New male contraceptive may be submitted for Indian approval this year - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-29/a-new-kind-of-male-birth-control-is-coming <comment><USER2> This is big. This is the future of contraception, because it works, it's incredibly cheap, it has (almost?) no side effects. All current solutions are a joke.

Hormone-based contraception feels like something from the middle ages. It has serious side effects, it has "harmless" side effects that aren't even related to the pill anymore after years of intake, but still an annoyance (migraine, headaches, yeast infections, high blood pressure, ...)

Non-hormonal contraception has its own negative aspects:

\- Copper IUDs can cause a lot of pain, inserting them isn't that easy, they are ethically troublesome (eggs can be fertilized after ovulation, but the copper IUD prevents nidation)

\- Natural family planning methods are way safer than many people believe (the sympto-thermal method), but don't allow unprotected sex during fertile days

\- Condoms are way safer than many people believe as well (as long as you use the correct size) and won't go away because of STDs, but are a bit annoying in relationships

And there really aren't any other alternatives right now. The state of contraception in 2017 is incredibly sad and RISUG is the first attempt, which truly can _disrupt_ (and I don't use this word lightly) the entire industry.

It will require some social shift. Men must be willing to take responsibility for contraception, but it's already happening: Recently, the pill for men was stopped because of side effects, but the men were disappointed. They WANT to have alternatives to condoms.

<comment><USER3> Bang on.

Me and my partner were planning on me getting a vasectomy in a year, when her implant runs out.

We've had to bring that forward a year because one side effect is also a symptom of cancer or polyps.

After removal, she experienced a huge lift in energy levels and greater stability of mood.

I have 2 children so a vasectomy isn't so bad an idea. Even still, it is an invasive and permanent treatment and I'd prefer something less so. Nobody likes the thought of a scalpel down there. Even a physician who wants to get it done.

<comment><USER4> As a father of two: Said procedure is incredibly harm- and painless.

I understand the fear, but I've seen people (even here) spread a lot of FUD about it. If you prefer something else: Sure! If you're merely uneasy about the process: Don't be, it's so common, fast and easy.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that a normal response to a voluntary procedure? Fear? Uncertainty? Doubt?

Mine hurt for more than a month. It's worth it and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but hate it when people go around telling everyone that it will all exactly be the same. It ain't. Muzzle velocity is lower and the ammunition is visibly no longer standard issue. Further, the recoil action is quite a bit less intense. There's a lot of psychological stuff going on in this mind space, and discounting people's feelings about what is ultimately a primal urge is just foolish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's Parmesus Vasalgel that is going through trials in the US, based on this tech. Also, a startup whose name I forget is developing the same kind of tech. They were part of YC Fellowship Batch 3.

<comment><USER7> The article mentions this, although it's not quite clear to me how they differ (and by how much).

Parsemus apparently got started by licensing the technology from Guha, then developed its own solution inspired by that technology.

<comment><USER8> The tech in this article allow sperm through but damage the sperm. The Parsemus tech seems to block the tubes entirely.

<comment><USER9> Untrue, actually they both use the same system (and almost identical formulation). The difference being the focus on the FDA process and US market that vaselgel is taking, you can see the cleverly worded non-answer on their own FAQ, quoted below. They do "filter" the vasdeferentia and not block it. This is actually preferential as it can alleviate a small chance of pain or sperm granulomas after a vasectomy, also quoted below.

 _Although Vasalgel and RISUG® are based on the same concept of using a polymer gel injected into the vas deferens, the formulations are not the same. And RISUG has been developed and tested in India over multiple decades, while Vasalgel is being developed in the United States to conform to the latest FDA and international codes of production and safety._

And

 _only a small percentage of men who have had a vasectomy experience chronic pain (1-2% according to the American Urological Association). Our current understanding of Vasalgel is that fluids can pass through the gel, but sperm cannot. This will likely reduce the incidence of back-pressure. Sperm granulomas are formed when the vas deferens is severed in a vasectomy and sperm leak into surrounding tissue. Since injection of Vasalgel does not involve cutting the vas deferens, this should not be an issue._

Notice the non-answer below:

 _Our understanding is that Vasalgel works by blocking or filtering out sperm. In the past, RISUG (a different product) was described as working by shredding sperm by an electrical charge process as they went past the contraceptive that lined the walls of the vas deferens. Vasalgel makes no such claims._

[https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/vasalge...](https://www.parsemusfoundation.org/projects/vasalgel/vasalgel- faqs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember reading about this maybe 6 years ago. What was memorable was that the gel was even cheaper than the syringe. It's sad how slow these things move and that we're not going to have that in North-America for a good time.

<comment><USER11> I wish it could go faster, but the truth is this is exactly the sort of thing that should go slowly. It is much better for birth control to have a certain effectiveness, after all. Since this is an injection, probably best to have good tests with longevity as well. It isn't bad to go back every couple years for this, but this is the sort of information one needs to know upfront.

Unfortunately, finding this initial stuff out takes time.

<comment><USER12> A problem in the US is that the company that wants to sell this is the company that needs to pay for the studies required to make it legal. However because it is so cheap, it's difficult for the company to make a profit. The same thing can be found with many supplements. For example, N-acetylcysteine has shown to be helpful in several forms of addiction and mood disorders, but because it is so cheap, no company will front the money needed to make it a medication. We need to change the system so that the research is paid for by the government somehow, in my opinion.

<comment><USER13> > However because it is so cheap, it's difficult for the company to make a > profit.

Why does it have to be cheap for the consumer? They can charge $5k for this (honestly a bargain) even if the gel and syringe cost $5 to make. Isn't that what patents are for?

<comment><USER12> Many of these drugs are cheap because the patent has expired. Many times, it's not until the patent has expired that they learn the new use for the drug, but by that point, they can't make money off of it.

It shames me to think that we have a for-profit healthcare system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I wonder how this would effect STD rates in areas with bad sex ed? I could see a lot of people thinking 'don't need a condom because I can't make someone pregnant now'.

Not that this product is a bad thing, very useful for people in monogamous relationships.

<comment> torrent-of-ions I can't see how it would have a positive effect. HIV infection rates in the gay community have shot up in recent years unfortunately as people have become complacent with condoms. Without the risk of pregnancy one can only assume the same thing will happen in the straight community.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, the straight and gay communities are really just opposite sides of the same fish tank, not two fish tanks, as a metaphor for compartmentalizing the sharing of diseases.

<comment><USER15> It's still reasonable to differentiate the primary motivation for condom use in the two 'communities'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like interesting option, but 98% efficiency seem pretty unreliable, so I will still be at risk 2 times out of 100 intercourses when not counting other factors.

Personally I consider immediately after having second child vasectomy, though if wife would agree I would do it already now (one child is more than enough for me) plus store sperm in bank just in case if changing mind, since I heard reversing vasectomy ain't that successful. Seem safer with 0.15-1% failure rate than this method.

<comment><USER17> > Sounds like interesting option, but 98% efficiency seem pretty unreliable, > so I will still be at risk 2 times out of 100 intercourses when not counting > other factors.

Efficacy for contraceptives is almost always measured _per year_. That is, of every 100 couples using this method for a year, two will become pregnant. As the article says, this is about the same level as (perfect use of) condoms.

<comment><USER16> seem very inaccurate since every couple has very different frequency of sex per year, some couple can have 100 intercourses, other will have 20 and they have same odds according some average couple?

<comment><USER18> The inaccuracy would depend on the sample size of the test groups. It might be useful to get standard deviation, or maybe the methodology excludes outliers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems quite perfect in theory. Not invasive, lasts for a long time, just one shot and then you're done... I hope the clinical tests will bring good news for that project, because this is something I would do if it comes on the market one day.

<comment><USER15> While it is far _less_ invasive than some options, it is still an invasive procedure, and not without risks.

Obviously, for many patients, the benefits will massively outweigh the risks (assuming the clinical testing bears out the initial results).

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I spoke (or rather typed) too fast : it's still an injection, you're right, but at least it's not a complete surgery operation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This would seem to be the best birth control for either sex. Fingers crossed it makes it to market.

<comment><USER21> I currently believe that birth control should be actively employed by all parties. I look forward to a viable male contraceptive making it to market.

<comment><USER20> Technically I beleive the only efficient systems are those where it is known a priori who employs birth control. That basically means it must be the responsibility of one sex or both. I agree with you: both sexes may be overkill but is the only fair option.

<comment><USER22> I don't get it - what does that kind of fairness buy you or society? If it's enough when one side takes contraceptives, what logic argument is there that the other side must do the same? Economically (time, resources, even environmentally; the pill and condoms eventually end up in our water or the sea) this does not make sense.

<comment> nommm-nommm To minimize the risk of failure. Same reason why you'd have a backup parachute when you jump out of a plane even though you strictly only need one.

<comment><USER22> Sure, I get that. Grandparent mentioned fairness as driving factor though.

<comment><USER20> Ah yes should not have forgotten redundancy being good. Fairness is obvious: cost of procedures, risk of side effects, time spent in operation, etc is born by both parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Stories like that encourage Guha to persist with the project, he said, even > though patents on his invention have long since expired and he won't see any > personal financial gain even if it takes off worldwide.

Hm, in America you can get a patent term extension due to regulatory delays in bringing a product to market at other agencies, such as the FDA

Does that not exist in India?

</comment><comment><USER24> The reason male contraceptives don't get a lot of traction is that men don't get pregnant.

<comment><USER25> Nope, that is not the reason.

The reason is that they don't know it exists. Condoms are OK, but for that drunken one night stand, not necessarily good enough. Female birth control has the problem that you have to trust your partner (spoiler: not everyone is trustworthy.)

When my son has his first girlfriend and if it is getting serious, I would get this done for him if it was available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I thought it was going to be a pill, we already have vasectomies.

<comment><USER13> They will not give you a vasectomy in the US as a young childless man. Something about 'changing your mind later'. It's very patronizing.

<comment><USER27> Definitely patronizing!

Not only that, but even when a woman is in obvious pain and having issues which only a hysterectomy will solve (ovarian cysts) - if she is under 30 or so, they won't give it to her.

My wife and I made the decision not to have children a long time ago. In the meantime, she's had times where she went into the hospital ER for pain caused by ovarian cysts. She attempted to inquire about a hysterectomy from her doctor after these episode, only to be rebuffed about "what about having children later", etc.

To this day she still has problems, but it has waned greatly now that she's approaching menopause. She'd still like to do it just to stop having a period, but it's no longer the crazy amount of pain that it was.

I found it frustrating for her that as an adult, she was being restricted from making choices about her own body to improve her health and quality of life.

<comment> nommm-nommm Stupid question but why would a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) prevent cysts from forming on the ovaries? The ovaries are the hormone producing organs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Testosterone will also do this. There are long release esters so you only need an injection every few months. Even with a bimonthly shot, it costs about $10/mo. (On mobile, but there was a study in China with T undecanoate showing amazing effectiveness.)

Downside is that in the US, testosterone is, hilariously, Schedule III. But 5 minutes with Google should have you sorted. Can get OTC in other places.

<comment><USER29> No thanks. No way I'm offsetting the cost/work of having a child vs the reliability of a Hackernews doctor and a Googled drug source.

<comment><USER28> ... Obviously my comment was meant as a suggestion to look into things and note the availability of a well known substance that already accomplished birth control in men. It wasn't intended as a "read this comment and start injecting yourself".

You're of course free to attempt to convince a doctor to prescribe. Or you can buy the drugs and get a $100 blood test to verify it's real as well as do a fertility test. It's just an affront to liberty to pay a gatekeeper to allow you to change your own hormones.

Here's a study: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15126550](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15126550)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article fails to realize the true reason men would never use this product: You have to inject it into your testicles.

<comment><USER31> > You have to inject it into your testicles

You need an anatomy lesson or you need to read the article before commenting

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cyberpunk headline of the day!

</comment><comment><USER33> Should I have children, I see myself walking my teenage son to the clinic to get this done. A rite of passage of sorts.

It is difficult to understate the importance of bringing only wanted children into this world, and that both parents agree on it. The cultural importance of this invention will be revealed in time, I hope.

<comment><USER34> Indeed, the cultural "importance" will be revealed in time. However, I fear not in the way you intend.

There used to be a time when we as a society valued things like self-control, discipline, and tradition. No more.

What you are alluding to here is a world where we are ruled by our emotions and our basest desires without the fear or potential for having to deal with our actions. To divorce sex from children is to misunderstand intimacy, the family, and the entire underpinning of our society.

EDIT: Yeah, I know conservative positions on HN are ways to make your Karma go down, but hey, that's what forums are for right, to have your opinions regarded as trolling instead of interacting with them, right?

<comment><USER35> Marie Stopes would like a word with you from beyond the grave.

Seriously, we've had modern birth control for a century. Not only has society not collapsed but a whole number of hidden evils have been abolished (Tuam passim), and needless poverty avoided. It's our perfect anti-Malthusian weapon.

This is Hacker News in the 21st century. Tradition alone is a terrible reason to do things. I'm astonished that your comment seems to have been upvoted here.

Edit: I'm trying to keep it civil but I'm really disappointed not just that this appears on HN but it's sitting at the top of its thread tree not greyed out at the bottom.

Oh, and it's "alluding" not "eluding".

<comment><USER36> Sure society hasn't collapsed, but we've lost a lot all in the name of "progress".

<comment><USER37> What all have we lost due to birth control?

<comment><USER38> Before birth control, it was an accomplishment one could be proud of to have children at the right time. It required stable relationships and self-control. Your family and church would give you a lot of respect if you succeeded, and contempt if you failed. It was a test that separated the virtuous from the lazy, weak, and sinful.

When such hardships are made optional by technological or social progress, most find new challenges to conquer but many regret their loss.

Birth control is old news in the Western world. But the cycle will repeat with new technologies. Suppose you're serious about fitness, you spend hours every week spinning and cross-fitting, and your abs are rippling. And tomorrow, a pill is developed that lets everyone be perfectly fit with zero effort. What do you get for all your hours at the gym? Can you imagine being bummed that everyone else is getting for free what you worked so hard for? That might give some idea what pre-birth-control nostalgia is like.

<comment><USER39> The problem with this lovely wheat-from-chaff heuristic is that "failure" results in the introduction of a new human life into a world that may not be prepared for it and will be strained ecologically for its existence. I would much rather have a world where the lazy, weak, and sinful pop pills towards an ecologically sustainable population than one where the virtuous are lauded for bringing five or six new people into existence, but, you know, at the "right time".

<comment><USER38> Me too. The failure mode of pre-contraceptive society (unwanted children) was terrible. But human nature is what it is, and many people are willing to accept terrible externalities in order to have a means to display their comparative virtue. The recent attack on universal health care in the US is an example. Many voters seem to desire a world where people who have their financial shit together will live, and others will die.

For a clear-eyed view of these less inspiring aspects of human nature, read _Sapiens_ and _Homo Deus_ by Harari.

<comment><USER37> Reminds me of a Steinbeck quote:

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There is a lot of social commentary on this thread.

Unanswered however is, "How will this affect relationships between men and women"?

The "MGTOW" crowd laud this development, arguing that once control of fertility is in the hands of men rather than women (a woman can always "forget" to take the pill)... something good, as they define it, will happen. (IANAMGTOW - I am not a MGTOW)

In terms of total fertility rate, what does this mean for a country/nation when one population group greatly restricts having kids in terms of moral suasion, societal acceptability, etc. while offering money to those who do have kids? e.g. upper middle class (children discouraged, at least beyond 2 kids) vs. other classes in society (have a bunch of kids).

Living in the USA I have often heard complaints along the lines that we seem to be "discouraging the smart and hard-working people from having kids, while paying stupid people to have them".

<comment><USER41> How is any of that different from the contraceptives that already exist?

Further, your notion of "Idiocracy" (believing that the "smart hardworking people" have fewer kids) doesn't match at all with the fact that IQ keeps rising in every generation in the US, and fewer people are poor or jobless than they were in the 50s or before.

<comment><USER40> I would point out that you are relying on government statistics for your "poor or jobless" point - and many have pointed out sources of bias that call those stats into question; and also, you are assuming that the Flynn effect will be ongoing rather than just reflecting a topping-up due to better nutrition and more widespread education.

Others have calculated that USA/UK have lost as much as 14 IQ points since Victorian times. see [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-S...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are- STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html) .

<comment><USER42> Do you have a more authoritative cite for this than a tabloid article?

<comment><USER40> In less time than it took you to type this comment, I clicked on the embedded link in the article: [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329830-400-brain- dr...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329830-400-brain-drain-are-we- evolving-stupidity/)

The Richard Lynn they quote, has been published in Nature, amongst many other other publications: [http://www.rlynn.co.uk/](http://www.rlynn.co.uk/)

The Prof. Woodley they quote, is also a real person: [http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/cgi- bin/homepage.cgi?email=michael...](http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/cgi- bin/homepage.cgi?email=michael.woodley03%5Bat%5Dgmail.com)

As is Jan te Nijenhuis: [http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the- uva/organisation/staff-member...](http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the- uva/organisation/staff-members/content/n/i/j.tenijenhuis/j.tenijenhuis.html)

Sorry, but I don't think your comment added anything to the discussion.

<comment><USER41> You quoted "USA/UK have lost as much as 14 IQ points since Victorian times" and cited a tabloid article.

Presumably the reason that the parent commenter thought it appropriate to to mention that it was a tabloid article was because it used the standard tabloid technique of putting a sensational notion in a headline that is almost entirely unsubstantiated in the text.

You offer as support several links, mostly just proving that people exist. But your first link, with actual information, completely refutes your statement. [1] It refers to the effect that IQ has risen by 3-10 points per decade for several decades, and in the past few years it " _may_ " have leveled off, or dropped by 1.5 points.

The actual author of the study has said that leveling off is to be expected, and any "decline" is quite likely noise due to chance.

But _regardless_ of whether the 1.5 point decline in the past couple years is true, the entire article the opposite of the claim that we have lost "14 IQ points since Victorian times," since you cannot reconcile that with the Flynn effect actually being discussed in the article.

Combing down through the tabloid article, almost every other study refers to a decline of "about 1 point." Your headline claim is one single interesting (though bizarre) study that uses reaction time to try to estimate IQ, and tries to compare it to reaction times in studies from the Victorian era. [2] As you can imagine, published responses to this article from other scientists has been that of skepticism, to put it mildly. [3]

1\. [http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2014-September/015965.html](http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2014-September/015965.html)

2\. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000470)

3\. [http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/nettlebeck201...](http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/nettlebeck2014.pdf)

<comment><USER40> I covered this in my original statement with the comment about "topping up" the Flynn effect.

The rest of your comment doesn't apply to my point, seeing as I was pointing out that it was easy to find the actual people at the actual uni's quoted, via simple Google searches, and that their published papers did in fact make the various claims.

Thus the original response of "this is from a tabloid" added no value.

<comment><USER42> I think the only value it sought to add was to point out that the source cited was, in fact, a tabloid. I don't mean that in the sense of "it's a trashy, tabloid-like article". It may be that, or it may not be. But what I can say for sure is that it appeared under the masthead of The Daily Mail, which is, literally and uncontroversially, a tabloid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's definitely too popular to blame everything on middle-aged white guys. It's sad that even bloomberg is jumping on the bandwagon.

<comment><USER43> It doesn't even make sense. Women have the possibility to abort a pregnancy while men have no say whatsoever (in regions where the big pharma companies are coming from). So the argument that women would do more for male birth control is somewhat strange considering they have all the power in their hands right now.

<comment><USER44> That's adversarial thinking. If the man and woman are in a trusting relationship, the question changes from one of "power" to responsibility.

Today, most reversible contraceptive methods (pill, rhythm, IUD, abortion) rely on the _woman_ owning responsibility (one which they may be unwilling or unable to carry out). Male contraception relieves women of that burden.

<comment><USER45> _Male contraception relieves women of that burden_

You would think so, but... there are women (maybe a lot of them) who think the loss of power over conception would be bad for women [0]. Read the column. I don't know about you, but it gives me a very queasy feeling. Like there is some subtext that this woman believes she should be able to force parenthood on an unwilling partner.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/28/malepi...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/apr/28/malepillwomensloss)

<comment> nommm-nommm Contraception isn't a zero sum game. Giving men more contraceptive power doesn't take anything away from women.

<comment><USER44> You are right, but that's not what the article the GP linked is about. It's based on two (IMO very flawed) arguments, one, that men having the option of birth control forces women to trust them (which may be true, but is a problem faced by men today), and two, the – quite creepy – belief that women should be able to unilaterally decide when a couple starts having offspring. (As if men were not legally beholden to care for their offspring.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I can imagine the early adopters: male actors, athletes and other men of high social value as a way to enjoy sex without the chance of unwanted offspring.

<comment><USER47> Promiscuous people should be using condoms at all times, first of all.

<comment><USER46> If your sperm is a meal ticket for life, then condoms might not be enough. And condoms decrease the pleasure of sex for many people.

<comment><USER48> In the US, the meal ticket typically only lasts 18 years, not a lifetime.

<comment><USER13> The court doesn't enforce that the woman spends all the child support money. So if you get impregnated by a rich enough man it can certainly be a meal ticket for life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> at first it doesn't seem as convenient as a pill but I don't think any man would want to "oops i forgot my pill", or say they took it but didn't and if they did that it's not fair on the woman isn't it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Shut up and take my money/sperm!

<comment><USER49> Not a lot of Futurama fans here I guess.

This seems like a very good thing, and I'm excited for it to be available in the US.

<comment><USER50> No, it's that this isn't the place for memes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> \- I'm not paying money to have needle injecting chemicals with unexplored potential (longterm) side effects into my private parts when the potential success rate is that of a condom. Condoms kind of work.

\- "The pill" is a bit more than just a contraceptive. A variety of issues, ranging from skin problems to hormonal imabalances are regulated through the pill, which quite efficiently normalizes outliers in female hormone levels alongside acting as a contraceptive.

The pill is rarely "just" a contraceptive. It reduces menstrual pain significantly and allows women to forego the pleasure of planning for a week of unnecessary discomfort every month.

Every woman I've been sufficiently intimate with to have such conversations describes the daily pill as a small price to pay for all the benefits it comes with.

A male vasectomy is 800 bucks and certainly reversible.

<comment><USER52> Stop your patronizing bullshit!

I have taken the pill for years I feel like I am ruining my body. I have side effects. I switched brands, I switched to the shot (that was much worse), every one is awful. I put up with it because I won't risk unwanted pregnancy. It's the less of two very evil evils.

You're also ignoring the large population of women who the pill is contraindicated for. It also requires regular doctor visits and requires you to to remember to take it.

I'm not saying it's great for some women, it certainly is. People also take it for non contraceptive reason. Not great for everyone and not for me.

<comment><USER53> Being wrong about side effects is not the same as being patronizing.

<comment><USER54> His tone is very "Male contraceptive is ridiculous because it already works just fine for women! Here's some shitty anecdotal evidence to support my claim!"

I'd classify that as patronizing, and as a male, I had the same reaction to his comment as the responder...I've known lots of women, partners included, who avoided the pill because of its horrible side effects.

<comment><USER53> I don't get that tone. He suggested a vasectomy was good too. The critique of this method was only the effectiveness, not that it was unnecessary.

There's a lot wrong in the comment but I don't see what you see in it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where TDD Fails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.precog.com/?p=431

<comment><USER2> TDD is overrated. It's main benefit is that it forces the developer to express the same things twice in two different ways. It is like entering your password twice for verification. You get immediate feedback if there is an inconsistency. On the other hand, there might be methodologies that reveal more bugs per developer-hour, such as code reviews or spending more time on having a clean design. In fact, TDD often leads to a hacky, non-object- oriented design as it forces the developer to add ways to inspect and verify the internal state of whatever is being tested - thus perforating encapsulation.</comment>


Startup hacked by competitor, gets revenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.fbamastery.com/textbook-money-hacked-zen-arbitrage-got-punked/ <comment><USER2> I checked out Zen Arbitrage's site to see what it is they offer and it sounds really interesting -- find cheap popular books sold outside of FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) with little competition, buy them, and put them up for sale on FBA (so Prime members get free shipping) with > 100% markup. But if it's really that easy and profitable why aren't they just doing this themselves? If you can double your money every month, finance the hell out of it and keep your profit machine private. It always strikes me as suspect when someone offers a sure fire way of making money but instead of using it themselves they just sell you the info.

<comment><USER3> A possible reason: It's really hard to scale a scrounge-and-resell operation - as you train employees to buy books they begin to wonder why they shouldn't just do it themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could this come back to bite Zen Arbitrage in the ass if they get sued for damages caused by providing false data with the intention of sabotaging another company?

I understand why they don't like Textbook Money scraping their database and using it to fuel a competing product (and it is a competing product despite OP's constant insistence that it isn't) but it's not necessarily illegal and I think you could argue in court that the "correct" response would have been to deny service instead of to deliberately mislead.

<comment><USER5> Yes, especially considering it sounded like they were a paying customer. Yes they were paying with fraudulent cards but they were still paying.

Wasn't the real Arbitrage here that the textbook money company knew where to get the data that the book re-sellers wanted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This would have been a lot more entertaining had it been even a _little_ less spammy and fawning over ZA's feature set.

</comment><comment><USER7> As I understand, the user has the legitimate right to save the data she gets by querying. Just because she automated this process they call her a hacker?

<comment><USER8> "Hacking" isn't quite the right word, but I'm not sure what the right word for "systematic scraping of a competitor's entire database" is.

<comment><USER9> Crawling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We've found coordinated attempts to scrape our pricing data. As the OP also found, they might have gotten away with it except for being greedy, setting up so many requesters that it affected our site performance and we went to investigate. The trail didn't go directly to a competitor, but to a service that actually specializes in providing price comparison data. Some additional circumstantial evidence led us to believe that they were working on behalf of one of our competitors specifically.

We also had the idea to feed them fake pricing, but in the end our CTO thought it better to just play it straight, so we built a way to identify certain fingerprints of their requests (I don't want to say what, publicly), and blacklist any offending IP addresses for several hours.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> No more debased form of internet commenting than laypersons debating the law, but a comment on this article does address some of the legal issues this raises.

The comment is from a non-lawyer but raises good points about selling scraped data and scraping that brings down / slows sites as being particularly illegal.

Here's the (edited) comment (in re: competitors suing over this article):

"I've dealt with this kind of law in a tertial way and can second your statement that subpoena powers would be the most dangerous (and stupid) thing they could grant you right now.

I'm not a lawyer, but in my dealings in this area I know that there are a couple things that spell MAJOR federal crime: One is scraping data and then selling it (the _selling_ is where the prison time comes in), and the other is bringing down a site / affecting page load time (sabotaging a competitor and so on).

That doesn't mention all the aspects of this story I'm sure you couldn't talk about publicly.

A lawsuit would be fun for us voyeurs admittedly because you would have access to view ALL activity on their servers, email accounts, and so on and on. And once it is public record, it would be available for all of us to see. Now THAT would be a good article!

Yeah these guys would be majorly foolish to give you subpoena power right now!"

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems odd, someone gets (scrapes??) data from amazon - complains about someone scraping data from them.

Or is amazon sharing data and they have it legitimately?

Either way it is a funny world we live in now!

<comment><USER12> Amazon have an API that you can legally use for free.

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/Wel...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/Welcome.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not alert earlier and save people from spending money on garbage data :\?

</comment><comment><USER14> Getting a 500 from hostgator here!

</comment><comment><USER15> Long but well worth the read

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interesting (and hilarious) story about how a SaaS startup caught its competitor stealing their data, and the prank they pulled as revenge.</comment>


European Commission proposes a reform to the way the Internet is managed and run - <AUTHOR> http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-142_en.htm <comment><USER2> Like the governance in England where the government decides what you should be watching? Perhaps they'll uses the French model and make it illegal to say anything critical about the French government. Or perhaps they'll adopt the Turkish attitude of jail time for those who speak the truth (if Turkey gets into the EU). How are they better than the American model of Uncle Sam lurking in the background of everyone's lives waiting for the wrong words to be written so the entrapment teams can be sent.

Government control of the internet, by any government, will inevitably lead to censorship.

Edit: to address comments

From: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom)

There is an ongoing program to introduce a broad system of default blocking of certain types of content to all Internet users in the UK. New customers have their Internet access filtered at the ISP level so that certain web sites are blocked

<comment><USER3> As a french, I'm quite surprised about what you are saying for France. We have a lot of satirical newspapers, TV shows, etc. Where have you seen that?

<comment><USER4> What about that French comedian that has your government exploring ways to ban his act? his material maybe reprehensible but in the US he'd have first amendment protection. Your country also has draconian and stringent liable laws, and I don't want it to have anything to do with Internet governance.

<comment><USER5> > What about that French comedian that has your government exploring ways to > ban his act?

Well, what about him? France is not the US, you have hate laws here. Nobody is trying to ban him because he is criticizing the government.

That's not parent is saying anyway: _Perhaps they 'll uses the French model and make it illegal to say anything critical about the French government._ Last time I checked, the Figaro and le Point (conservative newspapers) were alive and well.

<comment><USER6> Exactly right, the problem is that you're not the US.

"Hate laws" are censorship. "Hateful" speech is equally protected under the US constitution, and any political movements it might inspire will not be infringed upon by the government.

The fundamental problem with "hate laws" in the context of speech is the definition of "hate", totalitarian governments tend to widen that definitions in order to suppress adversaries, this might be theoretical in your case but it's still an attack victor.

The Internet must be built on the example of the "freest" framework available and that is the US's.

<comment><USER5> > Exactly right, the problem is that you're not the US.

Exactly right about what? The original claim is that the French government is trying to muzzle criticism. You then bring up the case of a humorist condemned for his antisemitic views as a supporting example. This doesn't make any sense, unless you're going for some weird conspiracy theory - in which case, I'll believe any conspiracy theory as long as comes with convincing evidence, of which there doesn't seem to be any.

> The fundamental problem with "hate laws" in the context of speech is the > definition of "hate", totalitarian governments tend to widen that > definitions in order to suppress adversaries, this might be theoretical in > your case but it's still an attack victor.

> The Internet must be built on the example of the "freest" framework > available and that is the US's.

I'm on the fence about it. Besides, even in the US there are limits on freedom of speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

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

</comment><comment><USER8> no matter what the intentions, this sort of notion that we have to formalize the governance of the internet seems like just the sort of thing to bring about a "death by committee" when it comes to internet freedom.

Personally, I don't understand how the current governance of the internet is an issue. The only thing that enables stuff like all the NSA spying is that American companies are by and large the major providers of services. No amount of governance will fix that problem.

On the other hand, many European countries do have some pretty heavy-handed approaches to information regulation, which I definitely would not want to affect the status quo.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some here are quick to dismiss it as another attempt at "evil government seizing the control over oh-so-free Internet", whereas if you actually read what's there it's more about taking the governance over Internet out of American hands (basically what ICANN wants anyway) + doing something (not sure what exactly) to ensure the freedom in the Internet.

Not bad ideas in themselves, dunno about the execution. Personally I think it wouldn't be that bad to have _some_ governmental control over _some_ of the Internet functions.

Prefer this instead of leaving it at hands of corporations that only care about money (even if I agree that it's all a muddy area that can lead to some bad stuff too).

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's face it, the internet is centralized (hierarchical), not distributed. ICANN has taken giant steps to being a "global" organization, but in the end it's still a californian non-profit.

These reforms seem to just aim to make ICANN a more globally managed organization, and increase transparency in top-level decisionmaking. I can't see anywhere where it says it wants to increase governments' ability to block cat videos.

</comment><comment><USER11> Shame Neelie Kroes will be gone soon. She's been pushing some pretty good digital agendas with her position in the EU Commission. Hopefully her work won't be undone by whoever replaces her after the EU elections.

<comment><USER12> Let's hope that at least this part of her work referenced in this article dies the quick death it deserves.

She basically wants the global ability to impose EU laws, like worse copyright than the US, outlawing certain political views, and so on. And she wants to do this through technical means.

This can not be allowed to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "globalise key decision-making (for example the coordination of domain names and IP addresses) to safeguard the stability, security and resilience of the Internet"

Sounds like they want to make the internet a more centrally-controlled thing "to protect you better". Internet does not need any central oversight and regulation. People just need freedom to move their bytes around as cheap as possible. We are capable to figure out how to build secure schemes, encrypted channels etc on our own, completely voluntarily. Everyone is able to choose tools and protocols that suit them best.

<comment><USER14> Sorry to break your bubble, but the Internet has a centralized oversight and regulation already.

<comment><USER13> Not so much. China may put up their own firewall, yet people outside communicate just fine.

Also, mesh networks are pretty interesting: [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet- pr...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-privacy-nsa- isp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't the "management" of the internet already kind of off-hands by the US gov and somewhat open (I'm not talking about the spying stuff). Especially with regards to the draconian ways other countries treat it (China, Iran, etc).

So what the EU really is saying is that they want to lock things down a bit further.

The want more domain-name control, more gov level blocking and filtering, more surveillance, more data retention, and all kinds of new laws.

The sad part of all this is the naive crowd here is probably thinking - finally, let them stick it to the US!

<comment><USER16> Or they don't want the domain root in the hands of a private company that keeps selling ever-crappier TLDs to make money, making the net worse for everyone? Just a thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't know whether to agree with this or not. On one hand, a control point can easily be exploited by governments to censor and control users. On other, uncontrolled internet tends to form around where money is. And money is again in the governments that have enough to turn internet to their advantage. EC would be better after all, because that way we have to fight not with multibillion dollars of investments from large governments, but with votes while electing commission members.

<comment><USER18> "while electing commission members". Minor point, but EU Commissioners are not elected. They are appointed by national governments, 1 per state. MEPs are elected, but have significantly less power than EU Commissioners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Based on the European Commission's current record for incompetence, corruption and inefficiency, I wouldn't trust them to run me a bath.

</comment><comment><USER20> Governments have some control over the 'managing' and 'running' of the Internet, via TLD control, blocking, filtering, surveillance and legislation (e.g. the cookie law in EU), but even with all these in place, they're not really 'running' the Internet. If they did, there'd be no newsgroups, no torrents and no porn. They're seizing more control as time goes on, however: See the death of Net Neutrality in the US.

I'd like to see governments pledge to back off from the Internet. Unfortunately I can't see that ever happening. Forever pushing for more governance means that the non-government-approved portion will get bigger and erect more walls around it. If governments want to govern, they need to be more accepting of the 'net in its natural state and deal with it on those terms, rather than forcing citizens to choose to be on the 'light side' or 'dark side' (choose for yourself which term applies to which).

<comment><USER21> "Net neutrality" _is_ the government "seizing more control". And not in some abstract way either, that is literally the goal. If it had actually "died" then that would have been a good thing, for those opposed to government control.

<comment><USER22> > "Net neutrality" is the government "seizing more control"

Good point. Telling infrastructure providers they must treat all traffic the same and telling them they must prioritize certain traffic is the same thing from a government power perspective.

Being for "net neutrality" is one thing. However, being for net neutrality and being for less government control of the internet makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> These noises are inevitable and will grow.

The root problem is the load of nonsense that was peddled about the net being resilient to nuclear war etc. When really it's too centralized. The killer transition that needs to occur is to move DNS from being authoritative to being a matter of opinion. (Rather like having multiple got repos instead of a central SVN server). This would solve a lot of problems, but prevent the US from projecting a lot of soft power around.

<comment><USER24> You realize you kind of described Namecoin? The future is now?

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I think namecoin is likely to be closer to the future, however, I still think the whole system would be more robust if it acknowledged that, for example, China and the US could run conflicting DNS systems and that this is perfectly OK, largely because this way we'd be forced to accept the reality of the situation instead of living in the silly illusion we have today.

The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea.

<comment><USER14> > The whole PKI setup needs to be rebooted as well, and I really can't believe > anyone that understands how that works considers it to be a good idea.

I still never met a PKI alternative that was a good idea. Of course, I didn't look at all candidates, but one'd expect that if something was ready to replace it, everybody would be talking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wonder what they'll do it the US just says no.

<comment><USER11> They'll put more and harsher regulations on American companies until they say yes. So I'm fine with whatever decision US makes, because I wouldn't mind if US companies (and the US government by proxy) wouldn't have a monopoly on EU users's data anymore.

<comment><USER4> You want governments to decide market winners and losers?! the fact that US companies are successful in Europe and Europeans are less so is partly due to the fact that they don't suffer from the backwards economic views you're currently displaying.

<comment><USER26> > the fact that US companies are successful in Europe and Europeans are less > so is partly due to the fact that they don't suffer from the backwards > economic views you're currently displaying.

That's kinda harsh, there might be other reasons too[1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial_espionage)

<comment><USER6> You're grasping at straws, so is the EU with its recent deluge of grandstanding gestures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Neelie Kroes is pretty much the only notable politician I'd trust to get this right. She's generally on the side of openness, transparency, competition, etc. You might have heard of her before in the base of the EU vs. Microsoft at the height of their monopoly.

<comment><USER28> /agree [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neelie_Kroes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd like to see a system based on the bitcoin protocol handling the TLD (namecoin?): You can't block it, you have public access to the registration data and with US, China, Russia and the EU involved, it's hard to achieve a 51%-attack.

<comment><USER29> You mean like peercoin?

<comment><USER26> [http://dot-bit.org/FAQ](http://dot-bit.org/FAQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The biggest threat to internet is from governments. Time to think of an independent, autonomous internet that is dynamically formed and cannot be controlled or monitored by design

<comment><USER9> ...and in that new, great Internet you will get the natural monopolies, same as we have them today (Google, Facebook), only this time they won't be under supervision of any democratic government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> And here marks the end of what the Internet was supposed to be.

<comment><USER32> and then a new internet will rise up for the free minds. The old one will become a government controlled 'walled garden' mirroring meatspace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What could possibly go wrong that cookie laws was so successful:-)

</comment><comment><USER34> That's really awesome, and I hope it succeeds.

</comment><comment><USER4> No governments please! Internet governance is fine as is. European opportunism and grandstanding is of no use to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER35> News Ycombinator regular Marxist folk is very excited to hear about internet regulation!</comment>


How to attract a technical co-founder [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesoftwarepath.com/questions/how-to-attract-a-technical-cofounder <comment><AUTHOR> Hi - I'm the creator of this.

It's a new format I'm trying out — recorded versions of questions I get asked a lot as a developer in the startup scene.

A big part of it is also finding gaps in my advice/knowledge so I can improve. Feedback welcome.</comment>


Googling Fights Dementia, Study Suggests - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091020-googling-google-web-searching-dementia.html <comment><USER2> Could this be a possible counter-argument to the recent anti-Google Bing ads? Maybe it's good for you after all... I can only hope.</comment>


Camera made from 32k drinking straws takes pointillistic photographs - <AUTHOR> http://www.designboom.com/art/farrell-haynes-straw-camera-02-14-2017/ <comment><USER2> The article repeats the standard erroneous concept of "single point perspective", which it says is what a pinhole camera produces.

"instead of producing an image from a single point perspective, as would a pinhole, its straw counterpart produces a multipoint perspective from an array."

The traditional meaning of single point perspective is a drawing technique which uses a single vanishing point (rather than multiple vanishing points, one for each set of parallel lines in space).

The technique of using straws will produce a parallel projection of some kind, depending on the design of the camera. It isn't a "multipoint perspective" just because it's a parallel projection. This is so basic.

</comment><comment><USER3> Better link:

[http://strawcamera.com/cliff](http://strawcamera.com/cliff)

<comment><USER4> Definitely the preferred link. I was trying to figure out if they were exposing film or not. One could imagine that you could build a photo transistor circuit into the end of every straw and make a digital camera version.

<comment><USER3> I realized it wasn't an article by anybody associated with or knowledgeable about the project when I saw the 22mm diameter straws mentioned when clearly they were much smaller than that.

How about a scanning version? Couple two mirrors to speakers and hook up a photodiode to catch the reflected light. Though this is nicer in that it's all extremely simple materials and no 'high tech' involved. There's a certain charm in that.

<comment><USER4> I'm having a hard time visualizing how that would work. I presume this uses the long tubes as a way of isolating light from off axis "mixing" into the end result otherwise you would simply have 32K versions of the image.

If you could uncover each straw individually then you could collect the light from that straw using a parabolic collector behind the 'exposer'. Using two sheets movable in the XY plane, one with a slot vertically and one with a slot horizontally you scan across the tubes individually. Those sheets would have to be nearly twice as wide and tall as the camera to allow full coverage though.

Of course if you were going that route you could just attach a single straw to the XY movers and have it scan the scene.

<comment><USER3> > Of course if you were going that route you could just attach a single straw > to the XY movers and have it scan the scene.

That was what I was visualizing, the first mirror would have the straw attached. Making it rigid is quite a challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. This is similar to how some X-ray and gamma ray detectors did work or work in astronomy. Because you can't focus with lenses, you use narrow tubes (collimators) to only gather the light from a certain region of the sky. Note that most x-ray telescopes use focusing Wolter optics nowadays, consisting of nested shells of reflective material. Collimating optics are also used to detect particles, I believe.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the way fiber optic lenses used to work: Take a bundle of a few thousand optical fibers and you have a flexible "lens" that can see around corners or into small holes. They're not used much any more because it's difficult to keep the bundle coherent on both ends, and tiny high-res TV cameras are dirt cheap now.

</comment><comment><USER7> It'd be great to see some photos with more depth. Not having perspective is going to make ordinary rectangular objects like walls and streets look weird. This would be like a zoom lens, except presumably all the pixels merge to a blur with greater distance.

</comment><comment><USER8> mechanical version (single, moving straw): [https://youtu.be/R4vjfVWVHGY?t=86](https://youtu.be/R4vjfVWVHGY?t=86)

<comment><USER9> I was wondering if someone would post that work by Theo Jansen!

The fun bit about these camera's is that if you make the straws tubes long enough, they have practically no perspective. With Jansen's paint machine, which is also 1:1 in scale, this once resulted in a group photoraph being photobombed by someone standing many, many meters behind the group but appearing on the photograph as if he's right next to everyone else.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can someone collate all the "Hacker News for x" sites?  - <AUTHOR>

It would be great if someone could collate all of the "Hacker News for x" sites into one huge website. <comment><USER2> Every time someone posts on HN that they've created a "Hacker News for X" I wonder why the hell they don't use/create a subreddit for that.</comment>


Circumventing Windows RT's Code Integrity Mechanism - <AUTHOR> http://surfsec.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/circumventing-windows-rts-code-integrity-mechanism/ <comment><USER4> Amazing work. I have the best predictor of any product success - ask Steve (em)Ballmer what is the correct thing to do and find someone that does the exact opposite.

Surface RT and the whole metro store were very exciting until Microsoft unveiled the lockdown.

And even today I think that a reversal of course is possible and will be beneficial for the adoption of windows 8/RT. Just unlock the damn things - <USER2> lot of professionals are looking for a third device still.

Windows and PC succeeded because they were wild and buggy and moldable - <USER3> allowed them to deliver good solution now instead of perfect in 10 years.

The same things is happening with ARM/Android - I am having more fun switching roms than anytime since the late 90s. And from anecdotal evidence Raspberry Pis and the likes are busy taking over the world where mobility is not a concern - the moment you are asked by non geek about the Pi and can it move a home server, you know the rules of the game are changing and fast.

<comment><USER5> So how do you reply to the argument that "people certainly like iOS devices that are locked-down, often citing the absence of malware and other non- conforming apps"?

<comment><USER4> That I want to see that real user of iDevices that sober will say the phrase "noncomforming apps" ... or that lack of malware will be anywhere near the top 5 reasons of liking them. And path behavior was one expected of malware. And it was approved by Apple with bells and whistles.

Malware is a solved problem already since Vista shipped even on windows. I haven't seen one in ages on the maybe 20-30 friend pcs that I am the involuntary "IT" guy.

People like iDevices. Period. But one of the engines of innovation is being able to use something for purpose other than the one envisioned by its creator. It creates positive feedback loop. Which include running software that somebody might not approve. Also unlocked does not mean defenseless. Sandboxing and isolation are good things, so is the vetting of the apps in the store.

I think that the HTC model currently is best - device comes locked, with official unlock available that voids part of the warranty. If I want security - I got it. But if i want to use 300 of them mounted on the ceilings of the clubs uploading realtime feeds to show the hottest places in town right now - I can use them for that too.

<comment><USER6> I'm still seeing malware on Vista and 7 on home machines where the users are STILL all local admins and click "OK"/"Yes" to every "should this be allowed to run?" prompt because years of popup messages have conditioned the average user to just say "whatever" and click the continue button.

<comment><USER7> Even without administrative privileges, your malware can still do lots of interesting things: full access to the user's files, settings and browser history, full internet access, automatic launch on startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am very impressed with the thread over at XDA - really impressive hacking skills and discussion between a talented few. Go to pages 20 and 21 to see things like PuTTY and 7zip compiled and running on a Surface. Utterly fantastic!

[http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1885399&...](http://forum.xda- developers.com/showthread.php?t=1885399&page=20)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >>>The decision to ban traditional desktop applications was not a technical one, but a bad marketing decision.

But wouldn't Desktop apps need to be recompiled to run on the ARM CPU?

<comment><USER9> It would, but Apple did the same thing when they switched to Intel and worked out pretty well. They even shipped all the PowerPC binaries for a while, together with an emulation layer, so you could run old apps on Intel (albeit slowly).

It's more of a backwards compatibility/marketing issue, I suppose. Apple could afford to have programs work 'more or less', Microsoft with its track record for backwards compatibility probably cannot.

<comment><USER10> Emulation is fine when you're switching to a faster processor (68K -> PPC, PPC -> Intel). In this case, MS is introducing a slower processor so emulation would probably be painful.

<comment><USER11> Well they shot themselves there. The CLR was supposed to be the portability layer i.e. IL code would be dynamically compiled. Unfortunately due to Microsoft's schizophrenia, it never became a first class part of the OS over say non-portable PE x86 specific binaries.

Technically they could use dynamic translation, but building a working translator for x86->arm would be an absolute bastard as x86 is such a non- orthagonal mess of an architecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd buy a Surface if Sublime Text 2 were cross compiled for ARM.

edit: I'm also a bit confused, the XDA thread seems to imply that a user could side load an RT app that would launch an unchecked application [1]... meaning some sort of side-loadable RT app that could springboard a launcher for other ARM compiled apps.

Ironically there could be a community package manager and accompanying RT app and beat MS to the punch (if they were ever to go in that direction which is arguable)

edit2: Ah, a bit later in the thread it's revealed that the resulting cmd prompt still runs from the RT apps context, with its limitations and lifespan.

[1] That presumably would be killed/revoked from the Store and/or would never pass verification)</comment>


Ask HN: what's a good way to do escrow in a web app? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a new app that needs to authorize and reserves funds from a user to be collected much later (perhaps a month), similar to Kickstarter.<p>What is the best way to do this from a web app? <comment><USER2> You might want to have a look at Amazon's Flexible Payment System (FPS): <https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business?sn=devfps/o></comment>


Global Warming's Terrifying New Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719?print=true <comment><USER2> "June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States."

this is meaningless, really. I take it's based on the number of local observations across the country, which is somewhat tied to number of weather stations.

It does look like a huge and convincing number - gosh, if it is 3215 we must be onto something! But merely increasing number of places where measurements are taken going to drive this number up.

I am not suggesting the global warming is a non-issue, although this article is quite full of inconsistencies like that, as well as minor sins like not mentioning your sources - where does number "3.7 x 10-99" for the odds of increase of temperature comes from, for example?

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone who claims, like this author does, that energy companies such as ExxonMobil aren't heavily invested in diversifying their portfolio of technology solutions to include solar and wind power is either mistaken or intentionally misleading. Anyway, they got a page view from me.</comment>


Y Combinator for Dysfunctional Non-Schemers - <AUTHOR> http://rayfd.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/y-combinator-for-dysfunctional-non-schemers/ <comment><USER2> Kind of like reading the Little Schemer and using Javascript. Which is precisely what Douglas Crockford advocates (<http://javascript.crockford.com/little.html> \- he's got an example of the Y Combinator too).

Javascript's _arguments.callee_ will also let you define anonymous recursive functions (though I realize that was not really the point of the post).

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice, I was always turned off by the YC explanations I found, but this did the trick.

But the questions that's really not answered is: Is there anything useful for a programmer in pure CS, excluding AI? Does the ability to follow the gory papers at lambda-the-ultimate make you a better programmer (even if it is only for some obscure application)? Should I really spend a day getting intimate with the Curry-Howard isomorphism?

<comment><USER4> I suppose it depends how much you're into formal methods, etc. The YC, for instance, was developed (if memory serves) to obviate the need for assignment WRT recursion, because assignment makes it much harder to reason about programs.

In principle, CS theory can help you prove that programs are correct; Dijkstra was big on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice article named aptly for "dysfunctional non-schemers." :)

For the functional schemers/lispers out there, how close to the real picture is this? The same thing can be done in PHP, using a similar syntax, although it's probably more efficient to use switch/case (I say this because I recently rewrote some variable function names into switch/case).

<comment><USER6> I didn't examine each function in detail, but it looks like totally the real picture. If you have lexical scoping and anonymous functions, you have the Y combinator. I don't know if PHP has true lexical scoping and anonymous functions yet, but if it does, then yes, you can implement the Y combinator in PHP.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Discoverify – A Spotify-based music discovery tool - <AUTHOR> http://discoverify.aaronmamparo.com/ <comment><USER2> I am eager to try it, but are all these permissions necessary?

 _You agree that Discoverify will be able to: View your Spotify account data Your email The type of Spotify subscription you have, your account country and your settings for explicit content filtering Your name and username, your profile picture, how many followers you have on Spotify and your public playlists Take actions in Spotify on your behalf Create, edit, and follow private playlists Create, edit, and follow playlists_

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool tool. It needs PCA though</comment>


Sessions and cookies in Ruby on Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.quarkruby.com/2007/10/21/sessions-and-cookies-in-ruby-on-rails <comment><USER2> This is the best overview of sessions and cookies in Rails I've yet seen. Much better than Agile Development.

Thanks!</comment>


Paul Graham Isn't Keeping Women out of Tech - <AUTHOR> http://thedatingring.tumblr.com/post/71463600468/paul-graham-isnt-keeping-women-out-of-tech-from-ycs <comment><USER3> We're creating an environment now in which it is practically impossible to discuss this topic in tech. Our general irrationality and desire to completely and utterly jump down the throat of anyone who even remotely touches on this topic means that in the future any gender topics are just going to get "no comment" responses.

That's sad and not without a touch of irony precisely because in stifling the discussion we're probably doing more harm than good.

<comment><USER4> IMO, folks on HN need to do much less discussing on this topic and a lot more listening. For the most part, HN is collectively blind to issues of power and privilege.

For those interested in learning more about privilege, read these two essays by John Scalzi, _Being Poor_ ([http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being- poor/](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/)) and _Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is_ ([http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male- th...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest- difficulty-setting-there-is/)).

Try to read them without being reflexive or poking holes in them. If you find yourself getting riled up or defensive stop and ask yourself why you're feeling the need to respond that way.

<comment><USER5> On the contrary, I would suggest listening to Ram Z Paul ([http://www.ramzpaul.com/](http://www.ramzpaul.com/))

You claim that people at HN experience privilege, and in some sense I agree most of us do. And yet as proponent of a progressive agenda, you also have a different kind of privilege. Most normal people will automatically identify you with the "right" side. You will never have to fear being labelled a racist, sexist or anti-Semite. For example, why is it that you automatically turn to very patronizing language when addressing people you consider insufficiently educated in their privilege? Could it be that you are used to having your sense of moral superiority go unchallenged?

<comment><USER4> You got me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gawker was just looking for page views [1], as with the pg racism [2] claim a few months ago.

This is dangerous. If people are scared to speak openly and honestly about topics such as racism, homelessness and sexism because they don't want Valleywag to label them as racist, elitist or sexist, we'll all be forced to just go on pretending everything is great.

[1] [http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-nick- de...](http://pando.com/2013/12/26/look-whos-gawking-inside-nick-dentons- phony-hypocritical-class-war-against-tech-workers/)

[2] [http://valleywag.gawker.com/major-fwd-us-donor-says-a- strong...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/major-fwd-us-donor-says-a-strong- foreign-accent-makes-1208418411)

<comment><USER7> Gawker is horrible, but if you read the original article in The Information that they're quoting from, it's not that distorted. Graham is asked whether YC discriminates against women. Graham is aware that when he's asked this, the subtext is that there is a marked gender imbalance among YC founders. Graham could answer "no, we don't discriminate, and I don't know why the imbalance exists or exactly what we should do to fix it". But Graham doesn't leave it at that: instead, he writes a small essay about gender imbalance in the industry on the fly, and a lot of what he says is both discouraging and, to my ears, incorrect.

I think Paul Graham is a good, interesting person with a lot of interesting and valuable insight that comes from experience I will never have. But he is not infallible, and I think this is a huge blind spot for him.

Valleywag probably wants to see him burned at the stake, then drawn and quartered by four Uber SUVs. Think of the pageviews!

<comment><USER8> Despite its discouraging content, what do you feel is incorrect about it?

<comment><USER7> I wrote a mammoth comment about it on this thread already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately for this all female team, feminists will accuse them of working to support the patriarchy just as much as the evil men. Sadly, this is actually what prominent feminists in technology believe: [https://medium.com/about-work/e82b7ca7de03](https://medium.com/about- work/e82b7ca7de03) (Ctrl-F "support the patriarchy").

For these feminists, women who fail are obvious evidence of patriarchy, and women who succeed are obviously just working alongside the patriarchy. I firmly believe that if next year the tech industry was 55% female and females received 55% of funding and salaries, feminists would point to that as evidence that the patriarchy is purposefully giving things to women to hide the fact that they're all misogynist pigs. This prominent tech feminism is, according to their own terms, completely unfalsifiable.

<comment><USER10> In the Medium essay you link to they are calling out women who deny the existence of sexism in tech:

 _" The white privilege that benefits many white women in tech plays a huge role in allowing them to occupy a position denying gender oppression, supporting the patriarchy, and undermining feminist activism."_

This "female team" is doing the exact opposite. I think they're safe from the feminist horde.

Also, you might get something from this comic: [http://www.harkavagrant.com/?id=341](http://www.harkavagrant.com/?id=341) You seem to be experiencing similar terrors.

<comment><USER9> > In the Medium essay you link to they are calling out women who deny the > existence of sexism in tech

The essay isn't calling out women who fit that description. It is _attributing_ those denials to successful women in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan.

Which topics engage people's identity depends on the people, not the topic. For example, a discussion about a battle that included citizens of one or more of the countries involved would probably degenerate into a political argument. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the Bronze Age probably wouldn't. No one would know what side to be on. So it's not politics that's the source of the trouble, but identity. When people say a discussion has degenerated into a religious war, what they really mean is that it has started to be driven mostly by people's identities.

When that happens, it tends to happen fast, like a core going critical. The threshold for participating goes down to zero, which brings in more people. And they tend to say incendiary things, which draw more and angrier counterarguments."

[http://paulgraham.com/identity.html](http://paulgraham.com/identity.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> This article seems to be related to [http://valleywag.gawker.com/paul-graham- says-women-havent-be...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/paul-graham-says-women- havent-been-hacking-for-the-pa-1490581236)

It is the first time I saw Paul Graham appear on my Facebook. It is not worth reading, the author is just going for clicks by making baseless accusations. Paul also claims he was misquoted and thinks he should start bringing a recorder to interviews.

It is a shame, one of the appeals of reading a Paul Graham interview or his writing was that it was very open, I hope his no doubt hiring a PR filter or being more reserved with his words will not reduce the quality.

<comment><USER13> Was the ValleyWag article discussed on HN? I seem to have missed it.

<comment><USER14> Valleywag is a banned domain, so all submissions to the article were autokilled. (and there were many submissions)

Since the original article was under a paywall, those links were also killed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label-- "sexist", for example-- and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?_

One of my favourite essays.

[http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER5> Beautiful essay, and a beautiful idea that you quoted. I will have to read more of PG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Paul Graham isn't keeping women out of technology. Nor do I believe he wants to. If anything, his interests would be served by there being more women in technology, and thus more candidates for YC.

Also, Valleywag is a cesspool. I ponied up for the whole interview at The Information. I'd rather eat a bug than talk about what a Gawker publication has to say.

But Paul Graham has said some things on this issue that I think are dumb. Moreover, I believe he spends a lot of time worrying about the ways things he says are misconstrued. Reputation is potential energy, as he (correctly) likes to say, and I think he's aware of how much energy is tied up in what he says. Knowing that he is speaking carefully on these issues does not make what he is saying easier to take.

It is one thing to suggest that we should correct biases and imbalances as early as we can, because the sooner someone gets started hacking, the sooner they'll be able to bring those skills to bear on the market. Sure, that's true and probably benign.

It is another thing entirely to suggest that special status is conferred on people who started hacking when they were 13, and that it might be "too late" for people who didn't to join the ranks of that elite.

It is one thing to suggest that there are people that have, for whatever reason (nature or nurture) a natural affinity to working with computer programs and technology. True. Benign.

It is another thing to project backwards from that the idea that if women were going to be good at coding, "they would have found it on their own". That's not true. It presumes that the most important factor in determining whether someone's going to be a good coder is that they have the affinity. But you need more than affinity: you need opportunity and support.

A gigantic blind spot men in technology have is that there are two sides to the problem of gender bias. The side of the coin everyone thinks about is prejudice and bias. Men hear about gender imbalance in technology and interrogate their conscience. "Do I think women are inherently less qualified then men? No! I've never made a decision based on that belief!" They're probably even right about that.

The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept. Certain kinds of people "fit the mold". Paul Graham knows what the typical successful startup hacker looks like. So do most people who work at technology companies. If you ask someone in our field at random to visualize an elite startup hacker and then take bets on the attributes of that imaginary person, you would be nuts to bet on anything but "male", "English-speaking", "20-40", and "white or Asian".

25-year-old English-speaking white males have a privilege, whether they like it or not, because they fit into everyone's mold of a startup hacker. They will sometimes be asked stupid, discouraging questions at job interviews. Like, "do you have any children, and, if so, how will you balance the work of taking care of them with the demanding schedule of this job?". Or, "when did you start coding? We're really looking not so much for someone who can execute this role, but rather who _lives and breathes_ technology". You can tell by looking at some people that they "live and breathe technology" (guilty as charged). That's not a privilege at a bar or a White Sox game, but it is a privilege in our industry.

The existence of privilege is not a scarlet letter on young white dudes who code. But the forceful, repeated, insidious denial of the existence of that privilege is a problem: it reinforces the privilege and allows it to feed on itself.

<comment><USER9> > The coin has another side: privilege. Privilege is a simple concept.

Privilege is a bogus concept, at least in every manner it has been explained to me. Examine the example you provided. If most elite startup hackers are male, English speaking, 20-40, and white or Asian, then a person giving that characterization would be giving a reasonable one based on observation. What does this have to do with "privilege" or "fitting the mold"? And, more importantly, why should I feel guilty or have some additional responsibility simply because I, through no choice of my own other than refraining from suicide and sex reassignment surgery, fit into one of these "privileged" groups? You might as well claim that the winner of a paper rock scissors competition has privilege.

My questions are actually genuine and not rhetorical. I would appreciate responses, or perhaps corrections of my impression of the concept of privilege.

<comment><USER4> First, privilege is not a bogus concept. If you really believe that — about anything, not just privilege — you'll have a hard time learning it or amending your understanding of it because of things like confirmation bias.

Second, your probability is bad. You're confusing P(A|B) and P(B|A). This is understandable — lots of people do this all the time without realizing it, myself included.

Third, your understanding of privilege is confused. As a successful, white male who has started living in Silicon Valley, I acknowledge my privilege but do not feel guilty about it. That you've bound up the idea of shame in privilege might explain why you find it hard to understand — not because it makes the idea harder to understand but because your "body" is going to have a hard time swallowing an idea that tells you you're a bad person.

Here's one way to think of privilege. Privilege is the sum total of all the things big and small that you don't have to think about on a day to day basis but other people do.

For example, as an innocent white person being approached by a police officer, I never have to wonder whether this police officer is coming to help me or harass me. Indeed, I might even presume something like, "Oh, the officer must be coming to tell me something useful."

As a male, I never have to worry about getting raped while walking down a city street at night, or plan your evening so that I won't be in that situation.

As someone with means, I never have to think about whether you have enough money to buy food to last a week, or what it feels like to have to made a trade off between food or gas this week. Or the terror of being sick without insurance.

Now, you might know these things. I don't know and I'm not presuming. I don't even know whether you're white, male, or anything else. I'm just trying to paint a picture.

If you want reading, I recommend these two essays by John Scalzi: _Being Poor_ ([http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being- poor/](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/)) and _Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is_ ([http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male- th...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest- difficulty-setting-there-is/)).

<comment><USER9> I still don't understand what to do with the concept. Anyone would be a fool to think that you can group people by some attribute (like ethnicity) and show correlations with other attributes (like income). (Granted, we might want to do a bit of work to see if the correlations are stronger than would be expected in a purely random distribution of attributes, but we can assume this is the case.) And, given those correlations, anyone can recognize that they are statistically likely to follow those same correlations based on their own group memberships. If that's what privilege means, then so be it, but it's not much more meaningful than saying "I'm thankful that I'm statistically more likely to be successful than people who die as children. John Scalzi could just as easily write an article about how not being born with a terrible disease or deformity is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

<comment><USER4> I have a hard time believing you're genuinely interested in understanding the concept since you're putting up resistance at every step. I'm not here to make you _want_ to learn — I was presuming you already did.

If not, my mistake for engaging.

<comment><USER9> I'm putting up resistance because there is still very little I have heard that makes sense. I do consider myself a skeptic, and I think skepticism is a requirement for critical thinking rather than an obstacle to it.

<comment><USER4> A person willing to learn says, "That's interesting and it doesn't make sense to me for X, Y, and Z reasons. I'm obviously not getting something and am probably confused about something important." That is not what you're saying.

Being a skeptic is orthogonal to having that attitude.

Anyhow, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, ...

I'll just end it here and you can reply however you'd like or not at all. :)

<comment><USER16> > That is not what you're saying.

That's very much what baddox is saying, but with less self-deprecation. He/she is continuing to ask questions and indicating that the concept does not make sense to him/her. Asking critical questions about the utility of the concept, etc. are all very well in line with skeptical approaches towards anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "ask any female founder who has dealt with investors - 9 times out of 10, that investor has used his power to sexually harass the founder"

I'd like to see some stats to back that up, i.e. police reports. Sounds like a generalization that's probably not based in reality. Every investor isn't a rapist waiting for a shot at a female CEO.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Misogyny is alive and well, from Hacker News devolving into a disgusting sea > of victim blaming after a female poster discussed being sexually assaulted > at a tech conference, to the HR-free world of venture capital ( _ask any > female founder who has dealt with investors - 9 times out of 10, that > investor has used his power to sexually harass the founder_ ).

In my mind that last parenthesised bit stands out like I don't know what... What the f*...?!? :(

<comment><USER19> I think you are misunderstanding this, due to poor wording.

That quote makes more sense if you replace _" that investor" with _"a investor" _. It seems plausible that founders have to deal with many founders, and it seems further plausible that many founders have had at least one bad experience.

9/10ths of founders having at least one bad experience with an investor and founders having bad experiences with 9/10 investors are obviously two very different things.

Of course we should obviously still be asking ourselves _"what the fuck?!?" _

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there something that can collectively be done about Gawker (more Vallewag)? I know, freedom of speech, etc, but they time and time again publish the most incendiary articles based on the wildest of intentional misinterpretations. It is the farthest thing from "hard-hitting" or "raw" journalism, and at times borders libelous.

<comment><USER21> _Is there something that can collectively be done about Gawker (more Vallewag)?_

Sure: don't talk to their writers.

<comment><USER22> If there's one thing gawker sites do well, it's nerd baiting.

Yes, there are problems women face in STEM fields. No, getting everyone angry at pg isn't gonna help.

<comment><USER21> To be sure, "someone is wrong on the internet!" is what sites like these depend on for a business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> By claiming that "it's already too late" for those who started coding in high school or college, Paul Graham is reflecting the industry bias against those who don't fit the stereotypical white male hacker. It is not too late.

I wrote down some of my thoughts on this issue here: [https://medium.com/p/f7efb084e8a](https://medium.com/p/f7efb084e8a)

</comment><comment><USER24> Wow the cufon font on that page is awfully blurry on a retina display.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was just thinking the same thing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why has tumblr become such a cesspool of social justice warriors just aching to find something to be angry about?

How does the Tumblr owner feel about his platform being used by this toxic community?

<comment><USER26> As someone who owns some Yahoo stock (which makes me a Tumblr owner (admittedly 9.9009901e-7 percent)) I feel pretty good about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> _But that doesn't give us free reign to ignore the problems that exist in universities, accelerators, tech companies and venture capital. These pieces of the funnel need to be thoroughly analyzed and optimized for inclusion - <USER2> it for gender, race, age, or other markers, so that we're able to produce the best sustainable and profitable companies and organizations possible._

Why?

 _3\. 'Not discouraging' women isn't enough - actively encourage them._

Again, _why_?

I don't understand this "get women in X" movement. There are women everywhere, women are doing fine from what I can see in the tech space.

Why must I go out of my way to specifically pave a way for women in everything I do?

Why not blacks? Why not midgets? Why not "X deviation from being a while male?"

Read my previous comment history for my stance as I'm not going to copy paste everything here. I honestly don't get it. You have all the same opportunities men do, at least in this space.

Women are so entitled nowadays.

<comment><USER28> Technical jobs are 90%+ male, but our customer base is generally much closer to 50/50\. Don't you think it's pretty plausible that having a woman working with you might add a useful perspective when making your product? I've worked at 3 startups(2 as a dev) and interviewed a couple hundred programmers over that time, and don't think I've yet even had a resume from a female programmer, and honestly that really disappoints me - I'd love to work in a coed environment, just to get more opinions and life experiences informing our discussions.

From a purely selfish standpoint, theres a lot of money to be made and a lot less competition in female-customer-oriented startup spaces - take the phenomenal success of Pinterest for an easy example - unless you're only building for yourself, why would you be opposed to adding a perspective that could potentially double your market size.

*I'm personally bothered by the gender gap for a plethora of reasons that go far beyond purely economic, but women control something like 70% of household spending in the USA, and there's a lot of compelling opportunities there even leaving aside any larger equitable society issues.

<comment><USER27> I understand you and I fully agree. I actually work with a majority of women. I'm in the corporate sector, and there are more women then men from what I'm seeing.

I still don't get the movement. Everyone knows Computer Science exists. It's just not an interesting or attractive field for everyone. Let's be honest, when you have prospective high school grads you can't make CS more interesting than say, Physics, Bio, Chemistry. A majority of women flock to those fields and humanities. It's not sexism, it's not the patriarchy, it's just statistics.

It just seems like a lot of women just aren't interested in CS, and I get that. It's a fascinating field, but I can totally see why it's not populated with women.

Anyways, all I'm trying to say is when it comes down to it, and I see a good female candidate, I will hire her. I really don't care about the gender, just I get way fewer females candidates. It is what it is.

Why not host more women friendly CS/Info tech workshops to spread interest?

These kinds of blog posts are just hot wind without any real foundation. Affirmative action isn't the way to go about it, spreading interest in the field at an early stage, however, is.

Example: CS classes in high school don't hold a candle to the sciences and are very very poorly taught for the most part. Other sciences are exciting, they out number CS classes like 20 to 1.

<comment><USER19> I believe the basic premise is that there is nothing in biology that makes computer science more interesting to men than it does to women.

Since it is not an imbalance that can be pinned on biology _(perhaps unlike an imbalance in world weightlifting records?)_ , the cause of the imbalance must be somehow 'nurture' related. Even if we do not consider the imbalance itself to be problematic, the imbalance is considered to be the result of some sort of bias that _is_ assumed to be problematic.

For example, fewer women in tech _may_ not be considered problematic in and of itself _(though I believe many people think that it is)_ , but the existence of this imbalance may be _evidence of_ systematic sexual harassment, which certainly is problematic.

I might be getting this wrong, so I welcome corrections.

<comment><USER27> Well, here's my take on it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6977753)

Most of the men I know and have talked to specifically about fighting for pay, have in fact put up a fight for their pay, while the women I worked with believed that their work will pay for itself and have no fought for a higher pay raise. The women that are top tier managers, were actually just as vicious as the guys, and by being this way, have attained the same things.

People are so quick to hop on to the social justice brigade when in reality its a much more complicated and personal issue, being lumped into the gender category.

<comment><USER29> Have you ever read the research available on the different reactions people tend to have when a woman asks for higher pay/displays entitlement to better conditions in general, vs when a man does?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


FCC Opens Inquiry of Apple's Ban of Google Voice  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124908121794098073.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Boo to the WSJ for blocking the link. Here's ZDNet's take: <http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=22069></comment>


Ask HN: logging in with openid - clickpass - <AUTHOR>

Anyone facing issues logging in using clickpass. I have been trying to login using a google account and All I get is "Unknown" on HN. This is the second time, I have faced this last 6 months, I am writing this because my session is 'saved' on my other browser.
I wasn't able to overcome the earlier error I got 5 months back, in the end used a new userid/openid to login. Later I found that clickpass had done some kind of reset and I had to manually tinker with the url. I could do that because I was using claimid as a openid url. This time with a Google account, I couldn't figure out. I tried changing to https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id to no avail.
I also have to mention- I wrote couple of times to the "send feedback" at clickpass. I am still waiting 5 months down for a response.
Anyone? with similar experiences? <comment><USER2> I fixed a bug Arc server code a few days ago and the fix broke something in Clickpass's code. I'll get someone to fix it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks PG!!

do you have any stats on what percent of users login with clickpass?

<comment><USER2> I have no idea, unfortunately. These look like normal logins to our code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am having the same issue and its EXTREMELY frustrating. Using an old account to post. It's definitely not my openid provider, as I'm using it to authenticate to Stackoverflow no problem.

This is particularly distressful as I was right about to use clickpass and django for a site I'm launching. Here's hoping it's an issue with Arc and not CP.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunately for you, I don't think many people here use Clickpass to log in. In fact, I'd be surprised if more than 1% of HNers used it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought so. But didn't think it as low as 1%. I was more towards 20%. do we have any stats?

I started using clickpass after multitude times of forgetting password. I have been a HN user since early days, but never participated. So I used to upvote to save links my bookmarks. ..and then one day, i thought fk it(we'll do it clickpass!) and used my google account to login.</comment></comment>