Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/uber-sexual-harassment-investigation.html <comment><USER2> As I commented last night[1], the New York Times has cast Fowler's experience as a he-said-she-said story. Unfortunately I was not pessimistic enough:

1\. The New York Times spiked the most damning part of Fowler's story: that HR was actively involved in supporting the behavior.

2\. It down plays Fowler's specific experience as typical for the industry and marginalizes it by bringing Pao's story into Fowler's narrative. Pao's experience was radically different, if for no other reason than Fowler is a rank and file employee of the most typical kind, an engineer. Pao is an executive. It also brought all the irrlevant ambiguities surrounding Pao's executive actions at Reddit into the mix.

3\. It repeats nearly all of Uber's public response verbatim rather than linking to it as it does with Fowler's article.

Fowler's story gets one paragraph (or two if the one sentence paragraph about going to work for Stripe counts). The same amount is devoted to Pao. Uber's PR gets the bulk of the article with no critical analysis.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159)

<comment><USER3> NYTimes is a news organization with a mandate to report on verifiable fact, not rumor or opinion. You're complaining that it's reported as a he-said-she- said type of story… but for now, that's exactly what it is. The claims are quite plausible and convincing (and likely true), but at this point they still are merely unsubstantiated claims. If I were to imagine the right way to report such a story at this point, it would go like this (1) summarize the claims made, (2) include the response from the accused, and (3) emphasize that this is a developing story. That's pretty much what the NYT did. However, until a court or investigation corroborates the report, they shouldn't be reported as irrefutable fact.

That said I agree that the comparison to the Ellen Pao case has no place in this report. Pao's case was quite different and much less convincing. In my distanced armchair opinion, she deserved to lose that case.

<comment><USER4> I really wish papers could run non-stories along with the usual stories:

"Uber Sexual Harassment Claims Story - In Progress

This story is in progress, and the following are the verified facts:

<insert facts here>

The following are claims that no media has reliable, verifiable source on yet. If they are reporting on them as fact, you might want to reconsider what media you trust:

<insert claims here>

We will publish our full story when we the picture is clearer."

As the newspaper of record, it's also helpful to differentiate the reliable and non-reliable media for us.

<comment><USER5> Sometimes merely repeating an unsubstantiated fact can expose a news org to liability. Take, for instance, a slander or libel case.

<comment><USER6> That's not true. If you attribute what you say "X said", then X is guilty of slander/libel.

(YMMV in England)

<comment><USER5> In my journalism law classes in the US, precedent was dictated on the terms I described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Ms. Fowler's account is another sign of Silicon Valley's struggle with women's issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost.

This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts. Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case _where a jury decided she was wrong_.

This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political commentary.

<comment><USER8> > (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at)

Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.

<comment><USER9> What a hateful and oddly specific comment.

"I've read _your_ comments"

Yeah, ok buddy

<comment><USER10> He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme- right-wing viewpoint that is cloaked in just enough civility to make the decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging with him. (Many don't, because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to death.) I wouldn't expect a woman--or anyone--to tell me jack and/or shit if I was comfortable expressing worldviews that treat them the way 'hueving does. And it's not "hateful" to call out somebody whose hat is exactly that; 'DanBC (who is a fantastic poster around here) is not wrong to use the history of a poster to challenge his I-don't-see-it-so-it-doesn't-exist dismissals. As for "oddly specific," 'DanBC has been here longer than I have; you start recognizing names when the pattern of posts that make your gorge rise goes on as long as these have.

But then, I spent a minute browsing your latest work, too, so I am not particularly surprised that in your post you choose to, as with most modern conservatives, attempt to call citing a reactionary's _record_ "hate" when it is that reactionary's _behavior_ that exemplifies it.

<comment><USER11> I really don't see how personal attacks, or attaching pejorative labels to others (conservative, reactionary etc.) enhances your argument. It just makes it seem like you don't have a convincing counter-argument and need to resort to appeals to emotion / preaching to those who already agree with you. If you actually want to convince people who don't share your views, perhaps consider a different tactic.

And there's just something unsettling about going through someone's comment history to better 'target' your irrelevant personal attacks. I think it reveals more about you than it does about the person you're attacking.

<comment><USER10> If "conservative" is a pejorative--well, that's their own doing. I called myself a conservative for a very long time until it became obvious that American conservatism required of its adherents a level of misanthropy that I could not ever support. Hell, I worked for Republican congressional campaigns, twice!

But you seem to misapprehend me, and maybe that's my fault. I don't want to convince any extremist. My intention is to deny them the legitimacy of the chin-stroking, pince-nez-adjusting "thoughtfulness and reason" that they so earnestly adopt. Because that posture is very, very good at convincing the low-information reader that they are credible. They are not. The extreme right wing understands that this isn't about facts (but are happy to retreat to the sinecure of "what about _your_ facts?!" when challenged), but about narratives. I will (and 'DanBC did) challenge 'hueving's narrative because his narrative doesn't make sense: of course he doesn't _see_ it, those who experience it would have to be themselves reality-averse not to realize it would just be an invitation for a battery of well-actuallys and backhanded snipes. It's who he chooses to show himself as. He has no credibility when he leans on what he sees, and shouldn't.

As far as "going through someone's comment history": I'm a known quantity around here and I use my real name. Others may choose to use pseudonyms and that's fine, but their histories _here_ are important for context. 'hueving I recognize by sight. The poster to whom I replied is not one I recognize, but he has comments blurfing about "liberals" literally on the first pace of his comment history. I'm not going to go digging, but I like knowing whether I'm dealing with somebody who's actually acting in good faith. He wasn't, and you can bet I'll call him on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how much impact this will have. If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed, or if they will make a lot of noise about investigation and saying how terrible they feel and not have anything change.

Someone here once asked me how I differentiated between a corporation run by people and a corporation structured as an institution. In the latter there are processes put in place that bind the people in the corporation to specific rules and constraints, and the consequences of not following the rules is well defined and not up to interpretation.

An example of that would be a sexual harassment protocol that would be activated by making a claim to the protocol director. That position would typically report to the general counsel or the CEO. That director would have 30 days from the time of the report to capture statements from all of the named parties, copies of all company email from all named parties, and any chat session transcripts. The protocol director would then have another 30 days to seek out any corroborating information from people likely to be affected and then would provide the CEO (or General Counsel) with a report on whether or not harassment was deemed to occur. If it had, they would be required to remove from management responsibility the perpetrator on a first offense, and to separate from the company on a second offense. There would be no consideration for their "performance" against their goals.

Its all very mechanical, there isn't a lot of leeway for misinterpretation and the punishment is fixed without recourse. Of course there are similar punishments doled out to protocol enforcers should they attempt to mitigate the protocol.

Institutions are interlocking processes and regulations which insure the proper functioning and survival of the institution in the face of imperfect people being in charge of executing the institution's mission.

Corporations of people run on loyalty, friendship, and leverage. In such a corporation, justice is only found the exercise of friendship or leverage. And greater friendship or greater leverage can steer the result regardless of its merits.

<comment><USER13> It will have impact. It won't move the needle 100% across the industry, but I can see a 5% movement. Well done Susan if she doesn't sue.

<comment><USER14> Why "if she doesn't sue"? Assuming she is giving an honest accounting, and has the evidence to back it, why shouldn't she be compensated for shedding the light on the shitty practices of the company that shielded her, and a number of other folks that need to be held accountable for their abuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm dismayed that articles about sexual harassment in tech often bring up the Ellen Pao case. Her claims were _rejected_ because the jury found that her claims weren't believable, and if you look at the evidence that was presented in the case, I don't think this is an unreasonable conclusion.

If the accusations in this case are true (and, according to the original blog post, there should be plenty of paper trail to back them up), then bringing up the Ellen Pao case does a disservice to Susan Fowler. It would be like bringing up the UVA gang rape case during a discussion of a real case of sexual assault.

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is _not_ your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.

<comment><USER5> Sure they're not your friend, but Jesus Christ, the amount of legal trouble this particular HR establishment exposed themselves to through their actions is breathtaking. THAT'S their job: to prevent the company from getting sued!!

In this case I'm completely bewildered as to why HR handled this particular situation so clumsily.

<comment><USER17> Sure..the thing I don't understand is why she didn't go to a lawyer? That would have been the next logical step for me. At least 1 person should get to prison if there is enough evidence collected by multiple women.

<comment><USER18> I used to have this attitude until I heard harassment stories from two close personal friends in the last year. It's really hard to come forward, especially if you're early in your career and struggled to get any job in the first place.

Apart from potentially being difficult emotionally there are tons of negative outcomes that could come from taking the legal route

Here's a list of potential negative outcomes of lawyering up:

* getting terminated (remember, at-will employment) * getting blacklisted by other teams at your current employer * getting blacklisted by potential _future_ employers. Court cases are often public and in some industries companies are forced to make ongoing litigation public * having your weird texts, emails, personal life and sexual history being dragged out in a public court case * losing and still having to pay all those lawyer fees * winning but not getting any meaningful compensation * getting harassed on twitter/wherever by the alt-right/gamergate crowd.

Yes, people should be getting in trouble but it's a prisoners dilemma where each individual victim is not incentiviced to do anything.

<comment><USER19> > Here's a list of potential negative outcomes of lawyering up

Aren't most of these potential negative outcomes of _suing_ , not lawyering up?

Having a conversation with a lawyer who specializes in employment law to get a temperature-check on your specific situation (does it qualify as harassment, what are your options, what are likely outcomes of exercising these options given precedent case law, etc) will not result in "having your weird texts, emails, personal life and sexual history being dragged out in a public court case".

Even if you _do_ sue, most lawsuits (especially discrimination ones) are settled out of court, without lascivious details being made public.

<comment><USER18> > Aren't most of these potential negative outcomes of suing, not lawyering up?

You're _kind-of_ right, but suing only has teeth if you're prepared to go to court and not bluffing. Engaging a lawyer without suing is just going to cost you money. All of the things I said still suck if you're going through depositions, even if everything isn't being made public. Imagine having to sit in a room full of lawyers and explain why you replied 'haha' to an inappropriate text instead of "I'm forwarding this to HR right now."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.

<comment><USER21> I think one senior person isn't enough in a case like this. What is described here is an entire malfunctioning department, which in my opinion, couldn't be attributed to anywhere below the C-level. Sure perhaps there is somebody who can be fingered "VP of HR" or whatever, but anybody who has so little visibility into their department that this type of scenario could evolve is clearly not auditing what's happening levels beneath them.

<comment><USER22> > _I think one senior person isn 't enough in a case like this. _

How can you make a statement like this without knowing anything about the details of the case? We have an allegation; a big one, but that's it. How many heads would you like to see in advance?

<comment><USER21> It's not so much a number of heads, but what I reject is the common notion that somebody can be so many levels above a problem that they are absolved of responsibility.

Let me ask you this: How many people in the HR department would you need to see leave before you'd feel comfortable having your sister work at Uber? What would you need to see to have trust?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find it disconcerning that they did regular performance reviews, and she aparrently scored very highly on them. But later those ratings were discounted by some "hidden" factor.

Why would I waste time on performance reviews when I'm not openly giving feedback to the employee? How can an organization efficiently distribute team members based on metrics derived from performance reviews when there is such an impactful but undocumented component of the review?

<comment><USER24> I think that the "undocumented component" is undocumented for the very same reason that companies have an undocumented component with technical interviews - they're trying not to get themselves into a potential legal situation.

<comment><USER25> That's not what I got out of it at all. My take on it was that the "undocumented component" was made up after the fact, as a retroactively fabricated excuse to remove her eligibility to transfer teams. The same situation happens all the time in a gender-neutral way in the form of raises and promotions that are promised but then fail to materialize, with some new excuse being created out of thin air.

Also, my company very explicitly does not have an undocumented component to technical interviews, as that could open up all sorts of legal liability. The interviewers write up their feedback and the feedback is then evaluated by a neutral hiring committee who never met the interviewee in question. Keeping the paper trail of 100% of the information that went into the hiring decision is the best defense against possible discrimination claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> These events could not have happened without the CEO himself setting an example and establishing an unwritten policy in the company about how to deal with such issues. It is not a matter of one person or team or manager or event. The series of events establish a pattern. The investigation will just be an eye-wash, with a gentle firing of a low level HR executive and some new internal policies that will be disregarded immediately.

</comment><comment><USER27> >Ms. Fowler's account is another sign of Silicon Valley's struggle with women's issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment.

That's a hell of a claim since this is a "typical corporate America" type of problem.

<comment><USER28> Well there are some typical corporate American companies that have this problem. But I would argue that (almost?) all tech companies have this problem.

<comment><USER29> What?? Everywhere I worked a screenshot like what she's describing would get you fired. Over office chat even?? It's not even hearsay. Someone can bring up the exact chat history.

<comment><USER14> That's great! It sounds like you have worked at places that follow the rules.

Please don't use your personal observations to discount the growing collection of evidence that this sort of thing is happening at tech companies around the world, and not just in the bay area.

<comment><USER30> Think about what you are saying using your brain. It is equivalent to "please stop giving me your anecdotes, because they conflict with these other anecdotes that I like better".

If you're going to use personal experience as evidence for some phenomenon, you need to accept personal experience from every angle, not just the angle that agrees with your perception of the phenomenon.

<comment><USER14> Fortunately I don't need to think too much about what I am saying on this topic, because this has been an area that's been examined by lawyers, law makers, and researchers for at least 20 years. There is a growing mountain of evidence that can only be ignored by those who are uneducated or unaware of the topic (and no-one in tech other than recent graduates should be at this point). It's time for everyone in tech to stop ignoring the problem, and start publicly and privately calling out any and all bad actors on this even if it destroys the careers of a few "high performers" (even setting aside the fact that said high performers with bad behaviour often drag down the performance of the teams and organizations they are a part of, offsetting any of the gains). Since this is hacker news and not a blog post or paper, I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to find more evidence of that claim - why not start with this [http://lmgtfy.com/?q=impact+of+bias+on+team+performance](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=impact+of+bias+on+team+performance)

These are just a short list of samples of articles that are based on surveys, studies, and legal opinions (and that's all I could find in literally the time it took me to pour my espresso this morning).

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229336?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229336?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

[http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender- bias...](http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/)

[http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/men-and-women- biased-...](http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/men-and-women-biased-about- studies-stem-gender-bias-opposite-directions/)

[https://www.wired.com/2014/07/gender- gap/](https://www.wired.com/2014/07/gender-gap/)

[https://theestablishment.co/new-study-finds-60-of-women- in-t...](https://theestablishment.co/new-study-finds-60-of-women-in-tech- experience-sexual-harassment-ddfeaf42fba9#.20mtgbhhe)

[https://mic.com/articles/132285/most-women-in-tech-say- they-...](https://mic.com/articles/132285/most-women-in-tech-say-they-ve-been- sexually-harassed-many-others-are-likely-silent#.TuhbxPCqQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just find the whole leather jacket incident incredibly baffling.

It's just a few hundred bucks. Is Uber that short of cash? It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER25> It's only baffling until you realize that it really just is horrible, blatant sexism of the worst kind. That entire department had turned so corrosively sexist (going from 24 to 3% women) that it needed to finish the job and get the rest of the women out by making it plain that they weren't welcome. We're talking about the people in power here being so horribly sexist that they have to _force the women out_ in order to feel comfortable being themselves.

Any company that cares one inkling about diversity will go out of its way to make minorities feel comfortable. We're dealing with the opposite situation here: A department actively working to drive out diversity.

<comment><USER32> Thats not how I read it. They tried to push out the last few women, while scheming to keep them? Why hire them in the first place?

I take it at face value, Oblivious Employees/Managers thought that not paying extra for women's jackets _was equality_.

<comment><USER33> > Why hire them in the first place?

Because they were qualified applicants and the hiring manager wanted to not get sued for blatant hiring discrimination?

These folks clearly don't deserve to be taken at face value. Otherwise the "Everyone is getting jackets" could have been properly taken at value to mean that everyone, including women were getting them. So we're past believing them at face value now, great.

So why did they really make this an issue? Probably some combination of:

1\. Someone was playing politics and wanted a head pat for saving money (conversely, they did not want to reprimanded for going over-budget).

2\. Women are often perceived as less assertive, so they thought they would be less likely to raise a stink over a "minor issue" like a free jacket. (The __really pessimistic __side of me says someone thought "Women don't wear leather jackets anyhow, it's not stylish enough. Why spend money on something they won't use?")

I don't for one second believe they actually thought "equality" came into play at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> After reading the entire blog post, and also reading that the CEO is concerned, I want heads rolling. Specially those who were involved from HR, managers. I think it will centrate the people on doing their job, not doing anything aside from this.

What a bad image UBER is getting for toxic "high performers".

<comment><USER25> I'm worried that the head of HR will be fired as a scapegoat or something, when they were never empowered to truly deal with issues like this in the first place, and that such policy will continue. If the company culture is toxic to begin with, and "high performers" are retained at all cost, firing one head of HR makes no difference if, afterwards, HR is still not going to be empowered with truly addressing these issues.

<comment><USER34> The head of HR wasn't reported, that's what I believe it happen. That's why now it is on duty. I think this has happen in middleground, not the highest spheres. Well, the CTO is involved, and as manager, he had to work on that matter from day 1. The CTO will not be kicked, of course, but it tells you how much the company will do with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why does everything involved with UBER, sound like it's run by some type of frat house?

<comment><USER36> My theory, as a casual observer and not speaking from experience (aside from having been a 20-something white male), is going straight from college to founding a company with m/billions at stake has the tendency to breed and feed unhealthy perspectives. Not always, not inherently, and certainly not irreparably, but ostensibly more often than not for the SV unicorns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Crisis PR 101. Announce an investigation, "discipline" a few anonymous people or fire the most egregious offender, announce a new code of conduct, and then hope the furor blows over in a week or two.

But nothing will really change if this is part of the ingrained culture at Uber. Fish rots from the head, as someone noted in yesterday's thread.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change. From anecdotal evidence I feel like nothing really changes. It's mostly people in some bubble that get really upset and then a week later everyone forgets what exactly they were upset about.

<comment><USER39> The Uber CEO did withdraw from the U.S. President's economic council after widespread outcry from a vocal portion of customers and a high proportion of employees. This is not an example of a major change, but it did demonstrate that Uber is responsive to public opinion.

<comment><USER40> I think it's fair to say that Uber only takes corrective actions only when there is public outrage. Otherwise, breaking the laws and unethical behavior is all well and good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> As a meta, it seems to be an infallible rule of Hacker News that any discussion about the relationship between men and women turns into an angry painful mess in no time. Maybe we should look into this anger itself rather than draw all sorts of conclusions from cases of which we don't know half of what really happened.

<comment><USER42> It's similar to conversations between conservatives and liberals. Both groups have _implicit_ assumptions about how the world works. They have _implicit_ value judgements, in preferring one thing versus another.

Conversation _almost never_ describes these implicit assumptions. As a result, each side ends up thinking that the other side is stupid, obtuse, biased, etc.

Getting to the underlying biases is hard.

As evidence, see any number of newspaper headlines, including this one:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle- east/donald-t...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald- trump-us-military-attack-yemen-civilians-women-children-dead-a7553121.html)

Ignoring the Trump bit, the headline says "kills 30 civilians, including 10 women and children"

Now, try to prove that the male / female victims were treated equally. And, that there is no implicit bias in male / female relationships.

I'm not saying that such bias is good, bad, or ugly. I'm saying it exists. And it underlies a lot of conversations, without anyone realizing it.

Which goes a long way to explaining why things end up as you pointed out.

<comment><USER43> I think in a lot of cases it's more that:

1: We know the assumptions.

2: We know the differences are often intractable (I will never relent on full LGBTQ equality, for example)

3: We can't just split off and do our own thing because we need each other for civilization to function, so we have to deal with them.

Some of us can avoid dealing with it by moving to the city/suburbs/exurbs where there's more unity, but that just postpones dealing with the problems we ran from. Eventually, elections happen, and you realize putting 50-5000 miles between you and that person who finally motivated you to leave didn't actually resolve your conflicts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I have a hard time believing HR really behaved the way they are portrayed in that article. They really claimed that if she elected to stay in her current department she should expect to receive a negative review from the boss she rejected for a sexual relationship? This is just too much. And for someone as savvy and with as large an internet presence as the author, I can't imagine she would accept this resolution. The crowd is quick to crucify Uber here, but we have seen similar claims before that have turned out to be false or exaggerated greatly. It's also suspicious that the claimant tends to only last in jobs for a median of 6 months before moving on and has just released a book. This deserves a full investigation and we will have to wait and see what evidence surfaces.

<comment><USER45> Thank you. The swiftness with which the hammer has fallen on Uber, is disturbing. Yes, at face value, this looks bad for Uber. But, the claims here are serious enough that we really should be holding our judgement before an investigation, or some other evidence surfaces.

This does not mean I think her claims are false. In fact, I BELIEVE them to be true, but I withhold my judgment and public criticism until I can be sure.

<comment><USER46> Healthy Skepticism is well... healthy, but I think at this point there is enough evidence out there to confirm the story.

Case in point, a quick look at glassdoor reviews seems to confirm the story. (there's even one that says it's "Not Great for Women" \- Sep 2016 although it's not as devastating as this article but the info from that and other reviews seem to support what she's saying)

It's disturbing when it seems people are jumping react before all the facts are there, but it seems the story is verifiably true. If there is still doubt, I think the discussion is better served by bringing up specific items than a whole cloth rejection of the story.

<comment><USER44> The only thing that review says in reference to women is "Emotionally unintelligent male managers (all the way up to the CEO) make it hard for women to feel heard and valued." This has nothing to do with sexual harassment.

There is also talk of long hours, but it is not clear if the reviewer meant that is a negative specific to women or not.

<comment><USER46> I don't mean to imply that 1 review on glassdoor is the smoking gun. But a bunch of reviews talking about the same issues (not specific to sexual harassment), and other comments and testimonials not on glassdoor seem to point in the same general direction. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't mean it needs to be incontrovertible.

Let's not miss the forest for the trees here, this isn't about a single case of sexual harassment (at least to me it isn't). It's about how Uber is operating as a business and culture and from that what are its long term prospects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Please reach out to your state labour commissioner. Here are some numbers for California [1] and New York [2].

[1] [http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm](http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm)

[2] [https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language- access.shtm](https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-access.shtm)

</comment><comment><USER48> Headline should read 'Uber Ignored Female Employee's Claims of Sexual Harassment Until She Quit, Wrote About It And Got It Picked Up On High Profile Site'

</comment><comment><USER49> This is the third post on this topic that's made the front page:

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022)

<comment><USER50> Why wouldn't there be lots of stories about this on the front page? It is big news about a major player in the exact target market of this site. It is also actionable to the audience here: this story may affect the decisions of many current and potentially future Uber employees.

<comment><USER51> Relax, kuyan didn't provide any opinions with these links. It wasn't necessarily a complaint.

<comment><USER50> I didn't mean to be un-relaxed, but I see that I may have been re-stating the obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> More like "Uber Announces it Will Investigate Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex- Employee"

<comment><USER39> Yes, there hasn't been any verifiable action other than the press release. Then again, it's a weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Interesting that Arianna Huffington is taking a personal hand in this investigation, given that her former Chief of Staff and Managing Editor at HuffPost, Jimmy Soni, was dogged by similar allegations: [http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was- investigate...](http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-investigated- for-sexual-1626614104).

This is a mess. They need a fully independent investigator.

</comment><comment><USER54> Amazing how bad PR can get a company to start investigating things. They should probably also investigate the total incompetence of their disgusting HR department.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's very common that startups have such issues. You've got a bunch of younger inexperienced managers and an inexperienced HR department.

What I don't understand is, why don't investors compel such valuable startups to get experienced HR? Do they calculate that the lawsuits will cost less than outsourcing HR or otherwise getting adult supervision? Or are they just blind to it?

<comment><USER56> I think startup is a pretty generous term for the growth stage that Uber was in at the time

<comment><USER55> I agree in that I think startup is a vague term. I think what is important is that it's a young company funded by external investment, not organic growth. Why don't investors care about such issues enough to be proactive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Why does Thuan Pham get a free pass on what happens under his supervision? He joined Uber as CTO two years before Fowler's hiring.

</comment><comment><USER58> Yeah, Travis Kalanick, Uber's chief executive, said it was the first time the issue had come to his attention, yeah. And we are to believe this. Yeah.

</comment><comment><USER59> In California your employer is required to keep a personnel file. Get a lawyer. They are the pros. Don't leave it to a blog post, this is way more important.

</comment><comment><USER60> One of the criteria for being a high performer needs to be: being a decent human being and treating other people with the respect they deserve

</comment><comment><USER61> i have been a long time uber user, up until their sale in china to didi taxi, and it was a beautiful service here. since then, i have deleted their app just because it was taken over by some useless shell company in beijing.

but what is happening lately with all the accusations about uber, the trump immigration executive order and how uber profited off that, some uber ban in some city, etc. it all seems quite methodical and targeted. do not think it's lyft of all people, that would be too obvious, maybe it's like the secret brotherhood of the knights or something. who aside from lyft/taxis would gain the most from uber collapsing? (not that they're anywhere close to collapsing). i guess there are probably a lot of haters out there since they've been really at the top.

personally i've given up on uber, but mostly because their service essentially is being killed by didi taxi in china.

</comment><comment><USER62> With Travis at the helm is anyone surprised? Don't expect anything to happen unless it has to because of more bad PR.

</comment><comment><USER63> Uber having a terrible year in PR.

<comment><USER64> I tend to believe that more often than not, you reap what you sow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> With that evidence, the CEO should not only fire the creeps involved, but name and shame them. Incredibly damaging, not just for PR reasons, but for missing out on talented people and allowing toxicity.

</comment><comment><USER66> In case I needed another reason to hate Uber.

</comment><comment><USER67> The book "Corporate Confidential" is a must read.

</comment><comment><USER68> I will believe it when I see it. I have no confidence that anything will actually change, and that anyone other than a token fall guy will be fired.

</comment><comment><USER69> These are allegations by one party against another with zero data either way, why is everyone on the anti-uber bandwagon.

<comment><USER70> Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out. Fowler knows this. There's no room for ambiguity here: either Uber has broken the law _extravagantly_ , or she's lying. If the latter is true, she will be crucified for it. The defamation suit alone would be monumental.

And again, there's no ambiguity. She says she has extensive records of this behavior. That's not something she can really walk back. In a situation where one person's word is pitted against another's, the most reliable way to buy credibility is precommitment. By writing the article that she wrote, she made a massive precommitment. She will be _screwed_ if Uber takes her to court and she can't back up her claims. Uber, meanwhile, has said "We're looking into it." Precommitment is about cutting off your options. Uber has done the opposite.

So we have one side that just cashed out options for credibility, and one side that wants to wait and see. If you're trying to assess the situation rationally, there's only one correct play here.

<comment><USER71> There's an obvious test of whether your claim that, if she's caught lying, she'll become a massive pariah: Ellen Pao, whose claims fell apart in a court of law thanks to evidence she was lying. Look at how the publications like the New York Times and people in this thread treated that case. Here's some quotes from the NYT article about her losing that is linked from this one:

"One of Silicon Valley's most famous venture capital firms prevailed on Friday over a former partner in a closely watched suit claiming gender discrimination, but hardly got away unscathed."

'"This case sends a powerful signal to Silicon Valley in general and the venture capital industry in particular," Ms. Rhode said. "Defendants who win in court sometimes lose in the world outside it."'

Neither the fact that her claims were found not to be true in a court of law nor the evidence contradicting them mattered as far as the press or public opinion were concerned. Just the fact that she made them in the first place was sufficient justification for condemning the company she accused and their entire industry.

<comment><USER70> First of all, there's a big difference between merely losing a civil case and having been proved to have lied. It just means the jury did not find sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. There are a lot of possible reasons for that. If you want to make the case that she was actually lying, you need to point out specific evidence for that.

The fact that the firm not only didn't counter-sue, but also offered to settle with her in exchange for dropping her appeal, tells me that the evidence that she lied is not very strong. Everyone agrees that they took a reputation hit over this. If they had clear evidence that she committed perjury, wouldn't they be eager to clear their name exhaustively?

But second of all, I don't see nearly the kind of buy-in in Pao's case as in Fowlers. Pao sued. Fowler wrote an extensive indictment of Uber's company culture. IANAL, but it seems from what I've seen that it's hard to sue someone for defamation over a lawsuit. A scathing blog post is another story. In addition, there's inherent ambiguity in merely losing a lawsuit. Fowler's move is far more dangerous to her reputation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> "It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey, our new Chief Human Resources Officer, to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations." Me Kalanick. Ah the damn pattern. Boycott Uber now?

</comment><comment><USER73> Is there any physical/electronic evidence?

<comment><USER73> It is popular in the USA right now to silence rational, evidence based discussions. Now more than ever it is of vital importance that we stick to values of relying on open dialogue, reason, and facts. If these values only apply when they are convenient and comfortable for you then they aren't your values, but instead a rhetorical tool you abuse.

As a community of above-average intelligence and reason, I am disappointed to see hacker news commenters abuse their power to silence requests for evidence. If you approach things objectively you must always seek evidence. Given the libel risks, there must be some evidence. Perhaps it's not getting released at this stage to strengthen her legal position. In this case the evidence shared thus far is character-based. That doesn't obviate the need or prevent the ability to have a rational, logical discussion about evidence.

Please, go ahead and silence this post as well. Show me how badly you deserve your current political situation and fractured nation. If this community behaves this way, I don't have much hope for the world.

Our democracy and the world needs people committed to reason, evidence, and open dialogue. The choice is yours.

<comment><USER74> Here's the thing: If you had ever taken even a few minutes to sit down with women who work in our industry and asked them if anything like this has ever happened to them you would learn it is extremely common. You would also learn that women rarely get the benefit of the doubt in these situations and are often punished or eventually forced out of the company. Women don't talk about it because jerks immediately start screaming "WHERES THE EVIDENCE?!?!?!?!". As far as anyone can tell she has no interest in pursuing a legal case; in that sense this is just like the NFL national anthem controversy. No matter how blandly and inoffensively someone behaves there will be assholes at the ready to condemn them for speaking out about anything in any form whatsoever. Susan kept her head down, tried to do good work, then left for another job. She has made the absolutely minimum of an issue out of this as it is possible to make.

Try this thought experiment: assume the original story was written by a man and was identical except for the sexual harassment part. The same tales of toxic work culture. The same stories about managers protecting fiefdoms, undermining each other, and withholding information. The same story about being denied a transfer so this person could serve as a "feather in the cap" of the manager denying the transfer. Would you still be out here claiming it is the end of civil society that everyone isn't demanding evidence before rushing to judgement?

Hint: we've had these kinds of stories show up before with male authors and the answer is _no_ , people aren't so demanding. Only people who experience sexual harassment are held to this double-standard.

Nothing about what Susan posted seems far-fetched or out of the ordinary. HR exists to protect the company from you, not to help you or ensure justice is served. Telling people this is someone's first offense is likely to diffuse the situation and ensure no one files any pesky complaints with commissions nor hires a lawyer. Playing games with performance reviews is par for the course. Anyone who complains is viewed as a troublemaker. This happens on a daily basis in most companies in the USA.

Of course I don't believe you (or the rest of your compatriots) posting here are acting in good faith. If she shared screenshots and emails you'd just claim they were faked. How exactly she is supposed to gather evidence (when CA is a two-party state, so recording the conversations secretly would be illegal) is never explained.

<comment><USER75> > Here's the thing: If you had ever taken even a few minutes to sit down with > women who work in our industry and asked them if anything like this has ever > happened to them you would learn it is extremely common.

This type of argument is extremely dangerous. Not only isn't it true for many (I've done this), it's conflating claims with evidence.

If one is being honest, it's clear that the vast majority of news outlets that routinely cover activities in the tech industry are ideologically left-leaning and progressive towards ideas like those in feminism. It's regularly claimed that sexism in the tech industry is a major issue as fact, including in the linked article:

> Ms. Fowler's account is another sign of Silicon Valley's struggle with > women's issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment.

This is a factual claim, and no evidence is ever given for claims like these from left-leaning media.

Now, given that we have an established media that leans this way, and has a long history of sensationalizing the hell out of anything that they find validates their position, why is it then that stories like these are so infrequent? Why must we suspend disbelief and not require evidence a few times a year when these stories get published and talked about? And further, why then must we conclude that because we get a few sensationalized cases per year that this is a pervasive issue which many women face, as you claim?

Given the context that these same outlets routinely print other stories that overhype exaggerated or outright false claims in this same vein (earnings mismatch, college "rape" statistics, etc), why is this suddenly the issue where second guessing what's printed is not okay? Surely merely believing what anyone tells you uncritically is dangerous.

I'll gladly wait until actual evidence is presented, or a group that is actually informed by the facts of the case (and not overly sensationalized clickbait articles) makes a decision regarding the merits. That's for the judge and any jury to decide, and the rest of us can opine when actual evidence is provided. A blog post truly is insufficient.

<comment><USER33> Dude, this isn't a court case. It's one woman sharing a story about how sexism in a male-dominated environment affected her career. Anyone can opine on it, especially people who have experienced similar issues firsthand and want to discuss the root cause of it and how to stop it(Is it a few bad apples? Is it endemic to tech/SV culture? Is it a problem equally in all fields dominated by a single sex?). If you don't think there's a pattern there worth discussing, that's your call, but it seems clear that a huge number of us do, and a blog post is plenty sufficient for discussing that.

I'm glad your women friends tell you things are all good and rosey, but the rest of us are going to keep talking about this sort of behavior until it stops happening.

Also, scare quotes around "rape" statistics? Ewww.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Not saying uber is right or wrong but part of the problem is there aren't any sane rules of what is and isn't sexual harassment - there is mostly just vague case law and public opinion so things are treated 'case by case'. I was told by a HR department that if someone overheard you and misconstrued what you said it still could be harassment even if they don't report to the person talking. No one could agree what was and wasn't harassment when people in the meeting posed several real-life scenarios. I tried to basically explain the ridiculousness and lack of clarity of what they were saying but felt the extreme discomfort in the room and stopped.

You basically have the option of abstaining entirely from any comment or remark that could resemble anything sexual to anyone within physical or digital earshot or be at risk to an uncertain and unwritten standard. Treat everyone as formless blobs of raceless genderless biological matter or else. This is a impossible when when jobs become the majority of people's lives and part of their identity. Sex is a crucial part of human identity and denying it's existence generally isn't healthy behavior or even practical.

<comment><USER77> Actually, the dictionary definition of sexual harassment is quite clear cut. If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually harassing them.

I don't know about you, but most people are quite capable of understanding when an interaction is a) sexual in context and meaning and b) unwanted.

<comment><USER78> > If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually > harassing them.

That's untrue. It has to pass a bar of being "frequent and severe". ([https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm))

With your "clear cut definition", simply asking somebody out on a date that you work with is sexual harassment if he/she doesn't want to go.

Which is ridiculous on the face of it, because if you don't make some sort of advance, you'll not know if it's unwanted or not.

The language "severe" is ambiguous, but asking somebody out once to dinner should not be a fireable offense. Telling somebody what you would like to do to them sexually should be.

<comment><USER79> "Harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision"

Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

<comment><USER78> "Frequent" and "severe" are definitely not legal terms.

If you ask somebody out to dinner, and they say they're busy, is it ok to ask them out again in a week? Is that frequent?

Everything is context driven, which makes things very difficult to write hard and fast rules about. For instance, it is usually sexual harassment if you link somebody to a page of with pictures of models in lingerie on it. If you work for an online clothing shop, it might be perfectly normal. "Every time anybody rates this item, it throws an exception in the server logs. Is there anything special about it?"

<comment><USER77> To me there is a very clear difference between asking a fellow coworker out to dinner, and propositioning a subordinate for sex on their first day on the team.

You keep coming up with all kinds of examples, but in real life most people know (or _should_ know) what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.

<comment><USER78> > but in real life most people know (or should know) what constitutes > harassment and what doesn't.

That's a very dangerous statement.

First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people. If you want clear cut rules, you're not going to find it.

Second, these things are culturally dependent. You can go topless on a beach in France and nobody will bat an eye, do so in an asian country and you'll be gawked at, and in any conservative Muslim country you'll be jailed.

Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary sanctions and/or accusations.

<comment><USER77> >>First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people.

Of course we are. Most people don't go around sexually harassing others. That's why you hear about it when it happens.

>>Second, these things are culturally dependent.

Again not sure how that's relevant. We aren't talking about a foreign employee who was temporarily visiting the company's San Francisco headquarters. If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

>>Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary sanctions and/or accusations.

Last time I checked, saying "I didn't know that was the law" was not an excuse.

You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then don't do it. It's really that simple.

<comment><USER78> > Most people don't go around sexually harassing others.

A high proportion of programmers are on the autism spectrum compared to the general population. The law should apply to everybody equally, but this sort of thing is extremely hard to pin down. Something appropriate in one situation is not appropriate in another, and it takes discernment.

> If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be > acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

We're talking about the law in general, about how it's especially not clear cut and black and white in this case. Your arguments aren't relating to that point at all.

> You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then > don't do it.

That is ridiculous. Most people don't know the law backwards and forwards

It's stupid to think that people are responsible for all of the perceptions people have of them, especially people who are on the spectrum, as I have alluded to earlier. Would you just cut all people with social disorders out of any sort of human interaction, because by your logic, they can't do anything?

There is no hard and fast rule, as I have said before. There are standard deviations from the median, and it's hard to draw lines in human behaviour, a nuance that seems to escape many people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The core Internet institutions abandon the US Government - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetgovernance.org/2013/10/11/the-core-internet-institutions-abandon-the-us-government/

<comment><USER2> I guess hoping for a dramatic dismantling of Bluffdale and Clapper's arrest on perjury charges was always unrealistic.

In reality, we've already started to win. Jewel v. NSA, rather than being dismissed under executive privilege and placed into the realm of "paranoid nutjobs" is proceeding strongly, as are a multitude of other lawsuits with strong merit.

There's been a renewed interest in stronger systems, which will ultimately be the only way to prevent against surveillance. After all, policy changes only are secure and trustworthy of the government that makes them.

The transfer of Internet institutional power away from the US is just another step, even if it's probably a bit less useful than you might suppose, given that every major technological power has also participated in similar surveillance schemes.

So while I still wish for political reform in the short-term, I am continually re-assured by other efforts which will solve this issue in the long-run. So long as we don't forget about this issue, it will be solved one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER3> Insofar as the Internet is an "entity" with any of the kind of agency that would allow it to "abandon" anything, it is governed by telcos, 5-6 major US Internet companies, and the content industry.

<comment><USER4> Brazil's government (and UNASUR as well) is pushing for building connectivity for all of South America, excluding the USA, so all information flows between countries without going through US companies.

<comment> a-priori As a Canadian, I wish this were possible for us. Virtually all of our Internet traffic, even to hosts in other parts of Canada, go through American territory. I'm not sure if it would even be possible to route our traffic around the US.

<comment><USER5> Apparently you are not aware that Canada is part of the five eyes. If you are then I don't know what to tell you.

<comment> a-priori I am aware, and that's something I've voiced my concerns about with my MP, but I don't see anything changing under our current government.

But even if we weren't, it would be possible for American agencies to intercept Canadian traffic without any sort of due procedure.

<comment><USER5> You have no responsibility to take to the streets to protest the evils of the Canadian government as long as you can blame the Americans.

<comment> a-priori I don't follow...

<comment><USER5> Indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many HN readers may support this action (heck, me, too), but this is a _ridiculous_ article.

" _...turned their back on the US government..._ "

" _...he conspired with her to convene a global meeting..._ "

The "major Internet organizations" have about as much organization as a room full of cats. Don't expect this important action to actually mean much.

Except possibly for a new herd of top-level domains, useful primarily to extort money from trademark owners.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a graphic explaining "who runs the internet": [http://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/assets/governance-2...](http://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/assets/governance-2500x1664-21mar13-en.png)

I don't think we fumbled our right to lead. Internet standards are bigger than the US. This is good, imho.

</comment><comment><USER8> I guess everyone is getting tired of the Arrogance and heavy-handedness of the NSA.

Arrogance - We (NSA) will sabotage, undermine and subvert legitimate efforts at security because we need the ability to Snoop on everybody. Thus making the Internet Unsafe for everybody else as well only to suit their paranoid needs.

Heavy-Handed: We will store all communications that we get get our hands on either directly or thru foreign lap-dog governments(Five eyes). The rights of Americans other nationals and everybody else be dammed.

About time some one held their feet to the fire for this nonsense. Snowden should be given the Nobel Prize for Human rights (A new category that needs to be set up)

</comment><comment><USER9> A good thing. The US has squandered its right to lead.

<comment><USER10> Who says that any single governing national body should ever have the right to be an all-but-unchecked international leader, the way the US has?

<comment><USER9> To the extent that the US provided technical leadership, resources, stability and benevolent dictatorship, they could _hope_ for the community following them as the best alternative. There is no longer any basis for such hope or expectation.

It's probably been a long time coming, and too bad it had to happen the way it did, but that seems to be the way these days in so many areas of US "leadership." We can't be trusted.

<comment><USER11> This. We nurtured it, we funded it, and as recently as WCIT-12, I personally had zero desire for international governance, as many other countries have some very 'non-open' ideas about what to do with the Internet. But, as it turns out, so do we.

<comment><USER12> Exactly the point though, towards the end of the article, they lament the fact that instead of an open and somewhat self-regulating environment, we are getting more "political oversight".

Political oversight is seldom effective, especially when you try to honor the rhetoric that everyone must be on equal footing. With such a plurality of stakeholders, any consensus is extremely difficult to achieve. Instead, you often end-up with a bunch of half-measures and nuisance regulations.

In my own ideal world, governments and their regulations stay within their borders and the "Internet" as a pseudo-entity is not regulated in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While this is necessary knowing what we now know. I really hope it isn't continued by the UN as a tool for the countries with worse human rights violations.

</comment><comment><USER14> Saying Dilma Rousseff "has been intensely critical of the US government and the NSA spying program" is a big overstatement.

Regardless, let's hope this segregation happens and the internet can get a little bit of freedom from the greedy hands of the US Government.

<comment><USER15> She cancelled US visits and contracts. Complained on the UN assembly.

And even raged on twitter (yes, raged on twitter, teenager style).

How that is not being intensely critical?

<comment><USER14> That's showing off as a critical. Nothing was DONE. A lot was said.

If she had actually taken action against it, I'd buy it. She didn't and she won't, so I (and you should too) assume that's just propaganda. At least in Brazil it's how every politician plays the game.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. Clearly Brazil should have launched nukes at the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What differences will this make now?

<comment><USER18> good point. the article is thin on this topic.

my guess is that latin countries will have a local exchange instead, which is about damn time to be honest.

which happens regardless of that meeting...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hopefully, this will just involve transferring the governing authority away from the U.S. government without changing how the IETF/IANA are actually operated.

It would be bad if the traditional, international standards-setting organizations (e.g. ITU, ISO, ECMA, IEEE, etc.) ended up gaining control over the IETF/IANA, and they've been eying for it for some time now.

</comment><comment><USER5> The more that people buy into the idea that the only problem is the US the easier it is for the entire West to continue with business as usual, regardless of election time posturing by EU nations.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would you mind using a stronger font/color? This is unreadable for me.

<comment><USER21> Yeah that exactly what I thought. Could not even read first sentence of that page. Even after zooming the page ^_^

<comment><USER18> at least you can zoom.

death to all lazy slobs who just cancel zoom on mobile instead of doing his/her work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ah more jollies/meetings in hard to get to 3 world dictatorships so that "civilians" cant hold ICANT to account.

</comment><comment><USER23> I find this article to be pretty overwrought.

NSA efforts have focused on exploiting applications, weakening encryption standards, and subverting telcos and big hosted service providers. None of those are managed by Internet governance bodies. Altering the internal structure of ICANN would not inhibit NSA activities one bit.

The revelations of NSA spying have pissed off a lot of other countries, and no doubt increased their desire to splinter the Internet into a federation of national networks, which would be easier for them to each respectively control. That would help them protect from NSA spying... but it would also give them greater capability to control every other aspect of Internet access.

This is the approach that was rejected at the ITU, and recall that we all cheered that result.

I think it's interesting that this article describes the values of freedom and democracy as cherished by the U.S. Aren't they cherished by all people? Who doesn't want to be free?

There is a group of people who don't cherish those values, and those are the leaders of national governments that are known to be oppressive, censorious, or both. Would China really be a better steward of "Internet values" than the U.S.? I don't think so.</comment>


Mathematical and Logic Puzzles - <AUTHOR> http://martin-gardner.org/PuzzleBooks.html#MLPC <comment><USER2> The big puzzle on this page is finding where the hell the puzzles are because there certainly isn't a single puzzle on that page.

<comment><USER3> I found a single puzzle. (It's in the Word Play Puzzles section.)

But I agree, this is just a list of books, rather than a collection of puzzles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some great examples of Martin Gardner's puzzles it's worth looking at [http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in- numbe...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in- numberland/2014/oct/21/martin-gardner-mathematical-puzzles-birthday) or [http://martin-gardner.org/Top10MGPhysics.html](http://martin- gardner.org/Top10MGPhysics.html)</comment>


A market for Product Hunt invites? - <AUTHOR>

Suddenly, Product Hunt invites are becoming a hot commodity around my cycle. Is a market developing soon ? So far, a few founder I know basically send invites to their supporter so that they can vote for her own products. It does not make much sense to me. <comment><USER2> The Gmail invites case was similar:

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_beta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_beta_phase) :

> _During the early months of the initial beta phase, Gmail 's well-publicized > feature set and the exclusive nature of the accounts caused the aftermarket > price of Gmail invitations to skyrocket. According to PC World magazine, > Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as US$150, with some > specific accounts being sold for several thousand dollars. After a new round > of invitations in early June, the price for invitations fell down to between > US$2–$5. Websites such as Gmail Swap emerged to allow philanthropic Gmail > users to donate invitations to people who wanted them. On 28 June 2004, > Google amended its policy to forbid the selling of registered accounts._

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean by "Is a market developing soon ?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Could I buy an invite ?</comment></comment>


Teach your clients to give you a perfect bug reporting - <AUTHOR> http://talkweb.eu/mission-possible-teach-your-clients-to-give-you-a-perfect-bug-reporting-especially-for-design-issues/ CLIENT: There's a strange symbol after the company name – can you remove it? ME: Hmm… I don't see anything. Does it come after the exclamation point? <comment><USER2> I have been at the receiving end of such cases on multiple times...so that is when I started giving out link of this tool to people :) [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/awesome- screenshot...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/awesome-screenshot- captur/alelhddbbhepgpmgidjdcjakblofbmce?hl=en)

<comment><AUTHOR> this one is good too, but I found Usersnap more user-friendly (personal opinion). Thanks for sharing the addon!

P.S sometime the clients are not people, they are monsters :)))</comment></comment>


Do you use faker.js in production? A Patreon campaign to support faker.js dev - <AUTHOR> https://www.patreon.com/marak <comment><AUTHOR> faker.js could use your help to ensure continued development.

If you've had success using faker.js in past, please let me know. Any testimonials would be appreciated.</comment>


If college students made the next Angry Birds, who would own the IP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/15/11236504/college-games-IP-gdc-2016-usc-rit <comment><USER2> I've often been afraid of this. It has killed my desire to work on new open source projects.

My school has a clause that it owns all IP that we create, but I don't know how far it extends.

Would they be able to take my creations away from me?

<comment><USER3> What school are you at? I'd be curious to read the actual policy. Do they claim all schoolwork-related IP, like work you create in response to homework assignments?

<comment><USER2> I've talked to a few teachers in the CS department and they do seem to hold that the school owns any IP created by me or even teachers.

I'm at NJIT. Honestly, the teachers are all extremely brilliant (especially in your major) because you are usually working with people who actually care about the field.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Periodic Table of GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://ablakey.github.io/periodic/index.html <comment><USER2> I'm surprised to see this kind of things here, of all places. I'm even more surprised to see all the positive comments (so far).

The most important feature of the periodic table of elements is that it is based upon some underlying structure of the elements. It was initially used to make predictions about the existence of elements that had not been found at the time.

The "true" Periodic Table was truly a stroke of genius, equivalent in many ways in coming up with a scientific model/theory to describe nature.

The "periodic" part refers to the fact that some properties reappear as move from element to element, from the lightest to the heaviest: this is related to the filling of the atomic orbitals and their effect on chemical properties.

There is absolutely nothing of the kind in this so-called "periodic table" or its various cousins (I have seen some for "design" and other topics). There is no hidden structure revealed, no predictive power to be made if one were to actually leave one of the squares unfilled. It takes a wonderful communication/organisation scientific tool, keeping only a superficial visual element and leaving all essential meaning behind.

<comment><AUTHOR> My hat off to you. I read your critical analysis of my joke and for a few minutes thought you were serious.

<comment><USER3> Poe's law is working against me here, what gives away that this person isn't serious?

I think it's cool, by the way.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious about that, too. I'm betting they are serious and just didn't get that it was a joke. As it stands I'm not quite sure I get the joke either, but it is kind of funny how useless an organization scheme this is since all the repos are unrelated and it's highly unlikely any one person would be looking for multiple element-named projects.

I think it'd be even funnier if the repos it links to weren't even named after elements, but just had names resembling the abbreviations or something. But then again, it would be hard to find some more useless grouping criterion than being named after an element... I wonder if it's actually worse than random :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not an organization scheme in any practical sense. It's just a way of looking at all the repos named after elements and seeing which ones are still up for grabs, because naming things is hard so let's pick an element and name it that! But more than that, it's just a personal exercise and publishing something without getting caught up on weeks of perfecting it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was based on a joke at work. I'm sharing it because I have a serious problem with the "it's not perfect yet!" paralysis that causes nothing of mine to get completed. The goal was to hack something functional together and be okay with sharing it, despite the embarrassing code and the voice inside screaming at me that it's terrible.

<comment><USER5> Congrats on releasing and posting it here! Cheers to you getting over this paralysis. This is a neat project - I haven't looked at the code (and don't really plan to), but it works and that's good enough for me.

EDIT: I just looked at the code. It uses CSS grid - very cool! I'll be sure to use this as a reference.

<comment><AUTHOR> My first use of CSS grid. I really enjoyed it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No one picked lead?! AWWWW!! Poor old heavy, non-soaring, non-inspiring lead. Poor unglamorous, non-magical, non-shiny, inert lead. Old toxic, brain- damaging lead. Poor dull, dense, leaden, lead. The one every alchemist tried to turn into gold. The one every character in a Western movie had to eat. The one every character in a gangster movie had to get filled fulla.

<comment><USER7> [https://github.com/tcoxon/lead](https://github.com/tcoxon/lead) ?

Even uses the periodic table box as its logo.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder why my script didn't pick that one up! Will have to test and learn something new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nicely done. Just need one for planets and elementary particles now.

</comment><comment><USER9> For some reason this is blocked at work, so I can't actually view it. But jokes aside, I do think there's legitimate taxonomic value in these "periodic tables". See also: [https://linux.pictures/projects/colored-periodic-table-of- gn...](https://linux.pictures/projects/colored-periodic-table-of-gnu-linux- distros)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can we get a catalog of some 'molecular' repos which combine multiple elemental repos as dependencies?

</comment><comment><USER10> Great job. Looking forward for the Github Space exploration, because naming is hard everywhere in universe.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just noticed that while phones were never a target, it looks awful on a phone. Will need to scale the font.

</comment><comment><USER11> totally guilty of this lol. i've also done greek/roman gods and planets. what do other people do?

<comment><USER12> I basically exclusively do gods tangentially related to the thing I'm making.

Some document virtualization thing became Enki, some anti procrastination became Aergia, and so on and so forth. I actually quite like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was kinda looking for something like this :)

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER14> Going to have to claim one of those available rather quickly...

</comment><comment><USER15> Where's libsodium? :-)</comment>


Ask Paul: Is "smart" enterprise software interesting? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I absolutely think it can be. I think it mainly depends on who you work with at the enterprise software company. Its exciting to work around smart and highly motivated people, even if the product is a seemingly "boring" B2B application to us web hacker types.

Before I started working at my current company all I thought of as "cool" was startups and cutting-edge B2C web services companies. It really expands your horizon when you get the chance to work at an awesome enterprise software company who is solving a real business need..

Business software CAN be cool..

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PG: I laughed along with most everyone else at Startup School after your line about (paraphrasing) "if you're not smart then develop enterprise software, since it's a sales business, not a technology business."

Good one, and definitely some truth. I've spent a bit of time in this field and there's certainly the boring factor with some of it.

However--I'm assuming you'd find it interesting if people took a traditional piece of "enterprise software" (big suites sold to big companies, I guess) and Web 2.0-ified it.

Any comment there?

<comment><USER3> I think there is probably a lot of opportunity for smart little startups to compete with enterprise software in the way microcomputers competed with mainframes. Just make something good that everyone can use, and eventually businesses will realize they can use it too.

<comment><USER4> That's right out of a "disruptive innovation" paper I read recently.

Nice to know the company I'm in with regards to my reading material!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with enterprise software (at least as I understand it) is that it's frequently bespoke data processing software, written in-house -- it's not the sort of thing that you can do once and sell to multiple clients, it's the sort of thing that needs to be customized for each client.

I think that it has the potential to be the most interesting software to work on, because a lot of it is about real things, but because of its bespoke nature the only way to get at the really interesting bits is to work for the company that it forms part of the infrastructure for. And once you're in that situation, you're dependent on (probably very risk-averse) management for support for doing "smart" things with the software.

</comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely it is; I spent a long time this year working with a small real estate company that uses very primitive software and analog techniques to track very complex business processes. Existing software that would help them is too cumbersome or requires too much training; they can't afford to hire a consultant to sort it all out for them.

This is the crux of my YC funding application, so I really hope the answer is yes!

</comment><comment><USER7> "Enterprise" software is a market distinction, not a functional class of software, right? Are you asking if the enterprise software market is interesting if you're somehow smart about it?

<comment><USER8> Enterprise software has a bad rap because it's such a jaded business; decisions almost never get made for the right reasons, and the level of politics and bs is absurd.

From my own experience: unless you're doing something really special (and even then it's not guaranteed), it's tough to convince a large firm to license your product if you're a startup or 2, 3 man firm.

The best way, actually, is through the proverbial "back door", i.e. make versions available on the web or downloadable, and get a critical mass of employees within the company to use it.

<comment><USER9> I absolutely agree. I used to work for a big enterprise software company, and it took me a while to get used to the fact that we're selling crappy software for millions of $ a piece. I think the problem is that large enterprises trust other large organizations to solve their problems. You can't really get ahead in a large enterprise and become a manager with a budget to spend on software solutions unless you have that kind of organizational mindset. You fear change and fear failure, and so you'd rather spend tons of cash on a crappy solution from someone "trustworthy" - so they can't blame you if the software you bought sucks, than on a small startup's product that no one else in your industry is using. BTW, Crossing the Chasm is a good book on the subject. I recommend it to anyone considering going into enterprise software.</comment></comment></comment>


Ellison suggests Apple in trouble without Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-oracle-larry-ellison-apple-steve-jobs-20130812,0,2516309.story

<comment><USER2> Yes, Ellison is a vulture circling the corpse. Also, it is true, Apple is doomed without a "god", their culture was built around that paradigm, now their god is dead, and unless they find another one, they are lost. That really is the situation, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the opposite of pump and dump? Because I'm sure Ellison would love to buy Apple and step into Jobs' shoes.

<comment><USER4> The opposite of pump and dump is "short and distort"[0].

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

<comment><USER5> What's the term for panning a company so you can buy the shares cheap and hold them permanently?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: My Winter 2014 Mhacks Project, Glass Presentation Remote (ideas needed) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yeldarby/glass-presentation-remote

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a video demo on Youtube here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hgOJRF-m4&feature=youtu.be](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hgOJRF-m4&feature=youtu.be)

I'd love any feedback or suggestions you might have. This is still very much a work in progress (20 hours left before I have to submit it for judging) but I felt it was at a good point to be able to share it.

I've blown through most of the ideas for the project that I had coming in so I'm looking for ways I can improve the project in the time remaining.</comment>