When Did it Became Impossible to Say, 'I Don't Know'? - <AUTHOR> https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/when-did-it-became-impossible-to-say-i-dont-know <comment><USER2> I say I don't know all the time. It's the best answer when you don't know.

<comment><USER3> The people who say "I don't know" are some of the brightest and smartest I know. It shows you're willing to learn, humble, and not pompous and elite.

<comment><USER4> I agree but but I think it should be followed by some indication of the strategy or initiative that you'll use to get in the know:

"I don't know - I need some time to research the effect of XYZ on our prooposed solution. Let's get together tomorrow."

"I don't know. Let me ask Bill from the platform team if he has any suggestions and then get back to you."

etc.

Weak performers use "I don't know (how to/where to/ etc)" as an excuse to give up; strong performers use it as an opportunity to learn without bucking responsibility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Humans are tragically limited in some literal and obvious ways. For example, most information comes in through 2 very local light senors and a pair of ears, and is then processed by a gooey grey lump that is very, very biased towards the present.

Compare that to the problems that require leadership, which often span large areas of both time and space. Obviously, no human is up to the challenge of comprehending the actual challenge.

A leader who actually believes they understand what is happening is delusional. Not necessarily in a bad way, they just aren't engaging with the reality of the situation. They will hopefully still get buoyed up by their other skills and the work of the people around them, and with a little luck and skill might have a grasp on a couple of the key drivers of a given situation. The true state of things isn't going to stop leaders _pretending_ they have an answer to everything, because leaders are chosen by the people and people prefer to be told that the situation is easy and under control than the messy reality that requires caution, risk management and contingency planning.

I've yet to see the public admit en-mass that they are bad at picking leaders, but they clearly have no idea how to. If we had a better system for choosing political leaders we'd certainly see it used.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like it's common thing in interviews too. Even recruiters will tell you: "never say you don't know the answer, try...". Not sure about the others, but if I don't know something I go and do my reading/digging in, instead of trying to guess it or bluff it, not sure why it has to be different in any other situations.

<comment><USER7> When I interview other people, I usually ask one question that is really hard for the candidate. I don't expect an answer, I just expect the candidate would give an honest answer.

Then I'm always surprised there are so many people willing to take some random guess and stretch it hard, until some Socratic questioning let them falls into paradox.

<comment><USER8> I can think of at least two reasons why. The first is that the candidate doesn't realise they are hitting their intellectual limits. The second is that the candidate _does_ realise the question is difficult, but doesn't know if _you_ know the question is difficult.

As a result, the second type of candidate has to decide whether to enter into a debate with the interviewer (and risk losing the job opportunity if the interviewer turns out to be ignorant), or try to appease them with a best- guess answer. If the candidate is desperate for a job, they might choose the appeasement option.

You have no way of knowing if your candidate falls into the first or second bucket because interviews involve power asymmetry. In my opinion, this type of questioning is counterproductive -- you're looking for honest people by being dishonest.

<comment><USER9> Another reason: People might not necessarily know what they don't know right off the top of their head. So if you ask them something and they don't know the answer, they won't even necessarily know whether they don't know the answer because it is an embarrassing gap in their knowledge or if the question is hard. The only thing they might know for sure is that they don't know the answer.

Honestly, trying to bullshit your way towards an answer isn't a bad strategy in this circumstance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So obviously bluffing is still the fault of the guy doing it, but I feel like the non leaders play some role in it. In sort of competitive environments where the people aren't very informed and don't seem to have high moral standards, sometimes I'll see random employees who want to increase their status barrage specialists with minute and usually largely irrelevant questions and then try to paint the specialist as stupid or dishonest if he doesn't answer all of them. So it becomes important to BS people to get them to shut up. Many seem to substitute this for competence, leading to a downward hellspiral

</comment><comment><USER11> It's funny, when I was a manager at a big tech company I did fear saying "I don't know." I always assumed saying that enough would have people doubt my competence.

When I was at the same company as an engineer, I would see my managers make up shit on the spot and I knew they were full of it. And, I doubted their competence.

I really wish someone could assess the long term implications of saying I don't know and not saying it. I don't know which way it would pan out.

I suspect there might be a short term gain in pretending you know something but a long term problem when you pretend. And if you are truthful, the short term benefits might be worse but the long term benefits might go exponential.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not impossible, it's just impossible for politicians. It's because they're essentially tricking their way in, especially during primary seasons. "I don't know" is a very honest statement, and doesn't go well for trickery.

<comment><USER4> You're right; there are a number of quality character traits (like this one) that disqualify a person from ever achieving elected office. I fear the list grows longer each day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> because in the workplace lack of trust means we all have to pretend we know when we don't for fear of looking weak

<comment><USER14> It's exactly the same for politicians, we all know what the headlines would be the next day if the guy in the video had responded honestly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I didn't think butegig's first answer was bloviation, it was correct, and challenges the default assumption.

<comment><USER16> The anecdote in the article was about Beto O'Rourke, not Pete Buttigieg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You can say you're not sure but will follow up when you have the requisite info.

</comment><comment><USER18> When did _it_ [become] impossible to say 'I don't know'?

<comment><USER19> Fixed now. Thanks.</comment></comment>


What an Instant-Edu Machine might do to Education - <AUTHOR> http://markmaunder.com/2011/what-an-instant-edu-machine-might-do-to-education/

<comment><USER2> The title made me think of an education appliance, not a brain uploader. That machine in my mind then moved to a cloud resource of K through N updating/update-able/customizable curriculum, with pointers to resources from the curriculum.

Not the Kahn Academy, that would be a resource pointed to from the curriculum.

I've thought about this before, Kahn and OCW et al. are too hard to navigate when taken together, and individually they're spotty, not least because each course/lesson varies based on how much love its meat-space originator gives it. I've felt like I wanted to review as much open courseware as possible and put together either long or broad curriculum based on interests and goals.

The What Your Nth Grader Needs to Know series is something like what I'm thinking about.</comment>


P2P encrypted email is looking for funding. - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flowingmail-encrypted-serverless-email

<comment><USER2> What happens when your private key is compromised? Someone is able to read all your messages and send messages impersonating you and you can't stop that, as the address is a hash of the public key which derives from the private key. You can't change keys like you could change your password in a traditional email. You'd need to start using a new address but you can't expect the whole world stop using your old address overnight (if at all).

This looks terrible. GPG solves this problem by not having keys and addresses bound mathematically and relying on web of trust to match keys to addresses. You can always revoke compromised keys and start using new ones. You can't do that if the address is mathematically derived from the private key.

Our email addresses are our identities these days. Any system that aims to replace email needs to provide some safe recovery in case the keys/passwords are compromised. It's just too risky to have unchangeable password/key for your identity.</comment>


LaZagne – An open source application used to retrieve lots of passwords - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AlessandroZ/LaZagne <comment><USER2> Accepting pull requests? I can think of a couple of pieces of software I could contribute to the discoveries.

</comment><comment><USER3> Combine this with USBdriveby, and its just too easy.

<comment><USER4> How do you mean this? Make USBdriveby download LaZagne from the internet, run it and send the output somewhere?

<comment><USER5> Or just stick it into a usb, run LaZagne that's on the flash drive, then pull the flash drive out and walk away.

<comment><USER6> Huh, I was thinking someone could buy up a ton of cheap usb sticks, load this on there, have it autorun, and then have the payload sent to a server over HTTPS in AWS (who is going to block HTTPS traffic to AWS? everyone runs out of there) that would catch it and notify the attacker via webhook.

Then go sprinkle them around the SFBA.

<comment><USER7> Sorry for my ignorance... how does anything auto-run anymore?

<comment><USER8> USBdriveby emulates a keyboard that types commands at inhuman speeds, and since keyboards are plug and play.. you can probably guess what happens next ;)

<comment><USER4> The thing is, only keyboards and mice run without any confirmation. Pendrives normally open a explorer/finder window etc, no?

<comment><USER9> I think the point is that this is a USB drive that looks to the computer like a keyboard, so it will run without confirmation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty nifty. Obviously there's a lot of malicious uses for this, but as someone who supports a lot of seniors with near inability to remember passwords, this sort of thing has a practical use.

<comment><USER11> Passwords which can be recovered with a tool by someone other than the user to whom they belong, and passwords which tend to be forgotten by the user to whom they belong, are two different failures of the whole function of passwords.

Its true that the first failure can be used to mitigate some of the visible harm of the second, but any place that features a coincidence of the two failures really should be taken as a particularly strong sign that, in that place, _passwords of the type used are entirely the wrong tool for the job_.

<comment><USER10> Sure, dragonwriter, I'm not contesting that. But I live in the "real world", and this is a real world tool that will help me help users who, whether you like it or not, fail at technology.

<comment><USER12> Do the users you're supporting set up accounts themselves, or do you set up accounts for them?

<comment><USER10> Usually the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does this integrate Mimikatz to pull hashes ?

</comment><comment><USER14> Holy moly. Looks like I have some cleanup to do :|</comment>


Ask HN: How to get into more specialized, interesting work? - non-entity I dont want to spend the rest of my working life doing what I do now (basically just slapping together CRUD apps and loose integrations). It doesnt even feel like problem solving, someone else has solved the problem, I'm really just implementing it. Plus majority of the problems solved  are even technical problems, but business problems (yes, I realize this is mostly just how the world works, but it's not even remotely intellectually stimulating)
I've worked professionally for around three years now and have programming as a hobby for years now. I know there's more interesting work out there. I've met people who's worked on cool things, occasionally see interesting looking positions while sifting through job boards, but I just feel like I've been so stagnant. I haven't learned anything on the job really and it's all been mostly easy. Theres plenty of things od like to get into, but the problem is all the relevant positions seem to require years and years of experience in whatever specialization they are that I will never get doing the grunt work I do now. I dont want to be stuck in 10 years working jobs I hate, throwing cookie cutter insert tech here apps to move data around.
I'm not really interested in ever pivting to a management role either, although that may be another depressing reality. I've tried venturing off and picking programming to as a hobby again, but I almost always give up out of lazieness, very quick loss of focus, etc. I can sit at work and daydream all day about cool projects to complete, but when the time comes, I nornally just pass outbofnwasye my time on something else. A lot of times there's shitton of boring, but relevant prerequisite knowledge I need, but dont feel like dredging through.
What can I do to make sure I'm not stuck doing this sort of mind-numbing work forever? I have no education and fear that other fields are less welcoming to hire people whos only relevant experience is some sad side projects. <comment><USER2> Apply for the jobs. Your chances of getting it don't significantly improve after 50% of the requirements[1]. So, just choose something you're really interested in, spend a bit of time getting familiar with it, and then start applying. You'll quickly find out from interviews what you need to learn to get further. After that, the number of jobs you apply for is more of a factor than anything else.

(I didn't know this at the time, but trying this is how I got my first Linux sysadmin job)

[1] [https://talent.works/2018/11/27/the-science-of-the-job- searc...](https://talent.works/2018/11/27/the-science-of-the-job-search-part- vii-you-only-need-50-of-job-requirements/)

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll have to pick a specialization you want first. What do you think is interesting? AI? Wearables? Image processing? Content generation? Space colonies?

Then just start diving into that. There are communities around everything now. Get to know people there. Most of the time they'll pick someone who has genuine interest in a field, rather than someone looking to get paid, because it also affects the rate of learning. user experience, and stamina in problem solving.

<comment><USER4> Yep. I did that for computer vision. I was really interested in it and decided to take time off work to study (and get better at prerequisites - <AUTHOR> algebra, multivariable calculus etc.). After roughly six months of study, I got an offer for a remote job at a startup to be a computer vision researcher (granted, I also had Msc in machine learning/AI and some previous ML experience on my resume). I didn't end up taking it, as it was for half of what I was making as a regular software dev.

Now, I'm back to my old job and just saving money to retire early and not have to worry about money and jobs any more. To me, the theory and math side of computer vision research are super interesting - but the actual practice, i.e. implementing the models, seeing what works well, chasing bugs, library defects etc. is similarly tedious and tiring as the regular software job. The research job has the benefit of not having to work within a team (which, under scrum, I mostly hate), but it's not worth 50% pay cut to me. I suspect that may be the case for many "interesting" jobs - they pay less and also become way less interesting when you start doing them 40h/week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Get a job at FAANG, then switch to an interesting position after. People go by brand name, so if you have a brand name, then they will hire you for something you may have no experience in.

</comment><comment><USER6> or you can just work on some project that really interests you, and maybe it could turn to a company</comment>


You will be surprised to see how much Google tracks about you - <AUTHOR> https://myactivity.google.com/item <comment><USER2> This submission breaks the site guidelines egregiously by injecting pure clickbait into the title. We take aubmission privileges away from accounts that do that, so please don't do that again. Instead, (re-)read [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), which includes: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

The idea is to take linkbait out. Adding it in is going the wrong way down a one-way street.

<comment><USER3> While I don't like clickbait I don't actually find this to be a very offensive case. It ties into the "oh wait, Facebook sells my data?" discussion pretty well. Also there are many other articles on HN that break the rule far worse, imo.

<comment><USER2> The solution is not to have more articles that break the rules; the solution is to tell us, by flagging or emailing firstname.lastname@example.com, when there's a case we haven't seen. We change all the ones we see, or at least post an explanation like I did this time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, I won't. I've seen this page before and I've disabled a lot of the stuff that I'm uncomfortable with having them track. Google does a lot of shady creepy stuff, but I think just linking to your activity timeline doesn't add much value. How about writing a blog post about which items you found most surprising instead?

I do wish we had was better controls. For example, if you disable location tracking, Google Maps won't remember any address you visit. Why can't it be cached locally? If I regularly visit an address on my phone, it should be included in my autocomplete. I don't need cross-device history or tracking, I just want my damn phone to remember places I've visited previously without uploading it to the cloud. Taking an all-or-nothing approach seriously harms the user experience.

Despite it taking years, I've gradually been migrating away from my hard dependency on Google services. With that being said, if I were locked out of my gmail account I'd be seriously fucked. Maybe some day I'll reach the point where that's not the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the Google Maps annoyance after activity tracking is disabled is designed intensionally. To force users to give up the control with easy to click buttons.

<comment><USER5> I too dislike how many of Google's consumer services are being increasingly gated on the location history permission, which I too have disabled and which therefore means I can't use those services.

However, having worked at other parts of Google (not on Maps or location stuff), I'd guess at a much more prosaic explanation than that kind of conspiracy: the product managers / engineers / tech writers / UI designers don't want to maintain the complexity of both code paths and UX flows indefinitely if most users are happy to share their location server-side in exchange for the conveniences and features that enables.

You and I aren't happy to do that, but we on Hacker News aren't representative of most consumer-product Google users.

<comment><USER6> > I too dislike how many of Google's consumer services are being increasingly > gated on the location history permission, which I too have disabled and > which therefore means I can't use those services.

Huh? Google Maps works fine for me despite having disabled location services. It nags me nearly everytime I open the app to "enable location services to proceed", making it sound as though it is required, but I just click "No" and get on with it. Haven't noticed any missing features.

<comment><USER5> One example of a Google consumer service that needs location history is the Google Assistant. on my Google Pixel phone, that has fully replaced the older non-Assistant OK Google system which didn't require location history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not surprising at all. I've been actively logging into Google and confirming my visits at various restaurants. I've been using it to track my past activities, and I hope it can provide more accurate restaurant recommendations for me. It has been quite useful. Video recommendations on Youtube are also way more accurate than any other service I've ever seen. If you don't mind sharing your personal data, you do get better service over time.

<comment><USER8> >you do get better service over time.

Awesome, now you're stuck in a bubble where serendipity will no longer play a role in you stumbling upon interesting videos you NEVER thought you'd like, same for restaurants, websites and who nows what more?

On a more serious note, I'd argue that you do not get a better service, your profile becomes near to perfect and your experience online, and increasingly offline, will stagnate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think Google is doing this right. Yes they're not showing you everything they know and yes the UI could be a lot better but fundamentally I feel like I'm in control here. I know Googles business model means selling me as a product to advertisers but they give me a lot of value in return with search and maps, and they're allowing me here to control on what basis advertisers can target me.

The only thing missing is Google paying me something for this data - as I'm the "head of a family" and the main earner, I believe the ability to influence me is worth more than the value I'm getting back from Google. I choose whether my kids get Android phones or iPhones for example...

</comment><comment><USER10> I actually think they deserve some credit for putting this page together. It helps you understand what they're collecting and gives you an easy way to turn the tracking off.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you clicked the link and found the amount of information they have on your surprising, and now feel a bit violated, then good; you should.

You'll probably try to do a bit of research and try to figure out how to opt out of all this and protect yourself. And you should. But you shouldn't just stop there.

Many of the people who are reading this right now are responsible for designing and implementing systems that collect massive amounts of data. I implore you to not just think about your own privacy moving forward, but the privacy of your users. Security and privacy should be two of your top level concerns when designing systems, not just tack-ons.

Simply hating of Google/Facebook/$$$Corp for invading your privacy and not doing anything to rememdy the general poor state of privacy in the modern connected world when you have the power to do so is hypocritical.

Next time you're given a project that has PII and the security user story gets deprioritized, raise it as an issue. Aside from being the right thing to do, many places, such as Canada and California, are looking at GDPR-like regulations. So it makes sense to do it now instead of later.

And if you're going to argue that it's hard, and it's time consuming, and you're a startup just trying to get on their feet so you can't be bothered, then consider that you may be part of the reason we find ourselves in this sorry state.

/rant

</comment><comment><USER12> They're also excluding vastly more information than they know about you - they're only showing your activity on Google properties, but not your activity on sites which use Google Analytics or Google Ads.. which is most of them.

<comment><USER13> Blocking Google Analytics is a good antidote against it collecting any data on you. Block it at the router, in the hosts file and by using adblockers (which also block other analytics "services").

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was shocked the first time I realised that Google stores all you search queries by default. Typing things in a website seemed like a private activity, and all of a sudden, it wasn't. Years of history, mostly mundane, some queries mildly embarrassing, and a few that I really wanted to keep to myself.

I deleted all the data, immediately, logged out of Google, and started to reduce my reliance on Google. I switched to Fastmail for Email, use Duckduckgo for searches, and I try to use a variety of routing apps, even though none are as good as Google Maps.

I've become paranoid with regard to form fields on the web. I stopped trusting websites. I use an incognito tab for Facebook, hoping that'll stop them from correlating my day to day browsing with my profile. I stop myself before I type a name into the search box, worrying that the algorithm would draw conclusions...

<comment><USER3> > they store my search history

by default they also remember every time you open what app and where exactly you go.

i know because they can show me where i've been and which apps i've used. I let them collect the data because those are things I am interested in as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not surprised. But then again does Google give that data to some shady app a friend of me has installed? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER16> As an iPhone user I'm really not surprised by any of the data "in my file" – google maps queries, google queries, and YouTube videos.

It makes sense that Facebook gets all your call data and Google knows things like what apps you have when your operating system allows it.

</comment><comment><USER17> If I were in charge of Hacker News I'd occasionally make posts like this and quietly ban users who up-voted them. The post title effectively translates to "You are an idiot that doesn't belong here."

<comment><USER18> I think upvotes should more resemble "let's discuss this" rather than "I agree with this".

<comment><USER17> Interesting. Any idea if the significance of the up-vote is explained somewhere officially?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do any other big tech companies offer interfaces like this?

<comment><USER20> Hopefully it'll become more common with GDPR...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most frightening thing about the data Google collects is location history. It was a real wake-up when I realised they use that data to map real life social networks. They know everyone you've bumped into every day, how long you talked to them for, who you've had a one night stand with. Your daily routines, who your friends are, and more, which all can be discovered just by analysing location history.

Them knowing what your favourite coffee shop is or where you work and live is just the tip of the iceberg.

I used to be a very heavy and trusting Google user. It started to get a little bit uncomfortable when I noticed an alert on my phone notifying me that there was a restaurant nearby that I might like to try. It occurred when I had 30-40 minutes to spare, it was a restaurant that indeed looked interesting to me, and was within a 5 minute walk. Yes that's useful but my conclusion was that this company knows way too much about me. It didn't make me comfortable when Google alerted me about flights I never explicitly told it that I was taking, and offered suggestions about how to get to the Airport that suited my routine.

<comment><USER22> How did you minimize your usage of Google? Most of the smart phones are juggle between Apple and google? Where do you go for research questions and topics?

<comment><USER23> There are alternative mobile OS options, such as LineageOS or Plasma Mobile.

There is also NextCloud, which has an impressive number of apps that could help make getting off of Google easier.. mail, calendar, contacts, notes, drive, xmpp chat, video chat, trello clone, password manager, music player....

Collabora can also be installed to give an alternative to Docs / Sheets / etc..

<comment><USER24> Most of spying comes on behalf od google framework, that comes with google play. LineageOS wont solve that (actually they refused changes that would allow replacing google framework with microg) but a fork of it will. They are reimplementing oss, google compatible framework, also your battery will last ~30% longer (no battery drain due to google spying).

[https://lineage.microg.org/](https://lineage.microg.org/)

To use google play store, find yalp explorer.

Why google framework is a problem and why bother with microg? Android developers are using calls to it and without it, half or even more apps would break. Microg implements those calls and fakes electronic signatures of google binaries to keep them working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> 1\. Open chrome settings

2\. Go to content settings add domain encrypted.google.com

3\. disable javascript & cookie on this domain.

4\. Search exclusively on encrypted.google.com

5\. Download adblocker and disable all google ads.

Google can't track no shit. I reviewed [https://myactivity.google.com/item](https://myactivity.google.com/item) and all I can see is youtube browsing history.

<comment><AUTHOR> The core functionality of encrypted.google.com has been incorporated into the Google search homepage. Those visiting this URL after April 30, 2018 will be redirected to [https://www.google.com](https://www.google.com).

<comment><USER25> ipv6.google.com then.

I am pretty sure google has some more subdomains to block.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there surprising or troubling stuff on others' feeds that I'm not seeing on mine? Mine is just a list of searches I've made while logged in on Google products: maps, search, etc.

I was expecting to see something less obvious, like location data that I didn't explicitly or knowingly share with Google.

<comment><USER27> If you go to "Other Google activity" via the sidebar you can find Location History, Device Information, Google Play Sound Search History and some other stuff.

<comment><USER26> All three are empty, at least in the last 2 weeks. I would expect there to be some location history, since I use google maps logged in all the time, but nope.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing you've turned the collection off. They'll be at least smart enough not to show you if they still collect it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Based on my tracking of what google services does on your phone, what google shows to you is far from all what google knows about you, they have set those pages as a PR, to calm down users and only throwed in some peanuts. After GDPR kicks in, I will officialy request the infomation from them and compare those data with the data I know were sent to their servers. Next thing is article and official complain to EU authorities. This madness must stop.

Btw, my profile exported few kilobytes of data. Beat that ;)

<comment><USER3> I'll look out for the HN submission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was surprised to see that they track every app I open on my phone. Anyone know if that can be disabled?

<comment><USER29> Same here. WTF! That's some next level bullshit. How does even Apple allow that? They must be leveraging a phone API because it's tracking the name of the binary. So not only Google has access to this data but virtually any app installed in my phone.

<comment><USER30> It's not an Android phone?

<comment><USER29> No. iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Its funny how I regularly have to visit this page and delete new stuff.

This time it shows my activity on the Google Play developer console all the way back to a couple of years ago. That wasn't there last time I went to empty their spy machine trashcan.

<comment><USER19> Have you tried just pausing history instead? [https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols](https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols)

<comment><USER32> That's what I've done. Someone recently mocked me for using DDG instead of google and I explained that I did it to keep my data store shown by this link empty. I check regularly to make sure nothings new is turned on. Happy to always find it empty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No searches, no location, no device data, no Youtube history, no suggestions, no synchronised data... ghee, it is almost as if not using that Google account other than for accessing a Gmail account (which I only use for backup purposes) and blocking those cookies works...

It might be interesting to know that I use many Android devices, phones and tablets both. As those things all run without proprietary Google bits, Google does not have anything interesting to show me. I might miss out on some potentially handy services but that is a small price to pay for keeping my devices and my data under my control.

</comment><comment><USER33> I tend to not be logged in for the times I use their search engine. This is easily achieved by using the tab containers in Firefox. So for my mail, I'm logged in in a tab container. So when I go searching at their search engine, I just press Ctrl-t to open a tab (which isn't the same container as I'm logged in) and search.

I was surprised of how little data they had just by doing this.

</comment><comment><USER34> What surprises me the most is how much stuff on there - while maybe factually true - is actually wrong. _" 1 card in your feed; Sports - viewed"_ No I didn't, at least not knowingly. _" Viewed Gmail ads "_, I checked my mail, yes, but I couldn't tell if there were ads or whether I looked at them.

</comment><comment><USER35> The "okey google" while screen of had some very funny recordings of me there from my former pixel. I did turn it off but for some reason it had snippets of me saying "fucking frying pan shit" and "no the hot dogs there suck" in Swedish. That's not really close to "okey google" at all...

<comment><USER36> Hi

<comment><USER36> Hello

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> By using something like this: [https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

I have effectived block lots of analytic service. I can see how well it works when I open Chrome Dev Tool aand see bunch of console error due to js tracking fail to load.

</comment><comment><USER38> I recently started actively using profiles feature in Chrome. At first because it was convenient to keep each profile on each own KDE activity, but after awhile I started to use separate profiles for anonymous browsing, testing various chrome extension testing, throwaway-ish social accounts, etc.

Highly recommend it - super convenient.

</comment><comment><USER39> I disabled most of it 12 months ago, not just because of privacy but because they were continually in my face attempting to make the data useful through google now. Through no prompting google worked out where I lived and would "notify" me of my commute time every morning, except it didn't realize I was taking PT and traffic didn't affect me. Every time I had lunch at the train station it would notify me of train delays, even though I wasn't catching the train and had already left the station. More than once it notified me of a delayed flight that wasn't really delayed. So all the data I was giving to google was a net negative to me.

Disabling everything is only the start though because google does a really poor job of actually respecting this. The maps app is constantly prompting me to re-enable the tracking. I'm forever one dark pattern or one urgent "just f-ing work" instance away from re-enabling this tracking. For most cases It's easier to give up google products entirely rather than be eternally and infallibly vigilant when I use my phone.

</comment><comment><USER40> I found this summary of what they track (or what you can export) pretty succinct. [https://twitter.com/iamdylancurran/status/977559925680467968](https://twitter.com/iamdylancurran/status/977559925680467968)

</comment><comment><USER41> Huh, I guess I was surprised.

It's exclusively Youtube, which I use logged in to get the benefit of history tracking. Every so often I clear my history, but apparently searches (again... Youtube searches, there's nothing else here) don't get cleared when you do that.

I see no real problems here.

</comment><comment><USER42> I use gmail and search for stuff. That is about it. And because of that, I only log in like once a day into gmail, check mails and log out. Why would I want to stay logged in after that? This site only showed me that it knows nothing about me which is intended.

</comment><comment><USER43> I see my Youtube views. Shortly after getting my first Android phone, I got creeped out by a link like this (and the phone's "helpful" suggestions for products and services) and asked them to stop tracking everything that I could find an option for.

</comment><comment><USER44> I delete my Google activity every few weeks. This allows usage of features which they require you to enable tracking for, but keeps your information relatively private in the long term. It'd be nice to have this done automatically somehow.

</comment><comment><USER45> I remember stumbling upon a grey background google menu on my... droid whatever and disabling all of this. Very creepy. Looks like it's still holding the preference after at least two new phones. I like that part.

</comment><comment><USER46> Stop using sites that collect and/or sell your data. Good email replacement is TutaNota or ProtonMail. Good search engine replacement is DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER17> DuckDuckGo may be the best non-Google search engine but it's nowhere near anything even remotely resembling a "good" Google replacement. There is no such thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Given that I have no Google account, they won't say.

But that's actually protecting my privacy, so hey.

</comment><comment><USER48> I find it amusing to trawl through all the .wav files of me activating the google assistant.

</comment><comment><USER49> Isn't the real question: how much data does Google sell about you?

</comment><comment><USER50> Tracking each area of Google maps I look at was surprising.

</comment><comment><USER51> What's that supposed to be? A pitch ala "But LOOK, Google is collecting data, too, not just me, Facebook!"

</comment><comment><USER52> Facebook has nothing on Google.</comment>


Australian re-invents light-bulb - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/hometech/australian-reinvents-lightbulb-20120918-263yq.html <comment><USER2> On the history of kickstarter lightbulbs: [http://blogs.reuters.com/felix- salmon/2012/09/18/kickstarter...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix- salmon/2012/09/18/kickstarter-vaporware-of-the-day-lifx-edition/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Possibly the least needed product in the history of time.

<comment><USER4> Really? Say what you will about the colour choice gimmick, this could be one of the cheapest, consumer-friendly solutions to home automation of all time.

The only DIY product I've seen prior to this is a device you place between the power plug and power socket. As a manufacturer I'd imagine you would have to produce a variety of plugs to meet the various global standards[1]. This is where a single light globe, or perhaps a small range of wattages, would shine (pun fully intended). One product for the global market.

It's surely a more elegant solution than dicky little boxes between your power points, and much cheaper than having a team of home automation "experts" wire up your house for a few grand.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Type...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Types_in_present_use)

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with a switch?</comment></comment>


Google Loses Engineering Director Who Once Caused Steve Ballmer To Melt Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/13/google-loses-engineering-director-who-once-caused-steve-ballmer-to-melt-down/ <comment> brown9-2 This article is filled with some ... interesting statements:

 _Lucovsky has been an integral part of Google's APIs, including the all- important Search APIs._

Would anyone characterize them as all-important? Also, this:

 _Lucovsky was also the architect of Microsoft's Hailstorm project to port older Microsoft products into .NET. It's a project that's be named as a precursor to the current open web movement._

<comment><USER2> It's possible that they were referring to the Search APIs for internal use, which I would assume could be called "all-important".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So that's the source of all those Ballmer+chair jokes on slashdot.

<comment><USER4> _"Just tell me it's not Google," Ballmer reportedly said according to court documents (for a case surrounding another Google ex-Microsoft hire). When Lucovsky said it was Google, Ballmer allegedly picked up a chair and threw it across the room._

 _What he apparently said next, will live on forever in Internet history._

 _"Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."_

Anyone else remember the old TNT made-for-TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley? This kind of melodrama always reminds me of it.

<comment><USER5> That movie is great. I own it and show it to friends who do not know the epic saga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I wrote most of the kernel executive, kernel32, and the Windows API,..."

A quote like this gives hope to all of us.

No matter how complex or massive the software, it's surprising to find out it was written by one or two people.

I see this all the time. I once implemented an ERP package in a $100 million company. I called customer support and got one of the 2 guys who wrote the package! I couldn't believe it.

Believing that one or two people can code something large and awesome is often the first step to doing it yourself.

<comment><USER7> I don't want to minimize their achievements, but it never takes one or two people to build something that large. There is an entire organization to support their efforts -- sales, customer support, QA, etc... There is a tendency to "hero"-ize developers in big companies, but at the end of the day it is an organization-wide effort.

<comment><USER6> I was referring to the actual programming only. Sorry if I inferred otherwise.

<comment><USER8> Even so, that usually applies only up to a certain point in time. Once the company is big enough, they'll hire an army of maintenance programmers to continue improving the software.

For example, Tom Proulx wrote the first version of Quicken basically singlehandedly, but it's probably a whole department inside Intuit working on it now. Paul Buchheit is normally associated with GMail, but the GMail team is _huge_. Linus Torvalds wrote the first version of Linux, but hundreds if not thousands of people have contributed patches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well at least he didn't leave for Twitter like everyone else has been, I'm sure that would have caused Eric Schmidt to pull a Ballmer.

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought Dave Cutler was the principle architect on NT?

<comment><USER11> Chicago (Win95) came after NT.</comment></comment>


Career Day - A parent introduces programming at her son's school - <AUTHOR> http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/oct/24/career-day/

<comment><USER2> There's currently a non-profit in the UK working in primary schools with kids aged 9-11 called Code Club. They use MIT's Scratch to teach children how to programming using drag and drop blocks.

Link: <http://www.codeclub.org.uk/>

I've been in one of the schools when they have the after school club and it's amazing how much the kids get really quickly. They're making their own games without needing any help from the assistants, the drag and drop element of Scratch makes it a lot easier than getting syntax wrong and getting frustrated. Some of the kids love it so much that they're disappointed when it's half term and they can't do it that week. One kid now wants to be "a programmer or stuntman" when he grows up.

They're in around 300 schools in the UK now and have roughly 15 children per club, so that's an extra 4000+ children in the UK learning to code each week.

Disclaimer: I help out Code Club and develop their site

<comment><USER3> It seems like you really have a great model going there, nice job! You think there is any chance of open sourcing what you're doing with Code Club so it could be used elsewhere?

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I need to speak to the founders about that, it isn't my say about open sourcing unfortunately!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was an interesting read, but it'd be useful to know roughly what age the children were. I'm not familiar with the US school system, so I don't know at what age careers days are usually held.

She showed the children a Python program with a while loop, and says they "got it". I've tried explaining iteration to a (bright) seven year-old by using indented text and they found it hard to comprehend, but the equivalent in a graphical lego programming environment was obvious to them.

<comment><USER5> I taught my 9 year old sister how to program, at a very basic level, using PHP.

She understood the simplest parts, variable assignment, simple loops, errors, if statements (children seem to understand these naturally, since she is always saying "Shane, if blahblah did blah blah, what would happen?" so it was a breeze to introduce else statements.)

The trouble came when we started on arrays, she understood the concept of variables well, but the idea that multiple variables can exist inside of a single variable, and more inside of that, etc, really confused her, until I managed to explain it using a rather simple tree diagram.

Then there is the fact that numeracy in primary school begins at 1, there is no 0 as far as I know which is taught until later (unless of course, she simply wasn't listening during that lesson) so to hardcode it in to her I got her counting her spending money from 0 instead of base10.

Once we had this out the way, database manipulation came, and this was really difficult as she didn't understand how the computer knew these things when it was so far away and the idea that it could be transferred across the world in seconds was fairly mind blowing (mind you, she thinks the world ends at the south of England so it probably wasn't _that_ amazing) so I got her to take part in a practical taking lemons to and from the garden shed and keeping a tally of what was in each. Not only was it fun but it was a great learning experience.

Fast forward 1 year and she is extremely intelligent for her age, can do advanced algebra and is the only child in her class to be able to do maths in her head near instantly.

I'm proud of her, but my point is this, children don't need brightly coloured graphical languages, sure, they may help, but to nurture their minds all they need is a little ingenuity and a whole lot of love. (not to mention patience, you're gonna need buckets of patience.)

<comment><USER6> When I learned programming, getting arrays was one of my first "aha" moments. Moving from x0, x1, x2, x3 to x[0], x[1], x[2] was definitely enlightening.

My guess is that for simple programs, you almost never have to index an array by a dynamic expression, so you don't see a need for that.

<comment><USER7> Same here, I remember when I was learning, before I knew what arrays were I had a bunch of variables like that: $x1, $x2 and I was trying to find a way to convert a number like $n into the variable name so I could do $x$n to reference $x1, $x2. I knew what I was trying to do, just didn't know how to do it correctly at the time because I didn't have any exposure to arrays before.

<comment><USER6> Exactly ! Syntax and meta-syntax are sometimes easy to mix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The argument for not teaching children scratch. "You don't need to start kids off on some fake programming language like Scratch."

I have no real affection for scratch, but I feel that he was making the argument that children should learn to program in an environment that models (at least to a point) the one in which a developer develops in, at least with regard to language preference.

I feel at this point, the language choice (barring ease of use etc) is pointless. Whether you use scratch, python or Haskell, if it piques the interest of a child, then nothing will stand in the way if that student wants to go on and learn every programming language available.

If you think of the first language you ever learned, and what you are now programming in. For me, my first language (a type of kiddy basic) gave me what I needed. A concept of execution flow. How to make things come up on the screen, basic 2d programming and it made it very easy to make some GUI based stuff.

My point is that don't hate any language (even if it is a _fake_ language like Scratch) if it builds the initial building blocks in a child (or adults) head.

<comment><USER9> The "lesson to educators" was certainly a quick conclusion to draw from the number guessing game example. A fair comparison would be a game with sound and animation that kids have created using Scratch that you get kids to do using a "real" language like python. Furthermore, I think BYOB (build your own blocks)[1] raises the bar what can be done in a Scratch-like environment.

[1] <http://byob.berkeley.edu/>

<comment><USER10> BYOB is important indeed and we also have Panther (see <http://pantherprogramming.weebly.com/> and [http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Panther_%28Scratch_Modifica...](http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Panther_%28Scratch_Modification%29)):

"... a host of new features such as file and webpage manipulation and advanced colour sensing, cloning and much more besides, Panther provides advanced usage for avid Scratchers around the globe as well as new programmers looking for a fluid, easy to understand starting language."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have given talks in both my daughter's and son's classes (when they were in grade 2) on what I do at work. Not on programming per se, but on how an SMS is delivered to a mobile phone (so we also got into programs, databases etc).

What struck me the most was the sheer number of questions I got. 4 or 5 hands in the air the whole time when I was answering questions. A lot of smart questions and comments. Very intense and high energy. Contrast that to giving a talk to adults - usually there a lot fewer questions.

Overall it was a great experience, and I recommend it if you have the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER12> It might be slightly odd bringing up the topic of women in programming but in a few decades it might seem archaic that we were even worried about the problem.

Kids today (both male and female) grow up with so much technology around them. My bet is that this will drastically influence the number of women entering technology focused career paths in the coming years.

<comment><USER13> The proportion of women in software development has actually been _falling_ since the 1980s. It's not entirely clear why this is, but the rampant sexism in software development that is so painfully evident in HN commentary is surely an important contributing factor.

<comment><USER14> I don't see much sexism on here and the stuff that I do see looks like obvious trolling.

I do sometimes see people accused of being sexist for applying any skeptisism to "all men in tech are sexist pigs" articles.

<comment><USER15> Sadly, one of the reasons that you don't see much sexism on HN is that numerous articles about sexism in the industry are flagged as soon as they arrive on the home page, and get removed fron the site.

It's quite depressing.

<comment><USER14> In my experience at least a couple of posts about sexism in tech make it to the front page every month.

I guess they get flagged because there's really not much you can say about these posts. They are usually something like "I was at a conference and someone commented on my boobs".

Well ok, that guy is probably an asshole but most people on HN probably don't go around doing that.

It would be an interesting story if there was some evidence of tech companies deliberately deciding not to hire women or allowing unchecked sexual harassment in the workplace.

<comment><USER16> Those stories are about _culture_ , which is why it's still important even if the majority of guys don't do it. And you are not being charitable in your characterization of them.

<comment><USER17> You're right. It would be totally better if we did a ritualistic denunciation of sexism every thursday at 8pm.

<comment><USER16> Please. I did not imply anything of the sort. If you're not going to participate in honest discussion, and instead try to score argument-points, please don't participate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I did a high school career day earlier this year, talking about both my job as a frontend developer and my book ("Experiments on Babies" -- <http://www.experimentsonbabies.com>). About a third of the kids in each session were totally tuned out. Another third seemed interested, but I guess didn't want to seem overly interested. And the final third were really attentive and asked lots of good questions. I guess that's probably typical.

One of the things I tried to impress upon the kids is to look at where the jobs are, and what they pay. I don't think that's emphasized nearly as much as it ought to be. For instance, prior to making the switch to full-time development last year, I was working as an editor at a newspaper. I loved it, and I was good at it ... but the newspaper industry was (and still is) in the tank, and there was very little job security. And, of course, there's an oversupply of people with journalism degrees, so the wages aren't much to write home about.

I told them I wasn't trying to talk them out of pursuing a highly competitive, not-so-highly-paying career. But I think students should know, going in, what they're getting themselves into.

<comment><USER15> _One of the things I tried to impress upon the kids is to look at where the jobs are, and what they pay._

Honestly, there's such a thing as "too young" for that. Your high school career day makes more sense, but in the OPs story there are kids dreaming of being pilots and firefighters. A little young to be thinking of career development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the past few years, I have spoken to local middle school kids (7th or 8th grade) at their "career day". They are all totally fascinated with what I do, because kids nowadays (yes I know I sound old) live their whole lives online and surrounded by technology.

The school where I visit is really average, some rich kids some poor kids, all kinds of backgrounds. The format of this career day is that each class period somebody will come and talk to the class that is somewhat related to the subject - so I usually end up speaking to a math or computer class. In a class of 25, there are probably one or two kids who already know some limited programming (or have made a website). Almost everybody that age is online (all Facebook, a handful of Twitter) and plays console video games. Probably about half have cell phones.

When they ask me questions, it's usually about how to steal their friends' Facebook passwords, conceal their browsing history, or build their own video game. I do spend some time talking about privacy, reminding them that their behavior online can stay around forever and that they should be careful who they are talking to online.

<comment><USER20> How does it work for a minor using Facebook? Are their accounts public by default? Can they friend and be friend-requested by anybody? Are they linked to their parent accounts somehow so that parents can monitor or approve requests? When they become an adult, is all of the data/content/history going to stay with the account? So when they are 20, friends can see what they wrote when they were 12 if they dig into their history?

(I am not very familiar with Facebook but I do have two young kids who will probably start wanting it soon)

<comment><USER21> Honestly, I would suggest you get a Facebook account and start playing around with it. The answer to all your questions are "it depends". In part it depends on how Facebook evolves over time, in part it depends on how much they want to curate their content, in part it depends on what their friends do with the content your children are incidentally a part of.

More than any of these, however, it will depend on how well they understand the implications of their actions online. You're going to be in a much better position to communicate about these implications if you understand exactly how they're interacting with their online identity. This means having at least a reasonable understanding of how interacting on Facebook works and, like it or not, Facebook is complicated enough that the only way to understand it is going to be using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I did career day at my daughter's school, when she was in 4th grade (ages 9-11). It was interesting that the kids were far more interested in computers than in robotics. They were even more interested in gaming, which I kind of expected (be prepared to weigh in on which console you prefer, and expect to have at least one of the kids tell you your choice sucks).

I'd recommend it for any technical parent - what you do is definitely cooler than being a lawyer. =P

</comment><comment><USER23> "Every kid has a smart phone. I guess my son wasn't being dramatic when he said he was the only one without one."

Ha! My inner child feels somewhat vindicated.

</comment><comment><USER24> re: "whole numbers" and "decimal numbers"

The terms don't vary much by district; they vary by age. Kids younger than these use the term "number" to mean positive, decimal, integral numerals. That's all they know.

Kids at this age are introduced to some new distinctions: fraction vs. whole, negative vs. positive, and decimal fraction vs. common fraction. At that point, they will use the term "whole number" to mean not some type of fraction and "decimal" to mean a number that uses this nifty, new fractional notation that has digits on the right side of the decimal point.

A few more years pass, and they no longer see "fractions and decimals" but just "numbers." At that point, they switch over to referring to integers and real numbers (with no emphasis on exactly how a fraction is represented), and if they begin working with binary numbers, they'll use the same term, "decimal", to make the distinction of base, not type of fraction notation.

The term "float" is not a mathematical term. Many older math professors don't know it. It is a tech term for a form of storage and display of approximations of real numbers.

These terms are not regionalisms; they represent the distinctions being made by the students at their stage of development.

</comment><comment><USER25> Great read, I felt a bit excited after reading it. I look forward to do the same thing at my boys school. One thing I am wondering about kids and programming is when they are suitable to start taking in the concept of programming, it is probably different from kid to kid. It is such a great tool to teach a kid, to actually be able to build stuff on their own.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Getting kids excited about programming today means that one day, you're more likely to have competent juniors. If you plan on being in the workforce eleven years from now, the fifth grader you talk to today is your new hire in the future."

Wait another 2-3 years, and you will be their new hire.:)

Seriously, I wouldn't think of them as 'juniors' or 'new hires', that will be only a very short temporary state. Think of them as your future colleagues, competitors, hacker friends, fellow tax payers.

Great article though!

</comment><comment><USER27> > The kids repeat questions. Over and over and over again. Not variations on a > question: the same exact question. I would just repeat myself until the > teacher intervened.

Just like trying to give the computer the same input over and over again. I find this hilarious, kids are the best

</comment><comment><USER28> Great article. But expecting children to know what integers and especially floats are is ridiculous. Integers, maybe, like definitely in a higher grade level. But floats absolutely not. They are whole and decimal numbers!

</comment><comment><USER29> Don't put it off!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxVBHhXi8Ho&feature=fvwp&...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxVBHhXi8Ho&feature=fvwp&NR=1)

</comment><comment><USER30> >I comforted myself that I was at least a step above the nutritionist.

How is this person a "step above" a nutritionist?

<comment><USER31> He was talking about the "cool factor", presumably as measured by the kids.

<comment><USER11> She

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What grade / how old are these students?</comment>


Android (and Windows 7 phones) leads to too much hardware choice - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2730711751

<comment><USER2> Nahhhhh... this is like saying "We have too many car manufacturers... we all need to narrow down and settle on a couple key models"

While we as tech-heads tend to follow all of the market, the author is right, most users don't. But to me this is what naturally focuses the choice. "I had a Motorola, show me only those because I liked it" "I am on ATT, I'm not moving, show me only ATT phones" "I want a big screen, I have poor eyesight, make it big"

The average customer even without being a tech-head knows what they like and will automatically self-limit their choices to a manageable field. The fact that they may still have 2-4 devices that fit their general spec is a big plus for Android, not a detriment because they still have choice. It is WE, those of us who follow every possible model launch that start comparing specs and plans and proto-types. I do admit this does become a little frustrating for us... but never forget, WE are not the bulk of consumers.

<comment><USER3> Great points that you've made. One thing though, I would argue that we've seen this issue in action: "Nahhhhh... this is like saying "We have too many car manufacturers... we all need to narrow down and settle on a couple key models"

That is essentially what the reborn GM has done - it paired down a wide range of models by their brands into just a handful. If the recovery of the company is any indication, consumers responded well to a whittled down set of choices over fragmentation set.

<comment><USER2> True, but I would offer the difference between "Too many models" and "too many models at a manufacturer (or in this case, per OS)".

GM fragmented their product line too much to offset the manufacturing and R&D costs to support all of those models. Narrowing focus was more to save their own skin than to make the consumer's life and easier. I would guess (this is purely off the top of my head) that the number of GM's sold hasn't changed that much... but what has changed is GM's profit margin per model, and thus cost savings allow cost cuts to the consumer which may have increased sales. HTC would have the same problem if they produced 2-3x the number of models they do now.

To me the original article reads more like "cars with four wheels have too many choices... one company needs to make four wheel ones, one needs to make two wheel ones, and one needs to make unicycles". That's the jist I got from it anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is full of assertions without actually providing evidence behind them. For example he makes the statement: "since then, very few non-geeks know about individual Android handsets". He doesn't cite any surveys of consumers that back this up. Its all very well making these assertions, but when they are so lacking in evidence its hard to trust this article, its reasoning or its conclusions.

On the other hand market share figures offer some evidence to the contrary. Consumers are clearly buying Android phones - more so than any other platform. Developers are clearly writing programs for Android phones - the market has less programs than the iphone app store but its growing incredibly fast, and its a clearly ahead of Windows Phone 7, Blackberry and Nokia's efforts.

In the tablet marketplace there has been clear demand shown for the Samsung Galaxy Tab - despite the fact that the Android software isn't even tablet ready. In other words people are buying a specific Android device for its hardware - the exact antithesis of the argument in this blog post.

I find it really hard to believe that this article is motivated by anything other than the author's liking of Apple products. Thats fine - its his prerogative to take those stances - except that I find articles promoting opinion that don't back them up with any real evidence to be incredibly unconvincing and pretty much a waste of time. Its a real shame that this got voted onto the front page of HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also, all the different MP3 stores really make my head spin. Why cant we all just buy music and video from iTunes? Give me a break. I bet walking down the cereal isle at the grocery store is a nightmare for Marco.

This, like all of Gruber's work, is pure brand loyalty. Look - I get that a lot of people _really_ like Apple products. I own several - they're slick. But at the end of the day, Apple just puts way too much effort into insisting that you operate entirely within its ecosystem. And it makes me uncomfortable using their products.

Oh, you want an iPhone? Cool. Of course you'll have to use iTunes. Oh, and if you're using iTunes you really should have a Mac because iTunes on Windows is awful. And if you want to play it on a stereo you'll need one with a Apple licensed connector. Oh, and if you want games on it just head over to our App Store. And if you want to put your photos online, you'll just need a $99 Mac.com subscription...

No thanks. I'll take choice any day.

<comment><USER6> _Also, all the different MP3 stores really make my head spin. Why cant we all just buy music and video from iTunes? Give me a break. I bet walking down the cereal isle at the grocery store is a nightmare for Marco._

Well, I hate to quibble, and I mostly agree with what you're saying, but if you remember back to the last time that Apple had to negotiate it's contracts with Universal, Warner, Sony BMG, etc, the music studios weren't exactly trying to negotiate the iTunes music store's prices _down_. In fact, they were asking for a lot of fairly consumer-unfriendly stuff, like the option to jack- up the price of singles in the first few weeks of release, and more album 'bonus tracks' (ie less a-la-carte song pricing).

In fact, it's Universal et. al. that own the rights to all this music. Do they really have to sell any of it in the iTunes music store? Would they have to sell any of it in the iTunes music store if the retail online market for music was split evenly between a multiplicity of mp3 stores? Why don't they tell Apple to take their $1.25 price point and shove it? The answer to that question is the key to understanding the digital music market.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hardware diversity in an OS is almost never a flaw. Even Apple knows this: look at the iPod line. The simple fact of the matter is no one device is going to fit all the needs of all users, whether those needs are real or just perceived. I agree with Marco on a lot of things and admire his work, but he does have a weird blind spot when it comes to Android (like his opinion that it is going to be much less relevant now that there is a Verizon iPhone).

The one device model does have its positives, of course. But the advantages are either too niche or too minor to matter. Fragmentation is the favorite knock, but outside of the tech world not that many care. A significant percentage of iOS users don't even update cause they don't realized they can. Software is somewhat easier to develop, but the advantages are overstated here. Accessories are nice, but those are post sale for the most part. Very, very few people buy phones based on a case or a dock. But even if people hate choosing from similar devices, the manufacturer will win in the long run if they have a plurality of the choices. And in the end, whether or not that is good for the customers, that is what matters.

</comment><comment><USER7> All that choice, and yet there isn't a GSM model with high specs, a 5-row keyboard and a front-facing camera. Some of the author's points are valid, but ultimately I think the market will be better served by _more_ choice than what's currently available, not less.

A problem, as I see it is that there are so many nearly-identical devices out there. Making a device just like the one the other guy is selling a lot of may be an easy recipe for profit, but it's a bit lame. Manufacturers showing a bit of originality might help them get ahead more than "me-too" devices.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the accessory issue is really understated. Not sure how much it matters to others, but to the subset of people I know, it is quite an incentive to go for Apple.

I have a tremendous amount of available add-ons for my iPhone and iPad: speakers, docks, cases, chargers. They are compatible with my car, my A/V receiver and my bedside stereo/alarm clock.

Some of these I bought myself, some I got as gifts from family and friends knowing I have the iDevices.

With Android? Not so much...

<comment><USER9> > With Android? Not so much...

Headphone jacks are amazing things. Perhaps none of your equipment has one?

(usb is also quite cool)

One thing the iPod connector does have going for it is a better 2-way interface. But in practice most devices just give me an optional, equivalent screen, inches away from the iDevice anyways. It's like a wireless remote for a car stereo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "But since then, very few non-geeks know about individual Android handsets. They change so frequently, and are so numerous, that there's never much of an opportunity for a meaningful buzz to generate around any of them. Nobody's lining up to buy them. CNN's not covering their launches. Consumer Reports isn't vigorously testing their antennas. The Daily Show isn't making jokes about them. So the mass market doesn't really respond to individual devices."

These problems are for Android the BRAND, not Android itself. For ~15 years the cellphone industry did just fine without people knowing/caring about specific models (with a few minor exceptions). You walk into the store, look at what's available and pick what you like, just like with PCs themselves. I'm not really sold on the idea that Google cares all that much about the Android brand. It is in their interest that phones become generic internet-consumption devices, just like PCs have.

I do agree that the paradox of choice thing can be a problem for purchasers, but ultimately the market seems to think that it's not enough of a problem. Every industry eventually moves to 50 varieties of spaghetti sauce, because even the most popular variety doesn't appeal to millions of potential customers.

Finally, this: "The manufacturers and carriers have very little incentive to maintain the software on devices that are still relatively new and under contract, because they want everyone buying the newest ones instead."

What? Even if they didn't want everyone buying the newest one instead, what incentive do they have? The way the industry works now you are basically married to your phone for 2 years, like it or not.

<comment><USER9> _But since then, very few non-geeks know about individual Android handsets. They change so frequently, and are so numerous, that there's never much of an opportunity for a meaningful buzz to generate around any of them. Nobody's lining up to buy them. CNN's not covering their launches. Consumer Reports isn't vigorously testing their antennas. The Daily Show isn't making jokes about them. So the mass market doesn't really respond to individual devices._

I thought this just made him sound impossibly old - as in some elderly man, sitting out on his front porch, complaining about all the craziness the kids these days are involved in. "Nobody gets dressed up to fly or go to the movies these days! All these crazy restaurants, whatever happened to just a diner and a bar! How'm I supposed to know about these new fangled color TVs! My wireless Marconi radio never talks about 'em! What do you mean Eisenhower isn't President anymore!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would actually go the other way on this one. I really think we have too few truly different mobile devices. Ignoring the OS, we seem to be in the chase- the-iphone phase after a while in the chase-the-blackberry. It seems like we are missing true differences. I was encouraged by some stuff at CES (mobile phone is brains of laptop), but I really am looking for some wildly different form factors.

<comment><USER12> Not that it's anything new or radically different, but the choice of a physical keyboard is a nice difference in form factor between the iPhone and Android. It was certainly a deciding factor for me. Still, it seems like the reason for the typical form factor's success is that it just makes sense. Wide enough screen for occasional video watching, but not too large so that it's awkward to hold. Buttons down the bottom, because they're out of the way, but still easy to hit. Notification bar up top to show what's new, because that's where menu bars typically are.

Do you have any particular ideas in mind when you're discussing wildly different?

<comment><USER11> I am intrigued by the idea of having something modular. I think plugging a phone into a case to get a notebook or tablet is pretty cool. I guess I want a block of cpu/memory/storage to be my portable home (kinda like some people used their iPods for) that had docks and cases to become something else. Probably a pipe dream, but it would be interesting.

Or maybe something designed with bluetooth as a known instead of an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Couldn't the same argument be made, even more so, with other areas of the technology market? When is the last time there has been a _must_ have entry level digital camera? Or that one laptop that everyone has to have (although certain models stand out, keep in mind that the average consumer is spending in the under $800 range). Even devices where this is less of a choice, such as with iPods, there is still a range for what different feature choices people want, as well as other moderately successful devices. I'm just not understanding the point... walking into a Best Buy to get a gadget has always been this way.

<comment><USER12> If you really want a good example of where there is "too much choice" (in my opinion of course), look at video cards. Unless you follow hardware, it's very difficult to differentiate between models, or even have any sense of comparison. It's all hidden behind strange model numbers which seem to have no correlation between features.

(Well, either that, or I'm an idiot who just doesn't understand video cards.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This fragmentation meme doesn't even pass the laugh test. So why does it keep coming up?

My best hypothesis is that people who're invested in the iPhone are trying to rationalize their desire to stay on Apple's platform. Is there a better explanation?

</comment><comment><USER15> I think HN commenters are _really_ missing Marco's point. He's talking about what's beneficial for the company, not what's beneficial for consumers.

Are any Android manufacturer's making as much of a killing as Apple is right now, globally? I'm talking about profits -- not unit sales.

<comment><USER15> The diversity can be bad for consumers, too. Marco makes a great point: How many 6 month old Android phones are never going to see an Android update? How many Android phones available right now will never get Honeycomb?

With an iPhone, you know you're going to get iOS updates for at least a few years, to the extent that the hardware can support various features. I've got an iPhone 3GS that's over a year and a half old and I'm running the latest and greatest iOS.

(Honest question: How many Android phones released in the summer of 2009 -- Android 1.5 days -- can now run Android 2.3?)

<comment><USER16> Rumours are that the iPhone 3G (which was the top model until the summer of 2009) won't be able to run iOS 4.3. If Google supports Android 2.4 on the Nexus One they'll support it with upgrades longer than Apple supported the 3G.

<comment><USER17> Nexus One was released Jan. 5 2010 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One>

iPhone 3G was released Jun. 9 2008 - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphone_3g>

How are you doing your math?

<comment><USER16> Sorry, I got fixated on "summer 2009" date in the original comment and got confused. My original point stands in much reduced form: A Nexus 1 should have a similar support period to an Apple phone. Better? probably not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "People hate choosing between similar things. The more choice we have at the time of purchase, the more stress we feel making the choice, and the less satisfied we feel afterward because we're worried that we made the wrong choice."

That is so very true. When you get an iPhone you have the comfort of knowing that the iPhones in Japan aren't better. The iPhones with the carrier on the other side of hte fence aren't better.

You have the best iPhone (presuming you have the latest) available. It's consistent and treats the hardware as a platform in addition to the software which makes sense with a cellphone.

The people who buy a phone for it's operating system are a minority. They're shooting themselves in the foot by trying to make the cellphone market like the 1980's PC market.

</comment><comment><USER19> This paradox of choice is very real.

The situation is no different than with laptops. You can expect certain quality standards out of Macbook's. You might be able to get something far cheaper, with more features from others, but there is clearly a market for Macbooks..

I don't know if users of Android care whether Android is open or not. Now there will always be geeks who will run nothing by Linux or *BSD, but most others don't care.

</comment><comment><USER20> Most of these phones could be weeded out by simple criteria (like no updates to recent Android versions). Unfortunately it is difficult to get that information among all the noise.

<comment><USER21> You also can't predict whether the phones you're considering will get updated to newer versions of Android. I got burned by this when Froyo came out _three months_ after I got a phone, and the manufacturer would not update it.

<comment><USER22> Nearly every phone gets updated to newer Androids, just often not by the manufacturer. <http://www.xda-developers.com/> is your friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's somewhat true. If you listen to Barry Schwartz's TED talk "the paradox of choice," he cites a few studies that show if you give a consumer too many choices, there's a better chance they won't buy anything at all. I think that's a definite advantage Apple has had over its competitors: the product lines are clear and simple.

link to talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think choice is somewhat of a red herring (although I do recommend reading "The Paradox of Choice")

Speaking for myself, I don't really care about "choice" (it falls slightly higher than "openness" as a criteria for selection; although both are pretty much at the bottom).

Ultimately, there is either a phone that meets my needs; or one that doesn't. A choice between one phone which doesn't meed my requirements, and thirty phones which don't meet my requirements isn't much of a choice.

So I don't think the fact that there are a multitude of Android phones is inherently good or bad. I agree on the accessory issue, although I'm not sure how much that really effects people's purchasing decisions (I for one probably wouldn't buy a phone based on the docks available for it).

I do think that the large accessory ecosystem is a big benefit for Apple, but probably not as big as Marco postulates.

Although in that sense, I just saw a post about this today: <http://www.akaipro.com/synthstation49> and I'm incredibly excited about buying it (and wonder when we'll start to see similar things for Android show up).

</comment><comment><USER25> As far as I'm concerned, there have been two Android phones: the Nexus One and Nexus S.

<comment><USER16> Don't forget the ADP-1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> commodity (noun) /kəˈmɒd.ə.ti/ Undifferentiated goods characterized by a low profit margin, as distinguished from branded products.

</comment><comment><USER20> Could it be that most of those phones are actually OK, so that one could pick after other criteria, like design?

</comment><comment><USER27> Some people made this argument about the Bell system breakup in 1974. Doubt they still feel that way.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm more worried about developing mobile apps for all these different phones. Minor differences between hardware profiles and firmware versions can lead to major headaches for an app developer. If that concern leads to fewer apps, then it sucks for the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seemed to work out ok for Wintels.

<comment><USER18> But with computers you have a keyboard, monitor.. eventually mouse.

These things were pretty universal and even carried over from machine to machine.

Even then the marketing was more about the OEM branding than Microsoft for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And Apple products lead to too little. Am I destined to forever be stuck in Nokia land?

(really, is it too much to ask for an SD card slot and a standard usb connector on an iDevice?)

</comment><comment><USER30> The one strange thing about the overload of Android phones is there seems to be very little choice in the <4" touchscreen only model category. I'm not sure if the handset makers are conceding this market to the iPhone or they just don't sell very well?

</comment><comment><USER31> 400 models of cars would have a problem if they could not standardize on a single kind of road or petrol.

The accessory issue is about a standard connector and protocol.

There are heaps of iPods and iPhones, but one connector and protocol.

</comment><comment><USER32> Too much, too little, death of one thing, year of another. Anyone else getting tired of some of these pointless opinion threads?

</comment><comment><USER33> Since when in the USA there is a thing of too much choice?

</comment><comment><USER34> An alternating circus of asymco, marco, and daring fireball all trying to spin everything in the iPhone's favor, each referencing each other as moral support.

<comment><USER35> The post references neither Asymco or Daring Fireball. It's almost like you commented on something you didn't read, but I know that can't be the case because that would be childish.

<comment><USER34> No, it's like I've paid attention to the various posts by Asymco, Daring Fireball, and Marco over the past couple of months. I fully anticipate Gruber will link to Marco's piece, Asymco will add some sort of twisted perversion of data that supports it, and so on.

I read the piece and thought it added nothing that hasn't been debated and discussed countless times before.

Yet, the market has spoken, hasn't it? A year ago such was the argument about why Android could never succeed, with so many confusing choices and options against the iPhone's simplicity. Android has done pretty good for itself in spite of that, I suppose. In fact I thought the current angle was " _of course_ Android would do well with so many handsets and so many options".

<comment><USER36> I agree, it's been pretty amusing watching and reading the re-structuring and re-wording of arguments on the Apple circle-jerk of blogs this past year.

It's similar to the current "browser wars." We're all over-privileged and spoiled to have 4 (soon to be 5) standards-compliant, fast, extend-able browsers to choose from on any platform we want. It's basically just nit- picking and personal preference at this point.

It's the same way with smartphones now. We have dozens of handsets that come in a bunch of different flavors (Android, iOS, Windows Phone) that are for the most part very well designed. We're just as spoiled with them as we are with browsers right now. Isn't it enough that we can all choose our favorite equally-awesome version of a smartphone without having to trash the slightly different competitor and write dissertation after dissertation over-analyzing how the other will fail or is bad (when clearly they are succeeding and a large portion of the market enjoys the product)?

Marco, Gruber, and co: you can stop. We get it, you like Apple. Good for you, not everyone else does. Isn't there something more productive you can be doing with your time?

<comment><USER37> >Marco, Gruber, and co: you can stop. We get it, you like Apple. Good for you, not everyone else does. Isn't there something more productive you can be doing with your time?

No they don't, and I'm not being facetious. They are all Apple Tech Writers, not Tech Writers. They don't understand or care much about technology beyond Apple, so if they didn't glowing pro-Apple articles, they wouldn't have much to write about.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How We Improved Page-Load-Time By 1600%, using CloudFront - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/attachmentsme/developer-blog/blob/master/cloudfront.md

<comment><AUTHOR> In an effort to speedup our landing page at Attachments.me, we moved all of our assets over to Amazon's CloudFront CDN. I was shocked by just how much this improved performance.</comment>


Adobe Charging Royalties for "Premium" Flash Player - <AUTHOR> http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/premium-features.html

<comment><USER2> You should have, of course, clarified that this is just for developers, not users.

The interesting bits of the article are:

Applications that make less than $50,000 in revenues will remain free of any royalties, as will any use of the premium features in applications packaged with Adobe AIR, including mobile applications for iOS and Android. ... There is no charge to use premium features in applications that generate less than $50,000 in application revenue. For each application that has net revenue up to $50,000, the fee to use premium features will be a 9% revenue share.

Seems like a strange choice to start charging. Will be interesting to see if it gets used. In particular I'm most interested in if it will produce "good quality" iOS / Android applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good news for HTML5</comment>


Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Incident - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident <comment><USER3> Stiegler (the German pilot) was exactly one shot down enemy machine away from getting the Knight's Cross. So that machine would have been easy prey - <USER2> too easy for his sense of honor?

I think it's interesting that he justified his action with his commander telling his men that shooting enemy pilots that have parachuted out of their machines is dishonorable, and that he essentially saw the almost defenseless machine with most of the crew killed in a comparable position.

There's a sense that technological abstraction makes warfare more evil, because people don't see each other anymore, and killing becomes even more abstract. That's even noticeable in non-war situations like car traffic, where people can become pretty aggressive behind the glass windows of their metal boxes. Even more obvious with drone strikes from a safe place halfway around the world. But for some reason those early days of airfight (probably more so in WW1 and less in WW2 though) convey this notion of "chivalry", which is somewhat counter-intuitive.

Maybe the common shared experience of having to deal with these complicated flying machines created this kind of respect for the other side?

<comment><USER4> The term "chivalry" originates from medieval knights, who had been operators of devastating war machines of the time. And sure, they were warmongers, sexist, oppressors of working class etc. etc. but there is historical record of honorable behavior.

I don't see anything counterintuitive in modern operators of devastating war machines behaving in similar way. Not every warrior is a murderous psychopath. In fact, I have never seen one so they are probably quite rare. While an infantryman, for example, could go through wars for years without ever killing anybody, a pilot is likely to be killing people regularly, just like knights of the past. I imagine the chivalry is the way to cope with killing.

People in traffic don't need to develop it because they are not really killing each other (except for rare road rage incidents). On the other hand, samurais, the warrior caste in Japan developed similar behavior, bushido. Likewise, Vedic tradition also speaks of strict warrior code for khatriya, Indian warrior caste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Brown went on to complete a combat tour."

Traditionally the reason for not allowing enemies to escape is that they will regroup and fight you again (accepting surrender, or allowing parachutists to land & become POWs, is a different matter). In this case, the escaped crew was able to return to bomb German civilians.

<comment><USER6> No good deed goes unpunished.

How unfashionable by today's standards of shooting a guy in rags from IR vision enabled, high calibre helicopter gun because he has old rifle and some ammo so might pose a problem to somebody at some point in the future.

<comment><USER7> At least your scenario has a guy with a gun in his sights. "We don't do body counts" type attitudes seem to reign supreme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My grandfather who fought in WWII (British) developed a close friendship with a German veteran in his later years. I think they met in southern Spain where they both spent a lot of time in their retirement in the 1980s. I doubt their story was as spectacular as this, but there was clearly some experience they both shared that led to the friendship. I'm not suggesting they knew each other in the war (but who knows?), but the fact they both went through similar experiences allowed them to develop a bond.

I wonder how common this is?

<comment><USER9> I would guess it is not something difficult to do in this scenario. We are talking about a war where young men get drafted and sent to the carnage, most of them don't go there voluntarily out of some ideology.

So it's easy to see some years later that you were just being used and form a bond with someone that was exactly in the same situation as you were but using different colors.

All in all, those two men had more in common with each other than with the men from their own country that were waging war from whiting their palaces and sending them to their deaths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Swedish power metal band Sabaton told the story of this incident in their song "No Bullets Fly"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x02g4-XT_VU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x02g4-XT_VU)

</comment><comment><USER11> >> Stigler recalled the words of one of his commanding officers from Jagdgeschwader 27, Gustav Rödel, during his time fighting in North Africa, " If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute, I will shoot you down myself."

At first I thought this was somehow in response to the battle of Crete and the civilians attacking the parachuting Germans, and I was preparing to offer a few choice words about the "honour" of the esteemed commander.

But then I read a bit further into the link from that quote:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_parachutists#Second...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_parachutists#Second_World_War)

And it seems Stigler's act was not isolated, and German pilots did let bomber crews at least jump out of their damaged planes.

I was reminded of something I've heard before, that the air forces of the European powers in WWII were carrying over a tradition of gallantry from WWI- or at least they did so at the start of the new war.

I also remember something about the war in Africa not being as vicious (or at least the troops not being as cruel) as the one in Europe, but again, no sources for that.

Edit: I should say that I find the whole idea of honour and gallantry at war completely pants. The same people who found it dishonourable to shoot at parachuting enemies had no compunction in bombing the shit out of peoples' houses, farms, factories and generally livelihood, on the ground, not to mention not giving a flying pig about the same people and what their bombs would do to them.

Somebody mentioned the knights below, and how they had a code of honour also (and sometimes, even lived by it). Well the knights are a great example. They were honourable and gallant to each other when they remembered it (unless they were drunk out of their basinets) but the way they treated mere peasants... well, I don't have to say anything, we've all read Game of Thrones, so.

Case in point (for Germans in WWII):

Massacre of Cretan civilians at Kondomari, Crete, 1941

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crete#/media/File:Bu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crete#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-166-0525-30,_Kreta,_Kondomari,_Erschie%C3%9Fung_von_Zivilisten.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER12> War is terrible. Average citizen doesn't realize it until there's a draft or until after they're a veteran.

I hope one day we'll reach critical mass of war awareness and stand up against it. For now, we're building "modern" smaller target nuclear weapons.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have just read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#The_British_later_in_the_war) that was very different from what my teacher said. For him, germans were far more effective than uk in bombing war production factories and uk was getting short of airplanes. Churchill has decided to focus more on german towns, causing the retaliation on London bombing. According to him, this plan has been a total success, uk was able to rebuild its war production factories and to catch up with Germany.

As history is always rewrote by winner, I was not able to confirm this story.

<comment><USER7> I recommend "Britain's War Machine" by David Edgerton. Prior to hostilities Britain had an inferior military in many regards (but many superior tanks, ships and planes) but her manufacturing and resources available from Empire far exceeded those of Germany. It didn't take that long to get war production going, and by most measures of armament production Britain had overtaken Germany by 1941. It's a while since I read the book but it was quite eye opening to me too see the stats on how powerful Britain was when going into the Second World War. The story of the plucky underdog is a myth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The bomber did not surrender. It did not land and/or seek sanctuary with a neutral party, even though both options were the more humane. It was not a wounded soldier trying to stay alive: it was still fighting and showed no intention of surrender. Today, the German pilot should have shot it down or be punished for allowing a combatant to so escape.

Chivalry is all well and good but, like so many other stories from that war, this reminds me of the speech in Remains of the Day where the American congressman calls all the old powers amateurs, that the coming war (WWII) wouldn't be prevented by a agreement between gentlemen over dinner. Imagine the outrage today if a US soldier allowed a wounded ISIS fighter to limp home with his weapon rather than capture him. Conversely, imagine what would happen to that wounded ISIS fighter should his compatriots see him fail to kill the hesitant US soldier. War has moved on.

<comment><USER15> Until you've had to kill people yourself, seen the results, and lived with yourself afterwards, I don't think you have anything to say about what someone else has been in that situation and decided not to kill that day.

<comment><USER14> Which is why civilians have laws and soldiers have their orders: to overcome personal morality. That bomber pilot came back, so did the german fighter pilot, as would the ISIS fighter. Orders and laws recognize the bigger picture.

The structure operates both ways. We punish soldiers for applying their morality above orders because often that morality tells them to kill where their commanders don't want them too. In this case the soldier's moral code told him to disobey orders by not killing, but what about those situations where the soldier's moral code tells to disobey orders by killing? That leads to revenge, torture and all manner of illegal horrors ... which is why after WWII we setup a host of laws meant specifically to further usurp such decisions. The lesson was that, despite some noble stories, the decisions of gentlemen could no longer be trusted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I read an account of this incident and its aftermath - including the meet between the two pilots decades after the war.

Absorbing read, quite different from your average WWII literature - investigating Stigler's background in some detail to look for motivation for this act, &c.

It was titled 'A higher call' IIRC. Most recommended.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one that see Stigler as clearly the better man in all this story?

All Brown did (not counting the his bravery and the bravery of his crew, but looking just at the interaction Brown Stigler) was to spare the German plane after he helped him get out of that mess and send him away with a pointed gun warning and then shut up about the gesture and keep bombing German civilians until the end of the war.</comment>