Repair is as important as innovation - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/10/20/repair-is-as-important-as-innovation <comment><USER3> Intellectual property protection is a major inhibitor of repair. When only one organization can legally produce replacement parts, repair becomes relegated to outlaws. Companies default to closed source, guaranteeing that at some point what they produce will all end up in a landfill unless it can be recycled. It's an obscure position but I believe that intellectual property protection increases material waste and accelerates the destruction of the natural world. It's an issue that sadly few people think much about, and one that I believe is invisibly harming the earth.

Recently I met Neil Gershenfeld from MIT, who advocates for research and development in to universal machinery that can assemble itself, perform its duties, and then disassemble itself back in to parts when complete. [1] As he says, "there is no trash with LEGO, and there is no trash in a forest." It's a far off idea it seems, but intriguing nonetheless.

In the near term, we as consumers can help avoid this waste by refusing to buy proprietary materials that will eventually become landfill waste. Don't buy cheap Halloween decorations at the dollar store that will fill up the dump. Don't buy cheap Christmas presents for the short term amusement they provide. We can point fingers at manufacturers for producing goods they know will become trash, but we are just as complicit for buying those things from them. Support producers who believe in repair and you will be doing the earth and all its future inhabitants a favor.

[1] [https://youtu.be/3pkqm-mzXDU](https://youtu.be/3pkqm-mzXDU)

<comment><USER4> IP is but one inhibitor of repair. I'm far from convinced it's the main, or even a major one.

It's more a concerted effort to make repair expensive, unexpected, unfashionable and gratuitously difficult across as many industries as possible.

30 or 40 years ago nearly all simple products were repairable, easily and cheaply. You went to any major retailer and they'd have a spares section along with aisles of new product. All of them. You could buy a new element for your toaster, kettle, heater or coffee machine. They'd keep seals and limescale filters and so on. Some of these were standard enough that they'd fit a wide range of manufacturer's products. They'd still be there years after the particular model was discontinued. There'd be a few third party offerings that were rarely as long lasting but perhaps £1 or £2 instead of £3 or £4.

Now? Nowhere sells spares, nor are they an expected part of most products. A kettle manufacturer _might_ condescend to carry a few consumables like a limescale filter for a year or two. Then charge you around £10 with £2 p&p for a simple piece of plastic. Want a replacement element? That's basically never a spare part any more, though they don't last any longer. A fridge manufacturer might charge £18 with £4.95 p&p for a thermistor and a little heat shrink tube, but no longer have the one of the three that fails most often available at all. For a few year old refrigerator. (recent actual examples)

For larger products manufacturers are combining parts and modules into indivisible units that might ease manufacture a microscopic amount, but absolutely make many simple repairs no longer possible. So what was recently a £20 simple repair to your fridge or cooker is now a £200 major component and more labour than it's probably worth.

 _> Support producers who believe in repair_

I've spent years, decades, trying to. There are effectively none left. Even the most expensive brands are aiming to have you throw it away and buy another as soon as they can get away with. Which leaves who?

<comment><USER5> > So what was recently a £20 simple repair to your fridge or cooker is now a > £200 major component and more labour than it's probably worth.

I think this is a large part of the problem. Our goods have become so cheap to produce that they're cheaper to buy new than to repair. For example, I'm rebuilding a small motorcycle engine for a Honda. I can rebuild the engine, paying the machine-work labor cost and a small amount of parts, and it's actually just a bit more expensive than to buy a brand-new Chinese clone that's been in production for over a decade.

Labour costs for repairs have gone up, while consumer goods have gotten cheaper. In a lot of cases it's simply more cost-effective to replace than to rebuild. No mechanic rebuilds water pumps in the shop anymore than a home appliance tech would fix a coffee maker.

DIY is largely the one holdout for repairs, and it's unreasonable to think that every person can have the aptitude to fix any device that may break in their lives.

<comment><USER6> > _In a lot of cases it 's simply more cost-effective to replace than to > rebuild._

I think a lot of this is because we can choose to not factor in a lot of additional costs that will show up in other forms. E.g., unsustainable disposal leadss to environmental problems and hazardous living conditions, while the cheap chinese labour only works with far weaker labor protections than we have here.

<comment><USER7> If we can apply the same ingenuity to the end of life stage as to the creation stage, it actually makes sense to not bother attempting to fix - why expend costly human effort on individual patches when innumerable hours have been spent refining industrial processes to bring the cost of a replacement down? Just buy the replacement. Though of course even with the cleanest lifecycle there's still the power requirement and associated carbon, but perhaps even that can be taken care of via mitigation.

I should say instinctively this still seems kind of wrong and wasteful to me, but then on the other hand when so much time has been invested in processes it kind of makes sense to take advantage of that efficiency. I should also say that this still leaves manufacturers with no excuse for taking the decision to deliberately stop making consumables, which is the kind of thing I would like to see legislation against.

<comment><USER6> I don't see what one has to do with the other. Even with the most efficient production process, you will end up with landfills of toxic waste if your strategy to make your devices throwaway-only.

Also note that a lot of "ingenuity" is production is just shipping parts across the world from wherever human labor is cheapest.

<comment><USER7> > If we can apply the same ingenuity to the end of life stage

Did you miss above? I'm saying that IF devices can be recycled effectively at end of life, it may be more effective in economic terms to do away with the idea of making the thing repairable (beyond consumables) in life.

> Also note that a lot of "ingenuity" is production is just shipping parts > across the world from wherever human labor is cheapest.

I think that's a little too cynical - take the car industry as an example - are you really going to argue that outsourcing to reduce labour costs has played a more significant role than technology and quality shifts? If so perhaps you should warn Germany, who still seem to be cranking out millions of cars every year, paying German wages, and turning a profit..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the core messages of Strong Towns (strongtowns.org).

In general humans get really excited about building new and transformative things, and we have a big blind spot to ongoing maintenance. In particular we've come to utterly depend on the things that were "shiny and new" back in first generation of suburbanization (50s - 70s), while many of those things have been poorly maintained, and in many cases the economic returns on that infrastructure don't actually justify the ongoing maintenance cost.

It's a dangerous drag on the economy, but we're stuck with it now, and the lesson learned is we should prioritize maintenance in our thought process and make sure we're getting a positive return out of the infrastructure liabilities we already have before creating new ones.

<comment><USER9> I worked for an ex-Australian Navy commander who managed various Asset and Maintenance groups for various organisations. The subject of maintenance is a very interesting subject.

If your maintenance regime is done properly, over the long haul, you save a fortune. Do your normal maintenance, refurbish at the correct times and replace with new when the % maintenance cost has reached the trigger point.

This means that every asset lasts longer (on the whole) costing you less and you get some return on that asset in the end. The one thing that generally gets in the way of proper maintenance are the accountants. They have a penchant for not understanding maintenance and future costs.

I have seen them willing to spend up to 80% of the cost of replacement for an item on repairing an item year on year, when it would be better to simply replace the item in question. They also seem to have the general attitude of "It's working therefore we do not need to spend any money on maintenance for it." This attitude seems to ensure that all sorts of organisations have a continually degrading asset base instead of a maintained asset base.

If you were to look at each state government in any country, you will find that most of the state assets are ill-maintained and that to get them to the correct maintenance level would be more than the current state budgets.

The other side of this is that accountants have a skewed point of view as to what is an asset and what is not. As such they will spend plenty of money on smaller item with replacement rather than refurbish or repair those items. Hence, office furniture, phones, computers, etc, are treated as consumable items and not worth repairing. So why would suppliers and manufacturers be bothered to make these items repairable?

Change the mindset of those whose responsibility is the finance and your will see a change in what supplier and manufacturers do in terms of repairability of their products. The small scale consumer such as us would then then benefit from this.

It effect, the mentality of not repairing items has a number of interconnected causes that feed the problem, from the basic tax law and attitudes of accountants "protecting" the bottom line, to companies using this attitude to make it cheaper to not design products that are repairable, to patent law and copyright law, to that simple staple called greed and the other stable called politics.

<comment><USER10> I've witnessed same effect in the US Military. The problem is, and always was, they're spending other people's money. They don't need to make the best long- term decision, they need to make the 'what fits in my budget this quarter' decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The discipline's most prominent statistic, gdp, is gross (as opposed to net) > because it leaves out the cost of wear and tear.

Net domestic product is an interesting concept that I haven't considered before.

The Fed appears to track it somehow, despite the difficulty in measuring it, as the article mentions. Here is a graph I configured on the St Louis Fed site that compares GDP to NDP:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lErT](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lErT)

In general, it seems to track GDP pretty well, although recently it appears to have gotten closer to GDP, though I don't have any idea why.

The article's comparison of "wear and tear" as a % of countries' GDP is interesting. Since lower income countries (China, India) often have a lower standards for acceptable maintenance level in both the public and private realm than wealthier ones, it kind of makes sense that they spend less of their GDP on wear and tear.

Also, a lot of the expensive modern infrastructure (airports, freeways, etc) in those countries is relatively new, so a big repair bill might just be further down the road (no pun intended).

Britain in this view is an anomaly, being a high income country with low maintenance spend as a % of GDP.

<comment><USER12> I'd say there are three main reasons for Britain's lower maintenance spending:

1) Compared to France and Germany the climate and environment is a lot simpler. We don't have lots of mountains with tunnels, the temperature barely dips below freezing. Even though we have roughly the same population size, we have roughly half the length of motorways [0].

2) In the 80s a lot of public infrastructure was privatised. Taking the railways as an example, First Group is a company listed on the London Stock Exchange which owns a large majority of train and local bus services across the country [1]. Infrastructure projects are still funded by the government, but they are often funded in the way of loans, that at some point they expect to be repaid, so don't impact the GDP.

3) After the financial crisis, fixed capital spending was greatly cut (as well as public spending in general), but as a % of GDP it still hasn't returned to its 2008 levels [2]. I suspect a lot of what was cut was really improvements and new projects that have been shelved. If we were to compare it to other countries over a greater timeframe, I'd expect to see the spending closer to that of France and Germany.

It'll be interesting to see what happens after Brexit as a large percentage of both the construction labour force and building supplies are imported from Europe.

[0] [http://www.nationmaster.com/country- info/stats/Transport/Roa...](http://www.nationmaster.com/country- info/stats/Transport/Road/Motorway-length)

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

[2] [https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gross-fixed- capi...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gross-fixed-capital- formation-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html)

<comment><USER13> Much of the maintenance of Britian's infrastructure is still done by the government. Rails, for example, are government maintained but we just don't get the profits anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> [..] In March California became the 18th state in America to introduce a bill supporting the "right to repair", by obliging manufacturers to make manuals more widely available to customers and independent repair shops. [..]

Patently untrue. More here: [https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers- right-to-repa...](https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to- repair/.). At least for CA farmers [..] a big California farmers' lobbying group just blithely signed away farmers' right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software. As an organization representing 2.5 million California agriculture jobs, the California Farm Bureau gave up the right to purchase repair parts without going through a dealer. Farmers can't change engine settings, can't retrofit old equipment with new features, and can't modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own. Worse, the lobbyists are calling it a victory.[..]

<comment><USER15> (Author of the linked piece here.) The Economist is technically correct. The bill was _introduced_ , but did not pass. We're going to try again next year.

<comment><USER16> If you use words to suggest something untrue, you are a liar.

"Technically correct" is something best left to lawyers, whose job entails just that, by its very nature. Everybody else, especially those whose job is to inform people, don't get to use a "technically correct" free pass. They're either telling the truth or lying.

In this case, the unnamed coward journalist is lying.

<comment><USER17> But isn't that what "introduce" is for?

<comment><USER18> "Attempted to pass" might be clearer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The US military sells itself on being incredibly capable thanks to developing and fielding cutting edge weapons technology.

It is actually capable because it is extremely effective at logistics and maintenance.

<comment><USER20> I think that's very subjective. The USSR actually led the way on some innovation:

* IRST on MIG-29 and helmet-targeting for infrared missiles

* Titanium welding for high-speed submarines

* Super-cavitating torpedoes

* Stealth theory

* Air dropped vehicles

* Urban tank support vehicles (BMPT)

* Radar targeting for individual machine guns

* CIWS

* Reactive armor

* Lots of other stuff I can't think of right now.

It's also questionable whether the US military efficiency over opponents scales with budget over opponents.

So its both questionable that it leads in innovation and that this leads to superiority.

<comment><USER21> > It's also questionable whether the US military efficiency over opponents > scales with budget over opponents

That's a good point. Apparently the US military funding accounts for 36 percent of global military funding, with 3x as much funding as the country with the second highest spend, China.

I have no idea if the US military is particularly efficient. Even if it was half as efficient as competitors, the US military could still have an advantage due to the sheer volume of resources dedicated.

<comment><USER22> A certain percentage of that is simply cost of living - China can pay their soldiers and military industrial researchers a Chinese wage while the US has to pay US wages all the way down the supply chain.

Still incredibly inefficient, to be sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have the concern that - as the pace of tech development increases - <USER2> timeframe of designers, planners, and stake-holders shrinks. The advantage of this trend is obvious (why invest in tools that will be greatly improved upon in coming years?), but the pitfalls are less apparent and less exciting. The perspective needs to be broad.

Honestly, some rudimentary technology (physical infrastructure, financial instruments, computing solutions) is rather effective and oftentimes elegant. Why not lean into these artifacts and design around repair/maintenance/continued-use?

<comment><USER24> You mean tech companies want everyone to buy almost identical phone every two years?

If anything pace of tech development plateaus after technology gets commoditized.

<comment><USER25> Up until recently mobile devices had been getting ludicrously massive performance gains year over year, much like traditional PC's had before ~2012. Going from my iPhone 6 Plus to iPhone 7 Plus two years ago was an absolutely massive leap in terms of even day-to-day performance, meanwhile outside PC gaming I'd have a hard time justifying a replacement or upgrade of a mid-range or better laptop or desktop made in the past 6 years.

Times have changed however, had my iPhone 7 Plus not died on me I wouldn't have bothered to upgrade to an iPhone XS (I had an extended warranty through T-Mobile and got the device swapped just to trade it in for a $300 credit) - it was still stupidly fast and I certainly wasn't missing any of the gimmicks in the newer devices. This is probably why T-Mobile is now testing 3 year financing options with the iPhone XS and Galaxy Note 9.

<comment><USER26> I really don't understand why phones _needed_ those performance gains. What on earth are people doing with their phones to make use of multiple cores, anyway? The form factor makes their utility so fundamentally limited that increased compute capacity doesn't seem to change anything.

<comment><USER27> Have you seen the code people write for mobile apps lately?

<comment><USER26> No, I have no contact with any of that ecosystem, and I use very few mobile apps since most of them seem like pointless skins over poorly designed websites. What do you have in mind?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> speaking as an engine mechanic by trade, I agree 100%. But manufacturers have another tactic that needs to be reigned in. Namely, fabricated service bulletins and procedures.

Example: reporting a bad transfer case bearing as a service bulletin. This is normal, as customers have detected the fault and the manufacturer has identified it as a problem. What isnt normal is the manufacturer insisting the part cant be repaired, and instead of a $50 part you need to chuck the entire thing and pay $2500 for a new assembly. Sure, bearings are a hard example, but ive also encountered manufacturers who demand their brake calipers cannot be re manufactured (Porsche and BMW, im looking at you.) and instead of a $119 rebuild, you'll need to buy a one thousand dollar caliper straight from germany or the entire car will explode.

<comment><USER16> See Apple for the equivalent fraudolent behavior in the computing world.

[https://youtu.be/o2_SZ4tfLns](https://youtu.be/o2_SZ4tfLns)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Freakonomics did a Podcast on this if anyone wants a pretty good listen. I listened and couldn't stop thinking about all of the applications to software in it.

freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/

</comment><comment><USER30> I suspect a legislative process not dominated by industry lobbyists would ensure that people have the right to repair everything.

I think countries that use proportional representation rather than winner- take-all elections aren't as hijacked by such lobbyists. I know there was an effort in the EU to ensure the right to repair.

<comment><USER31> I think you're looking at this totally wrong.

Making things repairable has real costs. They have to be designed in a modular way so they can be taken apart. Given the choice, most people want sleekness and better industrial design over the ability to repair. This is why products like the iPhone, which feature seam-less industrial design and no externally- visible screws, are so popular.

In order to make something maintainable, the design must be stable, it must be designed to be serviceable, it must be built with serviceable parts, and it must have a long enough lifetime where maintenance is worth it economically, and a buyer who cares. _None_ of these are typically true for huge segments of what consumers buy.

<comment><USER32> I think the distinction between the right to repair and the ability to repair is important. I think you're addressing the latter and stretchwithme is addressing the former. As the article suggests, the lack of recognition for the right to repair is one of the phenomena inhibiting repair. Where the right isn't enforced, it's possible for manufacturers to make things repairable, while also imposing a monopoly on repair, thereby inflating repair costs and inhibiting (legal) repair.

Please see this Vice article about tractor repair [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why- americ...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-american- farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Because the thing about repairing, maintaining and cleaning is, it's not an adventure." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHECxS6IEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHECxS6IEU)

</comment><comment><USER34> The article does a good job of differentiating between repairing high fixed cost items (like a bridge or house) and low fixed cost items (like electronics). It's also worth thinking about the labor cost of repairing vs manufacturing, especially in a world where manufacturing is automated and repairing is a very labor intensive process (diagnosis, sourcing replacement parts, performing the repair, verifying functionality post-repair etc).

This is probably the reason why repairing is generally more common in low labor costs markets than in the developed world.

</comment><comment><USER35> I would like to point out the Portland Aerial Tram as an example of an infrastructure project that has an extremely strong focus on maintenance and repair (understandably so).

Here's a nice video from Oregon Health & Science University featuring the Tram's maintenance supervisor talking about the maintenance program and the impact it has on the Tram's performance.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShDGIQMbx4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShDGIQMbx4I)

I don't think all infrastructure projects require this level of maintenance, but it's nice to see what's possible when it's baked into a project from the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER36> The problem is short term versus long-term profits.

It seems it's more expensive to make products that are more easily repairable or can last longer, because obviously brands benefit from making products that break, although I'm curious if consumers really know how to switch brand when one break early, and if consumers can really understand why and how a product will last longer.

There should be regulations about how products are made and how their parts can break. I saw some broom vacuum cleaner's break because of a flexible plastic air canal. It requires buying a big piece. It's either intentional, or bad design. Those designs should be regulated, inspected and fined.

</comment><comment><USER37> I thought this was quite interesting:

Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w)

</comment><comment><USER38> While I am coming to this discussion after most have moved on, as a software guy who has moved toward hardware I think a substantial point not made here is that manufacturing processes are not like software.

Lego works for reassembly because it is a one-part item: standard interface, bulky, light, strong, simple. A typical circuit board by contrast is centrally fabricated by high-end robots as an extremely high density sub-assembly including tens, hundreds or thousands of components. It's not easy to repair because it requires relatively specialist knowledge and tools to do so, and there are so many different components available. In a similar way, many products have been explicitly designed to be smaller, lighter, simpler or cheaper instead of being reassembly-capable. Injection molded plastic is a classic example, so is assembly by glue or snap-in vs. screws. These are powerful techniques and valid trade-offs.

This does not excuse, for example, companies like Canon and Nikon requiring customers to pay extortionate amounts for repairs and replacements of simpler mechanisms and refusing to supply replacement parts to independent service people.

</comment><comment><USER39> The real change will come when my handphone can repair itself. Screen cracked? no problem just throw some sand on it and the nanobots will do the rest.

</comment><comment><USER40> In the same vein of repair and things having a long life, I'm experimenting with the idea of giving unused things new homes. We own many things that are not utilized often, so why not move those things better homes?

[https://cultofless.com](https://cultofless.com)

</comment><comment><USER41> Realistically, repair & sustainability is far more important than innovation largely driven by our fossil fuel dependency, which is going to run out in the next 50 years anyways.

</comment><comment><USER42> Not if you ask Tesla [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR4CFiuR3tQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR4CFiuR3tQ)

</comment><comment><USER43> More important. The only innovative thing I can come up with to avoid having to fix my leaky toilet is shitting in the yard.

<comment><USER44> 1) Start eating meals at regular hours,

2) join a gym,

3) get a part-time job to fill your empty hours.

Voila, no need for a toilet of your own. (No thank-you required)

But seriously, hold your nose and fix your leaky toilet - this is one of the easiest things in your house to repair. There's such a thing as being _too_ lazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Repairs need to be part of the business model to become a priority. Currently, the manufacturers see repairs only as a mandatory service they need to offer as imposed on them by the local law. The market doesn't impose any further requirements on these products. 2 years are just about as far in the future humans can anticipate and foresee things.

Robust design is a feature that doesn't do good to your business. Soviet product design, as laughable it seems to one, was really incredible and produced products that would rarely break and when they do so parts were always available. But in that market model getting rich was never the goal. Quite the contrary!

For example, my grandmother still has a radio that weights 7 kg built in 50s that works despite all things. I can listen to Radio Moscow from my kitchen 2000km away. The antenna is broken and that radio hangs near the cooker, it is already filled with a lot of dust and grease. Just like your extractor fan. That's just one example. Kalashnikov, Russian tanks, cars, soviet home electrical appliances like tvs, washing machines or vacuum cleaners etc. They all work today.

In a capitalist economy only the regulators can impose repairs as a requirement. Most humans are beyond their ability to think critically at what happens in 2-5 years time.

</comment><comment><USER46> Just establish worldwide regulation that favours any approach with the least amount of resource consumption.

Would not force people into replacing/fixing. It would always favour the approach best for all of us.

Simple solution IMHO

</comment><comment><USER47> non-paywalled link: [https://archive.fo/TIWAi](https://archive.fo/TIWAi)

<comment><USER48> Thanks, unfortunately it didn't work (SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP on FF 63.0b10).

<comment><USER49> [https://outline.com/nWt5uF](https://outline.com/nWt5uF)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Indeed.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is there not some irony here that The Economist, a rag if any is more associated with neoliberalism is running this story?

Repair and maintenance is one of those things that is completely overlooked by neoliberal, modern capitalism. As they state in the article, GDP and economic analysis in general doesn't take into account wear and tear, amongst a number of other things. If anything, the drive away from things like interchangeable/universal parts and the ability to repair things you own in the first place is directly tied to rise of unfettered capitalism.</comment>


Mamet Ipsum Lorem Ipsum is the new "Hello, World" - <AUTHOR> http://mametipsum.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> No matter which dropdown I choose, I still get the same text: "John...John...John.,Okay.,John.,John.,Look: The Glengarry Highland's leads, you're sending Roma out.,Fine.,He's a good man.,We know what he is.,He's fine.,All I'm saying, you look at the board, he's throwing...wait, wait, wait, he's throwing them away, he's throwing the leads away.,All that I'm saying, that you're wasting leads."

I'll stick with <http://lipsum.org> \- or ~/Documents/lipsum.txt

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to check this out. Both scripts have the same content. I just needed more than one script so that I could play with more than one element in clojure's sequence data structs.

Also, I had trouble finding anything other than Glengarry Glen Ross. Pointers to other scripts and screenplays are greatly appreciated.

One advantage to this over the methods you mention is the ability to use your own Handlebar template. FYI.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've made an update so that the two scripts are, in fact, different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I always use <http://www.blindtextgenerator.com/lorem-ipsum>

It has more options for breaking text into paragraphs than c&p lorem ipsum and doing it manually. The only issue I have with it is pasting into a cms window keeps the styles from their site so if I do that, it'll go through notepad first.

I'm having the same issue with Mamet Ipsum, it pastes as Arial with the flesh- colored background. I'd love to have a plain text option for this reason.

One other thing that would make me use this generator over others would be if there were a way on Mamet Ipsum to generate different-sized paragraphs, such as 20 words, 60 words, 30 words, 100 words, etc. on random with a refresh button to re-generate random paragraph sizes.

(edited with more feedback since I am no longer on a phone)

<comment><AUTHOR> For plain text, remove the div tags on the Template tab, then click the little clipboard icon. After that, just paste it wherever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand the reference to "Hello, World." Do you mean that that a Lorem Ipsum generator is the new equivalent to a "Hello, World" program, or that Lorem Ipsum text is the new equivalent to the string "Hello, World," or something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> The former. I wrote this to learn clojure. So I mean that a lorem ipsum generator is the new "Hello, World!".</comment></comment>


Skype on XFINITY - <AUTHOR> http://comcast.com/skype

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the will succeed where many others have failed.</comment>


'Hackers' at 20 - <AUTHOR> http://passcode.csmonitor.com/hackers <comment><USER3> There's three really great hacking movies: WarGames, Hackers and Sneakers.

WarGames really nails the solo bedroom hacker of the 80s but then mixes in the DoD and general purpose AI to turn it into a coldwar thriller.

Sneakers is a clever, quirky, thoughtful adult hacking film.

Hackers though, teenage me ate up the feeling of the hacking culture that it espoused. When I read cyperpunk books, I pictured the environment and characters as places and people who could have come from this world. The sort of irreverent, authority denouncing, cybervandalism spoke to me. The Warez, Demoscen, ANSI art scenes all seemed to sort of be a kind of foundation that created a universe that this movie made manifest.

When this movie came out, I was still telneting, BBSing and gophering around "cyberspace". As soon as I found a writeable folder on an ftp server I'd make hidden folders and upload crap and tell all my friends. We'd stay up late wardialing and playing this soundtrack. We'd telnet to random IP addresses and then get excited when we'd hit a VAX system, just like in the movie.

It formed a kind of social scaffolding my nerd friends and I hung our digital world off of.

It's kind of laughable in many ways now, like many teen counter culture movement. But it still holds a special place in my heart.

<comment><USER4> Antitrust wasn't bad either, but I'm not sure if it goes too far into drama.

<comment><USER5> Antitrust was great, a longtime favourite of mine. They at least had some focus on coding etc. rather than just mindless bashing on a keyboard to "hack" random systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was never that upset about Hackers, but I've had my fair share of laughs at it over the years. I've had some revelations since then though.

If you don't document things yourself, you don't get to write history. There just isn't that much material out there of how things were. In hind-sight I also think it was more accurate than given credit for. Partly because a lot of the things it described, like phreaking, isn't a thing anymore. So technical accuracy is no longer that important.

The people who made the movie to some extent understood hacker culture better than the hackers themselves. They realized that it wasn't the technical details that was important, but describing the sentiment among hackers. Otherwise they could have made a movie about security researchers at Microsoft.

PS. Regarding hacking traffic lights, back in the day you could supposedly flash a light at the same frequency as emergency vehicles to turn the lights green, or at least that's what the textfiles said.

<comment><USER7> The traffic light exploit still works, sort of. They didn't upgrade the sensors or the communication protocol, they just changed it so that it turns all of the lights red. Emergency vehicles can run reds, so it works for them and not you.

<comment><USER8> This is true, and an Arduino and a switchable strobe will let you figure out the frequency. The important thing is to know which direction it lets go first after the light goes away :-)

I read an advertisement for a red light camera system that offered this as a feature (traffic management for emergency vehicle (EV) ingress and egress) it had the feature that you had to have red and blue lights, so it wasn't fooled easily by civilians.

<comment><USER7> Oh, using the same system but taking advantage of the additional signals already present on emergency vehicles... that's pretty clever thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the things I love about this movie is how much it got _right_. The general attitude of the time, the _feeling_ that we had in that era. This film shows what it feels like to spend all night reading through hexdumps trying to solve a complex riddle. I don't know anything else that captures that.

Of course it had to be "inaccurate" to show visually what that feels like without it being super boring. It glorifies a particular set of attitudes and styles that many of us were a part of in that era.

Love it.

<comment><USER10> I agree and tend to think of it in terms of how the movie _300_ depicted the Persians as monsters. They were nowhere near as monstrous in real life but the Greek saw them that way. And the only way to convey the sense of how the ancient Greek viewed them to our modern eye was to make them hulking giants.

In much the same way, _Hackers_ had to do something to depict how we felt about computers at the time. I remember thinking how silly it looked at the time but I also remember it resonating.

Though, I have to say, I was much more inspired by _Sneakers_ a few years earlier which was much more accurate from a visual and technical standpoint.

<comment><USER11> I liked Sneakers a lot... loved that movie... never saw Hackers at the time of release (only first saw it all the way through about a month ago).

I don't know that it was particularly more accurate (at least the device in question), but I think it was certainly closer.

<comment><USER12> I always assumed the "device in question" was a hardware DES cracker. Assuming that, the story makes a lot of sense for the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Memories...

Good soundtrack, even if the film did make me cringe. When it came out I was knee deep in oodles of Perl on a shit-hot upgraded SPARCstation 10 machine (not camo painted I will add). Whacked the soundtrack in my external caddied CD drive and plugged my headphones in, then spent 2 hours of frigging #defines trying to get the fucking thing to compile a CD player that worked on SunOS 4 OpenView that I'd downloaded off Usenet via a 14.4k Hayes SmartModem (which I still own)

And that piece of crap cost more than my car at the time...

Edit: I just realised one piece of tech I still use daily survived from back then; a lowly TI-85 calculator.

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing your CD player was workman.

<comment><USER15> Oh wow, I remember workman now. At least I had university Internet, even if the whole country's net was taken down once when someone tried a video chat.

It must have been a year or two later that I wired a doorbell between DTR (I think) and CTS on a Sparc workstation, with a program that broadcast a UDP packet to a Tcl/Tk program running on multiple lab machines whenever tcdrain() unblocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The (few) scenes that took place at school were filmed in Stuyvesant High School ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School)) which I attended. It always felt very appropriate - Stuy is a specialized math and science school.

At any rate, I can confirm that the "pool on the roof" myth is indeed alive and well. Upperclassmen used to try and sell "pool keys" to incoming students for $10 each. Absurd as that was, there was a thriving market for escalator keys - to turn on or off the many escalators in the 10-story building - so it wasn't that far-fetched.

<comment><USER17> I was an extra in this movie - some of the school scenes (eg. the hallways during the sprinkler scene, which was great fun to film!) plus some interior classrooms too - were filmed on a sound stage at Pinewood Studios in London [1].

[1] [http://www.pinewoodgroup.com/production/hackers](http://www.pinewoodgroup.com/production/hackers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's been a very long time since I've seen the movie, but I was going to make the same point that the director does: it was never intended to be realistic, just a fantasy which captured the right feelings. It's probably not a good movie for other reasons, but I think it was successful at doing that.

I've heard similar criticism of William Gibson's work, that his 1980s-flavored cyberpunk makes no sense scientifically now. And that's true. But it still completely works as a fantasy world.

<comment><USER19> Some of Gibson's 80s writing is almost prophecy, like New Rose Hotel

>Set in the near future, huge megacorporations control and dominate entire economies. Their wealth and competitive advantage reside in the human capital of their employees and the intellectual property they produce. Corporations jealously guard their most valuable employees and go to great expense to keep them safe and happily productive. There is little point in traditional corporate espionage as new products are developed at a lightning pace; there is no time to capitalize on the intelligence acquired from a rival firm, it will be obsolete before it can be used. Companies now hire extraction agents to steal each other's top productive employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Kind of feel weird posting this but a recent show, Mr. Robot feels like the next attempt at something kind of like "Hackers".

One of the early on episodes actually has a character musing aloud if some screen writer is making the next Hackers to incorrectly portray this generations technologist. As they watch Hackers on TV in a hotel. A bit tongue in check, because the show itself is doing exactly that.

It's actually quite good and surprisingly "accurate" on the technology bits and even some of the personalities.

\-- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER21> I love Mr. Robot (even though it borrows rather heavily from Palahniuk, among others) and strongly recommend it to anyone who liked the movie Hackers. I particularly enjoyed the Hackers reference in that episode you mention. The character's contempt at the technical infeasibility of the data visualizations is well captured as I've probably heard that same criticism a million times by my "real hacker" friends who may have snorted derisively but _still watched_ the film to its end multiple times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sneakers[1] > Track Down/Takedown[2] > Hackers[3] > Sword Fish[4]

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/)

[2] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/)

[3] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/)

[4] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244244/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244244/)

<comment><USER23> I feel like having Swordfish in there at all skews your "weak side" of that list to the gutter. Not fair to Hackers to be so closely associated with Swordfish.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER24> Having swordfish in there at all, and not War Games, invalidates the list.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off deserves more credit than swordfish on social engineering alone!

<comment><USER25> Not to band-wagon it up, but I agree that Swordfish felt like an overly produced Mad TV sketch of a techno-action movie. Expensive cast - <USER2> worthy though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seeing this at 11 is honestly what made me interested in computers and pushed me towards my current career, so seeing that it is 20 years old is sort of a shock.

I can also certainly can relate to the portion of the audience that found phreaking much more interesting than hacking and the fact that the phreaking scene is all but dead is pretty sad.

<comment><USER27> If you missed the phreaking era like I did, do yourself a favour and read "Exploding the Phone": [http://explodingthephone.com/](http://explodingthephone.com/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I once heard a story of a firefighter that used to love to watch the movie Backdraft just so he could point out all the inaccuracies. This was somewhat of my interest with Hackers in my younger years. Today, I get caught up in the 90's nostalgia. The article makes an interesting point that the movie is "one of only a handful of movies in the cybersecurity film canon". On top of that, I can't think of any cyber-ish movies that come close to matching the era and attitude of Hackers.

<comment><USER29> The earlier film, Sneakers [1] had some of the same ethos embedded, especially in the climax.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(1992_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_\(1992_film\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "We emphasized the use of psychedelic colors that the world of hacking was a mind-expanding experience for the kids."

Awesome quote. Computers/programming/"hacking" were definitely a mind- expanding experience for me as a teen. While "grown ups" saw a boring beige box, the machine felt alive with limitless possibilities to me.

</comment><comment><USER31> love the film to pieces, never for the accuracy (tho it did accurately introduce many to the concepts of phreaking etc, simple stuff, tonedialing etc.whether technically displayed properly.....oh gosh it's all coming flooding back now)

There was a quote from Softley in the Art of the Title article about the opening titles [http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/hackers/](http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/hackers/) where he says it was a Bridge. Being of a certain age, this totally was part of it. It was for the most part the peak of the modem/bbs days... and there was a transition between the more analog days to the real digital days, the days of the internet - where alot of the hacker culture, and things like the demo scene etc...became diluted. Anyways, never took it that seriously, I mean the characters alone are so out there, but it was inspiring from the whole computer thing to the _music_ (legendary soundtrack, introducing a lot of ravey/UK type stuff to ppl, on the cusp of the whole electronica thing) and just the 90s nostalgia/tech nostalgia - it's great! And come on! Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller alone...the former going on to such massive success....

</comment><comment><USER32> It's funny to think in another 20 years kids might see this movie and wonder what are those weird small rooms with phones that people go into all the time. And they have to pay money to make a call!?

<comment><USER33> I can already tell you that the idea that a phone number calls a _house_ rather than a _person_ is foreign to a 7-year-old.

<comment><USER34> Which is really as it should be. I also find it amusing when people are SHOCKED that a kid would have a cell phone. Sure, they don't need an extravagant $700 smartphone, but who needs a cell phone more? The adult with multiple credit cards, money, reliable transportation, and sits at a desk 8 hours a day with a telephone sitting right there on it? (and then commutes by comfortable car to a house that likely has a landline.. or at least used to when I originally formulated this argument)? Or the kid who rarely has access to a landline, no credit card, no transportation of their own, relies on others (school bus, parents, etc) for transportation to a schedule that might vary each day of the week, and who is much more likely to be "stuck" somewhere?

<comment><USER35> Perhaps they are available everywhere and I haven't noticed, but in Japan they have cellphones with 4 programmable buttons on them. You can't call anybody other than those 4 people. They are quite popular as emergency cell phones for children and the elderly (the latter because the buttons are really easy to push).

<comment><USER36> I met an one of the entrepreneurs behind the jitterbug(now known as a different company). Initially they focused it at parents wanting phones for their children, but now it's mostly for the elderly.

He said they failed at their market research - they tried to make something that appealed to parents, but neglected to see what kids actually wanted(to have things like the adults do). American kids knew it wasn't a real phone, and rejected it. Their parents then got them a flip phone instead of a "kiddie phone".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It captures an optimistic spirit of the culture about as well as Hunter S. Thompson talking about the middle 60s:

DUKE (V/O): Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.

(he gets up, pours himself a drink.)

DUKE (V/O): Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.

DUKE throws open the curtains. Light streams in. Ext. 1965 Stock Footage: We are in San Francisco. Images of the time flood in.

DUKE (V/O): There was madness in any direction, at any hour... you could strike sparks anywhere there was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. our energy would simply prevail.

We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

DUKE's face is suffused with a sadness and serenity we have never seen before.

DUKE (V/O): So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The memories dissolve into the night skyline of Vegas. DUKE closes the curtain. The room is in darkness again.

</comment><comment><USER38> Honestly the thing I remember most about Hackers was when the credit rolled and hearing Halcyon for the first time. That changed my music tastes permanently.

<comment><USER39> The most loved music soundtrack in my collection. These is also a Hackers 2 soundtrack (music inspired by). Both are pretty brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I was recently in Kiev and I happened to see the movie being broadcast on a small kitchen TV with VHF rabbit ears. So there was tons of static and it was dubbed with that deadpan style Russian that they typically do in movies without even trying to replicate the actors' emotions. I don't know exactly why, but it made me laugh out loud.

</comment><comment><USER41> And consider just four years later "The Matrix" was released. It gives you an idea of how fast things were changing in the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER42> This movie came out when I was 18 and I very much related to the characters in the story. My friends and I definitely stepped up our "hacker" game after seeing this film. I also bought the soundtrack on CD (that's something you did then) and it was what got me into techno/house music.

Funny side story: I grew up in LA and one of the things we got to do as teenagers was see pre-screenings of movies. This was usually before they were finished and rated, as a way for them to tweak the final product.

Hackers was one of those movies. They didn't change much except that Angelina Jolie unzips her jacket all the way to show her breasts. They cut the scene most likely to get their PG-13 rating, but 20 years later that scene is horribly sexist and a sign of the times.

<comment><USER43> > ...20 years later that scene is horribly sexist and a sign of the times.

IIRC, (and I may not RC) that scene is Jolie and Miller engaging in sexual role-play. A few moments later, we cut to what's _actually_ going on: the pair is making out on a bed, and their friends have _just_ walked in to deliver good news, but are currently gawping at the spectacle. Jolie notices the gawpers, gets up, calls them something off-color, and we get to hear the good news.

Is my memory of the scene dramatically off the mark, or am I missing the sexism?

<comment><USER44> These days, anything remotely sex-positive for heterosexuality is usually claimed to be sexist.¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER45> Quite. She's absolutely 100% in control and doing what she wants to do. I guess some people find that threatening and try to use a trigger word to shut it down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Or we could celebrate another 'Hackers' at 31 -- the 1F-th anniversary of Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution", a fantastic book on the origins of hacking, which also helped me get my first job as a programmer. (My employer-to-be had just finished reading the book too and we talked about it during the interview.)

Thanks Steven. (And Greg.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Compute...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)

</comment><comment><USER47> _Hackers_ is pretty much _The Craft_ for people in my trade: very silly, very 90s faux-edgy, and very fun. Originally I hated it, but then I was a dormmate in college with a skinny Russian kid who looked like he could walk straight off the set of this movie -- and he used the handle "Phreak". (He was into the MOD/tracker scene.) So eventually I came around to see its validity as an artifact of the cyberpunk zeitgeist.

And in a few ways it was accurate: it predicted (perhaps inspired?) the rise of case-modding.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't understand the hate. Hackers was a really great niche film. It wasn't going for the Oscar but when I saw it for the first time when I was 14 it got me excited about computers. Movie was fun and soundtrack was great. When I managed to compile and use my first exploit it felt like I was one of "them". Made a few friends online that I only knew by their "hacker names" and I even formed a team. Now that I think about it those were the fun times.

</comment><comment><USER49> WarGames (1983)! I don't think this has been mentioned yet (?!).

The modem, hacking the phone companies, motivated by curiosity and paying no mind to whether or not one is breaking any rules, military misuse of technology, programs being used to ends not intentioned by its creator, command line, hacking alone, physical infrastucture comtrolled by software.

I mean, it had it all!

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord For an actually good hacker film, see _23_ (1998), about the story of Karl Koch.

<comment><USER50> 23 (the German original, not the similarily-named holkywood turky!) is great. Fwiw I love Hackers too, but they are so different, it's hard to compare them.

I also like "Hackers 2"/"Takedown" despite the various controversies (the book being a rip off of another book, the script being a rip off, both book and script being factually inaccurate etc).

Still now that Mitnicks own autobiography is out, while the movie might not be a kind treatment of him, or his friends. I still think it's quite a good hacker film, with some traces of accurancy (think "inspired by true events" rather than "based on").

Btw, the name "Hackers 2" was just an attempt at marketing - the two films have nothing to do with each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> When the producer of the movie Hackers appeared on AOL for a promotional chat room visit, some malicious technology lovers showed up and kept knocking them offline.

[http://www.aolwatch.org/list/0051.html](http://www.aolwatch.org/list/0051.html)

<comment><USER51> Here's a more detailed account of the background leading up to that attack.

[http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxiv/10.3.97/exclusive/let...](http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxiv/10.3.97/exclusive/letter.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Sneakers was better.

<comment><USER53> Sneakers has held up _amazingly well_ to the passage of time. It didn't do anything impossible, just highly improbable.

If you haven't rewatched it in a while, it's worth watching again.

<comment><USER54> Eh. Sneakers' central plot point was a magic box that could crack all encryption. It was otherwise a great movie, and many of the physical "facility hacking" scenes were quite fun, but the magic box that breaks all ciphers was more than improbable. Maybe you could say it was a quantum computer :).

<comment><USER55> But they got the implications of it right. "There isn't a government in the world that wouldn't kill us all to get their hands on this." That is absolutely true. Whether or not such a device exists, or could possibly exist, is irrelevant.

<comment><USER56> > Whether or not such a device exists, or could possibly exist, is irrelevant.

It is a little bit relevant in a post that is replying to another post that says nothing in Sneakers is impossible.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223284](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223284)

<comment><USER57> Putting on my tin foil hat ... one could imagine a box the size of a phonebook (or just a laptop) that could, when it encounters packets or encrypted data, send signatures and packets to the NSA data centers, and do the kind of matching/etc that they are building towards.

Heck, even having it try to decrypt the packet(s) in a distributed manner with $ALL_THE_KEYS that might have already been collected via nefarious means, and then return the key + plaintext that is most likely, certainly seems possible if the box was created by someone with the resources of the NSA.

I would be extremely surprised if someone were not already working on (or had not already created) something very much like that.

<comment><USER54> The box in Sneakers is a valuable theft target, implying it is not merely a frontend, or if the Russians got it the NSA would simply revoke its API keys, so to speak. It's also the product of a stroke of genius by a single cryptographer.

It has to be a breakthrough in factoring large numbers very quickly, like what quantum computers are promised to be. So maybe possible after all, I guess. It's also very clearly a device, not an algorithm, so probably not a Von Neumann machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I pretty much owe everything to this film, it's how I started with computers. I didn't even have one when I watched it but the moment it ended I said "That's what I want to do!". Never became a "hacker" but at least I'm a developer and do something I truly love.

As for the accuracy of the film, I don't really have much to say. I don't expect films to be "too" accurate, if they were they would be called "documentaries". It's cool to see Gibson they way it was and them turning traffic lights green etc.

</comment><comment><USER59> "Hackers" wasn't accurate but it did bring about awareness for the need for computer security and strong passwords.

I think Hollywood should reboot it for the modern times.

<comment><USER60> Please, not with John Travolta and Hugh Jackman...

<comment><USER59> Ugh why them? The main characters in Hackers were teenagers who went out to explore cyberspace and see what was there and hack into it.

They had a "Hack the Planet" message in that movie.

<comment><USER61> It's a reference to Swordfish.. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfy5dFhw3ik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfy5dFhw3ik) Because, you know, that's how hacking works...

<comment><USER62> Had nearly forgotten how much I hate that movie, and had definitely forgotten that Travolta has almost a Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg haircut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Perfect timing for the Art of the Title to release this interview with the creators of the opening sequence: [http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/hackers/](http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/hackers/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I submitted a link here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10227078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10227078) but in your terminal give the following command a whirl - it should output the text of Hackers.

nc z.ero.cool 1337

</comment><comment><USER64> If you are in downtown Austin, this is actually playing at Alamo Drafthouse tonight(9/15).

</comment><comment><USER65> And here I thought, "Steven Levy's book has been out longer than 20 years..."

</comment><comment><USER66> I loved the OST, especially orbital's "Halcyon on and on". It's still on my 'snowboard' playlist. I still remember the intro scene vividly[1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxb5YrDjDZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxb5YrDjDZ8) "New York - The City that never sleeps"...

</comment><comment><USER67> FWIW - The 20th edition Blu Ray release has some great documentary materials talking about the cast attending computer meetups _in character_ to get context. Also some bits with the costume designer talking about creating the the 'look' of the hackers.

</comment><comment><USER68> Hackers was a landmark in my youth. I also really enjoyed the movie "23" about Karl Koch: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/)

</comment><comment><USER69> This movie may have had bad visual depictions of computers and laughable tech references but it was what kicked me in the direction im headed now. Truly, a life changing moment for me watching this as a young teenager. Mess with the best...

</comment><comment><USER11> I only just recently (about a month ago)... It wasn't horrible, but not having seen it when it came out it's hard to say what I would have though 20 years ago (when I was 20), and on BBSes and a few art/dist groups.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I love this film for the cheesiness of it all. But the odd thing, the whole heist angle was fairly accurate considering what most large scale 'hacks' are about: money.

</comment><comment><USER70> I watched it on netflix the other day, and it still makes me cringe when phreak says "twenty eight _point_ eight"

<comment><USER60> I still do not have a clue what a BLT drive might be... Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato ??? How is that possible?

<comment><USER71> He looks at his sandwich before he says it; he's showing that you don't even need accurate information to get people to do what you need.

sound potentially important, hurried.. and desperate for a favour- and people will try to help

<comment><USER60> Okay... How many times have you watched it to notice that minor detail? Just curious.

<comment><USER72> It was pretty noticeable on the first viewing IIRC. It's a common movie trope: [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LineOfSightName](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LineOfSightName)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I will pay good money for either a) a modern computer that mimics the clear laptop or b) Penn jillette to be my assistant.

</comment><comment><USER74> bluebeep. toneloc. AOHell. attcard. Miss those days.

Did anyone ever have the "terminator" terminal program which had the hidden war dialer in it, which you accessed with the password "joshua"?

<comment><USER74> p.s. I still watch WarGames. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> That's mere a narcissistic (hipster's) self-delusion.

I still feel like an idiot at 40.

\-----

A hipster is mere a r _o_ le-governed behavior with corresponding fashion and hairstyle.</comment>


The one that got away - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/the-one-that-got-away/?hp

<comment><USER2> Not quite the same thing, but there are similar stories in my family...

About a hundred years ago various relatives of mine owned oil fields, factories, textile mills, and more in Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. My great- grandfather was apparently the first man with a home phone in Kiev.

But then the Russian Revolution happened and all of their property was confiscated by the Soviet government.

So, if not for that, I'd be very rich right now.

But its okay. I'm planning on getting it all back, myself.

<comment><USER3> "So, if not for that, I'd be very rich right now."

Or perhaps not born.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Spring of 1999 I was kicking it at dinner party/get together with a bunch of Netscapees sometime after AOL had purchased us for $4B, but prior to them closing the deal (Final day value of $10B). A lot of the people I worked with were considering going to work with Omid Kordestani, who had worked under Todd Rulon Miller/Mike Homer back at Netscape - they were looking for new bodies at this young company; there was an opportunity for me to dive in. I heard a pitch for this company, and I knew more than enough to explain to everyone that not only was the target market fully mature, but that I would be going to a company where the market was just _starting_ (Oblix - LDAP mgmt) and that there really was very little left in terms of technology development in the field of...Search.

So yes, I know that feeling very well. Very well indeed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Supposedly, someone on my mother's side of the family invented those gas station bells - the one with the hose attached that makes the bell go 'ding' when you drive over it. And didn't patent it/sold the idea on for 100$ or something else that looks pretty bad in hindsight.</comment>


Tech recruiting is broken and you're the problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nealrs/tech-recruiting-is-broken-and-youre-the-problem-217fd00779f3#.43soy7kun <comment><USER2> >How do I know that? Because, at Devpost, we surveyed over 1,700 student developers at over 80 college hackathons about recruiting. And their answers showed me that both companies and job hunters are bad at talking about themselves.

Sounds like students and recruiting firms are the problem then.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, I think it's pretty broadly applicable. I see bad applications from mid career folks and I see bad job descriptions written by internal recruiters & managers.

Those answers may come from students, but I think they represent an attitude at large.</comment></comment>


Microsoft's Edge browser arrives on iOS and Android in beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/5/16428658/microsoft-edge-ios-android-preview <comment><USER2> how about server sent events support....</comment>


New comet might blaze brighter than the full Moon - <AUTHOR> http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1209/25comet/

<comment><USER2> I'm getting a little disappointed with astronomical events. The let downs have greatly outnumbered those that have delivered.

DISAPPOINTMENTS:

Comet Kohoutek

Halley's Comet

Every meteor shower I've watched: at least an order of magnitude less than they said I might see.

SUCCESSES:

Comet West: this one delivered. It wasn't a big comet, but it was bright and beautiful in the dawn.

1975 nova in Cygnus: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V1500_Cygni>

FALSE ALARM:

I saw a very bright star-like object, fairly low in the sky. It was around magnitude -4 or -5, much brighter than any normal star. This was in the east, and it was around 10pm, so it could not be Venus. I watched for several minutes and could detect no movement. I grabbed some binoculars for a closer look. It still appeared as a point source, and still showed no movement.

I watched for a bit more and it finally started showing movement, ruling out my guess that I was seeing a supernova.

Turns out it was a B-52, very far away, coming straight at me with its landing light on. Those lights are quite powerful, and you can see them when the plane is a couple hundred miles away or more. We lived about 5 miles from the runways at Castle Air Force Base, and from where the plane was the angular distance between me and the runway from the plane's point of view would have been maybe half a degree, so it's not surprising that there would be an occasional B-52 coming right at me.

<comment><USER3> Hale-Bopp in 1997 was very nice, as I recall.

<comment><USER4> Naked-eye, even.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This would be very cool if it happened. I still remember spending all of my childhood after learning to read waiting for Comet Halley to return, and then having difficulty seeing it even in the desert of Arizona. Now I refer to that comet as "Halley's Smudge." Comet Hale-Bopp was all right, and well visible from Boston Common on a fine spring evening in 1997 when I was there on a business trip. Simply put, predicting the visibility of a comet to the naked eye is more wild guess than science, but when a comet is visible, it is a delight to the eye.

AFTER EDIT, EXPLANATION OF ASTRONOMICAL MAGNITUDE SCALE:

[http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/education/senior/astrophysics/...](http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/education/senior/astrophysics/photometry_magnitude.html)

<http://www.icq.eps.harvard.edu/MagScale.html>

[http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/stars/magnitudes.htm...](http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/stars/magnitudes.html)

[http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/basics/Stellar_Magnitud...](http://www.skyandtelescope.com/howto/basics/Stellar_Magnitude_System.html)

Oddly, the historically developed magnitude scale (which goes back to the ancient Greek astronomers) has the brightest objects ranked with magnitudes that are negative numbers, and dimmer objects ranked with increasing numbers that eventually become positive numbers. Of course the estimate of eventual brightness of the newly discovered comet is just that, an estimate, and may disappoint.

<comment><USER6> FYI the Greeks didn't have negative numbers. Philosophers were still arguing whether zero could truly be a number (there wasn't really a need for zero as a placeholder regardless, Greek numerals don't have a positional aspect).

Source: [http://www-history.mcs.st- and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_numbers...](http://www-history.mcs.st- and.ac.uk/HistTopics/Greek_numbers.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I was five or so, my dad got excited one day and said there would be a comic in the sky and we would go see it that night. I thought that was pretty cool, and I thought about how they were going to set it up.

I'd seen searchlights many times used for advertising where you could see the beam hit the bottom of an overcast, and I figured they had a way to use one of those to actually project a comic up onto the cloud cover.

After dark, we drove out of town up to a hilltop. I was puzzled: it was a perfectly clear night, so what were they going to project the comic onto?

Then he pointed and said, "There it is!"

But it was no comic, it was just a little star with a fuzzy tail.

</comment><comment><USER8> Quick question for someone who knows more about this stuff. Is brightness adjusted for size?

In other words: If the comet is 20% the size of the moon and the same brightness, is it throwing off 20% as much light due to the lower surface area?

<comment><USER9> Brightness published for this comet in the article is in "magnitude" and it's a logarithmic value of total brightness as used in astronomy. Not brightness per unit area.

<comment><USER8> So if the comet is much smaller than the moon, is it reasonable to assume that it wouldn't reflect enough light to light the earth's surface like a full moon?

<comment><USER10> Why did you just ask the same question again? I guess you couldn't tell what z92 meant?

Anyway the answer to your question is no. The article is talking about total light, in Watts. Area is not a factor.

<comment><USER11> Watts is not a useful measure of visibility for humans, I would hope they're using lumens. Unless it's safe to assume that it reflects very similar amounts of visible light to the moon, but I don't know if that's the case.

<comment><USER12> Isn't light a synonym for visible light...?

<comment><USER11> In most contexts. But it's used frequently in "infrared light" too. Watts include radiation across the entire EM spectrum, from radio up to gamma rays, while lumens are normalized to human perception.

You basically take the number of watts at each wavelength and multiply it by a factor that represents the eye's sensitivity at that wavelength. So 1 watt of IR is zero lumens, and 1 watt of blue light is fewer than 1 watt of yellow.

Take a look at the spectral distribution of daylight [1]. You'll notice the area under the curve in IR is pretty similar to the amount of visible light.

If the IR reflectivity of a comet were high and the visible were low (relative to the moon), knowing that they were reflecting about the same wattage wouldn't tell you much about relative brightness.

[1] [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Solar_Sp...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Solar_Spectrum.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anybody remember Kohoutek? Exactly. If I were a comet, my strategy would be to underpromise and overdeliver. That's the best way to rally a comet's soothsayer base.

<comment><USER14> If you talk about this approach, the first commet that comes to mind is Hamner-Brown. (Yeah, it's fictional. Still, it's the archetype of that strategy :)

<comment><USER15> Ha! I remember that book. I memorized several end-of-the-world survival strategies from it. Like "you can drive a jeep on railroad tracks" and "when packing for the apocalypse, don't forget liquor."

<comment><USER14> Yeah. I keep telling myself I'm simply disaster-ready when I look at my liquor cabinet, too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Then again, it might not. In any case, I'm polishing up my Galilieoscope and hoping for the best. ("The best" meaning that I don't actually need my Galileoscope, because I find it particularly difficult to aim and focus.)

<comment><USER17> I also have a Galileoscope. I find it really awesome if you use a tripod, but otherwise totally miserable. And even with the tripod...yeah, focusing is tough. But possible, and very very rewarding for a $15 scope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I predict that when the world doesn't end in December 2012 the doomsdayers will latching on to this thinking the Mayans were off by a year and that this comet will cause the end of the world.

<comment><USER19> I agree... this is going to have huge "star of Bethlehem", "Second coming", and "we were off by a year on Mayan calendar" connotations. The timing is just too perfect.

So... who's going to start a company to take advantage of this?

<comment><USER20> Late to market. The myriad of religious institutions have it cornered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Excellent! Hale-Bopp was so cool to see. I was hoping for a another great comet to show my son.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure if this is correct. The moon has an average apparent magnitude of -12.74 (which is a lot, you've seen it), and as Wiki says:

'At the time of its discovery, the comet's apparent magnitude was about 18.8'. That's PLUS 18.8, but allright, at the time of its discovery.

...

'The comet may become extremely bright if it remains intact, probably reaching a negative magnitude.'

If the comet reaches a magnitude of -1, the moon is more than ten billion times brighter! I don't believe the uncertainty is within a factor 10^10, so this is probably just bad journalism.

<comment><USER21> I think the article is saying that the predicted magnitude of the comet is -16.

<comment><USER22> Yes the article says so, but I really don't believe that it's correct. The comet will at its closest be around 60,000,000 km away from the earth, that is more than 150 times further away than the moon, and almost halfway to the sun.

What could possibly make the comet, which is very, very small compared to the moon, be that bright? I think the journalist have misunderstood the calculation or maybe read ~16 (approximately, which has been the current magnitude) as -16.

From nasa.gov: "In the best case, the comet is big, bright, and skirts the sun next November. It would be extremely bright -- negative magnitudes maybe -- and naked-eye visible for observers in the Northern Hemisphere for at least a couple of months."

If NASA says it _might_ reach negative magnitudes, I'm pretty sure the -16 is wrong.

<comment><USER23>
      What could possibly make the comet, which is very, very small compared to the moon, be that bright?

The tail, which is very, very big compared to the moon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Come on Universe, show us something unusually spectacular. A once in a lifetime, awe inspiring event. Something wondrous to let people for a moment see just how amazing everything around them is.

Honestly, I'm really hoping this comet hits closer to the fantastic side of the predictions. Also hoping to be able to see it from the eastern US. It says Northern Hemisphere observers are favored, so there's even more hope.

<comment><USER25> Personally, I'm gunning for Betelgeuse. That would be awesome.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Approaching_supernov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse#Approaching_supernova)

<comment><USER26> My personal favorite is Eta Carinae which could be 20 times the size of Betelgeuse and may be big enough to be a hypernova. It may explode in our lifetimes. Pretty pictures at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The dragons really are coming back to Westeros.

<comment><USER28> The comet only means one thing, boy ;-)

<comment><USER29> I just watched this episode today. Came here to find this comment, was not disappointed.

Of course, this means that HN is becoming more like Reddit. :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just don't forget that -16 mag will happen VERY close to the sun. Comet won't be visible from Earth at that time even at that magnitude, while it will be a cool sight for SOHO cameras, possibly blinding the sensor.</comment>


London Calling: Two-Factor Authentication Phishing from Iran - <AUTHOR> https://citizenlab.org/2015/08/iran_two_factor_phishing/

<comment><USER2> Google already has a solution for this, why are they ignoring it?

Google allready supports 2FA with the new U2F protocol. With this protocol the app id (uri) is part of the process and its provided by the browser. Thus phishing attacks will fail.

Sadly Firefox and other broswers do not yet support this, only Chrome. I really hope this replaces the old 2FA TOTP style and specially SMS.

For people who want to use both, there is a nice solution. You can use YubiKey as your U2F token and for websites that don't support this you can use the YubiKey as your 2FA with the help of a android app called 'Yubico Authenticater' and NFC. I prefer it to Google Authenticator because I can move between android devices (just came in useful when my phone broke).

Google does not yet support NFC U2F on their mobile browsers as far as I know. Thats very sad, I really want to be able to disable HOTP solution.

See the protocol here: [https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fidou2fin10minutescis2015-15...](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/fidou2fin10minutescis2015-150622164512-lva1-app6891/95/fido-u2-f-in-10-minutes- cis-2015-17-638.jpg?cb=1434991550)

</comment><comment><USER3> The article says, in "One Quick Check to Spot the Fakes!", to look for https instead of http. But this is no good: an attacker could use a domain-validated SSL certificate for the fake domains used.

<comment><USER4> This. The only way to check is to verify the certificate, which on Chrome means clicking the padlock, switching to the Connection tab, and then viewing certificate information. Not exactly straight forward.

<comment><USER5> If you already trust your CA authorities and you already know what domain to expect, then that's not necessary, you only need to check for HTTPS and the domain name.

<comment><USER3> Checking the domain name isn't sufficient because some letters look similar to each other and not all users are capable of doing precise string comparison matching in the same way that programmers do. The article has an example - qoogle.com instead of google.com. I bet that a significant number of users would miss this when asked to check.

<comment><USER6> How does it differ from checking the domain name in the certificate? I don't get it.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't differ from checking the domain name in the certificate. It does differ from checking the entity in the EV certificate, which is generally the legal name of the company.

In theory, a phisher could register a company with a similar name to the target website's legal name, obtain a valid EV certificate for that, and then phish using a similar looking domain with a similar looking EV certificate legal name. In practice, if that were to begin happening, I'd like to think that the authorities in charge of legal entity registration (eg. Companies House in the UK) would start requiring identity checks for the legal entity registrations, and then phishers would not have an easy path to exploit this route.

<comment><USER6> The discussion started with only mentioning DV certificates.

> I'd like to think that the authorities in charge of legal entity > registration (eg. Companies House in the UK) would start requiring identity > checks for the legal entity registrations

Wait, they don't require that now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only real protection from this is to verify that the SSL icon is displayed in the address bar, and that the domain is the domain you expected. It's a shame more websites don't educate users to do this.

This gives me an idea for a Javascript widget that guides users to verify the address bar, with an appropriate demonstration screenshot based on the expected domain, and the user's browser.

<comment><USER3> Worse, websites will redirect you to a different domain as part of their normal process.

For example, in the UK, the Lloyds Bank main website is lloydsbank.com, but click (on their insecure page) for online banking logon and you're taken to [https://online.lloydsbank.co.uk](https://online.lloydsbank.co.uk).

The main website for another UK bank, NatWest, is on natwest.com (it redirects to [http://personal.natwest.com](http://personal.natwest.com)), but click for online banking and you're taken to a page on [https://www.nwolb.com](https://www.nwolb.com)

Telling users to check the domain is useless, since legitimate sites condition users to ignore it.

EV certificates do fix this to some extent, but users are not conditioned to check these, and it domain-validated certificates just complicate matters for them.

I would prefer to see legislation that mandates security standards for entities that handle personal data. In the UK, secondary legislation against an amended Data Protection Act that mandates EV certificates would work well for this, IMHO. This won't help the Internet at large, but would at least help condition UK users to know what to check.

<comment><USER7> I'd love to see EV certificates everywhere, and cheap enough that made them practical for small business owners who collect minimal personal information. Should you really need an EV certificate to have a newsletter sign up form? Probably not, but I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact that I'd pay over 200 pounds a year [0] for the privilege.

But absolutely, anyone storing _serious_ personal information (credit cards, banking information, social security numbers) should be required by law to have an EV cert.

[0] [https://www.geotrust.com/uk/ssl/](https://www.geotrust.com/uk/ssl/)

<comment><USER3> My issue with that is the users no longer know what to check - having two types of certificates is confusing.

I'd be happy if you used domain-validated SSL but browsers didn't make any claims about the security of connections without the EV cert though. For me this means no padlock icon whatsoever. After all - from the perspective of an ordinary user who cannot verify your domain, it _is_ insecure.

Edit: how about "No claims about security to be presented to the user without EV certificates"?

<comment><USER8> The connection to a website with a DV certificate is certainly secure, it just isn't _authenticated_. TLS is designed to provide both, and EV follows through on that second promise.

<comment><USER3> This is a question of semantics - one that everyday users don't care about. To them, unauthenticated _is_ insecure.

<comment><USER8> I guess it was impossible to have a secure session before the introduction of EV in 2007 then. I guess all these https sites (this one included) have been fooling me all along, with their fake secure connections.

<comment><USER9> Well yeah, you could register a domain validated cert for hotmaillogin.com, or for _._.company.com (and then register hotmail.com.company.com) at the time just fine, and plenty of people did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Is their some kind of addon that warns people about url that look the simular? That might be easy and useful.

Edit: With certificate pinning you could put out a msg to the User to verfiy if he understands that this is the first time he visits the site.

The problem is when to put out such a warning, i dont want to do that every time I go on a new site.</comment>


I applied for an Apple Card. What they offered was a sexist insult - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90429224/i-applied-for-an-apple-card-what-they-offered-was-a-sexist-insult <comment><USER2> Did DHH have 20 times her wealth prior to their marriage?

It seems likely given that he is a guy who collects Zondas.

GS have stated that they don't know your marital status or gender when they make the decision.

There may well be sexism somewhere in how this works, but she doesn't seem to be making a good argument for where.

<comment><USER3> They have been married "a long time", tweets Hansson. How long do you think is long enough?

She's a millionaire too. And with a higher credit score.

How do you know that she doesn't also collect expensive items? Because it sounds like you are fishing for a reason.

Her credit limit got raised, so apparently GS now thinks the algorithm messed up.

You write: "GS have stated that they don't know your marital status or gender when they make the decision".

That's great - so, can they explain how they came to their assessment?

And can these models be published or otherwise made available for review in case there are mistake or systemic errors? Why can't customer service do anything better than say "wait 6 months and see what happens?"

What information does GS use, and does that information include an implicit gender bias? For example, even if gender isn't known, it can often be inferred from someone's first name.

Finally, Hansson also tweeted:

> It gets even worse. Even when she pays off her ridiculously low limit in > full, the card won't approve any spending until the next billing period.

How does that make any sense for a millionaire with a high credit score?

What would you consider a good enough argument that you wouldn't have written your comment? Because it seems impossible for either Hansson to present an argument that can satisfy you, at least, not without lawsuit and publication of materials found through discovery.

<comment><USER2> Their marriage is irrelevant because as GS have stated, they don't have that information so they don't take it into account.

They claim they don't know the person's gender.

If they are inferring that from a first name or from other information they have then their statement is a lie.

By all means claim that GS are lying.

I'm curious to see what the result of the investigation is.

As for paying the card off in full and still not being able to spend more, indeed that doesn't make sense for a millionaire with a high credit score. Clearly the system is not doing a good job of assessing what credit to offer her.

However the fact that she is being treated differently from her husband, who is not just a millionaire - but someone who is estimated to have >$100m, is not evidence of sexism.

Sexism would be a systematic bias.

She hasn't provided any evidence whatsoever of that, although she has demonstrated that the system is bad at recognizing creditworthiness.

So yes - the bar for demonstrating sexism is indeed much higher, and yes, materials about how the algorithm works so implicit biases can be evaluated would necessarily be part of that.

I hope the New York Financial services investigation does get access to these materials.

My guess is that if there _is_ a sexist bias it will take some tracking down, and that it will be a result of industry wide practices.

I think this _should_ be reviewed across the board.

But I stand by my original comment that she hasn't shown that there is sexism at work in her own case.

<comment><USER3> If it's irrelevant than your comment "prior to their marriage" is also irrelevant, yes? Because that's what I was responding to.

They don't claim to not know the person's gender. They write "Our credit decisions are based on a customer's creditworthiness and not on factors like gender, race, age, sexual orientation or any other bias prohibited by law,"

That is, they might know the person's gender, but not include that in the assessment.

Why must their statement be a lie if there is a gender bias? There are plenty of reports of risk models which have an illegally discriminatory bias even when not designed that way. For one example [https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk- assessm...](https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments- in-criminal-sentencing) .

In that case, 'Brennan said it is difficult to construct a score that doesn't include items that can be correlated with race — such as poverty, joblessness and social marginalization. "If those are omitted from your risk assessment, accuracy goes down," he said.'

As I pointed out, there are correlations between names and gender. Almost certainly there are other correlations. A model might have trained on those factors to produce a result with an illegal gender bias, even if that wasn't deliberate.

When you write "the bar for demonstrating sexism is indeed much higher", do you mean the bar for legal action, or the bar by which someone can make a public accusation?

If I am black, and walk into a restaurant and refused service, then my white spouse walks in 5 minutes later and gets service, do you expect that I must remain quiet about it until I've demonstrated in a court of law that actual illegal discriminatory practice occurred?

And if I go public before that's done, will you say that I haven't given you enough evidence?

If yes, then in both cases, I think you are using the wrong threshold for when it's relevant and useful to go public, because doing so is part of one way to drive the resolution process.

Or, if I have a child who gets a rare illness due to some heavy metal poisoning, and a local company is dumping those heavy metals into the water supply, do I need to wait until there's conclusive evidence, as for a court of law, before I go public about it?

In all three cases, sure, I can be wrong. (Courts can be wrong too.) But ... so what?

<comment><USER2> Yes - it doesn't matter whether it was prior to their marriage or not.

It seems entirely possible that DHH has 20x her net worth.

Perhaps that's involved in their decision making, no?

See: [https://twitter.com/gsbanksupport/status/1194022629419704320...](https://twitter.com/gsbanksupport/status/1194022629419704320?s=20)

"In fact we do not know your gender or marital status during the Apple Card application process".

So your comments about them knowing her gender are either false, or they are lying.

The analogy of your examples is invalidated by GS's statement that they didn't know her gender or marital status.

And yes - I agree that there may be some implicit bias in a scoring algorithm somewhere along the line, or some other systemic influence. As I have said, I'd like to see the investigation look into this possibility.

But "I got lower credit than my spouse", simply is not evidence of sexism, especially if the spouse is 20x richer.

<comment><USER3> The own their wealth jointly. There is no 20x different in net worth. In a community property state, any wealth made during their marriage is shared. For example, in divorce it could be split equally between the two.

Again, DHH is _not_ 20x richer than his wife. They are equally rich under the law. (Excepting any money that DHH made before the marriage, which, given that it was a long time ago, is likely a small part of that wealth.)

This all came up recently during the divorce between Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. Amazon started after their marriage, and since Washington is a community property state she was entitled to 1/2 of their shares in the divorce. It wasn't that Jeff was 10,000x richer than MacKenzie was.

Please note the subtle distinction between what you wrote: "They claim they don't know the person's gender." and the additional qualifier GS used "during the Apple Card application process".

They very likely know that she is a woman, and married. Their statement is that those aren't considered _during the application process_.

Thus, it's possible that I am not wrong, _and_ that they are not lying.

They don't need to know one's gender or marital status to violate anti- discrimination laws, so I don't see the point of discussing that detail further.

<comment><USER2> All this talk about community property is well known but not relevant.

It is _during the application process that the credit amount is decided on and offered_ , and that is what the complaint about.

So how is it relevant to this discussion if they find out later?

<comment><USER3> If you believe that it's relevant to claim 'It seems entirely possible that DHH has 20x her net worth' then it's relevant to point out that they have equal net worth, making your claim likely incorrect.

<comment><USER2> It's not at all likely that their net worth is equal unless you assume they both had equal net worth before they were married, which itself is highly unlikely.

More importantly, the net worth you are referring to is only the value that would be established in the event of a divorce, and indeed could only be established with the knowledge that they were married.

Since GS doesn't know about the marriage when they make the credit offer, we know the figure you are using has no relevance whatsoever to the calculation they _do_ use.

Do you actually now acknowledge that they don't know the marital status or gender of applicants when they offer the credit, or are you still denying that?

If you do, why do you keep bringing this up?

<comment><USER3> I have already addressed all of these points earlier.

Eg, you write "which itself is highly unlikely" while I wrote "Excepting any money that DHH made before the marriage, which, given that it was a long time ago, is likely a small part of that wealth."

You are of course free to have different opinions than I do, but I find it tedious as it appears you are not reading what I have written.

I keep bringing this up because you are making what appear to be very weak statements, then using those to suggest a stronger conclusion than it warranted.

Consider your earlier phrase "It seems entirely possible that DHH has 20x her net worth." This has a double layer of uncertainty - 'it seems' means it's your opinion and 'entirely possible' means that you are accepting anything except which is clearly impossible.

These are weak statements. In this case, what does "net worth" mean, how does GS determine their individual net worths, and how does it affect the credit process? As DHH wrote, "We have no separate bank or credit card accounts or any separate assets".

Can you tell why you believe DHH might have 20x her net worth? Other than as hypothetical constructed to defend the actions of a multinational company?

<comment><USER2> DHH might have 20x her net worth because athough it was a long time ago, he had already been an owner at 37 signals for a few years before he got married.

Appreciation of assets owned before a marriage does not automatically contribute community property - only income and newly acquired assets do.

DHH's answer may further give insight into why she was offered a low amount.

If he is named as the primary account holder then it may not show up on her credit reports even if it's a joint account.

But so what? These facts aren't relevant. Even if I'm wrong about them it doesn't matter.

I agree they are weak and that this is why you are bringing them up.

You are bringing these weak statements up to avoid responding to the real problem with your position:

They don't know her gender or that she's married to him when they make the assessment.

Do you still claim that they do?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>