Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME. - <AUTHOR> http://kirstensamazing.com/stop-leaning-in-put-down-your-iphones-and-help-me/ <comment><USER5> A few weeks ago, I was pedalling to work in the rain when I saw something which briefly made me well up with rage: a car parked diagonally across the cycle lane, driver clearly on the phone - a new level of "f*ck you" from a motorist to cyclists. But then I saw the skid-marks leading across the verge from the road, and I realised this was a bit more serious. I stopped and tapped on the window. She was very distraught, nearly hysterical. It was a single-vehicle accident caused by sliding out of control on the very water- logged roundabout. The thing she kept saying over and over was "nobody stopped to help! They all just keep on driving past!"

So I phoned the police and stayed with her for the next 20 minutes, until the police showed up. I was getting soaked in the rain and making myself late, but felt I owed it to her to stay put and make sure she came through it all OK. As I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at any point thank me, and since then has made no attempt to contact me even though we discussed where I work (just across the road from her) as part of the small-talk. So in her own way, she was doing the same thing as the other drivers who had so upset her, albeit inadvertently. I probably wouldn't have stopped either, except she was literally blocking my path.

So it's easy to marvel at how disassociated we all are. A different thing entirely to do anything meaningful about it, even on a purely personal level. There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers, even less when there's a risk of being dragged into someone else's potentially violent confrontation. This is not a problem with phones, it's a problem with excessively large communities where we will probably never run into each other again. So why take the risk?

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "As I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at any point thank me..." >> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers..."

Good on you for stopping to help but why do you feel like you should have to gain something by helping someone else? The woman you helped was still probably quite shocked and dealing with police to thank you and it's highly likely that in such a situation information like where you worked completely went over her head.

I think this is one of the reasons people have stopped helping others - <USER2> expect something in return. If I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in return would be that if the person I helped is ever in a situation where they can provide help to someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped by a stranger and take action.

Side point

>> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers, even less when there's a risk of being dragged into someone else's potentially violent confrontation."

The second part of this statement interests me. Is fear of something (that is highly unlikely to occur) a reason people don't get involved? It made me think of Michael Moore's conclusion in Bowling for Columbine that America's love of guns is based on fear that they will be attacked, mugged, home invaded etc. This may also be a reason people don't get involved in situation they can't control even though it's highly unlikely they are in any danger.

<comment><USER5> > If I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in return would be that if the > person I helped is ever in a situation where they can provide help to > someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped by a stranger and > take action.

You say that as if it's a minor thing ("the only thing I'd expect") but you might be expecting someone to risk their life, get accused of rape by an unstable person, put themselves in danger of injury or lawsuit. It's not a trivial matter. I personally wasn't expecting anything from this person I helped, I was just pointing out that she ended up being no different from the other drivers around her - just less fortunate.

As Anderkent says, on a basic level, we're all expecting "something in return". We help other people, maybe they'll help us one day. But this instinct is tuned to small communities (in which we evolved) where "paying it forward" like this is very likely to occur in a short space of time. You help me carry my kill home, you can have some of the meat. You help me get my harvest in, I'll help you raise that barn. But in large communities (several million strong, in some cases) these opportunities will be limited so we are more reluctant to get involved. We might not be consciously weighing profit and loss, but on a subconscious or instinctive level, we are.

<comment><USER6>
      You say that as if it's a minor thing ("the only thing
      I'd expect") but you might be expecting someone to risk
      their life, get accused of rape by an unstable person,
      put themselves in danger of injury or lawsuit. It's
      not a trivial matter.

Strongly seconded.

This happens more often than one would think.

I do not want to alarm anyone but it is not entirely out of the bounds of reason to expect law enforcement to NOT acknowledge your good Samaritanism or worse, punish you for it.

"Good Samaritan Backfire or How I Ended Up in Solitary After Calling 911 for Help"

Discussed previously here on HN :

How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730)

Direct link to blog :

[https://medium.com/human-parts/9f53ef6a1c10](https://medium.com/human- parts/9f53ef6a1c10)

<comment><USER7> That guy did not leave after the police arrived and _told him_ to leave (according to his own account, at the URL you give).

<comment><USER8> But does that even justify the police brutality though? He didn't want to leave without his friend (who was supporting the girl while she was getting up when the police pulled him off).

No, the police is definitely in the wrong here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, this piece cuts close to home.

I currently live in Taiwan and just yesterday there was a subway stabbing - <USER3> 20s male started stabbing people on the subway. Naturally, reactions was slow as most people was playing their phones or getting some shut eye. He managed to kill 4 people, get off the subway and intimidate more people, before finally brought down by a 62 elder man.

Everyone can be armchair quarterbacks, shake their heads in disappointment, raise their fits in anger, but when you are in a situation such as the above, or witness a knife attack - you are stunned. Taipei is one of the safest city in Asia. Most of us don't see scenes such as this except on TV, and most of us don't know how to react. It's fight/intervene or flight/stay out of it.

I've taken defence classes, including Krav Maga and they all emphasize that knives are the most deadly weapon in the world due to its ease of access and the damage it can do.

Sorry it happened to the OP but I don't think society has 'become' anything. There's no proof that people are more willing to jump between a knife wielding maniac and a victim before the iPhone age.

<comment><USER10> I think the main difference is that the overall level of violence in society has gone down so much that people simply _don 't know how to react_ anymore. In the past, violence was much more present in everyday life: wars were more common, criminal activity was more common, law enforcement was lax or even non-existent, so people had to literally fight on the streets day by day just to survive. Women wouldn't go out alone even in daylight, most men were supposed to carry some sort of weapon as soon as they stepped out of walled towns (and often even while inside) and so on. After WWII, there were so many veterans around that you wouldn't dare starting sh*t for fear that somebody would kick your ass in 5 minutes.

Nowadays, people like me wouldn't know the first thing about hitting someone or defending themselves. My childhood home was in what we'd consider "a bad area" of a Southern European city (mafia and all that) but even there it took very little care to stay out of trouble. I don't think I've ever been in a physical confrontation with anyone after my 18th birthday; I wouldn't know how to use a knife or a gun, nor how to protect myself from it. Law enforcement and cultural pressure are now so efficient that they can usually limit violent activity to specific areas, so as long as I stay away from those, I'm very likely to be safe. (Every city has different attitudes and problems, of course, but that's more or less true for most of them)

If a random stranger started knifing people in my subway carriage, I'd probably freeze too - I'm a family man, not a goddamn soldier or street- fighter. Same for witnessing something like what OP describes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Give her the phone! GIVE HER THE PHONE!!

edit: OK, I'm being downvoted. That's fine. But, why put your irreplaceable life in mortal danger for the sake of keeping hold of replaceable consumer electronics? That's the disconnect I'm finding hard to process.

<comment><USER12> Does it matter? What do you intend to gain from that discussion?

<comment><USER13> Yes, the audience's ability to relate to the protagonist matters.

Intend? In the trivial sense, you can guess; in the broad, unknowable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Let's evaluate for real, the cost-benefit of intervening physically against a knife-wielding crazy person:

\-- Minimum: you'll miss the day of work, have an arrest on your record which you'll have to disclose forever and which may cost you your career, may make it impossible to enter foreign countries, and so on.

\-- Probable: you'll miss many days of work due to police/legal complications. Significant chance of losing your job. Significant chance of grievous personal injury. Significant chance of assault charges which will cost you (minimum) tens of thousands of dollars to defend against (more likely >$100,000).

\-- Possible: Killed by knife. Killed by cop. Jailed for assault. Jailed for murder (if attacker ends up dead, you're going to be charged for sure). Newspaper columnist heaps scorn on your actions.

\-- Benefits, maximum: a newspaper mentions your name in a good way. Victim says "thank you".

Yes, everyone is wondering if someone else will intervene. But also, individually, the calculus for intervening is just terrible. Highly likely consequences include months in the hospital, months in jail, cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The joke about a knife fight is that the winner is in the hospital, the loser in the morgue. Which one of those two will you be?

<comment><USER15> I feel like I miss something here. Why would you be arrested for Helping? I can see that you would have a risk of getting hurt or killed by the attacker, but why would you be arrested or killed by the Police?

<comment><USER14> The people involved are not wearing "Good Guy" and "Bad Guy" badges! How exactly are the police going to magically know who is "right" and who is "wrong"?

When the police come to sort out an altercation in progress, everyone involved is going to get tackled, rolled face down, have a cop kneel on your neck with his entire body weight, have your arms wrenched behind your back, and placed in handcuffs. That is the _best_ , _least physical_ outcome possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope I would have kicked the woman in the head or wrestled her to the ground. As a male, I suspect I wouldn't have.

I could have just called the police, but that doesn't really help in an immediate situation of one person trying to stab someone. So this situation calls for either: 1) Subduing the attacker by pinning them. 2) Doing enough damage to the attacker that they can't move. If they are on top of the victim, they _maybe_ are in a good position for me to run up and corner-kick their head and end things with a quick concussion. I can't tell from the prose. Otherwise, it would be better to just restrain her and pin her to the ground.

So I'm either a man pinning screaming woman to the ground in a public place or a man who is viscously beating a woman in public.

No thanks, "Real Men" don't hit girls. [http://goodmenproject.com/featured- content/brand-what-do-you...](http://goodmenproject.com/featured- content/brand-what-do-you-do-when-a-girl-hits-you/)

Especially not in public where "defend the woman being attacked" is a fantasy for a whole bunch of people.

<comment><USER17> Exactly my reaction.

> I'm [..] a man pinning screaming woman to the ground in a public place

I can just imagine how this goes down. You grab the perpetrator, wrestle her to the ground violently. You have to lean deeply over her to restrain both her hands. The victim runs away. The woman you're holding starts to scream and shout that you're assaulting her. The police arrive.

You are fucked with a capital F.

> a man [..] beating a woman in public

... the victim runs away. The police arrive. The police tell the other guys in the holding cell that you're a woman-beater.

You get the picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone who has been attacked and/or robbed several times in cities like Brussels, two things I'm sad to have learned:

1) Your reality changes. At any point, in every street, someone/some gang can step up and change your situation to something vastly different than the reality the other people around you are in at that moment.

2) Nobody cares. People don't want to get involved. They are not aware of the situation, or even when they are, they are not in it themselves. As a woman you might have the luck of a knight in shiny armour nearby who feels obliged to step up and help, but as a fit male, all bets are off. Few want to get between "men fighting" – to them you are a perpetrator, not a victim.

The loneliness and absurdity of such situations are hard to get over. Years later I'm still more aware of my environment whenever I'm out, and I always check for exits and whom not to turn my back to. It has also made me more likely to reach out and help others in such situations, partly because I can relate, and partly because I'm more aware that something doesn't feel quite right.

You must learn to accept that if you have belongings, you might lose them. Or alternatively, be willing to pointlessly fight like hell with a random stranger for little or no benefit. The second option might cost a hell of a lot more overall, even when you "win".

</comment><comment><USER19> It's not a mobile phone thing; I got punched in the face on a commuter train 20 years ago and none of the crowd got involved then either.

It's partly bystander effect ("I'll leave it to someone else to intervene") and partly a very real fear of the intervention going wrong. Maybe you get stabbed. Maybe the police get involved and _you_ end up with an assault conviction and consequent expulsion from the middle class. Maybe the scene isn't all it seems (setup for robbery, or domestic where both parties turn on the intervenor).

Commuting and the mass-population city kind of relies on us forming the habit of studiously ignoring one another, and it's a hard habit to shake in an emergency.

<comment><USER20> There have been quite a few stories where people that intervened were themselves charged with assaults. There's been burglars breaking into houses whose owners were charged with invasion of privacy for having security cameras in their own house.

Taking justice in your own hand - helping people out in a violent situation - is frowned upon and discouraged. Perhaps even moreso in the US, where it's much more likely that people carry guns and people - bystanders or those directly involved - get killed.

But as I'm sure is mentioned elsewhere, the main causes of inaction are the exceptionality of the situation (despite what the media wants you to believe) and a group mentality (nobody's doing anything, so why should I? Alternatively, maybe the group is seeing something I haven't, could be dangerous)

<comment><USER21> > There's been burglars breaking into houses whose owners were charged with > invasion of privacy for having security cameras in their own house.

I don't normally do this but extraordinary claims need evidence. Citation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why people might not want to get involved? Every situation is unique but 1. How do they know these two women don't know each other? 2. How many people actually saw the knife? Not everyone has 20/20 vision either. 3. Sounds like both of these women were arrested. Hypothetical hero could have been arrested too. 4. If you're going to intervene in a dangerous situation, you could be sued. 5. There could be a more dangerous accomplice nearby to make sure she gets the job done. 6. What if the woman with the knife is in a gang? Will the gang retaliate tomorrow? 7. Maybe she has a gun in another pocket? 8. How many people in the crowd know how to defend against a knife attack? 9. Maybe I watched too many Zatoichi episodes but "no good deed goes unpunished." ;-)

I was in a similar situation once and just gave up my phone and mug money. I was somewhat prepared because I was warned it would happen. Maybe this book saved my life [http://www.roughguides.com/shop/rough-guide-new-york- city/](http://www.roughguides.com/shop/rough-guide-new-york-city/) As I was pulled into a dark alley, a young woman walked by like it was completely normal to see someone mugged. Then I packed my things and left NY and never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER23> this is a well known phenomenon called the "bystander effect"

wikipedia entry here:

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

long story short, what's going on in people's minds when they don't help is that, probably someone else will step in, and playing hero will probably just get in the way.

which, isn't that helpful if 100% of the bystanders are thinking that. It's somebody else's problem.

there's a simple remedy- Don't scream "help! anyone! help!" scream "Hey you, burly looking dude. Help! yes you!" ' This is what psychologists say. until the evidence comes in, I'm skeptical that it would work. but it's better than repeating these stories again and again.

<comment><USER24> It may be partly "somebody else will fix this", but also largely "is this really what it seems"? It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv street theatre, or a sociology experiment. And since nobody else is responding, maybe they see something I don't.

As an aside, apparently she pretty much did what you suggest (which is the standard advice to deal with the bystander effect) in that she asked one particular bystander to help her, but even that didn't work.

<comment><USER25> >It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv street theatre, or a sociology experiment.

If so, irresponsible experiment/theatre, and they have only themselves to blame if someone did get tripped/punched/rugby tackled/hit with martial arts moves/arrested. The fact that nobody did any of those is the main problem - <USER4> someone did, many people would have felt more confident too, both at not being caught up in police issues around it, but also via a safety in numbers instinct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish this wasn't the case, but as a man, _there is no way I am getting involved in a fight between two strange women_. No way. There is no upside for me and unlimited downside, in fact that downside is virtually guaranteed.

This is the way things are in 2014.

<comment><USER26> I have friend that once intervened between two drunk women fighting on the bus. What he got out of it was that both turned on him, and threw stuff at him. Nobody else on the bus turned to help him, but he managed to get the women off the bus though (after they attacked him). As a man stepping into a fight between women, you have limited options when things go wrong.

The common rule is that men don't hit women, so if they start attacking you (which, hypocritically is perfectly okay), you can only hope to defend yourself. Was it a man though, you could fight back, but that still means you've just put yourself in danger by trying to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't really intend to risk my life going up against a knife-wielding crazy person, just so you'd be able to keep your phone. I would probably call the police though, which was also my reaction last a bigger fight happened near me.

For me to risk my life for you, I would have to know you somewhat well, and then I would _very_ likely intervene.

It's not only the bystander effect, but also the quite rational question "do I want to risk my own life for the sake of this woman I don't know, in this situation I know very little about?"

Once, my friend intervened in two drunk girls fighting each other. He was calm, but instead they just turned against him.

It's simply a game of pros and cons, and I can very much follow the community thing that Anderkent mentions in another thread.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think there's several things going on here.

One is diffusion of responsibility or bystander effects, which I think she's hinting at. In a crowd an individual is less likely to take action. I think this has a lot to do with our social instincts. Being in a crowd of strangers is a new thing. We aren't built for it.

On our own, we make decisions for ourselves. That's easy. A group is supposed to be a family or troop or somesuch. These will usually have a leader. Someone responsible for deciding that this is a mugging, that we're on the victim's side and that we are going to join the fight. I'm not sure it has to be a literal leader, but there needs to be a pre-established decision making process and the individual needs to know where they stand in it.

A second issue is that this is not really a question of "willingness to help" in the intellectual sense. It's a question of instinct.

A third is that in a city (or in modern life in general) we are surrounded by other people's problems. The homeless person we step over, the domestic violence sounds we don't call the cops on, the volunteer help line where we don't volunteer at and the charity we don't contribute to.

This is complicated. I think it's more about living in cities, nations and the global village than it is about iphones.

<comment><USER28> Skill set comes into it to.

If you have a dog with an injured paw then different people will willingly help you (dog lovers) than those people that will willingly help you find a lost cat (cat lovers). Same with directions, some random tourist might not be as willing to help you with directions as a native, the tourist could probably get the maps out on their phone, but they will not feel as if that is the thing to do. However, if you were lost in their home town then they might walk you to where you needed to go.

As a cyclist I often help other cyclists with flat tyres etc. and you try stopping me from helping out. I spent a decade working in the cycle trade so, for me, fixing someone else's bike is merely an opportunity to keep my skills fresh. I cannot say that first aid is my thing, however, I am sure that someone else will keep the patient warm until the authorities arrive, so I auto-delegate myself to warning traffic and collecting debris from the road in such circumstances. Because I don't do cars, I am unlikely to offer to bump start someone's car or help them back in if they have locked their keys inside. However, others that have those skills will take up the opportunity to help.

When it comes to violent confrontational circumstances, there was a time when I would have a go, however, after getting my head kicked in by four muggers I no longer feel inclined to get involved. However, I do have friends that have been doormen and they will leap to the opportunity to do a little bit of enforcing - it is in their skill set.

Most people are willing and able to help out if they can and if they have confidence in their usefulness in a given situation. The problem is that when there is some rare and outrageous act of violence going on that there are very few people around who have 'enforcing' in their skill set. Hence the apparent 'bystander effect'.

<comment><USER27> Interesting point and this loops back around (in my mind) to the beginning. 6 triangles into a half dead thread, the only thing to do is quote Douglas Adams:

" _..we don 't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world._"

Why do we even have an expectation that someone in the street will help us any more than we have an expectation that someone in a different country would help us.

The majority of us have, right now, the ability to help someone with similarly urgent problems. Medical or nutritional. There are still people campaign out after their house got blown away in the Philipines earthquake.

Thinking about this as "not my area" is an anonymous mentality. Like saying _" I support education projects. I don't know anything about refugee projects."_ She is asking " _Why didn 't you behave like my friends and neighbors_"

We could help them without endangering ourselves. If I was one the the bystanders who didn't help this person, I would feel ashamed. Is this sentiment a vestige?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can make it less likely that you'll fall victim to the bystander effect by precaching better responses - the heroic imagination. I first read about it here: [http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/03/14/developing-the- hero...](http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/03/14/developing-the-heroic- imagination-the-5-traits-of-heroes/) which links to [http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of...](http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of_heroism)

</comment><comment><USER30> Hacker News already took down Kirsten's site. Wordpress really doesn't handle load very well.

Luckily, Google's cache has a copy already:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m0OtEZT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m0OtEZT3zDYJ:kirstensamazing.com/stop- leaning-in-put-down-your-iphones-and-help-me/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz)

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow, scary stuff. I've been there with crazy people, alone, at night, at a T-stop in Boston. One thing you can do, is put your keys in your hand, and make a fist with the keys pointed outward from your knuckles. That will make punches way more effective and one good punch could blind your assailant, which is exactly what you want to do.

Another thing to consider is getting a gun or at least supporting gun rights. Not a lot of unarmed people are going to help you against a crazy person with a knife. If someone was caring a gun, they could have helped. If she were caring, then she could have put an end to this nightmare herself.

There's a saying in the gun rights community, "The second you need a cop, they're always minutes away." All the cops I know agree with that statement. It's not a reflection on them, just that they can't be everywhere all the time.

I hope her injuries (both physical and mental) heal quickly.

<comment><USER32> > If someone was caring a gun, they could have helped. If she were caring, > then she could have put an end to this nightmare herself.

No, that is not how it would work out in most (if not all) cases. Especially not in such a public place. And especially not if the gun was contained in something, e.g. her purse.

Even if that person were a great shot, in a (even moderately) close combat fight with a knife-wielder, she would most likely not be able to pull/unlock the gun before being stabbed, or miss and/or hit others or just be plain too scared/untrained to keep that much control.

Even if it worked, there would be the question of ethics and legality of wounding/killing another person to save her possessions. The legality may not be an issue in (many states in) the US, but even there not always a clear case and most likely will have some legal procedure.

If she were able to use the gun for intimidation and get the assailant to run away, that might work, but the attacker is obviously beyond quite some normal mental restrictions when threatening to kill her in a public place and might not easily be deterred.

Guns are the perfect tool for killing people when you know you want/plan to kill people. They are effective in wounding too, if you're able to hit where it doesn't kill. They are mostly useless in not getting wounded/killed by someone who wants to wound/kill you.

<comment><USER31> Typically people who don't own a gun don't have any training with guns. These same people also think that people who do have guns don't have any training as well.

In fact, most people who own guns are well trained. I can also assure you that even under stress you can hit a human sized target from 15 feet very easily.

Most of the state laws about even brandishing a fire arm have to do with _inescapable_ life threatening harm, meaning you can't just run away. In the blogger's case she couldn't run due to an injury, but based on her description she would have had time to properly use a gun in defense and it would have been legal for her to do so in my state of MA.

I was trained by a former police detective and told in a knife situation, if you couldn't escape, draw your weapon, yell _stop or I will shoot_ , then shoot if they're within 15 feet and move toward you at all.

>Even if it worked, there would be the question of ethics

Ethics? Someone threatens to kill you, has a deadly weapon, and is coming at you and you think there's still an ethical issue? Sure, they're crazy and sure, you could choose to let them kill you because you pity them, but I doubt that makes you ethically superior.

<comment><USER32> > but based on her description she would have had time to properly use a gun > in defense

I quote the article: "She pulled the knife out further and pushed it into my blue purse" Into the purse that would have contained the gun. I think she would have been stabbed before she could have reached inside.

No one intend on robbing you up close and personal is going to pull out his knife from 15 feet away or announce to you from that distance, especially in such a public situation, that he's going to rob you. He wants to threaten you with a knife, not with his voice.

And this is what I mean with "training": the reflexes to pull your gun instinctively when seeing a flash of a weapon in pretty much any situation, in this case: With your headphones on and watching some movement on your phone, as she was doing.

Maybe most gun owners are well trained enough to hit moving people at some distance, but I would argue, that nearly none of them are well trained enough to hit somebody who is moving within arms reach and will try to hit you with a knife/grab your arm/etc.. Most martial arts practitioners will say that they are not well trained enough to evade/fight somebody untrained but handling a knife.

> you think there's still an ethical issue?

I will argue ethics whenever the outcome is death, especially when there are bystanders and even more when the other option is to lose some possessions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Bystander effect aside, this is really shocking if it's true. I once got robbed in broad daylight at a bus station in La Paz (Bolivia), with dozens of people standing nearby and watching everything happen, but then again this was in a developing country.

I think part of the explanation is that such situations occur pretty rarely in the developed world, so people do not know what's the appropriate reaction: Fight back and risk getting attacked as well, scream for help, just call the police? It probably can be compared to first-aid situations, where most people seem to get completely paralyzed and are unable to help the injured person. Maybe governments should offer seminars where people learn to react properly in such situations, just like in the first-aid seminars that you're required to attend when you get your driving license.

<comment><USER34> USian here.

Where do you live that you're required to take a first-aid class before you get your driver's license? That sounds like a freaking fantastic idea!

<comment><USER35> I don't know where he's from, but here in Germany you are required to do so.

<comment><USER36> I'm also a big fan of the law that requires you to help in an accident and protects you from charges as long as you don't do anything obviously stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> one other challenge may be that in San Francisco there's so many crazy homeless people, you never know what could happen. I saw a homeless guy fall over in front of a bus last week and waited a few seconds, no body did something; I was just about to go other to help pick the guy up, but good job I didn't - as he was just crazy - got up and started trashing all the trashcans around him etc.

<comment><USER38> This really shocked me when I visited SF last year. We have issues with homelessness, drug abuse and lack of support in some of Scotland's bigger cities, but SF was on a whole other level.

We seen people throw themselves in front of cars then demand cash from the driver, destroy restrooms in fast food joints, and just sit the street talking incoherently to themselves. We were there for less than a week.

I wondered if perhaps while we've not been great at reducing homelessness here, we have better support for those with acute mental illness.

I know every large city has its problems, and I absolutely loved visiting SF (I'd go back in a heartbeat), but seeing this just made me sad.

<comment><USER39> Agreed 100%. Love SF but the crazy homeless person situation there is off the charts relative to everywhere else I've been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm curious - does anyone else have a mental habit of trying to notice bystander effect situations and taking it as your job to handle them if you're able?

I've had this habit for about a year. So far, called the police too late to do anything about it twice (once because my phone was dead, once from a combination of negligence and not knowing the right number to call), and once called the emergency number for a guy who fainted in public (but ran off before help could arrive). In the last case, a handful of other bystanders also stopped to help the guy, so bystander effect mysteriously didn't work that day. So I haven't been terribly helpful to anyone, but I was surprised how often I saw problems once I was looking for it.

(I don't think I would have been terribly helpful in this situation, though - I don't know how to break up a fight without being hurt, and probably wouldn't have thought of some of the better ideas like trying to single out a strong- looking person in the crowd and get them to help.)

</comment><comment><USER41> I attribute this to living under an authoritarian government that supposedly takes care of dangers to society. We're just bystanders and taught not to meddle because the police will take care of it.

I've lived in different countries and have seen different reactions where people are used to feeling responsible for their peers because they know the government doesn't care, is not efficient, or otherwise limited.

Of course, some people will also be reluctant to get stabbed for a complete stranger.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's the bystander effect - this is why you always ask specific people to help. Myself, I like to think I'd have helped if I was there, but I know how easy that is to say, even if I am certainly someone who _should_. Many people who were there probably feel terrible that they didn't, but sometimes in an emergency, people who haven't thought about what they'd do will freeze up.

</comment><comment><USER42> Is it just me or does she seem to have a sense of entitlement? All throughout the article, she seems to tell herself, one way or another, "clearly this can't happen to me. I'm important. Too important."

<comment><USER39> Do people with a normal amount of self-esteem look "entitled" to those who don't possess that?

<comment><USER42> ... That's the essence of the word "entitled." Their "normal" amount of self- esteem isn't normal at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is this title taking a shot at Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In? If so, I'm not sure what the connection between the two is. Anyone care to explain/correct me?

<comment><USER44> I understand this that the society, media, politicians, everyone is busy focusing on the "social media justice warrior" issues, but we're turning a blind eye towards the _real_ problems in the world (people dying, getting mugged, starving, ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Is this how disconnected from the real world we've become?

This _is_ an example of the real world. Its nothing new, nor likely to change. History is full of "bad things" happening to people, on a large and small scale, that happened because others did nothing to stop it.

My comment does not mean that people should not help others who are in need, but suggesting this is something new - possibly due to changes in technology - reinforces the (wrong) idea that people think the world is a safe place.

</comment><comment><USER46> Normal human reactions.

OP also didn't react as hindsight tells us the answer. Hand it over. Why did they value something crappy like money over their life, are they so superficial? (Probably not)

We've been told a million times just to hand it over, but OP still didn't.

Concentrate on the long term issues, there are more and they are solvable through logic, like solving homelessness.

Don't worry so much about how people react in unexpected situations. Worry more about peoples long term decision making, that scares me.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct, in hindsight, I would have handed it over, halfway through fighting it over, while bleeding I contemplated handing it over? What stopped me from doing so in the beginning?

I had the largest presentation of my life that night for a public audience of 200 people and letting my company and CTO down. I couldn't imagine losing all of my things and not being able to do so. Yes it was a very selfish driver at the time, but my brain couldn't move beyond that thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I wonder how much of this is that people don't know what to do. If we were listing the qualities that would encourage someone to help what would they be?

1) Believe that your intervention will do good/be effective.

2) Have a personal relationship with the victim.

3) Be thinking of the victim as a person rather than a piece of the scenery.

4) Perceive the risk to self (legal/physical) to be low.

5) Don't believe someone else will do it.

6) Don't believe that it's a setup where the 'victim' will turn on you.

I'm not saying those are the things that matter, they're just the things that came to mind.

And how many of them typically apply?

This was a knife attack, and that probably takes care of 1 and 4. I've seen untrained people fighting in the street, and it's the equivalent of a monkey slinging shit. Add to that that a knife is less to do with careful application of skill - it's more constant. It's entirely possible, if people had intervened, we'd be talking about multiple people seriously injured, perhaps scarred for life, or killed.

2 doesn't apply, 3 could go either way, 5 might be the case - there were a lot of people there. 6, happens, but again might go either way.

...

And there's a thought - _did they see the knife?_ or did they just see two people having a domestic and screaming at each other? I imagine that might decrease the chances of anything happening.

</comment><comment><USER48> I was in a _slightly_ similar situation the other day. I'm a male (white), walking to boxing class when about 0.75 blocks away, I see some kid getting attacked by... wait for it... 4 other kids. All women. All African-American.

There was a group of about 12-15 high school age girls and 10 of them were just watching 3 or 4 of them gang up on 1 of them.

WTF do I do here? I had the same thought process as many people in this thread. I could get involved, but realistically, there's absolutely no way I'm going to go try to break up a fight with that many people in it, let alone teenage girls.

I watched for about 5 seconds before I started to get my phone out to call the cops (which I also felt bad about b/c... wtf are they going to do... something needs to happen now).

Luckily for the kid, she managed to get away and they stopped pursuing her. But man, the feeling of helplessness sucked pretty hard.

</comment><comment><USER49> > I know San Francisco is a tight-knit community, and we like to think that > we'd jump to help one another.

Really? Have you SEEN the homeless population there? Who the fuck is helping _them_?

> But what the hell was that? I've read all the psychology books. I know the > typical explanations.

....then why are you asking? It's bystander effect, plain and simple. If you're expecting San Franciscans to go against human nature just because they write code, sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Get some pepper spray and some self defense classes and learn to fight dirty. Don't blame other people for not saving you; they have no obligation to.

> Is this how disconnected from the real world we've become?

It's how disconnected _the author_ has become. I'm glad she's now got perspective on how the real world works. (I'm also glad she came out of that safe and sound; sounds like a really scary fucked up situation)

</comment><comment><USER50> I was so certain this was absolutely impossible in the US. This is quite common in France, where a girl was raped in the train wagon and nobody did a ything. We have a law that makes it illegal NOT to help the other person if there's a danger. Yet noone moves.

I tried an experiment once quite recently on a train trip, to try and ask some young hysterical girl to calm herself down ( she was basically insulting everybody). What happend was this : seing that someone did something made the other passengers decided to act and speak their mind as well. The problem is that some guy decided to go physical on her and hit her on the face. I had to ask for help stopping him this time.

My conclusion was that :

1/ it only takes one person to make all the other personn move as well.

2/ you have to be really carefull because depending on the level of anger of the crowd, things can get extremely violent.

</comment><comment><USER51> I expect to gather quite a few downvotes for this viewpoint but here it goes.

There is no way I would have intervened. I am a male and I can't see my involvement in the situation working out for me at all. Now you might say I'm wrong for putting my self-preservation above that on Kristen's but this isn't just about preventing physical harm to myself. In fact if I knew that I would only be cut (non-fatal) then I wouldn't have this stance. Instead I am worried about the ramifications of "attacking" a women in public like this.

We have seen countless times in the media where someone coming to the aid of someone in danger (not in an attack situation) has been sued for helping (just google "rescuer sued"). So if trying to help someone alone can get you screwed just think about what can happen when there are two people involved. What assurances do I have that I won't inadvertently hurt Kristen in the process and that she won't decide to sue me? Or that the attacker in this situation won't sue me for "attacking her" while trying to prevent her from stabbing Kristen (google "attacker sues victim")? I'll tell you: NONE. For all we know the attacker will sue Kristen for throwing hot coffee on her, this story isn't over yet.

Let's examine an example:

I intervene, I kick the attacker in the head to get her off Kristen. Let's ignore for now the chance that a bystander only see's me kick this women in the head and assumes it was unprovoked and then attacks me. Then Kristen gets up, shakily thanks me and the disappears into the crowd. I am left standing over the body of a women that I just physically assaulted. A bystander had pulled out their phone to film what was happening but only caught me kicking the women. If I leave the scene then there is a chance I will be hunted down and if I stay at the very least I am going to spend the rest of the day at the police station. The attacker stuffers brain damage from the kick and the family sues me for all I'm worth and I spend the rest of my life paying off the debt while waking up daily to the thought of "No good deed...".

I understand this is a worst case outcome but there is no way in hell I am going to risk my life AND if I survive the remainder of my life over a $600 phone and the contents of her bag, it simply is not worth it. I'd cover those costs with my first meeting with an attorney. If the attacker was actually stabbing Kristen then it would be a different story but that's not what happened. I've talked to people trained in various martial arts and the vast majority of them say that if they were mugged they would hand over their belongings. Mind you these are people trained to fight (whereas I can assure you I have no such training) but they know their lives are not worth their possessions.

TL;DR: A phone and purse are not worth the victims or a potential rescuers life (both immediate and long term)

<comment><USER52> You're assuming too much when you assume that a bystander will attack you. So many people saw the random attacker assault Kristen, no one did a thing about it. You will be the 1 in 100 that would do something about it, chances are there will be no one else.

<comment><USER51> I know this is 2 days old and I don't want to beat a dead horse but check out this video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PgH86OyEM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PgH86OyEM)

I know it is Man -> Women and Women -> Man but I think it neatly illustrates my point. And I think we can assume:

* 2 women fighting -> Public doesn't care

* women fighting man -> Public doesn't care

* man fighting women -> Public cares and will get involved

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> [https://twitter.com/ericallie/status/466682232166293504](https://twitter.com/ericallie/status/466682232166293504)

Posted this in her reply... 'Nuff said...

</comment><comment><USER54> I never witnessed a robbery or violence where innocent people where getting hurt (likely due to my someone scary look?), but it's not because of phones. It's because people are in their routines, if you would walk the same road for 10 years and suddenly someone put a hole in the middle, you'd fall in.

Plus people are sheep, if not a single person is crazy enough to start and help someone else, then most of the time nobody will.

<comment><USER55> And after one person steps in, others will follow. One can see it (sometimes to comedic effect) in videos of robbers having the tables turned on them.

It's just getting that first person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> "Actually, this happens all time here in Brazil. But our problem right now is exactly because people are beating thieves near to death. A good solution is one that would fix both cases."

Just in case some of you here were losing faith in bystanders worldwide. ;-]

</comment><comment><USER57> Not only a SF problem... [http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/taiwan- train-st...](http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/taiwan-train- stabbing)

</comment><comment><USER58> well, it the same when you pick the goat from the herd for slaughter. It screams a lot, but the herd does not care. Well behaved, docile, bred to be ignorant of each over.. Just like typical civilized man.

</comment><comment><USER59> Reminds me of Kitty Genovese. We humans are really weird sometimes.

<comment><USER16> Multiple people called the police when Kitty Genovese was crying for help. They didn't have 911 at the time though, so the police handled it poorly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> What's bugging me are the trolling comments about how she doesn't deserve help because she's a feminist. I suppose this is to be expected these days, though.

</comment><comment><USER60> hard to believe this is true, I'm in Toronto and some of the dark corners of US society are alien....but it's just sad. And I shouldn't have spent too much time reading the comments on here about hypothetical not-helping scenarios etc. sigh. Tough situation/sad.

<comment><USER61> I mean, this is an aspect of human nature that's been pretty well documented for decades, at least. It might make you uncomfortable, but it's also not some unusual, hard-to-believe example of how "the dark corners of US society are alien".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did this incident happen in San Francisco?

</comment><comment><USER62> Welcome to 'murica. Where no-one gives trully a shit about anyone. ;)

<comment><USER39> This is NOT a 'murica story. If you look elsewhere in the thread, there are links to this sort of thing happening around the world.

It is a "bystander intervention" and "diffusion of responsibility" human- psychology problem. Both of those are Googleable terms and both have practical solutions in how to bypass them; unfortunately, typically only people who've taken some Psych coursework are aware of them.

Compounding this is the fact that there are MANY crazy homeless people in San Francisco, so you tend to automatically filter unusual behavior out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Next time, yell: "She's got a bomb!"

<comment><AUTHOR> "FREE KITTENS!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The feminists say to flip the genders.

</comment><comment><USER64> Get a government that cares about their people (mental health care for everybody who needs it & a solid social security net) and these kind of stories should become very rare.

<comment><USER31> I down voted this because most mentally ill people I know don't want "care". They don't want pills and they don't want to be normal.

It's our bill of rights that prevents us from forcing help on these people and, while it's sad for them, I rather like our strict policy on NOT being able to just call someone crazy and force them into an institution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> So this is what happens when you ban weapons.

<comment><USER25> No, if the crackhead had a gun, there wouldn't be a blog post, just another murder.

<comment><USER65> If somebody shot the crackhead instead of just staring there wouldn't even be a blog post. Problem solved.

These kind of people are going to carry weapons no matter what, and I for one don't want to be again in a situation where I'm unable to defend myself or somebody else.

I really understand the arguments behind prohibition and could agree with them, but the integrity of my loved ones comes first.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "If somebody shot the crackhead instead of just staring there wouldn't even be a blog post. Problem solved."

So you could hand over your phone and wallet to this mentally unstable person and everyone could walk away.

OR

You could shoot them, they die, and you've killed someone because you didn't want to lose $600.

If you choose the latter I really hope you don't own a gun. You're irrational and the reason they should be prohibited.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Model, View, Culture - <AUTHOR> http://modelviewculture.com/

<comment><USER2> Well, this is more encouraging from a gender equality perspective than a debate about whether Paul Graham is sexist. Quite a lot more useful.</comment>


Show HN: Version 1.1 of our $99 hackable Bluetooth smartwatch - <AUTHOR> http://wwww.getinpulse.com/? <comment><AUTHOR> Eric from inPulse here. We're back in stock with a $50 discount today. Now with a native compile option (<http://www.getinpulse.com/guide/local/>) and a bunch of tweaks that improve on the first version. Check out what other developers have written at <http://www.getinpulse.com/apps>

I'm also trying something new...hosting a Google Hangout at <http://www.getinpulse.com/hangout>. Drop by, ask questions and get a live demo of inPulse.

<comment> mike-cardwell FWIW, the Google Hangout has got you at least one customer. I was weary of how chunky it would be, but you just showed me it on your wrist and it looks ok. I'll be putting in an order shortly.

EDIT: Hmm. I should have placed the order straight away. Looks like the site is getting hammered now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Suggestion: what about a lite version?

I don't particularly want or need a watch that can display email alerts or interface with my phone or even run a program I wrote (although that last one _is_ really slick). I have a smartphone in my pocket which does all that.

And I definitely don't want a watch whose battery I have to charge every night. Last year I changed the battery in my current watch for the first time ever. I've had it since 2001.

What I would pay money for, though, is a slick watch with a brilliant and skinnable display. One of the reasons why I've stuck with the same watch for ten years is because it (Casio Databank Telememo 30) is one of the few watches I've found with a screen at a high enough resolution to display day, date, and time all at once at a size readable from 5 feet away without looking chunky or ugly.

(No, I don't care about my watch's ability to store telephone numbers. It's a curious example of an evolutionary dead-end; the ability to store 30 telephone numbers in my watch was barely convenient, though gimmicky, when I was in high school. This is true no longer. But the fact that Casio had to design a screen capable of displaying a name and telephone number means that the screen is also capable of fulfilling my requirements above.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've said it before, I'll say it again - build one with ANT+ and I'll buy a dozen. I don't see any reason why I'd want an adjunct to my smartphone strapped to my wrist, but I can think of countless uses for a tiny device that can read and interpret sensor data via low-powered wireless. ANT+ is the killer app for the "smartwatch".

<comment><USER4> Is ANT+ popular in the US? I see companies like Nike promoting it, but I've never laid hands on a device supporting it (I'm in Europe).

<comment><USER5> I see it in finiteness devices. It allows you to integrate things like heart rate monitors and cadence sensors on bicycles or running shoes with watches and smartphones.

Once a device has ANT+, it is the logical tool for data transfer as well, so devices like Garmin watches come with an ANT+ USB dongle to integrate with your computer.

<comment><USER6> But to be fair, ANT+ data transfer is super fucking flaky. I would say that I get my running data off my Forerunner about 50% of the time when the watch is physically touching the USB dongle and 0% of the time when it's not.

And, nothing ANT+ seems to work under Linux. So let's skip this for a while and stick to Bluetooth or USB; it works better and works everywhere. You have to plug in your watch to charge it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the watches but I would somehow love to take a stab at re-designing the landing page.

Somehow your background colors are not supporting the watches well.

Edit: Just tried removing the background and the orange element. You really should consider making the background darker. It will make your watches look more digital and crisp. (You should also considder getting a proper photographer or photoshop wizard to re-do the pictures of those watches)

Again love the watches, but can't stand seeing them not presented properly.

<comment><USER8> HN peeps help me out, there is a tool/service that lets you reskin a website and then show that to the site owner. What the heck is it called?

<comment><USER9> I think the service you want is <http://bo.lt/>

Lets you "remix" websites and share them.

<comment><USER8> It was like that (which is pretty cool btw, thanks) but more oriented to designers. I think website owners were encouraged to put a button on their site that invited designers to alter the css and submit a variation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've long been fascinated by the making of physical products. It seems to much harder than software. I feel like I can make bits dance from my keyboard, but assembling atoms is much harder. Any chance you could write a blog about how you made this, the challenges, and the like? Also, possible to bootstrep your way through it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I gave a talk at the Hacker Dojo recently about starting up a hardware company. They posted a section of the talk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afH8KGv0W24> Happy to chat about this kind of stuff eric AT getinpulse.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great idea but right now, I think far too much real estate on the face of the watch is not a screen. The digital part should be flush with the border instead of effectively having two strokes around the screen. That alone would make me wait for another version.

Here are examples I would try doing

[http://www.timefy.com/en/design/420-watch-i-steel-by- flemmin...](http://www.timefy.com/en/design/420-watch-i-steel-by-flemming-bo- hansen.html)

[http://www.timefy.com/en/design/599-slip-watch-white-by- non-...](http://www.timefy.com/en/design/599-slip-watch-white-by-non-linear- studio.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Really curious: why did you use l2cap over spp? With spp you'd at least have full coverage of all Android devices since 2.0, independent of platform- specific stacks. Is spp an option at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, it was a limitation due to our custom BT stack and limited processing power on the micro. We tried implementing SPP, but quickly ran out of space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice. What's in the way of letting it support the iPhone?

<comment><USER14> Bluetooth, except for a few profiles, is locked down on non-jailbroken iPhones and requires the manufacturer to jump through Apple's 'Made for iPhone' hoops and design in a authentication chip into the hardware.

<comment><USER15> Does anyone know if this is also true for developing bluetooth low energy devices or are they going to be more open about that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Besides the obvious advantages of open source and hackable, how else is this better than the ipod-nano as a watch design?

Oh interesting that someone thought of comparing the sizes:

[http://www.sizeasy.com/page/size_comparison/31203-inPulse- vs...](http://www.sizeasy.com/page/size_comparison/31203-inPulse-vs-iPod-Nano- vs-SD-Card#view-panel)

</comment><comment><USER17> Might be fun to pair with a bluetooth heart rate monitor for highly customized aerobic (running/cycling) workouts.

Particularly for allowing someone to easily get a customized interval workout. More specifically, I would enjoy having a heart rate alarm that allowed me to spend 10 mins at 70% max heart rate, then switch up to 4 minutes at 95%, 2 mins recovery to no less than 70%, repeat . . .

I could see how personal/high school/college coaches might like that.

Has anybody done any hacking with the garmins HRMs with GPS?

<comment><USER18> Or to buzz every 30 seconds (or however long you're going) for HITT workouts. I've tried using MP3s with beeps put in every 30 seconds, but the headphones fall out/off/get knocked around when I'm sprinting full-bore. MP3s also have the disadvantage of forcing you to start right on a beep, so if you get interrupted for a second or two it throws off your workout. A HRM could start whenever you started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool :)

What's the battery life like?

I gather input is bluetooth and the side button, output is speaker (buzzer?), display and vibration? If this is the case then I'm sure a few more buttons would be useful, or possibly a basic touchscreen - something along the lines of splitting the screen into four reactive areas, obv not pixel-precision touchscreen as that would be silly.

Great product at a great price - best of luck with this!

<comment><AUTHOR> 24 hour battery life while connected by BT, 3 days while used just as a watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice job shipping your 1.1! I'm always interested to see new developments with this project.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sweet :) I'm curious - what prevents the app from running on Android phones apart from Nexus One, Nexus S, Motorola phones and CyanogenMod users? Something to do with access to certain bits of Bluetooth functionality?

<comment><AUTHOR> Each Android handset manufacturer can choose which Bluetooth stack they want to use. Unfortunately the L2CAP API calls we use aren't available in the Broadcom stack, which is notably used by HTC and Samsung.

<comment><USER21> Ah, I see... that's a pity :( I'd assumed the Android platform was at least a little more homogenous than that - surely people would have learned from the horrors of J2ME development...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I saw an old guy wearing this while driving and thought that is was brilliant for accessibility with its oversized buttons and interface. Perhaps you should market this exclusively to older people?

</comment><comment><USER23> I got to look at one recently. They are a tiny bit bulky, but beautiful. Would like to see an accelerometer in there though. And GPS. (Pretty soon this thing would be an iPhone on your wrist.)

<comment><USER24> Why would you want an accelerometer in your watch?

<comment><USER25> Presumably to act as a pedometer and sleep analysis tool; think Fitbit.

<comment><USER26> this. I would rather have a jawbone up to track health, there's very few times I'm wishing i had a watch to give me caller-id info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's the hardware spec, can't seem to find anything about that.

<comment><USER28> <http://www.getinpulse.com/developers/faq/>

Not much there but they mention an ARM7 microcontroller. I remember seeing one of their job postings here and they were asking for ARM experience as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems like it could be cool for notification on signups or purchases for your startup instead of rigging it to a bell, as you can bring this with you!

</comment><comment><USER30> How do you check the time on an inPulse watch? I'd get one if you could do it without needing to press a button.

<comment><USER31> You write a C program to display the time.

I'm mostly joking, but it does depend on the program it's running. I think most of them go to sleep to conserve battery so you have to push the button to wake it up.

It might be cool to have an accelerometer so you could shake to display the time (and do things like tracking your motion like Fitbit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just ordered one! Finally something to do with my Blackberry. Can't wait to get started with the SDK

</comment><comment><USER4> Who are you? Where are you based? And do you ship to the EU? :)

<comment><USER33> i think in EU you can buy imwatch.it (they're italian) but it's more expensive. Dont know how it is compared to this one

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this watch waterproof and shockproof?

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome, congratulations on shipping!

</comment><comment><USER36> Will iPhone support ever be possible?

</comment><comment><USER37> what are the actual improvements with this new version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Android support (Nexus and Motorola phones), higher contrast screen (darker), eliminated a few physical issues (strap, button) and tightened up the aesthetic look

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does it have a mic?</comment>


WebRender2 Lands in Servo - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/servo/webrender/pull/319 <comment><USER2> There's not much context here, so let me help. WebRender is Servo's renderer, which is the component that takes all the junk that happens behind the scenes (the DOM, etc.) and turns it into something that your monitor can actually display.

What differentiates WebRender from the renderers of all other modern browsers is that renderers have traditionally operated in "immediate mode", where the renderer itself draws items on the screen one at a time, whereas WebRender operates in "retained mode", where the renderer declaratively shunts all the heavy work to the GPU. (And note that I'm hardly a graphics programmer at all, so I may have butchered this.)

Some relevant links:

pcwalton's great demonstration of the initial WebRender prototype from February (page demos start at 26 minutes): [https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area- rust-meetup-february-2016/](https://air.mozilla.org/bay-area-rust-meetup- february-2016/)

WebRender 2 overview: [https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Webrender- Overview#webre...](https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Webrender- Overview#webrender-2-overview)

A short walkthrough of WebRender 2: [http://www.masonchang.com/blog/2016/7/18/a-short- walkthrough...](http://www.masonchang.com/blog/2016/7/18/a-short-walkthrough- of-webrender-2)

I believe a long-term goal is to get WebRender into Firefox itself, but this would be quite an invasive surgery (and AFAIK wouldn't be able to 100% obviate Gecko's current renderer, for legacy reasons(?)) and so shouldn't be expected in the near future (though Stylo, another large Servo component, should hopefully be landing in Firefox this year).

EDIT: Oh, and of course, Servo is a new browser engine from Mozilla and written in Rust (though it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to also say that Rust was written for Servo, at least originally :P ).

<comment><USER3> > and AFAIK wouldn't be able to 100% obviate Gecko's current renderer, for > legacy reasons(?))

IIRC it's not just supporting legacy systems, but also things like printing (and print to PDF) need a different renderer. I'm not sure; I forgot the details.

> hat Rust was written for Servo, at least originally

Rust was initially called "The Servo Project", actually

<comment><USER4> Graydon Hoare started what became Rust some time before 2009. Graydon came up with the name, inspired by the wheat mold, I believe. Rob Sayre and I got Rust sponsored as Graydon's day job by Mozilla in 2009, if memory serves.

I did a brief keynote at Mozilla's Whistler, BC all hands in 2010 proposing Servo, a new layout engine programmed in Rust. Servo was named by Dave Herman and me in honor of Tom Servo from MST3K. Rust was never "The Servo Project".

<comment><USER3> Huh, I thought that both Servo and Rust were internally under the Servo umbrella for a while at least. I'm probably wrong then :)

<comment><USER4> [https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/761105563807731712](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/761105563807731712)

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Summit2010/Schedule](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Summit2010/Schedule) (find "Servo Project")

<comment><USER4> Graydon tweeted [https://twitter.com/graydon_pub/status/761280391239958528](https://twitter.com/graydon_pub/status/761280391239958528) and it's all clear now: the Mozilla Summit session was called "Project Servo" but focused more on Rust, and Graydon's slides had that phrase as title:

[http://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro- talk-2.pdf](http://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf)

(also picked up on my T2 robot from the future joke and reversed it, lol). But Rust was Rust, even then. Servo was the big news, I think Rust was known within Mozilla, a bit. So we used Servo in the session name and the rest is history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't expect this to hit HN so soon!

Feel free to try WebRender 2 out--it should hit nightlies within a day or two --but note that this is still under heavy development, and there are a lot of very important optimizations that have yet to be implemented. The primary focus so far has been correctness and validation of the approach.

At some point either gw or I will probably write up an overview of how WebRender 2 works. It's conceptually similar to, and shares most of the code with, the original WebRender. Briefly, the main advantage of WebRender 2 is that it uses an approach loosely akin to tiled deferred rendering to minimize overdraw, whereas the original WebRender more or less performed forward rendering only. We also have a path forward to subpixel AA (though not implemented yet) without requiring readback, expensive framebuffer ping-pong, or GL extensions.

<comment><USER2> Have you measured the difference in performance between WR1 and WR2?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain the significance of this?

<comment><USER7> WebRender 2 is just the next evolution of WebRender. After we started testing the original one on real sites and apps, we discovered a few performance problems. Glenn had some ideas for how to fix them that involved changing quite a lot of things, and that work is now landed in the tree.

One consequence of this work, other than speed of course, is that it enables things like subpixel AA, which weren't possible before.

Externally we'll probably just call it WebRender. Not many people knew about the first one and most users won't care that it took us a few iterations to perfect :)

We're planning to turn WebRender 2 on as the default very soon.

<comment><USER8> Congrats on landing WebRender 2.

> "Externally we'll probably just call it WebRender. Not many people knew > about the first one and most users won't care that it took us a few > iterations to perfect :)"

It's your choice, but considering the audience of people interested in browser features (especially browser features for Servo) is largely tech savvy, I'd recommend against it. Of the examples I can think of where version numbers have been messed with, I can't think of a single one that hasn't caused unnecessary issues (Final Fantasy 3/6, the "new" iPad, XBox One).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are there any browsers (experimental or not) that actually use this?

<comment><USER10> Experimental, yes; You can download nightlies of Servo at [https://servo.org/](https://servo.org/), which use Servo together with browser.html, a HTML+CSS+JS-based browser chrome developed for the purpose of showing off Servo.

<comment><USER2> Though the nightlies won't be using WR2 until tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Besides the WebRender2 itself, nice to see the Amiga logo.</comment>


Review: Nokia Lumia 800: Microsoft doesn't have to buy Nokia, they already did - <AUTHOR> http://www.intomobile.com/2012/01/29/review-nokia-lumia-800-its-either-smartest-dumbphone-dumbest-smartphone/ <comment><USER2> cheeky tldr version; Microsoft does not support some of my more throwback behavior so i don't recommend this phone until Apollo comes out. At that time I will probably not recommend it again until the one after that comes out.</comment>


Why don't more women work in IT? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/feb/04/women-it-naomi-alderman <comment><USER3> I'm sure that there are women out there who are better programmers than I am (probably thousands of them!), but - as Camille Paglia argues - the bellcurve of female drive and talent is narrower than the bellcurve of male drive and talent. There are a lot of great sociobiological reasons for this - <USER2> example, something like 90% of women reproduce, but just 50% of guys do. Guys are driven to find and conquer hard challenges in part to gain access to fertile women. This translates into behaviors like studying programming for years, working long days, etc.

Also, it's hard not to believe that a larger percentage of men have the mathematical / analytical mindset that is a prerequisite for most IT jobs.

The politically correct will worry at this question for decades, because they're incapable of seeing the answers that are right in front of their noses.

<comment><USER4> IT does not require particularly long hours most of the time, and it certainly doesn't require years of study (many IT professionals have never studied it at all). At the same time, many jobs with long hours and years of study have more than 7% female participation.

<comment><USER5> _many IT professionals have never studied it at all_

These IT professionals have never coded at home? They have never read even _part_ of a single book on coding?

<comment><USER4> Not all IT professionals are programmers. Not all coders do it for fun.

<comment><USER3> > Not all coders do it for fun.

These are the ones I try not to hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How apt. I'd just finished a blog entry on the sexism I suffer, and have always suffered, as a woman in IT.

"Sociobiological reasons" aside, women in IT are leered at and heckled; their accomplishments are looked over in favour of male colleagues. Others in IT make assumptions and generalisations about their female counterparts without even realising they're doing it.

Women who don't have the mental strength to overcome this eventually get out of the industry (or avoid getting in to it in the first place.)

<comment><USER7> I agree that it can be massively frustrating as a female in this industry.

True story: last year, I had an interview with Nasa Ames Research. A recruiter had called me up and said he had some Linux-oriented position for which they were hiring.

So I made it out to the interview, was interviewed by a couple of people, and alas, given a Microsoft machine during the last part of the interview. I was then ridiculed because I couldn't remember off the top of my head how to get to the default C:\\\command-prompt on Microsoft Windows because I have been working almost exclusively on Unix variant machines for the past 4 or 5 years. I eventually got it, but almost felt like the interviewer put me in a position where I was made to look and feel stupid, despite the fact that the recruiter had told me that I was interviewing for a Unix-type position.

I was not hired. The recruiter told me it was because I don't have a car. (This info was NOT in the job description or requirements, and I'm pretty sure it is _illegal_ to deny somebody employment for not owning a car -- should I sue?). I suspect the real reason I wasn't hired was because I am a female. I suspect if I were to attempt to "fight it," I'd also lose because I'm female (well, maybe only during the last Administration's reign). :)

All in all, I was out almost a full day of my time, public transportation costs, and down a whole lot of hope for females in this industry.

P.S. This is the real deal <http://oss.zentu.net/?q=node/27>

<comment><USER3> > given a Microsoft machine... the interviewer put me in a position where I > was made to look and feel stupid, despite the fact that the recruiter had > told me that I was interviewing for a Unix-type position.

Yeah, maybe.

...but do you think that had anything to do with you being female?

Do you honestly think that male interview candidates were given linux boxes, and they kept a windows box on a shelf in the closet JUST to trip up female candidates?

I suggest that the problem was that either the recruiter was an idiot, or that you applied for a government job.

<comment><USER7> If interviewers would like potential employees to bring their own (built/customized/configured) laptops to interviews in order to demonstrate competence in a specific area, they should _specifically_ state so.

Edit: recruiters tend to mess up the communication process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe because nobody will hire them?</comment>


Intel: 1000-core processor possible - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/155871/2010/11/thousand_core.html <comment><USER2> Can someone elaborate on the meaning of this for future programming paradigms?

From what I understand, we need to get rid of shared memory when we have more than 1000 cores. Is that correct? Should I stop using Threads and prefer Processes whenever possible, now?

<comment><USER3> I think so. Actually the mantra "processes, not threads!" is something I've found to be a good way to solve problems in general. For instance, when I needed to run 3 simulated microcontrollers in a simulator that supported circuit plugins but only one microcontroller per simulation, this new way of thinking led me to realize: instead of trying to make the single simulator support 3 cpus, simply run 3 copies of the simulator process (and use tcp/ip to link them, via custom circuit plugins). I think, that once we embrace separate processes for concurrency instead of threads, we'll begin to see how abandoning the shared memory model can actually make some things simpler.</comment></comment>


Libertas Institute will be interviewing William Binney, the NSA whistleblower - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/libertasutah/posts/584519078248420

<comment><AUTHOR> _"Tomorrow we'll also be interviewing William Binney, the whistleblower who worked at the NSA for over 30 years and quit after they started targeting innocent Americans. He has some fascinating insight on exactly what the agency does, and with the data center being built in Utah, has a message to deliver to us."_

I actually live down the street from this new NSA data center in Utah. This should be interesting. Are there questions I should be asking?</comment>


Does Technology Spell Doom for Close Relationships? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/does-technology-spell-doom-for-close-relationships/ <comment><USER2> >Solomooning, according to recent news articles, is a new phenomenon in which just-marrieds take a post-wedding trip separately from each other.

Never heard of this until today. Guess I'm old fashioned but what would be the purpose of this?

Yay we just got married, now I need a two week break from you! _shrugs_

</comment><comment><USER3> We'll see timed lockboxes for holding laptops and mobile phones from Friday nights to Sunday afternoons so that couples are forced to spend time with each other.</comment>


Online porn searched by Parliament staff more than 24,000 times - <AUTHOR> https://www.theweek.co.uk/90806/parliamentary-staff-try-to-access-porn-every-nine-minutes <comment><USER2> I read through this article, plus the ones linked in it, but there's very little information regarding what is actually blocked.

It's says porn in the title, but there is frequent reference to blocking 'adult content'. In this regard 'adult content' can be a very wide net. Sometimes blocking things which are not 'adult content' at all...

The Guardian article contains quotes which[1][2] raise my suspicions about the validity of this issue. I'm not an expert, but surely for such a large amount of users (plus, what I'd imagine is an easily accessed guest WiFi) the amount of block access attempts isn't that high?

Aside from that, why should I care that someone looks at (shock! horror!) 'adult content' on their phone? I'm surprised that this puritan attitude to pornography still persists. I also thought we progressed beyond the whole sex lives of politicians nonsense too.

[1] "A parliamentary spokesman said of the figures: "All pornographic websites are blocked by parliament's computer network. The vast majority of attempts to access them are not deliberate. The data shows requests to access websites, not visits to them."

[2] "There are 8,500 computers on the parliamentary network, which are used by MPs, peers, their staff and staff of both Houses. This data also covers personal devices used when logged on to parliament's guest wifi."

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a couple of reasons to care about people accessing pornography while at Westminster.

1) There's a long running problem of absue and harassment at Westminster. Staff describe abusers viewing porn in front of them, or sending them porn.

2) They're at work, and they're paid from public funds. They're always banging on about "efficiency" in other workplaces (education, healthcare, law- enforcement) so the hypocrisy is a bit hard to take.

<comment><USER3> I also believe that Parliment outlawed porn / made it more difficult to access recently.

<comment><USER2> Their aim was to make it more difficult for children to access it. Not quite the same.

These hits could include a grown adult looking at an adult model's pics on twitter, on their own phone, in their own time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "And you want to be my latex salesman"</comment>


How Can I Reach Chinese Influencers? - <AUTHOR> Interested in building an audience in China - does anyone know how to connect with Chinese influencers, or know anyone who has experience in this areas? The industry is gaming. <comment><USER2> Do you speak Chinese (or have someone who can speak for you)? Do you understand the ins and outs of wechat? Do you have feet on the ground in China? Which blogs do you follow? Do you belong to any Meetup groups in China? Are you willing to attend trade shows? Have you poured through LinkedIn? How much are you willing to pay in terms of time (often) or money (occasionally) to make connections?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can speak Chinese, I understand how WeChat works - or atleast I understand the fundamentals from reading about it. I don't have feet on the ground in China and will not be able to move there - I would be able to go to trade shows though.

I would have the time to build the relationships, but I don't have money to put behind it - at least not an enormous amount. I want to build an audience through video content - the term objective would to release a game in China and have a following already there.

I notice that many of the giant apps do not allow foreign users to upload content, but some of the new ones seem more relaxed. One in particular Douyin has come up in conversation a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for getting back to me by the way!</comment></comment></comment>


UID roll out in India begins September 29th - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/india/uid-roll-out-in-india-begins-september-29th/188

<comment><USER2> Wow, a big waste of money. Common Wealth Games weren't enough that they have to do this :(. This really makes me sick.</comment>