Why are there so few woman developers? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerearth.com/2013/12/women-programmers.html <comment><USER2> >number of intelligent women coders

As opposed to middling intelligence? I'll assume this is a language miscommunication.

>most of them quit half way >Male dominated workplaces seem to be a contributing factor to this.

Chicken and egg problem: speaking from experience it's really hard, for your entire career, to be around men and more men all day long. Hiring women is hard. Getting women into programming via Dev Bootcamps has been the best attack on this I've seen, and it's a fun way to do it.

>I think it's coded into a woman's DNA to not take their careers as seriously as a man and the change of that mindset starts at home.

Stop right there! Cultural assumptions abound!

>If there is any hope for an equal representation of genders in IT, it has got to change from the grass roots level.

Correct. More dev bootcamps please.

>what difference will women bring to technology. Well, I don't know about difference

What did women entering law, politics and medical fields do? Maybe nothing immediately obvious but the social ramifications these last hundred years or so have been massive, if nothing else I got to grow up having role models.

Edit: links for related dev bootcamps or intro classes:

[http://railsgirls.com](http://railsgirls.com)

[http://hackbrightacademy.com](http://hackbrightacademy.com)

[http://women2.com/tag/dev-bootcamp](http://women2.com/tag/dev-bootcamp)

<comment><USER3> And PyLadies: [http://www.pyladies.com/](http://www.pyladies.com/)

Boston specific meetup: [http://www.meetup.com/PyLadies- Boston/](http://www.meetup.com/PyLadies-Boston/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see someone explore the link between autism spectrum disorders and computer science. I remember seeing a study of majors in the states (does this ring a bell? I can't find it) that put the average CompSci major actually on the spectrum, where the other majors didn't come close to this prevalence.

Throw in that boys are overrepresented in high-functioning autism / aspergers numbers by a 7:1 ratio, and you've got a possible biological explanation for at least some of the gender bias in the field.[0] The linked study has a 12:1 ratio for aspergers!

This is just a hypothesis but I'd love to see it studied further. There might be some biological bias at work here, instead of making it a purely cultural thing (and without bringing in the evo-psych malarky).

[0] [http://www.la-press.com/gender-ratios-in-autism-asperger- syn...](http://www.la-press.com/gender-ratios-in-autism-asperger-syndrome-and- autism-spectrum-disorder-article-a1900)

<comment><USER5> can we please not do that? we finally got past the last set of assholes crooning about how "autistic, _therefore_ good at programming" they were.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's a good idea to ignore facts just because they are inconvenient and/or some assholes try to abuse them.

<comment><USER5> <sarcasm>I'm good with ignoring this one if it means we don't have to sit through another watercooler session of Aspberger's self-diagnosis.</sarcasm>

There is still a lot of disagreement about what Aspberger's and autism actually mean. There is a growing body of study that says it's not an inability to empathize with others, but more likely a hypersensitivity to stimulus. Regardless of whether or not that is true, with such a drastic difference in opinion on the nature of the disease, it seems unlikely that studies on the occurrence of the disease would yield meaningful results.

I have a few problems with the study you linked to. It looks like they are basing the data off of interviews of parents who brought their kids in for testing, comparing the diagnosis rates for these kids. Wouldn't this more likely show that "boys with disruptive behavioral issues are 12 times more likely to have it blamed on autism than girls of the same age", not that "boys are more likely to be autistic"? They collected data over an 8 year span for a 20 year span of birth-years, but never indicate the age of the subject _at the time of diagnosis_. Given that the test is almost completely behavioral in nature, wouldn't it stand to reason that age is a significant factor in behavioral development, and thus the likelihood of being diagnosed with behavioral issues?

I remember the other study you mentioned, it was in the early 2000s. I remember because one of my professors conducted our university's part of the study and made his students fill out the questionnaire during class. They asked questions on the narcissistic personality disorder spectrum on the hypothesis that lack of empathy correlated to Aspberger's syndrome. From there, finding a statistically significant skewing of the data supporting the idea that computer science students lack empathy, they then concluded that Aspberger's-afflicted people are attracted to the pure, analytical nature of programming.

Talk about leaping lizards of logic, Batman.

Without an associated correlation of lack of empathy in other analytical fields, I just think the far more likely answer is that, as a culture, we tolerate dickish behavior out of programmers more than any other analytical field, and thus people either learn dickishness or people who are prone to dickishness find a certain degree of survivability in programming. My experiences online with communities such as YouTube and 4chan indicate that dickishness is extremely easily learned behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm tired about all these "Why aren't there so many female engineers?" articles. What is the mystery? The answer is very clear.

Girls, from birth, are subject to absolutely enormous pressure (even if it's subconscious) on the part of nearly everyone they ever come into contact with, to be "girls" and not "men".

If you haven't noticed it before, try having a daughter, and realize that you do it too. I don't care who you are. _You_ do it too.

In a sense, it's hard to consider this as something strange - of course, people talk to each other differently, dependong on who they are. You talk to children differently than you talk to adults, for example. What is difficult is to adjust to the idea that women on men, on certain levels, should be addressed in the same way, and on other levels, addressed in different ways.

<comment><USER8> That pressure is not only external - it's also internal[1]. Often it's a wasted effort to try and treat your children in gender-neutral ways, they simply prefer to play with dolls and robots, and then you're just forcing your preferences on your children. Work with children and the extent to which our preferences are coded into our genes becomes even more evident.

An alternative conclusion we can draw from the statistics described in the article is that women are just as capable of pursuing careers in computer science if they so choose. The fact that there is a skewed gender distribution may not necessarily be a problem, but merely a difference in preferences. As long as we have no law or other system that discriminates against women or men, there may be no one but our biology to blame for such skewness.

[1] Behavioural gender differences become evident at very early ages, before any external pressure is exerted upon children. This is a widely studied issue, see for example:

Alexander, G. M., & Hines, M. (2002). Sex differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus). Evolution and Human Behavior, 23, 467–469.

Bailey, J. M., & Zucker, K. J. (1995). Childhood sex-typed behavior and sexual orientation: A conceptual analysis and quantitative review. Developmental Psychology, 31, 43–55.

Bauer, J. A., Shimojo, S., Gwizada, J., & Held, R. (1986). Sex differences in the development of human infants. Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, 27, 265–273.

Berenbaum, S. A., & Hines, M. (1992). Early androgens are related to childhood sex-typed toy preferences. Psychological Science, 3, 203–206.

Liss, M. B. (1981). Patterns of toy play: An analysis of sex differences. Sex Roles, 7, 1143–1150.

<comment><USER4> Interestingly, when mothers learn the gender of their child, they talk to their daughters in the womb more than they talk to their sons.

There was another study published recently that suggested that male and female babies might get subtly different breast milk.

Basically it's extremely difficult to separate what's genes and what's environment/culture. Because a baby is treated differently, fed differently and spoken to differently, based on gender, their entire lives (and before, depending on your definition of life).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another question: Why are there so few African-American developers? Diversity at a developer meetup is a bunch of white guys along with a splash of Indian and East Asians.

</comment><comment><USER10> 5-hour-old Google mirror: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m91Zysh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m91ZyshTAdUJ:blog.hackerearth.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><USER11> The actual title is "Why do we not have enough women programmers?". And I question the premise. The writer does not directly address this point, but an implicit premise is that if the proportion differs much from 50% we should look for something wrong.

Well, that's somewhat reasonable so far - certainly there are cultural factors impeding what would occur in different conditions, and maybe causing societies to miss some talent and individuals to fail to realize their potential. But the goal should be only to attain whatever percentage naturally results when any undesirable interferences are removed, and that condition is so poorly defined that we can't say that near 50% would be the outcome.

The correct approach, IMHO, is to attack any problems that are found in upbringing, education system and workplace culture - not with a goal of increasing representation of any group, but instead to remove any unfair treatment, sexism, loss of valuable contributions and so on - just because those things are undesirable - and then whatever results will be OK.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's down, does anyone have a mirror or copy?

 _edit_ : managed to get in long enough to grab the text, it's up on [http://pastebin.com/5eQnCXkX](http://pastebin.com/5eQnCXkX) with links put back in. Apologies to the author for denying them ad revenue, but your site seems to be creaking under the HN strain.

<comment><USER12> Check, its up again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are a lot of woman developers. Whenever I hear people asking this question, I automatically think, What you mean is "Why am I ignoring all the woman developers?". Where developers can be replaced by authors/bloggers/ceo's etc. There isn't 50/50 but there is a lot of them out there.

</comment><comment><USER14> In my last job I led a dev team made up of 8 women and 1 man (we did internal front-ends). The rest of the programmers in the company, including web, platform, DBA, IT, QA, devices etc. had plenty of excellent women working there.

I don't know why this particular company didn't suffer from gender imbalance in their computer science depts. There was no "affirmative action" directive coming from above; we hired the best human for the job.

It's possible that success breeds success. The more women worked there, the more women were comfortable there. Many programmers had migrated from the business side of the company (which needed to be pretty technical) so that may have been a factor.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a tough one for me. I hope I don't have to say that I am very opposed to discrimination against women, and I think we should take this problem seriously.

However, I also have to wonder if the scarcity of women in software is simply the result of better career decision making among women.

The sf chronicle (sfgate.com) recently released a list of jobs and what they pay in SF. RNs (registered nurses) earn an average salary of about $112,000 a year. Application developers, on the other hand, earn about $111,000 a year.

[http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most- co...](http://blog.sfgate.com/gettowork/2013/12/17/what-the-most-common-jobs- in-san-francisco-pay/#18915101=0)

Interestingly, physicians and pharmacists aren't listed (perhaps there aren't enough of them to make the list). Laywers, in spite of recent issues in the legal world, are still listed as having an average salary of $166,000 a year in San Francisco.

Nursing is 90% women. Pharmacy is about 56% women. At UCSF, the entering medical school class is 58% women. At Boalt law school (UC Berkeley), the entering class is 54% women.

Average don't tell the whole story. There's good and bad in everything. Many lawyers give up, so there is some survivor bias here (though you could certainly say the same thing about developers - many people believe firmly that there is bad age bias after age 40, something that doesn't appear to happen in health fields).

In terms of career stability and earnings, long term, I actually think that all of the fields (except perhaps law) listed above are probably better choices for academically talented students.

I post this a lot, but here it is again - the RAND institute concluded that the american aversion to graduate degrees in STEM fields is rational and market driven, a response to poor prospects and pay _relative_ to the options available high achieving students in other fields.

[http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html)

We should at least consider the possibility that avoidance of STEM degrees and software development careers may actually reflect better career decision making. We say that young women are generally outperforming young men academically, _but_ not in STEM. Well, maybe avoidance of STEM is just another manifestation of how women are making better choices in life than men are.

</comment><comment><USER5> Our culture bludgeons us over the head with the concepts that A) women are supposed to be social creatures, more-so than men, and B) programmers are supposed to be anti-social, but we put up with it because "aint nobody got time to understand what they do, amiright, yuck yuck yuck". So, when people internalize those messages, it isn't difficult to figure out the result. At least in America, programmers tend to act like anti-social assholes and women tend to have a lower tolerance for anti-social behavior.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Openshift has failed us :(

Thanks for putting up the mirrors. Do read and tell us what you think :)

</comment><comment><USER16> A lack of women in a given profession usually means there's no work-life balance there.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why are there so few man nurses? Innate preferences in the sexes, that's why. Deal with it already, I'm tired of this gender theory bullshit being pushed on HN.

<comment><USER5> I'm assuming you understand just how completely unlikely your statement is to find any sympathy, considering you made this account to make this statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why are there so few male nurses? Why are there so few male elementary teachers? Why are there so many male soldiers?

Why man and woman? Why homo sapiens cannot asexual reproduction? Is this where the evolution fails?</comment>


Air-breathing rocket engine set for key tests - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47585433 <comment><USER2> I'm 53 - I can remember news stories about HOTOL when I was in high school!

Mind you - it would be fantastic to see this become a reality.

<comment><USER3> I was fairly young at the time but still remember _Tomorrow's World_ (A BBC TV show about science and inventions) talking about HOTOL. To ~6 year old me, raised on watching Thunderbirds, Star Trek and NASA launches, it felt great that we'd be getting our very own Shuttle.

Much much older me loves messing around with scramjets and air-breathing rockets in Kerbal Space Program. Or spending real-world months exploring the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way in Elite: Dangerous. I guess our imagination always outstripped our ability, but to be honest I don't mind so much nowadays. Mostly because I'm partially disabled and would never get on any kind of space or Mars missions to start with.

<comment><USER4> Bumbling around out in the fringes is one of the best things about ED I find.

No man's sky is worth a look if you like the explorer aspect as well.

Universe is vast and varied and it's come a long way since the disaster that was it it's launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The air breathing operates upto mach 5.14 and 28km (which is higher and faster than an SR71).

That would be about 5500km/h. The first stage of a falcoln 9 on the recent flight was 6,600kph and 91km high, so not a direct comparison but fairly close.

Re-entry heat shields is still going to be a problem if it goes to orbital velocity of 27kkph for something that's reusable.

<comment><USER6> The space plane ideas for using a Sabre engine are fairly early stage designs, since the whole engine isn't even a working prototype yet.

Of the various designs I've seen via wikipeda, Reaction Engines PR, and on- line forums, it seems that the thermal management proposals are :-

* Bigger lighter air frame will do more thermal soak than other spaceplanes (I mean, what else is there apart from Shuttle and X15?)

* Retain some fuel to be circulated through airframe during decent, and then used for powered landing

* Less intense re-entry profile to avoid sharp heat spike, but at expense of longer thermal load

* Avoid going all the way to orbit, using a small final booster for orbital insertion

If they can harvest enough LOx/air in the final ascent, then they could also do a retro burn I suppose.

Perhaps a mix of all these, plus heat shields. SpaceX are learning how to deal with similar issues right now too.

<comment><USER7> > what else is there apart from Shuttle and X15?

Buran, X-37 .

<comment><USER8> And soon hopefully Dream Chaser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How exciting! Never expected this to come out of the vapourware stage, the technology sounded just too improbable. Sure would be nice to have an ambitious EU counterpart to SpaceX.

<comment><USER10> EU for another 11 days, unfortunately. But this is not the place for Brexshitting, so I'm just celebrating this regardless of any politics.

<comment><USER11> Maybe I can get away with the observation that this kind of prestigious engineering project has traditionally been a magnet for proud mercantilists.

The Science Museum's book about Concorde contains a breathtaking interview with an engineer who is very keen that technological innovations are not shared with the industries of other countries. Very myopic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its interesting to know that they are finally testing. I remember reading about Reaction Engines back in 2012 (I was in college) and them working in this technology. Back then it was in primordial stages.

How does this technology compare with Ramjet technology and X51?

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

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-51_Waverider](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-51_Waverider)

<comment><USER13> Scramjets minimise compression losses by minimising compression...

Sabre minimisies compression losses by instantly cooling incoming hypersonic air stream with their tricky heat exchanger, thus not doing compression. The turbocompressor after the precooler is pretty much a pump.

<comment><USER14> Interesting, thanks? You seem knowledgeble on the subject, what's your take on the commercial and technical viability of this tech in general and REL's abilities to execute more specifically in the case the tech is viable.

<comment><USER13> My common sense says that tech is not viable, but reality shows otherwise. Thus, I can't tell much about it from my common sense. The company must be staffed by much more competent engineers in their domain than I am.

The most tricky parts in my view are the pre-cooler just for the giant mass flow and temperature difference, and the helium/lh2 heat exchanger, but those two seem to been done. O_O

<comment><USER14> I see what you're saying but innovation in high-speed mass transport is going to take a breakthrough in tech: could be sabre, could be hyperloop, could be superconducting maglev. Despite what your spidey-sense is telling you, maybe this is one of the breakthroughs we need. Having said that I think we should be aiming for low environmental footprint with all our tech from now on given what we know about the damage we're doing. I'd like to see these breakthrough techs compared in terms of environmental costs.

My ideal combo would be superconducting maglev high-speed trains coupled with nuclear power to deliver the electricity.

<comment><USER15> For mass transit high speed only makes sense for longer distances. Most mass transit is relatively short haul where the acceleration/deceleration times (that still provides a comfortable ride) prevent you from saving any time.

Over the speed of sound is _great_ if you want to fly half way around the world. But from Paris to London it doesn't really save you much. Unless it becomes cheaper than regular air travel.

<comment><USER14> > For mass transit high speed only makes sense for longer distances. Most mass > transit is relatively short haul where the acceleration/deceleration times > (that still provides a comfortable ride) prevent you from saving any time.

Probably I just should have said superconducting maglev trains. I guess you're right that they only need to be properly high speed over longer distances. Superconducting maglev would be a win for acceleration/deceleration as well so would benefit short haul.

Realistically speaking, inexpensive superconductors would be a total game changer for many fields, not just mass transport.

> Over the speed of sound is great if you want to fly half way around the > world. But from Paris to London it doesn't really save you much. Unless it > becomes cheaper than regular air travel.

I kind of feel that in general it'd be better to replace planes with trains, than to replace planes with better or faster planes. Better security-wise. Better for the environment in the long run I believe. I'm totally open to correction though.

<comment><USER15> > Superconducting maglev would be a win for acceleration/deceleration as well

This limitation isn't at all technological. You just can't accelerate or decelerate much faster than today's high speed trains without causing discomfort to your passengers. And the radius of any turn increases with speed. Otherwise first you just produce noticeable discomfort while turning, and beyond that you risk derailment (no matter the rail type). So you're basically stuck with having really long and very straight stretches of rail where you have to gently accelerate and decelerate. On any short trip this would kill any economy of high top speed.

> I kind of feel that in general it'd be better to replace planes with trains

The advantage of flight is that you are free to take a more or less straight path between the 2 points without caring about what's below. But with any kind of land transportation you need to deal with rivers, mountains, lakes and seas (not to mention oceans), cities and other man made structures, etc. Without a breakthrough in engineering I don't see how you can go from London to Los Angeles in a reasonable time.

<comment><USER16> > This limitation isn't at all technological. You just can't accelerate or > decelerate much faster than today's high speed trains without causing > discomfort to your passengers.

Will electric cars change people's comfort with longitudinal acceleration? Imagine people's family SUV does 0-60 at 5 m/s^2 (Tesla Model Y), and sedan around 10 m/s^2 (Model 3 and S). Then subway's ~1 m/s^2, shinkansen's 1.2, or TGV's 0.5, may seem very last century. A generic Honda Civic looks about 3.

<comment><USER15> We can do it but it won't be comfortable. It would be "roller coaster fun" (similar acceleration). You have 500 people on a train (half of them facing backwards) and want to give them a comfortable ride. Including keeping the coffee in their cups or their stomachs :). Again, it's not a technological challenge, it's a biological one. The human body doesn't evolve faster because we have capable cars.

At 5m/s^2 we're talking ~0.5G, more than what you feel in a plane taking off (normally ~0.4G) and one order of magnitude higher than most high-speed trains accelerating (~0.03-0.05G). This is not a normal or comfortable regime. And at 0.2G lateral acceleration (in curves) you have a good chance of seeing your lunch again. This means at 600Km/h you need 15-20Km turn radius. Add to that the air turbulence at close to and over 500Km/h at sea level which causes a rumble that's nausea inducing for most people (riding in low pressure tubes may help here).

Just a few other numbers for reference:

Shinkansen: 0.07G

ICE (German HSR): 0.05G

S-Bahn (metro transport): 0.1G

Plane take off: 0.4G

Roller coaster: 0.5G

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use air breathing engines for small single stage orbital vehicles in KSP. They are much more fun to fly, albeit you have to stay in atmosphere for a longer time due to very low degree of ascent to gain speed :)

If I have to go further, I make it two stage, with the last stage traditional booster stage. Anything bigger than that tends to fail though.

</comment><comment><USER18> How does this compare to Concorde, and contemporary aircraft, with regards to emissions and noise levels?

Could a hypersonic "plane" operate from ordinary airports near cities, or would it need to be operated from remote, unpopulated areas for environmental reasons?

<comment><USER19> This engine is meant for Skylon spaceplane, an unmanned cargo vehicle. As for noise, there are no reasons to have it overflight any populated areas. I presume there would be less noise abatement technologies employed due to need for efficiency.

As for emissions, close to none. The engines are supposed to burn hydrogen, and other emissions (brake pads wear, in-orbit maneuvering via cold thrusters) are minuscule.

<comment><USER20> What type of cargo does an unmanned plane carry that needs to get to the destination at Mach 5?

I am not convinced that this is not military development.

<comment><USER21> This engine is meant to bring stuff (and people) to low earth orbit. Don't think of it as a plane, but as a space shuttle which will be fully reusable with no additional boosters. It flies at up to mach 5 and then switches to rocket mode, thus using it's own oxydizer instead of using the one in the atmosphere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow. 1,500C to -150C in 1/100th of a second sounds pretty remarkable. Any idea how that's achieved?

<comment><USER23> A helium cooling loop, cooled by a nitrogen boiler. More info and pictures: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-20510112](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20510112)

The Rolls engines designed for HOTOL were meant to do the same, by a different method. They were going to use the hydrogen fuel to operate the intake heat exchangers. The engine then burnt hot hydrogen. Any excess was used as reheat injected into the exhaust.

<comment><USER24> What do they ultimately do with the heat?

Or do they just boil of the nitrogen into the atmosphere and need to take a supply of it for the whole trip?

<comment><USER13> They will use fuel instead of LN2 in the real thing.

<comment><USER24> From what I heard liquid hydrogen is quite nasty. It will definitely require different materials than ln2

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is very cool. But, there are two ways to make your trips shorter:

1 - make them feel shorter by providing some luxury, comfort, ability to sleep watching movies, or remaining predictive, etc.

2 - go faster and reduce the travel time.

There is a cost/benefits points where 1 vs 2 will not make economic sense, even for very wealthy.

This is why I think, this kind of technology will mostly work and see demands in military applications and not so much for jet-setting around the world.

<comment><USER26> Even with current airplanes, for most trips the hassle is all the stuff that involves getting on the plane in the first place. Once you are _in_ your seat, you can either relax or by relatively productive with your laptop+in-flight wifi.

<comment><USER27> _Once you are in your seat, you can either relax or by relatively productive with your laptop+in-flight wifi._

I think that's only true if you fly first-class (domestic) or business class (or maybe premium economy) international.

In standard Economy I can't open my 15" laptop screen all the way, and when I try to use my keyboard, my elbows poke the person in the seat(s) next to me. So being productive while flying is not an option.

The economics don't support giving people adequate space, so reducing the time in flight is a big win for everyone.

<comment><USER26> Upgrading to a 'sane' amount of legroom cost me 40 bucks on my last flight as I recall. Even if time in the seat is 100% wasted time, all the ancillary stuff like getting to and from the airport, security, rental car, bag check, etc, etc is a significant % of the overall time expenditure for all but the longest flights.

<comment><USER27> It varies widely among airlines, the last time I booked United for SFO->SEA (a 2 hour flight), they wanted $89 for "economy plus" and ~4 inches more legroom. And even with the extra legroom, the seats are still quite narrow and I have a hard time using a 15" laptop and still keeping my elbows within my armrests.

I think I paid $29 for the upgrade on Alaska Airlines (though you need to do your research, since depending on the plane (Alaska, former virgin, Horizon), you may not get more legroom, just a seat closer to the front and maybe a free cocktail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Fully reusable Spacex Rockets would be lower cost than Skylon spaceplanes"

[https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/08/fully-reusable- spacex-...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/08/fully-reusable-spacex- rockets-would-be-lower-cost-than-skylon-spaceplanes.html)

It's really difficult to beat rockets for launch to orbit. Air breathing may make more sense for cruise missions.

</comment><comment><USER29> So its a two in one engine? neat idea, hoping it goes well. This sounds a bit nicer than blasting at high gs for quick travel around the planet.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this technology will ever be viable for commercial flights in the future. What the safety procedures would look like at that speed.

<comment><USER31> I'd imagine the cockpit would need to be fully shielded? Just as a fun exercise, let's calculate the kinetic energy of a 3kg goose impacting the airplane at 5000 kmh:

The formula is (m*v^2)/2.

Plugging in the figures, we get 2.9 MJ, or the equivalent of a little more than half a kg of TNT. Not bad :D

<comment><USER32> Geese don't fly at the height where this speed is reached.

<comment><USER33> My 90s childhood education based on pirated floppies was apparently deficient in the flight habits of geese, then: [https://www.myabandonware.com/game/star- goose-ix](https://www.myabandonware.com/game/star-goose-ix)

Thanks for the correction, HN!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How much operational weight (fuel, power source) is there compared to other technologies? What about range?

</comment><comment><USER35> Is this equivalent to a SC/RAM jet engine?

<comment><USER13> No, it is very different

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> As a hydrogen engine it is also carbon neutral. That makes it more environment friendly than both the existing jet engines and Musk's methane rocket hopper.

<comment><USER37> That comment has very little substance. Where do you get the hydrogen? Where do you get the jet fuel? The answer determines if it's environment friendly.

<comment><USER14> Yes. So-called `green tech' and its boosters have greenwashed a bunch of tech which is far from actually green and clean when you look at the details. I'm unsure whether these people are ignorant or mendacious. Charitably I'm going with the first option with a touch of the ol' ideological blinkers thrown in for good measure.

Examples:

(a – transport) electric vehicles, hydrogen-powered vehicles – In the first case, how are batteries made? where do the elements come from, what are the environmental costs? what are the human costs? what are the industrial processes? In the second case, to echo your question, great but where does the the hydrogen come from? And what about disposal and recycling?

(b – energy production) wind turbines, solar pv panels – Same set of questions: how are they made? What are the social and environmental costs? What's their lifetime? How are they disposed of or recycled?

This is a shame because actually greener tech (like nuclear in the case of energy production, and cycling and mass public transport in the case of transport) is overlooked or sidelined to the detriment of the whole planet. Unsurprisingly this childish ignorance will end up hurting us all. This stuff needs to be taught in schools.

<comment><USER36> You understand that you can google either of those and get thorough, comprehensive breakdowns of environmental costs? Because that's exactly the kind of questions that being asked by people like you for last couple decades. Not that they ever read the answers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car#Environmental_impact_of_manufacturing)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I just hope they've got the IP well locked down. Bound to be lots of envious eyes on this tech!

</comment><comment><USER39> This might be competing with SpaceX BFR taking passengers point to point. I would bet on the BFR being more likely, proven technology vs new tech.</comment>


Dan Gilbert to Lead Detroit's Super Bowl-Type Bid for Amazon HQ2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20170914/news/639106/duggan-gilbert-to-lead-super-bowl-type-bid-for-amazon-hq2?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> Detroit was built on an industry so large that nothing has matched it since in scale.

I think that to restore Detroit to its former glory is not really possible because there is no industry big enough to support it, nor is Detroit necessarily the best area to put that industry if it existed.

It just so happened that Henry Ford was born here and transformed a small trading town into a huge manufacturing hub by chance of his business growing so large at the right time.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a Michigan resident.. I would like to see it happen. But I don't think Detroit is a particularly attractive destination for top software engineering talent.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good luck. It has the airport and cheap housing, but no educated workforce or mass transit.

In my reading, Philadelphia and Atlanta have to be towards the top of the list, with Toronto a plausible dark-horse candidate.

<comment><USER5> I didn't read Amazon's requirements doc; was an out-of-the-box "educated workforce" a requirement? It seems like that could be seeded with new grad hires and existing Amazon employees who are willing to relocate for much lower cost of living. If Amazon is thinking big enough and long term enough they could also invest in improving the education system in the area at the secondary and higher level (e.g., grants for faculty hires and curriculum development).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a Detroit resident, I would love to see this happen. Detroit doesn't have the resources to invest in infrastructure and Michigan doesn't have the will to do so.</comment>


Ask HN: I've been offered some equity for work as Employee #1 - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
This is a throwaway account as I'm pretty sure the people who know me knows my user account here.
I'm kinda in a weird situation right now. I'm actually a freelance Rails developer who have been taking on projects from startups.
I've recently been approached by a local startup to help with their Rails development and I have been heading down to their office to do some pro-bono work for them (I don't often do this but I found myself having some kind of rapport with the founders).
The startup is still in its pre-seed stage and I'm currently advising them on the technical aspect of their startup.
They have two founders, 1 a Business/CEO guy who has 17 years of experience and a technical guy who has no working experience.
During my short time working with them, I found myself teaching/mentoring the technical guy most of the time.
The guys recently approached me to offer me to work with them.
I would be working:
4 days a week and I can take 1 day off to work remotely from now till the start of Jan.
From Jan to Mar, I'll be working about 14 hours+ a week as I have an existing commitment with another project.
In return, I'll be given 10% of the equity at the end of the 4th month, USD$933 (converted from my local currency) for working in December and USD$465/month from Jan - Mar.
The project I'm working on from Jan - Mar would give me about USD$3.1k/month. Normally, I'd earn on average of USD$27/hour for my freelance work.
I obviously earn much much less than I normally would if I were to take on freelance projects.
I kinda like the team but I feel that the amount of compensation doesn't make sense. I have some faith though that the CEO guy would be able to secure some form of funding and probably maybe even attract angels.
Does it still make sense to take the risk of equity over cash compensation or how should I renegotiate? <comment><USER2> Looking over the 7 comments so far on this, I suggest you trust your instincts that this isn't a tremendously well-conceived business. Find someone else whose Rails skills you find are roughly comparable to yours, and say you are too booked to commit to sling the code for them, but you would be happy to serve in a technical advisory / oversight capacity as a board member, and here's this other Rails coder who should be able to serve your needs almost as well. Typical board member time commitment is no more than 16 hours a month for a director who is conscientious, with no chair commitments on a board, but one who preps for the board meetings, is available for ad-hoc and committee meetings, etc. Typical compensation is entirely equity, around 2% at the pre- seed stage for each director. Read up on what board of directors do in a startup if you take this advice and use it, before you approach them; don't go overboard, an evening spent Googling around is sufficient at your stage with these guys, you just need to get a feel for the boundary between guidance / advice and operations.

This delivers several objectives:

* Puts out the message: your professional time is outbidding their bid in the market. * Retain the relationship for a more manageable time commitment. * Allows them to get strategic-level technical advice from you "for free" (for now), and implement in the trenches as they see fit. * Gives them a starting point for another in the trenches implementer.

Expertise matters _a lot_. Execution matters more.

It can cost very little to offer general board-level guidance (making sure they are asking the right questions) using your expertise if like in your situation you are favorably disposed to the parties. It should cost very dear for you to use your expertise to execute.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to second gallerytungsten's comment.

I've been approached a dozen times by business people offering me equity for my development time. I committed to and completed three projects and nothing ever came of them. Thankfully it only amounted to ~1000 hours among the three projects, but it's still time I wasn't paid for.

A technical co-founder with no work experience doesn't sound like much of a "technical" co-founder. Has he worked on any sort of open source projects, done research at a university, or anything that could be considered experience? If not, then it's not a good sign.

If you can afford to spare the time, then by all means take the opportunity, but I'd ask for 33% and wouldn't settle for less than 25%. Just state that you feel you'd be playing an important role in the product's creation and expect a more equitable share. You're allowed to put any price you want on your time. If they're confident the venture will succeed, then they should relinquish some of their share, otherwise they're being a bit greedy.

</comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like you'd be more or less a co-founder. Why are you only getting 10% and not 1/3? Do you really think their "idea" is worth that much? Ask for 1/3 and align your interests with the other co-founders if you really want to do this.

</comment><comment><USER5> This generally depends on your personal needs.

1\. Do you have another job? 2\. Can you afford to work for the amount they are willing to pay you? 3\. A general rule of thumb is that you _always_ renegotiate. Once you reach salary negotiation you're pretty much going to be hired, and the worst they can do is say no.

You need to figure out if you can work for equity over cash. How viable is the company?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a freelance developer.

The amount of money that they offered will not last me more than a week.

The company is in the space of business intelligence and their customers would mostly be corporate/startup owners.

I'm not crazy over the idea, but it does sound viable but then again there's so many competitors in this field.

The only saving grace is that I find that the CEO guy with his previous experience managing a medium-sized company may be able to use his connections to get customers.

And the startup environment where I am in (Singapore) may be advantageous to him where angels and government grant givers take previous working experience before giving out cash.

<comment><USER6> BI is a pretty crowded space. Even with the connections of the CEO, he's going to be competing against established companies with significant teams of developers ranging from smallish, but quickly growing (e.g. Tableau) to monstrous (e.g. Microsoft).

I'd be very reluctant to take almost nothing but equity in a BI company unless the CEO can make a very clear and convincing case for the product over the legions of competitors you'll face.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not totally convinced that he knows the space well myself.

I find myself trying to justify sticking with them, maybe negotiate a lower working time/commitment for the same pay (provided that they cannot afford to increase the pay) in exchange of losing this friendship and potential network.

Although I still think I'd be shortchanged.

Another worrying trend I feel is that while I'm probably 'employee #1', I find myself doing more architecture/design work than the technical co-founder as he is a relatively new programmer.

What would be a good way to ensure that I do not burn bridges while negotiating and/or rejecting?

<comment><USER6> I'd just tell them that your current financial situation doesn't enable you to work for just equity. And if you feel like you're doing more of the technical work than the technical co-founder, it's probably not a good situation overall.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Absolute Denial of Shit - <AUTHOR> https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/07/the-absolute-denial-of-%F0%9F%92%A9/ <comment><USER2> The bad news:

\- They changed the gun emoji to be a water gun, which has a totally different meaning. This retroactively changes previous writings, changing their meaning. What kind of writing system allows people to change your words after you've written them? Emoji is a trash writing system and an agent of kipplization.

\- Emoji is controlled by corporations that are concerned with maximizing the value of their platforms which will lead them to a PG13, disneyfied, milquetoast worldview.

The good news:

\- In the entire human history, it has never been easier to create and publish text, audio, or video works of any kind. The most popular platforms have severe limitations, but it only takes the slightest effort to use other platforms that are uncensored.

\- There is plenty of free software that can give you pixel-level control over your output, you don't need to rely on the unicode consortium or any other organization of any kind to determine what you express.

<comment><USER3> > What kind of writing system allows people to change my words after I've > written them?

Any kind of writing system allows this. Translation changes the words, and can change meaning. People can mis-quote. And yes, over time, meanings of words change, as do the cultural contexts from which they came. None of this is unique to emojis.

The truth is that all communication has at least two parties, and there is never a guarantee that the receiver will get the message as intended. Even if you do craft "pixel-perfect" emojis, people still can (and likely will) mis- understand the nuances of your intended message.

<comment><USER4> When "gay" changed from "happy" to "homosexual", it (1) took many years (starting over a hundred years ago [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay)) and (2) happened as hundreds of millions of English speakers came to a consensus -- or at least an overwhelming acceptance -- about the word.

When "pistol" changed to mean "toy gun", it (1) happened in two years and (2) was decided by an oligarchy of actors (and not even the Unicode Consortium oligarchy).

Can you spot the difference?

<comment><USER5> Slang can change rapidly based on current events.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't change very often due to top-down orders, though...

<comment><USER7> It didn't in this case either, it changed because a group of private platform vendors decided they agreed with the rationale one of the other vendors had for changing something.

<comment><USER6> Why do you not consider that to be "top down orders"? Sure, the orders came from a few execs at a few companies, rather than from the president, but it still looks top-down to me. Specifically it looks top-down in contrast to slang changing rapidly due to current events (which was the original context), which involves a bunch of people having a new reference point, and choosing to use that in their speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I alone in thinking that emoji should be completely removed from the Unicode standard? The character set is an amazing collaboration between companies and countries to place all glyphs used by humans in a standardized collection... And then there's a bunch of smiley faces. Seems like someone at the Unicode Consortium accidentally downloaded a "free smiley pack" malware from the 2000's that injected itself into the standard draft. Just deprecate that garbage. There's already a standard to represent all conceivable pictograms: <img> tags and PNG.

<comment><USER9> You're not alone, but... riddle me this: what's the difference between emoji and ideographs (e.g., Chinese Han / Japanese Kanji characters)??

I submit that the only difference is... time.

Perhaps a better questions would be: Do you believe that we should close the set of human language scripts? If so, when?

That's a serious question.

You might say that we should not invent new scripts (there goes Klingon), only accept new Unicode codepoint assignments for existing scripts. OK, but, really, you want no evolution of scripts? I don't think the Chinese -for example- would appreciate that, as Han/Kanji have been added over time, and even recently[0][1]. So perhaps you might say "just don't invent new _scripts_ ". Ok, but, why not? Why should we close one enormous aspect of human culture to innovation?! And what if some language authority (e.g., the Spanish Royal Academy) were to decide to incorporate emoji? International politics has had a definite and substantial effect on Unicode's design and evolution -- do you think that the Unicode Consortium can somehow start to resist political pressure where it has not been able to?!

You can see where I'm going with this. Emoji are new ideographs. Love them or hate them, that's what they are. Me? I like phonetic systems, but I understand that ideographs add expression dimensions that most of us outside countries where ideographs prevail... just are not even aware of. There are word games to be played in, e.g., Japanese, which will just not translate well to English -- though to be fair the reverse is also true, just in a completely different way.

I don't think opposition to emoji is politically tenable, not in the long term, and probably not in the short term either.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/Are-new-Chinese-characters-still- being...](https://www.quora.com/Are-new-Chinese-characters-still-being- invented)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_j%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji)

<comment><USER8> The difference is that Han and Kanji are 4000+ years old. When smiley faces reach han/kanji's level of consistency if humans 20 generations from now speak in full smiley face syntax, then it's time for Unicode to standardize them.

Anyone from standards committees know that when you attempt to standardize something early that is in development and still mutating, you either 1) prevent further change of the development if your standard is widespread enough, leaving you with an early, not-well-thought-out version that the world has to live with or 2) your standard must keep up with the changing reality, making your standard change over time, which is synonymous with "a bad standard" or "not even a standard".

Unicode has a perfect solution already for glyphs that are currently in development: unspecified reserved blocks. If a tribe of humans wants to develop a language around smiley faces, they can use one of these blocks until Unicode Inc. recognizes that it is consistent enough to standardize. But instead, Unicode has placed emoji in the mainline standard.

There's only one explanation for Unicode's horrible decision. Ideagraphs are controversial, and controversy creates votes and attention, which funds their company. If you think this is the way it should work, emojis are for you.

<comment><USER9> As writing systems they are old indeed. Not every character in those systems is that old, or very old at all.

So what? In a digital world, not having a Unicode codepoint assignment means not having the character at all, not even with pen and paper. Therefore rejecting emoji is the same as rejecting new scripts altogether. I don't think that's wise.

EDIT: Also, regarding private use codepoints, since the desire is to interoperate, those cannot be used for emoji.

<comment><USER8> Private reserved blocks are perfect for emoji and developling languages. They can be a time-variable recommendation, not a standard, by Unicode. That's how _anything_ gets standardized. You don't just put new arbitrary ideas into the mainline standard. This is like Boost and the C++ standard, or PEP drafts and the Python standard, or W3 WD and REC, or industry de-facto standards and ISO. If emoji becomes constant enough (not likely since no language will even be developed using it), it should then be moved into Unicode Standard.

But accepting emoji to the official standard on the spot? I see they've chosen my (1) from above.

<comment><USER9> PUC are completely non-interoperable.

Apple and Google, and their users, want to interop. PUC is a non-starter.

<comment><USER8> So why don't Apple and Google agree on a standard? Why does Unicode need to do it?

<comment><USER9> Because PUC means _private_ to an organization. Any standard imposed on PUC would... violate the Unicode standard, and any standard of how to use PUC would, if accepted by the industry, be indistinguishable from... just the Unicode Consortium standardizing those characters. Why is the UC doing this not good for you but some other standards development organization (formal or informal) OK?

<comment><USER8> In this case, the rules of Unicode has set itself up to be doomed. If the organization favors commercial votes over common sense, it is no longer an organization with the purpose of standardizing human glyphs, but a company that accepts icons from companies for cash.

However, going back to my original point, UC's decision to standardize smileys from Japanese icons was a mistake, and it _can_ be reversed by releasing that part of the standard into a non-UC-endorsed extension, or by deprecating it entirely, recommending system-dependent methods for transmitting icons instead.

<comment><USER9> Not commercial votes, _paying members_ 's votes.

I prefer SDOs like the IETF, which are not pay-to-play, but, really, a seat at the UC is a drop in the bucket for nation states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The water gun emoji controversy got considerable press coverage and is easy to find in Google. Apple was behind it.[1] But they were pressured into it by a New York anti-gun group.[2][3]

The Unicode discussion for the "no" symbol (COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE BACKSLASH) suggest the use of "No" on the gun glyph for "no guns":

No guns ⃠

That's a combining mark; you can apply it to anything.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-gun-emoji-change- squirt...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-gun-emoji-change-squirt-gun- has-led-google-samsung-facebook-microsoft-to-follow-suit-2018-4) [2] [https://metro.co.uk/2015/08/07/activists-want-the-gun- emoji-...](https://metro.co.uk/2015/08/07/activists-want-the-gun-emoji- removed-from-iphones-5331721/) [3] [https://www.wired.com/2016/08/apples-new- squirt-gun-emoji-hi...](https://www.wired.com/2016/08/apples-new-squirt-gun- emoji-hides-big-political-statement/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Where are the emojis for pain? And why are there so many happy family emojis? People (and "corporate people") who care enough to get emojis put in by buy votes at the Unicode Club seem to have super weird values totally detached from humans who send each other messages.

<comment><USER12> Have any "pain" emojis been rejected, or has merely nobody officially proposed them? (which anyone can do, no club membership required)

<comment><USER4> IDK, but either way the end result is a system which is unuseful for expressing common ideas.

<comment><USER9> In Japanese, ideographs (Kanji) are paired with syllabic characters (Hiragana) to express things which Kanji alone cannot. Foreign words are spelled in Katakana (another syllabic script). There's also romaji -- a way of writing Japanese in the familiar Latin alphabet.

Incompleteness is manifestly _NOT_ a problem for an ideographic script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Adding new stuff to Unicode should have a delay, 20-25 years from proposal to the standard (roughly a generation).

In the meantime it's possible to insert emoji into text as smiley, -smiley-, :) , smiley.jpg, ::smiley:: or whatever you want and the system you use is free to change it into a picture.

We end up with standard that is full of ancient symbols from 2000-2025 and new generations of people will abandon them for something else when the culture changes.

Emoji from 80s:

      ________
             /  "Ship Arriving Too Late to
            /    Save a Drowning Witch"
           /  /\              F. Zappa

<comment><USER9> Users of scripts not currently fully-covered by Unicode would NOT be happy with this proposal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The best part of this article is discovering "send me sfmoma"

> Text 572-51 with the words "send me" followed by a keyword, a color, or even > an emoji and you'll receive a related artwork image and caption via text > message

Stuff like this makes me happy for technology

</comment><comment><USER7> Emojis are ephemeral, imprecise symbols which in the clients discussed are generally used for short term communication, not persistent information storage. Like the ASCII art they originated from, their implied meaning often doesn't survive font changes.

I wonder how many of the people apparently incandescent with rage at the "authoritarian nature" of vendors changing a gun to a water pistol to bring into line with other vendors had similar objections back when Microsoft changed their original scifi toy gun to a pistol back in 2016...

<comment><USER9> No more ephemeral than Chinese characters ever were (some were ephemeral, some durable). For example, the list of Kanji to be taught in Japan is updated periodically -- some characters are dropped, some are added. New Han/Kanji characters are invented occasionally -- it can be done because they are actually simplified drawings with one or more root characters and pen strokes added to distinguish them from other similar characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I basically want this:

\- Emoji decoupled from Unicode, and represented as SVG by chat clients. This ensures our expression is not limited by the Unicode committee.

\- Any user can upload a new emoji as SVG.

\- Any user can download an emoji that appears in one of their messages, and place it in their own library.

\- Emojis can also be downloaded from web-pages etc.

<comment><USER16> SVG would make a lot of sense here - but could you settle for content-hash- named transclusion of arbitrary bitmap images as a Unicode escape?

It's been proposed!

[http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16105r-unicode-image- hash.pd...](http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16105r-unicode-image-hash.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Oh god why. This is like the 21th century update to Zawinski's Law: every data interchange format will eventually expand to encode arbitrary binary data. Unicode is a text standard and even including wingdings symbols and emoji was pushing it, please kill this in the cradle.

<comment><USER18> Think about the 1700s, when printing presses had existed for a few hundred years (since 1439) to transfer data between people. Books were expensive, though. Would you have been able to imagine that in 1975, printed paper would be created each morning, and hauled around to everyone's door step in time for breakfast?

Now think about us sitting here in 2018. Computer rendered text has been around for a while (ASCII, UTF, .doc, .html, etc.) In another 200 years, the way we transfer, encode, and view those formats will be completely perfected and probably unrecognizable to us. They will probably be ubiquitous in a way that seems completely alien to us now, and all of the implementation issues we worry about in 2018 will completely fade away (proprietary vs. open, security vulnerabilities, compatibility, accessibility, etc.).

With this in mind, being reluctant to add enrichment to how document transfer works seems like it's obviously on the wrong side of history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What surprises me is that there isn't any emoji with an unequivocal meaning of "thanks."

<comment><USER20> Is that surprising? Is there a unequivocal symbol for Thanks other than the word itself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had been disturbed by the actions of platforms like Google for awhile, fearing that their naive efforts at maintaining "mass market appeal" in the most hamfisted and blind ways possible were going to have unintentional consequences for global human culture. Then I read Eric Schmidt's book 'The New Digital Age.' They are not naive. And the effects are not unintentional at all. Their goal isn't even mass-market appeal. They want to ossify human culture and lock it in place to what it was in the early 2000s when they first became successful. As multitudes in the past have done, upon attaining influence many in the tech crowd have concluded that they know better, and that the general public (of which they of course never count themselves a member) is not capable of the task of regulating their own culture. This is a pretty old viewpoint. It built the pyramids, united Rome, etc. It's old school Conservative thinking, where the needs of the nation (or cult or tribe or whatever) come first, and the individual exists solely to serve that. It requires the presence of 'special' people, typically incarnated gods, representatives chosen by a god, or somehow otherwise fundamentally 'Better' people, like a kings lineage.

That brand of thinking ruled the world for a long time, but it got its ass kicked basically completely around the end of the 18th century. I have no idea why the rich people at the top of tech companies seem to like it so much. But it's becoming increasingly clear that these systems of communication are enabling a greater level of control and there are some sick-minded powerful folks who will need to be reigned in as they are more than willing to take those reigns. No one should have those. Global culture can, and eventually will, guide itself.

Humanity is a wonderful species, but only in its totality. In the cut-down whitewashed conformal mass that Facebook and Google and others want to construct and sell to people, then try to force on the rest, it looks more like a metastatic infection. The tech companies are unquestionably at war with basic human nature. They do not like humans very much, and they want to change them. Like their forebearers in the Industrial Revolution, they seek to round off the rough edges, smooth out the wrinkles, and will wreak any amount of suffering necessary to do so. Engineers need to think very hard about the ethics of their work. "Just doing my job" holds exactly as much moral weight as "I just did it for money", so keep that in mind. It's an empty dodge.

</comment><comment><USER22> Clicked on the article hoping for something substantial about policy to clean up fecal matter on San Francisco streets. Instead got:

" a distinct work-life balance has been replaced by free food, ping pong, and services that do your laundry or drive you to work. This puerility is internalized so profoundly that it extends to corporate hierarchies and the way essential tasks are discussed. Software engineers are often colloquially referred to as "rock stars" or "ninjas" in job postings, and childish jargon is pervasive. "

Which is ridiculous considering the article is about poop and gun cartoon depictions.

<comment><USER23> I have a feeling that by 2016, most people who use emojiis weren't using them on Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Part of the problem is that Google and Apple have a monopoly on this stuff. Not sure we can do anything about that readily, but we should probably at least acknowledge that it's a problem.

If we just assume that isn't going to change maybe we could adopt an app that has its own emoji representations separate from the operating system.

And/or maybe we need to start some political process working on the companies to improve their representations.

I think this is the tip of the iceberg and is more important than most people realize. Censorship is no joke.

</comment><comment><USER25> Designed by the corporate committee of social fads, emoji represent a lot of things I've come to despise. Overly truncated thoughts, ambiguity, laziness, sometimes plain disrespect. Sure, you can do all of this without the help of emoji, but even if the medium isn't the message, it does modify it and I think it does so for the worse.

What I'm really saying is, I'm angry about the kind of person who tends to abuse them. Getting angry over little pictographs on the internet is silly after all, right? :-)

</comment><comment><USER26> While good writing and artwork undoubtably can express a far greater range of emotions than emoji—and with infinitely more subtlety—if you ask me how I'm feeling in casual conversation, 90% of the time I'll reply "fine" or "ok" or "bad". Being able to easily reply with one of 50 reaction emojis is a great improvement in expressiveness here.

Emoji do become problematic when you start asking follow up questions, such as "what does feeling 'bad' feel like?" Since you've already expressed your specific state when you replied with your first emoji, to add more depth you start having to combine reaction emoji to express something new or repurpose other emoji as symbols. Which sounds a lot like any language actually

A far more dangerous problem is that emoji can replace the idea of the things they are intended to represent. For example: the happiness emoji becomes our idea of what happiness is, instead of merely representing the concept of happiness. That seems to be what the article is driving at and it clearly would be bad if this widely happened. The result would be newspeak type language, incapable of expressing many ideas and that is controlled by these huge companies. Worse, using such a language, your subjective experience of life has to fit into the emoji standard because you lack the tools to express or even conceptualize anything beyond it.

</comment><comment><USER27> > queries containing emoji whose colloquial meaning had diverged from their > objective depiction, such as the infamous [eggplant emoji], left users > unsatisfied.

Well but how is that different from how words have worked since the dawn of civilization? If tomorrow the collective society starts using the word kaleidoscope as an euphemism for penis, then any software that statically maps words to meanings will also fail. This is not a problem tied to emojis specifically.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a non-American, I find it somewhat ironic that nowhere in this discussion of the gun emoji change - "The Absolute Denial of Shit" - is there any discussion of the correlation of gun violence and gun laws.

[http://fortune.com/2018/03/20/gun-laws-gun-crimes-state- gun-...](http://fortune.com/2018/03/20/gun-laws-gun-crimes-state-gun- regulations/)

<comment><USER29> Although you make a valid point, the article linked to is statistically questionable, and consequently potentially very misleading.

"Potentially", because it may (who knows) accidentally have come to the correct conclusion, notwithstanding its shaky basis, but it could just as easily be wrong.

The author of that article even goes as far as writing "Correlation does not equal causation" and in the same sentence goes on to call it a trend, which I find contradictory.

<comment><USER28> The linked article doesn't in fact draw a conclusion - it is simply drawing attention to the correlation - which is quite striking. And while it would have been equally correct (if not drawing a conclusion) to state that the "trend" (poor choice of word) indicates that states with fewer shooting deaths enact more gun laws (ie. not assuming cause and effect), to do so would have been disingenuous. IF the effect is not the obvious one, then there is possibly a hidden variable driving fewer gun deaths that is associated with populations that prefer more gun laws (even if the laws themselves don't drive the reduction).

At the very least it's worth further study. And yet here we are discussing the corporate control of emojis on freedom of speech. And while that's worthy of discussion- we are all still free to use English (or <insert your language here>) instead of a language that is unfree.

To the best of my knowledge no one has yet died as a result of misinterpretation of the gun emoji.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > The argument for the mosquito emoji, made by the Johns Hopkins Center for > Communication Programs and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was firmly > rooted in public health. The proposal states, "For many parts of the world, > the mosquito is more than a nuisance — it is also a danger. Mosquitoes are > the world's deadliest animal — outpacing sharks, snakes and all others by a > wide margin." A mosquito emoji will allow people to easily communicate about > the deadly insect to populations of varying languages and literacy levels. > This usefulness serves as a kind of inversion of the ways in which other > serious or controversial issues are mitigated. Why try to cover up or deny > the existence of "real" guns, which are as rampant (at least in the US) as > other "object" emoji?

This highlights a YouTube policy that I found very disturbing. YouTube judged that graphic violence, defined somehow, was unacceptable and couldn't be shown on their platform. In particular, they didn't allow the posting of beheading videos featuring South American gangs beheading people who they thought deserved it. The reasoning was that allowing people to watch those videos served the gangs' purposes by inspiring fear.

But, YouTube made a special exception to their policy to allow beheading videos of ISIS beheading people who _they_ thought deserved it. The reasoning was that allowing people to watch those videos carried the message "look how bad things are in Syria", a message that Google endorsed.

I can't for the life of me understand why the reason any particular person uploaded a video to YouTube should determine what I get out of the video. In my eyes, if YouTube was full of videos of gangs beheading informers, cops, and guys who slept with the boss's daughter, _uploaded by the gangs themselves_ , that would be newsworthy and probably draw a lot of attention to the message "look how bad things are in South America". It's not like ISIS was ashamed of the beheading videos _they_ filmed and released for propaganda purposes.

Unfortunately, I can't provide a link to substantiate my characterization of Google's policies; my source is an English-language interview between a former YouTube executive and a Chinese consultancy, which I was asked to help transcribe.

<comment><USER31> Bogus moral considerations are a great rationalization for censorship, charging Marie Le Pen for sharing photos of reality being a good example.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/01/marine-le- pen-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/01/marine-le-pen-charged- for-posting-violent-isis-images-on-twitter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think the solution is a universal standard for multimodal interfaces that allows external and attached content.

An example of this already exists: in a Facebook comment, you can reply with an arbitrary meme, and I believe Slack lets you define emojis as well. We could extend this to include sound, or even modes for haptic or braille feedback. If there isn't space to attach the mode you could simply provide a URL.

This could be turned into a standard, and apps could implement the standard, allowing people to communicate with richer content across a wide array of technology.

<comment><USER33> But in slack emoji, you have to modify the universal standard for the workspace in order to add those emoji, and now you're back to where you started.

The whole benefit of Unicode is that anyone anywhere can see Unicode on any device that supports it, without introducing added complexity of sending the actual image over the message.

<comment><USER32> IIRC Unicode was intended to encode and represent text for writing systems. I get that the purpose of emoji in Unicode is to provide a universal way to represent certain pictures, but it's clear that we also don't want to be limited by the set of pictures we can send.

It seems a lot more sensible to actually send the picture you want to send, or a link to that picture, because that doesn't need to be interpreted differently by each client... just rendered. Sending the actual image might take more space in, say, a text message, but its actual encoded size should be pretty trivial. For example, one of Twitter's 16x16 color emoji is a 400 byte SVG file. Base64-encoded that would be about 533 bytes. The standard could define the image formats accepted, with probably one ideal format for emoji (SVG) and another for memes (JPEG).

Here's another way to think of how you could implement this in a standard. Each message is multipart. The text body is the first message by default. That text can contain references to other parts. That reference could be the name of the part you want to reference in that message, and that name would only need to be unique to that message. But that name could also be, for example, a SHA hash. When you accept messages, you could store the message parts in a database with their SHA hash. When someone sends the same part again in a new message, you can just retrieve that part from your database, rather than storing the same part multiple times. This could allow you to send messages referencing the same gigantic meme file 50 times, but you only ever store it the one time, and after that you just store references to it. The standard would allow you to simply say "please reference part X in this part of the message text, and if you don't have that part yet, here it is, base64-encoded or linked via URL".

(What I just described is MIME, but you could reinvent it if you wanted people to adopt it, because people don't like adopting things that aren't new and cool)

<comment><USER34> > IIRC Unicode was intended to encode and represent text for writing systems.

Nonsensical garbage. The Arrows, Technical, Box Drawing, Block Elements, Geometric Shapes and Miscellaneous Symbols blocks were all part of Unicode 1.0.

> It seems a lot more sensible to actually send the picture you want to send, > or a link to that picture, because that doesn't need to be interpreted > differently by each client... just rendered.

1\. Except now you need to design a way to design and render mixed content.

2\. If that's your argument, why even have letters and fonts? Just send the right images.

<comment><USER32> Uh, it's not nonsense or garbage, for multiple reasons. The first and foremost is that just because the first version supported arrows and geometric shapes does not mean it couldn't have been invented as an encoding for writing systems. The second reason is that I actually read what it was created for. [https://www.unicode.org/history/summary.html](https://www.unicode.org/history/summary.html) The purpose was to encode the characters used by written languages for expressing language in a legible form. This includes multiple forms of graphemes.

Apps already have ways to render mixed content. How do you think you can see both text and pictures next to each other? E-mail has supported this for decades. The linked article even explicitly mentions how different apps render different image sets for the same emojis.

We have different fonts for several reasons, and sometimes we do send entire fonts in order to render our messages correctly. What font you use, and how you choose to render graphemes, is completely up to the application. What I'm proposing is a more interoperable way of sharing mixed content, which people clearly already want to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Given the formation of an international committee and - most significantly - their adoption by parents, we can hope that we have reached peak emoji, and their decline will be rapid.

<comment><USER36> Kids haven't stopped using words just because the parents use them too. Or iPhones.

Some things are too essential to discard for this reason.

What will change is what emojis are used and how. The rare ones which are not used by parents will become used by kids. I already see this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> :-)

:-(

;-)

Did I miss any?

Edit: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm)

</comment><comment><USER38> Hmm. I still see a pistol[0] on my Android 8.1.0 messages app. Is this even correct?

[0] [https://photos.app.goo.gl/w9kPRwUr2UHNQoKa8](https://photos.app.goo.gl/w9kPRwUr2UHNQoKa8)

<comment><USER39> The pistol was changed to a squirt gun in the Android P (Android 9) Previews and betas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The mspaint Fu Manchu mustache drawn on the photo of the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém really bothers me. There's a lot of power in graffiti, but it's labeled as being Eddie Adam's original photo.

</comment><comment><USER41> "When language is subjugated to corporate interests, we lose our ability to talk honestly and openly about the world, and some uncomfortable and disturbing juxtapositions emerge"

Great quote

</comment><comment><USER42> Every single comment in here thinks this article is about watergun/poop emoji, which is why we have the problems that the article touches on.

<comment><USER43> It's a bunch of programmers arguing about art...

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> "He brought a pistol to the birthday party."

"He brought a squirt gun to the birthday party."

Clear enough?

</comment><comment><USER45> Add the "rifle" emoji/codepoint. it's not even shown.

</comment><comment><USER46> You should google how language has always been affected and mutated by capitalism. You'd cry so hard you'd use enough kleenex to fill a dumpster. You might even have to take a break and go play frisbee or ping-pong or spend some time in a jacuzzi.

</comment><comment><USER47> The bit dissusing kitsch was really interesting, thanks for posting!

<comment><USER48> It's worth noting that Kundera's interpretation of kitsch (as a socio- political phenomena rather than an aesthetic quality) is pretty fringe and generally not recognized outside the lit crit community. You won't find it being taken seriously in academic circles focused on sociology, politics, etc., mostly because there are far more elegant and explanatory frames of reference for discussing the phenomenon Kundera describes (mostly drawn from psychology).

<comment><USER31> >there are far more elegant and explanatory frames of reference for discussing the phenomenon Kundera describes (mostly drawn from psychology).

Such as? I thought "kitsch" perfectly summed up the essence of a restricted, infantilized worldview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Just realized that this is the first time I've seen emoji from a URL render in my browser's address bar. That really surprised me for a second.

<comment><USER50> Some domains use emojis as well:

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2035572)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This was more profound for me than the whole emoji issue:

"What the tech industry can't obfuscate behind algorithms is often relegated to some form of infantilization, in which a distinct work-life balance has been replaced by free food, ping pong, and services that do your laundry or drive you to work. This puerility is internalized so profoundly that it extends to corporate hierarchies and the way essential tasks are discussed. Software engineers are often colloquially referred to as "rock stars" or "ninjas" in job postings, and childish jargon is pervasive."

</comment><comment><USER52> Wouldn't two half votes for $15k be cheaper than the one vote for $18k? Are two half votes the same as a full vote?

</comment><comment><USER53> This is all over the road, but that's not out of the ordinary when it features "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" being name-dropped in the middle of it. I don't really get the axe-grinding about stereotypical nerdboys having some nefarious influence on expression through control of emoji fontsets.

Emojis are silly little pictograms. If you want something more varied, send an image or a gif or a meme. Or settle down and type out a few of these things we call words, that have the capability to be very expressive and unambiguous.

<comment><USER54> I think that the article makes a pretty good point that emoji are increasingly important in communication -- referencing the suggestion of the mosquito emoji that was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in order to facilitate communication and discussion about the malaria-spreading insects. Even though I don't completely agree with the importance of emoji in modern communication, apparently a lot of people (especially some of those who vote on the Unicode Standard Consortium) do.

If you were to accept that emoji are an important part of modern communication, would you not agree that censoring certain images is akin to censoring words? Then, the reference to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" is very apt.

I didn't get the impression that the article was suggesting that the people who vote in the Consortium have any sort of nefarious intensions -- and I don't think that there is much to be gained by a fascist government by censoring the word "shit". The decision to do stems from personal taste, prudence, or social pressure. It is not the intention behind it that we should be afraid of, but the power of some organizations to form our means of communication, independent on how "good" they are, as there are many unpredictable factors that can shape their decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This article is a perfect example of how the crit lit genre often analyzes the shit out of a stool sample while ignoring the patient's sawed-off arm. (Usually missing the real point because an auxiliary one makes for a much cuter reference to some piece of literature authored c. 1800-1990.)

A set of images designed by advertising and consumer goods companies are not optimized for expressing the full range of the human experience? I'm shocked! /s

The real critique: we've had <img> since the 1990s, and plenty of more than usable chat systems/protocols/markup languages that allow inline images for about that long as well. Why are standardized emojis so popular, and why do people even give a fuck about them when there are obvious workable alternatives?

Emojis are not "radical" or "new", as the author puts it. They are a crippled instantiation of an old and obvious idea, an idea that has itself been implemented in better ways thousands of times prior to the rise of emojis.

</comment><comment><USER56> > Mosquitoes are the world's deadliest animal — outpacing sharks, snakes and > all others by a wide margin.

I do believe you have to specifically except humans from "animals", unless it was your intention to include us, in which case I do believe you are mistaken.

<comment><USER57> This is needlessly pedantic, and I think a good proofreader would have cut a "besides humans" aside, did it exist in the original.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you use internal project codenames in your company? - <AUTHOR> From what I see and hear, here and elsewhere on the internet, it seems like a lot of companies use internal usage only codenames for the projects they're working on. I guess that's for the sake of practicality and ease of communication.
But I've never been in a company that uses one.
Now that, at my current job, I'm involved with many projects, I think it's time to introduce the idea to my teammates (and the rest of the company). But, to be honest with you, I have no idea how it works. Do people use them for 'official' communication, in emails? or just as placeholder name for marketing material? etc.
I looked around the internet, but no such knowledge was shared before. Can you help me? <comment><USER2> We use them and I complain about it a lot. Anything that reduces clarity and transparency is a bad thing in my opinion - a codename is _at best_ security theatre, and at worst just someone's power trip because they know about the super secret project and you don't. That annoys me a lot. If a project can have a simple descriptive name rather than a code I'll always go for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment, and for the new perspective.</comment></comment>