Japanese government dismantles freedom of the press - <AUTHOR> https://freedom.press/blog/2015/12/preparation-join-us-wars-japan-dismantles-freedom-press <comment><USER2> Neo-nationalism seems to be on the rise everywhere. Look at the UK (Scotland trying to secede, the crazy extreme right-wing party getting seats in Parliament, etc.), France (the National Front did very well in recent elections), South Korea (IIRC, textbooks are edited to replace history with nationalist propaganda), Israel, Turkey, Russia, China, Donald Trump, etc. etc.

When is the last time you heard someone stand up and point out how dangerous nationalism is, how it's historically led to wars, massacres, and other oppression and brutality. I suspect the public, hearing no criticism or counterpoints, goes along with the nationalists.

Where are the liberal and moderate conservative elite? Asleep at the wheel? Cowed? Complacent?

<comment><USER3> Nationalism doesn't lead to wars, massacres and other oppression and brutality. That's tribalism leading to that. Tribalism is one of those built in human behaviors we have that we can't get rid of. People have tried with globalism, with cultural marxism, with communism. The pendulum always swings back toward tribalism because genetics is a powerful force. Nations are the people, not the dirt, as is pretty obvious to see after 3 decades of mass immigration.

If you want real danger, you should want to curb and reverse the mass immigration we're still seeing. History is very clear on this point; if immigration continues unabated, eventually the immigrants will become targets. Hopefully it's just expulsion that they're targeted for, but genocide isn't unheard of in these situations.

<comment><USER2> The meaning of nationalism (and tribalism) is not clearly defined, at least not in this thread. I thought about that as I wrote my comment, but I decided I couldn't cover every contingency ...

Without disputing the definitions, I agree with some aspects of what you say, but I disagree about that there is some inevitable bad ending. Generally, as the U.S. shows, it turns out well.

The U.S. is filled with the descendents of immigrants who think of each other as 'Americans'. Today's nativists are the descendents of immigrants that suffered the same discrimination. A few examples: Ben Franklin (and his peers, AFIAK) openly disparaged German immigrants, Italian and Irish immigrants used to riot against each other ... generations later, does anyone care? I read a study that said by the third generation, 3% of immigrants spoke the language of their former country and 80% married outside their group (I might misremember the stats to a degree).

> The pendulum always swings back toward tribalism because genetics is a > powerful force.

I don't think it's tied to genetics. People are tribalistic about all sorts of groups that aren't genetically related to each other, and over time the groupings change. I believe genetic studies show enormous diversity within groups.

<comment><USER4> "The meaning of nationalism (and tribalism) is not clearly defined"

Wikipedia would have been helpful: "[Nationalism] can be expressed as a belief or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with or becoming attached to one's _nation_." "Tribalism is [...] a way of thinking or behaving in which people are more loyal to their _tribe_ than to their friends, their country, or any other social group."

None of these in itself implies that it also has to bear a negative emotional charge of any kind. I think you're confusing nationalism/tribalism with xenophobia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's happening in New Zealand to a similar extent. This current government is raiding journalists homes who publish things they don't want[1] [2]. Even more worryingly the government recently bailed out the other major broadcasting company, and replaced the CEO with a friend of the prime minister. It didn't take long before journalists who were sometimes critical of the government were replaced [3].

1 [https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/hager-police- rai...](https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/hager-police-raid- dangerous-for-journalism-6099331)

2 [http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/290989/police-raid- du...](http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/290989/police-raid-du-plessis- allan's-home)

3 [http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_i...](http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11462265)

</comment><comment><USER6> For a country whose culture already stifles expression and speech, this is bad news. I'm proud that supposedly so many Japanese stood up to protest these legislative actions. Having lived there, I can say that the government comes across as way more untouchable and heightened than here in the US, and that it takes a LOT before action can be taken against them. The US messing in their politics in order to get more aid in their wars is infuriating and makes me worry for the future of such a rich country.

<comment><USER7> Had a friend who lived in Japan for 35 years whose opinion of Japanese politics was basically that the ruling party were the largest and most powerful of the triad gangs.

<comment><USER8> You mean Yakuza, not Triad?

<comment><USER7> yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, as an average citizen in the country, what should I do?

I'm just a tech geek guy. I write software at work, and I teach sometimes (for CS related topics). I write OSS. I occasionally write a blog, but feel terribly helpless for spreading my view with that. I don't think going to a rally helps the cause that much (because I feel it only pleases the curious media). I'm probably a bit more politically aware than the average people here, but I don't want to devote myself to much political activities.

Probably I should continue to do the small things that I'm currently doing (e.g. occasionally bringing up the topic to friends and advocating more openness of the society, etc.), but what else? Does anyone have any idea?

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish this post gave a better treatment to the discussion. By presenting such a stark claim on a blog, with little justification it leads to polarization that may make some who are open-minded to the issue actually take such concerns _less_ seriously.

I don't have any answers myself, I'm learning a lot but here's what I glean:

\- Reporters without borders (RWB) is a neutral cause dedicated to investigating freedom of the press in various countries, they explain their methodology on their website.

\- RWB has moved Japan down to 61 on the list of nations with the most free press. However, the US is at 49 for comparison, so saying Japan has "Dismantled freedom of the press" because they are 61 seems to be an overstatement

\- The piece presents a theory that America is trying to use Japan's military. Time will tell.

\- The style comes across as vaguely rambly

If anybody who's not too emotionally involved in the topic has some recommended reading I'd love to hear more.

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel saddened by this this. But at the same time I see Japan in a very complicated situation with China expanding its maritime influence in the region.

If it doesn't flex its military muscle (needing the secracy for it) it may find itself in a vulnerable situation against China. Although on the other hand it really doesn't stand a chance against China's nuclear arsenal.

If China used a nuclear warhead would the US riposte in the same manner?

What I don't get is the "Japan to battle in the middle east". Is this a "you scratch my back and I scratch yours"? Or just a cover for not saying "we're preparing for an eventual conflict with China"?

<comment><USER12> > _Although on the other hand it really doesn 't stand a chance against > China's nuclear arsenal._

I beg to differ; According to the U.S government, Japan maintains a latent nuclear program. According to their assessment, Japan can go from "Hey, let's build a nuclear weapon stockpile" to actually having that stockpile in as little as a few months. (Source: [http://zidbits.com/2012/02/which-country-is- closest-to-build...](http://zidbits.com/2012/02/which-country-is-closest-to- building-their-first-nuclear-weapon/))

Germany comes in second place and could have nuclear weapons nearly as quick.

> _Or just a cover for not saying "we're preparing for an eventual conflict > with China"?_

Right now, if North Korea launched a missile at California, Japan would have to watch as it sailed over Tokyo. They legally cannot shoot it down in protection of their ally. Japan wants to change that. They want to be able to protect and assist their allies in more than just a minor supporting role. Japan was there in Iraq and Afghanistan, they just weren't in combat roles. They were there providing medical aid and resupplies.

People (incorrectly) think that Japan is trying to become 1935 imperial Japan again. That's not it - they just want to be like everyone else. Right now, they have less freedom (militaristicaly) than everyone else. Significantly less than Germany too.

<comment><USER13>
        > Right now, if North Korea launched a missile
        > at California, Japan would have to watch as
        > it sailed over Tokyo.

This doesn't detract from your general point, but I was curious to see if this particular thing was true.

If you use the "measure distance" tool on Google Maps you can see that even if North Korea launched an ICBM from the southernmost part of their eastern coast to the southernmost part of California it would only intersect Japanese territory by a few miles, at the point of Rebun Island northwest of Hokkaido, something they could trivially avoid. They'd have a much bigger practical problem with having to fly it over Russia than Japan.

In order for its course to go anywhere near Tokyo they'd have to be aiming said ICBM somewhere midway around Argentina, around a thousand miles south of Buenos Aires or so.

Don't let the Mercator projection interfere with your sense of reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you could redesign a system of government free from major flaws we see today, how would it work? Current systems almost seem to have a tendency to "breed" the types of malevolent, inefficient, greedy and problematic power structures we see. I think that at the root of the problem are natural human flaws. It seems almost certain that given enough time, no matter how well intentioned people are, the cumulative effect of our natural flaws inevitably evolves the kind of system/culture that attracts and perpetuates these flawed tendencies. I think the process could be compared to natural selection. Has anyone thought about it like that? I'm curious. Is it possible to design a system of government which would not be influenced by inherent human flaws? A system which, by design, has a tendency to "select" characteristics that shape it to be more beneficial, free from its current flaws?

<comment><USER8> Some form of sortition probably;

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

Basically treat political office as a civic duty, much like jury duty.

Give them a very generous salary and have a maximum term after which they can never be reinstated.

Also ban completely any form of financial lobbying.

<comment><USER4> I don't know how this worked back then, but what prevents acts of corruption or any other kind of power abuse from the instated public figures' part? BTW, the power itself legitimizes lobbying, so this may sound a little cynical but when you ban means convenient for corruption then it simply goes underground until it finds its way to being legit again in some form. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be (the cynical part) - the game of life and the ever- present competition inside our species?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "In preparation to join US wars, Japan dismantles freedom of the press". What US wars? Populist hogswaddle. Such assertions should be backed up if you're going to make them. As for the supposed rise of "nationalism", to the average liberal, _ANY_ movement in the direction of national security, or any display of pride in one's country, is not just nationalism but _fascism_ , racism, and worse.

<comment><USER15> @sprucely -- thanks for the downvote -- you prove my point.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sprucely](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sprucely)

<comment><USER16> What are you trying to do here? You think you know who downvoted you, and you're...calling them out? By...linking to their public user page?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why does it look like democracy is on a declining trend all over the world, even as the Internet is more used by more people than ever?

<comment><USER18> Observer bias

<comment><USER19> Indeed, we live in a time of unprecedented democracy. But confirmation bias reigns supreme, people read from news sources which confirm their preconceived notions of the world. The Hacker News community is as susceptible to this as anyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think that the Japan public debt house is starting to crackle and they do not want the public to know. Thus they are silencing the media.

Here is a graph of Japanese debt to GDP ratio [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to- gdp](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to-gdp)

Here is demographic Changes in Japan's population. It shows a top slope, population starting to fall. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/F...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#/media/File:Population_of_Japan_since_1872.svg)

So a retiring Japanese population is going to pay for rising public debt. Sustainable in the long run?

<comment><USER21> You forgot to mention that Japan is the biggest creditor in the world and the one that possesses more foreign net assets than even China.

So even if debt is colossal, it has the assets to maintain it for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have never seen the emdash overused this badly.

</comment><comment><USER23> Once again the US exporting "corporate democracy"

<comment><USER24> Don't blame the united states for everything. Totally unlike the situation described in the article, I can assure you that Americans have all the freedom in the world to criticize the government. We are fortunate in that regard.

<comment><USER25> Fortunate? Freedom of speech (et al.) is a birthright, NOT a privilege. If only the people of Japan stood up for their rights..

<comment><USER26> > If only the people of Japan stood up for their rights..

As mentioned in the article, there already are massive protests around this issue.

What more could they do? Try to take down the government by force? Even if they succeeded, I'm sure the U.S. would be happy to step in to "calm the waters" and impose martial law outright.

<comment><USER27> They don't need to have a violent revolution. They can just vote for a different party in the next election cycle. If the votes aren't there, revolution wouldn't succeed anyway.

<comment><USER28> "They can just vote for a different party in the next election cycle."

The last time they tried that (2009), the different party was literally more of the same. The only thing worth mentioning about the following two elections was their extremely low turnout (the lowest ever in Japan's modern history in the latter).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Main Core – database of US citizens believed to be threats to national security - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Core

<comment><USER3> What transpired in Turkey can easily happen in US. There are many dissatisfied people on either side of the political spectrum. Now more than ever, with higher unemployment and extensive communication channels, the risks are even higher. But there are ways to keep the population at check:

1 - Utilize the fear of external entities (Iraq, terrorism, etc.) to channel away anxiety from domestic issues.

2 - pre-occupy the public, reality shows, sports, etc.

3 - Focus the problem on individuals to provide the election as a escape valve (Bush, Obama, etc.)

4 - Quickly stop or discredit any movement before it catches on like wild fire.

5 - Identify potential instigators and defuse them early if needed (shutdown bank account, credit card, ATM) terminate their phones and Internet-which is why you need this list. , etc-which is why you need this list.

Edit:fixed formatting

<comment><USER4> 6 - (but really #1) Eliminate financial freedom of the populous.

What do you think 2008 was about?

<comment><USER5> Is that not just giving them a reason to rebel?

<comment><USER6> Conspiracy theorists tend to miss obvious things like that.

<comment><USER7> Are you calling Noam Chomsky a conspiracy theorists?

<comment><USER8> He might not have, but I sure will.

<comment><USER9> Amazing. Chomsky is a legend. Who are you exactly? Ignoring his entire career to simply dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. Ignorance and apathy like yours is why the US has fallen into the hole it's in now.

<comment><USER8> I'm not ignoring his entire career. He's one of the towering intellectuals of the 20th Century, and his work in linguistics has positively influenced a range of fields.

But his views on politics and world affairs are extremely eccentric, and have remained on the fringe for a reason.

<comment><USER9> >and have remained on the fringe for a reason.

Yea, for the same reason people who claimed the US was spying on everyone remained on the fringe.... until we had a bunch of evidence of it dropped on us.

<comment><USER7> Also, Chomsky's work is always backed by an incredible amount of evidence.

Edit: I can not over emphasize 'incredible amount of evidence.'

<comment><USER8> Don't confuse footnotes with evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks like all four of the citations on wikipedia ultimately lead to:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080831101327/http://www.radaron...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080831101327/http://www.radaronline.com/from- the- magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01.php)

<comment><USER4> Info about "main Core" has been around a lot longer than that article.

Main Core theory is the source for such speculation that they are after people and keep a list of who to stop from spreading truth.

<comment><USER10> I am not saying its a lie, I'm just saying its a weakly referenced article for wikipedia and/or a wikipedia article that makes it to HN. Please add the other links to the wikipedia page.

<comment><USER4> Understood, wasn't saying you were - was just providing additional data point...

<comment><USER10> Respectfully†, you were not adding another data point, you added another anecdote.

† I am not trying to be a dick I really do mean respectfully. At a time like this I think it is important to not get carried away with wild speculation. Privacy has not gotten this much attention in a long time. I think we should strive to make the best use of this opportunity as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> After the last few days of headlines on HN, I am starting to feel a bit (a lot) like a conspiracy theory wingnut. Am I going mad? Is it just me?

<comment><USER12> Only if you apply the loose criteria conspiracy theory wingnuts apply. Like with anything else, you should ask yourself 'what's the evidence? how reliable/well-sourced is this story?'. In this particular case, the answer to the latter is 'very poorly'.

A reasonable common-sense question is also - what use is a database with 8 million records in a situation dire enough to necessitate invoking continuity- of-government procedures/martial law/etc. Who exactly is going to go out and check up on 8 million 'potential threats' in case of, say, a nuclear attack?

<comment><USER11> 8 million tiny, poison-tipped drones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security

Millions of US citizens believed to be threats to national security? Paranoid much, US government? I don't see much of a reason tot trust that government; it seems they don't trust you, anyway.

<comment><USER10> Not trusting the government was a founding principle.

<comment><USER13> But does that mean the government by definition doesn't trust the people that put them into power in the first place?

<comment><USER10> Have you read the constitution? Is the electoral college a sign of great trust?

 _Sir, your people is a great beast._ \-- a.h.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I sometimes fret that a nation formed by a revolution, who's founding document even seems to imply that revolutions are periodically necessary, would so thoroughly protect itself from revolution. This database is a revolution-buzz- kill.

Then I get bummed that after the Newtown shooting all the politicians who wanted to enact tighter gun restrictions kept saying that you don't need an assault rifle to hunt. I don't see anything about hunting in the 2nd amendment. I always thought the second amendment was about preventing tyranny, in which case a fully automatic weapon would be very useful.

But, the second amendment is probably more about state organized militias in a time when the feds didn't maintain a standing army. I guess I'm going to have to give up this idle revolution fantasy. It would probably suck anyhow -- there's no way more people will be fed than are now, wealth would be distributed more equally, or due process would be better respected, after an armed revolution.

<comment> trust-me Let me tell you how useful an automatic weapon is against a swarm of drones: not useful at all. Those drones are very similar to the laptops and tablets we use everyday and can be mass produced in millions on the Pentagon/Occupation/etc. 1+ trillion budgets. PRISM and company will just supply the targets - leaders, current and potential, of an opposition.

<comment><USER15> Don't those things need a (remote) pilote? How would drones without pilotes work against a revolution?

<comment> trust-me With the huge R&D investments of DAPRA&Co they need fewer and fewer people to operate. It's not a problem to find a few dozens of loyal people ready to kill kids and whoever else tries to disobey the orders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something is very, very wrong with your government agencies when such a sizable percentage of the population can be considered "threats".

<comment><USER17> Or something is very wrong with a _government_ that would perceive so many as threats -- or _create_ such "threats."

<comment><USER18> I don't see this (if it really exists) as being a product of government, per- se, but of bureaucracy. If you come across someone who is vaguely dissatisfied, and a list of malcontents exists, then you're going to shrug your shoulders and add them to the list. Because leaving them off the list would be risky, and no one ever got fired for doing the safe thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For a moment, I thought they were talking about the Japanese internment camps from WWII.

<comment><USER10> ...and then you realized it says 8,000,000 not 120,000 people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Welp, I'd bet that the majority of people here on HN who care about stuff like this are on this list.

<comment><USER21> HN makes it easy for the NSA to collect names. Recycle your HN profile regularly. Green is the color of privacy.

<comment><USER11> There are no reasonable steps that I can take to maintain anonymity. The most I can do is to counter my inbuilt bias to self-censor; to be as outspoken and uncaring-of-the-consequences as possible. Punk is the only and correct response to surveillance.

(Hence my previous straw-man reactionary paranoid collaboration).

<comment><USER22> There used to be anonymity, but it's too late to start now. I've met a few people, (outside of the homeless community or the third world), that are truly anonymous in the practical sense of the word. It's not something that 99.99% percent of people would consider or desire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, we have people claiming that FEMA(?) have all these dormant prison camps all over the US waiting to lock millions of Americans up in the even of..... well, who knows?

Well, if Main Core is correct, these people have to go somewhere. If the prison camps are only in the imagination of loon conspiracy theorists, where would these 8 million go?

Strikes me the US, probably my lot in the UK too, needs a truth and reconciliation commission.

<comment><USER8> Or hn needs to get over its sudden decision to become a mashup of /r/politics and /r/conspiracy.

Really, this is first rate nutty stuff. Did you know the U.S. government has a database containing records on hundreds of millions of its citizens (and even some non-citizens!)? It contains records of where you live, which causes you support and how much money you make. Some people in this database are flagged for "special attention" by government agents who conduct an even more thorough trawl through personal lives.

Of course, that's the IRS. Maybe some of us would prefer a taxation scheme that didn't require all this infrastructure, but there's nothing deeply nefarious about it.

It's one thing to be unhappy or disturbed by the alleged degree of NSA data collection on U.S. citizens, but when you start speculating about FEMA prison camps you've gone over the edge.

<comment><USER24> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879204)

<comment><USER8> I think alan_cx greatly exaggerates the extent to which anyone claiming that the NSA might be intercepting communications (which is, of couse, their job) was described as a "conspiracy theorist" prior to revelations about how the program actually worked. What exactly did people think the NSA did?

By alan_cx's logic, we can't call people who think there are frozen aliens at Area 51 "conspiracy theorists" either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me very much of this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)

Well, as a possible consequence.

</comment><comment><USER26> The bit that seems to me more poorly sourced is the purpose of the list - <USER2> idea that it is there for the investigation, detention or as someone has made the leap to Stalin level purges.

If you're planning for Continuity of Government you aren't looking to handle detaining whole swathes of your surviving population. However you may want a database to be able to check people coming forwards to be involved in civil society after such an event.

Surely there are enough people on here who have watched Jericho and Revolution to understand that civil society is really vulnerable in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.

</comment><comment><USER27> How do I find out if my name is on it?

<comment><USER28> Why it's very simple, my friend:

(1) Just file a request with FEMA, DHS, or the FBI.

(2) Presto! Doing so will mark you as suspicious, and subject to surveillance, questioning, and/or internment during times of national crisis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Come at me bro

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd be incredibly surprised if every government on Earth doesn't have something like this.

That being said, that doesn't mean it's good. How "dirty" is that data set, for starters?

</comment><comment><USER31> Keep in mind that detained may be for a long time, indefinitely in solitary confinement and without charges, in one of the _many_ prisons the US government has been building in recent years: [http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the- unit...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united- states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289)

</comment><comment><USER32> The Wikipedia article is correct and covers most of it. Technically it is correct the current list is from 1982. But really the list surfaced in 1950.

Another Wikipedia article to check out is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Internal_Security_Act#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran_Internal_Security_Act#Provisions) . The provisions of that act are more-or-less the same thing - a reversal of the idea of habeas corpus. It grants the executive branch power to indefinitely detain masses of political dissenters without trial. The provision that allows this was proposed by the champion of US liberalism at the time, Hubert Humphrey.

That 1950 list is the 1982 list and is also the current list. Of course the names change as times go by, but the purpose is the same. For the government it is a good idea - it worked pretty well for Germany and Italy - you get rid of troublesome nationalities and political dissenters. It works well and makes a lot of sense for them. Of course I myself don't condone it.</comment>


There are two Americas, and one is better than the other. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/phil-robertson-duck-dynasty-two-americas-2013-12

<comment><USER2> That...was ridiculously bigoted, grossly misconstruing holders of differing views.

And that's why the "boycott A&E" Facebook page got a million likes in 24 hours flat - people are getting tired of being slandered & misrepresented for holding sensible, albeit different, opinions which were long the norm.

<comment><USER3> Methinks you and yours are projecting.

There is absolutely nothing "sensible" about intolerance and racism.

Your arguments from numbers and history are not "sensible" or rational either.

<comment><USER2> You make my case. No sense of respect, tolerance, or understanding, just imputation of non-sequitur pejoratives.</comment></comment></comment>


Text analysis of Trump's tweets: he writes only the (angrier) Android half - <AUTHOR> http://varianceexplained.org/r/trump-tweets/ <comment><USER2> An amazing tutorial for using R (against Twitter datasets)</comment>


Programmers: Stop Calling Yourselves Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/programmers-should-not-call-themselves-engineers/414271/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> What about train engineers? Sound engineers? Sanitation engineers? That ship sailed so long ago, it did so on steam power. I'm not even going to read your article. Clickbait: denied.

Besides, yes, of course, the civil engineer, what if bridges fall, certifications, professional order, etc. What about the electrical engineer making a portable radio, or a cable? We were just talking about how those can be just as bad as software ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494)).

In contrast, the doctor has certifications, a professional order, etc. So does the lawyer. Are those engineers? No. Turns out those things have nothing to do with the concept of engineering itself, but rather with the kind of legal framework that is appropriate in some businesses that carry a high risk of personal damage to others, and/or with the desire and ability of certain groups to control access to a profession. All of which are tradeoffs, which means there needs not be a single set-point that is ideal across all fields of engineering. As any engineer could have told you.

<comment><USER4> "In contrast, the doctor has certifications, a professional order, etc. So does the lawyer."

That is the entire point. A Professional Engineer is the equivalent of a board certified medical doctor, or a lawyer admitted to the Bar in a particular state. In Ohio, a Professional Engineer is defined as [http://www.peps.ohio.gov/4733/473301.aspx](http://www.peps.ohio.gov/4733/473301.aspx) Restrictions are outlined at [http://www.peps.ohio.gov/4733/4733021.aspx](http://www.peps.ohio.gov/4733/4733021.aspx) Note the exception for train engineers. You can use the term engineer as long as you don't confuse anybody into thinking you are a real engineer, i.e. sanitation. I like to call myself the Doctor of Love, but no one is going to think I'm claiming to be a real medical doctor.

There are legal consequences for claiming that you are an engineer when you are not. Check out the 2014 consequences in Ohio at [http://www.peps.ohio.gov/NewsReleases/2014.aspx](http://www.peps.ohio.gov/NewsReleases/2014.aspx) You get your name in print and in public for being incompetent and unethical. It is similar in all the other states.

The disciplines that can become Professional Engineers are listed on the right hand column here [http://www.peps.ohio.gov/Exams/ExamDates%7CDisciplines.aspx](http://www.peps.ohio.gov/Exams/ExamDates%7CDisciplines.aspx) Unfortunately, software engineering didn't make the list, although, electrical and computer did. I can think of circumstances where you would want software engineers to make the list. This is probably the result of corporate influence. PEs are more expensive. And a blanket Certificate of Authorization (CA) is cheaper. If you are an engineer via a company CA, you are only an engineer while working at that company.

You might claim that this is just rent seeking similar to a barber certificate. Yet, not many people die or have their lives ruined by barbers. You might get lice though.

It is interesting that you can no longer become a PE with a 4 year degree anymore that I am aware of. You used to be able to, although your apprenticeship was considerably longer.

<comment><USER5> _cough_ US-centric _cough_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is absurd. First, structural engineering in the developed world is insanely expensive because everything is overbuilt by at least 100% and teams of expensive senior people are hired to check every single number many times over the course of many months.

Software engineering, in contrast, is rushed out the door by typically over- worked, junior, and small teams. Blame the management, not the engineers.

But more importantly, this is totally beside the point, because the two problems aren't even the same: most software has to change constantly; structures mostly stay the same. The hard part about software engineering is designing for flexibility -- it's ridiculously easy to build software that never changes.

Oh, and by the way, it is _extremely_ common to have significant structural flaws in major construction projects; they simply find ways to go in and fix them before the building collapses, but not always before leaks occur, mold grows, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is absurd for many reasons pointed out in this thread.

The broad brush is especially problematic. If "programmers" should stop calling themselves "engineers" because of the prevalence of poor quality software, couldn't one argue (equally speciously) that "writers" should stop calling themselves "journalists" because of the prevalence of things like listicles and clickbait? In journalism as well as software, the garbage seems to far outweigh the good stuff (by volume). And in both fields, some professionals are trained, but many are self-taught, and neither skills nor ethics are uniformly incorporated into all practitioners' work.

I believe there _is_ a legitimate issue around the quality of software. But I don't see how demoting the class of people who build software brings us any closer to improving that situation. Rather, I'd be interested to read a thoughtful article about _why_ low-quality software remains prevalent. (I have a feeling it's because bad software remains economically viable -- in turn because it's still actually useful to people. A bridge that falls down is useless. An app that crashes every day is very frustrating, but potentially still worth the price. I'm just guessing, of course, but that's why I'd love to see a well-researched article that seeks to understand the problem before prescribing a solution.)

<comment><USER8> I don't see it as a demotion. Au contraire! Engineers work under hard constraints - the laws of nature aren't subject to negotiation. Sometimes earthquakes bring down buildings and bridges, sometimes tsunamis destroy harbors, sometimes water floods destroy dams, not because engineers are malicious, but simply because it's impossible to do better. We programmers have the luxury to seldom run into the laws of physics as a hard constraint. The vast majority of the time, when software fails to behave the way it is intended to, it's simply and plainly because we made a mistake. It is in principle possible to write bug-free software, after all, software is nothing but a logical artifact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I darted my work life as a civil engineer, mostly designing structural steel buildings. Now many years later I'm a data engineer at a big tech firm. My opinion: programming work is engineering.

I think the author simply has no idea what either field entails, and has proved me now to denigrate the worth of an English major's career.

Seriously though, there are so many kinds of engineering: Structural engineer Geotechnical engineer Chemical engineer Biomedical engineer Genetic engineer Mechanical engineer

Just to name a handful. Software engineer clearly fits.

<comment><USER10> I too am a Civil Engineer. I aspire to be a programmer. But programmers are not engineers! Engineer is a title of elites that everybody tries to steal. The guy who operates a crane is called a crane engineer. IMO, That is not engineering! The guy who repairs trains is also an engineer. IMO, that is not engineering. Engineer is someone who sweats through school, thinks about things in ways that have never been thought before, and can lose his job and license, for doing things wrong.

Software engineer is one of those titles taken by programmers for prestige. There are no calculations involved. There is just sweat. It is like calling CAD drafter, a CAD engineer for all of those times he sweats away on enormous drawings.

Engineer is a high ranking title, that bears command and direction, not a role done by programmers who listen to a manager grunt.

<comment><USER5> > There is just sweat.

Unless you're a junior developer you should be able to do more than just grunt work. If you think grunt work is all there is to software development, you frankly don't know what you're talking about.

I've worked with software developers in tech companies that plan and fine-tune code and data formats based on metrics like memory use and performance -- exactly the calculations you claim aren't involved in software.

The difference between software and physical objects is that the resource cost of producing software is zero so the difference between implementation and simulation is often non-existent. So unlike physical engineering where you necessarily need to run calculations because testing is expensive, you have a tight feedback loop that allows you to tweak a system under test in ways physical engineers could only dream of -- and even so, better simulation tools are already saving physical engineers a lot of number crunching.

> Engineer is a high ranking title

In your opinion. You already stated crane operators are called "engineers" too. That's the standard you need to compare "software engineers" to. Is software development more like engineering than operating a crane or less?

> done by programmers who listen to a manager grunt.

No true Scotsman, much? You're not seriously claiming engineers are never constrained by decisions from superiors, are you? The only difference I can see is that (like lawyers and accountants) engineers have skin in the game that disincentives following certain orders -- exactly what has been asked of software developers in the fallout of the VW scandal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's all well and good for Hacker News entrepreneurs to blather about egalitarianism, but the primary difference between an 'engineer' (a person with a Professional Engineering certification) and an 'engineer' (a person who touches a computer for money) is that one group is held responsible for their work, including explicit ethics standards, a governing body with certification-revocation powers, and a legal framework for enforcement of quality.

There has never, ever, ever, been a programmer who has been barred from programming for selling shitty code. There have _absolutely_ been engineers barred from engineering for selling shitty designs.

The only way to make this (frankly uninteresting) argument end is to either hold programmers accountable for quality, or stop holding engineers accountable for quality. Until then, you're using one word to refer to two groups of people with wildly different work requirements, and there will _always_ be people complaining about that.

Full disclosure: I have done both kinds of engineering for a living.

<comment><USER12> > the primary difference between an 'engineer' (a person with a Professional > Engineering certification) and an 'engineer' (a person who touches a > computer for money)

What about an 'engineer' (a person who designs components for a large corporation for money)? How are they a different bunch than a 'software engineer'?

> There has never, ever, ever, been a programmer who has been barred from > programming for selling shitty code. There have absolutely been engineers > barred from engineering for selling shitty designs.

There have been engineers who have had their licenses permanently revoked, but nobody has ever been "barred from engineering". Those are not the same thing (though I doubt a company is likely to hire an engineer who is so bad as to get their license revoked).

> The only way to make this (frankly uninteresting) argument end is to either > hold programmers accountable for quality, or stop holding engineers > accountable for quality. Until then, you're using one word to refer to two > groups of people with wildly different work requirements, and there will > always be people complaining about that.

The way I think it should end is for software engineering to be separated from computer science at the university level. ABET-accredited BSCS programs are practically that already, but most CS programs don't give a crap about ABET. So, scrap the BSCS and replace it with a full-ABET BSSwE and let the people with academic interest in CS get a BACS. As for non-degreed programmers, other engineering fields already have established practices for advancing a non- degreed technician to full engineer and those can be adapted to this field.

<comment><USER11> > What about an 'engineer' (a person who designs components for a large > corporation for money)? How are they a different bunch than a 'software > engineer'?

I can't answer this question, because "components" is too vague a word. You could be talking about software components, or mechanical components, or financial instruments... sorry, I just don't know what you're getting at here.

> There have been engineers who have had their licenses permanently revoked, > but nobody has ever been "barred from engineering". Those are not the same > thing (though I doubt a company is likely to hire an engineer who is so bad > as to get their license revoked).

An unlicensed engineer is not allowed to identify as the engineer-of-record for contractual purposes; that is, they can no longer 'stamp the drawings.' Sure, a company could hire a defrocked ex-PE to do the work, but they would still need an active PE to sign off on the work ('stamp the drawings'). So while obviously nobody is physically restraining them from installing AutoCAD, they are not able to meet (common) contractual requirements in engineering work.

> The way I think it should end is for software engineering to be separated > from computer science at the university level.

I completely agree with your assessment, except that I don't see CS as being B. A. material, since it's basically applied mathematics, which has traditionally been B. Sc. territory.

<comment><USER12> > I can't answer this question, because "components" is too vague a word. You > could be talking about software components, or mechanical components, or > financial instruments... sorry, I just don't know what you're getting at > here.

I meant literal electronic and mechanical components.

> An unlicensed engineer is not allowed to identify as the engineer-of-record > for contractual purposes; that is, they can no longer 'stamp the drawings.'

Correct. However, firms operating under a Certificate of Authority do not require a specific engineer to 'stamp the drawings'; the firm itself can do so. This is common with respect to mass-produced consumer goods and things of that general nature. None of the engineers who actually did the work need to be licensed, but they are still engineers. The CA thing may be unique to the US, though.

> I completely agree with your assessment, except that I don't see CS as being > B. A. material, since it's basically applied mathematics, which has > traditionally been B. Sc. territory.

I was getting confused by the BA in Physics. You are right, in that the BS in Physics is what you take if you want to "do physics", so a BSCS would still be appropriate for those who want to "do computer science".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A great example of what computer "Engineering" can look like is the On-Board Shuttle Group (Lockheed/NASA).

[http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right- stuff](http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff) [1996]

"This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved."

"The most important things the shuttle group does — carefully planning the software in advance, writing no code until the design is complete, making no changes without supporting blueprints, keeping a completely accurate record of the code — are not expensive. The process isn't even rocket science. Its standard practice in almost every engineering discipline except software engineering."

<comment><USER14> Hm. 3 years later Lockheed/NASA's "perfect" software led to the Mars Climate Orbiter's failure, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is one of those flame wars that never seems to die down. Really though... who cares? A lot of certified engineers do nothing more than simple paper pushing, should we start flooding medium with articles about that as well?

> The title "engineer" is cheapened by the tech industry.

A lot of 'cheap' techies are making way more money than officiated engineers

<comment><USER16> That's not at all what is meant. I hope you don't mean money is what makes the engineer.

<comment><USER15> I have a lot of friends who have passed their fundamentals exam (FE) and are on their way to become 'professional' engineers and I can guarantee you many accredited professional engineers do work that I would have a harder time calling engineering than a front end dev creating HTML files. Credentials certainly don't make someone an engineer, and neither does pay.

<comment><USER17> Cheapening in this case refers to the meaning of the word. In this case the word "engineer" or "engineering" is cheapened as anyone can call themselves that regardless of their output. Engineering should be about lasting structures or things that just don't fall apart (provided that's the goal) than just slapping a bunch of junk together. Or to put it another way: the currency involved here isn't physical money.

<comment><USER15> This just reeks of no-true-scottsman. Many engineers with the approved title 'professional engineer' do not build anything at all.

By PE I mean: [http://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what- pe](http://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would say this is the best definition of an engineer... "An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics, and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical, societal and commercial problems. -- Wikipedia" What really matters is the applied scientific knowledge and ingenuity to benefit mankind. The liability aspect shouldn't be the key differentiator.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Doing so undermines a long tradition of designing and building infrastructure in the public interest."

(from google) Infrastructure : the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.

In some countries, Facebook is viewed as "the internet" and the rest of us consider it to be just another social network (albeit one of the biggest) - and for all accounts, the internet is just as important if not more important then some utilities - a company can survive without water (technically) - <USER2> companies now a days can't survive without an internet connection - their 100% internet based.

Therefore - I'm an engineer - I build buildings (websites) that allow people to do things - be it educational or informational or to sell stuff.

... i completely understand the argument being made but it can be made across the board - Is a parent that home schools their kids a teacher? Is an employee at McDonalds a chef? Is a PHD a doctor? All titles have different meanings when used in different context.

</getoffmylawn>

<comment><USER20> I bet most people that cook food at McDonald's would think you were mocking them if you called them a chef.

<comment><USER5> True, but I bet most people pasting snippets of jQuery into Wordpress would be equally surprised if you called them engineers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Audio engineers should too? The author of the article seems to be willfully ignorant of the fact that some words have more than one meaning.

<comment><USER22> And don't forget train engineers.

<comment><USER23> And sanitation engineers.

<comment><USER24> And sales engineers, which the author has apparently never heard of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where I come from (Canada), you can't call yourself an Engineer unless you are certified as a Professional Engineer by the appropriate licensing body. This is similar to the fact that you can't call yourself a Lawyer or a Medical Doctor unless you have the appropriate certification. It's not a matter of fussiness. It's just that there are certain niches for professional behavior and those niches have evolved a process to prevent those without appropriate qualifications from marketing themselves using those names. There are also, broadly speaking, liability ramifications for the people in all of those occupations.

<comment><USER5> Where I come from (Germany), you're not allowed to do car paint jobs unless you're a certified varnisher. A lot of job titles have similar restrictions.

These restrictions have more to do with the history of these professions than with their intrinsic qualities. In Europe a lot of them can be traced back to the late middle ages -- and in North America they can generally be traced back to Europe.

I agree that these terms may have legal implications in some jurisdictions, but that's irrelevant to the discussion of whether they are accurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> We have certifications in different parts of tech that are not exactly the best indicators of knowledge / skill either (see: MCSE, RHCE, CCNA, CCIE, Java certifications...) so one of the distinguishing factors I see is not a level of formalization / standards but the adherence to standards as _consumers_ of an industry's output. For example, there's not a lot of start-ups making skyscrapers, so the market for those selling the construction becomes large entities like governments and corporations, and the standards become ones that they care about. This is similar to how software is sold to the government, which is completely different than how it is for consumer software. But few people buying Wordpress are willing to buy some mythical Enterprise Edition that's $100k / mo with an operations team at your service basically, so the cost of paperwork pushing involved for the bureaucracy-driven customers is removed at the cost of perhaps some corners cut.

However, I see quality output as a false dichotomy (rather, negative correlation) with bureaucracy / regulation of an industry's workers - look at the horrendous crap being produced for the Pentagon. Forget the glitzy articles in Wired and Techcrunch for defense-tech companies - most tech for government is done by under-qualified folks trying to make a quick buck off of Uncle Sam that couldn't really make it in the commercial software world. They'd be hard-pressed to make anything even close to some Chinese knock-off of a tech product if it came down to the wire. But I suppose this is because most defense contracts are regulated based around political and social requirements (see: the advantages for being a disadvantaged minority in getting a defense contract, plus Veteran's preferences) rather than actual functional requirements. Maybe the medical software industry is a better example of regulations in the right place (not that it's well done).

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a silly argument, but I feel compelled to participate.

The distinction is pretty difficult to make. Where does electrical engineering cross into computer engineering, then into software development? If your program runs on a FPGA, is that engineering or software development? If you program mathematical models for controlling boosters for satellites, engineering or software?

Is the distinction the person writing the software? A ChemE writes a program to control the dispensing of certain chemicals to maintain a reaction is engineering, but if a guy without a degree does the same, it's not?

Like it or not, software is a major component to engineering. We have progressed to the point where lots of products cannot be made without some level of computing.

The argument that "simple" software is somehow not engineering is also bunk. Mech.Es design mundane shit all the time. Somebody makes money designing door handles and light switches. Just like people make money building apps.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wouldn't call myself an engineer, however I know some Developers who _ARE_ Bachelor of Engineering or even Masters. In Germany SOME Information Technology courses will get you this title instead of the Bachelor of Science.

However thats just a title an official title and I don't care so much about that, since that says nothing about how much you could do. since mostly the newer generation with these titles knowing less and less. Btw. I also don't like people who care too much about it, they are mostly the 'bad' ones out there. if somebody would call me an engineer, fine. however I would never call myself so.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ok, so i just read this incendiary article titled Programmers: stop calling yourselves engineers. First, it was terribly written and researched and i can only imagine the author had very little respect for his fellow man. Second, Let me clarify that the word engineer is more a verb than a noun. It describes an action, not a person. We engineer a solution to a problem. We are all engineers in our own right. We solve problems that are important to us. This is the one downside to the freedom of expression the internet provides.

</comment><comment><USER30> I self-identify as an engineer. I have not had the operation yet but, you should not discriminate against me.

</comment><comment><USER31> I refuse to oblige this clickbait. The headline is so blatantly (click me! please! I need attention!)

Seriously though, Software Engineers will maintain the status of engineers whether they like it or not. And that's because it is real engineering work. Licensed or not that doesn't matter one bit.

</comment><comment><USER32> In this article someone who can't handle the fact that there are multiple types of engineers.

</comment><comment><USER33> Also stop calling yourselves architects. Job searching has become even harder.

<comment><USER34> ooohhh this one actually does bother me sometimes. Probably not for the same reason though. We've had a few guys proclaim themselves as "Software Architects" after just a few years of bug fixing. They seem to do it to distinguish themselves from the rest of the less gifted masses. One of our guys with the same level of experience as everyone else couldn't be bothered with scripting all of his database schema changes (which was a boring and tedious task because of how we managed changes at the time, and he didn't bother to keep track of them as he made them) because he was an "Architecture guy". A title that he gave himself and was in no way reflected on his resume.

If there are Software Architects they are very senior and experienced and hired into a position that asked for a Software Architect. They design entire systems not just a page here or there.

<comment><USER33> It's clear people are using software architect due to the prestige the name brings.

<comment><USER5> If you have ever dealt with actual architects it should be obvious there isn't anything prestigious about architecture. Sure, a small handful of elites gets to plan really cool projects but the same is true for most industries -- everybody else just does boring grunt work.

The reason they call themselves software architects is that they're mostly working on software architecture. Granted, the title is overused because scantly few companies have the scale at which it makes sense having a dedicated person for that but I've seen plenty of "art directors" prettying up PowerPoint slides, too.

The problem isn't that there is no such thing as "software architecture", the problem is that it's usually not useful to extract it into a separate role (although that doesn't stop people from trying), making the title more ceremonial than descriptive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Tell that to our employers. As for myself, I'm fine with 'programmer' or 'software developer', but my employer(s) often like to spice the titles up a bit.

<comment><USER36> Yes, it's amusing to me the various titles I've had over the years, given to me by different companies. Assistant Web Manager. Developer, Applications, Web Applications. Senior, Lead, Developer/Analyst II. Web Administrator. Consultant. And Software Engineer. You might think the roles and responsibilities for these would vary greatly....

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Think Bogost fairly captured the trade. So, raises the question what do we call folks that earn a living working on something until some else says its good enough?

</comment><comment><USER38> The following is from my personal perspective as a lead front-end engineer.

The author mentioned multiple times that civil engineers build bridges. Cool. Bridges are static. Updating a bridge is logistically difficult. You need expensive, heavy machinery. You have to redirect traffic. There are huge safety concerns for anyone standing below the bridge. Some of these things ring true for software engineering too. Voyager I has travelled almost 20,000,000,000 (thats 20 billion) km since it left earth[1]. Hong Kong's subway system transports over 5,000,000 (5 million) people every day and boasts a 99% on-time rating [2]. Google's autonomous cars have driven themselves over 1,250,000 miles since 2009 [3]. What do Voyager, Hong Kong's subway, and Google's cars have in common? They are all powered by software.

I don't dispute that quality is one of the first things to go at most startups, but to say that software engineers aren't "real" engineers because we have different goals and constraints is absurd. PEs (professional engineers) are generally concerned with quality, safety, and efficiency above all. This makes sense because trains, planes, and automobiles can't easily be fixed if something goes wrong. Remember the Toyota fiasco in 2009/2010 when the cars' gas pedals were getting stuck? The driver couldn't stop the car and this resulted in at least 10 deaths and a settlement of $1.1bn [4]. That settlement doesn't include the ~$3bn that Toyota spent in recalls, probes, and redesigning the gas pedal[4]. These are not issues that most startups face. We optimize for fast feedback loops that give us reliable data which we can use to improve the experience of using our product. In many cases, quality is sacrificed in favor of speed-of-development. Is it perfect? No. Is this engineering in the traditional sense? No. Does that mean we aren't engineers? I don't think so.

Building a rocket is difficult from a technical perspective. However, I believe that, in some ways, building a web application is even more difficult. Rockets are not concerned with human behavior. The few humans who will be interacting with the rocket are highly technical and have been through months or years of preparation. That's not the case in the work that I do. On the web, you must account for the knowledge and experiences of every individual using your product. The goal is to come up with solutions that anyone can intuitively understand without explanation, regardless of whether they've been using computers their entire life or if this is their first time. This is inherently a ridiculously difficult problem to solve because of human nature. Accomplishing this goal requires building complex systems that can handle interaction from thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of individual people, each with their own unique perspective on life and technology. Moreover, there are a number of highly complicated back end systems for things such as automatically scaling infrastructure to meet demand, pipelines for collecting and analyzing logs and data, and storing and retrieving data in an efficient way (in some cases, sub-millisecond analysis over billions of rows).

My point is that this article seems to have been written by an elitist person who does not understand the work of the people they are condescending to. I agree that, in general, software should be of higher quality, but compared to mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering, software is still very young. We are learning the ways of traditional engineering, forging a new path towards reducing time-to-market for new products, and inventing and building for a relatively new platform (the web) at the same time. There will be bumps in the road. That does not take away from the fact that software engineers solve difficult technical problems, which I believe is the essence of engineering.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1)

[2]: [http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/travel/hong-kong-mtr- success-s...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/travel/hong-kong-mtr-success- story/)

[3]: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/02/google-self-driving-car- upd...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/02/google-self-driving-car-update-from- october-no-accidents-halloween-helpful/)

[4]: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873246691045782034...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324669104578203440990704994)

<comment><USER8> Alas, society can't call us programmers engineers simply because "our job is difficult from a technical perspective". Otherwise, doctors are engineers, athletes are engineers, and suddenly the term "engineer" doesn't mean anything anymore.

I do think we programmers in general deserve more respect from society at large for what we do, but pretending to be something we are not (engineers) doesn't help our case.

<comment><USER5> Counter-point: until my country adopted the BA/MA system, the typical outcome of studying computer science would be a degree that literally contains the word "engineer".

Job titles are a cultural thing and mostly cosmetic. Most engineers don't do much engineering in their actual job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If I understand the gist of it, we can't call ourselves engineers because true "engineers" are blessed from on high by some self-ordained group, and given special rings while reciting a poem during a ritual? (yes, that's apparently a thing).

His problem is that his definition of engineering is ancient, not that many of those writing software aren't engineers.</comment>


The Story of John Paul Stapp, "The Fastest Man on Earth" (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I think it would be neat if there were more people like Lt. Col. Stapp and then I remember that they took all that punishment and technology evolved so we don't need to risk humans like that anymore.

But still, a brief bit of fame because you are crazier than everyone else and yet sane enough to produce brilliant work.

Wish I was like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wasn't Murphy's law formulated after a technician plugged sensors into one of these sled pointing the wrong way?

<comment><USER4> _Wasn 't Murphy's law formulated after a technician plugged sensors into one of these sled pointing the wrong way?_

The exact same problem occurred in 2004 when the _Genesis_ space probe sample return capsule returned to earth without its parachute. It hit the ground rather hard as you can see here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genesis_crash_site_scenery...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Genesis_crash_site_scenery.jpg)

        The Board determined the proximate (or direct) cause
        of the mishap to be that the G-switch sensors were in
        an inverted orientation, per an erroneous design, and
        were unable to sense sample return capsule deceleration
        during atmospheric entry and initiate parachute
        deployments [1].

The capsule was filled with extremely fragile silicon aerogel plates, which of course shattered on impact, and I believe dirt got inside too. Surprisingly, much data was recovered; that's what grad students are for.

[1] National Aeronautics and Space Administration. _Genesis_ Mishap Investigation Board (MIB) Report, Volume I. 2005.

Edit: references

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was a TV show, an early pseudodocumentary, about him in the 1950s, "The Man and the Challenge". The intro shows the rocket sled.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdCf6TnYEcM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdCf6TnYEcM)

<comment><USER6> Apparently the original footage of him is here. Warning: he is shown after the crash, eyes bleeding.

v[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4tuvOer_GI&t=3m](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4tuvOer_GI&t=3m)

Also real documentary footage:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XztU1bhQD7M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XztU1bhQD7M)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A fascinating insight into the fearlessness (recklessness?) of the human test subjects of yore.

Source: [http://whatif.xkcd.com/116/](http://whatif.xkcd.com/116/)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is flat out and amazing story. What an explorer!</comment>


Ask HN: How to transition from Data Science to Cyber security? - <AUTHOR> I am working as a Data Scientist for the past three years. I feel that the number of companies earning money through DS is limited and hence my career might hit the pavement soon ( I might be wrong here.).
Hence I want to transition into another Domain where Data Science skills can be helpful.
Would it be easier to transition from DS to Cyber-security? Which branch of Cyber-security would be easier to transition, if at all?
Anyone here who has made this journey, and can provide some advice?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Interesting. My feeling was that data scientists are generally better educated then cyber security personnel, on average. Many data scientists hold a PhD, while a CS master degree is a typical degree of IT people.

May I ask what's your education background and where you want to go?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a Masters in Statistics. In previous posts here, I have seen that cyber security as a field is quite vast. I am looking for particular subsets within this field where someone with a ML background can chip in. My hunch is that a ML guy with this domain knowledge can add more value in a tech company.</comment></comment>


Animate.css - <AUTHOR> http://daneden.me/animate/

<comment><USER2> Cool! I added the tada animation to my site</comment>


Google's fact-checking bots build vast knowledge bank - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329832.700-googles-factchecking-bots-build-vast-knowledge-bank.html?full=true <comment> bra-ket Kevin Murphy ([https://github.com/murphyk](https://github.com/murphyk)) is the lead developer of Bayes Net toolbox ([https://code.google.com/p/bnt/](https://code.google.com/p/bnt/)) and PMTK: [https://github.com/probml/pmtk3](https://github.com/probml/pmtk3)

This knowledge graph is probably the largest Bayesian network out there

</comment><comment><USER2> This is going to set the stage for the next battle between spammers and Google.

spammers will be populating the web with "facts" that suit themselves.

<comment><USER3> Like many here I'm a huge fan of Neal Stephenson. A lot of people around weren't big fans of Anathem. I actually really liked it.

One of the ideas that came up in that book was the Reticulum (Internet) was populated by "botnet ecologies" that subtly manipulated facts, streams and the like such that filtering this out became another industry (of course).

I've seen the idea that this lies in our future raised here and it seems to get mocked. I think the idea has a lot of merit.

<comment><USER4> This is immediately what came to mind for me too. The level of confidence for facts as referenced. I'm wondering how bogons might work into this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> "Behind the scenes, Google doesn't only have public data," says Suchanek. It can also pull in information from Gmail, Google+ and Youtube."You and I are stored in the Knowledge Vault in the same way as Elvis Presley," Suchanek says.

I really hope Google does not use Gmail data for projects other than ads. They really needs to ask users to opt-in to this kind of data sharing. I'm ok with gmail being read for ads, but almost anything else is unethical, especially some experimental knowledge base.

<comment><USER6> Why should google care what you are ok with after they already have all your data? If you don't want them to be able to engage in activities like this then _don 't give them your data in the first place_.

<comment><USER7> It's still _my_ data. Post office employees are not allowed to read my letters, even though I have given them into their care.

There are very good reasons why we, as a society, have agreed to disallow many activities that are physically possible. There's a good case to be made that such a rule should be explicitly added where organizations are entrusted with private data.

<comment><USER8> It most certainly is not your data. It's on their servers, in their apps, and running through their network. They decide what they do it with, how long they keep it, and whether or not you even have access to it. Comparing them to the post office doesn't really make sense either considering that's a public service, and one a depressingly large number of people want to get rid of. Google is a for profit company and their data is how they make money.

If you don't like that reality then don't use their service. It really is that simple.

<comment><USER9> If I leave some loose hairs on an airline seat, does the airline now own my dna?

<comment><USER10> The very concept of "owning data" is nonsense, as your example clearly shows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does this compare with NELL[0] from CMU? I'm assuming it's something like NELL, but scaled up 1000x because Google is not limited to how often it can search its own index, whereas NELL is limited to 10K queries/day?

[0] [http://rtw.ml.cmu.edu/rtw/](http://rtw.ml.cmu.edu/rtw/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hi, I'm Kevin Murphy, one of the researchers at Google who worked on this project. Just to be clear, KV did NOT involve any private data sources -- it just analyzed public text on the web. (And yes, we do try to estimate reliability of the facts before incorporating them into KV.) Also, KV is not a launched product, and is not replacing Knowledge Graph.

Unfortunately, I cannot do a more detailed Q&A here, but if you want more details, please read the original paper here: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf). (Note that an earlier version of the work was presented at a CIKM workshop in Oct 2013 (see [http://www.akbc.ws/2013/](http://www.akbc.ws/2013/) and [http://cikm2013.org/industry.php#kevin](http://cikm2013.org/industry.php#kevin)). We have also published tons of great related research at [http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Paper: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds a bit like Douglas Lenat's CYC project from the 1980s [1], but done by machine.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> HNers interested in this might also be interested in Deep Dive from Stanford CS Professor Chris Ré.

[http://deepdive.stanford.edu/](http://deepdive.stanford.edu/)

<comment><USER13> The paper ([http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf)) mentions the extracted knowledge base is about 38 times larger than DeepDive's, the largest previous comparable system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _It might even be possible to use a knowledge base as detailed and broad as Google 's to start making accurate predictions about the future based on analysis and forward projection of the past._

Hello Hari Seldon, psychohistory and mathematical sociology!

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

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

</comment><comment><USER17> Is any subset of the "derived knowledge" from public websites and data contributed back to a public dataset like Dbpedia?

There are bots [1] making Wikipedia contributions, Google could also make automated contributions to Wikipedia/Wikidata.

[1] [http://wikipedia-edits.herokuapp.com/](http://wikipedia- edits.herokuapp.com/)

<comment><USER18> A subset of the knowledge graph is available via freebase RDF dumps: [https://developers.google.com/freebase/data](https://developers.google.com/freebase/data)

I don't believe this is what the article is talking about (knowledge vault) though. This is just the human and lightly machine curated graph (knowledge graph).

<comment><USER19> You are right. This paper proposes to use freebase(it can be any other source) as prior knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I see a lot of downvoting here of posts that express very reasonable concerns about privacy _if_ Google is actually using private emails for this AI.

That Google is engaging in this behavior is indeed speculation, as far as I know. However, Google employees/allies have to realize that attempts to suppress debate on this issue can only backfire on them. Indeed, the fact that they don't have explicit policy on this (correct me if I'm wrong) is one of the reasons researchers are speculating.

It may well be that most people would agree with and/or permit Google to use their data in this way, but people should be given the opportunity to debate it in a reasonable fashion, else it looks like it was forced down their throats. And that's no good for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER21> >> "Behind the scenes, Google doesn't only have public data," says Suchanek. It can also pull in information from Gmail, Google+ and Youtube."You and I are stored in the Knowledge Vault in the same way as Elvis Presley," Suchanek says.

Ugh... that's a bit much... because now any employee at google could potentially get access to random facts about me gleaned from my personal and business emails? Good luck keeping different levels of confidential information segregated correctly. That's awesome.

<comment><USER22> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upu0gwGi4FE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upu0gwGi4FE)

<comment><USER21> Sure, I'm aware, but this is different.

Collecting anonymous statistics about its users does not include automatically generating a database indexed by individual based on their private data. One is par for course when selling bundles of users according to demographic to advertisers while the other is fucking crazy.

Mining public web data for building a database like that is one thing, but mining individual private data like this is crossing a line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Knowing the people who have left Google, who collected a lot of that data, who we trusted, who are now gone, I wonder what other non-public data is being used, and how is it being used, and for only good purposes, or for nefarious purposes?

</comment><comment><USER24> Facts are not knowledge. Read Socrates / Platon.

<comment><USER25> Knowledge is the grasp of the facts of reality.

Most of the ideas produced by Socrates / Plato / Aristotle were in fact wrong. They are not a good primer on epistemology, concepts, percepts, metaphysics or anything else. They're a good primer on the history of philosophy.

They inspired incredible progress on thinking and understanding, but they were wrong more often than they were right, and are a poor reference to understanding what knowledge is.

<comment><USER24> This is a contradiction:

"Knowledge is the grasp of the facts of reality." is was Socrates in an essence said about knowledge.

Then you say Socrates was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Isn't it nice that millions of people made web pages that Google decided to scrape to harvest the work of others and run ads next to it for themselves?

Now try scraping Google and see what they do to you.

<comment><USER5> You can ban GoogleBot easily, just put a line in your robots.txt file, but then people won't be able to easily find your site using Google services.

If you provide value to Google they will make an API to allow accessing that data easier.

By scraping do you mean scraping their search results? They offer this, which is nice: [https://developers.google.com/custom- search/](https://developers.google.com/custom-search/)

Many large sites don't allow scraping because of unnecessary server load (denial of service sometimes) so they'll offer an API where you can download content in a controlled (and monitorable) manner.

<comment><USER27> We need a robots.txt and "noindex" metatag standard for emails.

If one sends an email to an GMail/Outlook.com/Yahoo email address, one should be able to opt-out of their email crawler, advertisement analysis, artificial intelligence analysis, etc.

<comment><USER5> The user who receives it can: [https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en](https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662922?hl=en)

I don't think they do too much storing of email details, they know that it's a sensitive area and that an employee will eventually blow the whistle and it will hurt user trust, which is a big part of their business.

<comment><USER27> I meant it the other direction.

1) Alice sends an email to Bob (GMail user).

2) Bob receives the email, meanwhile Google scrapes the content and extracts its meaning to show Bob some ads and use the facts to improve Google's A.I.

Alice wants a way to mark her email content as "no index".

So that email service provider don't crawl through the content. Exactly like the robots.txt for domains or the "noindex" metatag in HTML head element!

<comment><USER28> Why should Alice get to restrict what Bob can do with his inbox?

<comment><USER27> It's not about Bob, he can do what he want.

It's about the email service provider, that should stop analyze the email text to extract its meaning. Gmail uses it to display ads to Bob, builds a shadow profile for Alice (like Facebook) and trains an artificial intelligence (see headline link).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Knowledge Vault has pulled in 1.6 billion facts to date", does this fact also include the fact that I am adding more facts right now? What fact metric is this fact?

</comment><comment><USER30> Are there any open source efforts like this?</comment>


Nielsen cops to iPad stat cock-up - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/25/nielsen_restates_ipad_stats/

<comment><USER2> I'm getting parse errors on this headline</comment>


Jonah Lehrer: Are Distractible People More Creative? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/are-distractible-people-more-creative/

<comment><USER2> The problem with doing this analysis of a bunch of college students at top- tier colleges is that there's a big selection bias. My guess (from having spent four years as a Harvard student and talking to many of them) is that, statistically, the kids who manage to get into a school like Harvard while having low latent inhibition probably need to have something else working for them to compensate for that.

In other words, the types of people who get in can be (as a model, remember; this is far from completely accurate) classified along two dimensions, let's call them A and B, where:

+A = Great latent inhibition. Able to focus and work really diligently on some assigned task.

-A = Less latent inhibition. Some probably ADHD. Less able to focus diligently because they get distracted more easily.

+B = Really "creative"/bright/clever/smart/"rich mixture of thoughts". Think "high IQ" here, though there are a bunch of correlated dimensions here that can't ideally sort people. Better description might be "paying close attention to the world" or "picks up new things quickly".

-B = Less "creative"/bright/clever/smart/whatever

Okay, so think about who gets into a place like Harvard. I posit that you end up with some +A+B types, some +A-B types, some -A+B types, and a lot less -A-B types.

In other words, to get into Harvard you'd better be a hard worker, or pretty sharp, or both, but if you're neither you'll have some trouble.

So now, what does this study actually do? It splits up the population into two groups, +A and -A, and then tries to find a correlation between that and +B/-B.

Well, in the first group we have +A+Bs and +A-Bs, while in the second group we only have the -A+Bs (the -A-Bs having already been excluded by the admissions criteria)

Then the study (or at least the Wired write-up) turns this into a causal link between -A and +B.... well, count me at least skeptical. I know some really really smart people who are also able to focus really well. Which is not to say that there certainly isn't some other relationship between these two dimensions, but only that a study like this doesn't seem like "proof". If we imagine these dimensions as normally distributed and independent, where you need some cut-off sum of A + B to get into a selective college, the number of students falling at the far right end of both bell curves (the +A+B bunch) at once might be really small.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am one of the few who (I believe) has made a transition from 'high latent inhibition' to 'low latent inhibition'.

It happened through no intention of mine and was quite a scary experience, like letting go or admitting defeat. With respect to Jonah Lehrer I must report that it felt totally the opposite to implementing a 'cognitive strategy'.

All kinds of new sensations, thoughts and impressions now make their way into my consciousness where previously they must have been filtered. The world is enlarged, enriched and more colourful (literally, and with Vermeer-like shading everywhere).

Although these 'extras' are available to me they don't seem to distract in an unhelpful way. Rather they provide subtle analogies and metaphors to whatever else I'm thinking about. (I suppose that's where the creativity part comes in.)

Am I more distractible? Well, no, I don't think so, because I still get to choose which thoughts to follow. If one is concerned with _explaining_ the world then only truly surprising perceptions (those few that don't fit in with one's worldview), have the potential to distract.

[I apologise to any readers who consider this report unfalsifiable nonsense or arrogant boasting. I can only reply, respectively, that presumably only the experience of transition can convince, and, as I said above, it was most humbling.]

<comment><USER4> Sounds fascinating. If it's not too personal a question for you, what triggered the transition. Meditation / Trauma / LSD / LGAT?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A related article[1] from the New York Times was published in May, and applies a similar thesis to explain why older people are wiser:

"A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what's going on than their younger peers," Dr. Hasher said. "We believe that this characteristic may play a significant role in why we think of older people as wiser."

I think this is also the reason why lateral thinking[2] consistently delivers creative results.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/research/20brai.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/research/20brai.html?_r=3&ref=science&oref=slogin)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking>

</comment><comment><USER6> As I recall, the psych literature also suggests that you need high amounts of working memory for low latent inhibition to be useful. (And note that Harvard undergrads could be expected to have loads of WM, as well as more famous things like IQ.) Low WM & low latent inhibition might just screw you up.</comment>


Ask HN: Is There a AR Search App? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,<p>I was looking at a shampoo bottle today and was wondering if there was an app that would easily allow me to just video/photo it and search google or the web through some other means for it? <comment><USER2> On Android Google Lens can do what you described.</comment>


Show HN: We ported an entire game development IDE to the browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.scirra.com/blog/184/a-first-look-at-construct-3 <comment><USER2> Great work Scirra!</comment>


Recruiting for Ideas: How Firms Exploit the Prior Inventions of New Hires  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nber.org/papers/w15869

<comment><USER2> This is simply an advertisement.</comment>


Ask HN: List of great web development shops - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in compiling a list of web development shops that tend to
* build high-quality medium-complexity websites using the best open-source frameworks and tools
* have at most a couple dozen employees, and most of them are technical
* have egalitarian decision-making structures
* probably have a physical presence
I started a spreadsheet with four that I happen to know of: http://exoweb.net (Beijing), http://hashrocket.com (Jacksonville, FL/Chicago), http://bocoup.com (Boston), and http://unspace.ca (Toronto).
http://bit.ly/iuQxyw <comment><USER2> Here's my list:

WEB DESIGN/BUILD <http://www.rokkan.com/> <http://www.f-i.com/> <http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/>

INTERACTION & UX: <http://metalabdesign.com> <http://www.zurb.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> web applications: <http://applicake.com></comment>


Bitcoin Privacy Tool "Coinshuffle" Sees First Transaction - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-privacy-advances-first-coinshuffle-transaction/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see that oldtimer Bitcoin is following Nxt in implementing Coinshuffle. I believe that Nxt is the only blockchain who runs the Coinshuffle protocol native in the core. Or am I wrong?</comment>


YouTube open free movies - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/movies

<comment><USER2> Strangely, youtube will remove _your_ video if it contains tits, but that policy doesn't apply to itself:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvn8lPLSx6Q>

Breasts available at 00:16:15.

Youtube's policy states:

 _N+: Some nudity Content rated "N+" may include content featuring exposed buttocks or partially nude breasts. Content rated "N+" may also contain full nudity where the context is appropriately educational, documentary or artistic._

 _Note: Some shows and movies may contain N+ content that would generally not be accepted on the site. Videos originating from the YouTube user community must abide by the YouTube Community Guidelines and may not be permitted to include such content._

([http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=146399&hl=en))

</comment><comment><USER3> That's really a huge news. This is the first time I see a big american media company bringing such an offering apparently worldwide (correct me if I'm wrong). I mean it's working in Europe!! - Hulu, Netflix etc aren't. I think that's quite as important as the introduction of YouTube itself.

<comment><USER4> Yes and no: Their catalogue is terrible. It reminds me of Joost's selection of TV programmes way back where they couldn't afford any better.

Can anyone find a video that is just slightly renowned?

<comment><USER5> Renowned, not really though Dawn of the dead might qualify.

But there are a couple I would want to see, and I could imagine that the twitter documentary (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW2oy9c5NiM>) would find a fan base there as well.

<comment><USER5> So it turns out there is more, here is a Hitchcock (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5VJqr9OgIo>) triller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember seeing this some 6 months ago. Not really news.

</comment><comment><USER7> This has been around for at least a year.

</comment><comment><USER8> By looking at the initial list of movies displayed, can anyone guess what demographic is being targeted?

</comment><comment><USER9> Moving Image Archive > Silent Films

<http://www.archive.org/details/silent_films></comment>