether you really want to sue".

<comment><USER21> That would be an exceedingly dumb strategy because if such a link could be made then it would open up Carmack to yet another round of damages if the suit would be lost.

Blackmail is not a sound legal strategy if you have a lot to lose. If you're on your last dime and you don't own anything that can be seized you might try this route.

<comment><USER27> > That would be an exceedingly dumb strategy because if such a link could be > made then it would open up Carmack to yet another round of damages if the > suit would be lost.

How exactly? Plenty of people sue a company, lose the case, and still do a lot of damage to the company because of the distraction and public confidence. One example, is startups getting sued that are looking for another round of investment. They are definitely harmed even if they win the lawsuit. It cuts both ways. Sometimes a victory can be made to cost more than settling -- for either side. That's why people settle. If you can make the PR cost higher, the price to settle comes down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm confused - was the case of John Carmack cited because his tweets have now been raised in court and have hurt his case? I haven't been following this situation so I've zero context.

<comment><USER29> It's only been a day to two since thise was public, I'm doubtful that they're being mentioned in court.

<comment><USER28> Ah so it's just general cautionary advice. I'd be interested to see if this comes up in court.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I found a true gem hiding amidst great advice: _the only lawyer that's yours is the one you pay_

Corporate lawyers exist to protect the corporation.

</comment><comment><USER31> I understand what the common wisdom is ("shut-up") when it comes to this type of thing, and I understand the stated reason why ("it will get used against you!"), but I don't understand the "how" part.

Carmack made a very clear, short public message about it. Rather than being any kind of admission, it was the opposite. A complete denial. How could Zenimax use that to strengthen their case? He's likely to repeat the same denial to the court anyway.

I'm not pretending I know better than the common wisdom, just trying to understand it better. If you were Zenimax, how would you use this tweet against him?

<comment><USER21> It wasn't a complete denial ('code' and 'patents' are not the only work products protected by IP laws and by employment contract terms).

That alone makes me believe this was not vetted by his lawyer unless they specifically wanted to misdirect the opposition. I don't think that's likely, and such misdirection would most likely fail anyway assuming the opposite side is halfway competent.

Making falsifiable claims in public simply does not help.

As for how Zenimax could use this against Carmack, let's not make their lives easier than we have to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm curious to when/if there are exceptions to this standard advice. When could it be a strategic move?

<comment><USER33> I can't think of any - I know that having been sued (OK it was my start-up, but I took it rather personally) and it was _incredibly_ stressful and at the start I nearly replied to the other side with communications trying to naively "sort things out" that could have made things even worse.

My stress levels decreased hugely when all communication was put into the hands of our lawyers - and it was eventually resolved with both sides walking away and paying their own expenses, which wasn't great as we had done _nothing_ wrong but was probably the least worst option.

Honestly - if someone raises a legal action against you - talk to a lawyer who specializes in the relevant area and do what they tell you, which is likely to include no public statement without their approval.

<comment><USER34> Exactly. The desire for communication with the public is mostly based on emotion, not on a rational decision. Lawyers give you rational advice.

Having been involved in a lawsuit last year, even after I won, I still don't dare to publicly talk about it for fear or repercussions. I simply ask myself: what do I have to gain, and what do I have to lose?

Usually the risks and impact of the things I have to lose outweigh the things I have to gain, and it's a good way of making myself shut up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps his lawyer okayed his tweets.

<comment><USER36> Then he should get a new lawyer

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is a HARD thing to cope with. I've been through it once, and I lost much sleep over many nights just because of it. Especially the first time, you have NO idea on how to deal with it. I can say that the best advice is to do nothing UNTIL you talk to your lawyer, and I can confirm that YOUR lawyer means the one YOU pay. Try to stay calm. Things like this take months, sometimes even years, to unfold. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am very confused that Carmack finds himself in such a position.

Carmack quite famously made "Fuck You Money" over a decade ago. He was driving garages full of super expensive cars. _He_ should have been the one with the levers.

Instead he became, effectively, an employee again. Why? Why would he do that?

<comment><USER21> funding Armadillo can't have been cheap.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_Aerospace)

<comment><USER38> pretty much, he said Armadillo had drained all of his 'crazy money' at a QuakeCon a couple years ago

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Why is this up-voted? This is basically don't be a dumb-ass 101</comment>


Ask HN: Drupal or Joomla? - <AUTHOR>

I have won a contract to build a site. Given enough freedom I would have chosen to implement it in RoR. Because the features that will be required in there are best built with RoR.
But the client wants to me to use either Drupal or Joomla.
I have worked with Joomla and I know whatever he is asking for is doable with Joomla. But with significant amount of Pain.
I hear that Drupal is framework rather than a CMS. Since people call it a framework I felt that it might be easier to implement my project in Drupal rather than Joomla.
Can a wise man quickly tell me the difference between Joomla and Drupal? <comment><USER2> Drupal is about 1000x more extendable than joomla.

I used to solely develop sites in joomla, moved to drupal, and will be moving to RoR.

The freedom drupal allows is like night and day over joomla.

<comment><USER3> Though I agree with the statement above, it also depends on how much customization you will need to do, or what sort of modules you will need to add.

The Drupal architecture may be a bit of overkill for what you are looking to do. I've done a very little bit of work on both, and Joomla is easier to understand, and therefore simpler to work with for smaller customized code pieces.

So, if Joomla meets your requirements with it's core install (or with only a few add ons), I'd go Joomla. If you need more extensibility, then go Drupal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Both systems have gone through a transition from an amateur cms/portal system, which has matured over time. Drupal has come a lot further in this process that Joomla has, which means that today it's closer to be a general purpose framework. It still holds some of its heritage, so you'll probably find it somewhere in between Joomla and RoR. That's not a bad thing, if what you're building is some kind of cms.

Compared to other general purpose frameworks, Drupal has a lot of stuff out- of-the-box, and it's quite easy to get in to. The community has been gaining a lot of followers recently and in some areas it is becoming the cms of choice for larger businesses. It's especially popular in the news paper world.

Judging from my observations, I would say that Drupal is a much more mature system that Joomla is (although I must admit I have limited experience with Joomla). I think they are about equal in how easy they are to learn. Both of them are fairly low-tech, procedural systems. I would pick Drupal of the two.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you'd find it helpful to read up on what features Drupal offers, so you can compare with what you know about Joomla, I just wrote an article on this last night: [http://returncontrol.com/what-does-drupal-provide-out-of- the...](http://returncontrol.com/what-does-drupal-provide-out-of-the-box-82)

In the article, I actually address the same point you make about Drupal being a "framework" (or "platform") rather than a CMS. In summary, it's probably best to think of Drupal as a "Web construction kit" rather than a CMS because its modular architecture allows you to plug in all sorts of features that go well beyond typical content management.

</comment><comment><USER6> I actively develop for Drupal (boost module). This 10 min demo should give you an idea on how fast sites can go up with it: <http://acquia.com/what-is- drupal>. I recommend Drupal.

</comment><comment><USER7> my partner set up Joomla for the Seminar Paper we wrote last year. don't know why he did that since later in the project we had to code, but after using it for a day or two I immediately asked him to set up Trac. it just was a pain viewed from the usability point. so, my advice is to stay away from Joomla if it's an option. I can't say if Drupal is better or not since I've never worked with it, but what I can say is that it can't get worse than Joomla! conclusion: use Drupal.</comment>